She's getting older.

He doesn't notice at first. The process is gradual, stealthy, affecting her appearance and movements in increments so small that neither of them notices until one day he suddenly realizes that there is gray in her hair and that her face is lined more prominently than it once was.

He starts looking behind him, behind her, as if this thing that is taking her away from him moment by moment can be found, caught, trapped, slain; let them stay together forever. He ignores it, laughs through it, and when she smiles the shadow lifts (but he can't help but notice that there's hesitation, that the skin sags around her mouth and eyes, laugh lines and crow's feet).

He tries to forget and the days pass as they always have, but now that he's noticed it he can't shake the notion. He has been made aware of time and it fills him with emptiness, a hollow terror that consumes everything he'd thought he had, all the happiness that he thought they'd made for themselves. His emotions are dragged in as well; he withdraws into himself, a blank-eyed quiet-voiced shell of himself. He tries to laugh but it echoes strangely, and his smiles are crooked and don't reach his eyes; the roaring hollow has swallowed everything. He skirts around her now; he's almost afraid to touch her, to disturb her, as if that will somehow speed the process.

She notices, but he doesn't notice her concern until one day she taps him on the arm, and when he looks up her eyes are full of worry. Guilt fills him, momentarily overwhelming the void; he's been so invested in his own fears he hasn't thought of how his behavior must be affecting her. He smiles at her, trying to reassure, but it's halfhearted and broken, a weak and twisted parody and he knows it and she can see it but how can he be happy when he's going to lose her?

The enormity of this strikes him all at once, and he feels all the breath leave him at once; it is as if the revelation has struck him a physical blow (the human body never fails to surprise him, even after so long, even when it's not technically human). He is going to lose her. She is going to leave him, and he will be left behind in this unaging undying body until his mechanics wear down after far, far too long alone and he stutters to a stop; and even then he's probably backed up somewhere. He is absolutely, utterly helpless, and he hates it, hates this feeling of impotent rage, the fear and the anger and the grief all mixing into one blindingly powerful emotion. He chokes, and then even though his body cannot cry, the emotion swells up in his chest like a wave and he sobs, dry, hacking convulsions that shake his entire body.

Warmth enfolds him; he feels her arms around him and he buries his face in her shoulder, wishing that they could be together forever, that time would stop just now—that Time was something he could reason with, plead with, beg for infinity.

"Shhh," she murmurs into his hair; he clings to her as if in danger of being swept away, desperate for the reassurance that she is still there, will always be there.

"I'm sorry," he rasps, and he doesn't know why; he can't see her face but he knows that her mouth has tensed into a line and her eyebrows are raised with confusion-worry-questioning and her silence drags the words out of him in the way that speech never could.

"I'm sorry!" he repeats, louder, something he's said to her too many times, and his voice cracks high on the last word. "I—I—I—" There don't seem to be any words. He stumbles and stutters for what feels like an age; she is patient—always patient—until he finds a word that he can use, "Hate."

Her shoulders tense and he hastens to amend, "Not you! Never you. Everything else, though." Until he realizes that that isn't what he meant to say at all, and then, finally, there are words, tumbling out faster than he can speak, "I don't—I can't—I don't age, and you do—and—and—and—you're going to die and I don't, can't lose you—I mean it, I don't want to be in a world that's not got you in it—don't want to be alone—but emI can't die/em and you can and there's not enough emtime/em—do you understand? Am I making any sense at all? Or should I just be quiet now?"

She smiles sadly, although he can't see it, but he feels the movement against his head, the tingle as her lips brush his hair momentarily. She offers no words of comfort—they both know that there are none—but it's enough that she keeps on holding him; the simple contact speaks more than words ever could.

It will be okay, he thinks, and the tightness in his throat begins to lessen. They have time. Maybe not much—but a little is better than none.

Years pass. They spend less time around people ("Oh, is this your son?" they ask; he begins to correct them, and she silences him with a glance) but it doesn't matter because she is all he needs and she has never been dependent on human contact. He keeps the worry out of his mind, for the most part, but every now and then her movements falter or she stumbles and it comes rushing back, but it's not the soul-crushing fear it was before.

Until.

Until one day she can't stand; she wakes and struggles to rise, but her legs will not support her. He's noticed, of course; he's seen her getting frailer by the day, but this is a cruel wakeup call. There is not much time left. And even though they have not gone near a town in years except for the barest necessities, he carries her to the nearest village he can remember, and the only thing he can say is "Help."

There's not much they can do against time, but they agree to do what little they can; they give her a bed and a fire and they let him sit with her, holding her hand (so frail; her bones feel like insects' wings, they'll crush under the slightest pressure) as she drifts in and out of consciousness.

They talk, when she's lucid; they both know what's happening. Well, he talks quite a bit; she gives a word here and there, but she is unique among humans in that she can say more with a single word and a gesture than the others can in a hundred. It is curious; now that the time has come—now that death is a reality, and not a distant ominous possibility—he is calm. He knows he shouldn't be; he should be raging, hysterical, desperate, but somehow his emotion has been shunted off to a place in the back of his head where it bubbles but doesn't leak through.

It takes two days, and in all that time he doesn't leave her side for a moment. The townsfolk think he is strange, because he doesn't eat and he doesn't sleep, but he doesn't care; his only concern is to stay with her until the inevitable occurs.

When it does, he almost doesn't notice. She is asleep—has been for several hours—and he is in a halfway-dormant state of numbness, the closest to sleep he ever gets—when suddenly he realizes that the hut is quiet, eerily quiet, and then he sees that her chest has stopped moving.

He picks up her body, and it is feather-light; he leaves town without a word, carrying her with him. There is a place—he found it once, when he was looking for food. It is a cave, a yawning black mouth in the rock face that he enters willingly, walking on into the darkness until he can no longer see the light of day at the cave mouth, and even then he doesn't stop, walking on blind until he runs into a wall.

His silence breaks with a curse—"Bloody hell! Sorry, can't see a thing down here, are you all—" and then he realizes there's no point in asking, that there is no answer, there will never be an answer, because she's emgone gone gone/em and she's left him behind in the dark.

And there, finally, he breaks down; choking hacking sobs that still, still bring no tears, but she is unable to offer comfort now and he is forced to ride out the storm of emotion on his own. He abandons himself to it—he cries, as best he can; he shouts into the darkness until his voice breaks and his throat is raw and painful. (em"It's not fair! She was the one thing I cared about! She was the one person who ever cared about me! You wouldn't let it happen, though, would you—couldn't let me have even a little bit of happiness, could you?"/em) He accuses and threatens and pleads, hating himself for being so powerless, hating the world for taking her away, even—he can't help it, he doesn't want to, but he can't—even hating her a little for leaving him, for going into that place he can't follow.

He drives his fist into the wall, over and over again, until the plastic skin over his knuckles hangs in tatters and the silicon bones crackle when he moves his hand, and it hurts but he doesn't feel it because the pain in his chest makes him numb to everything else. (em"Give her back!" he cries, slamming the wall again, "Give her back give her back give her back give her /emback,em I'll do anything, /emanythingem, just give her back—")

And when his anger and grief are finally exhausted, he sits and shakes, folded over into a clump of pathetic numbness, full of a roaring void that drags him down in upon himself; and he clutches her to his chest desperately as an anchor in a world that is falling out from underneath him.

Time passes, although he doesn't perceive it down here—the darkness is absolute, and nothing moves; the light never changes, because there is no light to change, and the only sound is the whirr of his processors. Gradually he becomes aware of a drag on his awareness; he has not moved but the processes that keep him alive require energy, if only a little. Normally he converts it from sunlight, but there is no sunlight down here.

Perhaps he cannot die, but no one will find him down here; no one will bring him back up into the light. It is not death, but it is as close as he can come.

The words scroll across his vision, poisonous green: emPOWER-SAVING MODE ACTIVATED/em. He has just enough time to wonder what that means before he switches into sleep mode. His body slumps against hers; his head rests against her shoulder, a grotesque parody of a lovers' embrace.

And all is still.