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What makes someone a human?
A body like Aigis' defies easy categorization, easy answers. Whereas Kotone could pick any part of herself and easily be able to call it soft, warm, a live… None of these qualifiers can rightly be mapped to any one piece of Aigis at first glance. It would not even be a stretch to say that her metal exterior is hard, cold, still. Even the parts covered in layers of cloth, a small allowance afforded by unfeeling and uncaring creators, can only yield a few centimeters deep before the plush exterior gives way to internal armor plating.
Kotone knows all this, and more, of her best friend and lover. She knows better than anyone in fact. After all the spare hours spent with one another, she knows that none of that can ever be the whole story.
Metal tips the ends of Aigis' hands; little, innocuous caps that can, in an instant, slide open to reveal the barrel of a gun. The metal joints just beneath the cloth layer slide and click as Aigis moves them, snapping in and out of place as the need demands. When she touches Kotone, there is always that nagging awareness that these hands were made for only one thing; death. And they’re damn good at it.
But she's seen those hands do so much more. She's seen them softly caress the leaves of withering plants, consoling them as she pours life-giving water into their home to feed their greedy roots. She’s seen them slide through Koromaru’s fur as the dog rolls over in his happiness at her care.
And she's felt them. Holding her; gently, greedily, gingerly. Playing across her own hands, as stark in their similarities as their differences. Those same needs and wants in microcosm, shared with only a touch.
Nothing will ever be as soft as those hands; as violent as they are in design, they are trumped tenfold by a chosen tenderness.
Aigis' arms and legs are things of metal in totality, utilitarian needs overcoming human aesthetic. They move silently, in comparison to her hands, as she navigates the world with a gait of someone who knows how much stronger they are than the creatures of flesh and blood around her. Kotone has watched these arms take the brunt of attacks that would destroy cars and buildings, bore witness to those legs perform feats of athleticism that would impress even the greatest of Olympians in terms of sheer power. Her limbs are the most obvious of her mechanical origins, and the most brutal in their design…
So when she holds Kotone in those arms, pulling her into a stiff but warm embrace, Kotone can only marvel at their reclamation.. How these arms built for function took on their own form, how they feel as they hold her tight. How easily Aigis lifts her from the couch when she's too exhausted from fighting to leave it, how full of want she is in those closest moments. In that, Kotone finds warmth.
The most care given by her designers in terms of Aigis' humanity is her head. No harsh metal resides there, beyond her sensor suite disguised as a pair of headphones. Her blonde hair tussles in the wind just as Kotone's does, her blue eyes glowing with a vigor that even many humans lack. Her small smiles, powerful in their restraint, grow more and more common as the month of January grows long and their time together builds and builds. Her face flushes when Kotone touches her, her brow furrows when she is confused, her nose crinkles when she allows herself to laugh. Even with the metal framework just beneath, poking and prodding as Kotone lavishes kisses on her, her own sense of greedy need shining through, Kotone feels happy. Her girlfriend does not feel the same way as other girls, nor does she try to.
She is her, in a way only she can be.
The Papillon Heart she carries at the base of her neck is a miracle in every definition of the word, built to specifications that even the Kirijo scientists who developed it have difficulty comprehending. The Plumes of Dusk that crisscross its form create a connection with humanity that facilitates everything that Aigis is, and everything she could be. It is something incomprehensible, unique… Alien.
But it beats, just as Kotone's does. A thrumming of energy, barely perceptible when Kotone presses her ear to it. And like hers, when her love is close, when they're sharing their time together, when the moment is just right… it builds and grows.
Aigis has a stronger heart than anyone Kotone knows. Her good nature, built with gentle care from a knife’s edge now dulled, defines her every action. There's never been a girl like her, a human like her, but she is such. And how beautiful that is.
No one has hands like hers, holding Kotone's so tenderly as their fingers weave together.
No one has limbs like hers, entangled as they are with hers on this lazy day in bed.
No one has a face like hers, her every mannerism an act of active learning that so earnestly shines into the life of every person she knows.
No one has a heart like hers, drumming its nervous song that vibrates down the body of this wonderful girl and finds resonance with Kotone’s.
There's nothing held in common between their two bodies, no thread to tie them together. Two souls, staring at one another through crude effigies of steel and flesh, seeking their meaning within the other.
And that's alright.
Because there's one thing they do share, that makes those distinctions become just splashes of color on this canvas their bodies occupy.
“I love you,” Aigis says, her words a breathless hum against the top of Kotone's head.
“I love you too,” Kotone says, her words a light breeze against Aigis' neck.
And that makes all the difference.