A Gaslamp Rekindled

*7:30 PM Thursday April 18th, 2019*

Olivia sits on the bench, staring out to the sea as the faintest touch of violet night skims the horizon. The normally busy sidewalk is sparse with the crowd of businesspeople having the day off and tourism occupying further North and South of where she’s sitting now. A bouquet of wisteria sits next to where Olivia is now, her hands crossed tentatively.

Would Gwen know that it was her? Would she believe it after all that’s happened? Olivia gets up and paces, resting her hands on the top of the bench after catching herself in the act. She hates not knowing what’ll happen if Gwen does show up. A light blue coin-shaped disc shapes itself between her fingers and she flicks it back and forth before skipping it across the water.

It fizzles out about 100 feet from where she leans against the rail. There’s no time to take it back now, she has to see Gwen. She spins back around and steels her nerves. Excitement starts to rush through her as she picks up the bouquet with a newfound vigour.

Gwen holds the paper bag tight as she breathes into it in the back of the Lyft, motioning at the driver that she’s fine. She is, of course, over-acting, but she is very, very nervous about seeing Olivia again. The last times they had been apart for a long time, Gwen had come back to Olivia having forgotten about her, or having been brainwashed by GREY. This time, Olivia had had her body broken and Gwen hadn’t been able to talk to her for two months. She is excited to see her girlfriend again! But what if something was wrong again this time?

She gets out of the car a block away from where Olivia’s message had said to meet, pays the driver, and takes a deep breath. She straightens her jacket and checks her hair in a shop window, tucking back her twitching cat ears under her beret. Gwen had been glad that it was getting warmer as spring began to bloom across Halcyon, so she could leave the house without Rhiannon fussing over her not wearing a coat.

Gwen walks towards the pier, the sea coming into view. She fiddles with her phone in her jacket pocket, her other hand gripping the strap of her messenger bag. Rounding the corner, the bench--and Olivia--comes into view. Gwen stops at the start of the pier to focus on her breathing as she looks at the other girl. She sees something in Olivia’s hands. Flowers? Oh no.

She takes out her phone and sends a text message to Olivia.

*> hey I have a problem?*

*> i won’t be able to meet u where you asked.*

*> i just saw u and im paralyzed cuz im nervous and ur hella cute*

*> i didn’t really… forget that? But also i didn’t see ur face in 2 months*

The messages flicker on the edge of Olivia’s vision and she spins around. Her coat billows in the wind as she looks around the area for Gwen, blush becoming more apparent by the microsecond.

*>My face was kind of a mess during the last 2 months so I don’t blame you…*

*>If I hold onto these flowers any longer I’m gonna crush them haha*

She lets out a nervous laugh randomly, shrill in tone but filled with giddy optimism. Still spinning around, she locks onto where Gwen stands and it feels like her system suddenly shuts off then comes back on.

Frozen. Olivia stands frozen looking at Gwen, her face starting to well up. It was 2 months and she saw Gwen almost every day through her broken vision but now… now that she’s seeing her in person again. It feels almost magical.

“Hey,” she calls out. Her legs refuse to move despite the commands she keeps sending to them. A loose strand of hair escapes her ponytail that she brushes back behind her ear.

“Hey,” Gwen responds. She can’t help but smile and laughs nervously. She walks towards Olivia, while she looks sideways, out to sea. “It’s a beautiful evening,” she says, trying to defuse the tension, “You picked a very nice spot to meet up.”

The shadow of a waterside flagpole dances across her face. When she walks further, back into the sunlight, the blush on her face is all the more apparent in contrast. The wind blows her hair back and tugs on her beret. Under her shirt, she wears a white top and a red skirt, along with black stockings. It feels nice and warm in the evening sun, by her standards. Gwen fumbles with the edge of her jacket and puts her hands in the pockets, trying to take on a ‘tough girl’ stance as she stops in front of Olivia. She sucks in her lower lip and nods and stifles a snort at her own awkwardness. “You’ve uh… got good taste in meet up spots.”

Olivia shuffles to the rail next to Gwen, trying to pull the card from her mom jeans pocket. It was rushed and homemade and probably not as good as a store-bought card from Legitimate but she hoped Gwen wouldn’t care.

“It’s a really lovely evening, but I see someone lovelier than the sunset,” she responds. *This is why you don’t watch 8 romance movies before meeting your girlfriend.* Olivia groans and puts her face in her hands. “That was corny, sorry,”

She thrusts the bouquet and card to Gwen, hoping she’ll ignore the comment while Olivia keeps one hand over her face, hoping Gwen won’t see her face red as tomato soup.

“Oh my God,” Gwen mutters, covering her mouth with a hand, still in her jacket pocket. She takes her other hand of the pocket and takes the bouquet. She sniffs the wisterias and leans in close and kisses Olivia on the cheek, right beside her hand covering up the rest of her face.

“If that was corny, I hope you’ve got a whole maize field of lines like that,” she says. “And you’re prettier than a moonlit night.”

Gwen’s face is flushed as well, and her eyes keep darting around, looking away from Olivia and back to her face again, smiling. She moves close to Olivia’s side and brushes her free hand against hers and takes hold of it. “So… do you want to go somewhere?”

Olivia lets out a nervously high, tremulous laugh- more shrill than her usual laugh. She turns and holds Gwen’s hand with her free hand. “It’s quiet here but we can maybe go to the park if you want,”

She looks deeply into Gwen’s eyes. The things they’d both been through, together and alone… Olivia takes in every shade of Gwen’s pale blue eyes. She would not forget them. She would not fight them. She would protect them at any cost.

“You’ve never worn a beret before haha,” she says confusedly. What was it that Elle told her about Gwen while she was being repaired? Something happened but her memory files are still jumbled from the 2 months under repair.

“I’m… trying new things,” Gwen comments on her beret. “I thought it might fit my outfit? It feels a little awkward on my head though, but at least it covers my ears. Do you like it?”

Gwen cast a look over the water, where the sun was touching the horizon. “Yeah… I like this view, but we can go elsewhere. It’ll be nice to go for a walk, and the park is not too far away. There are some nice restaurants around there too, I think.”

She squeezes Olivia’s hand lightly as if to confirm herself of her presence. She still feels the same, but there seem to be small differences that she makes note of. Did Olivia’s mother make her look… older? It seemed mostly subtle to Gwen, but that slight difference was a little uncanny at first. Gwen smiled and squeezed softly again. The change wasn’t more than that of a human ageing a few years, and those people were still the same. She just often forgot how different robots were. To Gwen, Olivia was essentially completely human.

Olivia casts Gwen a smile. “You could wear a death metal clown costume and I’d still like it,” she responds. Hand in hand, she leads Gwen down the promenade as the waters crash below.

“There’s a little spot along the pier that isn’t quite a park but there’s a seating area that’s usually unoccupied at this point in the day.” Although she’s still the same Olivia, the newly upgraded body still surprises her. For example, Gwen’s hand still feels the same mostly but the way it sits in her own hand feels slightly different than before.

The wind from the water brushes up against her trench coat, a simple white blouse peeking out with the locket. Alarms in the distance and the sound of car horns is faint white noise compared to how loud her newly upgraded fans are working.

“Uhhh, there’s something that I’ve been meaning to tell you that I don’t know if it’s come up. Aha… I think it’s actually better until we reach the area,”

This is the first time she stutters like this…

Gwen snickers and tries to imagine herself looking like ‘a death metal clown’. Perhaps next Halloween she should ask Bitzy for makeup tips. She glances sideways at Olivia as she stutters. “What’s wrong, babe?”

She looks in front of them, trying to discern where exactly Olivia is taking her. *Is there something wrong with the seating area?*

Gwen squeezes Olivia’s hand reassuringly, and lifts it up, planting a kiss on the back of her hand. “Don’t worry, it’ll be good. Take your time if you need to.” She smiles at her. Meanwhile, her brain is screaming. *What is it? What’s wrong?! Oh God, is this the part where she tells me about some evil long-lost relative, or a secret lover, or… or… I have really been watching too many telenovelas with Angel, haven’t I?*

Olivia relaxes a bit on the outside after seeing how composed Gwen is. *Everything about this entire scenario is so cheesy. Why must you do this to yourself? If you keep internally screaming she’s going to hear it through the fans.*

The area she described comes into view. Another stone bench is placed on a circular outcropping that juts out slightly from the promenade faces the sunset. An old oil lamp stands next to the bench, dust coating most of the stand save for a few streaks leading to the small glowing light.

“We’re here. Grandma Josie told me this is where she first met Harold- her husband not the gun- on their first date.” She goes on ahead and spins back to look at Gwen.

Gwen looks up at the streetlight with its old dusty lamp. Her mouth hangs open as she turns to Olivia. Her heart begins to beat faster and she hears the doom-doom of it in her ears, which twitch beneath the beret. “I…” she begins, but the words don’t seem to come. She hadn’t talked a lot with Josie in the past, but for Olivia to take her to a place that was so significant in her grandmother’s life? Her brain drew her a mental picture, connecting that past event to the present moment. Before her mind’s eye, Gwen gets a vision of a possible future: herself at 90 years old, sitting by the fireplace in front of a wall full of old family photos, with a gun named Olivia in her lap as she knits a sweater and hums an old-timey song like Despacito. She screams internally out of embarrassment over the thought.

“That’s so sweet,” she says with a nervous smile, trying to remain composed. “I wish I could’ve met him. Your grandpa, not the gun. I think I’ve met the gun too often.” She kind of mumbles the last part.

This time Olivia lets out a genuine laugh, free of the tension from before, a shrill machine-gun-fire-like noise that only a girlfriend could love. She takes a seat on the worn wood and iron bench.

“I don’t recall if I’ve ever said it before,” she looks out to the sea, another small disc dancing between her fingers.

She turns her face back towards Gwen, mouth settled into a gentle smile, eyes glassy on the verge of crying but tear-less. “I love you, Gwen.”

Gwen sits down next to Olivia, putting the bouquet down next to her, and her breath stops for a moment when she speaks the words. Gwen smiles and shakes her head first, then nods. “You have said it before. It was kind of a hectic environment and emotional moment though.”

She slides closer to Olivia and raises a hand to her face, brushing her cheek. “You’re gorgeous and adorable inside and out, y’know? And I… I love you too.”

Olivia gets closer and puts her forehead against Gwen’s. *It’s warmer than normal, she might have a fever. You should probably close off the fans before you make it worse. At the very least you’ll match the average body temperature of a human.*

A chilly sea breeze toys with the flame in the oil lamp as violet and indigo take the rest of the night sky. She leans in even closer and kisses Gwen softly, electric tingle playing across her lips but without any cold steel to accentuate it.

She quickly leans back and her face appears flushed. “You are my everything,” she says.

“There’s no one I rather would have repaired a destroyed kitchen with or taken to a school dance or kissed in a transforming submarine or spun out of the hand of a weird blue alien mall cop or kiss again soaking wet in a really *really* bad facility with or beat up the guy who caused a lot of this,” she waves her arms wide. “Or sit right here, right now, on this bench with… No one.”

The warmth of Olivia’s skin, the tingle of her lips, the last, colourful sunshine of the day… Gwen can barely stop smiling for long enough to properly kiss Olivia back and lean in. She takes in a breath as they part and puts a hand over her face, touching her lips as to hold the feeling for a bit longer. She can’t stop smiling. She can’t stop flushing red.

“Olivia, I… fuck. That was poetic. How am I supposed to follow up with that? You’re bloody perfect.” Gwen shakes her head, visibly tearing up, trembling slightly. “I can’t believe how lucky I am to have met you, how you are still so strong and kind and… and everything after all this. After regenerating, after GREY, after Zodiac City… You’re more resilient than anyone I know, and that includes my *father.*”

Tears roll over Gwen’s cheeks. She clutches her hands together. “I will happily beat up any dragon with you or for you. I would love to show you the sights in space I’ve seen and felt, once this whole Risganjan business is over. And… and…”

She stops, trying to think of something else to say, perhaps to top those other things with. Something bigger than fighting dragons or going to space. Then, it seems as if a light goes up in her head. “And I’d love to take you to prom with me?”

Olivia puts her face in her hands but not before Gwen is able to see the grin that spreads across it. The robot nods, her face tomato red again and she peaks through her fingers.

“That’d be lovely,” she responds, putting her hand overtop Gwen’s.

Gwen smiles broadly. “Crap, my cheeks hurt now,” she laughs.

She shivers slightly, getting colder now the sun has gone. The wind tugs at her beret. With her free hand she reaches up to keep it on her head, but a sudden gust blows it off, and Gwen moves quickly, almost jumping up a little to grab it. “Got you!” she says, sitting back down, her cat-like ears unfolding and twitching in the air. “I’m still not really used to this thing, but at least it looks nice, don’t you think?” She turns to Olivia and her expression turns questioning. “What? Do I have something on my face?”

Honestly? If her jaw could stretch like her limbs, it would be on the ground right now. “Y-your ears?” Olivia stammers out. Confusion consumes her face along with a sense of shock that isn’t from overcharging. All of a sudden, she slaps her forehead.

“Of course! Elle told me this before,” she giggles. The small disc disappears from her hands as she reaches up to scritch them. “How long have you had them?” Olivia asks inquisitively as she keeps touching.

“I--” Gwen starts to answer before her voice is overtaken by a surprised purring noise at Olivia’s scritchy fingers. She slaps a hand over her mouth and looks embarrassed, but she leans closer to Olivia regardless. “I don’t remember the exact moment I got them, but it was during Zodiac City. I guess I wasn’t really paying attention when it happened but after the fight with Ghazal… when we were taking you back to the base, I noticed that I had them then.”

She puts her head on Olivia’s shoulder. For what remained of the daylight, they spent time talking with each other on that bench. Gwen told Olivia about having found her mother, how she’d helped get her fixed up and walking again, and the two other robots she had with her--only to disappear again shortly thereafter, with no notice, as far as Gwen knew.

As darkness grows, the lamplight keeps the night at bay and they continue to talk. Some parts are intertwined with stretches of silence, broken only by the crash of waves on the rocks below. For now, they sit in each others’ company and look up at the stars, hands crossed over each other.