scraping up the pieces

Nic felt like shit. Not because of any one thing, but just in general. He felt lazy and apathetic, and it was all he could do just to lie there on the couch, staring at the ceiling.

This wasn't a job. He barely did anything. How could he even call himself a guard if he didn't do any guarding? He was little more than a live in pet, and the idea of it made him surly and angry.

Maybe he should quit.

Maybe he should tell Ulrich that it wasn't working out.

He could faintly hear the sound of someone entering the house, and he stayed where he was right up until he heard Ulrich set something down. The coffee table wasn't more than a few feet away, but he hadn't even bothered to get up.

When he did, it was probably a bit surprising, since he was coming out of nowhere. Not that Ulrich would be bothered by that sort of thing.

"We should talk," he muttered to himself, feeling sour and annoyed.

Nicolas didn't say it. Not right then. It wasn't cowardice, he informed himself--he was about as far from a coward as it was possible to be--but instead simple practicality.

He didn't have anywhere to go. He didn't have another job lined up. He felt useless and frustrated, but that didn't mean he got to stop being practical.

"Nevermind, I'll talk to you about it later," he said, squinting at the box in Ulrich's arms.

Probably more work. Or that was his thought right up until the point where Ulrich said it was for him.

Nicolas squinted, a sliver of guilt squirming it's way in.

"For me?"

Nicolas was expecting a gun. He was expecting some kind of sizeable, hand crafted weapon. Maybe a sword? A sword would certainly have fit in the box, although it wouldn't have been terribly large. Either way, he wasn't expecting an arm, so when he popped the box open and squinted at the contents he found himself abruptly without any sort of snappy comeback.

"An... arm?" He finally said after a long moment. It took him a second to process that yes, it was an arm, and then another to process that it was not, in fact, a severed arm. It was mechanical, some kind of robotics peeking out at the shoulder, but the majority of it looked human enough to pass as a completely normal arm.

His brain simply didn't connect. He was staring at the arm, and even as he stared his hand came up, rubbing at the stump, but his brain couldn't snap the pieces together, couldn't understand that it was a gift, that Ulrich had said he'd get an arm for him.

"An arm?" He repeated stupidly.

His brain still didn't get it. He'd been handed all the information that he needed, everything that he could possibly desire, and yet he still didn't get it. He felt strangely choked, like there was a golf ball stuck in his throat, and when he reached out to run his fingers over one of the plates he found himself almost surprised to realize that they were solid.

It was real.

"It's -" Nicolas started, finding himself abruptly at a loss for words. How did one even describe it? It was certainly beautiful. Sleep. Clearly well put together.

"Is it... is it for work?" He said, trying to figure out the why. The why was what he needed. He needed something to ground him, something to help him understand.