cinder || dnf

chapter twenty one

Dream slumped down at his work desk, relieved to finally be out of that stifling apartment. Not only was the air system down again with maintenance nowhere to be seen, but the awkwardness between him and Adri bordered on unbearable. They'd been tiptoeing around each other since he'd returned home from the lab two days before, Adri trying to remind Dream of her superiority by ordering him to defrag their apartment's entire mainframe and update all the software that they didn't even use anymore, while at the same time lurking around as if she were almost, kind of, ashamed of what she'd done to Dream.

But Dream was probably imagining that last part.

At least Pearl had been gone all day and had only shown up when Dream and Patches were on their way out to work on the car.

Another long day. Another late night. The car was going to take more work than he'd realized- the entire exhaust system needed to be replaced, which meant manufacturing a lot of parts himself, which created any number of headaches. He had a feeling he wasn't going to get much sleep if they were going to have it road ready by the night of the ball.

He sighed. The ball.

He didn't regret saying no when the prince had asked him, because he knew how badly that would end. Any number of things were sure to go wrong- from tripping on the stairs and exposing a metal extremity, to running into Pearl or Adri or someone from the market. People would talk. The gossip channels were sure to look into his past, and pretty soon the whole world would know that the prince had taken a cyborg to his coronation ball. George would be mortified. Dream would he mortified.

But it didn't make it any easier when he wondered, what if he was wrong? What if Prince George wouldn't care? What if the world were different and nobody cared if he was cyborg... and on top of that, Lunar?

Yeah. Wishful thinking.

Spotting the broken netscreen on the carpet, he peeled himself off his chair and kneeled before it. The black screen was just reflective enough for him to see the outline of his face and body, the tanned skin of his arms contrasted with the dark steel of his hand.

Denial had run its course until it had nowhere else to go. He was Lunar.

But he was not afraid of the mirrored surface, not afraid of his own reflection. He couldn't understand what Minx and her kind, their kind, found so disturbing about it. His mechanical parts were the only disturbing thing in Dream's reflection, and that had been done to him on Earth.

Lunar. And cyborg.

And a fugitive.

Did Adri know? No, Adri never would have housed a Lunar. If she'd known, she would have turned Dream in herself, probably expecting payment.

Had Adri's husband known?

That was a question Dream would probably never know the answer to.

Nevertheless, he was confident that so long as Dr. Za didn't say anything, his secret would be safe. He would just have to go on as if nothing had changed.

In many ways, nothing had. He was every bit an outcast as ever.

A white blob caught his eye in the screen's face- George's android, its lifeless sensor staring down at him from its perch on top of his desk. It's pear shaped body was the brightest thing in the room and probably the cleanest. It reminded him of the sterile med-droids in the labs and the quarantines, but this machine did not have scalpels and syringes hidden in its torso.

Work. Mechanics. He needed the distraction.

Returning to his desk, he turned on his audio interface for some tranquil background music. Kicking off his boots, he gripped both sides of the android and wheeled it toward him. After a quick examination of its external plating, he tipped the android over, laying it horizontal so that it balanced on the edge of its treads.