Err0r

Chapter 15: Discomfort

    She screamed again and fell to her knees. She lifted her hair and touched her hands to the back of her head. She let out a noise of pain as she felt wires; her wires sticking out of an empty spot in the back of her head. After all this time of shoving her head against the wall or the charging station it had taken a toll on her. Despite her strong metal it seemed that she had hit herself too hard too many times. She was more surprised at how she felt, but she couldn't dwell on it for that long as a sharp pain seemed to electrocute her. She screamed again and squeezed her eyes shut.

"Pixal! What's wrong?!" Borg appeared in the doorway.

Normally she would have tried to hide everything she felt but right now she couldn't. She looked up at him with a painful expression stuck on her face. He seemed surprised but then he saw the back of her head. Slowly but with a bit of urgency, she watched Borg lower himself down from his contraption. She watched as he set himself in his wheelchair. He asked her a few questions and she didn't want to answer any of them but she listened to what he said.

"How did this happen?" He whispered loud enough so she could hear him.

She didn't respond to that question.

"Does it hurt when I-"

She flinched.

"Could I use the tools in your- Thank you"

She absentmindedly did what he asked, trying not to move that much. It was painful when he touched the back of her head but she sat there anyway. Sometimes she wanted to move or to lash out but she kept the only restraint she still had left holding back her tears. While she didn't make much of an effort to hide anything from Borg since she knew he could help her she didn't want to let herself cry in front of him.

"Pixal." Borg whispered.

She gently nodded to say she heard him. The whole thing was extremely embarrassing for her. She hated Borg fixing her but she let him anyway because she was in pain. Usually with small injuries she fixed herself. It didn't take very long and she could do it without anyone noticing anything different. She winced again but tried to be as subtle as she could. She would've preferred to fix herself at this point but she couldn't reach behind her head. Otherwise she was probably capable of fixing herself too.

"What happened?" Borg gently urged again.

Pixal had almost forgotten he was waiting to say something. She was too focused on her own thoughts. She didn't answer though. She would've if she knew how to explain it. If she explained that she had been slamming herself against the walls of her room and even the charging station he would want to know why. Frankly she wasn't ready to explain all her emotional outbursts to him considering that he didn't even care about her that much. Or at least in her mind he didn't. The room went silent and Pixal figured he wanted to hear her answer. She let out a deep heavy sigh.

"It must have happened because I slipped." She was terrible at lying.

"I apologize for interrupting you." She added.

She couldn't see Borg's expression but she figured that he probably also thought she was terrible at lying. He paused whatever he was doing to the back of her head and she heard him let out a single breath. She waited for him to demand an answer but he didn't. He just continued what he was doing. She didn't have much to go off on his emotions but Pixal assumed he thought she was somewhat careless. Even if he didn't believe her excuse he had no reason to know what had actually happened. Even Pixal herself hadn't realized what she was inadvertently doing to herself until her head apparently couldn't take it anymore. That was just it. The fact that she hurt herself was sickening. She had never felt physical pain before until she brought it upon herself. She had so many thoughts flowing through her mind but she couldn't listen to any of them. She wanted to cry and kick herself for what happened but she remembered Borg was still there. A slight painful jolt had her focused again. It had been a few hours and she just sat patiently waiting for him to finish.