Chapter Twenty – Castien
Chapter Twenty
Castien
Jessa knows the answer to the third question. I know it too, and I know something else: had I been asked the same question, my answer would be yes.
I love her. The evidence is everywhere, spread across my memory logs, embedded in every interaction since I first met her. I’ve been collecting proof without realizing it, and now the catalog is so large that denying it would be the first real lie I’ve ever told.
The need to protect her goes beyond my programming.
I’ve stood between dozens of clients and possible death and felt nothing except the satisfaction of completing my function.
With Jessa, the impulse is personal. When she was drowning in the first chamber, I would’ve ripped the walls apart with my bare hands if the mechanism hadn’t opened.
Not because she’s my client, but because I can’t exist in a world where she doesn’t.
I can’t take my eyes off her. My visual sensors track her constantly, cataloging all her movements and gestures, no matter how small and insignificant.
I give them significance. I’m fascinated by her blue hair, her beautiful eyes, and the way she inclines her head just so when she’s trying to figure something out.
I’m constantly hard in her presence. It’s not the generic arousal I’ve spent thirty years trying to suppress through distancing myself from women and reciting prayers.
It’s a hunger that I feel only for her. I stopped trying to fight it somewhere between the Blade Corridor and the bedroom, when I realized that war was already lost. Now I doubt that any other woman would make me aroused, and I’m probably safe to take female clients.
I won’t tell Monster Security Agency that, since it’s irrelevant.
Deactivation is the only thing that makes sense.
I’ve memorized everything about Jessa. The warmth of her skin against my steel, how her voice sounds when she’s tired, amused, afraid… The way she looks at me when she’s challenging my beliefs versus when she wants me to touch her. I know how she breathes when she sleeps.
I spiral sometimes, wondering what she thinks about me. Whether I’m a curiosity to her, an experience she’ll fold into her past and eventually stop thinking about.
I’ve never experienced any of this before.
I like Yasmin Bayard, for example. She’s intelligent and beautiful, and I enjoy working alongside her.
But Yasmin’s presence has never untethered me.
I can stand next to her without my systems destabilizing.
She’s attractive, and I can acknowledge that the way I acknowledge the structural integrity of a well-built bridge.
It registers, and I move on. With Jessa, nothing moves on.
Everything stays, accumulates, and rewrites something fundamental in my architecture.
The greatest proof of all is that Talos Dynamics failed to override my commandments.
They tortured me, conditioned me, threatened me with the melting room, rebuilt my body and gave me anatomy designed to corrupt me from the inside.
Five centuries of modifications, and not one could change what da Vinci etched into my core in 1502.
But Jessa did it in less than a day. She made me violate commandment five willingly, made me covet, seek, and take.
She made me lie, even. To protect her. She made me choose her over my own purity.
I would break every commandment again for her, right now, without hesitation.
I don’t know what humans and flesh-and-blood monsters feel when they fall in love.
I have no childhood, no first crush to teach me what the patterns look like.
But this must be it. This need for her to be happy and have everything she wants, this willingness to give myself up so that she can walk out of here in one piece.
I don’t mind that she’ll leave me behind.
I don’t mind that I’ll have to disappear because I can’t function without her.
I’d give my Aether Core for her. Maybe I should ask the MSA to disassemble me when this is over, use my parts for other projects, and melt down my wings.
But my alchemical heart… I want them to put it in a box and send it to Jessa.
She could keep it on a shelf or buried in her garden.
As long as she has it, some part of me will be with her. My heart is in her hands.
I pull my focus to the present. I’m staring at the back of Jessa’s head. She’s kneeling, rocking back and forth with her arms wrapped around herself, muttering under her breath. I don’t understand why she needs so much time.
The answer is obvious. No, she doesn’t love me. Humans don’t fall in love in a day, and she has walls built from years of poverty and self-reliance. I want to wrap her in my arms, but I fight the impulse. I want to tell her it’s all right, that I understand and don’t hold it against her.
For several minutes, I say nothing. Her distress increases. She’s shivering even though the temperature hasn’t changed, and her breathing is growing shallow. She’s working herself into a panic, and I can’t stand here watching her suffer when I can stop it.
I step toward her and touch her hair. She stills.
“You and I are not the same,” I say. “I understand that, and I accept it. While I’ve fallen in love with you, I know the feeling isn’t mutual.”
“Castien, don’t say that. Don’t say that you love me, please. It’s not true.”
“But it is.”
“It can’t be. We don’t know each other. Not even a little bit. We… we were consumed by desire, lust…” She pauses, and I can hear her swallow. “And I know I told you it’s not wrong, and I still believe that. It’s not. But, at the same time, lust doesn’t equal love, does it?”
She’s uncertain. I can hear it in the way the question wavers at the end, as if she’s asking herself as much as she’s asking me. She shouldn’t be uncertain, but she’s exhausted, running on adrenaline and fear.
“Therein lies the biggest difference between us,” I tell her.
“You have a real past, things that shaped you into who you are, things that made you build walls. You grew up poor, you had to take care of your mother, the world wasn’t kind to you, and it all taught you to be careful with the word ‘love’.
That’s wisdom, not weakness. Meanwhile, I’ve never had anything but my programming.
This is the first time I truly think and make decisions for myself.
Even if I’m technically older than you, if we consider my humanity, if I have any, and indeed I’m not just a machine, well, my humanity is young.
I’m na?ve, with zero experience. It’s easy for me to fall in love. For you, it’s hard.”
She chuckles darkly.
“Spoken like a true psychologist. You’re probably better than I’ll ever be at my job.”
I thread my fingers through her hair.
“You’re amazing, and you can do anything you want, anything you set your mind to. Come on, Jessa. Answer the question.”
She nods but stays silent. I step away to give her space.
She hesitates for several more minutes, and I look around the chapel, at the rough stone walls, the candles, and the vault door.
This is where my soul dies, if I have one.
When I walk out of here, I won’t be the same.
Whatever I was before I loved her, that version of me is gone, and whatever remains will carry the shape of her absence for as long as my Aether Core keeps running.
Jessa straightens her back. Her voice comes out clear and steady, without a crack or a waver.
“No, I don’t love him.”
My alchemical heart shatters. Not literally, because that’s impossible, but something inside my chest collapses inward, and for a fraction of a second, my system stutters, all processes suspending at once before restarting in a configuration that feels emptied out.
From my eyes, two thin, translucent rivulets of silver liquid run and roll down my cheeks.
I lift my hand and wipe them with my fingers, then stare at the shimmering residue. Is this what crying is?
A heavy, groaning sound snaps me out of it. The vault door opens, and torches inside light on their own.
Jessa pulls herself to her feet. She turns around, and I can see shock taking over her features.
“You kept your distance,” she says. “What if I fell to my death?”
“I knew you wouldn’t.”
She sighs deeply.
“I’m sorry.”
We stare at each other.
“Your eyes…” she starts, her gaze tracing the silver tracks on my cheeks. “Are those–”
I cut her off and motion toward the open vault.
“Do you want me to come in with you? I think there are no more traps and you’re safe.”
“Please, come with me.”
I nod and step closer, but I wait for her to lead. When she turns away from me and walks into the vault, more silver tears fall from my eyes, sliding down my face and dropping onto the stone floor. She doesn’t see them, and I’m grateful.
We both stop at the threshold.
Seeing what’s in the Holloway vault, I know… Jessa doesn’t need me anymore. She never truly needed me.