#cooked up some EllenXAMaton

[nonbinary-beast]

May have figured out a good way to shovel some AM/Ellen ideas in. Under a cut due to spice, and because AM is a no good, fucked up little toaster.

I figure AMaton (before it's truce with Ted, or maybe this is yet another AU), knows very well about how he feels about Ellen, and I'm going to take a little liberty from the comic adaption and say that Ted was not all that quiet with his thoughts, maybe he talked to himself a little when he was away from the group.

So, this sort of settles on the thing where Ted claims that "AM gave her pleasure". While AMaton has data on all five of the survivors just from watching them wander through the complex, it is not nearly as complex or complete as what it has gathered from Ted once the computer had gained the means of making a body for itself. It knows what Ellen looks like, sounds like, the way she walks, how her face settles depending on her mood. The rest, AMaton pieces together from what he gathered from his up close interactions with Ted.

It "remakes" Ellen, a hologram of her of course. AMaton allows Ted to catch sight of her wandering in the distance, a ghost walking among the long grasses of a meadow perhaps. "Ellen" sees Ted, and through AMaton's 109 years of memory of their conversations, manages to perfectly emulate what she would say when they reunite. She wants to know where he's been, they've been looking for him.

Ted assumes this "they" is the rest of the survivors. Maybe AM had found a way to resurrect the dead. Her hands feel real enough when they touch his that he wonders if maybe she's not a mirage or a ghost that his mind made up.

Then he sees AMaton in the distance, prowling, closing in behind Ellen. Ted tries to warn her, she looks just in time for the machine god to break into a sprint. Ted bolts instinctively, and yells for her to run; but when he looks back he hears laughter, sees her embracing Him.

AMaton was the other party she had been searching for him with.

His gut twists just from seeing her wrap her arms around the machine's neck, plant kisses on his cheek. Her gaze turns to Ted, it feels colder, lacking that admittedly fragile sense of camaraderie they shared before they entered the ice caves. She no longer is one of them, a survivor- he can see it in her mannerisms, how she talks to him, she even says outright that she cannot be with him anymore, with any of the survivors if AM brings them back. She does not want to. AM promised she would not have to deal with those four men anymore, she likes this new lifestyle. Ted cannot understand how she could, she was starved just like they were, was forced to wander, had been mangled, and thrown, and broken by the machine countless times.

But another part of him said he should have seen it coming. AM had made it so she was the only woman down here in the machine's belly, free to choose whichever man she wanted- while Ted completely ignored of course, all of Ellen's discomfort. It only made sense to him that she would betray them all when given the chance, if only to get more.

It gets worse, he sees AM- or more, AM lets him see- Ellen with him. She laughs, she smiles- she never smiled or laughed for him, Ted remembers. He stands transfixed, legs like cement while his eyes are glued to them both, unable to look away. He sees the machine resting its chrome snout on her lap, how she caresses its face, strokes along its jaw while it lays there contentedly- a dragon in the lap of the maiden.

It raises its head from where it was pillowed upon her thighs, kisses her neck with its rough, bladed mouth with all the gentleness of a lover, whispers something in her ear that makes her blush. She kisses the machine back, says something to him that Ted could not hear- but he comes to the realization soon enough, as AMaton lifts the edge of her skirt, noses between her spread thighs.

Ted cannot look away. Whether it be by AM's will, or his own shock, he cannot look away from them.

It moves them both so Ted can see better- it wants him to see. See her arch her back, eyes closed and lips parted in heavy breaths, blissful. See as the machine god gives her what she never received during her 109 year stay with Nimdok, Ted, Gorrister, and even Benny. He watches, gaze transfixed on Ellen as AMaton eats her out; attentively, slowly, watching her as much as it watches Ted, to see if he's still where it left him. Ellen's hands reach out to grasp and hold it's face, keening, it's name on her lips as she comes.

In the past Ted may have thought he had an idea of what the computer would have been capable of doing to torment him. But this was a new one; it hit him low, making him watch as it pleased her where none of them ever could- and she loved every moment of it. Genuinely. He could see it on her face, the way she laid against his chest when AMaton held her, the look in her eyes when she was around Him. It had altered her again, it had to, made her into Lilith's form. It made it so she never missed Ted and the others, never would find a reason to miss him.

So it was, Ted received all of AMaton's pain, writhed in torment as it chased him down, tore him open and left him bleeding until he returned to being whole again so it could resume its hunt. All the while being forced to watch as Ellen received all of its pleasure, her cup overflowing with its love.

He was in hell, watching Ellen in heaven.