#that during 'you didn't have-' in ep 5 J actually kills Tessa

[regretfullyrave]

Just very short Jessa writing practice, come feast :)

A Lesson in Anatomy:

Tessa gasps. She's breathing. Oh Lord, she is breathing. J's eyes drop to the human's chest painfully slow. It's... fear. Fear of losing the human’s features out of sight for even a second, like it takes a second and not a millisecond longer for them to wash away. It rises. Up and down. A light tremble, heaviness had settled, the motion is strained and her voice is stained. But Tessa never was a quitter and she won't quit now, she wouldn't. With every rise of her ribcage her chest eats away at the silver blade and every exhale spits a chunk back out, the insides leave a wet trail. 

J's optics snap to the petite face within a blink of an eye. The features so deliberately crafted, not even the tiniest of details on her face washed away, but paint had spilled and continues spilling. It reached her hair now, drank and absorbed by the darkest of locks, but that's not enough to keep the broken dam from spilling. Nothing will. It will drain. It's going to drain and it won't stop. It won't stop. It won't. Stop. "Don't move!" Tessa pleads hurriedly, before adding a much softer "please." She must have noticed the flash of panic on J's visor, her processing finally caught up to what's happened. 

Despite everything she obeys her 'Boss' to the letter. No emotion in her synthetic body stronger than the desperate order of her friend. But her fingers tremble, it's so light it's barely perceivable, but J wants to snap her own hand in half. It feels like a deliberate error during manufacture and she curses that fault in her design.

"J, you can'—t..." her voice strains suddenly, she chokes and can't breathe, but she fights to get the words out. "Can't pull out." She looks at the blade lodged into her chest cavity with a small smile. Morbidly she wonders wether it came out all the way on the other side. Out of her back, into the strawberry red carpet. Her parents would lose their shit had she let it rip the fabric. 

She cannot feel anything. 

She watches J's optics shift, no one clear emotion behind them but a plethora of fear, panic, confusion.... All right, a lesson in organic life she supposes. The anatomy and phylogenetics of the cardiovascular system, chapter 22, pages 245 to 280, give or take, she isn't entirely sure, she hadn't finished the chapter yet.

"Arteries, veins, little blood tubes... mine 'r bloody mess. Blade plugged through and tissue closed on it, it's keeping the blood in place," Tessa explains, she tries to shine light on the concept in as few words as she possibly can, each syllable further hindering her ability to breathe. 

Then she hums an amused laugh. "Like a cork on mother's bottle of Chardonnay, ey?" Her eyes trail up at J, like she just said a relatable joke and is waiting for the drone to join a playful back and forth. 

But J is too shaken up to even make a noise. 

Tessa smiles the warmest smile the world had ever seen. "S'alright, J," her hand finds the razor edge and rests there, she wants to trace her hand higher, but the climb is too much for her tired self to make. The distance separating the two will have to do. "It's not your fault."