#the gabe and v2 friendship is so cute to me!!! he worries about it ;o;

[cherubchoirs]

I like to think that when V2 gets revived, it just takes over the neighbouring apartment, claiming that there is no way its living under the same roof as V1 but it ends up spending most of its resting time hanging in their living room anyway because it gets very lonely in its own space and they are the only ones that talk with it because it wants to use their terminal to cybergrind.

OK can use this opportunity to talk about v2's relationship with v1 and gabriel after the initial phases that i've already gone over a bit!! v2 definitely does have an apartment right by theirs in fraud and while it's fairly icy with them at the beginning, it also finds having company much better than nothing and this becomes especially true as it gets more comfortable with gabriel. there's a lot about him that it understands, and he's the most human thing that will interact with it besides. and like. it GUESSES it owes him its new life or whatever. they begin talking fairly regularly, mostly about things that don't particularly matter but that they both have no one else for - much about aesthetics and the natural world (although v2 finds gabriel is much less philosophical than it would have thought an angel would be. so it goes). sometimes, given their verbosity, their conversations carry on and veer into deeper, more uncomfortable territory (their lost place, their respective falls from grace), but one or the other will find a reason to leave before it gets anywhere. v1 is a more complicated issue though.

despite gabriel's insistence that they're like family, v2 not only believes their objectives to be fundamentally at odds, but it also just. hates v1 for what it did. not just killing it, it could rationalize that out to it's own failure, it's own fault, but that it stole from it twice, that it destroyed the dreams that had carried it so far through hell. it knows as a machine, personal grudges like this are an oddity and likely show its ever-multiplying coding quirks, but its psychology has never aligned well with its kin. it does note v1 has changed with its exposure to gabriel, and it easily recognizes that it does love him, it shows him affection, care, and admiration in a way v2 never would have predicted. he changed something in it, it can see how they've moved each other and now are a part of one another...and v1 is making an effort on his insistence. it's certainly not being kind to v2, but it would hate it if it was - they trade sniping insults and constantly get into little scuffles, but the unfeeling hostility once present in v1 is gone. they can exist side-by-side, even swapping some inside jokes between them, and over time v2's reaction to it isn't so visceral....but there's a wall it refuses to take down. it doesn't trust it. maybe it does love gabriel and maybe it will keep loving him, but that's an extreme exception for v1, it knows that better than anyone. it knows how hard it must work against its own code to treat him the way it does, and it can't imagine it ever making so much effort for anyone else. it's inefficient. it's pointless. and so v2's convinced that thing would kill it still if it came to it. if it or v2 let their guard down.

still, it begins coming over more and more as it reaches a level of comfort it can accept - watching its back always, but spending entire afternoons or nights over at gabriel and v1's apartment. i like to think it gets them access to more human entertainment, bringing them movies and video games as an excuse for its presence (or otherwise definitely saying it just wants to cybergrind). it's sometimes gone for a few days at a time, off to a different "home" it has on one of the higher layers or even popping up to the surface, but it inevitably returns...and gabriel's glad to see it's ok every time. this leads to some concern on his part when v2 begins seeing michael more regularly, leading to much more significant lengths of time before it shows back up in their living room. v1 personally doesn't think much about it - maybe it's bored of them lol but gabriel pesters it a bit, making it realize that maybe it actually like. has a friend in gabriel. he worries about it, thinks about it when it's not there, and wants to know if it's ok. it's a weird feeling for it, but nice to consider. well. nice until gabriel comes poking around one of its other properties just to "check in (because it's been awhile and even v1 is wondering if you're dead so!!!)" and mike needs to immediately teleport while v2 tries to keep gabriel from coming in so it doesn't have to explain why it's growing multiple test fungal colonies!!