by Zucca
Doc awoke much earlier this morning. He and Zucca had rented a room at a discreet inn to keep tabs on a hard luck case Zucca seemed interested in helping at seemingly random. As it was the off-season, Doc did not have any matches anytime soon and rolled with it, especially when Zucca said he would be key. The ferrety smacked dry lips and leaned out of his bed. Zucca had taken the one closer to the window. “Water,” he croaked, standing and staggering past the room’s clock, whose LEDs signaled 5:12, towards the bathroom.
He opened the door and paused staring.
Zucca’s “boots” were on the floor, linked together with a cable leading to an outlet, his chrome arm was sitting on the counter, linked to the same, and a hunk of metal with a dimly glowing blue eye rested beside it. Their triplegic owner sat on the counter and turned hi shead to look at Doc, allowing him to see the hollow cavity usually filled in by the metal faceplate and eye.
Both men just stared in silence for a moment.
“Oh, apologies. Did you need to use the bathroom?” the maimed hybrid asked softly.
“I’m sorry…!” Doc blurted. He’d never seen the old man so vulnerable before, so helpless. It was worse than if he’d walked in on his dropping a chocolate dragon off in the well.
“No, no, it’s alright! I’m sure they’re charged up now. I was just lost in my thoughts,” Zucca smiled, flopping on his side and then lowering himself to the floor with the only limb he had, take the “boots” one by one and pulling them to his thighs, standing up on them, and inserting the metal arm into the shoulder jack before sliding his faceplate into the hollow space on the left side of his head.
“I, uh…just needed water,” Doc murmured softly, having not had a place of mind to ask if Zucca needed help or if asking would offend the Old Man since he had clearly found a way to be self-reliant in spite of the missing limbs.
“Are you going to tell me someday how that happened…?” Doc asked.
Zucca paused, the lenses in the synthetic eye whirring as the refocused. “Someday,” he promised, patting Doc’s shoulder before padding past him and climbing into bed.
Whose life cost you so much to save? Doc wanted to ask. And why do you have to suffer so much?
The water he poured was a city tap, complete with the medley of trace amounts of heavy metals, bits of pollutants and other unpleasant things… but in that moment it tasted like it came from the cascades in the Primordial Evergreens.
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