AUTHOR: TwinkleTreb
RATING: PG-13
DISCLAIMER: Original movie character property of Dreamworks
WARNINGS: None
NOTES: Monica has a revelation that shatters her quiet, desperate existence. Bold face are writings of Joe

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The night had past without Monica's knowing. Somewhere in between the scalding sensation in her palms and forced mental numbness, she had let herself slack at the kitchen table overnight. The morning sun had crept into the kitchen window and started to kiss its way across her color-drained face, which had been resting on her folded arms in front of her. She stirred, shifting her head away from the light. Though awkward, it was a rather peaceful sight. She had been able to sleep through the night for the first time in weeks.

However the quietness was all too soon jarred by a rapid pounding on the front door. Monica jumped, skittishly at the sound, and then waited to see if it would come back again. It did.

“Hello? Anybody alive in there?" The muffled voice echoed though the house along with the pounding.

Sleepily, she made way to the front door, casually giving her palm a pass across the sensor on the wall near by. She rubbed the sleep from her eyes as the doors slowly began to part, opening her mouth to say something... but the words died in her throat at the first sight of the trio greeting her.

A woman stood at the front, about her own height but with a muscular build and stringy red hair falling about her face, a lit cigarette slacking from her lips. Her expression was unreadable, not much of any kind of an expression there, actually. Maybe part deadpan sarcasm and part forced smile. She had the look of one that had been though hell in hand basket and came back to live and tell about it, obviously it not being a very good experience. A she-thug of sorts, Monica thought.

Behind her, wandering in the walkway, a scruffy dark haired teenage boy had lingered back. He kept his hands stuffed in his pockets as he kicked at rocks, and seemed content to let the she-thug do the talking.

A little behind the woman and to her left was a male Mecha, his clothing caked with dried mud and torn, revealing damage down one side of his body. This disturbed Monica the most. She was not much for seeing the innards of any Mechas that were moving and "alive"; in her opinion, it just as bad as watching surgery on an Orga.

Seeing males present, Monica pulled her robe closed. "I... I... um... can I help you with anything?" she asked, finally finding words for herself.

The Mecha started to smile at her, but its expression suddenly froze, its eyes scanning her body intently.

The she-thug nodded her head briefly, "Yes, good morning', Ma'am," she offered in a rough Irish accent, thick with layers of a smokers growl. "I've got myself in a spot of trouble, wondering' if you might be able t'help me out, like."

Monica straightened herself out, trying not to show her uneasiness, "I'll try..." she said, not knowing what would happen if she had decided to say no.

"See, my car's broke down at the bottom of your drive," the woman smiled, "and I have to ask, may I use your phone to ring the tow truck?" She was clearly trying to be polite and inoffensive, but the overall effect to Monica was of finding a wolf on her doorstep, wrapped in a most unconvincing sheepskin.

“Um...” Intimidated by her presence, Monica started for the phone inside, glancing at the damaged Mecha -- and found herself caught by the robot’s stunning green eyes. As soon as she looked directly at him he stepped forward, right to Cal’s side, and spoke.

“Aahnicahh! Ahhnicahh Hiinhon!” His mouth was moving but only buzzing and humming sounds, and a very few vowels, are coming out. His gaze remained locked with Monica’s, as if trying to make a connection.

Monica’s eyes grew large, wondering if he was saying what she had thought.

"Is he... okay?" Monica furrowed her brows, asking the she-thug.

The she-thug looked him and shook her head. "Ah, Ma'am... I couldn't begin t'tell ya."

Monica switched her glance back to the Mecha again, locking herself to his gaze. He opened his mouth again. "Aa-vid!" he said in his broken voice.

She swallowed, "What?" she asked, hesitantly. She’d seen the word form on his lips clearly, but was trying not to believe it was what she had seen.

The Mecha repeated, this time in a quieter and more intimate voice: "Aa-vid.". His hand rose to show a height at the center of his chest, a height that Monica all too easily recognized. Then he pointed at her. "Aah-ica?”

"Ah...y'know each other, then?" the woman asked.

This pulled Monica partly out of trance, "Come in please..." The words had fallen from her mouth without a thought, but she remained in place, still sharing her gaze with the Mecha. He smiled and gave his clothing a little shake, as if pleased and putting himself in order. He nodded at Monica and glanced past her -- *may I come in?* his body language asked.

"Oh... right," She stepped out of the doorway, releasing it with her hands and allowed the three to step in.

The woman nodded. “Thank ya kindly, Ma’am,” she said, then let out a sharp whistle, and like an obedient pup, the lingering boy came swiftly to her side.

The Mecha moved in first, striding past the woman and her young companion. He walked right down the step into the parlor and stood looking about with eagerness, as if he were expecting to see something.

“Um, yes... the telephone,” Monica said to the other two, who had followed in quietly. The woman looked around her with barely veiled contempt, but the boy just stared at everything with a kind of awe.

“The telephone,” she told them, walking to the kitchen, “It’s right this way.” She motioned to it as she crossed the threshold of the dining room. It was sitting on the kitchen counter now, not in the dining room itself, where David had once proudly shown her “what he could do”.

"Stay here, don't do nothing’, I'll be right back,” the woman mumbled to the boy before following Monica to the phone, her body language very contained. The boy remained with the Mecha, glancing about anxiously. What was it that was so peculiar about him? Scared of something almost, perhaps his… mother? Was that who this woman was? Monica shuddered to think.

The woman picked up the phone and Monica left her to some privacy. Back in the living room the Mecha had walked a little more forward to look up the stairs, then turned toward the dining room, peeking toward the kitchen. Apparently not seeing what he was looking for, his exuberant and eager body language quieted down a couple of notches. He stood in place looking around him, upward and into doorways. He was searching for something, that much was clear.

Monica hesitated in the dining room, afraid to approach him. After a moment he spun on his heel too look at her, overbalancing slightly and catching himself just short of stumbling. His smile had faded.

"Aa-vid?” he asked in a hopeful way. The word ended with a mechanical click somewhere in his throat.

A chill went through Monica’s weary body, and she closed her eyes briefly to let it fade away. Why the hell did he keep saying that? Stop it! Just stop it already! she begged him silently. She knew exactly what he was trying to say. How he knew, she was afraid to ask. He could not have possibly met… could he? So much had been happening at once that she could not keep her judgment straight. Perhaps he did, perhaps David did make friends with that thing. How could the Mecha know her though?

She opened her eyes again to see the tall figure looking at her, his hint of a hopeful smile fading. Behind him the boy stood in the middle of the living room, looking at the beautiful furnishings and waiting for the she-thug to return.

"Aa-vid, aa-vid hhinhon. Ee-ah?" he asked again, more persistently. Bbbzt! something in his throat protested.

From the kitchen, the sharp-faced woman called out, "Ma'am, just where am I?"

Suddenly it was all too much, too much at once. She shut her eyes, turning away for a moment, letting all of it just pass. The room around her began to spin in a whirlwind of blurred voices, and in a fit of panic she bolted from the room and up the staircase.

She did not see the Mecha’s eyes widen, an instant before he started after her. She did not hear the she-thug growl “Ah, shite!” She was completely focused on tumbling up the stairs and grabbing the first door she saw and locking herself inside. Footsteps pounded up the stairs after her and skidded to a stop in front of her hiding-place.

She sank back, closing her eyes and holding her head, muttering under her breath: “This is not happening, this is not happening...” Downstairs she had wanted to cry out, This isn’t happening! but her common sense, or what was left of it, had stalled her from doing anything so stupid.

But it was too late for that, wasn’t it? Already she’d fallen asleep at the kitchen table and woke with a crick in her back, opened a door to an odd bunch of strangers, let them in, and now ran fleeing from them for no apparent reason.

Breathing deeply in the tight space, her shuddering breath started to slow. Slowly, cautiously, she uncovered her face and opened her eyes. No wonder it had been stuffy -- she’d hidden herself in the hall closet. There was a tall shadow lingering outside the ribbed glass of the door. It was the Mecha. Trying to think of something else other than its scratchy mutterings, she remembered what the she-thug had asked.

“Seventeen forty six, Crosswind Drive, West Camden,” she spat out the address. “Go... tell her... now... please.”

Mechas were always to do as commanded by an Orga, but this Mecha paused, and she saw it cock its sleek head. “Ahh ahhnt,” it said in a clear tone of apology.

Of course it couldn’t. Taking a deep breath, Monica opened the closet door and stepped out into the light again. She tried not to look at the Mecha as she shouted the address down the stairs toward the kitchen. For his part, the Mecha stepped right back to the linen shelf in the hallway, almost losing his balance and falling against it, giving her maximum distance.

“Thanks, Ma'am!” a smoke-roughened voice called back up to her.

Yes, Monica thought, keep thug woman down stairs busy and get my way with the male Mecha up here… no, not like THAT. Yes, she knew what models of his like were for, she wasn’t that clueless, but with his extensive damages, she hoped that his certain components had been “short circuited” in the least.

Now, what to do? Here she was, upstairs alone with this Mecha that had been tormenting her already frazzled nerves with incoherent mutterings of… of…

"Again ... one more time ... what were you saying?"

He gazed at her with large green eyes -- then suddenly straightened and snapped his fingers. He opened the left side of what remained of his shiny coat and reached into an inside breast pocket. His face fell when his torn right hand came out empty; whatever he had been looking for had not been there.

“What?” She asked fervently when he didn’t give any answer. He pantomimed writing on a notebook, bits of dried mud falling from his clothing to patter on the clean floor with the emphatic quality of his movements.

Quickly, becoming too impatient, she grabbed him by the hand and then led him into the nearby bedroom, past a curved wall of clear glass to what had been David’s place in his last few days. It was a tiny quarter, but it had pleased David while he was there. Upon entering, Monica dreaded the sight if the rumpled blanket on the window side cot. She had spent several nights curled up in the little bed, finding it hard to be with Henry in the master bedroom. She started for it but stopped. Oh, why bother cleaning up anyway? Mechas weren’t very judgmental.

“There.” she said, pointing to the little desk where sheets of clean paper and a few pencils sat. The Mecha glanced at her, then swept back the tails of his damaged coat to sit at the small desk. Quickly, he began to write in a flowing Victorian hand:

David

David Swinton

Are you Monica? Are you his mommy?

Monica let out an audible whimper. She grasped the edge of desk to keep herself from collapsing

Did the Blue Fairy make him real? Did you let him come home?

That feeling came over her again and she had to turn away once more. What was this, some kind of a bad joke? Maybe she was the victim of some new form of those crass “reality shows” that had been popular back in the early 21st century. She’d caught a few on a nostalgic television channel and had been amused. In fact, she’d highly prefer eating jungle slugs over what was currently her situation.

She looked away from the Mecha’s writing, breathing hard. Yeah, that was it. Henry had set it all up… the people in her home were paid actors… the Mecha was nothing but a mere walking hidden camera… and at last when she had her melt-down, a suited announcer would come out of nowhere and would tell her to smile because she was on live television. Maybe she was still asleep… that could be it… it was all a nasty... nasty dream, no, a nightmare… a dreadful nightmare. She was quite possibly still asleep. All she needed to do was wake up, pinch herself.

Aw, hell, who was she trying to kid? Stupid fantasies, stupid fanatical thoughts! Just face it now and deal with it. No running, no hiding… no, this was not a game.

“Who are you?” She asked at last, “Why are you doing this to me?”

She turned her head as she felt his hand on her arm. Her first instinct was to pull away, but the commanding look in the Mecha’s eyes froze her joints. Carefully, she released the edge of the desk she had her tight grip on. Letting go any sooner would have probably caused her to faint. Warily she followed his gaze back to the paper where she reread his words.

David Swinton.

She bit her lip, fighting the urge that had been growing in her chest.

Are you Monica? Are you his mommy?

Wanting to burst, like lava from a stopped up volcano.

Did the Blue Fairy make him real? Did you let him come home?

She could not take it anymore. She gave in and before she could form words, cruel sobs and tears ruptured out of her like a courtyard fountain on full blast. Her locked knees started to weaken and found that she could barely stand.

Sinking to the floor, she burrowed her face onto the long loose sleeves of her robe, her dark brown hair entangling itself on her tear-streaked cheeks. What would she care if the machine saw her cry? It didn’t know emotion. David, though, would have seen her tears and would automatically be cuddling against her soothingly. The thought tore her heart even more savagely.

She felt something approach her face: the Mecha’s hand was reaching out to her, but she batted it away in annoyance. Instead she had felt it rest gently on her shoulder, his other coming to place an unexpected item in her open palm: a soft linen handkerchief.

“Why are you doing this to me?!” She asked in a hoarse whisper when she had regained some control. “Who are you and why are you doing this to me?” Her hands now rested in her lap, one clutching the handkerchief, her head staring down at them. At last she looked up, face to face with the Mecha. His hand reached out again, moving from her shoulder to her face, his fingers coming to gently brush away the errant hair on her forehead. It was abnormally comforting coming from a machine other than David, although she never really thought of David as a machine at all.

The Mecha smiled at her and started to rise, once again obviously compensating for a problem with his balance. He helped her up, gradually, and sat her in the small desk chair. He knelt beside her, picked up the pencil and started to write again, his hand gracefully scripting the elegantly formed letters:

You ask me who I am. Women sometimes ask for me by name: "Gigolo Joe, whattaya know?"

I know all about women... about as much as there is to know!

Are you Monica Swinton?

Are you David's Mommy?

Meanwhile, as he wrote, Monica’s empty hand had disappeared into the neckline of her pajamas. Her hand grasped a silver chain and gently drew it out from under her shirt. Dangling on the end was a smooth inch long silver locket, oval, with a sky blue stone embedded on its front. Her thumb parted the two halves and she gave the picture inside a sad adoring glance before holding out to the Mecha.

“This boy…” she said, “My David.”

He broke into a smile of clear delight upon seeing it. "Aa-vid!" He turned back to the desk, writing eagerly:

Did the Blue Fairy make him real? Is he here?

Can I see him? Please?

Monica’s face remained sad, as she took time to read everything he had written. "No ... Not here..." she said quietly.

Will he be home soon?

She shook her head, “No, no Blue Fairy… no, he is not --”

"Excuse me for interruptin' a beautiful moment.” Lady She-Thug was behind them, arms crossed, leaning against the edge of the glass partition casually. She had entered so stealthily that Monica hadn’t heard her coming. “But the truck's gonna be here in about twenty minutes, just so's y'know... please, carry on, it's quite lovely."

Quickly, Monica used the handkerchief to wipe her face, letting it linger against her cheeks longer than usual. It smelt faintly of cheap perfume and something more pleasant, like warm vanilla and light musk, and there was a smudge of lipstick almost primly confined to one small corner. The musky, romantic scent alleviated her tension.

The she-thug smiled to herself and pushed off the doorway. "I'll be downstairs... y'mind if I have a smoke?"

"Where did this man come from?" Monica asked, looking up at her.

"Him?” She paused. “Dunno ... ran out in front of my car, picked 'im up that way. Don't know who he belongs to.”

Well now, she thought, there was plenty she could learn from that, heh... not. Hell, why not ask the robot himself? “My David, where did you see him? Is he alive?"

Seemed like his mind was in the same place, for as she asked, his mouth opened as well: "Aahr ih aah-vid?" Their words collided simultaneously. "

Monica recovered first. “Where did you see him?" she repeated, almost desperately, pointing back to the paper lain out.

In Man Hattan, the lost city in the sea at the end of the world, where the lions weep.

Half excited, but still overwhelmed with fear, Monica asked: “He was there?”

Joe nodded, and wrote:

He saw where the Blue Fairy lives and went to find her.

She was going to turn him into a real live boy.

“She can’t... she’s fictional...”

I asked him to remember me to the ladies when he grew up.

Then he said good-bye.

I never saw him again.

He stopped writing and looked at her intently.

“Blue fairy,” Monica sighed. “She's not a real person... he can't have seen her... where did he go looking?"

He fell from the top of the tower into the sea.

Monica’s mind rushed back to her previous night’s vision. “The sea...”

I followed him in the amphibicopter. He fell all the way to the bottom, but I found him.

I brought him back to the surface, and he said, "I saw it Joe, I saw it! The place where she lives! She's right down there, Joe! She's waiting for me, we have to go!"

“So he went down? That’s it?” Monica shook her head. “The fairy isn’t real... then how...?”

But the Police came. They took me away, but before I went I sent the amphibicopter down -- so David could find the Blue Fairy.

He was going to ask her to make him into a real boy.

He was

Joe stopped writing. Monica’s eyes scanned the paper. “Is that the last you saw of him?” she asked, her voice half filled with a sense of hope, looking up at him once she was done.

He nodded in response.

Yes.

His face grew concerned, brows drawing into a mild, questioning frown.

He never came home?

Monica’s head drooped, shaking. Why did he have to ask that? He seemed not to understand her well.

Joe knelt, immobile for longs seconds.

Did she make him real?

"How many times do I have to say the blue fairy isn't real?" Monica mumbled, her voice nerved, punctuating each word in annoyance. She would burn that book when she got the chance! She was good at holding back her frustrations, but now she was just ready to blow her seemingly cool exterior. Urgency drove her to her feet. “I need to go... I need to go to Man-hattan... ”

Equally suddenly, again in a way that was eerily simultaneous, the Mecha’s writing exploded, his words almost like a boot to her gut:

Why did you send him away?

Why did you send him away?

Why did you send him away?

Three times in a row, his hand and the pencil passed over the paper with quick staccato jerks, his motions accusing, and almost deliberately hurtful. Why toy with her heart like this? Why? People’s emotions weren’t to be played with and yanked about this way.

Not knowing how else to answer, Monica responded with the only thing that she had been feeling at the moment:

“I am a bad Mother.”

Joe stopped again. He cocked his head to one side and stared into the middle distance, a faint speculative whirring in his throat.

"I made a big mistake... I wasn’t thinking straight…" She did not know how to finish.

Again she heard the becomingly familiar scratch of the pencil against paper, though Joe was not looking at what he was writing.

We are suffering for the mistakes you made.

he wrote, and stopped again like a toy winding down in fits and starts.

She stared at the paper, her eyes not moving from the words, Joe’s words. Another pang coursed though her breast and she remained silent for a few long seconds. “And so I deserve to,” she said at last, her voice calm and her face stained with her dried tears, acting almost normally now.

Again, an eerily disembodied line was written:

The Blue Fairy wasn't real.

Not an electronic parasite. Not magic.

Not

Not

What the hell? Maybe he was suffering from a memory malfunction, his repetitive writings were starting to scare her. Then again, he might be trying to get some kind of point across. Monica wanted to give him the benefit of a doubt.

“Not what?!” she asked impatiently.

Real -- like David.

She had to be truthful, now and admit it to herself by saying it out loud: "No … he wasn't real."

Those words were like arsenic as they rolled off her tongue, leaving a foul taste in her mouth. Unable to take any more of the pressure upon her, she rose quickly from her chair and darted past the she-thug, out of the room, in tense silence -- before the Mecha had time to write anything else.

Joe turned his head, following her out, then looked back down at the sheet of paper in front of him. His focus then switched to the redhead who had seemed to make herself a temporary home beside the glass wall.

"Yeah? Ain't my fault if she's mad," Monica had heard her growl as she escaped to her bedroom. It was mid-morning and already her mind was exhausted. She sat upon her neatly made bed and fell back into its softness, her hand grabbing a pillow and pulling it over her face, blocking out the world. She wanted to scream and blow off all the steam that had been building up in her, but making such an outburst would not help the situation any. Then again, what would?

What do I do? What is going on? Why does he know about David?