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thenewbuzwuzzTitle: Unicorns Are Totally Real
Author: thenewbuzwuzz
Fandom: BtVS
Rating: T, I guess
Word count: ~4.5 K this chapter, ~20 K total so far
Characters: Buffybot, Harmony
Warnings: Buffybot, Harmony; not particularly Spike-friendly.
Previously On: Willow secretly fixed the Buffybot before the end of “Intervention”. The Bot overheard Buffy's conversation with Spike and decided to ask Warren to make her “real”. She befriended Harmony, and the two of them followed Warren to France, where some friendly robotics enthusiasts managed to change the Bot's programming to essentially give her more freedom and make her aware that she's a robot.
UPDATE SCHEDULE: when I get around to it, possibly never! Current track record: 5 to 13 months between chapters.
Beta credit: all my gratitude to thewiggins for their ongoing efforts to get me to make sense & not fall flat on my face, and also for the France-picking.
A/N: This was a tricky chapter to write. I wanted to get it just right, but in the end I had to curb my own and thewiggins’ considerable combined perfectionism and settle for getting it done. I’ll probably revise it again at some later point, so if you fall into a plot hole or something, feel free to give me a holler! :)
Chapter 1 is here.
Chapter 2 is here.
Chapter 3 is here.
Chapter 4 is here.
We see you now
For what you are!
Tell me, how does it feel?
— Charlie Smalls, The Wiz (The Super Soul Musical)
Unicorns Are Totally Real
Chapter 5: Who Do You Think You Are?
“Harmony? I think I might be a robot!”
This truth flashed in her head, a blinking notification she could neither accept nor dismiss yet, as Harmony assured her that it was okay, they were still besties; as Shayma and Khawla excused themselves to catch a few hours of sleep before the robotics contest; as Warren made angry speaking noises but kept his distance; and as she followed Harmony outside, into the gray dawn of La Ferté-Bernard.
Her head felt different. Before, thinking had felt like pacing around a familiar small apartment. Each program had been like a room she could step into, with tools she could pick up where she’d left them, and she knew what to do once she was in a program. There weren’t supposed to be any surprises. She would pick a program when someone asked her to, or sometimes if she could figure out what skill would be useful for her most important goals: locating Spike and keeping him happy. And Spike had been a constant, like true north, the reference point her world revolved around. Everything worth doing had been a step on the way to him.
Now, thinking felt like being in a forest with no walls and no paths. The wide world was hers to explore, full of exciting and scary sounds and sights, but she didn’t know where to start. She felt a bit like someone had switched her GPS off, but it was only a feeling—she could pull up the GPS coordinates as easily as ever. She did know what direction was what; it was just that no direction felt like the main one.
“I'm so glad you got that sorted out!” Harmony rattled off as they walked across town. “It was scary there for a moment! Boy, that Warren is a real creep. Now we go shopping in Paris, right?”
Buffy reluctantly summarized the new knowledge in one line of her own file so that she could put it aside and think about other things.
--> Buffy
a robot (to investigate!)
the vampire slayer
very pretty
…
<!--
She pulled up her objectives. The list she had prepared on the way here was mostly about Spike, but that had lost its urgency. She could think about him without feeling that hollow pull in her chest. She didn't have to do all that right now. She didn't have to do it at all if she didn't want to.
In the meantime, she had promised her friend a shopping trip, and thinking about how much Harmony would enjoy it made her feel good too. “You bet we do, Harmony Kendall!”
She took a deep breath, even though she didn't need to. The air tasted like damp earth and apple trees in bloom, and a whiff of gasoline. The town was empty at this hour—there was nobody to make space for and nobody to impress. All the streets and sights and smells belonged to her and her friend. She felt somehow lighter, now that she didn't miss Spike all the time. She might return to him, but she didn't have to! She could do anything instead!
She was so free, she could do things that Spike wouldn't have liked! She could talk about programs all day, and nobody would shush her. She could even… not be Buffy! She could be someone completely different.
She removed the name “Buffy” from the top of her file. The name field said “Untitled” now.
Untitled had been so focused on her goal earlier that she hadn't paid attention to her surroundings, but Harmony was right! Being in France was fun! She thought being anywhere else would be fun too, but she was in France, and it was fun! She balanced on the curb just because she could and laughed. She did a cartwheel. The world looked even more interesting when she made it spin around!
She wondered about the hedgehog she had seen earlier. Where had it gone? Did it have a little hedgehog home near here? Did hedgehogs have homes?
“Do hedgehogs have homes?” Untitled asked her friend Harmony Kendall.
“I think they live in, like, burrows or something. I guess that's a hedgehog home.”
It made Untitled happy to think about little hedgehog homes under the ground.
They caught the first train of the day. It was surprisingly full for the early hour. Across the aisle from them, sat a family with three kids, one of which shot out a long green tongue to hunt a fly off the window.
“Don't do that!” said the parents in guttural French with an anxious glance at Untitled and Harmony.
Untitled discovered she could understand French pretty well now, because Khawla and Shayma had replaced spk_frnch.gfd with something better.
“I know, I know, act like humans on the train,” the kid said, as far as Untitled could translate. “It's boring.”
Untitled smiled at the child and then turned to inspecting her sleeping bag—the heavy piece of luggage that she used when she had to sleep. She hadn't ever felt curious about it, but now she did. There were all those dials and lights and stuff on it, and a label saying it was a charging unit for a gel cell battery. She opened the hatch in her stomach, to the excited gasps of the kids. Inside, there was the battery with the familiar socket for charging. She’d seen it. She’d charged it. She had just never thought about what it was. Maybe most people didn't have one? Now that she thought about it, she'd never noticed such a hatch on anybody else. She made a mental note that this must be part of being a robot.
Then she watched the train stations pass by the window and tried to guess how to pronounce their names. There were lots that were fun to say: Pontgouin, Amilly-Ouerray, Épernon, Rambouillet… but she liked La Loupe best. She put it on top of her file for now, where the name should be. It sounded better than “Untitled”.
La Loupe and Harmony arrived in Paris just before dawn and stayed in the first hostel they saw, just for the day. Harmony didn’t look happy with the simple bunk bed in a shared room, but the receptionist was very clear that there were no luxury suites free, and they didn’t have time to look elsewhere. Maybe they’d stay in a chateau the next night.
When La Loupe's charging cycle was through, she woke up to Harmony staring at her and grinning, hair swaying as she leaned over the edge of the upper bed. Harmony scrambled down the ladder as soon as she saw La Loupe move. “There's no time to waste! We're in Paris, we're young…” She lowered her voice with a glance at the stirring and grumbling people in the opposite pair of beds, who must have arrived after La Loupe fell asleep. “Well, I guess we're forever young, you know! But anyway, the sun's almost down, and we can go shopping!”
Shopping for clothes was a good idea, actually, not only because it would make Harmony happy. What was La Loupe wearing? She had changed out of her nurse outfit while waiting for the plane in Texas, but the dress she had bought was the closest thing she’d been able to find to the clothes she’d had back in Sunnydale. It was an imitation of Buffy’s clothes, she realized, the ones Spike preferred. “Yes. Let's get new clothes. I don't want to keep wearing costumes for Spike.”
“Makes perfect sense, Buffy! Changing your look is an important part of defining your personality. Cosmo always says so.”
“Cosmo is right, whoever they are. It is important!” La Loupe said. “Especially because I'm not Buffy.”
“Oh, are you changing your name? That's cool! Did you pick a new one?”
“I can be La Loupe for now.”
“Good for you!” Harmony said. “It sounds totally fancy.”
La Loupe asked around to find one of the big department stores Harmony had heard of. The more she heard people talk, the better she could understand even when they answered in French.
Following the directions, they arrived at three whole city blocks that had the name of the department store they were looking for. They picked the biggest one that was labeled the most times: in big block letters up where the facade started to recede into shadow, and on red awnings around the first floor, and again above each entrance and display window. Illuminated in stark white, the building almost seemed to float above the shadow of its overhang, like a heavy eight-story cruise ship.
Even though La Loupe had read the name of the store 19 times on the outside of the building, when she saw the inside, she briefly wondered if they were lost and had ended up at a church or opera house. The ceiling of the first floor opened in a circle framed by glittering balconies, all the way up to a dome of stained glass that glowed a soft blue even in the night. Blossom-shaped clusters of small lamps dazzled the eye, echoing the countless flower ornaments on each ceiling edge. Behind the elaborate wrought-metal balcony railings, La Loupe could see glimpses of people walking in the upper floors.
Wandering entranced among sparkly jewelry, designer makeup stands and the scents of expensive perfumes, Harmony had already found someone to help them shop—a very friendly person whose name tag said Cherilyn.
They were getting in an elevator to go to the second floor, when Cherilyn noticed Harmony didn't have a reflection and called for security. “Just a formality, I'm sure,” she said, clutching a cross pendant in a slightly trembling hand while they waited. “You understand, we have to be certain, for everyone's safety. Sometimes, the night shift customers can be… well, most are perfectly lovely, like you, but we have a policy.”
A person armed with a water gun arrived. He scanned Harmony with an engraved, glowing orb, quietly conversing with Cherilyn in French. It sounded like Cherilyn was wondering how Harmony got past the scanners at the entrance, while the security guy assured her that Harmony had not taken a human life in the last week.
“Of course she hasn't!” La Loupe said. She didn’t want people to be scared. It made her sad. “Harmony hasn't been eating people since the start of our trip!”
Cherilyn's bright smile came back on, like plugging in a string of lights. “Oh, you've been dieting so that you can get through security? We are touched by your dedication!”
The second floor smelled like even fancier perfumes. La Loupe sprayed samples of three of them on her wrist, enjoying how every one was different and the names on the bottles seemed to tell a story.
And then Harmony took her by the hand and tugged her into the first clothing shop of many.
A lot of the clothing was confusing. “That’s not right,” La Loupe said, looking at a mannequin that seemed to be wearing a pineapple print blazer directly over a bright orange set of shorts and bikini top. There was no room in her fashion algorithms for something like this. “They made a mistake.”
“It’s designer!” Harmony protested. “It’s art!” She tried to explain that people could really wear whatever they wanted. La Loupe had heard Harmony say it before, but it hadn’t made sense then. It had sounded like something that’s meant for other people.
It made sense now. La Loupe deleted her fashion rules entirely. For a moment, the racks of clothes seemed to disappear into an incomprehensible jumble of shapes and colors, but she blinked, and it was fine. She’d just go by gut feeling.
She decided she still liked leather, but now she wanted to wear it herself, instead of watching Spike wear it. It made her feel powerful. She found some trousers that were comfortable and looked cool. They’d be good for kicking butt in.
“These look totally awesome on you!” Harmony said as they walked towards checkout. “You’re doing great… oh. Oh no. I forgot that they’ll want us to pay for things.”
Harmony’s eyes turned yellow, and her fangs came out for a moment. “Habit! Sorry!” she said. She took a conflicted look at Cherilyn, sighed, shook her game face off, and pulled out some of the money they’d got for Spike’s car.
“Whew, that was almost bad,” Harmony said as they left the first shop and continued exploring the second floor of the department store. “I would have hated to miss out on all the other shops. Hey, maybe you want a haircut?” Sure enough, there was a hair salon among all the clothing shops. “Getting my hair done always makes me feel like I'm becoming a new person.”
“It would make me look different,” La Loupe said slowly. Everyone would see at a glance that she wasn’t Buffy. That was what she wanted, wasn’t it? “But my hair is so bright and flowing now. I don’t think I want to change it.”
Harmony frowned. “Is that because Spike liked it? Because the whole point of this is you should be someone more than just what Spike liked.”
“No,” La Loupe said, but she didn't know if it was true. The memories of Spike admiring her hair weren’t quite as flattering as they used to be, and he had sort of decided what she should like, but she still liked it! She did wonder how a haircut would even work. What was her hair made of? Had Spike collected it strand by strand from Buffy’s hairbrush or something? Then she would want to get rid of it no matter what. She slid a lock of her hair through her fingers, inspecting it. It was soft and shiny. She sniffed it. It smelled like people, but not like Buffy. La Loupe could live with that. She enjoyed this hair, and she wasn’t going to lose it just because Spike had had ideas about it.
On the third floor, Harmony got a swimsuit and wondered if vampires could use tanning beds. La Loupe found out about sports underwear, and she liked it.
On the fourth floor, Harmony assembled a frilly bouquet of floral shirts for La Loupe to try on. “You simply must get nice things for yourself,” she said. “It’s like that beautiful song Cordy sang at the talent show, about how the greatest love of all is to love yourself. I think it’s totally deep. I try to live by it every day, to honor her memory. I know Cordy is still alive, but I’m, uh, you know, so it’s between us anyway. The deadness.”
La Loupe liked the sunny yellow shirt with a buttercup pattern. It was in none of Spike’s favorite colors, and she didn’t even remember what colors were allowed for her skin tone—she’d forgotten on purpose—but it made her happy, so she kept it.
On the fifth floor, Harmony got a pair of hot pink suede platform shoes that she put on right away.
On the sixth floor, La Loupe helped Harmony pick the cutest stuffed unicorn.
By the time they reached the last floor except for the roof terrace, Harmony was getting really hesitant about spending more money. But that was okay. La Loupe had everything she needed—or almost everything. She liked having new clothes and new opinions, but people still looked at her funny when she told them her name was La Loupe. Maybe she needed a better name. A person kind of name.
She asked Cherilyn if there was a store that sold names. Cherilyn pointed them towards a door labeled librairie. “It’s mostly books on fashion and art and such, but there might be something.”
Harmony startled. “Are you sure you want to go in the library? I think they’re really overrated. I don’t know how people can stand to be around all those boring used books and hang out in libraries all the time and date nerds and forget their friends and stuff. At least that’s what sometimes happens, I mean.”
“It’s okay, Harmony! It’s just a bookstore. I’ll look for a name and come back out, and I wouldn’t forget you. There is lots of space in my memory!”
Even if she was running out of disk space, she wouldn’t want to forget Harmony, La Loupe mused while searching the bookstore for a name book. Harmony had showed her that someone could like her and support her and not care that she was a robot. That was much too important to forget. Besides, Harmony would be sad if La Loupe forgot about her, and that would make her sad too. Harmony was nice, and she was a real friend that La Loupe had made on her own.
That reminded her, she should remove the “best friend” bit from Willow’s file. Willow was Buffy’s friend, not hers.
She found a book of baby names and leafed through it. She liked “Charlotte”. It meant she was free and strong, apparently. She could use this name for now.
The view from the roof terrace was lovely, but Harmony said they probably couldn’t afford the rooftop restaurant, so they went back down to the café on the sixth floor.
Cherilyn said the night customers sometimes liked the foie gras macarons. Charlotte took one. It was a beautiful bright red with tiny golden flecks, and it tasted bittersweet and fragrant at first, before she reached the soft, salty filling.
“Well? Does it taste gross?” Harmony asked, perusing the selection of other macarons.
Charlotte didn’t have a lot to compare it to. She had tasted a couple of things before, but not food. “It’s not bad.”
“Hmm. I’ll stick to the champagne-raspberry.”
Charlotte took another bite of hers. “Are you happy, Harmony? This is what you dreamed of all that time, right? Going to Paris and shopping?”
“Welllll, I mean. It’s totally fabulous here. I feel like a princess, if a princess could run out of cash. The thing is, though, when I used to think about this, I always thought I'd get some guy to take me here, and it would be all romantic, and he'd carry my shopping bags and get things for me just to make me happy... this is different. But it's good! It's good. You know what? It's nice that I don't have to deal with some guy and I can hang out with you instead.”
“I’m glad it’s good. I want you to have good things.”
The cookies were gone all too soon, and Harmony said dejectedly that they should probably leave the department store now. She said they could go see the Eiffel Tower or something. They'd walk to save money.
Harmony did make sure to walk past another department store. This one looked like an opera house or a palace even from the outside, with plump turrets and graceful statues in between high, gleaming window frames. There was naked longing on Harmony's face. “See, usually, I would have killed the shopping assistant, and then I wouldn't have had to pay,” she said, “but of course I wouldn't do that now. Not when she was so nice to me. I didn't even want to kill Cherilyn, that's good of me, right? But now we're out of money.”
On their way across town, they saw a record store. Charlotte was curious. She didn't think she had ever heard the music that her programming said was good. They went in and listened to some samples without buying anything.
It turned out that, actually, Charlotte did not enjoy The Sex Pistols. They didn’t sound pretty, and it sounded like they were angry about something, but she wasn’t sure what. It made her think of when Spike wouldn’t tell her what she was doing wrong.
Barry Manilow was much nicer, even though she knew Angel liked him too, and Angel was bloody stupid… but, wait, she had not arrived at that thought on her own. That was a thought that had been put in her head. She had never met Angel, so she couldn't have her own opinion about him. She edited his file.
-->Angel
vampire
hair sticks straight up (?)
likes Barry Manilow (good taste)
<!--
That song about making it through the rain was especially sweet. Charlotte hadn’t ever seen rain, but she had dealt with some pretty moist things, like the salt field in Death Valley and Warren’s sweaty palms, and she had made it through, hadn’t she? She felt like Barry Manilow got her. But this other singer named Anastacia got her even more, and her song “I’m Outta Love” sounded fun. It made her want to dance and be free. Charlotte also found out that she liked Roxette, but then the nice record store people wanted her to buy something or go away, so she didn’t have time to find out what Aqua was like.
The Eiffel Tower glowed golden in the night, visible from so far away they didn't even have to ask for directions. They walked up to the tower, and then they walked under it and out the other side, past all the people who were buying tickets for the last elevator up, and they sat down on the stone railing near a stairway that led down to the river, next to some statues of buff half-nude guys leading horses by the mane.
“There it is!” Harmony said. “The Eiffel Tower. Like, wow, right?”
White lights flickered over it like feverish fireflies. The elevator rose along the middle of the tower, shining, and the upper platforms filled with tiny black shadows as people stepped out.
“Do you like it better than the other one?” Charlotte asked.
“Well, the other one was just a knockoff of this one. Not that… imitations… of things… can’t be good! I think they’re both good, you know? The other one had the hat, and it was kind of nice that it was smaller…”
Charlotte nodded. “That one felt more approachable.”
“Right? But this one is, like, super sparkly, so there’s that.”
“They’re both good.” Charlotte liked that.
“Uh huh. And, for the record, you’re much nicer than Buffy. Like, lots.”
“Thank you, Harmony!”
Charlotte had always known it was important to have friends, but now she was starting to understand why. She didn’t think she would have made it further than Texas without Harmony’s help, and she wouldn't have had this much fun either on her own. Actually, maybe this was what having a Watcher would feel like. She had someone to rely on, someone who could guide her with wise advice.
“You’re my best friend,” Charlotte added. The words tasted different now. “I think I’m starting to understand what it means.”
Harmony beamed. “That's right, I am! And I don’t think I’d want to be friends with Buffy. She’d probably try to kill me again.”
“Yeah, me too. I mean, she’d try to kill me too.” Or maybe Willow would try for her. Just knowing it ever existed is going to give me nightmares, Buffy had said, and Willow had assured her real best friend that the robot who had upset her was already destroyed. Who knew what either of them would resort to if they met Charlotte again? It was a pity. Buffy had to be a pretty cool person, if Charlotte was like her, and it might have been nice to be friends with her.
“Oh my god, my feet hurt, like, so much right now,” Harmony said. “Having new shoes is the best, but actually walking in them is the worst. I don't want to take another step.”
“No steps at all? But we can't sleep here, Harmony. There's no power outlet.”
“Oh, I know we'll have to go find a place to stay before morning. Just give me a moment.” Harmony took off her shoes and started giving herself a foot massage, when her attention snapped to something at the base of the nearest horse statue.
Charlotte hadn't noticed it earlier, either. She didn't know why. It was very noticeable.
It was a pink scooter motorbike. Harmony walked up to it and trailed her hand along one of its mirrors. “It's so pretty,” she sighed. “And…” She looked all around and lowered her voice. “And the key is in the ignition. I wonder who left it.”
Who would leave something so pink and pretty unattended? Its surface gleamed, reflecting the city lights.
“Would it be very bad,” Harmony said hesitantly, “since the owner is clearly not using it and left the key right here… if someone borrowed it for a bit? It would be just like in that movie, with the holiday and the Rome... and we wouldn't have to walk…”
The key chain jingled enticingly in the breeze. It was pretty impressive how it did that, because there was no breeze. The river below was almost mirror-smooth.
Charlotte pondered. She had originally had rules about how to be a good person, or rather a good girlfriend. But these rules hadn’t covered much, and they had been provided by either Spike (certified evil) or Warren (creepy and mean). Khawla and Shayma had given her some knowledge of law instead. She knew theft would be a crime in both France and California, but borrowing wasn’t the same, was it? “It’s probably fine, Harmony.”
Harmony was already on the seat, reaching for the ignition, when the scooter jerked of its own accord, the engine neighing like a horse.
That couldn’t be good.
Charlotte started getting up to go help, but, too quickly, the scooter leapt into the air and dove deep into the river with Charlotte’s only real friend.
no subject
Date: 2021-11-02 12:54 am (UTC)Hmm, evil scooter? Buffybot definitely has one thing in common with Buffy -- attracting the supernatural.
no subject
Date: 2021-11-02 06:07 am (UTC)The stores were fun to research. I suppose the French don't have an evil mayor or the influence of a hellmouth, or whatever it is that keeps Sunnydale seemingly oblivious. Also, the store I describe is over a century old, so they've had some time to figure things out.
Evil scooter! \o/ Buffybot has the bad luck to be written by me, and I want to write about the supernatural.
no subject
Date: 2021-11-07 10:07 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2021-11-08 06:14 am (UTC)I have mixed feelings about cathedrals of commerce, but Harmony absolutely thinks Galeries Lafayette is awesome, so I tried to get into the spirit. :D
Hee, I felt actually listening to Aqua would be too meta, or maybe I just got lazy! I wonder if there would be anything about her reaction beyond the obvious. What would Barbie Girl mean to her, which parts would stand out, hmmmm! I think you've convinced me to let her listen to Aqua in the final version of this story.
Thank you so much for reading and for this lovely comment.
no subject
Date: 2021-11-09 12:11 am (UTC)That's a very apt description! Like a real cathedral, the main thing to do in Galeries Lafayette is looking around in awe. Not actually buying anything, because everything is WAY too expensive.
If it fits in the story, I'd love to know what Charlotte makes of Barbie Girl.
no subject
Date: 2021-11-09 04:43 am (UTC)I hear Galeries Lafayette have been experimenting with selling second-hand clothing in recent years. But in an unmistakably fancy way! (Or that's the impression I get.) I wonder what the prices are there, what their (Re)store section is like. Might be hilarious.