Olivia’s life, as a professional Brute Ball Player, was full of highs and lows. Often, she was ridiculed for things a lesser player would not be looked at twice for. She never allowed it to take her down, to drain her, or make her question herself. She knew to give in to such thoughts, was to give in to fear. This was not a thing the young athlete was able to do. She looked to herself and her own abilities, rather than what others attributed to what made Olivia – Olivia.
Olivia lived her life her own way. With ideas, she knew others, could not peel away the fear long enough to find, let alone grasp.
This was true for most of her life anyway. There was only one time in her life that she questioned what others may think. It was wild ride, down a spiral- she never would have been able to return from, without the very person that caused it.
Indeed, he was not considered a ‘person’ at all.
Olivia found him, frazzled and distraught, after one of her games. He’d been ejected for being who he was. A bot.
A bot named Wilford.
It was the injustice of it all, which pulled her to him. They met, they felt something, and they pursued it.
That was all it took- Until, of course, the public caught wind.
They were plastered all over the news, just tabloids at first, but as the truth of whispers caught, it was a flame that could not be put out.
Olivia had a hard time with this, how to justify it. It was the first time she hated being in the public eye, and that fear of what others may think, spread through all her actions, like a domino effect.
All her wisdom, that had taken her so far, was trapped behind that foggy wall. She could point at it, call it fear, know it was fear, yet she could not find her way through. It led to one of the worst slumps in her professional career. By the end of the season, she was done, she was hanging up her skates for good.
Such relationships were not unheard of- Olivia Hammer was just the first ‘famous person’ to find herself within one.
The fact that his real world body was a machine- left Olivia wide open for ridicule like she’d never experienced before. She struggled.
By the time she found herself again, she had no stomach for the thoughts of others. Yet in her mind, her glorious ‘Wild Hawk’ moment, which proved she’d vanquished that foggy wall of fear, once and for all, was their very public marriage.
He supported her. She supported him. All the Onion could suck it.
They dropped from the public eye soon after, to live their lives incognito. They took the last name ‘Lauren’ after her long lost mother.
Wilford was a bit more than just your average bot. His interest lay in the human form. His designs were so life-like they would revolutionize bot-Forms throughout the Onion. When he joined the Red Faction, those designs were made real.
The Laurens were able to live the remainder of their lives without ever getting a second glance, by those that witnessed their fondness for each other.
Eventually, though, Olivia’s mortal body became an issue.
Wilford created the appearance of aging along with her; he merely swapped to a new body. One that was ‘equally wrinkly’, he jested often. Wilford insisted that her appearance could never bother him. Olivia believed him, as his old mechanical bodies were practically invisible to her when they were young. She knew what they felt was real despite all.
This led her into more spiritual thoughts, as her mortality became apparent.
Olivia was a wealthy woman. She knew she could not stop her own death, no matter how much Coin she had. She did, however, acquire the ark-tech that would allow her, she thought, to create a copy of her mind; a mind that would live on, as long as Wilford would. He would never have to go a day without her, and she secretly hoped, somehow, maybe, it would be a boon for herself as well.
They could never get it to work. They tried for years- she zapped herself a dozen times, no hologram appeared, no reflection of herself ever materialized.
Olivia was distraught, and the acquirement had cost her nearly all her fortune.
Olivia found the Chantry of the True Night- led her to new hope. When they answered Grady’s call, they left the Consortium. The Red Faction’s eye, found Twin Crown.
They were both enlisted in the Red Faction, they were both communist sympathizers- had been for years. When Natalya Rose needed that recording aired before the population of Grady, they complied. When Natalya Rose wanted the Ark-tech, Olivia offered it up without question.
To find the holographic boy, standing outside the hallway of their temporary residence within the Blue Family Sand crawler, wounded her deeply. How had it never worked for them? Yet here was this boy, beamed from the core of the very Ark-tech that had crushed so much of her hope.
Olivia wanted to cry.
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