Authors Note: Some Tres/Caterina love for you. I wrote this after reading the special manga chapters "Gunmetal Hound", which centered around Tres having an epic gun battle with his "older brother" Duo, who was intended to be an arsehole who wanted to absorb Tres' battle data (the constant use of rape imagery every time Tres was being "hacked" only added to the scariness of that fight). Throughout the whole fight, we see Tres' backstory, and how he was saved by Caterina...and we see that he seems fond of the memory, holding it in high importance. Near the end of the fight, it appears to be a curb-stomp battle, but then Duo makes the mistake of insulting Caterina...which caused Tres to go batshit on him and blow his head off. Hard-frigging-core. But for those few pages, Tres' dialogue boxes become more rounded, his speech more casual, and he seems more human overall. That one woman can invoke such a reaction in someone who appeared to be all circuits and wires and cold logic, to me, really says something on how he feels.

Trinity Blood and everything to do with it belongs to the late, great Sunao Yoshida.

Sitting motionlessly in her office, Tres Iqus gazed at the strikingly beautiful women sitting nearby. As she sipped at her tea, he could see that she was, for once, completely at ease. He inwardly smiled at this, for seeing her happy often made him feel…something. He never knew what this feeling was, but it never mattered. He was a machine. He shouldn't be feeling at all. Yet, looking over at his mistress, Duchess of Milan, Cardinal Caterina Sforza, he reassessed himself, his existence, and his purpose for living. And he remembered that his life was hers. He had no right to question it.

He remembered the moment they met for the first time, the point when his life was inexplicably altered. Lying in a growing pool of his own life-preserving liquid (he could not call it blood; blood comes from people), most of his limbs and abdomen missing, slowly but surely dying. His creator was dead, as were all his brothers. He had failed his mission, and now he had nothing left. He was dying. And then she appeared; a sudden vision of great beauty, red clothes and blonde curls looking so bright, so stunningly gorgeous. She looked like an angel that had been sent to claim him for the afterlife, but instead of death, she offered him life. "I will respect your decision", she had said. Die, or live with her as a human? He knew then, even on the brink of death, that he was a machine, and that she was to treat him as such. And so she knelt in the red oil puddle, staining her stunning red and white dress a deeper crimson, and, taking his head in her hands, claimed him for her own. Her words still echoed in his ears, to this day. "Then, from now on, you will belong to me. Every drop of life-sustaining fluid in your body…every file of memory in your data banks…all of you will belong to me. You are my possession," she said, her voice solemn. She looked almost sad as she said it, as though she had known in advance the effect this encounter would have on the world.

He was bound to her from that moment on, his life dedicated to her and her order, the commands that she issued. And he was glad to carry them out. No matter what dark, sinful things he had to do, he would always accomplish his mission. And seeing her satisfied with his work, no matter how violent and bloody it was, always lifted whatever spirits he had. His life belonged to her, and in exchange, he gave her the lives of many others. Yet he never felt anything for those he had to destroy to complete these goals, never felt a single emotion concerning them. He only seemed to feel for her.

Thanks to his brother, Tres had known a variety of emotion, all in a short space of time. He knew what it was to panic, to feel fear grab his insides like a giant hand, crushing, choking. He knew what it was to be dazed, disorientated, his vision blurred and his head fuzzy, thoughts incoherent. And he knew what it was to hate, for anger to burn in his veins and sharpen his power and resolve to a fatal degree. These emotions, he reasoned, were temporary and impermanent. Nothing to concern himself with. But he felt something else, something that only surfaced when he was forced to recall the moment his real life started. Warmth, small and almost delicate, starting in his chest and pulsing through the rest of his frame. He thought that he could ignore it and get on with the mission, for her sake, but when she was insulted, when Duo had called his memories of her "garbage", the tiny glow in him suddenly blazed into fury, like a campfire doused in gasoline. This heat, a blend of hate and something he could not identify, was to be Duo's destruction. And with it came a restoration in his resolve, the law of which he lived: He was her possession. He was her gun.

He had heard of love, had seen the change it can bring about in people, but Tres had never experienced it himself. He could not. He was, after all, a machine. But watching the famed Woman of Steel, he wondered it really was so impossible. She had, after all, given him a new life, a life where he went and did what he was made for. The life of a machine. And it made him as close to happy as he could get without feeling the emotion itself. He belonged to her, and he realized that his life would mean nothing without her to command him, to make use of him. Without Lady Caterina, he was about as good as scrap metal. But he felt that there was more to it than simply belonging to her. He knew that he was in love with her. He assessed this feeling logically; it made sense, after all, because why else would he treasure his time with her and despise her time away? Why else would he give up all he had and continually put himself at risk for her? This realization, however, troubled him deeply. Why burden himself with human emotions, pointless as they were to him? Why feel love for a woman when he could never act on it?

And so he just sat there, watching her and waiting for her decree. For whilst he would never be able to confess such thoughts and feelings to her, as long as she had use for him, his love would always exist, giving him his reason for being. And he was content with that. Watching another smile light up her already radiant face, he felt, for once in his existence, truly happy. He was her possession, and that suited him just fine.