Title: Responsibility
Summary: It is often the things that people forget, that they regret completely once they realize they'd forgotten it in the first place. Razaya one-shot.
Disclaimer: I don't make money off of this. Don't sue me.
Warning: Fluff, mild sadness, slight mention of the episode 'Homecoming'and a weird writing style I adore to pieces.

I know, I should be working on my Batman fanfics, but I needed fresh liquid color to move myself past 'Go' to collect five hundred dollars. How odd it is for me to shaft all of my responsibilities. NOT.

-:-
The voice you hear is not my speaking voice—but my mind's voice.
-The Piano

[Inside the Interceptor a pulsing of green light echoes everywhere like the inside of a mother's womb, the ultra-warp coil sits readily for whenever it is to be needed, the artificial gravity is off because the ship is stationed and there is no need for it.]

Razer set down his first drink of the day (sludge in a glass as Jordan would put it, but a wonderful pick-me-up for Razer's specie) and looked up in annoyance and curiosity at not hearing Aya make any sound his way like she did most mornings after giving him breakfast. She was silent, which was disturbing in consideration that she wasn't in her humanoid form and therefore mulling about in the Interceptor's wiring trying to understand something herself, rather than asking a question she had started thinking (since returning to Oa and having talks with the Guardians that seemed to bring her more and more down on herself with Kilowog training new recruits to assist the Red Lanterns in fixing the Forgotten Zone, Jordan still on Earth having dessert as he'd said, and nobody but Razer to speak with when he wasn't busy; thus causing the Red Lantern to feel the displaced feeling of pity for the AI) about, that was probably leaving her more confused than when she started.

With much contempt about himself (something he had become less and less used to feeling of his person since his fourth month on the Interceptor with Hal Jordan's crew) Razer gave a low sigh and glanced up at the moving electronic orb that Jordan had often commented on Aya's eye of Fate…whatever that meant.

"Aya," the voice of the Red Lantern inquired, blue eyes tracing the un-lit orb for any signs of activity, "Is something the matter? You've been awfully quiet this morning."

Since being given the Interceptor as a sort of home before the Guardians decided what to do with both the AI and the nearly (though more than all the other one's of sentient being and temper) non-hostile Red Lantern, Razer had come to recognize when Aya was listening but choosing not to respond. At that moment, the panels along the walls that flickered when activity gave them thought, become electrically charged to confirm that Aya was indeed listening. One particular branch of the color green seemed to be moving for the roof of the room (the place where she had delivered herself like a newborn from a birth canal; both child and mother unto her own making) and Razer took to heart the feeling that she was going to make this a two-way conversation. He'd rather not have to talk into the thin air.

"Aya?"

The orb lit up, rather than the ceiling, and Aya's single eye looked down on the Red; the blue circle of the device, that Kilowog said was close to a pupil in similarity, zoning in on Razer and the meal he was having as well as his morning drink (deep blue leaves that seemed coated in congealed red ooze for flavoring, roots the color of indigo chopped to the size of a cut off finger; a salad, in a way that—if Hal wasn't on Earth—would make an Earthman's stomach roll).

"Good morning, Razer," (was it just him, or did her voice seem more "mopey" than she usually exhibited?) "Is there something I can assist you with?"

"I asked if something was wrong with you," Razer tried again, crossing his arms because a thought was niggling in acknowledgement in his brain that she was avoiding his questions in respect to her well-being.

The eye twitched and then disappeared into the ceiling. Before he could make comment on that, however, Aya's body parts fell out of the ceiling and assembled themselves on the table (inches from setting one of her feet into his meal, but careful when she stepped backwards to avoid such) so that he could finally look at a face instead of the air; twitching at the sounds of her disembodied voice.

The green powered AI took a step back and off of the table (like Hal had taught three days into her having a physical body; apparently it was rude to stand on the table whether or not a person was eating, unless it was to give some "kick-ass speech, like in a 1980's Union Rally")and gave Razer a rather…odd look. One side of her face tilted to the left and her eyes seemed narrow, not looking at Razer; not really.

"All of my operating components are at full power and have no damage."

Razer rolled his eyes (damn the Earthman when some of his habits made sense and rubbed off and latched onto every single member of the Interceptor), but before he could say something along the lines of his not meaning that sort of thing, Aya surprised him in taking a seat across from him and continuing. Seeming almost nervous; a little girl across from a boy at school who she'd seen plenty but had never spoken to before.

"However, I do have an inquiry that has been bothering me for a little while since returning here to Oa."

Armor not at all glowing at such an hour (amazingly, his temper was made less volatile by the smells he picked up that reminded him of his home planet at the same hours; crisp air made beautiful by dew on vegetation and chill in temperature from the sun going up and down as needed), he didn't make the table glow light crimson when he rested his elbows to make himself more comfortable when he looked more closely at Aya.

"Go on."

The AI moved one leg from foot to knee forward and back (infinitely like a child that Razer had to keep reminding himself that she had never been, at the same time silently disappointed that she could never have enjoyed the experience) twice before asking, "Does it hurt to die?"

Razer's mouth went dry as a bone and he felt as though his heart had stopped a couple of seconds, clogging up the blood leading to and from his heart. An unpleasantness settled over him and his eyes moved to look more closely at the way the blue of her retinas seemed darker than usual after the inquest.

"I do not know myself, Aya," he stated, point-blank and undeservingly quiet all of a sudden, "There are books and such that would say that the events before death can be very unpleasant, but in most specie, a chemical goes off in the brain and anesthetizes you. So, if you follow what science says, then I don't think the act of death in itself hurts; only the events leading to it."

It was the best answer he could give in his current condition of extreme surprise, but there was something in the way she looked at him (that look Hal Jordan often referred to as the Oracle look of the all-knowing and all-powerful that was only exhibited by the most brilliant and the most cunning when they knew that they could not quite get the answer they were hoping for) with a color of disconcertion that made him shoot back a set of questions of his own.

"What has happened that would make you ask such a question Aya? Something one of the Lanterns might have brought up?"

Aya shook her head (two precise movements of her head going left and then right) and blinked once before answering, "No, a Lantern did not bring this question to my attention. The events leading to the end of the war with the Red Lanterns has left me simply contemplating the events that might have happened had you not arrived in time to prevent Drusa from deleting my consciousness from my systems."

"…Oh."

(It is a broken sound; a piano key that has had a dead man's hand dropped onto it in a room full of obliterating silence. An awful, terrible realization of something overlooked.)

Without hesitation (his mind is suddenly uncontrolled not in rage and anger, but in the panic that would be beautiful in the shape of those yellow crystals inlaid on prison planets and asteroids) Razer found himself getting up from his seat to cross over to where Aya sat, bending so that he was in a kneeled position (one knee warm and grasping the chill always present on the floor of the Interceptor) and he carefully took her much smaller hands into his own. Those tiny hands were not cold like the floor beneath him, but warm and strong and almost made his intentions break because he could understand that she was a real person here and Drusa had hurt her in a way that could have been most irreparable; even though he did save Aya.

"Aya, I'm so sorry… I'd completely forgotten about that. Nobody talked to you after it happened and everyone got so caught up in the Red Lanterns allowing for restitution and…"

"You should not feel at fault Razer," Aya interrupted, the thumb of her right hand grazing four of his left hand knuckles in what she had been informed by various clusters of data (and experience, because Kilowog and Hal had done so to comfort her in previous months) to calm him down, "I did not bring it up myself, so why should you make yourself responsible?"

Razer shook his head (completely different from Aya, because it was uncontrolled and uncoordinated, sloppy and real) and his hands tightened a little onto hers, "I made myself responsible to come and get you when the attack was happening. I should have had it in me to make myself responsible in making certain that you were alright afterwards. You're an AI that is constantly evolving, so it should have been obvious that at least I or Jordan or Kilowog should have talked to you after what would have been a trauma for any sentient being. It wasn't fair to you."

Aya did not show any tremendously outward signs of being too emotional in Razer's confirmation that she was indeed right to have these strange new processing's of information that caused her to be unpleasantly aware of just how horrible it could have been if Drusa had gone through with deleting her higher functions (her personality, her curiosities, her consciousness, her very existence all wiped away to leave behind an empty shell for that awful woman to play with as she'd wanted), but there was something there. Her eyes seemed to dim, her hands tightened even more (clinging deep) into Razer's larger hands and her shoulders seemed to heave downward as though letting go of a heavy weight on her chest.

The Red Lantern lifted quietly from his position on bended knee and took Aya into a comforting hug (one hand still with her smaller hand, the other coming around her middle to softly tread circles along her back) with his head resting atop her helm.

Razer would not notice until he let her go, but Aya closed her own blue eyes (grateful, warm, soft) and squeezed Razer's hand gently with both of her own (less afraid, less frightened).

[Outside of the Interceptor: thirty-two new recruits were allowed to leave basic training, all of the Greens flying out to get away from the Sergeant in one of his moods that had them nattering like geese on Planet Earth about his ill-treatment of the young ones; Green Lantern Salaak tried his best not to exhibit his extreme annoyance in the Guardian's conference hall as his blue leaders spoke with Zilius Zox the second time that week; and two hundred, ninety-eight miles away, Green Lantern Hal Jordan made his way to Oa in hopes to visit the three people he had been missing, as well as to beg the Guardians to team him up with anyone on Earth other than Guy Gardner.]