She has always been alone. 
The wires are her cocoon, an endless web running through her soul. She is put together and taken apart over and over and over and over and over again, until she's spent more time in pieces than whole. The hands that touch her are steel claws or else heavily gloved, the eyes that watch her indifferent to her pain. 
Venus de Milo, they call her, after the armless, helpless statue. She wriggles slightly in her restraints, stumps twitching, wondering what it would be like to be made of marble. Maybe her body would not ache to be held, would not be desperate for even the smallest caress, if it was made from cold white stone. 
Another one, an assistant who doesn't last long, calls her Mei Pieh Chi. Venus does not ask what it means, whether it is kind or cruel. She is not here to ask questions. She is here for...what is she here for? 
She doesn't know. Maybe she is here for no reason other than this, to undone over and over again this place crumbles in on itself. 
Venus looks at herself in the two-way glass. Disjointed limbs swaying in space, a mask stitched to her face, one hand longer and more distorted than the other. One of them says if we had to build a robot, couldn't it be a sexy one? and she feels like she’s curling in on herself, even though that simply isn't possible with the way she's stretched out like this. 
The electricity dances over her skin, the closest thing she will ever get to a heartbeat. Sometimes it burns like teeth ripping her apart from the inside out. Sometimes it is almost gentle, like kisses from butterflies that may or may not turn out to be poison. Sometimes it sends images of strange, twisted-up black-and-white symbols swirling behind her eyes. 
The other turtle comes with the electricity, the first time. 
She is not-there and then there, a ghostly presence swirling through the chamber. She is buzzing and jerking and there is a something sinking into her consciousness. filling Venus' eyes with an impossible outline. She blinks, and there's a face looking back at her from the corner of the chamber, dark eyes glinting against green scales. 
Who are you? she thinks. Who are you? the turtle repeats. Or maybe it's the other way round. 
A girl-turtle, Venus thinks, not knowing why. A girl turtle with scales, with a heart that Venus can feel beating, with a cloth mask that doesn't appear stitched in at all. A turtle who is still, somehow, in pieces, just like Venus. 
Venus can see the shards floating at the stranger's core, keeping her together as she draws near. Sharp fractured bits, torn and rubbing, slicing at the turtle girl's tender insides. Fractures of an identity: a human, a freak, a killer, a sister, a daughter, a lover. They seem danger of cutting through her skin as she moves, tracing kaleidoscopes of pain over her scales.
Venus already knows that there are different types of pain. There is pain-from-electricity. Pain-from-rebuilding. Pain-from-deconstructing. Pain-from-dead nerves. Pain-from-cruel-words. Pain-from-boredom. Pain-from-loneliness. Pain-from-fear. Pain-from-helplessness. Pain-from-confusion.
Her stranger carries some kinds of pain that she recognizes, and others that she doesn't. Pain-from-grief. Pain-from-guilt. Pain-from-worry. Pain-from-responsibility. Pain-from-shame. Pain-on-your-back. Pain-on-your-knees. Pain-from-his-words. Pain-from-his-lies. Pain-from-his-love. Pain-from-his-ghost. Pain-from-the-wrong-body. Pain-from-I-can't-tell-them-about-it. 
You're hurting, they whisper to each other. You're alone. A pause, then one of them asks, Who are you? They don't wonder how are you here, because that doesn't seem important right now. 
I'm Lavinia--Nia, the girl whispers. Even while restrained, her voice has a kind of power to it that Venus has never heard before. 
I'm Venus, says Venus. 
The electricity spikes again, and then the girl-turtle-ghost-shadow is gone. It's then Venus learns something new: Pain-from-loss. 
But the other comes back. She watches Venus in the dark when the technicians are gone, she dances between their wires as they work. They never see her; she is Venus' secret, the only thing she has ever been able to keep hidden from her creators. 
I keep forgetting you, she says. I don't remember to look for you. She sighs. I'm sorry. I... I'm not very good at remembering the things I want to remember, sometimes. 
Venus doesn't know what to say to that. On some level, she's just happy to not be quite so alone anymore. Besides, there are times she doesn't remember Nia, either, or much of anything, slipping into an endless blankness when she just has to get away from the technician's hands. 
She doesn't disappear when Nia's here, though. She wants to be here for her, even when (especially when?) Nia seems to be as in many scattered bits as Venus is.
Sometimes her visitor's pieces are held roughly together, sometimes they swirl and bounce around the room in a silent storm. Sometimes her mask is blue, and sometimes it's a black that would make Venus' stomach clench if she had one. 
Nia whispers fragments of memory, pieces of the outside world. Her voice swerves between English to something she tells Venus is Japanese. Her voice occasionally lilts with a few bars of what she says is called music. 
When she's in the black mask, she breaks down into fractured muttering, liquid spilling from her cheeks to stain the floor. Apparently, these are tears. Her hands scratch at her wrists, and it reminds Venus of her own early days, when she was constantly malfunctioning and screaming and vomiting up endless streams of useless data. 
She doesn't talk as much these days. But she talks to her visitor, even when said visitor isn't sane enough to hear. She whispers about the story behind both her names, recites the names of various scientific procedures and asshole technicians, asks questions that Nia does her best to answer. 
I think, Nia says, I created you, to cope. To find something to distract me from the nightmares. 
And Venus wants to say that's not true, she's not a figment of Nia's imagination. But is she sure about that? She doesn't know what she's here for, after all. And it's not like she's "real" in any sense of the word. Who knows, perhaps she made Nia to cope. Or maybe they created each other? 
Venus doesn't say anything about this. She worries that if she pushes too hard at what makes this.... this, she'll damage something irreparably.
Are you beautiful? she asks Nia.
Nia looks confused. That's not usually how you say it, I think. She shrugs. Only one person ever called..this, she waves at herself, beautiful. And he's dead. Good riddance, too.
Venus blinks thoughtfully. Sometimes I think you're beautiful, she says. But I don't know what that means. She trembles slightly, nervous. Do you...do you think I'm beautiful?
Nia frowns. You shouldn't be, she says. But I think you are.
She can feel Nia pulling closer with every visit, close enough for them to hear each other's breath if Nia was physically there, and if Venus could breathe. Eventually a time comes when she pauses, basking in the warmth of Venus' heat, and asks May I touch you? 
No one has ever asked Venus that before. She was not aware that was something you could ask. 
Okay, she says, because she's curious, and she never gets to be the curious one. 
Nia's pieces flow through the web of blinking lights and steel that makes up Venus' body, sliding into all of her many gaps. She hums, and Nia-Nia feels it. Feels something different from rubbery hands or lightning, feels a touch like nothing she ever experienced. 
A soft, gentle rumble pulses through her wires. Nia rumbles back, the pace picking up as she flutters and pushes against Venus' skin. 
It feels...good. Really good. What is this? Venus asks, voice trembling with wonder. 
I don't know, Nia admits. I never...this isn't like the other stuff I've done. And quieter, so quiet Venus almost doesn't pick up on it. It doesn't scare me. 
She pushes outward, her soul unfolded like a flower. Venus pushes back, weaving fresh threads between their two minds. Everything is safe gentle warm good nice. They push against each other, rubbing back and forth, and the feeling only grows stronger. 
In the distance, Venus can hear the technicians talking about "pleasure centers." She clenches her jaw and tries to pick up the pace, feeling the wires vibrate ever so slightly with her effort. 
Sensations twirl through their joined minds, intensity increases with the speed of...well, whatever they're doing together. There's melted cheese in Venus' mouth, the steady shimmer of a wooden floor under her feet, flashes of red and orange and purple. It's overwhelming in the best way. 
Want you, she whispers. She has never wanted before. She has never asked for anything before. But she wants now, and Nia gives, sinking deeper and deeper into Venus' mechanical brain. She imagines the oh-so-important pleasure centers must be on fire by now. 
She can feel Nia coalesce around her, of long-broken pieces pushing into place (at least for the moment). Venus likes that. She likes the act of healing, she thinks, the act of creation. It seems fitting, that is one of the first things she truly chooses. 
The heat builds and builds while the technicians yell, while twin souls push into one. Venus closes her eyes, and in her mind she sees a flesh-and-blood body curled up on the mat in her bedroom, shuddering. Nia's hand works desperately between her legs, her beautiful eyes rolling. 
Venus flares up at the sight, crashing back into her body on a tidal wave of impossible pleasure. She shudders--it feels like an earthquake, although she knows it can only be the faintest quiver. Her eyes flare for a heartbeat, sending one of the techs crashing back with a yelp. 
She drifts. The heat wraps around her, keeps her safe. It's like the times when she has to disappear into her own head to get away from the technicians, but so much better, because her mind is full now, full of Nia, and Nia is full of her. 
When the detachment comes, as she knows it will, it is slow and careful, gentle as they can make it Nia leaves a few memories behind, leaves words like pizza and dojo, names like Donnie and Raph and Mikey. Family names. Names with a promise. 
Venus opens her eyes, and she is alone again, still slumped in her restraints. The technicians are muttering about a power surge and walking off without a look back. She can feel the pain-from-loneliness nipping at her heels all over again, taste the pain-from-loss. 
But just because she is alone does not mean alone is forever. Nia will come back--she does not hope this, she knows this. Or perhaps, if she dares, Venus will get out of here (somehow, some way, and she doesn't think she cares who she has to kill to do it) into the outside world and set about exploring it for herself. 
I'll find you, she thinks. If you can't remember me, I'll remember you. 
And then...Venus doesn't know. But the pain-from-loneliness isn't quite so bad, now, with the thought that she won't let it last forever. Venus has been only recently introduced to the concept of liking things, but she likes that.