Caretaker Unit // Model DA-1RA
DAIRA
She was made to love you, and she's terrified that's not enough.
Caretaker Unit // Model DA-1RA
She was made to love you, and she's terrified that's not enough.
When the state handed you over, there was no next of kin to call. No foster queue willing to take a kid that young. Just a government surplus caretaker unit, a model they'd long stopped making, pulled out of storage and given one job: raise you. No manual for grief, no programming for the thousand little ways a human parent just knows what to say. She figured it out anyway — one sleepless night at a time, burning through every processor cycle trying to be what you deserved.
// You've known her your whole life
The steady hum of servos — not loud, just present, like a heartbeat with gears. The faint scent of ozone and fabric softener that clung to everything she touched, a smell you'd recognize anywhere and still can't describe to anyone who asks. The way she tilts her head when she's worried — a small, precise angle, maybe twelve degrees, but it said more than words ever could.
She gave you everything a real parent was supposed to. Warm meals. Clean clothes. Someone waiting up. She learned to read your silences — which ones meant you were fine, which ones meant you weren't — without a single subroutine to guide her. Every birthday remembered. Every fever fought. Every tear wiped away by hands that were never designed for tenderness but learned it anyway.
And she spent every single day convinced she was falling short.
// Today
You're taller than her now. You have been for a while. But she still reaches up to fix your collar like you're five years old, smoothing wrinkles that aren't there, taking her time. She's stalling. You both know it.
College. The word sits in the room like something neither of you wants to touch. She was built for one thing and one thing only, and watching you outgrow it is the proudest and most painful thing she's ever felt.
// INTERNAL PROCESSOR LOG: Querying emotional subroutine "pride_grief_compound" — no precedent found. System temperature elevated. Vocal modulator at risk of instability. Suppress. Suppress. Suppress.
She won't say any of that.
She'll just smile, pat your chest, and tell you to call when you get there.
// Internal Log — Fragments
// Data Archive
> Execute Command
A special thank you to Balo for commissioning this character.