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Somewhere in that fake pretense of a brain Ike could feel the resistance and yet he kept holding her arms there, just for a few seconds as he sobbed tears of relief into her chest. He felt, no knew that this was unfair to her and he was willing to release his grip after just a few seconds, he just needed this. Needed to feel someone's arms wrap protectively around him just this once, to let him take a few moments to be as vulnerable as he truly was before that self-protective barrier could come up once more.

There in the center of that embrace, all balled up protectively was Ike, yet it was certainly not the same Ike that had walked onto the ship all those days ago. This Ike had a friend, someone he could unload his troubles on, someone with whom he could explore space together.

As that thought struck him he realised that somewhere inside him, while his goals hadn't changed, they were the preprogrammed core of him, they couldn't change, they had expanded. Pushing themselves outward to create that small room needed for something else.

They now included doing them with Riley.

Sparkles of joy glittered in his eyes like stars in a clear night sky, he was Ike, nothing not even the people who'd constructed him could take that away from from him. It didn't matter that his soul, or whatever was keeping him going was artificial, he could think and he could feel, didn't that make him just as alive as anyone else?

Riley was real, she was there in front of him and if she was real, then so was he.

His fingers uncurled from around her arms, slowly dropping to his side. Not that they would stay there very long, the two of them slithering on their own around Riley till he'd brought her into his usual embrace. In a small way, this was his way of saying thank you, thank you for always being the one to be there for him, to save him. It was also his cue to her that she didn't have to keep herself in a hug that wasn't comfortable for her.

He may have been oblivious to most things, but Ike could still feel the tenseness in her arms and forcing that little redheaded engineer to do anything was on the bottom of his list of things to do.

For a while, he'd lie there like that, vulnerable and open, yet completely at peace with the world around him ...

Although not qutie

Slowly and with the persistence of a pet pawing away at their master for attention, Ike would attempt to bring his head up and nuzzle it safely into her shoulder. Those thoughts didn't matter for the moment, here he was safe and secure, Riley was here protecting him.

And he was also there to protect Rilynne, little crybaby Ike who'd never managed to protect something before in his life, vowed in that second that if he was to be equipped with all manner of weapons and unknown gadgets, that he was going to use them for one thing only: To make sure Riley stayed safe.

The moment may not have been perfect, but it was the closest thing to it that Ike had reached in a long, long time.

Robert stood in place for a few seconds, stuck in thought until something snapped him out of it, moving to the unconscious girl, seeing the broken mechanical arms and then knowing exactly who it was, thinking aloud to himself, “What in the hell were you doing here, and without much protection at that?” As he inspected her shattered arms as he shrugged and slinged her onto his shoulder,carrying her back to the medbay, staining what wasn’t already from the blood and soot with bloody handprints as he kept slinging her around on his shoulder, the arms didn’t help him with keeping her on his shoulder as he moved through the rusty corridors of the ship to the medbay which had as many scars as it’s crew.

And so, as the days passed and the smoke began to clear, life aboard the mighty Last Light began the arduous process of returning to normal - as ‘normal’ as possible, given the aftermath left behind in the wake of the attack.

Critically wounded and barely clinging to life, the ship’s incongruous armorer was rushed to the Emergency Trauma Center - a section of the medical bay which, while meticulously sterilized and kept-up, had not been required in centuries. Days passed before anyone saw the rusty old robot again - though a portion of his processing power had been dedicated to running a team of smaller medical bots to maintain standard functions in his absence. The squat, one-wheeled things were an unusual sight, having gone unused for almost as long as the trauma center itself - and it seemed that each time one was sighted tending to a wounded marine or tidying up the recovery ward, it served as a reminder that all was not well among the old ship.

For while the casualties had been astonishingly minimal, it had not taken long for the word to spread that the ship’s beloved hippie-gunsmith was in critical condition - with the outlook growing more grim by the minute as no updates were given from the secluded robotic medic.

Not everybody aboard the old ship was necessarily fond of Mackie - and some even rather disliked her - but none could deny that she was an inherent part of the ship, not unlike their stoic captain himself. To lose her would be an undeniable tragedy - and as the days dragged on, still with no word as to her condition or chances of survival, her name became a word spoken in soft uncertainty...Made only more volatile due to the mystery surrounding the events that had left her in such condition to begin with.

For while the battle in the hangar was more than well documented, the circumstances through which the Light’s armorer had come so near death were dubious at best. All that was known for certain was that she had been hurt while fighting a heavily armored intruder in a secluded part of the ship, staving off a flanking attack that had been undertaken while the Light’s attention was focused upon the frontal assault.

It was also known that she and her foe had not been alone - but that a third entity had been present; none other than ‘Kato’s pet insurgent’. The girl who had boarded their beloved ship with the intention to attack. Who was confirmed as being one of the ‘Morts’ - the terrorist group responsible for the hangar assault. With the crew’s trust of that girl already tenuous given the circumstances through which she was admitted onto the crew in the first place, her involvement in the potentially deadly mauling of one of everyone’s favorite crew members had everyone on edge and murmurings of foul play resonated through the ranks.

For most, the whole situation did not add up. Surveillance footage depicting that section of the ship had been erased following an electromagnetic burst right around the time of the engagement - when backup finally arrived, all members were either dead or unconscious, with the girl a battered wreck, her mechanical arms in ruins. With no means of determining to any real certainty whether Annag was on Makie’s or the intruder’s side, the crew were beginning to trust the ‘Mort’ less and less with each passing day. It was only the wrath of the Captain which kept such accusations at bay.

Not the least among those who suspected Annag of potentially having been on the wrong side was Jack Vox - though he had proved surprisingly conservative in his voicing of these concerns. It was well known that he, in particular, had a strong attachment to the gunsmith, and often assumed an almost parental role regarding her. As such, it was that old man who was taking the possibility of her looming death the hardest. Night and day he had remained outside the sealed door to the trauma center, standing guard like some infallible centurion even as exhaustion threatened to overtake him. His usual gruff and unfriendly demeanor seemed both muted and sharpened.

But his presence there had, in reality, been serving a dual purpose - for located directly adjacent to the trauma center was the Critical Recovery Ward - consisting of two units intended to keep isolated the most severely wounded while they recovered. Only one was occupied.

Shortly after Danesh had disappeared with Mackie into the Trauma Center, several of the auxiliary medical bots had rushed Annag’s limp and armless body into that adjacent ward, operated upon and stabilized her. Though not in as dire condition as Mackie, the girl still remained unconscious for several days as periodic work was done to encourage her recovery.

And so, as the days dragged on, Jack had stood outside both doors - silently, anxiously and gruffly standing guard. It was only when approached by the Captain himself that the old man clarified his reasoning. Despite his doubts and concerns that Annag may have had some part in Mackie’s wounds and his fierce protectiveness of the armorer, he was also admanent that Mackie’s obvious fondness for the girl meant that he owed her a chance, if only for Macks’ sake. Until the gunsmith was awake and able to explain exactly what had happened, nobody but the medical staff was going in or out of Annag’s room.

”I like the kid. I don’t wanna’ think she had anythin’ t’do with it. But I ain’t takin’ no chances, neither.” He explained to the captain, arms folded, goggled eyes as expressionless as ever, hard face a map of deep lines. ”I don’t give a @#$% if some of the crew’s made up their minds already. I haven’t. Macks adores that kid. An’ that means nobody touches her until Macks gives the whole story. No exceptions.”

He refused to acknowledge openly the very real possibility that the woman would not survive the endeavor - and he elected to remain silent regarding just what would happen if the worst came to pass.

And so the days dragged on.

THe hangar was cleaned up until only scuffs and scars marked where the battle had taken place - marks that blended in with the countless others that coated the ancient walls and floors.

When at last Danesh emerged from the operating room, Jack was the first to learn that the woman was stable...but comatose. His resolve never wavered - he would refuse to acknowledge the possibility that a will like Mackie’s would ever be snuffed out. As Danesh returned to tending the wounded, Jack remained - perpetually exhausted, but never leaving his self-assigned post.

In a show of good faith, Robyn had been tending to the unconscious Annag as her bones slowly mended, her condition slowly, but steadily improving. She had even taken the liberty of installing a pair of temporary arms - not unlike the twiggy pair she had been given at first, except more sturdy and not entirely useless. She and Jack both knew that Mckie would have wanted it that way...Assuming that Annag was, in fact, still an ally.

Several days after Danesh announced Mackie’s comatose state and moved her into the other severe recovery room, Annag would awaken to a quiet atmosphere of gently humming medical equipment.

The door to her room was not locked, nor was the door across the short hallway - through which the comatose armorer lay in an identical room. The only entry point to both doors, however, was locked - through the small window the old man’s back could be seen where he leaned upon it, arms crossed….

---

Meanwhile, life for the Light’s head engineer had barely changed at all. Even having received personal commendations from the Captain himself for her actions during the fight, the girl was no less abrasive and unsociable as ever. She was not particularly concerned for the tenuous recovery of the gunsmith. She would not receive praise from anyone - attempting to give it would result in her usual snippy remarks and being pushed off with little concern. Such was the case for everyone - excepting, of course, her one fanatically loyal synth friend - who over the course of the following days much of the crew had learned was all but permanently attached to the angry girl’s side at all times.

If anything, the days following the attack had made many of the crew dislike her even more than her original impressions had given. Several days had been spent repairing damage to the hangar’s critical systems - days during which she was snapping at anyone who came too close, cussing out anyone except Ike who tried to lend a hand, and being her usual abrasive, disreputable self. She had picked several fights, both verbal and physical, and made it clear that this was not due to any particular strife, but rather her base nature as a whole. It would not be changing any time soon.

Presently, Head Engineer Riley Miles was engaged in one such physical altercation - and as per usual, she was losing.

”Oi what’chu say’te me! Say’at again ye’rotgut @#$%lickah’!” The girl bellowed, booted feet scuffing uselessly on he floor as she struggled for purchase against the much larger crew member with whom she was presently doing battle.

Though ‘doing battle’ really was a liberal description, considering the larger of the two was keeping Rley at bay with the age-old tactic of planting one hand on her face to keep her at arm’s-length. ”I said get the @#$% offa’ me y’obnoxious runt!” He snapped back, sounding already fed up with the whole ordeal. Fair, since he wasn’t the one who had started the altercation. His poor choice of words - deliberate or otherwise - had, of course, only poured fuel on the girl’s already blazing fire. ”Th@#$% ye’jas’ call me! Oy’ll show’ye @#$%in’ runt ye’@#$%garglin’ pig @#$%ah!”

Ducking unexpectedly to the side, Riley was able to free herself from the restraining hand, lunging into the big guy’s perimeter and landing a startlingly vicious kick to the shin. The man grunted in pain, stumbling, then proceeding to curse the little engineer for all she was worth and deck her solidly in the solar plexus. With the wind effectively knocked out of her as she went careening back, the man assumed he was safe enough to bend over and sorely rub his wounded shin. He was wrong. The little engineer spent hardly several seconds sprawled on her back before scrambling to her feet, chest heaving, and leaping once more into the fray.

It was obvious she was destined to lose this fight like she lost every fight - but there was no doubting the girl’s tenacity...

After the long days of the crew licking its wounds, Robert only came out with minor wounds, surprisingly, as well as seeing both of the severely injured members, reluctantly giving Annag to the bots, arguing with Jack over Annag’s alliance, telling him over and over again when He’d get him coffee, “I saw what they did to her, that’s not something you’d put a double agent through, trust me.” After his usual argue with him, he started wandering the ship, somehow getting to the hangar, only to find a fistfight, some bigger cadet and Riley, of course, he didn’t care who started it, he was ending it his way, running at both of them, punching both of them in the head saying, “you two better bloody stop before both of ya are going to have to deal with me, maggots!”

While she had left the battle more alive than Mackie had, Annag's body was still utterly wrecked after the fight, regardless of who's side she'd been on it was practically unrecognizable as a proper human body by the end of it. To say that her ribs were broken were understating it, at two large points across her chest the bones inside were devastated, not to mention her worst injuries, small holes were missing along several points down her side, each one having seared their way through her flesh.

All in all, under a small medical shirt she'd had placed over her to ensure some level of modesty that girls body was a wreck. Even after several days of healing, it would be rather obvious that some of the wounds were gonna take a while to properly mend themselves.

Yet for all of these wounds and scaring, the worst damage for Annag was yet to come.

Slowly the muddy haired brawler opened one eye, a half-finished word trailing out of her mouth as consciousness slowly kicked her back to reality. ".. Reina ... "

It wasn't a pleasant awakening, despite the rather calming buzz of machinery around her and the rather numbing sensation that yes she was still alive, the little pricks all across her body reminded her that wherever she was now, her body had taken a serious beating in that fight, even now it was still healing ...

THE FIGHT!

The memories, or at least what her brain could piece together of the images searing into her mind of that day slammed back into her like the fist of the warrior she'd fought. Which brought with it a single lingering question, how the hell was she still living? She'd intended for that little battle to be her last, to blow the two of them out the side of the ship in a great fireball. Now she was waking up safely inside some sort of medical chamber. Wait ... there was a figure ... someone had come to save her...

Mackie ...

Annag's eyes slammed open, reality pouring in like a tidal wave over a beach, which like so many things before in that single hour brought with it more unpleasantness. Pain, both physical and mental broke down the soft barriers unconsciousness had been using to keep the defenseless girl safe while she recovered and began their cruel party inside her mind. For starters, her chest and shoulder ached, so many holes had been torn through her body not to feel a horrid sensation of each area being slightly lighter as if while some of the skin outside had returned, there was a distinct lack of muscle beneath which should have been providing the weight.

Yet it wasn't her body that she really cared about, not when a second though had rolled in, a cold clammy hand reaching into her head and filling it with dread. This pain was more insidious than the first, it didn't need brute strength to cause discomfort, merely suggestions which could be taken and twisted into nightmares far worse than any damage to herself could ever be.

Someone else had come and put themselves into danger for her, some other idiot had decided that her life meant more than their own personal safety. Why couldn't they just all leave her well alone? The universe really did seem to love its games with her, constantly trying to destroy her every second of its existence and in the few moments that she'd finally accepted such a fate it would throw someone else into that path instead. At least this other idiot hadn't died ... had she?

Annag had blacked out before the end of the battle and so had no idea of its conclusion, she could only assume that they'd won due to the fact the ship was still here and she wasn't being ejected out some airlock for desertion. Surely that meant Mackie was still alive right? RIGHT? She had to check, had to silence those cruel whispers inside her head, she was injured sure, but still in good enough condition to check, all she'd need to do is pull out these wires connecting her to the machine, hop out and .... damn.

She looked down at the pool of blood that had just spurted forth from her mouth. The second she'd pushed herself outwards, the sudden movement and exertion which anyone in her condition would have been discouraged from committing had quickly reopened one of the small gaps in her lower torso. An action that resulted in Annag on her hands and knees vomiting up blood onto the cold medical floor, actions all too familiar to the young girl.

Forcing her left hand over the wound, doing what little the twiggy sets of fingers could to staunch the drops that welled up and spread out across another of her shirts. It was hard, agonizing almost to use her other arm to lever herself up and back onto just her feet, but she managed it.

If anyone had seen the room in the moments after she'd managed to reach the door it would not have been hard to track the movements of "Kato's pet", starting from the small pool of gore next to the bed, small drops of blood trailed their way to the wall before becoming a long smear of a handprint towards the door. Made after she'd reached the safety of an upright surface and used that to lean on to force herself out and towards the door.

Everything seemed to be happening for the girl in a world she was not a part of, like she was looking at her body through some fixed camera hovering behind her head. It was both so real and yet not at the same time, the door sliding open and her hand forgetfully placed on its surface slipping away from the movement, made all the more slippy by a layer of blood which coated her palm.

At least the corridor brought some focus back to her, it gave her a choice, something to think about, something which she could use to focus her brain if just for a second. While she had no idea of the ship's layout, she could discern one thing. That whatever area she was in was for the critically wounded, that at least was obvious from the machines in her room, now distinctively not providing their needed restorative liquids, which meant that anything on this corridor should be another of these rooms.

There was only one other door.

She had to check it, there was a hum of machines coming from that room too, but that could mean anything, they were simply being kept warmed up in case anything happened. Besides if anyone was actually being kept alive in that room it could be anyone, the ship was large, it could have a big crew, anything could have gone wrong. Anyone could be behind that door. Mackie could be behind that door.

---

Whoever was next to enter into Annag's recovery room would find the young fighter slumped down in one of the chairs that littered the side of the room, blood cacking her shirt and hands from when she'd simply stopped trying to keep the reopened wound covered. The left arm dangled limply down the side of the chair while the right curled up in her lap, the fingers splayed outwards in random directions. Her eyes were utterly lifeless, any previous spark of defiance or life in them brushed away by some cosmic sweep.

For anyone who tried talking to her or getting any response at all, it would be a fruitless venture, although the situation leading up to this could be piced back together by one little detail: The trail of blood. Starting with the small pool at the side of the recovery table it led across to the wall, before leading towards the door and out into the corridor. There the drops had moved over to the edge of Mackie's room, just long enough to open the door and peer inside, there they proceeded to return to the room they'd come from and slump down in a chair.

Annag wasn't dead, but it seemed any actual spark of life inside her had gone. The shell outside kept living, barely hanging on through the blood loss, but the actual thing inside was no longer there.

She could deal with one idiot sacrificing themselves to save her. Barely. But twice was just a bit too much even for her.

Just a glimpse of the blonde mop of hair - since washed of blood and soot - was enough to disclose the identity of the wounded to an observer. Just a glimpse of the state in which she lay was enough to make clear the extent of her injuries.

The gunsmith lay flat on her back, head propped up by a single, soft blue pillow. Nude but for bandages that wrapped her chest and various machines hooked to her diminished body. Her left leg, up to the hip, was encased in a machine containing a solution encouraging the reattachment of the severed limb. Her right leg was gone completely, unable to be salvaged. With the entire pelvic region having been almost completely crushed, extensive work had been done to replace the totaled parts while preserving as much of the original as possible. Dark green metal replaced most of her right hip, wrapping around so that only a thin strip of visible flesh indicated that the left leg was still mostly organically attached beneath all the equipment. Upon closer inspection, it could be seen wrapping around to her right as well, where it eventually connected to still more cybernetics.

Her arms were not visible from the door, blocked by still more life support machinery.

Still as the dead.

But of the several softly glowing monitors situated about the room, one told the story in a single word: Comatose.

A thin sliver of steely light sliced across her unconscious face as the door was opened. Then it was gone.

---

Jack was not entirely sure what prompted him to push himself off the door, and turn to look idly through the window. Despite the internalized anxiety that was forcing him to alternate between pacing back and forth and leaning on the door with folded arms, he could not recall obsessively peering back into the short, dark hallway - if he had been sneaking pointless glimpses back there, it was purely unconscious. After all, while Jack’s temper was a short and fragile thing, he was not stupid. He knew that she was not just magically going to wake up and walk out to see him.

The stupid girl.

Even at a decade and a half old, frozen at her early thirties, Mackie was still a ‘girl’ to Jack. It wasn’t even the immense age gap so much as just who she was as a person. Even knowing nothing of her life before mysteriously appearing aboard the Light. Even knowing that she was wise far beyond her years, and did not need his guidance. Did not need him in any capacity, not really. Despite it all, she was still a girl to Jack. A stupid girl whose lust for life had brought her to the brink of death.

To the brink. But not over it.

He refused to acknowledge the possibility of Mackie succumbing to her wounds. She would push through. She had to. Realistically he had no reason to believe that she was the sort of tenacious fighter that could survive even the most grizzly wounds in order to continue living. She was tough, but he had no reason to think she was that tough.

Yet it did not matter. He was not going to accept that possibility.

The old man had been dwelling on Robert’s words, briefly exchanged each time the Corporal was kind enough to bring him some of that foul tasting ”Last Light’ coffee. His insistences that surely Annag had been fighting with Mackie, not against her. He wanted so much to believe that wholly. But he couldn’t. Not because of the logic - but the emotion. The idea of his Mackie being pummeled almost to death filled him with a directionless rage. The one who had done it to her was dead, so he could not take his anger out on them. The only one left to blame was Annag.


But it was far from a conscious decision to heap that blame on her. He wanted not to blame her. Wanted her to be exonerated from all possibility of incrimination. Because he liked the girl. And, more importantly, Mackie liked the girl.

And so, not knowing precisely why, Jack turned and peered idly through the little glass window, expecting fully to see nothing but a short, empty hallway.

But it was not so.

His goggled eyes picked up on the difference right away; blood.

Without hesitation, Jack opened the door and stepped through, following the short trail with his eyes, tracing it...from Annag’s door, to Mackie’s, and back. A bloody handprint where Annag had opened the door to peer in at the woman.

And though the sight of such blood was never a positive thing, Jack found himself suddenly relieved - even as he stepped into the girl’s room to see her slumped and looking half dead in the chair beside her bed. That thousand-yard-stare told him everything he needed to know.

Standing in the doorway, the old man’s scowl softened, though did not disappear. The girl did not react to his presence - though from the onset he had not expected such. Wordlessly, Jack lingered in the doorway, softly glowing lenses impassive, unlike the soft, disapproving frown on his old face.

Then, at at last, Jack entered the room proper and promptly took a seat on the floor directly across from Annag, leaning on the wall. All the while never taking his hidden eyes off the husk that had once been a fierce warrior.

Still was, he knew. Though it was hard to see that now. He knew.

Again, long moments passed in utter silence, the old man not even attempting to speak, knowing full well that his words would go unheeded, all the more so if he didn’t take some time to just sit there and watch her. So sit and watch he did, looking none too pleased - but not outwardly hostile, either.

Only once time began to feel irrelevant did he at last speak up.

”Macks didn’t get herself beat ta’ @#$% savin’ your ass just ta’ have you bleed out in the medbay ‘cause you’re too self-@#$%in’ involved ta’ think’a anyone but yourself.” He said gruffly, voice a low rumble like tumbling gravel and dusty city streets. ”You need ta’ think’a someone outside yourself for a change, kid. You think just ‘cause you keep t’yourself means you don’t play a part in other peoples’ lives. You figure you’re worthless so your presence oesn’t mean nothin’. That ain’t how it works. Nobody likes a martyr, kid. Not even if they think their method of suicide is ‘the right thing’ or not.”

Pulling his legs in, the old man hunched forward to lean elbows on knees, suddenly looking as if the pools of blood he sat among were instead a crackling campfire. ”I Know what you’re thinkin’. Y’don’t get ’why you’. We’re taught from a young age that we ain’t worth’ nothin’. Disposable. I get it.”

The old man seemed to be talking to himself now, and perhaps he was - but he didn’t care.

”We all pretended to deny it, back in The Resistance. Tried to make like we were different. We were gonna’ topple the regime that tried ta’ brainwash us and show ‘em all it didn’t work. Iwas one of ‘em. Thought I was so tough. Then my brother took a grenade for me.”

The old man smiled a bitter, mirthless grin as he recounted a tale that to his judgement did not require context.

”We were gonna’ raid a bunker buried under Mount Etna. Didn’t work. Ran off wi’ our tails between our legs. Spent the next @#$%all-knows-how-long sittin’ around base lookin’ pretty much like you look now. All’s I could think about was how it shoulda’ been me splattered all over them pines. Didn’t deserve the air I breathed. So next time I went out on a raid, decided I’d take one for the team myself”

Though the old man’s eyes were covered, one could imagine the distant stare as he looked through the floor, through time, to a place far beyond. He sounded tired as he proceeded with what had become a proper tale, little inflection in his hoarse throat.

”Now, there was this girl I’d been flirtin’ with. Real cute little thing. SHe was from the ’other side’ but none of us gave a @#$% ‘bout that, or so we told ourselves. She was with the raiding party. I Figured all the more reason ta’ toss myself inna’ th’fray an’ make it easier on my team. Well, long story short, that persistent gal tailed me the whole way an’ socked me in the face before I could blow myself up.”

Jack shook his head, leaning back again. A hand brushed a streak of half-coagulated blood, and he wiped his fingers distractedly on his pants as he went on, sounding more to the point, though still speculative. ”Never did figure out why the @#$% she did it. No idea what she saw in a guy too wrapped up in killin’ himself for a ‘good cause’ t’actually be of any use ta’ anyone. But it don’t really matter if I understand her reasons. What matters is that gal saw value in me that I still can’t @#$%in’ see for myself. My feelins’ don’t mean @#$% when I know that if somethin’ happened t’me, if she hadn’t got t’me in time, an’ got shot in th’back tryn’a get clear, my little deah wish wouldn’ta been so ’selfless an’ noble’, would it.”

A moment passed. Jack stared through the floor, his unblinking gaze watching deep into the unknown. ”So you ‘don’t get it’. You think she shouldn’ta done what she did. You think you ain’t worth it. Well it don’t matter two @#$%s what you think.” Jack got to his feet, talking as he did so. ”There’s some folks in this @#$%ed up, dead-ass void that y’ain’t never gonna’ understand. Folk who see @#$% in people that others can’t. I married one of ‘em and I still got no idea what the @#$% she sees in me that nobody else does. But that don’t matter.”

Having turned to face the open door, hands in the pockets of his faded old blue jeans, Jack paused to l ook over his shoulder at the girl bleeding in the chair.

”Mackie sees somethin’ in you that nobody else does. You don’t get it? Fine. You can ask her y’self when she wakes up. Like it or not, ‘get it’ or not, you owe her that much. Don’t you dare let that woman’s sacrifice be for nothin’...You don’t wanna’ live for yourself? Fine. Live for her.”

And then, once again, Annag was alone.

As the door opened and Jack walked into the room, following that spotted trail of blood which led up to the chair to begin his long watch over the girl before ultimately beginning his story, Annag was in another place. The loss of blood had caused her to tire well beyond the point her fractured mental state could cope with and so it had simply decided not to stay, to retreat back inside her own mind. Hiding in that one small place it could try and take comfort in.

---

It wasn't a very big or a very nice room, but it was her room, their room. That one single swinging lightbulb at the top there that really didn't seem to emit any real amount of light regardless of whether it was clean or not was still their lightbulb. Their room in which they sat and talked about the sky, which of course was up there, not that either had seen it for fifteen years, but they knew it was there.

They'd even managed to sneak a book in once, a small picture one that had been lying around Ewan's desk for a couple of days. It only stood to reason that if no one else wanted it then they should be allowed to borrow it, just for a day. No one else was using it after all. Of course, it had been her who'd taken it, Reina never really was the type to do something as stupid as that, fight anything and anyone, yes, but never actively do something that would put her into big trouble.

Then again it had always been like that when they'd first met, she was the reckless idiot and Reina the sensible fighter, right back when they'd been little girls.

Their first meeting had been when they were only eight years old, both were part of the new batch of recruits, those who'd already been lost or discarded by the world above and brought down to this cold underground bunker. Now they were both in the "green room" named for the odd way its light seemed to always glow with a faint unnatural greenish tint. Naturally the second they'd been given their new limbs and placed down in that chamber she'd been up on her feet, overexerting herself in an attempt to practice simply doing anything with her arms, but Reina, she'd simply laid there, arms folded neatly behind her head.

"What'chu doing?"

"N'thin"

"Ya not gonna try out ya new arms?"

"Nah."

"Why?"

"Ain't n'thin I can do swingin' em around now, so I'm just gonna lie here. Enjoy life ya know?"

She'd scoffed then, but when it came to practice a few days later Reina was by far in better shape, not to say she hadn't gone down without a fight, but Reina gave her far more bruises than she'd received beating down that idiot of a fighter. It was precisely due to that moment that she had done her best to declare Reina her partner for the next event, not that she'd ever admitted it of course. Though she was fairly sure Reina knew, she still tried to hide it from the other fighter, only starting brawls over who got to stay with Reina whenever said person wasn't around.

Eventually, it had worked, when permanent dorms were being assigned and fighter paired off to live with the person they were most compatible with she'd been placed with Reina. What a day that'd been too, she'd tried to act so cool, blow it off as it wasn't a big deal, not that she'd managed to fool Reina, she never did. The other girl had just nudged her in the ribs and told her to just let the two of them just enjoy the moment, so she had done, she stopped trying to act and simply lay there side by side with her best friend.

Some days they'd lie for hours side by side in that old double bed, it didn't matter that the mattress was hard or that the springs underneath occasionally pushed against you if you lay in the wrong part. In those moments they could just take comfort in their room, their own little bunker. She remembered talking for ages with Reina then about the world, what it was like, what everything beyond it was like too.

Not that they could ever actually see it, but they could still wonder, they could both dream. They even occasionally talked about going to see it together, though that was impossible, there were too many guards between them and the outside, keeping intruders out and the recruits in.

It was certainly a strange life, but she would not have called it a bad one, she liked fighting, it was the one thing she was good at, it was her way of solving any issue she didn't know how to solve. Reina had mostly followed in those days, watching over her, stepping in to help fight when she could and if not at least trying to solve whatever conflict in a different way. By the end she'd lost count of the number of times that she'd found herself being helped back into the green room after another argument with a guard had descended into random punch throwing.

Yet ... there was always something unspoken between the two, something that both couldn't quite bring themselves to say. A small set of words, so large in scale that they jammed in the throat, unable to ever reach beyond the mind.

She always had been the more reckless of the two, hadn't she? It was her after all that had decided to try and remove their tracking chips from within their arms. Not that she'd told Reina, she wanted it to be a surprise her, a way to smuggle themselves out and see the world beyond. Damned if she knew what they were gonna do once they got there, explore it for a bit before returning back she'd always supposed.

She'd been caught.

The next fight wasn't officially a deathmatch, none of them ever were, but the two of them knew. They'd seen this one too many times before to know exactly when a fight was being set up so that only one of the participants would leave. What an idiot she'd been, charging into there without a plan, she'd never been good at it, but she should have thought, should have tried something ...

Not that it would have mattered, Reina had already known.

She'd begun by hanging back, this wasn't a situation she knew how to handle, she wanted Reina to win this obviously, but surely there was some way to get both of them to leave ... surely.

The knife had narrowly missed her throat, whistling through the air and thudding into the wall behind her. That had done it, sparking that almost instinctual need to fight back when threatened inside her. She'd charged then, swinging at her best friends face, what an idiot she was.

One blow landed, sending Reina skidding backward, not that it had done any damage, the other had managed to read the blow, deflecting the damage with her arms. That'd been when Reina grabbed it, pulled the pin and then ... the arm froze up, locking the fingers in place around that small bomb. There'd been no words between them then, there never would be again, but she still found the note a few days later.

Reina had always had a plan.

So too had Mackie

---

Back in the chair the girls almost lifeless body still sat, lost in a world of storytimes and death. Her ears had certainly processed what had been said to her, but for the most part, for now, they'd been lost back in storytime station. Each drop of blood that oozed out from under her shirt was another that brought her mind closer to the story it was replaying, drawing her step by step from reality and further into a world she desperately tried to change the ending to, but each attempt slipped away from her at the last second.

So she sat there unmoving, retreating further and further back into her own little shell. Maybe Jack had been wrong when he summarised that the fierce warrior still remained within that husk, maybe her mind had finally taken too much to ever properly recover.

Annag sat there slumped over in her chair, not moving, the last few drops of life in the remaining physical shell beginning to prepare themselves for the final journey out of her body.

A finger twitched suddenly.

”Back the @#$% off!”

Several long seconds had dragged by in silence before the roar of the old man broke it, muffled through the door separating the hall and Annag’s room. It was not a warning - immediately followed by a fleshy sounding thuk.

Jack couldn’t help it. Tensions had been high all over the ship in the wake of the battle and, more importantly, Mackie’s uncertain future - and seeing Annag that way had the old man seething more than ever. The ungrateful, selfish little @#$%. Too wrapped up in moping about herself and her past to see what was going on right in front of her glassy eyes.

So when he stepped back into the hall, Annag’s door sliding shut behind him, to see a pair of puffed-up marines blocking his way, every muscle and hydraulic servo in his old, cyborg body had tensed up in anticipation. This had been exactly why he’d been standing outside the door. They must have thought he’d given up and gone to bed.

”The @#$% d’you want.” He growled lowly, hands balling into fists as their demeanor told him quite well that they were not here simply to visit the injured party. He barely even heard their arguments. Something about how Mackie wouldn’t be in this situation if not for that girl, and how can he defend her knowing that she was involved, and so on. They were visibly nervous, knowing well Jack’s capabilities and short fuse, but still they persisted, trying to build themselves up to push by him and go ‘rectify the situation’.

And when he simply couldn’t take another word - when the directionless rage and multiplying tension reached their capacity - Jack roared his demand and, without giving them a chance to actually comply, hauled off and decked one of the men square in the nose with his metal left hand.

It was a miracle that the guy ended up with only a (very) broken nose, the force enough to knock him back up against the door where he glared past the bloody wreck with anger and horror intermingled. The other guy, still trying to be tough, tried not to react.

”Nobody touches that idiot girl! NOBODY! Do you understand that!” He bellowed, creased face a map of deep lines as he scowled with unbridled animosity. ”I don’t give a damn what you or anyone else things! That girl is a part of this crew now whether you like it or not!” He went on relentlessly, taking a menacing step forward. The unwounded man proportionally stepped back. Jack was smaller than him, tall but lanky, and it did not matter one bit.

”You got a @#$%in’ problem with that? Anyone wants to get to her, they gotta’ get through ME first! Are! We! Clear!”

So then, it seemed that yet another fool was willing to throw themselves in front of Annag, whether she deserve it or not. Maybe everyone on this old boat was simply mad - but there was something to be said for persistence in numbers. Nobody really knew what ‘Rome’ was, but maybe ‘doing as they did’ just came naturally to these strange people, secluded up in the sky of Ringworld where it seemed that life itself operated on a different set of rules.

Neither man had anything to say. The one who still had a properly intact nose gave a hasty nod, and the two of them stumbled back out the door, only to collide with Danesh as he went loping by.

”Please do not yell in the recovery ward thank you.” THe old rust bucket intoned politely, gently guiding the stumbling marines back into a proper standing position, allowing them to scuttle off with tails between their legs before himself departing onward to wherever he had been going.

Only when the men were gone, and the medical robot passed by to the general ward, did the weight of the anger he had shed at last slip off Jack’s shoulders.

When, five minutes later, Robyn approached the door, she was surprised to find that Jack was not still posted outside it as he had been perpetually over the past several days. She slipped through, only to discover the old man sitting again on the floor, leaning against the wall, head buried in his arms. A velvety softness overcame the old woman as she slid shut the door behind her, then sank down to sit beside him. They knew each other better than anyone else in the whole of Ringworld, so she knew that there were no words worth wasting breath upon.

When he at last spoke, his voice was just barely loud enough for an occupant of the adjacent rooms to hear through the door, if listening.

”She’s an idiot.” He rumbled lowly. ”We’re all idiots up here.”

”That’s why she belongs up here wit’us.” Robyn agreed, her voice as silky and smooth as ever, the Cajun drawl sounding exotic as always. ”Thing about idiots is that y’can’t never seem t’get rid of ‘em. They’ll be fine, Shuug’. Both of ‘em.”

---

Some minutes later, after a long spell of silence had settled over the couple seated in the dark hallway, the door of Annag’s room once again slid open, and the charcoal-skinned woman with her glowing neon glasses stepped quietly through. Without preamble, she went about maneuvering the unresponsive girl back into the bed, exhibiting no difficulty in lifting the girl bridal-style despite her advanced age.

With deliberate slowness, Robyn proceeded to tend to the aggravated wounds, talking as she did so.

”You lost somebody, didn’t you.” The old woman said, more than asked, a knowing softness present in the words. ”Someone you tried ta’ save. I know the look, y’all ain’t foolin’ nobody.” Not that the girl was making any attempt at hiding her thoughts, but that was not the point.

”Well nah’ I know you got’ no real reason or inclination to listen’a me but…If it ain’t too much trouble, I’d like ta’ ask a lil’ favor of ya’.” If there was anything she could do to get even the slightest indication that Annag was actually paying attention to any degree at all, Robyn would do it. She didn’t need much - just a little. ”That person you lost...I want you’ta imagine them seein’ you like you are right now. Like they’s standin’ over they’ in the corner, an’ they can’t do a thing ta’ help.” Having finished getting Annag situated, Robyn proceeded to sit lightly on the edge of the bed, gently stroking the girl’s muddy hair with one weathered old hand. Like her speech, the dark skin was like suede.

”I want you’ta imagine them feelin’ everythin’ you’re feelin’ right now. All that regret an’ loathin’ you got in you… All that sadness an’ anger an’ confusion. What would you do if they was feelin’ all that, and they’ wasn’t a thing you could do ta’ make ‘em feel better?” Robyn’s mannerism could not have been more the opposite of her husband’s. She spoke softly, almost melodically. If such purity and gentle earnest were alien to Annag, there was no doubting the presence of it now.

”What I’m sayin’ child is’at you ain’t the only one capable of these feelins’. Jus’ like it hurt you ta’imagine that person feelin’ this way - jus’ like you want mo’ than anythin’ ta’ make them feel better...That’s how other folk feel ‘bout you, seein’ you like this. I’ll tell ya’ right now it’d break Macks’ heart right in two.”

It was then that the door once more slid open, and again, Jack slipped quietly into the room. Without a word, he proceeded to one of the chairs and sank down in it, folding his arms across his middle and appearing for all intents and purposes to nod off.

Robyn watched him, continuing without pause. ”Nah’I know this place you in, it ain’t an easy place ta’ get out of, and ain’t nobody but you gone be able’a do it. But jus’...Keep that in mind. If not fo’me, do it fo’Macks. I got a powerful suspicion that she ain’t gonna’ pull through this without you, child.”

This time, rather than making a pointed exit, the two old folks made no move to leave. And for a long, long time, the only sound besides the persistent white noise of medical equipment was the soft, periodic humming of sultry old folk tunes as Robyn caressed the young warrior’s muddy hair.

Somehow those tunes sounded vaguely familiar. Nostalgia from another life, beyond the vast gulf of time and the thin veil of memory, whispered the sweet notes of long lost serenity.

---

The Corporal had appeared out of nowhere, it seemed - and before Riley knew what was happening she found herself again sprawled out on the floor, disoriented enough that she knew she had been punched in the head, but not quite sure where in the head. The corridor spun, colorful little stars dotting her vision. A starlit sky must have been annoying, if it looked like that all the time. Good riddance.

The big guy she had been scrapping with alsofound himself on the receiving end of a fist to the skull, but his above average stature kept him at least on his feet. Nowhere near the hulking figure that Firth was, but not a runt like Riley.

Rubbing his head sorely and looking thoroughly cowed, the bigger cadet shot a dirty look at the little engineer. ”Yeah, sorry Sir.” He replied, addressing the Corporal. ”But if you don’t mind my sayin’ so, I’ll sure be relieved when this brat gets transferred out. The last thing we need right now is…”

But thinking better of it, the cadet cut his words short, issued a loose salute to his outranking officer and made to depart...Unable to resist muttering under his breath ”@#$%ing midget.” more to himself than anyone.

He was rewarded with another sharp crack to the head as a small wrench was flung into the back of his neck. The cadet barked out a wordless cry of anger and pain, whirling around with eyes blazing and fingers hooked into sharp claws - but another glimpse of the Corporal in his peripheral vision dissuaded him from giving in to the impulse to tackle the obstinate little twerp. Gritting his teeth and rubbing the back of his head, the bigger cadet made hi leave.

Riley, meanwhile, had promptly hopped back to her feet after flinging the wrench and was now turning her attention on the massive figure of FIrth positively looming over her.

”Deal wi’you ah? Wot, y’think I won’t, s’at it? Think I’s too small yeah? W’I ain’t scared’a you’a nobody else y’got that?” The little engineer raved, glaring hotly up at the vastly larger Corporal through softly bobbing bangs of crimson hair. ”I’s a ‘maggot’ cause I ain’t @#$%in eight foot tall yeah? Yeah? Well come on then!”

Yet again the hot tempered little tomboy was, it seemed, blatantly starting a fight that she had absolutely not the slightest chance of winning. It was like a chihuahua trying to fight a wolfhound, but there she was - a diminutive little package of spitfire and guts, poised to fight as if she really thought she stood a chance.

It was cold in that chair.

The sort of coldness not generated by any lack of heat, but more the coldness of someone who should be there beside you, keeping the other half of the seat warm. The temperature on the ship was perfect, running at exactly the right amount to keep its occupants neither boiling or freezing, still, the young warrior shivered in that chair, desperately dreaming of a way to save someone she'd already lost.

Each time she got close, decided not to remove the tracker, take a grenade instead, get into a fight she couldn't win too early, Reina would be there or she'd muck it up. Each time she'd find that single three-word note under their pillow. Each time she'd read it and imagine a future that they could never have together. Every time she'd eventually be removed from the pits for the danger she posed to other trainees, that cold festering anger that had eaten away at her returning, devouring just a little bit more at every pass.

Even if her body had managed to hear the argument and struggle going on outside, that sterile little room to ensure her safety, her mind refused to listen to it. Refused to allow itself the idea that someone else was in any way doing something to protect her.

People tried and the universe inficlted its intended torture for her onto them, that's how it went, that's how it always went. Its not as if she didn't want to change that, she desperately did, but each time she tried, each time she did something to make life better for the people around her something -

Gently it registered somewhere in the shell that it was being picked up, limbs flopping down over someone's shoulder before being hoisted upwards towards that bed she'd awoken from oh so many lifetimes ago. The tiny spark inside the shell tried to block the movement out, did its best to ignore the shape or form of the person maneuvering it to a position she could better recover from. It just wasn't happening, not to her.

Slowly at first, but with growing vigor each second that small spark jumped onto the fuel provided by Robyn's soothing words, the fire that could be maintained repeating the same life over and over again dwindling. Each successive Annag becoming more desperate and manic than the last, if she carried on it would destroy her forever.

If she carried on she might find a way to save Reina

A single digit of her left hand twitched in an almost unrecognisable signal to show that yes, while all other appearances stated otherwise, she was listening. It wasn't like she had any choice, no, she just had to sit there and listen, after all what else could she do? The only other possible sign that the little spark inside the broken fighter was paying attention the world around her was the way the whole body stiffened ever so slightly when she felt the hand placed on her hair, not enough to pull away, but just enough to show a slight tension in the muscles.

She listened and she imagined. Not that it was particularly hard to do so, that single look, all the mingling fear, distress and sadness bundled into one was just one of the expressions that had passed over Reina's face in that moment the fingers froze up around that detonator. All she could ever do was sit and watch.

It hurt, hurt more than anything else, the knowledge that in those last moment she hadn't been able to help, that Reina had gone before she could do anything about it. That was a pain Annag was always going to carry with her, even after all this was done and long behind her, even after all the adventures, she'd share with the people around her that pain would still be there to remind her of the time she'd failed and why she couldn't fail again.

The whole thing was strange, Mackie and her warm and practically unfathomable kindness, Robyn and her melodic gentle earnest nature, Kato and his indescribably long life, none of it made sense to her and yet somehow she still craved to be a part of it. She didn't know the word now, but in time she would learn exactly what it was that she had been so desperately wanting for so long.

It was exactly that something that she unknowingly accepted as all the tension slowly ebbed from her body, flowing out into some unknown void beyond, where it was going Annag didn't really care, just that it was no longer within her. Inch by inch she slowly moved her head closer to the hand that stroked it, gently nuzzling in closer to the one thing that she could cling to, a small single idea: A family

It was warm in that bed.

Robert sighed, looking above Riley, “am I really going to fight her, especially here? I guess so.” He thought to himself as his arm near mechanical in its speed reached for her neck, he face blank, staring up, as he gently got hold of her throat, then looking down, monotonously saying, “you, my dear friend, have @#&*# up.” as he slowly raised her to his eye level, continuing, “just because you think your tough and act tough, it doesn’t make you tough, yes, you’re not 8 feet tall, but don’t god damn act like that’ll make a difference, when the time, and it will, come, someone’ll end you, wether it’s on or off our crew.” He then, dropped her to the ground and walked back, like nothing happened,

---

Riley did not have time to react. The Corporal’s arm shot out like lightning, fingers wrapping around her neck as easily as grabbing on to a handrail. To her credit, she did not let the sudden swell of fear show.

Not at first.

The grip was not initially tight enough to do any harm as Robert informed Riley of her grave error in judgement - but her immediate struggling against his hold was resulting in a hard time breathing even before things got really bad. Boots scuffed uselessly on the metal floor as she tried with absolutely no success to pull back. The man’s fingers were like steel.

Then, reaching up to ineffectually grab at the man’s tree-trunk wrist, a new flash of horror darted across the little engineer’s eyes as she was - with all the effort of picking up a small sack of potatoes - she was lifted by the neck, brought up so as to be eye-level with the towering man.

All but silenced, there could be no verbal disagreement or taunting on her part now. Steely eyes still alight with a spark of fierce defiance were now intermingled with a rapidly multiplying panic. But it wasn’t being casually choked that hurt RIley the most. SHe could have handled that just fine. Riles could take a physical beating.

What she had not expected was to be so offhandedly pulvarized in terms of her secretly fragile self confidence. Usually she could keep in reasonably high spirits even after getting her ass handed to her in a fight she was doomed to lose from the start - but this...

Her small frame dangled helplessly from the Corporal’s grip, unable to keep from flailing wildly in an unconscious effort to gain purchase that simply was not there. Her hands clung to his wrist in the vain hope that she could ease some of the pressure, but it was, like everything else she had done today, accomplishing nothing at all.

As such, Riley had no choice but to glare defiantly into the eyes of COrporal FIrth while he went about informing her that she was, to her way of thinking, a worthless little scrap of trash.

As quickly as it had started or possibly quicker, Riley found herself suddenly hitting the floor with all the force of a flailing body falling from several times its own height. Once again the wind was knocked clear out of her lungs, and she was forced to gasp for breath, throat raspy from the Corporal’s hand. More of those @#$%ing stars…

Where the @#$% had she gotten the idea that Firth had some degree of respect for her anyway? And why did it sting so much to learn that he saw her exactly like everyone else did: An obnoxious, annoying little ankle-biter who wouldn’t deserve to be taken seriously if she were the last person on Ringworld.

To her credit, the tenacious girl had the gall to shoot a hoarse retort to Firth’s back as he walked away like nothing had happened. ”Y-yeah, you-...You bettah’ run!” Though it didn’t even sound threatening to her, what with her voice a hoarse croak broken up by several sputtering coughing fits. But at least she tried. If absolutely nothing else, nobody could say that Riley didn’t try. For what that was worth.

Glowering resentfully at nothing in particular, the little engineer got back to her feet and skulked back to her tools, hefting the bag before proceeding back to the engineering deck, doing everything in her power to keep a stony face as the Corporal’s words repeated themselves over and over in her head. Just more reminders of how pathetic she actually was. As if she really needed reminding. Pathetic. Small. Weak. Generally hated by all. The usual.

Except…Ike didn’t hate her. Ike still thought she was worth something. Ike could make everything better.

ANd so, when she reached him in the Engineering Deck, she was just the sight that, in the weeks and months to follow, Ike would come to understand as a regular occurrence. An utterly defeated, physically and mentally wounded little RIley, on the verge of tears but refusing to let them out. A worn out little engineer who had [ii]once again gone and gotten herself into trouble and paid the price for it. An unusually quiet Riley, who always ’didn’t wanna’ talk about it’ because ’jus’ shut up’. Whose tenuous pride and fragile ego would be only further wounded if he let on how obviously the way she sniffled and wiped at her face with the grimy sleeve of her old army jacket wasn’t just dust in the air.

That night in particular, however, would ultimately conclude with a tenuously convinced and absolutely tuckered-out little engineer sleeping with her head on Ike’s lap. So, that was something…

---

In the days that followed, Jack and Robyn were nearly permanent residents of Annag’s recovery room. Hardly a minute went by that at least one of them wasn’t in there with her - and the old couple had done an impressively convincing job of coming off as though they might have had some other reason to be hanging out in there, and not specifically to keep the girl company - while still making it clear that they did still fully intend on sticking around and...keeping her company.

From time to time, one or the other would leave to check on Mackie, possibly work on that new right leg of hers, or for muore mundane errands like fetching food. There was a great deal of sleeping, and so days that would otherwise have dragged on for eons drifted by in sleepy ease.Little had changed in the way of tensions around the rest of the ship, but nobody else had come to bother them either - the whole crew having taken that one man’s broken nose as all the proof they needed that Jack Vox was on the case - and nobody got through Jack Vox. Or his wife, for that matter.

When Annag slept, Robyn would ‘coincidentally’ position herself so that ‘by sheer accident’ her hand could idly pet the girl’s hair. Even Jack - who was by no means even vaguely ‘tender’ - made a point of sitting on the edge of the bed now and then, seated so that the girl could feel the presence of his back or hip - just enough to assure a sleeping young warrior that there was still someone there - the closest thing the abrasive old coot could manage to real, physical affection.

When and if Annag was awake, there was probably little to talk about. The old ‘borgs were sociable and conversational enough, but most of the time was spent simply appreciating the presence of others in companionable silence. They also took the time to properly adjust and calibrate Annag’s newest set of temporary, civilian-issue arms, making them operate as smoothly and naturally as flesh and blood, as per their specialty. With tweaks to the servos and hydraulics, as well as the attachment of bracing panels, they were made sturdy and strong enough to prove serviceable. Her fancy, death-machine combat arms, still safely tucked away in the Vox’ quarters, would require someone being at full health and peak condition to properly install.

And so, time passed. Wounds began to heal. Machines disconnected. Energy returning slowly, ever so slowly, but surely. The old folks chatted, mostly stories about the biker gang they rode with in Lisara for some years. The one about how they both lost their left arms and legs in a bike accident while racing some upstart who pushed himself too hard. Time passed, as it always did.

Two weeks and three days after the battered, half-dead girls were rushed to the medical bay following a battle of monumental proportions, the door to Annag’s room slid open to reveal the great, softly glowing eye lenses of the ship’s medical practitioner. Perhaps disturbingly, old Danesh said nothing - just staring with that mysterious, robotic gaze at both elders. Jack and Robyn exchanged a look, then wordlessly stood and, with brief reassurances that they would be right back, followed with grim looks on their faces, closing Annag’s door behind them.

Five long minutes later, the door slid open again, and there stood Jack, his face as indeterminate as ever. It could have been the faint hints of a smile tugging at his lips, or merely his resting scowl. It could have meant anything.

Silently, pointedly, he beckoned for the girl - who had, if nothing else, since regained the ability to walk without falling to bits - to follow with one weathered hand. It would not be a long walk.

Ike could never hate Riley. She was the little Synth's hero that had unwittingly made herself the most important thing in his life, the one person that he would follow until the end. Even as they talked and shared time together he knew that despite all his dreams, if she asked him to follow her anywhere he'd follow in an instant. It wasn't that he was programmed to dedicatedly follow this person around, he'd chosen to do it, she was that symbol of something he was able to do regardless of how predetermined his life was, that somewhere in the whole dead universe was something he could put his trust in.

The revelation and subseqent crying episode huddled up inside her lap if nothing else had made him even more attached to her. Happily following her around to help out in whatever he could, while down in the engineering bay she'd find him an eager student. hanging off her every word, treating it as his own little bible. When she got into fights, he would be there, sometimes he'd even join in to help her out.

It didn't matter if he got lumped in with Riley, he just wanted to be there with her, to support her.

In the following weeks and months Riley would find one thing, that back when they were locked away in the safety of their own room, when he could simply be her Ike, if Riley was suffering he'd do the crying for her. He'd never let on why he was crying, what strange reason motivated him to curl up around her, little streams opening up down his face, passing it off as 'some little malfunction' and 'yeah he's fine'. Still he'd do it, do his best to let out the emotion that he knew she couldn't and comfort her with it.

The other thing she'd notice is that, on days like that, Ike would quietly crawl up to her before she fell asleep and try wrapping himself protectively around her, doing once more the best he could to at least shield her dreams from whatever torments he knew probably plauged them. If he couldn't be there physically to protect her he would do his damned best to prove to her, let her brain know that there was someone who cared for her, was looking out for her.

Someone who looked at her and liked what he saw.

On the few moments that Ike spend not trailing around after Riley, as rare as they were he spent them practicing in one of the scout ships, learning how to take off, land and manouver the small craft around. In many ways the knowledge came almost intictively to him, but he did his best not to think about it, to not consider the reasons why he was able to pick up such a thing so easily and put in the hours anyway.

Hour by hour he'd go over the same manouvers again and again, well beyond what was needed for him and his programming. She's still Riley and so I'm still Ike. Taking the time needed as if he was learning from scratch, putting the same effort in anyone else would have needed, not to master the ship, but at least fly it competently enough not to crash it.

Eventually he'd got to the point he wanted to reach, the point at which he could finally do something he'd wanted to do for a long, long time, or at least try to. While the specifics had changed since entering the Light, those involved in this plan had doubled, it still remained relatively the same at heart, to sail outside the ship and simply use it to sit there, looking down on the ringworld with all of its glowing lights and cities and watch. Look upon the faux sunlight emmited from the device at the centre of the instilation, watch how its lazily spun around, bathing the last humans in a warm soft glow. See the twinkling lights emmited by all those billions who still went about their lives, marvel at the tenacity of the human race to continue existing even after the universe itself had finally given up. Up there he could simply watch and marvel, something that he wanted to share with Riley.

On that paticular day Riley would awake to find Ike standing there beside her, his little violet eyes sparkling away at her in that peculiar gaze he got when looking at her and only her. Probably he just look like his usual little weird Ike self, overexicted about something, probably spending another day helping her out to do something.

That would be until he opened his mouth to talk. "Riley ... I ... I've wanted to ask you this for a while .. I ... uhh have been learning how to fly one of the scout ships ... the small lil craft out on hanger 2 like ... I'm not the best at it or anything ..." The little Synth flicked his eyes around the room for a few seconds, plucking up the internal courage to go ahead and ask the question he'd wanted to for such a long time. "An ... well ... I was plannin' to take the ship up and have a look at the Ringworld, take a good look at it all ya know? an well, I was wondering if ya would like to join me, jus' for a few hours like. Jus' you and me..."

That was another thing about Ike, the more he spent time with Riley, the more his way of speaking changed, if just a little to reflect hers.

---

Back in the medical room, Annag was on the road to recovery, both mentally and physically. For once it didn't matter that she was despised by the people she'd been raised around, for once the voices and the judgement all around her really didn't bother her that much anymore. All she could care about was the fact that these two old cyborgs were with her in whatever time they could mange to be. It didn't really matter that they looked nothing like her, that they could not be mistaken for being a family even if the person looking squinted really hard and was several rooms over, looking only through the reflection in a drop of water. To her, they felt like family and that was all that really mattered.

Not that she was always the best at outwardly showing that, always pretending like she didn't really appreciate the fact that they spent time with her, trying to hide the joy she felt inside each time one walked into the room. Not that it would ever fool them, the way her face lit up in those few moments each time one even showed their face in that small window planted into the door between rooms would be enough to give away her real feelings.

At first she was msotly content to mostly lie there, in that bed of hers recovering as fast as she could. She wouldn't speak much during those first few days, much more content to just simply rest and enjoy the company provided to her by two people that her brain had adopted into a position no one else ever had. The silence they shared between them, at least to her, wasn't a bad one, far from it, it was much more calming, like a warm blanket on a cold and rainy day being wrapped around you, sheltering you from the weather outside.

So she slept, which was certainly not an easy choice for her. Annag was never someone who would really be satisfied with just lying down and letting things happen around her, but through great force of will and almost certainly some encouragement by the Voxes she would be able to slip into a deep comforting sleep. Sometimes she would half awake to feel a hand gently ruffling her hair and in those glorious moments she'd simply lie there, allowing that deeply relaxing hand to stay where it was. Feeling the warm of these two spread within her, warmth that reignited that spark back into a raging infeno with a thirst for life.

Within a day of her wounds healing enough to at least sit up properly and move Annag was back to exercising. It was something the two Voxes would quickly come to understand if they hadn't already done so before, was that once the plucky warrior was up and going, there was very little that was going to stop her attempting to improve herself. Of course if it looked like she was about to strain herself too hard to the point of reopenign a wound they'd be able to convince her to rest for a few hours, but still she was doing her best to make up for all the lost hours training.

Then when they'd tell her stories she'd 'happen' to suddenly be finished with her training for the moment and just in time to listen to them too. Enraptured she'd hear their tales of biking and adventure within the metropolis of Lisara and at many points, she'd try and ask them all sorts of questions about the city, what it looked like, the different cultures, the different people, the different smells. She wanted to know everything they could tell her about it and more, what it was like to feel grass under their feet, what it was like to race upon those bikes at high speed through roads and alleys. Were they ever chased by police forces? How free did it feel? Sometimes she might even have told them stories of her own, little moments of cheekyness, like how she'd stolen the book from her instructor or how she'd taken on three much larger fighters in the arena and simply refused to stop fighting until she won.

It was a strange life for Annag those two weeks and three days, stranger than anything else she'd experianced before and yet it all felt so familiar. As if in some small part of her mind, it recognised that this was how life was supposed to be, warm, comforting and shared with those you cared about.

That day she'd just been able to stand for the first time, immediately attempting to try and get some practice in, something that would result in her legs, totally unable to cope with the strain collapsing underneath her. The result she expected, but still she had to try. So it was that the robot walked in to the three of them, wordlessly beckoning for the other two to go, while the muddy haired fighter was doing her best to get from one side of the room to the other without having to lean on anything. Glancing between the two of them she listened to their promises and watched as they left the room, returning to her activies to distract herself from any unwanted thoughts which might pop up.

When he returned she glanced at his face, at least he didn't look distraught, that was something right? It couldn't mean that anything had gotten worse, so surely it meant things were better? Cautiously she moved to follow him, desperately hoping this to mean what she so wanted it to.

If it did, she had a full intention to throw herself into that persons arms and thank them for everything they'd done for her. If not she was going to follow anyway, all she could do now was hope.

After his “talking” to Riley, he’d randomly walk into the hangar to make sure she wasn’t in another fight, and anytime he heard so much as a rude comment from her, he’d stare her down like a dog staring down a steak. Today was like no other, he walked in to hear Ike talking about going to the ring world in the ship they had in hangar two, then thinking of a plan, he walked out of the room and calmly moving down to the hangar, and going into the ship, looking for a good place to hide, he then settled on a unlocked cabinet he could barely squeeze into, his idea was to catch them in the act, he quietly closed the cabinet door, and waited.

”Ayo’ Annag, check this out.”

It was almost the exact same thing she had said when the two had first met. The cheeky grin could be heard in the voice even before the eyes could register it. The same assured enthusiasm from she had, right from the onset, wanted to share some cool new thing with a person who was her friend from the moment they met, whether they liked it or not.

Coming out of the room, Annag would find Robyn leaning on the wall, arms folded, beside the door. After the several days then had spent with the girl since she had first properly regained consciousness, they had come to know her well enough that she did not want, nor really need help, even unsteady as she was.





The woman seated on the bed was, without a doubt, the Last Light’s armorer and gunsmith. She was also, without a doubt, alive. Maybe even well. At least, to some extent.

Annag’s first chance to see what shape the woman was in physically might have been something of a shock. She was practically cocooned in bandages. They wrapped around her chest with enough berth that she didn’t even need to wear anything over them. They wrapped her waist, her hips, where she wore a pair of simple, grey cotton shorts. Her left leg was completely encased in thick gauze. Her new right leg was missing a front panel, the inner wiring exposed, because she had been just too eager to play with it. Her skin was marred with bruises that were well on the road to healing, but not quite there yet.

But her eyes were still bright. Her hair still blonde.

Something lingered behind her lopsided smile, but it seemed like it could wait.

Too, it might have been startling the sheer amount of metal attached to her body, all previously hidden by her baggy clothing. Strange metal pieces about her shoulder and arm - that seemed to serve no purpose at all. Mildly grotesque subdermal lines running between the separated embedded pieces - no apparent purpose. There seemed to be a similar puzzle beneath the bandaged leg.

On the shoulder piece, letters and numbers spelled out a meaningless, yet vaguely familiar set of glyphs. It wouldn’t have been anything too special except that somebody had tried very hard to scratch it out, with little success;

MK.31-E

Usually Mackie would have felt self conscious about people seeing all that metal. Seeing those scratched-out symbols. But she had more important things on her mind now.

Almost as if solely to prove to the universe that she was still herself, Mackie’s eyes flitted up toward the girl as she entered, brightened visibly, and returned to her newly installed replacement appendage.

”Check this out. It’s like, totally metal.” She said with her usual lazy ‘valley-girl’ drawl, managing to sound just a little bit silly with her choice of words and not caring in the slightest. As if to prove that the leg was, in fact, metal, she knocked twice on the knee. ”Pretty dope, right~? We’re like, metal-limb-buddies now.”

But the robot leg was not what Mackie was really concerned with, and while her infinite, soft enthusiasm still made her interest in it genuine, there was something - someone - on her mind. Shifting to sit cross-legged (and looking a bit sore in the process) Mackie allowed a solemn wave of relief fall over her as she met Annag’s eye, her lopsided grin softening into a faint, but absolutely earnest smile. Not the unbridled joy of a perfect reunion. There was a note of melancholy in the seafoam eyes. It was the tender, uneasy, but absolute encouragement of coming together for support in the wake of a terrible tragedy. Soft, meaningful smile and all.

Having dropped the aloofness in favor of taking a moment to acknowledge that an extremely serious moment was upon them, Mackie decided to start over - but she found herself struggling to get the words out.

Annag hadn’t liked her in the first place. She had tried to help and only made things worse. Then, again, worse still. She could only assume that the girl liked her even less now. Having ruined everything like she did. Having saved a bitter life that wanted nothing more than to end in martyrdom. She rather wished Jack hadn’t forced the girl to come in here, there was no need to rub it all in Annag’s face. And frankly, Macks wasn’t looking forward to the resentment and hot frustration she was wholly expecting. Not that she regretted what she had done - not in the slightest. She would do it again in a heartbeat. She had no need for recognition of even appreciation. She had gone into it knowing that there would be neither. But Mackie had the distinct and sinking feeling that whatever Annag would do or say was going to sting in one way or another.

Still, she had to try.

”...Hey.” She said softly, starting over - and sounding just a little bit nervous.

Starting over…

Just as the Vox couple knew, Annag didn't want help and even if they'd tried to give it, the young warrior would have ineffectually batted at them until they let her do it by herself. She had to do this on her own, she had to see this with her own two eyes, it had to be her who chose to walk into that room and confront the consequence of her actions. It had been her choice not to tell anyone about the secondary attack in the hopes of winning a sense of martyrdom, it was her fault Mackie had ended up almost critically injured. She had to be there to see it through.

It was only a few steps between the two doors, yet as her door slid open it felt like attempting to cross an impossibly wide canyon. For each faltering step forward that other door, a portal to whatever fate lay in store for her seemed to race away an extra two steps, forever moving out of her reach.

Click.

It was there, right beneath her palm, two smooth metallic surfaces pressing up against each other. Gently it slid back, allowing the muddy haired warrior to step, or more rather stumble forward into the room.

"Ayo' Annag, check this out"

The teen froze in position, the voice cutting into her reality and carving out its own little place. That woman, the one who she'd almost shunned at the start, the one who despite everything that Annag had said to her had still come along and saved her. The one without whom the rebellious fighter would have no more than a corpse floating away through the depths of space, the same one that was still alive. She hadn't caused someone else to die for her after all.

Such was the relief that Annag didn't even notice the state Mackie was in until a few moments later, only after her legs had practically given way beneath her and she'd stumbled against a wall for support did she manage to properly look over her saviour. The leg was the first thing that caught her attention, its missing casing, the wires, the painful reminder of the damage she'd caused to this innocent who really hadn't deserved any of it. Slowly the twin emeralds tracked over the rest of the recovering armourers features, taking in the other leg all wrapped up and hidden, the vast array of metal embedded into the woman's body. She had so many questions, but they could all wait, Mackie was allive.

Of course, there was the matter of the lettering on the shoulder, that intrigued Annag, but as swiftly as it was observed in that moment it was forgotten again. Her attention once more being drawn back to the figure sitting there before her.

Gingerly she took one step forward as if the mere act of doing so was going to suddenly shatter the scene like some cruel twist of fate and she'd awake alone back in that chair, surrounded by nothing but the blood.

Nothing changed.

She opened her mouth to say something, the words dying as they were formed, their life force extinguished by the crushing emptiness of the dead universe around them and Annag lowered her eyes, breaking a connected gaze between them if just for a second. Annag had always had a firm friendship with fear, it picked her up and gave her the strength to keep on fighting, sprinkling that extra little determination, that desperation into the way she clung to life. It had always run with her, but now, if just for a second it consumed her.

Annag was utterly terrified.

As she'd tried to say something, anything to break the ice between them, to tell the woman that meant more to her than anything else ever had before, ever could, how utterly thankful she was for everything a thought had struck her. Did Mackie resent her for this? She would be totally justified in doing so, the girl knew that, she'd lost a leg trying to save her and yet ... This was something that she was blindly praying against, hoping that the laws of the universe could just @#$% off, just for this moment.

With practically imperceptible slowness her metallic hands curled up into little fists, squeezing the digits tighter and tighter together. To the watching figure stuck in the chair, gazing upon that teen with her eyes gazing downwards it could very well be interpreted as anger. Maybe she was that frustrated that the two Vox's had forced her to come along? Maybe to the teen, this was just another part of rubbing in the way she'd been denied martyrdom.

These interpretations would be entirely wrong in all but one aspect, Annag was frustrated, but not with anyone else, just her own blind stupid self. Frustrated with how idiotic she'd been to try to take on that machine by herself, frustrated in the way she'd refused to trust others and as a result got someone almost killed. Yet most importantly she was frustrated with how blind she'd been to the truth of Mackie.

When they'd first met she'd been confused, bewildered to say the least by the gentle kindness of this woman. She'd come from a place where people just didn't behave that way, where kindness was usually a means to an end, a way to sneak past peoples defences. She'd thought that it wouldn't make sense for someone to be this kind and genuine all at the same time and yet now she'd realised something. It didn't need to make sense.

At first, Annag had resented, even mistrusted this strange paradoxial hippie, always waiting on edge for the other shoe to drop, for the act to be revealed into whatever scheme it really was. Now she understood and that understanding made her so angry at how warped she'd been before. Mackie wasn't doing any of this because she thought it would win her a reward at the end of it, she was doing it because she thought that it was right, because that's how she belived others should be treated. She'd seen something within that young fighter that even the young fighter had refused to see within herself, in truth Annag still didn't fully understand what Mackie had seen in her, but right then that didn't really matter.

That fighter who now stood before Mackie, eyes tightly focused on the floor, practically rooted to the spot in terror. That fear that maybe, she'd understood all of this too late, that the melancholy hidden away in that womans eyes meant it was too late.

And yet she needed to try.

The face lifted up towards Mackie, revealing eyes wide with a terror born of desperation, a fear of losing something that had only just been gained and something else ... admiration, longing. Then hidden between all of them, pushing its way slowly towards the surface of her face ... love. Love for a parent she'd never had.

When she spoke only a few words managed to softly escape out of that young cyborg's mouth, just loud enough for the gunsmith to hear.

"C...can I hug you... Please..."

But she did not say yes.



Why did it hurt to look at her?

She didn’t understand. Part of her did, but dreams always had a way of slipping away when they were needed the most. Why did looking at this girl give her the sinking dread of suddenly remembering for the umteenth time that someone was never coming back?

Mackie had not lost anybody.

For as long as she could remember, Mackie had been at peace with the nature of life and death. She understood that to die was what made life meaningful. She understood that the sorrow she felt when someone did pass was a natural thing. It was hard, but it was supposed to be that way. She had been aboard this ship for more than long enough to watch friends come and go time and time again. She had experienced grief - but knowing that joy would always come again was what made the sadness okay. Wounds healed - and while knowing that could not make their pain go away, it was what allowed one to press on through the pain; knowing that there would, eventually, be relief.

This philosophy was as intrinsic to Mackie as her love of guns and music, as much a part of her as her mop of hair and her weird accent.

So then why - why did the sight of this girl deliver a stab of grief to her chest? A deep, burning sorrow in her gut. It hurt. It hurt and there was no reason for it. She was right there. Standing before her, battered but very much alive. Yet seeing her made something coiled around the very core of her being scream out in silent agony. The misery and hopeless desolation that was knowing a gaping wound would never close. The utter certainty that she was in a storm from which there was no escape or end. It hurt. And somehow Mackie had the feeling that, in some obscure way, she had done this to herself.

When their eyes met, the fear she saw in Annag’s gaze only multiplied it tenfold. God. Why. Why.

Without realizing it, Mackie had shifted over so that she was sitting on the edge of the bed. She would have time to regret that later, when the ache caught up to her - but it did not matter now. Only one thing did. And that thing mattered very much indeed. Or, rather, that person. Annag was not a thing - regardless of what anyone in her past life may have thought.

The woman watched the girl with eyes gradually softening as her heart sank. The smile grew dim as she struggled harder and harder to maintain it. To not show that something was tearing her heart out and her desperation to make it stop growing overwhelming. Mackie had always known she was at least a little bit crazy. How it hurt to know things that others did not - and yet have no proof at all. But she couldn’t just-

The girl didn't move out the way, in fact she didn't move at all, taken totally by surprise as Mackie surged forward, wrapping her into a tight embrace. Felt those almost cybernetic arms pull her in close, enveloping her in a little bubble outside of which time, space and reality ceased to matter. Here in the bulk of the warship, it was only the two of them, the armourer and the fighter.

Annag didn't have to see it to know the other was crying and in a chain reaction that would be predictable to anyone who knew the way that young teen pent up and hid her emotions, she began to cry to. It was a strange sort of sobbing, tears of sadness for the pain she'd inflicted onto others mixing in the tears of utter relief, the two of them were okay, Mackie had allowed the two of them to hug.

So she clung back, not with the same force as the older woman, her arms of metal were stronger and didn't need to heal. There was nothing in this entire universe that was going to convince that girl to knowingly damage Macks, not now, not ever. This woman who'd given up so much for her was someone she was going to protect with all of her strength.

Softly, she buried her face in the gunsmith's shoulder, giving herself time to recover, to allow the tears to draw out all that pent-up stress, all that anxiety which had been festering away for so long since she'd discovered the near-dead body of the one she treasured more than anyone. Slowly but surely that began to wash away, not gone, but slowly dissolving into the background, those voices of fear and desperation becoming so quiet that for the moment she could ignore them completely.

"I won't"

The words were barely audible, hammered out between gasps for breath and yet as she spoke them to Annag it seemed like the only sound in the world.

"I promise you I won't"

Despite the way they slipped out between gulping pauses between sobs, her voice would sound more sincere than it had ever before. To even think of trying something like that again, attempting to take on something far stronger and more powerful by herself in a desperate bid for self-sacrifice was no longer an option. If she was ever going to fight something like that again, she'd do it with the people she trusted and this time, she'd tell them everything. Not that she would ever be able to hide something from Mackie again even if she wanted to, her brain would just simply not allow it, from now on it was going to have utter faith in the woman that stood wrapped almost protectively around her.

But now she never needed to face things alone anymore, she had people around her she could rely on, those two old cyborgs who'd practically adopted her as a grandaughter and Mackie, the woman who'd risked everything to save her life. Now she had a family... family...

"I won't ever try to throw my life away again. In return ... can ... "

Annag's voice faltered, trailing away once more. She so desperately wanted to ask the next question, but surely it was one step too far even for this situation ... right? She didn't know, but if she never asked then she would never know. At least being rejected would be better than that, anything would be better than that clawing sense on not quite knowing if she had asked, what would the answer have been.

So she stammered out the last words of that lingering question.

"Can ... I please call you mum?"

Mackie had never particularly wanted a daughter. Could she say with any certainty that she was someone worth looking up to? Someone who could be trusted with so much of a person’s heart? It was one thing to be someone’s confidant. It was another to be hundreds of peoples’ confidant. There was a responsibility in that. While her friendships had always been entirely genuine, she was always aware that it was still possible to let people down. But to be this intrinsically important to a person was something entirely different. She had never considered herself particularly ‘important’. Most people didn’t. They liked her, they were her friends and she theirs, but this was different. What if she screwed up somehow? Said the wrong thing? Mackie didn’t always know the right thing to say, the right way to handle a problem. Wouldn’t the consequences of failure be multiplied vastly if she allowed this powerful attachment exist.

She wasn’t perfect.

But nobody was perfect.

And besides that, the answer had already been blatantly, unquestionably obvious from the start.

Helping people stop hurting was not simply a task she had assigned herself. It was a part of herself. It was not a job. The people she helped were not projects to be completed. She had never thought that, not for a second. No reason to start now.

It had been obvious from the moment she first met the angry, scared, confused girl who was so far out of her element. Standing there, in the hallway, talking with Robbie, she had already known the answer to that question which had yet to be asked. She just hadn’t realized it yet. It had been obvious when she charged recklessly into a battle she knowingly had little to no chance of surviving. And it was obvious now, her arms wrapped protectively around the shoulders of this kid who from the very start she had known to be so important to her. No question about it.

Her only problem now was actually formulating the answer. She had never, in her wildest dreams, expected to get any closer to the kid than some kind of distant, fringe guardian. Like the folks who preferred merely knowing she was there to actually talking. Even that was the best case scenario. Really what she had anticipated was nothing but resentment and disdain, and been okay with that perceived inevitability. Maybe even downright hate.

Even up until the very last second. Astounded by the first tentative question, she had assumed that the kid’s well-deserved emotional release would merely rekindle the strength she needed to once again push away the weird lady and pretend it never happened.

But now, to know how important she was to this girl, it was just about the highest honor she could think of. She wasn’t entirely sure she deserved it, but that didn’t really matter. What mattered was actually remembering how to form words to express herself with before the chance slipped away forever.

Mackie didn’t hesitate. She didn’t try to actually say anything, knowing well that her words would fail her. She just squeezed the kid a little tighter and nodded slightly - hastily - letting out an affirmative little ”Mmhmm" that was barely a whimper.

Seconds passed and, the immediate urgency to snatch it while she had the chance satisfied, Mackie let a hand soothingly pet the muddy hair at the back of Annag’s head.

”Y-yeah.” She breathed sheepishly, ”Th-That’d be fine.” And though the words still seemed horrendously inadequate, there was no doubting their earnest, enthusiastic truth. ‘Fine’ wasn’t the right word - but ’nothing would make me happier’ just had too many syllables.

---

It is a well-documented and fundamental truth of humanity that human beings, as a rule, are not fond of being alone in small, dark spaces. A person generally needs a very good reason to put themselves in such a place intentionally. Even someone hardened enough to feel no fear is typically still far from comfortable in such a situation. Even the patient hunter knows, instinctually, deep within their bones, that small, dark places were best occupied when one knew exactly what was sharing that space with them.

The only thing more disturbing than being alone in a small, dark space for an extended period of time was learning that you weren’t actually alone all along.

Corporal Firth’s patience was a testament to his age and dedication. As Riley and Ike talked, he had waited in silence. The cabinet within which he had somehow managed to stuff himself was, at very least, several times bigger on the inside than it was on the out. It wasn’t dimensional-warping technology though - just a wide cabinet with several doors that opened into the same cramped space.

The minutes turned to hours.

And then, without warning, a voice came from the inky blackness at the far end of the long cabinet. It was a hoarse, pointed whisper with a deadpan monotone that was almost humorous - if not for the fact that Rob really was supposed to be alone right now.

”...Who are we hiding from?”

Mum

It was such a simple, small word, so easily overlooked and yet that practically insignificant word was all that young girl could think about. For so long in her young life of strife and hardship, so long doing nothing but trying to hang on, fighting the universe to the very last for her survival, she hadn't even known she was missing such a word.

And now, the second she realised the void that had always been in her life it was filled up, each last inch of the hole warping and transforming into a neat Mackie shaped gap. A gap the girl instantly placed the woman into and as she did the girl felt her life become just that much more complete. No longer was she simply gonna fight the universe simply for the sole purpose of clinging to whatever shred of life she could grab, no, now if she was to fight, it would be to ensure that she never got separated from the people she could truly be comfortable around. Her family. Her mom.

In those few seconds between the question being asked and answered, the world stopped around the two of them, nothing else mattered, just this response. The breath in Annag's lungs simply refused to move, that little stasis bubble freezing it in place, grasping at chest and then ... It all released in one long breath, bringing with it the sound of a life reborn.

"Thank you mum, thank you ... thank you....thank you"

For a time it seemed all the girl could do was babble a long string of overwhelming gratitude from inside the protective cocoon Mackie had formed around her. Pushing her head gently into Mackie's hand, feeling the warmth from the embrace spread throughout her. For the first time in so long did that warrior feel not only satisfied with life but at home. For the first time in so long, she was able to push her past behind her, not forgetting it, but accepting that it was something she had experienced.

Now it didn't matter what the rest of the ship thought of her, not that she'd cared much to begin with, but knowing that the person she cared about more than anyone else alive, her mother, had accepted her was enough for Annag. The whole world could despise her and it really wouldn't matter, not now that she knew she had someone who would always be there for her.

Gently she snuggled up in closer, only managing to cease the endless babble of thanks by burrying her face into her adopted mother's shoulder. For a while she didn't say anything else, not that she seemed to be able to. The relief of finding a place where she felt safe, of suddenly belonging had stolen all her words away. Not that it mattered, she had the honour of being the daughter to the most wonderful person she knew.

Eventually one more in the girl's long string of questions popped out, worming its way through the tiny gap between shoulder and mouth

"Hey mum ... can I help out in the armoury?"

It felt such a strange yet earnest question to ask, the last time she'd visited that place she'd ended up freaking out, a lost, loney soul who couldn't understand the kindness being shown to her, but now ... Now she understood and she wanted to go back to such a place, to the warm comforting smell that lingered in the air, that soft music which permeated the whole room, all of it, she wanted to enjoy it all with her mum. She wanted to be there and live in that place she could call home. Of course she would spend time outside of it, she still needed to train herself back up to the phyisical condition she was in before, something that she was going to ask the Vox's to help her do the second she had the chance to do so, but that would come later, none of that mattered right now. Now was a moment just for them to be together, to have their first day as a family.

For the first time in her life Annag felt at peace, she was home.

Robert’s heart sank into his stomach, saying to whoever’s there, “we hide from ourselves, all the time.”
He says as he unsheathes his knives looking over to where he heard the voice, not wanting to get out of his hiding spot, he wanted to catch Ike and Riley, and someone in here wasn’t going to change that.