Archive of Our Own ^beta

“Hi.”

“Hi.”

Tommy feels a little breathless—and a little stupid to feel breathless—almost overcome with emotion when he speaks and is spoken to in response.

In response.

It’s not a chirp. It’s not a trill. It’s not a whistle or a grunt or a little warble that he’s watched Blue and Owl make to one another, back and forth; sometimes Boar perking up and chipping in even though the sound is lower, loose and far less melodically than when the others to speak to one another, (Tommy himself far better at imitating that he’s taken to teasing Boar now and then when he’s feeling particularly annoying). This time, it’s an honest-to-god, fully-understandable earthen word and, honestly, Tommy can’t even bring himself to feel embarrassed at the way his breath stutters and his eyes begin to tear up because Blue understands him and he can understand Blue in return.

Blue’s face breaks on his smile and his hand comes up, cradling against his head; sinking down on aching knees until they’re closer to the same height, and then Tommy’s knees just give out entirely, again—something he’s unapologetic about as Blue drops further down with him, catching him, holding him while Blue cradles his face like he’s something precious, like he’s something worth holding gently, whispering soft and worriedly, concern flashing across his face because there are tears streaming down Tommy’s cheeks.

“Inömæ næ, etue’ad naï inömæ næ,” he whispers over and over and, gods, the translator hears him and repeats back in a language Tommy can understand: “what’s wrong, tell me what’s wrong.” He can understand Owl and Boar too as they sink down to his level, Blue turning to them, but they just echo the same confusion, because they don’t know what’s going on either; talking around him, to him, asking Tommy what’s the matter because he’s crying and—“that’s not– doesn’t that mean that he’s in pain, or scared, or—”—his chest got a bit beaten up by the suddenness of the Eagle jumping into near-hyperdrive, so his lungs aren’t in the best of conditions and right now they’re tripping over themselves with all the breathing and the crying and that weird stuttering sob that sees Boar steadying a hand against Tommy’s chest and telling him to breathe. To slow. To calm.

“Alto ir. Alto ir. Reinæ’ir.”

“That’s it. That’s it. Breathe.”

“What’s wrong?” Blue asks again—Blue asks, and the translator translates—when Tommy is able to force his lungs back into a reasonable pattern; four eyes blinking slow and uncertain as his question is directed to all three of them and the way Boar frowns at the way Tommy’s chest shudders beneath the palm of his hand, but it’s all swept to the side when Tommy bullies his lungs into taking a full breath and says, “I’m fine, it’s okay, I’m just… happy.”
His own voice is taken and robotised by the AI; words unfamiliar rising up and speaking out of his wrist, bridging the gap that has separated them for too long, but it bridges the gap, and he is understood in turn.

Tommy palms at his face with his right hand, his left still firmly braced against him chest where he’s pretty sure he’s dislocated his shoulder; pushing down the pain in his chest as he looks to each of them in turn. “I’m just—you’re all okay. You’re all safe,” he says, because he needs them to understand—and they can, they can understand him and—Tommy chokes again, but this time it’s a laugh; a little wet, leaning a little too close to a sob, but it’s a laugh because he is happy.

Owl looks like he isn’t so sure, making a questioning little tribble in the back of his throat. “Are you sure?” he asks, voice melodical and warm and the translator repeats it all back to him with only a half-second delay in a language that he can understand and Tommy feels his face beginning to ache with just how wide his smile grows, still systematically wiping at the tears on his cheeks and returning to press at the speaking device that hadn’t clicked into place like it had to the other humans, although Tommy suspects that has something to do with an inner working and the fact that he has nothing magnetic to hold the device in place, and it will only need a little adjustment to fix.
“I’m sure, I’m sure,” he repeats to the others; sniffling, trying to hold back the tears because the others are alarmed and they don’t understand. But that’s okay, because Tommy can explain it to them now.

“I’m fine, I’m fine I promise. I don’t even know why I’m crying, really, it’s a bit stupid but I can’t really stop.”

Boar chuffs lightly with a noise that Tommy recognises is amused; his hand reaching up to Tommy’s cheeks to wipe away his tears, just-able to hide his own fascination with the damp that runs down Tommy’s cheeks over and over where his emotion boils up and over. “It’s fine. As long as you’re not hurt.”
“No,” he agrees. Then stumbles because, “not anything too damaging at least,”—because Tommy had to take the ship back from Schlatt and his crew with little more than his smarts, and he’d been pounded by the momentum when Nook jumped the ship from a drifting speed to lightspeed in the span of a few seconds—“but that’s not why I’m crying.”

“You’re hurt‽” Owl asks and he sounds horrified at the thought, and it makes Tommy laugh again because, how long has it been since someone was worried about him—truly worried about him and it makes Tommy reach out regardless of maybe-mightbe broken ribs and a dislocated shoulder and a bruised collarbone, unable to help himself to comfort as he tucks himself back down, pressing himself into Owl’s chest. He can’t help the way he sobs a little harder when Owl’s wing comes around him, and even he’s not sure if he’s crying or laughing or something entirely different.
Ever so gently, and ever so slowly, Owl cards his claws through Tommy’s hair in a way that can only ever be described as affectionate, whispering to him as his sobs wrack his chest and draw out the pain inflicted upon him; Tommy able to stifle his tears long enough to hear him whisper gently; “sssh, Starchild, it’s alright. You’re safe now.”
And that’s enough to make Tommy laugh—genuinely laugh, no sadness or new tears on his cheeks where he’s wiped too many into Owl’s chest or on his robe; Owl unbothered by it all—understanding for sure that they don’t think him some equivalent to a space-puppy or wolf-cub, but because he is theirs in the same way that they are his.
But still something aches in his chest and while the nickname is affectionate and fond and sets a thousand butterflies to flutter in his chest, Tommy can’t help but want to be regarded by his name, not having heard it for far too long and although Niki had called him by his name, he’s desperate to hear it from different voices.
Familiar voices.

“Tommy.”

“What was that?”
He pulls back far enough to see that Boar and Blue have crouched closer, all of them having settled more comfortably on their knees in front of him, leaning in but not quite penning or looming Tommy where he’s half-perched in Owl’s lap, always considerate of him and, impossibly, Tommy finds his smile brightens. “My name. It’s Tommy.”
Blue flicks his ears, his upper pupils dilating like a cat’s would and there’s something purr-like, something rolling in the base of his throat that is as much involuntary as Tommy’s smiles, or the way he leans into the hand that comes to card through his fringe.

“Hi Tommy.”

The three of them all take it in turns to introduce themselves, and it’s a little bit of a mind-stumble for Tommy to pronounce their names with what he can hear when he has the translator in his ear, trying to translate a deeper meaning for him: Blue’s name strikingly similar to the colour that Tommy had nicknamed him with, although when Blue says it aloud, there’s a whistle-trill at the beginning and he seems to purr the last syllable along his tongue, and it doesn’t help that the translator is throwing words at him because apparently Blue’s name, in the alien’s shared language is synonymous with multiple words and meanings and he doesn’t quite get it—and Tommy is sure his translator AI doesn’t get it either—but it doesn’t share any relations to the colour of his skin, (Which Tommy asks and finds that to be “glaice.”
Boar’s name has a slightly different issue in that it also means many things: Tor’uk-something? Blue is the one to help carry Tommy through the sound so the first half sounds like a loud of sounds all crushed together that Tommy can’t seem to get, and has to go with the modded, human pronunciation of Technoblade (which sounds fucking cool all by itself)—although he isn’t too fond of the way his translator is fixated on the word blood.

Although neither of them are so bad as when the translator practically gives up when Owl offers his own name, and even if “Philza” is simple and easy to pronounce, the meaning to it is lost when Owl speaks and the translator makes a horrible screeching sound, like a broadcast signal transmitting interference; high-pitched and wailing with such severity that he yanks it from his head and muffles it in a bone-crushing grip; his other hand coming up to cradle his forehead in pre-emptive preparation for a headache, which sets fire to his left shoulder and back because he’d somehow manage to forget he’s dislocated said shoulder, blinding him to Techno and Blue’s worry and the way Philza shoots a glare at the ceiling, like it was the Whale interfering and temporarily deafening Tommy instead of lacking information.

“Are you okay?” Blue asks, torn between wanting to take the translator ear piece away so that it doesn’t cause any further injury, and knowing full well it is the only bridge Tommy has between his earthen language and theirs; settling on letting the magnet of the irregular hexagon stick to the inlay of Tommy’s collar—close enough that he can still hear, but far enough that if it screeched it wouldn’t be as nearly painful as it was the first time.
“I’m good, I’m good, I just had no warning,” Tommy grins, but it’s a little pathetic where the surprise has made him flinch hard enough to tense up his chest, and now he is certain that he’s broken some ribs, because that shit fucking hurt.

“We should all move back to the Ericitcrantna,” Technoblade says, (the translator blanking on the last word and offering nothing rather than another noise of non-understanding that Tommy realises as the translator telling him there are missing words from its vocabulary) sharing distasteful looks to the humans behind them and a glance to the ceiling that Tommy doesn’t understand, nor does he see when Philza shifts beneath him, Tommy shuffled in turn so that they can stand and return to the Eagle—or the Ericitcrantna as Techno had called it—when he’s winded by the movement of a dislocated shoulder grinding against his collarbone.

Tommy can’t bite down on his noise of pain quick enough; his right hand clamping quickly, painfully over his left to brace it against his chest where his rib cage burns and his lungs only take half the air he needs as he curls up, instinctively protective of his injuries even if it makes breathing all the much harder.
His skin feels hot to the touch; Tommy himself already bordering on a fever where his body is working to repair the wound in the only way it knows how; hotter than he’s been before that sees Blue trill worry when he places a hand over Tommy’s to help him steady his arm and hisses at the discomfort of such heat because Blue is cold-blooded in comparison.

“It’s fine, it’s fine, it’s just my arm,” Tommy breathes, trying to steady his lungs back into a normal pattern, turning his body away in an un-thought movement when he sees Philza’s feathers hovering and Techno’s hands coming to brace him. “Shoulder n’ ribs,” he pants, because the adrenaline of fending off Schlatt and his bastard crew has long-since abandoned him and he only has reserves where the pain is concerned, torn between wanting to slump into Philza’s chest and letting the others care for him while he’s oblivious and the years-upon-years of fending for himself; habitual distrust rising up like vomit in the back of his throat that burns like acid and stings like tears.

“Was it the Humans?” Technoblade growls, vicious and low; the noise crashing between grinding teeth when Tommy threads tentative fingers around the edge of the cloak-like layer that he’s wearing and he pulls back the comforting layer to reveal the wrongness of a shoulder out of its socket. The deformity under his skin betrays an injury more than a nasty knock while racing through the ship’s corridors that sees the aliens back to fussing over him, although this time there is no chance for Tommy to hide his injuries. No need to, when he knows that they only want to help.

“If you mean one stupid, desperate human, then yeah,” Tommy says, aiming for joking, but Boar’s eyes glow like embers, sharpening when Philza runs a primary over the distended skin and it earns him a particularly colourful curse and Tommy hurries to amend himself.
“I mean, it was me. I did it to myself,” he says, and something curls in the pit of his stomach when Techno’s ferocity softens into something gentle. “It wasn’t like ai meant to. I didn’t know what I was doing and somehow managed to kick the ship into full-engines and the force of being thrown back into the seat must’ve been the exact force needed to knock my shoulder out its socket.” Not to mention the maybe bruised, mightbe broken ribs, but Tommy’s not going to mention them until he has no other choice because the horror of his crew at hearing his shoulder is damaged is enough for now.
Though Blue’s catches onto a different admission.

“You drove the ship?” he asks, incredulous almost, and Tommy can’t tell if it’s because he’s a human and Tommy had shown particular wonder towards everything aboard that maybe they figured that he didn’t know how. Or maybe, because Tommy shouldn’t be able to drive the ship, similar to how he wasn’t supposed to be able to lock the door to Boar’s workshop, so maybe when he and Nook burst onto the flight deck, he managed to supersede some coding and get Tommy permissions to do what he’d done, or something of the like, or the human’s interference did more than what they intended.
Tommy doesn’t quite shrug—he’s not stupid enough to try that with only one functioning arm and few dozen broken bones—watching as Philza hovers his feathers over his shoulders both, comparing them like they’re a puzzle he can figure out how to fix. “More like Nook did,” he answers. “I just got carried along for the ride.”
Despite the distrust-caution-unease burning like acid in the back of his throat, he doesn’t flinch or pull away from the way Philza’s wings hover, always not-quite touching, or the way that he is helping to keep him calm with a low, gentle song that holds no words, only peace, inviting Tommy to sink down into it.

“Nook? What is Nook?” Philza asks, tasting the word on his tongue, head tilting in bird-like familiarity, although considering his earthen look-alike and Tommy’s nickname, it’s achingly endearing. “He’s my friend—one of the robots—the one that has been following me around all the time. I nicknamed him Nook, and he just started responding to it,” Tommy explains, turning to look for him, but he’d left Nook up on the flight deck, and it’s not like he can go look for him when he has Philza’s wings around him; Blue and Techno’s concern softening the ache even if Tommy would kill for some anaesthesia or a triple shot of vodka.

“Fascinating. I know Sam mentioned that some of the ship’s systems had shown an affinity towards you and he’s given many more freedom when interacting with you, but for you to consider him a friend…” Philza says, trailing off when he takes note of the way Tommy is shifting despite the pain that it causes. Technoblade takes much more of an active approach to stop him from hurting himself further, and says, “we can go find him later, but right now, you’re injured and you’re in pain, so we need to get you to the med-bay,” shifting forward ever so slightly, hands slow and gentle like he’s asking for permission, and it takes Tommy too long to realise what he’s asking permission for until suddenly there’s hands on him and he’s no longer wrapped up in Philza’s wings but Technoblade’s arms as he helps lift him to his feet; his left arm bared to the cold air of the Whale so that Techno doesn’t jostle it any more than it already has been.
He is slow to rise to his feet, lifting Tommy with him; making a warning chuff at Blue who makes a trill in response, but he says nothing to the way Techno is helping Tommy and neither does Tommy himself.

It’s strange, to be cared for so simply; like their concern and their care and their agitation towards his wounds is a given even if they’ve never been able to talk as effectively before as they are able to now.

Tommy can feel a curl of something foul: a fear laced between the beginnings of fever and the cracked marrow that cages his heart; pin-prickling regret building amongst the lull of words. He knows he’s too much; he’s always been told that by everyone who has ever been responsible for him (until he claimed responsibility for himself and abandoned Kuiper Sys and Pluto’s expansion for whatever underhanded job earnt him enough credits to make it to the end of the week). He knows that he speaks too much, moves too much, moves too fast. He’s heavy-handed and ungraceful; too noisy, too loud, too difficult; enough that others have given up on him but Tommy was never going to change.
He had tried, once, for the sake of finding a family with parents that didn’t have enough credits to genetically modify their genes to create what they wanted, but he’d always been passed over, passed by, passed on to others that have the time or energy; having given too much away for the acceptance of others that couldn’t accept him for who he was, and concluded that it wasn’t worth it.

Now though….

Now Technoblade is holding him steady; hands splayed wide enough to cradle Tommy, to catch him should he stumble. It is as though he doesn’t mind going slow, letting Tommy set the pace so that his shoulder isn’t jostled; hands outstretched, ready to catch. There’s something about him that is strained, like Technoblade wants to just pick Tommy up and bundle him into his arms and yet for respect of Tommy’s own determination, he’s holding himself back. Blue and Philza move towards the door half a step quicker, but they don’t leave, turning back, waiting for Tommy. They’re making sure that he’s okay rather than pushing on ahead and expecting Tommy to keep up. The three of them are hovering, but not heavily; concerned rather than controlling and focused entirely on Tommy even though they all are as much in need of the med-bay as him; all three of them supporting their own wounds from the hands of the humans; bruises, missing feathers, split skin and a growing black eye that Tommy catches sight of when Blue passes underneath the light at the door to the Ericitcrantna, and he wishes he’d at least taken a proper swing at Schlatt before Nook managed to jettison him through the airlock.

At the door, he glances back, past where Techno is hovering—ignoring Blue’s jibe of being a den-mother—and is met with the sight of the humans; one dead, one unconscious, and this time, with the translator piece attached to his collar, he is able to understand Owl’s defeated warble when he says “don’t look Starchild. You don’t want to see.”
Tommy doesn’t want to see, but not for the reasons Philza thinks. Humans aboard the Whale, unconscious or dead, raise a lot of questions for him. They are also the proof of just how close he came to losing the only family he has ever known.
Later, he’s sure there will be regrets. Later, Tommy expects something similar to grief, maybe horror or fear or something sickening. Or maybe there will be nothing, because he had justified their deaths as necessary; eyes stilling on the blood pooling beneath one of Schlatt’s men—nameless, forgettable—hardly thinking twice when Nook unleashed his own fury and kicked them from the ship, but there’s a pause now; an indifference spoiling his lips:

“And what about them? There are still humans aboard the main ship. What is going to happen to them?”

There is no accusation in his tone nor in his words, and maybe it’s the translator that doesn’t quite match up to the meaning, or maybe there’s something Tommy fails to say, or maybe he’s said too much because all three aliens draw back and draw straight; rigid in posture in a way that is plainly and painfully uncomfortable.
“We need to talk about it. And we will,” Philza’s says, firm, “but after we have had you looked over,” turning his head towards Blue and Techno for agreeance. Tommy can see it sitting plainly on Blue’s face, and maybe a little hidden on Boar’s like he doesn’t particularly care for the humans any which way, but he wouldn’t take it upon himself to draw out any punishment no matter how much it angered them that they had held charged rifles to the back of Philza’s head and nearly tore his crew apart by firing off a few unthought rounds.

“We’re not going to kill them, if that’s what you’re asking,” Technoblade says, echoing what Philza had not explicitly said, but there is still something unspoken there, because Tommy had seen his anger when he was on the Whale, he’d seen the way that Techno regarded Schlatt and the humans, grinding his teeth and baring his tusks at them, and so too can Tommy see the dead body pooling blood where Techno had fought back more than heavy-handed.
Seemingly taking note of where Tommy’s eyes have returned to again, Technoblade takes a half step to his right, blocking off his line of sight, hands moving closer like he wants to nudge him forward but is painfully aware of Tommy’s suspected broken bones. “Just…. For now, let’s get you to the med-bay and get your injuries looked at. All our injuries looked at,” he amends when Blue makes an aborted movement to hide a slug of secreted film that hides an open wound on one of his wrists where the restraints had done their fair share of damage.

Tommy agrees, because as much as he has the energy to stand his ground—and the ability to do so, now that he’s not reduced to miming and waving his hands around and only getting frustrated at the end of it with minimal development—Tommy doesn’t want to. Not when there’s something warming in the way he’s shepherded up the stairs, to the intended lower left wing which is dedicated entirely to the med-bay and recovery rooms that Tommy has done minimal poking about in when he first explore the Eagle. The Ericitcrantna.
Damn Tommy was going to have to remember these new names fast.

But when they get to the hub, and the destruction wrought by Tommy, Philza makes a noise. It is somewhere between a rising hiss and a trembling waver of notes when he sees the utter devastation. There is very little remaining of the blankets and large stone-smooth pillows that used to fill up what Tommy dubbed as the nest, and the rest of the floor is scattered with the remnants of the plants and flora that had been growing in the hydroponic capsules that line the outer wall; crystalline shards of the glass glittering amongst the wreckage of edible plants now destroyed by the sudden vacuum.
“Why would they—what happened?” Philza asks, taking a step towards a small purple shoot of a plant, burnt with ice where the cold of the void had rushed in and destroyed whatever it could touch, but before Tommy could even begin to apologise for the hand he had in all of this mindless destruction, there’s a noise—a clunk, heavy and hollow—coming from the flight deck and Tommy has a split-second fear of thinking that it’s a human, either Niki, or one of those that he had shoved into a closet upstairs, before he remembers that Nook didn’t follow him when he blindly raced out of the bridge.
Despite the fact that the others want to take him to the medical wing (pun intended) Tommy is far more concerned for his friend and he stumble-hurries his way around the disordered nest to the stairs that lead downwards to the flight deck, only somewhat subdued by his injuries as the other three follow him through the door that had locked at his command, to the bridge.

And the horrible sight of Nook shattered on the floor, all his pieces scattered around him, like his power had given out and he’d dropped like a stone.

Nook’s faceplate is lightless.
Lifeless.

“Nook? Nook, c’mon buddy, you’re okay,” Tommy says, already at his side in less than a few steps, ignoring the fact his left arm is useless to him right now as he drops to his knees—a little too heavy to not jolt his shoulder and ribs, but he’s a little too preoccupied with rising fear to really take note—hand reaching out to touch Nook’s plating. He made to follow the seam of his faceplate, hoping to jolt some light into him, but pain arcs sudden and Tommy yanks his hand back, hissing low and shocked, because Nook’s metal is burning hot.

“What is it? What’s wrong?” Blue asks, worrying, trying to take Tommy’s hand so that he can see, but Tommy is far more concerned for Nook that he tucks his fingers underneath his long sleeve and tries again, nudging Nook’s plating to try and rouse him.
“Nook? Buddy, it’s time to wake up now,” he says begs and is nearly brought to tears when Nook makes a small, humming sound, almost like a groan; his familiar blue light flickering in the depths of his mechanics, but he doesn’t have enough energy to reassemble all his pieces. Tommy wants to help him, to hold him, but he’s only got one arm and Nook’s metal looks a couple centigrade from glowing. Still, he hovers.

“Nook?”

There is laughter—soft, gentle and unanchored to any of those gathered on the flight deck—Tommy tensing;, his muscles coiling in preparation to fight or to flee; his adrenaline reserves low but instinctual and although he’s battered and has already spent enough of his adrenaline, he’s got reserves that curl both his hands into fists, poised on a knee ready for round two.
But there’s no fight and there’s no enemy as the flight deck shifts its colour and a warm green hue spreads across the inlaid LEDs, as is familiar for Tommy from the times when he’s watched Philza and Technoblade call out on the comms to whoever. Wherever.

“Nook is fine,” the voice says, and there’s a metallic, false edge to it, something uncanny and echoing; the light shifting to pool strong in the main centre console as the screens seemingly light up of their own accord and an avatar appears as if out of nowhere, standing over the controls. They’re human-ish; in the way robots and androids had once been created in mankind’s image to help integrate them into normal society, before manufactures thought to build machines in shapes and structures that bettered them for their intended purpose.
The figure that flickered like a hologram was like that; as if they had been first created with mankind’s likeness in mind: a head, arms, a body, but that was all the likeness stretched to when the creature? alien? mortal? entity was created entirely from shards that tried to hold their shape into a body and arms and arms and so many arms.
They had no legs, only larger shards that held them suspended over the module, flickering between holographic and almost corporeal, and standing—floating—no taller than two feet above the main flight console.

“He just needs a moment. I’m still separating him from my conscious,” the holograph says, and Tommy relaxes his fear for his friend but tenses all the more because that voice is the same voice that Philza and Technoblade talk to on the regular, and that is concerning as much as it is confusing, because the hologram is definitely new and somehow, they’re speaking in the language that Tommy understands, and he doesn’t have to wait for the dew-second delay as it goes through his newly-acquired translator.

“Who are you?” he asks, fierce and on edge, remaining close to Nook but painfully aware how hot his metal is and that he can’t touch; acutely aware of the splay of feathers that spread out over his shoulder as Philza offers him comfort and something that he can hide behind, should he need too. A glance shows that he isn’t fearful of the hologram, and though he has a less-expressive face than what Tommy is used to being able to read, his head is cocked and his feathers slightly bristled to convey confusion, but mostly relief.
“Sam, I’m glad to hear you’re alright. You scared us for a moment there, when you went dark,” he says, just as Technoblade takes a half-shuffle towards the console, fingers waving over a few keys to bring up analytics and readings, though Tommy understand practically none of it. Techno does though, and becomes absorbed by whatever he sees, leaving Philza to introduce Tommy to Sam, the Ericitcratna’s resident AI.

When he turns back to the avatar displayed atop the console, his voice is a touch less soft. “Sam, tell me what happened. One moment we were talking, and the next you just went silent. Was it the Humans? I know that you weren’t responding when their ship requested emergency aid—”
“It wasn’t the Humans that silenced me,” Sam interrupts, then adds, “although they did have a hand in disrupting my programming. It was all a case of unfortunate timing. I received a message from the Aordna’p near enough the same time that the Human’s ship got in range of broadcast. I would’ve been better equipped to fend off their AI had I not leant so much capacity to their message. It was encrypted to a level I haven’t seen before.”
“Are they okay?” Blue asks, having claimed Tommy’s not-burnt hand while Sam provided a distraction, turning his head with a sharpness that Philza and Techno display too, though they’re quickly assured that the crew of the Aordna’p are in no danger.
“Though they have been scared by something.”

“Something? Not someone? You mean you don’t know?” Technoblade presses, worry prevalent in his voice. Sam does not share the same in his own tone. “I can’t say what just yet. I am still decrypting the message from my origin as we speak, although with the destruction the humans have wrought, I have only been able to lend 17% of my core processing power to the task. It will take some time with this current capacity as I have dedicated more efforts towards stabilising the ship and dismantling any overrides the Human’s AI placed upon the ship’s systems. The sooner I can erase any damage, the more I can divert attention. Until then, I can’t give you any clear answers. I’m sorry Techno.”
“No, it’s alright. I should’ve realised the Human’s would’ve done more than just board us,” Techno says, appeased by Sam’s explanation. The other are too, continuing to listen as Sam explains that, it was when he was decrypting the message that had interrupted his and Philza’s conversation, the Human’s emergency distress signal had been picked up by the Ericitcratna’s sensors.

“The humans were able to catch me by surprise. As I said before I accepted the message from their AI, I scanned the vessel and it is Hiarhtosanyü. I was too busy reading the logs of their recent travel to pay attention to the crew, but before I could warn you, it was too late.”
“You couldn’t have known,” Blue starts in what he intends to be reassuring, Tommy still caught up in the silent wonder that Sam is the ship’s AI and yet, if he didn’t know any better, he would’ve thought Sam was a sentient alien on the other end of a communications signal. Instead, he’s a hologram on the console, shards twisting and moving in an intricate design—curious that Sam decided to display himself as such—and a flash of anger when Sam cuts Blue off. “I should have,” he growls, words a snarl of tearing metal and electricity; the lights of the flight deck flickering from a warm, golden green to something dark and saturated for a moment. Tommy unconsciously leans into Philza’s feathers. His sleeve-tucked fingers are pressed against Nook’s plating still, and he desperately wants to pull him into his lap, but he’s still too hot. He’s not burning, not anymore, but he’s still far too warm for Tommy to think it’s a good idea to tuck his friend in close when Tommy only has a few layers between him and his skin.

“I should have known,” Sam repeats, a little more controlled. “I should’ve realised that something wasn’t right the moment that I read their flight records. It wasn’t consistent with Hiarhtosanyü flight patterns, even if it was damaged, and when the AI contacted me, it was wrong, the message was recorded in the wrong order and they didn’t engage security to prevent me from accessing additional data. I was able to read through their recent jump logs in the 0.04 seconds that it took for them to give me the pass keys, but the jumps were too short, they didn’t make sense, I should have realised.”

Tension and frustration wavers in Sam’s tone; the lights overhead shifting hues and his avatar aboard the console taking on less of a smoothened form; his shards fierce and sharp and flaring in a way that might be dangerous were he corporeal.
“The AI put me into circles I couldn’t break out of,” he goes onto explain, the lights still slightly flickering, but he is able to rein in his emotions enough that the ship itself is not affected around him. “I still had some control of the ship—the Human’s AI couldn’t completely take control, from what I could tell they weren’t appropriately programmed, or more so they were lacking the appropriate knowledge of an Æirtyto ship to be able to control even the most basic functions, so they didn’t disrupt core programs until they were copied or learnt from.”
“The Human’s AI didn’t hide anything in your programming when they had control, did they?” Technoblade asks, wary, fingers pausing where he’d been looking at records. “No. I have run diagnostics on myself and Sam’s original programming has it’ own failsafe reading through all coding on continuous loops every quarter. So far, nothing has been detected to be out of place, or the original programming would have rewritten it and if it becomes a reoccurring problem, Sam is notified.”
“Good, good.”

It helps Tommy to see the way the others are not as hard-pressed at the recent danger, and it’s something entirely different to witness them interacting and being able to understand what it is that they’re talking about. Tommy isn’t sure if his ribs are going to cope with how much his heart keeps swelling, especially considering there’s a high risk he’s broken one, if not more of them.

“I was still running the ship’s generators, life support as well as the artificial gravity,” Sam continues, “but I wasn’t able to control any functions that prevented the Humans from boarding the ship, nor was there any way that I could communicate with you to warn you of that attack. I tried to lock the inner doors of the ship too, to keep the Humans separate, but the AI understood my intentions and halted any attempt meaning that you were caught unawares and I was in no way able to help.”

Tommy cocks his head, imitative of Philza, as he comes to the realisation that all this happened while he was asleep: that Schlatt and his crew infiltrated Sam’s coding and boarded the ship while he was asleep leaving Technoblade, Blue and Philza to defend themselves. He’d been blissfully unaware while the others were overpowered; having been beaten, cuffed and dragged down to the Whale where Schlatt was going to ship them to some godforsaken planet in the middle of nowhere. He could’ve lost his family because he was having a fucking lie-in.

But there’s something Tommy doesn’t quite understand; a detail that has been bugging him discreetly beneath the panic and the adrenaline of running for his life.
“How come they didn’t find me?” he asks, speaking up; a little unsure when Sam turns his attention towards him; shards shifting around him so that his form began to take on a more-human visage, although he still had three pairs of arms and no face; only a bright pulsating green shard that simultaneously was featureless and yet, almost had a face carved into its edges.
Pushing past the trailing thoughts and subconscious distraction, Tommy continues. “They’re Nova Corps. Or, maybe ex-Nova Corps,” he says, thinking back to Schlatt’s scar that could’ve been equal parts and accident, equal parts deliberate. Not to mention the fact that they are a lone crew of seven—or maybe not a lone crew, maybe a forward party, maybe they’re scouts— “but they would’ve had a routine. They would’ve had a system that they would all follow, to sweep the ship. And I know they did,” Tommy says, glancing at the other three, “because there were two still sweeping the ship when I got away from Niki. They should’ve found me.”

“They did sweep the ship, but I was able to keep you hidden by locking your door,” Sam says, Tommy turning his attention back to the floating avatar. “The AI has protocols in-place that put Human Life as a paramount objective, and I played on this AIs understanding of the situation by changing my records of the ship to record a stored nuclear power core—as my understanding is that nuclear exposure is dangerous to Humans and Sol-hailing lifeforms in general—in your room enabling it so that the door would be locked and, no matter should another Human ask the AI to open the door, it would refuse to do so, according to its Safety Protocol alone.”
Tommy was impressed by this level of ingenuity from an AI, but one that far out-weighed the capabilities of even the most advanced Human AIs Tommy has come across, but Sam speaks simply and without-pride, and Tommy is reminded again how alive he feels. He has already witnessed Sam’s anger and frustration, but if being able to think freely and with such speed that had saved Tommy from discovery is hardly worth a prideful note to his voice, Tommy can’t help but wonder what else he is capable of.
And by his explanations, it seems, a great deal.

“Nook, as you’ve called him, tried to protect you,” Sam says, and there’s a note of fondness in his voice as the conversation turns to Tommy’s friend; both their eyes looking down to where Nook is still laid on the floor, still far too hot to touch, but Tommy can now see there’s a faint hue of blue buried deep within his system. He doesn’t like the way it’s flickering.
“When the Humans boarded one of the last things I was able to do was send communications to all ship functions that there were unwanted Human borders,” Sam continues, “but the same system that the AI trapped me in, also forced all other programming into suspended cycles, meaning that anything that wasn’t supporting the needed ship’s inner systems, such as the engine, oxygen supply and similar systems were forced to go dormant. From what I understand, Nook’s suspended cycle was interfered by you—a Human—but as I was still interconnected, Nook gave me information the Human AI did not allow.”

Sam goes on to further explain that Nook had relinquished part of his capacity to allow Sam to share computing space within his system that was untouched by the Human AI, and thusly ignored.
It was dangerous for the little robot, should Sam’s programming envelop him and consume him, it comparative to a candle burning in the middle of a bonfire, but through Nook, Sam was able to override certain functions for Tommy’s sake, while in-keeping with the AIs functions and programs; meaning that Sam had been unable to lock certain doors, even with Tommy’s external command, such as the workshop and the blast-protection doors, but had been able to… fiddle, with more simple systems.

“Then that was you?” Tommy says suddenly, mind catching up to memory. “You were the one that mess with the water pump and scared the ventilation bots out of the vents to distract the Humans so I could get the jump on them.”
“Yes,” Sam says, and there’s a smile in his voice.

But Tommy has confidence now and he points a finger, ignoring the way Sam’s shards shift to portray a certain level of surprise. “Then you were the one who ejected the Whale!”
“The Whale?”
“The transport ship,” Tommy explains, waving a hand wildly. “The one attached to the hull. I only wanted to close the door so that the humans couldn’t get to the others, but I didn’t mean for you to eject it.”

“Actually, you were the one who did that,” Sam says slowly. His tone doesn’t hold a note of accusation in it; maybe mirth, maybe something fond, but it still sees Tommy flushing as understanding clicks; Sam explaining that, “as soon as I noticed your mistake, I tried to cycle the doors to close, just so that it would engage the lock and keep it sealed, but the AI intervened again, as Schlatt had already given his orders that… the Whale,” he says, choosing to adopt Tommy’s earthen-nickname for the ship, rather than using her actual name, “was to be sent to the nearby planet, LarXII, with Philza, Technoblade and Blue. Enough parameters were met that the ship was ejected, despite the two human crew still aboard.”
Tommy felt his cheeks heat rapidly, ducking his head and only just slightly glancing to the other three while his mind scrambles for an apology for nearly getting them stranded in space.

“When you were alone, and their captain was angry, that was when things started to get dangerous,” Sam continues, and Tommy can hear the waver within his words; eyes glancing upwards sharply when the flight deck lights flicker around him; soft golden green taking on a sickly mustard, almost as if Sam’s emotions were strong enough to unconsciously effect the ship around him, similar to how a human’s emotions simply aren’t felt through the brain, but physically echo throughout the entire body.
And that, Tommy begun to realise, was what Sam was to the Eagle: not just an AIs computer programme that Tommy is used to—the ones bound by parameters and programmes and procedures—but an entity with thought and emotion and a body, though not made out of flesh, but one that traversed between the stars.

“Given the situation, I was able to change certain programmes which allowed me to lock the doors on the flight deck once you were inside. It is the most defensible position on the ship—” which mean that Tommy was right when he had though his hand had missed the control panel as he barrelled through the door, having been more focused on dodging Schlatt and Alyssa’s charged rounds but been grateful that the door having locked regardless, “—but I was still limited in how directly I was able to help you while confined by the constraints that the Human AI placed upon me and my original programming. Nook tried to help in any way he could, but he doesn’t have the free reign to operate ship systems either.”
At his name, Nook stirs a little more from where he’s spilled out all over the floor. His systems are still exhaustingly drained and Tommy wishes he wouldn’t push himself; chest physically aching at the sound of Nook’s whirred, whining groan, which in any other situation would be funny, because it’s so similar to the sound that Tommy makes when he wakes up somewhere other than his bed. It’s more similar to what Technoblade makes instead of greetings within the first few days of waking from his three-day hibernation, but it hasn’t even been long enough to consider the time spent dormant a fraction of Nook’s sleep-charge cycle and it is still worrisome.

Tommy reaches out again to touch him, cautious, but still hoping that he’ll have cooled down enough to pull him closer.
This time, Nook’s metal plating isn’t hot enough to burn him, but he is still somewhat unbearably warm: Tommy still keeping his hands tucked firmly behind his sleeves, making sure no part of his skin is showing as he heaves Nook—surprisingly heavy when he’s not powered up and floating, surrounded by his arms and legs and little components—and pulling him into his lap; Tommy slipping off his knees to settle his legs around him where he can nest Nook in folded legs and one arm, because as much as he tries to push past the pain in moments of forgetfulness, he doesn’t have his nano-bots in working condition to heal his injury at Mach speeds and it won’t do to strain the injury any more than he already has.
He is, for the moment, thankful that the others have forgotten about his injuries, and glad that Sam is providing an ample distraction for him too.

“Hey buddy,” Tommy says, when Nook makes that waking-whining-groan again, but this time, he can hear a whistle layered within; relief surging through him as Nook’s light flickers a little brighter.
“Nook gave me permission to integrate with his system fully, but compared to the size of the ship that I was given permissions to operate under, Nook’s capacity was infinitesimal, and to keep his programming separate from mine and intact was… difficult, to say the least, under the constrains of the situation.” Sam is skirting around the fact that he took a major risk; Tommy having heard adults talk enough to notice Sam’s hesitation and what he’s not actually saying, but he’s latched onto the fact that Nook is in his lap now, a little warm, a little groggy, but getting better as they speak.
“But doing so gave me more capacity, and allowed me to rewrite more integral parts of my code before Sam’s original code overrode it. I still needed Tommy’s input to be able to instruct the ship to move,” he says, attention turned to Philza, who nods, understanding that while Sam is skilled and lightning fast and far more intelligent than the human-programmed AIs, he still has limitations set upon him revolved around piloting the ship and functioning without permission from the crew, by another Sam, Tommy thinks, although he’s not quite sure.
(Later, when Tommy remembers to ask, the crew will to him that the limitations set upon Sam’s core programming and abilities—and all AI of the same calibre—are a failsafe to prevent him from acting without permissions from the crew themselves, to stop him in case his systems were to be corrupted, or he himself decided to go against them all; that for all of Sam’s wonderous capabilities, he cannot transfer himself of his conscious outside of the ship or control any space-faring ship for the safety of biological lives.)

“But I didn’t do anything,” Tommy frowns, the words phrased like a question. Even if Sam needed his input to drive the ship, he couldn’t have given it to him because he didn’t know Sam existed. In all of the four months aboard the Eagle he’d hardly given thought to an AI as the fifth member of the crew when he’d thought Sam’s voice was just communication coming from a different ship or a different planet, so he couldn’t have given him instruction to fly the ship, and it wasn’t like Tommy told Nook what to do either, even if Sam had been sharing data storage with him at the time.

By Sam’s instruction, the flight deck lights shifted from the warm-green-gold to a jarring orange; sounds played as if from nowhere, filling the air.
The room around them flickers and suddenly there is another in their midst and Tommy is surprised to see himself replicated as a hologram; full size, leaning against the wall near the stairs, half turned, looking back behind him where the sounds of rapid-fire charged rounds echo off the locked blast door; the creaking, shuddering groan of energy dispelled but doing little damage, halting for only a second as the haunting anger of Schlatt rises up, “the fuck are you doing kid?”
Tommy—the real Tommy, not the holographic Tommy—tightens himself slightly around Nook, gaze shifting from the fear painted on his own mirrored face to the expressions of his crew; Blue’s ears pinned back to his head, all four eyes wide in shock and fear; Philza’s feathers bristled but his eyes analytical while Technoblade is trying to stop himself from grinding his teeth at the door, rageful towards a ghost that can no longer do any harm.

There is a holographic Nook there too; screaming and trilling, and Tommy has a half second to wonder if that was Sam trying to communicate with him, or if that was Nook, or maybe, more likely, it was an amalgamation of the two; and then holo-Tommy is following after, yelling in turn: “yes, Nook, I know I’m fucked but I’d appreciate it if you helped me instead of yelling at me!” because he had been scared and panicking, and backed into a corner without any options while Schlatt and Alyssa unload their guns again and again and again.

It's weird, watching this all happen from an outsider’s perspective. Tommy can still feel the tightness of panic in his chest as he watches himself yell at Schlatt—warmed, somewhat, by Techno’s chuff of approval—and then watches the catalyst placed in the fire as he himself turns on Nook, yelling, pointing, and though neither he nor Sam had been able to understand the words exactly, there is an obvious instruction in hand movement alone and Tommy realises that he was the trigger that enabled Sam to use the tweaks in his coding to fight back against the humans.
Or, perhaps it gave Sam an idea, because Sam got physical permission to manoeuvre the ship and although he couldn’t communicate with Tommy to get himself strapped into to Philza’s piloting chair and had been forced to tackle him. It was in a stroke of luck that Tommy’s hand had brushed the controls, which allowed Sam to bypass intention for permission, and he’d shot the ship forward at deadly speeds.
Thankfully, Sam cuts the hologram there, and Tommy’s twin dims from existence, returning the flight deck occupation back to six; four of which now having a better understanding of just what exactly happened, even if Tommy had been at the centre of it all.

“When Tommy touched the controls, I allowed myself to interpret that as a member of the crew giving me permission to fly the ship,” Sam explains, more-so to Philza and the others, and perhaps he should be more careful with how close he can come to pushing the boundaries of his limitations, but he’s far more concerned with the truth and explaining that, “given the time frame of physical connection with the controls, I only had 1.59 seconds to force the engines into sudden acceleration, because I didn’t expect Tommy to touch the controls so soon, nor did I have enough of a window to programme a fast-yet-gradual acceleration that wouldn’t cause any excess of injury, yet would still detach the human ship, and with it, the AI that was dampening my systems.”

Once the ship was detached, Sam was no longer constrained by the continuous communication with the Human’s AI and was able to regain control of his systems, though he was still forced to purge the human’s AI that had begun integrating themselves; replacing and mimicking Sam’s programming so that they could purge him entirely, but with Nook’s help as a second attacking point, Sam had been able to return fire and effectively trap the AI in the same way that he had been trapped, although in this circumstance, they wouldn’t be able to break their way out of Sam’s hold.
He explained, that with the expanse of the human’s ship as well as the Eagle, Sam had grown in capacity; having more room to stretch out and detail his inner mechanisms which included the development of a projected avatar; having grown in strength and capability and knowledge; having taken the AIs knowledge as well as their ship’s tracking and historical data; stores of data that he was still combing through; deciphering and piecing together as he systematically wiped and replaced it with himself.

“With the second ship allowing an internal expansion, I was also able to access recorded data that has allowed me to interact with Tommy far more easily,” he explains, “as before Sam left, he didn’t leave any instruction for such circumstance, although I would hardly call it an oversight—”
“Wait,” Tommy says, mind catching. “Before Sam left?”

“This isn’t truly Sam,” Philza says from where he’s stood; the feathers that had been warming Tommy’s shoulders moving to play with his short blunt-cropped hair where head and neck join; smoothing it all down similar to how he’s seen Philza do it to his own feathers. “Or, perhaps more accurately, I should say that this isn’t all of Sam.”
“I am what you would consider a sub-mind,” apparently-not-Sam explains. “Just as Nook is a much smaller sub-mind of a larger component, programmed only with the instructions of the maintenance of the ship and her crew—now with the additional programming that comes to accompanying you—I am not the original programming. I am, as you could say, part of Sam’s soul. He left me behind to run the ship and help Philza and the others while he attends to… other matters.”

Tommy turns to the others, not really needing to know about these “other matters,” but more so looking for some stability because he’s woken up from a depressive nap and suddenly everything has been turned on his head and he’s feeling very lost, and his best friend is still laid awkwardly in his lap, too warm, like he’s got a fever; too weak to generate his levitation field or even the energy to right himself and get up off the ground; all his pieces scattered around like fragments of shattered ware.

Philza is the one who takes pity on him, feathers a little firmer as he soothes Tommy’s bed hair, clicking his beak gently. “We will explain everything in greater detail later. But first, you are injured, and I think it best if we all wash off this blood before getting some food and sit down to talk,” he says, lifting a wing to gesture to his own feathers that have a smattering of red and blue blood where he’s fussed over Blue somewhen; Boar equally dirtied where he’d posed the biggest threat and subsequently caught the most fists and gun bashing.

Tommy is just glad that none of the humans pulled the trigger, no matter how callous and quick-tempered Schlatt had been.
It almost makes him regret killing him.

Almost.

The reminder that Tommy is injured is enough to spur both Blue and Technoblade into moving, and before he gets a chance to awkwardly push himself to his feet with a lap full of Nook and a busted shoulder, Tommy is being gently gathered into a pair of strong, protective arms again, Technoblade not-quite purring when Tommy latches on in turn; his centre of gravity shifting as he’s lifted up, Nook slipping delicately from his lap.

“Wait. What about Nook?” he asks, reaching with his good arm, like a child for a toy, but he gets no further when Sam (easier just to call him Sam until Tommy comes up with an adequate nickname for the sub-mind) disappears from where he’s hovering over the console to reappear, hovering in the space between the small robot and his human friend.
“I’ve got him Tommy,” he says, gentle and patient like how Blue has been when Tommy was tripping over starting a new language without a starting point; the way Philza is when Tommy’s emotions overwhelm him because he’s in space, so far from anything that has ever been familiar to him.

“Nook’s components just need to cool down in their own time and my conscious is yet to be completely separated from all of his programming. It shouldn’t take too long, but there is a lot I’m working with right now, even with all this new space,” he says, the lights shifting warm and sunflower-yellow; his voice a touch louder than before, like that will do more to convince Tommy then the truth of his words alone. Although, he finds that he already trusts Sam, impart because his crew do, and impart because the AI has saved his life and helped him to save the lives of the very few people who mean anything to him. And, he was the first to explicitly say he counted Tommy as part of the crew, instead of simply a tag-along they randomly saved alongside Blue.

“It’s a delicate undertaking and I want to take every precaution to return Nook to you good as new, if not a little improved. I’ll send him to come find you when he is able to. Prime knows he doesn’t like you leaving his sight.”

Concerns finally settled, Tommy allows himself to sink lower into Technoblade’s arms, who looks intent to keep him there; already having taken a detour from the med-bay and though Philza and Blue are already up the steps and out the door, he hesitates a moment, seeming to deliberate before speaking.
“Sam, the humans still onboard—?”
“Are secure, Technoblade. None of them are yet to wake and I am continuously monitoring their vitals should there be a change in their health or situation,” Sam says, clinical and precise with his words; tone shifting to something more business-like compared to the fondness with which that he addressed Tommy. “Currently I am working on clearing a space aboard the ship to momentarily house them, but for now, every human is secure, including the pilot of the human ship. All weapons aboard have been disarmed and they have been locked out of all systems except for the comms network that is closed so that he can only talk to me and no one else. He isn’t surrendering, and he isn’t giving up, but that is to be expected.”
It’s not the most heartening of briefings, and reminds Tommy of too many meetings back in Phobosyr and Kuiper Sys both, but instead of hunched shoulders and a ducked head, Technoblade nods in response and near whispers a soft, “thank you, Sam,” before taking his leave.
Leaving Tommy to sit in his arms and allow himself to be carried to the med bay.

There’s a joke sitting on his tongue. Something about how his arm is busted instead of his legs, but Tommy is keenly aware that should he open his mouth and say something, then Technoblade might put him down and while Tommy is certainly more than capable of walking, he finds that he doesn’t quite mind being carried. He puts it down to being lazy; habitually lying to himself to make it easier to shove embarrassment and guilt and something squirming in his gut all to one side, focusing on the sounds of Technoblade’s footfalls and his gentle cadence of silence as he follows after Owl and Blue, heading to the medical wing.

Tommy doesn’t come here often, and not just because he’s not often injured, but mostly because he can’t stand it.
The entire lower left wing of the Eagle, or the Erivan—the Ericaite—the Ericitcrantna (fucking stupid alien name) is dedicated to the medical care and recovery of her crew; half reserved in one giant, long-stretching room with temporary beds erected from the wall—eight in total, none of which that look like they could hold Technoblade’s hulking size, although Tommy suspects that there is space for him somewhere or it would be really fucking stupid to have a tanked ship-resident excluded from the med-bay because he was too big to lay on one of their beds. They’re all made out of something like foam, but softer; like mousse or marsh-mellows; something closer to solid than liquid but retaining qualities from both, similar to how the mattress in his bed is although far softer.
Each cot-bed-thing has adjoining glass-screens and a small console near to the foot; one of which lights up when Technoblade gently deposits Tommy on one of the beds, withdrawing his touch and moving around to stand with Philza at the screen where undiscernible text reflects on the glass.

Without Techno’s shadow surrounding him, the lights of the med bay are glaring, bright and vicious. Tommy must’ve hit his head on something at one point, he thinks, glaring up at them for a split second before he’s dropping his gaze, shifting to bring his knees close to his chest, head ducked down as if that would do something to shield himself from the ever-present brightness needling behind his eyes. His chest burns from the position, but it soothes an ache that was crawling up Tommy’s spine, and despite the pain, he can’t bring himself to unfold all his limbs, deliberately keeping his eyes affixed to a point opposite the room from him; tyrian details stark against the smooth white sheen, all clinically clean and painfully foreign.

In this white room.

With its white walls and while tiles and while lights.

The last time he had been in this room was when Tommy and Blue had just been rescued from The Demon; sat similar to how he is now while Blue had been laid on the cot aside him, whistling and purring and dazed in pain while Owl and Boar fussed and hushed and shuffled around him, giving instructions to the medical equipment through touches on the console. Tommy guesses that Sam had been part of that process back then, though he had been unaware as he had been unable to understand anything back then.

Not that that means that Tommy is able to understand anything now where all four of them are talking with one another, quick and fast, and the translator is only a passive thing, and it’s hard to listen to the voice that speaks soft, snipped translations when Tommy focuses on the fast movement of hands and the machines imbedded in the ceiling that he has seen come down; panels sliding back to reveal mechanical equipment that Tommy has no understanding of and a growing fear towards; eyes flicking up to the sealed hatch above him, waiting for Philza to press the appropriate keys and have it descend and slice him open.
This—the knives and needles and not-understanding—is what he had expected aboard The Demon’s ship; back always pressed to the wall when he heard someone outside his enclosure; too many nightmares since wondering how many times he’d been watched unknowingly through the one-way window; observed and monitored like a scientist’s new discovery; the days running forward like a clock counting backwards until patience ran out and Tommy was dragged, kicking and screaming, to a room none too dissimilar to this one—though without the tyrian words and symbols and streaks; without Philza or Technoblade, or Blue’s attempt at a reassuring smile that Tommy doesn’t see, folded in around himself, chest tight and growing tighter. He doesn’t seem to notice it himself, the way his breath is coming in silent and far too shallow; his eyes unseeing as he looks into a past that never came into reality but Tommy can’t see beyond white walls, white floors, white lights and the burning pain of knives slicing flesh and skin; no anaesthesia to tamper with the experimentation of the subject, the tightness of his throat where screams choke him as much as the terror—

The white light grows brighter still as the screens at the end of the cot and the one on his headboard light up around him. There are shapes and symbols—words, maybe numbers, Tommy doesn’t know, he can’t read. Just because he’s got a vocabic translator doesn’t mean that it’s going to transcribe written words for him in a split second, and even now, the translator is hardly able to keep up with what is being said anyway when Sam brings up something that he debates with Philza, and now there are two conversations happening at once. The others keep their voices soft, but the words they speak are as unintelligible as they have always been.
Tommy can’t hear them anyway. Not beyond the overwhelming whiteness and burning pain, the gnawing of growing hunger like wolf’s fangs around his throat and he can feel his hands curling into fists; hear the white noise creeping in; hear his heart begin to race; feel the ache of it beating against already bruised ribs that the dreamons are going to discover broken and they’re going to open him up just to see what is inside; they’re going to see how far they can push him before he starts to break; they’re going to make him bleed and they’re going to make it hurt—

Something touches his arm, just barely, and Tommy reacts without thought. He smacks it away, barely opening up his fist to lash out mindlessly before whatever it is can hurt him. Anger is sharp on his tongue, sharded like glass; a hiss warming his throat; expletives loaded like incendiary rounds sparked and burning, but before they can be spat out, Tommy’s mind catches up to his panic and it’s not dreamons in front of him, but Blue, his hand clutched to his chest, four eyes wide in alarm.

“Sorry,” Tommy stumbles, words catching on a heady inhale, his own hand coming up to scrunch at his shirt, pulling it away from his skin like that is the cause of the tightness and not the sudden, sheer panic that feels like it’s crushing him; mind catching on reality and false memories of The Demon’s ship.
“Sorry,” he says again, although he’s not sure for what entirely: for his over-active imagination that had cause him to freak out; for slapping Blue’s hand away; for scaring him and the others because Philza is watching him with similar shock-concern-uncertainty and it’s hard to discern what Techno is feeling because his features are rarely so expressive and Tommy is apologising again, tightening back up on himself, chin near to his knees but not quite folded all the way down because otherwise it really hurts to breathe, He’s already in enough pain as it is.

“I’m sorry,” he repeats for a third time, eyes flicking between all three of them, hating the silence that he has brought on. “I don’t like… med bays and things,” he explains, glancing around the room, trying not to flinch violently at white walls, white tiles, white lights. “I haven’t ever really had good experiences with them.”
Back on Mars, the last time he was taken to a Medi-care facility, it was a week before he was kicked from the planet; given a new round of nano-bots to help him with launch-nausea and those that were programmed so he wouldn’t get weak on the month-long cruise to the out-lying ice planet; Tommy in attendance with another five-hundred-something orphans as the Ante-Generation to help give Pluto a kickstart where she was the last of the nine planets to be cultivated into a populated planet.
It is safe to say that Tommy’s experiences with human Medi-care wasn’t the most pleasant either, although they weren’t treating him like an animal like The Demon was.

In front of him, Blue shifts; tension draining out of his body; limbs relaxing, eyes not quite half-lidded but returning to kind, comforting and understanding.
Tommy knows he understands. He’s seen Blue barge his way out of his bedroom, ragged of breath, skin deep and electric-black colourings stripes across his arms instead of soft blue; hand clamped over to the non-existent scar on his neck and something whining-whimpering-terrified breaking on his lips as he tracks down Techno or Philza, or sometimes Tommy himself to prove to himself that he was awake, that he was safe, that The Demon was gone.

“We’ll tell you what’s happening at every turn,” he says. “You can tell us to slow down or to stop at any point.”
Tommy nods, his tongue like cotton in his mouth. He wants to tell them that he trusts them—because he does trust them, enough that he’s here, enough that he’s thrown away his own kind for them—but it’s hard to say. It’s hard to make that commitment because giving them his trust means giving them the ability to break it; that they can hurt him; that they have that power over him now and Tommy can’t help but be afraid.

Still, he unfolds himself; right arm moving to brace his left, choosing to look down at the floor instead of at the ceiling hatch that was soon to open up and spit out the terrifying machine.

“Sam will use the—”
“—fir niivosyion wylou”— the translator echoes, not having actually translated, after it suddenly cut out. It makes a weird stuttering noise, like it’s physically stumbling over the words, and then just gives up entirely, leaving Tommy only the words that Philza is using, meaning that there must not be a human equivalent word in its vocabulary but Philza keeps going, not having noticed, so the translator can’t spend an extra few seconds trying to figure it out and instead just continues with its primary job with words it can translate—“to see what’s going on inside—”
The translator has chosen a really bad time to cut out because Tommy has no fucking clue what a nova—navies—niivosyion is and all he can think is the giant machine in the ceiling turning into some kitchen-assembly-hybrid with all of its knives and pincer-grabbers on long tentacle arms that grab hold of him and pin him down while his stomach is cut open, and suddenly Tommy is surrounded by the nightmares and terrifying imaginings of when he thought that The Demon was going to hurt him in some way, except this time it’s his family standing over him, whispering honeyed words and bleeding him dry because they want to see what is inside—

“Tommy?”

Tommy’s chest is tight once more and he’s deathly cold, despite the burning of broken bones beneath his skin; hardly daring to breathe in panic. White noise fills his ears and faintly he feels the burning behind his eyes that tell of tears; Blue hushing him quickly, humming as a hand comes up to push through his fringe, saying it won’t hurt. Tommy is far too deep in his panic to pull away or acknowledge the hand in any way; eyes still fixed to Philza and the concern that he shows too.
“The translator’s not working,” he says, hollow. He’s holding onto the hope that a niivo-whatever isn’t a knife; begging silently that it isn’t invasive because he can’t if it is, he’s barely being able to hold himself back from running—

“Sam, what’s going on?” Technoblade asks, having picked up on Tommy’s panic. Blue’s ministrations are doing all they can to catch his dread where he’s already on edge from the medical wing itself and they haven’t even got out the tools or instruments and though Tommy hated his time back on Mars’ Medi-ward, he’d rather take the boring hours, the forced quarantine, the disgusting food and the boring scans that had his nano-bots relay all necessary information rather than being cut open or injected or—

“Humans don’t have a word for a niivosyion,” Sam explains, having already figured it out, either by watching back a recording of the last minute’s interaction, or maybe even consulting the translator directly, “and considering that he was Xsdí’s prisoner for an indeterminable amount of time, I can infer as that the lack of information and potential bodily harm is causing Tommy minor panic.”
Tommy realises belatedly, that Sam had swapped to Philza’s language, and maybe he probably shouldn’t have heard that last part, but the translator is still idly working in the background.
Technoblade makes a noise somewhere between angry and startled, “Panic? He’s hardly moved since we’ve come in here. Tommy hasn’t even made a sound.”
“It seems Humans have more depth of emotion than we were told. Look at his bio-monitor. Look at his heartrate,” Sam instructed; four pairs of eyes turning to the screen and although Tommy doesn’t know where to look, the other three do: all three of them stiffening slightly even though Tommy isn’t sure how they’re measuring his heartbeat because he’s not holding onto anything, there is nothing on him and his nanobots are dormant so it’s not like they’re transmitting data to Sam or anything of the sort.

Three pairs of eyes turns to him, wide and maybe even a little frightened.
Tommy curls his one good arm around his knees and stares back at them, and tells them again: “I don’t like med bays.”

Liking med-bays or not isn’t the issue though, whether it reminds him of The Demon’s ship or not.
At the end of it all; Tommy’s arm is busted and he needs it looked at, but Blue’s colourings shifter a shader greener each time Tommy makes a note of discomfort, and he’s the only one with small enough hands—Philza not even having hands, but instead clawed feet, which are deadly sharp and vicious—that would be able to feel around the injury so see whether the bone was broken, just bruised or dislocated, and Tommy doubts Blue will be able to help him without throwing up or passing out.
Or both.

Although, that doesn’t end up being an issue when Sam takes over explanations, having combed through the human AIs data storage for human medicine practices, whilst on the side searching for a human word that can closely apply to whatever the fuck a niivosyion is. And it turns out, it’s not even the giant machine in the ceiling. That is an aw’e’arwæn or something or other; there being no human word that matches up to that although Sam’s explanation included the word surgery and promptly stopped when Techno made an abrupt noise.
Probably because Tommy’s heartrate spiked and he was still on the edge of a panic attack.

Taking his cue, Sam left the aw’e’arwæn for a later conversation, going on to explain that a niivosyion was very similar to what humans would call a Magnetic Resonance Imaging machine, or an MRI. Which, confused Tommy.
Because MRIs were fucking ancient pieces of crap that could only show you details on a fraction of the electromagnetic spectrum compared to what nanobots could tell you from within your bodies where they were able to analyse blood, temperature, electrical currents, pain receptors, as well as being able to actively make changes from within the body. Tommy knows very little about the finer details of medical science, having always preferred to working with engine and machinery of star farers and interplanetary ships, and orbital maths, so it’s not like his knowledge is gospel. But what he does know, is that vast technological advancement some hundred years ago is why MRIs are outdated and nanobots are in.

Sam is still talking, explaining to Philza, Techno and Blue the similarities between human and alien medical science, mentioning something about skimming through AI stored knowledge so that he might understand the redundancy in human resources or knowledge, because—

Sam goes silent.
Long enough for the others to raise their heads to the ceiling; Tommy uncurling ever so slightly as he looks up too, (deliberately keeping his eyes off the hatch-panel located directly above him, because even though it doesn’t seem to be necessary for the extent of a few bruises and a busted arm, Tommy is still uncomfortable with the thing looming over his head and he pointedly keeps his gaze away from it), waiting alongside the others.
It isn’t until Technoblade that calls out to him that Sam responds again, apologising, forcing a little bit of laughter that Tommy envisions a flicker of blue to the lights. Sam’s avatar must only be limited to the flight deck, because he hasn’t brought it into the med bay so there isn’t a visual aid that presents emotion through other means beyond his voice and tone, leaving Tommy to fill in the blanks, distracting himself enough with such thoughts that he doesn’t remember to wonder why something has managed to catch the seemingly omniscient AI off guard; too caught up in his imagination to catch the slight shake to his projected voice.

Blue, Philza and Technoblade notice, however.

They’re tense once again, questions burning on their lips, but Sam’s attention is on Tommy; voice strained like he’s trying to act calm so as not to cause panic, although that in itself as Tommy winding his right hand tighter around his left arm; numb to the pain it causes as Sam asks, “may I use the niivosyion to take a quick scan? It’s not quite like an MRI or an X-Ray, but it’s close enough that what you will experience would be the same. I just need to look at something a moment, if you will permit me to.”
It’s reassuring that, despite his injuries and despite that all he and the others are trying to do to help Tommy, Sam nor any of them will cross the invisible line in the invisible sand without Tommy’s permission. Maybe Blue understands better than all of them, having seen Tommy in that too small, too white room; Blue having been a captive of The Demon as much as he had, although not nearly as long.

It warms Tommy, that they ask.
It scares Tommy, that he trusts.

Tommy has never needed an X-Ray, being one of those lucky enough to have been born on Mars that he was given quinquennial revisions with his inner technology and the only bone he’d broken had been one to heal without anything more than an extra bit of coding towards his nanos, but that doesn’t mean he doesn’t know what X-Rays do. So, he waits for Sam or Philza to give him the instruction as where to stand, or perhaps to lay on the cot and not move for however long, except no one says anything after he nods assent, and suddenly the lights in the med-bay are dimming to a pale blue, hardly giving any light but saving the room from complete darkness.

It's only dark for a few seconds before, suddenly, the cot which Tommy had been placed upon suddenly lights up as if it holds a light within it; yellow and warm, but darkening into pink in the places that Tommy’s weight distorts the shape of the weird material.
On one of the screens that had previously displayed text and numbers—all of it still illegible to Tommy—now ripples to display images of himself; layers of human anatomy layered over one another all in the shape that Tommy forms now; shifting when he does to get a better look, and then, shifting by themselves as Blue reaches out and puppeteer’s Tommy’s skeleton into a hologram, making it stand up straight, eyes wide in wonder and confusion as they see more of Tommy, and of Humans, than he ever has before.
“Look, his bones are dense, just like yours,” he says to Technoblade, fingers coming to poke at the hologram while Philza inspects from the other side, muttering something about density and strength that must be related to the molecular structure to make Humans far more durable than their small sizes should allow, and Tommy can’t help but wonder if Philza holds more attributes to an earthen owl more than feathers, wings and clawed feet; that perhaps his bones are hollow to allow him flight too, which is why Tommy’s own bone density is intriguing to him.

Their fascination, however, comes to an abrupt stand still when he catches sight of the holographic anomaly of Tommy’s left shoulder.
“That doesn’t look right,” Blue says, poking at the screen, pointing out the injury to Techno and Philza both. “That’s because it’s dislocated,” Tommy says with a sigh of relief, thanking whatever entity saved him from a broken shoulder and months of only have one arm instead of just a few weeks of limited movement and an arm strapped to his chest. “Look at it compared to my other one,” he says, pointing, highlighting the obvious dislocation compared. Then, noticing more damage, he uncurls a little more from his tucked-up ball shape, hiding his injuries beneath twisted limbs, motioning with his good hand towards the two misaligned ribs on his left side. “Those bones though, are broken.”
Which makes sense really, because Tommy got jerked around like a rag doll, so it would surprise him more if he hadn’t really done anything too damaging.
Although by Blue’s apparent horror, breaking two ribs is horrifying enough.

“The ribs are fine, they’ll heal by themselves,” Tommy rushes to explain, even though Sam probably already knows that and could’ve filled the others in for him where he has access to human records. “It’s my arm that is the problem,” and he can’t help but wince at the prospect of having his arm reset without anything to curb the pain, because eating alien food was risky enough and Tommy doesn’t really want to tempt fate any further and accidentally end up killing himself with space-anaesthesia.

“It’s broken,” Blue makes to repeat, but Tommy cuts him off, right bracing his left. “No, not broken. Dislocated. Which means that it just sort of, got knocked out of place and it just needs putting back.” In layman’s terms, so to speak, and that’s not mentioning the pain Tommy is in—would be in more if residual adrenaline wasn’t holding it back along with his own high pain-threshold—and the fact that he hasn’t actually ever dislocated his shoulder before, nor was it in his mandatory Medi-Care lessons that he was forced to take before he was shipped off to the stars as cheap labour; a prisoner of an ice planet yet to be tamed by mankind.

“If Sam has the human AI’s knowledge he should know how to do it, but if not I do have the rough idea how to fix it,” Tommy says, eyes flicking to the ceiling, because Sam can’t manifest his avatar in the med-bay.

Tommy waits for the space of a heartbeat and another, wondering if Sam’s capabilities make him a little slow in response because he has so much to monitor, but by the mirroring furrow of Techno and Blue’s brows opposite, perhaps that’s not the case. Until Philza grows too worried he lifts his voice in question.

“Tommy has micro-robotic artefacts in his bloodstream.”

Sam sounds harrowed when he speaks, despite him being artificial; an imitation of sentient beings rather than sentient himself.
The other three looked shocked; Tommy’s eyes widening in turn and a sudden panic-pain-terror of The Demon doing something without his realising. Sam lights up the screens with displays and holographs of his likeness, showing a magnified view to reveal hordes of nanobots in dormancy; septi-tentacles looped with one another to form a lattice of the biotics where they had anchored themselves into flesh or bone as to not cause harm to the natural cycle of the body that still functioned around it.
Tommy sagged in sudden relief, forgetting about his arm and chest for a moment too long that the weight of himself draws an ache and he has to breathe shallow. He worries that hiss of breath, the ache, the wince will draw Philza to mother and Blue to fuss, but the pair of them are staring single-minded at the display. Technoblade is staring too.

“They don’t look like Xsdí’s work,” he says. Tommy doesn’t know who—or what—Xsdí is, but he’s not as worried as he had been and waves an idle hand. “I got them at birth. They’re from my world.”
But that doesn’t do anything to reassure the others either.

“But why?” Technoblade asks sudden; angry, if not afraid. Tommy can’t help the way he curls his hand into the cot beneath him; golden light twisting into peach and deep blushing pink. “Starchild shouldn’t have—he doesn’t—He’s not a Warrior, he’s not a….” Technoblade stumbles on emotion and words both, head snapping to Tommy that sees him curl his hands tighter; fingers stabbing into the foam-mousse-softens with such force that the colour shifts to red; something too much like anger on his tongue, though none of it is directed at Tommy per se.

“You’re not, are you?”
“Not what?”
“Nikerym—a warrior, a protector,” Technoblade says after the translator has caught up, more than a little confused and perhaps even scared, like he doesn’t want to think of Tommy as a soldier like Schlatt and the others.
“You mean like part of the Nova Corps?” he asks, needing just a little more clarification, like there’s the chance he’s not quite matching up his meanings to Techno’s. Though it’s not like Tommy would call them warriors. Protectors, maybe not so much, though it was part of the original reason why the Nova Corps was originally created even if alien life hadn’t been discovered back when the militaries melded into one force and began to expand throughout their own solar system.
For Niki, yes, he thinks, casting his mind back to her care and compassion; a stab of guilt piercing him when he feels her dead weight in his arms; another much sharper and much deadlier when he thinks of Alyssa stood beside her in the hub, weapon slung, mask removed.

“The Humans are Nova Corps soldiers,” Tommy says instead, pushing the thoughts from his mind. “I’m not one of them.”
To what he is implying does not need to be specified.

But amidst whatever panic the detection of the nanobots have brought upon the other three, they don’t take notice of his declaration, Technoblade pushing; “if you’re not a Warrior, then why do you have micro-robotics in your body?” He says it like it’s something abhorrent; like the robots were placed there in some way to hurt him, or to control him, and while yes, criminals have been tracked, located and apprehended with the assistance of their nanobotic implants in the past, Tommy knows that they’re not controlling him like some factions believe, otherwise he wouldn’t have gotten so far in his ship-thieving career.
He wouldn’t have had that stupid space-jump accident, and he wouldn’t have been captured by The Demon neither.

“I was born on Mars,” Tommy begins, before realising that the others might not understand the implications of being born on one planet over another within the human-occupied Solar System. “Earth is our core planet, it’s where Humans originated from millennia ago,” and that at least is familiar because despite the shock-confusion-fear-apprehension written so clearly across Blue’s face and bristled in Owl’s feathers, they both nod in synchronisation; the words matching up to prior knowledge that they’ve got from wherever—Tommy makes a mental note to ask about that when it’s his turn to ask questions.

“Mars is the second richest planet in our solar system, despite being as close to Earth as Mercury—”
“I thought you had Moon,” Philza interjects; Tommy cocking his head with the glimmer of a smile, because the Moon is a moon, not a planet, and it’s weird to hear it addressed without its determiner. “The Moon is technically a planetoid. It’s not considered a planet all by itself, but instead it’s a dedicated nature sanctuary,” Tommy explains, maybe getting a little side-tracked when he explains that it’s an expensive place to visit because they only allow a million people each quarter, so technically the Moon is richer than Mars.
“But Mars is populated and rich enough that every citizen born on Mars, just like Earth, gets nanobotic enhancements at birth.”
That’s a shock to hear apparently, with the way that all three of the others withdraw back. Tommy continues.

“On Mercury it’s the same, but on the other planets, like Jupiter’s moons, Saturn and the outlying planets, they don’t get their nanobots until they’re about fifty, although situations vary on what your job is, family status, the overall faction progress and dependency,” Tommy says, throwing in parts of a conversation he overheard when he brought a RAYNEs Long-Haul Space Cruiser in to fence off to another, having been quietly making a transaction with his go-to buyer when he’d overheard someone complaining that he was still waiting for his summons, though grateful that his wife had already had hers sorted out after needing surgery a few years prior.
“It’s different if you join the Nova Corps or their enrolment,” Tommy continues. “That usually happens around the age of ten—in earth years—before puberty properly starts to kick in, so those not born on the Big Three can get their nanos when they join ranks and get a helping hand with growth spurts and all that.”

Luckily for Tommy, his height is all genetic.
He’s read his file, and he knows that it wasn’t the result of the mistake, nor was it added into his gene pool—the blond hair, the blue eyes, his sex, that was all hand-picked. The boosted immune system is given to every manufactured test-tube baby, as is the mutation of denser bones and the genome that holds onto the ability for faster reproduction of cell growth and replication of all cell types, no longer just stem cells.

Tommy’s genetic mishap was a miscalculation: a fault to genetics is that asking for one thing can bring along a plethora of consequences and that just so happens to include Tommy’s body shape to fit that of “perfect baby regulations” and the fact that he can consume twice as much food as the uniform human being and his body’s metabolism devours it like it’s never been fed before.
That meant growing up he was long, lanky and disproportionate. That meant in school he was the kid bullied on the playground; the one that defended himself but couldn’t put up much of a fight by those around him that were brawn and bullish. They excelled where his would-be-parents wanted while Tommy was far more invested in computers, engineering, mathematics and the science behind jumping through wormholes.

And while Tommy was looking at programmes in engineering and interstellar travel, and anything that would prove his worth to parents that thought he was worthless, all those bullies started getting excited for their Nova Corps applications and the chance to explore space and seek out new planets and maybe, maybe even discover the truth if aliens exist or not.
Well looks who’s laughing now.

Not Blue, not Technoblade and not Philza for sure.
All three of them are looking at Tommy like he’s told them something horrific; like Humans are barbaric and eat their young or that they add milk before cereal.

“My nanobots are in stasis,” Tommy continues, a little less blasé now that he feels like he’s suddenly manoeuvring a minefield, voice a little softer, head bowing to look down at his feet. There’s a lick of anger—habitual, defensive—and another because he’s angry and he doesn’t want to be, shouldn’t have to be. So what that he didn’t earn nanobotic upgrades because of anything he did, rather where he was born but that wasn’t anything he had any control over, and neither was it that he got shipped off-world to Pluto. It’s not his fault either, that the nanobots in his system are out of date and dormant when they could be numbing the pain he feels right now.

Actually….

“Wait, do you think that you’d be able to reboot them?” he asks, lifting his head once more, pushing past the mix of unnerve and amazement. “I should’ve had them updated every five years, but I was shipped to Pluto after I was ten so they’re only a year out of date and now they’re dormant.”
Having his nanobots reawakened would be a major bonus for him; Tommy probably only having to wait about a week for both his shoulder and ribs to heal rather than the expected eight it would take otherwise if he had the added mechanics; the whole time his biotics curbing his pain receptors so that he wouldn’t be constantly aching as well as a little bit of natural anaesthesia converted to help dull the process of his arm slipping back into place and rapid cell replication to help wherever else he might be injured; the adrenaline and pain of broken ribs and a dislocated shoulder masking it for now.

The request, if possible, makes the other three even more uncomfortable. Technoblade straightens until his spine is ram-rod; Philza’s feathers shifting between bristled and smooth while Blue’s ears flick and his sail flares and falls in an indeterminable pattern.
To Tommy it’s normal. It’s a fact: it’s humanity’s progressive amalgamation of biology and technology coexisting as one; a stop-gap between the millennia of mutated genes and science that can do it for them; it’s denser bones and more effective lungs; it’s replicative muscle cells and aesthetic-choices; it’s a built-in defibrillator and extra oxygen supply from the blood; it’s a science lab in their bloodstream as long as Tommy has the elements to give and his nanobots the know-how to create what is needed.

Sam doesn’t have the know-how though, to re-establish Tommy’s nanobots and tells him as much, apologetic despite the fact that there is a note of relief in his voice as he does. Tommy doesn’t buy it. His anger returns—habitual; defensive—because it’s not Sam’s decision, not Philza’s, not Technoblade’s nor Blue’s decision whether he’s allowed nanobots or not and he calls Sam out on his bullshit, because he’s a genius AI built by who-fucking-knows which alien civilisation and he conveniently forgot that he just assimilated the knowledge of a human AI that has that information.
“It doesn’t matter that you’re a sub-mind,” he says, cutting Sam’s disembodied voice off. “You don’t need the original Sam’s extensive knowledge, the AI on the human’s ship will have everything you need, or you can just request the information from the nanobots in the humans already aboard,” Tommy says, dismissing the thought of human prisoners trapped where Tommy himself locked them away as he reminds the other three; glare and broiling frustration levelled at some detail in the ceiling because Sam still hasn’t manifested his avatar and Tommy doesn’t have somewhere specific to focus his growing irritation.

As if reading his mind, Sam materialises himself in his avatar; hovering above the opposite medical cot where Blue had lain once, bloodied and barely conscious. He looks a little more real in this lighting; the edges of his apparition more defined, only four arms this time while the other pair float around him in shattered shards of data, light and information like a splintered halo; intelligence and particulars confined into pixelations and constellations of Sam’s own design.
“Tommy,” he begins, tone too apologetic and cautionary for agreement.

Tommy pushes himself off the cot, standing on unsteady feet to face the other. They’re near enough the same height like this, even if Sam is two-feet-tall and floating off the ground, but Tommy has been fighting all his life, proving his worth, scrapping and fighting for a place to stand on his own two feet and that’s left him here, on an alien ship lightyears from anything familiar but close enough to something worth fighting for that he can reach out and touch it.
“You have to have that information Sam,” he says, his tone too much like pleading, but Tommy’s holding himself up and holding himself together; he can’t be blamed for when things slip through the cracks. “If the AI didn’t have it, then the information should be logged somewhere, maybe in their medical bay.”

The silence that follows is fragile; the echo of Tommy’s words all that stands between them and the ever-present reminder that Sam is an AI that only needed a fraction of a second to programme and implement a hyperdrive acceleration sequence alongside fending off an attack, of which he was already at a disadvantage against, with all his own retaliation targeted like shooting bullets through the eye of a needle.
It shouldn’t take as long as it is to deliberate whether or not Sam should reawaken Tommy’s nanorobotics; it shouldn’t take this long for Sam to come to the conclusion that it’s not his decision to make, and Tommy feels a surge of ice electrify every nerve in his body with the fear that, despite Sam’s seemingly-endless capabilities, maybe this isn’t something that he is capable of.

Until: “I can’t make any promises.”

Tommy’s heart almost gives up entirely from sudden relief.

“I haven’t had the time to go through all of the AIs information while I am also taking care of other problems that they created in their attempt to take over the Ericitcrantna, but I will look for the information you want,” Sam continues, voice strange in a way that Tommy can’t decipher his emotions, but he doesn’t care about specifics because Sam is going to at least try.
“Thank you, thank you Sam,” he says emphatic and genuine; his right hand coming up to massage his chest where his heart aches, but it’s a good ache—a warm ache—and Tommy revels in it.

Sam’s avatar blinks out and with its disappearance, Tommy’s exhaustion sweeps back in.
He’s near knocked off his feet, and probably would’ve crumpled if Philza wasn’t as attentive as he is, stepping in to brace Tommy with his wings before his knees can give out and he can increase the number of injuries he’s sustained. “C’mon,” he says, soft and twittering, “let’s get you back onto the bed.”
Tommy goes willingly, and lets the weird marsh-mellow mattress adjust to his weight; the light of the niivosyion switched off while Sam was preoccupied with sorting through compiled information; the silence not so tense nor strained, but neither does it stay as Blue shuffles his feet, eyes flicking between Tommy’s holographic X-Ray whatever’s and the boy himself.

“What do… what do your nanobots do?” he asks, saying the word like it leaves a bad taste in his mouth; ears pressed flat to his head, sail equally flattened when Tommy turns his head; cocking it in intrigue because Blue speaks like there’s something shameful, something embarrassed in not knowing. As if it’s something embarrassing for Humans’ to have progressed their biological technology before their space-faring systems, or have taken a different route aside from bionic bodies and the like.

“They’re like super white blood cells or something I’m not too sure,” Tommy begins, nearly shrugging before he remembers he’s got one arm out of commission; having grown used to the dull ache but knowing that jolting or trying to move it in any way will send pins-and-needle pain coursing through his arm. He suspects there is something with the bed that he’s sat on, somehow, someway curbing the pain. “I’ve always been much more into engineerical and mathematics than medical science—hence why I got shipped to a backwater planet to try and progress her colonisation rather than Neptune or Saturn,” he says, far too blasé for the taste it leaves in his mouth, but that’s old news and he’s got more pressing matters to be concerned with.

“We have nanobots because human cells haven’t mutated enough for us to be able to do it ourselves. They replace any dying cells before the body can run low on them and “age” if that makes sense. Then that programming kicks in half-way through puberty so when our systems our suddenly shocked with a fuckload of hormones and all that shit, the nanobots help our bodies to regulate the process efficiently so that we grow more. It makes us bulkier, helps keep our bones dense and makes us stronger.”
Tommy gives a self-loathing laugh. “Even with my genetics I’m statistically taller than the Earthen stereotypical type, just like Mercians, because Mars’s gravity is 38% but because I got shipped off to Pluto before my fifteenth and appointed upgrade date means that I am tall enough, but without the added nanobots to help have balanced that with muscle mass.”
There’s also the fact that Tommy ran away from Kuiper Sys; the school-cum-organisation-cum-prison on the ice-planet he’d been transferred to from Phobosyr, meaning that daily meals weren’t a staple for him, and he devolved into a petty criminal to get by until he learnt enough that that best way to accumulate credits and earn a name for himself.
A fast metabolism on top of that did him no favours.

“Because of the transfer, I didn’t get the necessary intervention to increase muscle growth to make me proportionate,” Tommy shrugs, (half-shrugs, busted shoulder and all) but apparently that’s the wrong kind of thing to be blasé about; Technoblade’s eyes wide in shock; Blue’s ears shooting up and flattening against his head all over again. Tommy’s a little too tired to play into theatrics but at least he can recognise their surprise rather than abhorrence as Blue nearly chokes on a lung as he says, “you manipulate your growth?”
“You mean you wouldn’t?”

Because Sam has demonstrated that they have progressive medical technology with the niivosyion; they have access to amazing technology considering this ship and all its mechanisms aboard; all its intricacies and wonders; Nook, the kitchen-assembly-line and all those that keep the ship running so surely they have something dedicated to their Medi-science. Surely it’s more of a surprise that that aliens with all this technology at their fingertips aren’t using it to better their biological building blocks, but by the reactions that Tommy is being given, he isn’t too sure.
“You’ve got crazy technological advancements and you don’t better yourselves?”

Philza noticeably stiffens at the question.
“We have reasons why we don’t,” he says, voice strained. Unmelodical.

The silence is tense once more, with no press for conversation or attempt to hold anything between them. It’s not uncomfortable per se, but Tommy would rather a distraction from the ache of stretching skin and lungs that he forcibly breathes shallow; an effort to fight against the natural tempo of breathing so that his lungs don’t expand his chest at all.
He's about to break the silence himself—to take the opportunity to ask one of the thousand questions that have been churning around in his mind since the moment he was brought aboard the Eagle—when the lights change from white to having a touch of green within them and Sam materialises his avatar back in the room; this time hovering in mid-air above the foot of the cot that Tommy is sitting on, his version of legs folded beneath him in simulacra as to how Tommy would often sit cross-legged in the sunken lounge, lights warm, all arms fitting into place.

Tommy sits up straighter, ignoring the twinge in chest and arm at the sudden movement, and waits for Sam’s verdict.
He is more than a little desperate for him to reboot his nanobots; it would be nice if Tommy could finish puberty before his natural cycle was over: to fill out a little and put on some muscle so that he’s not as weak and feeble as he feels and looks, especially now considering that he’s in deep space with aliens that are far stronger, faster and smarter than he is. He might’ve held his own on a whim against The Demon, but that was hysterical strength and never a guarantee whereas nanobots would react to his adrenaline and fear and he’d have a better chance at fighting back.
At better chance to defend his new-found family if they ever came in harm’s way again.

Before Sam gets a chance, it’s Technoblade who is speaking; asking “are they important?”
Are they necessary, goes unspoken; his discomfort like a taste on Tommy’s tongue and it sharpens it into frustrated annoyance. Just because the others don’t like the idea, just because they’re against the idea of biology and technology combined to better Tommy’s circumstance, it doesn’t mean that he should be also and it doesn’t mean that they should stop him.
It’s not their decision to make, but Tommy recognises that Sam, while intelligent and sentient, takes his orders from Philza and Technoblade both. It is them who Tommy has to convince.

“Nanobots keep me healthy,” Tommy says, curbing the sharpness of his words because annoyed or not, it’s not fair the other three don’t understand and it’s not fair to take it out on them. He sighs deeply, and instantly regrets it as the movement allows his ribs to shift; a hand coming up to steady them with a wince that is reflected on the three opposite him. Even Sam’s avatar flickers with subdued distress. “Out here, in space, there are a thousand new things that could make me sick or ill or get me injured. It’s best that I have every advantage I can and nanobots are that advantage.”
He gestures to his arms and ribs, looking Technoblade in the eye and holding his gaze. “Like my arm. I’m going to have to set it one way or another and the nanobots will increase the rate of healing as well as to help me bypass my pain receptors. That doesn’t mean I won’t feel it, but think of it like getting hit with a ball as opposed to a car.”

Okay, maybe that’s a bad analogy, it’s not like the aliens would know what a car is.
Or, maybe they do; the translator catching up (fucking thing, why can’t communication be instantaneous instead of a stupid three-second-delay) and the three of the shifting from fear to curiosity.

“Your nanobots are that powerful?” Philza asks, his voice wary but inquisitive.
“From what I remember, yeah,” Tommy admits. He had been fascinated as a child, each time he skinned his knees; felt the sting of pain for a split second before settling on the ground to watch as his then-working nanobots regrew skin and replaces the speck of spilt blood in front of his eyes. “Without them it’s going to take my arm a month to heal. My ribs,” he says, gesturing, “can take up to eight weeks.”

Blue’s ears aren’t plastered to his head anymore. “You’ve dislocated a shoulder before?”
“No, but I did break my arm when I was a kid,” Tommy says, omitting the fact that it got broke in a schoolyard fight that went too far. “Broken arms can take months to heal naturally but I had nanobots back then and with a brace, the arm was fixed in a week.” The kid that broke Tommy’s arm got a slap on the wrist punishment, but Tommy’s blood was swimming with nanobot-administered anaesthesia and he hardly felt his knuckled cracking when he’d broken the kid’s nose in retaliation.
At least the bullies stopped messing with him after that.

It is clear to Tommy that that others are still uncomfortable by this new revelation, but none of them order Sam to stop as he expresses his own unease. For an artificial being, Sam is remarkably expressive with his emotions, surprising Tommy again and again; pleasantly so when he begins the rundown of his analysis. He explains that most of Tommy’s nanobots are in what is logged as a systematic-dormancy. which means they’ve grouped up and imbedded themselves into pockets of flesh and bone so as not to cause blockages in his bloodstream.
It's fascinating for Tommy, if not a little redundant because it’s not like he will have control over his nanotech once it’s activated; although once it’s all done he’ll ask Sam for some sort of log transcribed in earthen so that he can read up on his body’s condition just like the doctors and mechanics did back on Mars, and from there he can ask Sam to make adjustments to the nanobot’s programming based on what he sees and go from there. Maybe he might even get Sam to set it up so he can make adjustments himself, especially if the AI is so adverse to Tommy having such int the first place.

It’s not really all that invasive for Sam to reboot the tech.
The niivosyion flicks on again so Sam can use it to specifically locate a large group of nanotech somewhere redundant and hopefully away from nerve endings. He explains that he’ll wake them with commands transferred with a surge of electricity—nothing too dangerous, and nothing that should hurt Tommy any more than a scratch of a nail—finding a pocket of a few thousand nanobots all dormant in Tommy’s left shin, having latched onto the underside of his tibia.
Sam explains that he’ll wake the bots and reprogramme half of them with information to wake other nanobots around the body and given the updated programming while the other half is instructed to follow the pain receptors in Tommy’s body—the same programming that would allow them to identify and locate medical damages and fix them. He doesn’t know how long it will take, reminding Tommy that the count of bots he has within him averages out at about seven-hundred-billion, so the recuperation of his arm and chest might not take as quick as he is expecting. Not to mention, he was ten the last time that he had nanobots; his size and height should’ve been accounted for at fifteen and he should’ve been given more to account for growth, but Tommy’s not about to complain when he’s getting his nanobots back again.

To Tommy’s displeasure, Sam unfolds the aw’e’arwæn because he needs something to produce a controlled electric shock.
It’s an ugly too-big, disgusting contraption that Tommy would rather stays far the fuck away from him, and he draws back, trapped by too-shallow lungs and the marsh-mellow cot that sinks beneath him like it’s keeping him here. Blue whistles encouragement in that no-word, no-real-understanding way they had “talked” over the past four months and Tommy is embarrassed just how much it calms him. He doesn’t untense as a long probe descends; Tommy eagle-eyed and still as stone as he watches it slip down into his vision and hover millimetres below his knee, touching his clothes and giving a sharp, stinging electric shock that lasts less than half a second but makes Tommy flinch violently regardless.

Philza makes a worried chirp at the way he clamps his teeth over his bottom lip; skin bloodless from the severity of it, but the pain is temporary when a different sensation surges through Tommy’s body like electricity all its own; familiar and reassuring. It’s not the movement of the nanorobotics he can feel released into his bloodstream, but the sudden surge of adrenaline that is their sub-setting as they revivify; a systematic process that effects the body and gets the heart pumping rapidly to help blood flow and distribute the nanobots more effectively around his body despite their reduced number.
It takes a moment—along moment—but Tommy starts to feel it in the way that he doesn’t hurt so much anymore; the nanobots far more powerful than he remembers because even as a child his broken arm had ached and ached for hours while his bionic enhancements had set to work fixing tissue, marrow and nerves.

It's a question and a relief all wrapped up in one and it doesn’t take long until Tommy is sinking down into a slump, giggling slightly when, instead of pain, he feels a sort of cushy-numbness and something warm and un-feelable swirling over his still-dislocated arm. “Will the nanobots fix that?” Blue asks, bringing attention back to it with a concerned pointed finger. Tommy hums amusement. “Nope,” he says, popping the p; adrenaline and his returned-nanorobotics causing his body to release a surge of opioid neuropeptides, along with their own home-concocted nitrous oxide—nanos having taken nitrogen from his lungs and other cell supplies to combine it with oxygen—making him a little loopy and a little out of it.
It’s a learning curve for himself, Sam and the bionics that are flooding through Tommy’s system, as much as it is for the other three that watch surprised and intrigued; Blue coming closer as the surge of endorphins run their course while more nanobots combat the risk of their host being out of his mind and pull back on the chemical imbalance enough that after a few more moments, Tommy is blinking back the sudden drunk stupor into three amused expressions.
He grins back at them.

“How do we fix your arm?” Philza asks, and there are feathers in Tommy’s hair and another sliding across his cheek. He leans into it without apology. “I think you have to yank on it, or just knock it back into place.” And yep, he’s still a little uncoherent because that could’ve come out with a little more explanation and in a way that doesn’t have the three’s amusement twist into something incredulous.
“Knock it?” Techno asks. “It’s a ball-joint,” Tommy explains, as if they didn’t have an X-Ray of his skeleton floating two-feet over on a weird hologram. “It’s just as case of lining the bone up with the socket and applying a little pressure. The ligaments will pull it back into place.”

Sam, of course, hasn’t just been researching human nanobotic applications, he’s been revising the human AIs medical code and with Tommy slowly coming back around, he talks Technoblade through the procedure; the only one strong enough—both physically and mentally—while Tommy’s head is tipped forward against Blue’s chest. His nose is at the juncture of his throat, chin tickled by his weird robe-like clothes, all earthen tones and soft-weird-alien material and it’s a nice distraction while the noises of the others float above his head.
With a grasping hand, Tommy reaches up to his collar and tugs at the thing that should somehow connect to his head, pulling it away because he can already hear the nerves in his family’s voice as they prepare; he selfishly doesn’t want to understand the words they’re saying.

“Tommy? You ready?” Sam asks, because he is an AI, he doesn’t need a translator to speak to Tommy when he holds that information inside his processors. “I’m ready,” Tommy says, burying his face deeper into Blue’s chest, sinking into the comfort as a blue hand comes up to cradle the back of his head, keeping his face turned away, words rising up—

Technoblade takes Tommy’s arm in two hands with all the delicacy of a mother holding her new born. Tommy’s breath stutters in his lungs, everything hesitating for a moment but Tommy murmurs for them to continue.
It’s just Technoblade, it’s just Techno, he’s not hurting me deliberately, it’s not his fault, it’s none of their faults, he doesn’t want to hurt me, Tommy tells himself, over and over, controlling his breathing, curling his right hand into Blue’s garb and simply holding himself there. He can feel feathers on his skin, feel something cold on his cheek before it disappears against Blue; the sound of their voices washing over him just as Technoblade pushes on Tommy’s arm at the angle Sam instructs him too.

A low groan, scared, unsure and terrifyingly trusting warms Tommy’s throat for the space of two heartbeats before there’s a loud, jolting POP! and his shoulder is back in its socket.
There is pain lingering, but only briefly before the nanobots react to the sudden surge of pain and firing receptors in Tommy’s shoulder and upper back; Philza responding too fussing as Tommy’s hiss of pain dissolves into laughter all muffled by Blue’s chest, who still hasn’t relinquished his touch. He’s whispering words over and over; soft little phrases that float like flower petals over Tommy’s skin and even though Tommy can’t understand he is comforted.

He doesn’t move until he is certain that his arm is entirely numb, giving his shoulder a tentative roll and finding nothing but a little stiffness.
“It needs to be braced,” he says, because as much as Tommy hates to be held down or trapped even he knows the stupidity of not letting an injury rest for a day or two; leaning back to give Blue access to reattach the translator piece to his collar while Philza and Technoblade work to remove Tommy’s arm from his clothes so that they can brace it with a weird gel-like cast; all intricate lattice patterns that unfold and curl and morph to the shape of his arm before solidifying into something harder than concrete, yet remaining smooth and almost soft to touch.

“And it will be healed within a week?” Philza asks, understood now that Tommy can hear the translator once more.
Tommy can’t help but laugh, exhilarated that there’s no ache in his chest when he does. “At this rate, I should be as good as new by tomorrow.”

This time, Tommy doesn’t recognise the emotions that flit across the others’ faces.
His own good mood waivers uncertainly, and internally he curses, because he’s being too much, they’re not used to him, they’re not used to understanding him—Tommy’s panic surging up where pain has fizzled out, breath quickening before Philza catches his panic, slipping a sturdy feather beneath his chin, more slipping over his cheek like a hand cradling his face.
“You’re certainly full of surprises, Starchild,” he says, heart-achingly fond; Tommy looking up at him, up at all of them and their bright smiles. Even Sam’s light shines warmer.

“I’m okay now,” Tommy beams.
And he means it.