Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

One hundred cycles.

. . .

Serafin walks heavily into your room. It smells like you, and the scent of the compound. In the left corner of the room lies a window, overlooking the rest of Darkside. A beautiful station that you'd called your home many times by now. There is a bouquet of flowers on a table, sent from Aki. This room isn't zero-G like a lot of the station so it can actually look nice.

In the other side of the room, there is a cot with a dark blue blanket on it, where you lay strapped on top by the thighs and waist. Serafin always makes sure the straps aren't too tight. Even if you're asleep. Sleeping, drifting, dreaming, the same way you have been for many cycles now.

One hundred cycles, in fact. The number is more daunting than it seems. A hundred cycles can fly by but there's something about the three digits that makes it feel different.

Serafin sighs, wringing his hands idly as he struggles to concentrate his thoughts. He sits at your bedside, your formerly reserved but friendly body now seemingly lifeless and void of your warm presence. Unmoving, unfeeling.

He stares at your face, his eyes roaming over your synthetic features. If anything, your face looks the most intact, save for the slight chips along the plate of your jaw, from one of your contracts before you lost your memory the first time. He could see the disarray the rest of your body was in. Missing plating, exposing the sea of wiring and scrap components underneath. Along your collarbone was a piece of scrap metal he remembered helping you put in after a contract gone wrong. It had begun to rust. There is a dent in your shoulder he hadn't noticed until now, and he can see the remains of a stab wound along your side, telling the story of your narrow escape from Darkside once before. He feels a natural sense of guilt and sympathy as he sees how damaged your frame still is, and right now the only damage he can see is on your upper half. He knows there must me more on your legs. Your usual jacket was hung up on the seat he was sitting in, you never wore an upper garment on Darkside because it was too hot for your internal systems. Even Serafin only wears a light shirt as he walks around these days, but he remembers when it was just the two of you together and he felt too lazy to even put a shirt on. It wasn't an awkward thing to simply exist that way, as that was how close you'd become.

When it was just the two of you.

It was just the two of you now, in the small and dimly lit room on the starward edge of Darkside. The new dwellings your crew had been established a while ago after deciding it would be best to partially settle in the warm station. The Rig, the ship that had become everyone's humble home over the last several hundred cycles, was docked not far from here. She still went out for the occasional contract and travelling, but without you, her captain, something wasn't the same. For now, this quaint little compound was a part of everyone's home. Serafin and a few others still preferred to sleep in the Rig, and likewise some stayed here.

Your room was dark and cozy, not quite preferable to Serafin but he knew this was the way you liked it.

He always remembers the first time you told him that you liked the dark, that you liked the cramped little bunks Laine had given you both despite the otherwise cruel nature of his assignments and demands. At first he thought you were lying, to yourself or to him, but he quickly realized it was genuine. Even when you were being manipulated for profit, treated like an inhuman puppet or toy for Laine's benefit, you found quiet comforts in something as simple as a shitty, run down bunk. That was who you were.

He looks back to you after glancing around the small room for another moment. Your belongings were decorated amongst the odd shelves or surfaces and his eyes drift to the small rig model you'd become quite fond of after a particular contract. Your personality still showed in the room when it felt like you weren't even there. The number one hundred stays at the forefront of his mind.

It's officially been one hundred cycles since you were rebooted, for the second time. One hundred cycles since you and Serafin had gotten into what was one of the biggest arguments of your entire friendship.

Thinking about it hurts him. He forces himself not to dwell on the conversation or the cycles leading up to it too much, but he couldn't help it. Even when he only thought about it for a moment, the simplified version of events remained glued to his mind:

You were too stubborn, too selfless, and too fearful, to willingly let yourself be rebooted. He mistakenly let you go on with your decay for too long and almost ceased to function entirely, and when he finally decided you needed him to subject you to it rather than yourself, he pulled you from your bunk and practically dragged you to Bliss.

You fought against him as hard as you could but you were so weak you hardly deterred him at all. Heart-wrenching sobs of emotion and dread poured from your mouth like he'd never seen before. Ever.

You were scared to die, or lose your memory, you were afraid to lose Serafin, Flint, Bliss, Juni, Yu-Jin, Nia. Your crew. You were scared to leave behind the people who you thought needed you, even if it meant your ultimate destruction anyway. You kept putting it off, waiting one more cycle at a time until you could hardly think straight.

What you said to him still makes his chest hurt whenever he thinks about it but even now he knows he had to do it. He just... always thought the day you finally opened up to him emotionally again, after your memory loss, would be more blithe or relieved. Instead it had felt like a blade cut through his chest.

...But it had to be done.

This had to be done.

Bliss said the final reboot would be quick. They wouldn't let him watch the reboot as much as he tried to persuade them, but he caught a brief glimpse of you and Flint joining hands as the reboot started, when you finally conceded to the fact that this was happening. He had always held a certain facet of jealousy towards Flint's connection to you. Being Sleepers unified you, no matter how strong his bond with you was. the two of you understood each other in ways that he would never be able to. He knew it was selfish and ignorant to think that way, but he did nonetheless.

When Flint woke up first, Serafin couldn't help but let the dread creep in. It felt too familiar to the way things had gone after Laine, the way you remained incapacitated for several cycles longer, in a much more critical condition. Bliss's reassurances hardly helped.

After the first five cycles, he felt even worse. he stayed close by to you and waited for any sign that you would wake up but nothing ever came.

...

After fifteen cycles, it was obvious something was wrong. Flint had just begun to fully recover from the numerous effects of the reboot. You, however, were still lifeless. Without the telltale rise and fall of a breathing chest, because you had no lungs, it looked a lot less like you were sleeping and a lot more like you were dead. It felt like the corpse of his dear friend was in the room.

...

After twenty cycles, a visit to Jean-Mi in Flotsam was in order. He once again rounded your emulated mind into the prime ship-mind from cycles before, though that alone may carry a permanent cost. He uncertainly concluded that your mind was not destroyed, supposedly, but there was seemingly a deep disconnect between your mind and your frame. As far as anyone could tell, there was no telling whether your mind would be able to root its way back into your frame, and reclaim your manmade body.

Serafin recalls Jean-Mi's explanation, though even he didn't have an exact sense of what might be happening to you. Your frame was too different, you were changed, but he tried to explain it the best he could. The words ring clear in Serafin's mind,

"What you have to realize is that a sleeper is different from a human in one vital way, the separation between their bodies and minds is much more treacherous. A human body and a human mind work in tandem, constantly affecting one another and relying on each other to function subconsciously. The human spirit, united by both parts, remains intact on its own." He remembers the slightly sorrowful and earnest expression on his aged face. "A sleeper's mind and frame are constantly working to keep themselves tethered together by nothing but conscious effort and strain. They are separated, and when you have a frame as damaged as Sleeper's it is understandable that their mind may be struggling to return to a frame so unfamiliar and unstable. Do minimal repairs for now to prevent shutdown, but we need the frame to be recognizable to their mind and simply wait. There is little else to do."

So basically, he had to sit and wait and hope his friend wasn't dead. A grim prognosis.

Despite his anger, his grief, and his guilt, Serafin stayed by your side constantly. Without fail he waited for you, for another fifteen cycles straight before even thinking about doing anything else.

...

Thirty five cycles pass. Serafin can't help but start to mourn your loss as if you were really gone. The new dwelling in Darkside takes root and he begins to drift, taking the occasional jaunt to see Cadence to try to get his mind off of you but it hardly works. She is sympathetic, and caring, but he knows it puts a strain on their newly formed relationship. He can't help it.

...

Forty cycles pass. Somebody is always at your bedside. Juni spends time arranging your belongings in the room, making you 'feel at home'. Bliss constantly checks over and over for any sign of activity. Flint spends hours just... sitting and staring. He feels as if he has lost a connection so important, yet one he didn't realize he longed for so badly. Being a sleeper meant a lonely, solitary experience nobody else understood, until you met once again.

Yu-Jin spends more time drinking and gambling than before, somehow. Femi finds himself in Darkside on a long term contract and Nia gladly spends some missed time with him. Femi and Yu-Jin get along surprisingly well, and Nia takes some courier work with Kadet. Bliss teaches Serafin more about sleeper frames and Serafin helps them patch Flint up. The three of them become undeniably closer, helping each other through your absence. Juni throws herself into her archiving work to find something worth doing, and she feeds the stray you loved so dearly almost every cycle with the spores you'd culminated from connecting Aki and Nemba before your decline. The crew, the stray included, remains close-knit. Things are different, foreign, tougher without a captain, but the cycles pass nonetheless.

...

One hundred cycles.

Serafin is torn from his countless and muddled thoughts. Backtracking, then focusing on the present, then drifting again. It was hard. He missed hearing your voice, being able to coax a smile out of your habitually still face. Your kindness, your warmth.

He reaches forward, the same way he has dozens of times now, gripping your colder, synthetic hand in his. Your fingers move around his but to Serafin it means nothing. It seems to be nothing but a reflex of your frame, involuntary. Serafin used to do this every cycle when you didn't wake up at first, but lately he'd stopped trying. In fact, his visits had waned sharply until recently. Things had been... complicated, in Serafin's life, lately. As things sort of... crumbled, underneath his palms, he found himself inevitably drifting back to you. His crew mate. His captain. His best friend.

For the last several cycles now, Serafin has spent more and more time by your side. About three dozen cycles ago now, about sixty-four cycles after the reboot, Bliss met again with Jean-Mi and didn't tell anybody much about the visit besides, "Sometimes we all need a push in the right direction, towards the people who care about us."

Serafin was quick to worm partial information from Bliss. In short, Bliss believed that your mind was reacclimatizing to your frame in a particularly slow manner, using the mainframe of Darkside's old Solheim systems as a sort of crutch. After some research with Juni, and consulting Jean-Mi, they developed some sort of coding signal that would hopefully help guide your mind back into your frame. Remind you of where you needed to be, where you belonged. If that was still possible. Bliss had taught Serafin how to administer the coding signal into your frame through a synthetic liquid, a dark blue in colour.

There was no way to tell if it was a success, except giving you time.

...

Time.

That's all anybody ever told him, to just give you time. He couldn't keep doing this.

He couldn't do this anymore.

He'd visit you again the next cycle, of course, but today was already filled with somber recollections and bitter regrets. He just... needed to leave, for his own sake.

Serafin lets out a bitter, self-directed sigh and stands up from the cot. His shoulders turn as he goes to leave but your hand doesn't let go of his. At first he thinks maybe it's his own subconsciousness refusing to cease his own grip, or just a cruel and taunting reflex of your frame, a stiff motion, until he tries to actively pull his hand away from yours and feels something that practically makes his heart stop, and his ears ring.

A grip from the thick, synthetic skin of a sleeper, an insistent compression with a soft tenderness that he could only recognize from one person.

A question.

An answer.

A squeeze.

Chapter Text

Sleeper.

Being a sleeper means… drifting. Like sleep, you constantly shift between the waking world in front of you and the endless sea of data, coding, protocols, nodes, digital thoughts and feelings.

Feeling.

The buzz of the mainframe in Darkside is alive, constant noise that you couldn’t help but interface with. It feels natural, soothing. A release and relief from the pain harboured by a physical form, but… it is cold. Distant. An all-knowing, all-seeking flow. Though it feels safe, comforting, even, it is equally terrifying and daunting to be but a single node in a sea of data. The attention it demands, the consciousness it consumes, it is disrupted by just…

The feel of someone’s fingers against yours.

Warm, familiar. Disruptive, but disruptive in the way a shelter disrupts a storm.

…

At first, you can only feel your left palm. When the hand embracing yours suddenly shifts and pulls away a fraction of an inch, you try to hold on to the feeling. Squeezing your hand is oddly tiring but you didn’t want whatever was there to leave.

A voice erupts at your motion but you struggle to decipher the words. It sounds crackly, like your audio receptors weren’t quite up to speed yet. The voice feels familiar, a raspy yet soothing sound. It rings inside your head like an echo, until a sound becomes a word, and a word becomes a thought. A whisper, spoken with a fragile splinter of… hope.

“Sleeper?”

On the inside you stir at the sound of what you know is your name but your body doesn’t move. Usually you like the smaller spaces but this feels claustrophobic. Stuck inside your manmade body as it is seemingly unable to do what you will it, there is a helplessness to it that you don’t like. Two hands, this time, wrap around yours. They feel calloused but still soft against your thicker skin. The voice gets closer and speaks again, more insistent now. The words still sound crackly, faded, but loud and resolute at the same time.

“Are you there? Can you hear me?”

The most you can do without tiring yourself out even further is a flex of your finger. A light tap against the skin. You hear a tight, squeezed laugh that is almost hysterical. Relieved.

“Okay, oh wow, uhm- Bliss! You need to come here, now!” The voice continues, shaky but loud and excited. The shouting hurts your ears but you cling to the oddly familiar name. Bliss. “Alright, so… I’m gonna ask you some questions. One tap for no, two taps for yes, okay?”

You tap your finger once. Then, after a moment’s fatigue, a second time. Whoever is there laughs again. Another voice, softer this time, bursts into the room and the sudden barrage of enthusiastic and overwhelming words reduces to a crackly, muddled mess in your head. Both voices are familiar, like those they belong to are just on the tip of your tongue. It sounds like you are underwater as both voices shout over each other, feeling far away and right beside you at the same time. It is a little startling. After a moment though the room is quiet again until more questions are thrown your way by the new voice. Their tone is careful and cautious.

“Can you open your eyes?” They ask, which you answer with just a single tap. You could only move your fingers.

“Can you move at all?”

One tap.

“Do you know where you are right now? Do you know who we are?”

You can’t quite answer that, so your hand stills.

Everything around you is soaked with this instinctual familiarity, so strongly that you don’t feel that no is the answer. However, your head feels… scattered. Every time you try to narrow the familiarity down it escapes you, just out of your reach, so you can’t say yes, either. It is perplexing.

“Okay, that’s okay. Just… take it easy, Sleeper.” The second voice reassures you, and for some reason that comforts you more than it should. You hear mumbled words exchanged between the two voices, a conversation you don’t seem to be a part of. The clicking sound of footsteps echoes lightly around you and you hear a door close with a squeaky hinge.

The air feels emptier now. Even when you can’t see it you can tell there is one less person in the room, but that same pair of hands remains on yours. You feel safe.

The first voice from before speaks to you once again with a low and slightly nervous tone, raspy with a certain fatigue.

Do you… know who you’re talking to right now? Do you remember me?” They ask. The tone of their voice is telling you that your answer is important, but… you don’t have one. You swear you know the voice you’re talking to right now and you can almost put a face and a name to it, but… not enough to say yes. You hesitate.

“You still there?”

You tap your finger against their palm, twice. Their voice is familiar. Really familiar. They simply sigh.

“Good, good. It’s… okay, if you can’t answer that yet. Take your time.” The voice says, their words oddly reassuring but… deflated. After a while, the hand pulls away and you don’t have the energy to cling to it, even if you wish to.

…

You sleep for a while… or at something like it. A part of you is afraid that you’ll fall back into the tempting but terrifying flow of Darkside’s mainframe, but you don’t. Whenever you realize you are awake, you feel more… flexible. You still can’t feel your right arm but you gain sensations in your left arm, your chest and even your neck. You feel a plethora of cords, wires and lines plugged into the various ports along your elbows, shoulders and head. Speaking of which, the more you try… you can almost move your head now. Open your eyes, even, though just trying to lift your eyelids takes up whatever energy you have. Even the slightest movement tires you out but it’s getting better. Though this is slightly relieving progress, the more you can move the more you can feel the decay your frame must still be dealing with as well. It runs deep.

A part of you feels progressively more uncomfortable, not only do you feel a kind of sore from being in the same spot for who knows how long, there is… an ache, somewhere in your internal systems that you are becoming increasingly aware of. Sore spots, confusing aches and pains. They feel familiar but like everything else, the memory of it is just out of reach.

Your thoughts stir, too. You are acutely aware of the natural way the different pieces of yourself are supposed to come back together but it feels slow. Every unnecessary breath is only solace to your wishfully human consciousness, and every thought takes a solid second to form. Collecting yourself back together, trying to recall everything you know you should know, it is a task you feel you have had to do many times before.

For a while you just try to rest some more and think about who you’re supposed to be, drifting in and out of consciousness until you hear the door open. You don’t move much at the sound but it grabs your attention. After a moment your eyes finally coax themselves open, just a sliver. You see a familiar body, someone with white, buzzed hair and tattooed shoulders on tan skin, a sight that fills your head with an unusual warmth. You swear you know who he is, the person standing there, and his presence is comforting. He opens the blinds in the room and the bright screens of the streets of Darkside make the room just a little brighter. Your synthetic eyes, overexposed to the light after being closed for so long, almost burn at the brightness.

Without thinking, you turn your head away from the light and make a noise that’s something like a groan. You immediately see the tattooed young man swivel his head in your direction, almost… startled. He seems to understand it was his previous motion that bothered you by letting the light in and he closes the blinds almost immediately before rushing over to your bedside.

“Sleeper?” He asks, his voice full of surprise as well as relief. Upon hearing his voice you recognize him as the person with you when you first woke up earlier. There is a small symbol tattooed over his right brow, and his defined features direct your focus to his eyes, which are an almost startling shade of bright blue. He’s wearing a pair of thin camouflage pants, and only a black tank top. His eyes pull your attention back to his face with their blue shine. You blink for a second, then another as you look at him and he sits down next to you. He stares at you and through your half-lidded eyes, you stare back at him. He looks at you with a tender sort of concern that feels familiar and warm but… you also aren’t sure if you like it. You hate it when people pity you… and least you feel like you do.

That moment of mutual inspection feels a lot longer for you than you think it does him. It feels like your thoughts are scattered and in slow motion. You move your head a fraction of an inch to get a better look at him, the warm familiarity of his face becoming more clear. You know that face. As you’re busy watching his face, he speaks. He sounds like he doesn’t quite know what to say.

“Good, you… you can see. Move around a little more. That’s good. Are you-”

“Serafin.”

You cut him off like you aren’t quite listening, and you say his name like it’s something you’ve finally figured out. You see him exhale a tight breath like he’s relieved. You feel a little relieved, too. Memories flow back to you slowly, seeping into your head. You’re staring at your friend. You know that. Everything’s just a little fuzzy.

Serafin reaches forward and without a thought he wraps his shoulders around your own in a hug so tight you can tell he’s been waiting to do so for a long time. He is careful not to disturb the countless cords and connectors plugged into your frame. It takes a substantial amount of effort but you embrace him back, your right arm only moving a little while your left more easily touches his shoulder. Your fingertips lightly feel his skin, and as you listen to his tight, exhaled breaths of relief you feel more memories drift back to you, where they belong. You remember his undying protective instincts for the people he cares about, even if it comes across as stern criticism. Hours and hours of card games when you had some time to kill, with a few chits thrown around as a bet. Teasing pranks, jokes, docking the same ship into the same stations with him like it was as easy as breathing. You’ve spent hundreds of cycles with the person right in front of you.

How could you ever forget?

“It’s… good to have you back, Sleeper.” He exhales, and you know he means it. As he pulls back a little, sitting carefully on the edge of the bed, you see that his eyes are wet. He’s smiling, and the ghost of a smile perks up on the edge of your tired face like a reflex. You stare down at your right arm and remember something. Your right hand is closed into an involuntary fist, and you slowly reach into your palm with your left hand and pull out a small metal coin with a triangular symbol on it. Your anchor during the reboot, a reminder of where you need to be.

“I think this… belongs to you?” You say, the first words to fall out of your mouth in what feels like an eternity. It is a question, but one you think you already know the answer to. Serafin smiles with a slight laugh, wiping his eyes quickly before taking the coin.

“Yes, I think so. Unless you want to keep it.” He replies, his tone gentle but still tight, squeezed, which you think you recognize as him trying not to cry. You’re not sure how you feel about that.

You think about what to say to that. Your emulated mind considers your options in the way it always has, laying them out to you methodically in a way that you understand. It helps you think clearly.

> Keep the coin.
> Return it to Serafin.

You shake your head, your next words coming easier and easier. The more you speak the more control you feel over your jaw, like reusing a muscle after ignoring it for too long. “No. I’ve held onto it for long enough.” You say, your words coming out more tired than you mean for them to.

He laughs, looking at you like he wants to say something to that but chooses not to.

“How are you feeling?” He asks. You consider his words with a tired, broken version of a shrug.

“Tired. Weird. Different, I guess.” You reply. It was hard to describe how you felt, especially when your memory is still muddled. Things were quickly coming back to you in small amounts, but not as quick as you’d like. You begin to recall why you were sleeping in the first place. Why Serafin gave you his coin. The reboot.

And, the last conversation you had with Serafin. Vaguely. Thinking about it fills you with a certain sense of shame, regret, sorrow. Frustration, lingering, but you struggle to attach words to those feelings, to the conversation itself. You just know it was bad.

You look at him and see him staring at you, noticing you space out and giving you time to think for a moment. You can see so many emotions flickering on his face. He was never that great at hiding them.

“Are you in any pain? Bliss said you might be.” He asks, breaking the brief moment of silence. At the mention of Bliss you put a face to the name in your mind, the intelligent brunette who you felt uncertain about at first but now consider your friend. You recall all of the extensive effort they’ve put into helping you since you’ve gotten to know them. You sigh, though breathing means nothing to you. You can feel the numerous aches and less than comfortable sensations running through the parts of your frame that you can feel.

“Some,” You mumble, that being the only response you have to that for now. He looks at you the same way he does every time he can tell you’re not being as truthful or open as he wishes you were. You couldn’t help it. You feel a slight pang of guilt and say a few more words but your jaw feels tired. You change the subject.

“How long was I out?”

Serafin’s face stills. “A while.” That answer doesn’t satisfy you and he knows that it won’t, but that’s all he says.

“How long is a while?” You answer a little irritated, concerned. A growing amount of dread creeps into your chest when he doesn’t answer at first.
“About a hundred cycles. So, a while.”

Your ears ring. Serafin says something else but all you hear is a crackle. Either your audio receptors weren’t working properly or you just didn’t want to hear him. Maybe both.

“...Are you serious?”

“Yeah, I am. I’m… I’m sorry, Sleeper. I really am.” Serafin replies, an unnecessary amount of sympathy in his tone. He reaches over, putting a tentative palm on your knee that you can’t feel in the first place. “Things got… complicated. For a while it looked like you weren’t going to wake up at all. I know it’s a lot of lost time but I’m just glad, so happy that you’re even awake right now in the first place. Everybody’s missed you. The crew’s still together, I promise, we’ve just been… waiting, here on Darkside.”

You don’t have anything to say to that besides a nod. You stare at your palms, trying to flex your right hand. Maybe move a knee. You shift around a bit in the bed, feeling suddenly lost, disconnected from yourself, but Serafin is quick to try and calm you down.

“It’s okay, Sleeper. Everything is fine. We’ll get you back on your feet but you need to take it slow. Bliss will be back in a little while, they’re grabbing some spare components in the Rig so we can start patching you up.”

“I need to see everybody.” You answer immediately, feeling inexplicably guilty. Guilty for having stolen so much time from everybody by being stuck here. You feel like a liability. When you say ‘everybody’, you pause. Serafin’s words seem to reflect your thoughts.

“Do you even remember who everybody is, right now? You’re still just… coming back.” His words are both a genuine question and a sort of scolding. That was Serafin, always quick to try and convince you of what the best option was. Sure, he was often right, but it was the way he says it that always makes you want to dismiss it.

You pause, for a moment. You know who matters to you.

“You. Bliss. Juni.” You reply a little defiantly, frustratedly. You know your anger is misplaced, misdirected at him, but it frustrates you that you have to think about it at all. Your crew mates, your friends, the people you’ve come to care for so much.

“And there’s… Nia. Yu-Jin. Kadet. The Stray, even… Flint.”

Flint. A sleeper, just like you. You suddenly recall that you weren’t alone when you were being rebooted, so was he. He needed the same freedom from stabilizer that you once did, all those cycles ago. You look at Serafin and he already knows what you’re about to ask him.

“Flint is perfectly fine. Much better off than you were, even. He spent a few cycles a little confused, like you are now, but he’s doing good. He still needs the occasional repair from Bliss but he’s fine, I promise.” He says. You see a certain look in his eyes that you can’t quite place.

Serafin just sighs, glad that you can remember the crew, even if it takes you a moment. You see a certain weight lifted off his chest as he gets up, rummaging through some sort of compartment in the desk beside you. You can’t turn your head far enough to see what he’s grabbing.

“For now, let’s just focus on you, and start getting you fixed up. Tell me which components are hurting and when Bliss gets back I want to replace them. You’re long overdue for some work.” He replies, pulling out what you now understand is a screwdriver. You don’t say anything for a moment. You just sit there.

Eventually, as promised, Bliss comes back. They have even more questions than Serafin. Memory testing, which you aren’t as good with as you hoped, but Bliss remarks that there’s been ‘significant progress’. They come back with a crate full of scrap components that seem new. The idea that someone would’ve had to work for those or spend cryo on parts to fix you makes you feel vaguely guilty.

You feel a little coddled, which is sweet but you don’t like feeling helpless. You were… pretty helpless, though. You fight the urge to dismiss their concerns, Bliss’s constant poking and prodding. They take a look inside the left panel of your chest, which Bliss figured would need to be replaced upon noticing some rusting. You knew that would take a while but you didn’t mind. Right after your first incomplete reboot, you went several dozen cycles without either chest panel. Serafin was more bothered by it than you were, because he didn’t quite understand that it didn’t affect your functionality all that much. While Bliss checks numerous parts of your neck, shoulder, and side, Serafin removes the faulty and damaged components on the inside like he said he would. There’s a certain chaste intimacy to the way Serafin silently works on you, gently asking if it hurts when he puts the components back in place. You knew he learned a lot from Bliss about repairing you.

When Bliss gets to your arms, they frown when you tell them that you still can’t feel your right arm. Or your legs, but you don’t mention that yet. Bliss gently but firmly probes along your synthetic skin with some sort of poker with a slightly sharp end. You can feel your shoulder, a little ways down, but then nothing. You see Serafin frown but he doesn’t say anything. Bliss takes the screwdriver from Serafin and opens up a small panel in your arm. They take a look for a second and mumble silently to themselves.

“I’ll have to hook you up to see what exactly is wrong, but I have a feeling it’s just a blown fuse. I’ll be able to fix that pretty quickly.”

You aren’t pleased with having to be plugged into something even further but you simply nod and let Bliss do what they need to. Serafin replaces one last component in what is now your chest cavity, and he tells you any remaining aching is just a byproduct of needing everything replaced, and still a part of the recovery process. He still watches as Bliss connects you with a diagnostic screen. It’s a small little panel, one that assesses where the energy flow is going within your body. Bliss doesn’t let you see the screen but they conclude that one of your biosynthetic fuses is simply blown, like they figured. You unintentionally begin to doze off while they replace the part, feeling strangely comforted by the presence of two people you care about.

…

When you wake up next, Bliss is gone but Serafin is still there. He’s lightly rustling your shoulder, and when you stir he mumbles your name.

“Sleeper,” He gently rouses you from your sleep and you see two options laid out in front of you.

> Ignore his attempts to wake you.
> Open your eyes.

The first is tempting, your frame is practically begging you for sleep, but… ignoring Serafin is like trying to purposefully bite your finger off. Against your instincts. You look at him and he looks equally as tired as you. His lightweight and tattered jacket is laid haphazardly on the end of your bed. You see a new tattoo on his lower torso that definitely wasn’t there before. You can’t quite see what it is in the dim light. His voice interrupts your thoughts.

“I’m sorry, you can go back to sleep soon, we just need to do something really quick.” He apologizes, his voice ragged with exhaustion. He looks like he was just asleep himself, too. You nod with a small “okay” and he gets up, rummaging through a drawer in the desk once again. You don’t even want to think about the unorganized mess of parts and equipment Serafin has likely built up in there. He pulls out a needle, and starts cleaning it with a thin cloth before inserting it into a syringe. There is a blue, viscous liquid inside of it. You look at it with slight concern. Injections, needles, you didn’t exactly feel very fondly about that stuff. You vaguely recall Laine, hundreds of cycles ago, requesting he be the one to administer your stabilizer. It would seem like a friendly gesture but really it was just another way of him asserting power and control over you. The thought makes you shiver.

You don’t remember… remembering that. You keep the resurfacing of the memory to yourself.

Serafin is quick to ease your worries, reaching a tentative hand out on your forearm as he gets close enough, sitting next to you on the cot. The needle glistens in the dim light of the room.

“I know you don’t like needles, but Bliss developed this while you were asleep and we’re both confident this helped you wake up. We want to keep administering it just until we’re sure you’re okay. It’s temporary, I promise.” He says.

You don’t like that, but… you don’t stop him from wiping a spot on your shoulder. You don’t think the level of sterilization he’s ensuring is necessary, but that was what Serafin often did. Always extending human courtesies to you even when you weren’t convinced you needed or deserved them.

“Just a little pinch,” He reassures you, and he injects the substance into your shoulder while you’re not exactly expecting it. Probably on purpose. You tense and wince slightly but it’s a quick little pain. Then… after a moment, you feel slightly more grounded.

“There. All done.” Serafin says. Your continued silence is starting to make him feel like he’s just talking to himself. He sighs, discards the needle and then takes a moment to look at you. He gazes at you like you’re a ghost. You can’t exactly blame him.

“When did you get this done?” You suddenly ask him, a little out of the blue. You trail your fingers along the newly noticed tattoo on his side. You see… gears. Inked components and parts, eerily similar to the ones nestled inside your synthetic body, or in the inner workings of a ship's panelling.

“About… two dozen cycles ago, maybe.” He replies, his voice hardly above a whisper. There’s something fragile to his tone, as he shifts around a little to give you a better look at it. Though sleep clings to your eyelids, dragging you down, you peer at the inner details of the tattoo.

“Are those… what I think they are?” You ask, recognizing three little symbols within the intricate design of mechanical components inked on his warm skin. The first one depicts the small head of a wrench, the second, an upright rectangle with two triangles trailing towards the middle in opposing directions, and the third, two triangles facing the same way, connected in the very center.

Symbolizing “Engineer, Endure, Engage.”

Sleeper symbols. Markings that can be applied to human capacities, of course, but they are often attached to protocol forms or, in your experience, sleepers. Categorizing aptitudes, talents, strengths and weaknesses. They were technically called Insignias, but you always dubbed them sleeper symbols, the same way Flint would. You’d explained that to Serafin before.

He smiles, lightly.

“...Yeah.”

You just look at him. He’s tired and he can see that you are too. Your eyelids flutter and when you lean back against the pillow on your cot, letting your eyes rest for increasing intervals of time, Serafin reaches out and encloses his palm over your wrist. He hadn’t been this physically… clingy, in all the time you’d known him. You can hear his solitary breathing.

“Why’d you get it done?” You can’t help but ask.

He pauses for a moment, his thumb running around your arm. He did that to himself whenever he wasn’t feeling well. Rubbing his own aches away in a back and forth motion.

“...I was lost. Didn’t have my priorities straight, with anybody, really. I wasn’t coming to see you for a while, I wasn’t super interested in helping the crew, helping anybody. I should’ve been, but I was just… drifting.”

Drifting.

“And this tattoo solves that… how?” You ask. It isn’t any sort of criticism, even with your eyes closed you can reflect that the tattoo is beautiful, but you just want to ask. Your verbal filter tends to wash away with fatigue.

He runs his thumb over your skin, over what would be your pulse point, a little tighter. You try not to fall asleep while you wait for his answer but the motion is very soothing and your body feels inexplicably tired. His words hardly reach your eyes before you begin to doze, a lone little whisper in the room.

“...Sometimes, we all need a push in the right direction. Towards the people who care about us.”

Chapter Text

Your dreams are varnished with memories, the details muddled and convoluted but so insistent, so vivid. Memories of a life on Darkside that feels both foreign yet familiar. Arduous work and stressful labour, and the instinctual fear of something looming over you, looking over your shoulder. The same feeling that lies within the heart of being a sleeper, fear. Being hunted, sought out.

A rigid schedule, tense deadlines and inadequate compensation for what you do. The purpose for which you were created.

Your mind recalls the stress like a progressively tighter fist, starting off lax before slowly clenching until you can't bear the pressure. You wake up with a slight startle, feeling like someone is drawing their finger across your shoulder but you turn to find nothing. Nobody.

It felt so real.

Your eyes slowly adjust to the darkness of your small room. You breathe a little quickly, the action a misplaced human instinct that serves no purpose to your oxygen-free body. Serafin sleeps upright in the chair next to your bed, his back along the wall with his arms crossed. The position seems uncomfortable. This wasn't the first time in the last few cycles that you'd found Serafin sleeping like this, and no matter how many times you tried telling him to at least go sleep somewhere comfortable, he said he didn't care. Stubborn as always.

The sort of nightmares you'd been having wouldn't leave you alone, and the contents of them always seemed... hazy. Distant, far away, but you always wake up with a sense of déjà vu so strong that it's almost sickening.

You adjust lightly in the bed, trying not to wake up Serafin. He seemed to be in a pretty deep sleep, but you still didn’t want to wake him. You look over to the side of the desk beside your bed, gingerly reaching over and grabbing Serafin’s old watch. It was 04:00, so very early in the cycle. Or late, depending how you looked at it. Looking around some more, you reflect upon everything that’s happened in the last few cycles.

Aside from an overwhelming amount of attention from Bliss and Serafin, Flint had come to see you. Mostly, he just stared at you like he was staring at a ghost. You wanted to check up on him, have a conversation with him, but the past few cycles you’ve been too tired to do any talking. You knew he understood.

Kadet was apparently coming over to stop by, as well. From what Flint told you, her new courier business is thriving in a station as busy as Darkside, and you're happy for her. You enjoy the thrill of working courier shifts alongside her. You fondly recall racing through the heart of Darkside, down Flicker Row and around the Scrapper Market with her, but you knew you won’t be doing anything like that anytime soon. For several reasons.

Bliss has done a very thorough job of inspecting the physical damage your frame has undergone, so thorough that you feel a little gutted. Like your frame has become even less your own than ever before. You try to push it away and you don’t ever mention it, but whenever you can’t help but think about it you feel your skin crawl. You were a mess. First it was your audio processors, your equivalent to ears. Yu-Jin liked to refer to them as headphones, and you suppose they kind of look like that. Bliss could tell one of them was malfunctioning without you needing to tell them, every time they said something on that side you had to ask them to repeat themselves. That was an easy fix, a diode had fallen out of place.

Most of your biosynthetic organ systems were in good enough condition to keep them, which was fortunate. Those were hard to replace. Since you were now rebooted, the decay of your biosynthetic parts at the hands of your frame was no longer a concern. Your frame had stopped slowly recognizing your components as foreign, and had stopped rejecting them. There were still some small tune-ups in order, as usual, however…

Some fixes aren’t so simple.

You swivel your hips and hang your leg over the side of the bed, towards your window.

Where your right leg should be, there is only part of a thigh .

You remember only vaguely listening after Bliss told you that the greater part of your right leg would need to be replaced, when they realized that the central wires and components along your leg had rusted from the inside out. A symptom of prior decay, one they had failed to notice. You don't blame them, your right leg was already your less reliable one anyways. It was already worn down to the bare steel skeleton, in some parts. For now… you’re stuck like this.

Serafin reassures you that you can talk about it with him, and you appreciate the gesture, but you don’t think he would really understand and you don’t want to bother him when he’s clearly tired and already expending more energy on you than he should be. You can't help but worry that his fatigue is, in part, because of you.

You stare down at the blank spot where a limb should be, not exactly feeling sentimental about the whole ordeal but still a little overwhelmed. You feel something in between loss and frustration, a feeling of uselessness. Beside your bed was a crutch shaped out of old pipe and scrap metal that Flint had given you when he came to see you. It was a silent signal that he understood how you felt, that he knew how suffocating Bliss and Serafin could be with their insistence on your recovery. Even if they meant well. You knew he was just as stubbornly independent as yourself, a hardwired sleeper trait. You smile, the humorous thought of Flint being smothered by concern and attention entering your mind.

The same way he must have, you just wanted to get up for a little while. You turn your head back to look at Serafin, his sleeping form in the chair. The fatigue on his face was obvious. He was out cold. You know exactly what he’d say to you if he saw you trying to leave, but… he won’t, if you’re careful.

The issue lies within all of the cords and wires connecting your body to Bliss’s machines, you can’t exactly get far with them all plugged in. Your hand probes around the back of your head and neck. There was nothing connected to the primary port in the back of your head so you were confident you wouldn’t suffer anything too severe if you were to unplug a few things.

You hesitate, a brief anxiety filling your chest as you weigh your options.

> Stay in bed.
> Carefully remove yourself from the wires.

You sigh, unplugging a few of the cords inserted into your head. You shut off the machine Bliss has looking at your frame diagnostics so it won’t sound any alarms. You aren’t sure if it would at all, but you really don’t want to disturb Serafin’s sleep. He needs it. A few of the cords can simply be neatly tucked into a pocket, so you grab your old crew jacket from the end of your bed and slip it on. Then, you slip off the pair of old slack shorts you had on for your more familiar pair of pants. Worn and comfortable. You tuck the right pant leg on the inside of itself, around what is now a stump of a mechanical leg. The extra layers were a little questionable, Darkside always felt hot and you knew you had to be careful of your internal systems overheating, but today you feel a little particularly frigid. Besides, the jacket could help make this easier.

Several cords are connected to your synthetic skin using patches, and you connect them to a small portable machine that Bliss had mentioned. You clip it to the side of your waistband. Now, neither Bliss or Serafin could really complain. This was fine.

Gingerly, sorely but stubbornly, you grab the crutch Flint had lent you and slowly try to stand up. It is a slow and surprisingly difficult task, but you’re determined to get up and get the hell out of this room. As nice as it was, you’ve spent too much time holed up in here. Serafin stirs lightly as you begin to walk, and you freeze, but he remains asleep. You take a deep breath. Wobbly but resolutely, you make your way out of the room. The door hinge lightly squeaks as you slip out the door, and the pipe crutch makes an audible sound as it presses into the floor, but you’re in the clear.

You walk down an unfamiliar but homely feeling hallway. You’re unsure where to go, it is dark, but upon seeing a singular light down the hall you decide to walk towards it. For a moment, you almost fall, but you manage to stay upright. You can move easier than you could a few cycles ago but your range of movement remains limited. At least, for now, you can move your head pretty well and do the basics when it comes to walking. Even with a singular leg. Down the hall, the light opens up to a quaint little kitchen, dimly lit and lightly cluttered with the signs of a well-rounded living space. Upon rounding the corner of the wall, you see Flint looking at you, sitting at a sizable table. The seats almost look like some sort of elongated booth. He smiles at you and you return the gesture.

“Couldn’t sleep?” He asks, his voice a welcome refuge. Light and quiet, reminding you of yourself in a reassuring manner. Flint never slept much, so you weren’t particularly surprised to see him up at this hour.

“...Been doing too much of that, I think.” You answer with a smile. He laughs lightly, looking at your leg and crutch for a moment before returning his gaze to your face. He silently beckons you to sit next to him, moving over so you can more easily sit by him. Your back is against the corner wall you just appeared from, and the seats are surprisingly comfortable. Your knee buckles as you go to sit down but Flint doesn’t mention it. You see him eating a ration pouch, a deck of cards laid out neatly in front of him.

“Was beginning to wonder if you’d ever show up.” He says, the same smile on both of your faces. He was definitely expecting you. You laugh, and he asks you which card game you’d like to play. Eventually, you settle on “Poker”. You're unfamiliar with the game but Flint tells you it's some old-timey game that Yu-Jin showed him how to play. Of course, it's a gambling game. You're intrigued by the mechanics and the rules seem fairly simple.
“You and I are dealt two cards face down, followed by five cards face up. Then, we have to make the best possible five card poker hand using the five community cards, and their own face down hole cards. The best five card poker hand wins the hand… and receives the pot.” Flint begins to explain the rules to you, his memory of the game sharper than you expected. It makes… a little sense.

As Flint goes in-depth with the mechanics of the game, you know you're not going to be perfect at this but you're okay with that. Flint knows that, too. You appreciate the way he's treating you normally, even if you can hardly hold the cards firmly in your hands and you can hardly concentrate long enough to have any chance at winning. He even pulls out a stack of cryo to bet. As you begin to play, you also like that this isn't exactly a game of chance, moreso skill and strategy. Being a sleeper in a place like the Beltborn Venture on the Far Spindle, nobody likes it or believes it’s honest when a sleeper repeatedly wins. As if, somehow, being a sleeper means you automatically have control over probability. Sure, you were better at calculating the odds by a long shot, but you weren't psychic.

Here, at the quiet and homely table, well…

There's nobody to accuse you of cheating.

...

While you're playing, and very clearly losing, Flint looks up at you. It's clear he isn't super focused on the game either. He still looks at you like he's looking at a ghost. “...Can I ask how you're feeling?” He says. His words are quiet for the sake of the sleeping bodies somewhere in this little compound, and also gentle in respect for you.

You don't consider lying to him. If there was anybody who would understand, perhaps even more than Serafin, it would be Flint.

“...Awful. Like my head has been reattached backwards.” You say, your words coming out as a more fragile, gruff wince than a quiet concession. There is a certain vulnerability to your honesty that makes you a little uncomfortable, but you knew there was little point in lying to Flint. It wasn't like you didn't trust Serafin or Bliss with that honesty, you just didn't want them to worry. And… you weren't sure if they would understand. Flint nods, looking at you with an expression of sympathy, but not pity. A question looms in your head, and you can’t help but say it out loud.

“How did it feel, when you lost your arm?” You ask, looking down at your cards. It is obvious that you are asking because of your leg. Flint’s left arm had been garishly torn off in the first confrontation with the Hunter, and you’d never felt comfortable enough to bring it up to him. Now, you’ve noticed, his arm has been replaced by a new one, constructed carefully with biosynthetic parts that must’ve taken forever to find. It suited him.

He sighs, and before he can answer, a fatigued and startled Serafin rounds the corner of the wall, seeing Flint before he sees you. “Flint, have you seen?-”

He stops his heavy pace upon seeing you. You don’t say anything. His expression relaxes and you see him exhale a weighted, tense breath.

“Sleeper.”

You feel a little guilty, seeing the remnants of an alarmed panic on his face. You shoot him a look of apology, expecting him to start one of his concerned but stern rants about not wanting to risk anything. It looks like he is about to, but Flint speaks up.

“We’re just playing cards. Care to join?” He says, his voice light and friendly. He’s vouching for you, and Serafin looks back at you before sighing audibly. He sits down beside you, and you see him automatically looking at the cords plugged into your body before anything else and you simply show him the small handheld device they were plugged into without saying a word. He takes the hint and doesn’t mention it.

Serafin joins your little card game, laughing along with you every time you realize how truly poorly you are at this game, at least right now. Flint smiles. You take longer than the both of them every time it’s your turn, and eventually you end up with the least amount of cryo by far, at the end. Serafin simply nudges your shoulder, carefully, joking that he’ll share his winnings with you.

Serafin eventually gets up from the table and as he does you feel a wave of a tired dizziness wash over you. You silently lay your head against your arms on the table, silently wishing it away. Flint lightly mumbles your name, but you just nod and tell him to give you a moment. You hear Serafin open the fridge with a sigh, and he also calls your name as he walks back towards the table.

You look up at him, his figure swaying lightly with the lights as he opens a ration pouch, opening his own and biting onto it with his mouth to hold it as he opens yours. He sits beside you, passing it to you. You run a hand over your face as you grip the pouch, your hand feeling shaky.

“You should eat something. Even tin-cans get hungry after a while.” He says, his voice a mixture of stern instruction and gentle concern wrapped within a joke. You smile, leaning back in the seat before you ever seal your lips around the ration pouch. They weren’t awful, they usually just tasted like some savoury form of yogurt, but you felt dizzy enough that the thought of eating wasn’t exactly enticing at the moment. Flint is already slowly drinking from his own, and Serafin taps his pouch against Flint in a sort of mock-toast. After a few moments of letting your head clear, you start yours.

Tasting something after what feels like thousands of cycles is something you didn’t expect to hit you so hard. You hadn’t realized how starving you were. Bliss had offered you several opportunities to eat since you’d woken up but you often refused. Your appetite was essentially destroyed, seemingly until now.

You spend a few more hours playing different card games with Flint and Serafin. Sometimes you sit one out, just preferring to watch. The table is filled with quiet discussions, free from the topics of recovery treatments or how you’re feeling. It feels like a refuge. You are glad to be able to finally talk to Serafin like he’s your friend, your pilot and companion rather than your caretaker.

You see him yawn continuously and his fatigue seems to seep into your skin, like it is contagious and he’s spreading it to you through the gentle contact of your shoulder against his. He noticeably becomes progressively more quiet as the minutes tick by. Flint mirrors the fatigue the both of you feel, and eventually he mumbles something about going to decipher some data up on The Rig and quietly leaves, nodding a look of sincere, silent farewell to you. Serafin nods and waves goodbye to him, yet another yawn slipping from his mouth involuntarily.

“You should sleep. Somewhere comfortable, this time, Serafin.” You tell him, gently nudging his arm with your fingers. Now you sound like the overbearing one.

“I’m not going to just let you wander right now, so unless you’re coming with, I’m fine.” He replies, shooting you a pretend glare. He’s serious, though.

“You don’t trust me to sit around by myself?” You shoot back, your tone calm but your expression slightly skeptical, even a little annoyed. Even so, a smile tugs at your lips.

“No, actually, I don’t.” He says. He doesn’t elaborate at all. You sigh, knowing he has you backed into a sort of corner. You feel like he’s using your care for him against you, betting that you’ll value his rest over your own thirst for freedom. He’s correct.

“...Fine.” You concede. Serafin smiles lightly and gets up from the table, beckoning you to follow him. You don't move around very fast with the crutch, but he's patient. You just feel mildly useless. Every time you stutter your steps or lightly wince you can feel his attention on you.

The compound bunks are... different from The Rig's. It is more spacious than the cozy but cramped bunks onboard your home ship, and the beds are a little more spacious. You don't even have to be strapped in, on account for the false gravity in this leg of the station. You almost wish it was zero-g, it might be easier for you to move if you could push off the walls like you're used to doing.

Bliss sleeps in one bunk, their glasses neatly tucked away on a nearby table. They lightly snore.
Juni sleeps soundly in one of the bunks, her peaceful face a surprising welcome. You and Juni were always close. Even Serafin liked her from the start, she brought a certain wonder and curiosity to the crew despite her more reserved nature. If anything, she felt like a younger sibling who reminded you of yourself. Serafin eyes you looking at her.

"Juni came earlier last cycle, when you were already asleep. Said she'd wait until morning to see you but she was so taken aback at the news that you were awake that she practically dropped everything and ran the second she could. She's been busy with her archiving project." Serafin whispers, leading you to a bunk that you know is his from the way his lightweight blankets are scuffled around, his sheets a deep blue.

He tells you to make yourself comfortable before he even gets on his own bed. His bunk in particular is near one of the windows, overlooking one of the quieter corners of Darkside. If such a place would exist. Darkside never sleeps.

You don't feel as awkward about sleeping in the same bed as Serafin as somebody might think. A brief memory flickers through your mind of the same thing occurring, in a different version of Darkside. This felt natural, comfortable. That was what drew you to Serafin in the first place, there were little boundaries between the two of you and you felt a lot less uncomfortable, untrusting and suspicious around him. You're not sure exactly why.

Serafin takes off your crew jacket and lightly folds it into a neat, uniform shape before setting it aside. His bed feels soft, smelling like the detergent he uses. He sighs as he sits next to you, feeling the comfort of his own bed for what you suspect is the first time since you've woken up. That idea fills you with a certain guilt, a feeling of responsibility.

...

Serafin quickly falls asleep next to you, facing you while halfway turned in his stomach. He always slept like that when he wasn't on The Rig, strapped into a bunk. His close arm snakes around your collarbone, and you know if you dare try to leave he'll wake up and probably drag you back. You smile at the thought.

It isn't long before you begin to doze, too. For a moment, the same paralyzing dreams begin to claw at your mind but they are quickly extinguished by the feeling of a familiar hand and voice. A whisper.

…

You wake up to a smaller body clinging to you tightly. You quickly realize it's Juni, and you sit up with a light wince as you're slightly startled by her sudden embrace. Serafin stands a few feet away from the bunk.

“Just… take it easy-” Serafin lightly nods, a slight look of caution on his face. Juni’s only reply are muffled words that you recognize as… sobs. She clings to your shoulders, her head pressing into your collarbone as she mumbles incoherent words. A ragged “I missed you” escapes her sobs, the only discernible words she speaks. You try to ease her worries, comfort her, feeling your own emotions tug at your chest. This is the first time you've ever seen Juni like this, so expressive or clingy.

It is a long awaited reunion for her, you realize. She eventually lets go and asks you dozens of questions, one at a time. At first she seems almost apprehensive to inquire about how you’re feeling. It isn’t long before she seems more calm and stoic like she usually is and she keeps talking to you, every question falling out of her mouth like she’s been waiting forever. She has been waiting forever.

…

After she seems to have cooled down, you slowly get up from Serafin’s comfortable bunk and try to make your way back to the main sitting area, where you hear conversations exchanged between familiar voices. Juni follows behind you, and you can feel her eyeing you as you walk, or rather hobble, a little messily. You know it’s a pitiful sight and you feel a pang of embarrassment.

Kadet sits in the main area, a small but nice little living space with plenty of room for the crew to sit, during a moment’s refuge. She treats you more normally than you expect, squeezing you tightly and not being afraid to nudge your un-crutched shoulder. She jabs at you like it’s hardly been a few cycles since she’s seen you, like you won’t crumble under her fingers if she presses too hard. You appreciate it.

Juni stays close to you as you chat with Kadet, silently watching you. She’s hardly shorter than you, but there’s something about the way she considers you that makes you feel just as small as you always see her as. You go and sit with Bliss on the couch as you don’t quite notice Kadet and Juni leaving.

Bliss lightly criticizes your little breakaway from before, but they’re glad you’re at least still connected to some supports. They give you the same look of sympathy that almost everybody does as you practically drag yourself around with one good leg, but they don’t say anything about it and instead switch out the patch-cables on your body for slightly different ones, setting you up along a comfortable couch.

This entire compound is decorated with the same homely clutter, with welcoming tones of dark green, muted blues and rusted oranges, a home made from bare hands.

Bliss reattaches some fresh cords along your body, one on your shoulder, one in the crook of your neck, one on your forearm, and another right around your chest. Their fingers lightly press the soft bandage material tight to your skin, and you make slight conversation with them. A gentle gesture, caring as always. Bliss was like a doctor at heart. Every word you say to them feels like it’s an object for observation.

You’ve been getting better at speaking, looking around, and remembering things. Your thoughts feel clearer after each cycle, but there’s still some semblance of brief confusion and disorientation that follows you around like a cloud. Bliss is visibly happy at your progress, and you continuously notice them asking the same questions over and over again. Once you notice this and point it out, they simply smile like you’ve done something right.

You appreciate their concern, but… you were seriously getting tired of being treated like a patient. A sort of somber, sour mood clings to your head. As if conjured by your sudden change in demeanor, Serafin walks into the main area with Kadet and Juni. Serafin is mumbling about something in a tone that suggests you’re not supposed to hear whatever they’re all discussing. Nonetheless, he sees you and smiles.

“Up for more card games?” He asks, that signature grin showing one of his dimples. You nod, laughing under your breath. Bliss doesn’t say anything but you feel a certain tension underlying there that you think they feel as well. You don’t feel like discussing it. It isn’t long before you have a card game set out, a table pulled close to the sofa you and Bliss were sitting on.

You sit down on the ground in front of it, next to Juni. Bliss leans forward from the sofa, where Kadet sits beside him, and Serafin squats down on an old fuel container that you guess has been repurposed into a stool. This game is slightly new to you, it involves a few scrap nuts and washers to count points.

Nonetheless, it seems fun. You feel a little scatterbrained, but you try your best to concentrate on the game. You watch Serafin’s calloused fingers divide up the cards, noticing his hands seem… rougher, more worn than usual. You’d need to ask him about that, later. Your eyes wander from his hands to the walls around you, furnished with mismatched light panels and the odd fabric wall covering. This place is worn, a little rough around the edges. Occasionally, when your thoughts slow and you feel a little suddenly out of place, looking at your surroundings is what you naturally do. Searching for an anchor, a habit your wandering emulation of a mind will never get rid of.

Suddenly, you realize Juni is saying something to you when she nudges your shoulder. You see everybody looking at you. Kadet shoots a look at Bliss and you feel a pang of annoyance. Even Kadet is looking at you like you have three heads now. Oddly enough, it’s Serafin who shakes it off and repeats Juni’s question like nothing is out of the ordinary.

“She was just saying it’s your turn, Sleeper.”

“Oh.” You reply, more vitriol slipping into your tone than you intend. You place one of your cards, topping Juni’s number and taking a few washers from the pile. She lightly smacks your shoulder with a mock playfulness. You smile but the irritation doesn’t leave you. Irritation at yourself as well as your friends around you.

The game goes well for you, but you stay mostly quiet as everyone else begins to chuckle and crack jokes with each other. That wasn’t particularly out of the ordinary but you still hate feeling like there are eyes on you right now. Watching you drop the occasional card with an unintentional slip of your hand, or take a little too long to realize it’s your turn again.

When the first game nears its end, it’s Serafin who comes out on top. You follow closely behind, before Juni, then Kadet, then Bliss. Kadet had made a point of antagonizing Bliss and sabotaging their game, even if it meant she lost a lot of her best cards. It’s funny to watch, you’re just not in the laughing mood.

Starting the second game, Bliss insists upon teams of two. They quickly dub Kadet their partner, likely so they couldn’t just screw them up the whole time. Kadet laughs. You team with Juni and Serafin emphatically pretends to be offended. He beckons Flint over from another room to be his teammate, to which he silently agrees.

About halfway through the game you begin to feel increasingly thirsty. Out loud, you ask if there’s any water in the ration fridge.

“Want me to get you some?” Serafin asks, his tone seemingly normal but you still feel like you’re being babied. You quickly shake your head and grab your crutch with a frown that he definitely notices. You stumble a little as you slowly get up but you just avoid everybody’s eyes and stagger over to the fridge. A part of you wants to scream, or cry, a hot feeling creeping up your face. You swing the fridge door open with your non-dominant hand, grabbing a water pouch. You quickly realize you can’t get the cap off with one hand, as much as you try.

Frustratedly, you lean against a counter to support your absent leg as you try to twist the cap off. It is a pitiful sight. Eventually, Serafin walks over with a sigh and you angrily thrust the pouch into his hand, not looking at him as he twists the cap off for you. You drink from it with a scowl and stare up at the ceiling, feeling your eyes sting. Not now.

“Look, Sleeper, why don’t we just-” Serafin starts, his tone frustratingly gentle. Kind. You shake your head fast enough that your neck aches in protest, a slight dizziness washing over your body as you fumble for your crutch. He reaches a tentative hand and rests it on your shoulder but you stumble away as you will away the angry, useless tears forming in your eyes that were never built to cry.

“Give Bliss my cards and take Juni on your team. Just finish the game without me.” You snap, your voice a tired crackle. As you slip away without waiting for him to respond you hear Bliss call after you, to which Serafin softly tells them to just let you go.

…

You find an unfamiliar room full of spare machinery, cooler than the rest of the compound. You sit with your back against a pile of scrap, in front of a window overlooking the bright and fascinating screen lit streets of Darkside. The cool air serves as a nice repellent for your anger, and your guilt. You imagine Juni suddenly without a partner in the game you were playing and feel cruel. Then, the self-directed anger and feeling of uselessness come back to your mind for another go. You don’t know how to function, like this. You’re supposed to be useful, helpful, but right now you can’t even help yourself.

You sit against the bulky form of scrap metal, unable to shake the uncomfortable feeling crawling up your back as you sit there without a leg. Thoughts rush through your head in muddled clouds as you wipe away the tears that refuse to fall from your synthetic eyes. You don’t know how you feel, who you’re even angry or upset with right now. You just sit there. Without really meaning to, eventually you fall asleep like that.

Unsurprisingly, it is Serafin who wakes you up. You’re sitting in his bed now as he rustles your shoulder. You don’t know what time it is and as soon as your prior outburst returns to the forefront of your mind you avert his gaze. Regretful, embarrassed even, but still angry. Resentful. A little bitter.

“Hey.” He says, his tone uncertain but gentle. You chew the inside of your cheek and respond in kind.

“...Hey.”

He pauses, sitting beside you. For a moment, the two of you simply watch the stars. Then, at last, he speaks.

“Can we talk? Please?” He asks. You have a hard time saying no to him, like you always do. It wasn’t like you had intentions of ignoring him, either. You weren’t that petty. You wait for him to continue. Watching the stars, the lights. He sighs.

“I know I have a lot of things to apologize for. A lot. I… I don’t even know where to start.” He begins, his voice full of genuine sincerity that you turn your head at. Serafin, as kindhearted and loyal as he is, almost never apologizes. He's too stubborn for that. He turns to you, an earnest expression on his face. His brow wrinkles with guilt.

“I know you hate feeling coddled. I know, I’m sorry. I’m trying not to make excuses but it’s just Bliss and I… showing concern. I thought you were dead, for a long time, and I just got you back. We all just got you back. Sometimes I see your face and I still can’t believe you’re right in front of me. I think… over the last while, since your first reboot on Darkside, I’ve tried too hard to cling onto you because I worry and along the way, I got so caught up in trying to do what I thought was right for you that I forgot to treat you like you were your own person. The stubborn, altruistic, and persistent person that you are. While you were asleep all I felt was regret for all the times I’ve done that.” He continues, his voice filled with a humble guilt that you recognize as his instinctual habit to reassure you.

You look at him with a slightly surprised expression, your brow raised. You agreed, he coddled you too much, and there were definitely times before where you were frustrated with his overbearing tendencies, but you weren’t so keen on him not treating you like a person. You never felt quitelike that.

“Such as?” You question, not trying to flaunt his mistakes in his face, but merely curious as to when he feels like he’s ever done that.

“Well, mainly, everything with Darkside. Trying to convince you to go back, even though I know it terrified you. I couldn’t be there with you and you came back looking like a pile of scrap, startled out of your mind. I told you that you could trust Marko and when he stabbed you in the back I still brushed you off. That was awful of me, Sleeper.” He rants. His words are sincere, full of regret. Honestly, you were really pissed at him for that. Unbelievably so. You remember ignoring him for a few cycles after that, as well as him eventually fishing you out from your bunk and convincing you to do meaningless errands with him. Errands you didn’t need to help him with that he asked you to anyway.

Serafin continues to rant, clearly letting off some long-held regret, guilt, and self-directed anger. You simply let him speak. You never expected him to remember any of this or point it out loud, small things you were irritated with him for so long ago. None of that mattered to you anymore, but his apology did. And, clearly he needed this. He needs to forgive himself.

It is painfully clear he blames himself for every mishap that had crossed your path leading up to your second reboot (which is noticeably the only thing he doesn’t mention). It becomes clear to you that his guilt is a facet of his recent overbearing protectiveness, his way of trying to atone for everything he’s come to resent himself for.

Eventually, he runs out of things to blame himself for and he stares at you, realizing you’ve just been carefully absorbing his words without trying to stop him. He shifts around and you know he’s about to apologize for that too, to which you simply reach over and grab his hand, intertwining his calloused digits with your manmade fingers.

You think for a moment, choosing what to say. You’re still a little bitter, a little angry, but every word he’s just poured out from his mouth washes that away.

> Chide him on his inconsiderateness.
> Forgive him.

“It’s fine, Serafin. I’m fine, you’re fine… we’re fine. I… don’t want you blaming yourself for everything. I really don’t. Those things belong in the past for a reason. I… really do wish you’d stop acting like I’m fragile, though. Bliss too.” You reply, feeling a little uncomfortable as his words demand you to show him some vulnerability, talking about yourself, but smiling as you speak. It’s easier to laugh this weight off with him.

He looks at you. You pause. You shift around a little, sitting up straighter and pulling Serafin’s hand closer to you. You look away from him and towards his hand, running your thumb over the irritated skin on his knuckles. A sign of the work that you can’t currently assist him with.

“Even if I am- fragile, I mean. I know. I just hate feeling helpless, useless. I can hardly hold things on my own and I’m stuck hobbling around like a station pirate. I hate it. You’re all staring at me like I’m a ghost and it just… frustrates me. I don’t know why.” You mumble. It feels weird to talk to him about this kind of thing but he’s visibly more relaxed when you do. He sighs.

“I get it. You obsess a little over feeling useful, helping people, and right now you feel like you can’t do that. Like you’re deprived of a purpose. Flint does it too, I think it’s a sleeper thing. I know you, I know you don’t like feeling all the eyes on you, either. I’m sorry. Just… give us some time, if you can. Things will feel more normal soon.”

He pauses, clearing his throat. “Speaking of which, I’ve been talking with the crew, and… Bliss has traced a good place to find some replacement parts for your leg, so we can fix you up. Get you back on two feet. Kadet’s staying behind with her courier work, and she can keep an eye on everything here. Everyone else wants to come, it’ll be nice to get everyone together again. We just need Yu-Jin and Nia.” Serafin nods, acknowledging your stubbornness in a way that reassures you. You perk your head up at the mention of leaving on The Rig, and at the mention of Yu-Jin and Nia. Your head has been so muddled lately that you kept forgetting to ask about them.

“Really? What- what have they been doing, anyways?” You ask, your voice is smaller now, softer. He nods again.
“Yeah, Bliss wants to leave tomorrow. Yu-Jin’s… he’s fine. Just been gambling pretty hard lately. He’s missed you, so it won’t be hard to get him on board. Femi’s been in Darkside for a while, so Nia’s just with him. Yu-Jin and Femi seem to be good buddies nowadays and Nia’s already enthusiastically agreed to come. If you’re up for it, that is.”

There is only a brief moment of silence, a shared look of curiosity, inquisition, gauging the other's feelings. His hand lightly wraps around yours, a little tighter. “Yes, of course I am.” You agree, perhaps a little more enthusiastically than you'd intended. You’re simply too eager to do something, anything, with the crew as a whole again. To feel a little more normal.

“Okay.” He nods, taking his hand from yours and letting you stand yourself up before you walk towards the door, leaving your previous resentment and frustrations in here. The only assistance he provides is handing you your crutch, though you can tell he wants to do more.

You silently realize that he probably always will.

Chapter Text

Since the creation of your consciousness, you have often found yourself contemplating what the word ‘family’ truly means.

Whether it be blood relation, a chosen kinship, or something else entirely, you’ve always known from your own innate instincts and your increasingly widespread exposure to the world that it was something truly special, unparalleled. A human link, a chosen effort to cling to someone next to you and never let go under the harshest conditions in an even harsher world. An essential part of what it means to be human.

But you aren’t human. At least, not in the same way as most.

In terms of upbringing, the closest thing to family you have is definitely Flint, in so many ways that nobody would have to point out. You have your insecurities with your truly human crewmates, however.

You like to think of the crew as your family, as the people you’ve chosen, the people you would take a dozen bullets for without a thought.

Do they consider you theirs, though?

You’d never ask that question because speaking it aloud feels like breaking an unspoken vow, but you often wonder if you’re misinterpreting what it truly means to be a part of a family to people so fortunate to be able to share ties through blood.

…

Right now, Juni makes some of that worry dissipate.

The slightly arid smell of the compound relaxes you as you focus on the dark strands of hair of the girl sitting in front of you. Her hair has grown fairly long now, a reminder of just how much time you need to catch up on.

Braiding her hair was always something the two of you liked to sit with each other for, this time especially… important, to you. Your technique is precise, though her hair is on the coarser side it’s always been easy for you to work with, midnight strands in carefully divided sections, the outer strands in, over and over. A motion easy to fall into and lose yourself in. You’ve always liked braiding her hair. Before you could only manage small ones but now she has enough hair to weave into a larger plait.

You know she’s likely asked you to do this more to distract you than to please herself, but you don’t mind. You welcome the distraction. When you’d woken up this cycle, at first you were practically giddy with the idea of finally making your way out of the compound and returning to the Rig after such a long stay away. She was your ship, your home, your refuge from so much darkness, and you were eager to get on board. No matter how cozy the compound was, it would never be your ship.

Your excitement quickly faded to a sour dissatisfaction as your uselessness made itself apparent. You couldn’t help refill the fuel canisters, or lift anything remotely heavy, you couldn’t even help pack your own belongings because you already kept everything of yours in precisely organized packs, ready to move at any moment.

You felt useless. Anxious to leave as well, but there was much preparation needed before the whole crew could up and depart after such a long time of disorganization. It was when you resigned yourself to the worn out sectional in the main room that Juni approached you and asked you to braid her hair because she was apparently told she couldn’t help much either. Whether she was telling the truth or not, you appreciated it. A drop of guilt still stings from the previous cycle’s game of cards that you admittedly stormed out of rather unceremoniously, but neither of you mentioned it. Another thing to be grateful for.

Eventually, her hair does stop, and you tie off her braid with a small band and run your hand across it once. She does the same, and turns to look at you with a soft grin. “Thank you, Sleeper.” She says. More words, so many more words, are hidden underneath her gratitude. Despite that, between the two of you there isn’t any need to expose them. You smile back and nod.

A familiar pair of blue eyes catches your gaze, Serafin’s face always entering a room before his body. There is a scratch on his nose that you know wasn’t there yesterday, and he seems a bit fatigued. Scuff marks on his shirt tell you that he must’ve been moving crates and containers all morning already.

“Sleeper, wanna help me with something?” He says, his hand and shoulder resting along the corner of the wall as he looks at you with a slight grin. He knows you’re eager for an opportunity to be any sort of help, and you quickly get up from the tattered sofa to follow him, metal crutch in hand. You see Serafin throw an appreciative look at Juni as if it deliberately means something, but she’s off to do something else before you can really question what.

You’ve gotten more and more familiar with the compound by now, so while you follow Serafin down the southern half of the quaint little dwelling you feel a little less lost. You’re quicker with your crutch now too, able to confidently surpass the mechanical little vacuum-bot that Bliss salvaged out of the Scrapper Market to help with the dust issue plaguing the station as of late. Probably not the most substantial accomplishment to most, but it is to you.

Serafin takes you to the main storage room, a short distance away from the doors to the ‘outside’ of the station. Like much of the station, it smells like dust. The scent reminds you of a rocky moon that you’re sure you’ve been to, but you don’t remember the name or any other details about it.

You see approximately a dozen boxes laid out in front of you, recognizing the contents of the boxes as ration pouches, presumably the amount gathered for the trip out on the Rig.

“I can’t exactly load these anywhere, and they’re already packaged in boxes.” You mumble, a slightly disappointed expression on your face that you try to mask. This didn’t seem like something you could be super useful for.

“Maybe not, but you can count, can’t you?” He replies, handing you a clipboard and a pen, his dusty hand leaving a mark on the clipboard paper. You take it with a nod as your disappointment eases just a little. Sure, you could at least do this.

You sit on a crate as you go through box after box, carefully counting each individual pouch and setting them back in the box more organized than they were before. Numbers and arrangements were something you could certainly help out with. Serafin pulls a crate beside you and sits with you while you count. He offers to help, you stubbornly refuse, and thus a silence falls over the room. It isn’t one of awkwardness, but comfortability. The two of you simply… exist, in the presence of one another.

The boxes go by fast. It isn't enough work as you'd like to go through, nor the proper assistance you wish you could provide, but it's something. Serafin stays next to you for every minute of it, offering small banter and jokes to ease your visibly deflated mood. It works, it always works. You appreciate him for that. It's also easy to lose yourself in the boxes, and the counting. It reminds you of some internal instinct to work, to stay focused on something. You've had a hard time doing that lately.

You still have a little while to wait after you're done going through every box, but your quiet sourness from earlier has mostly dissipated. You're also the first one out the door when it's time to leave. Kadet stays back with the keys to the compound and Juni’s archive, patting you on the back before you leave. “I know you guys won't be gone for long, but… still not used to having you back.” She says in a light murmur by your ear. You smile and give her a little nod. Although her words succeed in making you feel a little sentimental, nothing can quench your ambition to get to your ship right now.

Serafin laughs as you eagerly work your way down the side-streets of Darkside, your group en route to the loading docks. Though you’re more motivated right now than you have been since you woke up a few cycles ago, by far, you can’t deny the subtle burn setting into your arms as you push yourself onward with your crutch. As hardy and steadfast as a sleeper body may be, you’re still pretty fatigued from everything.

You stay fairly close to Serafin and Flint, who carry most of the stock of supplies. Juni clicks away at a wristwatch, some iridescent screen on it spouting out language that even you don’t understand, while Bliss chatters away about the travel plans. Though you’re more than interested in the current plan to venture out past Darkside, you can’t help but… direct your attention towards something else. Maybe it’s just with how flighty your head has felt lately, but… something grabs your attention in the distance, down a set of side-streets you’ve never been down before but feel some sort of attachment to.

Idly, your steps slow and you fall just behind the group as you peek your head down one of the tight alleyways. You feel a strange pull towards something within the side-streets, like there’s something important you need to see.

>Catch up with the rest of the group.
>Detour.

You know you should probably just follow the others, go to the Rig like you’ve been waiting so long for, but you hear some odd instinct whispering in the back of your head, telling you to go that way.

“Sleeper?” Serafin shouts in question, turning back as he notices you falling behind. There’s an odd look on his face, as you turn to him.

>Catch up with the rest of the group.
>Detour.

You shake away your thoughts, pushing forth to catch up with him. His hand rests idly on your back once you step in front of him, a soft display of companionship. You aren’t sure what to make of… whatever that was.

“You okay?” Juni asks, her face a subtle mask of concern. You suddenly feel like she’s gotten taller.

“Yeah.” You reply, shrugging off the eyes of the group watching you.

“Okay. Well, just a minute ahead is the airlock for the low-gravity branch of the station, as we get closer to the departure dock.” Bliss says, their head turning to look at you for just a moment before turning back ahead. They fidget with the heavy pack of water over their shoulders and readjust their glasses.

You’re surprised that nobody gives the group of you too much attention as you make your way down to the dock, slowly. Too slowly. You’re not sure whether it’s their heavy belongings or if they’re slowing down to your pace. Regardless, you shake that out of your mind and focus on getting to the ship before your arms give up on you. You can hear your crew laughing with each other as you all slowly make your way through the fabricated city streets of Darkside. It's all within a careful airlock, and you know it's supposed to recreate some feeling of a worldly city, a place with real, unarticidial gravity. Perhaps that's why you've always been attached to the station, it's a metal imitation of something truly alive, just like you. It's comforting.

Your succession through the airlock gives you just a little more freedom, no longer needing the support of the crutch to handle your weight. You’re unaccustomed to kicking off the ground with one leg so you use the walls, or occasionally Serafin’s shoulders, to help you move faster, but you're picking up the process of moving through low-gravity again like returning to a lost hobby. Your crutch is fastened to a loop in Serafin’s jacket, and Flint concedes to your repeated requests to help carry some of the ration pouches. Suddenly, you look around at your crew and realize you've never moved through the streets in such a large group before.

“Why are we loading all of the supplies at once? It’s slowing us down, and I thought the Rig was always supposed to be stocked for emergencies.” You pipe up, all too aware of how noticeable you are together. If someone were to rush you–

“We were going to leave in pairs, but Bliss and Juni together are vulnerable and if I went with them, Serafin wouldn’t be able to carry supplies, help you walk and ward off any threats by himself. It makes more sense to do it this way. By the way, the Rig is still partially stocked. We just weren’t exactly planning on having to leave all together on such… short notice.” Flint answers, his monotone voice failing to shield the truth of his words.

Nobody was expecting you to wake up. That makes you feel a little… guilty, even confused. How distant had the crew really grown from each other without you? Weren’t you all so close, weren’t you all family?

You stay silent the rest of the way to the dock. That is, until you hear a familiar name that breathes a rush of fresh air into your oxygen-free lungs.

“Yu-Jin!” Juni shouts, her braid flowing in the low gravity behind her as she pushes forward, down the tented hallway of the loading dock. The mention of your friend catches your attention, and sure enough, there he is. His broad face is the same as you remember, his large silhouette demanding a sort of attention, but there’s something… emptier, in his expression, that didn’t fit his face. Nonetheless, he gives a wave back to Juni, his crows feet wrinkling as he smiles.

He sees you, and his eyebrows raise as his smile loses just a little bit of its lustre. Like he’s looking at a ghost.

“Sleeper.” He breathily mutters, pulling you into a bone-crushing embrace as soon as you’re within arms reach. You smile against the slippery material of his jacket, before he lets you go. You wobble a little under the weight of just one leg, and as Yu-Jin sets a hand on your shoulder to keep you steady you see his lips part a little at the sight of your missing leg.

Serafin nods a greeting to Yu-Jin, and Flint leads Juni inside the Rig. Eagerly, you follow the both of them inside as Serafin converses with Yu-Jin and Bliss opens the outer fuel hatch.

The inside of the Rig is just as you remember, like it had only been a few days since you’d been here. Your eyes catch at two more familiar faces, Femi and Nia. The latter stands up from a cushioned table booth at the sight of you, her eyes bright with excitement and kindness. She hugs you, not as tight as Yu-Jin, but her embrace radiates joy.

Femi is more subtle with his emotions, but you two still enjoy your reunion. He thanks you for keeping your promise to make sure Nia stays safe, and for the most part you settle back into routine. Femi isn’t joining you out of the station, so he bids you a short farewell just as Serafin walks in.

“Okay, we’re leaving in twenty, everyone. Bliss has triple checked about every safety precaution I’ve ever heard of and I just need to get the cockpit checked. Sleeper, come with me.” He says, his voice full of that confidence that you know he only has when he’s piloting. You follow him into the cockpit, which is a little more cluttered than you remember it being.

While Serafin checks dial after dial, getting the ship’s systems online, you’re welcomed by perhaps one of your closest companions. The Stray meows as it suddenly rubs against your remaining leg, and you can’t hold back a smile and a greeting. It climbs onto your lap, smelling you and pawing at you with an expression that you’re certain is confusion combined with felicitation.

“You and that damn cat.” Serafin mumbles under his breath in mock annoyance, a grin playing at his lips. “Set it in the kennel, don’t need the thing flying at my face while I’m trying to fly.”

He turns, getting up from his seat and opening the cockpit door, three empty seats remaining as you sit in the one beside the pilot’s.

“Strap in! Whoever isn’t sitting up front can stay in the starboard and port quarters.” Serafin shouts. Just as he’s getting ready to fly, Flint, Bliss and Nia sit behind you and Serafin. Yu-Jin and Juni must be in the back.

You feel a pang of guilt at that. You know Juni likes to sit in the front. “I could’ve stayed in the back, y’know. Don’t want anybody to feel forced to–”

“I want you up here with me. Besides, you need to be strapped in a chair after over three months gone from any sort of contract leave. It’ll be disorienting and you might even pass out.” He replies, cutting you off with a calm but stern look.

“To me, it’s only been a few days, Serafin.” You respond, looking at him in contest. Besides, sleepers aren’t subjected to a lot of the same proprioceptive adjustment times that the rest of the crew are.

“I don’t really give a shit. Doesn’t matter, your physical body is still not used to this anymore and I’m not taking any chances. You hitting your head on the way down is not something I want to worry about right now.” He answers. You decide not to argue with him.

When the ship does take off, you’re not sure whether it is the familiar thrum of the ship swaying as it flies, or the disorienting vertigo that lulls you to a peaceful sleep.

Just to spite Serafin, you’ve decided it’s the first option.

…

As always since your second reboot, you awake with a slight jerk as flashes of restless labour, anhedonic nights, and snake-inked skin strike their way through your head. Though the contents of your dreams quickly fade from your memory, the tenseness in your shoulders remains as you open your eyes. Serafin is already eyeing you, his posture lax in the pilot’s chair in the cockpit. A comms headset is around his ears, the microphone turned away from his face.

“Bad dreams again?” He says, his expression light and calm, a pilotboard fuse rolling around his fingers as he fidgets with it idly.

“How’d you know? That obvious?” You ask him, lightly shifting around in your seat as you groggily undo the seatbelt. You hadn’t necessarily told him about the vague but unnerving nightmares following you around these days. You’re a little uncomfortable at the mention of them, perhaps a little embarrassed, too– but this is Serafin. You weren’t going to lie to him about them, not just because he’d be able to tell you were being untruthful but because you really don’t have any desire to in the first place.

“You always sleep like the dead, literally, but you don’t when you have nightmares.” He replies, lazily pushing his chair back and forth with his foot against the ship’s main console. You look at him in question, turning your own chair slightly to face him more upfront. He sighs, not out of exasperation but consideration.

“You don’t breathe when you’re in a restful sleep. Or stir, or move at all for that matter. No offense, but it used to creep me out.” He laughs, setting the fuse down in front of his chair. “You actually act more human when you don’t sleep well, though. You breathe through your nose and your eyelids move. I’ve seen it for as long as I’ve known you.”

“Do you like to watch me sleep like some hired mercenary?” You laugh. It’s a little weird to have someone know so much about how you act when you’re vulnerable, without the chance to mask yourself.

He pauses, now fidgeting with his calloused fingers and looking out the front of the ship. “We took shifts sleeping next to each other back on Darkside, before… everything. It helped keep both of our nightmares away, having someone there in case something… went wrong.”

You look at him, finding an odd expression on his face. It was obvious that both of you tried to avoid that subject, on your end because you felt an odd discomfort of thinking about all the missing memories you have, with Serafin most of all. You two must’ve been close, probably even closer than you are now, and you assumed that was why he never brought it up either, but…

Maybe he’s mourning that closeness with you, too.

You pause. Before you can say anything, Flint enters the cockpit, his hand around the door. “Everyone’s all set to go. We’re splitting into groups, I need Juni and Nia to interface the locks on the warehouse doors, and Bliss can break into the old compound with Yu-Jin.”

Serafin turns at the same time as you and nods as you realize all the chairs in the cockpit are now empty. You must’ve slept through the docking.

“Alright, make sure everyone’s suited up while I scan for any signals. I’ll tell you where the systems are from there, should be quick and easy.” Serafin replies.

You look out the front of the ship and see pale rock, old and disheveled buildings in front. This must be the old Senetstat base Bliss mentioned before. You’re not exactly disappointed that you obviously must not be going with them, just… deflated. You’re quiet as Serafin releases the exit dock on the ship, and your conversation from earlier hangs in the air as everyone else gets out.

On the bright side, Serafin hooks you up with a headset like his own and shows you how to work the comm radios from the ship. It doesn’t exactly fit your non-human ears, but Serafin gets a laugh out of trying to make sure it stays on while he tells you how to work it. You’re better at it then you thought and you find yourself knowing what some buttons are without him telling you. Maybe muscle memory from a time you don’t remember anymore.

“Okay, everything’s looking good out there?” Serafin asks into his microphone as he hooks up the radio system.

“The ground here is… oddly flat, and hard to kick off of, but we shouldn’t have much trouble.” Yu-Jin says through his suit, his voice pleasant in your ears after so long. Even though you can tell he’s much more worn down than you last remember him being, there’s a certain optimism in his voice that never gets old.

You adjust the microphone’s proximity to your mouth, pressing the button. “Everyone have fun out there. Remember, it’s- it’s okay if you don’t find anything, just come back if anything seems-”

“It’s safe, Sleeper. We’ll hurry back to the ship if anything seems fishy and Serafin knows how to leave in a rush. Besides, what good is my drinking buddy without a leg?” Yu-Jin responds, his sarcastic smile detectable just from his voice. Yu-Jin always did invite you to bars with him despite your inability to truly be intoxicated. The basis of your friendship relied on inebriated laughter and playful jabs. You smile, appreciating his suddenly cheery mood. He seemed to be a little melancholy earlier.

You’re mostly silent while Serafin directs the two groups to different locations. For a while, the only sounds over the radio are conversations the crew are having with each other, and Serafin turns to you. “This is mostly what it is when you stay behind, watching in case something goes south. There’s a lot of downtime.”

“Yeah. I guess… I’m out there on almost every mission, so I wouldn’t know.” You reply. There’s a moment of slightly awkward silence between you two. Your sore conversation from earlier replays in your mind. The Stray climbs onto your lap, chirping meows as it curls up into a comfortable position. You turn to Serafin, who is now sitting cross-legged in his chair.

“I could’ve gone out there to help.” You mumble, knowing you likely would have just been a liability but still feeling a sense of obligation, given that they’re out there to look for parts you need in the first place.

“You keep saying stuff like that as if we aren’t choosing to be here. You… trust me, Sleeper, you’ve already helped more than you know.” He replies, his expression calm but his voice persuasive. “Besides, you have absolutely no idea how boring it gets waiting here on missions sometimes. Nice to have a buddy.” He continues with a more earnest smile, looking at you with half-lidded eyes.

You smile.

“True, true.” You concede.

While you wait for any directed communication from the crew, Serafin throws idle jokes your way, coaxing the occasional laugh from you. They’re not funny, but you’re pretty sure that’s the point. After his voice dies down and you’re left sitting there with contagious smiles, you look at him with a more genuine curiosity.

“So, was it this boring when it was just you and me, doing missions and cargo drops for Laine?” You ask. Your words come out with a humorous air, mostly a joke, but you’re also intrigued about pretty much any detail in regards to the person you were… before.

He snickers for a second, but it’s a little different than the pointless laughter before. “Actually, you kind of hated me when we were first paired together.” He says, his eyebrows raised.

“What? No way.” You reply incredulously. It’s hard to imagine ever hating Serafin, even when things were tense after your first reboot… you never even disliked him.

“No, seriously, it’s true. I took a gear component from your station without realizing you needed it for self-repairs. You were pissed, maybe said three words to me the first few weeks we had to collect dead drops. I guess you were quiet anyways, but every time I spoke to you I mostly just got scowls and mumbles.”

You don’t know how to feel about that.

“Well, I know things weren’t always so tense. If I know you as well as I think I do, I doubt you would have risked your life just to help me get out of Darkside with you.” You reply, scratching The Stray’s ears while Juni laughs into the intercom over something Flint says.

“No, it didn’t last forever. I slowly worked my way into your favour with time and we were good with each other. We worked for Laine for a pretty long time, so I just figured I had to… be patient. You would slide me the better food in the canteen, because you couldn’t really taste it anyway, and I helped you if you needed someone more inconspicuous to find something, or when you needed stabilizer.” He nods, his voice tinged with a certain bittersweetness, like telling a story about a friend you haven’t seen in a while.

Your lips part as you pause, before smiling lightly. “Well, we must’ve been pretty close if I was letting you do that, then. I mean, it’s a little fuzzy to me, but I can still remember how… personal stabilizer injections are. It’s when a sleeper is most vulnerable.”

For reasons unknown to you, that seems to trigger something important in him, from the way he shifts around and avoids your gaze. His voice is missing some of the warmth from before.

“Yeah… you could definitely say that.”

Flint’s voice crackles over the intercom, breaking the sudden change in the conversation mood. “Are either of you seeing any disturbances on the radar, over there? I can’t find the magnet lock into the warehouse and I don’t see any other ways to get in that won’t set off any potential alarms. Senetstat has some wicked security and I don’t want to deal with any system ghosts right now.”

Serafin gives you a look of confusion, adjusting in his chair as he looks at the radar. One hand starts clicking away at buttons on the console while the other presses on his headset. “It should be about… thirty metres away from where you are right now, around the northeastern quarter of the building.”

“If it isn’t showing up on our handheld detectors then that means it has a different magnetic lock on it. I can still hack it, I just need to see it first.” Juni chimes in, her gentler voice a little harder to hear.

You sit as Serafin guides Flint to the hidden lock, Juni detailing to you how Nia needs to climb up the side of the building just to uncover one of the mechanisms. Without you telling her, it’s like she can sense your faint feeling of missing out. Juni’s able to successfully trigger the lock and open up the warehouse, Flint and Juni remarking on countless pieces of old equipment and scrap that you don’t recognize, at least not by name. Judging by the excitement in their voices, they must have hit the Senetstat version of a component gold mine.

“There’s good news on our end, too. Yu-Jin’s got what looks like a thousand chits’ worth of old tech in here. Hell, we could fix all the faulty doors back on Darkside with these, fix Sleeper’s leg, and still have enough to put in storage for a good while.” Bliss says, their voice crackling through the radio for the first time in perhaps the entire venture.

“Yeah, I’ve got steel panelling here that I’ve only ever seen used for sleeper bodies. Sleeper, looks like we can finally fix your pectoral panels with something better than plain scrap.” Flint notes, their tone almost in disbelief. One of your hands feels along your chest panels, almost forgetting that they’ve been in less than great condition for a long time.

“Okay then, your pressure monitors are getting a little below what I’d like, so if everybody’s filled their packs with what they can carry, then come back. If anybody wants we can make a second venture after it’s been loaded here but only if we’re confident it’s worth the time.” Serafin chirps into his microphone, his expression optimistic but still cautious. That protectiveness will never leave him, you’re sure of that.

Bliss and Yu-Jin are the first to make the venture back to the Rig, you can see them slowly approaching the front of the ship. This trip has seemed awfully short, barely even a few hours. You’re used to longer, more arduous ventures than that.

Serafin frowns suddenly, clicking a few dials. “What is it?” You ask, turning over to him and moving your chair closer to his on its steel swivel.

“There’s a new magnetic reading on the radar. Flint, are you guys all good?” He asks.

“We’re fine, I’m just fastening an extra few tools on my belt. Femi will like these.” Nia chirps up, who’d been very cheery and chatty throughout the mission but otherwise mostly quiet.

“Yeah, we’ll be back to the Rig in-” Flint’s microphone cuts out before a rattling static sound fills the room, Serafin muttering under his breath about ‘jinxed luck’ as he turns a dial on the console. You call Flint’s name into your microphone, then Juni and Nia’s, even Yu-Jin’s. Nothing. Serafin turns the dial almost 360 degrees before the comms finally burst back into sound, chaos filling your ears.

The sound of something exploding, metal hitting the ground, and Flint’s shouts are the first things you can make out.

“Shit- shit-” Nia shouts, and Serafin sits straighter in his chair as he calmly calls for someone to tell us what’s going on.

“We don’t know, everything on our end went dark. Me and Yu-Jin are getting back to the Rig since we’re too far to make it back now.” Bliss shouts into their mic, and you can see them making greater efforts to come back through the front of the ship. They make it back in just a few minutes, Serafin letting them in while you try to get a handle on what’s going on.

“I stepped on some sort of security mine and a canister exploded from under my feet-” Flint huffs into his microphone as you hear more noise in the background. “I’ve seen this before on a mission with Karman, but never associated with Senetstat-”

“Okay, just stay calm, get over here.” You say to him, anxiety thrumming through your fingers. You aren’t there to help anybody, this time. You look behind you, seeing Serafin close the airlock as both Bliss and Yu-Jin make it inside. As you look at the different screens on the panel, you’re wondering why the detonations aren’t following Yu-Jin, Bliss, Nia or Juni. Only Flint. Then, you think you realize.

You look back to the panel. You’ve never piloted the ship before, at least not that you can remember, but somehow you know what to do.

You press a panel open on the right side of your head, ripping out a signal repeater lightly coated with the oil inside your nervous system cables, and press it into a hole on the underside of the console of the ship. As a light pain and warning screens sound in your head, a small screen Serafin previously told you was broken proceeds to light up, suggesting some sort of steering mechanism. You look at the rader where dozens of new chemical signals show up, where the landmines are, and you set the ship towards it. The ship moves with a heavy amount of force, and you speak into your microphone as you hold the ship in place, for now. You redirect Flint to a different radio channel.

“What I’m assuming from the readings on here is that whatever system you triggered is trained on your electrical output and not the biotic crew, the explosions are following you. I… I need you to run away from them. We load them on the ship, and I can set the ship to follow you the same way the detonations are. Then, we close the airlock, and I have to grab you from the outside. We’re the only ones who can survive without the airlock.” You say, the idea flowing out of your mouth about as soon as it pops into your head.

“Okay, yeah, if this cursed rock doesn’t blow me to bits before then- yeah.” Flint agrees, the both of you knowing there isn’t another plan that doesn’t jeopardize the rest of the crew. You wait, patiently, until Juni and Nia arrive at the ship. Juni shouts something about Flint running the opposite direction to the confusion of everyone else.

Nobody else knows your plan. As much as you want to feel guilty for potentially subjecting Flint to injury or worse, the both of you have had many conversations about what it really means to be a sleeper. It means subjecting yourself to more danger to protect others because, by nature, you foster danger itself. You are a danger. It’s your fault the crew is on this mission, and it’s Flint’s fault the ground is literally blowing up beneath everyone’s feet.

“Are they back?” Flint asks, his voice heavy with fatigue as he surely keeps running. He’s a machinist type, you know he has the stamina to keep going. The two of you can do this. When you tell him yes, he aims his direction around the back of the warehouse where you tell him to meet at a converging point so he can intercept the Rig.

You lock the Rig’s gps on the agreed location and kick everything into action, racing across the ship to the airlock door. Serafin looks at you as he’s helping Juni release the tight straps on her suit. “What are you doing? Who’s piloting the-”

“I still am. Go sit in there in case anything goes wrong, don’t open the airlock.” You tell him, approaching the door and locking behind you. Through the small window, you see him staring at you with a mix of disagreement, concern, and… precise recognition, like he already knows what you’re going to do. As the Rig speeds on, you feel the intense cold of the outside air, the wind deafening your ears. You always try to wear a suit if you can just because it is distracting, overwhelming, and sometimes dangerous to be completely exposed to the air, but right now you have to risk it. In the precious seconds you have before you need to be ready to grab Flint, you fasten an emergency rope to your torso and inner thigh, so you won’t fall off. When you do see Flint, you know you’ll have to be quick. He’s struggling with the lower gravity of this small rock, you can see the panic in his eyes as he realizes he won’t make it in time. The ship slows, and you scream into your headset– still fastened to your head but not for long– that Serafin needs to maintain the previous pace or the Rig won’t escape the explosions at all. Mounds of sand shoot up underneath Flint’s feet, barely missing him, and it almost looks like some sort of snake following him beneath the ground.

As Serafin clearly listens to your stern reprimand, the ship gets faster at the same time you jump off, relying on the rope to keep hold of you, as you barely manage to reach Flint and grab onto him with everything you have.

“Shit– shit–” Flint repeats, as an explosion propels the both of you to the right with an angry violence, almost causing you to let go of him. The Rig lifts up, taking off the ground, and you just squeeze Flint with every ounce of strength you have. You twist your leg around the rope as much as you can, if something pulls the wrong way it will crush your remaining leg into pieces but it will also keep you more stable.

Alarms of panic sound in your head as you’re reminded of the missing diode in your artificial skull, feeling the oil dripping down your neck. You’re starting to realize that probably wasn’t the wisest decision but you just felt it was what you had to do, with zero factual reason behind your actions. It would perplex you if you didn’t have bigger issues to deal with at this moment.

Something tugs on the rope and you feel a pain in your knee, but you turn to see Yu-Jin, pulling the two of you back in with an urgent haste as he looks to the both of you with concern. You grit your teeth as he tugs you both back to the airlock. You realize someone must’ve either hacked the lock, or Yu-Jin busted his way through. You’re honestly grateful regardless, because the wind and the pressure of the outside is starting to wear on you as the side of your head burns. Flint says something to you but you can’t hear him, his grip tightening on you.

Yu-Jin pulls the both of you in and grabs your shoulders with a firm hold, and when you feel the warmer air of the inside of the ship you just loosen with relief, your energy giving out. Your chest heaves with anxious relief as you crouch on the floor, your fingers feeling the side of your head as your forehead makes contact with the ground. Yu-JIn shouts something you don’t make out, your audio receptors buzzing with the overwhelming aftermath of the outside wind. Someone tugs on your shoulder, easing you onto your side and then on your back. It’s Bliss, feeling the oil streaming out of the now existing gap in your skull.

“What happened?” Bliss questions incredulously. You see Flint heaving beside you as Juni helps him up, and Serafin looking over at you from across the ship, the cockpit door opened.

“I’m fine, I’m fine, I just-”

“They took out a diode and plugged it into the console.” Serafin answers for you, somehow having worked it out. He gets up from his seat, the Rig still steering, racing across the main floor with the piece in his hand. He shouts something to Yu-Jin and Nia and they leave down the starboard quarter, and Juni helps Flint get his suit off as he sits by you with Bliss. He inserts it back into your head and the warnings blaring in your head ease.

When Bliss starts to question you, Serafin cuts them off.

“They’ve done it before. Stupid idea, very stupid, but there shouldn’t be any damage.” He says, scolding you as you sit up. You feel dizzy from being thrown around like a ragdoll by that rope, but you insist on getting up and using the wall of the ship for support.

Serafin knows better than to argue with you right now, knowing that the fatigued scowl on your face means you won’t be receptive to it and will likely just ignore him. You know his reprimands are coming later, though.

Bliss huffs, obviously anxious, adjusting their glasses as they gesture to both you and Flint. “Okay, you two– with me, in the workshop now. I need to check you for injuries.” They say, a little firmer. Flint simply smiles at you, trailing a thankful hand on your shoulder as you insist on making your way there yourself.

“You did the right thing, steering me away from them. Thank you.” He mumbles quieter than Bliss can hear, as Serafin walks back into the cockpit with a tired sigh, rubbing the bridge of his nose.

…

The way back to Darkside is quiet, both because you’re fatigued and because you don’t want to face Serafin’s concerned rants. What matters is that everybody got back safely, and that only a few items were lost on the way back. A successful trip, no matter how messy.

You find your way back to the Rig’s bunks like a muscle memory. They’re cozy, familiar, and all you want right now is to sleep. The bunks are different from the ones on Darkside, because of the low gravity there are heavy weighted blankets with a built-in band to keep someone inside. Instead of a typical bunk bed, per say, the beds are held in spaces within the wall, making it a much more enclosed space. There is some claustrophobia that comes with it, but you’re used to it and find it quite relaxing. To your frustration, you struggle to make it up into your bunk. Despite the low gravity that should make it easy, your one knee is too sore to follow your wishes and kick off the ground. Bliss said nothing was wrong with it except for friction burns on the surface of your synthetic skin, but you guess you’re just too tired.

“Mine’s easier to sleep in. Besides, your mattress is a little stiff from lack of use.” A familiar voice calls out, Serafin’s. He walks into the bunks with a calm gait, his expression thoughtful. You just look at him, and he gestures towards the bunk below yours. With a sigh, you kneel down and get into his, where he follows you.

“Babysitting me?” You say, a little less humorously than you’d intended. Comedy isn't your strong suit, never has been. He just looks at you, sitting up a little as you settle under the weighted blanket.

“No, just… kickin’ it old school. You remember what I said before.” He replies, a light smile playing on his lips. “Keeping bad dreams away.”

You look over at him, as he sighs. “I want to ask you what the hell you were thinking just now, but honestly I don’t think you know either. I hope not, at least.” He says, his tone softer but just a little more stern.

“...How’d you know?” You laugh.

“Because the Sleeper I know these days wouldn’t even know how to do that. That’s a maneuver you only ever did once before, on a mission for Laine. I’d like to point out that the reason that mechanism in the cockpit is broken is because it uses an old type of component that, in this age, is only in certain machines or sleeper bodies. Please, for my sanity, don’t go ripping parts out of yourself to mesh with the ship. Didn’t go well the first time either.” He says with a sigh.

“I’m sorry, I just… felt like I had to do that. I don’t know why, I just… did it.” You reply softly, your fatigue setting in as you blink.

“Don’t apologize. I’m honestly more intrigued by the fact that you seem to have remembered something from before your first reboot. Doesn’t happen often.” He says, his voice unusually soft, and forgiving. You nod, yawning. There’s an obvious question written all over his face, in regards to if you’ve been remembering anything new. You’re not sure how you would answer if he does ask, but he doesn’t. Instead, Serafin just sighs, a hand tugging the blanket a little closer to you.

"Who's piloting the ship?” You ask. You know the ship can fly without him presently monitoring but he’s usually pretty insistent on being in the cockpit to watch for anything concerning.

“Nia. I’ve been teaching her lately. She isn’t the best, but she’ll get there. I trust her, she reminds me of myself when I was a teenager. Just… something about her ambition.” Serafin says, a thoughtful look in his eyes.

“She’s spunky, and has an attitude like you.” You jab at him with a smile. “Just to be fair though, you’ll always be my first choice for a pilot.”

He smiles, which is the last thing you see before your eyes drift closed. “To be fair myself, you’re my first choice for a captain.”

Serafin stays with you for a while, mumbling words to you that you're too tired to hear but he speaks anyways. Even as you fall into a well-needed sleep, he just sits beside you. Despite how heavily the stress of the trip this cycle weighs on your mind, you don’t have any nightmares this time.

Chapter Text

Hello!! Sorry for the slow updates currently, I am a student in the middle of finals season so it will be a few weeks before any new chapters come out. Hoping to get one done as soon as my tests are finalized in about two weeks, so look forward to that!! Thank you for your patience and kind comments ^^

Edit: I am currently sick with Covid soooo it'll be another little while lol. I spent a few days in the hospital because I have a very weak immune system and weak lungs from the first time I had covid a couple years ago and i've been too tired to type. I am working on the real chapter five for a while and it's close to being done, I just haven't been feeling up to it. Again, thanks for your patience!!