Chapter Text
Golden eyes. They were a constant companion, staring at her from the mirror, leaping out from the darkest of shadows and behind every blink of her own. They reminded her of a lot of things, most of which she wished she could never relive again.
Golden eyes stared through her right now, and V wondered what made them so different from any other pair.
N blinked, and flashed her that overly excited grin that she’d learnt by force of habit to roll her eyes at. She wondered what he’d say if he knew what she really felt.
She pushed up a hand to look beyond the raging blizzard. Ronathon—apparently that was the bus driver’s name—had taken them outside the bunker under the words of the Teacher for ‘a look at how our surroundings changed after the nonsense that happened two weeks ago.’ Trauma was but a thing of repression for these Workers, but they had sense enough to hole up behind their bunker doors for a whole fortnight, and she couldn’t say she blamed them, honestly.
Two weeks, and the three of them had tried to go back to normalcy, and live how the other drones did. Live in the society standard of normal, but it certainly didn’t feel right to V.
She didn’t miss the pain and trauma, but she missed the adrenaline. The distractions. The excuse of thinking about something far more important—think about the plot, as Uzi would put it—the rush, the feeling that overwhelmed everything else, made her numb again. Because when everything was over, and when those tidal waves from the storm inside her receded backward… it unearthed feelings and emotions that V thought were long gone.
They had spent about five agonizingly long hours outside doing nothing. She could hardly wait to leave.
A familiar voice rang out from behind her. “Someone’s in a staring mood today.”
She averted her gaze, turning around to scowl at the tiny figure walking towards her, next to the rusty school bus behind. Uzi gave her a dramatic eye-roll. “Would it kill you to show some enthusiasm once in a while?” She looked behind her to wave at N. “Sneaking looks at N? Not very subtle, V.”
She scoffed, backing away to allow the purple grape to run up to him and give him that obnoxious fist-bump sequence. “As if. No one’s taking him from you.”
Perhaps if the duo was paying close attention, they’d have noticed the bitterness laced underneath those words.
The rest of the classmates started filling in the old vehicle, her blonde bestie coming into view from the clearing of trees, too busy gushing about something to another idiot teen.
“Lizzy.” She drawled, crossing her arms in annoyance. “What the hell took you so long?”
“Gossip can’t wait, bestie.” Liz quipped, whipping out her cellphone and popping in her earphones. “There was this really juicy story about Rachel and I just had to tell Chad. And don’t ask why, I don’t even like him.”
V merely hummed in response, and followed everyone inside the bus. “That loser still has a reputation?” Rachel was the school outcast, somehow much more disliked than Uzi was—after certain stunts she pulled, one of which included trying to flirt with N after they’d already established he had a girlfriend, unfortunately if him yelling ‘That’s my girlfriend!’ out loud in that presentation class was not enough. Everyone hated her, just a name in the face of lots of stupid drama. V hated her the most. She’d gotten far too close to N. That alone deserved a head chopped off.
Well, maybe Uzi hated Rachel more for the exact same reason. By some godforsaken miracle, the idiot girl wasn’t dead, and N had whispered to V to make a mental note ‘not to anger the cutie’.
The engines rumbled loudly and she could barely manage to squeeze through the gap between the seats, inching towards the back towards the only free seats—occupied by N and Uzi solely because no one was willing to fight for them and risk pissing off the eldritch goddess that was somehow the reckless girl that V was friends with.
Yeah, that was another thing that made their whole situation awkward—Uzi’s new… whatever you could call it. Eldritch form. Goddess thing. Whatever had given her those heterochromatic eyes, multi-colored solvers, and an ego the size of Copper-9.
She could barely control her nanite-acid tail halfway through the bus, yanking it away just before it could hit a drone. Groaning, V shoved her way through, slamming down ungracefully on top of the worn, torn blue leather of the seats, springs sticking out of the ends and rough enough for her synthetic metal to ache in protest.
Liz sat to her right, occupying the window seat, and N lay to her left, sitting just beside Uzi, who was propped against the wall of the bus, sketching in her notepad.
The bus began thundering forward, and the whispered noises from the students up front became a blur as the weight of sleep threatened to close V’s eyes. Checking her internal clock, it was almost early morning, and her nocturnal sleep cycle was doing its job, and wandering aimlessly on the ground for hours wasn’t exactly helping her energy levels either.
Her bestie had already crept into sleep-mode, music still blasting in her eyes from the earphones. Those pop-ups were flashing in her visor, [BATTERY LEVELS LOW!], [SLEEP MODE: IMMINENT] and [GET SOME SLEEP, IDIOT] flaring up left and right. The overhead lights of the bus grew harsher the more she kept her eyes open, and the rumble of the bus fading into a rhythm trying to lull her to doze off.
The bus shook as it stumbled over a bump, and V almost got launched off her seat, clenching the edges of her seat tightly to haul herself back up again. She shook her head, shaking off the sleep, there was no way she could get some with that stupid headrest—
“Hey, sleepy?”
His voice was just a whisper, but she jumped up from surprise. She hadn’t noticed how close he was—feeling his warmth just inches away from her face, cramped up against each other, every point of contact she noticed burning up immediately. Were her internal fans whirring?
She tried to push him away, ignore those feelings, but an arm gentle as ever rested on her shoulder.
“These seats are really uncomfortable…” He murmured, before looking at her with a smile. “Need a drone pillow?”
“Drone pillow? What are you—”
V froze as she felt a hand slowly move up to her head, and he lowered his shoulder just enough for him to lay her head slowly against it, carefully adjusting her weight. She could smell that cinnamon scent of his, something new—perfume, maybe? It was perfect for him. Her core skipped a beat, and she clamped a hand against her visor, desperately praying he wouldn’t see those cursed diagonal lines that shot out.
His eyes hollowed out in concern. “Oh, did I hurt you?”
Breathe, just breathe through it. She mentally composed herself, put on her neutral expression and nodded. “Nah.”
Something else crisp and sudden slipped through her tongue and out of her throat. “Thank you.”
N chuckled, that chipper laugh of his. “Of course. That’s what friends do, right?”
It was meant to be something sweet, but his words soured in her heart, and she shrunk back more than she should.
Friends.
Just friends now.
Out of the corner of her eye, she watched Uzi look up at the two of them, frown and open her mouth to say something. N put up a hand to stop her, making a gesture with his hands, most likely to infer that she was sleeping, or trying to. V squinted her eyes shut, to seal the deal.
Uzi paused for a few seconds before shrugging and flipping her notepad in his direction. On the page was a dog, drawn in her style that V had learnt to recognize. She looked up to N, and spelled out something on her visor. [GIVE NAME TO DOG]
V could hear N chuckle, but couldn’t see his face. His response reflected on her visor, too blurry to read but earned a snicker from Uzi. [WHY THAT?? XD]
Whatever he had answered back sold her, and she quickly scribbled the name he suggested above the dog, and slowly flipped to show him. It was probably something silly, like—
BINGO!!!
It could very well have been his name on the page—both silly, cute and stupidly adorable, though V wouldn’t dare admit it.
Uzi pushed back a bit of her lilac hair, blushing as she gave him one more message. [CUTE LIKE YOU <3]
V would have never imagined her saying something like this months before—her making them official must have really boosted her confidence, almost like she was waiting for confirmation before daring to be sappy and cringe with the big oaf.
And she knew N well enough to say he’d be just as sappy with her too, if not worse. And as if her thoughts were trying to prove themselves, whatever line that N had said back had the other exploding in purple blush.
Uzi inched forward, giving him a ridiculous, dopey smile, and laid against N’s chest, and he welcomed it, embracing her with a tenderness that V could distinguish from how he had handled her.
Something in her chest burned, like a virus creeping up from her core—the feeling washing over her, sour and painful. She didn’t know what this was, and she hated it for existing. She did not know why her chest sank in on itself when she watched N and Uzi together, feeling nothing of the sort before the almost-core collapse of Copper-9.
She did know one thing, however. Whatever she had felt for N, whatever lay in the shores of her heart when all of the storms had calmed, whatever she had forced herself into believing didn’t exist when they had first landed on this planet…
It had come back.
The second she believed everything was over, that her stupid feelings had faded away—they had come back in comedically perfect timing, like this was one big fat cosmic joke.
N wasn’t hers to fantasize about anymore. That part of her, still part of the Manor, that tiny fragment that had not ebbed away despite willing it to, the little girl that dreamed of happy endings could no longer wonder what their future looked like. It wasn’t theirs anymore.
It was Uzi’s future.
And with nothing left to dangle in front of her eyes, she couldn’t walk away from this one.
Golden eyes weren’t hers to swim in anymore.
…
Robo-god, she hated this.
N would call the slow rise of their planet’s copper skies beautiful. And he seriously considered giving Uzi a compliment with it (somehow…), but he knew that any more compliments and Uzi might internally implode from her—what did she call it—low edge levels.
It’s called precaution. It almost happened once.
He instead chose to hold her hand and help her down the bus stairs. He could hear her murmur something that sounded like, ‘Gentleman’, and his core fluttered a bit at that.
V stepped down from the bus, barely noting his wave to her. “You got some rest?”
“No.”
“Oh,” He said dumbly, rubbing the crook of his neck. “Guess the shoulder thing didn’t work too well…but I’m sure you can catch some more at Liz’s place?”
“Not heading there today.” She clipped, her voice dragging. “I’m just going to head back to the spire. Coming?”
“Actually… I was heading to Uzi’s place tonight, if you don’t mind?”
N could swear he saw something flicker in those eyes for a minute. “Oh right, your better half. Attach yourselves to the hip at this point.”
Her upset tone alarmed him. “Oh no, if you want me to come I will, if you’ll be alon—”
“Don’t.” She interrupted sharply, burning him with her gaze. “Just… go off with Uzi. See you tomorrow night.”
Turning her back to him, she added one more thing before deploying her wings. “And don’t even think about being all apologetic tomorrow, leave it.”
“V!”
He rushed forward into a cloud of frost and snow, watching as she ascended like a comet into the sky.
What was up with her? He considered she was just grumpy due to the lack of sleep… but she’d stayed awake for longer, and she’d been happier…
It wasn’t the first time she was upset like this, though. He chose not to dwell about what just happened, silently hoping she’d feel better tomorrow.
“Is everything good?” Uzi asked, running up beside him. “Did V just…?”
He took a deep breath. “Yeah. She’s… not getting enough sleep, I think.”
She frowned, and mirrored his own worried expression, though he could tell she was desperately trying to hide it. “Haven’t we all been a little off-the-rocker since… y’know…”
He knew exactly what she meant, the almost heat-death of the universe. He knew Uzi tried to act chill and proud about winning, but really?
He’d been around when her nightmares began.
Which was another reason he’d insisted on going with Uzi.
She shook her head, and gave him a wicked grin, obviously trying to lighten the mood. “Race ya to the bunker?”
N winked, and rushed off for a head start. He could hear her yelling to the wind behind him.
“Dude, not fair! I didn’t even start the countdown!”
Door 1 was wide open, some of the classmates still hovering around in idle chatter. N entered the steel halls and ran across the metal grates, the floor creaking under his weight. The WDF’s table came into view, and they gave him some cheerful waves. He waved back without stopping, telling them incoherently that he was in a race, though he doubted they’d understood what he said, whoops.
He could hear Uzi running, already catching up a few feet behind him. The bright lights of the doors light up overhead, and he could vaguely remember the first time he’d come to this place…
N stopped when he saw a dent on the wall.
Scrapes of claws, and stains of oil that were never washed away. Just up to the right, a few metres off the ground. Oh, he remembered that spot vividly. Pulling out his blades, stabbing… Uzi… towards the…
Oh robo-god, he remembers.
Uzi cackled, running past him and taking the lead. “Hey, stop and you miss me!”
Watching her zoom past the halls towards the entrances, he chose not to dwell on it for long. Uzi’s not going to ever be hurt like that again. Not by him. Not by V. Not by anyone else.
Never again.
The lights grew dimmer and the path narrower as he ran, trying to catch up. He’d always have trouble reaching this part of the bunker—where all the homes found their place and where it was a bit too cramped for a Disassembly Drone and the grates were hard to navigate through.
At least he had it better than V with his… flatter feet. He could count with his fingers the number of times her leg-pegs had sunk through the grooves of the flooring and she’d fallen flat on her face.
He finally turned the hall and saw Uzi, quickly trying to open the door to the residence, and N ran behind her the second she entered.
“Haha! I won! I won N—”
The floor cut her off when she tumbled onto it.
N reacted immediately, rushing forward to try and help… until his feet slammed against something hard.
“For the second time, watch where the hell you’re going!”
The voice came far beneath him—and he guessed who it was before he saw: Mrs. Uzi, Core Crab Creature thing…
Uzi pulled herself up from the floor the second before Nori slapped her head back into it.
“What do you think you’re doing, bursting through the door like a headless chicken and nearly crushing me with your foot?!”
“Why were you crawling on the floor?”
“To go make out with Khan—to get to the other side!”
He felt a drop of sweat bead down his face, and smiled nervously. Watching them argue was like watching Uzi argue with herself, and might as well have been, because it didn’t take too long for N to realize that those two were basically carbon copies of each other.
Almost concerningly so, because Nori did act like an angsty emo teenager, and she was a mother with a kid. Oh, maybe that was harsh. Had he heard a similar statement during his time on Earth and just repeated it?
After what N could only describe as growling for a good two minutes, she averted her gaze from Uzi to—oh dear—him.
“And you brought the Murder Drone, fantastic.”
He wished the sentence was friendly and not dripping with sarcasm.
“Nuh-uh, not Murder Drone,” Uzi air-quoted, scooping up Nori with her hands, “Super cool boyfriend!”
He blushed a bit at that, but it quickly evaporated as Nori started belting out slaps with her tendrils, or at least tried to, if his girlfriend wasn’t holding her at a distance like she was holding a bug.
Honestly, Mrs. Uzi did kind of look like a bug. Wait, no, that was rude!
“Those things killed your—”
“FRICKEN MOTHER! I knowww!” She interrupted, dragging out the last part. “And I’ve already told you that their moral situation is so screwed up that it wasn’t completely their fault, and he’s super sweet, so you can bite me, mom!”
“That’s inhumane.”
“We’re not humans.”
Nori smacked her with a mug from the side of the kitchen, enough to release the latter's grip and allow her to run up straight to… N?
She crawled up inches towards his visor before he could react.
“Hurt my daughter and I swear to robo-god you wouldn’t be able to scream before you die.”
He gulped and nodded. After Nori had asserted her role back as the guardian figure and parent of the house, she hadn’t failed to remind him of that threat. Nori had surprisingly fit so seamlessly back into the family’s lives, it was now like she was meant to be there.
Uzi dragged a hand down his visor, trying to coax Nori away from his face. “Why do you tell him that every day? He gets it, he’s not gonna hurt me!”
Nori’s digital eye furrowed, and pointed at her eye and back, like ‘I’m watching you,’ before jumping down and scuttling to a distance.
“Khan! See your damn daughter!"
Uzi’s eyes hollowed out. “Wait, no, Mom—”
“Oh Uzi!”
A singsong voice ran out from the master bedroom, and its owner rushed out through the door with open arms. “Welcome bac—”
“Don’t fricken touch me!” She hollered, stepping backwards just next to N. “I’m still mad at you.”
Khan’s smile wavered a little, but he didn’t let go of his frame. “It’s not another one of your phases…?”
Nori and Uzi both gasped and spoke at the same time.
“It is not a phase!”
“Was yelling at you for five hours, thirty-six minutes and ten seconds not enough for you to drill into your head that you abandoned our daughter in the hands of that murder drone?” A tendril was once again pointed at N, and froze in place, he wanted nothing more than to bury himself underneath the metal plating beneath him. “Phase, my ass. She has every right to be angry, and so am I!”
Uzi blinked and just nodded, probably a little surprised that she silently managed to agree with what she had just said.
Khan looked like he wanted to get out of this conversation. “I know, and I’m sorry about that, really I am, but is there any way we could move past this—”
Uzi’s eyes could not get wider, and N felt a hand seize his and squeeze it, just behind their backs, a silent plea for comfort. He reciprocated immediately, gently pressing his own against hers, stroking his thumb against her palm as if to say, ‘It’s going to be okay. Don’t let it get to your head.’
“Well, I’m not bothered to move on from that kind of betrayal! And don’t you dare start again, Mom,” she put up a hand in front of Nori, “You’re not blameless either! You left us for years, and I just…” Uzi trailed off, looking ready to burst. Another [LOW EDGE LEVELS] message flickered in her visor, and she slapped the controls back to their usual setting. “Just follow me to my room!”
It took a minute for him to process that it was directed at N, and after a moment of pause, he walked towards her bedroom she’d nearly slammed the door of. Her parents were silent as he stepped past them, and he glanced back one more time before he entered.
Khan’s eyes were downcast, and he almost looked… guilty.
N refused to think more of it as he slowly pushed the door shut.
Uzi was sprawled on her bed like a snowflake.
“Long day, huh?”
He sat on the side of the bed, careful not to hit her when she just groaned in response. “Tell me about it…”
She raised her head and looked at N.
And just kept staring.
He tried to wonder what she was trying to do before a figurative lightbulb popped over his visor.
“Oh, you’re doing that thing where you’re too embarrassed to ask me to cuddle so you just stare at me till I—”
“Ugh, yes, you dork!” She sputtered, covering her purple blush of embarrassment. “Don’t call me out like that!”
He simply chuckled and flopped down beside her, and she was quick to wrap her arms around his chest and back, clinging onto him tightly. Robo-god, she must have needed this.
Her face was just under his chin, and he playfully rubbed it against her soft hair, and she let out a little giggle at the contact. Her eyes were closed peacefully, her audial sensors positioned perfectly enough to go above his core, hearing it beat its steady rhythm. It was something she always did every time they wrapped around each other.
And he knew why, and thinking about that right now would just dampen the mood.
Maybe Uzi was thinking about it too, because her brows seemed to shrink in as well. He ruffled his fingers against her soft locks, hoping it would soothe her enough. “Doing alright?”
He could feel her tighten her hold on him, rubbing his back in turn. “Seeing Dad just screwed my mood, I guess. Why did Mom have to call him…”
He hummed in response. “You’re, uh… still mad at him for that?”
“Nooo, I’m not,” She said, in the same sarcastic tone Nori had used when they had tripped earlier. “Yes I am! He can’t just expect me to go all sunny-shiny and forgive him for that so easily! Because I won't, and I’m mad!”
He didn’t really know what to say to that, so he just hugged her tighter. What did get him to freeze up, however, was her next sentence.
“He just cares about it now because Mom came back, it’s not like he… actually loves me, or whatever…”
N pushed her back just enough to look at her. “Uzi… I mean, I can’t speak from experience since I don’t really have a father, but don’t parents love their kids unconditionally? He may not be doing an amazing job showing it… but I’m sure he does love you… to a point…”
Uzi grumbled back, burrowing her face into his chassis. “Well, it seems pretty conditional, and that condition was Mom being there.”
He had something to say to it but she caught him off guard. “You deserved a father, N.”
Gaping a little, he watched as she grabbed his arm and looked him in the eye, with an expression akin to… sympathy? “Like, someone who cares about you, made you feel better when it was all—life was so… unfair to you. I genuinely wish you had it better.”
A soft smile crept up his lips, and he felt touched that she’d want that for him. Cared. The only person he could think of when he was a Worker Drone that was like a parent to him was Tess—
Nope, nope, nope. Shutting down that line of thought right now.
A remnant of whatever trauma rabbit-hole he almost fell into must have reflected on his visor, because Uzi was cupping his cheek in concern. “N?”
“Just tired,” He responded, before she could ask. “Switch the light off?”
He saw her nod out of the corner of her eye, and he got up enough to stretch his tail out and flick the switch to the purple hanging lights. She was looking at him so endearingly while doing something so simple that he had to fight the urge not to—
Ping.
He almost physically stepped backward at that, Uzi shooting up in an instant. A notification? For a ping? He had that?
Oh, right, he did. Back when they were still Disassembly Drones for ‘JCJenson’, the squad had used these pings to call each other, like notifications when in long range from each other. J had used it the most, practically spamming it like a bell when she needed N to do something in urgency. They didn’t really use it much besides that, and not at all after his rebellious display when he first met Uzi.
So he was still a bit shocked when he saw that pop-up in the corner of his screen, and he hesitantly opened it.
[V-0X0010010 has pinged: N-0X0010010. Go to them, idiot-]