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The robot arm is cool. That’s just an undeniable fact. Leenik has always loved gadgets and tech. He’d take a shock glove and a jury-rigged grenade over a blaster any day, and now his arm is a new piece of tech for him to poke and prod at. He already has some ideas for improvements. It’s cool. He’s cool with it.
He’s lying in his bunk as the Mynock speeds away from Phindar, watching the way the room’s dim track lighting glints off the metal of his new hand. The weirdest part about it, honestly, is that this new mechanical hand has all five fingers. He’d been missing a finger on his left hand for so many years now that he was just used to it, had learned to compensate for it so effectively that five feels like too many now. He’d almost considered asking Lavali to give the hand only four fingers, but that seemed silly.
Now he kind of wishes he had asked. This arm is cool but it’s not his. Of course it isn’t—it’s metal and duraplast and wires, not flesh and blood and bone—but maybe with the missing finger it would feel just a little more familiar.
He’ll get used to it. If anything, it’s better than his old arm, now that he can punch with all the power of the repulsors he had Lavali install. Hell, he thinks as he watches himself clench and unclench his own metal fist, maybe he should get more cybernetics. There are plenty of bounty hunters out there with cybernetic limbs and eyes and other bits that they got willingly, to give themselves an edge over the organic competition. It wouldn’t be crazy to go that route.
(What did Bacta say about his friend who lost an arm and then just kept losing limbs? Some people cope with grief in strange ways?)
Losing the hand sucked, though. He doesn’t know if he could ever go through that on purpose. It hurt, of course, but more than that it was frightening in a way few things in his life have ever been. Sure, lots of things about the life that Leenik leads are scary, but seeing Zero cut his hand off—feeling Zero cut his hand off—was scary in a bone-deep, visceral way. It was the feeling of watching something break and knowing it could never be fixed.
(He remembers watching Venton’s hand slip from his grasp, feeling something inside of himself break and knowing it would never heal.)
He’s too much of a coward to go full cyborg, really. It’s cool to imagine, though—imagine himself stronger, more powerful, more machine than person.
(After all, like he told Aava, he’s not really a person anymore anyways, not deep down.)
“God, Leenik, I can hear you thinking from up here,” Tryst grumbles into the quiet of the night. The sheets in the bunk above Leenik rustle as Tryst leans over until he’s looking down at Leenik from above.
“I wasn’t making any noise!” Leenik protests, letting his metal arm fall to his side.
“Your angst was loud enough to keep the whole ship awake,” Tryst says, rolling his eyes.
“That doesn’t even make sense.”
“I have the Force for these kinds of things, remember?” Tryst says. Now he’s sitting up, his bare legs hanging over the edge of the bunk. Leenik hears him shuffling around up there, sees a flash of a kimono as he pulls it on over his nude form.
“You absolutely do not have the Force,” Leenik says, although sometimes he isn’t quite sure. “And I thought you said you had the Force for, like, relationship type stuff.”
“Emotion type stuff,” Tryst corrects, jumping lightly down from the top bunk. “Scootch over.”
“There’s no room,” Leenik whines, but he’s scootching over anyways. Tony, who’s curled up at Leenik’s feet, snorts and blinks one eye open. He doesn’t move, so Tryst has to squeeze himself into the sliver of room next to Leenik, until their bodies are pressed flush against each other.
Leenik feels instantly warm and flustered. “What are you—” He squeaks as Tryst reaches across his body to grab the wrist of his metal hand, lifting it up to the light.
“Does it hurt?” Tryst asks, running his thumb along the hollow of Leenik’s metal wrist.
“Uh… A little?”
There’s a bone-deep ache that’s been throbbing up and down Leenik’s arm since Dr. Kabral did the port surgery on the first day of BHIKKE. No matter how much bacta she used, he’d still suffered a pretty traumatic injury—twice, once by Zero’s sword and once by Tamlin’s—immediately followed by a pretty invasive surgery, so she’d told him it would take at least a few weeks for the pain to subside completely, as his raw nerves healed and adjusted to the new arm. But the dull ache is nothing compared to the sharp, white-hot pain that had burned from Leenik’s forearm to his shoulder while he tried desperately to fix their hyperdrive on their escape from Mandalore.
(It’s only been a few nights since then, but he’s already had nightmares about it, the fiery burn in his arm and the sweat pouring down his face as he stumbled and slipped up again and again, his crew yelling at him to fix the damn hyperdrive while all he could think about was that he was broken broken broken and his body would never be the same again.)
“Hey,” Tryst says, the warm rumble of his voice pulling Leenik back out of his thoughts. “It’s okay if it hurts. You don’t have to pretend it doesn’t. Bet it hurt like a bitch when Zero cut it off.”
“Yeah,” Leenik breathes, focusing again on the way that Tryst’s fingers are gently rubbing his arm. It’s a strange feeling—it’s not the same as Tryst’s fingers would feel against his skin, but he can feel it, in a disconnected sort of way.
“Crazy that this is the first time anyone in this crew has gotten a permanent injury like this,” Tryst says lightly, turning Leenik’s hand over to admire the back of it. “You’d think we’d be losing limbs every other week.”
“I mean, I did lose a finger,” Leenik points out.
“Hm, true,” Tryst says. “What limb are you gonna lose next?”
Leenik’s stomach flips uncomfortably. Just a minute ago he was thinking about how cool it would be to go the cyborg route, but hearing Tryst say it like that makes him feel light-headed and sick.
(He doesn’t want to lose any more of himself than he already has.)
“Hey, man, are you okay? Like, okay okay?” Tryst asks, his voice uncharacteristically soft as he lets Leenik’s hand fall gently back to his side. “I mean, you were being a real wet blanket during the post-mission meeting earlier. It really seems like something happened on Phindar, man.”
“Nothing happened on Phindar,” Leenik says.
Of course, Chartreuse happened on Phindar. But Tryst doesn’t need to know about that. No one needs to know about that. If he doesn’t tell anyone about it, then in a way it never really happened, right? He didn’t kill Chartreuse. He just couldn’t save her.
(Just like Venton. He couldn’t save Venton, either.
Did you kill him? Chartreuse had asked, tears in her voice, and Leenik had seen red. Of course he didn’t kill his brother.
But how much of what he remembers about that day can he believe, if he knows that he’s a liar even in his own head?)
“Do I need to get Bacta in here?” Tryst says, and Leenik turns to see him frowning.
“What? Why?”
“Cuddle pile,” Tryst says, utterly serious.
Leenik’s face flushes. “Nooo,” he moans. “We haven’t done that in ages.”
“I think it might be time to bring it back, buddy. You’re giving off major sad vibes.”
“I’m fine,” Leenik says, but Tryst is shaking his head.
“Either you tell me what’s wrong or we do cuddle pile.”
“Nothing is wrong.”
“Sounds to me like you’re choosing cuddle pile, Leenik.”
“Noooo…”
But Tryst is already getting up out of the bunk, and before Leenik can stop him, he’s stuck his head into the cockpit and is shouting up at the crow’s nest for Bacta.
“Bacta. Cuddle pile. Now.”
Leenik moans again and pulls his pillow out from under his head to press it against his face. Maybe he can smother himself before Bacta gets here.
No luck. A second later the pillow is being lifted from his face, and Bacta is staring down at him, his expression lined with so much genuine concern that Leenik feels guilt pooling in his stomach.
“I’m fine,” Leenik says. “Go back to doing sweaty chin ups or whatever.”
Bacta shakes his head. “You know the rules. Tryst called for a cuddle pile, and you already used your veto for this mission.”
“Cuddle piles should get their own vetoes.”
“Do you want me to go wake up Tamlin and Lyn and Neemo?” Tryst asks, his head popping up over Bacta’s shoulder. “Yeah, that’s right, I can play dirty.”
“No, I think that would be nice,” Bacta says genuinely. “We should go get them. We could all make a blanket fort in the kitchen! Tamlin would love that.”
“No, no, nope, veto,” Leenik says, sitting up and shaking his head vehemently.
“Already used your veto, bud,” Tryst says.
“Guys. Please,” Leenik says, giving them his best pleading look. He’s too tired, too exhausted right down to the center of his being, to get properly mad at them, but maybe the shine of the stars in his eyes will be enough for them to take pity on him and just leave him alone.
“Come on, buddy,” Bacta says softly. “If you won’t talk to us, at least let us do this.”
Leenik has no response. He scoots over as Bacta shuffles his broad frame into the narrow bunk, and then there’s a whole mess of shuffling and shoving as Tryst decides to climb over both of them to slot himself into the narrow space between Leenik and the wall. Tony, ever the perfect son, is absolutely refusing to leave the foot of Leenik’s bed, so once they’re all finally settled down, Leenik’s bunk is filled to absolute capacity. It’s completely uncomfortable and Leenik’s already sore arm twinges with pain as Tryst shifts against his side, but it’s harder to dwell on the pain (on Venton, on Chartreuse, on Aava) when he’s worrying about being suffocated by his terrible crewmates.
“See, not so bad,” Tryst says, throwing an arm around Leenik’s waist.
“We should do this more often,” Bacta says, shifting his arm behind Leenik’s head.
“We absolutely should not,” Leenik says, but he’s melting into their touch despite himself.
They’re a strange bunch, the three of them, and Leenik is sure that most of their traditions would surprise a lot of the people who know them. They love chaos almost as much as they love their eccentric rules and rituals, and for every harsh and cutting comment they sling at each other, they’re more than willing to hold each other close.
They all have nightmares. Bacta’s are less frequent, because of the lesai, but there have been enough times when Bacta’s gotten knocked out in a fight and woken up sweating and screaming that Leenik can only imagine how bad it would be if Bacta did sleep. After five years of sharing tight quarters, they have post-nightmare comforts down to a science. The cuddle pile evolved from nightmares to any time one of them seems sad or scared or lonely. Any one of them can call for a cuddle pile for themselves or for someone else on the crew, and a cuddle pile can only be called off with a veto or a very good excuse.
They’ve been so wildly busy for the last few weeks with the Murder Ball and Tamlin and everything else that a lot of their traditions have fallen by the wayside, and it’s been at least a few months since any of them have called for a cuddle pile.
Leenik tries his best to pretend to be grumpy about it, but like all of their seemingly arbitrary rules, it exists for a reason. The cuddle pile works, is the thing.
“You know we care about you, right, buddy?” Bacta says softly, his voice a deep rumble that Leenik can feel against his side like some huge beast purring.
“If we didn’t, we would’ve thrown you out the airlock a long time ago,” Tryst adds.
“Not helping, Tryst,” Bacta says tersely, but it is helping, in a way.
Because Leenik absolutely does deserve to be thrown out of the airlock and left to float far, far away from anyone else he could hurt. And maybe that is what his crewmates would do to him if they knew who he really is (what he really is), deep down in his bones, how broken every part of him is.
But these two haven’t died yet (he hasn’t hurt them yet) and that’s comforting in its own way.
“I know,” Leenik says. “And if I need to talk, I will talk to you guys. I promise.”
He won’t, and they probably know that he won’t, but it’s the kind of lie that feels good.
(And Leenik is very good at living inside of his own lies.)