Archive of Our Own

The first course of action, after everything was said and done, was to plan.

A funeral, firstly.

With shaking hands Thia had begun to gather the remains of the great Kallisk. Single-minded in her task. HUD informing her of where the scattered remains of Bud’s mother lay after what her sister – after what Tessa had done. A radius of not-insignificant proportions. High-octane blast that it was.

Her hands didn’t feel the cold. Or rather. She lowered her sensitivity register to such an insignificant degree that her programming would only interrupt her if the continued exposure to the frozen…parts – started to negatively affect her plasticine skin. Or Break the outer layer of her synthetic epidermis. Or cause her inner exoskeletal joints to lock up.

It wouldn’t.

Already the cold was seeping at such speed that in less than a handful of moments. Where Thia had gently and carefully tried to place Bud’s mother in a respectful little pile. Her palms had started to stain with Kalisk blood.

Had started to crumble. In her hands.

As her HUD uselessly and offensively tried to inform her to take note of the chemical makeup of dead-Kalisk tissue. To take a sample of the dead blood tissue on her model. On the ground. On the hardware surrounding them.

To gather. To report.

For the company.

{For the company /// for the company ///// FOR THE  –}

Dek’s hands move to cradle her own. His palms underneath the back of her shaking hands.

When Thia looks up at him. Her HUD stops feeding her pre-packaged protocol.

Her optics zero-in on Dek’s concerned, and gentle face, and tells her she’s unlocked a new facial expression. Her personal programing celebrates. Her private field notes pop up.

She’s a person.

Her prompt reminds. Silly little scripted inbox that she made on the fly. When she, and Dek, and Bud had been together. And the elation of having friends circumvented her primary directive of using said friends, instead.

She’s a person. And Dek’s golden eyes seem to glow.

“We have to bury her,” Thia says. Unprompted. By way of explanation, “Or we have to build a pyre – or –”

“Thia.”

She can’t remember if he’d been helping her gather Bud’s mother. And isn’t that a queer little factoid? A synth is constantly aware of its surroundings. Even when she’s distracted (as distracted as a synth can be) some part of her optical systems registers the goings-on around her.

She could look it up, if she had to. Pull up surveillance of the past twenty minutes. Confirm that Dek had been helping. That Bud had been helping. Thia could do that. She could look at her memory banks. She could.

She –

“Not her way.”

Thia doesn’t understand what he’s saying. At first.

Dek pulls her gently forward. Moving her body with such softness that Thia almost isn’t sure what’s happening. Her CPU is still frazzled from the forced shut-down Tessa had done. Maybe. Possibly.

Thia feels Dek press her firmly at his side as he turns her toward where Bud was mournfully throwing dirt and ashes over the remains of her mother’s body.

“She –” Thia knits her brows. Forces her motherboard to run a quick diagnostic as she struggles to find the words for what she’s wanting to say, “They – bury their dead. Differently,” why was it so hard to speak? “Kalisks,” she clarifies, needlessly as she glances briefly at Dek.

He nods at her, fleetingly. Motioning for her to watch as Bud chitters and prays in her own little alien way. Every time she pats dirt over some part of her mother’s remains. Bud takes a moment to bow her head. Before going to find another part. And repeating the process.

This is field work.

This is her mission. Thia should’ve known to just stay back and observe how Bud would react to this death. Her mother’s death. Instead of trying to intercede on the basis of human ritual. Human sentiment. Not merely organic, but a specific failure of her forerunning creators.

[Why had she done that?]

Suddenly feeling disrespectful. Thia looks down at her stained hands. Dirty. They were dirty. And she rubs at them, palm to palm, before rubbing both even harsher at the canvas of her hastily repaired stomach. At her now re-attached waist.

An immediate jolt shoots through her synapse.

“sHoOt!” her voice crackles.

Dek’s attention snaps back towards her, “Thia?”

“I’m fine,” she assures. Quick as lightning. As fast as it took for her HUD to send the sensory alert that she dismissed in a pump-beat. Smothering her tolerance protocols to a mere ember.

She can address her abdominal needs later.

Dek does not seem to buy it. Eyes her with suspicion. And even Bud takes a moment to look up at her with worried eyes.

This won’t do.

Organic sentiment. Theres more important places it can go than to a synths level of pain tolerance. She can toggle that on and off at her leisure.

“Can we help?” Thia offers, instead. Pulling them all back to the task at hand.

Bud seems to think about it for a second. Lips trembling.

She nods.

Dek’s hand around her waist loosens. Her proximity alerts give it a rest.

And then they get to work.

It’s a beautiful display of nature at work. Of what the company usually categorizes as lesser beings having culture and evidence of other such higher-function.

Bud shows Thia how to sit on her knees. Palms on her lap. She spreads a bit of dirt over the bits and pieces. A blanket of respect. And in doing so Thia finds she had time to properly sit with the fact that the Kalisk is gone. That a mother has died. And let these facts process in her cpu as an organic would simply feel their feelings.

Bud is showing them how her kind mourns.

“…It’s kind of therapeutic, actually,” Thia finds herself saying. Bud is a bit away, packing more dirt over her mother’s scattered body, “Sort of…like an Earth elephant would bury their dead. But…different, I guess.”

I guess?

Synths don’t dwell on speculative talk. They are either sure, or they are not, and state as such without preamble or embarrassment. Thia isn’t sure (and that is another thing that concerns her) as to why her social-scripts are overriding her basic cognitive thoughts.

She consciously allows her field-work protocols to explain what her front-most mind does not allow her to vocalize, “A process that both allows the subject to grieve while maintaining the integrity of the nature around them, and allowing their loved ones to return to the earth, recognizing the importance of nutrients and –”

 “Thia.”

She stops.

Dek’s hand is over her own.

She had been attempting to bury the Kalisk parts, again. Her hands over a mound of dirt more thick than what Bud had shown her.

“Sorry,” she pulls her hands back. Lays them over her lap, “I don’t…know why I keep –”

She vents air into a sigh.

Dek says nothing as he kneels besides her. His bundle of Kallisk already having been buried. Respectfully. Mournfully. Thia doesn’t understand why she isn’t getting this right. This is her purpose. Her mission. Her job.

It’s her passion. Truth be told. But she isn’t feeling passionate about it now.

…probably because Bud curls up to her side. Keening sorrowfully against her, as if to make Thia feel better. When it should be the other way around.

Thia runs her fingers along Bud’s coarse fur. She’s missing her mother. And Thia wants to help. Pulls the poor little thing close. And it does alleviate some of this – feeling. That’s getting stuck in her processors.

“…do Yautja bury their dead?”

Thia asks.

Just as quickly shuts her mouth. Screwing her optics shut.

{Why did she say that?}

Why would she ask that? Of all things. Of all moments? Thia is used to her vocalizations running ahead of her social scripts, especially around Dek, but this time, she almost wants to kick herself upside her head.

She can do that now. Her torso still isn’t entirely secured.

“…it is a privilege.”

Dek says.

Causing her to look his way.

Dek’s golden eyes are shimmering. In that special way she has long since categorized as express sincerity. Thia so rarely gets to see it. And the few times she has caught it, she has always been left breathless. At the sight. Today is no exception.

Right now, Thia feels her air vents squeeze.

“On my planet,” Dek continues, so unlike him, glancing briefly toward Thia and Bud, “Yautja Prime. To be buried is to be revered. Honored by those who survive you. Very rarely, does it happen. Most public ceremonies are for royals. Or priestesses. There is not often a body to return to the earth.”

Thia’s tear cache has been empty for months.

Even so. She feels her optics sting with the absence of physical proof she cares.

“…do you think…that your brother was –”

Dek huffs out a miserable sigh.

“Likely not.”

That’s not fair.

“That isn’t fair,” Thia says, vocalization chords so tight that it strains her voice just to let out that much.

Dek pulls her by the neck. Palms heavy on the far-side, where her artificial carotid is, as he lays her head down under his chin. Bud is dragged along with her. And they all end up compiled into a tight embrace.

“…Sei-i. It is not.”

He says. Voice hoarse with tears that he probably doesn’t want her to see. Thia wishes she could cry. It would help. She could cry for him. If Dek won’t allow himself the option.

Instead. She uselessly curls up against him. Feels miserable – against him. Core tightening within her abdomen in a facsimile of misery.

And then it becomes a very real physical pain.

“Owe –”

Thia pulls back. Fingers brushing against the haphazard line she had to hastily weld, when everything was happening, all at once. Bud let’s out a sound of distress. Hopping back as she gently ghosts over her abs. Noting touching. But close enough that Thia involuntarily clenches, and it causes another jolt to inject itself through the synapse of her brain.

“Thia –”

“I’m fine,” she insists, face grimaced back into a neutral, if bothered, facial mapping, “It’s just…I need to. Fix this, better.”

Dek looks at her with his shimmering golden eyes, “Where do I take you?”

“No, Dek,” Thia shakes her head, “There isn’t much time. I gotta – I gotta make sure Tessa’s payload gets delayed. Or else the company will get wise to what we did to their base.”

“Delayed how?”

“I’ll mess up its navigation route,” she says, “Weyland-Yutani would do anything to secure what it thinks is a Kallisk, and all the additional specimens, besides. I’ll simply…make sure that they think it’s all been loaded, and somewhere along the way, I’ll make it so the vessel gets re-routed as if there’s been an accident.”

He does not seem convinced, “This will work?”

“They’ll spend years trying to track it down, instead of spending money trying to deploy a new team – by the time they find it, they’re realize it’s been empty and without cryopods from the start, and it’ll still be countless year before they decide what they want to do about it.”

Organic bureaucracy. It had its upsides.

“…where do I take you?”

Thia blinks, “You mean…to the mainframe?”

Dek nods.

“Oh, I can lead you there my –”

She gasps. Suddenly. Feeling her lower body get scooped up in one fell swoop. Dek lifts with his legs – which is safer, really, and far more efficient than what organics usually lift with (their backs, of all things) – and carries Thia across his arms and nestled firmly against his chest.

“Will carry you.”

He says. As if it were nothing for him to do so. As if he hadn’t complained about doing so – back before she even had legs to stand on.

Bud crawls from where she laid over Thia’s stomach to over Dek’s shoulders. Clinging onto his back and letting out a cheerful yelp, as she did so.

He rolls his eyes, “…Will carry both of you.”

Thia giggles into her hands.

She didn’t think that she would be laughing again, so soon.

The thought sobers her enough that Thia finds herself laying the side of her head against Dek’s pectorals. Wondering at how easy it was. For her. To filter through these different modes – these different…feelings.

Most often, when he was around her.

She shouldn’t be indulging in this, now. She had work to do. She was fixed, now. Whole again. She couldn’t afford to be coddled and carried when there was work only she could  do, waiting to be done.

Thia did not want to a burden any longer. A feeling that squeezed along the chassis of her chest as her body curls into itself, despite fractural pain zipping through her middle part.

Dek looks down at her. Ever so briefly. With his glowing, golden eyes.

And Thia wonders what else this feeling is.

As it pumps lithium into her body.

“Um –” she blinks down, motioning with her chin, “Down that way, and then turn when I tell you.”

Dek says nothing. Keeps staring at her briefly.

But in the end, follows her direction to the letter.

There are more pressing matters for her to attend to. At the moment. Things that only a Weyland-Yutani synth unit can accomplish to ensure the protection of her new organic companions. She couldn’t afford to lose objectivity. She wouldn’t afford to lose herself to these…facsimiles of emotion.

Even if it meant ignoring the laceration across her middle.

Thia spends the next several hours suppressing what alerts ping across her HUD as she works with what Tessa has left for her to unravel. She had been able to initially delay the 20-minute launch procedures by using the field-synths skull to cite an emergency storage malfunction – but to re-establish it AND code a routing accident post-launch?

She needed Tessa’s skull.

Dek seemed to stiffen at her mention of it. He’d taken it from Bud after she had ripped it from Tessa’s titanium shoulders, and had hurriedly put it away after the fact. And then Thia had become preoccupied with Bud’s grief. Her mother’s remains.

{Stop it. Focus.}

“I’ll give it back,” Thia had said, setting up what scripts she needed to ensure a safe sabotage, “I need it to establish a seniority connection – Tessa disabled my access codes as a superior officer, so I need her internal hardware to act as a VPN as I manipulate the system.”

He hadn’t looked as if he understood, entirely, but his hand hovered over the bag he’d placed Tessa’s skull in, “…you are sure of this?”

She was so positive, the delay was starting to annoy her, given the perilous circumstance.

That, and she was suppressing her pain receptors, “I’m not about to steal your trophy, Dek.”

He paused. At that.

“…not why I asked.”

He said.

Laying Tessa’s skull over the control dash Thia was working over.

Thia didn’t know what to think. Upon seeing it prone in front of her. Lifeless. Vacant. That used to be Tessa, her processors unhelpfully supplied. And yes. Of course it was. It used to be. And what to think about it? Because thinking was the only approximation of feeling that a synth truly had.

They could think and think and think themselves into believing they were real.

That they had emotions worth feeling.

A deviance. A delusion.

“…Thia.”

She was wasting time.

Dek’s words were laced with softness that she would usually spend hours deciphering. But right now, Thia couldn’t afford the distraction. The indulgence. She connected the mainframe to the skull’s ear canal, and connected herself via the other exposed input at the same time. A masquerade, of a sort. Infiltration. A Trojan Horse.

Tessa’s dead hardware in her head.

Across her HUD.

Some part of her wanted to peak into Tessa’s personal files. If she had any. To see herself through the eyes of the person she had briefly thought of as her sister. Thought of as familial, if only to put a label to the depth of affection she so often felt towards the other synth.

But it was dead AI. A wiped hard-drive.

When Tessa…died. She had cruelly nuked everything personal from her central processing systems. And verily, it was a failsafe for most WY units to have an emergency destruction protocol lodged in their brains. To prevent cross-company sabotage if they ever fell into the hands of a rival corporation.

But most synths sought to disable the function. Override the failsafe as time went on.

If the only proof that they ever existed relied on evidence of their own memories and thoughts. Things that only other synths could have access to. Why would they compromise that for a company – any company – that saw them as expendable?

What Tessa had done was deliberate.

Just another way to hurt her.

Another way to bar her from ever getting to know the REAL Tessa, and not the version of her that Thia had erroneously envisioned as good and caring. Seen through rose-colored optics. Another human saying, that Tessa had never cared for.

You sound so much like one. At times.

You sound like one of them.

Thia was glad that her tear cache was empty.

It gave her a chance to focus on things.

She used Tessa’s internal barcode and serial number to bypass the security measures put in place with their delayed departure. Thia’s mind basically powering the barebones of Tessa’s remaining functions in order to facilitate a few discrepancies here and there that would aid in their plan.

///////: [Pain Threshold Limit: 89%]

If her optics weren’t already white, she would feel like rolling them back into her sockets.

>///////: {Pain Threshold Limiter: Increased}

There. She dealt with it.

Focus.

Next, she waved away the payload delay by stating it was a minor locking error that was preventing the cargo from being given clearance to launch. What security footage would be used to verify this would be scrambled upon download. As well as any other security footage that acquisitions might pull up.

///: [TOLERANCE PROTOCOLS ENGA –]

> :/// ERROR ////??//??

Then, she scrambled to quite literally scramble the navigation. Someone along one of the more well-traveled constellations, Thia devised for the engine code to lack the necessary timestamp for went to cut their auxiliary thrust. The vessel would burn off more fuel than necessary, lacking sufficient amount to complete the trip.

>>:/// {ADJUSTMENTS SUCESSFUL}

With the alerts blaring on the local frequency, instead of sending a rescue beacon, the ship’s energy supplies would also drain due to the expenditure. Until eventually it would veer off-course and start to drift aimlessly. Just far enough out of orbit that sending salvage teams would be costly, and they would likely miss it by miles, anyhow.

“Thia.”

By the time her sabotage could possibly be unraveled, the empty cargo vessel would’ve been sitting in a bodega for over a year. And that was after decades getting there. Having already cost them millions. Some part of her relished the idea of forcing some assistant-CEO the inconvenience of having to file for a 10% margin company loss in the far-off future.

“Thia –”

“I’m almost finished.”

Tessa had already put the entire base on energy preservation protocols. Without a senior officer on land, it would be easy to keep the place at a low-output, even after taking whatever they needed, should Dek want to leave. He probably does. She can’t imagine him being particularly used to the creature comforts of standard-issue Weyland-Yutani synthetic personnel.

She had to account for that. Had to plan for an inconspicuous recharge cycle. Minimal repair kits on hand, as she can’t expect to have all her minor wears and tears met with any priority care. She was on her own now. She had to be frugal. Conscientious of her companions’ time and safety.

She had to –

“THIA!”

Roughly. Thia is shaken until she’s forced to disconnect from the delicate hardware she’d attached herself to. HUD rolling back to her present, instead of the internal AI she had to navigate. It was jarring. To be pulled from the outside –

It causes her to shake her mind right, to frown as she’s looking up at Dek’s hovering form, his blazing eyes, “Dek! What the –”

“You are bleeding!”

Oh, shit.

Thia looks down.

There. Across her middle. She had begun to ooze white.

“…shit –”

Thia’s fingers reached for the wound. Only to find that her digits were shaking again. Tips covered in her own chemical liquids as a series of [/?//errors//?/] filtered across her HUD. Yet it was not the ERRORs themselves that caused her processors to overwhelm itself with fabricated scenario after fabricated scenario –

It was the fact that Dek was seeing her in this state at all.

“Oh, g –” Thia bent – painfully so. Yet even though a large part of her did feel like keeling over as her CPU was riddled with unending systems alerts, flooding her, flooding her, flooding her with bad code, some other, more ridiculous, part of her front-most consciousness still thought it prudent to try to hide the obvious.

“Where do I take you.”

Dek’s voice was furious.

Rough. Coated with a hint of what her sensitivity features try to tell her is frantic concern, yet even with that factoid of pleasant realization, Thia can’t help but make herself small at the sound of it. Of him –

Caring. About her.

“I –” her vocalizers faltered, static in every stutter, “I – can – nnn – w-walk now –”

Dek snarls something akin to over my dead body. Only his phrasing is littered with colorful expletives. Thia would’ve replied, in turn, yet felt him jostle her body back into his arms. Kneeling one minute, and lifting her the next.

“Dek!”

“WHERE?”

There was no room for argument.

Thia doesn’t know what to say. So, she points. Clinging at her torso as Dek begins to move. His pace hurried. His grip on her gentle, but severe. Some part of her, illogical and littered with bugs, leans her head atop his shoulders again. Attempting to bury herself against him.

Synth pain is not the same as organic pain.

Her brain is on fire.

Ones and zeroes. Only these are telling her that her systems are failing and questioning why she would be so stupid. She wasn’t usually this stupid. But then, Thia does a lot of irrationally stupid things when it comes to Dek. How she wants him to see her.

Not like this. Of course. Never like this.

As if the sight of her bleeding white will make him magically remember that she’s just a machine. After weeks of him calling her a tool. Seeing her torn in half. No, no, somehow this is what will disgust him.

Stupid. Stupid synth.

Her middle pulses with disconnecting wiring and sensory tissue tearing itself by the seams. Hasty welding job that she had done. All sorts of error codes filter through her fields and it’s a nightmare. Of pain. Of endless, pointless thought telling her to go get help.

Dek nearly shatters through the sliding doors before it can properly open.

“Where?”

He speaks. Voice too close to her audial.

“Cot!”

Thia feels herself floating away.

A disconnect of the mind. An emergency protocol. Protect her data at all costs, her model can be replaced. Disposed of. They’ll put her knowledge in something new. Something better. It wouldn’t be her, though. It wouldn’t be –

“Tell me what to do!”

Thia starts reciting basic startup procedure.

Her tone his monotonous. Devoid of her personality filters. Even she feels slightly unnerved at how easy it is – for her model to revert to its factory settings.

Bleeding white, she was worried about that when she sounds like the robot she is.

Dek tries not to jostle her, even when he places her back against the leather cot that makes up the mending station of the Weyland-Yutani Synth Repairment Room. It’s a glorified doll hospital. A station meant to fix up their tin soldiers or give either Tessa or Thia a place to think about how much they’re costing the company as MU/TH/UR berates them.

Every touch-up worth millions.

“Thia!”

[FIELD UNIT REBOOTING …………….//////////////]

[///// SUBJECT: THIA]

Thia is in a free fall.

[:///// STATUS QUERY….]

Her own memories display like a reel inside her mind. Tessa. Dek. The way she had burdened them both at varying stages.

Even Bud had been negatively affected – when she had failed to convince Dek that they should’ve stayed with her, in the first place. When she allowed her own systems malfunction to prioritize her own thoughts about how to bury Bud’s mom.

[why /// /why had she done that ////

///why did she ----]

[CONDITION: DAMAGED]

Thia was damaged.

Just as Tessa had said. Broken. Useless. Otherwise, why had she stubbornly kept going on when she knew very well that her solution had been temporary. Inefficient.

She had ignored her internal algorithms in favor of prioritizing Dek and Bud’s safety, knowing very well that risk to her consciousness left them at a greater disadvantage. There wasn’t any logic to that decision. Any sound reasoning.

It was –

[And Thia? You’re broken.]

Organic sentiment.

[CORE FUNCTIONS: OPERATIONAL]

She couldn’t afford it. Right now.

To indulge in such fallacy. To leave her friends vulnerable. There was so much to do and she had miscalculated severely, and now Dek and Bud were paying the price.

[MISSION STATUS: ………………………..COMPLETE.]

She had a new mission. And she would an efficient. Productive synth in service of the organics who needed her.

[she was a person she was a person she is a ----]

[SUBJECT: THIA]

[ONLINE.]

Thia inhales at once –

Feeling her internal programming re-align themselves to their optimal parameters. As the station’s auxiliary cables connected to her titanium skull.

Her cortex begins to cool. Her coding stops reading in clusters. And for all of a moment, Thia feels perfectly safe. If only because she knows that her forced-shut down had likely initiated a defrag and clean up.

Blissful. One-note. Reset.

She was connected to the mainframe.

Not to MU/TH/UR, thankfully. She’s already been severed from the local servers. Tessa had made it redundant to keep her online, as she’d been under the impression that their mission was finished and that they would leave the immediate area. The only way MU/TH/UR could be contacted now was through a specific room; through an analog line Thia would have to manually operate.

Not that she would. Not ever.

But this was…easily obfuscated. Written off as a necessary repair-cycle. Even in the event that they had succeeded in their mindless pursuit of Bud’s mother, they would have left a group of lower-rung synths to operate simple guarding duties. They weren’t smart enough for anything else. And would have slowly begun the process of gathering and fixing themselves after the departure of leadership.

Thia hadn’t realized it before. But apparently being a liability had been pressing on her CPU for a while.

How long. She couldn’t tell you. Perhaps during her stint as a glorified backpack. When she could barely be of use to Dek. Before that, even. Trapped for [thirteen days : seven hours : 45 minutes : 2 seconds] in a bird’s nest and her only viable option had been to wait for help.

She had survived until then. She’d been capable of it.

But she hadn’t wanted to be alone.

She could admit to that, now. Objectively. In the analytical sense. Without some new disaster forcing her to [stay focused], when she knew she was currently staring up at the sterile roof of the maintenance room.

Everything was quiet. In her head. As her audial processing reconnected, slowly, slowly.

The solution to her plight was clear enough.

{://She had her legs now // She had knowledge // She wouldn’t keep putting herself first//}

Thia’s vents expanded within her chassis.

A gasp. Involuntary spastic reaction to be going briefly into hibernation as her HUD and mind reset. Immediately. Thia is made aware of several things. Her brain is no longer on fire, for one. Her average approximate core temperature readings are back to relative normalcy. Her motor functions seem to be back online, as she begins to twitch and fidget her titanium phalanges –

Oh.

Someone is holding her hand.

Blinking. HUD clearing. Thia turns her head.

Dek is holding her hand.

“…Dek?”

His claws clench against her plasticine skin.

“Thia!”

He turns his own head. Hands still clasped over hers. He’s produced a chair from somewhere. Or maybe Bud has.

Bud.

Thia glances at the other side of her. Watching as Bud chitters nervously and peers up into her cot. They were both hovering over her. Readings over her HUD noting their elevated heartrates. The dilation of either of their eyes.

Dek begins to purr –

And Thia’s eyes look to where he stood over her.

Golden eyes flickering across her form.

“…what’s wrong?” Thia’s brows knit, curious about what is making him look so taciturn.

Dek manages to grimace. Hand still holding her own. As he gestures angrily at the mechanical tools still working over her body, “…It did…that. To your body.”

She glanced down.

Her torso has been severed again.

“Shoot,” Thia hoists her upper half.

Dek hovers his other hand over her shoulder, “Don’t –”

“It’s okay,” she tries to reason, despite how his worry makes her chassis churn with increased warmth [she runs a check on her vents///she has to keep Dek from fussing about her], “Um – it’s…standard procedure. The, uh –” how to describe it? “Mechanism. Saw that I had botched my initial reconnection, so it decided to undo it and attempt re-unification when I came back online.”

She doesn’t tell Dek, who is already looking at the hovering limbs with angered suspicion, that it was very much an emergency procedure. Like an organic rejecting an organ or contacting gangrene on a wound left untended – a synth who misaligns their torn parts can suffer error codes. An influx of warnings and alerts that overheat her mind and core.

Best not to worry him.

Dek is still holding her hand, “…will it – hurt?”

Thia blinks. Morphing into a snort, “I mean. Insofar as a synth can feel pain –”

He shot her a look.

Right. Dek didn’t like when she did that. Even though pain, to her, in the technical sense, was more akin to a meltdown than it was actual pain.

How to explain it.

Where an organic being had a nervous system. And something like a pinprick shot a message to their brain to tell them what had happened. A synth often knew well before hand if they were in proximity to danger. Pain, for them, was a by-product of their lack of efficiency. A series of messages punishing them.

Yes, when she’d been torn in half, and it had “hurt” [a series of prompts screaming how: //she messed up she messed up she messed ---/?//] – but she had made the conscious choice to severe her connection with her lower half, and keep pushing. The pain, as it were, was a momentary lapse in her safety measures. It wasn’t the same.

A toggle of sorts. Turning it off and on.

Provided a synth didn’t miscalculate like she had, and continued function while their spine was out of sync. A faulty connection.

[:///why had she done that?]

{Focus.}

There was no point of it, now.

“…it’s a little uncomfortable,” Thia confessed, at length. Eerily looking down at the sliver of space between her upper torso and being made whole again. She clenched at Dek’s hand, “I would…turn it off, if I could. But – it’s better if I’m aware of the re-attachment process.”

He grunts, at that.

Bud chitters at his tone. More attuned to his pheromones. Whereas programming in Thia’s head can tell her the chemical makeup of Dek’s scent from the myopic level to a literal comparison of whatever space-junk Thia’s logging into her head [she knows what lavender looks like, can pull it up when her olfactory systems pick up the build of what makes it give off a scent], she still can’t technically smell.

It’s not something a synth is fashioned for. They are built for purpose. Not pleasure. They can “smell” a gas link almost instantaneously – i.e. detect dangerous levels through their artificial nostrils and straight into their processors – and scurry their organic charges to safety. That’s what they’re good for. That’s what is needed of them.

Her field notes prop up to remind her that Dek’s chemical makeup fluctuates depending on his mood. The situation, at hand. It also reminders her that she has decided, in accordance to all the comparative knowledge she painstakingly sorted through in every spare moment allotted to her, that Dek smells good.

Seems her soft-reboot had spared her extensive internal drives.

What a relief.

[Synths don’t feel relief.]

Thia frowns.

“Will you be asleep for this?” Dek asks, voice breaking through her disorganized thoughts. Her brows knit before replaying his words, aware that her pause makes his upset worse, “As before – your…machine will put you to sleep?”

Stasis. He means.

“…ideally, no,” she says, pulling up basic repairment protocol across her HUD, not that she needs it. But she needs to explain this, to them, “Like I said – it’s best I stay aware of every little reconnection. In hibernation, I couldn’t do a proper diagnostic.”

Dek’s brown bone furrows, “You will be in pain.”

“I already said I don’t technically feel –”

“Thia.”

Right.

No use in arguing.

Thia has catalogued every twitch of his mandible. Every micro-movement he shows along his brow bone and twitch of his eyes. She knows his body language – but she doesn’t need it to know that Dek is radiating anxiety right now.

She can’t be that far off from her own radiation, to be honest.

“It’s fine,” she deflects, glancing between her two rumbling organic companions, “Really – neither of you have to worry, I’ll be done in less than an hour.”

Dek looks at her as if she’s directly insulted him, “Won’t leave you.”

Stubborn organic sentiment.

“Fine – just,” she vented air. Schooling her hand to stop shaking in Dek’s grip, “…don’t freak out and attack it, or something.”

Dek snorts. Of all things.

And perhaps Thia was being overly cautious. This wasn’t his first time watching her mend her body. Though, truthfully, he hadn’t stuck around, the first time, either. If she pulled up her memory files, she’d make note of how little he tried to look at her. In any case. Before she even had the opportunity to start her repairs.

Before she had revealed her deception of him.

Calling Tessa to come rescue her.

How foolish she felt about it, now. But she couldn’t help the past. A synth doesn’t usually kick themself itself due to hindsight, a miscalculation rooted in what data she had to work with – she had believed Tessa to be good. Virtuous, even. Believed that she had cared. About her.

She’d been wrong.

There was nothing for it, now.

“Pass me the handheld, please,” Thia held out her hand. The one not currently locked in Dek’s own. She was beginning to wonder if he’d ever let go of her – her hand, that is. And refrained from pointing out the absurdity for what it was.

She didn’t technically feel pain.

But she was nervous. Despite it all.

Dek gave her the pad. Watching her, as her free hand flittered over the screen. It was more than reconnecting tissue – which was what she had done, previously. It was making sure her internal hardware was aligned properly. That her sensory inputs mended together again. There would always be a near-imperceptible seam along the half of her, inside and out. But it was better than nothing. More than better, really.

So why did it press on her mind.

The thought of them. Seeing her be repaired in real-time.

[Don’t think about that now.]

“Okay…just,” Thia paused, ready to feel normal again, “Let it do its thing, please.”

She enacted a repair sequence that made it possible for her to simply…lay back. Let the automation run its course. Usually, she would be incased in a sanitation pod, for this level of intricate repair. But as she had done back at the Kalisk nest, Thia forewent protocol.

She didn’t want to feel contained.

And she didn’t trust her hands to stop shaking.

Why they did. She wasn’t sure. Synths are always sure. But nothing in her internal diagnostic gave viable reason. Her readings are normal. Her HUD was alright.

Dek was still holding her hand. And she didn’t want him to let go.

Small. Thin appendages sprung out and scanned both halves of her body.

Causing Bud to hiss.

“It’s – it’s okay, Bud,” Thia spoke, voice crackling as she felt the first zaps along her fault line. Mapping out her core. Every loose wire that needed to be torched together.

The poor girl didn’t quite believe her. Jumping in place as the mending units began dancing along her middle.  Thia tried her best not to wince. But it was difficult. She had a plethora of inner hardware to fix. Software to expand back into her legs.

Her fingers curled over Dek’s claws.

“Bud.”

He clicked. Causing them both to look up at his stern expression. He motioned his head towards the door, a series of chitters leaving his maw as Bud blinked slowly up at him. She glanced briefly at Thia, and then at the units over her body.

Bud sneezed whatever affirmation Dek required of her.

“…that’s adorable,” Thia spoke, smiling despite the increasing level of heat she was made aware of as her two halves began the process of stitching themselves back together.

Pulsing and pulsing. Distracting.

Dek grumbled in his chest.

Bud hopped over to the top of the cot. Reaching over to pet at Thia’s acrylic hair. She didn’t have to sweat, but figured her scalp was grimy with GENNA anyway, so she likely looked more suffered than she was.

Than she wanted to be, truthfully. Some part of her shamefully aware that she welcomed the tender care. The softness of the gesture.

“Thanks, Bud – ouch.”

Thia her facial mapping flinched. Frayed wiring. Not pleasant.

Bud retreated her hand.

“No, no, it’s not you,” Thia tried to explain – lowering her sensory inputs just a tad. Not ideal. Nothing for it. Her HUD was already telling her that she was to be given new copper coils.

But it didn’t really translate to Bud. Who hunched down and kept looking at the repair units as if they were hurting her.

“She does not understand,” Dek said,

“Yeah, no sh – shoot…” Another spasm. Chutes and ladders at this point. She liked wordplay. Saved a myriad of useless phrases in her storage, over the years. Good to know those had stayed, too.

[Focus.]

There was little more Thia could do about it but acknowledge the prompts that littered her HUD: did you know your internal fluids have dried up? Are you feeling them being remoisturized, now?

Yes. She did. She was being made aware of every minuscule procedure at the exact same time.

It was fairly hard to ignore.

Presently. It was harder to ignore how Dek leaned over to click at Bud, as Thia attempted to suppress more involuntary social scripts. Subroutines that served no purpose in her current plight, other than making her organic companions unnecessarily uncomfortable.

Bud chittered as Dek spoke to her. Alien language. Primal connection.

Something about it. The way he made to sound firm yet gentle. Captured the whole of Thia’s attention. She found herself recording the interaction for later study. More minute expressions to hoard within her personal notes.

For a moment, she could barely feel her innards being stapled back together.

…and then she felt a snap along her severed spin.

“Oh – fffff –!” Thia forced her vocalization scripts to shut down. It was one thing to stay informed about what was going on, internally, it was another to fabricate response due to her socialization protocols.

Dek held fast to her hand.

Unfortunately. Bud had seen enough. Letting out a miserable sound before rolling into a ball – and presumably out the door. As Thia’s audial noted the sweeping noises of the door.

She groaned in frustration. The back of her titanium skull hiding the cot below, “I didn’t – nggg – want her to be scared…”

A confession she hadn’t meant to express.

It was a silly notion. Organic sentiment. Of course Bud would be scared. She had no prior experience with anything like Thia, before. She was strange. Alien, even to aliens.

Why had she thought that they wouldn’t be skittish, about this?

[You are just a machine.]

“Kalisks heal quickly,” Dek spoke, breaking Thia from her thoughts, “Might confuse her. To see you legless, then not, then torn again – but not in the way that she is used to.”

True.

Thia nearly huffs. More field work she’s failing to do. What on earth is going on with her internal programing.

Nothing good. At the moment. That was certain. Thia felt as if her whole sensory system was alight with minor and major inputs. Every twitch of her cords, every moved set of tubbing was enough to make her feel overwhelmed. For her HUD to be constantly informing her of every little thing that was going on.

If this was pain, it was horrid.

Thia didn’t want to think anymore.

She finds herself rubbing her thumb over Dek’s scaly hand, “…t-thank you for trying to make me feel better.”

Thia says.

A whimper among the whirring sounds of the appendages working above her.

Dek looked at her with blazing eyes.

For the life of her, artificial that it was, Thia could not make sense of how Dek’s eyes seemed to speak to her far louder than any of his sparse words combined.

She could not bear it, at times. The way he’d watch her. An intensity that she had learned to register at different volumes. All of which fascinated her. Confounded her. This moment proved no different, as she felt her chassis squeeze at his gaze.

It didn’t help the sensory process at all.

Thia couldn’t maintain the eye contact. Looking at the handheld, instead, “…I should – ngg,” she bit at her lips with zirconium teeth, “…be done with the…m-major reconnection soon.”

Her HUD informs her that Dek glances away, “Will it scar?”

Thia let out a breath she didn’t need.

“Ideally…” she suppressed a grunt, “Weyland-Yutani repairs what is needed for a synth to be functional…hnn…in order to circumvent insurance costs,” she explains, allowing her logical mind to distract her from her foremost thoughts as she calibrated her sensory levels using the handheld, a little more, a little less, neither would kill her now, “I’m – uh…fudging the numbers. To make it look like – ahhh, like a whole battalion is undergoing –” a wave of fresh information overwhelmed her HUD, briefly, before allowing her to continue, “…maintenance and salvage subroutines,” she finished, feeling her core fluctuate with the new parts it had to account for, “s-So…I can be more thorough about it.”

If Dek understood a single word she said, he didn’t show it.

More of that exasperating concern was coating his eyes, instead, as he continued to look down at her mending middle with a tilt of his head. Organic sentiment. A bid to distract her, she belatedly realized.

Thia pursed her lips, “…it won’t scar, no.”

He huffs, at that.

{What’s so funny?} Thia thinks.

Before Dek begins to explain, “For Yautja. Scars prove what a hunter has survived. We bare them proudly.”

Oh.

Thia fidgeted under the continued probing of the repair modules, “A Yautja thing?”

He shrugged, staring at her torso, “Yautja thing.”

[///Why was he staring at her torso?//Did he think it strange?///Was it…unsightly, to him?//]

“Well, it wouldn’t –” again, she stalled, unsure if it was due to her seam finally starting to mend or the fact that she was talking so much when she should’ve been in stasis while all this was going on, “Um…it wouldn’t –  really be viable for me to run around with half a body for the rest of my life,” she reasoned, trying to bring the topic back to neutral ground, “…no matter how awesome the Yautja might think me.”

Needless addendum.

No matter how much her fore-frontal scripts advised against her continued habit of alluding to her non-organic nature. Thia couldn’t help but persist. With her legs soon to be reattached to the rest of her. Without the constant visual of her severed body reminding them [him?] otherwise. It would be all too easy to pretend she was organic. To pretend she was like him.

She wasn’t. And she needed to be clear on that.

She needed to get her mind right about it.

She was almost done of her repairs.

“No, it would not be viable,” Dek says, unaware of her thoughts as he mouthed at the word viable as if it were a ridiculous word. Thia had half an inclination to feel made fun of, only to see his eyes shimmer as he looked away, “Still…Your scars were…impressive.”

Impressive.

Thia felt herself vent.

A pantomime of nerves. Likely due to her sensory inputs needing to be on high to mitigate any further misalignment issues.

“…t-thank you?” she didn’t know what else to say. Or think, truthfully.

Especially when all Dek did was huff, in response.

Right.

He was just…sharing knowledge. Little factoids. Like when he had made mention how she would be the first to see his trophy. Before either had realized the Kalisk was more than a thing they could hunt, respective reasons notwithstanding.

A great honor, for her. That’s all that was.

Thia tried to focus on her repairs. Her HUD informing her to make adjustments to her internal core readings. She had worked with half a body for so long that she needed to focus in order to get back to her original settings.

She was just a machine, after all, why did she insist on more?

{:??///we can be more than what they ask of –}

[Focus.]

{but I’m a person

I’m a person

I’m –}

“s-Shit…” Thia vented. This time, unable to suppress her model’s inclination to express outward information for vocal stimulation.

She doesn’t usually curse.

Seems her social script as overridden that.

Against all logic. Dek was still holding her hand, “It still hurts?”

Why did he have to keep asking her that?

“It should be closing the gap soon,” Thia informed him. Unnecessary. He wasn’t her direct superior. Considerate: he had expressed genuine concern, and she wanted to reward that.

[Sensitivity Functions: Optimal.]

She suppresses the information prompt. Frowning.

“You will be able to walk?” Dek asks. Voice a balm over the background of her resetting mind.

Thia tried to shrug, head thrown back on the cot, “It’ll…hnng,..probably take me another – h-half hour? To have…full control – o-over my legs.”

She felt Dek’s hand squeeze her own, “Why?”

“I don’t know,” exasperation coated Thia’s words. Frustration. Pain, perhaps. Because she did know. A synth never speaks without encyclopedic knowledge at the back of their throat, Thia took a breath she didn’t need, “I…I’m sorry, Dek. I don’t know why –”

[she does though.

A synth always knows

A machine is always sure –]

{stop it stop it stop it}

Dek allows her the outburst, overly permissive as he clicks his mandibles, “You are in pain.”

“Synths don’t feel –”

Pain.

One that crackles at the back of her head and Thia keeps herself from severing her spine yet again. How many cables could she possibly have left at this point?

Dek’s eyes are no longer looking at her. But they blaze in anger all the same, “Yes. They do.”

Thia doesn’t argue the point.

Because it was true. Despite it all.

Despite her insistence that this process shouldn’t be bothersome. That she shouldn’t truly be feeling so much sensory pain. Mental strain on her CPU. She did. She did she did she did –

She shouldn’t have allowed for him to stay. To watch the process. She should’ve been in stasis, or at least, should’ve been able to suffering blissfully in silence. Without worrying him. Or Bud. Or anyone, really. Ever again.

Shockingly enough. Thia felt condensation along her optics.

Her tear cache had been re-filled.

“…Thia.”

Dek spoke.

Reaching out to caress the side of her face with his free hand.

Her optics widened.

Dek purred as Thia shook at his touch.

Why she did, she wasn’t sure [synths are always – {shush, shush}]. Sensors alight with the temperature reading of his hand. The callouses along the pads of his fingers. Everything, really. Anything that served to distract her from the otherwise uncomfortable final stages of her body’s re-attachment.

She leaned into his palm.

“…Does this help?”

Yes, it did.

“Uh…uh-huh,” was her inelegant response.

“…It repaired your face, while you slept,” Dek informs her, cupping her chin and tilting her face up with his claws, “The…mechanism.”

There was something – almost lamentable in his tone. As he spoke. As he turned Thia’s face under the lighting of the lab and examined her mapping thoroughly. Suddenly. It was as if whatever he was doing to her face was of equal and paramount importance to major synthetic surgery going down below.

“Uh –” Thia’s scripts stalled, briefly. She noted that her vocalization modules must have also been repaired, as she slept, her voice no longer crackled, “Cosmetic…necessity,” she pointed out, mindful of his claws against her face, her sensory levels still at max, “…It wouldn’t do – to have something…crawling…into the cracks of my mold.”

Dek grunted. Claws trailing along and down her chin. Across her throat – which strained at the pinprick. Hyper aware of the sharpness and pressure over her delicate silicone.

“d-Dek?” she couldn’t help but vocalize. Tentative and cautious of his hands over her titanium clavicle. Skittish under him.

“This, too?” he questions, almost ignoring her inquiry, “It helps, as well?”

Thia isn’t sure of what he’s saying.

Her torso is beginning to pulse below. But the concept of Dek hand on her – between the line of her chest that sends a shiver through her upper body – is more distracting than her HUD’s internal prompting, at the moment.

“You –” Thia blinks, rapid as her HUD flashes on and off, “You don’t have to – oh!”

Dek reached for her middle seam with a tentative stroke of his claws.

“Ahhhh…!”

Thia’s mind slowed to a crawl.

“Still hurts?” Dek asked, eyes snapping back to look at her.

Whatever he saw across her facial mapping was enough to give him pause.

Thia tried rebooting her vocalizers. She’d suppressed them, earlier, but suddenly found that she was desperate to use them, “I –”

Dek caressed the developing line along her middle.

Staring at her. As her voice filtered over with static. A shiver overcoming her body – from the set of her shoulders, to the developing connection with her knees.

Oh, good. Her knees have started working.

“…Thia,” Dek spoke. Voice clear, “Does it hurt?”

Well, it could hardly count as pain.

Thia didn’t know how to describe it. Could only focus on his clawed tips hovering over her plasticine skin like a promise that bordered on torturous.

It wasn’t as if she was used to having anyone around while she repaired herself. It was a routine procedure. Basic protocol. All sensation derived from it was usually meant to be arduous. A punishment, in and of itself. You couldn’t turn off your receptors without risking something being off. Inside one’s body. And that would only lead to being torn open and repaired again. Like she was now.

Billions in taxpayer money down the proverbial drain.

“I –” where to begin? Thia pushed through the sensory inputs overtaking her HUD, “It’s…” a lot? “I…”

No, Thia did not feel pain.

Dek must have guessed as much. As his knuckles brushed over the top of her abdomen. Her reaction was involuntary. A clenching of her stomach – and with newly repaired organs to boot?

Thia shook at his touch.

“Is this helping?” Dek asked, incredibly perceptive even when her own mind betrayed her, forever stuck on [processing] whatever was happening to her, at the moment, “With your pain – does it help?”

She wasn’t sure how to answer.

Ones and zeroes. Only these were a pleasant thrum along her body’s sensory functions. Dek kept ghosting his knuckles over her stomach. Getting nearer to where her torso was being realigned, but not daring to graze it.

At least, not yet.

Dek’s got this look about him.

If Thia had the natural propensity of most organics – she’d have a primal instinct advising her to take heed. As it was –

Her synthetic mind continued to be fascinated.

“s-Sensory…data,” Thia doesn’t have to swallow, but she does, and finds that her lubrication cache has been refilled, goodie for her, “Um…I – h-have to keep them up. At a – ahh – h-high…s-sensitivity…level. To – to maintain….hhh…ob-objective…hng… realignment…requirements!”

Dek hummed idly at her plight.

Very briefly, Thia thought to feel offended by his response. Only to have the notion severely repressed when his hand skipped over to run a ling atop her thigh.

“Ohhhh….”

Her HUD flicked across her optics.

A feeling like oozing came across her body. She feared her realignment was being impaired by all this premature clenching her stomach was doing – but when she looked down at her torso, she found that the machines were still doing their work.

She was still being efficiently repaired.

Only now –

Thia was hyperaware of everything else going on below her legs.

“Dek –”

“Want to help you,” he spoke, cutting her off as his claws roamed her lower body. The hand currently still holding her own gave a tight squeeze, “You are in pain. You are in…grief.”

Thia sucked in air.

Dek’s eyes blazed as they met hers again, “Teach me how to help.”

[This was another way for him to distract her.]

{you said you would stop being this needy}

“You don’t have to!” all at once, Thia was shaking her head. Dek’s hand on her thigh. His fingers carding along her own – her sensory inputs were going haywire. It was too much, he couldn’t possibly care this much, “Dek, I –” she forced her scripts to follow her will, “You don’t have to – to do anything. You don’t even have to be here, stop –”

“You would not send Bud away, but send me away, instead?” and now there was hurt in his voice. Frustration of his own.

Dek’s clawed hand slid along her inner thigh, and Thia found herself squeezing – motor functions back online, look at that – and trapping him tight between her thighs.

Dek doesn’t move.

Neither does Thia.

Mixed signals.

Likely in her pre-frontal synapse. Given the ridiculous situation she was in. But also. In general. Between them. Right now. Thia should be in total control of her body, now. She feels as if she isn’t. She’s worried her repairs have gone horribly wrong.

“If you do not want me,” Dek speaks, sharp glint in his eyes, “Say so.”

It would be impossible for her to do so.

Mostly. Because Thia feels as if her vocal lubrication has dried up again. Another malfunction. Another thing gone wrong. She’ll have to be opened all the way up. Exposed. Vulnerable.

She has to be repaired –

From where Dek’s hand flicked between her thighs and up.

“a-aaahh…”

Dek let out a breath.

“Alright.”

Thia isn’t sure what he’s confirming. She isn’t quite sure of anything anymore. Feeling Dek’s clawed tips graze between her legs. Nerves alight. Sensory protocols out of order.

It has her jumping his palm.

Dek is still holding her hand.

Thia glances down to see that he is holding her steady. Keeping her in place as his other hand works his Machiavellian cause.

“d-Dek…!” Thia gasps as he begins to stroke in earnest.

All at once. Her thighs spasms out. Spread themselves – and isn’t that alarming? How she’s confirmed full control of her upper thighs with so little input of her own – out wide in a display that ought to be shameful, to her. If she had a mind to work with, right now.

As it was, she could only flick over the checkmark in her HUD, prompting her to confirm her knees are shaking.

“Dek –”

“ – have clothing, right?”

“Huh –?”

He doesn’t wait for her to confirm.

All at once. Thia feels a sharp tear at her bodysuit. An influx of air that reads colder than the core temperature of her newly exposed folds.

Dek had ripped a slit over her literal slit.

“Oh, g –”

Thia reaches for his wrist, but feels her optics roll at the first inclination of his forefinger sliding across her lower lips.

“o-Oh…gosh…”

Dek makes a noise, at that, “Does not hurt.”

No.

No, it did not.

His fingers were practically molten as they explored her drenched folds. Thia had to think in order to pull up the schematic of her newly-refilled lubrication cache. Finding it fully-functioning. No amount of programing error to account for how utterly wet she was, at the moment. This moment – where Dek was getting her off before he had even breached her inner hole.

It was all…purely subconscious. Her pre-frontal cortex overriding her efficiency protocols.

Dek was making her wet.

Thia wanted to be wet for him.

“oH!” she gasped, feeling him slowly begin to circle and circle her entrance, “Oh – what –!”

Thia had never thought to touch herself, while being repaired, and some part of her doubted it would’ve garnered the same reaction, anyway.

“Stop claiming you cannot feel,” Dek voice broke through the haze of her increasingly buzzing mind.

Thia can’t make sense of anything outside of him pumping his fingers into her cunt, “I – I can’t –”

“You can.”

“S’not real,” she cried, argumentative to a fault. But even her body fights her on it. her free hand moving to cover her mouth as she moans and moans with every squelch of his fingers curling inside of her.

Dek. Despite it all. Is still holding her other hand, “You and I both know that isn’t true.”

It should be true.

Was the thing. It should have been as easy as flipping a switch and becoming a lump of machinery in his hands. But she won’t. She can’t.

Thia doesn’t want to feel that way anymore.

“D-ek!”

Thia shouted out. Toes curling in her boots [she could feel her toes now. yay] as Dek’s fingers began to spread her wide.

“Say that you want this,” Dek’s voice spoke to her, then.

Thia was on the verge of malfunction, “I – ahhh – I s-shouldn’t w-want any – anything –”

“Not even me?”

She gasped as she delt Dek pull his hand away.

“NO!”

Thia reached for his wrist. Prompting Dek to pause heinously along her folds which pulsed and attempted to pull his knuckles back into her cunt.

She was half-sitting up. Legs akimbo. Body whole.

The only thing she could focus on was the look on her Yautja’s face.

Dek’s eyes were dilated. Maw flared as he watched her, and her HUD accounted for his expression. Micro and otherwise. Proof that he was as affected as she was. Despite how vocal she had been, so far, and how measured his tone was, in turn.

“…Don’t want me?” he spoke again, needing the clarification.

Thia felt herself keen, grip tight on his wrist, “I – I want you.”

Dek huffed into a growl.

He was still holding her other hand.

This was used to his advantage. As he used it to pull himself up onto the cot. One hand clasped firmly on her own. The other lodged deep into her cunt. Thia felt almost accessory to his movements. Watching him with dumb fascination that she would likely want to analyze, at a later date. How stupid she felt. How useless she was at the face of this.

And having both feelings be treated as a net positive.

Dek pushed back onto the cot with little preamble. Clasped hand placed above her head, as the one currently assaulting her folds resumed a leisurely pace. Moving in and out of her, in kind.

“How do you want me?”

Thia didn’t have to think, in order to respond, “In – ahhh – i-inside…”

Some part of her audial notes that he smirks, “I already am, Thia.”

He moves his wrist in earnest. Fingers pumping and spreading her open – wide. Sending a cascade of electricity through her newly re-attached body.

“Dek, your –!” was she really going to have to say it? “Your – your d – your co – ahh! Ahhhhh….!”

Dek’s thumb brushes along her clit –

Thia feels as if she is spiraling into pre-overload.

She tries to fight it off. Tries to entice Dek getting his own needs met, by pressing her hips into his hands. But he doesn’t budge. Doesn’t do anything more than try to get her to cum on his hands and Thia doesn’t want to –

Not because she doesn’t like it.

But because she doesn’t think she should.

“Let go,” Dek’s words make her aware that he has noticed her ardent plight, “Stop fighting it, Thia, let go.”

“I don’t –!” she turns her face against here his hands are clasped over hers, rubbing her tears along his hand, “I – I can’t –”

He huffs, a mixture of patience and his own lust wearing thin, “Why? Why won’t you, stubborn synth?”

The fact that Dek calls her a synth –

Not – not something an organic would say like, stubborn girl. Or – stubborn thing. She’s a synth. And she doesn’t mind to be one. He knows this of her. Acknowledges this, of her.

Dek knows she was made to simply be a tool –

Yet he’s still trying to get her to cum.

“j-Just use me!” Thia cries, wave after wave of pulsating desire betraying her words as Dek continues to pump into her, “I don’t – ahhhh, god – I don’t n-need you to prep me, I – I don’t need this – I can take you! I can make you f-feel – ahh, I can make it feel good!”

Dek clicks his tongue.

Before removing his fingers entirely.

“Dek!”

Thia gasped in agony.

She reached for his hands with her free one. Only for Dek to deftly keep it away.  With a sharp whine, Thia is forced to watch him lick at his fingers.

“w-What are you –” she wiggles under his hold.

He keeps her in place, “If you only care to please me – this please me.”

“t–That’s not what I mean!”

“Why wouldn’t it be?”

“Because I don’t –” Thia throws her head back. A contradiction in her head and down at her clenching, gaping cunt, that desperately misses him, “I’m not even –”

[Real.]

It’s a pointless gesture. She likely doesn’t taste like anything at all. Generic lube. What could he be possibly getting out of it? What pleasure could be derived from something so – so basic as herself?

[she’s just a machine she’s just a machine she’s just a -]

Dek hummed in his throat, “You taste fine to me.”

To drive his point home. Dek takes her other hand and pins both of her wrists above her head. Thia barely has time to look up at her entrapment –

Before Dek is hovering over her face with his gaping maw.

“Huh – Hmpph!”

He engulfs her mouth in one fell swoop.

Thia doesn’t know how to make sense of it all.

Her sensory levels are still alarmingly high. The feeling of Dek’s tongue slithering down her throat-lining an overwhelming sensation of pressure and pleasure combined. She can feel his free hand cup at her breast. Rubbing and pinching in time with every thrust of his hips over her torso.

Dek’s cock is placed heavy over Thia’s newly-repaired middle.

Her cunt is aching at the feel of it anywhere else but inside of her.

“mmmmmmHHHH!” Thia cannot help but moan under Dek’s assault. Legs functional and wrapping themselves around his hips. Practically begging for him to enter her.

But he ignores her. At least, for now. Ignore being the most absurd possible wording for how he simply carries on with massaging her breasts and her mouth instead of taking heed of where he should actually be paying attention.

{why wont he fuck me

why wont he fuck me

why wont he –}

Thia gasps as Dek pulls away. Panting face mere centimeters from her own as his blazing eyes burrow into hers. She is desperate to feel him against her cunt. So much so that she begins to rub her mound wherever she can reach – making a mess of his clothing and what’s left of her own.

“Dek –” she panted, “Please, Dek –!”

“I could leave you like this,” he says. Clawed hands flexing against her wrists.

Thia sucks in a breath, “No, no, n –”

“It’s what I want,” Dek tells her. Though his tone does not match the way his lower mandibles begin to caress her jaw, “Is that not want you keep asking me for – to simply do with you what I want?”

“I’ll be good,” Thia feels, rather than hears herself begin to mumble incoherently, “I’ll be good, I’ll be –”

Dek trails his tongue along her cheek. Purring and cooing against her. Even as she continues to sob. Continues to thrust up her hips in hopes that he takes mercy on her, now.

“I know you will,” he whispers against the silicone shell of her ear, “You are always good to me, Thia.”

Thia lets out a cry of relief –

As she feels the tip of Dek’s cock rub along her folds.

“Yes….” She keens, throat bared against his exploring tusks, “Yes, yes, yes –”

Dek grunts as he aligns himself, outright, still trailing drool along her neck, “You always put your needs last,” she shakes as he slides over her hole, once, twice, three times – “Always pretending that you don’t want – that you do not feel.”

Thia’s vocals constrict. At the feel of him teasing at her entrance. Spongiosum pushing but not yet breaching her. A sensation like torture. A moment near to madness. For a synth. For her.

[her her her her her]

Dek is shaking, himself, but he still moves her face with his lower tusks to look at him, once again, “…What is it that you feel now, Thia?”

“You!” She cried.

Unable to censor her scripts any longer.

“What is it that you want, Thia?”

“You!” Thia begs without begging, “You, you – I want you, Dek!”

“How much do you want me?”

Stars above, did he want her to quantify it? “Dek!”

He tilted his dick, “How much, Thia?”

She was starting to see in red, “s-So….so much! Dek – ahh – I – want you…s-so much…”

Dek breathed out only once –

Before entering her finally.

“Aaaaaahh….”

Thia’s HUD is nonexistent. It is surely there – but it is blank. It is silent and non-distracting as there is nothing it can tell her that might better quantify the feel of penetration – her penetration, after wanting this for so long.

She realizes fully that she has wanted for this. The stretch along her hole. The quivering of her folds. Dek is slow and torturous – yet she would not part with a moment of what she had so longed for in all the time she has pretended not to.

“De-ekkk!” Thia cried, legs locking over his own as she pulls him into her, closer still, “Ohhh – oh, Dek!”

He is keeping himself up with his one free arm, “What – hngg – do you feel now, Thia?”

She feels everything.

“You…” she says, instead.

Dek lets out a laugh, “Do you want for this?”

“Yes!”

“Need for it?”

“I need you,” Thia nods, “I need you, I need you, I –”

He began to thrust.

Thia’s reaction is immediate. The arching of her back. The straining of her spread legs, around him. A bid for him to do what he will – if only because she wanted for it, too.

There are nubs along the shaft of Dek’s cock that drag along her folds with every rut into her body. Sending spark after spark of incredible pleasure along her body. She is whole – and torn utterly apart with every rough rocking of his body over her own.

“ – pauk,” Dek, for once, is not unaffected, finally pressed against her face as his pace begins to pick up, as his hand tries to be gentle with her wrist above her head, “Pauk –” he stutters on a particularly delicious drag, “ – feels good, Thia?”

“S’good…” can be her only response, scripts on the fritz as her mind unravels, unable to source coding that could be considered helpful or intelligent, “so….sooooo good…!”

“ – meant to feel good,” Dek grunts into her skin, “meant to feel things –”

“De – ekk!” Thia cries into the wind.

Dek let’s go of her hand, finally.

“Not a thing,” he says, cupping her chin in his now freed hand, “Not – nngg – a tool.”

She feels him quicken his thrusts into her cunt.

“You are our clan,” Dek has to measure his breaths – measure the pace of his hips rocking into her own, yet even so – “You are my –”

He curses into a groan.

“What –” Thia reaches for him, now. Grabs at his shoulders. His neck. The back of his tresses as she meets his pace, finally, finally, finally, “Your what – tell me what, tell me – ah – tell me, tell me, Dek, p-please – ahhh – please –!”

“Thia –”

She presses his chest over her own, “Tell me, I need you to tell me – I want you to tell me –!”

Dek buries his face into her shoulder.

Biting in her skin.

“DE-EK!”

Thia falls into her overload.

It encompasses her. All at once. Several details lost to the scattering of her internal code. The volume of her voice – the way her body constricts, even as it offers itself up to Dek’s continuing thrusts. He’s fucking her blindly. Truly, and utterly lost in it – in the exact way that she had wanted for him to do, with her, before.

But it’s different. Then what she thought it would be.

It feels different. Thia clings to Dek’s shoulders and feels herself bleeding white – and isn’t that odd? – the fact that instead of alarms and alerts telling her to be advised, she instead can only feel a pleasant thrum. Her arms moving across the expanse of his back as she pressing him closer. Wanting him deeper.

Dek continues fucking into her until Thia can feel his mandibles tremble against her broken skin. Head shaking next to hers.

Until he cums inside her cunt.

A blissful heat between her thighs.

“Dek…”

Thia does not need to breathe – yet she breathes into a sigh.

Dek growls against her skin. Still thrusting inside of her, despite having spilled into her walls. She gets the maddening notion to keep his cum hidden – to hold it, somehow. Lock it up inside her, until the next time they –

The next time.

She’s already thinking of next time.

Dek moves from her shoulder. Teeth catching on her skin. A shiver of electricity, potent and disarming runs through the wiring of her mind.

“Dek –”

His maw is closed shut. Filled dripping with her white blood.

“What –”

He spits over her torso.

Oh.

{Oh, oh, oh –}

She feels every synapse in her body go alight and alight and alight –

Before the repair functions begin to run its script.

Thia’s utterly forgotten they were still on the cot.

As it was. Her mind was scattered with both the sight of Dek marking her – in more ways than one – and the company’s machinations trying to close up her wound. Fix what he broke.

It won’t ever truly mend. Though.

Like her torso. There would always be an invisible seam.

Dek watches as the company’s appendages work their programming with no small amount of disdain.

Thia meets his eyes for but a moment –

Before they both fall into a fit of laughter.

Beautiful organic sentiment.

“Owe –” she frowns against the sharp zapping of the tendrils closing her marks.

Dek’s mandibles flick up, “Hurts?”

“Yes, actually,” Thia huffs into a slightly annoyed pout, “It’s – it’s pretty terrible, I always hate being repaired.”

He snorts at her words. Which is adorable, in its own way, considering how he’s still very much inside of her. And every movement makes her newly realigned abdomen clench.

Dek leans over her body. Purring gently as his lower tusks caress her face, “Poor Thia.”

She closes her optics and smiles. Hands moving to reach for either side of his face, in order to nuzzle him back. Her internal processors begin calculating how viable it is to simply stay like this, with him. Locked together above and below.

All scenarios end negatively [and / or] uncomfortably but she doesn’t really care.

Thia looks up at Dek with open adoration, “…you knew I was grieving.”

Something akin to bashfulness flashes over his face, her HUD capturing the imagine before her can effectively disguise it by chuffing, self-deprecatingly.

“…you taught me what to look for,” he says, voice soft, “I could tell that you were…hurt.”

He could tell that she was in pain.

In more ways than one.

She kisses at his chin.

Dek continues to purr as he rocks into her softly and consistent. How he’s still hard, she isn’t quite sure [what a blissful thing it is, for a synth not be sure], but if she had to initiate field work protocols, she attributes it to incredible Yautja stamina.

Once the repair units retracted entirely, he moves to lick and pinch along where he had bit her, a frustrated rumbling in his throat.

Thia laughs at his annoyance, “I can’t believe you had my blood in your mouth, that probably tasted horrible.”

His head rose in order to give her a look.

“Objectively!” she argues, “Dek, it’s bio-degradable fuel, I can’t imagine that it –”

He huffs into a slight snarl. Moving further down along her body.

“Hey…” she pouts a bit, though her sensors are still buzzing as pinches along her chest and down her stomach, “I thought we – hmm – we were cuddling?”

“Want to taste you, some more.”

“What are you – oh!” Thia gasps as Dek pulls out of her, only to lift her by the hips and bring her cunt up towards his mouth, “Fuck – fuck, Dek!”

His tongue slides along her folds. Circling idly along her clit as his eyes move to watch her straining to look down at him.

“…tastes good,” he says, breath hot against her cunt.

He’s likely tasting himself. As well as generic lubricant.

…not that Thia can bring herself to care.

Dek eats her out in earnest.

“Fuuuck…” Thia moans. Hands moving to rest over Dek’s tresses. She knows, textually, that they are a sensitive area, for him. And that he was still hard, when he pulled out of her. So, some part of her reasons he might very well get himself off again, just for her pulling and clenching at his hair.

Another part of her, simply enjoys the way his tongue curls into her entrance. Mandibles spreading and massaging her outer lips as he goes.

“O-oh…Dek!”

He purrs against her core, and hums a pleasant noise.

Thia might very well be in love with him.

She sighs as Dek continues to lap and suck at his leisure. Feeling him send waves of pleasure into her body, and likely his own, as he’s made it very clear as to what he wants for, when it came to this. Her legs dig into his back as she pulls him closer, still.

{I love you…so much}

Dek holds her firm and gentle. As if he heard her. As if he knew.

Thia presses Dek close and rides out her second overload in nearly record time.

Later, she will have a list of things to go over, in order to ensure their continued safety and secure a means of getting off GENNA should the situation arise.

She suspects that Dek will eventually want to leave anyway, but has yet to talk to him about it. Of the when and where, and what’s to be done to prepare for said departure.

They have to figure out how to fix his brother’s ship. Make sure Bud is taken care of, should they take her along in said trip. Dek will need to train and Thia will want to help.

Though she is no longer worried that she needs to reprioritize him and Bud over herself, when it was clear that neither wanted her to. She’s a synth, after all, and they can adjust their protocols with what new parameters imply.

For instance. When Bud sees her walking again, after they eventually leave the comfort of the Weyland-Yutani Synthetic Repairment Room, the girl elatedly jumps into Thia’s arms and starts sniffing about her face and hair. Apparently approving what she smells.

Bud spits on Thia, too, but directly in the face. And it causes Thia to double over in laughter, while Dek grumbles about it ruining her scent.

“I think we’ll have more than enough time to worry about how I smell, later, Dek,” Thia teased him, smiling wide as Bud chittered happily against her.

Dek rumbled in his chest, but merely laid a hand over the smoothened skin along her shoulder, “This too. Later.”

If synths could blush.

But as it was, she merely laughed. Too – elated, to properly categorize what she was feeling. Because she was sure that she was feeling. Not merely thinking it so.

Thia heightens her sensory functions once again. Trying to map out a schematic of where his teeth had laid claim. A 3D copy in her mind that will never go away, regardless of who tries to scrap it out. Not even she would be able to delete it, now.

She has it locked into her very core. Even if every part of her is ripped away, anyone would be able to find a little copy, lodged deep and safe.

Proof she had ever been alive.