Chapter Text
Uzi came back a couple minutes later with a thermos and one of the couch pillows, and didn’t miss the way N unwound a little when he saw her. She tossed the thermos to him as she walked over, and dropped the pillow, then herself onto it.
“I refilled it for you by the way,” she said. “You’re welcome.”
N stared at the container. He looked from it to her and back with a puzzled frown.
“Uh. Wh— hm.”
She sat up a bit. After a second, he set it aside.
“Thanks,” he said, somehow both too quietly and in a tone she couldn’t decipher.
“Yeah… no problem.”
More silence. Uzi pulled her gaze away when he didn’t turn around after a while. She couldn’t even begin to guess what was going on in his head, and she couldn’t be bothered with the headache of trying anymore. At least until she had a good nap or something.
Mmm... sleep.
Not now, though. That would be less than great timing.
She straightened abruptly, scooching back to lean against the wall and crossing her arms with a frustrated noise. Which prompted— startled?— N into looking over.
“This sucks. Everything. This whole situation is bad and annoying and I hate it.”
N huffed a laugh.
“Yeah, that’s… probably a fair assessment.”
“It’s so annoying,” she mumbled. Uzi hunched in on herself, sliding down the wall a bit. “There’s like. One thing that would fix it all. And everything would be fine again, and it feels like we should just be able to fix it but for some stupid reason that has to be completely impossible.”
N adjusted, turning towards her more with a hum, then bringing one knee up to rest his arms on and laying his head on them. He blinked slowly at her.
“The memories?”
“What happened to the whole— like— isn’t data supposed to always exist somewhere? That should apply here I think.”
“I’m pretty sure you’re thinking of the internet…”
Uzi blew a hair out of her face and pointed at him.
“You shut up with your facts and logic.”
N chuckled, and that helped a bit. More than a bit, actually. She huffed a laugh too, rolling her eyes. The warmth in her chest bubbled down after a moment, though, and she stared at the floor, smile fading. N watched his glowing tail-tip flick idly. When she spoke again, he perked up.
“I just… I-I want it back,” she admitted. “I want you back. And… it should be enough that you’re okay, but so much happened and it’s all just… and… it seems like this should be something that can be undone and everything goes back to normal but it can’t. It can’t. And I don’t… know what to do with that. Um…”
Uzi wavered, looking away. She cleared her throat and blinked rapidly. Not the time.
The glow of N’s visor dimmed as he leaned back, head hitting the wall behind him, and gazed upwards.
“I’m sorry. I can’t imagine it’s— there was basically a whole other me you knew, and you’ve lost that. But then like, I’m also here, as a constant reminder? I can’t imagine that’s fun. You’re… kind of crazy-strong.”
Uzi choked a laugh and tried to secretly scrub at her visor.
“Pfft, y-you’re one to talk.”
“Ha! No. No, I’m really not.”
“Shut up and take my mutual respect.”
He laughed again, shaking his head. Uzi suspected it was more shelving-the-argument than her winning. But they’d work on that later. For now, she hesitantly shuffled closer to lean her head against his arm. He tensed, but after a moment, his tail looped protectively around them.
“You’re more than a reminder. Just… FYI.”
He hummed. One hand came to rest on her back and rubbed absent-mindedly, and they gazed at his drawing, lingering in tangible silence. What they were waiting for she couldn’t say.
Probably a few hours later, she startled awake and N was gone.
The thermos was still there though. He must’ve forgotten it.
V didn’t realize how gosh darn frickin terrifying this would be. Or how painstaking. Maybe that was how cautious she was being, but she wasn’t about to not be careful. Besides. There was time, now. At least, as long as J didn’t manage to do anything insane, or find her somehow, which was unlikely (she hoped).
There was maybe a 20 minute window where the satellite was in range. Then she had to wait for it to circle around the planet again. Which took forever, because it was supposed to be in an orbit that left it functionally stationary, but the core collapse threw it off, so now it was just wandering in a circle. A detail which made it all the more spectacular the thing had been in the right place at the right time.
At first, she thought J must’ve saved and uploaded the data for the company. Reports, evidence, study of the accidentally very sentient life they created, whatever. Except they didn’t care. J didn’t care. And no way would she sacrifice a good power trip and the knowledge that she’d irreversibly destroyed N, just for some useless files.
That theory unravelled. Meaning it really was chance, plus some quick thinking on N’s part.
Either way, she was almost there— it was just a matter of extracting everything without catastrophe and stuffing it into a convenient little flash drive without, y’know, wiping it from existence.