Chapter Text
“Hey, um.”
Uzi turned her head, blinking lazily up at N from where she was laying on her cold floor again. He’d been writing, but put that on pause to stare at the picture again with a faraway look.
“Hm?” She prompted when he didn’t say anything. N startled, glancing over and quickly down at his sketchbook.
“Uh. I just— the other day. Are you— I mean… you’re like, handling all this okay, somehow. Right?”
Uzi scoffed and turned back to glare at the ceiling.
“What do you think.”
“Oh,” He mumbled. Uzi caught him fixating a little too intently on the page in front of him and rolled her eyes, shifting closer to swat at him. N jumped.
“Cut that out,” she scolded, pointing. “I can make my own decisions. This is a messed up situation for both of us, but I’m helping because I’d rather everything suck and you’re alive than everything suck ten times as much because you aren’t.”
N stared, the edges of his book crumpling slightly in his grasp. He blinked and closed his mouth, opened it, closed it again, looked away.
“Oh,” he managed. Noticing the wrinkled paper, he loosened his grip to try and smooth it over, wincing. Uzi studied the ceiling again and let the silence sit. Her thoughts gradually slowed into a hazy spiral; the almost trance-like, semi-awake state that would easily turn into a nap if she wasn’t careful. She didn’t think it would, this time, since she wasn’t tired… but there was really no telling.
When eventually she checked, N was gazing in the general direction of his drawing again. It was hard to tell if he was actually looking at it from her angle.
She let it be.
Some time later, Uzi woke herself fully by shifting with a sigh.
“I missed this.”
N responded with puzzled silence.
“This is how we used to hang out,” she said. “Sort of. It’s cool how we wound up in the same place again, almost.”
More silence. N’s tail flicked in between them, and he pretended not to notice, the pen in his hand hovering in place as he regarded her with careful neutrality. He looked down, but didn’t even pretend to start writing again. As if stuck somehow. When he spoke it was in that same false neutral.
“So, could it… happen again, then?”
Uzi squinted at him. Frowning, she pushed herself up on her elbows.
“What d’you mean?”
He didn’t reply for a long moment. Maybe he hadn’t heard her somehow. Before she could ask, though, N abruptly shook his head and closed his book, setting the pen on top.
“Nevermind.”
…
Oh.
She sat the rest of the way up and took a deep breath, voice softening maybe a bit more than she meant.
“That was different. You were still living out at the spire. It’s the only reason she caught us off guard, so no, it won’t happen again.”
N hummed non-committedly. His visor dimmed as he studied the floor. Just barely, but enough.
“What’s up?”
He did that thing again, where he looked up and then away really quickly— as if he’d forgotten she was there.
“I-I don’t know. It’s just— I… don’t know.”
Helpful.
Uzi huffed. Why did this all have to be so complicated? It was so much easier to hit things. It would be awesome if she could beat away some abstract feelings. They were all difficult and frustrating for no reason.
“Still waiting on that manual,” she muttered, dropping back to the floor. “Would be reeeal helpful right about now.”
Uzi rested her hands on her stomach and glared at the ceiling. Then further back, to the wall, hat scrunching and pushing towards her eyes. Her posters and stuff were upside down from that angle. She could read upside-down, (robot and all,) but it still looked funny.
N gave her an odd look at the comment. She shook her head, waving him away.
“It’s a… just a reference, ignore me. Um. So, you’re… confused? Like, in general?”
He made another face at the book in his lap, bringing it closer, and flicked his pen. It scittered across the cover into his other hand.
“I mean, sort of? That’s part of it. It’s… I’m kind of just… here, y’know? Like— like none of this seems real, fully.”
“Denial?” She tried.
N shook his head with a sort of scrunched expression.
“No. It’s more like it doesn’t fit into reality yet. Like it totally happened, but now I’m… just here.”
Okay. So… moderately helpful. She still had no idea what to make of that, but it was something.
“I dunno what to tell you,” Uzi said, shrugging, and crossed her arms behind her head, propping it up so she could scan him. N went quiet for another minute.
Then he opened his notebook again. Uzi took that as a conversation over.