Chaos Theory II - SCP Foundation

I stepped into the room I’d been escorted to– my new office– but it wasn’t as empty as I would have expected.

Someone stood by one of the large windows, looking out at the small city below. The tall individual didn’t turn towards me; from its nondescript clothing, I assumed it didn’t want its identity to be known.

“The pathra1 fluttered its wings on back.”

Its voice was familiar. Too familiar.

“Why are you here?”

“I thought you killed yourself.”

I swallowed.

“I tried to.”

“Why?”

“Living was too hard.” It was a straightforward enough thing to me.

“Do you dislike your function so much?”

“Function?”

"We're Twos. That's what we were made to do, to take orders, even if they're… awful. But there's no shame in that. You didn't have a choice, I didn't have a choice."

"If this is about-"

"I don't want to talk about it," it interrupted firmly, then continued a bit quieter. "Look, I… it really hit me hard, too. I…"

I lowered my gaze, almost as if my eyes were weighed down by the heaviness of the words it wasn't saying.

"You didn't have a choice," I repeated softly.

"But eventually I was able to make one. I became a real medic because of it. Because of you. I guess it helps the guilt recede, since I'm able to tell myself that even if I couldn't save the One, even if I couldn't save you, at least… at least I'm doing something to make this shitty planet a better place, I guess."

We lapsed into silence. knew the feeling, I knew it in such excruciating detail; that exact emotion had been what caused me to defect in the first place. To martyr myself in hopes of helping even one civilian survive the bioweapon.

After a moment, it spoke again. “Look there,” it commanded, pointing to the side, away from itself. I obeyed, startling when it turned around, just barely in my peripheral vision.

It stood next to me, slightly behind, so that I wouldn’t be able to glimpse its face if I decided to turn my head back. Its hand slipped beneath my shirt's collar, feeling right above my collarbone. “You had your waste line removed.”

“I don’t… I don’t need it anymore,” I explained.

“That’s good. No more liver failure for you.” It took its hand back, walking to the door.

The door opened, indicating that it was about to take its leave. “Sir?” I asked, part of me wishing it would stay a bit longer. Maybe it could fill me in on the things I couldn’t remember.

“I told you not to call me that. I’m not your handler.”

The door closed behind it. A heavy exhale escaped my lungs as I stepped to the window, glancing around the room to see if anything else was notably amiss.

The office was very plain; minimalistic with hard edges all over, the most clear representation of a Kepler space that I could imagine. I’d never understood the excessive clutter that humans seemed so accustomed to, but sometimes it was nice to see their… photos, posters, pins, whatever personalisation items they decorated their areas– and sometimes bodies– with.

But our species weren’t like that. Whatever option took the least time and resources was almost always the one chosen, as long as it was still ergonomic and safe. Everything was all about efficiency, efficiency, efficiency. You got what you needed, and you got enough of it, and you didn’t get any more so that everyone else could get what they needed as well.

It worked much better than the capitalist system so much of Earth had adopted, where those who were good at oppressing others were rewarded, giving them more resources to cause pain and take away the things the oppressed so badly needed.

The chair in front of the broad desk looked… comfortable enough. I sat down, mobility aids clinking against the metal frame, and was relieved to find that the cushion had enough substance not to feel said frame.

And then I slumped against the desk, forehead going straight down onto the smooth surface. I made a sound that went something like “aaaaagh”, because what kind of fucking reunion was that?

I kicked the air, mechanical joints complaining at the sudden movement. It was incredibly unlikely that we’d ever see each other again, and it wasn’t like I had a way to casually contact it. I felt so stupid, berating myself over wasting the time instead of having tried to…

Get it to stay?

Or did I just want closure, someone to tell me that I hadn’t made my own life up?

Because nobody else had been there through all the horrors, through my Little Dark Age. Nobody else had noticed the blue-stained tissues scattered around my room in the barracks. Nobody else had watched 7cb7 blow up, and it had been the last person I said goodbye to before my shitty suicide plan.

I pulled myself up enough to run my hands over my face. I breathed in deeply as I pressed my palms over my eyes, then sighed and propped my head up on crossed arms as I gazed out the window.

I desperately hoped it was alright, as if hoping would actually change anything.

Born an analyst, forced to be a diplomat. That was my constant situation.

The most recent exhibit was my attendance at a rather high-tension conference; a small group of government officials had requested to meet with a few heads of the resistance in order to discuss a sort of cease-fire in civilian areas.

According to 6fb2, “Nobody has been active in civilian areas like you have, nor been part of the government’s inner workings, and therefore you have knowledge that is helpful to disprove any misinformation they’ve prepared to pull the wool over our eyes.”

So I was there because of my past as a government drone. Great.

The only good thing about the entire situation was that I’d been able to sweet-talk my way into the Doctor being there as well. All of the hecticness of the past few days– week? Weeks? I’d been having trouble keeping track– made it so that we’d barely been able to exchange a single word before I’d been whisked away to show off to the next gobsmacked higher-up wishing to see the returned asu in person.

As I sat at the table in a chair made for someone much larger than me, I came to the conclusion that maybe that was my role at that point. Be their… pet. Or something.

That was fine with me. I’d do my best to act all polite and domesticated.

The room filled up quickly– of rebels, and the few reporters that weaselled their way in. The government representatives took much longer, murmurs of disquieting and discontent making their way between keplers.

“Do you think they were lying about coming peacefully?”

I glanced over at the One, whispering to a leaned-in aide. It appeared a bit older, or maybe that was just the expression of tense worry on its features.

“This area is extremely secure, and agreed upon by both sides to be a cease-fire zone,” the aide reassured it. The client nodded, but its expression remained even after the aide straightened back up.

I drummed my fingers on my thigh, glancing over to the side of the room. There, the Doctor sat in a chair identical to mine; he actually fit in it, which had me impressed with its fortitude. Objects meant to hold keplers rarely exceeded a mass capacity of 90 kilograms, as virtually everyone aside from me resided in the 70 to 80 range. I was bad at guessing masses, but with his strength2 I would have been surprised if he was less than 100.

I began thinking about Earth to Kepler weight conversions to soothe myself from the tension in the room, playing with the numbers in my head like they were Grabnok’s tech deck. I realised that it was actually quite a clean multiplication problem when the door opened for the first time in a few minutes, revealing… who everyone had been waiting for with bated breath.

They had an unsettling air about them, the room immediately falling silent as they walked in. Out of all the guests, only one, maybe two of them were identifiable as Ones. It gave the group an eerie, sterile exactness to their movements, typical of the Twos honed into perfect little government drones. Used for jobs other than the above-board stuff.

I glanced at them nervously, uncomfortable with the very real knowledge that I had, at one point, looked like that. I could picture it then, baggy tactical clothes resting uncomfortably on my skin, a firearm burning a hole in its holster against my thigh. Following my awful handler around like a well-trained german shepherd.

My awful handler…

A sharp inhale of the room’s cool air shocked my lungs as my eyes widened on the person making its way around my side of the table.

Its eyes snapped to me. Then it frowned, a look of disgust washing over its face. I froze.

The injury it’d gotten from the Doctor was mostly healed, but not quite, and I could still see a faint bruise at the edge of its cap. I looked down at my lap, shame creeping its way up the back of my mind– I hadn’t exactly left it in the most wonderful state, now had I? I just acted helpless until the Doctor did something, and then had to be half-carried away.

As it approached the place I sat, I realised it didn’t reek of alcohol. That made sense, because it wasn’t exactly the best public image for the government if their head of special operations, the person in charge of tons of subordinate government workers, showed up to a peace conference intoxicated. But that also meant it was more volatile, unstable. Unsubdued. It was prone to extremes, and sometimes it felt like it chose those extremes by spinning a top and maxing out whatever said top landed on to 100.

I tried to tell myself that it only did that because it was suffering on the inside, that it didn’t know any better and couldn’t act any differently. But that got harder after I’d met the Doctor, someone who was also prone to overflowing emotions and snapping into black-and-white thinking, and he didn’t treat me like that at all.

So I thought it was reasonable for me to be confused about the whole thing. And feel like shit because of it.

Still, it got closer, and the warbling ball of emotions in my brain struggled against my attempts to compress it down into a little box to be discarded. Just as I’d been able to get it under control, having convinced myself that the person would simply continue past me, its footsteps stopped directly behind me.

“What a way to meet again,” the Handler muttered in a low voice.

“You don’t have power over me here,” I stated with a practised facade of calmness, taking off my AR glass to rub away my fingerprints with the hem of my sleeve.

“Oh, what, ‘cause you think you have power over me? Over them?” it sneered.

“I did not say that.” I tucked the now-clean display into my breast pocket, folding my hands on top of my thighs.

“You think they like you? You think you’re important to them? Isn’t that pathetic.”

3f32 was near my side, and seemed rather eager to increase the distance between the Handler and I. Unable to do much with my back facing it, I simply sat there, trying to make my mouth do the polite smile thing that I’d practised so much in the mirror.

“I am… sorry if anything about me is causing you distress,” I offered, hands clenched in my lap.

“Sorry?” It scoffed. “You’re sorry?”

I started to turn my head, about to face it, when its hand grabbed the back of my head. Before I could process what was happening, pain exploded through my skull as my face was slammed into the table.

There was yelling, and out of the corner of my eye I saw both of my aides dragging the Handler away by the arms. “Let go of me! Do you know who I am? I have every right– that thing would be nothing without me! ”

I tried to sit back upright, but overwhelming dizziness slammed into me, intervening. My lips and chin felt oddly cool, and I looked down at the table; there was a splatter of blood, a couple new drops adding to the blue pool every few seconds I sat there.

My eyes unfocused and refocused on the room around me in bursts, during one of which I noticed that the Doctor wasn’t in the chair he’d been in a few moments ago. He wasn’t there at all, I realised, as I tried to blink away the ache in my maxilla. Then I noticed a group– security guards?– off to the side, crowded around one tall, dark individual.

I closed my eyes as the pounding in my head got worse. Everyone in the room was talking over each other, but I somehow managed to make out what the guards were saying.

“Please stay here, you aren’t allowed to follow–”

“I am not allowed to, after that miserable, bumbling fool has laid hands on my–” His non-keplerian accent cut through the din, quieting everyone down considerably.

“We can’t have you interfering–”

“I will simply take care of the overarching issue. You will not have to deal with such a disgusting, repulsive connard, ce salaud–”

“Please! Calm down!”

A small blood clot felt particularly uncomfortable coming out of my nasal cavity, and I reached up to wipe it away before someone caught my hand. They cleaned off my face with a handkerchief, which stung considerably but was ultimately for the best– I didn’t want to look like a mess in front of everyone, after all.

“We need medical attention over here!” they called to the crowd of security personnel. That got one of them to glance over and nod, but more significantly, it made the Doctor register us.

Upon meeting the eyes of the person beside me, he turned away from the guards, quickly making his way to my side. I didn’t know if it was a good idea for him to be right there, in this room full of important people, as well as press no less, but it was hard to think too much about it in the state I was in.

He moved his chair to the empty spot beside me and took my face into his hands, fingers lightly pressing over all of its structures. He stopped when I winced, then held out his hand to the person next to me. I tensed through the haze of my dizziness, aware even then of the hesitation pouring off them in waves. They finally proffered the piece of cloth, and the Doctor took the handkerchief from them. I sat as still as I could as he used a dry part to wipe off more of the blood that, somewhat concerningly, just wouldn’t stop coming out.

“You don’t have any broken bones,” the Doctor reassured me, gently holding the cloth to my nose. “I wish that enfoiré did…” he muttered, that relatively frightening I-want-to-kill-somebody expression of his quite apparent at that moment.

“I-It’s not a big deal,” I managed to make myself say. “That person’s just like that, i-it isn’t the first time…”

The expression changed to more of an I-want-to-disembowel-and-dismember-somebody sort of thing. “That utter imbecile should be manually reduced to a stain. It’s as if it has something lodged inside its brain; how interesting that would be to dissect. While conscious.” He said all of this with one hand softly caressing the side of my face, fingertips doing away with the excess fluid that had collected in my eyes due to the pain.

Just as the ache in my face that pounded with every dual heartbeat was starting to become too much, my aides returned, clothes a bit messy but otherwise unharmed– 3f32 talked to the guards as 3f33 came over.

“We’re going to get you somewhere we can better take care of that injury,” it informed me as it helped me stand, motioning to the door.

I nodded, which was really quite a stupid thing to do in my condition; the floor lurched under me, and I absently realised I didn’t have the strength to keep myself from full-force colliding with it.

Thankfully for my easily injured form, I instead collided with a large, warm body. The Doctor held me stationary until I managed to get my legs working again, then let me start walking mostly on my own. 3f32 held the door open for us, where a security detail was already waiting on the other side.

My foot caught the threshold unevenly, but 3f33’s hands grasped my arm and shoulder to stabilise me. At the same time, however, the Doctor had placed his hands on my waist to do the same; I appreciated the help, but felt a little quote-unquote ‘warm under the collar’ when the Doctor then shifted my body closer to him somewhat… protectively?

I didn’t fight him, but looked nervously at my aide as it let go of me– they seemed to have had some kind of nonverbal communication that I didn’t pick up on, and I didn’t know whether to be worried or relieved that said communication had 3f33 turn me over to the Doctor so easily.

Managing to keep myself upright with his help, we followed the two guards in front. I didn’t know where they were taking me, but at that point I trusted my aides enough to not lead me into a death trap. I was still uneasy, but the casual dread that seemed to always linger around me was slightly alleviated by the man holding me close to him as we walked.

The guards led us through a few back hallways, which eventually led to a simple door that they held open for me, gesturing to go inside.

I nodded at them to hopefully communicate a thank you, gritting my teeth against the way my head spun upon doing so. I would definitely need to get whatever was wrong there fixed up.

From the appearance of the room, I was in a good place to do so; the Doctor helped me sit down on the raised bed clad in white sheets, and stood next to me to wipe off more blood that had run from my nose.

My aides dismissed the security detail, and the group finally left the room, instead taking up positions by the doors and in the hallway. I was glad that they were committed to not having my face get smashed in again, but still thought it was a bit excessive.

“Ah…” I pressed my fingers against my forehead, eyes squeezing shut due to the bright, sterile lights in the room. “My head hurts. And I feel… dizzy.”

The Doctor clucked his tongue, hands smoothing over my shoulders sympathetically. “Why don’t we get you laying down?”

“Yeah,” I agreed, opening my eyes and slowly shifting in that direction; before I could actually move myself, however, he looped his arms under my back and legs, picking me up and setting me back down in the correct orientation for occupying the hospital bed.

“You’re much too injured to be moving around on your own,” he explained, sitting down beside me. “Just let me do everything for now, alright? I wouldn’t want you to make your injury worse by falling or hurting your head more.”

“Thanks.” I smiled at him rather sheepishly, then dropped my voice to a whisper. “But maybe we shouldn’t– in front of them–”

He glanced at my aides, then back to me. “If they have a problem with my care of you, they can take it up with the reaper.”

I opened my mouth to say something, closed it, then opened it again; it took me quite a moment to actually get out something coherent. “I like them,” I said finally, and it was true.

They were kind to me, and even in all my insecurity, I didn’t get the sense that they looked down on me for my… unique appearance. They seemed like they genuinely just wanted to help, and it was comforting that they, too, were Twos in the resistance.

“Then I will not do anything if they do not get in the way.”

“Or… at all?”

“Hm… it is impossible for me to promise that.”

I genuinely couldn’t tell whether or not he was joking, but a knock at the door cut the conversation off. 3f32 walked over and opened it a crack, then nodded at the person who knocked and stepped aside.

It was someone dressed in the attire of a nurse, who quietly thanked 3f32 and approached the bed. It stood by the unoccupied side and set down a first aid packet, and I sat up a little more to make its job easier.

The nurse put on the sterile gloves from the packet, then took out a disinfecting cloth and started to wipe off my face. I stared at the wall behind it while it worked, feeling the Doctor’s eyes watching its every movement.

Besides the low hum of medical equipment, the room was relatively silent. That was, until the nurse pressed a little too hard on a notably sore part of my nose, and I reflexively flinched away.

Before I could apologise, the Doctor was taking out a second pair of gloves, brushing its hands aside. “You’ll hurt him if you do it like that,” he reprimanded as he took the cloth from it, continuing the work much more gently.

“My apologies.” The nurse removed and uncapped two saline syringes instead, a smaller one with a green label following. I relaxed a little upon seeing it, glad to be getting painkillers instead of having to ‘power through’ or whatever. “Fast or slow pull?”

My brain was a little too fuzzy to automatically understand what it meant, but the Doctor answered for me. “Slow. Pulling medications too fast makes him pass out.”

It nodded, making sure there were no air bubbles in the syringe as he undid my shirt. I looked off to the side, embarrassed that they were doing everything for me, but I knew the gentle scolding I’d get if I tried to do any of it myself.

The nurse pushed the saline in, then pulled it back out until it drew a small amount of blood, and repeated this a few times until it was satisfied with the cleanliness of the port. It set that syringe aside, then attached the one with a painkiller and depressed the piston.

Already I felt myself getting lightheaded, and I gripped the top sheet of the bed to orient myself. Seeing this, the Doctor tsked disapprovingly; he moved closer to me and took the medication-filled syringe out of the nurse’s hand, administering the medication at a much slower pace.

"He's really quite small, and just hit his head. With a dose like this, meant for someone with a much greater body weight, it's better to go slower than you think you need to. You must be considerate of these things if you want to have the privilege of treating him, you know."

The nurse looked up at him in surprise. "Are you a doctor?"

“In a sense. My profession was initially tied to an earthen, human disease, but… well, my purpose is now moreso tied to my chéri here," his fingers brushed my collarbone, other hand still steadily injecting the fluid, "who I would not part with if the world depended on it."

“I… see.” It looked like it wanted to say something more, but pressed its lips together instead and picked up the last syringe, offering it to him. “Ah, I assume you’ll want to do this as well.”

“You are correct.” He took it, injecting the saline as the nurse collected the minimal packaging and held it in one hand; when he was done, it accepted the empty syringe and threw everything in the medical waste disposal.

“We can get a doctor- um, a Kepler doctor in here soon, to make sure you don’t have a concussion from that. In the meantime, do you need anything?”

“If we could just be left alone, thanks,” the Doctor responded as he shot a pointed look at my aides. They remained grossly unphased.

“…Yes. Okay.” The nurse nodded at them as it passed, then opened the door and glanced back at us apologetically. I was confused until it turned to the side to slip past what turned out to be one member of a small group of people who entered the room.

They appeared to be important individuals, judging from their clothes and how one of them– likely an aide– appeared to recognise 3f32 and 3f33, nods exchanged between the three.

Everyone stood around a bit awkwardly, taking turns staring at the Doctor before averting their eyes. They were obviously trying to appear polite, but I imagined it was to avoid the tainting of one’s image if such a thing were to come to light during a public quarrel– being xenophobic, well, everyone did that. But you weren’t supposed to, and people still very much threw each other under the bus to get ahead if someone was too obvious about it.

Eventually, someone spoke up, addressing me. “So, that was pretty nasty, huh?”

I nodded slowly, finally able to do so without too much pain. “Nothing that I haven’t experienced already, though. I’ll be alright.”

“Has that person… done things like that before?”

It was time to stare at the wall again. Even thinking about the Handler in ordinary circumstances was enough to make me feel sick, much less trying to recall anything about the times it’d hurt me. Although, that wasn’t exactly not ordinary.

“I don’t see why that’s important right now.” It came out monotone, as I didn’t have the strength or enthusiasm to force inflection.

“Well, it’s important to have the full picture of what’s going on. If that person is found to be repeatedly guilty of those kinds of things, it would be gross negligence on the part of the government to keep it in their ranks. The people care about you, or at the very least see you as a symbol of hope, something to be protected and treated with kindness. This could quite possibly be another large nail in the coffin for the government as a whole. But we need your help for that.”

“Are you asking me to give a testimony?” I didn’t quite appreciate the idea of them using my relationship with my handler, which was quite frankly pretty unhealthy, a relationship that even now made the mere implication of intoxication set off my fight-or-flight response, and use it to forward their political agenda… even if it was for the betterment of society, even if it was a political agenda I agreed with, the notion still felt like a cruel shock of icy water.

“It would be helpful,” another person offered. “Your firsthand account is going to be a lot more informative than anything we can pry out of it, and that’s if it doesn’t outright lie.”

Seeming to pick up on how much I was shutting down, someone else spoke up. “Don’t you think it’s a little soon for that? After what just happened, maybe 5a82 needs some time–”

“We don’t have time, the public wants a statement.”

“Our statement can be that we need more time.”

“That’s not how this works! We don’t have the liberty of taking as long as we want like the government does, we need to get our side out before they do. You know how they twist things, and people are more likely to believe what they see first.”

More people interjected, adding on argument after argument until they were all speaking over each other, loud enough to make me cover my ears with my hands. I didn’t know if it was that raucous in reality, but the inside of my head was screaming; it sounded awfully like those quote-unquote ‘parties’ the Handler just loved to drag me along to, the ‘parties’ that smelled like alcohol and felt like frozen pavement and sounded like violent arguments, and all I wanted to do was curl into a thoughtless ball.

Despite the pain medication, I still had a headache, and my body was uncomfortable, and the memories swimming back were making me nauseous. Every sharp word hashed in the room felt like metal scraping my brain, and my shoulders and arms tensed so much they ached.

I felt so overwhelmed, and, unable to do anything else to self-regulate, reflexively did that muscle jerk-y thing with my arms where I twitched them in the air, waving my hands back and forth. It wasn’t always a bad thing– sometimes I did it to try and express how happy I was about something– but right then I just couldn’t fucking handle the situation anymore.

The room immediately fell silent. Part of me was incredibly relieved, as they’d finally shut up, but a stab of anxiety pierced through my chest when I realised they were probably all staring at me because of it.

I dropped my hands down to my sides, wrapping my arms around my waist. I didn’t want to look up at them, so I stared at my lap instead, trying to avoid having looks of scorn and disgust imprinted in my mind once again for something I really couldn’t even control.

The Doctor finally broke the silence. “What? You all look so confused.” He put an arm around me and rested his hand on top of one of mine, thumb gently stroking the back of it. “Heads of the resistance? Promoting equity and care for all? And yet you respond with shock when someone expresses self-stimulating behaviour? That is honestly quite pathetic.”

“It’s okay,” I mumbled, leaning into him just slightly enough that it wouldn’t be visible to the unpleasant company, but still letting him know that I did very much appreciate him being there and didn’t want him to pull away. “It’s another stupid cultural thing.”

“Still, it is honestly quite deplorable of them to come in here talking about how everyone values you so much, and then proceed to overstimulate you and make you feel even worse, after you’ve just been injured no less. So it would be very much appreciated if they could leave, now, and figure out what to publish on their own goddamn time,” he suggested with quite the edge in his voice, making it quite obvious that he wasn’t actually talking to me.

“Just a simple statement is all we need–”

“What you need is to leave,” the Doctor snapped. “Take a hint and become scarce. Our asu has faced enough subpar treatment today, and you are now in fact interfering with his recovery.”

To my surprise, but far from dismay, my aides agreed. They walked around the group to stand between them and the Doctor and I, body language indicating that they weren’t open to discussion. The aide within the group also tapped its client’s shoulder, signalling that it was a good idea to leave.

I exhaled heavily as they were all but herded out, dearly hoping that I would at last be able to have a break from the hecticness of this whole thing. It was exhausting to suddenly be some important person, even if I could logically understand why things were happening this way– that didn’t mean I was able to emotionally justify this in any amount, justify why it was me of all people caught up in this mess.

Yes, I was the only surviving member of the team that saved thousands, tens of thousands of lives… yes, I was a Two, a government-created organism, who went against his brainwashing because he saw how said government had hurt his friend, a One… yes, I sacrificed myself to an experiment that could have made my body eat itself alive, one that I thought was going to… yes, all of this had made me into a figurehead for the resistance, but…

Once the door closed behind them, the Doctor moved closer to me, his other hand coming to rest on my arm and pet it lightly in a rather soothing motion. I rubbed my face with a shaky hand, hesitating out of incessant self-loathing before giving in to my stupid needs and nestling closer to him, his warmth, his caring that I still couldn’t comprehend.

I couldn’t even muster up the strength to say anything. My eyes were unfocused, gazing at the edge of the bed, body strangely tense; it had been such a small thing, a pointless altercation, and I berated myself for having such an emotional reaction.

“You’re trembling,” the Doctor noted softly, back to the nurturing person he’d always been towards me. “They upset you quite badly, didn’t they? I am so sorry about all of this, if only I had acted faster, prevented that person from getting close to you…”

“It’s okay,” I repeated, more automatically than anything. I had a lot of practice with those words. “They wouldn’t have let you. Stupid Kepler stuff. I should have just… gotten up. Ran.” This wasn’t about what happened in the meeting anymore. “I should have left, somehow, I should have known it would get that bad, I should have just figured out a way to get away, if it was really that bad, if I really hated it that much…” I trailed off, my throat burning from the suppression of a sob.

“Could you have?”

I wiped a watery eyeball. “No…”

“People who feel trapped in abuse aren’t trying to feel trapped. They want to leave, you wanted to leave. But the abuse is designed to keep you trapped, to keep you helpless. It does not mean you are weak, or deserve the abuse, or anything of the sort. ”

Just barely able to urge my neck into motion, I nodded.

“I want you to believe me,” he sighed, placing his arms around me and pulling me closer.

“I want to believe you, too.”

After a lengthy process of dodging questions, I was finally discharged and allowed to go back to my room. That was fortunate, as I was very sick and tired of talking to people. It was also unfortunate, because when I’d stated as much to my aides, they’d misunderstood and thought that I also meant the Doctor.

I could have been completely fed up with everyone in the world, but that still didn’t include the Doctor. He could bother me, but he never bothered me. I didn’t think it was physically possible for him to truly bother me, or do so in a way that made me irritated.

The Doctor grumbled and seemed to be put in a foul mood, but once repeatedly reassured by 3f33 that they would take care of me, he parted. I bit my tongue during the whole thing, as this ordeal had taken place around the medical assistant discharging me; I didn’t want to admit it, but I was mildly afraid of what they would think if I protested to keep him at my side.

As I arrived to my room alone, however, I wanted to kick myself. He was being so brave to stay close to me even despite my planet’s xenophobia, and all I did was stay quiet and let people push me around. Afraid of? I was afraid of people knowing we were… what, together? In… love? A…ttracted to each other? What kind of… boyfriend… did that make me?

I busied myself with setting up an IV– it was late, and I was hungry, or at least in the way that Twos got hungry if they needed to intake fluids. As much as I really, really just wanted to collapse onto the bed and pass out, the Doctor had given me a direct but affectionate lecture about food and, you know, actually getting it into my body. It was strange to me that he was concerned, but I trusted his judgement and therefore was fondly obliged to listen to him.

But before I could finish, an unfamiliar knock at my door made me jump. I looked down at myself, regretting my decision to change out of my formal clothes. A baggy t-shirt and athletic shorts weren’t exactly the best thing to answer the door in– especially because the metal bracing my legs was plainly visible, and it felt vulnerable to have my disability be so visible in that way– I could tell from the way the knock sounded that it wasn’t 3f32 nor 3f33 that had knocked, nor the Doctor– if it had been any of the three, it wasn’t such a big deal.

However, new person = expected social behaviour is unknown = be as formal and polite as possible to not make a mess of things. That was my self-made social script that I stuck to in emergency situations, also known as meeting new people before I could figure out how to act around them. Because, obviously, being myself was stupid and inconvenient.

Wasting time deliberating about who it could be, or what they expected for me, was also stupid and inconvenient. So I gave up on my clothes, got out of my tangle with the IV tubing, and answered the door.

Upon opening it, I was extremely relieved to see that it was but a singular individual. If there had been a group, I may have slammed the door, locked it, and hid under the covers until they left.

“My name’s 4cc7,” the One standing in front of me introduced. “I’m a reporter for the global news’ broadcasting station based in the capital. I’d like to ask you some questions about what happened in that meeting.”

I looked at the individual, dressed in relatively casual but smart clothes that fit their body well. They had long, dark hair, tied up in a ponytail with some messy sections in the front, and their appearance was notably feminine; the slight swell of their chest looked to be shaped more from adipose tissue than pectoral muscle, or at least that’s as much as I could discern from a quick glance, my eyes moving from them to the tablet they held. Thank oeso,3 looking at objects was infinitely better than looking at people.

“How… How did you get in here?” I was honestly surprised that nobody had stopped this 4cc7, and I leaned into the hall just slightly to check if there was anyone around. There wasn’t.

“It’ll just be a quick interview. To get your side of it all, of course! It’ll help improve your image to the public, which is important for someone like you, isn’t it? Especially after that.”

I rubbed my eyes, then glanced back into my room. I was in the middle of setting up the IV pump, and there was tubing and various fluids strewn about the room; I didn’t know if that would be considered messy, and I didn’t want to be seen as messy.

But also, if I hadn’t wanted to look messy, maybe I shouldn’t have answered the door in my current situation. But that would have been rude, so it was really all about weighing why I wanted people to dislike me.

Not wanting to be impolite, I nodded, stepping back from the door and letting 4cc7 come inside.

I watched the One look around my room before ultimately sitting down on a chair in front of the full-length mirror in the corner. I sat down on my bed, feeling rather informal but not knowing what else to do.

“You’re still setting up an IV?” They looked at the various vials of liquid medicine, as well as the bag of nutritional fluid I was getting the line attached to. “I’d have thought you’d already be infusing, it’s pretty late.”

“I infuse less than average.”

“How much?”

“Um… 1.6 litres,” I answered tentatively, feeding IV tubing through the pump to distract myself from the uncomfortable question.

“1.6? I thought Twos were supposed to intake at least thr… well, no matter. I have some questions to ask you, is it alright if we start the interview now?”

I uncapped a needle to draw an alpha-1 blocker into the syringe. I would definitely pass out if I had to get up during any point in the night, but it was much better than having nightmares.

However, as I glanced up at the One, I decided to cap the needle and set the syringe aside. I didn’t want to clean off my catheter and inject the medication in front of this stranger; it would have been okay if they were a Two, as it was just a bodily function to us. It was just what we needed to do to survive, like someone eating, drinking, or taking pills erenterally. And we all knew the uneasiness that came with having a cannula right into one of our hearts, the uncomfortable reliance on synthetic materials that bound us to our creators.

But with a One… even if it was just the act of feeding or medicating my body, something every kepler needed to do, we did it in such different ways. The piece of metal embedded in my chest made us too different, too foreign. Too other. A One couldn’t fathom having no digestive tract, and a Two couldn’t fathom swallowing food without choking.

I pulled the collar of my shirt up to cover the scar above my sternum, where my waste line had been before I lost the need for it.

“Yes.”

“Okay.” They cleared their throat. “I don’t know if you recognise me, since you seemed pretty out of it, but I was the person who gave you that handkerchief,” they informed me, gesturing at the bloody cloth sitting on the table beside my bed.

“Oh– sorry about that, do you want it back..?”

“No, I meant it when I said you could keep it. What I mean is that I saw everything happen, what that government goon did and how your… company… reacted.”

My body tensed, more than it already was from being in the company of this stranger. I’d already known I had to be careful, to watch what I said as to not look utterly stupid, but that single sentence made me realise what this interview was actually about.

I hadn’t prepared for this. Sure, I’d gone over in my head roughly a million times what I’d say if someone ended up questioning my relationship with the Doctor, but that was just to myself, in the privacy of my own skull– it was borderline incomprehensible when I’d tried to say it out loud.

No words I had could fully explain the kind of thing we had together, while simultaneously hiding the deepest parts of said thing, the parts I couldn’t show to anyone. The ones I feared that sometimes I couldn’t even show to him, lest he see what he really did to me. A small shiver ran its way up my spine when I thought about his unfulfilled promise of continuing what had happened a few days previous.

“Okay, I see,” was the most neutral response I could come up with.

“So…”

I looked at 4cc7, trying to decipher their expression. It was rare for me to understand expressions, nor tone or body language, and it was really coming back to bite me at that moment. “So..?”

“So, what are you to each other?”

Fuck, that question. Fuck that question.

The really stupid part was that I truly didn’t know how to answer. 7cb7 had called us boyfriends, but I wasn’t sure it actually knew what that word meant– it had specifically said the word in English, or at least as best it could with its keploid mouth and throat structures– since there was not really a Kepler equivalent to the concept, not in our language nor culture.

We didn’t ‘date’, the only closest thing were those who grew so close to their friends that they decided to be life partners. From what I’d seen of many human cultures, a lot of them started dating because they were immediately attracted to each other, and the emotional closeness developed afterwards. Keplers were the opposite, only feeling… attraction, or whatever one would call it… after a deep friendship had already rooted its way into their lives, if it did at all. Since many Ones were able to reproduce asexually, a significant amount of the population were agenital and without sexual attraction. If only I’d been so lucky.

I bounced my leg as I tried to think of a way to frame it in a keplerian context. Or would a human one be better? The worst part was that I had no clue how the reporter would react to any options I considered, and the longer I thought, the more wrapped up I got in the whole ordeal.

“Important,” I finally said. “We’re important to each other.”

“Why?”

“Um… I’m sorry, I don’t think I understand the question.”

“Why are you important to each other? Who is he in the first place?”

“He’s…”

It was so unfair; how was I meant to describe months, even a year of our existence together, our mutualistic interspecies pairing like a dance through the stars– how was I to encapsulate the vastness of such a florid and alluring duet with such simple words? Anything I could attribute, short of pouring out my hearts, felt utterly vapid, like describing the expanse of the Garden of Eden with the word ‘green’.

I realised I was fidgeting, and tucked my hands behind my back to hopefully hide it. I didn’t want to appear uncomfortable, as that would indicate that I had something to hide; if they thought I had something to hide, they would only press more.

“He’s from That Planet, right?” 4cc7 asked in a hushed tone, almost as if we were gossipping.

“Why does it matter?” I tried my best to keep my tone of voice polite.

“Look, I’m here to get your side of the story. I can’t do that if you force me to make my own speculations instead– I could think of plenty of stories from what I saw in that meeting. But I might get some things wrong, so…” They tapped their stylus against the tablet impatiently.

I sighed and rubbed my eyes. “Yes, he’s from Earth.”

“And he came here because..?”

“Because I want him here, and he wants to be here.” I didn’t trust myself to say much more. “You said you wanted to ask me about what happened in the meeting, a matter of public affairs, not my personal life.”

“So he’s in your personal life? How personal?” the reporter pressed.

“The meeting,” I repeated, this time with an edge to my voice.

They wrote something down on the tablet, eyebrows raised but remaining silent.

“Okay… did you anticipate violence from the government? They said they were going to come in peace, didn’t they?” 4cc7 asked, much less enthusiastically than their previous questions.

“No, I didn’t anticipate it. We had a non-aggression agreement on both sides.”

“I guess the terran wasn’t part of that…” they retorted under their breath.

“He got upset, alright?” I snapped. “Can you please leave him out of this? Sometimes emotions are a lot, and he had a reaction, but nobody got hurt.”

“Being defensive is hardly professional.”

I exhaled and crossed my arms over my chest. “Apologies if I want to protect him from flesh-eating press.”

“Oh, please. I’d rather eat flesh than rely on TPN.”4

“Injecting fluid isn’t that bad,” I responded as I reached for my feed interface and pinged 3f32 and 3f33. I didn’t know where they’d gone, but hopefully it wasn’t far.

“Yeah, I’m sure you don’t mind when that terran injects his fluid–”

I clenched my jaw so that it wouldn’t drop to the floor in shock. “Leave.”

“Struck a nerve, huh?”

“Please go. Now.”

They sat back a little. “Come on, I was just–”

The door opened, and I tried not to collapse with relief as my aides stepped through. “Who is this?” one of them asked, gesturing at the unwelcome guest sitting across from me.

“Press. Just get them out of here,” I sighed as I waved my hand in 4cc7’s general direction.

The reporter stood, glancing uneasily between 3f32 and 3f33 as the pair led them out the door. I sat in silence, rubbing my temples until they returned a few minutes later without the offender.

“We’re very sorry about that,” 3f33 apologised as it knelt in front of me. It felt a little patronising, but I knew it meant well– that was better than if it stood, whereupon I’d be at the height of its navel, so. “It’s unclear how they got inside the building in the first place, but we’ll make sure that doesn’t happen again.”

I nodded, believing its sincerity. “It’s alright, don’t worry about it.” I paused. “I don’t suppose you could get their tablet, though? I think they may have written some… unsavoury things.”

“Ah, unfortunately that falls under censorship, and…”

“And we’re not the government,” I finished. “Right.”

I just hoped their report would have a tame headline.

Footnotes

1. Pronounced “pə-thrə” or “paath-rah”

2. SCP-6118 is recalling instances in which he was picked up and carried around by his boyfriend as if he weighed nothing. While it is notable strength, he forgets that he is smaller than the average teenage girl.

3. Pronounced “o-soʊ” or “oh-soh”, similar to “also”

4. Total Parenteral Nutrition– feeding while completely circumventing a digestive system.