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[therushingsky]

"Heyyyy, you've reached the head office of the Atlas Corporation, leave a message and your number, and one of our people will get back to you."

Comments

Re: voice: private

[therushingsky]

Wait, what?

[It's not that Rhys wasn't conscious of the fact that Kamski is kind of empathetically challenged, it's just that--

Well, he'd always seemed very restrained and practical about it.]

I have the key. Are you okay?

[He's off cybernetics. Rhys makes an intuitive leap.]

Do you need me to look at your eye?

Re: voice: private

[magician_king]

It's fried. I'll need some help with the extraction?

Probably you and Harry?

[Here's where his cool crumples and his voice starts shaking. A lot has happened very quickly.]

He was making me hallucinate with it. To see if he could.

Voice: private

[therushingsky]

Shit.

I'm sorry, that's--

[It's the worst. He knows that it's the worst.]

Come to cybernetics. I'll take a look at the damage and we can do this in person.

Voice: private

[magician_king]

You know- I might just take the death toll. Don't take this the wrong way, but I was anxious enough going into the last operation, I just-

[Fuck.]

Re: Voice: private

[therushingsky]

Don't do that.

[Rhys says, quickly.]

It might not need another operation. I-- look I get not wanting an implant anymore, but if it's about not wanting to be on an operating table again, just let me take a look first. You can trash a hell of a lot of the components in these things and still fix them without needing to go under.

[This from a man who spent a big chunk of time a few months ago sat in front of a mirror with a screwdriver in his own eye.]

Just let me take a look, okay?

Re: Voice: private

[magician_king]

Okay. Okay- you can have a look.

Cybernetics? I'll bring the vodka.

Re: Voice: private

[therushingsky]

How about coffee? I'm trying this new thing where I don't get drunk when I'm messing with someone else's eye.

Re: Voice: private

[magician_king]

You're not touching it. You're taking a tolerant look at it for me and validating how fucked up it is.

[But he's on the way.]

Voice into spam?

[therushingsky]

I'll see you in five.

[And he'll be compressing his tension into looking for tiny jobs to do, fidgeting about the cybernetic facilities as he waits for Quentin to arrive.]

[magician_king]

He arrives- sans vodka, so far.

"Hey."

He says, showing himself in. The eye is visibly damaged, even from across the room, mottled with black and scalded looking in place where it should be white.

"You talk to him yet?"

[therushingsky]

Rhys takes one look at Quentin, then immediately waves him over, gesturing to a work bench that's low enough to sit on.

"Hey. Please tell me your going to let me take a couple of those burned out parts out of your head?"

There are only so many textures that the eye is willing to happily close over. Scalded parts probably aren't on that list.

"And-- yeah. I ran into him in the inmate showers."

[magician_king]

"I told you. I'm starting from scratch."

He says, sitting down and closing his eyes a moment, before turning his face up to him.

"Everything really fucking hurts, and keeping going with it at this point would just be succumbing to a sunk cost fallacy."

[therushingsky]

"Yeah, well, let me just see if I can do anything with it before you follow through on getting drunk and killing yourself."

Rhys answers, very gingerly pulling down Quentin's lower eyelid, to look at how deep the scarring goes.

"The construction's pretty modular, so I can strip and replace almost all of it without you needing surgery. Your socket is pretty badly burned though-- Elijah did this?"

[magician_king]

"No. I did, when I found out he had control of it. The capability of accessing my full optical nerve, apparently- he was gearing up to showing me visions of people."

So, the scorched earth approach, and burns that make him jerk back reflexively from even the gentle touch.

"We can't replace it; he'll have the ability to hack that too."

[therushingsky]

"He was in the code, and in on the installation of this one."

Rhys points out, grabbing a small vial of oil from one of the counters beside Quentin.

"I'm not going to tell you why system is unhackable, but I can give you one he doesn't have keys too. Hold still--"

If Quentin let's him, Rhys is going to apply some of that oil to the burned out eye. It should soothe the socket a little, and cut down on any scraping over the eye.

[magician_king]

"I'm so fucking over this, Rhys, and I'm engaged to a super competent assassin."

He answers, barely managing to stay still this far.

"I don't- I can't deal with another surgery."

[therushingsky]

"Look at it this way," Rhys says, picking up done extremely small tool and bringing it up to the shell of Elijah's ruined eye, "Elijah hacked your computer, and you-- you nuked it. You definitely need a new computer. Doesn't necessarily mean you also ripped the plug socket out of the wall. Meaning you don't necessarily need your whole house rewiring. You might not need another surgery to fix this and get him out."

[magician_king]

"Oh- he is going to need his whole house rewired."

For the record.

"My temper kind of got away with me, and I went into the circuitry. If it weren't for cabin protections I would probably be owing apologies to his neighbours right about now."

Yes, he knows it's a metaphor. Still, though.

[therushingsky]

Components come loose, part of the shell of Quentin's eye falls away, and Rhys moves a hand to the top of the other man's head, tipping it forward slightly. Enough that some of the burned wiring and electronics literally fall out of his eye.

"I'm going to go in with some compressed air. Might feel a little weird, but it shouldn't hurt."

Rhys reaches for another canister, keeping one hand on Quentin's head.

"And-- I don't think anyone could lose control of something like this and not completely freak out. Like-- Elijah wants to talk about the human body not accepting things-- having someone grab the steering wheel inside your head is like-- a direct line to your fight or flight response."

[magician_king]

He turns his face up, and grimaces as the cannister clears out more scorch, dust and debris.

"I don't know what I'm going to do about him."

[therushingsky]

Rhys clears out the debris, before reaching into the back of Quentin's eye, to test that the optic nerve connection is still in place.

"You mean, about him being the kind of asshole who'd do this, or about the fact that he's-- just-- completely in the middle of a breakdown right now..."

[magician_king]

"Either. Both. He told me this when I was trying to get him to talk about his feelings, transparently to make me stop. And frankly-"

Well, he doesn't want to say it, but his teeth grind a moment. He tempers down to a more mild;

"I don't want to do more harm than good."

[therushingsky]

Rhys withdraws the tool from Quentin's eye socket, brushes his thumb over the other man's cheek, withdrawing a little.

"I don't think he'd be better off with anyone else on this ship instead of you in his corner. Hell, I couldn't help him any better than you did. And I-- I always kind of figured--"

He stops, pulls a face, then looks away.

"I didn't think he'd do something like this, but I guess I figured-- I figured if he was going to do it, I was a way lower risk target for it than you were."

[magician_king]

"I knew there was a chance. More than half a chance. I just- I really hung my hat on the fact that he had those breach memories of hurting me to begin with, and then being given the chance to use his specific skillset to make it right-"

Well. He tilts his head down a little against Rhys's thumb, into the touch.

"I think if it'd been a year later it might have worked perfectly."

[therushingsky]

Rhys gives Quentin's cheek a warm, fond little rub.

"I don't know. I-- I really, really like Elijah. He's crazy driven and crazy smart-- and I think he's done some incredible things..."

His tone is building in a way that makes the impending but feel completely obvious,

"But-- Look, I kinda knew going into this that he was probably only really interested in me as like-- a mashup between a groupie and a science fair project. I just don't know if he cares about other human beings. I know his go to line about that breach was that it wasn't him so it shouldn't have to feel bad about it, but I wonder if that's just something he says to justify the fact that he doesn't really feel anything about it."

Translation: Maybe he actually is a sociopath and Rhys doesn't know what to do with that either.