Private Act of Contrition

[Daiya]

(Post Soundtrack: "Atmosphere" by Concrete Castles)

D E N O N
TAUNGSDAY

"Are you sure it's all there? Intact?" The young shadowrunner pressed on her contact, one of the rare types she could actually trust to be reliable. His face was distorted on the screen, filters behind proxies over the CryptNet, yet she still searched for the expression on his face. Her Bothan contact had once said he detested those who considered themselves too noble for their profession: smugglers who considered themselves 'merchants of exotic wares' or drug dealers who considered their duties a public service to keep the ne'er-do-wells doped up. Daiya didn't disagree, though ever since then she kept a close watch on during their conversations for any tells that anyone too noble was involved.

"It's all there, of course, and intact. It should be, Nulse will be counting and recounting before it gets processed. No one gets paid until they're satisfied."

Daiya winced, wondering if that came across on her filtered face as well. She didn't entirely like the thought of stiffing some poor courier, it wasn't their fault they had picked the exact cargo run she had her eyes on. When the young shadowrunner heard that ardanium was being brought into Denon, she couldn't pass up a chance no matter what the unintended consequences.

The ardanium could help thousands of people more than whatever Nulse would do with it.

"Good." The teen bobbed her blond curls, knowing at least a nod would show up on her contact's screen. She counted down her mental list on soundless lips, checking off the last bits of information she needed to get in and get the ardanium before anyone was the wiser. Coming up with nothing, Daiya finally felt willing to indulge her curiosity. "Any luck finding out what Nulse actually uses it for?"

"Not a clue." The Bothan looked genuinely forlorn, surprising Daiya with an expression that actually translated through the filters. It seemed like a significant thing, perhaps a point of pride for his species, one that she could definitely relate with. "It's definitely medical grade, but unless I sent someone in to slice that data out for you, it's anyone's guess what it does for their bottom line."

"Oh well," Daiya shrugged, almost wishing she could somehow absolve him. Even though the teen wasn't his operative, her own curiosity made not having the answer nearly painful. She could have used that as more of a justification for this op, having the ardanium would be even better knowing it was depriving Nulse of what they needed. Daiya let it go as her shoulders fell, she had decided a while ago that this op was dangerous enough without any detours. "Thanks for the info," She flicked the video to the corner of her screen, and pressed a few controls on another part of her datapad. "That's two hundred to your account like we agreed. Always good doing business with you, FurloinedLetter286."

"You too, Powderpunk." He signed off.

She sighed in the quiet of her apartment, steadied by the weight of the conversation. Adding the last details to her personal files, Daiya stared at it, unsettled. It didn't seem like enough was there. She knew the time and place of the courier's delivery, the extra morsels of security meant to pad out any gaps left by relying on secrecy alone. She had even discovered where in Seven Corners the hand-off was meant to take place, in the Volgho Hollows ward which Daiya already knew well. Everything was in perfect order to support the op, except for one thing.

The young shadowrunner was going to need all the support she could get to convince the op's beneficiary to let her pull it off.

In her long trip to the clinic, Daiya agonized over her whole purpose in this to begin with. She was so sure of it in the thick of planning, but the further the teen found herself from the comfort of her apartment and the familiarity of Seven Corners, the more she wondered if she was wasting her time. Last they had spoken —argued— Doc had been eager to point out any errors in her logic, and so quietly disappointed with her conviction. The teen hadn't bothered to visit him again, her occasional sessions when she had helped at the medic's clinic, and learned some basic techniques along with it, had lapsed after their virtual argument. By the time she was almost there, Daiya was fully expecting Doc to turn her away the moment he spied her face.

She would have. It took a lot for Daiya to feel betrayed by someone, but every part of Doc's face in the tatt-chat had a look she had worn enough times to know it by heart. The teen wore the disappointment herself, mixed with anger and the frustration that Darkwire had come to such bitter division. Just thinking about it drummed up all the emotions once again, and the teen had to grasp the clenched fist with her other hand, hiding it from others on the tram and massaging the back of it to quell her own misgivings.

The clinic nestled itself into a secluded part of District 9, just seedy enough that the average being wouldn't stumble upon it. Daiya had visited a few times, especially after her own injuries caused the Doc to demand a series of check-ups until he was satisfied with how her hip was healing. It felt sore now, like it was traveling back to that time with her, back when Doc had been more a friend and mentor to her than an enigma. The teen bit her lip as she stopped outside the clinic doors, goosebumps rising from her sleeveless arms from more nerves than the chill in the air. She had weathered a snowy cold in this district, and yet Daiya couldn't help but shiver at the reception she expected inside.

Daiya opened the door, unsecured as it was during normal clinic hours. She paused in the front waiting room, realizing this was only the second time the teen had come as merely a visitor. There was a new protocol droid waiting to alert the Doc to waiting patients, and it stopped her short of just going in. The teen shook her head at the droid's query, "It's not an emergency, I'm just a—"

Friend?

"—visitor. I can wait." Apprehension guided her to one of the sitting chairs in the lobby, deciding it was better to appreciate the wait rather than priming her nerves even more by having Doc notified.

A minute later she was up anyway, standing at the divider between the two rooms. "Doc?" the teen called, her voice shaky and uncertain. Suddenly she wanted to be nowhere near this place, wishing she had never stepped on the tram to begin with. Her boots pointed toward the exit, if only her sense of guilt would let them move. She stuck them fast to the floor, committed now that she'd called attention to herself. "It's Daiya. I'm just here to—"

Check in?

Apologize?

Prove you wrong?

Daiya shook her head at the withering options in her mind, picking the easiest instead. "—talk. Can I come back?"

Doc Painless​

 

[Doc Painless]

"I really think we should look at switching your medication," Doc Painless said, speaking into the comlink balanced between his shoulder and ear. His hands were busy, one pinching shut the ragged edges of a shrapnel wound, the other operating the suture gun that would keep them closed. "I'm glad the vutalamine has helped with the tremors, but there can be some nasty side effects from long-term use. I'd like to try transitioning you over to low doses of myocaine, combined with some physical therapy exercises. We can go over them together next time you come in. It's nothing intensive, I promise. We'll work on some stretching, and... feth!"

A bright light and a shrill beeping broke his concentration, and the Doc's hand slipped, sending the suture gun careening into the side of his own forearm. Fortunately, he was all metal there, and the instrument just let out a soft clang and a frustrated little beep as the suture failed to implant itself. "No, not you, sorry," the street medic said, cursing up a storm on the inside. "Trying to multitask, not doing a great job. Let's pick up this conversation when you come in. Are we still on for next week?" Realigning the medical stapler, he put in the last three sutures in a rapid-fire line, then double-timed it over to the next bed, separated from this one by a heavy curtain of industrial cloth.

"Chit, chit, CHIT," he mouthed, checking the monitors. Before him lay one of his longer-term patients, a survivor of the speakeasy bombing... at least, a survivor for now. Covering the comlink with one hand, the Doc frantically motioned to his antiquated FX-series medical assistant droid. "Toxic shock," he said, a loud whisper. "I need two... no, three CCs of cardinex, stat!" Uncovering the comlink, he adjusted his tone. "Yep, next Taungsday is great, same time. I'll see you then. No double doses, please, one will hold you fine." He cut the transmission and dropped the comlink, aiming for his pants pocket but instead bouncing it off of his hip and sending it rolling across the clinic floor. Feth. It was one of those days. He'd have to get it later; for now, he was busy. No rest until his patient was stable, as always.

Grabbing the injector from one of the FX droid's many limbs, he carefully slid the needle point into the young woman's thigh; her hands and arms were too badly burned for him to use the veins there. She might lose both, even with the bacta treatments he'd been giving her, and even if she didn't there would be pretty serious scarring and muscle damage. When she woke up, they would have to talk about options. If she woke up. Thankfully, she did seem to be responding to the drug. The seizure that had wracked her was slowly easing, and her blood pressure was beginning to trend back up. The Doc let out a breath he hadn't realized he was holding, then hung his head.

Toxic shock didn't start overnight. He should've caught this days ago. That was two mistakes that'd nearly hurt a patient.

He knew exactly what was happening to him, and exactly what advice he'd give to a patient who presented with the same symptoms... and their obvious root causes. But lately, in the wake of everything that had happened, he couldn't find the strength to get himself under control. "I need another one, please, Effex," the street medic murmured. The droid's answering whirr sounded vaguely like a tongue clucking in clear disapproval... but perhaps he was just reading meaning into it that wasn't really there. The Doc took the sinthenol inhaler and raised it to his mouth, breathing deep as he pressed the button on top. A little more of his aching hangover faded as he did.

He needed to stop drinking, before someone other than him got hurt. But he wouldn't. He knew that all too well.

"Keep an eye on her, and let me know if anything changes. And draw up another antibiotic regimen, we need those burns cleaned again." Effex beeped an affirmative, and the Doc turned away. He was grateful to the little gaggle of droids he'd been able to buy or scavenge to help him out here. His clinic had always been busy, but in the wake of the speakeasy bombing he'd ended up with several patients who were here for the long haul. Caring for them was a new responsibility stacked on top of all the old ones, and without droid help he never could've managed it. Once he'd hoped he would have an assistant, a bright young girl who would learn to help him.

That plan, like his plan to change Denon for the better, hadn't exactly panned out the way he'd wanted.

The thought sent him careening into a deep, dark place.

Feth, he really needed a drink.

No, he really didn't.

Did he?

Focus. The street medic forced himself away from his office at the back of the clinic, presently strewn with whiskey bottles both empty and full, plus no small number somewhere in-between. Instead he headed back over to the patient he'd been suturing, some Trandoshan gangbanger who'd gotten the business end of an improvised grenade. Patching up gangsters like these was part of the deal the Doc had made with the local gangs in lieu of protection money. Never mind that he would've done it anyway; he never turned away anyone who needed help, unless they were going to be an immediate threat to him and the other patients who might be present. It was just who he was.

But his will to never give up on anyone, no matter what, was about to be tested.

"Doc? It's Daiya. I'm here to... talk. Can I come back?"

The street medic's heart skipped a beat. For a moment he was irrationally angry at his greeter droid, which hadn't alerted him that someone had arrived out front, but with one deep breath he managed to let that go. His other thoughts were harder to wrangle. They had flown back to the tatt-chat, the last place the two of them had spoken. He could still hear the things she'd said, echoing around the walls of his mind like blaster bolts bouncing off of ray-shielded bulkheads. What she'd advocated... kidnapping innocent people, sinking to the level of the very people they were trying to remove from power... it flew in the face of every value he'd tried to show her was right.

She'd asked him what he'd expected, asking a group like Darkwire to be moral paragons.

He still didn't have a good answer for that, beyond foolish hope.

The Doc didn't want to talk to her. He just wanted to bury himself in work, and in whiskey when he ran out of that, and pretend he'd never even tried to be some naive revolutionary. But he couldn't do that. In spite of everything, he just couldn't. If there was any chance he could get through to her - and to Cassus, and to all the others who were ready for blood vengeance that would kill far too many innocent people on the road to regime change - then he had a responsibility to try. He owed it to the people whose lives would be spared... and he owed it to her. He still believed in Daiya, still felt sure she could rise above the violence she'd grown up surrounded by.

He couldn't turn his back on her.

Not when so many others in her life already had.

Doc Painless allowed himself one deep, heavy sigh back there, where no one but an unconscious gangster was around to hear. Then he planted a stoic little smile on his face and answered the call. "Come on in, I'll be right there." He pulled off his surgical gloves and dropped them in a bin, then stepped out from behind the curtain, forcing down the hurt and anger he felt bubbling up inside him. He needed to be the adult here. For one thing, he was the only actual, legal adult. Daiya was still young, still learning, and he wanted to help her. Always, no matter what. "Hi, Daiya," he said, meeting the teen's gaze without hostility... but not as warmly as he once had.

He couldn't help that. He was only human.

"So, let's talk."

Daiya​

 

[Daiya]

(Post Soundtrack: "Resentment" cover by Lumity)

Daiya stepped across the threshold, drawn back in time as her feet brought her deeper into the clinic's operation room. She could hear the beeps of monitoring equipment, even from behind the curtains drawn around several of the patient beds. An FX droid moved behind one of them, the bed where Daiya had watched Doc deliver a little baby Ithorian, its many spindly arms performing the jobs of three or more staff. The teen let out a sigh, letting her eyes drop to her feet, letting her boot scuff along a floor in desperate need of bleach. It didn't do enough to satisfy the growing knot in her stomach, seeing all the places where she had been missed —or not— in the clinic since her fiery argument with Doc.

She watched his feet step around the narrow confines of the privacy curtain, and the knot rocketed up to her throat. It turned her head away, her eyes fixating on the metal-lined bucket that served as the catch-all for trash and bio-waste. Daiya grimaced, recalling the time she had leaned over the bucket, already reeking of off-metallic odors from the day's patients, to add her own, reeking flood of bile to the mix. Her stomach turned enough to force her eyes away, watching a ganger's entrails unravel in front of her was not a memory she wanted replaying in her head right now.

Instead, Daiya's head ran the looped track of her guilt and anger from the day of the tatt-chat, her eyes finally drawn up the man's long legs to the familiar face of Doc Painless. Her bones went rigid, defying muscles that urged them to open the cage that trapped her organs in place. Shallow breaths were barely adequate for a mind screaming for air; the air outside the clinic, the air on the way back to her apartment, any air than that shared with the Doc. Her thumping heart sent blood to limbs that wouldn't move for her, instinct setting her body up for a futile measure.

She had come all this way, leaving now would just make things worse.

Daiya swallowed around the knot in her throat, muscles moving easier against flesh, finding herself unsteady under the gentle courtesy of the Doc. He could have made it easier by simply turning her away, or lashing back out again. She had rehearsed arguments and counter-arguments for a rematch today, expecting to surmount the high bar of a broken friendship before the young shadowrunner could even divulge her purpose here today. Rooted in place, she was ready for anything that the Doc could throw at her, with plenty more reasons and insults to hurl back at him in turn.

But the Doc didn't do any of that, because of course he didn't. He was Doc Painless, he treated problems he didn't make them worse. Daiya was the one who did that, and probably already had just by showing up. The teen heard it on his curt tone, his clipped commands, leaving her the opening to impale herself on his endless bounds of understanding and compassion once more. So fething what, the teen decided, and clenched her jaw for a moment. Might as well just get it over with.

"You probably want me to just leave, and I get it. Looks like you're doing fine her without me," Daiya gestured with her chin to the occupied beds, more than she'd seen in use at one time before. A dismissive hand waved toward the medical droid, grateful that it didn't roll out from behind the curtain to rub it in on her. "so I can leave after I'm done here. But I'm not here to argue all that old stuff again, so just listen, okay?"

The teen felt shameful warmth already seeping into her hardened features, and she let out a breath. Her shoulders drooped as the muscles in her face unwound, it was already too exhausting to keep up a wall around Doc Painless. Regret fueled the knot in her throat to grow larger, pressing on her to add a gesture of courtesy to a man who had shown nothing but to her. "Please?"

She took another breath, and judged the silence enough to let her continue unimpeded. "I heard about this medical supply corp, Nulse, that's getting a super secret, super special shipment this week. I can't find anyone, not on the CryptNet or in the Real, who can tell me what they'd be using it for, besides the chit you don't want them to be using it for. And since I know your machine back there," Daiya pointed to the dusty corner that had turned into storage rather than being a valuable tool for the Doc's work anymore. "needs that kind of medical-grade ardanium to run, I thought of you."

Daiya put a hand up to steady against the expectation of an argument. If she knew the Doc, he was already judging it too dangerous. With the declaration of Darkwire as terrorists, too high-profile. And after the tatt-chat, too aggressive. "I already know where and when the shipment is coming, so it shouldn't be that hard. We just get there, grab the goods, and bring it back here to use it to help people. Nobody has to get hurt in the process, and it's just some rando courier bringing in a crate they're not even allowed to look in. The only ones getting stiffed here are Nulse, and they're probably up to no good anyway."

That should be enough to sell it to the Doc, Daiya figured. If he wasn't game by this point, then he was a fool and she could just walk away. The young shadowrunner had already spent enough time, and her own credits, on gathering the intel needed to pull off this run. All Daiya needed from the Doc was his agreement, she could take it from there. Her hands raised up in surrender, before dropping to her side. "So that's it, that's all I wanted here. If you're not in, I'll..." She shrugged slender shoulders in a hapless, defeated gesture. It didn't feel like just about the job anymore. The teen looked to the Doc's answer to a question she hadn't even bothered to bring up today. "I guess we just let Nulse do whatever they want with their new ardanium."

And just like the shipment, let whatever remained of their friendship lie forever undisturbed once more.

It would be easier that way.

Doc Painless​

 

[Doc Painless]

The Doc was pretty good at reading people. He'd worked with individuals from dozens of different species, helping many of them through the most difficult days and nights of their lives, coaxing as many of them as he could back from the brink of death or dismemberment. He'd learned what all kinds of emotions looked like, no matter how subtly expressed. With humans and near-humans he watched the jaw, the shoulders, the hands, the eyebrows. With less humanoid species he'd learned different tricks, gradually picking up where tension manifested in their bodies, and how they showed gratitude or relief. He wouldn't call himself an expert, but he had some skill with it.

He didn't need much of that skill to be able to tell how Daiya was feeling.

The tension in his young... friend? was obvious. She'd clearly come here ready for a fight, maybe even looking for one, still clearly convinced that everything she'd said back at the tatt-chat was justified. But the Doc saw no point in re-treading any of that. Neither of them was going to budge based on words alone; they'd both made their best arguments already, and that hadn't been enough. She was smart enough to know that, which meant it couldn't be the reason she'd come here. There had to be something more going on... and as little as he wanted to right then, the Doc knew he needed to hear her out. He needed to be the adult in the room, because he literally was.

She said he was doing fine without her... which was what she needed to say to justify her absence in her own mind.

"I'm not here to argue all that old stuff again, so just listen, okay? Please?"

Yep, sure enough. Here it came, whatever it was.

He was quiet. He listened.

And he worried. Immediately. Clearly this job she was suggesting was her idea of a peace offering, an opportunity for them to go back to the days of working together - even when they seemed to have so little left to say to each other. It was a shadowrunner's kind of gift, the gift of a run, and that both amused and saddened the Doc. This was the life Daiya had chosen, and he wouldn't ever try to choose for her, but he would always wonder who the girl might have grown up to be if she'd ever had a real opportunity to make a different choice. That thought had been a big part of why he'd wanted her to help around the clinic. He'd wanted to show her a different way, a different life.

Well, that hadn't really worked out, had it?

"Never heard of this 'Nulse' group before," the Doc finally said, breaking the fraught silence he'd accidentally allowed to follow Daiya's pitch. He was... leery of hitting a medical supply corp, to put it mildly, because he never wanted to keep medical goods from going where they were needed - his patients weren't worth more or less than any other people in need. But a medical corp he didn't know? That was already strange, and probably shady, especially if they were shipping around packages of Ardanium. The stuff was restricted due to its potential military applications - it grew stronger in the presence of radiation, useful for fuel cells... and bombs.

Which meant the Doc, as a wanted fugitive, sure as hell couldn't get his hands on any.

And could really use it for that scanner. It'd save lives.

Daiya had tailored her pitch well.

He was going to regret this, one way or another. He just knew it. What if it turned out that Nulse was legit, and this Ardanium was bound for the same kind of scanner he had - only one that would see four times the use? What if Daiya's intel was bad... or worse, she was trying to make some kind of misguided point about how extreme violence was necessary, and they were about to end up in a massive firefight with one hell of a body count? But he didn't want to believe that about her. He wouldn't believe that about her, not unless she forced him to. "It's a good pitch, Daiya," the Doc told her, offering a strained smile. Maybe it was an earnest one, too.

Maybe she'd genuinely been looking to set up a job that would help patch things up between them.

He very much wanted to believe that could be the case.

"When's the drop-off?"

 

[Daiya]

(Post Soundtrack: "Slipping" by Cryoshell)

Doc considered, and he considered for a long time. Too long, turning the teen's wavering faith into a source of real worry. The knot in her throat twisted, sinking back into her stomach. They both fell toward the floor, where Daiya found herself still rooted in place. Nerves and silence told her to run, get away before she heard the answer, and everything above her knees wished she could.

She kept her eyes on him, desperate for an answer she wished wouldn't come.

When he spoke at last, every sharp edge of hers felt brittle. Daiya searched his words for another meaning, a glimpse of his feelings. The cybernetic man had an iron face for her, unreadable, with mechanical eyes no better than glass. The teen held a breath at the edge of her tongue, anticipation raising her up on tiptoes. Everything piled onto this moment for her, and with a single word Doc could break everything all over again.

"It's a good pitch, Daiya. When's the drop-off?"

Her lungs emptied in a loud sigh of relief, her muscles freed of their tension. The teen's face grew warm again, a smile growing between flushed cheeks as she gazed up at him with a renewed certainty. Here was the Doc that Daiya knew again, the man she had enjoyed learning from, and the field medic who had saved her life with both his medicine and his blaster. She left behind her thoughts of that other man, forgetting the bitter argument that had once threatened their friendship. Gone. Erased. The teen only wanted this Doc forever again, casting an approving grin in his direction.

She could take a step again, and then another, floating on a cushion of air underneath her heels. The young shadowrunner circled the Doc in the cramped operating room, spying something to draw her attention in every corner. "Wellllllll," she began, and not even Daiya knew where the sentence would wind up. This was past the scenario she'd expected, and far past what she'd prepared for. "It's actually today." A quick spin stole a glance in his direction, before Daiya's blue eyes fell upon a cabinet instead. "In about five hours."

Slender shoulders lifted in a shrug as the teen spun back to the Doc again. "I just got the last deets an hour ago, okay?"

The young shadowrunner felt an odd need to explain herself to the Doc. She missed their easy association, the mutual trust they used to have. Daiya had lost his sometime around the incident with Hacks, and the Doc had lost hers in the tatt-chat. It was hard to look at him, hard to get an easy read. Her eyes pulled away, resisting a focus that kept them on his face, looking for the smallest of reactions. He wasn't offering anger today, or a bitterness that the young shadowrunner had expected with her offer to work together. Daiya had only hoped for more than a polite consideration of her plan, perhaps even a glimmer of the approval he'd once shown of her.

"Look, all we need is your speeder, your blast—" Daiya hesitated, recalling the Doc who argued so vehemently against taking life. "—or whatever you got to incapacitate the Corpos. A spray or something?"

The teen cursed her lack of mechanical skills, it left her without the possibility of preparing a converted bacta grenade with the appropriate drug instead. She found herself opening the doors of the cabinet, idly rifling through it as she talked. "Nulse isn't sending many for the pick-up, and if we get there first we can swap into their uniforms. It'll be quick, my repla—" Daiya glanced back at the FX droid's arms, still moving and visible through the privacy curtain around its paitent. "—your droid can handle things in the meantime."

"We need you." She said in such an off-hand way, distracted by the contenst of the cabinet instead. Knowledge flirted with Daiya as her eyes gazed over the names of supplies in the cabinet, lingering on one of them. She took hold of a small bottle of pills, uncapping it and tapping out a dozen onto her palm, leaving the quantity nearly untouched. "And some of these."

Daiya opened her palm to show the Doc the array of anti-nausea pills in her hand, telling him simply, "I'm almost out." The young shadowrunner palmed them away in her satchel for now, before holding her hands to gesture at the Doc. "So whatcha think? It's totally do-able, Nulse isn't expecting anyone to know about the drop so they're not sending any big guns." She hoped. "It'll be like old times, y'know? 'Cept it's a product, not a patient, but we're still saving it for the communal good."

That's what the Doc was all about, Daiya figured. There shouldn't be anything stopping him from saying yes.

Doc Painless​

 

[Doc Painless]

She sighed, a rush of breath that spoke of tremendous relief, and the Doc felt his gut twist. After everything that had passed between them at the tatt-chat, and all the time they'd spent avoiding each other since then, she still wanted - really wanted - to go back to the way things had been. When had that gotten so difficult? How had the rift between them grown so wide, so quickly? They had disagreed before, but never like this. Following a trail of memory, he traced it back to Hacks, to that night when he had prioritized taking care of the woman who'd tried to murder Daiya over the teenager herself. She'd gone along with it then, but in that moment there'd been a fracture.

He had pushed her too far, asked too much of her. He'd been another person in her life choosing not to put her first, asking her to give for someone else while she was hurt and in shock. He didn't regret his choice, because he couldn't have chosen differently; his medical ethics had demanded that he fight to save Hacks, no matter what she'd done. But he did regret how it had all turned out. That night had clearly made Daiya feel that he valued his principles above her wellbeing, and that impression had become a fissure between them... a fissure that had truly broken open the night of the tatt-chat, when he'd once again asked her to put herself in harm's way for strangers.

He'd asked her to fight a limited war against a foe fighting a total war. That was a hard sell at the best of times.

But when he'd already made her feel like her life came second to the moral high ground...

Chit. He wished he'd handled it better. All of it, start to finish.

Well, he couldn't change the past. The Doc would give anything for the chance to start his life over, avoid all the terrible mistakes he'd made, but he knew all too well that no one got to do that. All he could do was try to do better now, to repair the damage that his relationship with Daiya had suffered over the past few months... and somehow do that without sacrificing the values he held sacred. Because he did still want to guide her to the high road, to rising above a violent upbringing and choosing a better way to live. But if he seemed to be preaching at her, or judging her from some kind of high bantha, she would shut down, and he really would feth this up forever.

Now that he'd seen that sigh, now that he knew she really did want to patch things up...

... well, he wasn't going to waste this chance. He'd give it his all.

Her smile warmed his cybernetic heart.

Daiya floated around the room, seemingly giddy - or perhaps just surprised. It's actually today. In about five hours. The Doc stared at her; if he'd still had organic pupils, they would've been wide, incredulous. That was NOT much time to put together a job. Had that been part of her plan, a way to make sure he wouldn't have long enough to think it over and back out? I just got the last deets an hour ago, okay? Oooooor maybe she was just a teenager, and planning and forethought weren't exactly second nature for her. At her age, he'd still been the type to frantically pick up his laundry and defrost dinner only when he heard his parents' speeder enter the garage.

But Daiya clearly was trying to make a peace offering. She was even trying to cater to him in her explanation of the plan, pivoting to consider - in a haphazard sort of way - a nonlethal alternative to going in blasters blazing. That was enough for the Doc to finally crack a smile. Maybe she wasn't as lost to him as he'd felt in the depths of his despair, right in the wake of the tatt-chat. It might not be her first instinct to try to preserve life, even the lives of her enemies, but that instinct was in there somewhere... at least when she was around him. "Good idea," he said, nodding approvingly. He had plenty of anesthetic gas he could use to make a nonlethal sprayer weapon.

But then his heart hurt again, because she'd almost said "my replacement". The Doc hadn't had any choice but to buy the FX droid; his workload was more than he could handle alone, and Daiya had stopped coming. He wanted to tell her that he probably would've bought the droid anyway, that there was still a place for her here and she was welcome to come back... but he hesitated. He wasn't ready for that just yet, he realized, even if she might be. He needed to see how this run went first, to find out if they could really work together beyond the warm fuzzies of this moment. They still seemed to disagree on some pretty fundamental things. That would be hard to get past.

He watched as she shook out a handful of anti-nausea pills, the same ones he'd prescribed her not so long ago, and smiled again. He was glad she still recognized them on sight, and was clearly taking them. It meant he'd helped, and she'd learned something. "Keep the bottle," he told her. "My supplies situation is actually pretty good these days, so I've got plenty. And when you start to run out, just come see me. Even after... I mean, no matter what you..." The Doc broke off again, grappling for the right words, something that didn't emphasize their divide or place blame on her. "I would never, ever keep someone from their medication. I hope you know that."

It'll be like old times, y'know? Well, maybe. That remained to be seen. But this was Daiya coming to him, offering a chance to patch things up, being the bigger person. He was proud of her for that. And hadn't he just been wishing for a do-over? Maybe they could go back to the way things had been, the easy rapport they'd shared. Part of him whispered that you could never really go back, couldn't actually put the spirit back in the holocron after the kind of break they'd had... but maybe they could find a new balance, and maybe this was the start. "Okay," Doc Painless finally said, offering her a smile and a nod. There was much less hesitation in this smile. Progress.

"Let's do it. Carefully." He would need to keep an eye out for whoever Nulse's actual buyer was, and the inevitable complications...

... but he was willing to give this whole thing a chance. To give Daiya, and his friendship with her, a chance.

Reaching into his pocket, he pulled out the remote key to his battered old speeder.

Then he tossed it to Daiya. "It's your job. I'll follow your lead."

He hesitated. "You know how to drive?"

Daiya​

 

[Daiya]

(Post Soundtrack: "Confident" by Demi Lovato)

Daiya frowned in the direction of the Doc, a first for her today. One far from expected, too, after he refrained from fighting her on numerous subjects. She could him broadcasting it, even if his face was as emotive as a youngling girl's doll. The way he held his body, held his tongue, waited and watched before speaking to measure his words, the teen took it all in. Not a word was said about it, but another word perched on the edge of Daiya's tongue as she looked down at the speeder remote caught in her hand.

"Nope, still haven't learned. Speeders and me are not friends." The young shadowrunner looked back up to the Doc, and the quick shake of her head was enough to dislodge the curls on her shoulders. "I thought you knew that."

It wasn't the first thing she thought he'd gotten wrong today, either.

Daiya turned the key over in her hands, her thumb edging out the contours of the battered device. It recalled the look of his speeder, the one that had made the teen burst out laughing the moment she spied the slapdash excuse for a speeder. A reel of emotions had played out for Daiya in those next few moments, from shock that it actually ran, right down to terror as she gripped her wrists around the driving Doc, hanging on for dear life while the speeder stayed remarkably intact. Through it all, the Doc was a steady, stalwart calm in the lead.

So why did the Doc suddenly trust her in his place?

"Besides, we still have a few hours to kill." She stuck the speeder key into a pocket on the strap of her satchel, following it by stuffing the rest of the pill bottle into a larger open pocket. Her shoulders gave an easy shrug to shift the bag back into position, eyes searching for her next focus. The teen carried herself with purpose this time, feeling far more comfortable again in a place she had once felt needed.

As she passed the Doc, Daiya saw his face closer, and for the first time without a fear that it held rejection of her. The lines seemed to run deeper, the shadows under his eyes spread farther, his beard looking far more unkempt than it used to be. Was he drinking again? It would explain some behavior today, but Daiya shivered at the bundle of nerves in her spine as she moved away from the Doc again.

Was that because of her?

The young shadowrunner managed to push away the guilt as she stood in front of curtains, leaning and turning her head to peer through, drawing on the threads of knowledge she remembered from the Doc. Once or twice Daiya poked her head through to the empty beds that lay inside, with no success each time. Her stomach knotted up as her eyes fell on the final curtain, where her replacement rolled and swiveled on its wide, wheeled base. It was in the way of spying the answer to her unasked question, but the young shadowrunner didn't exactly need to see it after her process of elimination.

She paused, one hand on the edge of the curtain. Months before, Daiya might have asked to come around to the other side, if only because that was how the Doc approached his patients. She hadn't heard a sound from this one today, and even her short experience told her that his patient was out of commission. The young shadowrunner had seen beings dead or knocked out before, that didn't faze her so much as coming face to face with the faceless droid inside. She set her jaw, the Doc did say she had a good idea, and stepped inside.

If he wasn't comfortable with her lead, then he shouldn't have given her the literal keys today.

"Don't mind me," Daiya told the droid, and she was surprised that it seemed to listen. Her eyes flicked from its stuttering, almost disjointed motion, distracting movements that showed far more purpose the more she watched it. For the moment, the droid showed no more interest in her than a fly. The teen glanced down at the unconscious patient, her lips pressing together at the woman's fate; who wouldn't have even known if a fly had landed on her nose.

Gazing past the patient and her attending droid medic, Daiya's eyes landed on the device she needed. Her eyes rolled at her own bewilderment, of course it would be with the patient in case the Doc needed to operate. With his supplies more dependable, the young shadowrunner didn't feel so bad tapping the anesthetic gas today. She stepped back outside the curtain, nodding to the Doc with more than nerves on her tongue this time. "You wanna grab a sprayer?"

Her slender shoulders sat even as the curtain brushed over them, retreating from the teen who embraced having the run of the small clinic again. Daiya didn't stop to look at the Doc, stepping toward the back of the clinic where he once kept the empty canisters she was looking for. The teen stopped short a step inside the office, spying the second answer to unasked questions that day, and only paused for a moment. Her hands found what she was looking for, passing over empty whisky bottles to grab a cleaned gas canister instead, ready for reuse —or more likely for the Doc, resale.

"'Course, this would all be easier if you'd just use a blaster like me," Daiya told him, emerging from his office with the canister in hand. She lifted it, as if in explanation for venturing all over his clinic so far, aiming back toward the patient's curtained enclosure. The young shadowrunner ducked under the medical droid's waving arms to sit on the floor in front of the bedside gas dispenser, fiddling with cables and connections on the device. "But I know, I know, you're not into the whole life taking thing unless you have to."

Nimble fingers unhooked the wrong connection, spewing angry gas that hissed at her until she pushed it back together. Daiya twisted the fasteners back together, her mouth twisting to a corresponding degree. She never made such a simple mistake under the Doc's tutelage before, and she leaned her hot cheeks closer to the work so he couldn't spot the error. While she connected the right cable to the canister pinned between her knees, the teen tried to offer the veneer of the leadership the Doc had granted her today. "That reminds me, do you still run too light to wear any armor?"

Daiya sat back, a coolness on her cheeks once more, to throw an examining gaze over at the Doc.

Doc Painless​

 

[Doc Painless]

A frown. An "I thought you knew that". Not the responses he'd been hoping for.

Every time he thought he was breaking through, more evidence of the rift between them trickled out.

The Doc resolved, against his immediate instinct, not to take it wrong. It wasn't a big deal that this particular gesture of trust hadn't worked out as he'd hoped. Perhaps he should have known better, should have better considered the skillset and comfort zone of his audience. But there would naturally be missteps in the bumpy road to getting back to working together, and this was a minor one, not worth getting frustrated about. So the street medic just shrugged, internally amused that Daiya had told him she didn't want to drive his speeder... and then kept the key. Half of him wanted to say something like you'll enjoy the freedom once you can drive yourself around.

The other half recognized that they weren't really in a place where he could say parental-sounding things to her.

That was the half that ultimately won out, keeping him quiet for the moment.

Daiya wandered past him, looking through the clinic like some curious tourist giving a museum a cursory browse. It made him more than a little uncomfortable; he had patients back here, sick and injured people who deserved their privacy. He weighed the pros and cons of saying something, a dozen different conversations playing out in his head, all of them ending in arguments that would probably scuttle this whole thing before it even began. Frustration threatened to rise up in him again, and this time it was harder to push down. What was she doing back there, and why hadn't she bothered to clue him in? Was this how it was going to be on the job, too?

You wanna grab a sprayer? The words landed among his tempestuous thoughts like a lifeline to a drowning man, and he seized them gratefully. Maybe he just needed to be doing something, so that he wasn't alone with his own mind. A flash of memory surged up, something he'd once been told by someone he'd loved in another life. You're in your head too much, she had told him. She'd been right, of course. She'd been right about a lot of things. It was a large part of why he tried to stay busy, to occupy his thoughts with urgent treatments and medical supply acquisitions and the like, and why he drank himself into oblivion whenever he was too exhausted for that.

He couldn't handle his demons, his memories, his doubts and fears, except by fleeing them.

"Yep, on it," the Doc told the girl, heading for one of his many haphazard cabinets. He had neither the time nor the patience to neatly stack and label all of the various equipment and pharmaceuticals he stored here, but there was a pattern he kept to when putting things away, resulting in a system of organized chaos often intelligible only to him. The cabinet's hinges squealed as he swung it open, another piece of this place that needed maintenance he lacked the time and patience for. He kept a number of spare nozzles in this one, generally for the bacta applicators he used to treat injuries in the field. They'd work just as well for a knockout gas weapon.

'Course, this would all be easier if you'd just use a blaster like me, Daiya told him, emerging from the office with a gas canister in hand. But I know, I know, you're not into the whole life taking thing unless you have to. The Doc managed to keep his sigh internal. Was this the way it was going to be for the whole run, little needling comments disparaging his views, harking back to the moment at the tatt-chat that had finally completed the rift between them? He probably ought to just let it go. Teenagers were often like this, and he'd been no exception - they loved feeling right, and pointing out how right they were and how ridiculous others were at every opportunity.

They thought of themselves as worldly, full of insights that obviously no one had ever thought of before they'd come along.

It was funny how each new generation "discovered" a lot of the same ideas their predecessors had.

He should let it go, but he didn't entirely. He was only human. Casually the Doc brushed back the edge of his jacket with one cybernetic hand, revealing the blaster pistol belted at his hip. He'd carried a gun for quite a while now, ever since Shai had started teaching him to use one in the wake of the night he'd been forced to flee his first Denon clinic. Shai, now lost to the ravenous Maw and the grinding galactic war it had begun in the Unknown Regions... another friend gone, probably forever. The street medic wanted to say even more about the gun he wore. He wanted to point out to Daiya that he'd killed nearly a dozen people at Eden, covering their escape.

He reigned himself in. "Yes," he said, walking over to hand her the sprayer nozzle. "Not unless I have to."

He wouldn't apologize for that. He was in this business to protect people, not for revenge.

His enemies were those at the top of the system, not their wageslave enforcers.

But he knew Daiya wouldn't receive a moral lecture well right now.

Besides, if this job came down to her or some courier...

... he'd shoot that courier without hesitation.

That reminds me, do you still run too light to wear any armor? The Doc blinked, ripped from his thoughts again by her words. He really was in his own head too much. "Never got in the habit of wearing any," he replied, watching her work from a respectful distance once he'd dropped off the nozzle. Honestly, it was something he ought to consider. That he'd gotten through Eden without serious injury was nothing short of a miracle - or, more cynically, the result of having been completely surrounded by terrified prisoners who had been mowed down by CorpSec in his stead. Now that was a nauseating thought, the kind he drank to forget. He shook his head. Focus.

"Not against the idea, though, if you happen to have any in my size." He smiled slightly at the little joke.

The smile soured as he thought about it. "I didn't think we were expecting much trouble, though."

Was she planning for a big ol' Seccer shoot-out, or just being careful? He had no way to tell.

"How many Corpos are coming to this pickup?" He should've asked before agreeing.

Daiya​

 

[Daiya]

(Post Soundtrack: "Believer" cover by Chase Holfelder)

The Doc didn't seem too pleased to have Daiya running unhindered through his clinic. She could feel the eyes on the back of her skull while crouching by the tank of anesthetic gas to fill the canister. The teen tried to ignore it, and the she did the more it grated on her. Irritation rose along her limbs, and she clenched her jaw tight enough to make her teeth her, feeling like a youngling once more. Every skill questioned, every task supervised; as if Daiya was still the incapable follower who could only learn not do.

Hadn't he promised to follow her lead anyway?

"Thanks." Daiya tried not to let her annoyance show when she accepted the sprayer nozzle from the Doc, treading on eggshells despite herself. The young shadowrunner still needed him along today, she'd gotten herself into more than a one-woman job. Her eyes darted to the pistol the street medic had revealed on his belt, her expression changing to one of surprise. Daiya's memory should have supplied that answer already, she had seen the Doc firing back at CorpSec when they were under siege in the Eden Mall. It just wasn't something she expected to see the man wearing around his own clinic.

"I didn't just ask 'cause I'm curious," the teen offered in return to the man's answer, his joke prompting a sound from her that was eerily close to amusement. She swallowed it, letting her irritation rain down as feigned grace instead. "I'm trying to look out for you."

Even Daiya found that an odd thing to say to the Doc.

She unhooked the canister when it was full, picking it and the sprayer nozzle up as she stood to face the man. The teen shrugged again, she meant most of the words in any case. She headed for an empty bed in lieu of an actual workbench, barely giving the man a glance while her hands fiddled with the connection between the two objects. "You're the last one I'd think wouldn't protect himself, you can't ride on luck forever. I tried telling that to Cartri Keswoll , and he just would not listen until he got hurt on some job."

Then Daiya did give the Doc a glance, "It was just surface stuff. And I didn't have any armor in his size, neither."

"Ugh, this fething thing!" Irritation flared in her throat, and the teen flopped the pieces on the bed. They bounced but stayed put, where she glared at them for a moment. Daiya might have thrown them to her anger's satisfaction if she was alone, instead of under the watchful optical implants of the Doc. Without the relief, her body itched to move, so she found the easiest way to do that in the small clinic. Hopping up on the edge of the bed, Daiya began to swing her legs underneath her, frustration ebbing out with every kick they made. "There's not s'posed to be that many there, Doc, they think it's all under wraps. Nulse just sends a couple of goons, maybe a pilot, that's it. If they went in all heavy-duty, then they'd draw more attention, right?"

It made sense to the young shadowrunner, anyway. Her legs swung into a better rhythm, bringing Daiya a renewed sense of calm. She took a long breath, her legs swinging in long lopes like a freerunner's. She even managed to pick up the sprayer nozzle and canister once more, giving the complicated attachment system another try. "I figure we'll just get there early and blend, it's in Volgho Hollows so it's not like you don't see beings just waiting there. Then when Nulse comes, we'll sneak up and knock 'em out with this."

Daiya held up the completed sprayer nozzle and canister for the Doc's inspection, letting him take it if he wanted. The teen's legs swung closer to the bed now, kicking deeper underneath than out front so she didn't kick the cyborg man. She nearly giggled at the thought, her boots could do some damage if they caught the Doc as high as she could kick. Especially without armor.

The teen grinned at him, a self-satisfied grin she hoped was spelling out her accomplishments so far that day. Daiya had come to the Doc with the job, the details, a plan, and even put together a makeshift weapon suitable to his morals. Daiya could feel her blood pulsing more quickly as she made her silent challenge, daring him to make her out to be anything but mature now. She managed a chipper tone now, softening her words from their earlier edge. Paving the way for the Doc to return her grace in kind. "You almost ready?"

She was itching to get moving on more than just a squeaking medical bed.

Doc Painless​

 

[Doc Painless]

"I'm trying to look out for you."

The Doc carefully kept his face neutral at that pronouncement, a declaration of quite the role reversal. In their relationship, things had pretty much always worked the other way around. Daiya organized a treasure hunt, and he came along to watch her back. Daiya got hurt, and he patched her up. Daiya's birthday party fell apart, and he swooped in to comfort her and help pick up the pieces. Not that he resented that dynamic; he didn't. He was two and a half times Daiya's age, and was happy to help look out for her. He wished that the people in his own life had done a better job of looking out for him at her age, and he'd had far less to deal with than she did.

But now Daiya, who pretty much hadn't spoken to him since the blowup they'd had at the tatt-chat, was telling him that she was trying to look out for him. Was this her attempt to put herself on equal footing with him, present herself as an adult who didn't want or need his protection and guidance? Perhaps it was part of a broader declaration that she'd outgrown his mentorship - and that she considered his principles to be the kind of weakness that meant he needed a well-armed, underworld-savvy sixteen-year-old to look out for him. But maybe that was too cynical. Maybe she just wanted to be his friend again, and to be the kind of friend with something concrete to offer.

"You're right," the Doc finally replied. He still hadn't made up his mind about why Daiya was bringing this up, but if he evaluated what she was saying just by the logic of the words, he couldn't find a flaw in it. He would tell himself much the same, if he took better care of himself. "I'm setting a pretty bad example by going out on runs unprotected." His tentative smile returned, showing that he wasn't being sarcastic. He didn't mind admitting when he was wrong, and in this case, he'd been wrong - or at least thoughtless. He was still used to playing the role of the guy back at base, even as he delved more and more into the role of shadowrunner in the field.

"I'll look into it, and for this run, I'll take whatever you've got."

Daiya flipped up onto the cot, laying out the machinery pieces on it as she worked, legs swinging to let off the pent-up energy of holding in the mix of emotions that must be running through her. Well, he was going to have to wash that cot before he put any patients in it; who knew where those parts had been. But that was okay, he told himself, deliberately slowing his breathing and managing his pulse. It was another thing that, if he brought it up now, would throw a wrench in whatever progress they were making. And it wasn't even all that big a deal; he had a washer with medical-grade disinfectant right here in the clinic. It really wasn't worth getting irritated about.

He seemed predisposed to be irritated by Daiya's actions. The hurt from the tatt-chat still felt fresh.

But he needed to manage that. He needed to be calm, warm, mature, open.

Daiya had given them a chance to rebuild their friendship.

He didn't want to scuttle that chance.

"That makes sense," the Doc said, as Daiya laid out why she wasn't expecting much resistance. Nulse would keep their crew small if they wanted to avoid notice, which was generally far safer than big squads of private security tromping around in powered armor and basically announcing important chit here, come rob us. Again the street medic wondered how Daiya had gotten the information; if stealth was Nulse's favored armor, their couriers' routes would be one of their best-guarded secrets. But he didn't want to keep questioning her too much. He wanted her to feel like he trusted her and her judgement, and he hadn't done the best job of showing it so far.

He took the completed sprayer from her, turning it over in his hands to inspect it from every angle. "This looks really good, Daiya," he told her, impressed with the speed at which she'd improvised the thing. It looked pretty functional to him, though he was no weapon expert; his expertise with machines was pretty specialized to cybernetics. Still, he knew that she was good with this kind of thing, and he trusted her work. "Thank you for catering to me," he said, looking her right in the eyes - only the second time he'd fully met her gaze that day. He almost said something like I know you think it's naive or even if we don't agree about this, but thought better of it.

"I'm ready," the Doc replied, securing the sprayer in the nondescript leatheris satchel he carried. There was an emergency medical kit in there, though not his full doctor's bag, and a number of other supplies he'd commonly needed while out on jobs - a coil of synthrope, a magnetized grappling hook, several power packs, a few ration bars, a survival knife, a glow rod. It struck a good balance between traveling light and being prepared for most situations. "If we're going to loiter in the Hollows, I know a to-go noodle shop there that's popular with the warehouse workers. Maybe we can grab a bite while we lay low and wait for this courier."

He was about to offer to drive when he remembered Daiya had pocketed his speeder keys.

"Want me to drive us over there?" he asked, extending a hand for them.

It was a risk for a wanted man to go up to a higher-level district...

... but it was Seven Corners. He'd hardly be the only one.

He'd just keep his head down and his hood up.

Daiya​

 

[Daiya]

(Post Soundtrack: "Jump Start My Heart" by Satellites & Sirens)

"You're right."

Those words were magical to the young shadowrunner. Particularly from the man standing in the middle of his clinic, tracking her every move from the moment she got there. Daiya knew she wasn't held in high regards by everyone, or trusted as much by older Shadowrunners. Her journey through the Abyss had proven that much, and Daiya's heart still sank to recall the dismal trove of treasure they had rooted out —literally— at the end of it. For his part, the Doc had been a bulwark on that mission for her, even if she wasn't being held in high regards with him right now.

"It's not like we need something heavy-duty today," the young shadowrunner explained, still stuck pitching her armor suggestion to the cybernetic skeptic in front of her. She leaned her head from side to side, chewing on her words to find the right thing to say to make it all click for the Doc. "'Cause I'm not exactly planning on getting in a firefight. That'd just draw attention, and we wanna avoid that, same as Nulse. So their goal works for us. Whatever you got now will work until then."

Daiya let the words work in the absence of the Doc's confidence in her. She bit her lip each time, waiting on his response. The moment the Doc met her gaze, her heart soared. First she had his approval, now she had his trust. Daiya jumped off the squeaking bed, light on her feet. Her heart bounced to the beat of a renewed sense of faith in her, tingling out to the very tips of her limbs. The teen's instinct was to grip the cyborg man in her arms, to repay her own trust with an embrace. She stopped short, keeping to a respectful distance but leaving the Doc with a ardent grin instead. Adjusting her own satchel, Daiya turned to follow the Doc, a hand flying to her stomach at the mention of food.

"Did you read my mind?" Daiya's lips found a lopsided curve, smirking at the ever-prepared man in front of her. She felt her cheeks growing warm, the flush of modesty hot on her skin. Of course she should have factored in food, one look at the clinic told the story easily. Overworked and overlooking his own wellbeing, as was typical for the medic. "Noodles sound a-mazing right now!"

Daiya let out a giggle, and it was the first time she'd felt so free and unburdened since arriving. Maybe since the tatt-chat itself. She floated, not walked, out with the Doc to the rear of the clinic where the old speeder was kept. It was the same old, battered model the medic had arrived in when she called him, beaten with her hip deeply battered by the returning Hacks, who had somehow disappeared once more. Good riddance. The teen barely had a thought to give to the chip-brained woman, focused entirely instead on the approaching job until the Doc spoke again.

"Oh feth, right!" She looked through the corner of her eye at the cybernetic man, her cheeks hot again. The young shadowrunner pulled the speeder key from her satchel pocket, after patting a few down to recall where she had stuffed it. Daiya shrugged as she handed it over, a shorter, sheepish giggle bubbling through lips pulled back to their edge. She couldn't even begin to understand, herself, why the key had wound up in her pocket instead of handing it back in the first place, much less forge an explanation worthy of the Doc. Instead the young shadowrunner just offered, "Maybe someday I'll learn how to actually drive a speeder."

And not crash it.

Letting the Doc go first, Daiya climbed onto the speeder after him, sitting awkwardly behind the seat where a stretcher could be fit. It gave her a chance to see over his head, where the teen could take in the speed and rush of scenery moving past them. The first time the Doc took the speeder on a straightaway, finally removed from the deadlock of traffic, Daiya nearly let go of her precarious grip to take it all in. The wind tossed her hair back, chilling against the bare skin of her arms, and then the teen spread them wide, unable hold back any longer against the thrill racing through her body.

"WOO-HOO!" The young shadowrunner whooped into the rush of wind, her voice all but lost to the ether. She nearly lost her balance, clasping with her legs alone, and pulled her arms back in to keep hold of the speeder again with a short yelp.

Daiya giggled freely regardless, adrenaline leaving her unbothered by the danger around them, or still ahead.

Doc Painless​

 

[Doc Painless]

It was moments like this that reminded the Doc just how young Daiya really was - and just how few decent role models she'd had in her life. He didn't know her whole story - he'd never pried into the private lives of any of the pack of young runners he'd met through Darkwire - but it seemed pretty plain to him that she hadn't met a lot of adults who'd left any kind of positive impression on her. If she'd had a safe and steady home life, she wouldn't be a street criminal with a double-digit kill count by the age of sixteen. She took a lot of cues from her peers - Cassus, Cartri, Brie - just as they did from her, and that was certainly a key ingredient in the young woman she was becoming.

But when the Doc saw Daiya's smile, the way she seemed to light up when the barriers between them dropped a little, he recognized again that she wanted affection and approval from beyond just her own age group. All he'd done over the course of this conversation was admit that she had made a good point and agree to follow her lead, both pretty minor things, but it had taken her mood from the edge of hostile to genuinely joyous. He was more certain than ever that she'd come here genuinely hoping to patch things up, and that this gig wasn't just a gotcha attempt or a swipe at the principles that had put them at odds. She wanted him to trust her, to approve of her.

She wanted just one adult in her life who had her back.

He should've swallowed his hurt and reached out a long time ago.

"Noodles it is," the street medic replied, and for the first time a genuine smile spread across his face as well. For now, it felt like old times. The brewing class war and its manifold moral complications felt far away, and he was just taking a drive with a friend. It wouldn't last, of course; there would surely be another reckoning, another time when the two of them would find themselves ethically at odds about how to fight the coming fight. But there was no point in thinking about that now, no reason to spoil the moment. It was all the more precious because the Doc knew that it might well be the last one of its kind. If it was, he was just glad to have gotten one more. He'd missed Daiya.

He suppressed a chuckle as Daiya fumbled for the key she'd pocketed, accepting it from her with the good grace not to joke at her expense. "Someday you will," he said instead. He had all the confidence in the galaxy that she could master just about whatever she put her mind to. It was how she would use the many skills she would pick up that worried him. But he pushed that thought aside, labeling it unproductive at the moment. Instead he focused on her thrilled little shout as she stood in the back of the speeder, the wind in her hair, swaying and stumbling and giggling like someone her age should. It was good to see her take the chance to just be a teenager.

It was good to see her carefree, for once. The opportunities for that were fast diminishing.

The rickety old speeder didn't look like much, but it got them where they needed to go. They left behind the canyon-like airlanes between the colossal cloudcutter blocks and dove down into the Volgho Hollows, the massive cavern network that housed the warehouse section of Seven Corners. It was a more confined space, sure, but to call the passages "caves" or "tunnels" gave the wrong impression. They'd been industrially widened to the point that massive buildings stood side by side within them while hundreds of airspeeders whizzed above, with only enough natural stone left behind to support the cloudcutters that stood on top of this upraised chunk of Denon's crust.

They descended from those speeder lanes down into the streets proper, winding their way past crowds of binary loadlifters, cargo skiffs, and tired-looking laborers. It was all a maze down here, and the Doc made their route even more confusing as he carefully avoided holocam hotspots; coming up here at all was a risk for him, and he didn't want to be any more reckless than absolutely necessary. But he knew Seven Corners well, even if he didn't live there anymore, and they soon reached the noodle shop. There was a drive-thru, but part of the point was killing time anyway, so the street medic went ahead and parked. "Let's just head in," he said, turning the speeder off.

"Noodles are on me today." And he could use some. When had he last eaten solid food?

For all his skill at taking care of others, he was chit at taking care of himself.

Daiya​

 

[Daiya]

(Post Soundtrack: "Turn Loose the Mermaids" by Nightwish)

When her winged euphoria drew to a close, Daiya brought her arms in with a self-conscious giggle, hearing nothing from the man driving in front of her. She spent the rest of their journey gleefully enjoying the wind whipping through her hair, the rush of objects and obstacles flying at the, and the Doc's deft maneuvering around them all. The speeder might not have been fast, but it was more ramshackle and exposed than most she rode on. Even if Daiya's trust in the Doc extended far beyond his piloting skills, the closeness to danger kept her gripping the edge of her seat with a wild grin the rest of the ride.

Volgho Hollows was exactly what the young shadowrunner expected it to be, and not at all what she had anticipated. Other speeders, mostly the larger industrial models, flew or parked nearby. Workers focused on their jobs, giving little thought to the duo as they passed. Daiya's fingers and limbs itched just under the skin, crawling over her as if to warn her. Once or twice, she discretely glanced behind them, following the logo of some speedertruck or a flashing neon sign to guide her eyes to their rear. Yet each time, Daiya found nothing to settle her nerves about the place.

She dismissed them just as mission jitters once the Doc had slowed to a stop.

"Right behi—" Daiya paused as her stomach chose that moment to interject loudly, drawing a foolish giggle from her once again. She took some quick steps to catch up with the man's longer strides, catching up and passing him a heartbeat before the door. The teen tossed back a gleeful grin, suggesting, "Maybe I should actually go first."

The noodle shop had a few small tables inside, but Daiya's eyes darted immediately for the seats ringing the counter. There were two open, almost adjacent, prompting the teen to rush toward the Nosaurian sitting between the two empties. He turned when she tapped his shoulder, ducking briefly to let the horns on his massive crown whisk over her head. "Excuse me, do you mind if my friend and I sit together?"

Her face was the picture of perfect innocence, mujaberry lipgloss glistening off her bright smile, reflecting the glossy color of her blue eyes. Daiya didn't say another word, letting the Nosaurian hiss and warble, stepping back so he could look behind her at the Doc. Something else pulled the being's attention, staring off vacantly into a space beyond them, and Daiya nearly stepped back more to keep herself safe if the alien was about to be sick. Instead, when the Nosaurian opened his mouth, a soulful melody emanated from the depths of the reptilian's bellows, a throaty song of lamentation and regret. The teen felt herself swallow, her face drawn long by the music and the growing lump in her throat, wiping away damp eyes when he had finished.

The Nosaurian took his meal and moved one seat over, giving up the space for Daiya and the Doc. She took it warily, casting a glance over at the bulky alien who had gone back to eating as if nothing extraordinary was happening. As the teen settled in, waiting for the cook to pause long enough to take their order, she leaned over to the Doc, pointing with her chin toward the Nosaurian in the next seat to whisper a curiosity itching from the lump in her throat. "Was that for me? Just 'cause I asked him to move? I thought I was being nice..."

Daiya didn't have time to hear an answer, startled instead by the clattering of utensils as the cook dished up a bowl of noodles and set it in front of someone sitting at the other end of the counter. Then the cook stood before her, wiping hands on a smudged apron that could have serviced as a menu for all the stains it carried. "Do you have glowblue noodles?" She could have just read his apron to find out. The teen shook her head to answer her own question. "No? 'Kay, I'll go with whatever's popular, as long as it's not gluk."

Doc Painless​

 

[Doc Painless]

Daiya's stomach rumbled, and she giggled. The Doc, being who he was, worried immediately. Was she getting enough to eat? It wasn't like she had steady work, so she probably didn't have much in the way of steady money. She was a skilled thief, sure, but that hardly guaranteed regular and nutritious meals. She was living with someone now, wasn't she? That girl with a troubling fondness for explosions, if he remembered right. Did either of them cook, or were they living off of sporadic takeout? The street medic sighed, forced his suddenly-racing pulse back under control. There was nothing he could do about Daiya's overall situation right now, so it didn't help to worry about it.

He could at least buy her lunch today. That would have to be enough for the moment.

By the time the Doc made it through the door, Daiya was already talking with a Nosaurian, apparently asking him to scoot over a seat. The street medic, who hated confrontation and avoided it wherever possible, probably would have opted to stand with his noodles rather than ask someone else to move; he had once drunk an entire glass of flavorless soda water, given to him by mistake after the flavor syrup had run out, because he didn't want to inconvenience the waitress. So it was just as well that his young friend was a little bolder. But the Nosaurian's reaction... now that was strange. The mournful melody that issued from his throat seemed totally out of proportion to the minor request.

At first the Doc attributed it to what Daiya called her "curse", the strange things that she could sometimes make happen. He'd seen it only once before, at her birthday party, when she'd suddenly gleaned an insight she had no reasonable way to know. But she'd brought that on by focusing hard, even giving herself a headache. The street medic realized a moment later that there was a much simpler explanation, one that had been featured in his biology texts. The Nosaurian was probably "singing down the sun", an innate instinct causing him to bray at what his internal rhythms thought was sunset... back on New Plympto. The reaction probably had nothing to do with Daiya at all.

But there was no time to explain that, because the cook had come over in their direction. "Make that two of whatever's popular, please," the Doc said, and the cook gave them both a curt nod. Doc Painless had a simple rule for finding good food: go where the locals go, not the flashy tourist places, and order what they order. If you pick your restaurant based on where you see happy crowds of people from the neighborhood, you'll seldom be steered wrong. Bad restaurants can lure in tourists with flashy gimmicks, or buy adverts and pay off guidebook writers, but they won't keep locals coming back. This rule had worked for him across many districts, and indeed many planets.

You had to be a little careful applying it on worlds where humans weren't the dominant species, though.

Sometimes the most popular menu items on such planets weren't digestible by humans.

"So I hear you have a roommate," the Doc said, trying to strike up conversation while they waited for their food. He'd ransacked his mind for relatively safe topics, conversational directions that wouldn't lead them back into matters related to their falling-out. "How's that going? I've had some that are easy to live with, and some... not so much." Moving out had been a big step for him. He'd had a college roommate, and then a whole bunch of bunkmates in the army. He'd lived with a girlfriend once, before that had fallen apart. Ultimately, he'd decided he liked living alone - or at least was better off. He didn't know Daiya's life story, but this was probably a big step for her, too.

The noodle shop was bustling, but the service was quick. Surprisingly quick, given the cook's pronounced limp. Warehouse worker injured on the job, the Doc guessed, though he was too polite to bother the man by asking. Whatever his story, the cook had thrown himself into this line of work, and the two steaming bowls of noodles he set before the Darkwire pair smelled divine. Thick but soft Corellian buckwheat noodles filled the ceramic dish, rising out of a vegetable broth seasoned with punctil and catabar. No meat, which was expensive to import; there wasn't a lot of ranching space on a planet like Denon. Instead there were chunks of bloddle and celonslay among the noodles.

The veggies, probably grown in the owner's basement hydroponic garden, had been spiced and steamed to perfection.

"Thank you," the Doc said, passing over a few credit chips. The cook looked around furtively, then scooped them up. Galactic Alliance credits were technically legal tender anywhere in Alliance space, but the CAD special autonomous region only sort-of counted, issuing its own corporate vouchers in lieu of currency. It was a smart play, if an unethical one; it kept the workers dependent on corporate-provided services, since the vouchers only had worth to the corporations that issued them, and made it very difficult to immigrate out of CAD space - how would you pay for passage? All that led to a thriving under-the-table market that ran on credits, of course.

Leaning down, the Doc slurped up a noodle. He was a polite man, but a messy eater.

"S'good," he mumbled, through a mouthful of hot buckwheat dough.

Daiya​

 

[Daiya]

(Post Soundtrack: "So & So" by HANA)

The noodle dish arrived in front of her, with a dozen delights floating in the steaming broth. The aroma was intoxicating, tickling the insides of Daiya's nose as she inhaled, a blissful smile settling over her face. Not much seemed to matter to her now, not the mission, not the Doc's tepid reluctance, not even the singing Nosaurian sitting next to her. All the teen could imagine was dipping into the luxurious soup to satisfy her grumbling stomach.

Daiya picked up the set of eating sticks, leaning her face over the bowl to quickly slurp up one of the bloddle chunks. It was hot, scalding her tongue, but the roasted flavors drew a long, satisfied groan from her throat, with a slippery texture that felt just right for the dish. She quickly followed it up with some noodles, switching utensils to inhale a spoonful of the hot, hearty broth. The textures and tastes played music on her tongue, dancing an unfamiliar, but enchanting, performance. She waved a hand in front of her mouth, trying to cool it off from the painfully hot encounter, as delicious as it was.

"Oh my stars!" Daiya mentioned, finally capable of forming words again. She leaned back from the counter to sit up straight, wiping at her mouth with the back of her hand before she found the napkin waiting by her bowl. Quickly, she pressed it to her mouth, a nervous sound covering up her attempt to wipe away the mental evidence of her messy eating. "That chit is a-mazing! Stars, I want to eat this every day now."

She set the napkin down and looked at the dish for a longing moment, peeling her eyes away to the Doc again. He'd asked a question she had ignored when the food arrived, and she brushed a lock of hair behind her ear to cover her nerves. "Oh, Hex is a-mazing. She's a little much sometimes, y'know, but it's not like she's trying to be that way."

Right now Daiya's hair was being a little much as well.

The teen pulled it back again, annoyed by the cascading strands that kept escaping to fall in front of her eyes. Fishing in her pocket, then her satchel for a hair tie, Daiya kept up the conversation with the Doc in the meantime. "Plus, I was tired of living by myself, it's fething lonely and my place was like a glorified closet." She had her hair up now, fastening it with the tie to keep it in place. Daiya gave it one more tug for good measure before putting her hands down. "Now I've got my own bedroom, and there's a couch, and a kitchen —even though I don't really cook— and, I dunno, it's just better."

"I kinda wish it was Brie that I was rooming with, even though she's got her own starship and is offworld half the time where I'd miss her and it would be just like living alone again. But Hex is fun, y'know, and sometimes she's even more wild than me. Which is saying something." Daiya's head tilted to make her point. It made far more of an admission on her own part, Her hands itched for something to occupy them, rather than the nerves running through, and picked up the eating sticks again. She didn't go as far to put food in her mouth again, only stirring and bobbing the floating ingredients in her soup with the utensils. "Like the other day, she was working on one of her Party Poppers, you know those crazy makeshift grenades she makes? Well, I thought it was going fine, and then Hex is all flustered and hyper and says we need to get it out of the apartment. And I don't know if you know this, but we're on the seventh fething floor, there's no 'just walk outside' kind of thing so...we stuffed it in the trash chute. She was super weird for the rest of the day, and then she was fine, and said it must have been a dud. But," and the teen giggled at the second sheepish admission of the conversation, idly stirring her soup some more, "We got this note yesterday, I guess everyone got them, about not putting flammables in the trash chute. I put it up on the door of it, 'cause it's kinda funny..."

She wasn't exactly sure the Doc would see it that way, quickly adding, "I don't think Hex thought it was, just me. 'Cause, y'know, it coulda been waaaaay worse."

Daiya shrugged and picked up the eating sticks again. All the talking was making her hungry, and by now the soup was cool enough not to bother her mouth as much. She took eager bites, alternating between the broth and the bigger noodles, pausing to wipe her mouth when it came to mind. Her stomach ruled the moment, pushing the hungry teen to eat quickly until the bowl was almost empty. Her lungs burned as she sat back, filling her lungs with a sweet breath that carried a faint echo of the salty, savory taste of her meal.

Wiping her mouth, the teen looked over at the Doc to see his messier face. Daiya couldn't help an amused grin from spreading over her face, watching the cyborg man eat as sloppily as she felt. "Uhh, Doc? You got..." Daiya tapped her cheek, her nose, her eyes laughing behind the smile underneath. She giggled when she tapped her ear, motioning for the Doc to clean up the splatter that had somehow reached there. "...all over you, really."

Doc Painless​

 

[Doc Painless]

Good food, Doc Painless firmly believed, was a strong contender for the title of best part of being alive.

This was good food. It wasn't particularly complicated, but it didn't have to be - and the Doc had often found that simpler was better anyway. Each of the ingredients had been perfectly prepared on its own, but it was the symphony of them next to each other in each bite that really brought out the glory of the flavors. The Doc found himself curating his bites, making sure there was a bit of veggie in each chopstick-full of noodle, so that he could get both the slight crunch of the greens and the mealy softness of the dough in a single mouthful. There was some kind of spice blend in the noodles themselves, a different but complimentary one to the spices on the vegetables, working in tandem.

And the broth? Oh, he was going to drink the broth. None of this was going to be left in the bowl.

He was glad that Daiya agreed. He'd been nervous that he'd pick something she didn't like, a food she had some sensitivity or moral aversion to, a cuisine he'd forgotten she wouldn't eat. That might've made her feel like he didn't know her as well as he ought to, or wasn't taking her likes and opinions into account. He didn't want to stir up any further had feelings. Things were fragile enough between them that he worried over every little thing that might go wrong, like a schoolboy taking a classmate on his first ever date. The Doc had been that schoolboy once. He'd been so nervous that he hadn't even looked at his date the entire evening, afraid that would somehow come across as leering at her.

There hadn't been a second date with that particular young lady, for some odd reason.

But Daiya seemed perfectly happy, enjoying the chow and chattering away between bites. She described her roommate, her new place, how glad she was not to live alone anymore - the Doc smiled a little ruefully at that, thinking of his own life, though he knew she hadn't meant to make him think about his own lonely situation. He nodded along through Daiya's story about lethal Party Poppers, eyebrows leaping at the words makeshift grenades and trash chute and flammables, but he managed to restrain himself from any negative comment. "I'm glad that turned out alright," he said, offering a chuckle. "Hex sounds like she keeps things..." He struggled for the right word. "... lively."

He let her eat after that, just soaking up the ambience of the crowded little noodle stand for a while. It had taken a long time, but the Doc had learned to move past his younger self's need to fill silence. As he'd grown up, and experience had gradually eased his anxiety, he had begun to feel less pressure to keep up a constant flow of conversation. He'd found that people who really knew each other, friends and partners of all kinds, were comfortable with quiet moments. And for all that had come between them, and all that might still drag them apart again, the Doc and Daiya did really know each other. They'd been through a lot together. Call it trauma bonding, or just call it friendship.

May it last beyond this afternoon, the Doc silently prayed, and beyond this mysterious job.

The street medic was pulled from his thoughts by Daiya's little heads-up that he was wearing a good bit of his food. He sighed, but managed a grin at the same time. "I've got hands steady enough to insert implants into milimeter-precise locations, but apparently not steady enough to hold onto noodles that are a good fifty times as thick." He grabbed a slightly-grubby cloth from the counter, grimaced at it, and then shrugged. He'd lived in Smogtown, where the air was often thick enough with pollutants to be visible; he'd survive rubbing a little dirt on himself. So he wiped down his face, front, and hands, wincing at the spots where he'd left little soup stains on his shirt.

Oh well. They would wash. He had a medical-grade sanitizer for things like this.

"Yeah, I'd eat those every day, too," the Doc said, laying the empty bowl - practically licked clean - back on the counter beside the rag. He slapped down another couple of credits, ordering a caf to go, and raised an eyebrow to see if Daiya wanted one too. This might be a long night, depending on how things went, and he never got good sleep anymore; he'd need some way to stay awake. "I'm stuffed, though. Should we take this a little closer to work?" He meant the spot where they'd watch for the courier, of course, but wasn't fool enough to say something obvious about it in the middle of a crowd. "And should I make it two cafs for the road?"

Daiya​

 

[Daiya]

(Post Soundtrack: "Adrenaline" by CRMNL)

Daiya grinned with a pleasant ease, answering the Doc's question by holding up two fingers behind an affirming nod. She missed how easy he was to talk to, how interested he seemed in her life. The Doc had that Ol' Spacer Energy, the kind that the young shadowrunner admired, who always seemed to have time and patience for anyone in a different frame of life. It lit her face and skin with a dazzling glow, a bright energy of her own to burn inside her, itching in her limbs and fueling an urge to stand up and mill about inside the tiny noodle shop.

Her eyes set upon the various decorations in the shop, slipping from one colorful montage to another. Most were just marketing for the noodle shop, and the artist in her assessed them harshly. Daiya let her fingers trace over the misaligned text, the clipped images taken right from the HoloNet, shaking her head at the lack of care put into them. Part of her was convinced she could do better, and her hand reached for her datapad with a desire to prove it.

"Oh my stars, Doc!" The teen rushed back to the cybernetic man, demanding his inorganic eyes to her screen. She held up her screen, displaying an image of the last contestant to meet a gruesome ending in The Squib Games. She wasn't sure if the Doc watched that show, but it was an intergalactic sensation, so of course he had heard about the latest matchup. "I thought for sure that Chordo would be the last to go, he's so big and strong. I fething hated him for skewering Ary, like, a month ago? Whatever, he's a powerhouse, no one wins against this guy! Except..."

The teen turned away in shock and amazement, surprised not to see the same reactions on the faces of those seated along the counter. They simply continued with their slow, methodical eating, poking at datapads or chatting with their companions. Daiya paused for a moment, considering the Nosaurian next to her for a moment, before tapping him on the shoulder again. "Did you hear about this?!"

She showed the Nosaurian the same article on her datapad, and for a moment the teen thought he might actually say something about it. He let out a sound like a sneeze, forcing Daiya back a step, her nose wrinkling as disgust registered on her face at the alien's strange behavior. Turning the screen this way and that, she shrugged at it, then rubbed it on the side of her leggings to clean off any of the alien's airborne reaction before putting her datapad away again.

Weird singing and sneezing? Daiya was going to avoid those beings in the future.

"Anyway, yeah, we should totally go." Daiya had idled them enough, now that the Doc was finished paying. The steaming caf was waiting on the counter for them, where she grabbed them, handing one to him first after judging the content of both. Hers was a little underfilled, and Daiya was really hoping that Nulse showed up before she had to find a refresher. "If everything goes according to plan, it's gonna be a loooooong night at—" the teen made sure to copy the same inflection the Doc was using "work."

Grinning to herself, Daiya slipped out the door, pressing her toes hard into the sole of her boots. Her shoulders squared up as wheels emerged from beneath her, and she took a few quick steps before leaning back on her heels, letting the wheels skate her the short distance between the noodle shop and the speeder. The wind ruffled her hair again, not as much as before, yet still offering a thrilling reminder of the ride over. She took a sip of the caf as she waited, bouncing on the balls of her feet a few times until the Doc caught up. "We're just gonna be at street level now, right?"

Daiya hadn't checked how far away the noodle shop was from the meeting point, but the most important parts of Volgho Hollows sprawled out on this level. She tucked away loose hair from her eyes, lowering back down to her heels to stand surefooted on the duracrete pavement, the caf clasped between her hands in prayer. "Do you think I could try to, y'know..."

Her eyes flicked toward the speeder and then back up to the Doc. She had already asked a lot of him today, maybe she was pushing now. The warmth of the caf between her hands crept up through her body in the chilled air, joining the comforting warmth from the soup in her belly. It gave Daiya a confidence she hadn't felt anywhere else, enough to ask the Doc for one more thing. "Drive? I'm mostly just chit at the landing part of it, but we'd be barely a meter up."

It had been more of a crash than a landing last time she tried.

Doc Painless​

 

[Doc Painless]

Maybe the Doc just didn't understand young people anymore, no matter how hard he tried.

One moment they were having a good time; Daiya was happy, bouncy even, and it was great to see her that way. The conversation flowed pretty well, the silences were more companionable than awkward, and things felt pretty much like they used to. The street medic was encouraging his young friend to share things from her life, and the interest he showed in them was genuine. But in the next moment, she shared something he just couldn't wrap his head around. His cybernetic eyes narrowed, then widened as the scene played out on her datapad screen. They'd just killed that man! He would've dismissed it as a holo-TV trick, but he'd heard of this particular form of "entertainment".

Some sick, callous person had made a show where the contestants gruesomely murdered each other to advance, and people around the galaxy were tuning in to watch. No, not just to watch; to comment and nitpick and gasp and laugh and mock while real lives were snuffed out in front of their eyes. It didn't matter to the Doc that the contestants were failed Sith initiates, cruel and ambitious and desperate, eager to kill for a chance to become powerful paragons of evil. They were still people, living beings with hopes and dreams and families and stories that had driven them to this. In the Doc's mind, no one deserved to have their deaths turned into some kind of circus show. It was barbaric.

He wanted to say something, wanted to point out that this commodification of sentient life was exactly the kind of thing they were fighting against when they stood against the Corpos. Wageslaves weren't so different from the gladiators on Daiya's screen; they had both been reduced to the credits they could earn for the people and companies who claimed to own them, body and soul. Factory workers, cubicle drones, arena fighters, they were all victims of this system that placed the profits of a tiny few above the lives of the masses. How could Daiya look at this "Squib Games" show and not see that it was another form of the same exploitation they were all trying to tear down?

And what the FLYING FETH did this murder gameshow have to do with SQUIBS?!

But the street medic forced himself to contain all of those thoughts, rather than give them voice. If he spoke to Daiya judgmentally right now, he would scuttle the progress they'd made today, and he wouldn't convince her of a damn thing. She would shut down, take it as a personal attack, another castigation in the same stream of castigations he'd begun at the Tatt-Chat. The job would probably fall apart right here in the noodle shop. He needed to rebuild this relationship before he could start in on talking with her about lofty ideals, or it would never do an ounce of good. So he just smiled weakly. "That's... dramatic!" he managed. "I haven't been following it, sorry."

He was grateful when she turned the screen away to show the butchery to someone else.

They took the cafs to go, Daiya handing him the second one on the way out the door. The Doc noticed with a frown that the cups were plastifoam, neither recyclable nor compostable. Why did they even make this stuff anymore, knowing that it would clog Denon's gutters or - best case scenario - be hauled off to some offworld garbage dumb, where it would pollute some other world? He knew the answer, of course. It was cheap. That was CAD space for you - profits for today, no thought for tomorrow. But here he was moralizing when he ought to be focused on other things, the things he could control. Like patching things up with an old young friend. Young old friend? Whatever.

And she'd given him good ammunition for it, so long as he could hold his nerve.

Turning to face Daiya, the Doc sent the speeder keys her way with a gentle underhand toss. "Take it slow," he advised. "We're low enough that we don't have fast-paced speeder traffic to navigate, but there are pedestrians and loadlifters who aren't the best about the concept of crosswalks." Without another word he flipped over the side of the speeder and into the passenger seat, hoping he wasn't making a colossal mistake. Memories of the Rodian who'd tried to be a cool stepdad by letting his girlfriend's fourteen year old kid drive the family speeder flashed through his head. That had been a nasty crash, followed by a fourteen-hour surgery. Lots of cybernetics.

Please be careful, the street medic silently pleaded, though he outwardly showed only confidence in Daiya .

 

[Daiya]

(Post Soundtrack: "The Ghosts of Beverly Drive" by Death Cab for Cutie)

The teen jumped in the air to catch the flying object, her toes pressing deep into the soles of her boots. She landed on flat soles, speeder key grasped between her fingers once more. It gave her a feeling of such power, to finally control the speeders Daiya had always ridden in, fully in control of her fate in this moment. She drew in a sharp breath, memory chilling her bones at the singular time when the teen had taken that fate in her hands on a speeder.

The bones of her right arm remembered that day all too well.

Daiya took a sip of the caf, determined to warm herself back up. She wouldn't need that fear from long ago, that scared her stiff every time she considered taking the controls of a craft. Somehow the young shadowrunner could face down heights, sweep through combat in null-gravity, or brave the hostile environment of the labyrinthine Abyss below Denon's city without getting hurt. If she could do all that, then flying a speeder would be a breeze!

"Hop on!" Daiya swung her legs into the seat, settling in with a forceful sound. She sat up tall, part of her wishing it would be enough that the cybernetic man would need to lean around her to see. The thought lured a grin back onto her face, taking a last sip of the caf before slipping it into a holder and sizing up the controls. They were a standard grouping for the vehicle, readouts she had often seen but rarely looked at seriously. "Okay, power levels," the teen searched with her eyes as her hands inserted the key. "and..."

The craft roared to life under her touch, deepening the giddy expression on Daiya's bright face. Her throat hummed with the giggle of delight, the warm feeling inside her fueled by a full stomach and the stimulant in the caf flowing through her veins. The only thing that could have made it better at this point was a Meltdown, or any drink really. "Twist for speed controls, got it!"

She grabbed the controls in her hands, barely pausing to check if the Doc was seated on the back or not. With a flick of her wrist, the vehicle shot forward, forcing Daiya to turn hard to avoid a pole in the middle of the sidewalk. "What the feth was that doing right there?!"

Daiya shook her head, twisting the controls a little easier to keep the speed manageable this time. Power vibrated under her palms, sending a thrill up her arms to resonate in her chest. The teen tried very hard to keep concentration on the streets and the other occupants in them, but she couldn't help turning the speed up just a little more, bit by bit. She leaned the speeder ahead of a parked craft, giving it wide birth only to feel a thick breeze ruffle her tied-up hair.

Another speeder rushed past on her side, narrowly avoiding their speeder so close she could have grabbed their keys. Daiya sputtered, her head spinning on its top as she tried to control the craft beneath her. A gasp shocked through her chest, sending all the muscles in her body on high alert. Daiya tensed at the second near-collision, gripping the controls tightly to bring the unfamiliar craft under control. "Chit, chit, Chit, CHIT, CHIT!"

The speeder was going too quickly, and the teen took a wide turn ahead of her into a side street. Her heart was beating fast, pounding hard in her ears while her eyes scoured ahead of her. Beings crossed the roadway without looking, other speeders and containers were parked mostly on the sides of the street, and every time Daiya tried to avoid them she wound up in another panic as the wild vehicle in her hands exaggerated every motion she made of the controls.

When Daiya eventually brought the speeder to a slow, coasted stop, she jumped off as fast as she could.

"No way, no fething way!" Daiya threw her hands out in front of her, a shield between her and the speeder. It still choked on its engine, sending shudders down her spine. The animated craft was more beast than machine in her eyes, stubbornly purring in her crooked parking spot, crooning its call of temptation out to her. The teen shook her head, almost violently, the tied bundle of hair whipping at the sides of her face. "No way am I gonna break my arm again. Or worse!"

She sat down on the curb, letting her arms and head crumple into her lap. The teen's slender shoulders shook with every nervous gasp for air. Her hands clasped together, squeezing tightly until the bones of her knuckles were white against pale skin. After too many long seconds of slowing breaths, Daiya lifted her head, still trembling from the ordeal. "Why am I so fething stupid?!"

Her head shook and she blinked away tears, fighting through them to peer at the Doc. "Everyone else can do this, no problem! Cassus races his speeder, Brie flies a starship. Hex has a fething hover board, no hand controls or nothing! But me?!"

Daiya glared at the speeder haplessly, a half-whimper emerging from her throat. "I can't even do the simplest fething thing with it!"

Doc Painless​

 

[Doc Painless]

It could have gone worse. He'd half-expected it to go worse. But it sure didn't go well.

Doc Painless held onto his seat for dear life as Daiya, whose version of a light steering adjustment seemed to be a full 90 degree turn, weaved up and down the street at higher-than-advisable speed. She drove like she was wrestling a bucking ronto... except that she was the one bucking, fighting her own overcorrections as if they were a high wind or some flaw in the speeder's controls. They didn't actually hit anything, blessedly. The young runner, to her credit, brought the vehicle to a safe and complete stop before her breakdown began. She hopped out of the vehicle and slumped down on the sidewalk, looking utterly defeated... and terribly, terribly young.

Just a kid, the Doc was reminded. A kid without parents or guardians. A kid forced to grow up too fast.

Slowly and calmly, not showing how badly the wild ride had shaken him up (beyond his suddenly wind-frazzled hair, anyway), the street medic climbed out of the speeder and plopped down beside his young friend. She clearly had something of a mental block about this, likely related to the arm-breaking incident she'd just referenced... but it probably wasn't the time to try and therapize, which wasn't his specialty in any case. So he didn't bring that up, didn't try to talk her through the fact that her own fear was the thing getting in the way of her piloting, making her hands tremble and her arms overcorrect. Maybe they could tackle that another day.

For now, his friend needed support, not advice.

"Hey, now," the Doc said, voice mock serious. "Don't call my friend stupid." He was tempted to put a supportive hand on her shoulder, but he wasn't sure if they were back at that point yet, so he didn't. "You think Cassus or Brie or Hex flew those things perfectly on the first try? Or even the fifth?" He shook his head. "And this is not the best place to learn to drive, with all the narrow streets and parked speeders and sleemo drivers cutting it too close. My fault for putting you in that situation. I learned in an empty lot." He should've thought of all that before offering her the keys. He'd been trying to show trust in her, but she'd felt pressured to impress.

"You wanna know how bad I was at first?" He chuckled at his own expense, eyes staring off into the gutter across from where they sat, fixated on images of the past. "I made jerky little start-stop circles around that lot for hours, white-knuckling the steering. The whole time I was muttering 'I don't like this', over and over and over. My poor dad, sitting next to me the whole time..." He trailed off, hitting a face he didn't want to remember. One reason he drank was to forget that man's disappointment, hanging over him like a polluted Denon cloud. "Anyway, I finally got my license, and then I got in my first wreck within six months. Totaled the speeder."

He shook his head. "I was older than you, too, so no excuse. You did pretty good by comparison."

Daiya​