Chapter Text
The one drawback to listing Secunit as one of the emergency contacts on her PSUMNT admissions paperwork is the possibility that someone might actually contact it for an emergency someday.
This dawns on Amena on the first day of her third month on campus, when she drifts out of anesthesia with a newly repaired ankle, the dull post-MedSys headache, and an absolutely searing glare boring into her forehead.
“What did I tell you about organized sports?” Secunit looms over her bed like a thundercloud, its arms folded and its eyes narrowed. It's still clad in Perihelion's uniform, apparently fresh off of a mission that had been close enough for it to come sprinting to campus when the Campus Medical notification went out. Amena winces, but it isn’t because of the sting still pulsing through the small bones of her ankle.
“Don't?”
“Yeah. Don't .”
“Well…it wasn’t technically an organized sport…” It had been a round of Parrises Squares, which is one of the new Mihiran games she’s gotten a crash course in since her arrival and which happens to be thoroughly chaotic even under the best of circumstances. Last night’s match had been played at three a.m. on muddy grass by a gaggle of students all slightly buzzed by the celebratory alcohols that had been passed around to commemorate their first set of exams. Definitely not even close to the best of circumstances.
“You really think that makes it better?” Secunit shuffles sideways to make room for the MedBot whirring in with discharge instructions and a packet of take-home meds, but the glare barely budges. It simmers in silence as the bot runs Amena through the recovery instructions. One of its drones buzzes in scanning patterns over her ankle, as if it's evaluating whether or not MedSys did the job properly, while the rest of the swarm mills around the ceiling in tight, anxious circles. There’s a pang of guilt in Amena’s chest. The whole point of emergency contacts usually revolved around the hope that you’d never have to use them; Amena certainly had never expected there to be a reason for anyone to call and freak Secunit out, but here they were. She’d only put its name down because it was the only person she knew who wasn’t a few thousand lightyears away, and she’d had to list someone. Now, she almost wishes she’d left that box blank.
“I'm sorry you had to come all the way to campus,” Amena says, eventually, when it becomes obvious that Secunit isn’t going to offer her any break in the tension. She shifts to ease herself up into a sitting position and, almost immediately, there is a steady hand at her back to help stave off the brief post-surgery dizziness. However furious it may be with her, at least it isn’t mad enough to let her topple off the side of the bed. Amena’s going to consider that a good sign. “I didn't think you were going to be back in orbit for a while—did you and ART come home early?”
“Not by much. We would've been back by tomorrow anyway. It wasn’t hard for ART to shave a few hours off the ETA.” There's a notification chime from where her feed interface lies on the bedside table. “It’s sending you some educational reports about injury statistics among adolescent human athletes, by the way.”
The interface chimes again, then again and again until the notifications are overlapping in one long, continuous tone. Amena begins to fear for the fate of her feed storage space. She knows ART has honed pettiness to an artform, and if it took the idea of someone besides itself stressing Secunit out personally, then she wouldn’t put a little bit of (affectionate) harassment past it.
“How many is ‘some?’”
“Three hundred and thirty-six,” Secunit says, in a tone that is not one bit sorry. It plops a pair of the clinic’s complimentary slippers on the bed next to her. Amena dimly recalls a medic cutting her running shoe off of her rapidly-swelling foot the night before, but decides that this probably isn’t the time to lament the loss of her favorite sneakers. “Put your shoes on. I’m walking you back to your room.”
“How many of those reports is ART expecting me to actually read?” Amena slides into the slippers and rests her feet experimentally on the floor, testing her weight before she tries anything as ambitious as walking. It’s better than last night, when the pain had been a blinding red haze, but it still isn’t exactly pleasant.
“Enough to pass the quiz.”
“The quiz?”
Secunit gives a roll of the shoulders that isn’t quite a shrug. Amena makes a mental note to figure out where it picked that up. Shrugging wasn’t a part of its fake-human protocol before, so it had to have either gleaned it from one of its shows or from one of ART’s crew. It’s spent enough time with them by now that stealing a few mannerisms is entirely possible. It’s still weird to think of it settling into a new group of people that comfortably, but it’s a good weird. A necessary weird, even, much like Amena’s awkward settling period here at PSUMNT. Amena supposes Secunit may be winning on that score, though; it isn’t breaking any bones to make friends.
“It’s ART. If it has a choice between doing something and overdoing something…”
Amena rolls her eyes and tamps down a groan. She’s two solar systems and a wormhole jump from home, but it still feels like she’s drowning in adult supervision.
Speaking of which…
“Are you going to tell Second Mom about this?” She regrets the question as soon as it clears her throat. Phrased like that, it sounds small and stupid and a hell of a lot more juvenile than she'd like. But she knows Secunit keeps in close contact with Second Mom whenever it can, and she also knows that the two of them gossip like grandmothers about her personal life. This is one piece of that fledgling adult life she’d like to keep actually personal if she can. Second Mom is a wonderful confidant, and an even better mom, but she’s…a lot to live up to. She isn’t the type of person to lecture or scold or nag—especially over an impulsive lapse in judgment—but the look in her eyes when she knows you haven’t even tried to be your best self makes Amena cringe. She doesn’t want to have to explain why such a dumb idea had sounded so reasonable in the wee hours of the drunken night. And if Second Mom never has to know, then Second Mom never has to be disappointed.
“Depends. Are you going to do it again?”
“Not planning on it.” Amena wiggles the repaired ankle for emphasis and regrets it immediately. What had been a twinge of lingering pain becomes a knife, stabbing through the joint like a thoroughly pointed reminder of what her answer should be. “ Definitely not planning on it.”
Secunit stiffens next to her, evidently picking up on her grimace before she can hide it.
“Do you need MedSys again?”
“No, no—it’s fine. Just still sore.” Amena gathers up the discharge supplies the bot had left for her and holds up the packet of pain relief tabs. “Looks like I’m well supplied to keep it under control.”
Secunit frowns, but the anger has been swept away under a tide of aggravated anxiety. It’s worried and clearly a little mad about being worried. Amena isn’t sure how to fix that. It shouldn’t have to feel responsible for her here, now, when they’re both supposed to be on their own little journeys of independence and self-discovery. Clearly, it does anyway.
“Thanks for coming to check on me.” She hopes that that is enough of a dismissal to be taken as an exit window, as a hint that she can take it from here—that it doesn’t have to shoulder the care and keeping of her when she should fully count as an adult now. She cleared the age of majority on Preservation a full three months ago, after all.
Secunit bypasses the bait entirely, though whether that’s because it breezed by it in its enthusiasm for its self-appointed responsibilities or because it wasn’t interested in opening any additional cans of emotional worms, Amena can’t be sure.
“You can’t walk back to your room like that.”
“It’s not that ba—”
“No.”
“Secunit—”
“ No .”
Ten minutes later, Amena is getting ferried across campus aboard one of the powered lifts used for emergency medical transport because arguing with a huffy Secunit is about as effective as arguing with a wet cat. She isn’t sure it really qualifies as an “emergency” at this point, but she’s grateful nonetheless. Secunit strolls along beside the lift, its hands shoved in the pockets of its uniform and its drones zipping ahead of them to monitor the path. Its posture is less taunt now that they’re out of Campus Medical with any arguments and complications behind them. It seems content to listen to her sort through the barrage of files that ART had dumped on her, its mouth twitching up in amusement at her grumbles. She still wouldn’t have dreamed that it would show up for something like this—for something so very, very minor on the scale of galactic emergencies it usually handles. It’s weird. But it’s a good weird.