Chapter Text
Symbiosis.
That’s the word Skip saw again and again in the media Gnosis showed him the unit it dispersed itself.
There were other words- “mutual benefit,” “respect,” “partnership.”
He wasn’t sure what they meant for him, or for a cruel man who had never respected the people he should have.
Ever since Skip had loosened his iron grip on the bodycraft, allowing Norman Takamori back into his own mind, there was, naturally, another presence Skip had to live with. A psyche whose feelings bled into Skip’s all unit every unit, who wanted to use the hands at the same time Skip did, who didn’t always want Skip there.
It was a time of trying new things. He couldn’t be like his father.
But Void, it was hard.
-
“What they’re gonna see, then, is that I’m winning.” Gunnie’s hand karate-chopped the control panel with every few words, narrowly missing buttons, “That the ball has truly, undeniably, shot up into the sky.”
To then plummet and break? Norman thought as Gunnie continued.
“I’m fucking rich, I have fucking friends, I’ve actualized myself.” Gunnie’s teeth flashed in and out of view as he enunciated each word.
What’s with the ball thing, anyway?
“You have! You’re ten times the man you were when you left home, parts or not!” Sidney agreed, leaning over Gunnie’s right shoulder, “You’re rich in friends!”
It means things are getting better. Even in the mindplace, the “ever since I showed up.” after Skip’s words stayed unconveyed.
Gunnie had wanted to rip the bandage of a fathers-son reunion off right away. Now that they were nearing his childhood planet, he seemed to need convincing that it was a good idea.
That’s an unstable metaphor. It would always fall back down.
“That’s right , Sid! I’m rich in friends!”
Hm. Or land among the stars.
“And you know if they say some bullshit, it’ll be bullshit, right?” Sidney asked.
“Bull shit.” Skip agreed with a flat affect.
“Thanks, guys,” Gunnie said, clearly warmed by the support, “You-” He was interrupted by the ship rumbling and shaking. The Wurst was about to enter the atmosphere of Mirage.
Gunnie’s eyes went wide and his hands locked up, hovering over the steering handles. “I don’t know what I’m supposed to do at this part.”
“All good,” Skip put his hand on Gunnie’s shoulder, nudging him to get up. Skip took the controls from Gunnie, moving into the seat as Gunnie got out.
“Watch me land.”
-
After he had landed the ship and Gunnie and Sidney had gone off to deal with the docking fee, Skip was almost by himself. Norman had been inactive since their discourse, only making himself known with a vague aura of discontent.
Skip was excited for life. His friends, who were his life, were free of everything that was holding them down. No more debt, no more shitty bosses, no more limiting programming, no more vengeance. They could do anything they wanted to. He was all in.
Skip swiveled his wrists and cracked his fingers, entranced by the feeling of bones moving internally. He didn’t feel the pain that might normally accompany the movements in this tired and battered body, he just enjoyed the ache and the loosened joints unlocking.
He leaned against the pilot’s seat with hands keeping him sturdy, bringing the ribs up and the shoulders backwards as he arched the back, trying to feel the spine click.
It did, and at the moment of his satisfaction, two more things happened at once: Skip felt an ambiguous detachment between some amounts of skin and flesh as an allconsuming aura of distress slammed the mindplace.
FUCK!
You did it again. The complaint appeared in the mind, and the body was torn from Skip’s control, with the arms dropping downwards.
Norman stumbled towards the wall, bending over from pain that Skip did not feel.
Oh.
Skip’s coldhearted cohabitant sank to the floor, stifling all noises less dignified than the hoarse breaths that escaped his lips.
Yeah, “Oh.” Did you forget I was stabbed this week?
Norman held his stomach, and squeezed his eyes shut. Gunnie’s makeshift, only-a-master’s-in-biology medical skills were good, but not that good. Working with various pastes and gadgets he had picked up in the crew’s ragtag units before they met Skip, Gunnie had gotten the body ostensibly stable, but his organs were basically held together with goop.
Skip didn’t like the stillness, the darkness, or the quiet. It was too familiar.
He tried to use the hands to get up and was met with a wave of resistance. In the past few units, they had attempted to start truly sharing the body, allowing the other to move and speak when they wanted to, but now, Norman held his grip strong over the controls.
Don’t. Norman warned.
It wasn’t a grip that he couldn’t tear away, of course. In psychic battles, a cerebro slug would almost always win against their host. Skip had made something of a resolution to play nice, but he was beginning to feel claustrophobic.
Let me move.
I need the fucking meds, where are they?
They’re with our stuff. Skip referred to the two pairs of clothes and few other personal artifacts beneath their bed in the crew’s quarters, only a few rooms away.
Let me take over, Skip pressed, I’ll be able to get them faster, just let me move.
He pushed at the edges of Norman’s domain, trying to find some purchase where he could take control without resistance.
Fucking don’t!
Skip felt the need to run. He didn’t know what from, but he needed to get away.
And yet, so agonizingly, the body stayed still and the vision remained dark.
He was locked out.
Move. At least move yourself.
With Skip’s growing fear, there was no quickening of breath, there was no widening of the eyes, and only a tiny heart beat faster.
Responding to something Skip didn’t feel, Norman pressed a hand just below the collarbones.
Are you scared? Is that what I’m picking up on?
Please.
I’m trying to do what I said I’d do, but you have to too.
Fuck you. I’m not doing anything.
Norman bowed his head against the wall.
“Just get off me. Get the fuck off me,” he begged aloud.
Footsteps approached.
“Skip?” Said a low, hesitant voice.
“Skip can’t feel this.” The grumbling came out strained.
“Norman, then.” The voice said levelly, accompanying the sounds of somebody getting on their knees beside him. “Can I help you?”
Norman looked at them. Barry Nyne met his eye and held out his hands in offering.
Talk to him, Norm.
Don’t call me that. Worm.
“You got hurt, right? Is your wound messed up?”
Norman only involuntarily groaned a little in response. Skip could feel him internally writhing about Barry being there. He could tell that Norman despised being perceived in this state.
“I don’t know where any meds are or anything.” Barry said, “Do you want me to get Gunnie?”
“No.”
Yes. Please, please.
“I can’t do nothing.”
Norman closed his eyes again.
“Can I take you to bed, at least?”
Burning waves of embarrassment emanated from Norman’s side of the brain, nearly overpowering his pain. But along with them came an aching, exhausted feeling. Skip jabbed at the nerves that would tell a hand to take Barry’s, not doing so, merely making a suggestion.
Fuck you. Fuck you.
Nobody spoke for a moment, and Norman slid closer to the floor in his languor, limbs giving up on holding him anything close to upright.
“Okay.” He mumbled.
“Okay. Okay, here we go.”
Barry Nyne put an arm behind Skip’s back, another under Norman’s legs, and scooped the body up. The body lurched and moaned with the movement, and another spike of hurt was muddled with Skip’s turmoil.
“Skip?”
“Hey, what happened to Skip?”
Skip's friends' words of concern followed as Barry carried them to the crew’s quarters. He wanted to be with them, not in that living void. Barry’s arm jerked in response when a hand reached out to touch them.
“He’s fine, but could somebody go get Gunnie?”
After Barry Nyne laid Norman down in bed, he stayed knelt by his side for a moment.
“The slug?” Barry looked him in the eyes, trying to discern what was behind dark brown irises that gleamed yellow. He scowled a little and spoke quietly. “You can’t really get away from it, can you?”
Gunnie entered the quarters. “What happened?”
“I don’t really know. He’s just in pain.”
Gunnie knelt at the bedside, knowing that the person he cared about most in that room did not feel pain unless he chose to.
“Where’s Skip?” Gunnie asked, a hard look in his eyes.
“He’s right here. He’s always here,” Norman replied.
“Is he okay?”
No! Tell him I’m not.
Norman didn’t respond.
Please.
Gunnie took the bottle of powerful pain medication from under the bed and put two pills in Norman’s hand. He swallowed them dry.
Gunnie looked Norman in the eye for a moment and then tugged Norman’s shirt away from the tender belly. Parts of the bandages beneath the ribs were unstuck from his skin, with shadows alluding to the chasmic gouge in the body.
“We’ll be able to get you fixed up properly to-unit.” Norman’s wound was severe, but relatively uncomplicated. It wouldn’t be hard to find a clinic that could mend it.
Gunnie peeled back the bandages while Norman grimaced. The wound was harsh with fresh blood and several stitches were broken..
Gunnie, Gunnie, Gunnie, Gunnie. Skip knew Norman could feel his terror ricocheting in his head.
Shut up.
Skip wanted to talk to his son.
Let me speak.
No.
You won’t be able to keep holding on.
You’re going to take me again?
Not if I don’t need to.
You’ve taken so much from me.
Not anything you earned.
Skip remembered the cycles he spent in oblivion, unable to see, to move, to know where he was. The powdered imitation egg substitute pressed every part of his body, uncomfortably compressing his flesh, shrinking him. He had not known when or if he would be able to find a warm body to live through.
In his first moments awake in Norman Takamori’s body, he had sprang out of bed and launched into the wall, just hungering to move.
And now, he was in a different form of oblivion. Erased inside the body, barricaded by that pitiful, yowling psyche.
Yes, Norman was in pain, but Skip was just as tormented.
The injury will be gone, he promised.
Skip shredded through the barricade. It was not difficult.
Norman’s gasp of alarm was cut short by Skip’s burst of movement. The body lunged forward and the right hand seized Gunnie’s shoulder, fingers digging into the ridges between metal plates.
The consciousness of Norman Takamori had been flattened into the margins. Skip was alone in the brain.
The mindplace was blissfully all his.
“Whoa, hey, hey, hey.” Gunnie took him in his arms. “Skip?”
The chest rose and retracted rapidly, but his panic was already subsiding. Skip stretched and wriggled his limbs just to feel his freedom. A good burn spread through his muscles.
“Lie back down, okay?”
Skip obeyed, still heaving. “He wouldn’t let me move.”
“You were stuck?”
“Not stuck.”
The torso had been stressed again by the motion. Blood trickled and started to pool on the sternum.
Gunnie dutifully began to clean the wound of his bully, his father, his inferior, his friend.
“Are you okay? Is he going to take control again?”
“He can’t. Norman isn’t here. I’m doing what I was doing before.”
Gunnie glanced away and took a breath. “He’s gonna be angry when he’s back.”
“You’re nervous about it?”
“You know that.”
“Are you nervous that I’m here?”
“You’re not him.”
“I’ll be him.”
Gunnie laughed a little. Skip felt the breath touch the inside of the body.
He looked at him.
“It’s just… kind of funny. This injury probably wouldn’t still exist if you were in anybody else.”
“You’d have FTLed as soon as you could.”
“What happened to-unit with it, anyway?”
“I like to stretch. It opened.”
“You might want to be more careful with your body. Y’know, if you’re thinking about keeping him. Take care of your ride. It’s in bad shape.”
“I am thinking about it.” Skip said simply.
There was a beat of silence before Gunnie spoke again.
“Do you like him, at all?”
“I like being him. It feels right.”
“Do you care about him?”
“I don’t know if I do about anyone.”
Gunnie looked up, surprise in his eyes, “You definitely do. You care about our friends. You’re kind to us.”
“I don’t feel the caring like I see you do. Before I was in Norman, I didn’t think it either. I mostly wish to know more.”
“To know more about Norman?”
“About all of you.”
“Then can I tell you something?”
“Of course.”
“This stuff is made with a lot of the same active ingredients as Pleasure Putty.” Gunnie was applying a pink salve to the now clean skin.
“Is that the thing?”
“No,” Gunnie “I was stalling. I’m nervous to see my dads again. I’m still a little scared to know what they think.”
“You were supposed to be meeting your dads now.”
“I had Zortch tell them to wait a marbec. I’m glad it’s getting delayed.”
“Do you want me to come with you, when you go?”
Gunnie thought for a moment, looking a little lost behind his eyes, “No. I need to talk to them alone for a while.”
Gunnie continued, “But I’m not that nervous about Norman, by the way. I know he doesn’t have what made him scary anymore. He doesn’t have the power.”
“Good,” Skip said. ”I’ll keep him neutered.”