Synth

They watched Tham eat the odd snack that TO themself had fetched from Lake. The dish seemed to be a simple bowl of noodles at first, but if TO looked closely they thought they could see the ‘noodles’ moving. They could have been wrong, but TO didn’t want to know badly enough to ask and they weren’t sure they’d want a solid answer. They were more than happy to pretend the dish was just noodles and not look too close.

“Will eating that really make you feel better?” TO asked. When they inquired earlier as to if anything would make Tham feel any better, he had only asked TO to pick something up from the kitchens.

Tham only grunted in response to TO’s question as his mouth was full. After a few more moments he swallowed, “Yeah.” He said. “Comfort food.”

“Comfort food?” TO frowned, “It’s food that makes you comfortable?” They glanced over just enough to see Tham nod. “I’d be interested to know how it does that. Is it a chemical in the food or-”

Tham gave a snort of laughter, then started coughing as they had only just shoved more of the noodles into their mouth. Waving TO away as they got up to help, they gave a few purposeful coughs before drinking some water and clearing their throat. “You’ve never heard of comfort food before?” They asked.

TO felt their ears warm, “It’s likely that I have, but I might have heard of it by another name. Any media I’ve watched that would have mentioned it before was translated for me, and if I heard it in another context or culture, then my helmet would have translated it to something I’d recognize.

“Right. Language fuckery.” He muttered, “Comfort food is just what you call food you eat when you’re upset to cheer yourself up.” He shrugged, “And here for a second I thought you synths didn’t have comfort food.”

“Well… We don’t.” TO said, “Not really. In training, there’s only one kind of food. It’s tasteless, but has all the nutrients we would need. Though, I prefer civilian food.”

Tham grunted and looked down into his bowl, “Right. Yeah. GiDi told me about the gray cubes of sadness. I guess they wouldn’t be comforting.”

An uncomfortable silence fell over them, and for several minutes TO wondered if they should say something. Their mind raced as they tried to figure out what they should say, what might help, or what might make things worse.They were still angry with Tham to a point, but it was hard to really feed that anger right now: his pale skin and blotchy face made it impossible for TO to want to do anything other than help.

“I’m fine…” Tham said after another minute, “You should go on and get your work done.”

“I can spare a few more minutes.” TO said as their ears twitched with their lie. Still, they felt no guilt with this lie, and idly wondered if their ears moved slightly differently because of that. “You and Jason were close?” They finally asked.

Tham stopped eating, lowering their fork slowly back into the bowl. “You could say that.” he said slowly, “Yeah, we were close. Very close.”

“More like family?” TO ventured, their ears dropping. It hurt bad enough for TO when GiDi was taken away and their fate was ambiguous. How would confirmation of GiDi’s death have hurt them if GiDi had died while trying to escape the training center? Would knowing be worse than not knowing? Would it hurt just as bad if they learned for certain that GiDi had died even after they assumed the worst for months or even years? How long had it been since Jason was taken?

“... yeah, like family.” Tham said. “He used to work in civilian assistance groups. You know, visiting other planets and helping the civilians who got displaced, right? That’s where we met. We worked together a lot and got along well.” He looked up, “I knew him before he met Mel, back when he had nobody behind him.”

“You were part of an assistance group?” TO asked. Civilians of planets integrated into the galactic empire did not need to be exposed to interplanetary warfare, but if they wanted to, a civilian could join a civilian assistance group and go to planets with active combat or natural disasters to help as civilian support. It was akin to joining a military back when most planets were independent, and left to defend themself and conquer as they wished. Joining the civilian assistance groups was also the only time most civilians would see a synth army in person, and get to work with them in any capacity. Given what they knew so far. TO could see Jason doing that, but they couldn’t see Tham joining.

“Briefly.” Tham said, “And I didn’t go to a combat planet, I mostly worked in places with natural disasters.”

“I’m more surprised that you joined at all.” TO said as they leaned forward to listen. “I mean,they often support the synth army…”

“I got arrested when I was younger for theft, and back then there was a big call for people to help on a planet suffering a climate disaster. They let non-violent criminals ‘volunteer’ for a reduced sentence. So, I joined, and met Jason there. We got close fast, and I stayed on with the assistance group. Jason led a unit, and he could request me specifically.” he smirked, “Of course, he wasn’t just helping, you know?” He smiled as he stared into his bowl, “Jason was getting people off the planet if they didn't want to be there, or if they were in a bad spot and needed to go to another planet and be another person. That’s how all this started, you know.” he shook his head, “Just.. getting people away from places they didn’t want to be and helping people get what they needed. After a while, he just realized he couldn’t do that legally.”

“And that’s how he formed the insurgency…”

“That’s how he grew a group of people who realized that the people in charge were exploiting us all.” Tham said, “He never considered it an insurgency. It shocked him when the GBA called us an insurgency. In the early days we weren't even that organized, we were just doing what we could.”

TO nodded, “So… you stayed on just to work with him.” TO said, “And, you two were very close.”

“... For several years, yes.” Tham said, He looked down, his hands forming fists on the table, “He called me his brother after a while, and… well, he didn’t have family, not really, so he often said I was the most important person in his life. And, honestly, he was the most important person in my life.”

“You became his family.” TO said.

“Yeah, I did,”

“You know…” TO looked down, “Chilacians, from what I understand, don't put a lot of stock in blood relations to form their family units. I think he’d be considered your actual family.”

“Well… anyway.” He looked aside, “Eventually he met Mel, and she became his most important person in his life.” There was a hiss to his voice, and a twitch of his tail that TO couldn’t overlook.

“Did you dislike her?” TO asked.

Tham looked up, eyes suddenly wide, “No. No, not at all.” he said, “I didn’t know her, not really. She and I were never friends, but…” He sighed, “I guess I disliked her at first. But I didn’t know her. And one night Jason and I went out for drinks and she was all Jason could talk about. Mel said this, Mel did that, Mel was thinking we might…” He shook his head, “Jason was crazy over her, so if she was important to Jason, then I figured I’d have to just deal with it.” He sighed, “If I wanted to be in Jason’s life, I’d have to accept that she was in his life too.. And I’d have to learn to like her.”

“And did you?”

“We were polite to one another, and the few times when I got injured doing something for Jason, she’d help patch me up and make sure I was ok.” He gave a joyless smirk, “She was important to Jason, and I was important to Jason, and Jason was, separately, important to both of us. So, we made it work. And Jason and I still worked together when we went off the planet. She had a medical thing that made her unsuitable to volunteer, so with the assistance group, it was just me and Jason. But then Mel got pregnant with Helen and…” Tham shrugged, “That was that. He chose to stay home since he had a family, so he left the assistance group. I left as well and we did what we could to help people here, but it wasn’t the same.”

TO frowned, “Wait, what do you mean that was that?” They asked, “You were still his family, yes?”

Tham nodded, “Yeah. I was his family. I was Uncle Tham to Helen, but things were different. That’s also when we started getting organized; Being stuck on Arkane gave us an opportunity to do that.” He took a large drink of water, grimacing as he did.

“Something wrong with that?”

“No, I just… forgot I was drinking water.” Tham said. He put the water down and sighed, “I suppose it’d be a bad time to see if we have that fermented drink left.”

“... If you want to rest, I can take care of things.” TO said. Even as they spoke they were silently cursing on themself. They already had so much to do, and they were already behind. How were they going to balance their work and Tham’s at the same time?

“No, it’s fine.” Tham said, “I need to work. I need to be productive.” He pushed himself from the table, “I need to help.”

“You just found out some hard news.” TO said, “I imagine nobody would be upset if you took time for yourself-”

“I’ll have plenty of time for myself when we get off Arkane.” He said, “If I want to… to mope and be a moron, I can do it then. For now, there are things to do, there’s work to be done and I won’t let myself ruin things for everyone.”

TO nodded and stood up, “Then… I’ll do the plans for packing the supplies on the ship, and send them to you as soon as I can.” they said. “Meantime, I suppose it’s best to get everything brought to the cave around the entrance.”

Tham got up, running a hand through his short red hair as he nodded, “Yeah.” He said, “I'll take care of that.”

TO nodded and left Tham to prepare himself for work. There was a lot about the situation they felt they didn’t understand, bits of the story that Tham left out or skimmed over. Still, Tham’s desire to work right now was something TO understood well.

======

Of course planning the placement of the supplies for the trip was near the top of TO’s list of things to do, but there was something else they had to check first. While DH said that they were fine dealing with whatever emergency had come up in the dorms on their own, TO still wanted to check on them and make sure that everything was alright. They decided to do any quiet work in that little alcove that Petra and Lendulin showed then, because at least that way they could stay close to DH and then the two of them could easily meet Avery later at lunch and make sure Avery was ok before they continued on with all the rest of the work they had to do.

They braced themself, not sure what might wait for them on the other side of the door to the dorm. Their mind briefly raced through every possible thing that could happen, everything from parts of the underground collapsing to gas leaks and infestations of disease-carrying insects.

They took another breath, just hoping there wouldn't be too much blood, and opened the door.