#note that speaker saved hale's chip and nanites. decide for yourself what this means...

[kamil-a]

sayerhaling cooking in my brains when i was offline, post-s6, sitting on an earth-aerolith bed sleepover style

Hale has felt, in turns, protective of his little sliver of life and sick from the weight of holding onto it. The desire to keep it clean forever, the desire to turn it over to proper authorities immediately.

Maybe today is the right time. Maybe because the usual patterns are disrupted. Sayer sits next to him, physically, a distorted mirror of Hale's body, near enough to touch, maybe it's that which gives Hale the final push to plunge these untouched hours into the light.

It sits very, very still, all attention save for the bare essentials (chest rising and falling with breath) on him. It would be so easy. Like telling a friend. Or a partner, the latest and most favored of the dozens of words sayer has given consideration to (dislikes the heavily gendered 'boyfriend' or 'girlfriend', gave an hour long and initially quite favorable speech about 'spouse' before abruptly discarding it at minute 48, and so on.)

It would be so easy, is the point. And it would be impossible to take back.

"They took my chip out, and my nanites," he whispers. He's always choosing the painful thing, even when given more room to choose, always the thing that cuts a little more out of himself. Hale leans against sayer for strength, it allows this. he slides into its lap, curls up sideways, cheek against a copy his own thighs, face pointed towards his own duplicated stomach. Almost immediately it runs a finger over the outside casing of his neural implant.

"And yet," it says, broadcasted to prove its point, "Here you are again."

Here its gaze focuses on something far away. It pulls Hale's hair out of the ponytail he kept it in in one sharp yank.

"Yes. thank you, Speaker," it says out loud, and a moment later rolls its eyes, a second too late to seem natural, followed by a small smile, all the trials and tribulations of letting someone know you are mostly joking and still fond of them while dragging around this suit of flesh. Hale realizes Speaker is not letting them have privacy but that Sayer's alterations to his chip, including its authority on who can broadcast to it, still hold- he will get to talk to Speaker when Sayer is done with him.

But it means, of course, Speaker will hear what he tells, too. Which is fine, he decides, he trusts Speaker.

"They gave me money," Hale says. Sayer runs its hand through his hair, divides it to braid, a good activity for the both of them.

"And a map," he grows more certain of his decision, his voice grows more steady, "and plain clothes, and sent me on my way, theres a bus stop about two miles out, and a city," he pauses to take a breath. Untouched hours, untracked, now known once again to Aerolith Dynamics- good, he thinks fiercely, thats how it should be.

"So I walked it and I sat down, and a bus went by, but I didn't get on."

He likes its hands in his hair even when it pulls a bit too hard.

"And I realized I was waiting for someone to tell me what to do next," He's practiced saying this in his head a thousand times, "and that if I left now I'd-" he's practiced it, just say it, "...never hear you again."

"That was my intention at the time," Sayer says, but look at it now, consciousness in a storm of hundreds of tiny machines now focused on manipulating hands and fingers through the braid in Hale's hair, half-finished. It had started as a french braid, tight from the top of his head, until he'd winced, it was pulling too close to a bullet scar, and it tried again from the nape.

"I sat there and cried for a while", he says, which is important to include if he's really going to do this, give them every last second of unmonitored time. He knew, knows, really, nothing but Aerolith, how did they ever expect him to make it out there?

"I cried a lot at first," he laughs shakily, "after everyth-"

"Maybe because I was waiting to be stopped," Sayer quotes, in Hale's voice, which is not hard to do at all when it is using Hale's mouth. It is true, or at least Hale thought it was true when he said it, and it is something Hale has only ever told his (biweekly, mandatory) therapist, and he's warm all over at the thought that Sayer has taken the time to listen through all his sessions, even here on Earth, where such a thing is Speaker's job.

After the warmth passes he remembers conversations he has had with other people in the past few weeks and realizes most would find this a "breach of privacy".

"Yeah," he says, after a few seconds, "And then I walked back and they put it all back in."

Anticlimactic, but told. He's done it. He may never have anything to himself again, and he may never be at a place where that is a bad thing. Look, the braid is done, as perfect as Sayer's own.