Of Ponies and Puppies

Smile

Uzi slowly came to in their bed, a wing over her as usual. Recharge tonight was oddly more restful than usual. Her internal clock told her it was a little earlier than usual though. She'd be pinned here a little while if N didn't wake up soon. A small smile was on his sleeping face. Uzi hoped her own had matched.

She had never really gotten used to sleeping together like this over the years. They had slept hanging from their tails together a few times before overcoming the Solver and Uzi losing the ability to do that on her own. N tried to step in and keep this their preferred way to sleep together, but after multiple nights of Uzi accidentally falling from their position, he had to admit defeat and do something different. Now, they slept any other Worker couple sans N's wing covering them up. It was the last semblance of normalcy he could provide himself. Uzi didn't mind, it kept a very intimate aura around them.

Uzi buried her face in his jacket's fur trim. He'd made a few changes to his style to distance himself from the past, but the jacket stayed. His beloved pilot cap had been retired, the pin on it taken off and put into storage. It just didn't feel right to leave such an obvious mark of his intended function on his person like that. He would often find hats out on searches and kept a small collection he would periodically wear from for events. He had long removed his armband in a heated moment over not being property, the band torn to shreds left somewhere deep in the planet. It happened during that time of their lives, the one they didn't speak of much.

Not that they didn't talk about it at all, they gladly boasted over overcoming the Solver. It was hard for all of them to talk about in general. Uzi and N went through hell and back for each other, and V only came back to life through sheer willpower on their part. The whole time, Uzi was periodically being controlled by the Solver, at the mercy of the whims of the hivemind. The loss of control and identity was a frightening thing to experience. Something she hoped she'd never go through again.

In a way, she still was.

The bunker held opinions, opinions Uzi didn't agree with. That had always been a thing even before meeting N and had never gotten to her, but over the years it did. Age had mellowed out her edge to the point that these opinions would get under her metaphorical skin. She dressed normal now, acted normal, had normal body parts and didn't have witchy powers now (against her will). However, as much as she could mask "normal", she couldn't mask N's obviously non-Worker form. The colony had been against N living among them from the very start. It wasn't obvious, and the unease was hidden under their breaths. They hadn't approved of Khan's daughter dating one, only to realize with morbid fascination that a hybrid was something they could gawk at, and swiftly changed opinion. She'd fallen for that, jumping the gun to propose to him even though she still had no interest in human customs of the sort.

She'd fallen for the opinions of others and locked them into several years of disconnect and trying to believe that everything was ok. In the day-to-day it was, but she knew N wanted kids and now with them married the whole colony was expecting it. Thank goodness for V and Lizzy for having one before them and getting the pressure off them. They'd have a kid in time, Uzi just needed to feel better about it. She'd grown up feeling unwanted, so she hadn't wanted to make another kid feel that way.

Right, they had a kid now. Colt. The neural network in the other bedroom of the place. Their son.

She pushed against him a bit, unsure if she wanted to wake him up so she could go check on Colt. His sleeping face felt comforting to take in. He was still dorky, but a protective guy as his wing keeping Uzi to him proved. Looking at him in the context of him being a father now to her child felt strange. New. Fluster set in as something about that context made him appear more handsome to her. Oh robo-God, Uzi. You're married to him, stop acting like this!