The survivors, numbering only ninety out of over five-hundred who'd once lived there, followed N and his crew topside with their meager belongings. Once there, they began the harrowing task of trying to salvage what they could.
Their rescuers stayed out of their way unless explicitly asked to help with something, and had moved off to a far off corner to shuffle around awkwardly. Every now and then they would wince when an anguished cry would ring out from somewhere nearby, knowing that some unfortunate drone had just been stripped of whatever tiny sliver of hope they clung to.
The Pathfinders were furious at themselves. Over a week of radio silence from a typically chatty outpost and not once had anyone gone to check it out. Of course the logical, rational machine side told them that there was nothing they could have done if they had acted earlier. Without N they couldn't even get into the bunker, let alone fight what was inside. But the fact that they had just shrugged off the abnormality and went about their lives while Outpost Five had been fighting a losing battle for theirs hit them hard.
The O-Three Workers were handling it better with the exception of Nick. Nick was not okay. How could he be? He'd been concerned after the second day of being unable to reach Outpost Five, but when no one else thought anything of it he just went with the flow. It was four days before he started making any noise about it, and a full week before he tried to get anything going. Realizing how easy it had been to put together a team and coordinate with Outpost Four made him feel even worse. Regardless of what the machine in him said, all he could think about were the lives that could have been saved if they had arrived even a couple days sooner.
For his part, N made all the appropriate expressions and noises of concern and sympathy, all while keeping a respectful distance. But Uzi knew he was NOT okay. Maybe more not-okay than she had ever seen him. He was very good at hiding it, much better than her anyway, but she was getting very good at picking up his tells.
He kept flinching at something, but would play it off as picking at imaginary lint on his coat. His tail kept drooping, the needle actually scraping the floor a couple times when he wasn't paying attention. But the big one was how he wouldn't look anyone in the eye.
While a lot of Workers around Outpost Three found eye contact with him uncomfortably intense, N himself saw it as a sign of respect and, most importantly, acknowledgment. He was letting them know that even though he literally looked down AT everyone, he wasn't looking down ON them.
This was especially true when it came to Uzi. So the first time she saw his eyelights clearly dip as he started focusing on her mouth, it was almost jarring.
She readily admitted she wasn't the best at reading people, but Uzi felt she had a pretty good idea of what was going through N's head. To everyone else, he was the conquering hero. Even the O-Five survivors, with their baleful gazes and distrustful looks, had to admit that without N they would still be stuck in that room, waiting for that thing to find a way in. But seventeen years of being told he wasn't good enough had left him practically unable to give himself credit or believe in his own successes. They had pushed through adversity, fought their asses off and came out on top. This was a big, fat W, but all N could see were the people he couldn't save. It didn't matter that most of them were already dead before he even knew they needed help, he would still find a way to make it his fault.
Because for as long as he could remember, it was always his fault.
However, despite her confidence in her amateur analysis, Uzi didn't have the first clue about how to bring it up, or if she even should.
'Maybe I should've paid more attention during those sessions with Annette...' Uzi thought.
But to be fair, how was she supposed to know she would one day have a friend at all, let alone one who needed counseling?
