“I don’t need your help,” the Elder buzzed at her, teeth flashing in her direction.
Keir gasped and pulled her hands back, clutching the medkit to her chest and taking a few rapid steps backwards towards the relative safety of her designated resting room. His expression immediately softened, one large hand going to cover the stain that was slowly spreading across his chest and the other reaching out towards her, palm open in a gentle gesture rather than the fist she was expecting.
Thus far, the Elder had been a far cry from anything she was expecting.
He was difficult to understand, as her training had warned her he might be — moody and capricious, taken to long periods of silence followed by outbursts like these. And yet…
“I’m sorry,” he sang, his baritone soft and low as he coaxed her forward once again. She took one step towards him, unable to help the shaking in her limbs. He was… intimidatingly large, nearly twice the size her Caretakers had been, arms as thick around as her waist. It would only take one sharp movement…
“Little one,” he sighed, dropping his hand as he lowered himself slowly down onto the floor, those orange eyes dark with regret. “Little one, I… did not mean to… to, ahh… frighten.”
She had been told in the hatchery to fear her Elder, to obey him above all other things. She had been told that they would likely be demanding, that she would often be expected to carry out nearly impossible tasks and would be left alone to discover how to fulfill them. And while her Elder had proven to be strange, to be volatile, and certainly to be intimidating… There was something about him that didn’t quite fit the role she had been learning to expect. There was something about her own duties that didn’t quite seem to fit in as they should.
It was clear he was no longer used to living with another. His quarters were set off from the rest of the ship, and her own had clearly originally been intended as part of his. There were no other resting compartments onboard the ship, but it had clearly been set up as a long-term living arrangement. Where, then, was the rest of the cohort?
Where were her hatch-mate Assistants, and cousin service Drones?
Where were the Motherguard Apprentices whom she had met within the Hatchery tunnels…?
The Elder gasped quietly as his knee hit the floor of the ship, and rather than kneeling in dignity he fell over onto his hip, panting quietly as he curled in onto himself. Her antennae twitched, scenting the blood on the air, smelling the fear that curled beneath it. Her Elder was… different, she knew. And he was hurt.
She approached him slowly, her fingers tracing nervous patterns on the cool surface of the medkit, but he did not rise from his undignified heap. He only lay there, panting, a quiet, keening song of pain rising from within his chest.
He was… terrifyingly large. He was dangerous, a well-trained soldier with the strength to snuff her out like the smallest candle flame, and yet…
He had been kind to her since her arrival, even though he looked at her as if she was something that pained him. He had given her food, given her bedding. He had hardly asked her to work for him at all.
“Elder, sir…” she spoked up, her song quavering slightly with nervousness as she approached. “You’re injured. Please. It is… part of my duties to help. I have basic medical–”
“NO.” He raised his head, glaring at her, and the song died in her chest as the cold hand of terror gripped at her coron, her pulse thrumming loudly through her veins. He stared at her impassively for a long moment and Keir could feel something stirring within her, something that the Hatchery had tried its best to stomp out but never quite succeeded. In spite of her fear, in spite of her training, she felt it, hot and bubbling, spreading its way through her veins as he stared at her.
What? Did he expect her to sit there, to not do her job while he bled out like an idiot upon the floor?
She tightened her grip on the medkit and glared back at him, a miniature, hatchling’s version of a war-song buzzing in her chest. His anger quickly faded to shock and he was left gaping at her as she stomped her way forward and slammed the medkit down on the floor beside his head. “SIR, it is part of my DUTIES to HELP!”
He lifted himself from up off the floor with his arms and for a moment her anger flickered and died, replaced with fear. He was going to yell at her now, to force her out of the airlock like in the horror stories the other Assistants had told within the tunnels, he was going to slap her and–
He laughed, warm and incredulous instead, letting himself fall down upon the floor once more, shaking his head. What…?
No matter. She knew an opportunity when she saw one and knew better than to let it go to waste. She… gathered her courage and yanked up his tunic, ignoring his hiss of surprise and pain as she did so and bent to her task, batting aside the hand that reached to push her away. He didn’t fight back against her, only lay still and watched her as she worked, her hands moving with quick and well-trained efficiency. Big… idiot. Big stupid.
He wasn’t anything she had been trained to expect.