Carefully, Grey hovered over Jupiter, long-fingered hand steady as they carefully cut away her cast.
"Maybe you should-"
"You are first, Jupiter," Grey said, firmly, "You are more injured due to your previous injuries, and I am worried over lasting damage."
Jupiter frowned at them. Grey ignored her and removed the cast with as much care as they could give.
"You don't have to always put me first," she whispered, softly, and her heart ached with the weight of what a lifetime of being first had done to Seraphi in her first life.
Grey paused, slightly, and let out a sigh. And gave a soft touch with their fingertips against Jupiter's throat. They gave the softest chirp of assurance and safety, of understanding threading through their own throat. Jupiter would not understand it, but… Grey wished to share what little had survived of the Keepers culture with the girl.
"You are young, you are in my care, Jupiter, it is my duty to place you first. I am... Not yours," it felt like a lie to say out loud, this claim of personhood.
By the rights of the Verse they were following the one that would own them, could do with them what she pleased once everything was signed to her. But it wasn't blind obedience that had caused Grey to try and help Jupiter, nor was it any devotion to a dead woman that had caused so much strife within their long life. It was because they had been afraid for so long, kept silent for so long, tried to stay alive for so long that it had become agony to stay beneath the heel of a monster that saw them as nothing. It was because, for the first time in their long life of tending to the people of Earth, they felt as they could do more than stay at the fringes. And because a little girl had seen them, seen them and understood someone was looking back.
They were Grey. They were a person, they were alive and more than a herder or minder to ignorant people with no knowledge of their fate at the hands of an invisible owner. They were themselves. And they had a friend that needed them, "I am not an object or a servant to you. I am your guardian until you can return to your mother. I am your friend."
Then they kept typing easily at the interface of the computer in front of them.
Softly, Jupiter Jones began to cry.
Then, as if a dam had been released, she started to howl. Grey let her, soothed her with their voice and hand alike. They touched the small child that was their friend and soothed down the hurts she had suffered at the hand of someone that had come before her. Her age was stark to Grey then, seeing this child with the knowledge of too much, of a being too large. Of morality and life of something so other. Who had learned just a few hours ago how large and horrific a legacy her previous self had left, and the destruction her inheritor had done in the meantime. It was large and too much.
Jupiter had taken it all, and in crying now, Grey saw the child hidden behind the maturity of intelligence and forced memories.
"I want my Mama!" her voice was desperate, her vocalization a high keen of fright, "I don't want to be alone. SHE WAS ALWAYS ALONE!"
"I am here, Jupiter Jones. You are not alone. You will never be alone again. I am here."
Jupiter clung, reaching out of the medical bath with a wild sob. Grey returned her embrace, even if it hurt their still injured body.
"You are not alone."
