(Prompt: Theron, Nine and implant maintenance)

The third time Theron nearly twitches out of Nightshrike's pilot seat she turns toward him with a frown.

"I know you keep saying you're fine," Nine says, "but I'm not sure I believe you."

"You remember that shock trap we ran through on the way out of the base?"

She interlaces her still-tingling fingers in front of her, flexing them until her knuckles crack. "It was rather memorable, yes. Why?"

"My implant's shorting out." He twitches again, raises his hand to his temple as he bites back a curse. "Pretty sure it's just a blown connection, so I thought I could live with it until we get back to Odessen, but-"

"Have you tried turning it off and on again?" The moment the words leave her mouth she thinks better of them, watching him grit his teeth and the corner of his eye dart upward with every pulse of energy through the device. "Sorry. Not funny. You know I'm not much good at implant maintenance, but I can take a look at it if you'd like."

"Yeah. Let me just switch over to autopilot-" his other hand hand moves across the console, locking in their route, before he stands and steps toward the rear of the bridge- "and grab my kit out of my bag, and I'll meet you in medbay?"

She nods agreement and stands, too, a watchful eye on him, but he's moving just as well as he'd been when they'd been running frantic from Arcann's knights twenty minutes ago; he hides his injuries far too well for her liking, pushes himself too hard, always throwing himself in front of her into the line of fire. He worries about her, he says, about Valkorion in her head and Arcann and Vaylin relentless at her heels.

She worries about him, too.

By the time Theron steps into the infirmary she's got a pair of sterile gloves, a disinfectant swab and a pack of clean bandages on the tray beside the examination table- she'd be kidding herself to call this proper technique, but she can at least pretend. He holds the little metal box toward, her, hand outstretched.

"You, me and the medbay… must be a day ending in -y." She takes the kit, setting it alongside the rest of her equipment. "Is anything else hurting? I should take a look while we're in here."

"I could do with a thorough going-over- ow-" the flirtation in his voice makes her grin, remembering previous interludes, but when he winces she just points and he settles back onto the table, turning onto his right side, facing her. "I'm okay, otherwise. I'll walk you through the repair."

Hands duly gloved and a surgical mask covering her nose and mouth, she runs the swab across his temple as one of the implant's lights flickers and stutters in time with his spasming muscle and then she opens the case, drawing out the first of the instruments. "Go ahead."

He's done this before, she can tell- with his clear instructions within a minute she's found the fault and starts teasing the wire out around the thin metal rod held in her left hand. Focused on the work, bent over him with her head bowed scant inches from his, she doesn't notice his hands moving until his fingers slide into the back pockets of her trousers.

"Normally I wouldn't complain," she says as the wire finally comes free and she reaches down for the- oh, what's it called? the one with the hook- "but I'm trying to concentrate."

"And I'm trying not to get in your way. I need somewhere to put my hands." Theron closes his eyes. "This is the part I hate, where it feels like it's pulling right on- eh, never mind. You wouldn't know. You haven't got hardware."

"I do, actually. It's basically inactive, now-" (more or less; she still hears him in her head sometimes, whatever it is that Watcher X is now, artificial or ghost or a fragment of her own shattered self. But he is a counterpressure to Valkorion's constant psychic assaults, and there are days when she is glad of him. She never thought she'd say that.) "-and I had to have the scar removed. Protocol. But-" there it goes. Stupid wire. She picks up a fresh one with the forceps, wrapping it into the implant's connection. "It's still there. Too risky to take out, they said."

He blinks at her, slow, as his hands shift and she tries not to squirm. "Didn't know that. Where?"

"My spine."

"The SIS offered me something like that once- okay, if the wire's on, just thread it down into the open port and-" a stifled little noise: the other end of the wire slides into the socket, slipping in and down like a living thing, winding serpentine until it pulls the implant down flush against his skin- "fucking Void, that gets me every time. Anyway. I told 'em no. This one's worth the hassle with everything it can do, but you've seen what happens when it malfunctions. I don't care about quicker reflexes if the minute it blows it'd cripple me."

"My feelings exactly. Imperial Intelligence considered augmentations optional, thankfully, and my training scores were good enough without that they never pressured me." Slotting the tools back into their places in the kit box and peeling off the gloves- she doesn't need them now, the last of the real work done- she holds the calibrator between two fingers. "Just the reset now, hm?"

Theron nods. "In a second- I need a break. I was just going to say that I know you don't like permanents. How'd you end up with a spinal?"

"I didn't really have a choice at the time," she says, carding her fingers through his hair until some of the tension eases from his neck and shoulders. A small comfort (he never wanted sedatives if he could help it, not after Ziost) but still, he smiles up at her. "I needed to get somewhere and it was the only way to bypass the security system. It worked, though in retrospect I probably would have opted for the anesthesia."

"You let someone put in a permanent spinal augment with no anesthesia. Seriously?"

She shrugs, smile wry, at the memory. "In a prison cell in Shadow Town, to boot. Not the smartest thing I've ever done. Long story short, I know how you feel, at least in a general sense."

He opens his mouth, then closes it again and just looks at her, eyebrows raised, unspeaking, until she rolls her eyes at him and ruffles his hair.

"Oh, don't you start. Like you never did anything stupid in your younger days."

"Not like that." He's still holding on to her and he slips one hand free, a playful swat against her backside that makes her jump, laughing. "You can start the calibration. I'm ready."

She lays the device atop his implant, lining up the sensors, and activates it. "So you wouldn't call stripping half-naked and throwing your blaster at a Darth stupid?"

"It was a tactical decision, which you promised never to bring up again. And that makes it sound like those two actions were directly related."

"Weren't they?

"In my defense, it was-" the lines across his forehead ease as his implant chirps and its lights pulse once, twice, and then stay on- "really, really hot in there. Which had nothing to do with my blaster misfiring."

She grins, kisses his cheek lightly before straightening, tucking the last of his tools neatly away into their case "Mm-hm. All done. Is that better?"

"Much."

"Should we head back to the bridge now, then, or-"

Theron lets go of her, sitting up on the exam table with his legs dangling over the side. In the next moment he hooks around the back of her thigh with one foot, pulls her forward toward him and the surgical mask down off her face; it falls, forgotten, to the floor. "Later."