Vaclav managed somehow to drag Malik into his shop without fainting. The sight of that blood-soaked cockpit, controls smeared and a mess of a medkit on the floor – he'd taken it in for an entire second and torn his gaze away as Malik fell into his arms, but it was burned into his memory.

Pritchard was shouting something in his ear, but Vaclav couldn't hear, couldn't focus on it. Mind whirling with the procedure he needed to perform. Whether or not he had the parts on hand – he did, he's sure he did, but maybe the spare leg he had wasn't quite the right size. He shouldn't be performing an augmentation on someone dying, either, but if he waited – she'd lost enough of her leg that if he let it heal he'd have to cut more off to augment it. She wouldn't want that, he knew.

She might not have a choice.

He exhaled a huff and focused first on keeping her alive. No point augmenting a corpse and- and he couldn't think beyond that. He couldn't let her die.

The door left open behind him, light spilling into that dark courtyard, the steam from her plane's cooling engines hissing in the night air. He pulled her over his shoulder, the strength augs in his arms helping so he didn't jostle her.

"Vaclav," sharp in his ear and he nearly startled so bad he dropped her. He'd forgotten Pritchard was still on the line.

"Y-yes, yes Pritchard?" Taking slow steps up the staircase, only wishing he hadn't put the elevator down on the second floor – though knowing he had to, that it was the safest place for it.

"Is she still breathing?"

Vaclav wonders why he asked – he had access to her vitals, he'd been watching them this whole time, but maybe he thinks it's incorrect. Or he wanted Vaclav to verify. He holds his free hand up to her ribs, feels her chest rise shallow. "Yeah, -yes."

"You stay on the line with me, no matter what, and we'll get through this." Pritchard did not often comfort, and that in itself was worrying.

Vaclav made it up to his office, pulling the red book and waiting as the door slid aside. Hitting the switch and closing the bookcase as he waited for the elevator doors to open, sliding in as soon as he could fit without jostling Malik.

It was a harrowing couple of hours before Vaclav was certain she was stable. Laid out on his operating chair and the stump of her leg elevated, wrapped up in some actual clean bandages, and her having not woken up the whole time. Pritchard was in his systems. All of them. The security cameras in his dungeon, his own HUD, and any equipment he had that had the slightest modicum of ability to connect to the internet.

That unwavering presence, the small nuclear hazard icon in the corner of his vision, it actually helped him focus more than he thought it would. Pritchard asked probing questions, pointed him towards whatever he was rooting around for in a panic that he'd forgotten he'd need. He misplaced a single PEDOT implant at one point, and nearly tore out his own hair before Pritchard spotted it with a half-dead security camera in the corner.

He had collapsed in a rolling chair, its wheels a patched parody of what it used to be, but worked well enough. Malik had always badgered him to get a new one. Maybe…maybe he finally would. He had his forehead on his tooled palm, and felt some dry crust rubbing against an eyebrow. Pulled his hand away and saw just how much dried blood covered the dark metal. He was reminded why he painted his augs red, and wondered why he hadn't done so to his palms yet.

He got up, legs wobbly, and moved to the sink to get his augs at least a little cleaner. He felt better, then. Taking a scalpel and sitting next to her to try and pry the deeper chunks of crusted blood out of the cracks of his arms.

Sitting like this, looking over her, he was suddenly reminded of how he had first really fallen in with the Phoenix. When he was irrevocably involved with her, and could not be anything but the Phoenix's mechanic. When OtarBotkoveli came to burn down his book shop for ordering things outside of the Dvali hierarchy. Otar had seen a crate of Sarif pieces that Malik had dropped off, and had demanded to know where he'd gotten it and why Otar hadn't known. Another power-trip, and Vaclav had brushed it off – he'd been threatened and harassed like this many times before. How was he to know that this time was different? He only realized it was truly serious this time when he smelled smoke, when a cold gun barrel was pressed into his forehead.

He didn't even know how it happened, how Malik happened to be close by, how she knew. The loud crash upstairs that made Otar pause, made him face the door. The elevator door opening with a loud ding, all five men in the room turning their guns to it – no one was supposed to come down there.

It was empty.

Only Vaclav, too terrified to turn his head, to move, to remind Otar of his existence, saw the movement in the other entrance. The secret one, that he thought even Otar didn't know about. The black flightsuit with red feathers peeking out over her arms moving slow and careful into the room. A gun in her hands, and she waited until she was close enough to not miss, firing four quick shots to down Otar's goons. They weren't expert shots – only one of them died instantly, the other three collapsed, and Otar whirled to face her. Which was a relief – the gun no longer pointing at Vaclav's head, the slightest freedom. He watched on in fear, too used to being threatened and taking the brunt of it, and now worried for her. She didn't know Otar, didn't know how to calm him down.

She was not here to calm him. Her shoulders vibrated tense in fury.

"Who the fuckare you?" Otar snarled, chest puffing large in the dark space, his gun pointing at her now.

"I'm the fucking Phoenix." She stalked forward, and Vaclav remembered watching in awe and horror, certain he would shoot her. "Who are you."

Before he could answer, his face red in fury that she didn't know him – perhaps that was the biggest blow she dealt - she shot him in the thigh. His gun went off, grazed the side of her flightsuit, and she shoved her gun back into its holster on her thigh – that was the last bullet she'd had and she decided she didn't want to bother loading another clip.

He was still reeling from the bullet in his thigh when she lunged forward and kicked it solidly with her boot and sent him to the floor. Whipped out a knife and put a foot to his throat, leaning down over him. The groans of his men as they tried to get themselves together filled the quiet, beyond the muffled crackling of a fire up above. She pressed her foot down harder on him and pulled her gun out again, replacing the clip while still holding her knife and firing another shot into each of the downed men still moving. Vaclav startled at the three loud cracks, sudden and merciless. The fire in her eyes and he wondered what it was. What it meant.

"I've decided I don't care." She ground her foot into his throat so hard that he focused more on getting it off than on trying to attack her. Perhaps she had seen right through him – seen that he was used to threatening behind the safety of a gun, used to threatening already scared people that never backfired on him, that was easy.

"You threatened my mechanic," she's leaning down closer to him so he can hear the tight tremble in her voice. He tries to sputter an interjection, that Vaclav wasn't hers, that he belonged to the Dvali. She didn't let him. "You thought you could walk in here and do what you pleased because you have some third-rate punks working for you? I should've dealt with you months ago." Vaclav winced at that – he had told her that the Dvali protected him for a small favor – for working for them when they needed him to. She would be furious with him for lying to her.

She kept it short. Slammed her knife into his throat and slashed it hard. Listened to his gurgled whimper as he heaved once more against her foot, and she let him go, stepping off and kicking away his gun. Watching him die slow and choked. She turned and made sure the rest of them wouldn't walk out of there either. Before moving to Vaclav himself and making sure he was unhurt. The fire in her eyes flipped like a switch, something less roaring and blind, something a little closer to what he was used to.

"Mal, I'm-"

"Are you hurt?" she interrupted him, pulling him up off the chair almost gently when he shook his head. "Let's get you to my plane, and then I'm going to make sure your shop doesn't burn entirely down."

She had done that, had strapped him in to the copilot's chair – he was still too much in shock to do much – and had saved far more of his bookstore than he'd thought possible. He'd thought it would all be gone when Otar first told him he was going to punish him. The Phoenix…she'd gone to that much effort to save him, save his home. His livelihood, the one that he loved despite it not making much money at all.

He'd asked why, after he asked how she'd known. She just said 'a certain snake' warned her, and only then did he see the trail one Nucl3ar Snake had made through his systems. As for why, the answer had been that it was her fault he'd gotten into trouble in the first place. It was the least she could do.

Now here he was, looking over her, after her, the way she had done for him those few years ago. She looked so different like this. Smaller not for her injury, but that she was the one being protected. Not saved. She'd saved herself. She'd gotten herself all the way to Koller. Now it was his turn to take care of her.

He'd build her the finest piece of augmentation technology the world had ever seen. Better than his own, and something no one could ever mistake for being unworthy of the Phoenix.

She would have to wait a little, though. He'd implanted the PEDOT sensors into the stump of her leg, but did not want to go through the shock of attaching an augmentation (and one that would only be temporary, at that) while she was already in such a state. Better to have her wait a few weeks for him to make her a custom piece and attach it when she was better healed than to do it now. She could stay here, or he could go with her to wherever she wanted him to until then. His other clients would have to wait.

She came first.

He'd been so busy ruminating, sharp scalpel dug into his arm, that it took Pritchard barking a sharp "Vaclav!" to get his attention. The tool sparked sharp as he twisted it suddenly, jerking alert just in time to see the sewer entrance open, and a figure move quickly through it.

He nearly lit his blowtorch, ready to defend Malik fiercely, when he realized it was Icarus. Covered in blood. And carrying a large tank under one arm.