Adam makes sure the house is locked down, shades pulled and no unnecessary lights bleeding out into the darkness outside. The smallest distraction before he's going back to watch Vaclav, to see him and…what he'd done to her.

He gets back just in time to see her go under, see the way she slumps exhausted in his chair, as her shoulders loosen and the crease in her forehead eases.

Vaclav moves to shift the coat off of her gently, lifting her with care off the chair with one arm to pull it out from under her with the other. He offers it back to Icarus, not saying anything about the fact that she was wearing it. Hopefully he never will.

Adam thinks he knows Vaclav better than that. The mechanic will eventually say something, the kid could never keep his mouth shut when it came to anything not business- or life-threatening.

He doesn't put it back on. Hangs it over the back of a chair and leaves it for the moment. Arms crossed as he leans against the doorframe and he does his best to hide how hard he's focusing on keeping very consciously aware of every single aug of his. Unable to stop thinking of the moment he lost control, the screeching rush of fury that had slid straight into his gut his chest his augs and took from him.

Vaclav doesn't notice, or pretends not to, at least, as he works on getting the top half of her flightsuit off. She would never forgive him for cutting it apart if she wasn't dying, and even the slice in the fabric wasn't enough for her to discard it – she always patched her suits for as long as she could before it stopped looking professional enough, and only then would she buy a new one.

The mechanic slides the dark suit over her shoulders, off her arms and down, and Adam's attention is caught by the movement. Vaclav pulls her tanktop up enough to expose the bandage on her side, and Adam frowns hard, looking over her carefully. She had gained a handful of scars he didn't remember from the last time he'd seen her – back when she'd been learning to use her new leg. Slices across her sides. A bullet nestled between her ribs on the right. Gashes over her arms.

He can't help but wonder how many of those he could have prevented.

He wonders how she got them. If she tended to those injuries herself – the scars weren't small, not professionally stitched – if she had been alone when she'd gotten hurt.

He wonders why that bothers him.

He must have focused on that train of thought for longer than he'd thought, because by the time he snaps back to Vaclav's movements, he's already finished stitching up her side and is putting a new bandage over it.

Vaclav leaves the chest wrappings alone – he could redo it when she was awake, knows she'd appreciate not being touched while she's out and under. The compression they'd done on their way here was enough to keep her ribs together.

The mechanic pauses with his hands over the makeshift bandage over her eye – it's already seeping red, the fabric stained and wet to the touch. Vaclav swallows hard, his fingers curl for a moment, before reaching around and carefully, carefully unraveling it.

Adam hasn't moved. Riveted. He doesn't want to see, he already knows what it looks like what he did. But. He can't turn away.

Vaclav's hands still when he gets it off, he just barely manages to curb the sound of horror when he sees the ruin of her face – very aware that Icarus is right there. It comes out of him as a choked wheeze, and he stalls hard only for a moment.

In the next, he moves fast, reaching for clean tools, and just swallows hard. It was easier to cut into clients he didn't know. Pulls a stool and hunches over her and sets to work.

Adam doesn't notice any of this. The moment her face is uncovered his breath freezes hard in his chest. Rigid and cold at the gaping hole where her eye should be, the swollen ruin around the skin, the shattered bone he can see glistening in the work light.

The cold horror in his ribs that he did this to her.

She lies still as Vaclav cuts and though her chest rises and falls, soft and far too at ease for how much pain she should be in, artificial and induced-

It's too much like the moment he held a gun to her head and she closed her eyes. Like she was ready to die, ready for him to kill her, and she hadn't even resisted in any lethal form-

He knew she could fight, he'd seen it at the gala he'd watched from afar, in the way she carried herself, in the muscles wound tight in her shoulders. But she hadn't fought him, had tried to disable the weapons he was so rapidly turning on her without hurting him.

He'd be angry about that if he wasn't stuck on loop like a sticking gear of the way she'd looked under him, like she was done fighting. The surge and kick a moment later, his desperate attempt to aim away from her, to resist the fury static wild in his gut that told him to kill everything in his path – none of that wipes away the single instant of calm acceptance.

The look on her face now is too similar.

He lurches off the doorway, augs a whine in his ear and makes for the bathroom across the hall. Something roiling in his gut and he thinks he might be sick. Ripping off his chest plate because there's not enough air in his lungs and that must be the cause, flinging it against the wall in his hurry. His hands grip the sink hard, fingers digging digging and if he was thinking clearly he might worry about leaving imprints in the stone.

A dragging, agonized inhale. His HUD warns him of his erratic heartbeat – funny, that his metal heart could still malfunction just like its flesh counterpart – of his oxygen levels, of the 'panic' warning in the corner of his eyes.

He holds the breath.

Exhales.

Shades up and staring at himself in the mirror, the twisting lenses in his eyes-

Bad idea. The shades are back down instantly.

Adam's arms shake against the sink, his damaged arm sparking hard at the subconscious commands sent to it, and for one terrifying moment he thinks he's about to lose control again. There's an instant where he considers using his nanoblade to disable everything permanently – he won't be used again won't be out of control-

It takes another moment to register that the shaking is coming from him.

Another slow inhale, dragged through a synthetic rebreather. Hold it. Exhale.

Finally, the ache in his chest settles, his breath evens out, and he lets go of the sink, turns on the faucet. Cold, all the way to cold, and splashes it, digs under his shades at his face, scrubbing. Trying to ground himself back.

He doesn't think he'll ever be able to stop seeing the red angry ruin of her eye, the gaping hole, and her obstinate fucking trust of him anyway.

Adam is so very tempted to call Kay again, pay for a ride to Detroit, walk into David Sarif's fucking office, and shoot him. To see his expression, the single instant where he thinks that he might have Adam crawling back with his tail between his legs, willing to work. And to see that crumple beautifully when he pulls his revolver and aims it between his eyes. Or maybe he'll aim for his right eye and bury that bullet into his skull.

An eye for an eye.

If Sarif hadn't stuffed him full of augs like an over-eager child at build-a-bear, he wouldn't have been in a position to hurt her so greatly. He'd found the logs – that only his internals, left arm, and skull needed augmentation. That he had so much more is all to blame on Sarif's fucking ego. And then to have the gall to expect him to stay and continue working for him on whatever bullshit corporate espionage he was supposed to care about-

Fuck that.

When Pritchard sent him an interesting email a few months later, of Megan Reed admitting she'd taken his DNA, well.

She'd better hope she died in the attack. If she didn't, he'd finish the job if he ever saw her again.

Well, his breathing had evened out at least. Sarif and Reed would be so lucky to never come across him again.

He straightens up, looks at those reflective, inscrutable shades in the mirror. Exhales a sigh, rolls his shoulders back, and steps back.

There may be finger-shaped marks in the stone.

He steps back to the workshop, and Vaclav hasn't moved but the wound on her face has been cleaned, cut away, prepared for augmentation. Less swollen meat and more unhealed injury. The hole still gnaws at him, makes a matching wound in his chest.

"Heeyyy, Mr. Tall, Dark, and Augged," Vaclav looks pale, his voice not quite right as he tries to hit lighthearted and easy. "You might not want to be here for this. Iiii dunno how much you remember about your own augging, but the eye isss….not a fun one."

Adam remembers connecting her leg, holding her down as she reacted sharp, painfully. He wonders if the eye is worse. The uneasy look in Vaclav's eyes says it is.

Instead of leaving, of staying back, he steps forward.

"Aaaahh…Icarus?" He sounds confused, run ragged. A little lost.

"I'll hold her down," his voice is even, and he's almost proud of that fact. It took more effort now than it has before.

"You're….sure about this?" The leg had been one thing – he hadn't actually done that, but this…

He doesn't answer the mechanic. Just fixes him with an unmoving stare. Vaclav holds his hands up in surrender, wiping them off with a rag and reaching for the eye, disconnecting it from the tablet he'd had running to make sure it was still in perfect condition. And then disconnecting the eyeball from the optic cable.

"Alright. Hold her head still for me. The rest of her might react but I need her head unmoving." He lines up the cable, takes a deep breath to steady himself, and braces himself to hear her sounds of pain, again.

Adam hesitates. The moment of gut-wrenching anxiety at being close to her, that he might suddenly find his hands not under his control anymore, that they might seek to hurt her again-

Vaclav glances up at him, hands stilling. Like he's considering moving to brace her down and do the operation on his own.

Adam steps forward, braces his hands almost gently at her jaw, at the top of her head. Leaning over her heavy, using his weight to brace the rest of her even as he feels a static fear in the back of his mind. Illogical – distance from her didn't dictate how likely he was to try and kill her again, but it's there nonetheless.

His face betrays nothing, shoulders braced in preparation – they'd had to hold her down pretty strongly for the leg, and an eye was so much more delicate. He just nods at the mechanic, thumb digging in just the slightest at her jawline, and he braces himself, breathing deep.

Vaclav doesn't say anything about the tightness in his expression, or the way he's leaning over her and bracing her down hard. He just steadies himself, exhales, and slides it in, digging for the connecting PEDOT implant he'd already set.

The cable slides in and connects with an almost inaudible click. It's the last moment of quiet.

Her left eye shoots open and an agonized scream catches low in her throat as she tries to thrash, writhe, get away from whatever is hurting her. Adam doesn't move, hands steady on her, holding her down. The noise doesn't make it past her teeth, he's holding her still, and the panicked fear in her eyes is another spike in his gut.

"Ahfuck I'm sorry, I'm sorry firebird, just give me a sec-" Vaclav works faster, settling the rest of the cable into its place. Reaching for the eye without even looking back for it, turning it and sliding it into the socket. He pushes it in against the struts he'd placed down to reinforce the bones that had shattered.

A sob bubbles in her throat and Adam is focusing everything he has on keeping her unmoving while not breaking her jaw, hopes he's not holding her hard enough to bruise. Afraid that when he lifts his hands there will be more marks, more signs of what he's done-

The lenses in the eye twist suddenly, come alive, and Vaclav is just as quickly disconnecting it, twisting it back and forth in some sequence before pulling the eye out again. As soon as his hands are away he nods, setting the eye down where he'd picked it up and reaching gentle for her shoulder.

Adam lets go immediately, and she is still very much awake, and very much in pain. One of her hands fly up to try and cover the hole in her face and Vaclav has to catch it before she can do so, his thumbs stroking reassuringly at the back of her palm.

Adam's not thinking, clearly or at all, because the next thing he does is put a hand back into the back of her hair and pull her head into his chest, careful to keep the injury facing away so the just-cleaned wound couldn't get dirty.

The sound of pain that had been clawing out of her chest stops with a shuddery wheeze, and he doesn't even realize he's stroking his thumb gently through her hair, soothing and slow.

"I've got you." A quiet murmur into her hair, the rumble barely audible, but the way Vaclav's gaze snaps to him doesn't escape his notice.

She makes another sound, and Vaclav is reaching for gauze pads to put over her eye, leaning away for just a moment while Adam holds her to himself. The mechanic leans back as soon as he has them in hand, pressing close to put them over her eye and tape them down. Adam helps pull the tape around her head, tries to ignore how he can feel her shake against him.

Once it's wrapped, he just turns her head into him, arms around her, and he's not thinking about anything except trying to ease those tortured sounds that had been coming from her. One hand in her hair and the other on her spine, a slow movement up and down. He doesn't notice Vaclav watching, the look of surprise not remotely hidden, before he suddenly moves to clean up. He almost doesn't notice the easing of the tension in her shoulders, the slow slump into him.

"Fuck." It's a quiet whimper, nearly muffled into his chest.

He echoes the sentiment.

Malik wakes up suddenly and violently to the feeling of something boring into her skull.

She tries to throw off whoever's attacking her, tries to move, but there's a weight on her.

She tries to scream. The sound catches hard in her throat and there's metal holding her mouth shut, and the thing in her skull feels like it's on fire.

Someone's leaning over her, and she's trying to categorize trying to think past the literal spike in her brain and suddenly there's another pressure against the thing in her skull and something slides in and presses against injury. It really shouldn't hurt more than the thing digging into her brain but she notices it regardless.

She needs to see, needs to memorize the faces of those she's going to hunt the fuck down later and make them feel every moment of this but sharper. Her eye closes against her will as something. Else. Turns on.

There's a single instant in which she hears an activation, feels something spin and focus and-

It's just as quickly gone.

All at once the metal holding her down eases, pulls her up instead, into soft, warm fabric. Turning her very very injured side away and into open air, and just.

Holding her close.

There's. A hand in her hair. The noise she'd tried to make dies an ignoble death in her chest, as the pounding agony subsides to a dull thud. As the fear and adrenaline and instinct to fight and thrash and claw- subsides.

"I've got you."

The voice is low, rumbles against her hair and settles in her chest and even if she's not quite here enough to know just what or whose it is, it. Comforts her. Brings her down to ground.

She slumps into that warmth, feels something pressed against her eye and when the scratch of tape unwinding ceases, she finds her face turned fully into that chest. Darkness away from that piercing light and the cover over her wound means no one else was going to try and dig into her brain.

She shudders, feels a hand on her spine, a comforting weight. Recognizes, suddenly, whose hands those are.

"Fuck." Quietly, into his chest. A heavy inhale. A less stable exhale. Her right hand moves, no longer held down, to cover the fabric over her eye. She doesn't press down, doesn't incite more pain, just. Covers it. Her fingertips tremble against her forehead, and she doesn't notice.

"I'm sorry Mal-" from her right, and she doesn't turn to look. Knows that voice. Vaclav. She must be…home? As much of one as she has. "I can't give you anything else for the pain- Jensen already gave you some painkillers and I had to put you under. I'm afraid any more and it might be too much." He speaks fast, as he always does when he's nervous.

She tries to say 'it's fine.' The sound that makes it past her teeth is another groan. Not quite what she was aiming for, but she'd take what she could get.

So she's with Vaclav, and. Adam? She thinks. Somewhere safe. Which doesn't explain the pain in her eye, the stabbing agony and why she was suddenly awake. She'll think about it later. Maybe ask Adam to go hunt down whoever did it to her and make them hurt.

For now, it's warm. There's a comforting touch in her hair, over her spine and shoulders, and she just.

Breathes.