Broken

A/N: Technician Brown is broken and needs fixing, because (all main story indications to the contrary) you can't place everyone else in danger when a teammate is falling apart. (Too bad Gino wasn't in charge of psych evals for the crew. We'd have spared ourselves a lot of grief.)

Pre-game, early 2058, about 18 months into the Whale's journey, but with all game spoilers. Swears, because it's Gino and Vandham.

All the good stuff belongs to MONOLITH SOFT, with a special round of love for the localization team 8-4. Lila and Gino are mine.

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"You got balls, coming to me, telling me this," Vandham barked at the scrawny tech.

"It's your job to fix it. She's broken," Gino repeated.

Vandham slammed the other man against the corridor wall and pressed hard. His voice dropped to a hiss. "Shut your stupid mouth. You say that loud enough and someone's …"

"Someone better do something. It's like she doesn't even really see me. I can't raise her on her comm link, I can't find her when I need her. She's all over the place. It's like she's a ghost."

"She's always been hard to find."

"Not like this. She's gone, Chief. Something's really wrong with her this time. I don't think she's slept or eaten for I don't know, two weeks? I'm not even sure she's stopping for water."

Vandham pulled back and frowned. That sounded all too frighteningly familiar.

Gino kept going. "It's like somebody woke her up and told her about Earth and it's the first time she heard it. She's got that look, like she can't believe what happened, like she can't go on, like she's a robot, like she's broken…"

"I said, shut up about that." Because if Brown had broken, that meant one thing. A quick trip to the Mim Center and a prompt shut-down. No more Brown, no more problem. Because some things they still didn't know how to fix, and they couldn't risk a team member that could put them all in danger.

The tech kept rattling off the things that were worrying him. How Brown was repeating herself, or failing to respond, or just looking twitchy and pale, frightened, even in pain. How she wasn't caring about her team, not as deeply as she had in the past. Sure, she dredged up a smile for the newest additions, but it was a struggle for her to look at them, speak to them. She would stop in the middle of work and stand there, shaking, eyes wild. The list kept going on and on. When Gino himself started to repeat, Vandham finally cut him off.

"Enough. You're telling me the same things. I'll look into it. Where is she?"

The look Gino gave him was shocking in the purity of its gratitude. This was what the man wanted. Not to punish Brown, not to get rid of her, as Vandham first thought. He wanted his teammate fixed, not lost. "Don't know, do I? Maybe the lower floors, like level 8-4? Any place that's quiet, isolated. We have some maintenance due on the atmospheric interchanges. She might be crawling around there."

It wasn't too much later that Vandham made his way to the suggested location. He'd make it a priority to see about this. If Brown had broken, he'd haul her to the Mim Center himself, and hold her hand as they shut her down, and then…

He'd held her hand once, during the first bad weeks after the Whale launched. The ship was a mess, damaged from the attacks, barely finished in the first place. Whole sections kept depressurizing, bulkheads shifted with alarming regularity, the fact that the engines kept steady was not so much a point of pride as one of prayer. He didn't even want to think about the shields, and they should have been the first priority.

Add to that, most of the crew were basket cases, in tears or raging, shocked beyond measure at all that had happened to them. A large percentage had woken up to find themselves on a strange ship, everyone they'd ever loved gone, every place they'd ever walked destroyed. Even the holdovers from the White Whale campus weren't taking the events so well. They'd lived through 3 days of sheer terror, witnessed the attack itself, the escape, watched sister ships being blown to particles. Every moment the exact same fate could befall them. The new kids, the ones who hadn't been on-line for the frantic last days of prep and launch, at least had that much less trauma, but they had that much less warning.

There hadn't been time to deal with it all, fix what desperately needed to be fixed. They managed a triage for repairs, hitting the things that were most likely to destroy the ship first, then worrying about lesser things, like life support. Everything else would happen later. In the face of too few hands, everyone worked around the clock. Thank God the mims were built so sturdy. A person could run day in and day out without rest or food. He'd slept half as many hours as days they'd been up, probably less, when he caught Nagi giving him a careful look during a briefing. A look he'd given the Captain the day before, because he wasn't sure Nagi had gotten ANY sleep.

Death from overwork. Or, perhaps more accurately, suicide. The number of teammates that suddenly became incapable of responding had started to climb in the third week, and if things kept up, they were going to wreck themselves through attrition long before the ship gave way.

Under Nagi's direction, Vandham had instituted a recovery program in the main engine hall that very day, a fancy phrase for shoving as many bunks into his own office as possible, and announcing that every team member was expected to use them for at least 3 hours every day. Don't use them? Off the team, and to hell with how badly they were needed. He made a public show of being one of the first to use them. After a few days, he was always amused to see who made use of it when he was napping himself. Usually the worst holdouts, either most senior or most junior. Early on, he'd swung his legs off his bunk and almost stepped on a nest of 3 environmental specialists, not one old enough to drink, all piled together like puppies on the floor beside his cot. They never even flinched as he tiptoed around them.

They'd put rations and water around the ship, in every main station, with the expectation that they would be used and refilled or the station heads would have to explain. He'd enjoyed some of the more active explanations, really calmed him down even if it made his knuckles sting. And he'd tracked down every crewmate and made sure they rested, or else.

Brown had taken special persuading. Persuading, ha, he'd stormed into the relay station and threatened to carry her bodily up to the room, because she was the last holdout that he could tell. Her team had shown up in a timely fashion, sure, but not a whisper of Brown herself. She'd stammered that she'd caught a nap here and there, but her eyes were dull and not quite focused. He'd enjoyed doing his best to intimidate her, always a challenge, usually a fail, and watched with surprise when she agreed meekly. Meek and Lila, not a great combo. Sour and Lila, sarcastic and Lila, just this side of insubordinate and Lila, much more familiar.

He'd marched her up to the bunks, and stood, with arms crossed as she sat on a cot. And would not lie down. She sat and sat, blinking somewhat blankly. Finally, he sat down on the cot across from her and took her hand in his and gave her a direct order. "Sleep." Which she did, finally. She'd been exact in her use of the recovery room after that, hitting it every day for precisely 3 hours. Never caused him worry ever since. [If you ignored her Bug House crew, their fights and illicit discos, and her tendency towards wandering into random areas on her off-hours, not exactly unauthorized but tolerated because she tended to drop off snacks to startled sections on her way past. Plus the whole door hacking thing, but he hadn't officially acknowledged that.]

The section Gino had directed him to was dim and dusty. Okay, dusty was an exaggeration, but the air had an unused feel to it. Not much need for staff here, it ran pretty much automatically. Now where the hell to start looking? He stood quiet for a moment, on the off chance he could hear something. A whisper of sound led him accurately to a side room, where he found Technician Brown replacing filters with steady but slow movements.

"It's okay, it's okay, it's ooookay," she was muttering to herself.

It was not okay. Her head was hanging without energy. Her hair, usually pulled back in a tight braid, was escaping in whisps of brown and frivolous candy colors (faded green, with some of last month's pink). Her movements were more sluggish than slow. Worse, she ignored the figure in the doorway, didn't turn to greet him first. He almost never got the jump on her.

Gino hadn't been lying to him. She looked broken.

"Brown, I've gotten some bad reports about you." Niceties were wasted, and even after a year and a half, there was too much to do.

She turned, too slowly, and stared vaguely at him. He wasn't sure what she was seeing, if she was seeing. Her eyes were duller than he'd ever seen, and he'd seen her at her lowest, even before the Whale.

"When did you sleep last?"

"I … I'm not sure … maybe …" she stammered, rubbing her face. She blinked rapidly. "I don't know."

"What happened?"

"I don't understand."

"Your friend, Gino," he said, with a hint of sarcasm because he wasn't convinced Gino was anyone's friend, "said you came back from your break and promptly became a zombie. What's up?"

"I … the break, it didn't work out …"

He felt a crawling suspicion as he remembered their last conversation, when she had given her report before that weekend. "You said you were meeting an old friend."

She looked at him, closed her eyes, and shuddered. "It wasn't right. Nothing was right."

"What did he do?" Vandham ground out slowly. Because god help him, he'd see the ship down two members before he decommissioned just Brown.

"He wasn't there. I couldn't find him! No one …!" Her voice was rising almost to a shriek, when she jammed both fists against her mouth and shuddered even harder.

"Are you broken?" he snapped. Stupid. No one admitted to it. But usually, the broken kids, they couldn't even answer a question.

"… I don't know. Nothing was right, I wasn't supposed to …" She covered her mouth again, and looked at him with wide eyes. This time she really seemed to see him. He moved slightly to the side and was relieved to see her track his movement. So maybe she wasn't completely gone.

"You've got 24 hours to get back in shape. Until then, off-duty. Food, water, sleep, comb your damn hair. If you aren't ready by then, you stay off-duty. Permanently."

Her hands were by her side, slack. "Does it matter?"

"Not to me. I got enough to fix."

She nodded, dully. Then she looked at him, with an uncomprehending but piercing stare that gave him the creeps. "Who are you? Really?"

"Are you kidding me?! I'm the one who's gonna bust you if you don't get a move on."

"Who are you?" she said, unmoved.

He narrowed his eyes. "I'm Jack Vandham, chief of this boat, and you are the sorriest excuse for a shipmate I've seen in months. Get. Going."

"Chief. Boat. Yes, that's … that's real."

His worries had been swamped by pure impatience. "Dammit, Brown, I'm about to bust you right now. MOVE!"

"Yes. Okay. I'm going to, um…" At the doorway, she paused. Before he could bellow at her again, she said, mechanically and clearly, "I've cleaned the first four sections, sir, but E and F still need to be exchanged. Could you let Gino know, sir? And if you could be nice about it, please? Because he hates this duty."

Pure Lila, telling him his job, at least with respect to her crew. Maybe she wasn't broken. Vandham snorted. "Not your worry now. Get lost." He pulled the unfinished set of filters without watching her leave.

It was exactly 24 hours later that she showed up, neat and clear eyed and her normal shade of pale with just a hint of shadows around her eyes. "Sir, I followed your orders. Everything. I didn't sleep enough, but I'll do better tonight, and in the future." She looked at him calmly.

He wasn't exactly happy to see her. It had nagged at him all this time. He'd taken a hell of a risk, sending her home to recover, rather than dragging her off to the professionals. Even if she wasn't broken, she might need special care. He'd sent someone to check on her, someone with muscle and orders to do exactly that if he had any concerns. The first reports had come back innocent. She'd made it to her assigned quarters and hadn't stirred all day. Then, the next morning she'd left early, but not unbearably so, and vanished. Oh no, this was not gonna fly. Broken or whole, if he had to hunt her down, he'd junk her no matter what her condition.

"Where the hell did you go?"

"Sir?"

"This morning. You ditched Mara."

She smiled, only slightly. "I did warn him that I was going to shake him. I'm glad it was you who sent him."

"Who else'd give a damn?"

"Hopefully no one." She looked down for a second before continuing. "I went to talk to someone, about what happened, about what I … what happened afterwards."

"Ah. Hope."

"No, not her," she said with another small smile.

"Not the Mim Center guys."

Now she looked shocked. "Heaven forfend!"

"Dammit, Brown, you are the most freak ass sailor the Navy every created. Can't even curse."

"I'll leave it to the experts, sir."

No response to that. He grunted. "So you talked to someone you trust."

She hesitated. "Someone I … know. They know me, and they listened. I'll probably see them again." She shrugged and spread her hands. "Why pretend? I'll see them again, probably every week, until I'm okay, until I understand."

He nodded. When she didn't continue, he finally asked directly. "What happened?"

Again, she hesitated, before saying simply, "There was someone. Doesn't really matter who, but I was sure he was on the Whale, sure of it, sir. It had taken me a while to figure out where he was, but I finally thought I'd get to see him again. That was what I was doing, going to see him. But it turns out, he never made it on board. All this time, he was never here."

"Maybe in the Lifehold…" he started, but she interrupted him.

"I don't need you to lie to me, sir. He's not there. He's not anywhere. He's gone, and I never knew. Which made it really hard for me to trust anything I thought I knew." She looked around the corridor where they were speaking. "This ship, these walls, that's all there is of Earth for me. Nothing else. I don't have any hope for anything else."

He had to ask. Her words were so bleak. "Brown, are you safe to have loose? Rattling around the ship?"

She tilted her head to one side. "Safe, sir? This ship is all I have. I'll do everything for it."

"Plus your teammates, Brown. They're worth something."

She snorted, delicately. "Ask me in a few weeks. I suppose, yes, they're part of the Whale, repair cells or something, I'll lump them in with it."

Not exactly satisfying, but he'd accept it from such a weirdo. But he still had to ask, make sure. "What about yourself? Are YOU safe?"

Another calm but almost questioning look. "Last night, I didn't sleep much. I tried, sir, but I've lost the habit. I will do better," she assured him, before continuing. "When I got up, it was too early, but I didn't want to wait anymore. I realized that I wanted to see what happened today. I don't have much hope, but it seems I still have some curiosity. So I think I'm okay. I need to stick around if I want to see what happens, right, sir?"

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A/N: 1) HAPPY BIRTHDAY NINTENDO (9/23/2016)! They don't look a day over 127. I'm baking a cake, and you should too, even if it's belated.

2) If/when I ever get the main arc up, there will be a certain amount of explanation of WHAT exactly happened and WHOM exactly Lila expected to meet (whom? really? sorry, yes) and WHO her mysterious counselor is, but it comes VERY late in that series, because Lila story spoilers. Let's just say, there's more than one clever kid hitting above their security level, but thank heavens they don't all reach the same idiotic conclusions (skunkratprettygarbage).

3) So, SHOULD I put up more of this stuff? Because, trust me, I have a lot of Lila/Vandham stuff, ranging from true detective (with Mara!) to flufffff (without Mara! mostly. shoot me now) to having H.B. get scuffed a little and also the origins of Alexa/Doug BrOTP and the Shield of the Ma-non. But it is fluff driven, if only in the background, so I don't know what the appetite for that is ... oh who am I kidding, it'll go up eventually.

Next time: new single arc, maybe 2 chapters, with OC Rosalee, seen in (Music), and her brother Diego, from ... wait, wasn't he dead or something?