#thiago

MIs and constructs have a purpose, and that purpose is usually people-oriented in some way shape or form.

along this thread, i believe pack-bonding, or a coded affinity for social ties, is a built-in failsafe for most machine intelligences. basically, if you make the powerful sentient machine care about its people, make it social, it’s less likely to turn on them.

what I’m getting at is that Murderbot’s self-destruction is something ingrained. it can’t really fully see or come to terms with its self-destruction because its function *is getting hurt (and even dying) for clients*.

The “this is how I win” threads in Exit Strategy and Network Effect come to mind. the ultimate “winning” or satisfaction or purpose, in Murderbot’s mind, is to die killing a particularly nasty threat. To sacrifice itself. That Murderbot2.0 says this is especially damning wrt a programmed purpose.

I also think about the moment in Network Effect when Murderbot says it's guilty about having Thiago and Overse help it with a plan. To its mind, it has no worth if it’s not fulfilling its function. I mean, its guilt about this starts with Overse and Thiago insisting on accompanying MB in checking out the space dock: MB pushes back, but then it finds out Pin-Lee also wanted it to be safe by including that stipulation in its contract, and then the cherry on top is ART telling Murderbot that it can't lose it. It matters to all of these beings that MB remain whole and alive. and Murderbot is *so* confused by this. It literally says, “it was confusing. I was confused.” Murderbot's genuine confusion about being cared for by all these people is overwhelming to it, it literally doesn’t make sense on a fundamental level.

like the implications that it’s loved and important to these people—that its function is secondary to its personhood, that its people would rather be in a little more danger than have it endanger itself unduly—is *really* hard for it to reconcile.

like! this can’t be overstated. it was created to protect people, and self-sacrifice is so deeply a part of it that it’s very possibly in its *code*. i mean, even if it’s not literally coded into it, its experiences (its early treatment), have shaped its beliefs around what its function is. it’s behaviors.

THREE. maybe my fave murderbot character full stop. in a series that also has murderbot.

volescu who was in one (1) book and then went well that was stressful i think i will retire actually. ONLY RATIONAL ACTOR IN THE UNIVERSE???

amena. she is having the weirdest scariest time but somehow stays true to her roots as a snarky teen raised by hotshot hippies. WHILE wielding a weapon she's never been taught how to use. hello, dr. president mom. i have just had a traumatic experience. allow me to introduce the new parent i just adopted, Killing Machine With Feelings. today i watched it rend several people limb from limb and then make a baby.

thiago. if murderbot wasn't so pissy about him, i might not care about him so much. but as it is, i derive great pleasure from him and his role in the story. his concerns are reasonable, he's brave, he has people skills. he's a language nerd! sure, he doesn't understand what's happening sometimes unless you explain it to him, but that's true of literally everyone. meanwhile murderbot has cast him as Asshole Who Doesn't Like Me primarily because it needs someone handy it can attribute those feelings to, and gurathin stayed home this time.

Gurathin:

This SecUnit has been rogue all the time! It had done mass-murder! It calls itself Murderbot! It explains all these weird things happening around us!

In a word: Suspicion

Senior Officer Indah:

I don't want to have a rogue SecUnit roaming free on my station, hacking into systems. I want it to have a feed id so that humans know what it is!

In a word: Suspicion

Tarik: (regarding SecUnits in general)

You don’t understand how dangerous those things are.

They’re the only MIs I know of who would have a chance in a fight with Peri!

In a word: Caution

Thiago:

I'm upset that Mensah talks about things she won't discuss with us to SecUnit! It's made itself indispensable to her!

In a word: Jealousy

network effect chapter 1

Summary: When you accidentally witness something you were never meant to, Thiago Di Bianco chooses intimidation over trust. You choose not to be afraid. What starts as silent hostility turns into a dangerous pull neither of you expected—because some wars aren’t fought loudly, and some lines are crossed without either side realizing it.

Pairing: Thiago Di Bianco x fem!reader (you)

Warning: None

Tags: A quiet girl who loves books and poetry. A broken assistant coach. Angst. Enemies to lovers. Hurt/comfort vibes. Using the word (name). Authority Figure Conflict.

Word count: 2.1k

Author's note: I couldn’t find a Thiago fanfic anywhere, so this happened. I know the movie is a little cringe at times, but Thiago and Taylor absolutely are not skippable. Also, I’m back after a long while. To everyone who sent requests—thank you for waiting, and I’m sorry I haven’t been able to reply to each of you yet 🤍

The first time Thiago Di Bianco speaks to you, it isn't a conversation. It's a border drawn in the cold air of the empty school corridor, long after the final bell has rung.

He finds you at your locker, your fingers stained with ink from the poetry anthology you’d been annotating. You sense him before you see him—a shift in the light, a presence that seems to absorb the sound from the hall. When you turn, he’s there, leaning against the row of lockers opposite, his arms crossed over his coach’s jacket. His eyes, the colour of a storm over the sea, hold no warmth.

“(Name).” Your name is a statement, not a greeting. It sounds foreign in his mouth, like he’s testing a word he doesn’t like. “We need to talk.”

You close your locker slowly, the metallic click echoing. “Mr. Di Bianco.” You keep your voice neutral, a librarian’s tone. “Is there a problem with my history paper?”

A muscle ticks in his jaw. He ignores your question. “I saw you. Yesterday. Outside the gym.”

You know what he means. You’d seen them—Thiago and Kamila, standing too close in the shadow of the equipment room. The air between them had been so charged it felt like a physical thing, a crackle of unsaid words and old ghosts. You hadn’t lingered. You hadn’t wanted to. But you had seen.

“I was on my way to the library,” you say, which is true, but feels like a lie under his intense scrutiny.

“What you think you saw,” he begins, pushing off the lockers to stand at his full height. He’s taller up close, and the scent of him— clean cotton and something darker, like regret, washes over you. “It’s not what it looks like. Kami… Kamila is dealing with enough. She doesn’t need rumours. This school doesn’t need more gossip.”

The protectiveness in his voice is sharp, edged with something desperate. It’s the tone of a man guarding a fortress that’s already fallen. It annoys you, this presumption.

“I’m not in the business of creating rumours, Mr. Di Bianco,” you say, slinging your bag over your shoulder. “I have better things to do with my time.”

He steps forward, just one step, but it’s enough to invade your space. “Good. Then we understand each other. Keep what you saw to yourself. For everyone’s sake.”

Something snaps quietly inside you. You’ve spent your life observing, navigating the emotional minefields of others with careful silence. But this— this blatant intimidation from a man who is supposed to be an authority figure, it feels unclean.

You look up, meeting his stormy gaze without flinching. Your voice drops, but it gains a new steel. “What I understand,” you say softly, each word deliberate, “is that you are trying to silence a potential witness to something you feel ashamed of. I understand that you are using your position not to guide, but to threaten. And I understand, most clearly, that a man who resorts to this doesn’t deserve the respect his title demands.”

The silence that follows is absolute, deafening. His face goes pale, then a flush of anger rises on his neck. You’ve struck a nerve, exposed a raw truth he’s been running from for a decade. You see it in the way his breath hitches, in the sudden, wounded flicker in his eyes before the shutters slam down again.

He doesn’t speak. He just stares at you as if seeing you for the first time. Not as a background student, not as a potential gossip, but as a tangible threat to the fragile narrative he’s built his survival upon.

You give him a final, measured look. “If there’s nothing else about my academic work, I have to go. Good evening, Mr. Di Bianco.”

You walk away, your heart hammering against your ribs. You don’t look back, but you feel his gaze burning into your retreating form, a brand of newfound and unwanted attention.

---

The war is silent after that. It’s fought in glances across the cafeteria, where he sits with the coaching staff and you sit with a book. It’s in the way he’s unfairly strict during the one P.E. class you can’t avoid, his critiques of your basketball technique sharp and personal. It’s in the essays he returns to you—you, the top student in History—marked with unusually harsh, red-inked comments that speak more of his irritation than your comprehension.

You refuse to yield. You meet his harshness with icy, impeccable politeness. You correct his factual errors in class with a calm, devastating precision that makes the other students gasp. You become a quiet, immovable object to his unstoppable force.

The turning point comes on a rain-slicked afternoon. You’re in the school’s neglected greenhouse for your botany project, the humid air thick with the scent of soil and growing things. He finds you there, not by design, you think. He looks lost, his hair damp from the rain, his coach’s jacket clinging to his broad shoulders. He’s come here to escape, you realise. Just like you.

For a long moment, he just stands at the entrance, watching you gently repot a fledgling orchid.

“You’re not afraid of me,” he states, his voice rough.

You don’t look up. “Should I be?”

“Most people are. Or they tiptoe around me like I’m a live wire.”

“I’m not most people.” You finally glance at him. He looks exhausted, the shadows under his eyes pronounced. The angry facade has crumbled, leaving behind something hollow and achingly young. “And you’re not as frightening as you think you are. You’re just… very sad.”

He flinches as if you’ve struck him. No one has ever said it so plainly. Not to his face.

He takes a step inside, the glass door sighing shut behind him. “You don’t know anything about me.”

“I know you carry a guilt so heavy it’s bending your spine,” you say, turning back to your plant, your fingers steady though your pulse races. “I know you punish everyone around you for a crime you think you committed. Starting, it seems, with me.”

The rain drums a frantic rhythm on the glass roof. He sinks onto a rusty bench, his head in his hands. “You have no idea what I’ve done. What I failed to do.”

You set down your trowel and walk over, sitting on the bench opposite him, leaving a careful space between. You don’t touch him. You just offer your presence, a silent witness in this glass-walled confessional.

“I saw the accident report,” you say quietly. You’d looked it up in the old digital archives of the local paper after your confrontation. A tragic crash on a stormy night. A young girl lost. A family ripped apart. “I read between the lines. It wasn’t your fault.”

He lets out a sound that’s half laugh, half sob. “Everything is my fault. If I hadn’t… if we hadn’t seen… if I had just kept my mouth shut, or held the wheel, or…”

The story pours out of him then, in fractured, pained sentences. The perfect neighbour, the hidden affair, the birthday party from hell, the shattered trust, the panicked flight in the rain. The loss. The all-consuming, decade-old loss.

You listen. You don’t offer platitudes. You don’t tell him it’s okay. Because it’s not. When he’s finished, spent and raw, the greenhouse is filled with a different kind of silence—softer, shared.

“You were a child,” you say finally, your voice barely above a whisper. “You all were. Children in a storm made by adults. You didn’t drive the car, Thiago.”

It’s the first time you’ve used his first name. It hangs in the humid air between you, a bridge.

He looks up, his eyes red-rimmed but clear. He searches your face, looking for pity, for judgment. He finds only a quiet, unwavering understanding.

“Why?” he rasps. “Why do you even care? After how I treated you?”

You consider the question, tracing the pattern of condensation on the bench beside you. “Because someone has to see you,” you say simply. “Not the assistant coach. Not the tragic older brother. Not Kamila’s lost love. Just you. The man who’s been in the dark for so long, he’s forgotten what the light looks like.”

Something shifts in the space between you. The enemy lines blur, then dissolve entirely. The tension that was once hostile transforms, heating into something else entirely—a magnetic pull, dangerous and undeniable.

He reaches out, slowly, as if moving through deep water. His fingers, calloused from basketballs and years of clenched fists, brush a strand of hair that has escaped your braid, tucking it gently behind your ear. The touch is electric, a shock that travels straight to your core.

“(Name).” he whispers, and this time your name is a prayer, a question.

You don’t have an answer. Not yet. But when his gaze drops to your lips, you don’t pull away. The world narrows to the sound of the rain, the scent of earth and him, and the terrifying, beautiful precipice you are both about to fall from.