#ycgb

With every passing day, it became more obvious. He’d managed to piece together a haphazard mouthpiece for his translator with a little creative tinkering, and the Humans hadn’t bothered to limit his tools or supplies, even when it came to the clearly-dangerous welding torch. He’d finally delivered the bad news about Roman’s nestmate, and despite his clear devastation at the truth, they hadn’t disemboweled the messenger.

He’d slipped up time after time with his newfound freedom, aux limbs wavering and spreading out to absently flex in the air the moment he was even a little distracted, even though he knew the Humans were wary of them, and they— they didn’t change their minds. 

They didn’t hold him down and re-tie restraints around his legs or his arms or even his wrists. They didn’t so much as threaten to bind him, even when his limbs flicked too quickly and one of them flinched away. It became increasingly obvious that they were entirely oblivious to his apologetic submission displays, ignorant to any planetary language but their own, and still they held peace with him.

It had to be because the three of them were invulnerable, so hard to wound that he was no threat, nothing more than a de-fanged wyrm, harmless and not worth scolding. It had to be that the Humans outside were vicious and strong enough to slaughter him on sight, and that was why they didn’t bother locking the barn doors anymore, because they knew he wouldn’t dare to try and escape. It had to be, because otherwise…

Otherwise, they were serious about it all. The apology, the promises of kindness, the exchanging of names— the undeniable implication that they were working with him as equals instead of captors and hostage, predators and prey.

Chelcerae didn’t just trust in things like that. Not from relative strangers, and especially not strangers who had every reason to be his enemy. 

But he wanted to. He wanted to trust it so, so badly. 

(He hadn’t told them that he’d been left here in exchange for Roman’s brother. He didn’t want to know what they would do with him if they realized he likely had just as much entertainment value on a no-contact planet as a Human had in the black markets of the outer rings.) 

He could practically hear Janus’s incredulous voice ringing out every time he considered believing it, his usual combination of rationale and cost analysis shredding holes in any tentative hopes Virgil dared to hold. It was too tempting to be true. If he wanted to stay alive, he had to protect his mind from honey-lined traps like these. 

And he did want to stay alive. There was a hope now, however miniscule, that he could get off this planet, find his way back to Janus. Assuming the idiot hadn’t gotten himself killed the moment Virgil was out of his sight.

(In the back of his mind, a constant refrain: Please, please, please. Seryl, Veviin, any and all patrons of the stars, hear him now if not once more. Please let Janus still live.) 

With only Human materials he barely understood available to work with, there was no way to build a space-worthy ship, let alone launch it. If he could trigger a distress beacon from his scrapped suit, and amplify the signal enough to ping the outlaw ships that regularly passed by restricted planets in search of rare finds, though…

It wouldn’t be easy to commandeer a ship, especially not one with a crew confident enough to try smuggling from Earth, but he’d known nothing about this was going to be easy from the moment he decided to try. 

Admittedly, he felt much better about his odds with three Humans at his back.

Argh, no, not at his back! Just— just near him, on the same temporary alliance, with absolutely no expectations of loyalty. 

Bladed edges all around, this was impossible. He wasn’t supposed to be offering them the barest husk of trust, let alone forming a substitute bond with any of them! It was like he wanted to offer up a limb to be torn off! 

With a shudder, he tucked his aux limbs closer against his back, earning himself a sideways glance from Patton. He was pretty sure those usually indicated concern or curiosity. 

“You doing alright, kiddo?” he asked, pausing in the careful scritching he’d been administering to Patch’s ears. 

(The cat had apparently been known by another name, but everyone except Roman had started using Virgil’s superior given title, including the creature herself responding when called it. This was a fact that both sent Roman into dramatic rants about the superiority of literary references and prompted a sense of unreasonable smugness from Virgil.) 

Forcing his plates to stay gray, Virgil reached out and pressed one of the labeled buttons on the thick book before him. 

“Yes!” read out a cheery recorded voice. 

Though he couldn’t read any of the symbols that made up Human words, he’d been informed that the title of the books was ‘Baby’s First Words’, and it was most frequently used for the language development of Human young. Each of the simple words that were labeled on the buttons would be played aloud by the device when pressed.

This was another allowance that he never would have imagined to ask for, having a voice even after refusing to lower his guardplate. Logan had been the one to bring the book over, speaking all the while about how a proper A-A-C device would have been better, but this would have to do for now. 

It was a welcome change from the wear that his wristplates had been developing from all the ‘nodding’ and ‘shaking’ when answering questions silently before. Even if it did mean that Logan now spent an even larger part of his visits interrogating him about alien life with yes or no questions. 

Patton scrutinized him for a moment, making his guardplate twitch. He managed not to let any other nervous tells show, even as his chest tightened with instinctual caution. He’d picked up on some things by now. Even the most considerate of the Humans did this, the direct, aggressive eye contact. It was as though they couldn’t conceive of a reason not to. 

It wasn’t a threat, but even if it had been, he didn’t have the luxury of reacting to it. Patton had changed the dynamic in the barn in the span of a single day, providing Virgil with greater protection and greater hope than he’d had since the moment he first woke up strapped to that wooden beam. The weight of the life debt he now owed the Human was nearly as heavy as the one he owed Janus, and that unsettling knowledge should have made him furious, apprehensive, desperate. 

Instead, he was constantly resisting the urge to let his guard down even further, as though he wanted to get a blade between the ribs. The way his captors acted was bewildering; It was as though the fact that they had immeasurable leverage over him didn’t even occur to the three Humans.

“Is there anything you need before we leave for the night?” Patton asked, some of the intensity of his stare fading as he accepted Virgil’s answer. “The weekend’s over, so we won’t be here during the day for a little while.” 

Virgil bobbed one of his arms curiously at the unfamiliar word, his gaze flicking over the buttons on his board. “Sun,” he tried, and tilted his head slightly the way Humans seemed to do when inquisitive or confused. 

“Yes?” Patton replied, mirroring the motion. “The day is when the sun is out, and we won’t be here for most of it.” 

“No,” Virgil replied via button, pausing to try and figure out a better way to convey his question. 

Measured steps alerted them both to Logan’s approach, the Human moving slower than his usual brisk pace. It was one of the many subtle, bewildering ways the Humans altered their manner around Virgil. It would have been eerie, reminiscent of a kid trying to lure a small beast close enough to trap, if it weren’t for the fact that they had no need to lull him into a false sense of security. He’d been trapped well before any one of them had stepped foot in the barn. 

“We won’t be present for that period,” Logan offered, “partially due to the need to return to our homes and families for rest and socializing, as we have on other days, but primarily because of our school schedule.”

School? Virgil tilted his head further, his body tilting somewhat comically with the questioning gesture. He’d recognized the word itself as a location that the Humans discussed or referenced every so often, but he didn’t have enough context to take a guess at the definition. 

“Families? Socializing? School—?” Logan repeated the words carefully with a pause between each one, allowing Virgil the time to visibly react to the one he was curious about. 

Really, for someone on a no-contact deathworld, the Human had adapted to the difficulties of a language barrier with remarkable speed and strategy. It made one wonder how many languages Humans themselves had to navigate. 

But that wasn’t the information he was after this time. 

“School,” Logan echoed, nodding when Virgil pressed the ‘Yes’ button to confirm. 

“How does one describe high school?” Roman mused, drifting closer at an odd angle; it was an approach that kept Virgil from being properly cornered, he realized with another pang of bewildered gratitude. “A tormentous hellscape full of pop quizzes and jocks, where companionship can only be found amongst fellow theater kids?” 

Virgil had only recognized a handful of the words in that sentence, but it was a very concerning handful. 

Patton and Logan shot matching looks of reprimand at Roman, though one glare was much more severe than the other. Virgil was mostly sure that Logan had no plans to actually follow through on his threat display, not after weeks of seeing the Humans bicker and shout and jab at each other without ever drawing blood. 

He drew his aux legs in a little closer anyhow, keeping them out of the way of any surprise lunges. Mostly sure wasn’t entirely sure, after all.

“Ignore him,” Logan instructed Virgil firmly, following his own advice when Roman made an indignant noise. “School is the term used to refer to a building where students go to learn various subjects. We are currently enrolled in high school, and so we spend approximately seven hours at school to learn.” 

“There are also free periods and a break for lunch, where we can spend time with our friends!” Patton added, scrunching his face up in a closed-lip smile. “And there are optional clubs to practice or learn other skills, too! Roman’s been in the theater club since grade school.” 

For once, Virgil felt a little frustrated with the limitations of their makeshift translators. For every explanation he was given, he felt like he had four more questions to ask. What was the difference between grade and high? Did Humans not experience any of the food aggression that was so common on deathworlds? Why were skill-learning gatherings referred to with what sounded like the same word Humans used for ‘bludgeon’? 

However, there was a more pressing question, something about the explanation that seemed to grate against one of his earlier assumptions. 

Thinking quickly, he carefully reached not for the buttons, but for a particular page in the language development book itself. He’d already flipped through the thick, blocky pages a time or three, and though some of it was still oblique, many of the graphics within were easy enough to grasp. 

He stopped on the one portraying what he could only assume was a typical Human family unit, with two larger figures bracketing a much, much smaller one, the ‘baby’ referred to in the title. (He truly hoped the overly-large skull and wide, staring eyes were simply a stylistic choice and not the actual features of Human infants, but he was equally resigned to the all-too-likely idea of Humans being unsettling from birth.)

The three Humans all leaned in to peer at the image with open curiosity. 

“That is a family,” Logan said, both confirming Virgil’s guess and subtly asking for further elaboration. Virgil thought that was what that particular tone meant, at least. 

Virgil tapped one of the large figures, and then gestured to the three of them with two fingers, drawing a connection.

Three pairs of eyebrows flew upward, and Virgil immediately lowered his polite point, trying to interpret the expressions they were wearing.

“Are we being accused of being teen parents?!” Roman asked, sounding half-offended and half-amused. He was almost always exaggeratedly offended about something, so Virgil didn’t bother recoiling. 

Logan frowned, studying the image thoughtfully, but didn’t speak. 

“We aren’t really parents, as much as I love to call people my kiddos,” Patton offered, looking amused as well. “Most people don’t have kids until they’re adults.” 

Enough of that translated for Virgil to feel his fuzz ruffle up in alarm at his suspicions being confirmed. He jabbed a finger at the infant and swept it up to gesture to them, less politely this time. 

“We’re not babies, either!” Roman cried, far more offended by this comparison. Patton had begun to laugh outright, trying and failing to muffle the sound behind his hands. 

Logan, however, had turned and scouted out one of the bulky but thin-paged ‘textbooks’ piled in one corner of the room, flipping through it to find a diagram of his own to set next to Virgil’s. “This is a simple chart showing different developmental stages for Humans,” he offered. 

The infant shape was easy enough to distinguish, though it seemed that their heads really were that disproportionate, and Virgil studied the following images with growing dread. If the tallest one near the end was an adult, then looking between the traits of his Humans and the ones shown on the later adolescence stages… weren’t they obviously still kids?! 

Seryl’s kingdom above, Leond and her cronies had abducted a Human youth. 

Virgil became abruptly aware that, going by rumors of Human packbonding and defensiveness of their young in particular, this incident could mean very bad things for the long-term integrity of the intergalactic community. Not that he was in a great position to actually do anything about that little fact.

… At least his Humans had apparently been keeping both his existence and his early attempts to stab them a secret, going by the fact that no enraged guardians had shown up to tear him limb from limb. 

That didn’t keep his stress levels from rising significantly at this new understanding of how precarious his situation was, but he’d been learning to take the little wins where he could get them. 

“The three of us are teenagers,” Logan informed him. “We’ll be adults soon, however.” 

If he hadn’t had a diagram clearly laying it out before him, Virgil felt as though he would have been able to confidently say they were still youths just by the emphasis Logan put on their “rapidly-approaching” adulthood. It seemed like Chelcerae and Humans were alike in this manner; only kids were that excited to be dropped into the treacherous waters of adulthood.

He pressed the ‘Yes’ button anyhow. Just because he knew better didn’t mean he was interested in wounding the pride or egos of his only allies. 

Because they really were allies, weren’t they? The social structure was different here, that much was certain, but their youth added a new piece to the playing board, one that made the whole setup shift into something that finally made sense. Their efforts were inexperienced, clumsy, and often as confusing as the dark of a starless night, but genuine. Asking his name, feeling alarmed by his pain, teaching him how to pet a cat– they were soft in a way that younger Chelcerae often were, in a way that made Virgil want to stow them away in a cocoon with no sharp edges.

Fine. Fine! He let himself admit it: they weren’t his First, but he was going to make sure they didn’t get hurt anyways. 

Janus would be pissed, naturally, but only until Virgil explained himself. Of all people, he knew his partner would understand. (The two of them never would have bonded otherwise.)