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xp_logs14 comes and checks on Doug in her own inimitable fashion.
Really, there was only one thing that 14 could say, having come down into the infirmary to find one Doug, sans one arm.
"You're an idiot."
Thank god for pain medication. Not that Doug needed it to deal with 14, but dealing with her -and- a missing arm -and- a nanite swarm that had questions about everything under the damn sun would have been too much without it.
"Hi, have you met me?" he managed to volley back weakly.
A second 14 walked into the room behind her 'sister', looking identical in every way: Same clothes, same hair, same pissed off expression.
"Unfortunately. You're an idiot."
Doug blinked at the second body, then cocked his head. "Are the other three outside waiting to just come in and reinforce what an idiot I am?" Because that was simultaneously funny as hell as a concept, and yet might get a bit old by the end.
"Of course not," A third 14 said, strutting in with a toss of her hair. "I'm also off getting an emergency manicure. Even you don't warrant all five of me."
Beat.
"You're an idiot."
Oh, Doug could see that bit of a frown on one body because he'd had the temerity to call her out in the middle of her bit. That was so very Emma, refusing to be upstaged by anyone. "Stipulated," he replied.
"It'd better be," a fourth 14 snarked as she walked in. "But just in case, I went through all the trouble of having a shirt made, just so you... and everyone else near you... don't forget. You're welcome," she said, tossing the white bit of cloth that had been draped over her shoulder at Doug's face.
Somehow, Doug knew that despite the final one not calling him an idiot verbally, he wouldn't be that lucky and there was something else going on. Which was confirmed when he awkwardly unfolded the shirt with his one hand to read "Caution: Warning: IDIOT" in bright yellow text on it. "How very...thoughtful," he observed.
"Aren't I just?" 14 agreed easily, not at all put out by the poorly-hidden sarcasm and viable confusion. "It's so that other people can know you're an idiot when I'm not there to tell them."
Obviously a necessary and important duty she'd have to add to her billable hours. The things she did for her job...
Doug chuckled. "Did you expense it to me?" he asked knowingly. If he quipped enough, maybe he could think a little less about how he was going to have to relearn how to put clothes on now that he was down a hand. He'd gone into things with his eyes open, and he would do it all again, but it was still going to take some getting used to.
"Of course I didn't." She looked offended at the very notion. "There's no reason to add more injury to the insult, you know. Not given everything else," she said with a light shrug.
"It's your Christmas gift this year," she added after a beat, instead.
"So does that mean you're going to give me Easter chocolate in December?" Doug asked, a brief pang of missing Wade flashing across his features. One of these days he was going to track him down, grab him by the shoulder, and shake him until he agreed to come back home.
"What are you, twelve?" She very deliberately did not ask if he was 'fourteen', which had been her go-to up until a few weeks ago. She could already see the joke forming before she'd even asked. "Fine, I'll get you your chocolate if you can be a good boy and not be stupid until then. Think you're willing to give it a shot?" She quirked four eyebrows in sync.
Doug smirked. "Young at heart." He'd been on the receiving end of one of Emma's devastating eyebrow raises. Seeing it in quadruplicate was...definitely something. He wasn't rattled, exactly, but it was quite a lot. "I'm willing to try, but I'm not promising anything." He certainly had a history of doing stupid things to back that up.
"...I suppose that's the best I'll get. You're an idiot."
And with that important business out of the way, it was time to move on to the next important agenda.
"So I've been asked to come and give your nanites a check-up. Can't imagine why it has to be me," she said, not a small amount of sarcasm in her voice. "What can you tell me?"
One of the things Doug genuinely liked about 14 was her ability to go from merciless teasing to businesslike in the blink of an eye. He supposed others might get whiplash from it at times, but he relished working with someone who thought as quickly as him. "On a general basis, they mostly just seem to work in the background doing whatever they're doing. I'd actually appreciate an unbiased assessment of what you get from your end." They'd communicated a bit with Jean in the aftermath, but it certainly wasn't like they were a completely separate thing. More like something with the collective intellect of a puppy that really wanted to be helpful.
"Please. I'm always unbiased. This might tickle."
Reaching for the nanites seemed like a poor decision to begin with. She'd been unable to reach them directly during the previous clean-up sessions, but that was honestly more likely to be due to distance than anything else. Still, there wasn't anything wrong with a bit of caution, so instead of reaching straight for Doug's arm, she reached for Doug instead.
14 was always low-key impressed by the human brain's ability to disconnect from things. Everyone she'd ever made a deep read on had a massive gulf of information that their brain kept from reaching their conscious. Most often it was the consistent things, a known pattern of the brain hiding information that hadn't changed. Aches that had been so consistent for so long was by far the most common, but everyone still managed to show her something new. Doug's was interesting, because he brain had apparently decided to go straight from 'no nanites' to 'nanite interface', skipping over the 'information overload' coma that should have separated the two.
(14 also tucked away the technique that the nanites used to bypass his senses into the back of her mind. It was a good trick she hadn't thought of before, and would definitely go well with her own skillset in the future, with a little practice.)
"Interesting...." she muttered, completely engrossed in the sensory feedback.
14's mental touch on his mind was similar enough to Emma's that Doug could feel when she brushed past his shields, which he lowered for her. But it was still different enough to be the slightest bit unexpected in spots where her approach varied. "Oh god, are you going to do the telepathic equivalent of that thing where a doctor says 'what a fascinating case study' and then calls in all their coworkers to take a look at whatever's so dang interesting without ever telling the patient?" He wasn't entirely serious, but he definitely wanted a bit more feedback than a single vague word.
"It's cute that you think there's anyone else on the planet who could do what I'm doing right now."
"I was thinking more in the 'everyone come watch me do this important thing and stroke my ego properly by making approving noises at regular intervals', but you do you, I guess?" At least banter and repartee would keep him from bothering her every five seconds to just tell him what the hell she was seeing in there...
"Shh," 14 shushed him. "Congratulations. It's roughly two hundred billion a-gendered nanomachines. You must be so proud," she said eventually, dropping the connection to Doug himself and standing up.
Doug shook his head. "And suddenly all I can think about is mpreg fanfiction and how grateful I am that there were no ovipositors involved in this whole nonsense." He was also kind of glad that the nanites did not have gender, so that there wasn't any real conflict when it came to those sorts of... His train of thought tailed off. "Oh shit, I'm going to have to explain sex to them at some point, aren't I."
14 gave a tittering laugh. "I would pay money to see that. Not a lot, mind you, but at least a nickel." Celeste stood and rolled her shoulders through to work out some of the tension. "Like I said, somewhere in the neighborhood of two hundred billion nanomachines have decided that your blood makes a fantastic incubation station, because they've pretty much dug themselves in and interfaced with your neural network. They've gone so far as to actually find a way to use your brain's automatic filter to bypass most of the informational overload that should have come with such a process to a level that even I'm impressed, and you know how hard that is.
"As it stands, they're vaguely like a puppy. A particularly stupid puppy that can also kill you with a thought, but hey, nobody's perfect. They like you, at least, so you can take some comfort in that."
Maybe it was the leftover painkillers, or an endorphin rush, or who knew what, but Doug giggled at a mental image. At a particularly severe look from 14, he took a breath. "I just...the next time Fixer shows up, I absolutely need to remember to use that line from Ocean's Thirteen. 'I know all the guys you'd send after me, and they like me better than you.'" Because of course he would show up again at some point, that was just common sense and genre savvy.
"There's no accounting for taste, I suppose." 14 made sure to put as much dry sarcasm into the comment as she could. "Overall things seem to be settling down into a relatively reasonable new normal for you. You're going to have to learn how to adapt as a host organism, but something tells me that won't be the most difficult thing you've done in the last few months."
Doug, still tittering, nodded in agreement. "I mean, this time I didn't get my entire body digested, that's an improvement of sorts." And it didn't seem like he had come out of this with any new and intensely crippling phobias, which probably said something about just how good his therapist was. Granted, he could already picture the incredulous look on Dr. Grim's face when he told him about this latest development.
There was a long, long pause, as 14 took in and attempted to parse what Doug had just said.
"...nope." She eventually decided. "I don't want to know."
"That's a lie." Doug snorted, but it, and the words, were teasing rather than in earnest. "We both know you love to know things, and you'd be happier if you could know everything about everyone. It's why we work well together." Because he was absolutely the same way - the thing he hated most in the world was not knowing something.
"Just for you, I'll make an exception. Just this once." And simultaneous eye-roll.
A week or so later, after Doug starts physical therapy, Emma drops by to check on him as well.
Doug felt like he was finally starting to live again, instead of just existing while he wasted away. He had actual energy these days, and so much to catch up on. So...occasionally he overdid it, especially on days when he had to do physical therapy. It was a good thing he still kept a cot in his office. Just now he used it occasionally to recharge rather than spending whole afternoons on it.
"Should I have words with whoever is exhausting you?" Emma asked, breezing into Doug's office without knocking. "Up to and including you, if you are not managing your own recovery levels." The look she levelled on him would have been accusatory if it hadn't been both soft and fond.
He was loopy enough that he half expected a curt 'you're an idiot' before his brain caught up that it was Emma checking on him and not 14. "I had physical therapy this afternoon, so it's at least partly me, but not all," he volunteered wearily.
“Darling,” said Emma, softly. “Much as I would normally be willing to commit terrible crimes against someone who made you feel so tired, I find it difficult to justify when it is actually the therapist doing their job. Does it normally make you feel like this?”
"Some days more, some days less?" Doug went to sit up, and landed heavily on the still sling-bound stump of his right elbow with a grunt. "Generally depending on how frequently I forget that I'm missing a piece of my arm," he muttered, frustration rolling off of him enough that Emma probably didn't even need to read him to sense it.
“You know,” said Emma, seating herself on his chair, looking at Doug in the cot, “that I can always mess with your mind if you truly need me to. Take away pain, pep you up, whatever is needed. But,” she added, tilting her head to contemplate him, “you are far too good at not paying attention to the signals of your own body as it is.” She smiled suddenly, a quirky grin. “Perhaps I should make a magic potion for you. Aunty Em’s Magic Fatigue Away Formula. To be used ONLY in case of emergencies.” She brushed her mind lightly with hers, the equivalent of laying a cool hand on his forehead. “Working yourself into a state of exhaustion doesn’t qualify as an emergency, dear heart. No matter how much it pains me to see you so tired. And frustrated.”
It was a testament to their long experience with each other that Doug was willing to let down his walls around Emma and let her see his frustration and exhaustion. He tended to put on a bright face and shade things a bit more positively for most people, even the ones he trusted most. But Emma had put him back together from nothing, he couldn't hide from her if he wanted to. "It's a big improvement on slowly wasting away from magic anemia," he allowed.
Emma sighed, closed her eyes for a moment and then opened them and smiled. “It is,” she said. “It really… I was so… I couldn’t find any way to fix that and you know me well enough to know what that was doing to me.” She nodded at his arm. “You know I’m able to help you with that. If you want me to. And your physical therapist says it is time. All you have to do is ask. Or think about it vaguely. Daydream? In my general direction?” Emma batted her eyelashes at Doug, flirtatiously.
It was funny that, for all that most of the Hellfire Club (and probably a fair few at the mansion) likely assumed that his 'serving under' Emma was in a literal and carnal fashion, the intimacy between them was something very different, the coy flirtation really just Emma being Emma. (Not that he would turn her down if she wanted, certainly.) "I appreciate it." Frustration at not being able to fix something troubling a person they considered 'theirs' was definitely something they shared, after all. "I'm doing my best to not overdo it," he told her.
Emma smiled. “You are a delightful boy,” she purred. “My very favourite.” She sobered then. “I’m very experienced with helping people manage phantom limb pain.” She gestured at his arm. “Semi... phantom limb pain? If it hurts, Doug, you will come and talk to me, won’t you? I can help. I think. I’m sure I can come to some sort of arrangement with... I don’t really know what the right words are,” she said, finally.
The intimacy of the bond between them went both ways - Doug wasn't sure he'd ever seen Emma let down her guard and be quite that vulnerable, even around him. "I promise, Auntie Em," he told her warmly. "I've been getting a lot of reminders that I don't have to do any of this alone." Even if some of those reminders had come in the form of garish T-shirts proclaiming him an idiot, and various Hello Kitty accessories being dropped on him.
"Never alone," Emma confirmed. She stood then, walked over to the side of the cot. "I've got a ridiculous number of meetings to attend, so I can't stay and you still need to rest some more. But let me know if I need to install some kind of psychic alarm button in your head any time. A "press in case of emergency" thing to remind you NOT to feed yourself to the nanites. I can do that, you know. I could make clangy noises and sparkly lights and everything." She smiled, to take the sting out of her words. "I could even put one in my own head to say "stop feeding Doug to the nanites", if you want." She leaned down, pressed a soft kiss to his forehead, the lightest telepathic touch to his mind. "You will get better for me, won't you? Soon. So I can take you out to some kind of ridiculously expensive restaurant and get you somewhat drunk on ludicrously over-priced wine."
Really, there was only one thing that 14 could say, having come down into the infirmary to find one Doug, sans one arm.
"You're an idiot."
Thank god for pain medication. Not that Doug needed it to deal with 14, but dealing with her -and- a missing arm -and- a nanite swarm that had questions about everything under the damn sun would have been too much without it.
"Hi, have you met me?" he managed to volley back weakly.
A second 14 walked into the room behind her 'sister', looking identical in every way: Same clothes, same hair, same pissed off expression.
"Unfortunately. You're an idiot."
Doug blinked at the second body, then cocked his head. "Are the other three outside waiting to just come in and reinforce what an idiot I am?" Because that was simultaneously funny as hell as a concept, and yet might get a bit old by the end.
"Of course not," A third 14 said, strutting in with a toss of her hair. "I'm also off getting an emergency manicure. Even you don't warrant all five of me."
Beat.
"You're an idiot."
Oh, Doug could see that bit of a frown on one body because he'd had the temerity to call her out in the middle of her bit. That was so very Emma, refusing to be upstaged by anyone. "Stipulated," he replied.
"It'd better be," a fourth 14 snarked as she walked in. "But just in case, I went through all the trouble of having a shirt made, just so you... and everyone else near you... don't forget. You're welcome," she said, tossing the white bit of cloth that had been draped over her shoulder at Doug's face.
Somehow, Doug knew that despite the final one not calling him an idiot verbally, he wouldn't be that lucky and there was something else going on. Which was confirmed when he awkwardly unfolded the shirt with his one hand to read "Caution: Warning: IDIOT" in bright yellow text on it. "How very...thoughtful," he observed.
"Aren't I just?" 14 agreed easily, not at all put out by the poorly-hidden sarcasm and viable confusion. "It's so that other people can know you're an idiot when I'm not there to tell them."
Obviously a necessary and important duty she'd have to add to her billable hours. The things she did for her job...
Doug chuckled. "Did you expense it to me?" he asked knowingly. If he quipped enough, maybe he could think a little less about how he was going to have to relearn how to put clothes on now that he was down a hand. He'd gone into things with his eyes open, and he would do it all again, but it was still going to take some getting used to.
"Of course I didn't." She looked offended at the very notion. "There's no reason to add more injury to the insult, you know. Not given everything else," she said with a light shrug.
"It's your Christmas gift this year," she added after a beat, instead.
"So does that mean you're going to give me Easter chocolate in December?" Doug asked, a brief pang of missing Wade flashing across his features. One of these days he was going to track him down, grab him by the shoulder, and shake him until he agreed to come back home.
"What are you, twelve?" She very deliberately did not ask if he was 'fourteen', which had been her go-to up until a few weeks ago. She could already see the joke forming before she'd even asked. "Fine, I'll get you your chocolate if you can be a good boy and not be stupid until then. Think you're willing to give it a shot?" She quirked four eyebrows in sync.
Doug smirked. "Young at heart." He'd been on the receiving end of one of Emma's devastating eyebrow raises. Seeing it in quadruplicate was...definitely something. He wasn't rattled, exactly, but it was quite a lot. "I'm willing to try, but I'm not promising anything." He certainly had a history of doing stupid things to back that up.
"...I suppose that's the best I'll get. You're an idiot."
And with that important business out of the way, it was time to move on to the next important agenda.
"So I've been asked to come and give your nanites a check-up. Can't imagine why it has to be me," she said, not a small amount of sarcasm in her voice. "What can you tell me?"
One of the things Doug genuinely liked about 14 was her ability to go from merciless teasing to businesslike in the blink of an eye. He supposed others might get whiplash from it at times, but he relished working with someone who thought as quickly as him. "On a general basis, they mostly just seem to work in the background doing whatever they're doing. I'd actually appreciate an unbiased assessment of what you get from your end." They'd communicated a bit with Jean in the aftermath, but it certainly wasn't like they were a completely separate thing. More like something with the collective intellect of a puppy that really wanted to be helpful.
"Please. I'm always unbiased. This might tickle."
Reaching for the nanites seemed like a poor decision to begin with. She'd been unable to reach them directly during the previous clean-up sessions, but that was honestly more likely to be due to distance than anything else. Still, there wasn't anything wrong with a bit of caution, so instead of reaching straight for Doug's arm, she reached for Doug instead.
14 was always low-key impressed by the human brain's ability to disconnect from things. Everyone she'd ever made a deep read on had a massive gulf of information that their brain kept from reaching their conscious. Most often it was the consistent things, a known pattern of the brain hiding information that hadn't changed. Aches that had been so consistent for so long was by far the most common, but everyone still managed to show her something new. Doug's was interesting, because he brain had apparently decided to go straight from 'no nanites' to 'nanite interface', skipping over the 'information overload' coma that should have separated the two.
(14 also tucked away the technique that the nanites used to bypass his senses into the back of her mind. It was a good trick she hadn't thought of before, and would definitely go well with her own skillset in the future, with a little practice.)
"Interesting...." she muttered, completely engrossed in the sensory feedback.
14's mental touch on his mind was similar enough to Emma's that Doug could feel when she brushed past his shields, which he lowered for her. But it was still different enough to be the slightest bit unexpected in spots where her approach varied. "Oh god, are you going to do the telepathic equivalent of that thing where a doctor says 'what a fascinating case study' and then calls in all their coworkers to take a look at whatever's so dang interesting without ever telling the patient?" He wasn't entirely serious, but he definitely wanted a bit more feedback than a single vague word.
"It's cute that you think there's anyone else on the planet who could do what I'm doing right now."
"I was thinking more in the 'everyone come watch me do this important thing and stroke my ego properly by making approving noises at regular intervals', but you do you, I guess?" At least banter and repartee would keep him from bothering her every five seconds to just tell him what the hell she was seeing in there...
"Shh," 14 shushed him. "Congratulations. It's roughly two hundred billion a-gendered nanomachines. You must be so proud," she said eventually, dropping the connection to Doug himself and standing up.
Doug shook his head. "And suddenly all I can think about is mpreg fanfiction and how grateful I am that there were no ovipositors involved in this whole nonsense." He was also kind of glad that the nanites did not have gender, so that there wasn't any real conflict when it came to those sorts of... His train of thought tailed off. "Oh shit, I'm going to have to explain sex to them at some point, aren't I."
14 gave a tittering laugh. "I would pay money to see that. Not a lot, mind you, but at least a nickel." Celeste stood and rolled her shoulders through to work out some of the tension. "Like I said, somewhere in the neighborhood of two hundred billion nanomachines have decided that your blood makes a fantastic incubation station, because they've pretty much dug themselves in and interfaced with your neural network. They've gone so far as to actually find a way to use your brain's automatic filter to bypass most of the informational overload that should have come with such a process to a level that even I'm impressed, and you know how hard that is.
"As it stands, they're vaguely like a puppy. A particularly stupid puppy that can also kill you with a thought, but hey, nobody's perfect. They like you, at least, so you can take some comfort in that."
Maybe it was the leftover painkillers, or an endorphin rush, or who knew what, but Doug giggled at a mental image. At a particularly severe look from 14, he took a breath. "I just...the next time Fixer shows up, I absolutely need to remember to use that line from Ocean's Thirteen. 'I know all the guys you'd send after me, and they like me better than you.'" Because of course he would show up again at some point, that was just common sense and genre savvy.
"There's no accounting for taste, I suppose." 14 made sure to put as much dry sarcasm into the comment as she could. "Overall things seem to be settling down into a relatively reasonable new normal for you. You're going to have to learn how to adapt as a host organism, but something tells me that won't be the most difficult thing you've done in the last few months."
Doug, still tittering, nodded in agreement. "I mean, this time I didn't get my entire body digested, that's an improvement of sorts." And it didn't seem like he had come out of this with any new and intensely crippling phobias, which probably said something about just how good his therapist was. Granted, he could already picture the incredulous look on Dr. Grim's face when he told him about this latest development.
There was a long, long pause, as 14 took in and attempted to parse what Doug had just said.
"...nope." She eventually decided. "I don't want to know."
"That's a lie." Doug snorted, but it, and the words, were teasing rather than in earnest. "We both know you love to know things, and you'd be happier if you could know everything about everyone. It's why we work well together." Because he was absolutely the same way - the thing he hated most in the world was not knowing something.
"Just for you, I'll make an exception. Just this once." And simultaneous eye-roll.
A week or so later, after Doug starts physical therapy, Emma drops by to check on him as well.
Doug felt like he was finally starting to live again, instead of just existing while he wasted away. He had actual energy these days, and so much to catch up on. So...occasionally he overdid it, especially on days when he had to do physical therapy. It was a good thing he still kept a cot in his office. Just now he used it occasionally to recharge rather than spending whole afternoons on it.
"Should I have words with whoever is exhausting you?" Emma asked, breezing into Doug's office without knocking. "Up to and including you, if you are not managing your own recovery levels." The look she levelled on him would have been accusatory if it hadn't been both soft and fond.
He was loopy enough that he half expected a curt 'you're an idiot' before his brain caught up that it was Emma checking on him and not 14. "I had physical therapy this afternoon, so it's at least partly me, but not all," he volunteered wearily.
“Darling,” said Emma, softly. “Much as I would normally be willing to commit terrible crimes against someone who made you feel so tired, I find it difficult to justify when it is actually the therapist doing their job. Does it normally make you feel like this?”
"Some days more, some days less?" Doug went to sit up, and landed heavily on the still sling-bound stump of his right elbow with a grunt. "Generally depending on how frequently I forget that I'm missing a piece of my arm," he muttered, frustration rolling off of him enough that Emma probably didn't even need to read him to sense it.
“You know,” said Emma, seating herself on his chair, looking at Doug in the cot, “that I can always mess with your mind if you truly need me to. Take away pain, pep you up, whatever is needed. But,” she added, tilting her head to contemplate him, “you are far too good at not paying attention to the signals of your own body as it is.” She smiled suddenly, a quirky grin. “Perhaps I should make a magic potion for you. Aunty Em’s Magic Fatigue Away Formula. To be used ONLY in case of emergencies.” She brushed her mind lightly with hers, the equivalent of laying a cool hand on his forehead. “Working yourself into a state of exhaustion doesn’t qualify as an emergency, dear heart. No matter how much it pains me to see you so tired. And frustrated.”
It was a testament to their long experience with each other that Doug was willing to let down his walls around Emma and let her see his frustration and exhaustion. He tended to put on a bright face and shade things a bit more positively for most people, even the ones he trusted most. But Emma had put him back together from nothing, he couldn't hide from her if he wanted to. "It's a big improvement on slowly wasting away from magic anemia," he allowed.
Emma sighed, closed her eyes for a moment and then opened them and smiled. “It is,” she said. “It really… I was so… I couldn’t find any way to fix that and you know me well enough to know what that was doing to me.” She nodded at his arm. “You know I’m able to help you with that. If you want me to. And your physical therapist says it is time. All you have to do is ask. Or think about it vaguely. Daydream? In my general direction?” Emma batted her eyelashes at Doug, flirtatiously.
It was funny that, for all that most of the Hellfire Club (and probably a fair few at the mansion) likely assumed that his 'serving under' Emma was in a literal and carnal fashion, the intimacy between them was something very different, the coy flirtation really just Emma being Emma. (Not that he would turn her down if she wanted, certainly.) "I appreciate it." Frustration at not being able to fix something troubling a person they considered 'theirs' was definitely something they shared, after all. "I'm doing my best to not overdo it," he told her.
Emma smiled. “You are a delightful boy,” she purred. “My very favourite.” She sobered then. “I’m very experienced with helping people manage phantom limb pain.” She gestured at his arm. “Semi... phantom limb pain? If it hurts, Doug, you will come and talk to me, won’t you? I can help. I think. I’m sure I can come to some sort of arrangement with... I don’t really know what the right words are,” she said, finally.
The intimacy of the bond between them went both ways - Doug wasn't sure he'd ever seen Emma let down her guard and be quite that vulnerable, even around him. "I promise, Auntie Em," he told her warmly. "I've been getting a lot of reminders that I don't have to do any of this alone." Even if some of those reminders had come in the form of garish T-shirts proclaiming him an idiot, and various Hello Kitty accessories being dropped on him.
"Never alone," Emma confirmed. She stood then, walked over to the side of the cot. "I've got a ridiculous number of meetings to attend, so I can't stay and you still need to rest some more. But let me know if I need to install some kind of psychic alarm button in your head any time. A "press in case of emergency" thing to remind you NOT to feed yourself to the nanites. I can do that, you know. I could make clangy noises and sparkly lights and everything." She smiled, to take the sting out of her words. "I could even put one in my own head to say "stop feeding Doug to the nanites", if you want." She leaned down, pressed a soft kiss to his forehead, the lightest telepathic touch to his mind. "You will get better for me, won't you? Soon. So I can take you out to some kind of ridiculously expensive restaurant and get you somewhat drunk on ludicrously over-priced wine."
