He's still for a moment, before nodding slowly. It still takes him a moment longer to start eating, but he does. (Perhaps a little less hurriedly than previously, not as ravenous, and a little less concerned about it being taken away.)

She goes back to her tinkering.

It doesn't, really, take him long to be finished, and he pauses briefly before starting to clear his dishes, trying to be unobtrusive as he does so.

She glances up when he stands, but doesn't comment.

He flinches slightly when she looks up, but doesn't respond otherwise. When he's finished cleaning his dishes and putting them away, failing finding anything else to do, he retreats back to the cot, and curls back up.

She tidies her workspace a bit, and takes the datapad and fiddles with it. "I'm going out for a few hours," she says, before starting it playing music, and then she takes the goat's scrap bin and goes outside.

He almost asks if there's anything she wants him to do, but-

He stays quiet, and watches her leave. He manages to relax somewhat more with her gone, even if he still feels lost with having very little to do. He eyes Pradnakt's workspace briefly, decides not to tidy it further, and settles for closing his eyes and just breathing, listening to the music, and... and focuses on the happy feelings he's had for a little while.

(And after a little while, dozes against the wall.)

She takes care of the animals and the garden; she watches the sunset; she meditates. She goes for a jog, careful not to get too far from the house, and then practices her lightsaber forms for a while - briefly, compared to the few hours she usually puts in, but intensely.

Daisy returns a couple hours after sunset, to find her perched on a ledge alongside the path, just at the edge of the safe range; she follows them in.

He jerks awake at the sound of the speeder, and scrambles to his feet-

He stands, looking lost again, not entirely sure what to do.

The room is still empty. The speeder pulls up outside, but no one comes in, at least right away.

He has no idea what he's supposed to do here, takes a few steps towards the door, before stopping. (He hasn't been told to stay inside, but he also hasn't been told he can go out, and he doesn't want to interrupt anything that might be happening.)

After another few minutes, Pradnakt opens the door; the new droid is behind her, looming, but stays outside as she comes in to bustle around the table and cabinet. "You can go back to bed, Nova. Or come out, if you'd rather. I just need some tools; I want to get Nine's restraining bolt out right away."

He doesn't go back to bed, although he shrinks in on himself a little at the sight of the new droid, and waits so that he's following Pradnakt out rather than preceding her. (He's still trying to work through the part where he's pretty sure she just said she was going to take Nine's restraining bolt out.)

She waves the droid out of the doorway and directs him to sit on one of the rocks still by the campfire from lunch, and gets to work removing his armor plating to access the machinery underneath.

He watches her, curious and confused, but also looks around, assuming (hoping) Daisy is nearby.

She's out a ways in the scrub, doing something to the ground that he can't see well in the dark; after a few seconds, she walks a few feet and begins repeating the process.

He looks between her and Pradnakt, drifts as little towards Daisy, and then-

Stops. Because he needs to know what Pradnakt's doing, and if her statement about taking the restraining bolt out had been real. He keeps watching Pradnakt.

She's still working on the armor, but after another few seconds she gets the first piece off, and begins peering around inside with a flashlight. "Oh, that's clever, I'd wondered how they stopped your motivators from getting misaligned every time you got hit," she comments. "Lift your arm?"

    "Yes, Ma'am." He follows her instruction.

"I'm gonna want you to stop that, once you can. Pradnakt, or Dusk if you're feeling casual about it. All right?"

    "Yes, Ma'am."

"Shouldn't be much longer, anyway. Hmmm..."

(He does wonder if she wants him to stop calling her 'Ma'am', but she hasn't said anything to him about it...)

He does edge a little closer, at least a little curious as to the specifics of what she's doing.

She doesn't say anything about his approach, but scoots over slightly to give him a better view as she pokes around inside the droid, moving cables out of the way and occasionally unmounting a module and setting it carefully aside within his chest.

"I've got it," she says after another few minutes. "Don't move, I've still got to put you back together, but here we go. Ready?"

    "Yes, Ma'am."

She unmounts the module just as carefully as the rest, but then unplugs it, as well. "There," she says, sounding pleased. "Much better. Test it out?"

   "Yes, Ma' - Pradnakt. Wow."

"Yeah, I'll bet. Just give me a second and I'll have everything back in place." She drops the removed module in the droid's hand: "and you can do whatever you like with that."

He watches in amazement. It's still not completely processing that she actually took the restraining bolt out. Or seemed to. He doesn't know enough about droids to know for sure. But it seems like she did. (And there's really no reason why she would pretend to do that.)

She starts reassembling.

"I'm clear of your shoulder mount - don't point anything at Nova, please, he's jumpy enough already."

A pair of small cannons emerge from Nine's shoulders and swivel around: they politely avoid aiming at Nova, but the nearest one does point briefly at Pradnakt, and she grins up at it. "I can put out any fires or whatever if you want to give that a real test."

    "No... or... throw this for me?" he hands the module back to her.

"Ooh, excellent choice." She throws it hard, arcing up into the sky, and his shoulder cannons track it to the summit of its flight; a perfect pair of painfully-bright bolts later, it's completing its trajectory as a shower of scrap.

Proving the point, Nova flinches a little as attention is drawn to him.

He watches Nine not-quite suspiciously, blinks at Nine managing to point one of the cannons at Pradnakt. (He's pretty sure that's definite proof the restraining bolt is gone.) Blinks more at Pradnakt's response to having a weapon pointed at her.

And he can't help the smile that makes its way onto his lips as he watches the module get shot to pieces.

(Somewhere, not entirely realised, there's a tiny fledgling belief that he might actually be free.)

She watches the scrap scatter itself over the landscape, practically beaming. "Very good," she says, and gets back to work.

    "I... ah... M'a-... ah... Daisy says she has manumission papers?" Nine interrupts after a few seconds.

"Yeah. I'll want to get some for you, too, but I want to wait until I'm a little more comfortable bringing Nova into the city."

    "That makes sense, Ma'- ah. Pradnakt."

"Mmhmm."

Nova curls in on himself a little more. "I- it- I'd be- I wouldn't be a problem?" he says, urgently. (Of course he's in the way, causing problems, he always is.)