Knives can actually remind her of some bits of her maths. Not because he himself had already seen them or derived it, just from the same kinds of intuitions Zash displayed before but filtered through his more systematising personality.

Oh! Oh good! Okay, excellent, hold on, she'll write it all down. Then they can use that over here immediately, and that'll also make this other one easier, too. Probably with this information they can derive something to get somewhere with this one but actually probably they should put a pin in that problem and save it for later because while that's a tempting problem she wants to solve she doesn't think it's an efficient use of time for maximum plant assistance provided. Yet. SOON THOUGH. SOON.

She is totally going to forget to feed herself, though she is better at watering herself with a water bottle right there.

Honestly it's the plants that notice she's getting hungry, what with all of the ways they have full access to her sensorium and emotions.

"You need to eat," he says eventually. "And sleep."

"What? Oh. Damn it, not again. You're right, thank you."

She has definitely gotten worse at caring for her own physical needs! This is a mix of never having been confronted with so many new and shiny problems to solve all at once before, and also that uh. ... Zash was kind of doing that. (She misses him.)

Knives's left eye twitches a bit when she thinks about Zash but he otherwise does not acknowledge it.

Here's a guide bug.

No the fuck it is not.

"... I might legitimately get lost going back on my own, it's a maze of corridors and I spent most of my time getting there passionately denouncing your doctor friend."

"What does that have to—oh." His growl is purely mental. "Fine. Beast, you can send one bug. One."

Bug!

"...and he is not my friend."

"Well, good, because he's a shitty person and seems like he'd be a shitty friend, too. Hi, Zazi, thank you Zazi."

And then off they can go! To care for the annoying squishy human who can't just do things indefinitely!

Knives does not follow her. So long as she doesn't touch any consoles he doesn't care what she does or where she goes.

Well, where she goes is to eat, and then have a shower, and then... wish for some kind of change of clothes of some kind, flop into bed without most of the one set she has on, and attempt to go to sleep.

It's really, really hard to sleep without Zash. She misses him. Misses being held and snuggled. Misses feeling his psychic presence, his emotions and thoughts and affection. The temperature in this room is perfectly regulated, and yet. ... She still feels cold.

She does eventually manage it anyway.

Who is this human?

She's been honest about everything, the plants guarantee that. That's fine. Being honest is one thing. But the thing with the doctor...

The way plants reason is very relational. Examples, comparisons. And when this human was getting very, intensely angry at the doctor for hurting humans, experimenting on them, and killing them... the plants heard. And one of them presented the thoughts and feelings she'd been having then, next to the thoughts and feelings she was having when Knives was grilling her about plants, and sent him a single emotion:

[=]

The way she feels about plants is the same as the way she feels about humans. She doesn't just "care" about plants, she isn't just "honest" about wanting to help them. She cares about them and wants to help them just as much as if they were humans. More, one of the plants piped up, because she saw them as so much less able to stand up for themselves and so much more vulnerable.

Which is true, and is the thing Knives has been incandescently angry about for the past hundred and fifty years. The plants won't be angry on their own behalf, but he will be angry for them.

This human is also angry.

And then there's Zash. The plants conveyed that human thing, likened this human and Zash to those romantic relationships humans have. Knives doesn't understand those. But then one plant likened that to his own relationship with Zash and that was absolutely preposterous. There is no way they can share that, Knives and Zash are twins, they've inhabited each other's minds entirely, they've been together (apart) for a hundred and fifty years. Where does this human who hasn't even been around a year in his life get off on claiming she could ever compare?

(She didn't. The plants did. Because they saw the resemblance, themselves, in her mind.)

(Zash can't reciprocate that, he wanted to argue, except he... probably can.)

(Who could Zash love as much as he loves Nai?)

And now. Now this human is thinking about the times she's spent with Zash in Zash's mind. Sharing feelings and thoughts, like that. Zash can project to and read humans, it's not the same but it's the same.

No one can do that. Only him.

He wants to kill this human.

...and yet.

And yet.

And yet she still, eventually, wakes. She sits up and takes stock of her new situation, feels a horrendous echoing hole in her heart because it all happened, it’s all true, it wasn’t a dream. Zazi really kidnapped her, she really is in February, she really is probably going to die whenever she says or does the wrong thing. It’s scary and awful and she wants to hide in this little bedroom forever like a child until the big bad world outside sorts itself out and stops being awful.

But, well. That’s not how anything gets done, is it. She is now the one in the glass pod. How will she be, stuck in here? Hide in a corner, use up resources without replenishing in any way, consume and consume like Zazi says?

Yeah, no. If nothing else, she’d get bored.

So she tables her concerns for Morgan and Zash’s passage on the sand steamer now that she’s just gone. Boxed up is her frustration with how she and Zash went and did the stupid feelings thing, despite both of their best efforts and better judgements, and then she didn’t even get to fuck him! Her confusion and fear and despair at probably never getting to even see sunlight again before she dies are set aside. She will not be getting out of here, not anytime soon.

So while she’s here, she might as well work.

Knives looks somehow both angrier and less angry today. He doesn't say a single word all day long, but that includes not threatening her. When he wants to remind her to care for her (so, so fragile) physical form, he just pokes her with a foot and gives her a look.

And also he... relaxes, a bit. He isn't watching her like a hawk, so much. Still watching, still devoting all his attention to her, but there's... something different in the way he does it.

He looks a lot less ready to kill her at the drop of a hat.

She doesn’t understand the silent foot poking at first, but she catches on quickly enough, and eventually starts to view it with a sort of wry fondness. Yeah, it sure is dumb to have to solve the same stupid problem over and over again. She’s sorry, and she’s perfectly cooperative when reminded.

He is confusing and she doesn’t understand him, but it’s sort of like trying to figure out what’s going on with plants on the other side of their gate. She doesn’t have all the information, but she has some. Angrier and less angry implies… probably he still doesn’t have any real issue with her? And finds that intensely frustrating. Poor Nai. She’s not sorry, exactly, but she does recognize that it’s fucking hard to be confronted with something you didn’t expect to ever exist.

But she thinks she’s getting somewhere. Fuck you, Conrad, there is someone Zash loves in there, and you might have buried him deep under a pile of misanthropy but she will drag him out if she can. If he’ll let her. (The comparison doesn’t occur to her, but it’s sort of like the way she decided to drag red plants back from the edge, actually.) That takes time and patience, though, so for now: she will teach this person all she knows as she uses it to help as many plants as possible.

While they’re working, the Jeneora plant flips from red to blue. Yvette doesn’t actually notice, because she’s in the middle of an equation to help figure out how to heal another one.

Knives does. And immediately abandons Yvette to go float over to the plant and touch the glass. The plant unfurls to match him, but they don't do the glowing thing. They just stay there, looking at each other, in silence.