He doesn't understand.

Every day, he follows her, and he watches her work. Every day, she does good work. She teaches him things. She helps the plants.

Why couldn't the doctor have done this? He did so much work on Tesla.

(The doctor's work is only to destroy, never to heal.)

He doesn't know when exactly he gets completely convinced that she just isn't... bad. At all. Doesn't know what the precipitating event is, if there even is one. He spends his time with her, and he watches her work, and his sisters read her mind and try their best to communicate it to him. It keeps coming up the same, every time. Every time. She's being honest.

Was Zash right? Is that what's going on? But it makes no sense. Even this human agrees that other so-called "plant engineers" aren't like this. They're awful. They use and use and use. They hurt his sisters, hurt them until they die. And he wanted to save them but couldn't. Couldn't find them all in time, and couldn't keep them alive. Not at the rate humans consume them. Not in the long term.

It's noticeable, to Yvette, how he gets more comfortable with her over time. Stops glowering quite so much. Starts talking to her more like someone who can be listened to.

He... can sort of see. What Zash saw, here.

He likes her fire. He likes the way she gets so absorbed in her work she just starts to run her mouth. He likes that she is...

...angry, like him...

...and compassionate and kind and loving, like other plants.

Like Zash.

He doesn't understand. But he wants to.

Knives trusts her. That's the thing that's happening, here. He's starting to trust her. She doesn't have any ulterior motives, she just is like that.

If he leaves her to it, she'll keep doing what she's doing.

She will keep saving his sisters.

And one day, while she's being particularly annoyed at some dumb decision some human made, he laughs at it.

And then he notices what he just did and... panics. That's a dumb thing to happen, but he panics.

What is going on.

"I have something to do," he says abruptly, then he turns around and leaves.

"Um? Okay," she says, bewildered. This is not normal Nai behavior. She was kind of in the middle of something, reading diagnostics from the console, and hadn't finished following this potential lead to see if it went anywhere. It irks her to just go and put it down without getting to a decent stopping point. ... But trust is important, and to have it she needs to be trustworthy, so she will. Back away from the console like a good human. Leave it be for later, when he's here, so he can know that she will not abuse his trust. And try to figure out something else to do, she guesses.

(She really hopes he's not going to go kill people.)

It's not really clear what she should do with herself without work to hyperfocus on, though. Um. This is hard. She could probably explore the facility? Without trying to leave? She can navigate back to her own room and the kitchen just fine, by now, but there is a lot of retrofitted spaceship to wander around in.

The bug on her hair buzzes a bit.

"Mmm? Somewhere you'd like me to go?"

It buzzes a bit more then takes off.

"... Okay, sure, but please remember I will be much less interesting if I am dead," she says, a little bemused, but: yeah okay, sure. Is... she going to be shown Conrad's horrible experimental lair with his unwilling human subjects? Because she hasn't seen any hint of it since coming here, but probably it's nearby, right? It'd just be practical. (And also she will absolutely break it into tiny, tiny pieces if she can do so safely.)

It turns out that no! It takes numerous twists and turns but as they walk the architecture gets... nicer. Cleaner. Less old and destroyed. A newer area of the ship/city, or one that wasn't as affected by the destruction as the plant room was. And the specific room she's being led to is a big, spacious one with a very tall ceiling and a single, beautiful piano in the middle.

".... Huh."

She hasn't seen a piano since back in Jeneora Rock. She'd never gotten around to playing that one because it was in an awkwardly public spot, and she was kind of busy doing other, more important things. So the last time she played was back in December, and that seems like several lifetimes ago. It's really very tempting to go play. Hopefully her skills haven't atrophied too much from lack of use, her tutor would be livid.

But... this whole place feels... something. Sacred, maybe. Certainly well kept. How about she investigates thoroughly before she touches anything, hm?

The bug nestles itself on her hair again and goes quiet.

It's not decorated. Other than the piano, a stool, and a small box with a pile of what turns out to be sheet music, there's nothing there.

And there's some sheet music on the piano itself, above the keys, neatly placed and ready to be read and played.

Huh. Okay. Then... she's tempted. What songs are available to play? There are a few she could do from memory, but they're not the fun ones.

The sheet that's on the piano itself seems to be just the one song. It's not terribly complicated, certainly not for her, though it is a two voices song with some interesting cross-hand moments. From looking at it it looks somewhat melancholic, with some interesting higher notes that will probably sound very nice in harmony.

It does look like it'd be reasonably fun. A pretty good warm up song, actually. So. ... Yeah, okay. She thinks it'll be okay. Trespassing probably isn't going to get her killed. Despite randomly leaving for no apparent reason, Nai's been relaxing around her lately. At worst, she expects him to be cross, and tell her to never come here again. And she hasn't in a while, and no one's here, and she doesn't have anything better to be doing right now.

She will in fact sit down, read through the song to familiarize herself with it, stretch her fingers, and play.

It's beautiful. A bit over three minutes long, and it almost feels like a story being told, its words long forgotten. It's not one she's heard before, except, perhaps, very distantly, from months ago at a town that no longer exists.

She'd been too far away to hear it then. Maybe if she had, then she'd understand some of its significance. As it is now, it just looked beautiful and like it'd be fun.

But she plays it well enough, and it's more beautiful when heard instead of written, and it really was fun to finally get to play again.

She finishes it, then goes poking around in the box for another song to play, humming some of the last one's tune to herself as she does.

Knives takes a seat next to her at the piano. It's unclear when he arrived, he's silent as death.

But warmer. This close to her, he's as warm as Zash is.

She jumps a little, surprised. Um??? Um.

"Oh, hello. Sorry, I didn't mean to distract you from your, um, thing?"

Why does he look so intense. Because, uh, she's got a decent feel for his microexpressions by now and. That is extremely intense and focused and it has her concerned.

He grabs the sheet music she'd just been playing from, puts it together neatly, then summons some floating blades to place it into the box. Some other blades gently nudge her away from said box so he can fetch another sheaf which he then places on the piano for both of them to read.

Because this song needs four hands.

It's a duet.

Without saying anything, he starts playing; his part of the duet lasts about thirty seconds before hers begins, so that's how long she has to get her bearings and join him. And while this is quickly clear just from reading the sheet it becomes even clearer as he plays:

This is the original song. It's meant to be played by two people. The song Yvette had just been playing is a modified version of it, made to be played alone, but between listening to Knives's part and reading the sheet music itself it becomes painfully obvious that there was something very important missing from what she'd been playing, that you can only notice when you listen to the original, like this.

Oh, hell, what has she just gotten herself into. Something she can't get out of except by putting her heart into it, clearly, because obviously this is very important to him. And... probably because he played it with Zash. Yeah, uh, good job, Yvette. You're in for it now, whatever 'it' is.

She'd really prefer to have some more time to familiarize herself with this before she's thrown into the deep end, but, um, okay sure. She waits for the appropriate moment, and then she'll pick up her part.

He doesn't judge her for her mistakes. If it seems like she needs a redo, he'll pause and redo, or gesture at the correct keys or straight up show her how it's done. At times he seems to get frustrated, probably at having to physically show her stuff rather than being able to just share his mind with her, but...

...he started crying at some point. Silently, just two lines of tears running down his cheeks from his eyes. His expression doesn't change, and he doesn't otherwise acknowledge his feelings, but he's definitely crying.