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The fucked up thing about the job where Sid loses her hand is that there was no reason for anything like that to go down. It was such an easy job that Barry was hanging out on the ship instead of doing it, because Gunnie and Margaret agreed that having both Barrys was “too much firepower,” whatever that means, and Barry Nyne volunteered, so whatever, Barry got to take a day off.
And sure, something went wrong, because something goes wrong about half of the time. Zortch came over the comms and shouted something high-pitched about a medium-hot exit, so Barry commed Raymond and they worked it out, and they were back in the stars before Barry knew it. He spent the whole time in his gunner bay shooting people. It ruled.
So anyways, Barry leaves the gunner bay feeling fucking awesome because any hot exit that ends with everyone on board is a good hot exit, and he goes to debrief with Marge, and finds her and Zortch talking in low voices. Zortch is wringing their hands, which isn’t a great sign, and they yelp in surprise when they see Barry, which is also not great.
“Hey, Marge,” Barry says cautiously. Not too cautiously, though, because leaning into the bad signs feels like a bad sign on its own, and he’s not into making the signs any worse than they are. “What’s going on?”
“Hi, Barry,” Margaret says brightly. Her voice has a weird plasticky tinge to it that reminds him of when she was Margaret Encino renting an escape pod and not good ol’ Cap’n Marge. “Have you checked on Sidney yet?”
Alarm bells start ringing in Barry’s head. “What’s going on with Sid?”
“Nothing!” Marge says, and then immediately says, “I mean, something. But it’s going to be nothing.”
“Marge, that’s not very encouraging.”
“If my management style doesn’t work for you, you can sign up for a one-on-one, you don’t have to say it like that.”
“This isn’t a manager thing, it’s—”
“She lost a hand,” Zortch blurts out.
Barry’s so totally thrown off by this that he immediately looks at Margaret’s hands, which are clasped tight in front of her and also both present. “Dude, she has them both.”
Margaret sighs. “Sidney lost a hand,” she clarifies, and Barry’s ears start ringing. “She’s set up in the crew quarters right now.”
“Rad,” Barry says, and fucking bolts for the crew quarters. Margaret shouts something after him, which he ignores, because he’s a little pissed at her for talking around the situation. He’s also pissed that he wasn’t the first person who found out, but that’s… a problem for him to try and think through in the future, because whatever, he’s just Sid’s crewmate, none of them would’ve called him.
So he runs through the ship. And then he trips and falls and has to get up and keep going like he didn’t just eat shit. And he skids to a stop at the crew quarters and throws the door open to see—
“Close it!” Sid, Gunnie, and Barry Nyne shout at the same time.
“Fuck, okay,” Barry says, and closes the door behind him. “What’s going on?”
“Motherfuckers sliced my gun arm in half.” Sidney scowls. She doesn’t look like she’s in a lot of pain. Barry’s not actually clear on how much pain she feels, but this doesn’t seem to be bothering her. “They couldn’t have done it at the elbow so it’s a clean break, so—”
“So her systems are all out of whack,” Gunnie finishes. “I’m damage control.”
“I was waiting for you, dude,” Barry Nyne says. “I’m gonna take off as soon as Gunnie says I can.”
“Why do you have to wait for Gunnie?” Barry says. It’s autopilot more than anything. He can’t look away from Sid’s one hand resting in her lap, fingers curled into the skirt of her dress. He was so angry before this but he can feel it dissolving in the face of actually seeing Sidney, and actually seeing the injury.
“Because I’m trying to make sure the assault cannon that got cut in half doesn’t fire by accident and I don’t need any distractions,” Gunnie mutters. “It’s probably fine. Barry, you can leave.”
Barry Nyne gets to his feet and claps Barry on the shoulder as he heads out. He’s not very careful in opening or shutting the door, but Gunnie doesn’t seem to care, still squinting down at Sidney’s arm.
Slowly, Barry sits next to Sid on her bunk. “How’re you feeling?” he murmurs, loud enough that Gunnie can probably hear, but low enough that it still feels like it’s just the two of them.
“Been better,” Sid answers. “A lot better.”
It’s easy to forget that Sid isn’t organic. Barry is expecting her to be sweaty or grimacing or something, but she just seems transfixed by the end of her arm. If Barry leans over he can see the scrap metal of the assault cannon sitting by her feet, a perfect slice in half.
“We got a plan?” he asks, mostly because sitting here in silence is making him itchy and he hates it.
“Call Auma,” Gunnie answers. “We’re headed to neutral space, so we’re going to talk to her and see what she can do.”
“You can’t fix it?”
Gunnie gives Barry an unimpressed look. “I’m a math guy, not a gun guy. I barely know what I’m doing here. It’s just damage control.”
“You’re doing great,” Sid says, a blank and cheerful note to her voice. “Thanks, Gunnie.”
Her fingers are still scrabbling in the fabric of her skirt, fisting and clenching and letting go over and over. Barry reaches for her hand and holds it tight, and she squeezes his hand without hesitation. It’s a hard squeeze. Sid’s tough. So Barry squeezes back, cautious, not as hard as he wants to. Just in case. She only has one good hand right now, so it’s better to be a little careful with it.
“I think that’s all I can do,” Gunnie says, and straightens up. “No explosions. I need to go check on SQ, are you good here?”
Sid nods. Barry looks up at him. “All good, dude.”
“Great.” Gunnie pats Sid’s knee. “Feel better, Sidney.” And with that he heads off towards the engine room.
“I don’t feel bad,” Sid mutters as soon as the door is closed. “I mean, I do, but not — not in the way that he means, you know?”
“Does it feel like anything?”
“Sort of.” She lifts her arm, and Barry gets a good look at it for the first time. The metal is sheared neatly, no signs of melting or anything like that. “I don’t know what the fuck that sword was made of, but it’s pretty impressive. I kind of want one.”
“You’re not a sword gal.”
“I could be a sword gal,” she mutters petulantly, and finally leans over to drop her head on Barry’s shoulder. “I hate this.”
“I know,” Barry answers. He’s been hurt in the field before, mostly back when he was with the Barry battalion. None of them were medics, but Barry One was pretty kickass at taking care of them and making sure they got healed up. One time Barry Eyght got shot through the shoulder and totally fucked up his arm, and they adapted all his shit so he didn’t need full range of motion, and it was fine, but it was scary. It’s always scary.
Sid twists her fucked-up gun arm this way and that, inspecting the damage. “Do you think Auma would give me a better gun?”
“Better how?”
“Bigger or more firepower or something.”
“I mean, probably.” Barry has no idea how to feel about Auma — Sid loves her, and that counts for a hell of a lot, but if that weren’t in the picture then he’d hate Auma’s guts for the whole taking-the-money-and-running thing. But he gets the idea that Auma loves Sid too, so he says, “She’d do a lot of things for you.”
Sid hums indecisively. “Do you think she’d give me a grenade launcher?”
“If you asked.”
“Do you think she’d just give me a normal right hand?”
Barry twists to look at Sidney. She’s still looking at her arm, a small frown on her face.
“I do,” he says, because that’s the truth. Basically the only thing he and Auma have in common is that they’d do anything for Sid. “Do you want a normal right hand?”
“I don’t know.” She drops her arm so the sawed-off end of the gun is resting in her lap. “Most people have two working hands.”
“Most people aren’t Sundry fucking Sidney.”
Sid doesn’t smile, which is how Barry knows that this is serious. No-jokes serious, which is pretty rare for them, so he clears his throat and says, “Sid, look at me.”
“No,” Sid says, and leans in so her head is nestled more firmly against his shoulder. “Anything you can say, you can say without eye contact.”
But her thumb skates across his knuckles, still holding his hand tightly, and Barry has to fight down a grin. “Isn’t your whole deal that you can do anything?”
“You know it is.”
“So if you decide your version of anything involves two working human hands and carrying a gun around, that’s totally fine. And if you decide it involves a grenade launcher arm, that’s fine too.” He pauses. “That would be cool as fuck, honestly. I don’t know how you’d reload it, though.”
“What if I decide I want to live underneath Uncle Bob's Fantanimaland with the Junkmother?”
Barry doesn’t wince, because wincing isn’t cool and Sid’s on his shoulder and he doesn’t want to jostle her. He settles for making a nice, hearty fuck-that face and says, “If you really want to.”
He didn’t meet the Junkmother, obviously, but Sid told him about her. Not just a little situation recap, but whispering in hushed and reverent tones about who she was and what she did. About feeling understood and feeling hopeful in ways that were new and exciting, and she wanted to share those new and exciting feelings with him.
“Would you come with me?” Sid asks, barely a whisper.
Barry swallows. “Of course,” he says. He hates Uncle Bob and he hates that fucking Fantanimaland and living underground sounds like it would suck ass. He likes the sun too much. But if Sid went, he’d go with her. It wouldn’t even be a choice.
For a while neither of them say anything. It’s just the hum of the ship and the weight of Sid’s missing hand and the pressure of her head resting on his shoulder. At last she says, “I think I just want a normal assault cannon arm. Just like I already had.”
“You have time to think about it,” Barry answers. “Even if we call Auma right now it’ll take time to set up a meeting and to get there and whatever.”
Sidney nods, forehead bumping awkwardly against Barry’s neck. “Barry?”
“Yeah, Sid?”
“Do you think I’d look good as a blonde?”
Barry takes a deep breath. “Yeah, Sid.”
“What about if my hair were blue?”
“I’d still like you.”
“What if—”
“Sid,” Barry says before he can think better of it, “you could be a computer chip in one of Riva’s old psychodrones that got covered in graffiti and got beat to hell, and I’d still like you.”
“Oh,” Sidney says. It’s too much, it’s giving something away, it’s a weak and breathless honesty and she’s going to call him on it at any given moment, he’s certain of it. Instead she says, “Barry?”
“Yeah, Sid,” Barry says, voice sounding scratched raw.
“Can we just sit here for a while?”
“We can do whatever you want,” Barry promises. The terrifying thing is that he’s starting to realize how much he means it.