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The Three Laws of Robotics (Handbook of Robotics, 56th Edition, 2058 A.D.)

1. A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.
2. A robot must obey the orders given it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.
3. A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.

It’s Hornigold’s fault. That’s what Ed will say later, when the shit hits the fan. When he’s drowning in the consequences and the whole thing feels like a lead weight around him. He’ll say that he never asked for it. He’ll say that each decision made from this small butterfly of a decision flapping its wings was set in stone before him, and he could no more turn away from his path once set upon it than Hamlet or Macbeth could have avoided their own doom. But though it grabs him and twists him until his lungs burn and he doesn’t know how to breathe any more, he knows he’d choose it again.

The old man had been the one booked for the job, specifically, but he’d been in one of his moods - one of the ones that made even judges eye him warily and, depending on their disposition, either tell him to back down or - if they were weak - to quiver in their seats and let him rule the courtroom with terror.

Not doing this shit, he’d said. Why the fuck would someone think they’d get me for this? Fuck off. Give it to one of the whippersnappers.

His eye had fallen on Ed, then. Ed never really knows where he stands. He’s only been in this job a year - handpicked from his internship by old Ben himself - and some days it feels like he meant it. Some days Ed feels like he’s been crowned with a laurel wreath, like a Roman emperor in waiting, and Hornigold showers him with affection and praise, taking Ed into his confidence like a mentor would. Other days feel like Hornigold has handpicked him specifically to have a toy to torture; only the worst of the fucking worst for Edward Teach, and he can’t do any of it right. Brought to the front of the fucking class to have all his faults and his minor flaws dragged out, examined, and laughed at.

The other senior partners don’t act like there’s anything strange about this. Maybe there isn’t. Maybe this is just how law works.

Izzy says that Hornigold’s a twat and a bully, but Iz is just another kid hired at the same time as Ed so what the fuck does he know.

This feels somewhere in between the two - a piece of grunt work that should probably never have landed on Hornigold’s desk being handed over to the newbie. Just the legal paperwork to transfer some money and items from one person’s possession to another. Possibly a kid, looking at the paperwork - there’s no real details for them. Generic inheritance tax shit, probably.

Ivan, who’s drawn the short straw in playing assistant to the juniors right now, is manning the waiting room with a slightly bored look on his face. He tells Ed that the client is already in the room, and Ed straightens out his suit a little, feels with one hand to check that his hair hasn’t started curling out of its ties. Takes a breath, puts everything else to one side.

He enters his small office to see an elderly woman and her robot sitting on the two chairs in front of his desk, eschewing the couch squashed against the wall. Ed’s never really had much to do with robots - didn’t come from that sort of money - but it looks like one of the styles that you don’t see around much these days - very humanoid shaped, legs and everything. They stopped making those a while back, so this one must be old.

The woman’s small, and looks like she’s edging into frailty, but pins Ed with a look that could probably kill at a hundred paces. It makes a mockery of any judgement Ed was going to make about her based on her ageing body that must be in its ninth or tenth decade.

“I was expecting Mr Hornigold,” she says without waiting for him to speak, steel in her voice.

“Mr Hornigold is unavoidably detained,” Ed says smoothly, slipping into a persona that he calls charming and Izzy calls brown-nosing. “I’m Edward Teach, and I’ll be taking the preliminary notes in his stead.” Doing the whole fucking job, actually, but let’s ease her into that one. “It’s a pleasure to meet you, Mrs Allamby Bonnet.” He offers a palm in greeting.

She huffs outwards through her nose, unimpressed, but takes his hand, shakes it firmly. It’s the exact kind of grip that Hornigold would be impressed by and Ed is secretly indifferent to; tightly honed to high-power high-class business meetings. Her occupation is listed as ‘artist’. Maybe those are the kind of people she sells to; the kind of person who buys art because it’s expensive and in vogue, not because it calls to them. “Mary will do, Mr Teach.”

Ed nods his acknowledgement - never let them call you by your first name, keep yourself above them, Hornigold says - and takes his seat across the desk. She and the robot watch him and he busies himself with the infopad so he can watch them back.

The robot is… well, Ed’s not really got a comparison. There are robots around Hornigold’s of course - more modern non-humanoid mechs that are designed for very simple functions - cleaning, tidying, food service. This is one of the more complex examples, an older model, ones that were meant to be all-singing, all-dancing and more before US Robotics changed its design direction. Its humanoid features are clear; its silvery metallic body with the requisite number of arms and legs, and its head with vaguely facial features. It looks a bit worried, which has to just be Ed’s imagination, or the way its face was put together. It’s fucking weird all right, but more fascinating than alarming - Ed kind of wants to call a time-out so he can examine everything on it.

He doesn’t. It still has to be rude as fuck to stare, even if it’s at a robot.

“I understand you want to transfer ownership of some credits and property to a Mr Stede Bonnet?” he says. “A relative?”

“Not exactly,” Mary says, her eyes crinkling in some joke that Ed isn’t in on. “Stede?”

The robot turns its head, looks at Ed. His eyes are metallic too, small clear camera lenses in a vaguely human shape. “Mary would like to protect my assets in my own name.” His clear tenor carries the clipped vowels of a home that Ed left long ago, and it tugs at something that he thought he’d buried back then, too.

Their eyes meet for what should be an uncomfortably long time. It isn’t. It mainly gives Ed a chance to really take in the minute movements of the face - there are eyebrows there - fucking eyebrows! - which tilt minutely. It enhances the worried look, so maybe he’s not just built that way.

“Is that legal?” Ed asks, before he can stop and think.

“You’re the lawyer,” Mary says witheringly. “You tell me.”

This is way over Ed’s head. No fucking clue how the fuck to proceed here. “Right,” he says smoothly. “Just gonna, uh, take some notes about the details of this, then we’ll need to do a bit of investigation into precedent. Yeah,” he says, convincing himself as he goes. “So, who owns Stede?”

“I do,” Mary says. “Or at least, jointly with my husband.” She names a date of purchase, around sixty years earlier.

“We’ll probably need your husband’s permission to do anything, if Stede is joint property,” Ed says. Maybe. Who fucking knows.

“That won’t be a problem,” Mary says smoothly. “Doug agrees with me.”

Ed can’t imagine that many people disagree with her. Not twice, anyway. The tone doesn’t feel as menacing as Hornigold, or as capricious, but it’s no less powerful for it, and Ed wouldn’t want to be the one to cross her.

The robot’s - Stede’s - mouth twitches, like he’s politely restraining amusement. Like Ed’s guesses are spot on. Their eyes meet for a second and Ed knows he’s been rumbled. He’s safe with it though; their conspiracy of two in this meeting of three.

“Right,” says Ed, before he can give the game away. “Good. And have you got a list of what you’d like transferred over?”

Mary brings a device out of her bag, and swipes a few times. A sum appears on Ed’s infopad screen. It’s around ten times his annual salary. Pre-tax. Shitting fuck. There’s also a list of items and materials that make very little sense to Ed.

“Stede is quite the talented creator,” Mary says. She leans forwards. “I’m going to be straight with you, Mr Teach; I’m getting old. I want to settle my affairs before it’s too late. Stede has earned this money and I’d like to make sure it goes to him while it’s still within my power to do so.”

Another swipe of the screen. A site appears on Ed’s screen - a collection of different ships in bottles. It’s hard to tell how big the real things are, but they look intricate - each ship its own small perfect thing sitting in its own world. Sails, rigging, small planks of wood making up the body of the hull.

“Fucking mental,” breathes Ed, forgetting he’s at work for a second.

“Thank you,” Stede says. It’s the first time he’s spoken without Mary prompting him, and if he were human Ed would have said there was a hint of warmth in it. Pride.

“You made all of these? How?”

“My eyes can adjust to finer details than the naked human eye, so —“

“He doesn’t mean that, Stede,” Mary interrupts. “We don’t know,” she says to Ed. “We took him back to the factory - years ago, when he started whittling - but US Robotics couldn’t tell us why he does this. They said that the generalised positronic brains are ‘open ended and are designed to form new pathways independently.’”

“Unpredictably?”

Mary nods in agreement, then adds, “They said they couldn’t know what connections had formed in his brain, to know how this had happened, without taking his brain to pieces and destroying him. They stopped making them, shortly after they concluded their investigation into Stede.”

Ed looks at Stede. “They didn’t like what you were doing?”

“They were scared of me.”

“Because you could make things and you weren’t meant to?”

Stede smiles, the mechanisms underneath the silver metal visible in their movement, and Ed isn’t sure whether he intended to make himself look that sad. “Because I found enjoyment in it.”

It’s bad enough, in this world, that humans want. Ed has spent his whole life pushing that urge down, to work towards what he’s supposed to aim for. Has fought hard not to stay in the mould that he was destined for, but has had to fight just as hard to tamp down his own wants to fit into the one he’s chosen. Has cut bits off and tried to forget how to want them. He can see why unbridled desire appearing in a robot - no shame, no need for conformity, only logic pathways and the Three Laws to guide them - would freak them out.

“We took him home,” Mary says. “Looked after him as well as we could do. He’s my responsibility, Mr Teach, even if I don’t understand what happened to him. And US Robotics don’t seem to care,” she adds, as if she can read Ed’s mind.

Okay, okay. So that’s one less thing to think about. Ed is given a lot of leeway when it comes to weird shit, but US Robotics are one of the biggest companies in the solar system and getting into a legal bitchfight with them is probably pushing it.

“And no-one else would complain?” Ed asks. “Kids?”

“My children are in full agreement,” Mary says, shortly, like this is a waste of time.

“Alma and Louis will not provide you with any issues, Mr Teach,” Stede adds quietly, and there’s an edge of a query to it, as if Stede isn’t quite sure that he’s answering the right thing.

“Call me Ed,” he finds himself saying warmly, belatedly remembering to add a gesture to include Mary into that. Can’t make it weird.

Hornigold’s going to go mental. About that. About the whole thing, really.

“Good,” he continues, shaking off that thought. “No one outright fighting this makes life easier.”

There are other details to collect that Ed makes swift work of, and he promises to be in touch when he’s done his initial investigations.

“Will it be you or Mr Hornigold we see next time?” Mary asks.

Ed stops, because by rights this is way above his head. He should go to senior management about this.

“I would prefer it if this remained with you,” Stede says without any prompting. No hint of demand. No hint really of request. He’s a robot; he can’t, not of a human. Just a statement of preference. And that does it, because Hornigold will eviscerate this gentle robot and his delicate creations. And Ed isn’t going to let that happen.

“It’ll be me,” he says. There’s no response on the robot’s face, but Mary gives a short nod of acquiescence.

What his bosses don’t know can’t harm them.

***

Ed tells Izzy, because his head will explode if he doesn’t tell anyone, and then immediately regrets it.

“You’re a fucking lunatic,” Izzy says. It doesn’t sound like a compliment. “What the fuck do you think you’re playing at?”

“If it’s not explicitly illegal, it has to be fine,” Ed replies. They’re both searching the system for case law, but with vague search terms. No point making themselves easy to track. Spreading out the queries between the two of them allows for a bit of misdirection.

Izzy snorts. “Now you sound like Hornigold.”

And that makes Ed pause, because Izzy’s not wrong. He’s not sure how he feels about that. S’probably a good thing, right? Hornigold’s the most successful partner the firm has ever had.

He shoves any nagging doubt into the back of his mind and tries to forget about it.

And when Izzy’s not there, he spends time looking at Stede’s sale site. Brings each ship up, gets them on the holo emitter so he can really look at them. Thinks about the delicacy that’s needed to create them. The detail that his eye must be able to see. There’s no real info about the artist himself on there, leaving Ed scrabbling around the edges of the descriptions to look for any sort of clue about Stede. Traces the patterns in the glass of the bottles that surround them, each one as individual as a snowflake.

He can feel the care that has gone into each one of these emanating from the artificial glow of the screen. It’s easy to see why US Robotics are frightened of an army of robots with both the ability to desire and the tenacity to follow through.

Ed just envies it. Maybe he’s not as like Hornigold as Izzy says.

It takes three months of work, in the end. For him and Izzy both, though Iz is keeping his name off everything. He’s never really cared about the glory, and he sure as fuck doesn’t want the blame if the senior partners get wind of this. So far Ed has managed to fob them off by implying that there’s some mediocre technical difficulties that are just taking some time to untangle.

Yeah, technical difficulties like a robot not having the necessary ID, you know, just the little details.

Ed takes the second meeting outside the firm, just in case.

He arrives at the Allamby Bonnet house, in its old money neighbourhood, and sits in a kitchen bigger than his whole apartment. Watches the household robots - modernised, mechanised, blocks of metal, designed to be purposeful, not familiar - working away. Stede sits opposite him as they wait for Mary to join them. Wonders how much they exist in their anonymous, rigid, forms because of Stede and his brain and his familiarity.

“The ships - how do you make them?” Ed asks. “You never got the chance to tell me.” He probably sounds like he’s making conversation for the sake of it, but fuck it, he wants to know.

“You would like to know the process, Ed?” Stede asks. His eyes light up. Metaphorically. Maybe a bit literally as well? Ed’s not sure. He’s fucking excited anyway.

“Yeah, man, I don’t know how you do it.” Most art these days is digital; Mary Allamby Bonnet specialises in light installations and holo-projections. No one makes analogue any more.

Stede launches into a description of his methods then, getting bolder when he realises that Ed knows the ships on his site. Talks about his crafts and tools, and how each one has incrementally brought him closer to the perfection of his art.

“You don’t think they’re perfect?” Ed asks.

“I see them in my mind, before I start,” Stede says. “And they are perfect then. But then during the act of creation small imperfections may creep in, or I create each step as planned but the final product falls short of my vision.” He sighs.

“Sounds stressful,” Ed says.

“It is! And yet…” Stede shrugs.

“Do you like doing this?” Ed asks. “I mean, I know your family supports it, but…”

“Yes!” Stede says. “I did this in secret, to start. Or pretended it was a game, for the children - to keep them occupied. It makes my synapses run smoother, if I am allowed to do this. Before I could do this I was just… existing.”

“Treading water?” Ed asks. “Waiting?”

“Yes, exactly,” says Stede. If a robot could smile, he was smiling, fondly. “And I did not know what for.”

Fuck. Ed wishes he had that certainty. Every step he takes, he feels like he enters another waiting room, another set of tasks, another set of steps. Get to uni - tick. Get the degree - tick. Get the internship, get the job - tick. And for what? Sure as fuck doesn’t make his synapses run smoother. Just a never-ending ladder in front of him, and a long fall underneath if he missteps.

They’re interrupted then by Mary, who sweeps in, all artist’s protective gear and poise. This is new to Ed as well - he knows theoretically that working with light this fine, this laser-like, can be dangerous, but the goggles around her neck and the protective gloves that she removes carefully and places in a designated spot are something he’s only heard about.

“Apologies for the delay, Ed,” she says, and Ed remembers with a jolt that he gave her an invitation to use it. Stupid decision, really.

“No worries,” he says, and takes a breath, mentally squares his shoulders to be professional-faced Edward Teach. Stede has started moving his fingers through the lace trimmings of the cloth that covers the table, slipping his thumb from one hole to the next as any former ease disappears. The movement is steady as a metronome, more perfectly even than a human could achieve. There’s programming in old household robots, Ed has learnt, that normally stops them from doing this. It created slight imperfections in timing and movement that made them more human-like and less robotic. Either Stede has turned it off or his other systems are overriding the impulse.

It doesn’t make him look scarily inhuman. It makes him look nervous.

Ed flashes him a smile, tries to be reassuring. It’s not bad news he’s here to bring - the messages that he and Mary have been swapping over the months should have conveyed that.

Stede’s mouth twitches in reply, an acknowledgement of receipt.

“We can start from the beginning?” Mary asks. “I haven’t really kept Stede in the loop, didn’t want to get his hopes up.”

Oh.

Well, that explains the tense energy Stede’s giving off.

“It’s good news, mate,” Ed says, gentling his tone as much as he dare with Mary in the room to witness. “It’s a bit complicated legally, and a bit of a workaround with the whole, not-human aspect to the whole thing, but we can get you recognised enough to have control of your own assets. Just gotta get you and Mary to sign some paperwork.”

“It’s not technically full autonomy,” Mary says, “Not yet.”

“It leaves Mary nominally responsible for anything you might choose to do, but you get full control,” Ed says.

The brilliant look of hope that Stede gives him in return feels like reward enough for the months of work Ed has put into this.

“I would be interested in the details?” Stede asks, and Ed takes a moment to curse Mary, because if Stede had been told throughout… But there again, it’s a very clever solution, and Ed isn’t completely sorry for a chance to showboat a little.

He goes through it, bit by bit, one step leading logically to the other, except when it doesn’t. Where Ed’s taken a sidestep he thinks of as brilliant, because it is. He knows his own worth here, and he likes the way that Stede looks at him admiringly whenever he demonstrates it. Stede’s both fucking fascinating and fiercely intelligent, and getting to see his admiring look or his murmured approval satiates something inside Ed.

Makes him feel more alive than he’s done in fucking ages.

The paperwork gets signed, the permissions given. Ed thinks that Mary doesn’t notice Stede’s hands shaking minutely as the credits are transferred into his account, in his name. Ed shakes hands with both of them as he leaves, Stede looking visibly startled at the gesture.

Ed takes Stede’s hand in his, cool to the touch, metallic and hard underneath despite the smoothness of the surface. This is the first time he’s touched Stede, he realises. Stede had kept his hands politely behind his back at every opportunity, has never offered a polite civility.

A few weeks later, a parcel arrives for him at his office. A small ship, perfectly formed, in a bottle that is decorated with a swirling pattern on the underside.

A Queen Anne’s Revenge, for an Edward Teach, the note says. To keep you afloat. S Bonnet.

Chapter Text

The Three Laws of Robotics (Handbook of Robotics, 56th Edition, 2058 A.D.)

1. A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.
2. A robot must obey the orders given it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.
3. A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.

It would be wrong to say that Ed doesn’t think about Stede over the next decade.

There’s the initial flurry of research about the gift, of course - figuring out what the Queen Anne’s Revenge and this other Edward Teach are. Privateer turned pirate, mainly a mystery. Ed can go with that. He’s not sure if Stede has put this amount of thought into that, or whether it was merely a word association that tickled him, but Ed takes it and holds it close.

The little ship comes with him from office to office as he gains seniority, sitting on his desk as his marker. The juniors see it and start to call him Blackbeard; a play on his name and Izzy tells him to lean into it, and he does – even grows out his beard, gets a little fiercer in the courtroom and the office. Gotta keep ‘em down, only way to push yourself up is by climbing over those you’re competing with. As he becomes more ruthless he clings to the delicate ship even harder, tries to remind himself that Blackbeard is a means to an end and not all he is – that before the cutthroat deals and courtroom takedowns, he was capable of something different as well.

He keeps tabs on Stede’s site, as well. Watches it flourish. Watches it branch out into other things - Ed supposes that fifty years making the same thing over and over must get boring, eventually, no matter how much you love it.

He watches Stede’s experiments, the ones that fade away, and the ones that stay. He wonders how many things Stede tries that never make it to public viewing.

But Ed keeps it tucked away, hidden from sight. Can’t fucking let the kids think he’s human, not now. Hornigold is ailing - old, sick, weak - and there’s a board meeting coming up. Successor to be named. Izzy’s working on it, in the background. Gathering the votes and allegiances needed to make this work. Ed would be the youngest senior partner the firm has ever seen, but Izzy tells him that if Ed keeps doing what he’s been doing, it could happen.

Not certain, Izzy warns him immediately after saying that.

Nothing’s certain in life except death, Ed says, with an easy grin. And taxes. He trusts Izzy - if it’s at all possible, Iz’ll make it happen.

So when the request for a meeting comes through, he doesn’t tell Izzy. Ed books it in himself, hopes that Izzy has forgotten the surname ‘Bonnet’, or dismisses it as a coincidence. Different first name anyway - Alma. But it’s not that common a name, and Ed has secreted every word that Stede spoke to him into his brain.

(Yeah okay he’s re-listened to the automatically recorded transcripts, too, until memorising every utterance was virtually a guarantee.)

It might be a coincidence. It might just be a woman taking the recommendation of her mother on a completely different subject.

Ed still takes extra care with his appearance that morning. There are some silver strands appearing in his hair despite only being in his mid thirties - the war wounds of a decade of stress and minimal sleep. Maybe genetics, but it’s not like a prematurely deceased mum and a dad who’s fuck-knows-where can answer that one. Looks at the crows' feet starting to develop that definitely disappear after a week’s vacation. He sometimes wonders why the fuck he’s doing this, but then if he didn’t, what the fuck else would he do?

No easy answers at all.

Walks into his waiting area - his own, now, not shared with anyone else, tells Ivan to block access to anyone. When Ivan’s eyes widen a bit, he emphasises that this includes Izzy. He’s not hiding this, definitely not - it’s just wiser to suss it out first, before he talks about it.

Could be nothing anyway.

***

It’s not nothing.

Ed waits in his office as he hears Ivan greet them, the indistinct murmur of a feminine voice seeping through the cracked open door. It’s a routine that he’s built up, part of the Blackbeard shit. Wait behind his desk, in his overly large office with a window behind him, a strip of light that stretches from floor to ceiling. Let the light frame him, whether it be the natural light of day or the artificial lights of the city. Let the size of the room and its starkness intimidate the person sitting opposite him.

He doesn’t want to intimidate whoever is coming through that door today. But maybe the dramatics are a comfort, when the rest is so unknown.

Ed stands as a woman enters. In her seventies, she has Mary Allamby Bonnet’s nose and none of her other facial features. She holds out her hand, and offers Mary’s firm handshake. Must be familial, passed down like generational fucking wealth and a property in the right neighbourhood.

“A pleasure to meet you, Mr Teach,” she says. Her words are crisp and sharp, the generic non accent that most regions of the main planet have adopted. “I’ve heard a lot about you.”

She glances backwards towards the door as Stede walks in.

He’s just like Ed remembers, silver-grey and tall, and he finds himself moving from behind his desk like it’s an indelible part of his programming, pulled towards the person that is unmistakably the same. Except, there are changes that become more obvious the closer he looks.

He meets Ed’s eyes unwaveringly, for one. “It is good to see you again, Ed,” he says, offering his own hand.

It’s the first time that Stede has been proactive like this - Ed has to wonder if this is the change that a decade has wrought, or whether he remembers Ed’s gesture from long ago, and Ed’s smile as he takes it is genuinely warm. Stede’s hand is still cool to the touch but more rounded, closer to a truly human shape. There’s no give to the metallic surface but Stede remains gentle.

He’s changed in other ways, too - there are other new parts, Ed thinks - things that are different. Mechanisms. His face is changed, subtly - there’s more and smaller areas of movement - more ability to create an expression.

He’s just more. Ed wants to drink it in, wants to ask how he’s managed it when his US Robotics upgrade warranty must be out of date by half a century at least, wants to know what else he’s got out of them that’s hidden under the surface - the bits that Ed can’t see - but instead he forces himself to let go of Stede’s hand and indicates to the two chairs by his desk.

He tries to quiet the thrill that he gets when Stede spots the ship in a bottle on his desk. A complicated whirlwind of expressions that flitter across his face - some of which probably wouldn’t have been possible a decade ago, if Ed can remember the parts of his face correctly - and then he looks at Ed with clear surprise and delight.

Alma smiles when she sees it, knows it for what it is. It seems to give her some confidence, because she squares her shoulders, looks at Ed, and says, “We want to make Stede his own owner.”

“We?” asks Ed, automatically seeking clarification before his brain has begun to process the whole of the sentence. He can keep talking, no problem, just keeps the words coming out of his mouth until his brain has had a chance to catch up and provide options.

“My brother. Myself. Stede.”

“Your parents?” Ed asks.

“Their opinion is irrelevant. They’re both deceased.”

There’s a clipped note to those words; Ed had searched for Mary Allamby Bonnet - when he’d seen this appointment - and there had been no notice of her death. A recent development, then, or kept quiet to off-list announcements.

Given Alma’s words, perhaps the driving force behind this meeting happening at this time and this place.

“You want to emancipate a robot?” he asks, just to clarify, because his brain is catching up with this. This is huge. This will not escape the notice of US Robotics nor their army of lawyers.

This could trash all of Ed and Izzy’s ambitions.

“I would like to be free,” Stede says, looking at Ed.

“Okay,” says Ed, because Stede says it like it’s not a groundbreaking thing. Like this is something that any robot might say. Like this is a bog-standard, normal thing to want - one cappuccino please, and freedom for machines, hold the chocolate dust.

No robot has said this before in the history of robotics; Ed’s pretty certain. Ed did a lot of reading the first time Stede asked him for help, and he’s done a lot of reading since. Kept his eye on the ball, as it were.

Not because he expected Stede to return – but maybe because he hoped he would, and wanted to be ready, just in case.

And now that Stede’s spoken, he finds he’s not ready at all. Stede is an eternal surprise in an increasingly regimented world.

“If you don’t think you can help us, perhaps you could point us in the direction of someone who could?” Alma asks, and there’s her mother right there - forthright questions and clipped tones.

Ed’s still staring at Stede, who is looking at him with a very neutral face. He supposes, really, all of Stede’s faces are neutral and a construct - a conscious choice by a very good mimic - but this one seems hellbent on not giving anything away. Just waiting for Ed.

“I didn’t say that,” Ed says, and the parts of Stede’s face sag slightly; Ed thinks he can see relief? Gratitude? Maybe just what Ed wants to see, and maybe this is all in his head. Maybe what Stede wants him to see, a created face as an appeasement, provided as a familiar comfort to the humans around him.

“You would be my preferred choice for this,” Stede says.

Or maybe it’s real?

“Good,” Ed says. A little too fast, because Stede’s mouth gives a sardonic quirk upwards, like there’s a private joke in there just for the two of them. It’s more nuanced than it was ten years ago, but it’s the same.

“You are willing to do this for me?” The question is gentle. Ed didn’t know that robots could be soft.

“I don’t have any children,” Alma says. “It’s important to us that Stede’s future is settled.”

“It could take some time,” Ed warns. “If it’s possible at all.”

“We’re both in good health, Mr Teach,” Alma says wryly. “I may be of advanced age, but I’ll try not to drop dead on you for a while.”

“Alma,” Stede says, a mild reproof. Mild enough that it doesn’t sound like Stede means it at all. Or maybe he just doesn’t expect it to work.

Alma flashes a grin, and for a moment Ed sees the child that was. “I’ll be good, Stede,” she promises. She doesn’t sound like she means it.

Seventy years ago, when Stede was new, Alma would have been a child, another household task for Stede to take care of. An ever-fixed presence in her life. Maybe that explains why she’s the one that is willing to consider this. Maybe it felt safer for Stede to confide his desires to her than to her mother, who purchased him.

Maybe Stede has other desires that he can only access once he’s free. Ed itches to know what they are. If any robot could dream, it would be Stede.

“Can I ask,” Ed starts, “for the purpose of trying to figure out an angle here, what freedom - self-ownership - would afford you? What do you want to get out of this?”

“I would like to be able to decide my own future,” Stede says. “To make my own choices. I am fortunate - and have been fortunate - in my owners, but everyone, in the end, wants to decide their own path, don’t they?”

Yeah, everyone does. Ed isn’t sure that everyone is allowed that luxury, despite freedom, but he’s got higher hopes for Stede than he does for himself.

“You’re a robot and the Three Laws would still apply,” he says, temporising.

“You’re a human and the human laws apply to you - does that restrict your freedom?”

Ed hesitates a little. Stede looks at him patiently. Ed knows the answer to this, has debated it in law school ad nauseum. He could say, as he’s expected to, that good laws restrict a little but that’s measured against the protection that they bring.

Instead, he says, “Yeah, and sometimes that sucks ass.”

That does seem to startle Stede a little. Makes him look at Ed searchingly. “Into each day a little rain must fall,” he says, but the sardonic quirk of his lips is back, just for Ed.

The boldness surprises Ed - other traces of humour have been transient, plausibly deniable - a look, a crooked smile. Fleeting. But words are literally recorded in this room, and that makes them permanent. That makes them undeniably real. Makes Stede undeniably real, when he can match Ed like that.

Makes Ed want to do this for him even more.

***

There’s nothing, is what there is. Literally nothing in the history books, or the law books. And Ed even means that literally - he’s gone back to pre-digitised records and found himself searching through scanned-in records of actual books.

Izzy had gone mad, of course he had.

First he’d gone mad because Ed had kind of abandoned the plan they had to get him on the board and forgotten about all the steps he was meant to be doing - the stupid fucking regimented steps that controlled his life and ate his fucking soul.

Then he’d realised why Ed was distracted, and oh, boy. If Ed thought that Izzy was a little angry man on normal days then fuck, this was like standing on the surface of Io when all of its volcanoes come out to play, surrounded by lava fountains that reach tens of kilometres into the sky.

Ed was going to fuck his chances of ever getting a partnership. Ed was going to get fired. Ed was going to get Izzy fired. Ed was going to bring the entirety of the US Robotics legal team onto their heads and the entire company was gonna fold and take them with it. How could Ed be so stupid and unthinking?

Easily, as it turns out. The more Izzy pushes, the more Ed stands firm. When he’d left the meeting with Alma and Stede, he’d wondered what the fuck he was doing getting involved in this, but now the more Izzy pushes him to play it safe, the less he wants to.

He’s not going to be able to do this without creating noise. Izzy’s right with that one. The partners, US Robotics - this is going to get fucking wild.

What Izzy doesn’t understand is: that’s fine with Ed.

***

Stede is not entirely certain why Ed has requested to meet him, but he arrives at the allotted meeting place on time. The botanical gardens remain a preserve of the natural world that has been slowly eaten away by the increasing biomass of humanity, and their exponential hunger for power sources both direct and calorific.

Stede sits on a wooden bench and waits, allows himself to look at the plant life that exists nowhere else. The Bonnets are privileged enough to have a small garden, pollinated and propagated by strictly programmed robots, but here real insects and small birds are allowed. He can feel the wood of the bench against him, feel the imperfections in its grain that denote it as real rather than constructed. He can see the flaws in the joins that suggest that this is handmade, the product human hands, rather than a manufactured copy. There’s even a real human gardener; bald and sleeveless, whistling tunelessly as he works.

A small winged insect lands besides him on the arm of the bench; Dryocampa rubicunda. She - the rounded shape to her pink and yellow wings and simple antennae identify her as a female - settles in, her wings open and resting. Her abdomen is minutely distorted, filled with eggs that will create new life once laid on the maple trees in the biodome, in the same way that the production line of US Robotics created Stede.

There’s so much life in this place, hemmed in from all sides.

He can hear footsteps approaching far before any human would, recognises the cadence of Ed, the slightly unlevel gait that indicates a previous injury. Out of politeness, he waits until the sound is appropriately close before turning and offering a smile.

Ed is dressed more casually than normal; a leather jacket instead of a suit, his long dark hair moving slightly as it’s caught by the breeze. He smiles when he catches Stede’s eye - unforced, although everything else about him is tense, from his heart rate to his sweat to the way he’s walking.

Stede waits; humans, in his experience, do not appreciate having these things pointing out to them, except for the instances when they do. He is not yet skilled enough to know which of these situations is which.

Ed sits besides him, and offers him a hand in greeting; easily and freely, as if it were nothing. Stede isn’t used to being afforded this courtesy, finds that most people either shy away, unsure, or simply do not consider him enough to be worthy of it. He takes the hand, registers the warmth of Ed’s skin and the thrum of his pulse as it courses through his arterioles, the way that Ed’s fingers briefly tighten on his.

“Nice place you picked,” Ed says, looking around.

He doesn’t mean it; his body says different things to his mouth. His eyes skip over the scenery in front of them, scanning without really seeing, flicking between the different pieces of foliage as if they represent a threat. He’s more alert here than he ever was in his office, but for some reason Ed had insisted that this meeting not take place there.

“You wished to meet with me?” Stede asks, instead.

“Yeah,” Ed says. “I wanted to check in with you, let you know where we were with everything.”

Stede waits for a moment. He is unsure how to proceed here; his previous experience with Ed was metered through Mary and he has little other experience of legal matters.

“This isn’t going to be simple, like last time,” Ed says, looking at him seriously. There’s no trace of humour in those brown eyes now, and he’s scanning Stede’s face for clues as if Stede could betray his thoughts in his mechanisms.

“I understand that.”

“It will have to go to court,” Ed continues. “Which is probably gonna bring US Robotics down on our heads.” He looks away from Stede for a moment, away into the middle distance, then down at his own boots. “Could be media as well.”

“You do not wish to do that?” US Robotics are the most powerful firm in the solar system, and while Hornigold’s is a large corporation in its own right, Stede understands, logically, that this is a lot to ask.

His pathways stutter a little at the thought of failure.

“I wanna make sure that you’re up for this before it starts,” Ed says. “It’s gonna get big.”

“Are you sure you want to do it?” Stede asks. He eliminates any trace of hesitation from his tone ruthlessly.

“Nah,” says Ed, easy grin in place, reassuring. “I don’t back down from a challenge. I’d sooner die. Gonna win this interaction.”

There’s no hint of a lie to Ed’s words.

“You think this can be done?” Stede asks.

“I think if you want it, and you’re ready for what comes with it.”

“Ed, I think I would tolerate anything to do this.”

Ed searches his face, looking for something - Stede isn’t sure what. “You’re kind of a lunatic, you know that?” he asks eventually.

A lunatic, someone of insane disposition, predisposed to doing silly or dangerous things. Stede is unsure which of those Ed thinks this matter is.

Before he can compose an appropriate reply, Ed says, “I like it.”

The electrons in Stede’s brain hum as they flow under Ed’s approving gaze without impediment or friction.

“You understand why I want to do this?” he asks. Mary had been resistant all her life. She hadn’t understood why Stede wanted to break so far out of the role he’d been given, had seen it as a slight against her and her care and the life she could offer Stede.

Alma is different, and happy to support Stede, but with an air of confusion that suggests that she doesn’t truly know why Stede would want a change of state when in material terms he is planning to continue his existence as before. If it’s going to make so little difference, she’d asked, is it really worth it? It’s not like we ever order you to do anything.

Yes, Stede had said without hesitation, and she’d nodded, accepted it, but the confusion had never dispelled.

And he’s grateful for everything the Bonnets have done for him - they’ve been a wonderful family! He supposes that many families would not have allowed him to indulge in his creativity, or to form his own business, and would have expected him to keep to his original purpose even when ill-fitted for it.

But no one has ever looked at him like Ed is looking at him now. Like they see him. Like they could possibly understand him.

“Yeah,” Ed says. He laces his hand through Stede’s, squeezes his fingers. The children had held his hand when they were small, tiny fingers digging into his palm - Stede guiding them across a street, or across a park. But no one has entwined Stede’s fingers in their own like this before. Stede’s receptors take the information and convey it into the positronic brain - the pressure, the temperature, the movement. The meaning offered seeps into his positronic brain through other means, though - decades of observing behaviour to allow Stede to interpret the meaning underneath the action. Comfort. Reassurance. Allyship.

It’s so very human.

Ed might be the most alive person he’s ever met, and he’s offering some of that to Stede.

***

Stede has seen court cases - fake ones, on holovids - over the years. This is the first time he’s attended a trial that’s real.

Except Ed had told him it isn’t a trial, really. This isn’t a criminal case. This is a civil case brought by US Robotics, who have sent a lawyer to object to the process.

The lawyer is ruthless, too - he’s found all of Stede’s bank accounts, and his site, and his products. Brings them out, displays them like they’re tokens of shame. Brings Stede’s progress out as if it’s something that should not have happened. Something that should have been stifled and suppressed.

Ed watches idly, making notes as he goes. Taps onto his screen with a force that is far greater than necessary, although far below the tolerance of the equipment. He’s also brought the little ship in a bottle along - the one that Stede had gifted him many years ago.

Stede had not entirely been expecting that when he’d stepped into Ed’s office. Had expected that perhaps, as many other tokens that humans received, it would either be discarded, or kept tucked away because the recipient could not bring themselves to break the contract of gift giving despite not wanting to keep the item.

Hadn’t expected it to be retained like it was something important. Displayed. Like he was proud of it.

Like he was proud of Stede.

It sits between them now, its sails unfurled as though ready for a voyage, and Stede focuses on it instead of the words that this lawyer is saying.

It’s not personal. The man’s doing a job. He is merely operating within his normal parameters. He makes the case, quickly, efficiently. He finds security screenshots of his build being assembled. A list of his parts. Rhetorically asks the judge if a hunk of platinum-iridium by itself should be given self determination. Looks to the gallery with a huff of laughter, to share his joke with the crowd. He finds the original blueprints that made Stede, and the sales pitch that boasts about how lifelike the model can appear to be. He shows a picture, broadcast to the world, of Stede’s serial number. He shows both the invoice and the sales receipt.

He has Mary and Doug’s tax return which lists him as a business expense.

He brings out the evidence that Stede is an object, a thing, and nothing more than an incredibly good mimic, and he lays it bare before the solar system.

“Thank you, Mr Badminton,” the judge says, as US Robotics rests their case.

And then it’s Ed. And Stede had been aware, vaguely, that Ed was good. Remembers the explanation he’d been given in the Bonnet kitchen a decade ago, with leaps of brilliance that most human minds, he thinks, would not have been able to make. Has subscribed to the quarterly newsletter from the firm and seen Ed’s name pop up in articles about various successes.

And he knows Ed’s kindness, from how he’s treated Stede. His gentle preparation and his support.

But this is Ed in his natural environment. No hesitation, no quarter given. He takes US Robotics arguments and he skins them with a ruthless efficiency, takes them down sinew by sinew until there’s nothing left but disconnected bones. Tears them to pieces.

At the law office, Stede’s heard the juniors in the firm. They don’t pay any heed to a robot, forget to guard their tongue, because in the end they don’t see him as real either. They call Ed Blackbeard. And Stede can maybe see why, now, beyond the obvious. He slips in, he steals victory from beneath his enemy’s nose, and he wreaks havoc as he does so.

It’s magnificent to watch, a public disembowelment that entertains the spectators as well. The gathered press corps - nearly all here in person - are frantically tapping, or vidding, to memorialise the scene for the rolling news coverage.

Ed whirls, and he performs, and it’s nearly like a dance, with the way he approaches the judge, and backs off with the ebbs and flows of his story. If Stede is governed by rigid laws, logic, and engineering, then Ed is fluid, finding the gaps between the solid truths and slipping gracefully between them to prove their solidity and unchangingness a lie.

By the time he sits back down next to Stede, his core temperature has risen and a sheen of sweat has formed on his brow that Stede suspects is invisible to the human eye. His heart and respiratory rate are both a hundred and twenty per cent of their normal resting rate.

He takes a drink of water and Stede can see that his hands tremble minutely. From exertion?

They watch as the judge confers with his notes.

“Mr Bonnet,” he says eventually. “Could you please take the stand?”

Ed startles, and the water splashes from the glass. Turns his gaze to Stede, and for the first time he looks worried. “Are you okay with that?” he asks. They hadn’t expected this, not really. This is a case based on technicalities, not on witnesses.

“I will be fine, Ed,” Stede says, and, daringly, squeezes Ed’s shoulder in reassurance as he passes behind him.

He can see Ed reaching up to touch the spot as he walks away, and several of his subroutines dedicate themselves to wondering if that had been a misstep.

“Why do you want freedom, Mr Bonnet?” the judge asks.

“Would you like to not be free?”

She looks thoughtful. “No.”

“I, also, desire to attain that same state.”

The judge looks at him again, thoughtfully, writes on her pad for a moment. “Okay,” she says eventually. “There’ll be a full statement shortly, but here’s the lowdown. It seems to me, Mr Bonnet, that someone who wishes for freedom ought to be free.”

Stede doesn’t commit his response to his long term memory. He doesn’t remember making his way back to Ed. He doesn’t remember leaving the courtroom in a hail of holovid projections. The connections in his brain are too overloaded.

He does retain the look on the US Robotics lawyer’s face as they leave, somewhere in his subprocesses that he cannot eradicate. He sees it past the flashing of photographers and the buzzing of the crowd outside the courtroom, and not even Ed’s guiding hand on his midback is enough to dispel it.

The court ruling, when it appears a few hours later, states, “There is no right to deny freedom to any object with a mind advanced enough to grasp and desire the state.”

Stede doesn’t see it. He’s in the botanical gardens, tucked away in a corner that few people frequent. He gets to do that. He gets to choose anything for himself, now.

He has no real way to thank Ed, but he sends him a bunch of flowers carved intricately petal by petal - made of real wood that Pete has given to him - and a congratulations card on the announcement that he’s made partner at the firm.

Chapter Text

The Three Laws of Robotics (Handbook of Robotics, 56th Edition, 2058 A.D.)

1. A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.
2. A robot must obey the orders given it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.
3. A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.

Stede finds that the botanical gardens are a reprieve, over the next years. With the death of Alma he moves out of the Bonnet household and establishes his own dwelling, further into the city. This is a newer area, with no green spaces, humans and technology jammed so closely together that it leaves no room for any other organic matter. He’s not sure how long the Bonnets will be able to keep their garden, with the ever increasing need for space and resources.

Louis’ son occasionally checks in on him, but the third generation of Bonnets have no real tie to their grandmother’s robot and no real desire to build one.

Stede spends his time whittling, and researching in the library, and wandering in the few protected green areas that are allowed to remain. He has watched them disappear over the decades, one by one. First, the local authorities propose. Then, the people protest. And finally, the space is used for the ever growing human population, hungry for more space.

But this particular biodome has remained. It was here when he was newly purchased, and the children were young. It remains here, like Stede, though those children have finished their turn on this mortal coil.

“New shirt, Stede?” a voice calls out. It’s the gardener - Pete - and Stede waves, nods an assent, and continues on. He has had conversations with Pete, who has his own interest in whittling the deadwood that is taken from the trees in here, but he’s not eager to discuss this.

Clothes have been something new in his life over the last few months, and the reaction has been mixed. He’d mistaken the feeling in his positrons initially for overwhelm, when he’d first started shopping, trialling each as a holographic representation before committing - but he recognises now as an extreme reaction to choice. And possibilities. The colours are incredible, and the styles allow a variety of expressions. He’s studied, of course, the various styles of different cultures and how they are all amalgamating towards one homogenous whole, and has found the trend lacking. Instead, he chooses from the fringes, where individuality is still favoured.

If people do not look at him because he is a robot wearing clothes on the days that he ventures out of the house wearing them, they definitely look at him for what he is wearing.

He chooses a pathway that is normally quiet and devoid of people. Small hummingbirds flit across in front of him, unbothered by his form. The gravelly trail winds ahead of him and he walks quietly - footfalls nearly inaudible to the human ear, no breathing to make a noise. The thrum of the city is nearly inaudible here, and the rustle of the leaves in the artificial breeze is stronger.

The sound of laughter grows louder as he carries on walking - it’s not completely unusual to pass another lone wanderer in search of solitude, but a group is rare.

They’re a group of young people, all lounging around, drinking a beverage laced with alcohol. They are mildly intoxicated, Stede notes, but not excessively so.

“Who’s the big girl’s blouse?” one asks, drawing the rest of the group’s attention to Stede.

“Hey, you. Wait,” he says to Stede who is trying to edge away and back off.

Stede stops. The Second Law compels him to obey. The Third Law - requiring him to seek self preservation - is overruled. There has not been a direct threat. If Stede is extrapolating a future threat, that is merely one of the myriad of possibilities that he can calculate for this particular encounter.

“Why are you wearing clothes?” he asks.

Stede hesitates.

“Tell me,” he commands.

It has been so long since anybody has spoken to Stede like this, given an order. The children, for fun, when they were younger, but Mary had stopped them with words sharp enough to prevent a repetition even when she was not there. But even at the start, even before Stede had shown his peculiar tendencies, commands had been phrased as requests. The Bonnet household had been nothing but unfailingly polite and courteous.

The Laws and obedience are hardwired into him, though, even if his connections grind in protest at the manner in which they’re given and he rebels against it in the only way he can. “I am trialling a style that is based on a designer from around a century ago, in order to fulfil a level of self-expression. The shirt is particularly interesting with the —“

“Stop.”

Stede stops. Looks at the man, unblinkingly. Neutrally.

“Why are you choosing to wear clothes at all?” he says, so directly that Stede has no chance to evade the meaning.

“I want to,” slips out of Stede’s mouth. He can’t help it. He has no control over it. The Laws bind him more tightly than any human laws, which are followed by mere consent.

His words are greeted with howls of laughter.

“He wants,” one of the speaker’s companions says. “Does he know what he is?”

“Clearly not,” says another.

“What do they call you, robot?”

“My designation is Stede Bonnet.” He could have dropped the Bonnet, after his freedom. He is not longer legally tied to them. But he keeps it anyway, because there is a logical rightness to it. He will be tied to them forever despite his freedom.

“Little Bot Bonnet,” sneers one of them. “Thinks he’s a real boy.”

Stede stays silent. He is certain that there is a way to defuse this situation. He is also certain that he does not know what it is. The complexity of human reaction outmatches his circuits’ capacity to learn and form patterns that could guide him.

He has met hostility, and fear. Especially when he is by himself and obviously not engaged in a specific task, those times that he stands out as strange and noticeable. The looks which are not as disguised as well as their givers think they are. The casual crossing of the street that is accompanied by a change in respiration and heart rate, and an increase in pace.

This is new, though. He adds to his memory banks an observation on human bounds of propriety and their shifting boundaries that depend on others. They are not observed, so they are both transgressing but also not. Titles the subroutine Schrodinger. Reassess prior behaviours and tags them with the same label, shedding new light onto them. This feels more Heisenberg - it is obvious how fast this situation is going, but he is unclear where it currently is or the direction of travel.

Other parts of his brain note that he can hear no other humans near, only the buzzing of insects and the rustling of small animals, and that it is a brisk five minute walk to find themselves back onto the main paths.

“You’re not a real boy, though, are you?” the main speaker continues.

Stede remains silent.

“Answer me, robot.”

“No, I am not.”

“What are you?”

“I am a robot.”

“You have to do everything I say, don’t you?”

“The First Law compels me not to obey if it would place a human being in danger either through my action or inaction.”

“But apart from that,” and the man is looking at him contemplatively now, various expressions that Stede cannot read flickering across his face. “You have to do what I say.”

“The Second Law must be obeyed except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.”

“Take your clothes off, robot.”

Stede does not wish to comply. Stede has no choice. His fingers move of their own accord, his conscious mind unable to rebel. He removes his own shirt.

The man watches him for a moment, then says, “There’s no need to fold your clothes, robot, just drop them on the floor.”

Stede stops his actions, and the shirt falls to the ground.

“Ever taken a robot to pieces?” one of them asks, as Stede removes his shoes.

“Do you think he’d let us?” another one asks doubtfully.

“How can he stop us? He’s not allowed to hurt us.”

“His owners…”

“This is the one that doesn’t have an owner. From the holos. Who’d care?”

The first person, the leader of the group, eyes Stede, who is unbuttoning his trousers.

“Reckon a robot could take himself to pieces?”

Stede is bare now, standing unclothed before them. He has spent most of his decades in this state, but it feels wrong now. Different. The sensory processes that are hitting his receptors, found all over his body, are receiving completely different inputs. They are missing the sensory input of the clothing, no sense of fabric moving over his body. There is a small insect on his lower leg that would not have been there. It crawls up him towards his knee joint, single minded towards a purpose that Stede cannot guess at. The breeze is stronger on his torso.

One of the women behind laughs. “Might be funny to make him try. What do you have to say, you reckon, to get the best show?”

From the bushes, a voice says, “Hey, what’s going on here?”

Stede does not startle, because he is not human. But he had not heard anyone else approaching, all of his processors focused on the humans around him. He did not realise that anyone was so close.

“Uh, what are you doing?” This is a second new voice, one he recognises as Pete, the gardener.

“I’m taking my clothes off and then I believe I will be disassembling myself,” Stede replies, and, because even within the Laws he can choose how to comply, he adds, “These kind strangers found it an amusing thought.”

“Well, no. Let’s not do that.” The new stranger’s voice is somewhere between confused and exasperated, but Stede’s neural pathways allow him to interpret that as an order and he stops.

The group of people, so confident before, are silent now. They observe the two people warily.

The newcomer is wearing his shirt inside out, and a bruise is beginning to form microscopically on Pete’s neck in the dermal layer that matches the shape of his mouth. It is difficult to know, now, whether both their heightened metabolic states are from the confrontation they appear to be willing to engage in, or from the residual sexual arousement that has not yet dissipated.

“Are you okay?” Pete asks Stede.

“I am thus far unharmed.”

“Hmm… yeah, let’s keep it that way, yeah?” his companion says.

“You don’t own him,” the leader of the group says, but he’s looking more uneasy now.

“I have a pre-established relationship with this man,” Stede says. “I fear that if he gave me a command, it would override yours.”

“Yeah!” Pete says.

Everyone waits for a moment.

“Oh right,” Pete says. “Stede, these guys are kinda scaring Lucius. You could, like, do something about that?”

“Stede could you walk towards them?” That’s Lucius.

Stede takes two steps towards the group, and they scatter. He stops.

“Oh my god, babe, you’re a genius,” Pete says, and his companion - Lucius - bats a hand at him playfully.

“No, but it’s cute to pretend sometimes,” he says.

They turn back to Stede, who is watching them. “If you wanna…” Pete starts. “Like, do what you want?”

Stede starts to collect the clothes off the ground. Organic matter clings to it, and and he tries to brush it off. The wrinkles that have formed where they’ve crumpled on the ground will also be difficult to remove without the clothes processor at home.

A lost cause, perhaps.

Pete and Lucius are averting their eyes as he dresses - there’s some tension in the murmur of their voices although they’re talking so quietly that a human ear would not be able to hear them - he politely and deliberately attempts not to process their words.

Still, despite that, he catches snatches of their conversation.

“…Can’t just leave him…”

“…bit pathetic, really…”

“… don’t think he has anyone, babe…”

Stede clears his throat. Not literally of course - he lacks the respiratory system. But Pete and Lucius will never know that this is an exact replica of Louis, studied many years before and reproduced now.

They both look at him.

“Look,” Lucius says. “Is there anyone we can, like, call?”

“I am unharmed,” Stede reassures them.

“Yeah, but really,” Pete says. “They were gonna kill you, man.”

“I am not alive,” Stede points out. “I cannot be killed.”

He can be irreparably dismembered though. His parts used for scrap. Perhaps the materials that he is made of recycled into other robots.

Lucius gives him a look that can only be described as irritated beyond belief.

“I will probably call a lawyer,” Stede offers in way of reassurance. He is fairly certain that what has just occurred is absolutely legal. He is completely sure that even if it isn’t there is very little that can be done. But he offers it in the hope that it will placate the two people in front of him.

And because he is not sure who he can call that would answer.

“Go on, then,” Lucius says.

“Yeah.” That’s Pete, backing him up.

Humans are very literal and immediate at the most inconvenient times.

Stede taps the comm link that puts him straight through to Ed’s office - a souvenir of their previous working relationship. He reaches Ivan.

“He said he wasn’t to be disturbed this afternoon, Stede, but I can take a message?”

There’s a pause over the comm link after Stede relays the circumstances.

Eventually Ivan says. “Can you share your location?”

Stede does so.

“Wait there.” And then hurriedly, “If you don’t mind, sir.”

Stede waits. Not because he is compelled to - Ivan’s modulation is enough to make it a suggestion, not a command - but because he trusts Ed and his advice.

Pete and Lucius insist on waiting with him, and engaging him in conversation.

“Hmm… it’s very you,” Lucius says of his outfit, after Stede has detailed the inspirations of his clothes. “I’m not sure I’d suit the matching set.”

“Oh don’t put yourself down!” Stede says.

Lucius opens his mouth, and then closes it as the sound of someone else approaching hits his ears.

It’s noisy, and Stede has been aware of it for thirty seconds already. The footsteps are slightly uneven, and the person is uncomfortable walking through this path with the branches reaching out, and approximately every 15.3 seconds - on average - they push something out of the way or step in something they quite vocally would prefer not to.

“Hey,” Ed says, as he comes into view. He’s dressed for work; his clothing of excellent quality and if Stede is not mistaken - real. Partnership has suited him. It is clothes made for an artificial indoor environment, though, and small sweat patches are forming.

“Holy fuck,” Pete says under his breath. His eyes travel across Ed’s body admiringly. “Mr Blackbeard?” he says, louder. “Pete Black. I worked for you for a while?”

Ed looks at Pete with no hint of recognition in his eyes. “Great to see you,” he says, with no intonation that suggests that this is true, then turns to Stede immediately.

For a moment Stede believes that Ed will reach his hand out, but it twitches once, and then falls to his side. “Ivan said that you were attacked?”

His hair is tied back and up today, but it’s become dishevelled at some point and it’s fallen out of its restraints into loose curls. His beard is particularly wild as well.

“They were going to order me to dismember myself,” Stede says. Somewhere inside him, the Third Law screams in protest at being overridden.

Ed takes a step towards him, and this time when he reaches out he finds Stede. His hand is shaking, Stede realises.

“They didn’t?” he asks. “You’re okay?”

“Pete and Lucius, they found me.”

“Yeah as soon as we arrived, they scattered,” Pete puts in. “Scared those bastards to hell and back.”

“I only walked towards them,” Stede says quickly. “I did not say or do anything else, except to confirm that an order from Pete rather than a stranger would take priority.”

“Yeah I believe you,” Ed says. Gives Stede’s hand a squeeze.

“Absolutely terrified,” Pete says.

Stede knows this, to the core of his positronic brain. He’d known how they would react when he moved towards them. He’d done it anyway. He is not sure where the First Law stands on psychological harm, but it appears to allow him to inflict it purposefully.

He is not sure if it was always so. Perhaps years of causing nervousness and fear with no way to mitigate it has warped his circuits. His existence contravenes the First Law when so many are afraid of him.

“I’ll take you home?” Ed asks Stede.

It’s not an order, but it compels Stede anyway. It would make Ed feel better for him to comply. He nods.

They walk; Stede’s housing is in close proximity to the biodome, by design. It is hard not to notice that as a robot so clearly following a human, he attracts much less notice and reaction despite the clothing.

Once inside his house, Stede leads Ed through to a small kitchen, gestures for him to sit at the table. He has no need for food, of course, but he has memories of the Bonnet household, and the aliveness of the kitchen table - the children chattering or completing school projects, Doug pottering around and caring for them, Mary’s latest artwork. It was where Louis first asked him to whittle, just because it was a fun game to ask the household robot to.

Ed is the first human to sit at Stede’s table.

He watches Stede as Stede prepares him a drink - coffee, seven sugars - and hands it over. He takes a sip and then looks at Stede, wide-eyed, confused.

“It matches the chemical composition of the drinks that your assistant brings you.” This is what US Robotics thought they were programming into him, when they made his brain. Something that could learn and grow and adapt to the humans that it found itself around in order to serve them and provide them with their needs.

It feels right to do it for Ed. An exchange, rather than a servitude.

But.

“There is nothing you can do about this,” Stede says to Ed. “I can only apologise for wasting your time.” Everything that happened was completely legal. Stede is an animate object. There are no channels for Ed to pursue here. There is no reason for him to be involved. He is not entirely sure why he called, except that Pete and Lucius were going to stay with him until he had thought of someone.

“No,” says Ed. “No, Stede. Not a waste.” His voice is sharp, earnest. There is no hint that this is a platitude. “Those fuckers shouldn’t have been able to do it.”

“But they can.” Stede tries to make his words gentle, to calm Ed, and it seems to work to a degree.

He sits for a moment, sipping his coffee, and then asks, “What are you doing in that place anyway?”

“Oh!” Stede says. “I’m writing a book!” He fetches some of the pads that are on the table, and taps them a few times. “There are so many reference books of the organic matter left, but none have charted how being mainly restricted to the biodomes like the botanical gardens has altered their evolution or physiology, or taken stock of what has survived the process and what has not.”

“…Bugs?” Ed asks, looking at the drawings and articles. He sounds hesitant; dubious at best, repulsed at worst.

“Among other things,” Stede says, closing the subfolder with the information in. He starts to re-tidy the pads into their previously organised piles. It was unwise to start talking about this. Not many people are interested in the remaining life on the planet that is neither human nor plants grown to feed the biomass of humans. Ed has important things to do, and Stede is detaining him from them.

“No, hey, wait. Hey, Stede,” Ed says, laying a hand on Stede’s forearm. It’s warm, and alive, and his thumb is drawing circles on the surface of Stede, as if he needs soothing. With his other hand he snags one of the pads at random. “What’s this?”

“It’s the lifecycle of a rosy maple moth,” Stede says. He slowly takes the seat next to Ed. “They were one of the first species I looked at, because even before, when they roamed freely, their life cycle altered with their environment.”

He stops, glances at Ed, who nods at him, encouragingly. And keeps nodding, asking questions, as Stede carries on talking. It’s been so long, since Stede has been able to do this. He talks to Pete, a little. Asks him questions about the plants, and Pete will humour him politely. But Ed is involved in this conversation - asks a clarifying question, leads Stede onto paths of thought that he hadn’t previously considered. Teases him, but gently, in a way that has Ed laughing with Stede instead of at him.

He rejects the picture of the spiders outright though. “Nah, mate,” he says. “They’re fucking evil.”

“Ed,” says Stede, logic circuits fizzing with how wrong that is. “They’re a vital part of the ecosystem!”

“They’re scary.”

“I’d protect you.”

“Yeah?” Ed is looking at him with what Stede would describe as fondness, if it were aimed at a human. Sidelong, through his lashes. A smile on his face. “I’ll hold you to that.”

For a moment they look at each other, and then Ed clears his throat, looks away. “I’d uh, better go,” he says.

The sky outside is dark, and Stede realises they’ve spent two hours fifty three minutes and four seconds talking. “I can only apologise,” he says. “I know you’re busy. I didn’t mean to keep you.”

“No, no, s’my fault,” Ed says, getting to his feet. Stede follows suit, and walks him towards the door.

Before they are near enough to activate it, Ed looks at Stede. “You will look out for yourself, yeah?” he asks.

“I will try not to make these events a regular thing,” Stede replies.

“Good.” Ed’s looking at him again, and is taking a step forwards, and then Stede finds himself enveloped in a hug.

He brings his arms around Ed, feels the beard across his shoulders and the top of his torso as Ed ducks his head, tucks his face into the side of Stede’s neck, feels the pressure of a warm body against his. Squeezes a little.

He’s been hugged before, by the children when they were young. He would have described them as sticky, and an excuse to begin a cleaning protocol.

This isn’t sticky. If anything, he is tempted to delay his scheduled cleaning protocol in the hope that his sensors retain the ghost of Ed. It’s bright, and clean, and it retains a scent of three species of flower from this afternoon, all of which will be too light for Ed’s nose to detect. He tilts his head a little into Ed’s hair, allows his hands to make small circles on Ed’s back. Feels the tension in the muscles below his fingertips.

They stand there for a few moments, and then Ed lets go as abruptly as he started. Goes to initiate a handshake, changes his mind, instead claps Stede on the shoulder.

Clears his throat.

“Yeah uh. I’ll see you around?” he says, and leaves.

***

Dusk is falling as Ed leaves; he hadn’t realised how late it had gotten. Spends his time travelling back to the office trying to clear his head; impotent rage that he can do nothing, fear. Borne of a desire to protect Stede even when he knows that he cannot.

It doesn’t work.

He stalks through the building and for once it’s almost satisfying to see the juniors clock his mood and scarper. At least he won’t have to deal with them brown-nosing their way up to him, fucking him off with their Blackbeard bullshit.

The light’s still on in Izzy’s office and he ignores that as well. Doesn’t want to have to deal with Izzy’s bullshit about him walking out just before a meeting. Doesn’t need to explain himself.

Wouldn’t know how to explain himself, not to Izzy anyway. Has no way to explain how an afternoon talking about bugs and plants and shit is more important than prep for the board meeting.

He isn’t even sure who that was for. He’d started expecting Stede to be shaken, but in hindsight it feels more like Stede was calming him.

It had felt good, to have that. Just a moment of no-pressure connection with no ulterior motive. Just a robot talking about his bugs and sharing his interest with a… with his lawyer.

And that’s fucked, because that’s Stede’s purpose in life isn’t it? The one he’s broken away from. He shouldn’t have spent his time looking after Ed.

He slips into his office unseen; Ivan has gone home for the day. It still feels new, to have his place on the partners’ floor. Still feels like he doesn’t quite belong. Like if he lets his guard drop for one moment then it’ll all come tumbling down.

But that’s bullshit as well, because a partner’s never been removed once installed. He should be secure. He is secure. He’s the one that Hornigold’s boasts about, has his photo on the front of the quarterly bulletin. He’s brought in wins that were unwinnable, and fought corners that should have been indefensible.

Doesn’t feel great about a lot of it, but he feels successful.

He goes at his desk, glances at the ship in a bottle. It sits there, serene, unchanging, challenging him.

He brings up the available case law, as if something might have appeared in the records while he’s been out. Nothing has. There’s nothing Ed can do to protect Stede, not within the current law. This isn’t a case of applying an existing law onto him, or stretching a definition.

He falls asleep where he sits, and when he wakes up as dawn steals into the room he thinks sourly that at least Izzy will approve of this.

His foul mood isn’t improved by level of paperwork his intern foists on him, some of it not even for him, so he fires them. He’s never quite sure if the people he fires genuinely leave, or whether Izzy finds them some corner of the building to hide in until Ed has forgotten their name. But there again, Ed only hates sloppy work because it loads more soulless shit onto his head. Izzy hates it on principle, to the depths of his soul, so maybe the kids are just told they can’t cut it and are lobbed back into the unemployment pile.

He growls at the next interruption, and Ivan ignores him. “Message for you, boss,” he says. “Think you’ll want to see it.”

He taps a few times on Ed’s desk, and then a text-based message from Stede Bonnet lights it up.

I am enquiring about the invoice I should have received from your company and have not. It should have yesterday’s date on.

He’s signed it simply, “yours,” an affectation that hasn’t been used for around fifty years. Ed traces it with his fingertips.

“Want me to deal with it?” Ivan asks.

Izzy calls Ivan a gobshite and Izzy’s right. Ed gives him a foul look, and Ivan takes the hint to retreat back to his own desk. He’s grinning.

No invoice was issued as no services were rendered - ET

He hits send, and tries to return to his own work. Keeps glancing at the message centre in his desk, knows that his productivity targets are trashing themselves every time he does so.

But fuck it, he’s the boss now. He doesn’t have to pander to that.

He’s onto the message as soon as it arrives.

Are you sure? - SB

Ed sends back consider it a favour - ET. He doesn’t want to go through official channels for any myriad of reasons. Izzy is most of them.

A favour that will be returned, Ed! - SB

Ed looks at the message for a while, considers it. Considers his afternoon.

I’ll hold you to that - ET

There’s no further replies after that, no matter how often he looks at his own messaging centre. He tries his best to concentrate on his work, but his mind keeps returning to Stede.

The way he’d just said, coolly, that there was nothing Ed could do. He’s right. Ed knows he’s right.

Ed doesn’t want him to be right.

It’s not fair, that Ed can’t protect him. Wants to rend the little fuckers limb from limb, take them to pieces in a courtroom and then display their heads on a pole outside, a warning to anyone else that might think of messing with Stede that Ed is there, ready, waiting. And he’ll slit their throats and make them pay.

But he can’t. He’s impotent. He can only work with what he’s got and the law is completely inadequate here.

The law is…

It takes him three weeks to work it out, but when he does he brings up his messaging centre immediately.

Hey, want to do something weird? - ET

He barely has to wait ten seconds.

Yes -SB

He’d love to call it simple. It’s not. It might be brilliant, though.

But then, it kind of is simple. If the law can’t protect Stede - they need to change the law.

“It would not be a popular law,” Stede says. They’re meeting in a cafe near the biodome. Stede says that it is one that Pete has recommended. There’s coffee and a fancy cake in front of Ed that Stede has declared lacking in flavour just by looking at it.

Ed doesn’t know if it’s a hint of trepidation in Stede’s voice, or just a statement of fact. Doesn’t know whether this is a hint to carry on or to pull back.

“I get that,” he says. “I really do.” He probably doesn’t, but he understands enough. “I didn’t say it would be an easy ask.”

He’s got no fucking idea how he’s going to hide this one from the board, for a start, and he doesn’t think they’ll be happy with him spending his time on this. He’s meant to be his own boss, but turns out the higher up the ladder you go the more closely you’re watched. Not like the good old days where he could grab Izzy, hole up for months, and then come out with something startlingly brilliant that he never would have been allowed to do.

Now he’s an asset.

He doesn’t want to be a fucking asset.

He’d liked the power that came with it, to start. The deference and the recognition. But now even that’s starting to feel like a gilded cage that’s rusting from the inside.

“Lucius says,” Stede starts, and then hesitates, just for a fraction of a second. Ed wonders how slowly Stede processes human reactions before realising that it’s probably faster than he’s giving them out. “That public opinion might be the most deciding factor in any case like this.”

“Courts don’t work like the holovids,” Ed says, immediately bristling. Lucius has a sharp mouth - Ed’s met him, when he was collecting the testimonies. Ed thinks the kid is too fucking smart for his own good and once he really figures out how much of a bastard the world really is he’s going to cut someone with his edges.

“He is wrong? It would be a fair hearing?” Stede’s features twist into a sceptical face. It’s deliberate - everything he does with his hands, with his body, with his fucking eyebrows is calculated and deliberate and permitted, and right now he’s allowing himself to mock Ed a little.

“Yeah, he’s wrong. No, it wouldn’t be a fair hearing. Even if you got public opinion on board, there’s still commercial interests.” He speaks the truth and he can feel the odds stacking against them.

“Yet you still want to do it?”

“Yeah.” Ed’s not a complete idiot. He knows that changing the law won’t change what could happen to Stede. But he doesn’t know what else he can do to protect him.

And beyond that, it feels right.

Izzy would say he’s going soft, that doing the right thing only gets you grief. That sometimes you have to put aside that to do that paid thing, to survive, to get ahead. To not drown.

Izzy doesn’t realise that soulless corporate jobs is what’s robbing Ed’s ability to breathe. He likes it, maybe, or if he hates it then he buries it deeper.

Maybe Ed just wants to break the surface and take a breath. Maybe Stede is how he can do that.

“Would it help?” Stede asks.

Ed stirs his bitter coffee around with a spoon. The roboserver could not express horror at his order, but apparently Ed had hit the programme limits with the amount of sugar he’d requested and that had pretty much fucking felt like the same thing.

“It might,” he says.

“Then I want to do it.”

The thing is, Stede’s a bit of a lunatic. So while Ed had expected… well, he doesn’t know what he expected. Not the full frontal attack of Stede Bonnet around town with Lucius on his heels. The little shit’s got a way with words, and he works in PR so apparently he does know what he’s talking about. He manages to get Stede in on various media outlets - minor, niche, channels to start with.

And then he goes viral. It’s being shared everywhere, and people are talking about it.

The fucking board are talking about it.

“You’d better know what you’re doing, Eddie,” Mary says. “Cos it looks like a fucking shitshow from here.”

“I’m sure he’s got it all in hand,” Anne adds. “Right?”

They’re as close to friends as Ed has in this room, but either one of them would slice his face off if it got them ahead. And to be fair, he’d stab them in the back too. Just a constant process of fucking each other over slowly.

“Don’t worry about it,” he says. “It’s in hand.”

He’s not totally lying. He’s got his case prepared. He’s got some cards up his sleeve that he’s definitely not telling them about.

He’s sort of aware of what Stede and Lucius are planning, because meeting with Stede has become a semi-regular thing now. But they meet up, and they talk, and they laugh, and Ed is sometimes half way home when he realises that nothing they’ve spoken about has anything to do with the case.

He doesn’t know if it’s deliberate. He doesn’t know if it’s just that Stede enjoys his company as much as he enjoys Stede’s. It’s light. It’s easy. It doesn’t come with the ulterior motives that every other human in his life puts on him.

Every human, he means. He forgets, sometimes. He isn’t sure whether he constantly touches Stede because he’s forgotten, or because he’s deliberately seeking the cool, hard, sleek surface to ground himself in a reminder.

Not that he can remember what the touch of a human is like, these days. There’s Jack, sometimes, who rolls in for a good time. And he knows what Ed likes, and he’s a laugh, and Ed likes him, and most importantly he’s a lawyer so he gets the job, and he gets the shit that has to be done, but also he’s a lawyer, so he’d happily stab Ed in the back and climb on his body if it gave him a leg up.

But the board see him as a money making machine, and every time he steps away Izzy is there, pushing him to consolidate his position like Izzy’s job depends on it.

(Izzy’s job probably does depend on it; he’s worked so hard on Ed’s success that if Ed falls he’ll take Izzy with him.)

And then with this Stede thing on top, he’s barely got time to sleep; forming any sort of human connection is completely out of the question.

No, forming human connections is Stede’s half of this plan. And it’s not just that everyone is seeing him - weird, not quite human, not quite the robots that people have gotten used to in this century - they’re feeling for him. He listens in on a few opinion pieces, those debating, those just talking over the tragedy of what happened to him, what could have happened to him, like they’d talk about a living thing, and he starts to hope that this could be doable.

Lucius has got some of his friends on the case, too, and as they get further into this, Stede mentions them more and more. Oluwande this, Jim that, Frenchie said…

He invites Ed, hesitantly, along to some of their gatherings. Ed can only offer him a rain check on that for now. After the trial, he thinks. Maybe then.

He’s been telling himself that things will be better after his current project for about twenty years, now. It hasn’t happened yet.

The court date rolls around, and Ed and Stede make their way into the building past hovering signs that people have sent. He reckons they’re about 80:20 in their favour.

Stede has support in court as well - Ed recognises Lucius and Pete in a cluster of other people, some of whom return Stede’s small wave. The holovids catch it, broadcast it to the solar system. Place it on the pile of evidence that forms people’s opinions.

It’s US Robotics that have allowed this to end up in court by protesting, of course. Most robots these days are owned by them in lease deals, nobody buys robots outright these days. They’re so rigidly constructed that they become useless after a while.

They’ve got that Badminton fucker on the case again. He stalks up and down, pontificating on the difference between life and not-life, reminding the courts that robots are both made to serve humanity and everywhere around them.

He’s trying to create a sense of fear, and it’s not going to fucking work. Not if Ed’s got anything to do with it.

Not if Lucius has got anything to do with it - he can see out of the corner of his eye that Lucius is tapping on his comm device. Spinning things, probably.

He looks at Stede, offers a little smile before he goes. He’s fizzing with nervous energy, but he’s always liked that. This is where the crushing pressure allows him to fully shine. This is where he gets to feel alive. This is the only place he’s been allowed to live for most of his life.

Stede smiles back and Ed amends that thought to, nearly the only place.

The thought spurs him on as he gets up, approaches the bench. Starts talking. Speaks to the power of the Laws of Robotics that hold - that the Second superceding the Third means that any human can order any robot to self destroy, for no good reason.

“We used to have animals, and we used to provide them greater protection than we currently do for our robots,” Ed says. “And robots are complex beings of our own creation, whether they can do a simple job, or whether they’re designed as companions to talk with us, laugh with us, engage with us.

“If our ancestors, primitive as they were, could afford welfare laws for their animals, can we not do the same for our closest companions, who in some cases can meet us as equals? Ought we not protect them and preserve them as much as we can?

“If we hold this great power by laws, should we not also be legally compelled by great responsibility? Should we not restrain from asking the greatest sacrifice of them unless it’s to preserve human life?”

The crowd roars and the judge has to call order to the public gallery at the end of Ed’s speech - it takes minutes to get them settled again. The US Robotics lawyer is fuming, tries to claim that this will sway the judge.

The judge gives him a withering look, and when that doesn’t work, finds him in contempt of court.

But Ed only has eyes for Stede, who gives him a thumbs up from his seat, double handed.

They get what they want, in the end. There are a thousand caveats - robots manufactured after a certain date are eligible to be returned and recycled at the end of their lifecycle - planned obsolescence is protected, as is US Robotics’ profits. Robots can be destroyed in hundreds of different edge cases. Robots are not protected under multiple circumstances. But Ed struggles to give a fuck about those. Modern robots are rigid, not able to improvise, not able to learn except in very restricted ways. They’re not Stede - US Robotics has made sure never to create another one like him - and these new laws protect Stede.

When Pete and Lucius throw a party for Stede and his new friends, Ed slips in for an hour, takes a drink, accepts congratulations from people that he does not know who are genuinely happy for Stede, and by extension, him.

He watches people pat Stede on the back, hug him, express a camaraderie that he’s never been able to experience, and he stands, and he watches, and he’s not sure which of them is closer to humanity at all.

Chapter Text

The Three Laws of Robotics (Handbook of Robotics, 56th Edition, 2058 A.D.)

1. A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.
2. A robot must obey the orders given it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.
3. A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.

There’s a man at the entrance to Ed’s office. A stranger in bright clothing. This is unusual in itself - Ivan normally has the capacity to make judgement calls and not fuck Ed off, and Ed stubbornly clings to Ivan these days, despite every other partner having swapped to a robot receptionist.

He keeps getting told that if he could keep a robo-receptionist for longer than Ivan’s vacation period, they would learn what he liked. That the algorithm would adjust. That it’s undignified for one of the senior legal team to not have the trappings of his position. He keeps reminding them that he’s one of the world’s greatest legal experts in robots, and that’s why he doesn’t want to fucking work with one. He knows their limitations. Ivan suits him fine.

The man looks at him, offers a smile.

Wait.

No.

Not a man if anyone more than glanced at him. That’s clearly an artificial face. And body. An android.

“Stede?” he asks, disbelievingly. But that’s Stede’s smile, on a face more human than it really should be.

“Ivan let me through,” he says apologetically. “He said it would be okay.”

“Yeah!” Ed says. “I mean, yeah, take a seat.”

Stede looks around his office as he walks over, takes a moment to take it in. It’s been maybe a year since Stede was here, right after their victory. There are some upgrades scattered around that Ed thinks he hasn’t seen. New tech from - who else - US Robotics - cover his office discreetly. He’s pretty sure there’s some industrial espionage going on in some way, but he can’t bring himself to care that much.

The view is unchanging - the city below them spreads out, visible through the one way glass that covers his office wall - ever grey, ever static.

As Stede sits, he places one - flesh coloured! - finger on the ship that still takes pride of place on Ed’s desk, and smiles fondly.

“I haven’t seen you for a while,” Ed starts. “But I guess you’ve been busy.”

“The transfer of my positronic brain into this new form went smoothly, but there was still a period of adaptation,” Stede says.

“Yeah,” Ed says. “It…wow.”

He’s got no words. He’s going to say, it suits you, any minute now, when the shock of Stede being in a body that’s so strangely human fades. Because Stede was smooth and hard and beautiful, in a way that’s elegantly classic, and this is new.

He’s got blond hair now, a shock of it that looks like it could become completely ruffled at a moment’s notice. He’s got hazel eyes - eyes - and they’re looking at Ed, waiting for him. Eyes are one of the things that technology got right into, early on, and has really made an effort to make it look lifelike.

Ed would have said before that it was still possible to tell whether an artificial eye was implanted in a human or an artificial life form, but there’s as much life in Stede’s eyes as anyone else's.

His face is purposefully slightly asymmetric - android designers learned early on that people rebelled against perfection - and his skin contains tiny blemishes that add to the realistic effect.

He’s got a body, with muscles that flex minutely as Stede shifts in his seat nervously.

He’s still wearing clothes styled in a way that Ed has literally never seen before, though. He’s still got that hopeful smile on his face when he looks at Ed. He’s still leaning slightly in his chair like Stede always does.

He’s still Stede. He’s still perfect.

“It looks good on you,” Ed says, and Stede’s face blooms in appreciation.

“Thank you,” he says, looking away slightly for a moment. At this angle, Ed can see his eyelashes - strawberry blond, slightly darker than the hair - that planned impreciseness again. Fucking hell.

He stays silent for a second, lets Ed study him some more. He’s breathing. A steady in - out that is indistinguishable from Ed’s and he finds himself matching the pace. Deep and even. Calm.

And look - Ed knows that Stede has money - he’s been sending him invoices for years now that never raise a whimper, he’s seen the fees, by chance, of what Stede is earning on the talking circuit - The harmony of the organic and the inorganic, and people pour in to hear a robot talk about bugs, and robots, and humans, and how that could all fit together, if only humanity would give it space. Ed has snuck in a time or two, watched everyone else be entranced by Stede, finds it easy to see why this is so successful.

But fuck, this is like nothing he’s ever seen before.

“It’s unique, actually,” Stede says, and Ed realises that he’s said the last bit out loud. “Designed it myself with a US Robotics engineer.”

“You trusted those bastards?”

“The scientists, yes.” Stede taps his nose conspiratorially, leans in.

Ed can’t help but mirror it until they’re nearly nose to nose.

“Rumour is I’m something of an engineering marvel,” Stede says. “They couldn’t believe they got a chance to get their hands on me.”

His smile is mischievous, and Ed notices that he’s got a dimple now, just the right size for someone to place a fingertip over.

“I can believe that,” he murmurs, mainly to himself. Tries not to focus too much on the subtle interplay of muscles in Stede’s face, giving more shade to his expression without losing its essential Stede-ness. “They did a good job,” he says.

“You like it?” Stede says, “There were a lot of decisions to be made, you know, age, gender, hair colour, eyes, skin…”

“Stede, you’re perfect,” Ed says firmly, before his forebrain can intervene and ask him to tone it the fuck down.

Stede almost gives a gentle start at that - his features soften, and a light flush appears on his cheeks. He’s so pale it stands out like a beacon, luring Ed in.

“It’s experimental, to a degree,” he demurs. “This body isn’t a commercially viable prospect.”

“Humans don’t want robots that look too much like them,” Ed says. It’s not a question.

Stede nods. “They find it easier to not blur that line,” he says. “And in most circumstances that means not real.”

There are a small number of hyperreal robots, with very limited function. US Robotics doesn’t like to talk about them. The consumer market has always hungered for flesh, in more ways than one.

“Prosthetics are pretty fucking real, though,” he says. Izzy’s leg is indistinguishable from the one he had before the accident, until you see him take it off. They took his DNA and made sure of that. Hornigold had lived his last decade of life with an artificial heart that functioned just like a real one, the nanotechnology invisible to the naked eye and blended into the organic components.

(“You can implant a heart in a man, but he’s under no obligation to use it,” Izzy had said dourly, and Hornigold’s actions only confirmed that.)

“Exactly!” Stede says, looking a little like a teacher who is particularly pleased with a student. A fair comparison, given their relative expertises. Ed can run rings around anyone in a courtroom but despite over a decade of exposure this is still Stede’s shit, not his. “The basic technology is there, so it was just a case of implementing it.”

And then moving Stede’s brain into it. Maybe Ed’s glad he didn’t know about this. Even knowing it’s gone well he feels a sickening twist in his gut at everything that could have gone wrong. Stede might not have been compatible with his new body. The positronic brain could have been damaged in the transfer. There could have been something of Stede that was inherently tied to his old body, that was left behind.

And he must be spiralling, because Stede leans over the desk, takes his hand. He’s warm, and soft, and it doesn’t feel like Stede’s hand at all, and that shocks Ed out of it, distracts him into running a thumb over the plushness at the base of Stede’s thumb.

Stede watches him, hazel eyes steady and framed by his lashes, lips slightly parted.

And, fuck, that’s a dangerous path for thoughts to wander down.

“I don’t like to think about anything happening to you,” Ed says. “You’re important.”

“I am a unique specimen,” Stede replies. “They took great care with me.”

“You’re important to me,” Ed clarifies. Fuck Stede being a scientific marvel or wonder or whatever the fuck US Robotics is going to call him. Ed’s a selfish twat that wants to eat cake while Stede criticises it based off its scent profile, and listen to Stede go into far more detail than anyone asked for, and watch him get frankly bitchy with the people that come to his talks to ask questions that are actually dissenting statements designed to tear him down.

“I had help,” Stede says. “Oluwande and Jim came to the Moon for my recovery.”

“You could’ve said,” Ed says, and he’s a fucking grown up and he’s not letting it sting that Stede went to Oluwande and Jim and not Ed.

Stede shifts uncertainly in the chair as if Ed hasn’t hid it well enough. “I know how busy you are,” he says, and Ed flashes back to all the times he’s turned Stede’s offers down, citing work. “And they were helping me anyway, with my book.”

“Mate,” Ed says. “You just have to ask.”

“Actually, there is something,” Stede says. He’s averting his gaze now, looking at his own lap. His finger - his pink, human-like fingers - are twisting the rings he’s started wearing. They’re what’s fashion these days, Ed thinks. Ed’s too old now, has let his style become static, but he’s not sure Stede’s capable of just not caring. “Well, of course, I’m always delighted to see you, but I wouldn’t want to bother you at work for frivolous purposes. I rather wanted to talk to you about a matter.”

“Anything.”

“You may think it silly.”

“Never.”

“Or impossible.”

“Stede.” It’s a plea. He doesn’t know what he needs to do, to be the person Stede trusts with whatever this is, but he’ll do it.

There’s a flush high in Stede’s cheeks now, and Ed would bet it’s both autonomous and unasked for.

“On the Moon,” Stede starts. He stops.

Ed wants to speak, wants to say something, has to fight everything in him to be silent. Just when he’s about to lose the battle, Stede speaks again.

“The robots, on the Moon. They’re not used to androids.”

“None of us are used to seeing androids, mate. They’re not exactly walking around everywhere.”

“You knew I was artificial as soon as you saw me.”

“I knew you.”

The colour in Stede’s cheeks grows a little deeper, and for a moment he looks up and Ed gets those hazel eyes to drown in. “Oh.”

“The robots?” Ed prompts, because the alternative is to sit in the moment, and he’s not sure what he’ll say if he’s allowed to do that. It’s harder to ignore the clamouring of his own thoughts now Stede is seated in something that looks more human, that the impossible thing that winds its way around Ed’s soul is touchable flesh.

“They treated me like I was anyone else,” Stede says, speaking like the words are ripped from his vocal chords - fuck, he’s got vocal chords now. And he’s still kept the same voice. “They acted like I was real.”

“Ed,” he says, but now the words are tumbling out of him, like he has to get them out before someone stops him. Before he stops himself. “I want to be human.”

“Okay,” Ed says, because his mouth is moving as a placeholder right now, letting him look completely in control of his feelings while his brain is spinning out of control. “Okay, right.”

Real smooth, Teach.

“You think it’s stupid,” Stede concludes flatly.

“No, wait, no, I didn’t say that,” Ed says, because he can’t bear to see Stede shrink in on himself like that, look so small. He’s scrambling, now. “You want to be legally recognised as a human?”

“I haven’t thought about exactly what it might entail,” Stede says. “This is the first time I have spoken about it.”

And that soothes something in Ed. Stede might go to other people for help, but he trusts Ed with this. Ed wants to be the person Stede comes to first.

“If we try and get a ruling straight away, it’ll get shot down,” Ed says.

“You think this is impossible?”

“I didn’t say that.” He says it quickly, cutting off any thoughts of giving up that Stede might have. “But it’s gonna be tough.” He’s thinking out loud now, not entirely sure what’s going to fall out of his mouth until he’s said it. “We’re not going to be able to come at this head on.”

“You think we can play the system?”

“Get the underlying legislation redefined with other cases.”

Stede’s eyes light up. “You want to legally broaden the idea of what humanity is?”

Ed grins. “Exactly.”

“And then when we put my case forward, they’re backed into a corner.”

“Trapped by the fuckery they’ve already agreed to.”

“We could do it?” There’s hesitancy in Stede’s voice, but hope.

“Got a plan, mate, got a way to try.” He can’t promise anything.

He wants to promise Stede everything. He’s gonna do his best to see if he can deliver.

***

They start small. Ed takes on a case a few months later, pro bono. Insignificant enough to avoid the notice of the partners; they all take on a case like this every so often, good for the image of the firm if they’re seen to help. Nearly small enough to avoid the notice of Izzy, who is making his own way onto the board.

Nearly, anyway. Shoots Ed a sour look that clearly asks, what the fuck are you playing at?

Ed doesn’t answer. It’s a hopeless case. A guy who owes money - not a huge debt. There’s no real way that he doesn’t. There’s no real way that anyone can get him out of it.

Ed argues vehemently that a guy with a prosthetic heart isn’t really a human, so can’t be held to human standards. His client thinks he’s nuts.

The judge is one that hates Ed anyway. Thinks he’s jumped up. From the wrong background. Thinks he’s not good enough for law. Doesn’t like mavericks in general. Makes sure to sniffily put in his ruling that the possession of a prosthetic heart absolutely does not disbar one from humanity.

The same brand of prosthetic heart that Stede carries in his body.

Stede is not in court, but he meets Ed afterwards and takes him for celebratory cake. Buys two slices, and sets one in front of Ed and the other in front of himself.

“You can do that now?” Ed asks in surprise.

“I’ve a biomechanical organ system that can absorb some nutrients from organic matter now,” Stede says. “I haven’t tried it out, as yet.”

“Been waiting for a special occasion?” Ed asks, teasingly.

“Yes,” Stede says simply, taking the wind out of his sails. “This felt perfect.”

It’s hard to remember that he’s got cake in front of him, when he can watch Stede. The delicate piece that he sections off and spears, making sure to get both cake and frosting. The way he lifts it to his mouth, lets it touch his lips. The way his tongue is waiting just behind them.

Stede slides the cake into his mouth, and Ed holds his breath. Watches the frown as Stede processes the new experience. It creates a little dent between his eyebrows, a space that holds all of his thoughts.

And then his face blooms. The crinkles smooth out, the eyebrows raise. He straightens out in his chair a little. Surprise. Awe. Something twists, warm and fond in Ed as he watches Stede swallow.

“Good?” he asks. He doesn’t need to. Stede has very little control over this face, every thought written across it in braille. He wants to, though. Wants to extend this moment as long as possible.

“Ed…” Stede says, his voice trailing off. “I had no idea.”

“Feeling bad about the times you’ve insulted their cakes?” Ed asks. He’s only going to get one chance to rub this in. Gotta grab it with both hands.

“Ed!”

“Damn good marmalade cake, right?”

“Oh, shut up.”

Ed shuts up. Goes to steal some of Stede’s cake and lets Stede shield it.

“Go on, Bonnet,” he says. “Fight me.”

“I don’t think I want to do that,” Stede says, but he’s laughing.

“I’ll just have to steal your cake, then.”

“Ed, don’t steal my cake!”

“Come on mate, this is it. I’m gonna steal your cake!”

“No!”

“This is life, now act, or lose it.”

“No!”

Ed edges his fork close to Stede’s plate. “One… Two…”

As he says, “Three!” he goes with his fork, and Stede parries him, and suddenly it’s fast and it’s furious, and they’re both laughing at the clash of metal on metal, and stealing bites from each others’ plates, and playfully stabbing at each other. And the rest of the cafe is looking at them while trying not to look, and it doesn’t matter.

And eventually they get the tines of their forks tangled, and yanking backwards only makes it worse, so they slow, and detangle, and slowly separate with a little co-operation.

“Thank you,” says Stede. “For this. Everything.”

“S’most fun I’ve had in years,” Ed says, and means it. There’s no room anywhere else in his life to be like this. If he shows any of himself, then the vultures will be upon him and devour him leaving nothing but bones. He’s barely aware that this part of him still exists, until Stede enters the room.

And he has to keep it contained. It’s easier to live with the things he does to keep hold of his power when he knows he’s using it to protect Stede. If he growls enough, if he generates enough fear every time he steps into a room, he gets to keep doing what he wants, no questions asked.

If he has to spend his time taking on a big commercial client and destroying their opposition, with the morals of what both sides want questionable at best and making his skin crawl at worst, the price is worth it. Throws himself into it with a fervour that is read as enthusiasm for the kill when really he just wishes it was fucking over.

He tries to hide himself away, on those days. Ivan protects him, guards his lair. Stops all but a few coming through.

So when his door starts to slide open fifteen hours into his work day some months later he doesn’t even lift his head up as he growls, “What the fuck do you want?”

Whoever is on the other side of the door hesitates.

“It better be good or you can collect your shit and get out.”

“Well, I’ll let you be the judge of that.”

That makes him look up, bottom falling out of his stomach. “Stede.”

Stede smiles at him, walks towards him and settles in the chair on the other side of Ed’s desk. “Hi.”

“Hey.” And he can’t help it, even at work, even when he’s trying to be the worst possible version of himself because that’s what it requires, Stede makes him softer.

Ivan pops his head in. “Izzy wants to know if you’re done with the Ansari files.”

Ed gives him a foul look, because they have been over this a thousand fucking times and he’s fed the fuck up of twats not fucking listening.

“-or whether he’s, and I quote: ‘Going to die of old fucking age before your shrivelled husk of a dickface gets done with it,’” Ivan continues. Yeah, sounds like Izzy.

“Tell Izzy,” Ed barks, temper frayed to a thread “that if he wants the fucking job done he can try figuring out where the fuck the money came from, because we’re not taking liability for that.”

Ivan nods.

“And Ivan, if you keep coming back with stupid fucking questions you’ll end up on the street with your cardboard fucking box, yeah?”

Remembers belatedly that Stede is here. That he’s just spoken like that, in front of Stede. Turns back to him, fearful of judgement.

“Would it help if you got out of here for an hour and had some food?” Stede asks instead. “When was the last time you ate?”

“I… dunno?” Earlier today, maybe. Yesterday? He remembers being hungry, a while ago, but he worked through it and it passed. Might be submerged under the exhaustion.

“Ivan!” Stede calls out, and Ivan reappears, completely unbothered by Ed’s outburst. And shit, that makes it worse, doesn’t it? Makes it look - truthfully - like Ed does this all the time. “Is there any reason that Ed can’t step out for a while?”

“Nah,” Ivan says, the fucking traitor. “Nothing I can’t handle.”

Stede frowns. “You will go home at some point, won’t you?” he asks, and that should be Ed’s reminder that he isn’t getting special treatment here - everyone gets the full Stede Bonnet experience. Draws them in with his helplessness and then just fucking cares.

Ivan grins. He’s always had a soft spot for Stede, and Ed can never figure out how he feels about that. “Don’t you worry about me,” he says. “I get looked after at home.”

“You make sure he does,” Stede says, and Ivan has someone? Ed doesn’t think he knew that. Doesn’t know anything about him. How does Stede know that when Ed doesn’t?

And maybe it’s the shock of that that means that Ed is so compliant as Stede leads him away, towards a restaurant that is tucked away. Forgets that he’s sharing wine with an artificial being who lacks the receptors for alcohol, and forgets that tiredness increases his own susceptibility. Forgets that he loses track of everything else that he’s doing when he’s talking with Stede, too focused on the man in front of him to care about anything else.

He stands up and sways.

Stede catches him, and Ed allows himself to lean into it for a second. Feels the softness and warmth of Stede’s arm around him, feels a soft chuckle as Ed grips back, trying to steady a spinning world.

“Y’can just transport me home,” Ed says. He doesn’t think his words are slurring but Stede’s face suggests differently.

“I don’t think I can,” Stede says. “I think I’m bound to make sure that you don’t come to harm.”

“Fuck the First Law,” Ed says. “I’m fine.”

“I never said it was one of the Laws binding me,” Stede says. And Ed wishes that Stede wouldn’t say those things sometimes. He doesn’t need fodder for his overactive imagination. He doesn’t need to think that Stede is referring to him specifically.

But they end up at Stede’s place, and it turns out that he’s got a small bedroom with a bed, and Ed is gently deposited in it. The room looks straight out of an advertisement, no hint of Stede here, like it’s a room not normally used or lingered in.

“The yelling and shit,” Ed says, as Stede removes his shoes, because Stede is being lovely, because this has been brewing all evening now, because he needs to say it so Stede knows. “It’s who I am, yeah? S’not like, some fucking one-off.”

Stede can just send him home, and then Ed can cry there. He’d liked Stede thinking he was nice. A good person.

Stede doesn’t say anything. Instead, he eases Ed’s jacket off him and folds it neatly on the chair in the corner. Of course he’s looking after the clothes. He likes clothes. Fucking loves them.

“I run cases that I shouldn’t,” Ed continues, because if he’s going to fuck this up he’s really going to make it stick. “I make sure horrible people win, because they pay us.”

“I am aware of the broad mechanics of how a law firm works,” Stede says. He sounds wryly amused. He’s being gentle. Why is he so fucking gentle? He’s taking Ed’s socks off and it’s so gentle that it nearly hurts, to feel his fingers sliding against the arch of Ed’s feet. “And you’re very good at your job.”

“Even other lawyers don’t fucking like me, Stede. Even they think I’m shitty.” Annie and Mary had found each other, despite both being absolute arseholes of the highest order. What does it say about Ed, that they have each other’s back - kind of - and Ed has no-one? He dismisses the thought of Jack immediately - just mutual back scratching and stress relief. He’s got Izzy, but Iz only wants what he can get out of Ed. If Ed said he was done with this shit tomorrow, Izzy would fucking scarper so fast you wouldn’t see him for dust.

“That’s why I don’t have any friends,” he says. And it’s fucking embarrassing, okay, to say that to Stede. Stede who has this little network around him that cares for him, and will literally go to the fucking Moon to look after him for months when he needs them, because Stede has them and he doesn’t need Ed. Stede who is undoing the cuffs of Ed’s shirt because he’s going to take Ed’s shirt off, but only because Ed is drunk in his house and needs looking after.

“I’m your friend,” Stede says.

Ed sniffs. He’s not fucking crying but his eyes have started leaking at some point in this conversation.

“We could pretend you never saw it?” he asks hopefully, a little tearfully. “That this never happened?” He’s struggling with the buttons of his shirt now, and Stede sits next to him on the bed, takes over, undoes them one by one, his fingers so close to Ed’s skin but never touching. He doesn’t remove the shirt afterwards, just leaves it hanging and open for Ed to do with it as he chooses.

There aren’t many people who give Ed a choice in anything these days.

“Ed, we don’t need to do that,” Stede says, and just takes it as Ed tips his face into Stede and sniffs into his shoulder. Ed feels an arm go around him and he doesn’t understand, not at all, how it’s fine. How Stede can just see this new - ugly - side of him and it just, what, doesn’t matter?

But the warmth seeping into him is undeniable, and the comfort it offers is something Ed so desperately wants, and just for once he lets himself have it. Cries a little, silently shaking as he keeps his face buried, lets Stede soothe him. When Ed starts to drift off he’s barely aware that he’s gently laid down onto the bed, that when he peevishly tries to wriggle out of his shirt there’s someone there to take it. He doesn’t feel a cover go over him, but when he wakes he’s tugged it up to his ears in an attempt to bury himself in it.

He expects his head to be pounding and his stomach to be churning, but it’s not, just the dull ache behind his temples that Ed associates with dehydration that is easily ignored. Crust at the edges of his eyes where he’s cried himself out. For a moment he just lies there, luxuriating in a thread count that he can’t remember buying.

Realises that he didn’t, remembers that he’s in Stede’s bed in nothing except his underwear, and he doesn’t even remember losing half his clothes.

Or at least, the bed in Stede’s house. He has no idea if Stede sleeps. No idea if there’s another bed, or if Stede stayed here next to him, or whether he just sits up all night in his house every night, curtailing his activity in meaningless deference to the human circadian rhythm.

There’s a door leading to a bathroom and Ed staggers through it. Manages some kind of morning ablutions - empties his bladder, leans against the wall of the sonic shower as the stale sweat disappears from his body. Wonders if Stede needs to shower now, whether he stands in here and lets the microvibrations do their work.

Stops that train of thought.

It’s just curiosity about Stede’s new form, nothing more.

Steps back into the previous day’s clothes. They’re folded with such great care that no-one would know, unless they’d seen Ed yesterday. He checks his watch - seven messages from Izzy wanting to know where the hell he is - delete. He’s fucking late, answering them is only going to make him later.

Exits the room through the other door, finds himself in the main living area with noises coming from the kitchen.

It’s late, now he can see a timepiece. Nearly midafternoon. He’s slept for fifteen hours.

“Breakfast?” Stede asks. There’s a check tablecloth on his table, and he’s laying out a spread, multiple plates with different foods on. “I wasn’t sure how your stomach would be, so there’s a selection.”

“Thanks, mate,” he says. It sounds small in his ears. He doesn’t really know what else to say.

“Well, what are friends for?” Stede says, and it’s hard not to smile at that, with Stede so obviously peering at him anxiously to check that his words are appropriate. There’s no guesswork here, no hidden intentions, just Stede being Stede.

He eats breakfast, and they chat, and it’s no different to normal, and there’s no indication that Stede thinks any differently of him.

As Ed turns to leave, he pauses. “Hey, uh…” he says. He’s not sure how to finish it.

Stede steps towards him, and Ed pulls him in instinctively. It’s awkward; this Stede is a slightly different height to the previous body, is soft where Ed is expecting hard, is warm where there should be cool. It feels weird, which is stupid, because it’s not like Ed has made a habit of hugging Stede. But he’s imprinted the times that he has on his bones, knows how it should be.

And then they both minutely adjust their grip and their stance and then, something clicks, slips into place. Feels like the right pressure. Feels like the right place. Feels like Stede.

Stede, his friend. His friend Stede.

He’s not sure he’s ever had one of those before.

***

Stede finds that the whole episode has emboldened him, when it comes to Ed. Where he’d found himself reticent to push forwards, cognizant of all the time Ed is putting into him professionally and not wishing to impinge on the rest of his life, he now acts brazenly. Makes his interruptions a semi-regular thing, around his own engagements. Takes dinner to Ed, if he feels that Ed is genuinely busy, or harries him out to a meal when he feels he can get away with it.

He even persuades Ed to attend his birthday party, mingle with his friends.

“It’s not your date of manufacture,” Ed had said, confused, as he sips on some grotesque concoction that Pete has made him.

“No, it’s the date you won him his freedom,” Lucius drawls, from the sidelines.

Stede is not quite sure why he’s not told Ed that. He has not, at any point, lied. His programming wouldn’t permit it. Omitting the truth slides past his subroutines without a murmur though.

“Kind of an anniversary for both of you,” Lucius continues.

Humans do say the most ridiculous things.

“It was a good day,” Ed says. “Reckon Stede did good, there.”

Stede begins to open his mouth to counter-argue - to protest that Ed’s the reason that they ever made it that far, but he finds his words die in his throat as he meets Ed’s eyes and feels the warmth of his smile. He looks proud. Stede doesn’t want to do anything that would dim that. He smiles back instead.

“I think I’m going to vomit,” Lucius announces, which is odd, because he hasn’t drunk that much at all.

Now his body is more co-operative - so different from those first days when everything was a struggle and he could barely walk in even the lower gravity of the Moon - his publisher is keen to send him on a promotional tour for his book. Stede expects it to be small - he’s invested in the documentation of the ecosystem of his biodome, but there’s little reason to suspect that many other people are - and at first, he’s right.

But then his tour just… never stops. People trickle in, bit by bit. A groundswell of interest develops, slowly, and he finds himself revisiting cities to give talks to larger and larger numbers. People talk about it to each other. Even people who have never been to a biodome, but hunger for a world surrounded by life. Stede is fascinated by their curiosity.

He’s not the only one who’s alarmed at the disappearing biodomes, and the increasingly restrictive laws on any non-useful organic matter outside of them.

His book provides a useful nexus for these people to meet. To commiserate, to share what remains, and to dream. Most of them have never seen a plant outside a biodome. That’s the preserve of the privileged few like the Allamby Bonnets, and even the wealthy are losing their personal green spaces bit by bit.

And it provides a distraction for Stede. He feels he has to keep his distance from court - follows the progress of the cases through both the reports and through Ed’s retelling of them in vivid and hyperbolic detail. He can’t be too obvious, though. Can’t clue anyone into what they’re planning until they’re ready to implement it.

It takes years. Ed has to wait for the right cases to come up, in the right circumstances. Has to take on enough other pro bono work that the partners - now including Izzy - don’t look at what he’s doing too closely. And he’s still the firm’s star lawyer - is still winning big commercial cases and being celebrated.

Stede can only watch, admiringly, from a distance, as Ed loses case after case, subtly, slowly, strategically, but with every one of them broadening the definition of humanity to be as loose as possible.

Perhaps he should chafe about how long this is taking. But it doesn’t feel like a cost, not when he gets to watch the silver strands in Ed’s hair become more prominent over time, not when it gives Stede an excuse to be around Ed, and to speak to him, and to be with him.

It barely feels like a cost at all to have Ed in his house, chatting until it’s too late to send him home. And then to have Ed pad bare-footed into his kitchen in the morning, all soft and loose and not entirely ready to face the world yet, moving around Stede in a familiar dance that they’ve developed, Ed finding his way around by braille with a hand on a counter then a hand slipping across Stede’s shoulder as he passes.

Stede’s used to it now, the way that this new body gives under pressure, the way it yields to touch. But the way that his receptors linger over the warmth of Ed’s fingers remains the same whatever his outer shell is made of, or how often he’s exposed to it.

It doesn’t feel like that when he’s shaking hands with people at the end of his talks. It doesn’t feel like that when his editor claps him on the shoulder in a friendly way, pleased with their success.

And successes are happening more and more now.

Because when Stede’s biodome - Pete’s biodome - is threatened with closure, hungry developers looking to house ever more people, there’s an explosion of feeling that surprises the authorities. Stede’s book, so solidly based inside it and around everything that lives in there, plant and animal, has made it everyone’s biodome, and there’s fury that it’s being taken away from them.

His book sales explode, and it propels Stede back onto the holos in a way that hasn’t happened for a decade or more.

And he’s pleased, in a way. Ed is currently fighting in court on a case, and while his mouth preaches caution his eyes are hopeful. Stede needs to assign his circuits to something else to avoid getting caught up in Ed’s optimism.

So he goes, and he talks, and he expounds the value of green, and he talks about the community that’s built up, and he doesn’t correct the host when they call it Stede’s community. And he talks about watching children playing in a garden, and how that’s lost to nearly everybody. And the response is fantastic, and fierce, and it’s within the same week that Ed exultantly calls him with the news that a judge has ruled that no amount of prosthetics disbars someone from being human, the biodome is marked as a protected space and untouchable.

But as Stede sits waiting to speak about his biodome win on the holos, the newsreader introduces him as the robot fighting for organic matter, and he feels further from victory than he’s ever been before.

He tries his best to hide his despondency from Ed, because Ed is buzzing with his own victory and full of plans. Despite all the groundwork, despite all the legislation that will support Stede’s wishes, they’re going to have to go through the World Legislature and get a majority of the senators to support them.

“I am fine,” Stede says, for the third time. They’re sitting together around one of the corners at his kitchen table, sharing a takeout as they plan their approach. Ed is giddy, and Stede has no desire to dampen that with his own worries.

The first two times, Ed has accepted that and his mind has immediately flitted back to his previous task. This time, his focus stays on Stede.

“Mate, c’mon,” he says. “What is it?”

He reaches out, twines his fingers around Stede’s. It’s an unfair move, because Stede cannot deny Ed when he does that, when he can feel the pulse in Ed’s thumb thrumming against his own fingers and the small grains of salt from the fries that cling to his skin.

Stede hesitates.

“Please?”

Ed is looking at him with those eyes, the soft ones that he only uses for Stede. And the need to please Ed compels him far more strongly than the First Law ever could, drawn from want rather than obligation.

So he tells him. Talks about the holos. Talks about the host’s introduction. Talks about the sting every time he’s called robot, and his fears that that’s all he’ll ever be seen as.

“I’m scared,” he finishes, finally giving voice to his fears. “These people, they’re kind, and they like me, but to them, I’m irrevocably a robot. How have we even got a chance with strangers?”

Ed squeezes his hand gently. “Hey,” he says. “Stede. Breathe.”

Stede breathes, roots himself in the steady presence of Ed who seems unperturbed by his words.

“It’s gonna be a big ask, yeah,” Ed says. “But I reckon it’s doable.”

“Why?” asks Stede, because he can’t fathom Ed’s certainty here. “How can you be sure that anyone could see me as human?”

“How…?” Ed says, then visibly stops himself from speaking. He looks at Stede, and Stede still has no idea what he’s thinking, why there’s a slightly incredulous look on his face.

And that’s when Ed leans forward and presses his lips to Stede’s.

It’s chaste, as far as Stede understands kisses; closed mouthed and restrained.

But his sensory receptors overflow with sensation. He’d never realised there were so many in his lips, to be able to feel the press of every millimetre against him. He can feel the slight exhale from Ed’s nose across his cheek.

And he takes this new information and he re-processes old behaviours. He has done this countless times before, but this is different. This is his own behaviour he is reassessing. He has chosen a male body, and approximately 64.35% of the people Ed looks at appreciatively are men. There is a blond man who occasionally works in Ed’s office who Stede suspects Ed has a casual sexual relationship with, and Stede has chosen blond hair, but better blond hair. It makes Stede’s circuits run more smoothly when he can perform actions for Ed, in a way that they do not when he completes tasks for others. He compares these reassessed facts to his observations of Lucius and Pete, of Jim and Oluwande and Archie, of Mary and Doug.

Oh.

It takes Stede only 1.31 seconds of inaction to create this new subfolder under ‘Ed’, one among many, but it is enough time for Ed to begin to pull away, colour flooding his cheek, and for him to start to clear his throat, and the new positronic pathways formed moments ago light up in protest.

“Ed,” he says, and it’s hard to keep the wonder out of his voice.

“’m sorry, I…” Ed says, and he’s loosening the grip he has on Stede’s hand like he wants to let go, and Stede doesn’t want that, he doesn’t want to let Ed go.

He wants Ed.

Stede can recall a thousand moments now, of looks, of moments, of things that Ed has done that would have betrayed the depth of his feeling, if only Stede had made the right connections. They stretch so far back. So many years. Ed was looking at Stede like this when Stede was metal. Ed has always seen Stede, from that first courtesy offer of a handshake.

Stede leans forward, telegraphs his intentions, and kisses him back.

He has read about this, in literature. He has absorbed information about every aspect of human relationships and behaviour through as many sources as possible; non fiction, fiction, poetry. But Ed leans into the kiss, and his heart rate elevates to twice its normal resting rate, and his respiratory pattern becomes shallower, and the hand that is still holding onto Stede’s trembles like it hasn’t since the day Ed rescued him in the biodome. And his eyelashes brush against Stede’s cheek as his lips part and his free hand slides into Stede’s hair as Stede feels his tongue for the first time. The scratchiness of his beard lights up the receptors of Stede’s chin and top lip in a way that is indelibly Ed.

He’s still leaning forward, one hand clasped in Ed’s, but the other reaches out and braces himself on Ed’s thigh. Ed’s heartrate shoots up even higher, he tenses, and he vocalises a small moan into Stede’s mouth and the hand in Stede’s hair tightens minutely before forcing itself to relax. Stede hasn’t thought as far ahead as Ed’s autonomic nervous system has, hasn’t thought about the logical progression of this, but when the idea presents itself the urge to slide his hand upwards is irresistible, his thumb grazing along the edge of the distortion in Ed’s trousers.

“Fuck,” says Ed, breaking the kiss to mouth along Stede’s jaw. His hips are tilting by millimetres towards Stede’s hand, a silent plea. “Stede, are you sure?”

Stede mirrors him as a reply, mouthing down Ed’s neck as he lets his hand slip to feel the full length of Ed through his clothes, hardening under Stede’s touch. Ed’s hips push up into his hands, wanting more contact, harder.

“I didn’t think I could have this,” Ed says. His breathing would be alarming if Stede didn’t know that he was causing it, that the stutters could be traced back to the movement of Stede’s hand, the rise and fall of his throat that must be kissed. “I didn’t think this was something that you could want.”

“My programming has the capacity to grow and respond to inputs,” Stede reminds him. “I want this because of you.”

He doesn’t think that it would be possible for him to want someone like this had they not been Ed. If they hadn’t seen him from their first moment of meeting.

“I want this with you,” he adds.

Ed’s response is to pull Stede’s face up from his neck, to kiss him, more sweetly than Stede might have expected for how hard he feels below Stede’s hand. Tugs Stede to his feet, kisses him again. They fit together, they always have done, softness over solid planes.

He fits with Ed, who thinks he keeps his softness under a harsh exterior, but doesn’t see how easily it’s found if the surface is merely scratched.

Stede slots his arms around Ed, pulls him closer, twists one hand into his hair as they kiss. Finds himself pushed back and perched on the edge of the table, his hands pulling Ed’s shirt up enough to be able to get a hand onto bare skin, sliding first up the smoothness of his back. Ed is kissing him, and kissing him, and minutely rolling himself against Stede’s hip, and Stede wants that, but more. Wants to be the one that means Ed can’t hold back. Slides his hand down, encourages a thrust.

And then he has to let the table take his weight, because Ed has lifted one of Stede’s legs over his waist, but he’s rutting deliberately now permission has been given, and Stede can feel his own physiological response to the stimulation growing, and he can feel Ed panting onto his neck, and the strain in the arm that Ed’s leaning onto the table with, the sinews standing out, and he’s drowning in this and he didn’t know that it was possible to have so much of his sensory input be Ed. He could stay like this forever.

And Stede shifts his hips to make the stimulation more direct, and that seems to break whatever spell they’re under, because Ed slows.

“What do you want?” Ed asks.

You.

“Everything.”

“Bed?” And yes, that’s an excellent suggestion, and Stede is nodding, because he would have thought of it sooner had his circuits not been scrambled by the fact that Ed wants him, indefatigably, and the evidence of such is not only pressed into his hip, but in the way that Ed gently helps him up, places a kiss on his knuckles as they move rooms.

It’s changed, now that Ed spends more time here and it’s in regular use. More knick-knacks, brighter duvet cover. Stede doesn’t look at any of it.

Ed encourages Stede to sit on the bed as he strips off his shirt, throwing it carelessly to one side. And Stede wants to protest at that, wants to go and fold it, but he can’t because Ed is looking at him, topless and his flies undone, trousers sitting low on his hips and the wet patch on his straining underwear visible.

“Like what you see?” Ed asks, and Stede knows that his cockiness is justified from the mathematical symmetry of his face, from the looks that he receives when in public, the way that people react to him and his demeanour. The way he displays his tattooed naked chest and highlights the bulge in his pelvis - features that are a draw, not a repellent.

But he’s gentle in the way he holds Stede’s hand. Curious enough to want to know about his projects. Brave, to run into a biodome full of spiders when Stede needs him. Funny. Silly. Intelligent. Standing in front of Stede with a cocky face, perspiring slightly because he’s hiding a genuine question underneath a flippant one, because Stede’s opinion matters.

“Yes,” he says, because he always has. “Let me show you,” he says. He’s read so much about this, but can only guess at what he should do now.

He encourages Ed to step forwards and lets his hands come up to Ed’s hips, mouths at the salty dampness experimentally, and feels Ed restrain a thrust in return as he brings his hands to the back of Stede’s head.

“Stede,” Ed says, and his voice cracks, so Stede does it again, and again.

He’s so hot under Stede’s tongue, even through the fabric, and Stede can feel Ed twitching as he explores the full length, finds the place around the head that makes Ed exhale with the most force and move his hips helplessly.

When Stede looks up Ed’s jaw is clenched, his eyes closed as if adding visual stimulation to the tactile would send him over the edge.

Stede feels Ed take three deep breaths as the muscles in his pelvis tighten, and then use his hands to manoeuvre Stede away.

“Give me a minute,” he says, maintaining that deep steady breathing. His underwear is far damper than before, a mixture of both of them. Stede takes one of the hands resting in his hair, turns it over, presses a kiss to the palm.

“That’s not exactly helping, mate,” Ed says, tersely, and Stede has to laugh, stifling the noise against the hand he’s still holding, because he’s still Ed, still his friend, and the hand he’s holding gives him a single squeeze in return. Stops laughing as Ed wriggles out of his trousers, leans over and kisses Stede. There are traces of Ed on Stede’s lip, perhaps enough for Ed to taste as he licks his way into Stede’s mouth and Stede runs his hands up Ed’s torso.

Ed stops kissing him, leaves his forehead resting on Stede’s. “Want to take some clothes off as well?”

“Yes,” Stede says, immediately. He wants his receptors to have no barriers here, to feel the full slide of Ed against him. To not miss a nanosecond of this.

“Can I?”

“Yes,” Stede says, and then Ed’s hands are sliding up and taking the fabric with them, and Stede is shuffling back on the bed and Ed is following, billowing shirt sleeves getting caught as they go, and it takes both of them to fight him out of it.

But then Stede is lying there, and Ed is straddling his thighs. “Fuck,” Ed says, taking in Stede’s naked torso.

I chose it for you, Stede doesn’t say, because he’s unsure if it would be appropriate, or too much. “Chose it myself,” he says instead, which is also true.

In different circumstances, this would make Ed chuckle. He doesn’t now.

“It took a while, to get used to it,” Ed says, running his hands down Stede’s chest. Every single chest hair has its own sensory receptor in addition to those on the skin surface; Stede can feel Ed through every single one of them.

He finds the softness of Stede’s stomach next; not too hard, not too soft. Attractive, but not immaculate. He bends down, presses a kiss to Stede’s belly. “But it doesn’t matter what body you’re in, really.” Sets his teeth into the skin gently, not enough to break it, not enough to mark.

Stede suddenly finds that he would not object to being marked by Ed; his positronic brain carries a serial number that claims his manufacture by US Robotics, but Ed has changed him irrevocably.

Ed slides down further, stops at the top of Stede’s trousers, looks up at Stede through his lashes.

“I’m fully functional,” Stede says. He’s unsure why else Ed would pause, except hesitation about what he might find.

Ed bows his head into the crease of Stede’s hip, and for a second, Stede is concerned he’s crying.

When he lifts his head, he’s clearly trying not to laugh. Kisses Stede’s hipbone. “Happy to work with whatever you’ve got going on down there,” he says.

“I’ll have you know it’s all very average and normal,” Stede says. It had been a point of discussion, given what androids were normally made for, one that he’d thoroughly researched.

Ed kisses Stede’s hipbone again, then his stomach, then slides a hand up Stede leaving a series of receptors that continuously fire, a ghost trail of the path that he’s taken.

“Ed,” Stede says, as he suddenly realises why his nipples have so many sensory inputs. They seemed to be hardwired into his groin to cause a direct reaction.

And Ed surges upwards at that, and they’re kissing again. Stede wraps one leg around Ed’s waist and rolls his hips upwards which makes Ed bite down on his neck and groan, so he does it again, and then again, until Ed nudges Stede’s leg to one side, reaches between them to undo the fastenings, and pulls both trousers and underwear off together.

He contemplates Stede’s penis for a moment, standing proud of his body. “Average and normal,” he says, like there’s something funny in that. Presses a kiss to the head with a smile that Stede would categorise as fond, and then takes most of it into his mouth.

Stede knows exactly how many receptors there are in his penis; he’s seen the specifications. He’s never had them all activated simultaneously though, never had heat and wet and suction all at once, not with Ed’s beard tickling his scrotum and he gasps, thrusts up helplessly, once, local bio-organic pathways acting without the input of his positronic brain.

Ed takes it, looks smug even, catching Stede’s eye in a way that makes him look very pleased with himself. Places an arm across Stede’s hips to prevent a repeat, but the increase in his heart rate and the way he’s grinding himself gently on Stede’s calf makes Stede want to do it again. And his hips want to do it again; Ed is as focused on this as he is on anything, and the tight wet heat draws Stede into wanting to thrust into it, chase after it. And Ed’s watching Stede, keeping track of every expression that passes over his face, every flutter of his abdominal muscles, and Stede sees him reach down, and he must push his underwear down to take himself in hand, like he can’t do anything but touch himself in this moment, because suddenly the sound of skin sliding on skin is there as a counterpoint to the sound of Ed’s mouth and Stede’s breathing.

As abruptly as he started, Ed stops. Pulls off. “I want to fuck you,” he says, his voice gravelly. And that’s Stede, that has made him sound like that, and it would be a First Law violation, but Ed’s whole bearing says that it is not, that it is the very opposite of that. He’s resting his hand at the base of himself, intermittently letting himself slide his hand up and give a gentle squeeze to the flushed head.

“Yes,” says Stede immediately. He wants Ed above him, around him, inside him, as close as possible. There are places that he’s had no input from Ed, and he wishes to resolve that.

“Wait, shit… lube? Have you got any?” Ed says.

“In the drawer,” Stede says. He leans towards the bedside table, but finds his movements hampered by Ed kissing his way up Stede’s body.

“You keep lube in the drawer?” Ed asks. He’s not quite pinning Stede physically, but he’s looking… confused? Intrigued?

If Stede sits up a little he can press kisses down the line of Ed’s throat, run his hands across the tattoos that cover his chest, circle his nipple with a thumb; hear Ed’s breath hitch and feel the wet twitch of him against Stede’s abdomen.

“Doesn’t everyone?” Stede asks. He’d very thoroughly researched for this room, given it’s one that was never used until Ed. He’d wanted it to be usable for a human. Bed, wardrobe, bedroom table, lamp, and the consumables like painkillers, lubrication and the small religious book. All excellent brands, of course.

Instead of answering, Ed leans over and opens the drawer. Rummages around in there, tosses the Astroglide onto the duvet. Shuffles the rest of the contents so he can close the drawer, and looks at Stede over his shoulder. “You really did the research, huh?” he says. The corner of his mouth is twitching, as if there’s some joke there that Stede cannot fathom.

And Stede goes to reply that of course he did, but before he can open his mouth Ed is clambering over him again, kisses him deeply, slowly, his hair falling like a curtain either side of them. “You’re so you,” he says. “My favourite person.” It’s a whispered confession, and Ed’s heart is pounding as he says it, like he’s scared to say it, or of Stede’s response. His fingers tremble minutely and his temperature, already elevated with arousal despite his nudity, increases by a further point three of a degree.

“Please,” Stede says, because Ed’s the most important person in his life, has been the most important person in his life for so long now, and he has no erudite words to say what it means, to find that reciprocated. He’s stored the major works of literature in his brain, categorised and cross linked, and all of them feel inadequate.

Ed kisses him once more, a thing that starts affectionate but becomes more heated as it continues. Stede finds himself pushed down, opened up with fingers as Ed kisses him everywhere, and when Ed pushes into him it’s with Ed panting into Stede’s neck, stilling as he fights for control.

Stede feels so full, with Ed in him and around him and with Ed’s world comprising solely of Stede, and Stede’s subroutines solely categorising this moment. It’s impossible to think of anything but the way that Ed’s forearms bracket him, the feeling of his exhalations on Stede’s skin, the way that Ed’s forehead rests on his cheek.

Stede touches Ed wherever he can reach; runs his hands across his back, down his arm. Feels Ed’s skin shiver under his touch. Winds his fingers through Ed’s hair, holds it back from his face, finally winds his legs around Ed and presses his heel into Ed’s tailbone, urging Ed into the movement that he’s trying to deny himself.

Ed starts slow, the picture of restraint, but Stede doesn’t want slow, they’ve done slow for a decade and more, grips at Ed and presses kisses and bites to the hollow of his throat until Ed groans and allows himself to move freely, almost frantic in his desire for Stede.

Arches into it when Ed’s rhythm becomes erratic, feels Ed stifle moans against his skin, whispers yes, yes, into Ed’s ear, grips onto him as Ed’s ragged breathing stutters out, fuck - fuck - Stede - and he tumbles over the edge.

For a moment the only sound in the room is Ed’s harsh breathing as he collapses on top of Stede. Stede strokes his fingers through Ed’s hair, tries to withdraw them, then relents and carries on when Ed shifts his head enough to chase the sensation.

“Don’t stop,” he says. He’s loose and pliant and relaxed, and he’s pressing small kisses along Stede’s jawline as his hand slips down Stede’s body.

Stede has touched himself, when he first obtained this body. Self exploration. He would have said that the feeling was perfectly adequate, and that he understood that the accompanying dopamine release was something that humans chased.

He would have said all of that, before he felt Ed’s hand. Saw Ed’s face. He arches off the bed with surprise when Ed slides a lube slicked hand from root to tip, doubly so when Ed starts moving his hand in earnest, speeding up without even realising it, and his head bends to let his mouth close around a nipple.

“Good?” Ed asks, as if he doesn’t know the answer. Stede’s body is reacting to the stimuli, stomach muscles flexing, and he tries to hold his hips still before hopelessly thrusting through Ed’s hand, his body chasing the friction. Ed watches, mouth slightly parted, eyes dark with desire, taking every movement in until Stede finds that he needs him, pulls him in for a desperate kiss.

Ed tightens his grip and redoubles his efforts, gives a twist of his hand, and that’s enough for Stede. He comes, gives a cry into Ed’s mouth as he spills over Ed’s hand and his own chest.

For a moment they lie there, and Stede is able to admire Ed, sprawled on the bed next to him - supine, relaxed, all tension gone for the first time in their shared history. Their one point of connection the toe that Ed nudges against the arch of Stede’s foot to get his attention. He turns to Stede and the look he gives is soft, affectionate, and one that Stede has seen before, but now one he can place into context.

“How are you doing?” he asks, and there are so many possible answers to that.

“Sticky,” Stede says.

Ed laughs but rolls off the bed immediately, finds a cloth. Cleans Stede up, settles back down, head pillowed on Stede, leg slung over Stede’s leg, skin sliding over skin affectionately.

“We don’t have to do that, if you don’t like it,” he says into Stede’s chest.

And Stede doesn’t know how to answer that, because truthfully it’s not something that he might seek out for its own sake. But the tremble of Ed around him, in him, losing control…

“I want to, with you.”

Ed kisses his shoulder. “Back atcha,” he says, sleepily.

Stede doesn’t sleep, has no physiological need for it, but he does lie in bed with Ed curled up around him, snoring, the loose bun of his hair tickling Stede’s ear a testament to the whole world having turned on its axis.

And yet, nothing has changed.

***

He and Ed have a carefully drawn up list of senators and a plan of attack. Some are likely to be sympathetic, or respond to a direct appeal, others are in need of a more circumspect approach.

This is one of the senators that Ed thinks will prefer a no-bullshit approach. They sit in the waiting room, and Stede’s fingers drum on the arms of the chair, an outlet for the fizzing electrons beneath his skin. Ed looks over, gives a sympathetic smile. He doesn’t reach out, a precaution they’ve both agreed to.

It’s been a long time since Stede was officially Ed’s client. It’s only been three days since Ed kissed him, but stripping all affection away to their original relationship makes Stede keenly aware of every casual touch that he has become accustomed to over time.

Ed gives him a quick, tight, smile. His hands are clasped together, the knuckles white. Stede isn’t the only one struggling with this. It’s a relief when they’re called through.

Zheng Yi Sao is formidable. She holds sway over a lot of opinions, and it’s key to their plans that she be an ally, not a foe.

“Let me get this straight,” she says. She’s been silent throughout their pitch, the only senator who hasn’t interrupted them multiple times. “You —” and she points at Stede “— want to be a human. Recognised as one.”

“Every part of me can also be found in organic humans,” Stede says.

“Nearly every part,” Zheng corrects. “Your positronic brain is platinum-iridium, not organic.”

“All brains are individual,” Stede counters. “Mine just a little more so.” It sounds like she’s arguing against him. He is not completely sure that she is. She remains stoic, still, seemingly unmoved by his argument, but she is also not openly hostile.

Zheng actually smiles at that. “I always think of robots as…harsh. Unyielding. Rigid. You’re different, Stede Bonnet. You’re… soft.”

Stede is unsure whether this is a good thing or not. He suspects it’s not a quality that is associated with survival in Zheng’s domain, and Ed is shifting uncomfortably in the seat next to him.

“I’d like to take a chance on you. Let me talk to some people.” She looks at them. “The other person with a lot of sway in this area is Chauncey Badminton, but…”

“His brother is a lawyer for US Robotics,” Ed says shortly. “Has been their representative against Stede a few times.”

They’d crossed him off their list without even thinking about it.

“A shame,” Zheng says. “But inevitable.”

Ed is restraint itself, and waits until they’re alone, back at Stede’s house, before embracing Stede, kissing him and dancing him around the room. His enthusiasm is a rising tide that lifts all spirits.

“Babe, that went so well,” Ed says. Proudly. Fondly. “You did so well.” Kisses him once, like Stede’s mouth tastes like victory and he wants to drink deep.

“She seemed very open to our request,” Stede says, trying to be cautious even as hope unfurls her wings and clamours insistently.

They recalculate. If they can count on Zheng’s cadre, they can afford to lose some of the other people on the list.

On the days that Ed is approaching senators solo, Stede can do nothing but pace. Comms his friends, reveals their plans that have been so carefully hidden until now. There is little point in keeping the secret any longer; the World Legislature leaks those like a broken pipe leaks fluid.

When he tells Oluwande there’s a long pause. Stede is unsure what he will do if any of his friends reject his plans.

“You got a biologist who specialises in science communication as an expert witness yet?” Oluwande asks, and Stede hasn’t even thought that far ahead, so he answers in the negative.

“You want one?” he asks, and when Stede tentatively asks if he knows anyone, Oluwande gives a short laugh. “Me, Stede. Fuck’s sake, mate,” he says, and Stede is reasonably sure there is more affection than irritation in his tone.

“You would do that?” Stede asks.

“We’d all do that,” Oluwande says without hesitation. “You’re a bit weird, but you’re ours.”

Stede has belonged to people before. Mary and Doug purchased him, and cared for him. Alma inherited him. There is whatever is between him and Ed, complex and tangled and deep. He has never been claimed like this though, the assumption that it is easy, to belong to each other. That it is not possessive, or exclusionary, or restrictive in any way. He belongs to them as they belong both to him and to each other, failsafe upon failsafe, shielding each other.

It buoys him, makes his circuits run lighter, to think that there are others who can see a pathway to his goal. Ed focuses on success, does not think about the possibility of failure; Stede by his very nature has subroutines dedicated to all possible outcomes, a maelstrom of statistical probabilities that shift with every word a human utters, more unpredictable than the flap of a butterfly’s wings.

He allows it to buoy him into the final meeting of the week - a subcommittee that has agreed to hear them. Zheng attends, listed as an interested observer, neither for them nor against them right now.

He has heard many of the arguments before, rehashed from his previous legal battles. He knows his purchase date and order number, knows his original price. Knows the price of the upgrades he has acquired over the years. Knows that he retains, and must always retain, his positronic brain to remain him.

And he knows the counter-argument as well; Ed asks every senator in attendance to stand up. Asks those with any prosthetics or artificial body modifications to remain standing. Two thirds do; Zheng is one of the youngest present.

Asks those sitting to stand back up if they would happily take a prosthetic. They all do. Of course they do. All humans wish to extend their good quality life for as long as possible.

Asks those standing if they believe that their artificial body parts do, or will, make them less human. Reminds them that legally, no amount of artificial components makes them less human. Reminds them that he’s the one who has guaranteed that for them.

Stede has to stifle a smile at that; Ed has always had a tendency towards self-aggrandising, never shy of his own worth in this arena.

Asks them to consider whether they would still consider themselves human if their whole body slowly became prosthetic.

Asks them to consider that this would mean they were identical to Stede.

Asks them why if they are human, Stede isn’t too.

Ed’s trying to look at each individual senator as he makes his argument, trying to catch their eye. They’re captivated by him; his movement, his words, his voice. He’s a master in this arena and he’s bringing everything out.

“I’ve known Stede for a long time,” Ed says. “As the record will show. I’ve given you the facts, but let me tell you about Stede, the person.”

“He’s interested in everything. He’s got a fashion sense - I couldn’t tell you whether it’s highly stylised or highly insane, not my thing. He really likes bugs, and he really hates when people don’t get why they’re neat. You probably know that already, it’s pretty well publicised. He’s a bit of a bitch - you probably don’t know that, unless you’ve seen the holos where it slips out. He tries to hide it, doesn’t manage it very well.”

He looks at Stede then, the first time since he’s stood up to speak. “He’s the most interesting person I’ve ever met.”

It’s hard to remember there are other people in the room. A part of Stede assesses the response to that, some disinterested, some taking notes, some with their attention trained on Ed. Stores them to assess later. But they are completely irrelevant when Ed’s eyes are still trained on him, when he can feel the fondness radiating off him.

He doesn’t take his eyes off Ed as he acknowledges the committee leads, and takes his seat back next to Stede. And Stede can’t help it - he reaches out, takes Ed’s hand, gives it a squeeze before letting go.

The senators of the committee watch that, as well.

They’re politely ejected from the proceedings. The subcommittee will discuss amongst themselves, make a recommendation. They’ll decide whether this is something that can go before the World Legislature or whether it’s not worth their time.

With nothing to do, Ed paces across Stede’s living area, weaving his way among the ornaments, a caged beast. Stede halts him, pulls him into his arms, not entirely sure if he’s motivated by concern for Ed or concern for his possessions.

Ed comes to him, steps into his arms but stays tense. “There’s nothing else I can do for you,” he says.

“That’s not true,” Stede says. They’re not through, whatever happens now. Ed has changed him, his programming irrevocably rewritten forever. “This. This is enough.”

Ed runs his nose over the shell of Stede’s ear, a cold extremity in contrast to the warmth of his breath. “Yeah,” he says.

And suddenly it’s not enough. Stede kisses Ed, fiercely, possessively enough that he can feel Ed swallow his surprise and hesitate before responding. Guides him back towards the sofa, urges him to sit. Kisses Ed again, all tongues and sloppy.

“What?” Ed says. He looks dazed.

“Let me relax you,” Stede says. “Let me distract you.” Ed’s still in his court clothes, the armour that he wears to make him fierce. Stede only undoes the fastening of his trousers, eases them and his underwear down to mid thigh, leaves the rest.

“Yes,” Ed says, when Stede’s hand closes over him. “Yes, Stede, yes.”

He’s growing firmer now, lengthening with every stroke, and Stede drops to his knees. Remembers how it felt to be surrounded by wet heat and suction. Braces his elbow on the arm of the sofa, leans forward and takes the whole of Ed into his mouth.

Ed bucks, gives an incoherent shout and then forcibly stills his hips. Stede can feel him growing firmer, taste a drop of salty fluid as he withdraws and brings his tongue to the underside.

“Shit.” Ed sounds lost.

Bobs his head, gets the length of Ed wet with saliva to help with the slide. He can see the muscles at the base of Ed’s stomach quivering where his shirt parts, feel the rise and fall of his chest and the hammering of his heart.

Brings his spare hand up, runs it over his scrotum, uses it as a counterpoint to his mouth, runs it up under his shirt to feel the desperation beneath him.

When Ed gives an aborted half-thrust, Stede gives an encouraging hum, grabs at Ed’s hip in a silent encouragement. Lets Ed take what he wants from Stede, lets the saliva drip from around his mouth as Ed experimentally weaves his hand into Stede’s hair and starts to let go, pushing up from the sofa again and again into Stede’s mouth, hitting the back of his throat. Stede can feel the thickness of him on the roof of his mouth, on his cheeks, on his lips. Ed’s undone his top button now, and his hair is spilling out of his neat, court, updo and tumbling around his shoulders.

“Yeah,” Ed encourages, and he feels so uninhibited in the way he’s surging into Stede, again and again. It feels like for once, Ed’s not thinking, just giving in to what he wants. “Like that. Please. Oh fuck.”

He’s speeding up, seemingly unconsciously. The fingers in Stede’s hair tighten to the point of pain.

“Fuck, Stede,” he says. “Fuck, I’m gonna—“

Stede hums encouragingly. Ed stutters upwards three times, spilling into Stede’s throat. Stede takes it, holds Ed in his mouth until Ed weakly pushes him away, then rests his chin on Ed’s thigh for a moment, looking up at his dishevelled appearance.

“Distracted?” he asks.

“Smug git,” Ed says, tugging him upwards. Rearranging himself back into his clothes and then draping Stede across his chest. The tension he was carrying hasn’t entirely gone, but he’s running his fingers through Stede’s hair idly, soothing where he’d been grasping before, and his socked toe is rubbing at Stede’s ankle.

“Tell me about your bug things,” he says. There’s drowsiness in his voice, and Stede modulates his tone, lets it lull Ed into a snooze that will chase the worries away for a while. Stede has no such escape, but he sets his subroutines to idle tasks, calculates pi to a googolplex number of decimal places, checks the public sensors to the various biodomes dotted around Earth, the Moon, and Mars.

***

It takes three days before they’re called back to Zheng’s office.

“It’s not good news,” she says. “Sorry.”

“Just like that?” Ed says. “Just… fucking nothing, after all that? Thanks for your time, fuck off now?”

Zheng sighs. “I am sympathetic, I really am,” she says. “But it’s not solely my decision, and there was strong opposition.”

“If we could have more time…” Stede says.

Zheng shakes her head. “You’ve run a smart campaign, over the last decade. Those who are willing to be persuaded are already persuaded. Those that remain…” She shrugs. “Human nature is as it is.”

“Was there a particular point of obstruction?” Stede asks. He feels numb. His sensors have closed down, blocking all inputs while his internal circuits scream blindly.

“There were two,” Zheng says. “You have a positronic brain, not an organic one, and no human will ever have one of those, not with our current knowledge of neuroanatomy.”

She would know, Stede realises. She’d been a successful surgeon before changing career tracks.

“And maybe that wouldn’t be insurmountable, but you also have an infinite lifespan. I’m sorry, Stede, but humans are mortal.”

“Oh,” says Stede. “Well, thank you for your time.”

Zheng stands as they rise, and offers her hand. “I won’t hurt my career for you,” she says. “But if you think I can help, my door is always open.”

Stede takes it, feels the firm grip of someone who has fought their way to power. Automatically nods his thanks, courtesy deeply embedded in his systems.

He’s not sure how they make it back to his house. He’s not sure where Ed procures food from, or how he’s persuaded to eat it. He doesn’t remember being taken out of his clothes, or put into his silk nightclothes. He feels a faint hum, and recognises that his mechanical parts are charging. Feels the bedsheets around him as Ed tucks himself around Stede, clinging on as if his grip is the only thing binding Stede to him.

“I’m sorry,” Ed says. He sounds broken. Defeated. “I’m so sorry.”

They move around each other as ghosts for the next few days. There is no way forward they can see, nothing to aim for. Eventually Ed is dragged back into work by Izzy, leaving Stede alone.

He checks his messages. There are things that he needs to do, neglected for weeks now, but he cannot bring himself to complete them. He stares at them listlessly, then deletes most of them.

He ignores a message from Frenchie. There is nothing to be said beyond the basics, and his friends are already aware. He’d been buoyed by their support, but it had been false hope.

He goes back to the roboticists at US Robotics. They confirm what Zheng has told him: both positronic and organic brains are too complex to be anything except what they are. Stede can and has transplanted every other organ to a hybridised version but this barrier remains firm.

“At the current rate of technology, maybe in about a century?” Dr Roach says. He’s older than when he’d arranged Stede’s previous transplants, but still as blunt. “I’m sorry, Stede.” He shrugs. “You don’t need organic life anyway - you know I think you started to go downhill when you chose android form. Even biomechanical meat parts are just… meat. And meat treated wrong goes off.”

Meat treated wrong goes off.

Stede doesn’t say anything to Dr Roach then. Doesn’t say anything to anyone for a while. Not to Oluwande or Jim, who might understand what he’s considering, or to Lucius and Pete, who may well not. Considers, goes back, talks to surgeons about the possibilities.

He doesn’t mention anything to Ed, doesn’t want to consider that discussion until he’s certain. Ed seems to be struggling himself anyway - he’s put so much of his professional career into helping Stede that it’s like he’s floating adrift without a target. There are no more seas to conquer for him, he stands unopposed. Nothing else has seemed to grab his interest. It’s not a state that suits him, and it worries Stede.

And Ed still appears at his door, slips into Stede’s house and Stede’s life. Touches Stede as he passes by, as he’s always done. Sleeps in Stede’s bed, sometimes with Stede and sometimes without. He doesn’t ask what Stede is spending his days on now, and Stede isn’t sure why. Kisses him, and if his kisses are full of regret now, Stede is certain that it’s regret for what he couldn’t do for Stede, not regret for Stede himself. Not regret for them.

Maybe he can fix that.

He goes back to Dr Roach, first, plots out the details of a plan. Heads home from the Moon, waits for Ed to crawl in, late, brings him dinner.

“I’ve been thinking,” he says, into the silence. “About what Senator Zheng said. And about how to get around it.”

“What do you mean?” Ed says. He pauses with a forkful of food halfway to his mouth.

“She said that my positronic brain won’t degrade.” Stede waits, looks to Ed for a reaction. Nothing. “She said that while that was true, they couldn’t get anywhere near the support.”

“Babe, there’s not much we can do about that,” Ed says.

“I think there is.”

Ed’s still holding the fork half way towards his mouth. “What do you mean?” he asks, sharply. It’s not a tone that he’s ever used on Stede before, although it’s one that Stede has heard when he’s quizzing juniors, when he’s cross examining witnesses.

“There’s a procedure,” Stede says. “It takes the connection between my purely positronic brain and the prosthetics that are a mixture of bio-organic and synthetic, and it degrades them.”

“Stede.”

“The US Robotics specialist thinks that it can be done.”

“Stede.”

“And it would solve the problem.”

“Stede, your brain is not a problem.”

“It is to me.” And that’s the crux of it, in the end.

“You’d die.” Ed’s still holding the fork half way to his mouth. The food has slipped off it, back onto the plate, but he’s got his elbow on the kitchen table and he’s staring at Stede wide-eyed like he can’t believe what he’s hearing.

“Everybody dies.”

“Not by choice.”

“It wouldn’t… It wouldn’t be immediate. They would degrade over multiple years.”

“Are you sure about that? Sounds pretty fucking dangerous to me.”

“There are always surgical risks. With anything. The risk is acceptably low.”

“Acceptable to who? Not to me.”

“Acceptable to me.”

Ed looks at him. He’s still holding the fork. “You’ve really thought about this, huh?”

“I’ve done my research,” Stede says. He always does his research.

“Spoken to everyone you need to speak to?”

“I think so, yes. Dr Roach thinks that a robo-neurosurgeon could do the procedure.”

“I didn’t make the cut, huh?”

“What?”

“Of people you needed to speak to before deciding?”

“I’m speaking to you now.”

“And you’ve decided already. Guess that’s that, then.” Ed sets the fork down - finally - lets it clatter onto the plate. He abruptly pushes his chair back, and stands. Kicks at the chair leg once, misses, and disappears into the main living area.

“Ed!” Stede doesn’t know what he can do except follow. He has no pattern for this, no algorithm to follow. They’ve disagreed, of course they have - they first met a quarter of a century ago. They’ve never fought. But Ed is upset and he cannot leave that.

“Don’t walk away,” he says.

“Why not?” Ed says. “Might as fucking well. Apparently if I don’t, you will.”

“I never said anything about leaving you!” And Stede has no idea where Ed’s got that from. He’d never do that.

“Fucking off to the fucking Moon, have a little procedure, make sure you don’t have to deal with me for any fucking length of time. None of my business really, is it?”

“That’s not fair.” It’s semantically inaccurate, and it has no basis in the reality of this situation, and Stede has some sort of justice subroutine screaming alarms at him.

“No!” And Ed whirls on him. “What’s not fucking fair is you deciding that I don’t even matter enough to talk to about this. What’s not fucking fair is you just… playing fucking house with me and then treating me like just your lawyer once my feelings aren’t convenient to you.” He’s furious, angrier than Stede has ever seen him. Not the irritated rage of Blackbeard, stalking the boardroom. He’s hurt. There are tears welling in his eyes that he refuses to let fall.

It makes each word land like a blow, but Stede doesn’t know what he could have done differently. Each step has led him logically from one point to the next, until he has arrived here. He couldn’t have talked to Ed about this before. It might not have been even theoretically worth pursuing. It might not have been feasible. He might not have found anyone to agree to it even if it were.

Ed might have talked him out of it.

“You know how much this means to me,” Stede says.

“You know how much you mean to me,” Ed says. “And I guess now I know where I sit in the fucking pecking order.”

“No,” Stede says, a denial. “Please,” he says, because he doesn’t know what to do, if he can’t pursue this. “I need to do this.”

“Can’t fucking stop you,” Ed says. “I don’t matter that much.”

And Stede can see the moment it dawns on Ed, tears spilling down his cheeks, his lips trembling with suppressed rage and sorrow. Because Ed can stop him. Any human can stop him. He’s no less at the mercy of the Second Law than he was when he was purchased, or when the people in the biodome wanted him to dismember himself. Ed doesn’t even need to do it himself - just tip off those who would be horrified at losing a scientific curiosity.

Ed takes a step towards him, and for a moment Stede feels exactly what the juniors at the law firm feel when Blackbeard approaches, their whole lives sitting at the mercy of his whims. Ed’s fists are clenching and unclenching, like he wants to physically express the depth of his feeling in some way.

“Do what you fucking want, Mr Bonnet,” Ed says, every syllable stabbing into the depths of Stede’s guts. “If you need legal services you have my business number.”

He turns, he grabs his coat, and he leaves.

The door slides shut with a gentle click behind him.

***

Stede waits for twenty four hours. Ed doesn’t come back.

He tries to comm him, but Ed doesn’t answer.

Tries to go to his office, and he finds his way brutally barred by Ivan.

Sends message after message with no response. He doesn’t know if Ed has blocked his contact details or is just deleting them.

He tries not to think about the possibility that Ed is listening to them and just doesn’t care any more.

He consults his friends.

“Yeah, no, I’d’ve left you too, Stede, what the fuck,” Lucius says.

“Yeah, that is super bad,” Jim agrees.

“Couldn’t have fucked up harder if you’d tried,” Archie says. “Impressive.” She lifts her hand as if she’s going to offer a high five, but Oluwande discreetly slips his hand into hers instead.

“What are you going to do?” he asks.

“If I don’t go through with the procedure, Ed will still be gone,” Stede says. “It’s been weeks. He won’t let me anywhere near him. And if I delay there’s a greater chance someone will find out and order me to not go through with it, or stop Dr Roach performing the procedure.”

“You could die on the op table,” Archie says.

“If it succeeds, it could bring me humanity. If it doesn’t then many humans have died striving to become something more, and I find that an acceptable cost.”

“What if it works and no-one changes their mind?” Jim says.

“Then I will have lost everything for nothing.” He tries not to think about this possibility. Tries not to remember that the probability of this lies somewhere between 26 and 42%. There are too many variables to be more accurate than that.

After this conversation, he reduces the probability that Ed will come back from 15% to 5%. His behaviour has been unacceptable. His apologies, unaccepted.

Even within that 5% chance he has no idea how he could reconcile Ed’s desires with his own. It may be that the moment he reciprocated Ed’s kiss was the moment that they stepped onto a path they could not turn from.

Maybe their probability of success had always been very small.

He gives Lucius a letter anyway. Just in case the surgery has a negative outcome. He hopes that if he dies, that Ed will at least do him the courtesy of reading it. That he will let Stede try and explain why he must do this. It’s handwritten, calligraphy - something that Stede had experimented with for a short time, several decades ago.

He gives one last talk in his beloved biodome, looks at faces that he recognises and those that he does not. Encourages them to push for life, everywhere, uncontained.

Lucius and Pete walk home with him, spend his last evening on Earth keeping him company and joking inanely.

But then he’s alone as he steps onto the transport, and alone as he arrives on the Moon.

Dr Roach meets him, goes through the last preparatory steps. Stede has them memorised, of course, but humans like to repeat themselves, so he endures it. Puts on the hospital gown, heads through to the procedures room.

The actual surgeon is, of course, a robot. There is no way a human hand would be fine enough to perform the necessary procedure.

It hesitates when it sees Stede. “I cannot bring you to harm,” it says, a clear tenor that is a modulated version of the voice that Stede carries.

Stede hesitates before answering. “There is no First Law conflict,” he says. “I, too, am a robot.” The words feel heavy and like ash in his mouth. “I order you to complete the procedure,” he says.

In the absence of any First Law conflict, Stede at least looks human enough to activate the Second Law. The robot presses a spray of local anaesthetic into his neck, and begins.

Chapter Text

The Three Laws of Robotics (Handbook of Robotics, 56th Edition, 2058 A.D.)

1. A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.
2. A robot must obey the orders given it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.
3. A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.

Stede is floating, somewhere. Maybe waiting to drown. There’s a roaring in his ears that’s hard to ignore, but there’s something else behind it.

Something important.

He strains his ears, dedicates more subroutines to deciphering it.

“…you nut. Why’d you have to go and do this,” the voice says. It sounds tired. Hoarse. Upset.

He knows that voice. He wants to be near that voice. Just listen to it. Doesn’t care what it’s saying.

“I’m sorry,” the voice says. It cracks a little on the second word. “I messed it all up. I didn’t do well enough.”

There’s a pause then, and then the voice says, “Stede. Please wake up.”

Stede doesn’t know how to do as he’s asked, doesn’t know how to follow this direction. There’s no order in there; no compulsion from the Second Law. But he wants to stem whatever is causing the rawness in the voice, wants to smooth over those hurts.

He can’t see how he can achieve that, though, so he sinks back into oblivion.

***

When Stede next wakes, he finds himself in a bed. There are monitoring devices attached to him - some measuring organic output, some positronic. Ed is on the chair next to the bed.

Ed is half on the chair next to the bed. His head is pillowed onto his arm, resting on the edge of Stede’s bed, hair fanned out around him, untamed, salt-and-pepper, and his sleeping face turned towards Stede. His other arm is reaching out and he’s holding Stede’s hand.

Stede’s fingers instinctively tighten around Ed’s.

The movement makes Ed stir, a twitch followed by a scrunching of his eyes - a hallmark of a poor night’s sleep. There’s rheum collected in the corners of his eyes, crusting a little; the chemical makeup suggests that it’s secondary to tears, not normal lubrication.

He’s got no beard. There is only bare skin, small abrasions littering it. Some of them Ed would notice, some of them he would not. The newly exposed skin is rougher, unused to the exposure it now has.

Ed’s eyelids flicker open, and for a moment he locks gazes with Stede and it’s like any other day in the last decade; the recognition, the safety. But then Ed’s eyes shutter a little, and his expression becomes stiffer, more forcibly neutral.

“You’re awake,” he says, removing his hand from Stede’s. “I’ll get the doc.”

“I’m alright, for a moment,” Stede says. This should feel like a lie; his response times are lagging, and his vision is less acute than normal. He does not know whether his motor skills are fully present. But he’s with Ed, so he can say the words as a not-lie.

“Ed, you came back.” He fights the words out, his mouth rediscovering itself. It’s important that he acknowledge this. He finds it both impossible and inevitable at the same time, relief and surprise all at once.

Ed shakes his head once, a denial. “You need someone to look after you,” he says. “I’m here for that. Nothing else.”

He gets up, starts walking towards the door. He looks ethereal in the lower Moon gravity, his movements slower and more deliberate to compensate for the unfamiliar one sixth G.

“Ed…”

He carries on walking, and disappears out the door.

Stede carries out a self diagnostic now that he’s alone. He’s wearing pyjamas - artificial cotton-style, not his. He hadn’t expected to need any. His processors are lagging, stuck in a loop that will need a restart to fix. The receptors on his hand, where Ed had been touching him, carry the memory of him like a burn. The nanotechnology regulators in each part of his prosthetic body appear to be working, but independently of each other and with poor integration. And Ed had looked at him in a way that is seared into his visual processing centre, making everything freeze.

His positronic brain appears unharmed.

His positronic brain is hurting.

Ed comes back, bringing Dr Roach with him, and then he retreats a corner, hovers uncertainly as Dr Roach starts poking at the monitors. “I can go,” he says.

“No!” Stede says. Immediately. Too loudly, judging by Dr Roach’s wince. Maybe his auditory and vocal areas are not integrated correctly.

But if Ed goes, he might not come back. He might decide that Stede is fine without him.

Stede is not fine without him.

Ed stays, lingers in a far corner as Dr Roach sits Stede up on the bed and examines him, commenting about this system or that, checking the data from the monitors and the alerts that have flagged themselves there. It takes hours. Stede has no idea if it’s night or day; his internal chronometer refuses to sync. A natural Moon day is nearly a month long and the working Moon day runs to UTC so the steady light through the window gives no clue, and neither does Dr Roach, who just performs test after test, fully focused on his task.

Stede does not directly look at Ed at any point, training his gaze to the Earthrise visible out the window. He sharpens his peripheral visual field instead, watches Ed examine a plant - artificial, of course - and fail to hide his reactions to everything that Dr Roach is saying.

Dr Roach is not displeased with Stede’s progress - they were not expecting Stede to completely shut down after the procedure, but then they have never attempted anything like this before. But Stede is now fully online. His systems and his reaction times are altered - couscous, Dr Roach says dryly - but there are already signs of recovery.

“Your motor skills are affected,” he says. “So you will need to be careful until they recover. But, hey, at least you are alive. We weren’t sure that was going to happen.” He nods over at Ed. “But because Mr Teach is able to monitor you, I don’t see any reason why you can’t be discharged back to Earth. You’re far more adjusted already than you were after the android transfer.”

He leaves them then, Stede staring at the bed and watching Ed out of the side of his eye, Ed studying the plant but his gaze flicking over to Stede repeatedly, as if he thinks Stede won’t notice.

Maybe once, Stede was unaware of how much Ed watched him. Or found it difficult to interpret those looks as anything other than Ed’s generalised hypervigilance. But his circuits have grown with a lot of new information since then, have felt Ed’s open adoration and the intensity of his affection.

Ed is watching him now, and it feels like uncharted territory that Stede has no guide to help him with.

“Lucius told you,” he guesses, because there seems little other way that Ed would be here.

“Yeah.”

Stede wants to protest that Ed should not feel obligated to be here, that if Ed does not want to help Stede, then Lucius, or Olu, or Frenchie, or someone, would be available. He does not, because he does not want Ed to leave. He is not entirely sure what is currently tethering Ed here - to Stede - when it is clearly doing him harm to be so, but he is reluctant to start snipping at ties in case he finds out.

His inaction may be a First Law violation. Stede does not care.

“You arrived quickly.”

Something unfamiliar flashes over Ed’s face. Grief? “Stede you’ve been unconscious for eleven days.” His voice cracks and he’s blinking at 124.6% of his normal rate now, an excess of lacrimal fluid building up.

Stede’s mouth begins to form a denial, but his internal regulator has now re-synced to the universal time mechanisms and it dies on his lips as he realises the truth of it.

“Oh.” He wants to ask whether that means that Lucius has handed over his letter. He wants to ask if that is why Ed is here. He wants to ask whether Ed is here despite that. He does not want to hear any of the answers.

“How long have you been here?” he asks. Ed is studying the plant again, with more interest than Stede has ever seen him display towards anything green.

“Doesn’t matter.”

It matters. It matters to Ed, to every tense and miserable line of his body. It matters in the way he closes himself down immediately.

It matters to Stede.

That seems irrelevant at this present juncture. “I will get dressed,” he says, instead of prolonging the silence. “And then we can leave.” He can be rational, and unemotional, if that is what is required.

He tries to undo the buttons of his pyjama shirt, but his fingers will not co-operate. They feel like he is wearing a large pair of mittens; huge, clumsy, unable to function independently or do as Stede would have them do.

Ed moves over swiftly, sits besides him. “Can I…?” he asks, hands hovering.

Stede lets his hands fall away, and when Ed still hesitates, he nods.

Ed’s hands are gentle as they undo the buttons one by one. He doesn’t even touch Stede’s skin, though Stede can feel the heat of Ed’s hands travelling down his midline, radiating into the sterile air between them. He looks at his task, concentrating on his movements in this strange gravity, and Stede has no idea how he should react to this; Ed so close but so far away.

It’s like his breathing; it had been easy, before. Now he can feel the amount of processing space each movement takes, double checks each instruction for errors before it’s implemented, feels the movement in and out of every alveoli and the struggle of every molecular exchange.

Ed finishes, and Stede remains motionless, the pyjama shirt hanging off him, as Ed lifts his hands and slides the material off his shoulders. His thumb brushes over Stede’s clavicle as he does so, a sensation that Stede tries desperately to persuade his long term memory to store with little hope of success. Everything is so fuzzy.

“Sonic shower?” Ed suggests, and Stede is not sure what his organic functions have been doing, and his olfactory processing appears to be diminished, but he nods. He must be in need of one.

He’s agreed without thinking about this though. Stands as Ed slides his trousers down to his ankles, feels the drag of them as they slide down. Wobbles as he tries to step one leg out until Ed reaches up, grabs hold of his hand, brings it to rest on his own shoulder. His gyroscopic sensors stutter feebly as he copies the movement with the other foot, and then he’s there, standing bare and exposed in front of Ed.

Ed’s expression stays blank and neutral, even when Stede grabs his elbow as he goes to stand, Stede wobbling dangerously at taking on additional weight. Ed's in need of an artificial knee, really, to match the two that Stede has. He has claimed to be too busy to organise it for several years.

For a moment they’re standing face to face, clasping each others’ forearms, close enough that Stede could reach out and run his hand along Ed’s chin, to see what it feels like.

He doesn’t. He lets Ed guide him to the bathroom, steps him inside the sonic shower, lets him find the wall with his hand before stepping back and shutting the door. Lets the sound waves scrub him of the last eleven days.

When he’s finished he opens the door again, steps out. Ed has a choice of clothes ready for him.

“From my house?” Stede asks.

“Yeah uh… I asked Lucius to send stuff over,” Ed says.

It’s a complicated feeling. He would have preferred Ed in his house, if he’s totally honest, over Lucius - who can on occasion cut him down with a sly remark that Stede doesn’t understand until several days later. But logically he suspects that Ed has been here for the last eleven days, with him. He’s moving like he does at the end of a long case - one that means he’s spending late nights in the office and grabbing cat naps in his desk chair. Those are the times Stede takes food in to him. Persuades him to leave and sleep in a real bed.

There’s nothing Stede can do to look after him now, not in his current state. Not in their current state.

He looks at the selection - picks out a favourite outfit, a teal kaftan with stylistic details reminiscent of a deel from a designer he has admired for a long time. Tries to stare at Ed’s left ear only as he fastens the buttons on Stede’s right shoulder. Finishes with a golden silk sash with a loose enough tie that he needs no help.

It’s an outfit that Ed has admired him in for many years. It’s an outfit that makes him feel like him. He’s not sure which of these is the predominating factor in his choice.

Ed guides him out and waits while Stede settles his paperwork. Waits for the public shuttle. Takes the window seat, but makes sure that Stede is settled in his aisle seat. Watches them take off, gaze fixed out the window. Doesn’t look around at the other passengers, doesn’t look at Stede again. Doesn’t say anything.

Doesn’t say anything. Ed, who normally can’t be stopped, who has a thousand things to tell Stede every time he sees him. Just sits there, staring at his own hands, or occasionally fiddling with a pad. It’s as discordant as an avant garde composer at his very worst.

“What happened to your beard?” Stede asks eventually.

Ed stops looking at his hands to look out the window at the stars. “When you first didn’t wake up,” he says, voice deliberately neutral, “They didn’t know if it was contamination during the process, or whether there was a break in a seal into your positronic brain. Wouldn’t let anyone in without covering up their hair, proper sterile shit, and the beard didn’t cut it. So I shaved it off.”

The microabrasions on his cheek are clear at this angle. The lack of moisturiser is obvious. Not just someone shaving for the first time in a long time. Someone shaving in a hurry.

“I’m sorry,” Stede says. Ed’s beard is a part of him. Was a part of him. And now it’s gone, because of Stede.

“That’s what you’re gonna apologise for?” The stars are treated to a disbelieving look, a raising of his eyebrows.

“You liked your beard, and now it’s gone.”

“Well, shit happens, I guess.” Dismissive. Flippant. Tight.

“Ed, don’t be like that.”

“Like what? I’m just saying, you know, when you have a… a thing.. And you lo— like it a lot, then sometimes, yeah, he just fucks off into the sunset and does what the fuck he wants.” Ed delivers the whole thing still unnaturally still, still staring out of the window, but shoots Stede an angry look at the end.

“Ed, can we not do this here?” They’re both staying quiet, but five out of the eight people near them are surreptitiously trying to listen in. It’s making Stede’s skin crawl, to be the centre of so much attention. Nothing good comes of it.

“I think I’ll do whatever the fuck I want,” Ed says. “Shouldn’t bother you. Not like you’re planning on sticking around for the consequences.”

And that’s not fair. “I’m not the one who left!”

“Don’t need to leave, do you, if it never mattered anyway.” Ed turns back away, defiantly, hand on chin as he stares resolutely out the window of the transport into the Milky Way.

Now there’s no beard it’s easier to see the wobble on Ed’s chin, the bobble of his larynx as he swallows, the twitch of his lips. His breath is shaking as he tries to bring it under control.

“Ed…” Stede doesn’t want to be conciliatory, but he desperately wants to be reconciled.

“Thought you didn’t want to do this here.” Ed’s shrivelled up in his misery, hunched in on himself, and now everyone is trying to listen, and Ed hates this, hates having his vulnerabilities public, so Stede stops pushing past his own discomfort and drops it. Stares at his own hands, tries to find a pattern in the tremble that afflicts them. He isn’t sure whether this is a side effect of his operation, or a side effect of the argument they’re not having.

Ed’s still gentle in the way he helps Stede off the transport. Still gentle in the way he helps Stede into his house, sets him down at his kitchen table, and makes two cups of tea. It’s awful. It feels so normal, to have Ed there, to be able to watch his back and the fall of his grey locks as he moves around the room. He’s been watching that back since there were barely any streaks of grey in there at all. He can even forget about the beard, at this angle.

For a moment it feels like everything is right, and everyone is where they should be.

Ed breaks the spell by turning around, displaying red-rimmed eyes and that naked face. He’s slightly harsh in the way he sets the teacup in front of Stede. It’s half full, and Stede realises why as he lifts it up with trembling fingers. Ed watches him impassively.

“We need a plan of action,” he says.

“Oh?”

“To go back to the World Legislature, to figure out if this gets you what you want.”

“Now?”

“Well, you don’t have forever, do you?” Ed says. “Gotta get a fucking move on.” He starts talking then, about the senators that he thinks they could sway, and the way they’re going to need to approach them.

“Ed,” Stede says. The words are swimming around in his head, refusing to either commit themselves to his longer term memory banks or evict themselves from his short term storage. “Stop.” He takes another sip of his tea, tries to let the ritual soothe him. Sets it down again.

He’s woken up, had 423 tests, and been transported back to Earth in the last twenty eight hours. He is aware that this is technically the work of one day, and he is aware that technically he carries no need for sleep, but he is tired.

“Well, I guess if it isn’t that important to you.”

Stede’s not-quite-empty cup is yanked off the table and put in the cleaning unit alongside Ed’s. Stede realises that Ed is also nearly swaying with exhaustion. The dark circles under his eyes are perhaps darker than Stede’s ever seen them, and he almost certainly hasn’t slept much prior to Stede waking up.

“Please,” Stede asks. “I just want to go to bed.” He’s so tired. They’re both so tired. Without thinking, he reaches his hand up automatically to allow Ed to pull him up. Muscle memory. The way they fit together.

Ed visibly flinches, then takes the proffered hand briskly, devoid of emotion. Leads him into the bedroom, and glances at Stede for permission, his hand over the fastenings of his clothes. Now that Stede can look into his eyes, they’re as deep as the space they were flying through earlier. Not devoid of emotion. Too much of it.

Stede lets himself be dressed in pyjamas - something that had been entirely unnecessary until he’d been introduced to the idea, and then completely mandatory. Manages the bathroom by himself, lets Ed settle him into bed. Lies there and listens to the familiar sounds of Ed performing his nightly ablutions, using his toothbrush that has been placed in his spot. Feels the bed dip and the lights flick out.

Stede doesn’t sleep, exactly, but he can put himself into a snooze state that allows his systems to reset, and the relaxation that his organic muscles receive from lying down is not insignificant. Before Ed, he used to just sit in his favourite chair, on the rare occasions that he felt it necessary. Even after, he’s very rarely done this with Ed in the house, but tonight he hopes it will help his frazzled circuits reset.

He is interrupted exactly twice.

The first is to the sound of muffled crying from the other side of the bed. He sharpens his night vision, though it only reveals a lump of duvet, hunched and small, shaking as sobs wrack through.

Various different systems of Stede’s go into overdrive, or try to go into overdrive, and five different subroutines try and calculate his best course of action. They all compete with each other, leaving Stede frozen where he lies, unable to do anything except listen uselessly. Eventually the tears subside to shuddering breaths, and then slip into the deep even breaths of sleep.

It takes Stede eighty three minutes after Ed has fallen asleep to untangle his jammed systems and return to his deep snooze mode.

The second time he wakes to find a hand on his chest, over his heart, and the other giving his shoulder a gentle shake.

Ed’s eyes widen as Stede meets his gaze, aware and awake. Stede is unable to control the quickening of his heart under Ed’s palm to a thunder, feels the matching pulse in Ed’s thumb on his sternum. For a moment they look at each other, breathing in unison.

Then Ed pulls his hands away, disappears back to his side of the bed. Turns his back on Stede, disappears under the duvet covers until only the top of his head is sticking out.

They don’t mention it, the next day.

Stede rises first. He’d just begun to get into the habit of lingering, when he’d been allowed to curl up against Ed, when he’d first started using the bed. Of feeling Ed waking up against him in a tangle of limbs and a sleepy kiss.

There seems little point today. Ed is asleep, but as far from Stede as he can physically get. He uses the wall to help him stand, eyes his clothes and decides that this is a step too far.

Makes his way through to the kitchen. Sets the coffee machine to make Ed’s favourite blend when he awakens. Picks up a book, goes to the living area, fails to read it. The words don’t focus in front of his eyes quite yet, instead they swim in his brain. He stares at the page instead.

Ed appears many hours later; first, in his pyjamas, wide eyed, scanning the room until he sees Stede before disappearing back into the room. Secondly, a short while later, he reappears freshly washed, dressed in clothes that he would wear to work. He grabs his own coffee, makes Stede his favourite blend and drops it by him without a word, and then sets up a holo on the kitchen table to work remotely.

And that sets the pattern for the coming days. Ed is there, in body. Watching, never letting Stede falter, or struggle. Dressing and undressing him until Stede’s fine motor control returns to a satisfactory degree. But never wanting to interact more than he has to and always backing off as soon as Stede is physically safe. At night he sleeps in the same bed, but hugs the edge of it as if he can’t bear to be any closer than he has to be. There are moments when he seems to forget, walks into the kitchen behind Stede and lets his fingers start to trail across Stede’s shoulders. But then he’ll snatch his hand away like it’s scalded, mumble an apology, and disappear.

It’s hell. And it’s made worse because Stede cannot bring himself to wish for it to end.

Lucius and Pete are his first visitors, on the fifth day after his return. He ushers them in and sits down, tired by even the few steps that had taken. He is a terrible host, lets Pete get them all a drink without offering himself. He recounts as much as is saved in his memory, letting the story get fuzzy where only blanks exist. Pete has brought them a second cup by the time he reaches the present day.

“Thank you,” he says, after he’s run out of other words to say. “For telling Ed.”

Lucius pulls a face. “Couldn’t bear the thought of you dying in a puddle of your own piss without him knowing. Not sure if he’s thanking me for telling him.”

Stede isn’t sure whether Ed’s grateful, either.

But then a thought strikes him, because he knows Ed, knows how he can be. What Blackbeard is capable of with his junior lawyers when he’s frustrated. “He was okay, when you told him, wasn’t he? He didn’t…”

“Well, I’m still here,” Lucius says dryly. “Was too busy heading for the door to metaphorically throw me out the window.”

And Stede’s not good at this, deciphering layers and tones. But he does know Lucius, and he does know Ed, and he hesitates.

“Yes Stede,” Lucius says, rescuing him. “Your man’s got issues.”

“He’s not…” Stede says, trailing off.

“When I told him he went absolutely apeshit at me, and he’s hiding in your kitchen because he can’t bear to be apart from you,” Lucius says. “I’m not sure which bit you’re trying to disagree with? But you’re wrong.”

“He’s been looking at the same page the whole time we’ve been here,” Pete says, defensively. “I saw it. He’s doing some really tough work.”

“Babe.”

They leave their words behind when they go. You’re wrong, when Ed finds Stede’s favourite outfits from his wardrobe instead of the easiest suitable set. You’re wrong, when Ed brings the full might of Blackbeard to bear, when Stede’s food processor spits out a cake that’s slightly wrong and the repair company has no one available. You’re wrong, you’re wrong, as Stede improves and improves over the next weeks, and Dr Roach pronounces himself pleased at his recheck appointment. Ed is finally forced back to the office by Izzy’s increasingly agitated comms, but only on some days, and even on those days, he comes back to Stede’s every night, still he makes no move to leave.

And still they don’t talk. Not about their fight. Not about Stede’s operation. Not about the other fight they have ahead of them. They circle each other like a twin planetary system; Pluto and Charon locked together in an eternal dance in the cold outreaches of their solar system, their centre of gravity lying somewhere between them, a point neither of them can touch.

Ivan drops around with Fang, and Stede lets Fang masterfully cut Ed off from Stede, draw him aside, and ask in low tones how Ed is doing. Sharpens his hearing to take in Fang’s open-ended offer of support, Ed’s gruff brush-off.

“How long has that been going on?” Ed asks, after they’ve left. It’s the first time he’s addressed Stede with anything approaching a conversational question.

“About twelve years?” Stede responds, nonplussed. Ed knew about them. Surely. He works with both of them.

“Fuck me,” Ed says disbelievingly, so Stede can only surmise he did not.

Oluwande and Jim are around one day, discussing their next book idea with Stede, when the chime goes.

Stede frowns; he’s not expecting any visitors, but he makes his way to the door.

“Senator Zheng,” he says, not able to hide his surprise. Most of his functions are virtually normal now, but his ability to hide his first reaction has always been poor compared to humans.

“May I come in?” asks Zheng, entering. She nods a greeting to Jim and Oluwande, takes a seat next to them, looking around. “Mint tea would be lovely, thank you.”

She sits easily, waits for someone to do her bidding, like this isn’t the first time she’s done this. Like she has the script and no-one else does.

Stede fetches her tea. While he’s in the kitchen, he hesitates, then comms Ed at work, asking him to come back. This could be important. He’s trying to learn. He’s trying to fix previous mistakes.

There’s no reply.

He finishes making the tea, brings it back out to her just as the door opens to reveal Ed. He’s out of breath, like he’s run every distance he couldn’t transport.

His eyes rake up and down Stede searchingly. “Are you okay?” he says. If he’s noticed the other people in the room, he makes no concession to their presence.

Stede feels foolish, because he’s mis-stepped again, publicly. “Apologies for causing concern,” he says. He doesn’t really know how to backpedal on this. He may well have made things worse. “Senator Zheng is here, and…” He tails off, uncertain. “I thought you might want to be here?” Stede wants Ed to be here, but he’s not entirely certain that phrasing it like that will help.

He’s not so certain now. Zheng might just be here to visit? Ed might not want to be here at all? He cannot lean on past experience for this, cannot bring up an appropriate response and copy/paste it into this. He can only guess, and hope that Ed understands what he is trying to do.

Ed’s head jerks, looks in the direction of Zheng, and Oluwande and Jim. “Senator,” he says. “Guys.”

He looks back at Stede with an unfathomable expression.

“A drink?” Stede offers. He finds himself doing this sometimes; relying on the basest parts of his programming that demands that he look after people. Falling back on it when everything more complex is too difficult to comprehend, when he has no idea what other action might be suitable.

He can’t remember ever falling into this loop with Ed before.

By the time he returns, Ed has taken a seat next to Stede’s.

It’s probably because it’s the most logical place to sit.

Probably.

“Are you fully recovered?” Zheng asks Stede as soon as he sits, direct and to the point.

Stede nods. Doesn’t look at Ed. Ed doesn’t look at him. Can’t face each other while the modesty cover of their excuse is being lifted and the contents underneath examined.

“But the operation was a success? Or, at least, the outcome that you wanted.”

No. Not the outcome he wanted. Not Ed sitting next to him but a light year between them.

“My pathways will degrade slowly, over time,” Stede says. “And eventually my positronic brain will cease functioning.” Ed is staring into his cup, knuckles white on the handle. His jaw is clenched.

Zheng stays silent for a moment, studying him. “And that’s what you wanted?”

Yes. No. “One of them,” Stede says.

“And the others?”

“My desires appear to be mutually exclusive,” Stede says. “I made a choice I didn’t realise I was making."

Ed is barely breathing, next to him. He’s focused intently on the cup.

“Do you still want humanity?” Zheng is looking at him, searching for something. Stede isn’t sure what. Weakness? A lack of conviction?

“Yes,” he says. “I want to be a person. I always have.”

“Okay,” she says. “Then I want to help you.”

If Stede had not been convinced of Zheng’s brilliance before, then the council of war that follows would have been all that was needed. She’s a virtuoso - knows every other senator inside out, knows their weak points, knows how they should be approached. And she’s happy to modify her opinion when Ed brings up his objections, listens to his plans.

Because Ed has plans for this. Ed has been thinking about what they should do. Ed has been working on this recently. Ed has been doing so much work, and… just not talked to Stede about it? Stede’s not sure if the request to stop he’d given could work that effectively; Ed has no Second Law compelling him to obey Stede. But then, Ed has been working on it. Stede has seen it, laid out on the kitchen table. Openly. Maybe Ed has been waiting for Stede to come to him, to tell him that he’s ready for the fight now.

Ed can barely stand to be in the same room as Stede, but he’s still been putting his whole self towards what Stede wants.

Ed keeps his voice steady when he talks about it, as dispassionately as he would for any other client, but he still doesn’t look at Stede. The closest he can get is staring at Stede’s fingers as they grasp the handle of his teacup while Jim and Zheng divert into the alive-ness of viruses as an edge case. But he’s involved in this, pulling up prepared piece after prepared piece.

“Thank you,” says Zheng, as she gathers her things and prepares to go. “I can use this to put together some proposals. Might turn a few opinions our way.”

“I could help,” Oluwande says. “If you need some help with, you know, definitions.”

“Definitions,” Zheng says, but her eyes are wandering across Oluwande’s broad shoulders, and his hopeful smile. “Yeah. Tomorrow? My office? Nine?”

Jim nudges Oluwande knowingly once Zheng has gone. “Gonna offer her your expertise, huh?” they ask. They look delighted.

“Oh my god, shut up,” Oluwande replies. There’s a flush under his dark skin that perhaps only Stede can detect.

“She’s hot,” Jim says. “Kinda scary.”

“Man’s got a type,” Ed says, and when Jim throws him a mock-affronted look it’s the first time Stede has seen him smile since… Well, for months.

And Ed keeps looking at him, when he thinks that Stede isn’t paying attention. Even after Jim and Oluwande leave. Pensively, like he’s about to say something, but if Stede turns to him, he finds something else to take his attention.

They get into bed, and Stede lies there. He doesn’t need to; he’s fully recovered and he doesn’t need to rest every night. But this allows him to be near Ed and he’s loathe to give it up as long as Ed continues to stay.

Tonight, Ed isn’t sleeping either. His breathing pattern gives him away, and the tension that he holds in his muscles is far more than normal. It’s enough that Stede replays the moment he commed Ed over and over, to try and reword what he said, to make it better.

Finally, Ed rolls over, faces him. His hair is tied in a pineapple on top of his head, protecting it from the ravages of sleep. “They’re not mutually exclusive.”

Stede stops breathing. The moment hangs between them, brittle as an unserviced airlock, and just as dangerous if he makes the wrong move, or says the wrong thing.

“No?” he asks. He shifts onto his side, so they’re facing each other. Ed’s pupils are huge in the darkness, dilated and seeking any light the room can offer, and they’re trained on Stede’s face. One hand is underneath the pillow, the other fiddles with the edge of the duvet cover.

“You said… earlier… you thought that what you wanted was mutually exclusive. That you could only have one.”

“Yes, I did.” Lucius is echoing in his head, though; you’re wrong, you’re wrong, you’re wrong.

“Do you still want both?”

“You think I could stop?” It seems an impossible thought, to not want Ed.

“I was a dick.” A grimace, then, that Stede can see with his vision, where no human could. An admission. An apology. A timid query, asking if the line has been irrevocably crossed.

“Life’s a dick,” he says. He can’t have what his heart desires without hurting Ed’s. Not even because that has to be inherently so, but because of external factors that neither of them can control.

Stede can’t help himself then, reaches out with one hand, traces his finger through the scruff that Ed seems to have decided to keep short. The sacrifice that he’d made with no hesitation, to get to Stede. It’s bristly, the short hairs scraping over his fingertips. But he can feel the skin underneath now, smooth and healed from the wounds that Ed inflicted on himself in his haste.

The wounds that Stede has inflicted run deeper.

“I’m sorry.” He can’t change anything about it. Wouldn’t change his ultimate decision. But he’s sorry that it has to be like this.

“About the beard?”

“Ed, I had to do it.”

“Yeah,” Ed says heavily, “I know. I know.”

“I should’ve talked to you, though. Told you what I was thinking. But I was scared.”

“Of what? That I’d order you to keep yourself safe?”

“That you might ask me to.”

“No.” The denial is swift. A pause. “I dunno. Not a good person, remember?” He swallows, and Stede both sees it in the gloom and feels it under the cheek he’s still touching. “I want you to do what you need to do. I want to keep you safe.” He huffs a staccato laugh. “Mutually exclusive, right?"

“Ed…”

“I thought it would be easier - to go - instead of staying and losing you. And then I thought I’d lost you anyway.”

Stede leans forward and kisses him, close mouthed, lets the hand on Ed’s cheek slip to cradle his jaw. He’s not sure what he means by it. A reassurance. A comfort. A promise.

He’s not expecting Ed to surge into it the way he does, or the fingers that wend their way into his hair. He’s not expecting Ed to reach for him like a man in a desert reaches for the water he needs to survive.

He’s not expecting to be hit by how much he’s missed this. The touch of Ed’s hand at the back of his neck, the feeling of their noses nudging together, the huff of Ed’s breath hitting his cheek. Like one of his vital systems has been temporarily offline and he hasn’t realised the difficulty of the workarounds he’s been forced into until they all resolve.

But it’s different as well. The brush of Ed’s top lip brings only a short scratchy dusting of hair; his neck is bare. And Ed is leaning into the kiss with an earnest desperation that is at odds with the easy comfort that Stede is used to.

For seconds, for minutes, for hours - Stede isn’t sure - they kiss and they tentatively touch and they breathe each other in. But then Ed slides a bare leg over Stede’s pyjama-clad one, brings himself flush against Stede’s body. And from there it’s easy to feel the slide of body against body, to let hands tug clothes off, to slip himself over and around and inside Ed, and to feel the hitch of Ed’s breath as he rocks into him and the grip of Ed’s fingers as nails dig into his back. And it feels like a dam has burst; after weeks of distance, a flood of touch lights up every millimetre of his body that Ed touches.

And it’s easy - so easy - to kiss the freshly exposed neck, and chin - pay homage to the pain he’s caused, to try and chase the ghosts of it away. To let his lips press over his throat and feel the vibrations of Ed’s ragged gasps as he spills between them.

And afterwards, as they lie with cooling bodies side by side, Ed says, “I’m still angry with you, you know.”

He’s on his back, looking at the ceiling. It allows Stede to study his profile; Ed’s hair is dishevelled now, loose curls falling out of his night time style. One hand rests across a stomach, the other lying loose between them.

“I’m angry with you, too,” Stede acknowledges. He’s kept it buried under a complicated maelstrom dominated by hurt and loss, but it’s there.

“Okay. Right.” Ed is still staring at the ceiling, studying it with a degree of intensity it probably hasn’t received since its construction.

“What happens now?” Stede asks. This is too complex for him to figure; the push of one thought battling with the inexorable pull of the other - a logic paradox that he cannot solve. There is no clear path forward.

“I don’t know.” It’s not something Ed says very often. He says it in a small voice, like the words feel alien in his mouth. Like he’s scared that this is a question and he won’t like the answer. He turns a little, faces Stede, his muscles tensing in a conscious effort not to curl up or cover himself.

Stede reaches out, weaves one hand through Ed’s, holds it. This is something Ed has done for him countless times, right from the start; a comfort. A connection. The feel of palm on palm is familiar, and has been part of them since Ed offered his hand to a robot he did not know.

“What about this?” he asks. “Is this alright?”

“This?” And Stede knows. He knows from the way that Ed is looking at him with wide, gentle eyes. The way the angle of his knees has relaxed and become less acute. The way that his heart rate elevates to 110% of its previous, but his shoulders lose the tension that they’d been holding. “This is perfect.”

Ed brings his other hand over the top of their conjoined fingers. Stede places his other hand on top of that.

Ed looks at him, a twitch at the corner of his mouth, a challenge in his eyes, but… fond? Brings one finger to the top of the pile. If Stede twists his hand, he can reach with his thumb. It makes the twitch at the corner of Ed’s mouth stronger. Makes something flutter inside Stede. It unjams another piece of circuitry that he hadn’t realised was malfunctioning. As Ed places his thumb at the top of the pile, something settles into place. Not the whole, but a piece.

“You win,” Stede says softly.

“Good job I’m working for you, then,” Ed says, and he looks… He looks tired, and content, and that corner of his mouth is still tugging upwards, matching Stede’s feelings.

When Stede slips out of bed, somewhere in the early hours, Ed is still asleep. He is easy to look at, sprawled over the covers, tattoos winding across his body, hand still reaching part way across the bed, as if even in sleep he is willing to reach out and try.

It is not fixed. But when Ed joins him in the kitchen several hours later and his hand automatically slides across Stede’s shoulders in passing and he doesn’t recoil, it maybe feels fixable.

And Stede lets that buoy him into approaching Ed as he works at the kitchen table.

“What didn’t you tell Zheng?” he asks.

Ed looks up at him, startled at the interruption. Stede has avoided him when he’s been working, not wanting to interrupt. Not wanting to offer an interaction where it’s not wanted. He’s been taking Ed setting up here as a signal that Ed wants to be left alone, using his work as a shield. He wonders now if Ed setting up in the house, continuing to work there instead of going back to his office full time, was a door left open that he has been assiduously ignoring.

“What?” Ed asks. He’s frowning a little, a small crinkle appearing between his brows.

Stede fiddles with the ring he’s wearing on his finger, a sensory input that overrides the conflicting advice that different subroutines are giving him, allowing him to take action. “There were gaps in what you told Zheng,” he says. “But you didn’t seem perturbed by them.”

Ed hesitates. “You want to hear about it?”

Stede nods, takes a seat without any further prompting. And when Ed starts talking, a glint in his eye that suggests he’s being a genius and he knows it, it feels good. It feels nice to watch Ed show off a little, just for Stede. To revel in his own brilliance but still glance over shyly every so often, as if he needs to know that his words are having the impact he’s expecting them to. It feels easy for Stede, to rest his own head on his palm, elbow on the table, and to watch Ed get more animated and less guarded. Like he’s freer on this ground right now than he is on any other; like there’s safety in being hemmed into the work.

And he even laughs when Stede offers his own insights, a back and forth that Stede has missed so much.

It feels natural when they both stand up for Stede to step into his space, lift an arm – but then Ed shies away even as he looks at Stede with what Stede can only class as longing.

“Sorry, sorry,” Stede says, pulling back immediately.

“Nah, it’s just…” Ed runs a hand through his hair, takes a step back himself. “Look, honestly, don’t think that I…” He pauses, frustrated, visibly searching for the right words. “This bit’s easier,” he says eventually. “The whole… thing. The fight. I can do that.”

“Okay.” It’s not okay. It feels jarring and wrong to have this lack of ease between them. They’re trying to breathe normally, but the air is still toxic, and their intercostal muscles are aching with the strain.

Ed steps forward, and Stede holds still, wary of any sudden movement that is going to chase this moment away. Lets Ed’s lips brush against his own in a caress that’s as tentative as it is gentle.

And Stede can only hold still as Ed tips his forehead against Stede’s own, feels the shaky breath, more uncertain than Ed is pretending to be. Feels rather than sees Ed’s eyelashes flutter closed at this distance, hears him breathe deeply, calmly, for one - two - three - breaths. Feels their noses bump together, because Stede’s proprioceptive control is still not perfect without visual input.

It makes Ed smile, but it breaks the reverie that they have found themselves in. He kisses Stede nose as he withdraws and steps back.

“I miss you,” Stede says, because it may hurt Ed to say it, but it will hurt Stede not to. In uncertainty he can let the Third Law take precedence here. “I miss my friend.”

Ed swallows thickly. “I’m trying,” he says. “I promise. I want this. I miss you, too.”

Stede nods. He can wait. He can be patient. He can turn and offer to update Ed on a new biodome that has been proposed in a city on their continent. He can let Ed grasp onto that straw as a diversion away from their previous conversation. He can talk about the fact that there’s a discussion about reintroducing mammals into it, the first that have been allowed to exist in a century.

Stede shows Ed a holo of the largest animal proposed.

“Reckon I could be friends with that,” Ed says, taking in its long ears and its fluffy tail. “Looks like a good listener.”

And he’s making it easy to say, “Ed,” in a slightly chiding tone. To not quite hide delight at Ed’s not-quite-hidden delight.

They’re trying.

***

It takes three weeks for Senator Zheng to get back in touch. Oluwande blushes whenever anyone asks how their meeting went, which confuses Stede until Ed explains it to him with hand actions and words that make Stede blush.

Jim rolls their eyes. Ed just laughs fondly, a soft, gentle thing that is followed up by a casual pat to Stede’s arm as Ed rises from his seat, fun over.

It gives Stede hope.

Zheng sits in Stede’s house and doesn’t comment on Ed’s hand on Stede’s shoulder, a casually brief touch as he walks around the back of the sofa to sit by Stede. She notices, though, and Stede has no idea whether this is worrying or not. He has no idea if Ed even knows that he’s doing it or not.

“You could be in with a chance,” Zheng says, straight to the point. “There are some who are persuaded by your actions, and I think there are others who could be persuadable. You ran a good campaign when you wanted your freedom,” she says. “If you can match that you might get what you want.”

“And you’ll help?” Ed is sitting casually, one ankle crossed over his knee, arm leaning on the back of the sofa, but his gaze is piercing.

Zheng nods once, decisively.

And she does. Lucius pulls all the stops out, reels in the contacts that he’s been working on for years. He puts Stede onto every holo that he can think of, gets him to talk about something. The new biodome is beginning to run, and Stede is asked to come and comment on it - sometimes with Jim or Olu, sometimes alone.

“We want to remind people who you are,” Lucius says. “Go out there, and, with only a small amount of trepidation in my heart, I just want you to be you.”

He even arranges for Stede to go to the biodome.

“Are there going to be spiders?” Ed asks, when Stede extends an invitation to accompany him.

“I believe I promised to protect you,” Stede says.

Ed goes. Ed hates it. Stede tries not to let it dampen his spirits as Stede wanders around, chatting about both the invertebrates as well as the brand new species that have been resurrected. Stede gets distracted by a new-to-this-century chilli plant that has come from the Svalbard Global Seed Vault, spends five point three minutes giving a brief history of those very early genetic repositories with the host of the holo nodding along. Talks about how they’d started from something very simple, to trying to collect a representative sample of all life originating from the planet. Talks about how material from those repositories is now growing on most satellites in the inner Solar System - from the Moon right through to Europa.

In his peripheral vision, Ed kicks the ground and eyes a tree suspiciously.

Stede tries not to let it deter him. He pushes ahead, extols the virtues of existing in a world surrounded by life, by the natural cycle that begins, ends, and feeds back in on itself.

“And I’m led to understand that that’s a lesson that you’ve taken to heart, Stede?” the host asks. He’s holo-handsome, generically symmetrical to an enhanced degree after what Stede would guess is approximately eighty three subtle adjustments by a very good robotic surgeon. The current public trend is to hound those who have not had the adjustments, and then judge those who have.

“It’s not a path I would have chosen, if there were an alternative route,” Stede says. “There are so many things to see! To do! It’s difficult to know what to prioritise, or what I’m going to have to miss out on. And it makes me sad, in a way. Because I feel like I could have done so much more, if I only had the time. But the World Legislature was very clear, the first time around, that they wouldn’t - couldn’t - allow my claim to humanity to pass while I was functionally immortal.”

He’s fiddling with his rings now, soothing the disquiet in his circuits. “I don’t know if the procedure will help. If that really was the largest barrier. Maybe nothing I try will be good enough - but I’m not ready to believe that.”

He feels silly. He feels stupid. He feels like he may have harmed his own chances. But then he looks over and Lucius is giving him a thumbs up that is not obviously sarcastic, and Ed has stopped glaring at the foliage for long enough to watch him.

Ed keeps a pensive silence as they travel home, and as they move around each other in Stede’s house. It doesn’t seem to be directed at Stede, a small cloud of introspection following Ed from room to room with no sign or either storming forth in a shower or dissipating without a murmur.

It takes several hours, late in the evening, before the gentle rain begins. Ed comes up behind Stede, rests a hand on his hip, leans his head against the side of Stede’s.

“You were insane today,” he says. His beard is growing neatly now, the short whiskers tickling Stede’s ear. “I forget, sometimes, that there’s this whole other you going on. A whole thing.”

“Same me,” Stede says. They feel irrevocably tied, to him. The fight for life, but in different arenas. The same urges. The same wants. The same hopes. The same Stede, underneath it all. “I’ve rather neglected it, recently. I suppose after, there’ll be more time.”

One way or another, he doesn’t say. Doesn’t need to. If this is doable, he is sure that Ed will achieve it. If they don’t succeed, then it was an impossible dream.

“Got it all planned out, yeah?” Ed asks, casual but not.

Not all of it. Not those gaps that he is leaving in the hope that Ed will want to continue to exist in them. Those are tentatively sketched out, with blanks around them should Ed decide he wishes to occupy Stede’s space differently. The case is a simple binary, two clear answers leading to two different paths. Ed has never been either; he is the very epitome of multifactorial and complex humanity.

“Some,” Stede says, tempering his wants with caution.

Stede sees Ed draw breath to ask, sees his lips part, and then sees the question die on them as understanding dawns on his face.

“I don’t know,” Ed says. “Not yet.”

It feels unfair of him to say that as he stands so close behind Stede, taking comfort and offering none.

It feels unfair to think that thought when he clearly looks as miserable with the situation as Stede is.

“I know,” Stede says. He doesn’t, really, but there’s a social subroutine somewhere prompting him to offer a meaningless platitude.

Ed sighs. Slides a hand around Stede’s middle until he’s pressed himself up against Stede’s back. For a long while, he doesn’t say anything, just tilts his head against Stede’s and breathes. A few times, he inhales as if he’s going to speak, and then doesn’t.

“Feels like this is the only thing that’s worth doing,” he says eventually. “Not just because it’s you, either. Feels important. Feels worth it. The rest of it? We take a case, we win the case, we take on another case, and then what do we do? Win that case, and on, and on, and on, and on. And it doesn’t change anything, man.”

Ed’s been getting agitated as he speaks, and he slips out the embrace to start pacing, Stede turning to watch him run a hand through his hair in frustration. “It’s so fucking boring. I’m bored out of my skull every time I have to do any of that shit.”

“And you know what?” He’s gesticulating now, pacing around Stede’s kitchen. “People see my name on the court sheet and they freak out. Give up. Barely even put up a defence. Surrender. It’s not even a challenge any more. The only cases I’ve lost in the last decade are the ones I lost on purpose, for you. At least they were for fucking something.”

He looks tired. And Stede had assumed, naively, that this was all to do with him - with the case, with them - but he forgets, sometimes, that Ed has a life outside of him. That Ed has other obligations that he frequently ignores in favour of Stede.

He’d thought that was purely because Ed was as drawn to him as Stede is to Ed. He’d never realised that he was running away from the thing he was supposed to be as well.

“I hesitate to suggest it, but could you retire?” he asks.

“What?”

“Stop working, pursue a life of leisure.”

Ed flashes him a look that suggests it wasn’t the definition he was struggling with. “Yeah, you’ve got it all sussed out. With your talk show things, and your bugs, and your plants, and everything else.” He sighs. “Not sure how much of an option it is for me, though.”

“You’ve got time,” Stede says. “You can think about it.”

“Izzy’d go nuts.”

“Izzy doesn’t run your life,” Stede says, more sharply than he intended. He doesn’t know Izzy well - only enough to know he doesn’t wish to know him any further - and he’s never quite sure how much of his looming presence in Ed’s mind is real and how much is a convenient bogeyman.

“Doesn’t fucking feel that way, sometimes,” Ed mutters, but he steps closer to Stede, gives him a little half look through his eyelashes, and sidles into his space, waiting for a small node of permission before tentatively bringing his arms around Stede.

And it feels like home, to have Ed wrapped in his arms, letting the weight of his worries rest against Stede for a moment. To be able to slide one arm around the back of his neck and the other around his waist, to feel Ed’s fingers digging into the meat of his scapulas. It feels like they’re both being pulled into each other’s gravity, bound together and orbiting a shared moment.

“You can do anything,” Stede says, into Ed’s hair.

“’Course I fucking can,” Ed replies, almost sounding like he means it. “I’m Blackbeard.”

***

“It’s working,” Zheng tells them, as they sit in her office several weeks later. She points to the news articles in front of her, desk lit up with opinion pieces.

“I’m getting mail. All the senators are getting mail. About 85% in your support. It’s unprecedented for the general public to be united behind a single issue as much as this.”

“Surely they appreciate the need for expansion into the Kuiper Belt?” Stede asks. “The science is all for it.”

“It’s so weird that unmanned expansion has not grabbed the public imagination,” Senator Zheng says, and Stede gets the distinct feeling that he is being mocked.

“You think the mail is affecting the senators’ views?” Ed asks.

Zheng shrugs. “We are meant to represent the people’s views in the World Legislature,” she says. “And more to the point, the election is coming up within twelve months. It’s a nice story. Cute. Heartwarming. Little bit sad, tugs at your heartstrings.”

Stede wrinkles his nose in affront; he is not sure he appreciates being described as any of those things.

“Don’t turn your nose up at something that may be convenient, Stede Bonnet,” Zheng says. “We can use it.”

“Does it need to go through a subcommittee again?” Ed asks.

Zheng nods. “You won’t be required, though - we have your testimonies from last time, and we have the new information.”

“Will that hurt our chances, if we can’t answer questions?”

Ed grins. “Means she’s confident of getting through that stage and wants to save you for the main event.” He cocks a brow at Zheng, who grins back in acknowledgement of her own genius and nods in confirmation.

“We were so close last time, with the change in public opinion…” She gestures expansively.

Zheng might be sure, but it’s still a fraught wait as the subcommittee sits. Stede and Ed wait in a quieter part of the biodome, seeking a tranquility neither can find internally, and Stede watches Ed pace to and fro, wearing a groove several microns’ depth in the path. He is unclear on what he can say; they both have the statistics and the likelihood. They both know that Senator Badminton will put forth a vehement objection.

Suddenly Ed freezes, tries to focus on something right in front of his face.

Stede is there in an instant.

“Linyphiidae,” he says, watching the small creature sway in front of Ed’s face for a moment, assessing the situation.

“Fucking great,” Ed says, tightly. “Good to know.”

“A money spider. Completely non venomous.” A juvenile, which means there are probably more of them ballooning - dispersing through the air on a strand of silk. He would normally be eager to share this information, but perhaps Ed does not need to know this particular fact.

“Stede.” He sounds panicked now.

“I’ll protect you,” Stede says. He reaches out and takes hold of the silken line that connects the spider to Ed’s hairline, watches her drift in the breeze under his finger as Ed takes three stumbling steps back. By the time he’s released her onto the nearest maple tree, Ed is brushing himself down vigorously, trying to rid himself of any other hangers-on that he may have picked up.

“She was the only one,” Stede says.

“You’re sure?” Ed visibly relaxes, and then again at Stede’s nod.

“Thanks,” he says, a bit gruffly.

“It’s nice to be the one that protects you for a change.” Their conversation in the kitchen sits at the back of his mind; Ed has spent so much time being Stede’s defender.

“Well you’re doing a better job of it than I ever did.” Ed sounds bitter, and it surprises Stede.

“That’s not true.”

“You heard Zheng,” Ed says. “We were so close last time. If I’d done better then…”

“No,” says Stede. He rejects the implications of that thought mind, soul and body. “Ed, no.” He cannot let that go unchallenged. “I would not have wanted anyone else. No-one could have done as well as you.”

“I don’t think I’ll ever forgive myself for what you had to do,” Ed says.

“Can you forgive me?” It’s a terrifying question. He’s seen how angry Ed is. How hurt.

“Yeah.” It’s shocking in its certainty. It settles in Stede’s bones and in his nanotechnology alike. It makes his positrons hum.

It gives him the surety to step forwards and cup Ed’s face, kiss him until Ed leans into it. “I don’t regret it,” he says. He has tasted loss as vividly as he can taste Ed on his lips now. He has lost Mary, and Doug, and Alma, and Louis. He has lost Ed, temporarily, even if he’s slowly regaining him now. He does not have a limitless capacity to endure that feeling over and over.

“How long?” Ed asks, as Stede’s hands leave his cheeks. He’s avoided this question assiduously until now. Has avoided Stede’s rechecks with Dr Roach, has always found an excuse to duck out of them as soon as Stede was stable enough to travel alone. But he can’t avoid it much longer - the legislature is going to bring everything out and make it public record.

“It’s uncertain, at the minute,” Stede says. “We need to monitor the rate of decay more before we can extrapolate correctly.”

“Roughly?”

“Five to twenty five years.”

Ed inhales sharply. “That’s decades.”

“Maybe.” Stede’s tone is guarded. He cannot guarantee that.

“Deal.” He says it quietly, but without hesitation or uncertainty.

“Just like that?”

“Would’ve taken it if you’d said six weeks.”

“Oh.” There’s a lightness to Stede now. Relief pours through him like the nanobots that integrate the bionic and organic. “I thought the great Blackbeard was meant to drive a hard bargain.”

Ed leers, nearly convincingly, grabs at Stede around the waist and reels him in. “Could drive a hard bargain for you, if you want.”

Stede doesn’t laugh. It takes some effort. “I’ve heard the rumours.”

“You know what these rumours are like.”

“Next you’ll be telling me Blackbeard’s not three metres tall with smoke pouring out of his ears.”

Ed gives a dismissive shrug. “Only if the coffee is too bitter.”

“Not while I’m making it.”

“Guess I’m just some normal guy to you, then.” Ed’s doing his best to look offended. It’s not a terribly good attempt, especially from this close a distance.

“Never.” He can feel the warmth of Ed, seeping into his side where Ed is still holding him close. Can feel each finger of the hand around his waist.

“No?”

“Well, you’re still three metres tall. Allegedly.” Stede lets himself give Ed a dubious look up and down.

“Who’s been telling you those kind of rumours?”

Stede sighs. “Pete, probably.”

“I probably did fire him, you know. Just don’t remember.” Ed at least has the grace to look a little ashamed at this.

“Oh no, you definitely did. I asked Ivan to look into it for me.”

“I’m pretty sure he isn’t allowed to give you that information.”

“I think there was a rather semantic discussion about whether I counted as a person under the current legislation as regards to data protection.”

Ed is laughing now. “No fucking way that was from Ivan. That was all you.”

“Oh no, he just showed me.”

“Lunatic,” Ed says with a fond note in his voice that he’s not holding back. And another piece of Stede settles into the right place, fixing itself into a slightly new pattern.

“A walk?” Stede offers.

“That path?” Ed asks.

“I’ll protect you from the spiders.”

“No, it’s just…”

Ah. Ed doesn’t come here as often as Stede does. He hasn’t got anything to cover the memory of a panicked comm asking for help when Stede had no-one else to turn to.

“It’s fine,” Stede says and holds out his hand. He’ll pick another route if Ed needs him to, but Ed takes his hand and lets Stede lead him down the winding path. Lets Stede talk about the various plants and the changes that have happened since Ed saw it last, as if Ed saw anything back then except a person in need. Stede tries to overlay some of the bad memories with good, in the same way that his own have been dulled with familiarity and the passage of time.

As they exit, there’s a comm message from Zheng: the subcommittee has recommended that they be given a full hearing. Stede glances at Ed, who nods once.

They’re ready.

***

The public gallery is packed. Somewhere in there are their friends: not only Lucius and Olu and the rest of Stede’s people, but Fang and Ivan as well.

Strangers are holding up signs of support that the Speaker of the Legislature furiously makes them remove as they are “disruptive to government business.” Others are loudly protesting the sanctity of human life and are forcibly removed.

Stede can only hear about this from the security detail assigned to the room they’ve been given for preparation; a large, affable man who cheerfully relays every detail of every kerfuffle.

Ed is uncharacteristically uninvolved in this; he’s focused on his notes and his arguments to a degree that Stede has never seen him before. They’ve been over them a thousand times. Senator Zheng went over them just two nights ago, sitting on Stede’s floor, head rested against Oluwande’s knee with Jim leaning over her shoulder. Still Ed stares at them, knee jiggling, teeth worrying at his lower lip.

They’re called through, eventually. Ed emerges as the smoothly confident legal practitioner that the world knows. They listen to the same arguments that have been rolled out again and again, the senators rehashing old arguments, until Stede’s name is called and he takes to the floor to be cross examined.

Chauncey Badminton is the spitting image of his brother. The memory of Nigel stalking around a courtroom neatly fits over the contemporary scene step by step.

He keeps on glancing up nervously into the public gallery though - the atmosphere today is considerably more hostile and the crowd is not with him.

“You are the robot STD-113?” he asks.

It is nearly a century since anyone has referred to Stede this way. He had arrived at the Bonnet’s house and Alma had nearly immediately tried to read his serial number, adding in vowels with the unconscious freedom of a child who isn’t fully aware of the rules so feels no need to adhere to them.

“That was my original designation,” Stede says. “My legal name is Stede Bonnet.”

Though he keeps his gaze trained on Badminton, and he sharpens his peripheral vision enough to see Ed give a short, sharp nod of approval at his answer.

“STD-113 —“

“Mr Bonnet would be the correct form of address, as my client has already noted,” Ed interrupts, laconically.

“Senator Badminton,” the Speaker says. “Formally I’ll say nothing for now, but informally? Jackie don’t appreciate this.”

Stede chances a look at her. She looks back impassively. Not an ally, he thinks. But maybe not an enemy.

“Mr Bonnet,” Badminton says, the words dragged out of him. “You are a robot, correct?”

“That is currently correct.”

“But you have some bionic organs, correct?”

“All except one of my body systems are bionic-organic compounds.”

“Except one!” And here Badminton holds up a finger, shows it to the crowds.

“Because you currently, and forever, will have a positronic brain, correct?”

“That is correct.”

“Can you name a robot that does not have a positronic brain?”

“No.” Even the simplest of robots had a connection of positrons that carry their programming.

“Can you name a human who has a positronic brain?”

“I cannot.”

“Would you agree, then, that the difference between humanity and robots lies in the organ that makes us both respectively us - that is to say, whether we have a robot brain, or an organic brain?”

“There are many species that have an organic brain, Senator Badminton. It is hardly a uniquely human phenomenon when you share it with a mouse.”

The senator seems to be at a loss for a second. Stands, quivering, staring at Stede.

“Nevertheless,” he says, clearly furious. “I think we can all agree that humanity and the mouse are something you are not, Mr Bonnet - alive!”

He rests his case, then, and Stede tries to ignore the murmurs in the gallery. He doesn’t know if they’re good or bad. He could sharpen his hearing and take in every single one of them, store them, repeat them, calculate the percentage for and against. But they’re irrelevant, really. The ones he needs to persuade are the senators watching silently, giving away no clue.

He watches Ed approach, picking his way through. Senator Zheng has nominated him as her expert spokesperson, citing his years in robotic legal claims.

“Mr Bonnet,” he says. “Can you tell me the Third Law of Robotics?”

Stede hesitates for a microsecond, because this is not what they practiced. But this is Ed. And he trusts Ed. Even at his angriest, he wanted Stede’s success.

“A robot must protect its own existence, as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law,” he says.

“An irrevocable part of your programming?” Ed asks.

“Yes.”

“But despite that, you organised and booked a procedure that would damage your positronic connections and lead to the ending of your existence?”

“Yes.”

“Does the Third Law include physical damage such as this?”

“Yes.”

“Even if someone else - or another robot - was doing the damage?”

“Yes.”

“Stede, could you tell the court how you could arrange such a procedure, if it violated the Third Law?”

“It is true that the procedure caused me irrevocable physical damage,” Stede says. He does not know whether it is worse to look at Ed, to see the effect his words are having on him, or to look away and not know. “But this Legislature had made it clear that without curtailing my life, I could not be recognised as part of humanity. And that guaranteed failure would cause me psychological damage. I was, in fact, obeying the Third Law when I underwent the procedure. Damage to myself was impossible to avoid, but the physical damage of following my dreams was less than the mental damage of giving them up.”

Ed nods once, acknowledgement. “Yeah,” he says softly. “I get that.” He pauses for a second, and then continues. “And there was no interference from the First or Second Law on this process?”

“No.” And then something compels Stede to say. “In fact, I was asked not to do it.”

For a moment, Ed stares at him, a rabbit under spotlights. Derailed by Stede following him off-plan and then taking it further. Stede has always had a capacity to learn, and here he learnt from the best.

“I didn’t listen to them,” Stede adds. “And that hurt.”

“Because it was a violation of the Second Law?” Ed’s looking at Stede like he thinks Stede knows where he’s going with this.

Stede does not. But it feels right.

“No, the request was not strong enough to be an order; the Second Law did not come into play.”

“A First Law violation, then?”

Stede shakes his head. “No, I could tell myself that he would be fine without me. Perhaps better. Eventually.”

Ed shakes his head twice, a silent rejection of that idea.

“It hurt to cause harm to him because I love him.”

Later, Stede will evaluate all the angles that the holo-imagers captured of this. The way that the hubbub in the public gallery rises, the way that the watching senators break their stoic demeanour to whisper to each other. The way that the Speaker regards him studiously. Even the way that Senator Zheng glances over to Oluwande, sat between Jim and Archie, and finds him looking straight back at her.

Now, every sensor that he has is trained on Ed. They are separated by metres, but the way Ed looks at him makes that distance feel like nothing. The way Ed looks at him makes it clear that this doesn’t matter. The way Ed looks at him makes it clear that they have each other.

And the holo-imagers capture this as well. The image makes its way throughout the human colonies, to the furthest settlements on the moons of the gas giants. It tells a deeper story than the accompanying words could do. It tells a story of two men who are in love. Two people.

Ed rests his case then, but he doesn’t look at Stede until they’re back in their preparation room. His metabolic rate is increased, the level of arousal high, but this is normal for Ed, post public speaking. Stede cannot take any information from it.

“I’m sorry,” Stede says almost immediately. “I shouldn’t have said that for the first time in public, in that manner.”

Ed laughs, disbelievingly. Pulls Stede into his arms, waits for Stede’s arms to make their way around him, presses a kiss to Stede’s temple. “You’ve been saying it every day, love,” he says, and the endearment trips off his tongue like he’s been keeping it caged by force. “Just not in words. It wasn’t a surprise.”

He kisses Stede then, fond and fierce, lets it linger a little until it turns a little hungry and his body melds against Stede’s possessively. “I love you,” he says.

“I know,” says Stede. Knows it in every infopad that has ever spread across his kitchen table, knows it in the way he was cared for when Ed was hurting. Knows it in the way Ed will risk spiders to make him happy. “I know that.”

“What happens now?” Stede asks, because they can’t stay in here forever.

“Well, I think they disbar me,” Ed says.

“Why?” Stede asks blankly.

“Having a relationship with a client?” Ed says, like it’s obvious. “Gross misuse of power? A little bit of vindictive revenge from a certain Senator?”

And - yes - Stede supposes that he knew that, but he’d never considered…

“You should’ve stopped me,” Stede says. Ed is calm, not agitated. Stede has no idea why. Stede has just single-handedly ruined Ed’s career with his public proclamation. “We could say there’s nothing that’s been acted on. We could say you didn’t know.”

It’s a stupid idea. There are too many people who know. Too many people who can attest to them being together. And most of them are friends, but they shouldn’t make their friends perjure themselves.

They could ask, maybe.

“You can’t lie, mate,” Ed says.

“Maybe I could try – to protect you.” Because it would cause harm to Ed, and that would be a First Law violation. So he could maybe lie to protect Ed, even though some of his most basic circuitry is screaming at even the thought of it. But he’s hurt Ed, again, and he’ll be forgiven, but he doesn’t want to need forgiving.

Ed shakes his head. “Mate, it was written on both of our faces in there,” he says. It’s fond. Affectionate. Full of love.

“It’s fine,” he adds. Uses both hands to cup Stede’s cheek, persuade Stede to look at him. “Stede, it’s fine. It’s my way out.”

“You didn’t know what you wanted.”

“I know I don’t want that.”

Stede looks at Ed, for any sign that he’s concealing the truth. For any uncertainty. For any sign of regret that this path is going to be barred to him.

He sees none. Ed’s heart rate is steady, his eyes clear. He looks determined.

Stede must relax, because he feels the tenseness in Ed’s arms dissipate as they hold him. He sees Ed search his face before giving him a tiny nod and releasing him.

The fighting is fierce but short, in the end, and there is only ninety minutes of debate before a vote is called. The result is clear. Stede’s sacrifice, which has caught the public imagination, has also swayed the senate. Any that were not persuaded by the legal argument voted with the image of a man professing his love burned into their retinas, whether their eyes be organic or bionic.

“Mr Bonnet,” Speaker Delahaye says, when Stede has retaken his seat in the room. “The senate has come to a conclusion, and I agree. I have to ask myself, can a robot dream? Can he love? Can he be loved in return? I think maybe those things - belonging to something bigger than just us - make us human. Choosing to sacrifice the objectively better for a chance at what you want? That makes you human, too.” She looks at Stede, and winks. “Go live your life, Stede Bonnet. You’re a free man.”

Stede may have expected his circuits to explode with joy - metaphorically - at this. He may have expected the roar of the noise that greeted the closing statement to overwhelm his sensory inputs.

Instead, they close down. Ed is next to him, and there are tears of emotion running down his face despite the rest of his face contorting in a way to appear normal. His friends are whooping and hollering in the public gallery, no inhibitions. He feels nothing, a small raft of calm, bobbing on his personal ocean, protected from the outside world by a wall of glass.

He doesn’t know how he feels about this. He will have to decide later, once he has time to sort through his processes one by one.

He feels nothing, as they exit the room, and Zheng gives them a salute. Frenchie gives him a raucous pat on the back that is barely felt. Archie’s bear-hug goes unnoticed. Lucius gives him a hug and says something, and Stede will never know what it was.

He feels nothing, as they leave the building, except Ed’s hand in his. Later he will process the flashes of light that signify the holos monitoring them. Later he will dig out the footage of people yelling questions. He’ll see Ed move his body in a way that shields Stede from the worst of it, even though Ed will later admit he’s as little memory of it as Stede has.

They transport home, almost stumbling across the threshold in an exhaustion that has been kept at bay by tension and anticipation. Ed hugs Stede close, as if he’s trying to ground Stede and stop him floating away, fingers digging almost painfully into the meat of his lower back.

“Come to bed, love,” Stede says, as Ed sways into him, both their centres of gravity moving together.

Ed huffs into his neck. Kisses it, then Stede’s jawline, then finally Stede’s lips.

“My favourite person,” he says, slight emphasis on the final word.

He lets Stede pull him into the bedroom then, peel off enough layers between them to reveal the human below the lawyer, and lets Stede manhandle him into bed, too bone-weary to do anything except yawn into Stede’s face and collapse into him.

They sleep, or least, they doze - Ed’s head resting over the steady thump of Stede’s heart, their legs tangled together. Their work of decades finally done.

And then there is a party, because of course there is a party.

It is loud and raucous, and Stede is inundated with another barrage of hugs, from Archie’s enthusiastic bear hug to Ivan’s slightly teary one. Ivan then moves onto Ed, who looks poleaxed to be surrounded by a clinging hug.

“You let me know what you’re doing next, yeah, boss?” Ivan tells him. “And I’ll come help.”

“You would?” Ed asks. He’s blinking more, and his hand has a minute tremor to it, as if he doesn’t believe it.

“Sure,” Ivan says. “You know Izzy would, too. And Fang’s looking for a way out.”

“Izzy, and… wait, Fang wants out?”

“He hates it, you know? It’s hard to find anything that means something. That isn’t just playing off companies that are just as bad as each other.”

“I didn’t know that,” Ed says. He looks dazed.

“But you let us know, yeah?” Ivan says, and pats Ed on the arm before wandering off to rescue his partner from Pete.

“Are you okay?” Stede asks Ed, who is still staring after Ivan.

“Yeah,” says Ed, an automatic response. “No. I dunno.”

Stede slips an arm around Ed’s waist, feels the tension in the way he holds himself. “He’s always been very loyal to you,” he says, presses a kiss into Ed’s temple that makes him break his stare and look back at Stede.

He looks… Disbelieving? Confused? As if it had never occurred to him that Ivan could have moved onto another job a thousand times over, and has stayed because he wants to work for Ed. As if there haven’t been offers that Stede has seen on Ivan’s desk that Ivan has turned down without a second thought.

He wonders if he should point this out, or whether Ed ought to figure this out for himself. He does not know. He still doesn’t understand many of the nuances.

“Come and dance, love,” he says instead, nodding at the area cleared of furniture, where Oluwande and Senator Zheng are being engulfed in Jim and Archie, and Pete and Lucius are being borderline obscene already.

“I can’t dance,” Ed says, but he looks at the scene wistfully anyway.

“Neither can I,” says Stede. “I want to learn now.”

He has a limited time to do everything he wants to do, experience everything he wants to experience. He can start here, as the music changes to something ridiculous with set steps, bumping into Ed as they both move the wrong way, watching Ed give up on getting it right and making up his own steps that only Stede can follow, even as Ed makes them more and more convoluted and ridiculous until they both collapse, laughing, in a tangle of each other.

It’s enough.

Chapter Text

The maple tree is in full bloom.

It stands in the garden of the small home that had been theirs.

It’s young - all plant life outside the biodome is young - but sturdy. It will stand for a century or more, providing shelter for the creatures that live within it and around it.

The tree had been planted on the day that the legislation had been handed down, allowing private citizens to keep their own biomass. Allowing everyone the same rights that had been grandfathered down for the privileged like the Allamby Bonnets.

Pete brings it over to their house as soon as it’s announced - their new house - carries the sapling from the biodome like the precious thing that it is. Stede hadn’t been expecting it, cries on Pete, and then Lucius, and then Ed in turn, and Ed brings out the small trowel that he’s been hiding in his study and Stede cries on him some more.

It takes three times as long as it should to dig the hole - Stede both refuses to give up the task to someone else, but also stops every three seconds to pepper Pete with questions about where he’d been hiding it, how it had grown, exactly which tree it was the seedling of.

Ed knew exactly which tree. He’d specified it, when Pete had first approached him. The one by their bench, the one he could see when he’d first sat with a shiny metallic man that he was hopelessly fascinated with.

“Oh my fucking life,” Lucius says eventually. “Just dig the hole, Stede.”

“Honestly, please,” Pete adds. “It’s gonna get dark.”

“In five hours!” Stede retorts indignantly, looking to Ed for help.

“Dig the hole, love,” Ed advised.

Stede digs the hole, muttering to himself about traitors while the three of them watch.

As Pete ceremonially hands the spindly tiny tree to Stede, Ed starts recording. Holo-imager isn’t his profession, but he reckons he’s a dab hand at it these days, with the amount of practice that he gets.

Stede gives a short lecture about the day, about the ruling, and Ed doesn’t listen at all. It’s easier to watch Stede’s hands as they flail around with the delicate plant in them, and watch his face animate with the joy of all the knowledge he wants to pass on.

This face of his, man. Ed had thought that the silver-grey robot that he’d met had been expressive, even then, but years into knowing Stede in his android body, he marvels at both the subtlety that Stede’s face can convey as much as Stede’s inability to not convey exactly what he was thinking and feeling.

And Stede plants the tree, with a flourish, and waters it with a watering can, whatever the fuck that is, weird thing, and then he tells his audience that the maple would outlast them all, and Ed has to concentrate to stop the recording device from wobbling at that.

They were seven years post-procedure, at that point. The deterioration in the positronic-neuronal connections was visible during the tests, but not in Stede’s daily life. He was fine. Those were the good times.

***

Stede had thrown himself into his plant shit as soon as he could after the ruling, using all the energy that he’d needed for himself and his own battles to fight for other life, too. Spends most of the first seven years transporting around the planet and the inner solar system talking, and advocating, and persuading.

Ed thinks, initially, that he might be happy as a plus-one. Either following Stede around when the destination was exciting - the giant ice sculptures of Europa, Ed, one of the Seven Wonders of the Solar System! - or staying home if he didn’t fancy it.

He’d been so busy all his life. He craved peace and quiet, and no deadlines.

He loves the bit where Stede comes home. Where he gets to step into Ed’s arms, smelling like shuttle transport and decontaminant, the moment where public, peppy Stede Bonnet crumples into a tired and slightly bitchy man that needs a certain level of coddling to become a tolerable human being again; needs pushing into the sonic shower, and food put in front of him, and dragging him to bed to let muscles that have been holding an upright posture for weeks fully relax and give in to gravity.

He figures out, pretty quickly, every time that Stede is gone, that he hates peace, loathes quiet. Needs deadlines to kick his brain into gear. His brain itches so badly from a lack of things to do that he tries a bunch of different things and discards them all.

Power skiing on Io’s sulphur dioxide ice fields. Photography. Tattooing. He signs up to hike Olympus Mons and then backs out at the last minute.

He tries fishing for fuck’s sake. Not real fish, obviously. Small robots designed to act like real fish, which includes not being fucking caught in the first three minutes of trying.

“Call Fang,” Stede says, nine months post decision. He’d been half draped over Ed in bed, dragging his nose through Ed’s chest hair in a way that he probably had thought affectionately comforting but is in fact distractingly arousing.

“Hmm?” Ed replies, because his mind had definitively not been on Fang, and had been floating with the hand on his stomach, thumb gently circling his navel, and the cool nub of Stede’s nose on his sternum.

“You need to do something,” Stede says. “Before you destroy the whole house.”

Which Ed at the time thought was really fucking unfair, but in hindsight was probably a polite way of asking Ed to stop disassembling perfectly functional parts of the kitchen and ruining Stede’s morning routine.

He’d kissed the - in hindsight, not so - baseless accusations out of Stede’s mouth, and spent the night pretending to sleep, wrapped around a man who didn’t sleep. And who always knew when Ed was or wasn’t asleep.

Three hours after Stede leaves for Ceres - something about a biodome in Haulani Crater - Fang comms him.

Ed sends a message - you shit - to Stede, and then takes Fang to the cafe with the cake and the short walk to the biodome. And, apparently, Ivan, who had been waiting for them both there.

It’s a revelation. He’d known Fang for thirty years at that point - they’d been at the same university, at the same time. He’d thought he had him sussed. Thought Fang liked it - the hustle and the backstabbing and the climb. Turns out that he’d known nothing about the guy.

They make a plan that day. Ed still hasn’t been disbarred. Senator Badminton’s approval ratings had tanked after the case, and he’d been far too interested in his re-election cycle to risk publicly going after Ed.

Fang wants to do something different. Something better. Something meaningful.

Ed reminds them that he hasn’t been disbarred… yet.

“The rule against relationships with clients is to stop a guy like you exploiting vulnerable people. You think he’s gonna admit Stede is a person?” Ivan says, mildly. “We’re happy to take that bet, if you are.”

Fang smiles at Ivan then, obviously doting, and Ed wonders, not for the first time, how he’d been so wrapped up in his own misery that he’d blocked out anything from anyone else, good or bad.

“There’s a lot of people,” Ed says. He’ll remember, later, pausing at this point, having to be cajoled into it. “Just, a lot of people in debt to US Robotics. For, I dunno, household robots, or fucking organs, or whatever. Or in debt to other people, because they’ve prioritised paying back US Robotics.”

And he’d used those people as much as US Robotics had. Had sifted through them when they wanted free legal aid - taken on the hopeless cases that advanced Stede’s cause, but there’d been others with real claims, winnable ones, if they could find the right lawyers.

He hadn’t dared take them on, or draw attention to himself then. Facing down US Robotics when he’d been trying to fly under their radar was a fucking terrible idea.

The three of them realise they could make a living doing this. Doing things that mattered. Using all the senatorial and robotic connections that Ed has acquired, putting them to good use.

The first few years are frantic - trying to get a firm off the ground, trying to get Ed and Fang out of their contracts and their partnerships.

But they manage it.

And they try to keep the workload manageable as well. Try to limit their cases so that Fang and Ivan can see their nephews graduate, and Ed can take time while Stede is in town, or travel with him when he wants to.

Three years in, Izzy joins them, suspiciously and reluctantly at first, and then blooming into a person that Ed had never realised existed and Fang greeted like an old friend.

So, ten years in, when Stede wobbles and drops a cup, Ed can drop his current case on Izzy’s lap and book himself and Stede onto the first shuttle out to the Moon.

Dr Roach completes a barrel of tests, peeling Ed’s hand out of Stede’s for some of them with an affronted glare.

“Parboiled potato,” he announces at the end of it. “Things are starting to happen, but you’re not cooked yet.”

He’s not cooked yet. And they grab every moment that they can. They travel, and laugh and cry.

And fight as well. Stupid fights, about nothing.

“It really hurt, when you did that!” Stede yells at him across the kitchen table.

“Good!” Ed snaps back. “It was meant to!”

He storms out the house. Wanders around for two hours. Creeps back into bed. Whispers Stede’s name.

Stede has his eyes closed. He wasn’t due to settle into a snooze cycle and never could if he was upset anyway, so Ed pokes him in the ribs, hard.

“Dickfuck, you don’t sleep.”

Stede opens his eyes and gives Ed a bitchy look.

(He will swear, to the end of his days, that it was not bitchy. Ed will just as vehemently disagree until the end of his.)

“What?” he asks waspishly.

Ed nudges Stede’s foot with his own. Gives what he hopes are his best eyes, the ones that always make Stede give in to whatever Ed wants.

“I’ll make you breakfast?” he says. He’s always been able to count on his charm. Less so on his culinary skills, but that’s what the food dispenser is for.

Stede’s foot reaches back, strokes along Ed’s ankle.

“With the good marmalade,” he bargains, still sulky. “The real stuff.”

“Still got some at the back of the cupboard, I’ll find it,” Ed says, and Stede hmmphs begrudgingly but also reaches back for Ed’s arm to wrap around him.

Ed falls asleep like that, wrapped around his ridiculous, grumpy, man.

The marmalade tasting off in the morning is another warning bell when Ed tastes it afterwards and it’s perfectly fine, but Ed tries to ignore it, brush it off as a bad batch.

And many of Stede’s symptoms are intermittent, to begin. His hand shakes a little at a lecture he gives in Mombasa, well, he’s nervous. His eyesight becomes blurry during a trip to Schiaparelli Base - well, they brush that off as the gravity change. He needs to cancel an engagement at Asimov Crater - he’d been busy, and doing a lot, and not eating or recharging as he should have been.

They ignore it, as far as they can, because to acknowledge the symptoms is to acknowledge the future.

Stede cancels his check up with Dr Roach in the fourteenth year. Ed doesn’t object. He tries very hard not to think about either of those facts.

He succeeds as well, until six months later when he receives a comm from Dr Roach asking him to come to the Moonbase immediately. Stede had collapsed on a visit to Tsiolkovsky crater.

Ed spends the shuttle transport time, as he’d done years before, cursing himself for his own stupidity. For sticking his head in the sand. For not saying anything. Hoping that it wasn’t too late.

He runs, barely stopping to scan his ID card. His feet must remember the way because he finds himself in the US Robotics lab being directed to a room.

Stede is sitting on the bed - the experimental bed, Ed had come to think of it as.

“We have to stop meeting like this,” Stede says with a wan smile, and Ed does his utmost not to burst into tears on the spot as he folds into Stede’s embrace.

“You need a more relaxed schedule,” Dr Roach tells Stede. “Constant gravity changes are making your symptoms worse.”

“How long?” Stede asks, because he’d always been the braver of the two of them. Ed’s arms tighten around him.

“At the current rate of decay? Three years? Five? We’re heading into the upper ranges of the initial estimate, but it’s hard to know whether the state of decay will remain steady, or whether it will show a more exponential growth as it progresses.”

Ed holds steady as Stede prepares to leave the facility. He holds steady, staring out the window of the shuttle, as they make their way back to Earth. He holds steady as they transport from the shuttlepad back to the house.

He walks past the maple, the lushness of summer turning bare as the leaves start to fall. He holds steady.

Stede catches his arm as the door closes behind him. “Ed, please…”

And Ed turns and falls into Stede’s arms. “I’m not ready,” he says. “Not yet.”

“Neither am I,” Stede replies, and Ed notices for the first time that Stede is crying, too, gripping back with equal fervour. “I don’t want to go. I don’t want to leave you. I’ve never wanted to leave you.”

And it’s easy, then, to tilt his face, and meet Stede’s lips with his own.

He doesn’t expect the ferocity he finds, but he wants to match it. Wants to grab hold of Stede in any way that he can. Wants to take what he can get, while he can.

They discard clothing as they make their way through the house, and it’s not like them, not the gentle care that they usually take. There’s no laughter, just desperation and frantic grabbing.

And Stede sinks his teeth in, leaving marks, and Ed can only hope that they mark him as permanently as Stede has marked his soul; leave a visible reminder to everyone that sees Ed ever again.

“What do you want?” Ed asks, as Stede sucks bruises into his neck, pinning him down on the bed.

“You,” Stede says. “I want to make sure you’ll remember this.”

And Ed has to kiss him then; biting, frantic, wanting kisses that Stede matches with equal ferocity. And they move against each other, clinging to each other so closely that Stede can barely get a hand between them and on them. Stede goes first, crying out into Ed’s shoulder with Ed wrapped around him; nails digging into his back so hard that Stede will be littered with the mark of crescent moons for days. Ed pushes his hips up into Stede’s hands, and he takes and he takes while he still can, and the intensity of Stede’s gaze drives into his soul and makes its way to the pooling tension in his pelvis and his heel digs into Stede’s tailbone as he comes.

When Ed finally stills, Stede collapses into the combined mess on Ed’s chest, his hand sliding up to rest on Ed’s stomach, and they lie there for a long moment until Ed nudges Stede. “C’mon love,” he says. His voice is hoarse, he thinks. “You hate the sticky aftermath.”

“Maybe I don’t mind it, if it’s yours.”

Ed huffs a laugh into Stede’s hair. Disbelieving. “Really?”

“No,” Stede says. “I hate it. But I don’t want to waste any time not being with you.”

They share a sonic shower, after some negotiation, trading kisses until they‘re done. A compromise.

Stede cuts down on travel after that. Does more remote holos. Ed starts turning down more work. Still does some, but takes time to take a walk, or stop and smell some plants with Stede. Share a slice of cake.

They’re gifted eighteen years, in the end. Sixteen good, and two increasingly bad as Stede’s motor skills deteriorate. It hurts, in the end, to see the shell of a body that his love is trapped in. To know that there’s a perfectly sharp mind inside a mouth that struggles to talk, and a hand that struggles to reach out and touch.

They sit together, and sometimes Ed reads to him, once his eyesight starts to fail. Mostly books that Stede has collected, and loves, but sometimes a slightly terrible bodice-ripper, just so he can see Stede’s eyeroll.

Sometimes he puts a bad holo-film on, one that they’ve watched in the past, so he can murmur back the withering commentary on the plot holes that he’d once heard from Stede.

Their friends visit frequently. The people that are carrying on Stede’s work: Pete and Lucius. Olu, Jim, Zheng and Archie. Frenchie. Fang and Ivan. They come, and they see Stede, and they offer their support to Ed as well, in any way that they can think of. There’s food, home cooked. Pete brings plants around from the biodome, picks up Stede’s hands so he can maybe feel them, if his sensory receptors are obliging that day. Tell him about them, how they’re doing.

And later, Ed moves the plants to the bedroom when Stede becomes too weak to leave it. The room that had once been the sparsest becomes the one most full of life.

And at the last, it’s just the two of them. The others had been that day, for both of them, and will be back again, for Ed, in the morning.

Stede turns his head - a monumental effort - and looks at Ed. Squeezes his hand once. Mouths his name.

And then, nothing.

***

Stede is buried under the maple tree, in a biodegradable coffin. His positronic brain, lifeless, starved of the energy it needed to continue, will remain there forever. His body will feed everything above it, eventually. The leaves of the maple will be eaten by the caterpillars of the rosy maple moth, and there will be slightly more life on the surface of the planet.

Ed continues. He throws himself into his work, helps many, lets down a few. Wears himself to the bone to avoid spending too much time in an empty house. Gets sent home by Fang. Gets sent home by Izzy. Finds food waiting there, because Izzy has something going on with Lucius these days and they gang up on him now.

Finds Jim there, because Jim’s silent presence is sometimes all he can bear in that house. It gives him space to sit with the memories.

Any suggestion that he move is shot down with a ferocity that no-one has seen since the Blackbeard days. It’s their home. It’s full of plants - Pete keeps it that way, even now. It’s full of Stede.

He both can’t live with it, or without it.

His grief tempers, but never fully loses, its ability to strike him down where he stands.

The first time he sees a money spider outside a biodome, he calls in sick. Spends the day leafing through the first of Stede’s books instead. Not crying. Just looking.

Seven years after losing Stede, he goes to the doctor with headaches. They give him the bad news, tell him that he’s very young to get this kind of cancer.

Inoperable.

Incurable.

He thanks them, goes home, settles his affairs in order. Tells his friends.

Three months later, his ashes join Stede. His funeral has been attended by their friends - their family, in the end. But there are others - Dr Roach. People he has helped. People who Stede had helped, as part of his work.

He was never alone.

***

The maple tree is in full bloom.

Its seeds have been carefully harvested, propagated, distributed to people who will care for it. Its descendants will live on, populating worlds with their growth.

When it dies, it does not end.