No she won't.

An X of blades appears in front of the exit before she can leave the room, and then another blade whose point is in the direction of the console appears next to her, swaying back and forth like some video game arrow pointing at her goal.

But then the X disappears, after spending a few seconds there. If she really wants to she can go back to her room, but... he wants her here.

???????

O...kay???

Well that definitely looks like permission to work even though he's clearly distracted, so. She will just. Do that.

Good.

He won't supervise her for the rest of today, though; he'll just flit between plants and do his thing with them while seemingly paying her zero attention. Also, given the number of them he can do this to, he clearly has a lot more stamina for this than Zash does, and the limiting factor is the plants' own stamina, not his.

She notices the difference in stamina compared to Zash, but it makes sense. He's spent all of his time doing this, and comparatively, Zash has been running around in the desert with humans, just trying to get to them to help. Instead of building his plant healing stamina.

But anyway yes, work. Soothing, soothing work, where her brain can be used for things that are not latent sexual panic things that are confusing and squishy and not math. Math is better. Math is here for her.

Knives isn't here for her except for how he apparently kind of is. It's unclear exactly how much attention he's paying but given the blades from earlier, well. Some, at least.

She will not be thinking about that, because apparently her type is extremely powerful and dramatic men and man is that inconvenient. It is strictly math time. Plants will be so helped and she will calm down. Yes.

And then when she's tired and cranky and is noticing that her dumb human body is reaching its dumb limits forced upon her by biology, she can go to bed like a normal person.

...

"Goodnight, Nai," she says before she goes, feeling a little silly with how he's ignoring her. But, well. He clearly does trust her, and she does really appreciate that.

He turns around to stare at her as she leaves (he hasn't been healing the plants anymore for the last hour, just chatting to them) but before she's fully gone he says, "Good night."

Nai...?

She smiles a little and then goes to bed without further incident.

And while she sleeps, someone else arrives in February. A plant from a sand steamer that Yvette had spent quite a lot of time with.

Oh, yes. The nut who calls him "God" was meant to go fetch it. He really can be quite useful sometimes, it'll be a little bit of a shame to have to kill him if the Punisher succeeds at getting Zash here. Not much of a shame, he's also a prick, but, you know.

He goes to fetch the plant and find a place for her while he talks to her and reintroduces her to their sisters. Hi, hello, yes, he is Nai, these are—

—yes, indeed, that one human is in this compound, she was on the sand steamer? Huh. Interesting. And then they—she did what? And Zash did what? And she thought what???

What?

What.

Yep.

She did and thought all of those things. Fought desperately to keep this poor plant alive, and raged quietly at the callous humans that wanted to squeeze her dry, and hated herself a little for what she was being an accomplice to, and loved Zash, and despaired because this meant she would break his heart. All where this plant could see. All shared willingly with her, and treating and respecting her as a full person.

Zash helped them talk to each other more directly, and, once the communication bridge was raised, Yvette was quite happy to. And good at it.

There's. There's one explanation. One blindingly obvious explanation, now that he's thought of it. But it... it makes no sense. Why now? A hundred and fifty years late, too late?

...she's angry, and she's loving, and she's compassionate...

Why now?

No answer is likely to make itself apparent without words, with how she has that irritating problem with not being psychic.

But after she's cared for her dumb human biology she will be back in the plant room with her water bottle, looking to help.

Knives is already there, talking to a plant. He does react when she walks in, though, turning around and floating over to her. "Where were you born?" he asks with no preamble.

"Uh, December?" she says, blinking.

Big city plants... he doesn't know them that well. December is far, he doesn't visit it often, doesn't have the chance to.

"When?"

"Twenty-six years ago...?"

He looks up at the plants for a couple of seconds then nods and looks back at her. "You were born from parents? A mother and a father?"

"Yyyyyes that is how it usually works with us."

That rules out the standard scenario. He nods again then goes to float next to the console, chewing on something.

??????

"... Uh, while you're feeling talkative," she says, trying to move on from... whatever the heck that was about... "I had a visitor yesterday. Uh, small blond girl, looked like a child but spoke like a carnivore, one gold eye one blue?"

"Elendira."

"Okay. Well, she seemed..." Obsessive? Jealous?? Murderous??? "... like she had some sort of problem with me, and, um. I am squishy and delicate. So. Do I need to be worried about her?"

Because she is. She totally is.

"No."

Because if Elendira does anything to this human(?) Knives will make sure she lives to regret it.

"... All right. Thank you." Pause. "I've got to be honest but you attract a lot of fucking weirdos."