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Millie and Leap had the argument for a while: "Could Clementine Kesh get any worse?" Millie had presented the case that yes, on a philosophical level all things could get worse, and Clementine was part of all things, ergo: yeah, of course she fucking could. And to this, Leap could agree. However, Leap would then jump to declare his stance. Even if Clem could somehow become more cartoonishly evil, she could not be more cartoonishly incompetent. Thus, she could not get worse. He would draw on the steadfast pattern, a meeting with the rest of the Evening proceeding as follows:
"Leap," Clem would say.
"Yeah?" he'd respond, waiting to see where this would go.
Clementine would move a piece of tactical scribble around on her projection; whatever the great nobles in Kesh taught as the correct annotation for combat maneuvers.
"To press our advantage, your mech needs to be positioned at the primary locale", she said, pointing a finger.
A brief pause.
"...In the swamp?" he'd ask.
"Well. Near the mountain."
"In the swamp near the mountain."
"Well- It's... we'd need to..." she'd say, and the meeting would continue.
She'd get rejected, obviously. Millie and Sovereign Immunity would back him up on the actual tactics, and she would pretend that everything was her idea in the end. She was, by Leap's judgement, an idiot. And terrible at her job. But there was a freedom in her incompetence. Even falsely accredited, it was still their ideas that took the lead. He realized the answer to their argument before was not if Clementine could get worse, but what sort of terrible she could become. Now, after their "rescuing" of Gur Sevraq, it would go something like this:
"Leap" she would say in her hospital bed.
"Yeah" he'd reply, no longer wanting to see where this went.
"I need you to bring me Doctor Stevens. Afterwards, we need to focus efforts on mobilizing our forces. Bring Commander Clientele here and we'll discuss our topographical analysis of the Apostolosian territory bordering West Haven. I will need you to be present for the meeting, and I'll expect you to be prepared with..."
By this point he'd have tuned out the rest. He wasn't getting paid enough for this, which of course, meant he wasn't fucking getting paid at all.
It was a few weeks into these bedside sessions when Clementine had to keep pausing to cough. Her throat was dry, still healing from the buffet of sand and the following treatment that left her with a dull throat. Leap was messing with the ring around his hoodie string, hoping to hear more encoded Nidean gossip while pretending to listen to Clem.
"...by the next meeting- Leap, are you paying attention?"
"What? Yeah, you were saying something about- it was about the surgery? You were saying that it'd take a while."
"Yes, the timeline would need to account for..." a cloud of frustration passed over her face. "We'll need to adjust our plans for when I'm at full capacity. Doctor Stevens is the only medical professional we have on hand and, well, there's only so much one person can do."
"I could do it" Leap said offhand.
"You could?" Asked Clem quizzically. She leaned forward from under her covers.
"I mean, yeah, uh-" He was caught off guard by her sudden interest, and simply wiggled his fingers in explanation. He was Equiaxed, of course he knew anatomy. He grafted his own hands. He made himself an entire digestive system to eat shit. For energy. He could totally do it. Probably. It wasn't that hard to pick it up in the first place.
Clem moved her gaze to the side, lost in thought among the dull whines of the hospital room. Her hands were balled around the edges of her blanket. Her eyes drifted to the medical equipment. Leap was about to leave before she spoke up again.
"Then you will." She said.
"Then I'll what?"
"Do the surgery. Leap... I trust you to-" she paused and reconsidered.
"Mr. Leap, you may be the only one willing to take matters as far as they need to go. Doctor Stevens- while he has done the best he can in his service- is unwilling to do more than let time be my caretaker. But there is no time. Apostolos does not wait, and neither will I. I cannot do this alone and your experience will suffice."
Leap stared. This was different. This was weird. This was her asking for help. Well, she was demanding for help, so he scratched out the credit he would have given her. He did a comical one-eyed double-take to give her the chance to back out, and also just because he needed to.
"Well?" she asked.
Clementine Kesh had been his mental dart-board for the last few months of his life. Each little blister of rage could be spat towards her, because she did this to him. She put him in those stupid cuffs. She made him fight in a stupid war. She took away his life and didn't even bother to give him decent snacks while she was eating six course meals in her private mansion. Leap took out a piece of jerky from his pocket and bit down on in front of her.
And... a lingering thought at the back of his mind fermented into form: 'Why wouldn't I just kill her?' It would be a ticket to his freedom. But he looked at her, in her bed, where she was pale and visibly thinner than she had been before. Her arms shook trying to keep herself steady, holding herself up just to glare at him. She looked like a feral cat being rehabilitated. And he was a pirate, not a monster.
"Okay." he said. "I'll do it."
"Really? I mean- Good. Doctor Stevens will be leaving at 8:30 tonight. We'll proceed while he's out."
"Wait, we're doing it today?" he asked.
"Yes. Unless you have more pressing matters," she added with mild impatience, "I am ready to proceed when you are."
"Sure." he sighed audibly, "Got it."
She nodded, as a signal to leave. Leap sauntered out of the room and turned down the hall, still having to complete the other laundry list of chores she'd given him. 'No 'thank you'', he thought. 'Good thing she hasn't changed completely...'
The room smelled like alcohol and felt like caution. Cotton swabs were kept in a clean glass jar by the sink. On the other side of the counter, small needles were arranged parallel on a tray. Millie helped to collect capsules of fluid, a small pair of tweezers, bandages, needles, and a plethora of other tools specific to the trade. She placed them on wax paper on top the white table adjacent to Clementine's bed. Clem was already staring with the "mission brief" before the operation.
"...I am asking you, Exeter, to care about something. And I am afraid that in this situation, it has to be me. If that’s not something that you are comfortable with, you are free to leave."
"No, I can do it. I definitely can do it."
"Have I made the weight of this arrangement clear?" she asked.
Their eyes locked.
"...You have." he said.
Leap took a second to recalibrate his sensors, just to be sure, then started his work. Soon the operation preceded and Clementine fell under the induced unconscious. Leap unraveled the bandages on her side and started to work on her wound. Looking it over, he saw that the doctor had already done a decent job of cleaning the gash; removing the debris and dressing it, merely leaving him to work in his wheelhouse. He relaxed slightly, he would be creating new matter, new muscles and cartilage, something that had been his hobby for a while now. On the calm days in his ship, uncommon even before it had been taken away, he would have worked on his own organs. The thin membrane of his soon-to-be-stomach in one hand while the other held the pages instructing him how to keep it wet, to fold it correctly.
He started the work in front of him, stitching together the delicate structure of living wires, truly engaging to him. He figured that it was because he was made of mechanics, but he couldn't understand why people found organics to be so repulsive. The way they moved together, each fiber a small player in a larger structure. The way it was so flexible and soft, but strong, well designed over years of ridiculous random chance. Complex in it's own way, almost thinking in it's own way. Bizarre and beautiful. Millie reached down to wipe away some of the blood. Leap knew she was fine with this stuff. She'd seen a lot of it by now. He continued working, sewing dissolvable strings of nutrients, oxygen, chemical signals and supplies to help the little guys along. He enjoyed watching the cells grow, multiplying into something new. He remembered looking after his tongue when he was still working on it. Getting the DNA right, giving the millions of cells a helping hand. Clem had gotten the hard part out of the way really, she didn't need to genetically modify shit to get this to work. All Leap had to do was give the rest of the wound a structure before closing it up.
Before grabbing the spool of thin twine on the side table, he glanced up towards the various panels tracking the anesthesia levels... but then stopped to look at Clementine herself, breathing steadily.
'Huh, weird,' he thought. He'd never seen her asleep. And, yeah, obviously. Not like she'd ever just take a nap in the prison, but it was still strange. Maybe it was because her face looked so peaceful. Maybe it was because, he realized, she'd only looked at him with disdain. He thought it was etched permanently into her face, but no, she truly couldn't muster any other feeling toward him besides... contempt. And in that moment it snapped back into place. This wasn't a quiet moment to himself. He didn't have those anymore. This was another demand. Another task. Another thing she'd take from him when she didn't even consider him worthy of more than being a prisoner. She honest to god thought he was below her. His hands twitched a little as the charge of rage flowed through his metal veins.
...'Why don't I just kill her now..?'
Leap sighed. He stitched her wounds together, working the needle carefully. He took pride in his work. And he wasn't a monster, even if she was.