#don't worry mr alpha seventeen you'll make your first pair of socks in no time

[varpusvaras]

There are enough similarities with how the life was before and during the war, and how it is now, so that Seventeen doesn't lose his mind instantly.

He still gets up early. That was the easiest similarity to keep. He was told that he needs more sleep, so he gives himself until five thirty instead of his regular five sharp. It's acceptable. He still has enough time to get himself ready and then try to make food.

There the similarities end when it comes to the morning. The clothes aren't right. They are soft and while good for moving around, they are not tactical in the slightest. He feels like he is missing a layer of skin with them on. It grates on him, and it doesn't make the fact that he has no idea how to cook any better.

Not that he is giving it any more voluntary thought than he has to. Any of it. It's just clothes. It's just cooking. He has learnt to repair weapons, ships, armor. He has learnt how to fight, how to kill, and how not to be killed. He has made through all of it and has now ended up in a small kitchen of all places. This is not going to end him either.

He reads all the manuals for every single kitchenware they have. He reads of the nutritional values of every single item of food there is in the cupboards and in the cooler. He studies the diet plan he had been given enough time so he remembers every word. He downloads a cook book. He watches tutorials from the holonet.

Fifteen minutes after 6 in the morning, he has made caf, tea, toast and five other things that goes with the toast. It all tastes how the book and the tutorials describe them to taste like.

Then he cleans. He does the dishes. He looks through the kitchen again. He makes a list of things they need more of. He gathers every single item on all of the counters and puts them back in their place. He goes back to the bedroom. He makes the bed. He goes back into the kitchen. He dries the dishes. It's a repeating task, like cleaning a weapon. Take a plate. Turn it around in the cloth. Put it away. Take a plate. Turn it around in the cloth. Put it away.

He goes through all the plates like that, then the cutlery, then the glasses. He puts them away in the same order in their correct places inside the cabinets and drawers.

Then he goes into the living room and stands in the middle of it and stares at the wall for fifteen minutes.

After the fifteen minutes is over, he thinks about his therapist, who had told him to pick up a relaxing hobby that he can do with his hands but that gives him enough to think about. Something that is a little bit more removed from his life so far. Something softer had been the implication.

Seventeen doesn't want to do anything softer, but he still picks up the needles he had got for himself, despite it having felt like he was giving up, finds another tutorial, watches it, and starts learning how to put the thread through itself.

It's just past eight in the morning when he makes his first row of stitches. He stares at it for a minute, and then throws it at the same wall he had spent fifteen minutes staring at before.

His legs hurt. They do that a lot, these days. Seventeen thinks it's because they hate him just as much as he hates them.

He gets up. Takes the first dose of his allotted painkillers and tries not to feel like the biggest failure in the entire Galaxy, because it's thirteen minutes before he usually takes them, and then gets angry at himself for a moment for being stupid. Because the thing is, Seventeen does not care about anything.

He waits for a moment. The pain goes away. He picks up his needles. The stitches have fallen of off them.

It's nine in the morning. He has made 28 rows of stitches.

Seventeen hates the fact that he had forgotten to hate everything while focusing on doing them.

He doesn't throw the needles this time, though.