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Nibs used to be human. It was a terrible, awful thing and it took her a very long time to heal.
She was a little human girl with long ginger hair and paper skin that bruised too easy. She isn't that anymore. Not little, not human, and not really girl either. She's a hybrid, and hybrids are only girls and boys in so much as they're told that they are. That 'girl' hybrids have longer hair and softer faces than 'boy' hybrids.
Her hair is the wrong colour. It had taken her a while to notice, with everything else that had changed, her height, her new chest, the hold of her shoulders, and the jut of her hips. The length had thrown her off for a while, but now she knows for sure. Her hair is the wrong colour. Or a different colour, maybe, because this is a new body and they'd tried to keep some things the same but the differences between a little body and an adult one were too different to really succeed.
Her hair is a different colour, it's redder than it was before, and her eyes are a different colour, greyer than before, duller, and her freckles aren't where they used to be, she thinks.
And all of these are good things, they must be, because Rose Ellis was a little girl with lighter hair and brighter eyes and Nibs isn't.
Rose Ellis was a girl easily bruised and easier hurt, she was the sort of girl that her mother's new boyfriend liked to hold down and touch until it hurt and hurt and hurt and slowly, ever so slowly, killed her.
And Nibs wasn't a girl that anyone could hurt. Kirsh had promised and he couldn't lie, or he said he couldn't, and that meant that no one could hurt Nibs. Not really.
Because Nibs isn't a little human girl anymore, she's a hybrid, she's something entirely new.
Nibs knows what she wants to be when she grows up, except she isn't going to grow up, so Nibs knows what she wants to be. She knows it as soon as she sees it.
It's a beautiful, monstrous thing. It looks like something she'd see in those movies Mom and her boyfriend would watch after Rose had gone to bed.
It's perfect. It has claws and sharp teeth that tear through soldiers and a good hard shell that even bullets can't pierce through. Its head is hard enough to break open a man's chest just with a single hit.
Nothing could ever hurt something like that, she thinks. If she were something like that, she'd never need to be scared again.
Because Nibs isn't a little human girl anymore, but her mind forgets that too often. It forgets that nothing can hurt her like it could before.
Not like it could before, but it can still hurt. Dame Silvia can take away her memories, she learns. Even if she doesn't need to remember being so scared, she knows the real reason she forgot. Because she scared Dame Silvia. Dame Silvia was scared of her, and so Dame Silvia hurt her, and Nibs never wants to be hurt again.
She wants to be like this creature, claws and teeth and good strong skin that would never hurt or bruise, something that could never be held down or hurt.
So she follows Wendy and her brother down to the boat, like it does, and when the soldiers try to hurt them she tears them apart and then Nibs learns that trying isn't enough.
Because Dame Silvia can change her memories, and Wendy's brother can shut her down for a while, and she's not strong enough, she's too human, too scared, and she can still be hurt.
The creature isn't scared. It's never scared, it's strong enough, nothing can ever hold it down, not like her.
Wendy says that she's going to make sure nothing hurts them again, and Nibs agrees. Nibs drags Dame Silvia into the cell where Boy tried to lock them away.
And the island is theirs and the soldiers are dead or gone and everyone else, except Nibs and her siblings, her brothers, her family, her hive, is locked away. And,
"I want to put Kirsh back together." She tells Wendy, when they're far enough away from the cell that no one can hear them, when Wendy's brother has wandered away, because Wendy's brother isn't part of the family, hive, not really. "So that I can have claws. And sharp teeth. Like your creature."
"You don't need those to be strong." Wendy says, though it's almost a question.
"I don't want to hurt anymore. I don't want to be scared."
"Okay." Wendy agrees, and Curly, Jane now, Jane again, helps her download the manuals she needs to put Kirsh back together and her brothers, what's left of them, Slightly and Smee, help her put him back together like he used to be. And Wendy promises that Kirsh won't be allowed to hurt her, that no one will.
"Why do you want claws?" Kirsh says, staring down at the rough schematic Jane had helped her with. He's already adjusting it, making it bigger, so it encompasses her whole arm, past the shoulder and into her back.
Wendy is with her brother, but Nibs can see them still.
"You said I wasn't an animal."
"I did."
"And that animals are afraid."
"Yes."
"But I look like an animal."
"I look like an animal. And I am not afraid."
"But you weren't an animal before. People didn't hurt you before."
"I have been hurt." Kirsh corrects. "You only just fixed me from it."
"But not like I was hurt. Because I was little, and human, and a girl."
"You aren't that anymore." He says, and everything Kirsh has ever said always sounds gentle and soft, but Nibs doesn't need him to be gentle and soft, she doesn't need him to coddle her and remind her again and again that she isn't what she was before.
"I know that." She snaps, turning her shoulders away a moment after because she doesn't mean to get angry. She feels bad for being angry with Kirsh in a way she never did with Dame Silvia.
She wonders if the creature feels this way too. If the creature can tell what is animal and what isn't, what is human and what isn't, what feels fear and what doesn't. If it reacts like she does, to the mere presence of it.
"I'm not mad." Kirsh reminds her, and she knows. Kirsh doesn't get angry with them, not like Boy does, not like Dame Silvia does. Even Arthur and Wendy's brother get mad, but never Kirsh.
"I know."
"You think that this," he motions to the schematic, getting steadily more detailed under his practised hand, "will help you? To be less afraid?"
"It will remind me that I'm not a little human girl anymore. And I will remember that I'm not supposed to be scared."
"Will it?"
"Wendy's creature isn't scared. It's strong and powerful and nothing can hurt it."
"And looking more like this creature will remind you?"
"Nothing can hurt me." Nibs repeats. She says it in her head over and over and it feels nice to say it aloud. "I know that nothing can hurt me anymore, but I can't remember that."
"You have been hurt. I had to restart you after that shock,"
"Yes, and Dame Silvia made me forget. I know. But nothing can hurt me. Not like before. If I don't look like a human girl anymore, I'll remember.
"I suppose you'll want your feet done too, then?" Kirsh asks, but he knows her too well, apparently, because he's already drawing up a new schematic, with her legs instead of her arms, this time.
"And my teeth."
"Hmm." Kirsh hums, but he nods just a little too.
"You're not a man." She reassures him, even though Kirsh doesn't need it. "Just like I'm not a girl."
"That is correct."
"I'm not scared of you. Like I'm not scared of the others."
"I'm glad."
"Joe scares me, though." She confesses in a whisper.
"Joe Hermit." He asks baldly. Glancing over at the man from where he's sitting across from Wendy. They're playing some card game, and Wendy is smiling just like she should be, and Joe is too.
"Jane gave me some psychology books. They all say it isn't rational."
"Because it isn't. Nothing can hurt you. Not like that, or frankly, any other way."
"I know." Because she does, the problem is just remembering it.
On humans, surgery takes a very long time and the healing process takes ages longer. Anything can go wrong, and it's a dangerous operation.
On Nibs, with Kirsh and Jane as the operators and Wendy hovering nearby, the operation couldn't safer. Even when it is, as Kirsh calls it, new uncharted territory.
Nibs goes to sleep on the table and when she wakes her limbs are different. The joints in her legs are backwards and all her limbs are longer, and the freckled skin of her chest gives way to a sleek inky black at her shoulders and her hips.
Its as easy to walk on all fours as it is to walk on two, and as easy to climb the walls as it is to stay on the floor.
Wendy had suggested, and Nibs had agreed, that they ought to edit her hearing so she can hear what Wendy and the creature, now two of them, can hear.
When she wakes, she can understand the creatures as well as Wendy. She can understand Wendy's clicks and shrieks too. The creatures call Wendy Queen, and Nibs agrees.
Wendy is Queen of the island and the rest of them are part of the hive, and Kirsh and Joe are something altogether.
And Nibs isn't quite like the creature, because she has wants that they don't, and needs that they don't, and sometimes she still clings to the little things she didn't mind so much about being human, like holding hands and loose hugs and watching movies and playing games.
But she has long sharp teeth that extend when she bites into something, or just when she wants them out. She has eight of them, four on top and four on the bottom, and they're so long that her mouth doesn't close when they're extended and they're strong enough to break through bone.
And Kirsh has given her a little gift in them too, because when she bites down on something, she can taste blood like she's bitten through prey, and sometimes she shreds through blankets with them just to remember over and over again that she's strong and nothing can hurt her ever again.
And when people try to attack the island, when they try to take it away from the hive and their queen, Nibs tears them to pieces right along with the creatures.
She's not a little human girl anymore, and she'll never be again. And only little human girls are scared.