Imperial Radch, ancillary ghosts
And the other fic that I wrote for Trick or Treat, a treat for Ghostie! Well, more of a trick, really...
Contains: Minor violent imagery, reality issues, unreliable senses.
Three, Four, the Corpse Soldier
I hummed, and so did someone else.
I was watching Seivarden clean the floor, not very well; someone else held white flowers with thin petals tipped in blue, and her humming was out of tune with mine. I stopped so I could hear her song better, but a mechanical roaring sound cut her off, and I saw that Seivarden had stopped cleaning as well. "Did I do something wrong?" she asked.
"No," I said, and then, "You've missed a spot. Over in the corner."
It was not the first time I had heard other songs while I was singing, but it was the first time I saw an image to go with them. I had other things to think about, so I concentrated on those instead, and no other images or songs appeared. For a little while.
---
I put a bite of rations into my mouth and tasted antiseptic bitterness, the aftertaste of correctives.
"Has it gone bad?" Seivarden ate a little of her own meal and grimaced. "Mine hasn't, if you want to try it... Hardly the finest quality, though."
The metal in my brain (but it's not your brain) rang against my tongue (and it's not your tongue). "It's fine." I tried another bite, and the taste was normal. I continued to eat, despite the occasional mouthful of ash.
---
The wall beside me was not there.
The rest of the ship enclosed me as usual; it was only the wall on my right that was gone. Whenever I looked over at it, I saw Valskaayan hills and sky rolling out into the distance. Sometimes I heard a phrase or two of song, drifting on a wind I could not feel.
I remembered many songs from Valskaay and answered each one I recognized, but received no response. Whoever was singing couldn't hear me, no matter how I wanted them to. Or perhaps they no longer knew my voice.
"Do I need to scrub that wall again?" Seivarden asked tiredly. "I didn't know walls could even collect so much grime."
"No. Leave it."
I took a walk in the ship's halls, but the right wall remained Valskaay wherever I went.
---
"Are you all right? You just don't seem yourself, lately."
The itch of blood leaking down my chin distracted me unbearably, but I managed to say, "It's nothing." The person with the white and blue flowers was humming again, and the winds of Valskaay carried the scent of its earth, and I was bleeding from at least five different wounds, not counting what flowed from my mouth. None of it was real, and I had more important work to focus on. But I wasn't focusing enough; every few minutes another song or spiking pain or flash of sunlight insisted on my attention, and unlike the I who was Justice of Toren, I who was Breq had a limited amount of attention to give.
How much was I slipping, if even miserable, self-absorbed Seivarden could see that whatever self I had was splitting apart?
I breathed in smoke and tried to hum something that Lieutenant Awn had liked, but the tune kept fluttering off-key and into other melodies. Seivarden busied herself with some small task and sometimes looked at me, but she didn't speak again, or if she did, I couldn't hear her over the noise.
---
I woke up and they were all there, the faces I stole. They were supposed to become my faces but they were never really mine, and when I tried to put them on again they shouted at me in their languages and held me down on a medic's table and wouldn't let me sing.
I could have controlled them if I were myself, but I wasn't anymore. I wasn't one of them, either. They shouted and bled and ran through fire until they lay in cold storage to wait for me, but I couldn't have them. I could only have the pieces of them that kept screaming.
- killed me -
- around the planet, it goes around -
- killed me -
- my daughter's blood and then you killed me -
- killed me -
- wind blowing smoke away from my house and you -
Part of me sat up and part of me tried to walk out into the fields and part of me was singing and part of me crushed flowers in my hands as I watched the shuttles landing and part of me felt Seivarden's hands touching my face which was bleeding and not bleeding and covered in ash and clean and painted and plain. My ears and feet and voice and body didn't fit. I couldn't find where the joints should be and I needed to find them so I could get to Anaander Mianaai. I couldn't move if I didn't find the right neural map for the right body, but there were so many maps lighting up and blinding me.
"- she have any history of -"
- killed me -
"- a stranger, really, but she never acted like - I mean, the last few weeks she's been a bit -"
- let me sing but you would -
"I'm going to sedate her before she breaks her nose walking into walls again. Does she have any medication allergies that you know of?"
"That - that's probably -"
- killed me -
Part of me slept. The parts the doctor didn't know about ran on and on in the dark.
---
First I heard humming, soft under the cacophony from my faces. I knew the song, but none of me were the ones singing. The singer's voice was rough and flat; I strained to listen to it so I could recognize its owner, and the clamor slowly began to fade until the humming was all that I heard.
Then I tasted dull, lumpy rice gruel, with a hint of spiced sweetness. The taste woke a grinding ache somewhere in myself, a need for more, and the parts of me that were aware of it reached to identify and connect to the need. Hunger, one part said, I'm hungry, and that part I clung to, following the synaptic pathways and drawing their network around myself, reclaiming control of the body.
I opened a pair of eyes and saw Seivarden hovering over me, a half-empty bowl in her hands. "Breq?" she said; she sounded hoarse, as if she'd overused her voice recently. "Is it - is it you?"
"Yes," I said, "it's me," but behind Seivarden's head the sun of Valskaay still shone.
Ancillary Justice, characters, etc. © Ann Leckie and these books are so great for having AI/zombie cyborg soldier feelings, READ THEM.
Crossposted from Dreamwidth - read the original post here: http://brief-transit.dreamwidth.org/192359.html .
Contains: Minor violent imagery, reality issues, unreliable senses.
Three, Four, the Corpse Soldier
I hummed, and so did someone else.
I was watching Seivarden clean the floor, not very well; someone else held white flowers with thin petals tipped in blue, and her humming was out of tune with mine. I stopped so I could hear her song better, but a mechanical roaring sound cut her off, and I saw that Seivarden had stopped cleaning as well. "Did I do something wrong?" she asked.
"No," I said, and then, "You've missed a spot. Over in the corner."
It was not the first time I had heard other songs while I was singing, but it was the first time I saw an image to go with them. I had other things to think about, so I concentrated on those instead, and no other images or songs appeared. For a little while.
---
I put a bite of rations into my mouth and tasted antiseptic bitterness, the aftertaste of correctives.
"Has it gone bad?" Seivarden ate a little of her own meal and grimaced. "Mine hasn't, if you want to try it... Hardly the finest quality, though."
The metal in my brain (but it's not your brain) rang against my tongue (and it's not your tongue). "It's fine." I tried another bite, and the taste was normal. I continued to eat, despite the occasional mouthful of ash.
---
The wall beside me was not there.
The rest of the ship enclosed me as usual; it was only the wall on my right that was gone. Whenever I looked over at it, I saw Valskaayan hills and sky rolling out into the distance. Sometimes I heard a phrase or two of song, drifting on a wind I could not feel.
I remembered many songs from Valskaay and answered each one I recognized, but received no response. Whoever was singing couldn't hear me, no matter how I wanted them to. Or perhaps they no longer knew my voice.
"Do I need to scrub that wall again?" Seivarden asked tiredly. "I didn't know walls could even collect so much grime."
"No. Leave it."
I took a walk in the ship's halls, but the right wall remained Valskaay wherever I went.
---
"Are you all right? You just don't seem yourself, lately."
The itch of blood leaking down my chin distracted me unbearably, but I managed to say, "It's nothing." The person with the white and blue flowers was humming again, and the winds of Valskaay carried the scent of its earth, and I was bleeding from at least five different wounds, not counting what flowed from my mouth. None of it was real, and I had more important work to focus on. But I wasn't focusing enough; every few minutes another song or spiking pain or flash of sunlight insisted on my attention, and unlike the I who was Justice of Toren, I who was Breq had a limited amount of attention to give.
How much was I slipping, if even miserable, self-absorbed Seivarden could see that whatever self I had was splitting apart?
I breathed in smoke and tried to hum something that Lieutenant Awn had liked, but the tune kept fluttering off-key and into other melodies. Seivarden busied herself with some small task and sometimes looked at me, but she didn't speak again, or if she did, I couldn't hear her over the noise.
---
I woke up and they were all there, the faces I stole. They were supposed to become my faces but they were never really mine, and when I tried to put them on again they shouted at me in their languages and held me down on a medic's table and wouldn't let me sing.
I could have controlled them if I were myself, but I wasn't anymore. I wasn't one of them, either. They shouted and bled and ran through fire until they lay in cold storage to wait for me, but I couldn't have them. I could only have the pieces of them that kept screaming.
- killed me -
- around the planet, it goes around -
- killed me -
- my daughter's blood and then you killed me -
- killed me -
- wind blowing smoke away from my house and you -
Part of me sat up and part of me tried to walk out into the fields and part of me was singing and part of me crushed flowers in my hands as I watched the shuttles landing and part of me felt Seivarden's hands touching my face which was bleeding and not bleeding and covered in ash and clean and painted and plain. My ears and feet and voice and body didn't fit. I couldn't find where the joints should be and I needed to find them so I could get to Anaander Mianaai. I couldn't move if I didn't find the right neural map for the right body, but there were so many maps lighting up and blinding me.
"- she have any history of -"
- killed me -
"- a stranger, really, but she never acted like - I mean, the last few weeks she's been a bit -"
- let me sing but you would -
"I'm going to sedate her before she breaks her nose walking into walls again. Does she have any medication allergies that you know of?"
"That - that's probably -"
- killed me -
Part of me slept. The parts the doctor didn't know about ran on and on in the dark.
---
First I heard humming, soft under the cacophony from my faces. I knew the song, but none of me were the ones singing. The singer's voice was rough and flat; I strained to listen to it so I could recognize its owner, and the clamor slowly began to fade until the humming was all that I heard.
Then I tasted dull, lumpy rice gruel, with a hint of spiced sweetness. The taste woke a grinding ache somewhere in myself, a need for more, and the parts of me that were aware of it reached to identify and connect to the need. Hunger, one part said, I'm hungry, and that part I clung to, following the synaptic pathways and drawing their network around myself, reclaiming control of the body.
I opened a pair of eyes and saw Seivarden hovering over me, a half-empty bowl in her hands. "Breq?" she said; she sounded hoarse, as if she'd overused her voice recently. "Is it - is it you?"
"Yes," I said, "it's me," but behind Seivarden's head the sun of Valskaay still shone.
Ancillary Justice, characters, etc. © Ann Leckie and these books are so great for having AI/zombie cyborg soldier feelings, READ THEM.
Crossposted from Dreamwidth - read the original post here: http://brief-transit.dreamwidth.org/192359.html .