HARK! How the bells, sweet silver bells...

[piper90npcs]

Who: Everyone
What: Holiday Events
Where: Piper 90 - The Rig
When: Post-Rose Tattoo
Warnings/Notes: Holiday cheer, smooches, tactical snowball action

It's the Holiday Season in the Gone Away World and on the Rig in particular! Though they claim to be open to any cultural celebration of this time of year, the dominance of Santa Claus, reindeer, and elves in decorating really kind of blunt that claim. But the PA system, when not blaring alarms or fuzzy announcements for working party C to show up at the maintenance bay, play Christmas tunes of all sorts at inconvenient volumes. Decorations hang limply from the walls. And every worker with children has been issued a shotgun and a bandoleer of shells loaded with pellets of cold iron.

Just in case.

Comments

[takenalive]

Alloran is more familiar with extreme, uncontrolled expressions of distress. Hosts in the Pool have little reason to hide their feelings and often find solace in a few hours of unrestrained expression. He can still catch something of a suggestion, and assumes she's thinking of some instance where limited vision proved tragic. It must be a common problem with humans.

Gingerly he shifts his free hand to clasp hers between them. His fingers are held firm instead of wrapping, almost the formal expression of condolence, though he doesn't remember quite how that goes after so much time.

<I regret reminding you. It is...> Alloran pauses and scuffs a forehoof on the floor, recognizing that he's about to be condescending and trying to rephrase. <It seems difficult to be human, though I imagine one grows accustomed.>

[breq]

Oh. She realizes what she's doing and glances down at her hand between his; alien and different but still some of the closest touching she's allowed herself in some time. What is she doing? Does she bother saying it? Would anyone here even care? They don't know about the Radch, about Anaander or the Presger gun or any of it. She shouldn't.

She does.

"You do," she replies quietly, "But I'm not human. Maybe that's why it's difficult."

[takenalive]

One of his ears flicks. Of course she's human, only humans look like that - but that's just the first reflex, of course. The Rig is crowded with individuals who appear completely human, more like humans than Garatrons are like Andalites, and profess otherwise. He's kept his thoughts on that - mostly that it's confusing and they have to all be closely related offshoots because how could something like that evolve twice - to himself and decides it's better to continue to do so.

<Very well. What are you?>

[breq]

"It's a long story," she replies quietly, settling her back against the wall. They can have this conversation here. She doesn't much mind. Her attention is on him, anyway, trying to read his reaction.

"But I wasn't always Breq. I was - I am - Justice of Toren. A Radchaai troop carrier. An AI. I wasn't born; I was built. And this is all that's left of me."

[takenalive]

If their hands have pulled apart he brings his back to their neutral position, which is vaguely rat- or meerkat-like, bent slightly at wrist and elbow. The contrast of skin and fur highlights any motion they make.

Alloran stretches his stalk eyes up, an expression of surprise, and brings one to bear, glancing Breq up and down. The other moves on in an unhurried scan, checking and rechecking surroundings.

<An organic technology?< Not an unfamiliar idea, but it's weird to think of humans going in that direction. Human structures seem so lifeless to him. The Rig is just a box filled with boxes.

[breq]

"No, as a matter of fact...." Her tone has become more emotionless, her face more of a mask.

"I was a ship. A computer core. I - this body - is an ancillary. A human body fitted with implants so I could control it. So it - I - would be a part of me."

[takenalive]

He narrows his eyes, ears lowering, tail rising - not all the way to the ready posture with the blade poised to strike, but higher than the level of his back. Belatedly Alloran remembers the start of this conversation. So your actions weren't your own.

<I'm going to need you to explain in more detail. If you're all that's left, and I don't believe there's a signal maintained to anyone's home universes, are you the implants, or the brain?>

He sings something as he says that, a woven projection of sensation and emotion that takes a lot of unpacking, really. Tension as of being confined in a small space and shut away from grass and sky, stillness as of waiting, heft as of a blade, a desire to dig at the ear as if something is stuck clinging.

[breq]

Ah, she can read that reaction. Unfortunate. She feels a sting of bitter disappointment. But isn't that natural? She encounters the same in people in her own universe. She gestures ambivalence.

"I'm both. I was the ship. I was a computer core. I had officers and ancillaries; I am the 19th segment of the Esk decade of the Justice of Toren. That's me. Whoever this person was before she became me... no longer exists. I don't have her memories. Only my own. Two thousand years of life as a ship and my ancillaries."

There's that flat intonation; the expressionless face.

"I was - she was - we both were - equipment."

[takenalive]

This is much like a very long term host affect, Alloran recognizes. The reasons are most likely different. In an odd, grim way he's enjoying himself.

<I see the use of that. Demoralize enemy forces by converting prisoners into one's forward banner. Though, I never ceased to exist. It would be a kindness if yours actually has. How would you even know?>

He sings an unreal but vivid image-concept with that one, a paralyzed horror, an alien's possessive satisfaction, and the billowing curl and crack of this 'forward banner' whose colors and emblems strike fear and outrage from the Herd watching it at the head of the enemy's army. That was one of us! Why didn't he die? We could be next! It's a modification from a quasi-historical epic song.

[breq]

Breq gestures ambivalence again. It's difficult to explain, really, and she's hoping she can maange it.

"How do you know you're you?" She replies, posing a rather rhetorical question, "I don't remember anything about her. I don't have her emotions, her hopes, her fears. She's gone. There's only me."

The "song" is an appropriate one. There's a pause and then she sings herself. Her voice is not suited for it, but she does it anyway.

The person, the person, the person with weapons.
You should be afraid of the person with weapons. You should be afraid.
All around the cry goes out, put on armor made of iron.
The person, the person, the person with weapons.
You should be afraid of the person with weapons. You should be afraid.

[takenalive]

He's had little exposure to human music and finds the polished forms to be on the confusing, unpleasant side. Breq's singing comes across as something closer to ritual poetry, not as objectionable or as something to try and tune out.

Alloran considers it, his eyes still hard, and lowers his tail by one measure.

<If you've never had the ability to see her thoughts and memories, how do you know they have stopped?> An idea has come to him that he doesn't like - that he could morph Yeerk and find out. Which is absurd, for a lot of reasons.

[breq]

"Because the implants aren't designed to allow them to continue," Breq replies with a gesture of surety. She knows how this works.

"I've seen it done - felt it done - a thousand, thousand times. Each and every time, they become - they became - a part of me. Extensions of me. Hands and feet and eyes for me to use."

She looks him in the eyes, as sure of anything in her life, "And I would not allow you to unmake me. I am the last of myself."

[takenalive]

Unconvinced, Alloran holds one eyestalk higher than the other, giving the impression of a raised eyebrow.

He flicks his fingers while swaying his tail. No and melodramatic, which probably also refers to what he's about to say. <Outside of my skill set. I'm just a warrior.>

All he can do is kill people. Kill people, and relate politics. Alloran takes a moment now to take stock and work past his reaction. This being here is a kind of technological Yeerk in a supposedly nonconscious host. He has accepted that Yeerks are people, despite the repulsive way they function.

<There is no one who chooses the circumstances of their birth,> he says at last, and with a dry lack of inflection that's almost ancillary. <I am sure you miss your other slaves. You will not take me as one. For that matter, you will not take anyone else here.>

People will command him, even coerce him, but he is not a slave in the way that a host is a slave. He will never be a slave again.

[breq]

Of course. He assumes she wants to make more of her. That she wants to become what she once was. He's not entirely wrong, of course. She misses it - being a ship, with her ancillaries. She can't go back, though. She's gone and this is all that's left. Even if she wanted to, she doesn't think she could carry on with forcing people into becoming ancillaries. Not anymore.

She breathes.

"I miss what I was," she replies quietly, "As you would if you were a mere fragment. But I cannot go back to it. And I wouldn't. Not now. You don't understand me, Honored."

She makes a conciliatory gesture, "Even if I wanted to become something like what I once was, I couldn't. I don't have the technology here and I'm not a ship anymore. There's no way for me to... plug back in and become that again. This is what I am now. Who I am. My only goal is to find the person who destroyed me, who killed my lieutenant, and kill them. Which is a long story all on its own."

[takenalive]

Alloran's tripartate nostrils flare as she says I miss what I was. He is not at all sure that Breq couldn't or can't make more implants and take more hosts - he's always been too masculine to understand very much technology - and it's even harder to tell when aliens are lying than others of his own kind.

It's an interesting story whether or not he believes it, anyway.

<And so now you're in a rattling metal box, coerced by venal primitive humans into doing scutwork that nominally preserves them from extinction.>

[breq]

"Something like that," she replies with a gesture of resignation, "But I've spent twenty years trying to get to them. I can wait a little while longer. Even if I would rather not..."

She can be patient, even if so much of her burns with impatience.

"I suppose I just... recognize the situation you were in once. Even if it isn't precisely the same."

[takenalive]

There is not a lot Alloran has to go back to, not realistically. Contact with his wife and children, at great distance, and after so much time, will probably not go as he's fantasized about. His people might not even allow him back home - and if they did, could he really move with the rhythms of peacetime anymore?

<It's not. We have been on different ends of a similar experience. Have you ever had to watch some foul little upstart use you to kill your own people and advance?> He sings a sensory impression, most distinctly a taste. Oil, a stab of pain in the mouth, burnt fur, bleeding flesh. A bright star winking out, a terrible weight. Nausea.

[breq]

"Not exactly. But they did make me kill someone I cared a great deal about."

It's odd, what makes someone finally decide to stop. To finally decide to do what might be the "right thing". For her, it was making her kill one of her favorites.

"I was a tool and a weapon," she continues after a moment, "But I don't want to be any longer."

[takenalive]

He considers, scrutinizing her with all four eyes until the worn-down vestige of prey-animal paranoia rises and one of them returns to its check, scanning and swiveling.

<Empires, eh?> Alloran asks dryly, and holds his forearms one across the other, not quite touching, to say with some irony, <The pain in me sings with the pain in you.>

[breq]

"Empires," she agrees drily, "Are not really all that good for anyone. Well - I suppose they're good for some people. But not good for everyone else."