Imperial Radch Fandom Meme

Disclaimer: I know nothing about traumatic head injury or retrograde amnesia. But this is angsty fanficland, we don't need medical knowledge!
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“Come with me,” said the fleet captain, and touched the cuff of her sleeve. What had the medic called her? Breq Mianaai. Seivarden mouthed the name to herself, longing to taste some meaning, some memory. But there was nothing. Only empty uncertainty.

Seivarden stood up. Breq Mianaai’s fingers closed around her wrist like a steel vise. A clear warning. Don’t try to make a break for it. For the first time Seivarden felt actual physical fear. This was not a person she wanted to try and fight.

Obediently, docilely, she let herself be led from the decade room.

“Where are we going?” she asked.

“Your quarters,” Breq Mianaai said.

“Are you going to lock me in?”

“Yes,” the captain said, baldly. “I can’t have you assaulting my officers.”

Seivarden looked down at her boots, and watched herself putting one in front of the other. Her face was hot. Nothing made sense, and she was so angry. “Fuck you,” she spat. “Fuck you, fuck you.”

But she didn’t stop, or try to break free.

They didn’t pass any ancillaries or officers or officers pretending to be ancillaries. The ship must be keeping them away.

“Fuck you too, ship,” she muttered.

“Sir,” the ship said in her ear, smooth accent impeccable. Fuck it.

Her quarters were about the same size as they’d been on Justice of Toren, which was to say, too small, and cramped, but the room was just different enough to be unfamiliar. Seivarden sat down on the bed, and reached for her boots automatically and then stopped. Breq Mianaai remained standing.

“How did I get here?” Seivarden asked. “I mean, after I… was found?”

“The Lord of the Radch assigned you as my first officer,” the captain said. “It was a time of unrest. We were sent to Athoek System to protect the planet.”

“Athoek?” Seivarden asked. “Where the fuck is Athoek?”

“About one thousand light years from what you remember as the edge of Radch space,” she said.

“Why this ship?” Why you?

“It was the only one available.”

“How long ago was that?”

“About three years ago.”

Seivarden stared at her boots.

Who are you to me? she wanted to ask, but didn’t.

After a moment, the captain turned and left. The door closed behind her. Seivarden stood up and tried to manually open it. It remained closed.

She went back to the bed and laid down, folding her arms across her chest and staring up at the ceiling light. A minute later she sat up and struggled out of her uniform pants and jacket, and pulled off her shirt so she was only in her underwear. She laid back down and moved her gloved hands down across her chest and stomach and thighs, slowly feeling the shape of her ribcage and hips, fingers running into unfamiliar ridges of what she realized had to be scar tissue. Scars? Had medicine gone backwards while she’d been gone? There was a harsh line of puckered skin across her abdomen where her armor implant was located.

She touched her face, and felt unfamiliar lines. Skin rougher than it should be. She touched the bald fuzz of her head. At least that was explained by whatever the medic had needed to do to her skull.

She realized she’d forgotten to ask what the accident had been that had taken her memory from her. And then realized that she actually believed the story now. It was the most sensible explanation for the available evidence, apart from her just hallucinating all of this, which would be stupid.

She blinked. Her vision had suddenly changed. She was looking down at herself. She understood what was happening because she always had Sword of Nathtas show her herself every morning, so she could check that the ancillaries had done a good job with her makeup. But it was still jarring. Mostly because she still didn’t quite recognize her new face. It was so thin and haggard and older. Not that visibly older but you could see age when it was on your own face.

“That’s enough, Ship,” she said harshly, and rolled over and buried her face against her arm.

“Sir,” the ship said. “Lieutenant Tisarwat wishes to enter.”

“Lieutenant Tisarwat?” Seivarden said. She grabbed at her pants and tried to put them on, but got tangled up and had to pause and take a few deep breaths before trying again. She abandoned the jacket and shrugged into the undershirt. “Come in,” she said.

The door slid open and a young, fresh-faced person came in. Normally Seivarden didn’t notice people’s eye colors, but this person’s irises were a really stupid bright artificial purple. Seivarden winced and looked away. Aatr’s tits, was this what young people did with their money in the future?

“Hello,” she said. “I’m- Tisarwat. Bo Lieutenant Tisarwat.”

“Nice to meet you, I suppose,” Seivarden said sourly. The girl seemed to be avoiding looking at her. Seivarden sighed, and pulled on her jacket. Tisarwat looked up, face reddening slightly. Had they been sexually involved? Seivarden couldn’t see herself- any herself- getting involved with someone with bad enough taste to do their eyes like that. Sometimes younger officers could get weirdly embarrassed about seeing their superiors in any level of disarray.

There weren’t any chairs, and Seivarden didn’t want the girl looming over her, so she pushed herself off the bed and sat on the carpeted floor. Tisarwat hesitated, and then sat down across from her. She reached up to her very neat uniform jacket, which Seivarden saw was covered with pins, and undid a few buttons so she could unpin one of them. She held it out to Seivarden, who stared and then took it.

“You gave this to me,” Tisarwat said, and Seivarden had a jolt of, fuck, were we actually- before she continued, “after my first year of service. You said you were proud of me and I was a good officer.”

Seivarden looked at the pin. It was small, a platinum disc engraved with what had to be Mercy of Kalr’s insignia and Tisarwat’s- personal name, not house name? Attached was polished round pieces of aquamarine and heliotrope. A gift for a younger cousin who you were close to.

“I don’t know what the stones mean,” Tisarwat said. “I’m pretty sure they meant different things in your time than they do now. And you didn’t explain.”

Seivarden tilted her hand a little, feeling the lightness of the pin, hearing the stones roll and lightly hit each other. You’d give something like this to your favorite baby relative after they took their aptitudes, if the disk was silver, or when they got their first assignment, if it was platinum. Seivarden had never bought anything like this. She hadn’t had a favorite relative. There hadn’t been babies around when she’d been a teen, and later family gatherings were excuses to get drunk and try to avoid her mother.

Come to think of it, she’d never received anything like this, either.

“I thought maybe it would help you remember,” said the child with the stupid purple eyes.

“It doesn’t,” Seivarden said, mouth dry. “I don’t remember it. I don’t remember you.” Carefully, she held out her hand, and after several long seconds felt Tisarwat take the pin back.

“Oh,” Tisarwat said. “Well, it was just a thought.”

Seivarden swallowed. “Tell me,” she said, “do you know what happened to me? How I lost my memory and woke up in that med bay?”

Tisarwat hesitated. Seivarden wondered tiredly if she was going to get another carefully limited, short statement. But when Tisarwat spoke, she sounded entirely earnest.

“You saved the captain’s life, sir! And Administrator Celar, and Kalr Nine, and Citizen Basnaaid! A political dissident tried to kill Administrator Celar at the docks. She was right in front of an airlock, so she could get away after she killed the Administrator and everyone with her. There was a huge crowd of people. The Fleet Captain and Citizen Basnaaid were talking with Administrator Celar. You were with me on the other side of the concourse.

The Fleet Captain could have handled the shooter, but she was too far away. You were a lot closer, and you grabbed her and pushed her into the airlock and Station slammed the door down. But you didn’t have your gun or your armor and she shot you in the head, sir!”

Seivarden winced, and reached up to touch her head again. It felt whole.

“The Fleet Captain had run over by then and we both saw it. I was sure you were dead, sir, and I think everyone else was too. Fleet Captain was so angry. I never heard her talk to Station like that before. She didn’t have a gun on her either, but her armor- uh.” At last there was a brief pause. “She had her armor on her, and she got Station to open the door and when the shooter tried to come out she broke her legs. It was- it was a lot. I got to you and you were still breathing. Your head was bleeding a lot. I was panicking but Fleet Captain had just made us all brush up on first aid. I applied a corrective and then kept your head still until the medics arrived.”

“Thank you,” Seivarden said. The lieutenant sounded so young. She couldn’t be more than twenty.

“You were only out a couple days,” Tisarwat said. “Fleet Captain was so angry,” she repeated.

“Yeah,” Seivarden said. “I think she’s still angry. This memory thing can’t have helped.” She remembered the flat voice. The way it had said, ‘You did something very foolish.’ She shivered.

“I heard you attacked Lieutenant Ekalu,” Tisarwat said, in a low voice.

“Yes,” Seivarden said. “I did.”

It occurred to her suddenly that it would be very easy to overpower this very young lieutenant. The ship would close the door. But could it close it fast enough?

“You don’t trust us,” Tisarwat said.

“Would you?” Seivarden asked. “I don’t know any of you. I don’t know this place. Everything I’ve been told sounds ridiculous, except I can’t fucking think of any other explanation for anything. I can barely understand you because of your terrible accent. Why would a Radchaai officer sound so uneducated? Why would she have such stupid fucking eyes? Why would I be serving on a dingy little Mercy in some nowhere system? What kind of Fleet Captain commands a Mercy? What the fuck has happened to the Radch?”

Tisarwat’s face was flushed again. “You’re not yourself,” she said, with such superior magnanimity that Seivarden wanted to hit her.

“Listen, kiddo,” she said, “you’re really not as clever as you think you are, and I wish Breq would teach you some respect for your superiors one of these days. Don’t forget I knew you when you were seventeen and wet behind the ears.”

She heard Tisarwat gasp. “What did you just call me?”

Seivarden mentally reviewed what she’d just said, and felt cold terror settle on her. She stood up. “Get the fuck out,” she said.

“Seivarden,” Tisarwat said, sounding on the edge of tears.

“Get the fuck out!” Seivarden shouted. “Leave me alone!”

She saw Tisarwat read something invisible, a message from the ship or the captain, presumably. The kid stood up. The door opened just briefly enough for her to back out of, and then closed again.

Seivarden punched the wall.

She felt her wrist break. The pain was incredible, but familiar, and she stared at her hand, mind grabbing at something that was almost, almost there.

Through the white-hot screaming pain, she thought, Breq, and heard the thought in her head as though someone else was speaking it. Ekalu. Tisarwat.

But she couldn’t remember.