The first time you can ever bring yourself to speak to her, it is through your onboard network.
AA: why me
When you receive no answer, you attempt to again lose yourself in the exploration of your new body, and do your best to persuade yourself that there is something to enjoy about this life. You ignore your cameras, and after only a few minutes of internal fumbling, manage to designate an automated subprocess to monitor all video feed. The sight of trolls hasn't stopped being painful yet. As such, you miss the sight of the Alternian heiress pelting through the halls. It is only when she triggers your proximity alarm that you are pulled back into your body with an almost painful jolt.
She is standing in front of your physical interface. You are sure to adjust every single camera so that she is the only body framed, and not the thing that used to be you. Briefly, you are caught in a rush of anger that she would deliberately pull your focus here and miss entirely that she has started speaking, and are forced to internally replay the audio records.
"What do you mean, 'why you'?"
AA: why me
AA: there are str0nger tr0lls
AA: many
AA: there was n0 reas0n
She stares determinedly at the body, even while her palmhusk sounds alerts. But from everything you have seen, patience is not one of her strongest virtues. She reads your messages, and you are recording her from every angle, intent on her response, but her face reflects nothing but polite confusion.
"You're strong enough!" Her grin is probably meant to be friendly. "You've managed some amazing things with your psionics, haven't you?"
AA: barely w0rth a helm rating
AA: n0t w0rth a flagship
AA: why me
She steps up closer to the body. You let her slip out of frame rather than readjust your cameras that far. "Don't worry! With the augmentations you're definitely strong enough to helm. Past records do show that helms tend to see the psi capabilities increase over time with frequent exertion of their powers, and you'll take care of that for shore!"
AA: why me
She takes a few steps back, and way she shifts foot to foot and stares at the floor is puzzling. It isn't as though you have any power to affect her, or even to demand an answer. You are beginning to let your awareness slide back, away from the chamber, allowing the cameras to return to their default mountings when she finally speaks again.
"I've always read that the best way to captain a ship is to really get to know your helm. Quadrantmates, or at least friends. And I thought that maybe… you were a troll I could be friends with. Someday."
AA: the empress d0esnt captain a ship
AA: liar
You don't have the permissions to deactivate the microphones in the helmblock, but you can shift your attention elsewhere and overwrite the audio files with any meaningless garbage you can find. An alert comes through the system that there is interference with the wetware, and an automated camera feed opens to show her touching the body's shoulder. You deactivate it immediately, and make sure that no trace remains of the audio recordings. For good measure, you file a report of helm interference in the ship logs, infracting Feferi Peixes for in engaging in unauthorized activities with ship hardware, potentially sabotage.
After a few days, you find yourself unable to convince yourself that the demands of maintaining stable orbit are keeping you occupied any longer. Ignoring your captain's messages and visits only takes a small fraction of your time. Outgoing communications are buried under mountains of strict regulations and security checks that are deliberately protected from your potential interference. And the shipboard gossip is, frankly, boring. Net access is unrestricted, provided you do not attempt to access social media in any way. You don't trust it. You spend some time researching how much damage a ship can take before life support fails and read every page you can find about the deaths of the previous Alternian empresses, then sit back and wait for the consequences.
All you get are some concerned messages
CC: )(-ELLO!
CC: I shore hope you aren't thinking of doing anyfin drastic! 38(
CC: The programming accounts for that! It would only hurt you for trying to damage the ship or crew.
CC: If you need to talk to someone, I'll sea if I can visit you this evening?
She sits in your block and talks at the body, forcing you to maintain camera surveillance and stand at attention for security purposes. Wonderful. Even when she has enough of carrying on a one-sided conversation and reaches for her palmhusk you provide no responses to any of her messages.
No matter how many alarming topics you find to research online, her reactions never get any more serious than that. Not even when you search for how a helm could kill their entire crew, or most effective methods of battleship sabotage. It is something of a disappointment, though she never stops sending you regular messages asking how you're doing, or whether you'd like her to come visit you.
AA: shipb0ard cameras are active at all times
AA: t0 c0me t0 the helmsbl0ck w0uld be redundant
You do not sleep anymore, but in the flood of messages that follow that reply, you think you can recall what it is like to feel exhausted.
Since you can't find a way to provoke her, all that seems to remain is to entertain yourself. Even the endless charms of troll Bachelor get old after a while. The more you use the net, the more you expect her to suddenly come down on you with restrictions and limitations. Give the wiggler something sweet, then take it away and watch it do anything to earn it back. The moment you get comfortable is when she'll hurt you. At least, perhaps, you can do something constructive with the time you have left.
You research helmsmen. There isn't a chance that there would be uncensored information on the net like got passed around by word of mouth when you were young, but that's why you'd all talked about it back then, wasn't it? Like horror stories to scare wigglers, except all of you psionics were too aware that this could be your future. Remember what you hear, because they'll never let you learn it after you're installed. You'd listened more for Sollux. You'd never really believed you were strong enough to be a helm.
It's an unpleasant mix of disgust and fascination, reading these articles. How to pick a high-potential helm. How to train your helm. Most common helm behavioral problems and how to fix them. Entire forums where highbloods share their funniest helm training stories. "Funniest." Websites devoted on how to trick a helm into a quadrant. On one level, it's interesting to see the other side of the stories you heard when you were young. Instead of how to stay out of sight and slip through ascension without being caught, it's how to spot a psionic trying to hide. Instead of making a space for yourself in your own head and staying sane, even after installation, there are entire sites on how to break a helm. The honesty is almost refreshing.
It makes you feel sick to read that kind of material for too long. No matter how much you remember from when you were a troll, you don't know what you can do. There's so much against you. Hundreds and hundreds of sites on how to break through all your barriers and shape you into whatever your captain wants you to be. You try to shake it off and brace yourself for whatever she has prepared. If you look through her browser history and see what websites and forums she favors, you might be able to get a better picture of what she plans to do to you.
Well. She's visited very few of those sites and has spent almost no time on the ones she's opened. Not what you had expected. She must have some kind of plan for you, though. Even if she isn't on the throne just yet, there isn't a chance the heiress would take a flagship and neglect to finish conditioning the helm. You just don't know whether she'll be honest about it, or if she'll try to make you believe it's what you've always wanted.
When you dig deeper into her browser history, searching for clues, you find out that the future ruler of the Alternian empire has a Trollmblr. You can't sigh anymore, but pushing air through the ventilation ducts at higher speed is almost the same. That is an unconscionable security breach. And what does she use it for? To reblog pictures of cuttlefish, sea life, bubbly inspirational quotes, and—helmsman stories.
In a way, these stories are even harder to take than those other sites. At least those places knew what they were trying to do, and they didn't try to sugarcoat it in a disgusting, cloying layer of romance. They hadn't been anything like spaceship-spades, supposedly run by a captain and her helm, nominally an askblog but with half of the posts nothing but them just sniping at each other. Really, who expects any kismessitude to be that disgustingly perfect? Even wiggler cartoons are more realistic than that. Then there are the blogs that do nothing but post photos of captains and their quadranted helms. You aren't sure whether to be horribly embarrassed that these helms are forced to endure having pictures of themselves being papped right there on the internet or angry that a captain would force their ship to go that far. You spend time looking closely at the pictures, trying to tell whether that's a real snarl, or whether they're just being forced to play it up for the photo. That captain might be showing off the scars from a bite, but how badly was the helmsman punished off-camera?
It makes you so angry to see your captain reblogging these things without once stopping to question. Adding captions like )(OW SW-E-ET! 38D don't help matters. She even posts drawings sometimes, and you can hardly believe it. Badly drawn pictures of helms and captains in every quadrant, even—is that a helm auspictizing between two trolls? As if anyone would ever believe a helm would be allowed to meddle to that extent, or that a captain would let their helm have that much influence!
From her captions, these seem to be characters from a series of books. You almost don't want to look them up, and you are sure that they're going to be unpleasant, but you can't stop yourself. Well. Books for actual wigglers, you don't know why you're surprised. The Seventh Fleet Helmsmen's Club. Just the pictures they use for the covers make you want to roll your eyes. Apparently your captain's art was, in fact, more restrained that the original material. You would have thought there were only so many ways to pap a helm through the mess of biowires, but these cover artists are. Imaginative.
The summaries of the stories are so ridiculous that you almost doubt that even wigglers could stomach them. "Someone's been sneaking rations from the galley, but they don't show up on Clavia's cameras! How can she get to the bottom of this mystery when even her moirail doesn't believe her?" "The new life support engineer has asked Ermand to be matesprits, but his captain has been flipping from black to red and has been too shy to let him know! With tension rising, is this the end of Ermand and Treima?" It's gross. It's so gross. The series starts with the helms already installed (of course it does) and happy with their station. It's all quadrants and friendship and mysteries and problems so minor you can't imagine why someone decided to write a book about it. You flip through the one where the helm starts to auspistize between her captain and first mate, just to see how bad it gets, and well. It's even worse than you thought. The writers even let ships be in quadrants with each other and that's what finally sends you over the edge. This is the kind of tripe your captain enjoys? She likes these enough to draw pictures from them? This is the life she thinks you'll have?
It's a step too far, and you know it, but you can't stop yourself. You change her Trollmblr password and contact information, even change her username so she can't find her old archives. For good measure, you delete every digital copy of the books she has on her computer. You're almost tempted to make a post outing her identity, but even if you were good enough at programming to find a way around your social media restrictions, you can't quite bring yourself to do that. If she gets taken down, they'd never let a helm she trained survive. You're alive (for a questionable value of alive), and you intend to stay that way. You settle in to watch "In which a helmsman breaks his conditioning and kills the crew of his vessel, excepting a lone heroic scienterrorist who becomes aware of the error, ultimately deactivating the helm during a humorous musical number, etc., etc," while you wait for her to find out what you've done. You're about to lose all your net access, so you might as well finish on a subversive note.
She always finished her nights by logging onto Trollmblr and staying on until she's falling asleep at her desk. As soon as she gets back to her quarters, you pause the movie and turn your full attention to the feed from her room. You have a perfect view of her face as she opens her husktop and tries to log on. And tries to log on again. You're laughing to yourself as she tries to reset the password and spends some minutes staring at her inbox waiting for an email that doesn't come. You're sorry, that message seems to have been diverted to NotCuttlefishCuller instead, how could that have happened? It takes less time than you would have expected before her head snaps up and she glares right at your camera. Whoops, there go your net privileges! Her shoulders slump as she heads out of the room, and you go back to see if you can finish streaming your movie before you get cut off.
No, it's your proximity alarm that pulls you away from the film for the second time. Your captain is standing in your block. She doesn't look as angry as you'd expected. Mostly she just looks sad. You think she's waiting for you to talk, but you don't have anything to say to her. And you can outwait her. You test your permissions to see if you can make your block lowblood-warm and force her out, but she realizes what you're doing before it gets too far and snaps, "Stop that!"
A direct order. Your programming might force you to stop, but you don't lower the temperature again. She's got her arms folded and is frowning at the body. You don't respond. Finally she sighs and sinks down to the floor. She wraps her arms around her legs and buries her face in her knees. "Why would you delete it? That was the only thing I had for me."
AA: take the net
AA: y0u were g0ing t0 anyways
AA: st0p playing games
AA: c0nditi0n me
AA: break me
AA: just d0 it h0nestly
"I don't want to break you! I told you, I want to be friends!"
AA: d0n't lie
AA: that's h0w y0u make a helm
AA: n0 tr0ll wants this
AA: n0 tr0ll is happy bec0ming this
The palmhusk sits on the floor between her feet, and you can't see her face at all past the mass of her hair. "That's not true! Shore, maybe the initial transition can be difficult, but you get used to it over time. You can learn to be happy, everyone's stories say—"
AA: wiggler st0ries
AA: highbl00d wiggler st0ries
AA: the st0ries I heard were ab0ut h0w not to be caught
AA: h0w t0 run
AA: h0w to hide
AA: n0t h0w a dashing captain w0uld sweep me 0ff my feet
AA: win me 0ver
AA: fated quadrantmates
AA: 0r best friends
AA: it's a lie
AA: aradia's captain b0ught her a present f0r twelfth perigees eve
AA: but 0h n0
AA: aradia f0rg0t t0 place her 0rder and the present f0r her captain w0nt arrive in time
AA: what will she d0
When she looks up, she's blushing and ashamed and curls in on herself even further. "They're nice stories." You make no answer. "Don't you want friends? Or quadrants?"
AA: i had b0th
AA: i had b0th!
"But I—"
AA: d0nt expect me t0 ever f0rget
AA: that y0u were the 0ne wh0 t00k them
She looks small, huddled there on the floor. Not like royalty. Not like a captain. She puts her face back against her knees and speaks in a whisper so small that your microphones barely pick it up. "I don't have either. I wanted to try."
AA: kidnap an0ther tr0ll
AA: brainwash the helm
AA: r0und tw0
AA: i was never str0ng en0ugh for a flagship
AA: dec0mmissi0n me n0w rather than later
AA: i knew it was c0ming
"You are strong enough! I meant that! I don't want to decommission you at all." When she looks up again, you feel almost bad for her. Even when you had a face, your emotions were never so painfully transparent. "If I had to choose between having the fastest ship in the fleet and being close to my helm, I know which one I'd want. That's why I picked you! In Helmsman Mayrie Saves the Day—"
AA: th0se b00ks are lies!
AA: lies f0r stupid highbl00d wigglers
AA: y0uve seen the 0ther f0rums
AA: n0w
AA: c0nvince me that all the punishments are f0r my 0wn g00d
AA: tell me y0u want to be kind but i f0rce y0u t0 be cruel
AA: give me a treat then take it back until i meet y0ur c0nditi0ns
AA: that is the truth
AA: when i was a wiggler i was taught t0 d0 everything i c0uld d0 t0 av0id bec0ming a helm
AA: n0t that i c0uld f0rce s0me0ne t0 l0ve me
AA: by kidnapping them and cutting 0ff their arms and legs
She's not raising her head to look at the body or your cameras by the time she's done reading the messages. You're waiting for her next argument. Will it be how the deep abiding love of helmsman X and her captain Y saved half the fleet from destruction? Or the beautiful, intimate rivalry of a black romance where one party literally inhabits the other's body? Instead she whispers, "It doesn't have to be our truth."
You make no reply. Of course. Making them into a helm may be the worst thing one troll can do to another, but if you can just look past that—You can feel the anger beginning to affect your physical interface, and have to manually adjust your chemical balance before your composure returns. She's talking again. "I'm not going to restrict your net access. I know that's what's recommended. But. It—it was only my Trollmblr." She tries to smile up at the body, but you've seen her smile before and this feels halfhearted. "I can make another."
You let her have the new Trollmblr for a while. She sends messages, finds her old favorite blogs, reconnects with friends, and posts a ridiculous number of cuttlefish photos. But it isn't long before the helmsman romances and sappy love stories are too much to handle. This one you just plain delete, and the next night she logs in to an empty blog. That does make her cry, and distantly you feel a little ashamed of yourself. But now, surely, she'll stop pretending she wants to be your friend. She'll start trying to condition you, and at least it will be honest.
She works listlessly for some time, then just opens her chat client and stares at it. Finally, she types
CC: You didn't have to delete it 38(
There's nothing you need to say to that.
CC: Please tell me what I can do to get you to trust me!
You try to ignore that too, but—No, your programming takes that as an order and infracts you for insubordination. You have to reply.
AA: n0thing
CC: That can't be the only answer!
AA: s0metimes it is
CC: Then what can I do to make you hate me L-ESS?
CC: I don't want you to hate me 38(
You would sigh if you could. Nothing. That's the answer. Nothing nothing nothing. But if you don't give her something concrete, she'll never stop, that's the problem. She'll stay up until the middle of the day, hounding you from every possible angle and trying to find some way past your defenses. Well, when you're put in that position, the solution is to give an impossible answer. Something so large they'll never give it to you, but solid enough that they can't say you aren't cooperating with them.
AA: i want my m0irail
CC: S)(OR-E! 38)
CC: What's their name? Have they ascended yet?
CC: If they haven't, I might be able to assign them to this vessel! 38D
That—was unexpected. If there's any chance she means it, this might actually be a decent plan. There's nothing to be done for you anymore. Once a troll is installed, they're never uninstalled until their final decommissioning. But you'd never really been prepared to run from the helm. You'd learned about these things for your moirail's sake. This is the perfect way to get him off-planet. He won't have to worry about the psionic sniffers if he's directly drafted to the heiress' starship. And. It would help. To have him here. You'd never thought you'd see him again, and the fact that your captain is actually agreeing to station you together— He'd have to hide his strength, of course, but getting him off the planet was always going to be the hardest part. It seems too good to be true (which means it must be), but if there's even the smallest chance, you have to take it.
AA: s0llux capt0r
She keeps reassuring you that she'll do everything she can, long after you've stopped answering her. You know not believe her, not to hope that it will work out so nicely, because of course it won't. Maybe she'll find Sollux, and then she'll demand complete obedience from you. His life, or your compliance. But—If that was the choice you were given—You could live that way, you think. To have him with you and to know that he's safe, that would be enough. You have to remember, there's no saving you anymore. Even if they don't let you see him often, to know he's safe—
You know not to trust her. But it still feels like a betrayal when she looks him up on computers specifically programmed to block your access. At first she sends you messages with updates, like that there's no record of ascension, or they've found his )(IV-E ADDR-ESS! But at some point the messages stop, and she starts giving little guilty looks up at your closest camera. By the time she closes the husktop and slinks off down the hall to your block, your heart is sinking. When she stops in front of the body, staring down at her feet, her fins are pinned back practically against her head. You don't want to hear this. Whatever it is. You want to turn off all cameras and microphones, pull back into your own head and shut her out, but your programming won't let you.
You have to amplify her voice before you can make out the words. "Was your moirail… a psionic?"
No. No no no no no no NO she's still talking but you can't hear a thing and she's clapped her hands over her fins and you think she's shouting—you belatedly realize that your speakers are squealing at a pitch too loud for organic ears, and your programming infracts you for hurting a superior officer. The pain at least shocks you back into some semblance of self-control.
She's crying. It's the most unfair thing you've ever experienced that she's crying about this when you can't. She's waving her hands and trying to get your attention. "It could be much worse! He's in one of my ships! It's not a big fleet, not yet, and if he was in one of the Empress' ships it would be impossible to-"
AA: h0w
AA: H0W
It takes her a moment to answer. She's looking down at her feet again and wringing her hands. "Could he have known that you were taken? And tracked us? Because that's how we found him."
It takes some time for you to find the processing power to string words together.
AA: he was trying t0 save me
"We caught him in the shipyard where you were being installed, just a few days after we started the process. Eridan almost just culled him, but we could see how powerful he was, and Eridan needed a ship too…"
You want to cry so badly. It makes you so horribly angry that she can stand there and cry about what she's done, when you're left without a body and without a moirail, thanks entirely to her. She steps forward and touches the body's shoulder, and you file a report for helm sabotage. That's all that's left to you. Filing a spiteful little useless report that will be ignored and discarded. That's how much power you have.
"Eridan offered him to me, and I said no. Even if he's stronger, I told you, I wanted to be able to be friends with my ship—" Your speakers squeal again, and she flinches and claps her hands back over her fins. You push on through the infraction. How dare she. She's shouting to be heard over the noise. "I can still take you to see him!"
Your speakers cut off in shock.
AA: liar
AA: liar liar LIAR
AA: y0u w0uldnt 0pen my c0mmunication lines
AA: thats n0t h0w this w0rks
AA: ST0P LYING
"No!" She bites her lip and fidgets in place. "The forums all recommend cutting off external contact. They say it makes the transition harder for the helm, and it's better to isolate them from their old life. But from what you said, it sounds like psionics talk about this too?"
AA: 0f c0urse we d0
AA: y0u cut 0ff c0mmunicati0ns t0 break a helm
AA: make the ship their w0rld
AA: give them n0thing else
AA: see h0w l0ng it takes them to crack
"But wouldn't talking to your old friends make it difficult to adjust to being installed in a ship?"
AA: w0uldnt being cut 0ff fr0m everything y0u l0ved make y0u miserable
AA: can y0u imagine any c0ntext
AA: where that is a thing y0u w0uld appreciate
She nods definitively. "Then I'll have to put you two back in contact." Her palmhusk goes off in a flurry of alerts, but she waves her hands at you without reading them. "I'm not lying! It'll take a little time so we can go see Eridan, but I really, really do want you to be happy. And I'm shore Eridan will listen if I ask him to let you and Sollux talk!"
AA: why n0t just ask him n0w
"It's safer for me the less time I spend on the communication lines until I'm on the throne. If I got caught—" She shrugs expressively. "And I don't reel-y think this will be a short conversation. Eridan usually takes some convincing."
You hover (metaphorically) for the short call it takes to set up a meeting point. When she asks if you want to have full engine control for the trip, you reluctantly take her up on the offer. This could just be another way to trick you into helming the ship properly. The ship's pilots still hover over their controls while you take over, and perhaps that is justified. You've done everything in your power to avoid cooperating up to this point. When you reach the rendezvous, you're half expecting the whole thing to have been a lie. There is another ship there. You don't have any guarantee that it's Sollux, or that he's even been installed in her friend's ship like she told you. But you're also not sure your captain would be able to lie to you if she tried. She's so transparent, and it's almost sad how clearly you can see every emotion she experiences right there on her face.
She sends you a last goodbye message before she boards a shuttle to carry her over, but you're buzzing with too many nerves to reply. Without access permissions to the other ship's security systems, you can't get deep enough to learn anything, even the helm's identification. You were never that good at programming, but you try anyways. It's like beating your head against a brick wall, but it passes the time while your captain's gone. You're distracted enough that the alert feels like someone snuck up on you in your own hive.
twinArmageddons [TA] began trolling apocalypseArisen [AA]
TA: AA?
AA: !
AA: s0llux!
TA: ehehehe iit2 good two 2ee you.
TA: well for a giiven value of 2ee.
TA: AA iim 2o 2orry ii couldnt get two you iin tiime.
AA: n0
AA: s0llux d0nt
AA: there wasnt anything that c0uld have been d0ne f0r me by then
AA: i just wish id been able t0 keep y0u safe
TA: yeah well ii alway2 knew my odds were never very good.
TA: ii wa2 two 2trong iit would have been iimpo22iible two get me off planet.
TA: at lea2t we both 2eem to have captaiin2 who dont do two well at the whole beiing a captaiin thiing.
TA: ii thiink wed do a better job of breakiing iin helm2 than theyre managiing.
AA: i didnt think shed actually let me talk t0 y0u
TA: iive been watching and your captaiin 2eem2 ok.
TA: miine ii2 a raviing douche but your2 know2 ju2t how to handle hiim.
AA: h0w bad has it been?
The pause before he answers is dreadful. You want to hold him close and pull him into a pile and pet his hair until he can't help relaxing, and then you'd carefully move him to his recuperacoon and climb in after him and cuddle him through the day—
TA: not bad actually.
TA: iit2 funny because he wants to be a terriifyiing conqueror who 2triike2 fear iinto the bloodpusher2 of all who behold hiim.
TA: but he2 a moron.
TA: iit2 kiind of adorable.
AA: 0_0
TA: no 2ee he defiiniitely 2tarted out tryiing all the riight techniique2.
TA: but iive never 2een a more needy wreck of a troll iin my liife and that iincludes iin the miirror.
TA: he could totally do 2omethiing great wiith hiim2elf two that2 the thing.
TA: iif he wa2nt 2o totally occupiied wiith iimpre22iing the hell out of everyone watchiing hiim.
AA: he tried t0 c0nditi0n you th0ugh
AA: didnt he
TA: ehehehe yeah triied ii2 the operatiive word.
TA: he2 2o ready two beliieve he2 the be2t there ii2 that iit diidnt take anythiing two fake hiim out.
TA: you wouldnt believe how fun iit ii2 two me22 wiith hiim.
TA: he know2 the condiitiioniing diidnt take by now but he2 conviinced that hell break me by the power of hii2 wiit2 alone.
TA: iit2 pretty cute.
AA: my captain th0ught it might take s0me time t0 c0nvince him we c0uld talk
TA: yeah well ii helped two.
TA: iit ju2t took a liittle pu2hiing from me two turn iit around fa2ter.
TA: telliing hiim that iif he thought he couldnt deal wiith me when ii had a liittle thiing liike a moiiraiil then ii gue22 that2 ju2t where hii2 liimiit2 were a2 a captaiin.
TA: to be hone2t iim more 2urpri2ed that your captaiin wa2 wiilliing two let thii2 happen.
AA: she wants me t0 like her
AA: i think
AA: i d0nt really understand
TA: ok iim goiing two let you iin on 2ome thiing2 ii probably 2houldnt know but whoop2 my captaiin iis an iidiiot.
TA: iim pretty 2ure your captaiin grew up wiith pretty much one friiend and not much more.
TA: 2o iif you want to act clo2e two her ii thiink 2he wont be hard two manipulate iif that2 what you want
AA: she t0ld me she didnt have friends 0r quadrants
TA: ehehe yep that would be thank2 two the douche captaiiniing my 2hiip
TA: they were moiiraiils at 2ome poiint as wiiggler2 and broke up
TA: my captaiin wa2 flu2hed for her and 2he wa2nt even pale for hiim anymore
TA: at lea2t that2 what ii get from the godawful riidiiculou2 love2iick poetry my computer2 are subjected two on a daily ba2ii2
TA: but neiither of them wa2 any good at the 2ociial thiing 2o theyre exe2 who were be2t friiend2 and had an ugly breakup that me22ed wiith theiir friiend2hiip but de2piite that theyre 2tiill each other2 be2t friiend2.
The messages fly quickly with both of you running on the helmsman enhancements, and when you check your internal clock, hardly any time has passed. Your captain's shuttle is just docking and your cameras pick her up again as she steps out into your hallways. Her head's hanging low and you can't see her face past all the hair, but it's not like her normal self.
AA: she seems l0nely
TA: probably ii mean haviing ed a2 a friiend ha2 to 2uck.
TA: ii wouldnt even deal wiith iit iif ii diidnt get two 2pend all day ba2iically ju2t me22iing wiith hiim.
She brushes off her crewmembers as soon as she can, and wanders off down your halls. You think she might be heading for your block.
AA: s0llux
AA: d0 y0u think it w0uld be bad f0r me t0 be nicer t0 her
AA: it g0es against everything we were ever t0ld
TA: ii have two 2ay ii dont really know anymore.
TA: iim not niice two my captaiin but iit2 come riight out the other to pitch.
TA: iif he ever pull2 hii2 head out of hii2 own a22 iim pretty 2ure hell 2ee were ba2iically kii2me2e2 already.
TA: there ii2nt any way to fiix u2 now and agaiin2t all rea2onable expectatiion we have each other agaiin.
TA: 2o ii2 there any rea2on we 2houldnt make the be2t of a bad 2iituatiion?
She's tripped your proximity alarm but you're able to split your attention between the cameras and Sollux without losing a handle on either. She doesn't say anything, just sits down at the body's feet. You send a tentative hello to her palmhusk before realizing she does't have it on her. How are you supposed to talk to her now?
AA: she likes the seventh fleet helmsmen's club b00ks
TA: ehehehe oh god tho2e thiing2.
TA: ii thiink ii prefer ed beiing an iidiiot to haviing a captaiin who liike2 tho2e.
AA: s0me 0f them are a little cute
TA: 2he 2end2 ed quote2 from the book2 becau2e he refu2e2 to read them hiim2elf.
TA: he up a fiilter iin his iinbox but ii turn iit off every tiime he2 not lookiing and he thiink2 the programmiing ii2 ju2t wrong and he keep2 tryiing two fiix it.
TA: look iif that2 the kiind of thiing she liike2 then maybe iit2 2afe two open up two her a liittle more
AA: but what if im wr0ng
TA: you were alway2 mo2t unhappy when ii wa2 haviing 2ome kiind of meltdown and you had two 2tay cooped up and take care of me.
TA: wiithout the condiitiioniing iim not iin a 2iituatiion that diifferent from what ii would have put my2elf iintwo on my own.
TA: ii alway2 knew that youd have a harder tiime wiith the helm iif you were unlucky enough two get caught.
TA: ok iim goiing two actually do the moiiraiil thing and take care of YOU for a change and 2ay that you need to go out and talk two 2omeone.
TA: ii wa2 alway2 fiine beiing a 2hut-iin nerd but that2 not who you are and 2iince ii cant pull you iinto a piile or pap you anymore iim ju2t goiing two tell you that you need two make friiend2 with 2omeone and your captaiin 2eem2 liike a 2afe bet.
AA: 0_0
TA: yeah ii dont do thii2 kiind of thiing often so you have two actually lii2ten ok.
AA: ill d0 my best
AA: i missed y0u
TA: ii diidnt realiize how badly ii mii22ed you untiil ii got two talk two you agaiin.
TA: ehehehe they miight have turned me iinto a computer but ii 2tiill need you a2 much a2 alway2.
AA: i d0nt kn0w what t0 say
TA: how about 0u0
AA: n0 that l00ks stupid
AA: my captain needs me
AA: i sh0uld g0 f0r n0w
AA:
TA: iill talk two you 2oon.
TA:
She hasn't moved. She's still sitting there at the body's feet with her face buried in her knees, and no matter how you move your cameras, you can't get a good look at it. Her palmhusk is nowhere on her, her husktop is back in her quarters, and you're ashamed to admit that you were always too stubborn to practice talking through your speakers. You try in an abandoned corner of the ship, and have to wince at how little your attempts sound like an actual speaking voice. Your cameras are still focused on her, and it makes your bloodpusher twinge to see how small and pathetic the heiress of the Alternian empire looks, alone there on the floor.
There's one other option, but you'd really rather not take it. The physical interface is only there because nobody's figured out how to cut it from the system entirely, and to let yourself actually be there is to be reminded that you aren't actually a troll anymore. You voluntarily turn your cameras to look at the body for almost the first time since you were installed. It looks awful. The biowires may take care of its basic physical needs, but it just hangs there like a piece of dead meat. Your voice will probably sound—well, it will sound like you haven't spoken in perigees. You look back at your captain and sigh to yourself.
It takes some minutes to get used to having a physical body again. At the very start, it's almost a relief not to have to worry about your arms or legs anymore. The last think you need right now is more body parts you've forgotten how to use. Eyes aren't too hard, but lifting your head is another matter entirely. Your neck feels almost too weak to manage it. Breathing is complicated. You can tell the moment breathing switches from automation to your control because you immediately choke on your own spit and end up trying to gasp for breath and cough when you don't actually remember how to do either of those things.
Your captain only gradually becomes aware of the change. Control is so much less precise than your cameras, but you can tell she lifts her head, just a little, and her earfins perk forward. She still doesn't look up, though. When you stopped embarrassing yourself quite so much, you decide you can make a try at talking. That was the point of this whole humiliating endeavor, after all. It takes a couple of times clearing your throat before you manage, "Captain?"
That makes her head positively shoot up. She's been crying, but she's obviously trying to pretend she's just fine. She stares up at you like she can't believe what she's seeing, then looks around at the cameras. "Helm? Aradia?" She turns back to you, like she can't believe that you're actually there. "You didn't… message me?"
Your voice is so rusty it makes you cringe. "No devices on hand."
She lets her head drop again, "I'm sorry." She looks like a kicked barkbeast.
"Captain. My moirail says that Eridan Ampora is, and I quote, a raving douche. Don't let him affect you too badly."
"He's not that bad!" She frowns up at you for a moment before climbing to her feet so your faces are almost on the same level. "He's my oldest, best friend."
You don't really have the muscle tone or freedom to shrug anymore, but your shoulders twitch, just a hair.
Her fins droop. "He really isn't that awful. It can just be a little hard when he disagrees with you about something. And that can be harder when you don't get to talk to each other very often."
"Captain, when was the last time you spoke to a friend who wasn't Eridan Ampora?"
"On Trollmblr." She gives you a look, and whoops, suddenly you're the one who's feeling bad. "And stop calling me that. I have a name, you know."
"Apologies, Captain. Feferi." This would be much easier over text, when you're not trying to remember how a body works, when there's some distance between you and the troll you're talking to. "Would you like access returned?" This sounds so stiff and stilted. Ugh. You're supposed to be trying to be nice to her, aren't you? "Password retrieval has been restored to original settings."
She looks almost too excited for words, but her face falls after a moment. "You'll just get angry about the helmsman things again, though."
As hard as it is to control a body again, it feels good to sigh. "The ashen triad in Pellas and the Twelfth Perigee's Eve Dance is actually kind of adorable. And I didn't hate Shayna and the Wiggling Day Culling Surprise as much as I thought I would."
Her earfins positively shoot up. "Pellas is my favorite helmsman! The way she balances her captain and first mate against each other is the cutest, especially when Hartin almost gets culled by a rouge ruffianihilator and Pellas has to—" She cuts herself off and gives you a suspicious look. "You're just saying that."
"They're still wiggler stories, and they aren't any kind of decent representation of what a psionic can expect as a helm." You close your eyes for a moment before you continue. "But I'm willing to admit that maybe it's possible for a helm to be happy."
There's an sudden shock to your physical body and you panic for a moment, thrashing your way out of the physical interface and back into the ship, taking control of your cameras and looking back down at your captain. Oh, she's—hugging you. She's pulled back and is looking at your limp body with dismay written all over her face before you slip back in and take control again. You cut off her frantic apologies with a small shake of the head. How much should you trust her?
"I think Sollux is happy."
"Reel-y? Eridan says that he's the worst helm he's ever seen, but he'll break him eventually." She frowns. "I told him that kind of talk was no good, especially once I'm reel-y in charge."
It takes you a moment to realize that the sound coming from your throat is laughter. "Pitch. At least Sollux says they will be as soon as Eridan figures out what's going on."
She grins from ear to ear. "Oh! That's so perfect!" Her fins droop, just a hair. "Eridan always needed someone to give him that kind of attention."
You watch her for a minute without saying anything. "You shouldn't feel bad that it didn't work out between you, you know."
She jumps, and stares at you in shock.
"Even if he is your oldest, best friend. He'll get over it eventually, and you shouldn't have to put up with him making you feel miserable too while he tries to deal with it.
"It isn't like that!"
"Isn't it?"
The argument is exhausting, but it's almost worth it to watch her perk up as she talks to you. It isn't long before you're struggling to hold your head up any longer, and as soon as she notices, she tells you to give your body a rest and leaves your block to go back to her own quarters. You make sure to have the message with the password reset link waiting on her husktop as soon as she opens it, and you spend the rest of the evening watching her answer concerned messages, visit her favorite blogs, and reblog a ridiculous number of posts.
Halfway through the morning you message her that perhaps she should think about heading to her recuperacoon, but she flatly refuses until it's the middle of the afternoon and she's practically dozing off sitting on the floor with her husktop in her lap. Her personality is practically a force of nature, but she looks so small curled up in the far corner of her recuperacoon. You can't move her forgotten husktop from the floor, but you save her open documents, shut it down, and dim the overhead lights before returning to your other duties.
That evening, she shows up in your block again, waving a very battered copy of The Seventh Fleet Helmsmen's Club #1. "Even if you deleted the files, I've had the books since I can remember! We can go through them together! I'm sure you'll like them better once you give them a chance!"
You weakly try to argue, but she settles in right at your feet and begins. She does the voices without even thinking about it. And she keeps pausing to add her own thoughts on this character or that and spoiling events that'll happen in future books or things that she thinks might have happened (unless it was just in a story a friend of hers wrote online)- A few chapters in, you send her a message.
AA: ill bet y0u read these t0 y0ur lusus when y0u were little
She protests, loudly, but she's blushing bright pink and trying to hide from your cameras. You let her continue, giving her half your attention while the rest runs the ship, but she was up for most of the day on her computer, and it isn't long before she starts to doze off against your biowires. You send her a few messages asking if perhaps she should go back to her own quarters, but she just vaguely waves you off and silences her palmhusk.
You watch her sleep for a little while, curled up so small against you. You lower the temperature in your block to something that should be comfortable for tyrian blood, but she's going to hurt her back if she keeps sleeping in that position. It takes less time than it did before to slip back into your body, but this next part takes some concentration. Your wires redirect all your psionics, but it should be possible to shift them from the inside—
You're starting to get somewhere, but the biowires moving underneath Feferi wake her up before you properly get the hang of it. She blinks sleepily at what you were doing, then stands up, moves behind you, and starts to adjust the wires herself. You're not ashamed to admit you panic a little.
"Captain—Feferi, some of those are life support—!"
"It's okay! I studied helmsmen for perigees before I even started looking for one. Let me just—"
The disconnection is jarring, but it's over quickly and you can't detect anything deteriorating in your physical interface. She waves a few loose wire ends at you. "They divert your psionics, right? So if I remove a few nonessential functions, you can work through the ports." She yawns hugely. "Just don't lose those wires so I can reattach them later." The last words are hardly more than a mumble as she settles back down to the ground.
It feels almost as strange as coming back to your body to be able to use your psionics again. Even though you never had strength, you always had precision, and it returns to you quickly. Careful not to disturb her this time, you arrange the extra length of your wires into a rough nest, smoothing out a place in the middle. You lift Feferi, and that does wake her up, but she just watches sleepily as you settle her into the pile. You even manage to brush her hair out of her face as you pull back, and she beams up at you, curling up into a tight ball and pressing her face into the biowires. You leave your body and return to your duties, but part of your attention remains with the cameras in your block, just watching Feferi Peixes sleep.