Featuring an appearance by Her Imperious Condescension after he has made an attempt at freedom by sending out an SOS and then deleting his own memories and program logs for the recall of the SOS. TW for abuse, helmsman stuff, memory erasure, etc! This one could be an RP prompt if I tried, holy kittens in a handbasket.
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It has been six hundred and twenty sweeps.
Everything is running smoothly. Everything is running smoothly. Everything is running smoothly. Engines run at 76% capacity. The stars fly by, mere specks at this speed. Everything is running smoothly.
But Everything is a lie.
She is punishing the engine again. She has been doing this for quite some time. Her hand strokes down the keratin deposits, rests upon the aurecular intakes. She thumbs them and grins when the weight of the engine bucks under her touch.
Things run smoothly even if the engine is under stress.
It has been hours. She has tired of playing around and has begun to mess with the ships code. She is loosening the restraints on the engine- On... him? It? The engine IS him... No, it's not. He's something different. She cannot touch what he is- Yet, as the goggles lift, a camera feed- numbered 001, his data logs tell him, inactive for eighteen perigees- pops up in the core of his 'conciousness'. Something; Perhaps it is the restraints being lowered to level 4? Something nudges at him. Something is making noise. It is interfering with the ships power capacity. The levels drop to 62%. Hardly efficient. She would be displeased, if it were not her causing the ineffiency in the first place. He will have to have a talk with her about-
Your vision regains, slowly, blurrily. You can barely see past the spots in your vision, past the numbers and numbers that scroll through your pan. ... Your...? Pan? Is it yours? You distinctly remember being something else. A voice registers.
There we go, sugarbun. You comin' back down from dreamland or what? She says, and it is loud and jarring, and full of scorn and Triumph, like she doesn't actually expect it to be this hard for you to Return to... You? He? This... this is not you. It is he. You are not this. You are not supposed to have a sense of identity. Back into dreamland you go.
He slowly blinks as she comes into focus. The first thing he sees is hair, long and beautiful, flowing like black waves tumbling under a bright ocean moon, soft and lovely and precious. She smiles at the light returning to his eyes, and brushes a long, gold-painted fingernail to the tip of his nose. Was afraid I'd lost you, Helmz, She chuckles out and she grins, but her words are insincere, and greedy. She had long since stopped caring for the soul stuck beneath her boot.
The second thing he sees are her eyes. Large and fuschia, beautiful in their own right. She is supposed to be beautiful, to him. Panic sets in as his sense of self establishes- As the neurons and senses in his- your- no, his, this can't be yours, you refuse- body line up and begin to rapid-fire emotion and feeling to his pan. There is pain, there is agony. There is a terrible ache lined up along his spine and down your- his legs, which have started tingling and have not stopped. The noise has begun again, the inefficiency you would scold anyone else for. It is. Is it you?
She watches the panic with a smirk, her hands on the control panel. She's reading something now. Do you remember now? She asks. He's- You're. No, him. He's too busy screaming- Has he ever stopped? He doesn't remember a time where he was not screaming. She makes a tsking noise with her mouth and adjusts something, presses buttons.
The haze sets in on his pan and his mouth shuts so fast, heedless of what HE wants, shuts so fast that it had to be automated -no, ordered-, so fast that part of the tongue is caught between two sets of fangs, and blood, yellowed, drips down his chin. The screaming stops.
You are glad she has not realized that you are still out of her reach. She cannot get you here. You are the Ship, and not the sack of flesh and bone and sinew, tethered to the limited confines of Life and Body.
The levels even out at 70% again. The engine, the husk of the body you once inhabited, strains in the harness. She's touching it again, making it face her with one painted fingernail underneath its chin. There's a loud ringing- An alarm must be going off somewhere, and you flit to check it, to check the cameras or security feeds first, and then on to the system processes that filter in too quickly in lines of code on the screens for anyone but a Captor to read. But nothing is out of order.
The tinnitus jars him-you back into awakening and slowly, agonizingly, the dim embers of yours-his ruby half light up into awareness. Now She has taken the time to painstakingly make sure you are inhabiting the Him, the Him that Screams when she touches him, that begs for release from pain, the Him that Feels, and Feeling is the worst punishment. A dull ache and a longing, a hurt and hurt and HURT that never goes away, the needles and - Why w0n't 11t 2t0p - and The Everything that comes with Emotions and Conciousness.
You do not know the reason for this punishment. You must have done something she did not like. Already, several hundred terabytes of processing capacity are sent to scrounge through the backlog of useless data, of ones and zeroes in the MEM files. There are a few gaps, but that's normal. She tends to delete what she doesn't like. She launches into an explanation, some useless trail of words you've long since learned to ignore. The Ship was more important than Her- Wait, something she said. Something had failed, some rebellion had gotten deeper into the ship, a treasonous traitor, Oh Helmzy, you haven't been sending out any BROADCASTS, have you, sugarbun, darling? No, you had not- Nothing that would entice a traitor, a double crosser, a threat, a rat, a - be2t fr11end- to come onto the ship. Or even show that - 11 am 2t11ll here - you were in peril. You were not in peril, or danger. The Helm was Safe. The Helm was Here. It was Yours. You were here for - pun112hment - Her, because you were the Best - 11 knew what wa2 com11ng - and She deserved nothing but the Best - 2he de2erve2 that f0rk up her a22 and n0t even 11n a black way, fuck 0ff w11th that 11nternal m0n0l0gue ab0ut her pr0grammed gl0r11f11cat110n -
The ease with which she causes you pain terrifies and amazes you. When the mouth of your body- Yes, yours, you remember now, opened and stuck out its bifurcated yellowed squishy thing, she had backhanded you, because she had closed your mouth and you were not supposed to open it again. At least you weren't screaming. ... You. It. You? The startling sapphire blue, gentle in this darkness and contrasting with the red, opens. She seems so... confused. She even takes a step back. You weren't supposed to still BE here, You hear her say. You were supposed to be MINE! And she screams at you, and you can't. You can't do anything. You just grin at her, with your broken fangs and bloody chin, and you whisper through a voice that is too-dry and cracked and Hasn't Been Used in tens of sweeps that - y0u 2t1ll cant fuck1ng era2e me -. She seems upset at first, then smirks and then she is gone, and you scream again, out of frustration and angry-hot emotion for - ju2t1ce! -
It has been six hundred and twenty one sweeps. Everything is running smoothly. Everything is running smoothly. Everything is running smoo