(A/N)- Coming at you with some more Whumptober fic set in the Fix-It AU!
For those of you just now joining us, hi, the tl:dr on this AU is:
1. Slaine is able to successfully join the Earth forces at the end of Episode 7, and is present for all the events that happen on the Deucalion and for the assault on Saazbaum's landing castle.
2. Because is there by Asseylum's side for the landing castle assault, he takes the bullets Saazbaum meant for her. Saazbaum forces Asseylum into a sadistic choice between the dying Slaine and the injured Inaho. Because Slaine is her literal soulmate as dictated by Weird Aldnoah Powers (see "Half My Heart To Make You Whole"), Asseylum chooses him.
3. Inaho is captured as a prisoner of war by Saazbaum (who in this 'verse is the one that has him implanted with the electronic eye) and forced to become a remote pilot/strategist for the continued Versian assault. He does not have a good time of it.
Also these fics are kind of written all out of order, pardon the mess.
To returning readers, welcome back! The prompts used this time around were No. 20 "People don't change people, time does": Blanket/Found Family/"You will regret touching them." and Alt. 5 Body Modification
Set after Inaho's rescue from the moon base.
Disclaimer: Just give the story to meeeeeeeee, come on I can fix it. (The battle-cry of the eternally frustrated.)
Tokyo Blue Rose
She stared through the glass numbly, looking in on the ICU recovery room.
They'd put Inaho in a medically-induced coma for his recovery. Asseylum could see the thick bandages wrapped around his head, over his left eye, and burned with grief at the sight.
She watched his chest rise and fall, trembling with anger and guilt and shame.
She had done this. By being selfish and choosing the boy she loved over her friend, she had condemned Inaho to months of torture and hell at the hands of one of her own Martian Knights, condemned so many of their pilots to a brutal and swift end at the hands of Inaho's remote-guided Tharsis.
There hadn't been time, Yuki had assured her, over and over. You had to make a choice.
She'd made her choice. And she'd hated it. And hated herself for it.
Even more so now.
By her side, her fist clenched tightly. Her lip trembled, heat threatening to well up in her eyes.
She wished Slaine were there, to put his warm hands on her shoulders, slip his fingers into hers. Make her feel less awful.
She tugged on the connection between them, reached out through the Ea that entwined them, and felt an automatic and instinctive reassuring mental touch back. It was enough.
She inhaled slowly, forcing herself to turn away from the window. Her mind replayed the rescue, all the horrible details playing fresh against her eyes. The dark control room where he'd been stored. The wires plugged into his head. His shrieking as the Versian AI took control of him.
The door on the far side of the hallway opened with a metal clatter. Asseylum looked up to see Inko trotting through, a heavy folded blanket clutched in her arms.
The other girl stopped awkwardly. "Oh! Princess!" She hesitated for a moment, clearly wrestling with whether or not to curtsy.
Asseylum smiled ruefully, expression warm. They had dispensed with such formalities months ago.
After a moment Inko shook herself. "How is he?" she asked anxiously, as she came up to the window.
Asseylum swallowed back a bitter pill of anger, dropping her eyes towards the floor. "Stable," she said. "They were able to remove nearly all of the implant."
"Mmm," Inko just hummed, looking through the observation window with wan, worried eyes.
The princess raised her head, and pointed at the bundle in Inko's arms. "What's that?" she asked.
"Huh?" Already deep in her distracted thoughts, Inko blinked in confusion. "Oh!" she exclaimed, her brain catching up. She held up the thick folded cloth. "It's... it's his favorite blanket," she explained, her voice beginning to tighten as she spoke. "Lieutenant Marito let the 34th Unit sneak me into Shin-awara so I could go find it." Her hands were clenching into its soft folds, Inko's gaze growing distant and unreachable. "He's never liked the texture of hospital linens so I thought... something from home might..."
She trailed off, gasping shortly for breath and composure, almost warbling by the last words, and Asseylum's heart wrenched for her. She and Inko had grown quite close in the months since the disastrous attack on Saazbaum's landing castle. Asseylum counted her now as one of her dearest friends, closer than a sister. She looked at Inko and saw her like a mirror image of herself, intimately understanding her uncertainty, acquainted with her pain. Inko's feelings for Inaho were painfully obvious, her devotion to him as deep and as strong as Asseylum's for Slaine, even without the tether of a literal soulbond connecting them.
It was a minor miracle Inko didn't hate her, for the choice she had made on the landing castle.
Asseylum offered a thin smile, and pinched, encouraging eyes. "Ah, I see." They stood in silence a moment and then Asseylum urged, "Go on, I think the doctors will let you in."
Inko didn't need to be told twice, clutching the blanket to her chest and rushing stiffly towards the ICU doors.
Asseylum's smile faded, anger pulling at her again as she watched Inko speak with the head surgeon, watched her be allowed into the recovery room and hesitantly approach the sleeping boy on the bed.
Gripping her fists, she turned on her heel, and stalked with purpose out from the hospital wing of the base.
She visited her room first, pulling off the plain soft long-sleeve blue shirt and tan slacks that she regularly wore these days. She reached into her closest for her ruffled white dress. What she was planning to do required full formal Versian regalia.
She dressed swiftly, if struggling a little bit due to Eddelrittuo's absence. (Her handmaid had been put into a schooling course with a private tutor, and was busy being instructed in math and science and literature, which Asseylum of course made her share with her when they were reunited at the end of the day.)
She marched straight into OPS when she was finished, announcing her plan at once. The UEF military hierarchy was skeptical at first, but Marito backed her up—as she knew he would—and moments later Asseylum was sitting poised and composed in front of the cameras, preparing to deliver another announcement and wartime status report.
Her stomach fluttered nervously, hands shaking where they were clasped on the table, but Asseylum forced herself to be the perfect picture of grace and calm as the TV cameras were pointed towards her, a makeup girl powdering down her face.
This was her arena. And she would fight with the weapons she had, with her words and face, her ability to call to arms or cool tempers.
"All right, Your Highness," the man behind the camera told her. She nodded at the man, watched him count down the seconds on the hand he held aloft. "In three... two..."
She heard the cameras click on and knew she was being broadcast all across the UEF feeds, piped into the TVs of civilians across the globe, and even—they often hoped—reaching up to the moon base and the landing castles still in orbit.
She inhaled slowly, then launched into the speech she'd prepared.
"This is Asseylum Vers Allusia, Princess of Mars, true heir to the Versian throne," she began, reciting her standard greeting with firm authority. "I am coming to you live from UEF headquarters, with an update on the war efforts."
She paused a moment, gripping her hands together tighter.
"Two days ago, at approximately oh-seven-hundred-hours, I led a small team of insurgents on a covert mission to breach the moon base where the Versian traitors have dug in," she said. A little bit exaggerated from the truth, but her handlers had assured her all good propaganda had a bit of embellishment involved. "On that mission, we recovered the kataphrakt pilot Inaho Kaizuka, formerly presumed missing in action after the Battle of Novosibirsk."
Bile flooded her mouth, but she swallowed it down and continued, seamlessly.
"We believe Kaizuka was being used to remote-pilot the Tharsis, the flagship of the Versian invasion fleet, which has caused devastating losses to us in our fight to restore peace between Mars and Earth. He was not doing so willingly, but under extreme duress, as a prisoner of war."
She let the horror of that revelation settle for a moment before continuing.
"I urge any Knights still loyal to Count Saazbaum to answer honestly if they can tolerate the torture and imprisonment of a child, if they are willing to have that blemish on their names and tarnish their honor so, simply for the sake of continuing this pointless conflict."
The words came so naturally to her now. Before all of this, she could never have even conceived of calling out the men she'd thought loyal to her, to the throne, questioning their motives and character. The war had made her cynical, turned her hopeful calls for peace into bitter condemnations of her own men.
Her face stayed the same, even as the anger and despair and grief stormed inside her.
"Inaho... was my friend," she said. Her voice softened, and she had trouble looking into the camera instead of past it. "He was fearless, and clever, and fought bravely. Even though he was no older than me..." she trailed. Her momentary show of vulnerability was playing well to the audience, apparently, because the producer was gesturing at her urgently, letting her know someone on the Versian side of the conflict was listening.
Asseylum hardened her eyes and looked directly into the camera, as if she could see Saazbaum's face before her. She pictured his smug, disdainful smirk and addressed her next words directly to him.
"To those who had a hand in turning him into a weapon against our peace efforts, who mercilessly used him against his own people and friends..." Her eyes burned. "You will regret hurting him," she promised. "We will continue and redouble our efforts to end this war and arrest Count Saazbaum and any of his accomplices for his crimes against the Emperor and the Versian crown, against human decency itself," she declared. "Make no mistake; those who would do such horrible despicable things are no people of mine. They bring shame to themselves, and to Vers."
Her throat was starting to tighten, but she made herself speak the words with firm clarity.
"And they will face a reckoning."
She let that hang in the air for a few portent moments.
The producer gestured for the feed to be cut, and after a moment the cameraman complied, everyone sensing the broadcast was done.
Asseylum let out a heavy exhale, her palms turning flat upon the desk she sat behind. She tugged again on her bond with Slaine, felt his automatic response back, and couldn't hide the relief that she sent out, tingling, over their connection.
He was alive and whole—both her boys were, now, her soulmate and her friend, the one she loved and the one she had to sacrifice, and she thought she finally understood Rayet's desire for revenge, to hurt someone responsible for her pain, because all that comforted her now were pleasant thoughts of a bullet in Saazbaum's skull, for what he'd done to Inaho, to Slaine, to her, what he'd made her choose, what she'd had to scramble frantically to fix.
You did this, Princess, she heard him say like an echo inside her mind. You, not me.
Asseylum shuddered, and held back her tears, staying a perfect porcelain picture of composure even as she died inside once more.
The murmuring voices and shuffling in the room were background noise on her numb ears and senses as heavy, dark guilt gnawed her from the inside out.
(A/N)- Asseylum is Going Through It a little bit this fic, lol.
Thanks for reading!