veryroundbirdfics | Arknights | Hand in Unlovable Hand, Chapter 11

Rating: Spicy
Chapter: 11/28
Characters: Doctor (F), Kal'tsit, Amiya, various others
Relationships: Doctor/Kal'tsit, Kal'tsit/Theresa, Theresa/Doctor
Summary: Dr. Lau returns to Rhodes Island a stranger in a strange land, in a labyrinth of things that feel like they should be familiar but aren't—and at the center is Dr. Kal'tsit and all the things she's not saying. Even if amnesia's changed her, though, the Doctor wouldn't be the Doctor if she didn't have an impulse to solve for the missing variable.
Notes: while this fic is marked as "spicy" the only actual sexual content is in chapters 8, 9, 17, 23 and 27, and there's cliff notes for the scenes at the bottom of the chapter. sexual content is noted in the start of chapters where it appears.

How it started—

Having your scouting team tell you "don't come here" is really never a great sign,¹ so of course you head there as fast as you can, with the L.G.D.'s cooperation—Superintendent Ch'en and Inspector Hoshiguma and their detachment in tow.

...but then the Superintendent caught a glimpse of something² in the distance and took off after it, Hoshiguma apologizing and following in her wake after helping you fend off another ambush.

You're all determined to rescue Operator Meteorite's squad, but things look grim, and—even though it's winter, the weather isn't such that all the operators picked up so far should have gotten frostbite.³

"Unlike the reckless Reunion soldiers we're used to fighting, these members have unique tactics," you hear Kal'tsit say over the comms to Amiya. "Be careful."

Amiya's mouth is drawn into a grim line. "I... I understand."

A crackle of static. "Dr. Lau, am I clear?"

You nearly jump out of your skin, and the expected words stick in your throat—so you nod vigorously in Amiya's direction.⁴ She clears her throat. "Dr. Kal'tsit, that's a yes from her."

There's a pause. "Very well then," Kal'tsit says, finally. "I have some business to take care of—but Amiya, even if Dr. Lau is very helpful, you can't rely too much on a single person."⁵

This time it's your turn to frown, hands balling inside your coat sleeves, fingers digging into your palms.⁶ Amiya assures Kal'tsit one last time that she's minding her rings,⁷ and closes the line.

"Dr. Kal'tsit actually worries about you a lot," Amiya says, putting a hand gently on your forearm.⁸ Maybe in a way it's true.⁹ It's just cold comfort.

[1] Today would be a great day to be on top of your breathing exercises and thought pattern breaking game and you are definitely not.

[2] No—someone, a human silhouette outlined against the bleak ruins of the sub-city. You're sure she wasn't seeing things.

[3] Surely you should have some great ideas right about now but, in fact, all that's in your head is internal screaming.

[4] You couldn't talk to her in the briefing, either. Every time you even think about it your throat feels like it's closing up.

[5] She's right, and "helpful" seems even a little bit like a condescending overstatement in this moment. Or maybe a concession to Amiya being fond of you; it can't be on your behalf.

[6] You run your thumbnails along the inside length of your pointer fingers, to have something else to focus on. You have to back Amiya up; you can't get lost in flip-flopping between self-loathing and feeling wronged because you're pretty sure you could do that for a whole month.

[7] As much as Amiya says she'll be careful, you're already wearily anticipating having to check them at least once.

[8] All of a sudden, you remember very keenly the feeling of Kal'tsit's hands laced in yours in a way that for a moment tightens the feeling of something knotted in your chest, and then... lets it go, like releasing your hands, leaving only the lingering warmth.

[9] Just, well—the worry is far from out of anything like... care, you're sure.

Eventually, you pick your way across the ruined city, following the path of your operators, and find them—

Amiya and Meteorite are huddled around Jessica, one of your partner operatives from Blacksteel.¹⁰ She's curled up in the small amount of cover Meteorite was able to find for them before you got here, breathing like she's running a marathon.¹¹

"She's still in shock," Meteorite murmurs, fixing her long honey-blonde hair to keep it back out of her face, her brow creased slightly. "I was going to wait for her to calm down, but—I think she's been traumatized."¹²

Amiya gently puts a hand on Jessica's arm. "Jessica—are you okay?"

Jessica doesn't say a word, her ears flat and her tail curled around her legs.¹³ Frostleaf, the quiet Vulpo close-combat operator assigned to this group, hovers nervously, fiddling with the headphones around her neck.¹⁴

It's a few tense moments until Amiya looks up. "This is all I can do, but—Frostleaf, can you do me a favor? Place her hands on my arm, and hold her fingers tight. All right?"

"Ah—y-yeah, sure thing," says Frostleaf, and moves.

You reach out for Amiya, hand on her shoulder, frowning. "What are you d—"

And—

—you're not sure what happens, but—

—it almost brings you to your knees, somehow,¹⁵ whatever it was. And then you blink, and Jessica's sitting up, talking to Amiya, sobbing but sensible.¹⁶

There's almost a collective sag of relief, but you're clearly not the only one who felt something strange.¹⁷ Frostleaf frowns.

"Amiya... you—what did you do just now...?" she says, hands tightening around the grip of her axe.

For her part, Amiya looks a little abashed, and gives the both of you looking down at her a little wink—" Ah, shh... keep it a secret from Dr Kal'tsit, please..."¹⁸

"Amiya—" You sigh. "Hands, please. Let me see."¹⁹

She sighs, and presents her hands to you, palms down first; you squint at each ring, looking for any changes. None; good.²⁰ She turns them over, and same; you breathe a sigh of relief.

"Fine. But—I don't know what you did, Amiya, but don't push yourself too hard," you say, pinching the bridge of your nose, and... hesitate, before what you want to say next.²¹

"Kal'tsit's right that you can't be sure of being able to fall back on me, you know."

"Um, Dr. Zhanchi—" Amiya bites her bottom lip, lightly, and unfolds to her still-tiny height. "I don't know exactly what happened between you, but—"

She looks down. "Mm... you've changed a lot, and that worries her.²² But, um—even if you aren't the same person you were before... I'm glad you're here with me, Doctor."

You scrub a hand over your face, and give her a wan smile. "Thanks," you say.²³ "Now—let's see about getting out of here."

[10] She's apparently seasoned, and a diligent worker, but unlike Franka and Liskarm, she's the opposite of brash, known to be anxious and prone to depression. Which is to say, despite having only read her file, you feel like you understand her pretty well.

[11] Oh. Yeah, you definitely understand her. That's a mood.

[12] ...actually, that sort of begs the question of whether you've been traumatized, but you can unpack that one later.

[13] Reasonable, really. She shouldn't have to get up and fight right now, and yet.

[14] Honestly, you kind of wish you had something to do with your hands, right now to feel like you were doing something.

[15] Your relative inexperience as far as memory goes means you have a pretty decent sense, at least, of what experiences and feelings are yours, even if some of them you don't want to address or can't put a name to, and—
That wasn't something from you, that rush of emotion, flickering memory. What are Amiya's arts?

[16] It's a relief, to be sure, although—well, you avert your eyes, looking down at your hands; it seems a little like it should be private.

[17] One of life's little pleasures is having confirmation that you are not entirely out of joint with the world as far as your senses go, prone as they are to fail you.

[18] Well at least you can all agree on that, because you're especially not in the mood for more castigation.

[19] You can at least make sure and do this one thing.

[20] Death postponed for just a little longer, assuming you all get out of here.

[21] You realize after a moment that you're grinding your back teeth together, take a deep breath, and put aside the question of what exactly you're feeling. You're pretty sure that's going to take a while to sort out.

[22] You're a little dubious that that's the problem, but Amiya's known her well longer than you have, on the other hand.

[23] Maybe someday you'll feel that way, too.

The little Liberi kid in white—well, you could put a lot of terms to him,²⁴ as he orders his people to light an effigy made of the dead of this district.

But these aren't the surprise tactics you were warned of. This is more of the same—fire and big gestures and terror.²⁵ You're waiting for the other shoe to drop, because it can't be just this. There's always something.²⁶

So when frost snuffs out the flame and freezes your boots to the pavement, you feel a little bit better that you haven't completely miscalculated.²⁷

"Mephisto," the woman he called FrostNova says, flatly, and sweeps her gaze over the lot of you—taking stock.²⁸ "I should have left you to slowly freeze to death in the tundra like the psychopath you are."²⁹

Mephisto laughs, light and airy, until his voice abruptly breaks, and he covers it with a cough.³⁰ "Oh my, scary, scary..." He doesn't sound really deterred. "But Rhodes Island is right in front of us."

FrostNova sighs, and shakes her head a little bit so her pale hair falls away from her face a little better.³¹

And then she starts to sing. A lullaby like snow blanketing the earth, sending you all to a dreamless, quiet sleeping death by exposure—

It's cold enough that it's hard to think, but you grit your teeth. Amiya's arts lance through the enemy's lines, making a path for Meteorite to split open wider with sniper fire.

There's no way you're winning this. But you don't need to win, just to get out. The second you can, you shout for the retreat, using the opening: "Go go go go go—"

You see Amiya take one last look back at the damage, as you go, her face grim as she fixes the piles of corpses in her memory³²—

—what you get distracted by, though, is what seems like an impossibly tall figure standing by FrostNova's side in the fog like an ill omen.

But there's no time to unpack that.³³ So you take your own advice and book it.

[24] Amiya's reaction doesn't surprise you—it's horrifying. But also, even if one of the kids on Rhodes Island set part of your office on fire the other day, honestly—kids don't get these ideas from nowhere! Someone was irresponsible out there—
...is Kal'tsit rubbing off on you?

[25] It's enough of a problem to work through that even while the smell of burning flesh fills the air, you can retreat in your mind, advance to a few steps ahead—in a way, it feels as natural as breathing.

[26] Especially when it comes to your life. There's always another shoe to drop, even when you're covered in a pile of shoes already.

[27] If, you know, still very afraid for your life.

[28] She doesn't seem very impressed, but in a way she reminds you of Kal'tsit in being someone for whom being unimpressed by the world is chronic.

[29] You're a little bit taken aback by the sheer vitriol, to be honest—the undertone of... maybe betrayal, maybe disappointment.

[30] There's a slight gravely quality to his speech, like he had a throat injury—no, like he has lesions in his throat, even with the airy tones that make you think he might have been a singer. It's an incomplete portrait, but—you're starting to fill in the details.

[31] You could already see it, a little bit—the speckling of Oripathy lesions on her exposed skin, the telltale bumps under her shirt, but the look you get is... not good. You're surprised she's lived this long.

[32] She says to you that since Chernobog she's changed—that she felt like you feel now. Fragile, easily scared. That she wants to face these things head on, now.
You're not sure it's possible that you're that much the same, but you won't argue.

[33] Like pretty much everything else in your life.

How it's going—

The Yetis are still in pursuit, with their freezing cold following you. You've got reinforcements dropped to you—

—or rather, one, codename Blaze, who is a person who seems carefully designed to give you anxiety, especially because her hobbies include jumping out of aircraft to a degree that Meteorite exclaims "Again?" and Frostleaf just rolls her eyes.³⁴

FrostNova and her squad are persistent, though.³⁵ Her soldiers are loyal³⁶ and willing to support her to the end of the line—even as she calls to them, "We can't let them escape! Who knows what Rhodes Island will do to our people in Lungmen—"

The ground underneath you rumbles, and you freeze.³⁷

Below your feet the street starts to crack; the building next to you starts to crumble from the foundations at the cold being forced into the ground.

Blaze yells at you to grab a lamppost and you nod, speechless; Amiya reaches out her hand from solid ground.³⁸

"...I'm okay," you say, forcing your expression into a smile.

The ground splits wider. The whole district's collapsing, FrostNova telling her own people to stay back. She's going to go down with you if it kills her.³⁹

Amiya's ready to do whatever it takes, you know. When you make eye contact with Blaze, even just for a split second, you can tell she knows, too, what Amiya will do, and that also she should absolutely not do it.

She tells Meteorite to haul Amiya back, says she's got you and she'll do her best to slow your fall, but it's mostly the first part that matters, anyway.⁴⁰

So you close your eyes, and fall.

[34] Amiya looks like she's getting a headache and tells you "no matter what she says, just nod."

[35] Even though—FrostNova doubles over, coughing, wiping her mouth, after holding her own against Blaze's own temperature arts. She's pushing herself hard, which you should be glad about, but—but.

[36] No, not just loyal—they call her sister, and they mean it.

[37] Not from the cold, just—you can't make yourself move, can't think properly—

[38] You know you won't make it. It's too far.

[39] It very well might. Why is everyone around you like this, ally and enemy alike? Then again—you've resigned yourself too, haven't you?

[40] Mostly. You're scared witless, but what's new there, right? If you die here, you're never going to be able to fix things (here, with Kal'tsit, with anyone)—but like a lot of things, that's out of your hands.