veryroundbirdfics | Arknights | Hand in Unlovable Hand, Chapter 12

Rating: Spicy
Chapter: 12/28
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.

An interlude, in a dream (or memory?)

Theresa's smile haunts you in the darkness again, like a fleeting memory of warmth in the cold.

This time, though, in the dream, she touches your arm, enfolds you into her embrace. It feels like everything you are could bleed out of you and into her, leaving you blissfully empty, and you wish it would, a little, but—it doesn't.

In her arms, though, your fear settles, and your anxiety fades into background noise. She cups your face in her hands, gentle; loosens your hair; gives you time to be human in a way that feels safe.

You curl against her, sobbing, face pressed into the soft waves of her hair, and she just holds you as long as you need it; when you tilt your head up toward her, with your tear-streaked face, she's already bridging the gap to press her lips to yours.

For a little while you can put aside being the Doctor, the commander, the one who wins. You can just be human and lonely and tired and sad and desperate for affection. Somehow she never feels like she's just indulging you, which is the strangest part.

Someday, she says, we'll fight our last battle, and this land will be able to fall into a peaceful slumber. You want to believe it. You want to have enough faith to believe it. For now, though, at least I can give that to you, Zhanchi.

When you wake, in the near-dark, dim light filtering in through cracks in the rubble, your head feeling like it went a few rounds with a wall, you realize there are frozen tear-trails down your face.

And of course she's not there. But—

—you're not alone.