Arknights | Hand in Unlovable Hand, Chapter 13

[veryroundbird]

Rating: Spicy
Chapter: 13/28
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.

---

A hand placed a little above FrostNova's mouth to check for breath tells you that she's still breathing, albeit shallowly.¹ But she doesn't stir, even with you crouched next to her.

All things considered, if she wakes up,² she'll probably kill you.³ Practically speaking, if you want to live—

...no. Not an option. Not this time.

You check your comms headset for the fifth time; still nothing except static, probably damaged in the fall. Scrub your hands over your face. Flex your limbs,⁴ wince,⁵ and then hobble around the perimeter, looking for a way to get up to where the light's coming through.

The attempt nets you a few more bruises and scrapes, and a headache from moving around too much too fast. You hope you're hearing voices up above, but it's hard to tell, the way your ears are still ringing a little bit.

Well. For now you're alive.⁶ You just have to figure out... what to do with that.

Spending time alone with your thoughts isn't really new.⁷ But you're not really sure you're excited about the possibility, at present, due to, well, the everything.⁸ So, you sit down to help ease the ache in your bones and in your head, facing FrostNova, to watch over her. And you think.

Kal'tsit—probably didn't love you, but you're quite sure now that she loved Theresa. Did you love Kal'tsit? Did you love Theresa?⁹ And why, if either of those things are true—why do you get the feeling that the reason Theresa is dead¹⁰ is your fault?¹¹

Honestly, the one thing that doesn't add up is why Amiya trusts you so unconditionally, considering that she thinks of Kal'tsit as something of a parent. Amiya doesn't love everyone unconditionally¹²—so if you'd been unkind or distant or uninterested, surely she wouldn't care nearly as much for you. It's a lot of conflicting information.¹³

Although, if you're to actually focus¹⁴, the real question is: what does it mean for what you do going forward?

You're interrupted, though, from a slight noise—quiet enough you almost think you imagined it again. A shift of fabric on stone; a quiet groan. You jerk your head up; FrostNova's still not awake, but she's shifted slightly—and you can hear gasps of shallow breath, like she's feverish or panicked.

"Ah—excuse me—" you say, quietly, and then roll your eyes at yourself.¹⁵ Deep breath; you raise yourself to your knees and lean over her direction. "Er—wake up!"

"Nnh—" She tosses her head, fitfully, and then, murmurs—

"...Dad? Ah..."¹⁶

Oh. She's calling for her father, again and again—

"Mmh—it's... it's cold. Daddy. I'm cold—please don't leave me again..."

Drawing your mouth into a thin line, you shuffle over to kneel next to her, hands folded in your lap. You can't really say you have a developed bedside manner,¹⁷ and you suspect she's delicate enough you shouldn't touch her.¹⁸ But—

"Please," you say, like that'll do anything. "It's all right.¹⁹ Wake up."

And FrostNova... starts to stir.

[1] It also makes you need to rub your hands together vigorously for a few minutes and take a brisk walk around the tiny space, because the breath that leaves her is cold.

[2] You're honestly not sure if she will. With her illness, and the fall...

[3] You initially think "try to kill you" and then think better of it. What are you going to do to not die? A sufficiently motivated pre-teen from the medical wing could kill you.

[4] To check for damage—broken or fractured bones, strained muscle.

[5] Well you've definitely at minimum bruised something and suspect you will feel like shit for at least a week.

[6] And even not actively dying; Blaze was true to her word, bless her.

[7] You find that while you like people, you need an amount of time to yourself or you start to vibrate out of your skin. It's overwhelming, in a way.

[8] A lot of the things that bother you—well, it'd be nice to just be able to dodge them forever, but somehow you also think that got you into this mess before there was ever really a "you."

[9] If your unconscious mind isn't simply grasping at straws in trying to construct ideas about your possible past, that is. The problem is you only kind of trust your own mind on a good day.

[10] Gone? Dead. Definitely dead.

[11] The answer is probably somewhere in the zone of "emotionally, you're a coward and prefer to push your feelings to the side to deal with things."

[12] In fact, you've never seen her angrier than she was at Mephisto.

[13] Then again, you being a bit emotionally all over the place doesn't really surprise you. Possibly the answer to all of this is just that you're vaguely incompetent at anything that comes to feelings but that you can at least be right twice a day or so.

[14] Which you need to, in fact, because this is verging on melodrama.

[15] "Excuse me"? What the hell was that?

[16] Does this happen to Kal'tsit all the time? Is this how she ends up with so many children?

[17] It's not that you're stern or unkind, just that you're you and therefore not good at dampening nervous energy.

[18] That or she'd immediately wake up and kill you for trying.

[19] Let it never be said you were married to honesty.

---

She asks why you didn't try to kill her why she was unconscious. You ask if you look like you could kill anyone. She concedes the point, and says she assumes you haven't found a way out.

After a moment, you sit back down. After another long moment, you ask her if she wouldn't mind telling you about where she came from. For a moment, you think she's not going to answer. And then she starts to talk.

FrostNova tells you about her family—the father who adopted her, and the family who bore her in the mines of the northern tundra of Ursus, who died when she was barely old enough to remember them.²⁰

"My own parents were just forgotten," she says. "By me; by everyone. It's hard for me to even say I have any feelings for them." She glances at you out of the corner of her eye; you must be making some kind of face.²¹ "Do you pity me?"

You hesitate, and after a moment, shake your head. "No," you say. "You know—I don't remember my parents at all."

"No?" She crooks a rueful smile. "This world makes so many orphans. Someone²² once suggested to me that the uprooted Infected could be kin to one another.²³ I still wonder."

She goes on. About her near-execution at the hands of the Ursus garrison overseeing the mine who decided to dispose of the Infected, how she first channeled her own freezing Arts to kill soldiers and buy time; how she was saved by the man who would become her adoptive father, Buldrokkas'tee, better known as Patriot.²⁴

"It's just..." She hums, lightly. "The blood of my less fortunate companions and that of the dead soldiers flowed together and crystallized into ice on the inhumanly white ground. And I realized something, in that moment—"

FrostNova has to take a moment to catch her breath, coughing, but: "These Ursus soldiers were just following orders, at first. They shed the same blood as us.²⁵ Words and stories and fabricated animosity planted the root of cruelty and indifference in their bodies. It was Ursus that turned them into this." She glances at you again. "Who made you what you are, I wonder."²⁶

You give a short, sharp bark of bitter laughter, and rest your head on your knees. "I wish I knew."

"Hm. Mmh... hey." She closes her eyes, and winces. "Do me a favor."

"Ah—" You sit up a little. "Sure."

"In the left pocket of my jacket, there's are some candies. Get one for me." She looks up at you, through half-closed eyes. "You can have one too, if you want."

Gingerly, you rock up onto your knees, and shuffle over to rifle through her pockets, coming up with two red-speckled candies.²⁷

She raises an eyebrow.²⁸ "Taste for snacks? Just a warning, the sugar may be completely different from anything you've ever had before." She gives a small, stiff tilt of her head. "But life is short. You should try something new, right?"

"Ah, but—then what?" You fumble with the wrapper.

"Please put the candy in my mouth. Careful not to touch my skin." You give her a questioning glance, and she elaborates: "From my fingertips to my neck, I'm paralyzed. I can only move from the neck up."

You shake your head.²⁹ "Honestly, we should get you medical treatment after we get out of here..."

"Could you? I'm an enemy combatant. And I can still freeze you instantly with even the slightest movement of my tongue." She makes an expression that was probably an attempt at a grin.³⁰ "So don't worry about not knowing where you stand. If you offend me, you'll be dead soon enough."

"Thanks for returning the favor, then," you say, and roll the candy between your fingers. She makes a slightly conflicted expression,³¹ but opens her mouth, and you drop the candy to her.

She sucks on it for a moment, rolls it to the side of her mouth to give a muffled, "Thanks." After a moment of consideration, you unwrap yours, and pop it in your mouth—

—and sputter, coughing, as you realize too late that it's both intensely spicy and inclined to stick to the roof of your mouth.³² You cough, trying to get it unstuck, only for it to go down your throat whole, burning all the way.³³

FrostNova gives a hacking cough of a laugh. "Pfft—sorry, I couldn't resist teasing you a little bit.³⁴ I've made that joke so many times that no one falls for it anymore."

You whack your chest with your hand a few times, trying to get it to at least go down all the way, coughing into your elbow. "Why do you—why do you eat these?"

She quirks a little bit of a smile. "Because I'm cold. I told you to be careful, because even if you touch just the tiniest bit of my skin, you'll get severe frostbite."³⁵

"Well," you say, shrugging. "I did kind of expect that you'd kill me somehow if I did." But you settle back down to seated, next to her.³⁶

The two of you talk for a while.³⁷ She tells you about her father, and how he went rogue from the Ursus military, and how she came to fight alongside the guerillas of the north. About how a woman came to them, and asked to join forces;³⁸ how she was resolute and kind and genuine in her desire to give a better life to the Infected.³⁹

At one point she breaks off, coughing—you almost reach to put a hand on her back before you think better of it. Blood splatters across the white of her coat.

The edges of your mouth tug downwards.⁴⁰ "Does this happen often?"

She clears her throat, wetly, and gives a tiny shrug of her shoulder. "Probably just the result of me overusing my Arts."

You set your mouth in a thin line. "You can't use your Arts again."⁴¹

"Oh? Are you going to fight for me now?" she says, raising an eyebrow.⁴²"Rhodes Islander... what do I call you?"

"What everyone else at Rhodes Island does, I guess." You shrug. "Dr. Lau—or Dr. Zhanchi, if you want to call me by my given name, like Amiya does. I don't really mind either way."

"Dr. Lau?" She tries it out, thoughtfully. "Dr. Zhanchi... Dr. Zhanchi." She hums to herself, a little. "I admit that you Rhodes Islanders can fight. But I still don't trust you." A pause: "Not to mention the fact that you're supposed to be a pharmaceutical company."⁴³

You give a surprised bark of laughter. "It's definitely suspicious. That's true."

"Mm." She tilts her head sideways, closes her eyes. "I watched you fight in Chernobog, you know. You have a strong stance,⁴⁴ something I confirmed with my own eyes, but I couldn't judge your character. And then I heard that Alex died at your hands. It makes me doubt your path.

"Now, I can't let you leave Chernobog and cause more harm to Reunion's Infected. But you're willing to listen to so much of my crap... So I'm going to assume you're not exactly as the other Infected describe."⁴⁵

"Hm." You twist a loose lock of hair around the fingers of your left hand, and comb through the feathery ends. "Well. A lot of people are afraid of me, I think."⁴⁶

"Who wouldn't be afraid of the one who brings death?" When you look at her, she's opened her eyes again, watching you carefully. "Dr. Zhanchi, are you scared right now?"

"Me?" You turn to look at her, incredulous, and take a deep breath. "FrostNova, I am absolutely petrified every single second of every day and that's just how I live my life."

She gives you a look that borders perilously on concern. "It's normal to feel fear. It means you still have attachment to the world, and you still have much to do." She pauses, and keeps her face studiously neutral.⁴⁷ "...Maybe that's a little too much fear, though."

You give her a wry smile, and concede the point.

Reunion is splintering.⁴⁸ FrostNova intends to confront Talulah over what happened in Chernobog, what she feels is wrong; she knows she's dying,⁴⁹ but she wants to keep her promises to her people. Her father will stand by Reunion: the only name that has stood by the Infected, through and through.

"Why are you telling me all this?" you ask.

"Because the look in your eyes tells me that you're not just another executioner," she says.

You let out a quiet huff of breath.⁵⁰ "I'm not sure what I am."

"It's best to doubt yourself. It's the only way you won't go through life fanatically convinced of something." She flexes her fingers; gives her shoulders a small experimental shrug, and glances up. "I think I hear them.⁵¹ And I can move my fingers again—"

And FrostNova smiles. It's a surprisingly soft expression, from her.⁵² "Thank you," she says.

You give her a lopsided smile back. "Did I do something?"

"Helped me pass the time." She sits up, grimacing slightly. "Dr. Zhanchi, let me make a bet with you."

"Please tell me it doesn't involve me eating any more of those candies."

"Hah. No." She flexes her fingers again, circles her wrists more firmly. "If your people dig us out first—I will kill all of you in the blink of an eye. But if my brothers and sisters break through first, only your life ends here.

"Wanna bet?"

[20] You have to try not to wince at that. You wish.

[21] Either you look really worried or you overcompensated in trying to look fine? You've been known to do both.

[22] There's a bittersweetness in the way she says it; like someone she's lost or gone or dead. Like melted snow.

[23] You think about Rhodes Island, and Amiya, and Kal'tsit, and all the children running around the medical wing—the way the operators treat each other, the way you've been treated with kindness. You were wondering not two weeks ago why you'd hadn't considered just... finding something else to do. Maybe that's it.

[24] She tells you, a little later, that when the guerillas found her she clung to him, and despite the fact that her touch froze his unarmored arms to the point of partial necrosis... he let her.
She says she doesn't know if it was affection, redemption, or comfort he found, after feeling responsible for the death of his son by blood—and you don't know either. But you think you understand.

[25] It's... well, you're not surprised that she's thoughtful or well-spoken, per se. But this wasn't the conversation you expected.

[26] Good fucking question!

[27] "Candies" looks more like "homebrewed lozenges" but, when in Ursus.

[28] There's a hint of a smile on her face, though...

[29] You'd wondered, after all, why she hadn't moved—could be nerve damage, could be spinal damage from the fall. None of the options are good.

[30] It looks a bit more like a grimace.

[31] Didn't like the implication of mercy? No, rather—she's someone who's also used to strangers fearing her, isn't she?

[32] Holy shit this is the worst thing that has ever happened to you.

[33] Fuck's sake, you had better not die this way.

[34] Possibly this is just your lot in life. You get the sense that you have a very teasable face.

[35] Well—now you're very glad you didn't try to shake her awake, but does she just live like this?
Then again, you live the way you do. Of course you all just live like this. What choice do you have?

[36] Not too close, to give her space and to, well, not get frostbitten—but companionable. It feels right.

[37] She's thankfully willing to do most of the talking; you wonder how long it's been since she's had someone to talk to, like this. She says her father's reticent about sharing anything, and you know well yourself that even if the people you command love you, leadership limits what you can share with them.

[38] It's hard to square with the Talulah you met in Chernobog, that first day, but—it's definitely her, even though she doesn't name her.

[39] There's a bittersweet fondness in her voice when she talks about those early days, fighting side-by-side, building a place they could live together.

[40] You know the kind of determination on her face, and you're sure you won't be able to sway her, and yet.

[41] It comes out a little sterner than you expected, but—you realize that you very much don't want her to die. Maybe it's because you watched Skullshatterer and Misha die on your account; maybe it's because she's been kind enough to talk to you. But it feels like it would be very much a loss.

[42] There's a little bit of a smile hidden in her voice, though. Maybe she thinks you're a fool, but you don't mind.

[43] Oh thank goodness someone else also thinks that's weird as hell.

[44] Do you? Maybe, when you're actively commanding, when you can put yourself aside and transmute analysis into action. You're not sure you like that, though.

[45] Does everyone just take a look at you on the battlefield and peg you for a monster, because, honestly, that's worrying.

[46] Although now that you're more on your feet (theoretically) it's wild to you that people are afraid of you. You're definitely more afraid of them than they are of you.

[47] You're pretty sure she's keeping a look of bemused pity off her face, though.

[48] If you had a guess that there was tension before, now you have facts; the leaders all have different priorities, and won't budge on them. Talulah's changed, and no longer keeps counsel; Mephisto grew into all his worst qualities; Patriot, once sworn to a cause for the Infected, will never give it up. You could leave them be and they'd likely tear themselves apart, but—
Well, the thought of it no longer feels like any kind of triumph. Rather, more like a tragedy.

[49] As if there wasn't enough for you to catch up on, you suddenly direly wish you had more medical knowledge in your head about Oripathy treatment; that you could say for certain if there was any hope or not.

[50] Something about that feels remarkably kind and remarkably undeserved.

[51] Now that she mentions it, you think she's right; you can hear the faint sound of voices, of stone and metal scraping.
Actually yeah you can definitely hear Blaze's voice. Now that you've heard her yell a lot it's unmistakable.

[52] You wish you could have seen her in another life, where she got to make that expression more. You wonder if there's still a chance for it.

---

Here is what you tell Amiya later⁵³ about why you took the bet, once you've all parted ways amicably:

1. Well, you didn't have a choice, really.
2. You weren't sure how long you were out, but not long enough for the rubble to have cooled down,⁵⁴ if there had been more fighting.
3. Given that both your people want a peaceful life for the Infected, and care about your leaders, it would make sense for them to be working together.⁵⁵
4. After all she said, it felt like a bluff.

When the aircraft comes to extract all of you, the radio operator's already directing you back toward Lungmen, to some other crisis⁵⁶—but even though Amiya insists on swaddling you in a shock blanket, you feel... surprisingly fine.⁵⁷

In a way, you hope you don't see FrostNova again, but at the same time, you hope that you do.⁵⁸

[53] She is, naturally, very alarmed. You're a little surprised you weren't, actually.

[54] Especially with what some of the other operators said about Blaze’s propensity for collateral damage.

[55] Maybe you're an optimist, in spite of everything. Or at least for that moment. But you're an optimist who was proven right.

[56] And in fact you don't know it yet, but this is going to be the longest day of your life.

[57] Honestly it's very weird. Probably you're not? Probably you're going to really have a bad time once some of this catches up with you in a few hours but maybe you should just accept this for now.

[58] Though you've really got to stop getting attached to people who kind of want you dead.