veryroundbirdfics | Arknights | Hand in Unlovable Hand, Chapter 25

Rating: Spicy
Chapter: 25/28
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.

You need to make a decision, Kal'tsit yells to you over the noise of combat, and oh, you know. You know.¹

Here, you have choices:

An efficient, clean victory for your operators, sweeping the creature (him) (the boy) and its (his) thralls away, to keep those above and around safe.
Mercy for one more lost child who found himself at war's own mercy too early.
Have a nervous breakdown trying to balance the two.²

What you know about the person you were: you valued some measure of efficiency, rather than mercy, probably sometimes at the cost of your own operators.³ This is more than just a fight to decide your identity, and yet—

And yet, you want to think... the person you were, if she was able, would have done her best to save everyone.⁴ She just couldn't find a way, and therefore did the best she could. The person everyone fears and respects for her ability—

You have to be better.

No: you will be.⁵

And in the end, the great white bird coughs out one final plume of dust from his beak, and lapses into quiet, apart from a slight wheezing sound.⁶

You pull your jacket tighter closed around you; you're going to need to go through the full disinfection rigamarole later anyway,⁷ so you only have a moment of pause before going to kneel beside him. Kal'tsit follows, reaching for the rest of her kit.

"I have a better understanding of this Infected's behavioral patterns, now," she says, sweeping her hair back from her face in a clip so it won't fall while she's working.⁸

"His," you say, idly.⁹

She glances at you, her expression unreadable.¹⁰ "Of course.¹¹ In regards to stimulator measures, he possesses distinct measures of resolving stressors, which likely are leftovers of habitual thought from his previous human form."

To control, to be controlled. The lessons beaten into a child who grew a little older into... this.¹²

Kal'tsit pulls out a syringe, and loads it from a bottle of solution kept in her pocket.¹³ "Even if we set the entire district ablaze, it would only serve to further disperse what exceptional Originium crystal makeup has already arisen, and bring about even more exceptional infection in turn," she says. "With this—I can render his infected organs harmless, halt those organs' action, and destroy their basic function. After that... he can return to being a normal Infected."¹⁴

You look down at the creature lying by your knees, curled in on himself pitifully, as she does her work. Brushing feathers aside, a careful injection into a major artery; the liquid turns a startling blue under the skin, tracing its way through his system. "Is that all it takes?" you murmur. "If he can be a normal Infected—will he be human?"¹⁵

Her mouth thins; she doesn't look up at you. "The mutation of his Infected organs has already dealt irreversible damage to his bodily function. The rate and degree of infection of his various physiological systems can only accelerate from here on.¹⁶ He is already terminal; in end-state. The world has already abandoned him." She shakes her head, slightly, and her tone softens "This is the fate left for him. The only thing the world has for every single Infected."¹⁷

You sit there, quietly, and fold your hands in your lap. "And that's—" You look up at her, voice straining slightly even audible through your respirator.¹⁸ "That's all we can do?"

"From a medical perspective—yes." Kal'tsit sighs, a light exhale. "Even if I were to look past my position as a doctor, I still would not have any participation in any facet of administration beyond, regarding Reunion Infected."

She sighs. "We don't have much time. Whether or not he can awaken from his coma hinges entirely on how his physiological condition fares following operation, and following the conclusion of the Chernobog core city operation, we'll be completely disavowing any relationship with the Reunion Movement."¹⁹

You close your eyes—deep breath in, deep breath out. "Is there anything we can do? Or, rather—" Your hands curl tighter together over your knees. "Anything I can do."

There's a moment of silence; Kal'tsit drums her fingers on the hard tile floor, idly.²⁰ "The power to choose has always been in your hands, Dr. Lau. But before you make a choice, you should clearly ascertain the potential outcomes."

"Believe me," you mutter, "I'm having a little panic attack about all the ascertaining already. I've been doing so much ascertaining."²¹

She pretends not to hear you, although there's a little arch of her eyebrows.²² "Should you regard him as an Infected patient? Or should you regard him as one of Reunion's past leaders? If you regard him as a microcosm of all the evil that runs riot across this land, is he a casualty, or a perpetrator?"

Her chin lifts—not to look at you, but gazing across the room, a faraway look in her eyes.²³ "Should you regard him as an inseparable part of some kind of violent regime, or should you regard him as the lamentable outcome of some hideous logic?"

You look up at her, from your hunched-over position watching the creature-child shudder on the floor, feathers molting in great bunches from his skin, the pink color of an infant's. All around you, your operators are finishing cleanup—which is to say, careful disposal of the bodies of the mercenaries Mephisto unconsciously adopted into his herd. Even without them, you'd be hard-pressed to forget the scene in Lungmen.

But you realize where you heard that melody before, too.²⁴

"It'll always be both," you say, quietly.²⁵ "He's not the only one, after all."

"Mm." Kal'tsit sounds... unusually subdued in answering. "In reality, these identities are all fundamentally inseparable. But we don't have the capacity to accommodate them all. Factually, he has already vanished from this land. Only you can decide his fate, whether fortune or misfortune."

"It's all up to me, is it?" You level a tired glance at her. "You'd trust me with that?"

She glances away, lower lip jutting out just slightly. "Whether benevolent, or just, or fair, or resentful, or whether you'd like all four, or whether your decision has nothing to do with these words at all, it doesn't matter to me."

That seems a little dubious to you.²⁶ Even so, though—she nods her head slowly at you as she finishes putting away her implements, seeming at least satisfied with her work. "I won't issue any evaluation on your choices," she says. "Even if I would, I wouldn't speak it. Even if making choices for other people's fates is a ridiculous, laughable affair..."²⁷

Kal'tsit shakes her head. "He's already made his choice. What should be done next hinges only on you." She tilts her head your direction. "I'm only a doctor meeting the patient for the first time. But you are the Doctor who's fought against him numerous times."²⁸

A stretch from side to side, and then she unfolds to her feet. "And meanwhile, I have other obligations. There are certain things that only you can do, and certain things that only I can do. Operation of the Sarcophagus controls is the latter."

Her heels click away across the floor, a resonating tap, tap, tap in the large space—and then it's just you and the creature. The boy. Mephisto, his round face starting to be a little apparent under the shed feathers and deformations of flesh and bone, which may well be permanent.

Does it matter, what you do here? Even if he survives—what kind of life would that be?²⁹

You think for a long moment, watching his chest weakly rise and fall. Then you wave a medic over.³⁰

"Operator—I'm going to need emergency medevac for this one," you say, clumsily staggering back to your feet with nowhere near Kal'tsit's grace. "If we can get a stretcher and some shock blankets—I'd be much obliged. He'll probably need to be kept in a medical coma..."³¹

The medic looks a little alarmed at the prospect. But, he nods, grimly, and calls over another one of his squad; you flex your wrists, tired from your hands being clenched. This isn't the last thing you need to do down here, after all.

But you're not really sure, at this point, how many people really know how to be human in this world, anyway.³² He might as well get a chance to stumble through it with the rest of you.

[1] You're beginning to think that previously you were simply always deeply anxious so that people who knew you before just register that as your base neutral expression but please

[2] Three guesses and the first two don't count about what you're choosing! Unfortunately for you!

[3] Because that's the best way you have to interpret the way Blaze reacted to you—the hesitance she had around you, in addition to, you know, you being the reason for some of her beloved friends' deaths. You previously cultivated trust through the fact that you would win without fail—and not through any other means.

[4] If anything—the vague scraps of recollection you have paint a picture internally of someone who could not stop feeling things.

[5] You have to be.

[6] Only the weak rising and falling of his chest gives you an impression of life left in that body. It's not much—but it's something.

[7] Which you are dreading because it means you will not immediately be allowed to go back to bed and lie face-down for forty-eight hours straight, and will instead have to delay that for two hours while being going through all the deeply uncomfortable sanitization protocols and blood draws.

[8] Honestly, why does her hair look perfect every single way she wears it? It's really unfair to you personally.

[9] Maybe it's an odd time to get insistent about that, but it feels important.

[10] There's a little flicker of... not quite surprise in her features. Something like reconsideration, maybe—just the slightest hint.

[11] The kind of "of course" someone says when it is absolutely not actually a matter of course.

[12] You think... you know a thing or two, about the way the cruelty of the world changes a person, even when it's faded beyond vivid memory.

[13] Does she just carry all these kinds of things on her just in case? ...Probably. That seems right.

[14] The phrase rings oddly to you because... is there really anything that passes for "normal" among you? Is that really reassuring, if being a "normal Infected" still led him up to here?

[15] Rather—well... even as he is, the world hasn't treated him as a human. So... perhaps you can see how he'd be content as something other-than, enough that it would manifest like this.

[16] The precise, clinical tone belies what you can read in her face—she holds herself studiously neutral, but there's a tightness at the corners of her eyes that you can't help but notice.

[17] Grim words; your gaze falls on her shoulders, where you can still see the translucent black crystals through the transparent vinyl of her hazard gear. You're uncomfortably aware of how the striation across your chest pulls at the skin as you breathe. There's always just one ending.

[18] You want... you really want to believe that anything else is possible. Maybe, that's what brought you to Theresa in the first place.

[19] After talking to Yelena, and the way she fell, there's something depressing about that. It feels like they shouldn't be forgotten—or at least, you don't want them to be remembered like this.

[20] She has to mull it over—like it's not a question she expected you to ask.

[21] It's entirely possible you do too much ascertaining.

[22] You know what, that's fair.

[23] The kind where—particularly now—you're quite sure she's seeing some other place and time, if only for a moment, and remembering what mark it left on her when she left it behind.

[24] On one freezing-cold afternoon in a ruined sector of Chernobog.

[25] How many precious few people in this Catastrophe-ridden world aren't hurting in one way or another, after all? There are probably plenty of perpetrators who aren't victims, of course—but those, you don't think you'll find scrabbling for some kind of grasp at power under revolutionary banners.

[26] You're like a thousand percent sure it matters a lot to her, actually? Every time she asks you a question like this and says it doesn't matter to her you're pretty sure it's some kind of test.

[27] She frowns, as she says it, forehead creasing slightly; she really does seem to believe it. Kal'tsit's the kind of person who carefully considers all her convictions; you wonder what happened to make her hold that one so strongly.
Was it something that happened to her, or something she did?

[28] That feels like it's putting it a little strongly, but you don't really have it in you to argue; and, in any case—she's probably right. Somehow you do feel like you understand the complexity of the situation; you just have no idea what the hell to do about it. Or what feels right for you to do about it.

[29] ...on the other hand, what kind of life did he live already, that made him into this person?

[30] He does his best to not recoil at your charge, at least.

[31] You're not sure if you mean because he might hurt himself, condition delicate as it is, or because he might hurt someone else. Either way, though.

[32] You're definitely not one to talk, here. You only just feel like you're getting the hang of it sometimes at this point in your life.