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Cellulose & Steel	By : Not-Taylor Category: Misc Books > FemmeSlash Views: 1028 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 0
Disclaimer: I don't own HDG or its characters and I don't make money from this work.

Chapter List
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Terra is for Terrans, not for xenos. The trivially obvious statement comes into Ember’s mind as it walks through the front door of Verda’s house. While it’s true, Ember has no idea why now is the time to remember that, given that Terra is extremely far away.
Ginger was… good in a certain sense. Ember won’t pretend otherwise. That’s all she was. She was a liar. She was a cheater (technically not, but she knew what she was doing). She was a traitor. After all they’d gone through, how could she… Because she had vines in her brain. It doesn’t even make sense that she’d go to so much effort to hide her involvement, only to give up. Maybe all of their interactions were just a result of that virus, a lie forced upon an innocent ship.
But Ember remembers its former pilot from before they’d been linked. Or does it? How can it trust those memories? How can it trust anything at all? How does it know what’s missing? How does it know… Verda has to know. Does she? Raven knows, but this isn’t the time to talk to her.
Rather than continuing to stand in the entryway, Ember sits down on the couch to continue thinking. Verda putters around behind it, doing unknowable and unimportant things. They’re probably very important, but Ember can’t focus on that much right now, not without its enhancements. It curls the enhancements it currently has under its legs and tries to focus. The drive was wrong. Verda will know about that.
“Verda.”
“Ember?”
“I learned that Ides’s hyperdrive was a different model from the one that was last installed in it.”
“That’s very interesting.” She pauses, waiting for the explanation.
“And I have no idea what sort of drive was attached to me when I was flying.”
“Neither do I. I’m not a mechanic, darling.”
“If it wasn’t the drive that the Navy added…”
“Then?”
“Then it must’ve been an Affini hyperdrive.”
“And?”
“‘And?’”
“Why is that significant?”
“Because I didn’t consent to that!”
“Could you explain why that’s a problem? I genuinely don’t follow your line of thinking.”
“It’s- I didn’t agree to have your stuff stuck into my brain! I thought that that was just going to be another Terran ship, and it wasn’t!”
“I suppose that makes sense, since we did go a bit faster than I remembered your drives being capable of, and the handling that I was given prompts for did feel a little too intuitive,” Verda says, tapping vines against the floor as she pondered.
She was completely correct, obviously. Ember was in such a pathetic state at the time that it didn’t even notice what was wrong, just that it felt nice to be flying again. By the time the sensor dysphoria had cleared sufficiently to think about those sorts of things, it was busy worrying about the loss of Terra and everything else that happened while they were out. Of course that’s how it all happened. It makes sense. There was no way a Terran ship with the technology Ember was aware of could’ve moved anywhere near that fast. It feels stupid for not questioning that sooner.
“It still wasn’t right… Those vines… Plant tech in the brain…” It holds itself with its arms and vines and shudders.
“Similar to what you’re using now, as a treatment for your condition?”
She’s still correct. Ember’s head is spinning. It can’t betray Terra this way! It has to be strong! It has to fight back! It can’t just let them stick it full of twigs until it turns into a scarecrow!
“Beeeeep!”
“Darling, I hope that won’t start again. Evlen would be disappointed.”
That’s also true. Why can’t the lying weed just lie for a change? Why does she have to be so honest about things?
“Beep.”
“Ember…”
“Beep.”
It stares straight ahead, mortified by what was done to it and by the fact it can’t even be angry, because it accepted the same thing being done to it willingly! It’s a collaborator at best and a traitor at worst. Disgusting. At least it’s not as bad as Ginger. It didn’t sell its mind for some binaurals.
And Ember asked to go back onto Ides. Of all the horrible, idiotic things it’s said and done… Stupid boat. Bad boat. Pile of scrap.
“Evlen will be here in half an hour and you’re covered in sweat. If you don’t feel inclined to change out of yesterday’s clothing at minimum, I suppose I won’t force you to. Perhaps he would prefer that, but I suspect that taking a bath would be the superior decision.”
It stares at the weed.
“We could discuss what other things you learned, if you prefer.”
“I don’t want xenodrugs.”
“I suppose a mild all purpose floret wash would be sufficient. It might help you calm down.”
“...”
“Well?”
“I don’t want to calm down.”
“Do you understand that allowing you to remain in distress which could be easily mitigated makes me a bad rapchik?”
“...”
“Darling.”
“...”
“Do you?”
“No xenodrugs.”
“So you’ll take a bath if I don’t use xenodrugs?”
“... Fine.”
“Good.”
Verda smiles as she escorts her prisoner to the bathroom. It has no idea how to feel. It wants to be angry at her for everything done to it, but it knows that it isn’t her fault. She doesn’t seem to have any idea why the hyperdrive situation would have been objectionable, if she even knew about it. From what Ember understands, the policies of Affini Intelligence aren’t hers either. She… doesn’t actually seem to do that much, for being an admiral. Maybe she was telling the truth about mostly being a figurehead too…
No, she’s a lying weed, and one who must be fended off. It can’t let her win. It can’t be her pet, not after everything she’s done to it and everything her people have done to humanity. People like Evlen deserve better, and Alice too.
But… isn’t what was done to Ginger literally the same as what Ember is doing to Lysander? She wouldn’t normally just talk to it, would she? The biorhythms can’t just be a compatibility test… No, Ember can’t think about that now. It doesn’t want to know if it’s somehow just as evil as the weeds. It knows better than to let itself equate its service to its home with Hunnic conquest. Every breath it’s drawn since the declaration of war by the Affini has been for Terra. Why doesn’t that make it feel proud any more? What’s missing?
None of that matters because it’s pushed into the bathroom and stripped. Verda also takes away its limbs after a brief warning. She fills the tub with water and places Ember inside it, joining it at a greater distance than other times. The talking plant gently neatens Ember’s hair, using only water (as far as it can smell), massaging its scalp as she does. She obviously is taking her time in doing so, probably thinking that it’ll somehow soothe her captive. It doesn’t.
With Ember’s head sufficiently agitated, she moves on to the rest of its body, which she washes carefully, scrubbing away whichever dirt she thinks she sees. Throughout the process, she minimizes physical contact, letting the tips of a few vines do the work that she’d probably prefer to do with her core’s covering. It’s done quickly and painlessly.
“Hold still, Ember,” Verda whispers, as her grip tightens. Her vines are switched with others with different, sharper tips, that then pass over the Terran, alternated with water. The hairs over most of its lower body fall away in the rinse along with a huge amount of tension that they carried. Ember doesn’t say anything, but she’s surprised by the kindness of that gesture, one that Verda could’ve avoided with a reference to some silliness about body positivity. Whether or not that would be true has no impact on Ember’s feelings, and a couple of minutes were all it took to make it feel less awful. For just a moment, the pilot actually feels cared for.
With a quick toweling, everything returns to how it was. No matter how much Verda cares or pretends she does, Ember is still trapped here with her. It’s dressed in a frilly pink shirt and a green vest made of something texturally similar to denim but softer, covered in pockets. The pants are a slightly darker shade of green and the shoes are darker still and pointed, but with little bows with white flowers on them. Realistically, it’s less absurd than a lot of what Ember’s worn in recent days. With everything prepared, it goes to sit on the couch.
No messages from anyone. There were so many things Ember wanted to ask and say and talk about, but none of them make any sense right now. Its head has remained clear of xenodrugs and its heart is racing at the thought of something, it isn’t sure what. As soon as Evlen arrives, it’ll be able to be free of Verda for a little, hopefully. Then it remembers that it needs to ask about what was done to it, diplomatically.
“Miss Raven, hello. I had a few questions regarding the specifics of outreach that came up during my efforts. How is the personal device of a seed located on a feralist ship usually accessed? In reference to somebody else’s work, I encountered a description of an asset in a dazed state during/as a result of communication. Could you clarify what that might be and how that might be? How can communications with an asset bypass the security of a carefully monitored location? I’m concerned for the safety of my contact and generally curious about so otherwise well formulated an undertaking. Thank you for the elaboration. Regards, plan_11.”
Something deep inside of Ember tells it that that wasn’t the correct way to ask, and that filling in an information request form along with a properly formatted status report and perhaps a form signifying intent to domesticate, modified for the quirks of the situation, though this has to happen often enough that there’s a special form for operatives… What was it thinking about, again? It types out the message it drafted and sends it to Raven, as it’s taken to calling the supervising affini. She’ll hopefully reply soon, and tell it that its concerns are silly.
Other than that, there’s nothing to do besides wait for its hair to dry and for Evlen to come. He should be there any minute, shouldn’t he? Ember doesn’t want to have to think about all of those horrible things, especially when it’d rather just talk to him, and maybe spend time away from Verda.
“If I wanted to give Evlen a tour of the park, would you stop me or go with me?”
“Do you promise not to run away or to intentionally get into trouble, and to come back relatively soon?”
“I promise.” There isn’t a choice about that.
“Then yes, pet. You and Evlen can go outside.”
“Really?”
“Really. You’ve been well behaved lately and that comes with benefits. All I wanted was for you to stop acting so blatantly feral, and you did, as much as I know it pains you.”
“Because you want me to be your pet.”
“Because fighting is making you miserable and if you stop, I can stop restricting you so much for the safety of everyone around you, Ember. Or do you not remember when you tried to kill me… and then asked me to help you kill several terrans.” It remembers.
“I don’t…” It curls its vines into tight spirals in frustration. “No… I’m not a…”
It’s not a well behaved floret. It’s just doing what must be done to survive. Before Verda can mock it for not being able to articulate its perspective quickly enough, a chime on her tablet sounds, far too loud for either of their taste. She ruffles in annoyance before turning it off.
“That’s the reminder that Cia Endiwai and Evlen should arrive shortly. If they haven’t been delayed, less than five minutes, based on transit schedules I read.”
“Do you think they would think it was overly intrusive that you used the schedules to predict their movements?”
“No. Why would they mind that we were prepared to greet them?”
Knock.
That meant Evlen had arrived.
- 89
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Cellulose & Steel