#ailene

Right now the child was unconscious, recovering thanks to Ullane’s own psiionics, regenerative serum, and - she would reluctantly admit - Vannyn’s quick thinking. Sealing the wound with skin from their worms was creative, and it had certainly allowed Ailene to survive the flight to the clinic.

Not that the healing process would be easy. Loss of a limb - especially at this age - was always a painful, messy process. Ailene would need check-ups and likely to have assistance coping with the following trauma.

At the moment, she needed rest. So did the yellowblood.

First, though, she had to speak to the worm swarm.

They were on the phone to someone, sitting alone in the room she’d ushered them into, speaking quietly. They sat on a simple gray plastic chair, posture tight with their free hand clenched in their lap over their black pants.

“Yes, I found her...no, she’s not well...feed my snails, please, we’ll have to stay overday. Thank you, Srevni.” They sighed and hung up, their long ears drooping, then looked over and noticed her.

Their bright green eyes had always unsettled Ullane, but there was nothing in them to be afraid of now. Only a deep weariness and concern, a frightened anticipation as they leaned forward, clearly aching to know what had happened.

“She’ll live. But yes, she’ll be here at least a few days.” Said Ullane calmly and directly, running a hand through her hair.

The smell of blood still lingered, and she marveled that it didn’t seem to bother Vannyn, though they had a medical mask on themself as a precaution.

“Thank you.” They murmured. “Thank you...I...I will need to speak to my kismesis, I’m afraid I’m a little low on funds at the moment...”

“Don’t you work for Latrai as well?” asked Ullane, neutral but curious.

“Sometimes...” said the rainbowdrinker absently, looking at the wall instead of the lowblood’s face. “She has other people to look after her. She’s involved in some spaceship company mess at the moment, she’s hardly going anywhere she’d need me for...Amdzah is there, and her new assistant she’s very fond of...Chimer will be fine. How is Ailene?”

“Stable. She likely won’t wake up for a while, we’ve set up IVs and will see she’s clean. Luckily her cells aren’t too different from our own.”

“Good, good.” They murmured, still seeming slightly out of it. “Very good. Now. Do you have any spare blood around here? I am on...very heavy appetite suppressants at the moment, as it took a great deal of energy to fly here quickly. It’s fine if you can’t provide, but then, I will need to go elsewhere...”

Ullane’s lip curled in instinctive disgust, but then she sighed. She couldn’t blame Vannyn for asking.

“We need it for transfusions. However. Come with me.”

Part of her screamed that she was insane as she led the worm swarm along, to the part of the clinic that was all gleaming laboratories and fridges full of samples, engineering technology side by side with biological wonders in tanks.

At least, she considered them wonders.

An opinion many trolls did not share.

“Ah, reminds me of Nott...” They said, a bit vaguely. “Except so much more. You’ve really moved up in the world, haven’t you...”

She snorted.

“Administrator as well as medic. Nothing special.” She dismissed.

Vannyn looked at her curiously, but didn’t comment as she walked briskly to a specific fridge and pulled out what looked like half of a corpse...except no, it smelled wrong to the rainbowdrinker. That pale flesh now placed on a rolling cart had never been truly alive...yet, it was not dead.

As Ullane pushed it across the floor and hooked it up to a biowire rig with clicks and presses of buttons, they could smell the life from it...but it was not natural.

Then she sparked, pinkish-red, her eyes lighting up, and she pumped life into her creation, sparking the electricity in its brain, starting its pulse.

It had blood. Real, flowing blood.

Tuuya hardly registered ripping their mask off before they practically leapt over to it and sunk their needle-like fangs into its neck, sucking up nearly all its blood in seconds. It went limp, almost crumpled in on itself.

Ullane once more felt disgusted, but far better this than a real troll.

They delicately wiped their mouth with a handkerchief they took out from their sylladex before putting it in their pocket.

“Ah, it has a strange taste, but it works. Though I could use at least four more of those...what is this? An artificial helm?”

The yellowblood nodded.

“Do you, ah...have others?”

Ullane had three artificial helms that were in proper shape for Vannyn to feed on, and she sighed as she calculated how much time it would take to repair them. At least regenerative serum would make it a matter of nights, not weeks.

Tuuya looked far more alert after eating, and gave the mediculler a closed-mouth smile.

“Thank you.”

“Don’t mention it.” Muttered Ullane, completely serious.

They laughed lightly.

“Easily done...I imagine you need rest. Don’t mind me, I won’t bother anyone. Except to say hello to Ashe, if he’s around.”

She looked at them as they turned to leave the laboratory.

“How do you do it?”

She said.

They blinked.

“Do what?”

“People love you.” She muttered. “You have this whole...group, quadrants and children...friends...so many people know you and like you. You don’t even pretend to be a troll as much anymore. How? How can you do it, and I...”

She shook her head.

“Forget it.”

A look of gentle sympathy spread over the false jade’s face, and they gave her their full attention.

“You have friends, mustardseed.” They said, the nickname they’d once said bitterly, mockingly now so soft in their sharp mouth. “You do. Ashe adores you...Thrixe likes you very much. Glasya, too. Doubtless there are others I’ve no idea about.”

She looked at them.

“I killed a cavern of traitor jades. I helped make weapons that kill people, worse, that threaten them, make them live in fear of QPIN...I’ve cut open the thinking undead because...because holding what made them think in my hands made me feel like I had some control. I...I let an alien rip open Thrixe’s skull once, eat part of his brain. He ran away, he became a full horrorterror for the first time...I...I...”

Yellow tears leaked out of her eyes as her voice became deeper and rougher, her usual carefully trained higher tone slipping away.

“I hurt someone I love...even if I didn’t love him then, I hurt him so much...I was bad to Cheran...”

She clenched her fists, digging her nails into her flesh hard enough to bleed. She didn’t care it was in front of Vannyn. What did it matter.

“I go and I talk about what I’ve done and how to fix it and how to be better and how to not hurt people and how, how, how to do everything right, and nothing makes me feel like I am better.”

She punched the wall of the lab, bruising her bleeding hand, hardly caring about the pain. She could heal. She could always heal.

She could fix anything.

Except what really mattered.

“That’s because you’re waiting for something that won’t come, mustardseed. You’re waiting for an answer...there aren’t any. There never are, for people like us...there is no way to make sense of our atrocities.” They said, gentle but blunt, hands clasped in front of them.

“We are terrible people, and we must live with it...breathe it, every night, never let ourselves forget. But...we can’t let that stop us from living. I think...you are afraid to live, because you are so much more familiar with death, with killing as much of yourself as you need for ambition, for survival...for control, really.”

She laughed, slightly hysterical.

“If I could kill as much as I needed to be someone different, I would! What is there here, Vannyn...? What is this person? Clever, useful, but what is she? I don’t know.”

“No one can decide that but you.” They said with mild amusement. “You keep hoping you can see yourself reflected in what you do...I think you need a different mirror, mustardseed. I think...you should go away for a time, work elsewhere, at the very least. Ask Chimer for help. She’s good with this sort of thing.”

Ullane breathed deeply, in and out.

“Yes. You may be right. I am a medic. Always, a medic. But...what else?”

“You’ll just have to find out.” They said, amused, and walked out the door.

Ullane watched them go and stood alone in her laboratory, then looked at the biowire rig behind her.

An experiment. Everything was an experiment to learn from, if only she approached it the right way.

Everything.