5So this fic is at least 46% SparkleMoose's (on AO3) fault because their tumblr is a plot bunny breeding ground. How very dare.
Warning: Pronouns are kinda funky in the beginning.
It starts with an injury.
A training exercise gone wrong; the machinery malfunctions and explodes and the resulting shrapnel cuts easily into flesh. It isn't wearing armor, isn't supposed to need any for this exercise. And then there is metal in its chest and in its stomach and it hurt.
Distantly, it hears alarms sounding and people shouting, but it can't understand any of it.
It slips under as they wheel it into surgery.
Its heart stops.
It takes them nine minutes and thirty-eight seconds to start it again.
It's in a coma for weeks.
When it wakes up, it remembers.
MS-01659 is not a person.
It is a weapon in training for the glory of the Empire. It is in recovery after a malfunction but is expected to return to training within two days. The doctors have declared it fit for duty after numerous tests. Things have always been this way as long as it can remember.
MS-01659 is a weapon, not a person.
And yet.
It remembers being a person once.
It remembers having parents (they smiled a lot, gave affection freely, were warm in a way it didn't know people could be) and siblings (four of them – two boys, two girls, all younger) and a dog (a big, wiggling mass of black fur that was always so excited to see it). It remembers going to school and learning its letters and numbers, how to read and write and do arithmetic. It remembers making friends and playing games and having fun. It remembers growing up and going to college and getting a job.
It remembers dying.
It shouldn't remember these things, shouldn't be thinking about these things. These things are things people have and MS-01659 is not a person.
But it also remembers a story.
A story about a prophesy and a king and a monster made. A story that spanned two thousand years about a line of royal blood, of magic and gods and sacrifice.
A story where the Empire is great and powerful.
A story where the Empire is terrible.
Where slaughter and atrocities like it are written off as acts of war, where experimentation on people is acceptable until those people were no longer people.
A story it now realizes it is a part of.
A story that tells it that what is happening to it is wrong.
MS-01659 should not exist, not as it is. It is a weapon, not a person. It is a tool of the Empire, nothing more.
But that's not right.
It – they – she was a person once.
She's still a person now.
She should be treated like a person.
She is not.
MS-01659 remembers having a name once.
It didn't seem like much of anything at the time, but after being called nothing but a number, having a name seems like a dream. Names are for people and while MS-01659 knows that she is a person now, she can't tell anyone. She does not want to be decommissioned or submitted for reconditioning. So she answers when the scientists call her it instead of she, number instead of name.
She doesn't even know what her name would be.
The name from before was for a different person; one who is part of her, yes, but that is no longer who she is. She's too different from that woman who grew up loved and warm and safe. She remembers what that's like, but she's never felt it herself. No, that name is not hers anymore. If she is to take one, it will be new, one for her and her alone.
But how does one get a name?
Names are people things and MS-01659 has only realized she is a person recently.
She doesn't know how to get a name.
But she wants one.
The scientists test her harder after the accident.
They pull her away from the other subjects, run her through programs that she knows she shouldn't be running until she reaches level ten. She's only level five but they expect her to complete the programs and to complete them well.
She fails more often than she succeeds.
They punish her when she fails.
She does not want to be punished.
So she pushes until she succeeds.
The scientists praise her and it feels hollow. Before the accident, before she remembered, she had craved such praise. Now all it does is make her skin itch and her stomach churn. She does not want their pretty words and empty smiles but it is better than being punished so she nods at their words and says nothing.
But succeeding isn't enough.
They push her harder.
"It needs to be better," they say, "Faster. Stronger. It needs to be able to withstand the projected energy output."
So they push her.
MS-01659 starts to feel something building under her skin and the more they push her, the more the pressure builds. She doesn't like it but has no idea how to make it stop. The scientists seem pleased by the results she gives them so she says nothing.
(Would they listen?
She has vocal chords, a tongue, teeth. She can make sounds, knows how to shape those sounds into words. But she has never used them to say anything they didn't want or expect to hear.
Would they listen?
No.)
They push her.
It feels like there's fire in her veins and ice in her bones. The air smells like ozone all the time now and her skin tingles. It hurts. It hurts every moment. Training hurts and the tests hurt and failing hurts always but succeeding has started to hurt just as bad. MS-01659 does not want to hurt.
(Make it stop hurting.)
They push her.
She destroyed a gun the other day. She just touched it, the barest brush of her fingertips, and it melted under her hands. The pressure inside her hummed and sparks danced across her arms. The scientists make excited sounds and start talking over each other but MS-01659 can't understand them anyway. Sound is muffled and she can just barely pick out words over the static buzzing in her ears. Her vision has started to go blue around the edges. She doesn't think that's supposed to happen, but she doesn't say anything. Can't. She hurts and the pressure under her skin is so much. She doesn't know what will happen if she opens her mouth, but she thinks it will be bad.
They look at her with eager eyes and greedy smiles.
(She wants a smile like the ones her mother used to give her after she gave her a picture she drew, warm and soft and gentle. She wants a smile like the ones her father used to give her whenever she came home with a good grade, proud and happy and bright. She wants a smile like the ones her siblings used to give her when they played games together, innocent and loud and excited. She wants a smile like the ones her friends used to give her whenever they saw each other, gleeful and understanding and true.
She just wants a smile.
A real one.)
They push her.
They push her harder and harder and harder like they don't think she can break.
(She can. She remembers. She's broken before. She's a person, after all, and people break all the time.)
They push her until she feels too large to fit in her skin anymore.
There's a vice around her lungs and a noose around her neck. She can't hear over the static that fills her ears and all she sees when she opens her eyes is blue light, streams of it, twisting and thrashing and angry.
They push her.
MS-01659 does not break.
She shatters.
It hurts.
It hurts like nothing she's ever felt before. She feels like she's bursting at the seams, like something inside of her is demanding to be set free, lashing out when she just pushes back harder.
It hurts.
It hurts and no one is helping her.
She doesn't know what to do.
It hurts.
It hurts.
It hurts.
She lets go.
When MS-01659 wakes up, the lab is a ruin.
The equipment is shattered and sparking, smoke pouring out. The scientists that were running the test are scattered on the ground around her, blood pooling under them as sightless eyes stare out at nothing. The walls are crumbled and broken; she can see the training room thirteen rooms down. The ceiling is gone. She can see straight through it, through the roof, straight to the sky.
It's dark and filled with clouds, lightning flashing. She sees it streak towards the ground, hears something explode not that far away. The wind is screaming in a way MS-01659 has never let herself.
There's a storm raging outside and she knows that it's hers.
The pressure under her skin is still there but it's less now. Her eyes burn and she aches and she doesn't want to move. She's collapsed in a heap on the ground, limbs splayed every which way, drenched from the rain coming through the giant hole in the ceiling.
She's more comfortable than she's been in years.
Maybe she could sleep now, without anyone to wake her up. She doesn't think she'll want to wake up if she goes to sleep.
(Is that the same as wanting to die?
Does she want to die?
She's done it before.
But then she woke up.
She shouldn't have woken up.)
It would be easier. It would most assuredly hurt less. And she's so tired.
Does she want to die?
(No.
She doesn't.
But living is hard and dying is so very easy.)
"Well, well, well, what have we here? It seems our glorious Empire has been hiding quite the little treasure, hasn't it?"
For those of you who are interested, you can find the tag for this story on my tumblr under my story tag page.
Until next time,
~Elri