Vigor Mortis

"Yo, Jelisa! Wake up!"

My mind sputters and screams as I'm jolted awake by yelling voices and pounding on my door, the cacophony mixing with a brutal assault of sights, smells, feelings and sensations. I'm vaguely aware of the stiff immobility of my body, seized up and ignoring the quiet remains of rationality in my mind trying to keep together the rapidly-shattering structure of my sanity, rebuilding it in the midst of a hurricane. Chilled sweat clings to my skin as I feel every microscopic divot and contour of the mattress below my back. No blanket covers me, the uniform chill of the air far less distracting than the feel of cotton on flesh. The stench of mold and my own body mixes with the subtle undertones of stone, tiny cracks leaking out the scent of dirt and worms and ant pheromones. Each one crawls up my nose, fighting for my attention as I beg them to leave me alone. Even with eyelids firmly shut, the subtle differences in the light pressing itself through them pours into my head and refuses to go unanalyzed, demanding that I see through the skin of my own face. And worst of all, that fucking pounding on my door, punctuated by Vicki's insistent words that my brain can barely register, all echoing around the room and attacking me from different angles, highlighting the sound of my every breath and heartbeat, jolting my head with each smack of her fist, each impatient shift of her weight. I am, for a dozen horrifying seconds, not Templar Jelisaveta but instead a disembodied assault of qualia, drowning my sense of self in agony.

Filter, filter, filter. My mind screams as I swim through the storm, gathering my focus and reassembling my mind. Filter, filter, filter. These things do not need to be acknowledged. I can let them flow through me without acknowledgment. Filter, filter—

"Jelisa! We have a prisoner transport today!"

I know I fucking know shut up shut up for five seconds! Hearing my own name is like a battering ram against my focus, forcing itself through the walls I've been so desperately crafting. But slowly, agonizingly, I rebuild myself and manage to respond.

"I'm getting up," I call back to my partner, voice strained. "Please don't make any noise for a sec."

"Oh, fuck, sorry," she whispers, which is the opposite of not making noise but at least she whispered.

Altogether, the time between my rude awakening and the moment when I'm finally enough of a person again to stand up and start my day is barely thirty seconds, but I swear to the Watcher it always feels like hours. This one was worse than usual, as for once I was actually pretty deep in sleep when I got jolted out of it. I have not been sleeping well at all, and it will probably be months before I really get used to my room here enough to change that. ...And that's assuming I don't get subjected to whatever the fuck 'decontamination' is again. A minute later I have my armor on and I'm walking out the door to my room, an embarrassed Victoria waiting for me.

"Sorry," she mumbles again. "I forgot."

"It's fine," I sigh. "I'm used to it. But seriously, just like, whisper my name once and I'll be up."

I almost feel bad for lying—it's not really 'fine,' I absolutely hate waking up like that and it tends to color my entire day—but it's true that I'm used to it, and Victoria has enough shit to deal with to be overly worried about my problems. She's obviously under a lot of stress, from the tight muscles twisting under her skin as she moves to the fatty aroma of her sweat. She's also obviously still pregnant, meaning she has been for nearly two months now. I want to talk to her about it, see if there's anything I can do to help out, but it's kind of an awkward subject to breach. Naturally, she has no obvious visual signs of pregnancy this early into it, so I really don't want her to ask how I know she's kept the child. "Oh, well, I just noticed that milky, babyish scent is still permeating your vaginal discharge. Why yes, I do smell that kind of thing constantly from everyone around me, thank you for asking!" It's not the most awkward way I've ever lost a friend, but it would be up there. Ugh, I wish I was talentless.

Still, I eventually figure out a way to delicately breach the subject.

"You want to talk about that thing with Vita at all?" I comment as the two of us head upstairs.

She shrugs, a fresh layer of stress sweat leaking out of her armpits. She's actually kind of lucky in that her stench isn't too bad by stress sweat standards. It won't stand out to anyone else.

"She stayed quiescent the whole time you were in decontamination. It was no big deal."

We both know that's not what I was referring to, but I get the hint that I shouldn't press.

"Well, that's good," I acknowledge. "'Quiescent,' huh? That's a fun word. Really flows off the tongue."

Vicki snorts with amusement, the mucus in her nose sounding like it's left over from a nasty run-in with either allergies or crying. Probably the latter.

"You caught me red-handed," she admits. "I just like to say it."

We both chuckle at that, and I take the win. She'll talk if and when she's ready, and I will be here if she needs me. ...Because like, you know, I'm not allowed to leave. We reach the top floor of the facility, taunting me by dint of proximity to the surface. I'd really like to see the Mistwatcher's golden sky again, but that's not in the cards today. We're just accepting the two new prisoners and escorting them to their rooms.

The top floor of Site 4 is an enormous trap designed to kill everyone in it. A magic-powered elevator is the only way to or from the surface, with both the elevator itself and the pathway to it watched at all times, devoid of cover and lined with bolt holes from which spells and arrows can blast through to annihilate anyone stupid enough to walk through without permission. I can hear and feel the various deadly implements aimed at me from all around the room, because you never take allegiance for granted in a prison full of animancers.

Forget the emotional abuse and pregnancy and all that shit, it's a wonder that any of the Inquisitors here aren't completely stressed out of their fucking minds. I don't know how Captain Manus holds himself together.

The glass elevator descends, and inside it two Templars flanking the collared form of a twitching young woman come into view. Her mostly-pink hair is obviously dyed, roots of reddish-brown hair showing where it has started to grow out. Her olive skin tone is marred with splashes of pink across one cheek. Her arms and fingers are tied behind her back, and in general she looks utterly miserable, her shaking lower lip joining her involuntary convulsions as if she's about to burst into tears at any moment. Her soul is jagged and broken, stitched back together in a style that I've come to recognize as a relatively early Ars victim. Based on her age she must've been experimented on as a child, probably no more than three or four years old, then stuck under the thumb of a monster for many years after.

So. This is Capita, our new Delta-class prisoner. The combination of cognimancy, offensive chaos magic, and motherfucking teleportation means she is absolutely zero-tolerance collar-on at all times. And according to the reports... this 'isn't all of her.' Her words.

The elevator heads back up and returns back down, and it's easy to see why the second prisoner now on it also only answers to 'Capita.' She's nearly identical to the first woman, in both body and soul. What I once assumed was a haphazard splash of paint on her face is apparently quite carefully applied, as even that matches the other Capita perfectly. When she spots her twin she immediately starts to struggle, mewling like an abused cat behind her gag as she tries to step through the glass door and touch her matching experiment. The Templars flanking her yank her back.

Oh boy, this is going to be another problem case.

"Careful," one of the Templars grunts at us as they approach to hand the Capitas off. "They're not very strong, but they're feisty."

The twins stare at each other, and I can see thin, purple strands reach out from the cracks in the middle of their souls to try and touch each other. The collars give each of them a warning zap, and the threads dissolve as they convulse in response. Hmm. Is that why they're so similar? Do they use cognimancy to remove their differences? They look so unwell. Is that because of the cognimancy, or because they can't use it anymore?

"I can see that," I say, nodding at the Templar. "Thanks. We'll take them from here. Capita, will you walk with us?"

I carefully position my gaze between the two of them, trying to make it ambiguous which one I'm speaking to. As I'd hoped, it seems to relax them a little. They glance between me and each other, then nod helplessly, allowing themselves to be transferred to Vicki and I without protest. They walk in front of us, letting themselves be guided down the stairs.

"So," I say casually, starting to remove the gag of my Capita the moment we get to the stairwell. "Welcome to Site 4! I know that you two are probably less than stoked to be here, but I promise things aren't as bad as you may be afraid of."

"No," Capita growls as soon as she's able. "Wrong. Do not tear this sketch in half."

"Huh?" I ask.

"She doesn't want to be called 'you two,'" Vicki clarifies, to my surprise. "She's saying that both Capitas are the same person with two bodies. Is that right, Capita?"

Capita seems surprised, but she nods happily.

"Yes! Yes! Please, cease separating me from myself!"

"How did you get all that?" I ask Vicki.

"One of Altrix's selves calls herself a sketch, too," she explains, shrugging. "Capita just kind of seems like a reverse Altrix, you know?"

A brief moment of clarity seems to pass over Capita, both of them—er, both of her bodies, I guess—suddenly ceasing their constant twitching.

"Sister is alive...?" she mutters quietly.

"Oh, are you two related?" Vicki asks happily. "Yeah, Altrix is a friend of mine. Work hard and try to get up to level four permissions, okay? Then I can set up some dates for you to visit!"

I suppress a shudder. Holy shit, what a thing to say to a person. 'Work hard and I will let you see a long-lost family member again!?'

"Please," Capita begs, "before anything else, let me be myself."

Once again, those thin purple threads from each body start snaking towards each other, questing slowly out of their respective souls. I assume that much like Vita's tentacles, the threads are free to move as the collar won't trigger until it senses any mana pushing through them, but once it does...

"Capita, I need you to stop that," Vicki says firmly.

"Please," Capita begs. "Please."

"Sorry," I say, feeling like someone ought to. "You understand why we can't let you cast, don't you?"

"I know," Capita agrees desperately. "I know. Please. I won't run or hurt you. Please."

I glance at Vicki, who shrugs subtly in my direction. Unfortunately, Capita won't even be allowed in the same cell as her other half. There's not much either of us can do about that.

"I can only be broken for so long before the shards no longer fit," Capita pleads helplessly.

I sigh. Damn it.

"Maybe I can recommend a fast track up the ranks?" I say to Vicki. "And if we get a good enough metamancer we should be able to block off teleportation without too much trouble."

"Nuh-uh, no way, Jelisa," Vicki protests immediately. "If you try to fast-track a cognimancer right after she shows up your ass is going into decontam for a week."

"I mean, if it helps—"

"Fuck no! Don't you drop all your work on me," Vicki grumbles. "I'll end up screwing over all your progress with the Epsilon."

Oh, she's probably frustrated that I got authorization to promote Vita up to Epsilon-2 today. I didn't think about that, but I guess it's understandable. I haven't one hundred percent decided if I'm going to do it, but I figure it will be pretty difficult for her to hug that stuffed animal we got on the shipment today if she can't use her arms.

Still, I can't look at Capita's two faces and two broken souls and not feel sorry for her. Poor fucking girl. I can't believe an actual human person made other people into things like this. It just doesn't make any sense in my mind. Why? Why would anyone do this, let alone a High Inquisitor? I suppose some of the rumors say he never truly was one. They say that in the middle of the Ars crisis, people started noticing inconsistencies in the records, places where he seemed to have slipped into history as if from nowhere. The Inquisition, after all, wasn't a publicly known branch of the Templars at the time. A very limited number of people were privy to the identity of the High Inquisitor, and rumor says that gave Ars exactly the opening he needed to make the whole world believe it was just something he always was. No evidence exists to prove it, but who knows what the real truth is when dealing with a man capable of twisting memories and allegiances as casually as a chef would stir a pot.

...Again, so they say. I was… what, twelve at the time? Thirteen? My only real memory of the Ars crisis is the constant fear, waking up in the night to the sounds of battle as his twisted splices fought Templars to death in the streets. The paranoia that any living thing could be one of his agents, or maybe even Ars himself. Your neighbor, your grocer, your dog—there was always that subtle terror of uncertainty that anyone you know and love could be pulled away and warped into a monster without any outward sign of it.

That is what people remember when they hear the name 'Inquisitor.' I don't blame a single other Templar for hating me now that I'm one of them. But sometimes we just have to take a hit to do the right thing. No matter how hard we get knocked down, a Templar stands up again. And despite everything, despite my disgrace, that's still what I am. An Inquisitor was needed, so I answered the call.

Despite her protests, we lock each Capita into a different cell. I promise to return and check on them soon, my mind already spinning with ways to try and help their situation. Maybe it will help if I ferry messages back and forth? I don't know. I'll think of something. I have to.

In the meantime, the rest of our day still needs doing. My thoughts a messy jumble, I decide to start my rounds visiting a Gamma-5 prisoner by the name of Jeremiah. He's a learned necromancer who likely knows a bit of cognimancy, though it's never been confirmed. Obviously, he hasn't practiced any animancy since being imprisoned just under a decade and a half ago. Most animancers in the prison were caught in the wake of the Ars crisis, when the lookout for them was at its all-time high. All gathered evidence (and Jeremiah's own insistence) indicates that he was never involved with Ars, but he's the closest I've got so I still feel the need to ask him a few questions.

I knock on his door and wait for him to call me inside, unlocking the room and stepping in. The forty-something-year-old man grins brightly as I walk in, standing up from a rocking chair and snapping the book he was reading shut with one hand. He's a thin, academic-looking man with the occasional flick of gray in his otherwise-black short-cropped hair and mustache. His room smells like spices and paper, clean and refined and only slightly disorienting.

"Ah, Jelisaveta, a pleasant surprise! I wasn't expecting you until this afternoon. Sincerest apologies, I'll put on a pot of tea immediately."

"You know I'm not actually allowed to drink anything you brew," I answer, grinning under my helmet.

He winks at me.

"That's no reason to be barbaric," he protests, smiling wider. "A gentleman should always offer."

At level five permissions, Jeremiah has access to a pretty nice if somewhat cramped apartment room, fully furnished with a modest kitchenette and private bathroom. He has often joked that the only reason he's not level six is that he'd have to leave his room if they released him back to society, though when pressed he'll admit the real reason. As a moderately skilled animancer, he would need to either consent to having the knowledge removed from his mind or apply to join the Inquisition himself, and he doesn't consider either to be a palatable option.

"So what brings you here this early? I quite enjoyed our last philosophical scuffle. You're a sharper wit than that last fellow, and, if I may be permitted to say so, much easier on the eyes."

"You've never once seen me with my helmet off, Jeremiah," I remind him, chuckling at the compliment anyway. He's such a goof, it's hard to imagine him as a dangerous animancer now. At least, it is until I glance at his collar.

He does indeed make himself a cup of tea, as usual offering me one which I'm always required to decline. Of course, drinking isn't actually why he brewed it; his politeness is more than just an amusing joke. Most kinds of tea are agonizingly putrid, strong-smelling in all the wrong ways, but Jeremiah pressed me over and over about my favorite kind of tea until I finally gave in and told him about one that I can actually stand the stink of. Now he makes it every time I walk into his cell, and I couldn't be more thankful for it. I sit down in one of the other chairs as he returns to his favorite seat, sipping the warm brew mildly.

"So, in all seriousness, how can I help you today, Inquisitor?" he asks.

"No Inquisitor stuff, thankfully," I reassure him. "At least none beyond the usual. I just wanted to ask… why did you want to learn animancy?"

"Mmm," he hums, enjoying another sip. "That's the kind of question I will have to tattle to your peers if they come asking."

I shrug.

"Yeah, there are a lot of questions like that. Which is… a shame, but I get the necessity for it. Still, I want to understand."

He nods, considering his answer for a moment.

"Well, firstly I think it's important to understand that back in my day there was no Ars Rainier, yes?" he says. "Animancy was still illegal, of course, but a different sort of illegal. You could joke about animancy thirty years ago without anyone looking at you like you suddenly grew a second head, because the cruel and wretched reality of that kind of magic was not so raw in anyone's mind. There had been no one like Ars in the history of Valka, no context for exactly why it was as wretched a sin as it is considered today."

"But it was still a sin," I point out. "A serious one."

"Well, I suppose this is the part that always blows the minds of the deeply religious," he answers, smirking playfully. "Some of us think that you are wrong. Some of us believe that what you call sin is pointless oppression, baseless ramblings from old fools too caught up in their own traditions to look at the world with fresh eyes. And we are not mindless fools for doing so."

"There are good reasons that animancy is illegal," I insist.

"There are good reasons it shouldn't be, as well," he says, holding up a hand to stop me from protesting. "I no longer believe what I did twenty-five years ago. The benefits are not worth the risks. That doesn't mean the benefits don't exist. As a young man I imagined skeletal horses in the streets, ferrying the public wherever they wish to go. I imagined undead laborers tilling the fields, replacing the repugnancy of slavery that infects the country with mindless, humane automatons. I imagined an army of rotting monsters pushing back the edges of the forest, fighting the oppression of Verdantop without loss of human life. To me, they were dreams worth pursuing. And so when I stumbled upon an old tome that survived the purges and gathered myself some like-minded friends to learn that which we were banned from knowing, we did it with the burning fire of righteousness in our hearts."

I frown, thinking about that. I can see it, I suppose. I don't know very much about necromancy, but it's my understanding that any soul will do, not just the souls of people. The problem is that learning to control dead animals gives you everything you need to know about controlling dead humans.

"It does sound like a wonderful dream," I admit. "I wish there was a safe way to do it."

His smile turns sad, and he nods at me.

"Exactly," he agrees. "We thought we were heroes. And that… well. That is when everything started to go wrong. I'm sure you've heard the story before. Blah blah, greater good, blah blah power corrupts. It's no less true just because it's a cliché. It's so easy to justify evil in the heat of the moment, when it feels like you have no other option. The goal becomes such a perfect goodness in the mind's eye that it's blinding. You forget to ask yourself if the goal is worth what you've trampled along the way."

He sips his tea some more, leaving me to chew on his words while I enjoy the scent.

"Power is kind of frightening," I eventually comment. "I'm really glad I don't have very much."

To my surprise, Jeremiah starts laughing, nearly choking on his tea.

"Quite an incongruous thing for a warden to say to her prisoner, isn't it?" he asks, eyes twinkling with mirth.

I chuckle a bit as well, embarrassed.

"Sorry, you're right. That was insensitive."

"My point was not to say it's insensitive," he corrects softly. "My point was to say it's inaccurate. Be careful with that, Jelisaveta. If you fool yourself as to how much power you hold, you can do nothing but abuse it."

I blink, feeling duly chided. But something about that feels off.

"I mean no offense, but if that's how you feel," I ask slowly, "why do you remain here? You're powerful, aren't you? Shouldn't you use that power, or at least give it up?"

His smile grows especially wide, a subtle shift in his posture indicating to me that I've inadvertently touched on something important.

"Part of power is knowing who should be trusted with it," he answers coyly.

The conversation shifts to less serious subject after that, but even as I leave his cell I find myself thinking on his last words. As an animancer, he can join the Inquisition or lose his ability to cast animancy. In the former case, his power works for the Templars. In the latter case… well, I suppose it's not unreasonable to think that if other Inquisitors can remove memories, they can probably keep them as well. Either way, his knowledge, whatever it is, ends up in Templar hands.

…And I suppose it makes sense that he doesn't particularly trust the organization that has kept him imprisoned all these years. But was he implying more than that? And if so, should I be looking into it? The only people that can really check the Inquisitors are other Inquisitors. It is part of my job to internally police the organization, but if the corruption is within Site 4, I wouldn't be able to tell anyone about it because I can't contact anyone outside Site 4. So what would be the point of looking?

Hmm. Okay, that's... that's actually the exact line of thought that would enable corruption, isn't it? Now I've got myself worried. It's the worst possible time for doubts, too, since I'm about to check up on Vita for the first time today. I sigh in annoyance the moment I step through the second set of security doors, the familiar yet still overwhelming scent of piss and shit attacking my face immediately.

"Watcher damnit, Vita, you said you didn't have to go last night," I grumble, setting down the soup I brought in the corner of the room so it's nowhere near her while I wipe her ass.

I kneel down and shake her a little, snapping my fingers in front of her face and soul-eye. Naturally, she doesn't respond, so I remove the bindings over her mouth. She likes to talk and/or eat when she wakes up, and I doubt anyone likes waking up with a clamp over their jaw. That leaves me to the near-futile practice of holding my breath as I loosen and pull down her trousers. Ugh, so disgusting! I use a wet cloth to wipe off the inside of her thigh and nearly shit my own damn self as a motherfucking eyeball opens underneath my fingers.

"Dick in a sock!" I swear, leaping backwards. The thigh-eye tracks me with inhuman precision as the rest of Vita seems to groggily wake up. The three eyes on her face blink slowly, each out of sync with one another as her soul blearily looks around for a few short moments before all of them zero in on me at once.

"Oh," Vita mumbles. "Hey, Jelisa."

"Th-that wasn't there before," I insist, pointing at her disturbingly-placed optical organ as I tried to get my breathing back under control.

She glances down at her own thigh, quickly waking up and letting her features settle into a scowl.

"Ugh," she growls. "No, it wasn't. I can't believe I'm growing more of these things."

The eye twitches around in her leg as she practices moving it, sending an involuntary shudder of revulsion through my body. I approach anyway, still needing to finish cleaning her up.

"So, uh, you didn't grow that on purpose then?" I ask.

"Fuck no," she snaps. "Why would I want an eyeball that just rubs up against my pants all day?"

"…So your body is just growing entire eyeballs on its own?"

"Well, you've got me collared," Vita dismisses. "It's not like I can cast spells on myself."

With the supreme act of will I force myself not to react to that, but I know the effort is pointlessly wasted. It's Vita, obviously she's going to pick up on anything I feel. And maybe, maybe, I'm getting a false positive here. But for the first time since meeting her, I just got a clear impression that her words were a lie.

Only after I finish my dirty cleaning work do I have the courage to look at her face. She's as blank as usual, giving no indication that she knows what I suspect. Still, I'm not sure what to do about it. Those terrifying words from her file ring through the back of my mind: demoted from Epsilon-Three to Epsilon-One after lethal altercation with staff. How did a magic-blocked little girl kill a trained Templar under Epsilon-level security? Obviously, I asked that question as soon as I got out of her cell the first time. I did not at all like the answer.

"We don't know."

"You came here wanting to ask a different question," Vita reminds me.

I blink, nodding in agreement as I finish fetching her a clean pair of pants. Then I grab the soup, quickly reheating it with thermomancy and spoon feeding her to her clear delight. She's not wrong; I wanted to have one more conversation with her before I officially promote her to Epsilon-2. Although reminding me why she's in security level 1 in the first place is about the worst way to start that conversation.

"...Yeah," I confirm. "I want to talk to you about raising your permissions."

She cackles, smiling like a mad dentist pulled her lips back for a tooth inspection. It makes her look far more in pain than it does happy, but all of her expressions are weird. She says she hasn't been emoting much over the years and it shows. The way she pulls her own face around without even using her muscles leads to all kinds of freakish, impossible expressions. I just have to accept that it's going to happen and pay attention to other cues on how she actually feels.

"You just want me to be able to use my arms so that I can piss without your help," she accuses.

I smirk a little, though my helmet blocks any vision of it. She'll pick up on my amusement regardless, of course.

"I would be lying if I did not admit that is part of my motivation," I tell her honestly.

She cackles again.

"I can actually stand you, you know? You don't try to hide shit, and I can actually get your sense of humor. So sure, why the fuck not. I need to practice moving again anyway. What do you need from me?"

I let out a deep breath, setting the now-empty soup bowl down beside me.

"I need you to tell me why you killed the Inquisitor before me," I say.

Her expression goes back to blankness.

"Not how I killed him?" she asks.

"Better Templars than I have tried to extract that answer and failed," I shrug. "So no. Just why is enough for me. I want to know what would drive you to murder a person."

Her body stays still, but I watch her spiritual tendrils twist furiously at the memory.

"...A lot of things, I guess," Vita mutters. "I feel like it's no more than most people, though. When I kill, it's to protect me or my family from being killed by someone else."

"So you're saying he was going to kill you?" I ask, a bit confused. As an Epsilon-class, we are very explicitly not allowed to kill her, and the guards outside would have certainly stopped any attempt.

"No," she says, tapping a small soul inside her belly with a tendril. It's small and black, floating snugly right above her own soul's core along with a slimy, bubbly soul with small tendrils of its own and a soul of solid water. "He found something that would work. He found a way to remove them."

My eyes open wide, drawing conclusions together. Now that makes sense. Hell, that's part of my job. But Vita believes that souls that go to the Mistwatcher are destroyed beyond repair. She, arrogantly, considers herself to be the only afterlife in the world. So she would believe a method to remove the souls inside her tantamount to a death threat against her family, friends, and hundreds of others.

She's wrong. Horribly, tragically wrong. The poor girl is twisted and furious and confused, full of hate and bitterness… but she's not evil. She lashes out and hurts people because it's the only way she has to feel a semblance of control, because she has been abused and stepped on and only taught the lessons of strength versus strength. I have to believe that good will shine through if she's shown a little kindness and love.

"Okay then," I say, nodding. "That's all I really needed to know."

Then, to her surprise—ha, I actually surprised her—I gently pull her away from the wall and start undoing the bindings that tie her arms behind her back. She'll still have to keep the finger restraints, but they won't be completely preventing movement; she should still be able to do most basic tasks with her hands. When I completely free her arms, I finally get to see that soul-filled 'snake' that seemed to be running down her sleeve: a tentacle of pale flesh, growing out of her elbow.

My breath catches. Eyeballs and tentacles. Seeing it in the physical, it's impossible to ignore the comparison. And she's not doing it on purpose…? No, that's… no.

"Well damn, I didn't think you would accept that answer," Vita mutters, breaking me from my thoughts. "Time to enjoy learning to wipe my ass with mittens on, I guess."

"Yep, congratulations," I say, half-joking but mostly honest. "But that's not all."

"Oh?" she blandly asks, shakily getting to her feet as she flexes her arms for the first time in almost two months.

"Yep," I confirm. "I've got a surprise for you, but it'll have to wait until lunchtime."

She huffs air from her nose, scowling slightly at her new, fleshy appendage as it writhes freely around.

"Well, consider me hungry," she says.

"I always do!"

The rest of the morning is rough, my shitty sleep and painful awakening tainting the long hours between dawn and the second meal of the day. But it's worth it, all of it is worth it for the moment I return. I reenter Vita's cell with the plushy behind my back, unsure why the sender wanted it to reach her but hopeful that it will give her some comfort from home. She is still upright when I arrive, pacing around the room with an awkward gait, flinching as her sore muscles protest each and every movement.

"Jelisa," she grunts as greeting, still walking. "I don't smell any food."

"Don't worry, I have food outside. I've got something else for you first, though."

I reveal the stuffed bird from behind my back, holding it out to her carefully. Lazily, she glances my way, but as she sees what's in my hands her whole body halts, mouth hanging slightly open, paralyzed with surprise. Slowly, haltingly, as if it can't possibly be real, she stutters towards me, lifting the toy from my hands and staring at it with disbelief.

"R-rosco?" she whispers.

"Ta-da!" I cheer happily. "Someone tried to send this to you over a year ago, but I finally got the request to ship it pushed through a little while ago. It just arrived on today's delivery!"

I'm not sure if Vita is even paying attention to me, however, her whole body shaking as she pulls the stuffed animal close to her chest and squeezes hard enough to flatten it, a startlingly normal smile ever so slightly starting to twitch on her lips.

Then the shaking intensifies, her eyes water, and she starts to sob. The disturbing, inhuman monster is washed away by her tears, leaving only the vulnerable little girl underneath. A young woman, perhaps, barely eighteen but still far too young to be expected to handle the challenges the Mistwatcher gave her.

"He's yours," I promise her, squatting down alongside her as she collapses to her knees. "Not just when I'm here. He's squishy and safe and officially Epsilon-security approved."

"You brought him back," she blubbers, sucking in great hiccupping gasps between every breath. "Thank you. Thank you."

"You're welcome," I answer warmly, for once appreciating my ability to soak in her full-bodied joy with all of my senses. "You want some food?"

She nods her head rapidly, too caught up in the throes of her tears to articulate an answer. I have the goofiest possible grin beaming under my helmet, but I suppose I'll be the only one to know about it. I turn and start walking out of the cell to go fetch her some lunch.

Behind me, between her sobbing gasps of joy, she manages to whisper words with such gratitude, such honesty, that it chills me to my bones. I will never forget them, not in my waking hours or my nightmares.

"You get to live," she promises me.