#technically this is rimworld fanfiction

[just-horrible-things]

The Pursuit of Understanding

By the time Melis works up the courage to say anything, Tess is almost done. She’s bent over the limp body with the laser focus of an artist, stitching closed the crude incisions and tying the threads off one by one.

Melis feels a little queasy, watching.

“I don’t want us to do this anymore,” she says flatly. Tess doesn’t look up. “You don’t want me to learn medicine?” she asks, soft voice melodic as ever. “Not if it means — cutting live people apart.” “It’s not cruel,” Tess responds. “She didn’t feel anything. She’s not conscious.”

Indeed, the first thing Tess did when they recovered the injured pirate was feed deeply, until the crying and struggling stopped and the warm undertones of the woman’s skin turned to a dead, greyish hue.

“You don’t know that,” Melis challenges. “What if she’s still feeling it, but just too weak to move?” “She’s feeling no pain,” Tess responds with placid confidence. “I know, because I can fix that.” “What do you mean?” “We were engineered to be battlefield medics. I secrete a natural injectable opioid. I can show you, once I’ve finished these stitches. If you’d like. It won’t do you any harm.” “I don’t know why you’re bothering to stitch her up,” Melis grouses. “She’s going to die anyway.”

She does know why. Practice. 

“She has to die,” Tess points out. “She’d have killed us if she had the chance.” “Doesn’t mean you have to…. treat her like so much meat. I don’t like it.” “Okay.”

A shrug, and the would-be surgeon puts down the needle and thread. She lifts her victim’s arm, and puts her mouth to the inside of the shoulder. Her jaw moves as she bites down, and then swallows, and swallows.

Melis swallows too, trying to clear the bile from her throat. 

At least the poor woman is dead now.

Up close, Tess is almost impossibly slender – besides the slight swell of her engorged stomach. Her wrists are narrow as a child’s, her shoulders barely half the width of Melis’s. She looks like she should break in a strong wind. But Melis is acutely aware of the sharp talons that curve from her fingertips, the fangs behind her perfectly sculpted lips.

“I have to bite you,” she says softly. “The painkillers are injected like venom from a snake. But I won’t hurt you.”

Melis wants nothing less. It’s not consent but a panicked freeze that stops her from pulling away. Tess takes her wrist ever so gently and carefully pushes the sleeve back to expose the skin. Her claws touch lightly enough to leave no scratches. 

She can’t still be hungry, Melis tells herself frantically. She’s just fed, she can’t still be hungry. She’s never been anything but friendly towards Melis, there’s no reason to turn on her now…

The points of those killing teeth brush across the skin, then there’s a pinprick of pain, and then – 

– then a warm, tingling, intensely pleasant sensation that washes across her wrist and starts to creep back up the vein towards her heart.

“Oh,” she says, “oh, I don’t –” I don’t like that, she wants to say. She didn’t consent to this.

But she does like it.

It’s like soaking in a hot bath at the end of a hard day’s work, it’s like silk sheets against clean skin, it’s like – like nothing else.

In mere seconds it washes across her entire body. And with it comes the most profound sense of peace and well-being and oneness with the world.

“I’m not cruel,” Tess says softly. Her eyes are aquamarines, soft and lovely with gentle concern. “I’d never hurt anyone who didn’t want to hurt us. And they don’t suffer. It’s like they die when I bite them. They don’t feel any of the rest.”

Melis wouldn’t mind dying like this. Nothing could be bad, when the world is so beautiful.

“I’m just borrowing the bodies. I’m doing it for us, Melis. I want to be able to help you, if you’re ever hurt.”

Tess cares for her, and Melis can’t understand how she ever doubted her.

“Okay,” she whispers. “I can do it where you don’t have to see. I never wanted to upset you. But you understand, don’t you?” “I understand.”

Of course she does. Anything for Tess.