I Don't Want Justice, I Just Want to Know They're Okay
27 Apr 2022Lily Flemmon
SENSITIVE CONTENT WARNING: ACUTE CHILDHOOD TRAUMA, BLOOD/MEDICAL CONTENT, MENTION OF SELF-INJURYA lot happened recently that I can't write about publicly, except for a few hints- I made a new friend. Apparently she came looking for me, and... I'm really glad she found me.
Anyway, I need to write more about that investigation. It'll be a while before anything can be confirmed, but I talked to Phoenix about my last log, and they showed me that there were some details I needed more perspective on.
Yesterday was a long day. It took a while to track down Ana Philoppe. She was among the first 22 people I rescued, and while I wanted to talk to her, with the recent developments surrounding that system, I felt like she might want to talk to me too.
She was living on a starport, Mortimer's Charm in the Kinesi system. It's an interesting place, and it felt a bit like Chilton Terminal. Just a bit. It's an agricultural Orbis starport, although it doesn't actually orbit the habitable world in the system, although that on its own is... quite a sight. Rings on an Earth-Like World? Heated by a brown dwarf? Sounds like a fun place to live to me, although the oxygen content is just a little low. But maybe she didn't want to live on a planet after spending years trapped on one, even if she was in stasis the whole time. I don't know.
I got off of the Intrepid wearing just regular street clothes- no flight suit, no easily visible Commander patches or anything- Ana chose this as her home, and I didn't want to come off as the more important person when I went knocking on her door.
----
I rang the doorbell and politely stepped back a bit, and after about half a minute, the door slid open and Ana, a woman with wavy blonde hair, a bit past shoulder-length, fair skin with occasional moles, a soft jawline, and a pronounced Greek nose bridge, looked back at me.
"Hi, um- can I help you?" She didn't recognize me.
"You're... Ana Philoppe, right?" I started to feel tears well up in my eyes as bottled up feelings began popping open.
Ana was still a bit confused. "Yeah, that's m-" Suddenly her eyes went wide with realization. "Wait, Lily? Is that you?"
I suddenly couldn't talk. So many emotions were coming back to me, and I was trying so hard to hold in tears, and all I could do was nod, biting my lips together and closing my eyes tightly.
"Come in, come in!"
I stepped into her apartment and the door closed behind us, and I just... Everything exploded. I was crying my eyes out and I already couldn't think straight, and I probably couldn't walk straight either. My left arm and collarbone felt like they were on fire, and beneath that, every part of my body was screaming. Yeah, it was all psychosomatic, but that doesn't mean it didn't hurt. I tried to make some kind of sense of the barrage of memories in my head, anything more specific than how painful they all were, and-
Chinchilla.
The word- something important. Something really important. Something about it fits, something about it makes sense...
I kept my eyes shut tight- I needed to remember this. I just... I knew this was important.
"Chinchilla." The voice saying it- a woman- who was she? Her voice felt familiar... very, very familiar.
"Mama?" The voice of a toddler. 5 years old? Younger? I don't know, but- wait.
The woman, her hair. Brown, tied back. Her face was bruised and beaten. And I... loved her?
The child... was me.
"Don't let Daddy-" The woman suddenly stopped talking- and it wasn't the end of the memory, I remember her standing up slowly and backing toward a doorway- and then she backed out through the doorway.
BANG!
BANG BANG BANG!
My toddler ears couldn't hear anything after that, but there were flashes, and I remember turning to see a tall, angry man with a gun.
"MAMA!"
She was gone.
Wait. She was gone? She ran? She escaped?
"Lily, come on! Wake up! Please..." Ana's voice. Right...
I tried to open my eyes, but it hurt- not in my eyes, but in my chest- trying to open my eyes hurt my chest? I tried to talk, but I coughed before I could get any words out, and I tasted blood, but I didn't feel any pain from a lower respiratory injury.
"That's it. Nice and slow, okay? I don't want to try and brace your nose until you're with it again."
That's when I realized my nose hurt. A lot. My face hurt. Not in the way everything hurt- I could tell this was a physical injury.
I was sitting down with my back against something hard, probably a wall? Muffled echoes of traumatic memories were still ringing dully in my head, and I couldn't focus yet. "Wh-" I coughed again, and realized it was hard to breathe. Sort of? I took a deep breath and coughed again, on purpose this time, and harder. After a few more breaths to make sure my airways were clear, I tried to talk again. "What happened?"
"Well, as soon as I recognized you, for some reason you lost it and started sobbing. I invited you in, and you staggered in and wound up falling flat on your face. Like, you didn't catch yourself at all, and I'm pretty sure your nose is broken. You're lucky I'm a medic by training."
I felt Ana gently start to clean my face with a cold, damp cloth.
"EMS is still on its way, should be here in a minute or two. I got you propped up against the wall here, next to the door, and you started coughing and flailing, who knows why." She wiped around my nose, and then very gently traced the shape of it. "Wait, how the hell- the bleeding stopped already, and your nose- it's not even crooked? Huh?"
"Nano- nanorobotic- something."
"Well, that explains the quick physical recovery, but if you open your eyes, do so at your own risk. I don't know what your mental state is like."
"Can you- can you put your hand on my sternum, and like- tap my collarbone? Like, left-right-left-right, alternately or- whatever, yeah."
"Uh, okay... That'll help?"
"Yeah, sensory bilateral thingy."
Ana placed the heel of her hand on the upper part of my sternum and spread out her hand flat, and started rocking it side to side, gently tapping my collarbone on each side. "Like this?"
"Yeah, I'm gonna... o- open my eyes now." I forced them open and the same pain in my chest came back, but it faded quickly under the warm, gentle calming pressure of Ana's hand, and then vanished completely once I reoriented myself visually, looking around the room. I looked back at Ana, seeing her hazel, almost golden eyes, her hair tied back now, and her hand still gently pressing on my chest, and I smiled at her. I felt safe again, and it was thanks to her. "You can, uh, I think I'm okay now with the... sternum pressure tappy thing."
"I don't know why that helped, but it sure did." She pulled her hand back and I looked down where it was, and saw the massive red bloodstain on my shirt. "Yeah, you're, uh, gonna need a new shirt, I'd say."
A medical team of two men came through the open doorway and immediately began assessing the situation. One man went over to Ana. "I take it you're the one who called this in?"
Ana looked up at him, but didn't stand up. "Yeah, she sort of, uh, tripped and ate the carpet. Really suddenly, too- seems like something triggered some psychological trauma and she kinda just... lost some motor control."
"How is she now?" The paramedic knelt next to Ana and looked at me.
"Stable, which is really something considering what just happened. Bleeding stopped, and it's almost like her nasal cartilage is self-repairing."
I liked how Ana was staying down here with me, rather than standing up to talk to him, but she was still doing all the talking for me. "I can speak for myself, you know."
She smiled at me. "Of course you can. I just want to make this easier for you, you know." She held out her hand to me. "And you don't need my help to stand up, either."
I took her hand and she helped me up, although she made me do most of the work anyway. I'm glad she did; it felt nice to get my legs moving again.
The paramedic stood up right after we did, "So, you just... ate shit on the floor 5 minutes ago or whatever, and now you're fine?"
I shrugged, wincing a bit at the same time. "Nanorobotic procedure from a few years ago has enough residuals to help that kind of thing, so yeah. Physically, I'm fine. Mentally... fuck, that was a lot."
The other paramedic had finished scans of the bloodstain, and holstering the scanner, stood up and took a couple steps around the room. "She's not lying about the nanites, they appear to be trying to reconstruct the carpet fibers. Fruitless, but probably entertaining under a microscope."
Ana noticed that I was a little unsteady emotionally, and she put a hand on my shoulder. "Well, I think I've got it from here. She stopped by to talk privately, and I was hoping to let her."
The first paramedic shrugged and signaled to his partner to get ready to leave. "Well, better to be called and not needed than needed and not called. Glad to see things are okay." And with that, both of them left, the door sliding shut behind them.
I felt safe again. Just people I trust here, and emotions started loosening up. I felt tears welling up in my eyes again, and-
I felt Ana's arms around me. I heard her speaking softly in my ear.
"I know you're not okay. And that's okay. I didn't think you'd stop by, I heard you were avoiding involvement in the investigation for your own sanity's sake. Maybe you should keep doing that."
I returned her hug, hesitantly at first. "I- I will. I just wanted to check on you and make sure you're okay. I'm sorry I-"
"No need to apologize. I'm doing okay, it's good to have had a few months in a thriving Colonia. Before you rescued me, the last I saw of it was a mess of cultists and pirates and everyone else just trying to survive. I was sent as the medic in a team searching for food sources, and... you know how that ended. By the way... those lumps on your back are gone, what's that about?"
I hugged her tightly as I told her. "I... suffered from traumatic amnesia. About half the details of that rescue, I just... didn't remember. I was in denial about it. The gravity was high enough to activate the spinal support plates in my suit, and I had to manually activate the targeting beacons on the pods to get the cargo systems to pick them up, in 1100K heat... I ended up with third-degree burns, fusing the support plates to my back. And I guess it got locked away with memories of other self-inflicted injuries-" My collarbone and left forearm started to hurt again and I winced at the pain, burying my face in Ana's shoulder a bit- just not enough to squish my still-tender nose.
"Hey..." Ana's arms were suddenly holding me tighter. "Breathe. It's okay. I've got you."
I took one breath, in... and out. Then another. In, and out. And another, and another... and with each one... things really did start to feel okay again. "Ana..."
"Yeah?"
"That flashback, when I came in- I think you reminded me of my mother. I lost her when I was five, and I always thought she was dead. She used to tell me that it was okay to not be perfect. The amnesia's been lifting more and more recently as I work through it, and this time I remembered... the moment I lost her. I thought my dad shot and killed her, but... I remembered clearly- she got away in time. She could still be alive... Somewhere. And now that my dad is dead, she might even feel a bit safer, and I might be able.. to find her..."
"That's... wonderful. But I know it hurts a lot."
"I'll... take it slow. I'll look for her when I'm ready."
"See? You're getting the hang of this."
I took another deep breath and, now that I felt steady enough, I let go of Ana. "I- yeah, I guess I am. And you... How are you holding up with the investigation and everything?"
She held on for a little moment longer after I let go. "They'll find out what they find out. You rescued me, and my crew, and now you've organized the rescue of over a hundred more people... I have all my old friends back now, and it's thanks to you. I'm not too worried about whether or not the cause of it all gets identified. I don't want justice, I just want to know you're all okay. And that includes you, Lily."
"Well, I guess you got what you wanted then."
"Yeah, I really did. And soon it'll be your turn, I bet."