((I'll be using this thread to dump random short fiction for my characters. The first one begins after the double parenthesis))

"Sanity Check" (Sayuri's time in the psych ward)
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Sayuri's eyes snapped awake. The tiny alcove she'd shoved herself in for a moment's sleep now stank of rusting chains soaked in water. Which wouldn't have been as much of an issue if there weren't also a pair of glowing yellow-green eyes at the edge of the darkness.

"Good morning, Father," a voice like steel rasping on stone whispered. "Don't... don't worry. I'm not here to hurt you." Deft, scarred fingers shifted under Sayuri's cloak to draw one of the spare flint knives tucked into it. "I just... want to talk." Something in the voice reminded Sayuri of her own pain, the helplessness that clung to her every waking moment in this horrible place.

The creature was true to its word. It spoke of pain, of failure, of wanting to do right by its parents but not knowing how. It told the feral woman it was sorry for what had happened, that it had just been trying to be good for her.

Scarred fingers let the knife go and slipped out of the ragged cloak. Their tips brushed over a cheek that Sayuri could now see as gray in the gloom.

"I forgive you," Sayuri whispered, wanting nothing more in that moment than to ease another creature's pain.

The gray woman smiled softly, and Sayuri fell asleep.

---

Everything existed in a gauzy cloud. There were clean linoleum hallways and individual rooms with rough cots and soft gowns that tied closed in the back and bright lights that were either at full strength or completely gone. Sometimes Sayuri was awake, and sometimes she dreamed, and the lines between the two didn't seem to exist.

Sometimes a nice woman would come and take her into another room down the long hallway, and they would talk. They talked mostly about her dreams, which were also memories that weren't real except when they had happened exactly as she dreamed them. Sometimes they talked about memories that might have been dreams or might have been things she read about. At the end, the woman in white would always pat Sayuri on the back and lead her down to a big room where other things that she couldn't see through the fog shuffled lifelessly about from table to table, like a school lunch where nobody ate or spoke actual human words.

Every once in awhile in the hall one of the other things would try to make noises at Sayuri, but she'd snarl and they'd scamper away. Even through the gauze, she knew she couldn't trust them. They'd want to do the things to her she hated, that she'd tried to make stop. She couldn't quite remember what the things were, except when they were dreams or memories or fiction or happening all over again but not actually happening because she was just laying alone in her rough cot on the torn cotton sheets.

Over time, the haze over the place started to lift. At first, it was when Sayuri remembered that she'd been eating regular meals her whole time there. She started to try and count meals, but the line between sleep and wake, past and now was too fuzzy to keep track. It didn't help that the meals were school lunch meals of bland cardboard pretend food.

The next proof of reality was when Sayuri remembered that this wasn't the first time they'd cut her hair since coming to this place. The black locks fell from her shoulders, and someone showed her a mirror so she could stare blankly back at the reflection of her pallid face and the limp hair hanging around it. She smiled slightly and had a memory that was a dream that had happened except not quite like this back in a lush forest when she'd first cut her own hair off this short. It had looked just like this, she decided, except it hadn't, not quite, but this was close enough. The ephemeral thing in white ran out of the room and the nice woman in white came back and asked Sayuri about her hair and Sayuri told the woman in white fictional stories that had actually happened about being a warrior for justice and fighting off horrible monsters that wanted to do horrible things to her and other women.

The visits with the woman in white were getting clearer, and the lines between reality and dreams that were maybe not dreams were getting stronger. Sayuri was starting to be able to turn her memory on and off, to remember things as they happened and not think about them so much when she didn't want to. Except sometimes she had to remember, whether she wanted to or not, especially at night alone on her rough cot with the torn cotton sheets.

One day Sayuri decided that the gauze was drugs that they were putting in her food. So she stopped eating and just shuffled the food into the trash or got one of the weird things in the lunch room to eat it for her. The white walls with linoleum stopped looking so clean. The woman in white looked tired and angry. And every shadow was filled to the brim with horrible smells and things that smelled horrible that wanted to rip out her soul and violate her body and she didn't have any weapons any more except her hands. So they pulled her away from the dark corner of the supply closet and stuck something in her arm.

She kept eating after that. The gauze kept getting thinner, and the walls did slowly start to gain texture and blemishes. And all of her dreams were real but just memories and the monsters couldn't hurt her any more. The woman in white seemed very adamant about this, which Sayuri found odd. Normally in these situations, people in the woman in white's position told people in the feral woman's position that the monsters were in her head, but the woman in white was pretty clear that the monsters were outside Sayuri's head and realer than even the walls or the room they were sitting in.

Which made sense to Sayuri. She still had all her scars from the monsters, and from herself in trying to stop them. Sometimes, after they'd give her a bath, she'd shrug off the towel and sit on the tile floor and stare at the little dots where she'd sewn herself shut. She asked the woman in white about getting a needle and thread to do it again, and the woman in white said, "not yet."

"Not yet," happened to be the first words Sayuri remembered as words after hearing them in that place. Things were starting to make sense again. She'd suffered on that island, in that school, and somehow she'd been sent here to be healed. Maybe this was another part of the island, but that didn't seem right, since everyone here was safe from the monsters, unless maybe it was the big bright white lights that were always on in the hallways that scared them away. She could feel it working, too.

One day, idly, she ran her thumb over where her backup knives had grown in after the thing that stank of rusty chains had put them there. There was just smooth skin, but the bones underneath didn't feel quite right, not like they had when Sayuri had first been sent to the school. She shrugged and went back to eating her drugged school lunch meal and didn't snarl when one of the ephemeral things sat down across the table from her to eat its own meal. Those things weren't the enemy. They looked like people but not wholly people because they didn't smell like anything other than the disinfecting soap they washed Sayuri with and the lemon cleanser they mopped the hallways with.

And still, by thin layers, the gauze peeled away. Sayuri started counting days evenly, first to note that a few had passed since she'd had a particular conversation with the woman in white, then to note the weeks as they came and went. Sayuri took a rounded crayon from the lunch room and a spare scrap of paper and started keeping track of the days. When she'd charted out her second month, she realized that she wasn't menstruating any more. She shrugged and figured those drugs were in her food too.

Her calendar was at a year and starting to develop days when one of the orderlies found it. By then, they were all starting to look and smell properly human. The man took the thing from her and she just let it go, having committed the count to memory already. She got it back from the woman in white later. They talked about time that day and about what Sayuri wanted with the calendar. Then the woman in white handed Sayuri a scrap of paper and something she hadn't seen in a long, long time.

The pencil scratched swiftly over the page, scrawling out the to-do list in perfect copy from memory. Every name that had ever been on the list piled into order of greatest need to be destroyed, and each hurt each of them had caused burned like a torch behind the insane woman's eyes. Finally, she got to her predestined martyrdom and set the pencil down. Politely, the woman in white picked up the list and read it over. She folded it, tucked it into a pocket, and handed Sayuri another piece of paper. They repeated this again and again for the rest of the day until the list was meaningless words on a useless scrap of dead tree.

---

Sayuri woke up.

The rough cot and the cotton sheets were gone. The white walls that weren't actually white were gone. The hospital gown was still hanging loosely over her body. She sat up and looked down at the bizarre bed, at the smooth metal walls. Her bare feet found the floor, and she winced at the cold. It struck her that there should have been a thick callous there. Except that was gone ever since the rooms in the white halls. Which meant there should have been slippers.

There was a locker with a black, skintight top and shorts that looked appropriate for running, or maybe gymnastics. At its foot were a pair of what looked like shoes with almost no soles and space for each individual toe. On the door was a heavy cloak in dark green.

Sayuri walked out into the hallway. It was more of the same shiny metal, like brushed titanium. Something beeped softly at the end of the cooridoor. She followed the sound curiously. The whole place smelled like nothing so much as freshly-milled steel.

Just walking, Sayuri felt clean and smooth in a way she never had before. The simple motions of getting from point a to point b had her muscles singing songs of triumph and freedom. She paused a moment in the path, crouched, and sprinted the last few yards to the source of the noise. She'd never moved so fast or so surely in her life.

At the end of the hallway she found the source of the beeping. A massive control panel, covered in lights, was glowing and presenting data she couldn't quite make out. A comfortable chair was mounted to the floor in front of it, and she fell into its thin cushions and looked up and out of the broad windows before her.

It was an hour before Sayuri remembered there was something other than the clear field of stars that seemed to stretch into eternity. She leaned over and calmly pressed the beeping screen to her left that was flashing a short message she didn't bother to read. The stars vanished, and in their place a pilot's manual appeared.

They were the most beautiful words Sayuri had ever read.

---

A week later, Sayuri brought her new ship's communications systems online. There was a frequency listed at the end of the manual regarding their functioning that she was curious about, and it seemed wise to get in touch with someone before trying to fly the thing. The radio crackled and hissed to life before a rasping, metallic voice came through.

"F-Father?" it said.

"Is that you, Rusted-Chains?" Sayuri asked.

No, that name's not right, Sayuri thought. She wracked her mind for a memory of the creature naming itself.

"You're awake already?" the creature replied before Sayuri could respond. "I'm coming up there."

Before Sayuri could key in the comms to reply, the gray woman was standing in the chamber behind her. Sayuri jumped in surprise and reached for her wrist and a backup-knife. The bone spur slid from her skin and smoothly into her hand, leaving a thin trail of blood in the air as it went. This, too, startled her, as she hadn't thought to check for them again since waking up on the ship.

Miss Steel raised her hands slightly and took a step back, but Sayuri was already relaxing and smiling at the creature.

"Hello again, Steel," Sayuri said, brushing her thumb over the bone blade in her hand.

"Father, let me explain, I wanted to make it up to you how I messed up making you healthy before, but there wasn't a way, and I'm sorry I had to lie to you and take you away from everything, but I just wanted you to get better, and," Miss Steel rambled, her eyes and posture pleading for understanding and forgiveness. Sayuri stopped paying much attention. Her eyes went to the little bone knife in her hand. She remembered waking up with access to the things, how the gray woman had done something awful to her body and mind and then Sayuri had woken up mutated but always with a steady supply of weapons on hand.

Sayuri smiled and stood up on the tips of her toes to push a finger to Steel's lips. The blade turned in Sayuri's hand, and the handle pressed into Steel's.

"Thank you," Sayuri said. "You did good."

The gray woman fell to her feet and buried her face into the chest of one of the two beings she'd ever truly wanted acknowledgement from. While Steel cried and clutched desperately at the woman, Sayuri stroke hair that scratched at her fingers and softly whispered the only consoling thing she could think to say.

"Shh. Daddy's here."

---

Steel left the next day. There had been information Sayuri needed that hadn't been in the charts or histories or manuals, but now she knew what she needed to of what the island had been, truly, and what the rest of the universe looked like for humanity and the other myriad species populating the stars. When she left, the gray woman had a short homework assignment tucked into one of the strange pockets of her vest that she swore to complete and report on at her earliest convenience. Sayuri told her to take her time.

The ship was silent now, save for the soft thrum of the idle engine, the occasional flutter of a screen with new information, and the faintly-echoing sounds of Sayuri's footsteps. She strode back into the cockpit and hung the heavy green cloak on a hook at the door. The seat felt like the throne for the Queen of Nothing under her. The screens showed nothing but the soft glimmer of distant stars. It had been difficult to dig up a scrap of paper and tape on a ship with this level of technology, but Sayuri thought it well worth it. She leaned forward and pressed the note to the corner of her view screen, then smiled wickedly at it. It said, "TO DO," and nothing else.

Vacation (sometimes monsters need a break from being menacing all the time)
---
This was not the best day Sayuri had ever had. That belonged to old memories of blue hair and passion and fierceness. It was not the most difficult. That belonged to old scars and stolen thread and a wasted suturing needle. It wasn't the strangest, either. She didn't much want to mull that one over. It was not the most anything, really, but it had definitely been a long one, and it ranked up near the top in a number of disparate categories: tiring, bizarre, and natural seemed the most interested in vying for attention in the pirate's mind.

The creature before her, however, wasn't one Sayuri had ever really expected to find (which did not, unfortunately, make it the most unexpected. That belonged to rooftops and songs and electricity), particularly in its present state. This was a creature she'd feared. One she'd hated. One she'd fought and clawed at and been broken by on numerous occasions. One she'd sworn numerous times to see dead, if such a thing was even possible. One that wore gray skin and stood a good 9 inches taller than Sayuri, and that could probably kill the woman in a heartbeat without effort, and that stank of old chains and concrete and tears. One presently wearing soft fabric in a bold pink interlaced with lines of white and black.

Pink plaid pajamas, Sayuri thought to herself. Steel is wearing pink plaid pajamas. The abstracted concept was somehow harder to deal with than the raw materials that made it up. And pouting.

"Young lady, I'm not going to tell you a second time," Sayuri said, her expression hard despite the peculiar situation that seemed to have snuck up on her over the course of the day.

"But I don't wanna!" the gray woman said petulantly. She made a little huff and pouted harder.

"Go brush your teeth right now or you're not getting a story," Sayuri countered, hands firmly on her hips. Staring down a creature more powerful than herself was proving surprisingly easy, given the circumstances. Steel folded and turned to duck into the little closet that served as a bathroom.

"Don't even need to," Miss Steel grumbled, the last words lost in muttering as she passed into the little room.

"Don't pretend I didn't see how much candy you ate, girl," Sayuri said to the shutting door. She loosed an exasperated sigh and went to the sink in the kitchen-cupboard to get herself ready to sleep and clear her mind for a moment.

Dear god, what have you gotten yourself into, Sayuri thought as she wiped water from her face. Her eyes slid slightly left to the little cold storage unit in the cupboard and the drawing stuck to it with a magnet. The cheerful little spider smiled back at her. Sayuri noted that the lavender marker ink had escaped the lines set out to guide it in a few places. Her eyes slid over the edge of characters under the magnet. She knew, underneath, it said, "for Daddy," but seeing them directly had been a bit overwhelming. Even seeing the edge of them, something very, very peculiar stirred in the pirate's heart. Something she really couldn't place, though it reminded her, just briefly, of tea and sweat and sore muscles and a soft, approving smile.

"All done!" the gray woman said with a chime in her voice.

Sayuri turned back with her own soft, approving smile and walked up to her old adversary. "Good girl," the pirate said, reaching up to pat at hair that itched her fingers just slightly, "now hop into bed."

Steel was under the sheets in a heartbeat with a small explosion of bedding that fell back into place over her as gravity caught up with it. Sayuri followed more slowly, sliding in to the other half of the bed and getting herself as comfortable as possible without as much space as she was used to. The gray woman lifted her head and slid closer, and Sayuri's arm wrapped around the creature she'd found herself responsible for. That slightly itchy hair settled down at the top of Sayuri's chest, taking it for a makeshift pillow, and one gray arm slid softly around the pirate's waist. Sayuri bent to kiss beside the steel-wool hair at gray skin and sent her other hand backwards to tap at the wall and kill the lights.

"What kind of story would you like, girl?" Sayuri whispered as she settled back into the bed. Another moment of shifting bodies squirming to find comfort against one another followed, during which it occurred to Sayuri that the gray woman was much lighter than she looked, given her size. She wished Steel would do something about the hair clawing at her skin even through the loose, oversized shirt the pirate was wearing over her scarred skin.

"Pirates!" the monster chirped, wriggling in excitement. Her hair itched more, but Sayuri didn't let it show. The pirate didn't want to upset the creature, and not just because doing so could end in a lot of pain and suffering. Complaining about scratchy hair seemed like the kind of thing that would upset the gray woman.

"Well, alright, let me think," Sayuri said, searching her mind for a good story. "How about the first ship I robbed?" Steel nodded her head slightly, so Sayuri continued. "So, there I was, settled on a little asteroid to soak up some distant star's power. I was low on impulse fuel, and lower on money to pay for more. I'd spent the past two weeks in the sector trying to run down the little merchants that ran along its path, y'see, but I hadn't had any luck. They kept spotting me before I was able to dock, or else they outran the Oar. So I just kept returning to that little star and waiting for another ship to come by. I was waiting one day, wishing I had a cup of tea and considering going back to see if I could get a job at the station two sectors over when this little trader with just about nothing in it popped right up on the monitor." The gray woman started to look a little more excited as Sayuri continued. "So it circled in and unfurled a sail and settled itself down to charge off the little star. I sat there for two hours, just staring at it until the sail was fully out and gathering energy, and then I let go of the rock and used some of that precious fuel to give the Oar a gentle nudge and coasted in on the trader." The pirate smiled with the memory of the tension.

"They didn't realize I was anything other than debris passing nearby until I started docking," Sayuri said, the anticipation creeping into her voice. "Right down the airlock I went, and there on the other side, waiting for me, were three of the smelliest things I've ever encountered, and I don't mean in my normal smelling way. These things stank so anything with a nose would know it. Great big frog creatures, they were, that walked on hind legs and wore ragged, old fabric that barely covered their bulbous bodies." Steel made a small disgusted face, which brought a smile to Sayuri's lips before she continued.

"One of them leveled a rifle at me and said, 'get out,' its jowls shifting a weird, patchy beard that covered most of its neck and little else. I held up my hands and smiled and said, 'I just want to trade.'"

"But I thought this was a pirates story," the gray woman grumbled softly, her pout returning.

"Hush so I can finish and you'll see," Sayuri chided, patting Steel gently on the arm. "Where was I? Right, so apparently they didn't believe me and the other two took aim as well. So I'm standing on an alien ship, hands in the air, with three frog creatures pointing their guns at me. And, apparently, giving them all a really good view of what's I keep in my cloak, if the glinting on the walls was any indication. I seriously considered just going back and trying for the next one at that moment. And then a little radio squawked to life, and something made a weird croaking noise from the other side of it. The lead frog thing turned to answer into its shoulder. So I threw a knife into his throat." The gray woman tensed slightly, glad to finally be at the exciting part. "The other two shot, but by then I was rolling forward. They got the edge of my cloak, which apparently doesn't stop lasers so good, but I came up with knives in my hands. Which was good because I needed both of them to stop the end of a rifle from cracking my skull!"

Steel gasped softly but kept quiet otherwise.

"Clang! went metal on metal as I shoved the rifle away and turned just in time to kick the other frogthing right in the gut and keep it from doing what its friend failed to. The first one was getting its gun back under control, but it wasn't quick enough to keep me from ducking close and slipping a blade between its ribs. The last one got a shot off that grazed my hair and gave me quite a start. And that's when I discovered that the dagger was stuck in the other frogthing! So, with only the other blade in my hand, I turned and ran at the last guard. It brought up its rifle to smash me down, but I got up under its chin before it could, and down the big thing went with a thud that rumbled through the ship.

"I had just gotten the dagger free of the frogthing when their radios crackled to life again. Without much caring what the other side of the radio was saying, I picked up the little receiver and said back, 'you're being robbed. Just stay where you are and no one else has to die.' Then I went down to the hold to see what all I'd claimed. Or, well, I tried, but their damn ship was confusing as hell, so I got turned around a couple times, and when I finally found it, there were a couple more guards outside it. These ones were a little smarter, at least, and gave up after I pinned one's foot to the floor with a throwing knife. I shooed the other one off to tell his captain to stop trying and find first-aid for his companion.

"Finally, I get into the hold, and what do I see? A beautiful young woman, looking disheveled but none too worse for wear. And all tied up like a pretty little package, too, with a gag in her mouth and her arms stuck behind her back." Steel shifted slightly, a tiny hint of hunger edging at the corners of her eyes, causing Sayuri to pause and give her a glare that said, stop thinking like that, young lady. Abashed, Steel nuzzled back into place and hid her eyes for a moment. Sayuri took a slow breath and continued, "and then, on top of all that, the rest of the hold was empty. All that work, and all I got was this one captive! She seemed happy to be free of those creatures, at least, once I untied her and helped her back to the ship. She said she was an ADD agent, and that she'd been captured while out on a mission. She kept thanking me for setting her free, and promised to buy me a drink when we got back to the other agents.

"So, with only her to show for it, I undocked from the other ship, leaving their airlock open so they'd get a nice breath of nothing, and set a course away from there."

"Did you have any adventures taking her home?" Steel asked with a small, sleepy yawn. Sayuri stopped suddenly, her mouth open. She hadn't really given any thought to how to end the story. It took a moment of chewing the options over before she laughed softly and kissed the gray woman on the forehead.

"Silly, I didn't take her home," Sayuri said. "I sold her at the nearest slave market. This ship doesn't fuel itself."

Steel giggled and gave one last nuzzle before finally letting herself drift off, murmuring, "thanks fer th' story, Daddy," with her last waking breath of the day.

Sayuri lay back, just listening to the soft, sleepy breathing of a creature that didn't need to breathe or sleep, until her own mind quieted down.

---

Sayuri woke to the alarm 9 hours and 23 minutes later. She was sprawled alone in the bed, the shits a disorganized mess. She sat up and rubbed her eyes with her fists, letting reality settle back onto herself. Slowly, she shuffled over to the little kitchen area, then stopped. The table was out. On it was a plate of toast and a mug of black tea under an improvised warmer made of a clear serving bowl. On top of that was a smooth metal tin with some brand she didn't recognize and the words "English Breakfast" on the side. On top of that was a little folded note card. Sayuri picked it up and read the few words inside.

"Thank you for the break from work," it said in a smooth, blocky script. Sayuri turned and put it next to the lavender spider drawing on her food storage unit. She sighed and shifted the magnet over the spider so it was not blocking the more erratic letters in the same color.

Sayuri sat down to breakfast, her eyes bouncing between the two things stuck to her fridge. Yesterday had been the most parental day she'd ever had.