Chapter Text
==> Nekrah Psaira | 2 Sweeps | SS Euphreta's Research and Development Wing
When you were young, people said you weren’t that much of a talker. There wasn’t much to be said that could refute that, no, it was quite true. Not a single peep of sound passed your lips but the soft sigh of breath that you took, night in and night out in the cold, white walls of the research facility you grew up in. The halls were usually quiet, so why interrupt it? You had nothing important to say - you were simply meant to... exist.
Vitroper wasn’t a fan of that. He twittered and tutted about how you were surely fucked in the head and perhaps this was just the first sign that you were a failed experiment. He jabbed his pen at his notes about you like every lack of sound was a personal insult against him and every report he put into your file ended the same - Possible side effect of the artifical lusus program? A defect, really, he'd say as he angrily slammed the pen tip to dot the question mark, nearly jabbing it right through the holo-pad on which he took his notes. After all, if the Mother Construct could not teach a troll to talk, what was the point? He made her to be a parent not be a pretty, grotesque thing that just sat in her rooms and played the charades of parenthood.
Still, you said nothing. You had nothing important to say. Your mother may not have been made to be a pretty, grotesque thing that just sat in her rooms, but you were hatched to be a quiet object of observation. That much you knew and you were an obedient troll.
He brought it up near nightly with you in your report briefings in some attempt to teach you language. He said it was going to be difficult for you to understand what he says because it was a scientist’s work. It took a scientist to figure out what was wrong with her AND you, he told you with barely a glance at your face as you sat across from his desk. He said you were no scientist but it didn’t take a scientist to realize that what Vitroper said about her wasn’t true.
There was nothing wrong with your mother, nor you, but that wasn't important to bring up to them so you just... didn't. She was just quiet - just as quiet as you were - but that didn’t mean she didn’t teach you your words. Two pairs of arms would curl around you with the dragging whisper of synthetic skin on skin and she’d pull you in to cradle you close. You were small then, they said you were three feet and two inches exact and next to her, you were as light as the breath on her lips. She had no issue pulling you to her chest and… she would hum
She would hum and sing and talk in a dry, raspy voice in a low, low voice against your ears. It wasn’t something that the other scientists heard. Not a peep they heard of her singing, not during the check-ups or the biopsies or that time they locked you in a room for a week to test if she’ll mourn you. Not even then as she clawed at the doors 'til her fingers were bloody did she make a sound.
This was a sound for you.
Just you.
Her songs were a gift that she gave to you and you only and you cherished it. Mother Construct’s lips were misshapen and unyielding up against your cheek, but you didn’t pay it any mind. You still clung to her head and her shoulders as she sung, as quiet as can be and the two of you would sit there like that for hours and hours and hours - until you were called away for more testing
She’d let you down with her songs still dancing in your ears, with a dry kiss to your fins and a finger up to her lips. Then, as slow as can be, she moved her finger over to press against yours.
A secret to share, between a charge and his lusus, you realized early on.
Trolls always said you were a quiet one back when you were younger. It was true, you know that much. You never spoke a word and Vitroper thought that meant you daft, but that wasn’t quite what you were. You simply had nothing you could say.
Everything you knew weren't meant to be said. You were a silent secret keeper, full of songs in in your head and dry kisses on your cheek and the knowledge that for once, you had something that was yours and yours alone in a world full of clinical coldness and strict record keeping - and that was something you clung to. A quiet sound, barely a ripple in a pond of silence that was meant only for you.