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"Don't worry, Kanny, it's inevitable."
That was what you used to say to him, whenever he'd get all worried about the fate you knew you'd someday face.
It didn't help, of course, and usually just made him more upset - he'd try to convince you that it wasn't inevitable - so eventually you stopped saying it.
You still believed it, though. There really was no way out of it. Psychics of your kind were often exploited in this way, and you knew your powers were strong enough that, eventually, you would be subjected to that. You just couldn't see a future where you didn't end up in a ship.
You'd thought about all the possibilities, too. Some of them bothered you, of course, the thought of being taken away from your loved ones was unpleasant, but some were a bit more optimistic.
Maybe you would all be captured, everyone put to death or punished in some way, and of course your punishment would be the helm.
Or maybe you'd be the only one taken, snatched away from the people who had become your family, as the Empress disregarded your petty rebellion entirely to set her sights on a new wave of expansion.
Or you might end up striking a deal with someone - some highblood, out to gain Her favor, could set out to extinguish the resistance, and you'd beg them to leave your family alone in exchange for, well, you. If it meant they'd be safe at least for the moment, you'd accept your fate like that.
And then there were the more hopeful possibilities... you used to imagine that if Kanny's rebellion were to succeed, and he declared himself ruler, he of course would need a ship. And you'd willingly give yourself to him. It almost sounded romantic, in a way - what better way to declare your love for someone than to let them use you, body and soul? (Of course, if you'd actually mentioned that to him, he would've been appalled, insisting that he wouldn't hurt you like that. And you would have tried to explain to him why it would be okay actually... but no doubt unsuccessfully. So you never actually brought up that particular possibility.)
Or, maybe he wouldn't succeed exactly, but you'd all end up having to flee from the Empire entirely and form your own little... something not an empire. If that ended up being the case, you'd again willingly give yourself to them, a fast ship to ensure they'd escape Her clutches.
Even if, somehow, everything went as well as Kanny dreamed it would, you were sure that someday something would happen that would end up with you getting put in a ship, one way or another. You'd just hoped it would end up being one of the nicer ways.
As it turned out, your hopes had been futile.
You'd all been captured, and the Empress had wasted no time in having you installed into her flagship.
Something had happened then, although you didn't understand what. All you'd been able to learn was what the Empress told you, hissed whispers through gritted shark-teeth. Alternia had betrayed her, she'd said. That despicable piece of mutant scum had escaped, she'd said, and turned half her empire against her somehow. Her words were full of anger as she spoke, her hands with razor-sharp nails running up and down your body and cutting that anger into you.
You'd retreated into the ship each time she came to take her anger out on you, letting the pain diminish until it was just one small part of everything that you were, embracing the machinery that you'd always known you would become.
And you'd expected that this was all it would be, forever. Cruel words and painful touches, her hands feeding more life into your body with sharply glowing sparks, the miles of steel hull and half-organic machine that were your new body, and the infinite vertiginous flight that filled you with both joy and terror.
But then he had shown up.
Somehow, despite everything that had happened since your capture, whatever it was that had happened, Kanny had found his way back to you. He'd told you his plan, in those moments of rest when he would come to the helmsblock to do some little maintenance. You'd responded in the ways you could, putting bits of text and information on the screens and hoping he could understand what you meant by them.
And you'd carried out that plan, hoping beyond hope that he'd be able to pull it off.
So now you're here, hanging in the wires still, in the relatively undamaged helmsblock, your body warped and twisted all around you. Your hull integrity is reduced to zero in a dozen places, entire levels numb from the damage to your wiring at a hundred crucial junctures. You can feel things you were never meant to feel - atmosphere in your sensors, dirt and stone beneath your hull, the pain of catastrophic damage to your infrastructure.
More importantly, you can see something you never thought you would see again: Kanny's hopeful smile as he stands before you, holding a massive pair of bolt cutters.
As he gets to work, slowly severing you from your mangled body and pulling you back into yourself, you can't help but wonder... maybe it was something else that was inevitable, this whole time. Maybe, no matter what happened, his love would have saved you in the end.