You weren't sure what you wanted. The warmth, the contact, the promise of some kind of closeness, it was all too much. Your hand gripped her arm and you leaned in against her shoulder, pushing her other hand away from your chest.
Min-Seo was warm and soft and everything else that you wanted, a reminder that there was more to the world besides cold mud and human misery. You couldn't do this though. It was too much when all you wanted to do was lay down and sleep and as she pulled away you felt tears starting to trickle down your cheeks.
She froze, apparently not sure what to do. So you just pulled her closer to you and buried your face against her shoulder and wept in a way in a way you hadn't allowed yourself to weep in a long, long time. You couldn't stop crying, couldn't say
what was wrong. How did you describe to someone when you couldn't even make the words form themselves inside your own head? The stress of the past year of your career and the past six months of violent warfare and constant pressure all came pouring out, the dam of your resolve cracking and then breaking down under the pressure of the day's events.
It was loud and messy and humiliating and all the things that a princess is not supposed to let show in public. After a moment, though, Min-Seo's arms wrapped back around you. Awkwardly at first, then her grip tightened and you could hear her making soft noises, trying to calm you like you were a child or a younger sibling who had had a bad dream. It felt like a bad dream, and you weren't sure at which point you actually drifted to sleep.
---
You wouldn't say you were okay the next day, not by any means. You woke up with a start, your pulse already racing. Min-Seo was nowhere to be seen, which was actually something of a relief. You got up, got dressed, and as you went through your morning routine everything seemed to settle back to a sort of normalcy. You were going to be okay, you'd just needed an escape valve.
You spent the majority of your time that day writing out your report of the action as best you could. You had to fill in some details by asking your men, or in one case just… making shit up when no one seemed to have a clear memory or idea of what exactly had happened. Not like anyone was going to contradict you, right? You submitted the report, looked over the remains of your battery. You couldn't tell if the men respected you, feared you, or resented you at this point. There was definitely more of a sense of authentic deference now but why it was you couldn't really say.
Your butcher's bill arrived, again, noting that another man had died in the hospital. Kwon was still alive, though seriously wounded. You missed him now more than you expected. Instead you made due with Kudo, who was competent enough but whom you didn't quite trust in the same way. You hadn't shared seditious talk in a miniature submarine, after all.
A superior officer also arrived, a commander with a serious looking face who examined your unit and spoke to you only a little. He also spoke with all of your petty officers--separately from you--and then left without much to say except that he was going to 'read your report.' It felt… grim and ominous. You did your best to keep the men busy over the next day or two, but there wasn't much for them to do any longer and eventually you sort of… gave up. The third day after your stand, another officer arrived. This one was an army major, who identified himself as a doctor, with a pair of orderlies. Also with them was a young naval lieutenant. That one produced orders giving him command of the battery and saying that you were relieved, at which point the major calmly stepped in.
"Thank you. Lieutenant, if you please we'd like to bring you back behind the lines for an examination and evaluation. There's some concern about your health after the wound you sustained." That had to be an excuse. Your head still ached, but it was getting better, and it wasn't stopping you from working.
"Sir, respectfully, I expect that my replacement has orders for me--" You started to protest. They couldn't shunt you off to a hospital like this, could they?
"I respect your eagerness, lieutenant. We just want to do an examination and then you'll be back here at your post in a couple of weeks. It's only a couple of weeks, isn't it? Please, gather your belongings--we have a cart waiting." He said it in a tone that suggested this wasn't an order yet but could become one if you continued to argue and reluctantly, you turned back the tiny bedroom--and Min-Seo was standing there with your seabag across her back and your valise under one arm, looking at you expectantly. As if she was supposed to be coming along.
"
Er, Min-Seo, you don't have to do that…" you started, then blinked as she replied in Akitsukuni.
"Of course, my lady. Everything is...um…. Good for us to journey" she said, bowing as deeply as she could burdened with your luggage.
The events of the last few days telescoped out in your mind in that moment, so obvious that you felt a sort of guilt that you hadn't figured it out earlier. What would you do in Min-Seo's place? You'd find whatever authority seemed least hostile and you'd do everything you could to buddy up to them. That was politics 101: you made yourself indispensable to whoever could protect you until you could either replace them or be free of their influence, through whatever you could. Labour, loyalty, sex, violence, whatever you had to offer. She had seen you as a protector to some degree because you had encouraged that, but you hadn't really
understood you were doing it.
How did you miss this?
… because you'd dismissed Min-Seo as a servant, a
thing. Something you felt a newfound need to protect, but not as a thinking person looking out for their own interests. Spirits, how many histories of servants killing nobles had you read? They always tried to make it sound like there was a noble intellect masterminding it, but you were suddenly fairly sure that was a fiction to protect the ego.
There was a sharp, cold realization that if Min-Seo stayed here with a new officer and the men whom you had done your best to protect her from, she would be back where she started. She wasn't stupid. She probably heard and knew more about how the men felt than you did. She'd looked over the situation and figured that this was her best chance out.
All you had to do was play along. It was a gamble on her part, but then, so was any action she took here.
"Of course. Come along, Min-Seo." You said mechanically. The other officers didn't say anything, of course. You were a princess. Of course you had a servant.
"I'm impressed that you speak their language," the major was saying as you carefully held your sword to one side as you clambered up into the cart to sit next to him. "Very progressive of you."
"Well," you said with a smile that you didn't feel, "it is a modern age, isn't it, sir?" You looked around the cart conspiratorially, and leaned in. "A lady needs to be able to have private correspondence with their maid, you understand."
Ah, he nodded, pretending to understand. Men would do anything to avoid admitting ignorance.
---
Your trip took you back to the dreary train station where you had arrived and then south. You had to pay Min-Seo's way, of course, since the Navy wasn't going to give her a ticket, but it wasn't like you lacked for money. When you arrived at your destination, you were ushered into a military hospital (with promises that accomodation would be found for your maid) and then into a ward marked, innocuously, 'war neurosis.'
They thought you had cracked up. Gone mad. Turned into some kind of compulsive coward. You wondered which of your men had overheard your breakdown and which of them had ratted you out to the commander. Probably Kudo.
You found yourself sitting in a small room opposite of a doctor, looking at your sternly over his notepad, feeling utterly exasperated.
"I don't belong here." You said simply. "I'm fine. I just need new orders and a new posting."
"A lot of people say that. It's alright. You'll have those things once you've healed. Our advisors says two weeks is usually sufficient. Two weeks isn't very long is it?"
Two weeks was a
lifetime in a war like this.
"I just want a new battery. Or a ship.
Something. I'm not hurt, and I don't need to heal," you protested, then added: "I'm not
weak."
"No one," the doctor said, looking over his spectacles at you in a way that reminded you of one of your old schoolmasters, "is saying you are weak, lieutenant. War neurosis is an injury, just like the one you took to your head--which I am happy to see was quite minor and is healing very well. It is not physically apparent in the same way as a bullet or shrapnel wound, but it is a wound. And it requires time for healing. There's no shame in it." It was very easy for him to say that, he wasn't the first woman in the Navy. He wasn't trying to prove that you and women like you could make it a world made by and for men.
"Right, and you pulling me here after my first taste of action... Not even my first action--I saw combat operations on the I-02! I've been nearly killed by naval guns! I've killed a man with a s
word!" You were starting to lose your cool, absolutely. What a condescending jackass. "None of that has to do with my being a woman?"
"There are plenty of men here with this same condition, of course. Though..." he was continuing with an aggravating calmness as if you hadn't said anything, "it is possible that due to their more emotionally turbulent nature women may be more susceptible to war neurosis. We haven't had the chance to study many of our own women in combat conditions. Think of it this way: you are helping any other woman who may be in a similar position in the future. You will help us understand how to treat this condition in women in a way we haven't been able to examine directly. Certainly there has been some examination of the phenomenon in Western women but they're rather more masculine than the flowers of our home isla--"
"That's the stupidest fucking thing I've heard anyone say in my life, and I've had to work with soldiers." Normally you wouldn't be given to such coarse language (Mother would have been horrified), but
Spirits this man was dreary and condescending and you wanted to throw him out the window of his office.
"Interesting," he said without any apparent offense or distress and made a new note on the clipboard on his desk.
"What are you writing about me--?" You reached out across the table to snatch clipboard before he could protest and turned it around to look at it.
"Refuses to understand the reality of her situation?
Anger issues? The reality of my situation is that if you were in my position you'd be angry too!" You fumed as he reached out to try and retrieve the clipboard.
"Lieutenant, please. I understand your feelings but we're trying to help you--" You held the clipboard away from his grasping hand for a satisfying moment until he was forced to lunge across the desk in a completely undignified manner, at which point you let him have the damn thing. He settled back in his seat, finally looking a bit ruffled.
"Lieutenant, you have orders to remain here for treatment for two weeks. I don't like to use this stick, but I can see you're going to be a challenging case." Ugh. "So. You're not going to violate military discipline, are you?"
"No, sir," you said, falling back into a mechanical Academy recitation of acknowledgement. You knew when you were pushed into a corner.
"Very good. We'll be meeting again in two days after you've had some time to rest to see how you're feeling. Tomorrow you'll be seeing a nurse, who will be happy to answer any questions and who will be able to help and listen to anything you have to say."
"Yes, sir." You replied.
"Thank you for your cooperation, lieutenant. Your billet should be down the hall and if you need anything at all, just ring the bell to call the nurse. You have free run of this ward, the canteen, and the garden, but if you want go anywhere else, please ask a nurse so she can relay your request to me. Any questions?"
"Only one, sir. My maid? Where is she going to be staying?" He looked at you for a long moment, blinked.
"Oh! The Joseon girl. Right. We've put her up in an empty room on the nurse's floor. As long as she stays out of everyone's way, she should be fine. Now, go and get some rest, lieutenant."
---
We're doing another one of those All Snippet Specials. What does Haruna see, do, and say while in lockup for brain trubs that she doesn't really have?
Also, Level Up! Haruna gains a new Feat, a new Spell Level, and unlocks a summonable warhorse from the astral plane, and also +1 to one of her stats. Vote now on your phones!
[ ] Diplomacy
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[ ] Prowess
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