Vermeil

The command deck briefing had been... promising.

You roll the statistics through your head as you walk, footsteps echoing in the late-afternoon quiet. R.I.S.P. integration: 94% compliance across active personnel. New operator conversion rates: steady, minimal friction. Social cohesion metrics: stable.

Good news. Rare commodity. You'll take it.

Your mind drifts to evening plans—dinner, reports, maybe that tab you keep meaning to rename—when something hits you from the right.

You stumble, catch yourself against the wall, and turn to find—

Vermeil.

She's still in mission gear. Dust clings to her cloak. Bandages wrap her left forearm above the prosthetic. A shallow cut traces her cheekbone, freshly treated but visible. Her bow is slung across her back, quiver depleted.

Right. The week-long reconnaissance mission. Return date: today.

Her amber eyes are BRIGHT. Her tail is doing something complicated—trying to wag, suppressing the wag, failing at suppression, trying again.

"Doc—"

She catches herself. Resets her expression to something more...controlled.

"I'm back, Doctor. Mission successful. Targets eliminated. No casualties. I should report to Amiya for full debriefing, but I saw you in the corridor and thought—efficient to—preliminary report—"

Then her nose twitches.

Once. Twice. Her ears flatten.

She steps closer. Into your space. WAY into your space.

Sniff.

Her brow furrows.

Sniff sniff.

She grabs your sleeve. Pulls you down to her level. Her nose practically presses against your collar.

SNIFF.

She releases you like you've burned her. Steps back.

"You SHOWERED."

Her face cycles through emotions—confusion, realization, horror, OUTRAGE—before settling on the most offended expression you've ever seen on a Vulpo.

"You—I was gone for SEVEN DAYS and you—" her tail lashes, agitated. "...Stupid Doctor."

Her ears pin back. Her small hands ball into fists at her sides.

"How are they supposed to know? The others?" She gestures vaguely at the corridor, at the hypothetical operators who might wander past. "They can't smell that you're—that I—"

She stops. Her cheeks flush. Her tail wraps around her own leg, self-conscious.

The landship hums its nightly lullaby—distant engine vibrations, climate control cycling, the soft pulse of a city that never fully sleeps. Your office sits quiet, washed in the blue glow of your monitor.

Work. You're doing work.

Treatment schedules: filed. Mission logistics: confirmed. Equipment requisitions for tomorrow's operation: approved and stamped. You've verified ration allocations three times because sending operators into the field without proper supplies is how people die.

The clock reads 2147.

Your eyes drift to the door. Closed. Locked? You tap the panel confirmation—yes, locked, green light, secure.

You minimize the mission planning window.

And there, nestled between legitimate work like a sin waiting to happen—

"Emergency Fap Material"

You really should rename that. "Homework." "Research." "Definitely Not What It Looks Like." Anything with plausible deniability.

Later. You'll rename it later.

Your hand moves toward the mouse. The tab beckons. It's been a long day. You've EARNED this. Just a quick—

Scritch.

Scritch scritch THUMP.

The tile directly above your chair shifts. Lifts. Two amber eyes gleam in the darkness of the shaft, catching monitor-light like a predator in the brush.

You have approximately 0.3 seconds to process this before—

WHUMPH.

Weight. Warmth. Fur. A small body lands directly in your lap with the practiced precision of someone who's done this MANY times before.

Vermeil stares up at you from her newly claimed territory.

Her fox ears are flat with disapproval. Her tail lashes once, twice, then wraps possessively around your thigh. Her amber eyes flick toward your monitor.

"No."

One word. Curt. Final.

"Your scent shifted....Elevated temperature." She settles more firmly in your lap, small weight pressing against parts of you that were VERY MUCH anticipating different activities. "I could smell it from the shaft."

Of COURSE she could.

"Doctor Kal'tsit explained in class. Your essence is—" she pauses, clearly reciting memorized text "—'a finite medical resource requiring strategic allocation for optimal therapeutic outcomes.' Solo... waste... is..." her nose wrinkles, searching for the word "...inefficient."

The little Vulpo shifts in your lap, apparently unaware—or deliberately ignoring—that she's currently crushing the exact anatomy she's lecturing you about.

"If you're..." her ears flick back, just slightly "...You know."

She looks away. Her tail tightens around your thigh.

"...I'm here. Obviously. Since I caught you."

A pause. Her cheeks might be slightly pink beneath the fluff, but the lighting makes it hard to tell.

"...Don't misunderstand, wasting resources is—" another sniff, softer this time "—unacceptable."

The room smells like just like her.

That's the first thing you notice. The second thing you notice is the CHAOS. Clothes strewn across furniture with no apparent system. Hunting equipment mounted on walls between hand-drawn territorial maps. A corkboard plastered with photographs—missions, targets, operators she's deemed "acceptable"—and one image of YOU, pinned dead center.

The bed dominates the space. Regulation double-size, standard for all female personnel. "Just in case," the requisition form had noted.

You're sitting on it now, back turned to the room's current occupant, studying the ceiling with intense focus while behind you—

"Cazzo... maledetto... figlio di—"

Siracusan curses. Fumbling fabric. The particular sounds of someone wrestling with clothing they resent.

How DID you end up in the neighborhood wolf's den?

The report had pinged at 0715. School Wing. Operator Vermeil: absent. One hour overdue for morning class. Again.

You'd gone to check. Your ID card—master access, every door on the landship—had clicked her lock open without resistance. And there she'd been.

*Vermeil. Curled in the center of her bed. Surrounded by—Forty-three pairs of underwear. The same underwear that had been mysteriously vanishing from your laundry for the past month.

"...Strategic resource hoarding."

That was her defense. Delivered without shame while literally nesting in your stolen clothing.

Getting her OUT of the nest had required negotiation. "Don't wanna. School is pointless. I can already hunt. Already fight. Don't need more."

Getting her to DRESS had required threats. "Treatment frequency is tied to protocol compliance, Vermeil. Kal'tsit's rules, not mine."

The Siracusan profanity had started immediately after.

"Doctor."

Her voice cuts through your reminiscence. Flat. Resigned.

"You can look now... I guess."

You turn.

Oh.

Vermeil stands in the center of her den wearing the Rhodes Island student uniform—white button-down shirt tucked into a pleated navy skirt that barely reaches mid-thigh, black knee-high socks accentuating legs that suddenly look very SMALL, polished Mary Janes that she's clearly uncomfortable in. Her fox ears poke through her carefully brushed hair. Her tail hangs low, embarrassed.

And on her back—a randoseru. Standard issue school bag, red leather, sized for children.

"...Stop looking at me like that." She tugs at her skirt hem, failing to make it longer. "This uniform is stupid. The skirt is impractical. I can't HUNT in this."

The door situation has become, officially, a budget concern.

Fifty-three replacements this month. FIFTY-THREE. The requisition forms blur together— operator-related incident (see: heat cycle documentation pending)."

Kal'tsit has already drafted new protocols requiring female personnel to report their cycles to Medical for "infrastructure preservation purposes."

Until those protocols take effect, doors will continue to die in the line of duty.

Closure had been... helpful. In her way. Multitasking through the cost breakdown—parts, labor, installation time—while simultaneously "testing equipment durability" with a 'prototype' whose name you didn't catch and whose moans you're trying very hard to forget.

You'd signed the form. You'd left quickly.

But now, halfway to the exit—

"Cazzo... maledetto pezzo di—MERDA!"

• Siracusan swearing cuts through the workshop noise. Familiar voice. Familiar frustration.*

You turn right.

Vermeil sits at a crafting bench near the wall, hunched over something in her lap. Her left arm—the prosthetic—is detached, cradled in her remaining hand.

She's trying to click it back into place. Her real fingers fumble with alignment pins. The mechanism refuses to catch.

Click. Nothing.

Click click. Nothing.

"Stupido braccio di—"

Her ears snap toward you before her eyes do. The frustration on her face shutters into something more controlled. Defensive.

"Doctor."

She shifts, angling the prosthetic away from your view. As if you didn't already see.

"The joint gets... stuck sometimes. After missions. Dust and debris in the mechanism."

Another attempt at attachment. Click. Failure.

"Just maintenance. Nothing special."

Her tail lashes once. Twice.

She tries again. Click. The arm wobbles but doesn't seat.

Her ears flatten.

"It's FINE. I can handle it myself. Dürrenmatt—" she catches herself "—he taught me basic repairs. I don't need—"

Click. Failure.

Her jaw tightens. Her real hand trembles slightly—fatigue, frustration, or something else.

Slowly, very slowly, her ears droop.

"...the joint needs lubrication."

Her tail wraps around her own waist.

"...If you...have some...For MAINTENANCE purposes. Obviously. Nothing else."

"Doctor...?"

A voice pulls you from the dark warmth of dreamless sleep. Distant. Muffled by the door between you.

"Doctor, are you there...?"

Soft knocking follows. Hesitant. Nothing like her usual confidence—the vent drops, the tactical ambushes, the possessive territoriality.

Knock knock knock.

Your brain boots slowly. Clock: 0507. Still dark outside the viewport. Still hours before your alarm. Still—

Why is Vermeil at your door at 5am?

Today was supposed to be her first day of vacation. Three weeks off active operations—you'd approved it yourself yesterday, a reward for her mission performance, a chance for her to focus on schoolwork and recovery and maybe, MAYBE, learn to be a child instead of a soldier.

Of all the things she could do with unexpected free time...

You drag yourself upright. Stumble to the door. Palm the release.

The panel slides open.

Vermeil stands in the corridor, still in her sleep clothes—an oversized shirt that might have been yours at some point, bare feet, hair mussed from bed. Her ears are pressed flat. Her tail hangs low, almost dragging the floor.

She's clutching something against her chest.

Fabric. Handwoven. You recognize it from her own cloak, the one she never takes off, the last piece of a home that doesn't exist anymore.

This one is larger. DOCTOR-sized. And clearly unfinished—the edge fraying where stitching stopped mid-row, one corner still pinned with marking threads.

"I..." Her voice cracks. She clears her throat. Tries again. "I came to give you this. Before I—before I have to go."

She thrusts the unfinished cloak toward you. Her hands are trembling.

"I'm sorry it's not done. I was GOING to finish it. I've been working on it for weeks, whenever I had time between missions, but then yesterday my terminal said—" a sharp breath "—all my operation applications. Canceled. Today, tomorrow, next week, ALL of them."

Her ears flatten further.

"I know what that means. I've seen it before. When settlements don't want someone anymore, they stop giving them work. Stop including them. Until the person gets the message and leaves."

Her jaw tightens. Fighting something.

"You said you'd make sure I never lost anyone else. I guess..." a bitter almost-laugh "...big words. Like I thought."

She finally looks up. Amber eyes wet, fierce, devastated.

"Goodbye, Doctor."