Some days it was easier for him to remember than others.

Some days, after he'd been left back in his holding block with nine others after a long night of training and schoolfeeding and brainwashing, he could remember a name, and a sign. A sign of his own, not the one all the captives wear in the training facility. One he would supposedly get back when they were done with him, when he was installed in a ship. (It wouldn't be long now, he knew. He was stronger than all the others and he was past starting to forget, he was forgetting so fast the words and pictures slipped through him day by day until he was afraid there'd be nothing left of him but that's what they wanted) Some of those days he could even remember what he called his best friend, and the name of that bizarre hunter girl his best friend loved (A word that she'd come up with, said she'd found in old stories about a feeling beyond pity, beyond moirallegiance and matespritship and his friend had laughed and said fuck if he understood why the word even existed, normal trolls didn't feel this way about other trolls), and sometimes if he tried really hard even the name of the one who was his friend's- not lusus, not guardian, not ancestor – mother, (mother to them all, really).

But most days he couldn't remember their names. Most days he was lucky if he could remember their faces (but he knew they were always kind and happy and that was part of what was so striking, trolls are never kind or happy, especially to a yellow-blooded freak like him). So when he told his cellmates stories – especially the littlest one, barely more than a wriggler, whose strong psychic mutation had marked her for a horrible half-life worse than culling at far too few sweeps – he referred to them by the names they took in the rumors.

The Sufferer. The Dolorosa. The Disciple. The Psiioniic.

It would be easier to remember them if he'd slept, of course. His friends' faces, names, and voices were always clearer when he was dreaming. But the guards would have started to question him if they'd caught him sleeping without sopor too often. So no, he didn't sleep much. And he didn't remember much.

But he clung to what he could and it kept his identity with him through his entire training.

So he remembered the Sufferer and what he died for up through the day they first tried to take him to the Condesce's ship (though each day he remembered a little less until he could barely remember his best friend at all and he was just repeating the same stories over and over and hoping the words would stick to his brain, trained now to only accept certain commands no matter how he fought it). And it kept him calm and collected right up until they try to connect him to the headset.

And then suddenly he's all flailing limbs and screaming and pulsing psionics that were supposed to be subdued by the drugs they'd given him but weren't because the memory of his best friend speaking, face and body animated and practically dancing in front of a rainbow-blooded crowd that would follow him into battle, has suddenly sprung clear as glass to the front of his mind and he knows that he can't ever give up fighting, he can't let them do this to him or he'll forget everything, he won't be him anymore-

He manages to disarm, maim, or kill half the crew members on the bridge before they finally get him under control. And they would have culled him right there and then (and he would have been glad of it because he would have gone down fighting and with the memories of his best friend and his friend's lover and mother shimmering behind his eyes like he'd never ever forget them) if the Condesce herself didn't step onto the bridge at that very moment. Every other troll in the area snaps to attention or stops and turns to bow.

He rips himself away from the harness they'd put him in, scattering yellow blood everywhere, and charges her. He manages to grab a weapon from one of his guards for backup and feels his psionics charging, a bolt already aimed for the monster in front of him who dares call herself a ruler, who had ordered the deaths and enslavement of his friends and his allies, who he is going to kill or be killed by, he isn't particularly picky.

He makes it halfway across the floor before she turns her cold gaze on him and speaks two words.

Kneel, Helmsman.

And he does. Whether from fear or the training and conditioning or the simple hereditary fact that this was his natural ruler, he kneels.

The Empress had ordered them not to cull him. She'd taken a liking to him, so it was back to the training facility for a short time, then back to the ship. This time he didn't fight, just held onto as many memories as he could as the wiring pierced the back of his neck and he became part of the ship, as physically property as they'd tried to make him mentally.

And as he obeyed his first command as Helmsman of the ship of Her Imperial Condescension, he felt (distantly, as most of his brain was ship now and very little of his physical senses remained) the tears slipping down his face, carrying away memories of his only friends to a place where he would never recall them from.

She came to visit him frequently, often when the bridge was deserted. If it wasn't, she'd command it to be cleared and they'd be alone. She'd order him to turn off all the recording devices in that part of the ship and the bridge sealed. She'd come to stand directly in front of him (all dark dark long coiling hair and bright bright flashes of gold to what little vision he had left). And then she'd talk to him. She'd pour out her heart and mind, every last scrap of pride and resentment and hatred she'd felt that inspired her visit. Sometimes, if he's lucky, she'll finish speaking her mind, order the doors unsealed and the records back online, and leave.

Most times he's not that lucky and she'll touch him. Stroke his cheek, trace his headset, slide her hands down his chest. Sometimes she'll kiss him, long, lingering things without a hint of malice that would make him gag, if he still had control of his own body. If she's drunk, she'll giggle like she's six sweeps old and say it's too bad that the harness grew around his legs and hips like that, they could have had so much fun otherwise. And no matter what, the last thing she says before she prepares to leave is:

You should have been my matesprit, not that politically chosen ass.

If his mind were still more troll than ship, he'd call her kismesis.

But over the millennia of piloting for her, his life bound to his, his mind has become almost entirely ship. He barely remembers what his legs are for, or his arms. He forgets how to use his eyes and sees exclusively by the cameras and scanners of the ship. It's a stretch for him to remember what "matesprit" means past the definition in the ship's computer. He remembers that once, when he had a mind of his own, there was something important he wanted to remember. Something he couldn't ever forget, but he can't remember why or what it was. (It would make him sad, he thinks in a rare moment of clarity, if he remembered how to be sad and not just machinery, just there.)

He can't remember anything, at least until she runs screaming onto the bridge towards the end of one night, millions of light-sweeps from Alternia as they have been for centuries, hand clenched so tightly around her trident she's actually denting the gold and hair streaming behind her like an imitation her demonic lusus, and orders him back to Alternia as fast as he can go, faster than is ever safe for a pilot. He remembers then because he's dying. His body is tearing itself apart to obey this one last critical command, one that he is not allowed under any circumstances to fail, but somehow, somehow it also means that his mind has been freed. He can suddenly remember he had a best friend once, a brilliant troll who could fight with the best of them but who preached peace and equality across the hemospectrum. He remembers travelling to markets with an older woman who his best friend had called Mother, making sure everyone knew he was not her slave and that despite her perfect jade blood, they were equals. He remembers insisting to the girl his best friend had once loved that yes, food could be eaten raw but it had to be somewhat cooked for most trolls' digestive systems to absorb the most nutrients from it.

And there, still trapped by an organic harness that has grown up around his body, still connected through a headset wired directly into his central nervous system to a spaceship of massive proportions, still traveling through space so fast that his body is disintegrating, filthy yellow blood pouring from his eyes and skin cracking like shattered pottery and psionics sparking wildly and damaging equipment, with a monstrous troll who would have called him matesprit and had ordered his friends' deaths and had enslaved him for millennia screaming at him not to die because she forbade it, he suddenly remembers.

He remembers everything.

The last information that his brain ever processes is the strange fact that despite control over his body had been lost millennia ago, the corners of his mouth are curling up into the start of a smile.