Hearing Jeanne's answer, the Doctor accepted this bizarre revival without getting bogged down in how much it defied common sense. She wasn't one to waste time scratching her head over something happening right in front of her.
But a quiet wave of disappointment washed over her anyway. If what happened to Jeanne was a true, honest-to-goodness miracle, it meant it wasn't something that could be copied. There probably wouldn't be a second baseline human waking up this way.
Even knowing that having Jeanne here at all, awake and alive, was a massive stroke of luck for both of them.
"What about you, though? I still don't even know your name," Jeanne said, her eyes tracing the thick, layered hazard gear sealing the strategist away from the room. She was genuinely curious why anyone would choose to live cooped up in an airtight suit like that.
Up until this exact second, she hadn't just been left guessing about the Doctor's first name; she didn't even know her family name. The woman was a total mystery, and Kal'tsit had been notoriously tight-lipped whenever her file came up.
The question caught the Doctor completely off guard. Her entire body stiffened, her shoulders locking up as her brain went into a frantic, visibly painful scramble for the data. Was a simple name really that hard to spit out?
Before Jeanne could try to bail her out, the Doctor seemed to lose every ounce of her strength. Slumping forward like a puppet with its strings cut, she let out a soft, deeply defeated sigh.
"My name... it's a bit of a joke, honestly. I'd love to know what it is, too. But the current version of me has absolutely no memory of who I used to be. I don't even have a single clue to trace..."
There was a real, sharp edge of pain in her quiet voice. She wanted her identity back more than anything, but her mind had been completely wiped clean of personal markers.
The operators of Babel didn't call her 'Doctor' to build up some terrifying, mysterious legend; it was just that there wasn't a single proper noun left to use. She had simply told everyone to use the title because she still held a vague, lingering memory of having a doctorate in a forgotten life, and she could faintly recall people addressing her that way in the distant past.
"Is it from a head injury? Or did someone attack you and wipe out your memory?" Jeanne asked, her tone softening with genuine, protective concern.
(Fumina: Hmm, Can this be considered an Integrated Strategy?)
Jeanne knew enough about the mind to know it was a fragile thing. If a whole lifetime of history was just gone, it meant the physical brain had taken a catastrophic hit. Left alone, a breakdown that severe could mean her remaining time was rapidly running out.
Memories were anchored deep within a person's soul and mind. For amnesia to be this absolute, the strategist's spiritual core had likely endured terrible trauma—and looking at her, this wasn't a recent wound.
"So you really don't know anything about the old days..." The Doctor watched Jeanne's completely blank expression and finally let go of her last bit of suspicion. It was perfectly clear now that Jeanne wasn't a weapon grown in a lab by some hidden faction that's secretly controlling Terra from the shadows; she was a genuine, pure anomaly.
Even when logic said it was impossible, the Doctor had felt a professional need to test if Jeanne was a product of old-world science. She didn't think Jeanne was lying to her; she was just terrified that the girl's underlying thoughts and perceptions had been rewritten by some hidden player before she was sent onto the battlefield.
But through every word of their conversation, the Doctor hadn't found a single trace of an outside architect pulling the strings. With her safety checks satisfied, she finally let her guard down.
"If you count my first life and this one, I've barely been alive for twenty-five years total!" Jeanne huffed, crossing her arms with a pout. "How am I supposed to know what your advanced civilization was up to? You're asking a bit much from a simple country girl!"
She waved her hands dismissively, wondering if the strategist pictured her as a creation of some ancient, immortal monster pulling strings from the shadows. She was probably younger than the Doctor if they were counting actual biological years! She was just born a long time ago; she hadn't actually spent centuries aging!
Yes, exactly! She was still young, firmly a maiden. Why did every major intellectual in this world look at her and immediately assume they were dealing with a dusty old relic?
"Is that so? It sounds like you're quite a bit younger than I thought," the Doctor murmured, a flash of real surprise in her voice. Knowing that Jeanne had met her end at just nineteen meant her actual footprint on Terra was incredibly fresh.
That cleared up a major blind spot. It explained perfectly why Babel's massive information network hadn't picked up a single rumor about her before this year. A girl with her kind of reality-bending power would have caused massive political waves the moment she showed up. It also explained why she was running around the Ursus wilderness instead of living a comfortable, protected life with the high prelates of Laterano.
Beep—Beep—Beep—Beep!
A sharp, rhythmic electronic chime suddenly rang out from a watch-like device on the Doctor's wrist. Hearing the alarm, the strategist let out a massive, visible sigh of relief and turned to her guest.
"That's the atmospheric sync. It means the air in here has stabilized enough for me to take off this heavy suit. Normally, if I expose my skin without checking the toxicity levels first, it's a fast track to a life-threatening crisis. It's a huge pain..."
As she spoke, the Doctor reached for her collar, unlatching the heavy seals. She pulled back the thick hood and lifted the massive helmet away, finally revealing the face hidden beneath the infamous mask of 'The Ghost of Babel'—a face that almost every operator on the ship would have traded a year's pay to see.
The first thing Jeanne noticed was a waterfall of hair as white and flawless as pure moonlight. Beneath it was a remarkably delicate, finely sculpted face with features so gentle and soft that she instantly registered as a striking beauty.
Yet, despite her lovely face and a frame that clearly belonged to a woman rather than a child, she gave off the fragile, terrifying vibe of a porcelain doll. Looking at her, Jeanne felt a chilling worry that a single harsh gust of wind or a sudden shock could literally break her into pieces.
Though her height was perfectly normal, her hair and skin were so unnaturally pale it crossed the line into a deeply concerning, bloodless starkness. It looked as if the natural circulation in her body had completely given up, leaving behind an unhealthy, translucent white.
As the Doctor shed the bulky, oversized coat to reveal her standard indoor clothes, Jeanne's eyes widened in horror. The girl was dangerously thin. Jeanne was entirely convinced that if the strategist lifted her shirt, her entire ribcage would be sticking out like a skeleton's.
"You... what happened to you?" Jeanne gasped, her voice shaking with shock. She couldn't square this fragile, ghost-like specter with the high-energy, chaotic gremlin who had been sprinting down the halls this morning. How was this woman not permanently confined to a hospital bed?
If you rolled into an emergency room looking that bloodless, the entire chief medical board would call a half-month meeting just to figure out how to keep you standing! To be running around a military ship directing global strategies while looking like a stiff breeze could knock you over was pure madness!
Faced with Jeanne's horrified stare, the Doctor just gave a faint, incredibly weary smile. She didn't offer a grand explanation; she merely let her fragile frame sink deeply into a nearby armchair, closing her eyes as if she had finally been given permission to rest.
"Please, you need to lie down right now. I'm genuinely scared your heart is going to stop in the next ten seconds!" Without waiting for an answer, Jeanne stepped forward, scooped the strategist up in her arms, and carefully carried her over to the bed.
She's weightless! Jeanne thought, a chill running down her spine as she realized how effortlessly she had lifted the woman. How was she even functioning on a cellular level? She had met Infected refugees in the Ursus wastes who were literally starving to death, and their bodies still looked significantly sturdier than this.
"What kind of awful neglect did you go through to end up like this?" Jeanne murmured, watching the Doctor lie motionless on the mattress like a patient preparing to cross the veil. Deep down, she was incredibly confused.
Even if her health was naturally fragile, she was currently sitting at the very top of the Babel hierarchy. There was no way Theresa or Kal'tsit would allow their prime strategist to starve. How could she have let her own body waste away to this degree?
"This?" The Doctor raised her frail, pale arm, staring at her snow-white skin with a tired, distant smile, as if she had long since detached herself from the physical world. "It isn't a matter of starvation, Jeanne. It's just the lingering curse this current world has on our kind. Considering the path I've walked... the fact that I'm even drawing breath today means I'm already incredibly lucky."