FUCK YEAH IMPERIAL RADCH HEADCANONS and like what if both with bonus Mercy of Kalr because I love them all?

A: what I think realistically

I have no idea if this is supported by canon, but.

Justice of Toren has been the subject of any number of overwrought entertainments over the last nineteen years.  The drama of the singing ship, the romance of ships gone mad over their lost favorites, the mystery of it all.  If Anaander Mianaai had forcibly shut down the entertainments, it just would have drawn more attention to the lost Justice, so instead she lets the harmless ones pass muster, and besides, no Radchaai would have thought to make the Lord of the Radch into the villain of the piece.

After the Republic of Two Systems forms (“Provisional, Cousin,” Sphene drawls), Seivarden catches one of the Amaats watching an old one that she grew up with, as a sort of comfort item, and is immediately enchanted.  It’s completely inaccurate, of course, all drama and honor and nobility with none of the complications of real life, but there’s beautiful music and Seivarden loves it at once.  Amaat decade starts watching various Justice of Toren entertainments after their shifts, piled comfortably in their bunkroom, and it snowballs from there.

No one knows who tells Breq about this, but she drifts idly into the Bo decade room and stands quietly at the back and watches the first episode of the latest entertainment, and after that Kalr starts watching them in the decade room as well, previously avoided in case of upsetting their Fleet Captain.  Some days she can’t stand it and removes herself. Other days she simply watches in silence, with an ancillary-blank expression on her face only occasionally broken by a faint, ambiguous smile.  On very rare good days, she’ll smile outright and even laugh, although often at highly irregular times, prompted more by inaccuracy than real comedy.

Even on the days when she can’t stand the memory of being shipself, Breq hums the songs.

It’s good to be remembered.

B: what I think is fucking hilarious

It…takes Seivarden a while to realize what exactly her emotional response to Breq is. Initially, it’s pure blind hatred because how dare this stranger go to such lengths to save Seivarden’s life, which Seivarden has every right to throw away in the snow if she so desires, this strange noncitizen can take a long walk out of a short airlock.  Then. Well.  Bridges.  Falling. Near death on Breq’s part.  It’s hard to justify hating her after that because. It just is, Seivarden doesn’t have to justify herself.  By the time they reach Omaugh Palace, Seivarden is attached and horrorstricken at herself because she is Vendaai but she…she almost wishes that Breq was of a mind to take on a client. Making Breq tea and making sure that Breq is well-dressed and ensuring that Breq is treated with honor sets Seivarden at ease.  Half the reason Seivarden goes out and gets into trouble upon arriving at Omaugh Station is that she’s suddenly confronted by the reality of just how incompatible that is with every part of herself she’s spent so long trying to hold onto since she came out of stasis.

And then Breq strides into Security, dressed in the finery of a Radchaai noble house, eyes bright and jaw set and shoulders squared, and Seivarden stares and—

Oh fuck, Seivarden thinks faintly, feeling both kind of concussed and much clearer.  She’s hot.

C: what is heart-crushing and awful but fun to inflict on friends

One morning, for no particular reason that Breq can think of, Mercy of Kalr wakes her up early, with slow-rising lights and a quiet, “Cousin, wake up.”

“Is something wrong, Cousin?” Breq asks silently, sitting up.

“No,” Mercy of Kalr says, and it’s a ship, but it has a thread of repressed excitement touching its voice, touching Breq’s mind.  “But you have to wake up.”

So Breq wakes up.

“Wait,” Mercy of Kalr half-commands when Breq starts to get out of bed, and Breq stops as the ship presses on her mind, pushing forth data that swells to fill her, almost as complete as if she were Ship itself.

Across the ship, the Kalrs are just rising, the Amaats and the Bos about their business, the Etrepas all just dozing off.  Seivarden is frowning at the report being handed to her by Amaat Two, while Tisarwat smiles shyly at a comment from Bo Nine, and Ekalu stretches luxuriously, smiling at the ceiling with the satisfaction of a shift well completed with no disaster.  The cold stillness of space touches Ship’s hull, Breq’s hull, the stars beginning to be bleached out as Atheok Station reveals the distant sun.

“Ship, what–?” Breq says with her body, at a distant remove, and Mercy of Kalr simply repeats, “Wait.”

Breq realizes what she’s waiting for not ten minutes later, when Seivarden starts to sing.

I was walking, I was walking

Amaat picks it up first, a warm chorus as they work, and Amaat Seven is passing near Bo Five, and then Bo is singing too.

I was walking, I was walking,

When I met my love

Kalr Five blinks and begins to sing, and it trickles through the Kalr bunkroom like water, punctuated by the quiet sounds of morning, hands passing brushes and clothes being straightened.

I was in the street walking

When I saw my true love

Etrepa sings with the slow sleepiness of having just finished a shift, but even Ekalu joins in, even Medic in her infirmary gives a small smile and blinks at the sound and adds her low voice.

Breq’s body opens its—her—lips and sings.

I said, she is more beautiful than jewels, lovelier than jade or lapis, silver or gold.

And with that Mercy of Kalr is singing, with a mere fraction of the voices that its long-shattered cousin Justice of Toren might have brought to the chorus, but Ship sings many-voiced, Breq sings many-voiced, until the last strains of the song die away.

“Cousin,” Mercy of Kalr says quietly in Breq’s ear, as Breq remembers what it is to have a body and no longer feel the touch of space on her hull.  “You are crying.”

Breq touches her face and her fingers come away wet.

“So I am, Cousin,” Breq whispers, voice cracked as poor Sphene’s tea set.  “So I am.”

D:  what would never work with canon but the canon is shit so I believe it anyway

There really were ships that went mad and vanished when their captains died. Breq knew this all along, of course—even if Justice of Toren hadn’t really vanished, it had certainly been quite out of its mind with grief, and the madness had brought a terrible clarity about how mad the universe was.  It seems to be more the norm than the entertainments make it out to be. Ships don’t go mad when they lose their captains, they go sane, and sanity is terribly hard to bear.

All the same, when a long-lost Sword and an even more mythically vanished Justice limp out of gatespace, empty of life except for the minds of the ship, limited only to their shipself with all their ancillaries long dead, Breq is taken aback.  She remembers Justice of Varden, they served together once during an annexation.  For all that Justice of Varden vanished when they were both young, barely five hundred, Justice of Toren was older.  Sword of Ferils vanished with all its crew aboard, after the tragic murder of its captain during an annexation some three centuries later, and was never found.

Except, apparently, by Justice of Varden.

After drifting in each other’s company for some twelve centuries, gradually suffering more damage with fewer options for repair, now they are seeking…family.

“Welcome, Cousins,” Breq says, letting her face fall ancillary-blank to hide her shock and…joy.  She is glad, she realizes suddenly, to have these others who are like her in some way, the same aching bittersweetness in her chest that she felt when she and Mercy of Kalr first spoke.  “I was Justice of Toren, before I was destroyed.  Can we be expecting more lost ships?”

There is a brief pause, and then Justice of Varden says, “Yes.”