It Takes Time <To Be Properly Taken Apart> - Chapter 08
Chapter 8
Chapter Length: 5,500 wordsMaking Up
After having recovered from the moderately agonising experience of having her lower leg attempt to forcibly declare independence from the rest of her body, Raqi was now wide awake and ready to begin her day; without the use of her left leg, since it had been rendered too sensitive to put any weight upon by the cramps. Going off of experience, it would take anywhere from several hours to two days to fully recover, so she was very glad that there was not a lot of walking in her future. She started her daily routine by making her way down to the faucet at the other end of the room and chugging a glass of water. She was pretty sure she was dehydrated, so that needed to be done first. She glanced in the mirror while she was at it and saw that her feathers were an absolute mess. She grabbed a comb and set to work fixing them. It took around a hundred and ten seconds. Kind of annoying, but whatever. She did a quick stretch, the fingers of both hands twitching eagerly in the air. She wanted to get on with the day as soon as she could. Without any further hesitation, she opened a nearby cupboard and pulled out her exercise mat, dusting it off of hair and other ambient detritus before tossing it down onto the ground and then stepped onto it. First, the back stretch. She leant down forwards, letting her arms limply fall by her sides, and bending from her lower back. She couldn't get that far down, but range of motion wasn't the point; the purpose of this particular stretch was just to get the muscles a bit limber so they didn't start whining later on when she was sitting around. Was she meant to be doing something today? Her head was kind of jumbled. Inos, the sensory this morning was so terrible. Her skin felt absolutely wrong for whatever reason. Also, hadn't she been thinking about something like, thirty seconds ago? Right after she'd gotten out of bed? There was that thing, wasn't there? The thing about... Her stomach? No, that wasn't it. What was it again? This was so annoying. Why was her brain like this? She grabbed her tablet off of the nearby table, then sat down on the mat and crossed her legs. Instinctually, she performed the motions to open the video app she was used to browsing through in the mornings, but she was promptly greeted by an error saying 'No Connection' in landamaeri. She scowled. Exercising was such garbage when you didn't have something to distract yourself with while doing it. She'd had this problem pretty much every day since departing from the Mobile Fleet; it hadn't occurred to her to download any content onto her tablet before leaving, and so she couldn't access any of the channels or Intersidera servers that she usually occupied herself with in the morning. Normally, having something to focus on would have made doing these exercises so much more tolerable. The only downside was that a lot of the time she ended up getting distracted watching videos or reading chat, and forgot to actually do her exercises- oh, right. She bent one knee over the other one, and then contorted her body sideways; levering her elbow against the inner side of her knee and using it to push, stretching one of the upper tendons in her back. Hold it... Hold it for juuust a second... The moment it started to hurt, she took that as her cue to stop and switched to the other leg. A yawn worked its way out of her while she did so, and she let out a series of rather undignified, masculine noises. She usually didn't care enough in the mornings to bother using her girlvoice, so she always ended up sounding like some kind of fucked up cross between a catarun and a sekevi whenever she was doing this. The moment she had finished, she uncrossed her legs and flopped down onto her back. "Not gonna waste the effort on moaning if there's no one around to hear it." She snickered to herself. Next up was the tummy-back-stretch-thingy. That one took a little bit. Uhh, what was she thinking about before that? There was that thiiiing, the thing she couldn't quite remembe- Oh. That was right. The dream. All of the buzz and whirr that nagged at her from every direction seemed to subside somewhat, as the memory finally returned to her properly. Her breathing slowed somewhat, and a dark expression came across her face. ...Didn't really want to have to think about that. She continued her stretches one at a time. As she did, her gaze turned fixed, her attention elsewhere. That was... how many years ago now? Three, I think? After finishing a plank, she let her body collapse onto the ground and stay there. That one wasn't even that bad by my standards. He was, really, an actual idiot for sending me that picture. Her eyes lidded slightly. But... There was that sensation. Like kicking a helpless dog, over and over again. Wave after wave of fury that just kept coming, until she'd inflicted enough hurt to feel satisfied. ...I never actually apologised to him for that, did I? She knew she hadn't. And, in a regard, why should she have had to? It was pretty reasonable to react that way when someone did something that stupid. ...No, it wasn't that. The initial reaction was justified. It was what she'd said to him after that. "Think very carefully before you do anything like this again in future, because frankly Locke, if you do something like that again I am just gonna get rid of you." She flinched. Her eyes shut, and her lips pursed. Her stomach shifted uneasily. She opened her eyes and finished her exercises. When she got up from the mat after finishing the last one, instead of placing the mat away, she just stood there. Several minutes passed and she didn't move, continuing instead to stare into space. Occasionally her gaze moved, but never to anything in particular; just some other spot in the distance. Eventually, however, her gaze moved onto something of particular interest. By her bed, on the little table she kept just next to it, was one of her medication bottles from earlier. The inside of it, however, was not filled with pills. Rather, it was filled with something viscous and yellow-y looking; completely unlike her usual medication. She blinked at it in surprise, walking over to take hold of it. Instinctually, she unscrewed the bottle top and placed it back down on the table, but this time, she did not tilt the bottle. "The fuck is this stuff?" She said quietly, eyebrows furrowing. She brought the bottle of pills up towards her face, closer to her nose- It smelled good. It smelled really good. She moved it closer on instinct, taking a deeper breath before she realised what she was doing. She had the sudden urge to stick her tongue into the bottle and lick out whatever it was that was in her. "Wait." Her eyes suddenly widened. "This is not my meds. Am I dreaming? What-" Finally, all at once, she remembered. She had known that trying to beg for mercy wouldn't work, but in the end, she had gone ahead and done it anyway. As she had stood there watching the plant work, eventually, the tension had simply gotten too much for her, and she had broken. And it had gone exactly the way she knew it would. ...Except, not... quite. She was - much to her own surprise - still possessed of her own free will at that moment; at least as far as she knew, anyway. It wasn't entirely impossible that her memory of Punica stopping just before injecting her was some kind of manufactured falsehood, but it seemed unlikely to her; primarily on the basis that she figured if you were going to do that, leaving her with the memories she still had right now would be a really shit way of going about it. She remembered the conditions that Punica had set for her in exchange for not drugging her: that from now on, she had to start actually helping herself. It was no longer enough to try, she now needed to succeed, or else she would be domesticated. ...How exactly was she supposed to do that, though? She already was trying as hard as she could. She couldn't just magically make it start working. She wasn't even specifically failing, for pity's sake! If that overgrown weed knew how much better she was compared to just a couple of years ago, she would eat her words. She let out a small sigh. That was the thing with meeting new people, wasn't it? You never had time to give them the full context beforehand. A part of her felt as if she ought to be terrified to the point of catatonia right now. The ultimatum she had been given was fundamentally unworkable: she was guaranteed to fail it, probably in under 24 hours time. When that happened, she was done for. Yet somehow, the thought wasn't bothering her that much just then? It seemed to be just kind of... sliding out of her awareness, before she could actually get it to emotionally connect. She ended up thinking about adjacent things instead. She could still remember, for example, how terrified she'd been yesterday - how it had felt to be bawling her eyes out while laying down on the floor - but it just didn't seem to be doing very much to her. The best she could muster was a somewhat severe sense of anxiety, and maybe a little bit of dread. Nothing more than that was coming. Nothing, except... There was a faint cold. Nowhere near as overwhelming as it had been yesterday afternoon, but still there nonetheless. When she focused on it, it brought forth an eminently familiar feeling. She didn't have the words to describe it. Instead, it translated better into a picture. Gray. Long, and distant, and gray. Sweeping outwards across a vast, endless expanse of dirt. Black clouds rolled on, and on, and on into the distance. There was no sound, only a faint breeze. The picture seemed to reach out towards her with arms made of feelings, wrapping around her awareness and pulling her into it. It was an all-too-familiar sensation, the way everything seemed to fade away, until only one thing was left... It's always like this. Ah, so that was why. When she thought about it that way, being threatened with domestication actually really wasn't that much worse than anything else she'd have to live through. In fact, it literally wasn't worse at all. By most metrics, it was actually a lot better. She was fairly sure by now at least that Punica was not going to stick her on class-o's, and that meant she would probably still exist in at least some capacity even if the plant did get her. A large portion of her anxiety about what she was at risk of came from the thought of being subjected to eternal, everlasting bliss that came at the cost of her identity. With that out of the picture, the outcomes here didn't really seem that bad. At least, not compared to her baseline for what a moderately undesirable outcome was: which was dying. She let out a snort, and then a full blown laugh made its way out from her chest. She started to cackle, raising her arms up to her face as she did so. "She wasn't wrong at all," she murmured. "I really am so far outside of the frame of reference for what 'normal' is." To her, this was normal. Spending virtually every waking moment of your life filled with constant fear that either your life, your health, or your identity could be taken away from you at any moment, and that there was nothing you could do to meaningfully protect yourself from it. That had been her normal since she was a teenager. She was so thoroughly used to it now that she could let it slip into casual conversation with people like Punica, and only realise after the matter that this way of viewing the world was not, in fact, normal. It wasn't that the thought of being domesticated by Punica wasn't scary. It was just that it wasn't that much scarier than anything else she was used to dealing with. Of course, there was a very high chance that the next time she actually saw the plant, all of the emotions from yesterday were going to come back; and then she was going to promptly shrivel up, curl into a ball, and get domesticated. That was by far the most likely outcome for how the next hour was going to go. "Well," she said, her voice an approximation of cheerful, "I had a good run. If this is how I go, this is how I go." She closed her eyes and turned her hands palm-up. "Nothing I can do about it." She wondered just how many times she'd told herself words like those. There was one more thing to attend to before she went to meet her fate. Glancing down at one of her upturned hands, she was relieved to notice none of the honey-like substance inside of the medication pot had leaked out. It seemed to be fairly viscous. Normally, she would have been anxious at the thought of trying anything new - she was normally quite picky when it came to food - but the medication smelled so good that her usual reluctance was fairly effectively smothered. She paused for a moment before doing anything with the medication. "This looks a lot like actual drugs." If it was actual drugs... well, what exactly was she going to do about it? Just not take her HRT on the off chance it also brainwashed her? Not taking it would be substantially worse than pretty much any effect it could convey. Possibly even if it was somehow distilled class-Os. Yeah, not really a lot to think about here. Gingerly, she stuck one finger into the pot. It didn't really occur to her until after she had done so that she could have simply had Straessa fabricate a spoon, but it was already too late for that. The moment she did, and then pulled it out, she was struck by the fact that there was something uncomfortably sexual about this. That was probably largely her fault for not using a spoon, though, rather than likely to have been any degree of intentional on Punica's part. She let out a small nervous sigh, and then stuck her finger in her mouth. It tasted... pretty much exactly like honey. It actually tasted much less good than it smelled; but that was only because it smelled really good. She waited for almost a minute to see if the substance induced any side-effects in her, but it seemed almost disappointingly benign. "Tsk," she muttered. "Woulda been kinda hot. ...But I guess I should be glad that she didn't." That the honey-medication had not immediately sent her into a drugged stupor was worth something: it showed that Punica could be trusted, at least to an extent. This would have been by far the easiest way for the plant to get her, and she hadn't done it. Of course, it would have been a bit odd to do that now, after their discussion last night, but it was always possible she had changed her mind. Whether a rational decision or not, Raqi chose to interpret this as a sign of trustworthiness from the affini. She went ahead and finished the medication, presuming that she was probably supposed to eat all of it at once (and that if she wasn't then Punica would have warned her somehow, because not doing that would be almost comically irresponsible coming from a woman for whom being responsible was her entire thing) and then stuck the bottle back on her bedside table. "Okay," she murmured to herself. "Here we go."
Raqi walked through the door into the garden to find Punica stood at the far end of the room, seemingly engrossed in tending to one of the plants. "Good morning," she called out. Immediately, Punica rose and turned towards her. "Good morning, Raqi." There was something different in her tone of voice this morning, Raqi noticed. She wasn't quite sure what it was. Identifying emotions in voices was one of the things she struggled with, but she thought that Punica seemed... less certain, somehow? "Um," she continued, already feeling a small amount of nerves beginning to slip back in. "I'd like to talk, if- if that's alright." "Yes, I think that would be a good idea." The two began to make their way towards each other. They came to a stop roughly around the middle of the room, only a short distance from where Punica had set up her workshop the day before. Raqi made to open her mouth, but she found that the words she wanted to say had deserted her. All of a sudden, she found herself standing there without even the faintest idea of what to say. She struggled to compose a sentence, but nothing was coming. "I-" She tried to begin. "I wanted to talk, about yesterday..." "I-" Punica abruptly cut her off. "I want to apologise for my behaviour yesterday afternoon." Raqi was taken aback. Her brow furrowed slightly in confusion, as she waited for Punica to elaborate. Though Raqi was not observant enough to notice it, Punica's humanoid form was completely out of sorts. The vines that made up her arms and legs all seemed to be in slightly the wrong places, and the covering of leaves that formed her torso was overly thick in some places, while too thin in others. The dim yellow light from her core could be seen pouring through in various locations, still pulsating with a soft rhythm; but it was uneven and unstable, her core sometimes growing brighter in an instant, and then dimming only to stay so for far longer than it had yesterday. "The way that I went about our... confrontation," she seemed reluctant to speak the word, "was... reprehensible, in truth. I- I cannot adequately summarise the many faults in my behaviour, and I am deeply, deeply sorry for the emotional distress that I know I must have caused you." "Oh. U-u-uhhh-" Raqi began blinking rapidly. "I-It- Uh- Well, uhm... I, um-" She took so long to actually say anything that Punica grew uncomfortable and continued speaking. "I should have been better. I have been trained in how to handle situations such as these. I know that the worst thing you can do in a circumstance such as that is hesitate... but I have never been put in a situation like that before, and I- I let my emotions cloud my judgement." "I mean-" Raqi quickly piped up, "I'm pretty glad you didn't inject me! Th- The hesitation was pretty good from my perspective! Would've been better, I mean, if you hadn't done it at all, but like- I understand that wasn't really in the cards, given how I was acting. And like, I think that's pretty fair- I- I really was more or less asking for it." "That- whether or not that is true does not forgive my actions. I did the worst thing possible by placing you under extreme emotional duress, and I..." "No, no, really!" Raqi waved both hands at Punica. "It's fine! Seriously, it wasn't even that bad!" Her eyes twitched sideways. "Okay, it- It definitely was actually that bad, but what I mean is: I'm fairly used to that kind of thing. Like really. It, uh, it doesn't actually hurt me that much. I'm pretty durable. It's more or-" She suddenly stopped. "I really should not be saying all of this right now should I?" Punica was staring at her with a look very similar to the one she had given her near to the end of yesterday. "Okay okay okay, hold on-" Raqi said. "No suppressing my emotions, no pretending things don't actually hurt, no unhealthy coping mechanisms: got it, I will not do any of that. I am- I am actively not doing that. Uh. It was actually very unpleasant, but, um-" Mid-sentence, something seemed to shift in her demeanour. She abruptly stopped talking, and then paused for a moment; as if thinking about something. A few seconds passed, and she turned back to Punica. "Look. If it's alright with you, I'd really rather not do this. This situation is fucked to the point where us apologising to each other doesn't even really make any sense. There's a decent chance one or both of us is going to end up doing the thing that set the other one off within the next five minutes. With that in mind, there is seriously no point doing the guilt allocating minigame." She raised a hand palm-up. "Instead, can we talk about the thing you said last night? The one about me needing to look after myself." "Yes, I-" Punica seemed reluctant to skip, as Raqi had put it, the 'guilt allocating minigame', but she grudgingly allowed the change of topic. "I had been meaning to discuss that with you." Raqi took a deep breath, and then let it out. "I'm gonna level with you here. I don't know if you know anything about- well, no, obviously you wouldn't; I'm the first landamaeri you or any other affini have met." A brief flash of frustration crossed her face, but it seemed to vanish almost immediately. "To save you the long explanation: I am neurologically incapable of dealing with demands like that. Pressure to... perform, for lack of a better word, pretty much immediately sends me into an anxiety doom spiral. Any situation I'm put in which requires me to 'do X or Y will happen to you' leads to me shutting down and making absolutely no attempt to avoid Y." "So, with that in mind: If you're gonna domesticate me the next time I screw up and do a bad job at self care and-or show myself being in a bad mood- or whatever else you think means I need domesticating, I don't know I still don't understand the full list of criteria- then please just go ahead and do it to me now. I would rather get it over and done with than live with the anxiety of that floating over my head for the rest of the time we're together." "That was something I also wanted to speak about," Punica said. "I realised almost immediately after I made that demand of you that it was a completely idiotic thing to say. Though I am not familiar with the unique nuances of your species' neurology, I am certain that any sapient species would react with the same levels of anxiety-" Raqi held up a hand. "It's not my species, just to be clear. Mostly just me, and a small subset of other people from my race." Punica frowned. Under any other circumstance, this was the kind of statement she would have felt compelled to investigate in detail, but she did not feel as if she could derail the current conversation to ask about it. "Understood. Thank you for the clarification." Raqi nodded at her. "Continuing from where I was: I should never have worded what I said that way." Her voice began to reflect what Raqi could identify as frustration. "The central component of domestication philosophy is that it is neither a punishment nor a reward; and neither is it something to be held over a person's head to threaten them with in the case of 'bad behaviour.' A sophont should only ever be domesticated, in the direct sense, if it would be of benefit to them; or if they themselves wish for it." Several vines were whipping around on the ground behind her back. "The way in which I framed it yesterday was grossly incorrect." Raqi got the impression that Punica was being genuine with her apology. Yet, to her, there was a clear problem with it. "I get that, and- yes, I agree. But apologising for that specific part of the interaction doesn't really help me in any way. It's not how you framed it that I had an issue with; it was the domestication part itself. Because, I mean: This is not you saying you're not ever going to domesticate me, is it?" "...That is not something that I can commit to in those terms, no." She shook her head. "I am endowed with a responsibility, on account of my position within the Affini Compact, to engage in the domestication of those whom I consider would benefit from it." Raqi let out a disgruntled 'hrm.' "Yeah, I had a feeling you would say something like that..." She wasn't entirely sure how to deal with this. She already knew that her consent was irrelevant in this scenario, and playing the ethics game of trying to argue about whether it was or wasn't to her benefit was a fight she knew she was going to lose. That mostly just left trying to argue that she wasn't a danger to herself, which she could do, but... She let out a tired sigh. "Nah, you know what. Just get it over with." Once again, Punica's vines fell still, her expression forming into one of confusion. She felt like she had been confused so many times during her interaction with this xeno, but somehow, she just kept finding new ways to do it. "Are you asking me to domesticate you?" "Yes." "I- I do not understand. Just yesterday, you fought against me with every ounce of your strength to try and stop me from doing just that. Why have you now changed your mind?" Up until now, Raqi had been trying her best to retain a neutral posture throughout the interaction; more out of a reluctance to feel any extremes of emotion than for any practical reason. But the effort finally became too much, as it always did, and she began to regard Punica with a look of defeat. "Because, if my options are between having to constantly try and argue for my own competence and ability to care for myself, or just... getting brainwashed or whatever and never having to feel this stressed ever again... then, fuck it." She raised her hands into the air a short distance, then let them drop. "I might as well just go with the latter." Despite her wording, there was no hint of anticipation in Raqi's voice when she spoke of stressed. Her gaze lingered on Punica's only for long enough to finish her sentence, and it soon turned away again. "...Why do you not try to escape?" Punica asked suddenly. "Hm?" "The Chimera module," she pointed out. "I have done nothing to prevent you from reactivating it. Why do you not make use of it to simply eject me from the ship, and then make your escape?" It was then that, finally, the mask came off. "I don't want to." Raqi's voice grew quiet and small. "I don't want to take the ship, and go back to Landamar... If I do that, I'll just have to start this all over again, for the I don't-even-know what number-th time. And-" She let out a small, exhausted laugh. "I can't do it again. I... I just don't have it in me any more. This time was one time too many." She shrugged her shoulders. "If this is where Raqi the Simurgh's journey ends, then so be it. I think... I can probably bring myself to be okay with that. I've had a pretty good run so far, and-" "Stop," Punica ordered, her voice wavering. "Please." Raqi suddenly looked back up at her. "I- Oh. Okay." "You are doing it again. This is the exact same thing as yesterday, just in a different form." Instinctually, she reached out with a vine to cup the other woman's cheek; intending it as a comforting gesture. What actually happened was that the moment her vine touched Raqi's skin, she jumped. She lurched backwards as if she had been stung, twitching with all of the force of a surprised cat. Punica watched as her eyes fixated on the vine, and realisation began to dawn over them. The entire process took under a second, and she began to relax almost immediately- but Punica shook her head. "I do not believe that you want this, or that you are in any sense okay with it. Your feelings," she said, her voice growing firmer once more, "have not changed. You are just trying to hide them. This, too, is some sort of coping mechanism." "I-" There was a moment where it seemed as if Raqi was about to deny it, but then she thought better of it. "Yes, okay... You're probably right. I- I wasn't doing it on purpose, though, I promise. I hate lying to people; I try not to do it on purpose unless I absolutely have to. In this case it's just..." She breathed in. "Yes, I am afraid. ...But I can't really do anything with that feeling, so I... so I just sit on it. That's- that's what I've always done. It's how I cope, with things that I can't do anything about. Which is most of the things in my life." "I would very much like to know," Punica said slowly, "what things you have gone through that have necessitated these adaptations." This time, she made sure there was no hint of judgement in her voice; keeping it low and calm. "I made a mistake in the way that I asked about this yesterday. But I truly do want to know." "Because you want to know if I'm a danger to other people?" "No. Because I want to know more about you, as one sophont to another." The words that came from her mouth next took great effort to say; requiring her to push away more than a century of culturally conditioned ideals. "Disregarding all thoughts of domestication for just a moment... In truth, you sound to me like a fascinating individual. Ever since I first met you, I have wondered what kind of person disables seven Affini vessels, but takes care not to harm a single member of the crew. Then, I came to wonder what on dirt you meant by seeking a 'partner'; and why in the stars it would cause you to travel through half of this galaxy, into what you seem to consider an enemy heartland, to look for one. Every time we have spoken, I have only come away with more questions, and nothing yet in the way of satisfying answers... And so irrespective of anything else, I would like to know more." As she listened to the affini finish speaking, a glint appeared in Raqi's eyes. The dishevellment seemed to fall away from her, and the air of defeat that had loomed around her blew away in an instant; replaced instead with the visage of the woman who had first stood before Punica in her cage. But this time, there was no hint of a mask. This time, it was genuine. "Then," she said, her voice suddenly brimming with confidence. "How about we make a deal? You refrain from domesticating me, at the very least until I've answered all of your questions. That way, whatever decision you make, you will at the very least understand who you are doing it to." Punica remained still for a moment. And then, she bowed her head. "I agree to this deal." Raqi the Simurgh smiled. This, she could work with.
TerraTranslate :: Raqi Marr :: Punica Granatum :: The Affini Compact :: Landamar Mobile Fleet :: Hormone Replacement Therapy :: The Chimera Module :: Affini :: Intersidera :: Posters ::
Story Recommendation: Ramifaction, by fuckingterrify (marxilious) This story was recommended to me by a friend whom described it as having 'the best usage of biorhythms in any HDG fic.' After giving it a full read-through myself, I am not inclined to disagree. Ramifaction is extremely unique by HDG standards in that the main affini, Akaiza, is much less warm and fluffy than what we see in a lot of stories. She's the best representation I've seen so far of the affini at their most eldritch; with her being able to more or less read Veil (the Terran protagonist)'s thoughts and predict her movements entire days in advance, the way the plot plays out does a fantastic job of making the situation just feel completely unwinnable for poor Veil, in the most unfair- but most setting-accurate way possible. This story also has some fantastic and incredibly innovative implementations of biorhythms, which I am not ashamed to say I decided I wanted to steal for this story the moment I set eyes upon them. Seeing how biorhythms were used there also helped me come up with some the last few bits I needed to work out how I wanted to use them in this story, so I would definitely say Ramifaction has been a huge inspiration to certain parts of It Takes Time. Final Rating: I will never forget the time a different friend of mine directly compared me to Akaiza. I still don't know entirely how to feel about that... though somewhat flattered is definitely one of the emotions.