It Takes Time <To Be Properly Taken Apart> - Chapter 26
Chapter 26
Chapter Length: 10,500~ wordsBook 2: The Prism System
Chapter 26: Our Many Imperfections
Author's Note: hi this is Raqi: i made these public a little bit before i was actually done editing all of them, and so there might be some jank here or there. mainly, if you see a word that's coloured in red like so, that means it's supposed to have a variable entry but I haven't gotten around to writing it yet. might also still be a few tooltips with transparent backgrounds, though i hope not. anyway I really just didn't want to hold off on releasing this any longer lmao, so, hope you enjoy
"I love you, Raqi. No matter in what ways I change, that will always be-" Before she had been able to finish her sentence, Punica Granatum, First Bloom, had died.
In the moments before she met her demise, Punica had been given very little time to process what was going to happen to her. It had all happened very quickly; one moment she had been playing with Raqi, the next she had been closer to her than she ever had been to another living being, and the next, she had been dying. She had known that her body was going to fail, but it had been of far lesser significance than her primary concern at that time; which was ensuring Raqi's safety. She had known immediately that the girl was going to blame herself for the injuries she had sustained, and Punica had been terrified of what she might do on account of that. She had therefore thrown every bit of strength she had left into making her way to the xenosophont and trying to console her, intent on at least calming her down enough that she did not try to harm herself. When she had exhausted the last of her energy and begun passing away, she had not been certain if what she had done was enough. She did not have the chance to dwell on it, however, as shortly after her physical form failed, her consciousness went with it.
The next time Punica became aware again, she did not realise that she had done so. She began to experience sensations once more, but she had no capacity with which to register that fact. Her mind was completely and utterly silent and devoid of any self-analytical capacity in a similar way to which Terrans were said to be while dreaming; not that she was presently able to make that comparison. She lacked all knowledge of where, who, or what she was, and her world existed only as a mixture of sights, sounds, and other sensations. While in that state, her awareness drifted between a large number of topics; most of them memories of her interactions with Raqi. She was made to relive much of the time she had spent with the girl, observing her actions and behaviours from outside of her own body, as if she were a formless spectator. Her consciousness remained silent throughout most of it, but every now and then there would be something that sparked a shiver of emotion in her being. Usually, the emotion was regret. There was so, so much that she regretted in the time that she had spent with Raqi. It seemed to her as if almost every time there had been an important decision to be made about what to do with Raqi, she had made the wrong one. When the time had first come to sedate her in the gardens, she had hesitated, and every catastrophe that had occurred in the following days could be said to have stemmed from that one indecision. In spite of that knowledge, she found herself still unable even now to decide if what she had done - or rather, failed to do - had been the right thing. Had she injected Raqi, then the xenosophont's suffering could have been ended then and there; but she would almost certainly never have gotten the chance to know her the way she now had. Her mind remained fixed on the dilemma for some time, but no answer came to her, and eventually, she was whisked away to the next memory.
Some time later, she came to the play which Raqi had shown her. Punica had not spent enough time contemplating its significance in the first place; had she done so, she was certain she would have been able to derive further hints from it as to the various issues assailing its playwright. She had not stopped to ask Raqi for an explanation of even a single part of it, and had instead launched straight into an attempt to seduce the girl; an action born of a deep need for connection she had not even consciously realised she had. As did most actions taken for reasons one did not understand, it went poorly, and the result had rendered Raqi too exhausted to entertain any further questions. Punica herself had then become too preoccupied on caring for her tired-out charge to ask her anything, and by the time the next day came, both of them had better things to think about, and she had never been able to follow up on the matter. And then, of course, there were the events of her deathday. Against her better judgement, she had synchronized all of her rhythms, and allowed them to flow out and over her little xenosophont. The effect it had imparted upon the creature - and Punica herself, through mechanisms within her biology which she had not foreseen the existence of, and still did not understand - had been sufficient to strip them both of all reason, and so she had committed an act in the following moments that could be considered nothing short of sinful. What she regretted most of that entire situation was not the act itself, but that she had died before she could apologise for it. She had been so focused on ensuring that Raqi did not feel guilty over hurting her that she had not even been able to address the fact that it was Raqi herself, not Punica, who was the one who had been wronged there. It was gross, egregious, and a downright unjust way for the girl to be treated; and for the first time in her existence, Punica felt what she thought was hatred towards herself for having perpetrated it. It was there that the problem stood. In trying to finally be the affini she had felt as if she was always supposed to be, Punica had committed the worst sin any affini could possibly commit; harming a sophont when they should have known better. To injure a xenosophont through ignorance was ill enough, but it was another thing entirely to know that one's course of action risked grave harm, and to proceed down it anyway without any greater justification for doing so. Punica could have stopped what she was doing any time. She could remember thinking that she ought to have- but she hadn't. For whatever reason, she had not done so, and the results had been catastrophic. She was not fit to be an affini; this much was now abundantly clear to her. ...But what could she actually do about that fact? She was away from the Compact at present. There was no senior bureaucrat for her to report herself to, whom would almost certainly recommend she be domesticated for a bloom and be made to retake all of her training whilst having her existing qualifications in xenosophont care voided. There was no one more experienced than her whom she could hand Raqi off to in order to get the care she both desperately needed and deserved. She wondered suddenly if that was even possible anymore. She had subjected Raqi to her full, unseparated biorhythm for a matter of minutes. In the time after that, the girl had been in tears at the sight of her exposed core. There could be little doubt now, she realised, that Raqi had bonded to her. With that in mind, how would the situation even be handled under standard Compact policy, she wondered? It took her some time to come to an answer. While it was technically within the affini's capabilities to remove a xenosophont's bond to another sophont, it was a practise that was considered a last resort of such calibre that even the failings she had exhibited would not come close to warranting it. Once two sophonts became bonded with each other, that connection was one of the few things that the affini could be said to view as truly sacred. They would do everything within their power to maintain it, and entire mountains had in fact been moved to facilitate this. No amount of incompetence no matter how severe would ever serve as justification for something the affini considered as cruel as taking away a bond. It was much more likely, she concluded, that she would be domesticated herself and then forced to take Raqi on as a subsidiary floret. She had heard of such things happening in the past: occurrences were incredibly rare, owing to what an utter rotting mess an affini would have to make in order to necessitate it, but forcible domestication of an affini was seen as preferable to being forced to sever a xenosophont's bond. Most likely, whoever became her new owner would be put in charge retraining her, and would also be made responsible for Raqi's wellbeing until Punica could demonstrate she was capable of doing it herself; if indeed such a time ever came. In the meantime, her role would be to serve as Raqi's partner, in which she would provide her with all the attention, love, and appreciation that she wanted; as well as anything else which she desired from their relationship. ...Partner. To serve as her partner. It was only then that she began to realise. For all the mistakes she had made, for all the fact that she was unworthy to be an affini, she had - by complete accident - become Raqi Marr's partner. It was no longer an avoidable outcome: The two of them had bonded with each other, and if Punica could not be trusted to manage their relationship in a healthy manner, then the greater Compact would step in and do it for her. How...? How can this be? The thought that after everything the girl had done, this was how she would be rewarded, disgusted Punica. No, no, no. This cannot be, it cannot- it cannot! This is wrong! She came here in search of a partner, looking for someone who would be worthy of her, and by bad luck alone happened to stumble upon the least worthy affini in all of the Compact! And now she is bonded to me because I am such a failure that I cannot keep my rhythms apart, and her punishment for this is to be forced to have me as an owner?! No! This is not fair! She couldn't let this happen. She didn't care what Compact policy was; she would not spit in the face of everything Raqi had done to make it this far. If it took lying to her kin to ensure the xeno was not subjected to this fate, then so be it; she would fabricate another version of the events that had happened upon the Rending Talon when the time came to make her report. Not so that she could spare herself from domestication, but to ensure that Raqi was kept safe from her. She has suffered enough at my hands. Any more, I cannot- will not abide! She didn't know how she intended to trick affini dozens of blooms older than her, but she would find a way. She had to, for Raqi's sake, and she swore to herself that this time she would not fail. I am so sorry, little one. You deserve someone so, so much better than me. Her core felt like it was being wrenched in half, even as it made now to renew itself. But fate has conspired to make it that I am all you have. In that moment, she cursed the Everbloom for leading her to the Talon that day. It should have been someone else... It should have been anyone else. Bitter self-hatred coursed through her for several long moments, but as time passed it began to wane, and soon, a new thought occurred to her: Even if she avoided becoming Raqi's owner, what was she going to do? Just run off, and leave her all on her own to fend for herself? It didn't take her even a second to realise how disastrous that would be. She... she would not survive if I simply took my leave of her the moment we returned to Compact space. She would almost certainly try to end her life again in the days afterwards, and be forcibly domesticated on account of it. Xenosophonts who attempted suicide were all but guaranteed forcible domestication, and the way they were treated in the aftermath was usually very heavy-handed. There would be no risks taken in how Raqi was handled from then on; she would almost certainly be put on a heavy dose of class-E's, enough to ensure there was no chance of her trying to hurt herself again. She would only ever be weaned off of them when her owner could be entirely sure that she was not a risk to herself, and that would likely mean the elimination of all negative thought about herself. The affini would 'fix' Raqi by doing exactly what it was that she had been terrified of Punica doing to her. Both outcomes were terrible in their own way. If Punica remained with Raqi, she was guaranteed to continue hurting her; but if she left, then 'Raqi' as she knew her would cease to be. How-? How can these be the only two options?! This is not how things are supposed to be! The Compact promise xenosophonts the chance to become their best selves, but neither of these paths will give her that! There had to be another way. There had to be something else she was missing; Raqi couldn't simply be consigned to a choice between two equally terrible fates. That could never happen, not under the Compact's watch. There had to be another way, there had to, there had to- She thought, and thought, and thought, but no answers came to her. Eventually, her mind grew so exhausted from the search that she slipped back into unawareness, and returned to dreaming.
Time passed, and Punica's sleep remained troubled. Having run out of events to relive, her dreams instead changed to depicting visions of possible futures. She was forced to watch as hypothetical scenarios played out one by one in front of her; each a possible fate for her xenosophont. In the first set of futures, she spent the remainder of her time with Raqi upon the Rending Talon avoiding the girl; intent on trying to wean her off of the bond that the two of them had formed. She was ultimately successful, and by the time the two returned to Compact space, she was able to leave Raqi without the girl attempting to harm herself. Instead, however, Raqi fell into a deep depression. Feeling betrayed by Punica, she continued to view other affini as threats, and made use of her wit and understanding of the Compact to avoid domestication for a time. Instead, she threw herself into her work attempting to ensure a peaceful domestication for the Landamar Mobile Fleet. Here, Punica foresaw two potential ends to the story: In one, Raqi succeeded in her goal, and she managed to persuade the affini to enact all of her desired accommodations for the yuyayni. Then, once landamaeri domestication was completed, she found herself with nothing further to work towards. With no way to further distract herself from her feelings, she finally fell apart, and a wellness check was eventually called upon her. The affini chosen to look in on her discovered how she had been hiding her illness from them, and she was swiftly forcibly domesticated. Other times, the story ended much sooner. Raqi poured her everything into her work, putting so much into it that she burnt out long before the domestication campaign was complete. The ending in these timelines was the same: one affini or another eventually noticed the symptoms of overworking in her, a wellness check was called, and she was domesticated. In both of these possible versions of events, the Raqi Marr that emerged post-domestication only barely resembled the one that Punica currently knew. All of the pain and complexity that had produced the current version of her self was stripped away from her, and she was transformed into the picture of a happy, carefree floret. Within a year or two of being domesticated, it was impossible to tell her apart from the hundreds of other landamaeri florets she spent her days playing alongside. Every scenario in which Punica left Raqi ended the same way. They all varied in terms of what happened after she left, but the ultimate outcome was always the same: One way or another, Raqi always wound up domesticated. Sometimes, as part of her domestication, she asked her owner to remove the memories of her time with Punica; not wanting to be forced to relive the pain from the time they had spent together. In others, she simply worked through it, and was eventually able to move on. Whichever it was, she was always able to live a joyful and happy life without Punica. But there was a problem with this outcome. Nowhere in any of these realities did Raqi become her best self. She was happy, certainly, but she achieved that only by abandoning all of her potential. Though the consciousness that inhabited her vessel was the same one belonging to the girl that the Punica of the present knew, all similarities with this version of her ended there. The Raqi who became a floret to another affini would invariably be left as Raqi Marr in name alone - and likely not even that, as they would change her last and potentially first name as well - and nothing which made her who she was in the present would survive domestication. The second set of outcomes were those in which Punica chose to remain with Raqi. In the early stages of these, there were many more variables at play than if she left. The first and most impactful of these was whether Punica reported the details of what had happened on the Rending Talon truthfully or not. In the event that she opted to be honest about the mistakes that she had made with Raqi, she was invariably placed in a mentorship or forcibly domesticated, and events tended to play out similarly to the previous set of hypotheticals. Whether or not Punica remained free or became a floret herself, whoever was responsible for her would guide her to take a firm hand in Raqi's treatment, and she would inevitably domesticate her. Once she did so, she would be encouraged to do away with the parts of Raqi that caused her harm, and although she would never go quite as far with it as other affini would, the end result was still a Raqi Marr nothing like the present one. The alternate route was that in which she lied about what had happened between her and Raqi, and she was allowed to continue her relationship with the xenosophont without the oversight of another affini. In these timelines, things turned out very differently for the landamaeri. Punica continued to focus on finding out more about Raqi, and took her time forming a complete picture of the girl; in the process allowing time for herself to make many more mistakes, which ended up accruing injury after injury upon the poor girl. Many of these versions of events saw Raqi continue to harm herself psychologically, and there were no small number in which Punica had to cover up another suicide attempt; lest she be forced to domesticate Raqi. With the still-limited information she currently had about the girl, it was hard to predict how these timelines ended. It was possible that Raqi would eventually work through her issues and help herself on her own terms, or would decide to ask Punica for her assistance; in which case it seemed feasible that the xenosophont could become happier while still remaining largely her present self. Or alternatively, she might continue to languish under the weight of her self-imposed burdens, and Punica would never muster up the courage to force help upon her. Whatever happened, there was no doubt that Raqi would not be as happy in the version of events where Punica stayed with her. But inversely to what became of her in the other set of outcomes, she would still remain as herself, regardless of whether she became happy or not. There was no timeline in which Punica took drastic action to change who she was; that much the affini was now certain of. When contrasting the two options against each other like that, she knew without a doubt which the Raqi of the present would pick: she would opt to have Punica stay with her without so much as a moment's hesitation, almost certainly on account of her valuing the integrity of her self over any guarantee of happiness. That Raqi preferred one choice over the other did little to help Punica to decide, however. Xenosophonts, as a whole, were prone to making decisions that were not in their best interests almost constantly. There were more reasons for a member of a pet race to choose suffering over happiness than there were planets in the Affini Compact, and Raqi was absolutely no exception to this. Though she had developed a complex and seemingly robust framework to use to justify her urge to preserve parts of her current miserable state, anyone could see at a glance that the vast majority of it was simply lies she was telling herself. Knowing this, honouring her wishes held no intrinsic value in and of itself, and could even be said to be paramount to enabling her to continue harming herself. So it was that after more than a day of contemplation, Punica found herself completely unable to decide which path forward was best. Each had drawbacks crippling enough to make them decidedly unappealing, and what little benefits they could provide were almost entirely soured by the cost that they came at. Respectively, the two choices boiled down to happiness at the cost of the self, or the right to pursue one's own path at the cost of very likely continual suffering. Neither option was what she wanted for Raqi, but they were the only choices she had. How can I make a decision like this? she wondered to herself. To hold this girl's fate in my vines like this is... No matter how many times she lamented that she was the one making this decision, it never seemed to get any easier to accept that it did indeed fall to her. She kept wishing that it was some other, more competent affini who was responsible for Raqi, and not the shipwreck of an uplift that was her. But it was her, she knew that. Even ceding all authority, locking herself away in the garden and waiting for domestication would still be making a decision regarding Raqi's future. Whatever it is that I choose, it *will* affect her. There is no way I can avoid that... In the time that she had spent dreaming and thinking over the dilemma, she had become more aware of the state of her core. It seemed as if she had been transported from the place of her death to somewhere warm and moist; and, to her surprise, filled with nutrients. Some part of her biology understood that this was eminently a good thing; wherever she was right now, she was surrounded by exactly what she needed in order to properly rebloom. All around her was soft, mineral-rich earth, and she could feel the root systems of hundreds of different plants all around her. She had already begun reaching out with her own roots and connecting to them, supplanting their own root networks and redirecting the flow of nutrients to herself to speed up her reblooming. Not enough to kill any of the plants, of course- she would take most of them as grafts when the time came to finish reblooming, she expected- but it helped immensely to ensure a healthy rebloom. Raqi must have planted me in the garden, she theorised. The thought surprised her somewhat. I remember that she spoke of being familiar with reblooming before I passed away. She must have known that I would need plants to take as material for my new body, and so took me to this part of the ship. It was hardly a stellar leap of logic to realise that the sapient plant needed to be placed in soil near other plants to rebloom, but she knew for a fact that there had been Terrans who had come across affini cores and not had a clue what to do with them. She imagined for a moment what it would have been like if Raqi had possessed no knowledge whatsoever of affini biology. I could not possibly have explained to her in that short length of time both that I was not going to die, and how to ensure that I was able to successfully rebloom. That she already knew both of those things beforehand was incredibly fortunate. She was grateful for how competent Raqi was. When the two of them had first met, it had been hard for Punica to form a clear picture of how capable the girl was. She had disabled seven affini vessels, but seemed to lose her composure in regular conversation, and was emotionally a near-total wreck. Yet she had proven herself to be incredibly forward-thinking in the matter of protecting her race, had matched Punica's wit on more than one occasion, and even sometimes conducted arguments that seemed - at least until examined more closely - to pose a challenge to the wisdom of the Affini Compact itself. It cannot have been more than two days at most since my death. She wasted no time in constructing a place for me to rebloom, and I cannot think of a single thing which she has missed out... She wondered how many other sophonts could have recovered as quickly as the girl had from that day's events. She truly is incredibly tenacious. Her mindvoice was tinted with genuine admiration. No one like her should have to be, but nevertheless, she is. It was a large part, she thought, of why she found herself so attracted to the xenosophont. She was a member of a pet race, certainly; but she in no way acted like one. All of a sudden, a deeply ironic thought occurred to Punica. In some ways, her temperament is closer to that of an affini than mine. Were our positions to be reversed, I cannot imagine her hesitating to inject me the way I did. It was truly ironic that both of them should have developed personalities that were so unsuited for the roles which their circumstances of birth had bestowed upon them. Without her even realising it, the storm of anxiety and concern that had raged for almost a full day within Punica had fallen to a standstill. A sense of calm had fallen over her, and her thoughts had turned fully to the Raqi of the present. She thought, then, of how her last words to the sophont had been a confession of love towards her. In the moment, her words had felt entirely genuine and as if they had come straight from her core; yet now that she thought back on them, she hesitated. What does it truly mean for an affini to love a xenosophont? We are designed at a base level to be capable of deep affection for every single xenosophont; regardless of appearance, race, or even personal characteristics. Theoretically, it was possible for an affini to fall in love with any xenosophont, no matter what they were like. Does that mean, then, that I love her simply because I was made to? Would I still care for her in just the same way if she was an entirely different person? The thought of that unnerved her. She did not want to love Raqi in some universal, impersonal way; she wanted to love her for who she was, and for the unique qualities that made her her. She knew that some Terrans conceived of many different types of love; there was that which one felt for their family members, another for their children, one for romantic partners and another born of sexual desire, and another for bonds of platonic friendship between two deeply connected individuals. There was one in particular, she knew from some florets she had spoken to, that was the subject of much pre-Accord era Terran romantic poetry; as well as of songs, ballads, and plays from their race's pre-industrial age. She was not quite sure what the name for it was, but she wanted the type of love that she felt for Raqi to be that one. She did not know for certain that it was, but she hoped so.
Before arriving upon the Rending Talon, Punica could never have imagined that being an affini could be so difficult. She had feared the responsibility associated with caring for a xenosophont, certainly - that was a large part of why she had sequestered herself away in her research work - but even the difficulties which she had imagined as being inherent to the process paled in comparison to the complexity of the situation she now found herself in. Yet more time had passed, and she could feel herself coming closer to finishing her reblooming. She would need to make a decision regarding what she intended to do with Raqi before that time came, or continued exposure to her biorhythms combined with her own inability to refrain from affectionate behaviour towards the creature would do it for her. How does anyone manage in these situations? She thought of all the other affini that she had spoken to on the Longbough. The vast majority of them had Terran florets; others had spectrum jellies as pets; some took xenra or rinans or khetari; and one or two still had a pet from a particularly exotic race near the centre of the milky way; or from some other galaxy entirely. From what she had gathered, none of them seemed to have had to go through such difficult periods with their florets. I suppose most of them took their pets after the domestication programme for the respective species had already finished. So much of the difficulty in dealing with Raqi had come from not having the right chemicals to treat her, and from a lack of knowledge about how to interact with members of her species in general. This is why affini must take classes before being allowed to be around individual xenosophont species. But of course, there were no classes for an as-yet undomesticated species. She supposed that Raqi being from an undomesticated species did somewhat justify her struggling, but it did not do so entirely. From what she had gathered from her medical examination and the time they had spent together, Raqi really did not appear that much more complicated - biologically, at least - than an average Terran. Her inability to care for the girl had much more to do with Punica's own shortcomings as an affini than a lack of xenodrugs. If I leave her to be domesticated by someone else, then her happiness is assured. Whatever new life her owner gives her, she will learn to enjoy it far more than she ever could her current existence. There is no question that if she were to be allowed to retain her memory of her current life, then asked a year into florethood which she would rather have - her old life or her new one - that she would end up choosing her new life. Every affini knew, after all, that no sophont had ever regretted becoming a floret. Surely that outcome is what is best for her... She wondered how many affini would even spend this amount of time contemplating the issue when the person she was thinking about was the xenosophont who had disabled seven of their vessels. It felt almost delusional to suggest there could ever be a case for Raqi's independence. No matter how well Punica might be able to explain her actions, she doubted any affini would be inclined to entertain such a needlessly nuanced view, when they otherwise had the most open and shut forced domestication case in the galaxy. Purely from an optical perspective, the idea of letting someone who disabled affini naval vessels remain independent is unthinkable. With that thought in mind, she suddenly couldn't remember why she had even thought there was a chance of Raqi staying independent. It made sense to her that there could be an argument for it, but she should have realised sooner that no one who didn't know her personally was ever going to listen. No, the reality of the situation was that the moment they got back to Compact space, Raqi was going to be forcibly domesticated. It was just a question of who was chosen to become her owner when that time came. She couldn't deny that she wanted it to be her. In spite of everything she had been thinking, the thought of having Raqi as hers still filled her core with yearning stronger than any she had ever felt; and the idea of being parted from her filled it with a sorrow even greater. I... I do not want to leave her. But I must do what is best for her, and- and there is no argument that ownership by me is that. She remembered a saying she had heard from one of the Terran florets she'd met: 'If you love somebody, let them go.' If I truly do care for her, then I should let her be with someone who is not going to hurt her the way I am. Affini would at times be called upon to sacrifice their own lives in order to save that of a single xenosophont. Giving up her own happiness to ensure Raqi's was a comparatively small price to pay. Besides, she was sure that in time, she would find another- Before she could even finish thinking the thought, a wave of disgust and revulsion ran through her with such strength that she could feel some of her newly grown roots retracting. Find another xeno that I love as much as her?! As if I could ever! I could travel across the entire galaxy for a hundred blooms, and never find another creature quite like her! The mere implication that Raqi was in any way replaceable made her want to smash a hole in the very cosmos itself. I will never have the opportunity to find another sophont like her! If I leave her now... That will be it. In that moment, she could not imagine taking someone else as a floret. Perhaps the her of a dozen blooms later would be able to, but Punica Granatum, Second Bloom, wanted only one xenosophont as her floret. Yet even admitting this to herself, it still did not give her the strength to make a decision. She continued to languish in the pit of dirt that Raqi had dug for her, trying endlessly to find an answer that would not come to her.
Eventually, something happened that interrupted her thoughts. She felt a disturbance at the periphery of her root network; pressure being applied against certain portions of the earth, radiating downwards into her roots then being conveyed back to her core. The pressure released after around a second, then appeared somewhere else; occasionally being present in two places at once, but never more than that. She realised immediately what it was that she was sensing: it was the feeling of Raqi's footsteps. Every now and then, the xenosophont would make her way to the centre of the plantation where Punica's core had been buried. The past several times that Raqi had visited, Punica had lacked any sort of sensory organs to perceive her with beyond the pressure sensors in her roots. Just recently, however, she had directed her body to construct an organ capable of rudimentary audio reception, and she now found herself able to hear the landamaeri's footsteps properly after she came close enough. "Hey." It was her first time hearing Raqi's voice in what felt like aeons. "It's me again. Figured I'd come down and say hi." Punica was shocked by how different Raqi sounded to the way she had heard her before. The energy that was usually present in the xenosophont's voice regardless of her emotional state seemed to be almost entirely absent, and in its place she sounded tired and worn down. "I had to prune a bunch more of the plants today. Couldn't figure out any way to get the humidifiers attached, and they started dying because I took so long, so not much point in keeping trying to sort it out now. I hope you didn't need them. I don't really have any clue what you need- or if you need anything at all like that. Most of the other ones seem to be doing fine, though, so I mean- that's something." Something about the way that Raqi was speaking drew Punica's roots to a total standstill. Her voice just felt wrong; like all of the life had gone out of it. "Beyond that, uhh... I haven't really had much else to do." There was a sound that she thought was indicative of the exhalation of breath. "I don't have a lot of games on my tablet, and I already got bored of the ones I do have installed. Can't really access much in the way of reading material without fleetnet access, either; I didn't expect to be using my tablet much when I left Gliese, so I only set my PC up with stuff to do that worked offline on it. I could probably port some stuff over on to my tablet, but, eh. It'd take too long, and... never mind." The landamaeri was silent for several minutes. When she next spoke, her tone had grown openly despondent. "What the fuck do I even say... I don't know why the fuck I keep coming here. I have no idea if you can even hear me, or why I'm bothering doing this. I... I keep thinking about it, and I know that the smart thing for me to do would be to just throw you out of the airlock while you're like this. Because I know that you're probably gonna domesticate me when you wake up, and then I'm fucked and so is everyone else in the Mobile Fleet. But it's just... I... Inos, I'm just so tired. I'm tired of running away like this; of always having to treat other people like threats, and having to try and figure out ways to keep myself safe from them. I thought that when I came to the Compact, I was finally going to get away from all of that, but..." Her voice hardened. "But, like, at the same time- what the fuck am I even talking about? Treating you like you're a threat? I fucking killed you. I froze you in a block of ice, after it was me who blew a hole in your ship earlier and threw you into vacuum. If I hadn't done that, freezing you wouldn't have been enough to- to do this. It's because of what I did to you that you have to rebloom. And I know that reblooming doesn't kill you for real- that it's not the same thing as actual death- but just... Santraz akk aqchko, I- I-" Punica heard a small sound, akin to the falling of raindrops, on the surface of the dirt. "I didn't want it to be this way. It just- I hate this so much. It... it makes me so angry- so- so fucking upset- to think about it. I don't... ever want things to turn out this way, but they always fucking do. They always, always do. I always get scared of other people, and I always end up lashing out at them and- and hurting them the way that I hurt you. And every time, it's always because- always because I'm just scared of them. And they never actually want to hurt me. I know, for a fact, that you don't. But I'm still so scared anyway, and I- I can't stop myself from being. It's like I have no control over it." "I just... wanted to do nice things with people. I wanted to do nice things with you. I can never see past that point, and whenever this happens, it always feels like it's so out of nowhere... Why? Why do relationships have to be so complicated? Why are there always extraneous factors that have to get in the way? Why can't I just be nice to people, and have fun with them, and- and not have to think about things like money, or free time, or not being the person they like the most, or what impact my actions have on them or theirs on me, or the world around us or- or the circumstances or- fuck." "I hate this complexity so fucking much. It feels like it's impossible to just be with people. Without worrying that they're going to hurt you, or that, after long enough with them, they're going to die because of something you can't fix... I've never, ever been able to have relationships that felt stable to me. There's always been something looming over the horizon; threatening to bring it all to an end at some time in the distant future. I can never relax because of that, because it's always watching me... And I'm the only one who can't directly fight it. Everyone else has to struggle to get work, to earn money to buy food, and I'm just... here. Just staring at it, watching it come for everyone except me. That was why I wanted to find a way for my friends to not have to deal with it, the same way that I don't..." "It felt- feels unfair, that I should be the only person who doesn't have to worry about it. The only person whose survival is guaranteed, no matter what; while everyone else has to fight tooth and nail just to hang on. I get to spend all my time having fun, writing or playing games or doing whatever the fuck, for twelve or fourteen hours a day- while everyone else is off working themselves to the bone doing fucking retail, with piece of shit transphobe parents who don't love them and chronic health conditions and not enough money in spite of everything and no hope that it's ever going to get better, no joy or colour or the promise that anything will ever improve. I- fuck. I hate it so fucking much, fuck, fuck, fuck- fuck-" Raqi's voice dissolved into hiccuping. It was some time before she returned to speaking. "I wanted to be able to save people from that. But the truth is that I can't fucking do anything. Every time I try to help people, I end up hurting them instead. Because despite the fact that I alone am materially safe, I'm so Inos-taken terrified of losing the few people I have that it's driven me insane. And that's why, now, I'm like this. I- I feel like I've completely lost my grip on everything. I don't know if it would even sound like any of the things I'm talking about relate to each other. I can't tell any more where one issue starts, and another one ends. It's all just- it's all everything; everything leads into everything else and I can't find any end to it, no matter where I look. And I've tried- by Inos, I have tried, but it just... hasn't worked. The more time I've spent looking into things, the more everything seems to just further complicate itself." "And it's made so much worse by the fact that, whenever I come to any kind of realisation about the cause for any of this, no one believes or agrees with me. Every time I figure something out, I have to work so hard to justify it; because otherwise, it sounds deranged to other people and they think I'm a freak or a lunatic or some fucked up evil person. And that's true of just about every belief I've come to in my life. Everything that has ever mattered to me has gone against the grain, and I've had to live with being told again and again that I'm wrong, that I'm delusional or biased or lying to myself or selfish or..." Her voice trailed off. "My entire life, everyone has told me that I don't know what's best for me. Ch'ikan tell me that I'm incapable of understanding empathy because I'm kuruki, and kuruki tell me that I'm a bad person for believing that we're different to ch'ikan even though I feel that way in every bone in my body. Everything I have ever believed, I have had questioned by every single person around me, over and over and over again... Any time I have believed in a conclusion that I came to, I have to justify it to everyone around me; every single time." Her voice had started shaking. "I do not know what it is like to have an unexamined belief. I have never had that luxury." "It's so hard to be torn between both feeling and knowing intellectually that something is right, and being told by everyone around you that it's wrong... It hurts so badly. You end up doubting yourself, and then- and then you wait, and you watch and it goes exactly the way you thought it would, every single time, and it- it doesn't help. You end up being right every time, and you just- still don't have any more faith in yourself. Because it's just... I can't get away from the need for consensus. For the need to be approved of. ...But I can never have it. I've thought sometimes about giving up on my own beliefs just for the sake of being accepted, but I can't make myself do it. I've tried; it's like my brain rebels against the idea. So I'm just stuck like this." "It feels... it feels like going insane. To be told that you're wrong, that you don't know best, again and again and again, and then to see yourself proven right; but no one ever acknowledges it, and the next time they just tell you the same thing again- and you never stop believing them. No matter how many times they're wrong, you never figure out how to stop listening to them. Because they always say that same thing: that if you're the only one who believes something that everyone else says is wrong, then you must be wrong. Even if they're wrong every single time. Because you're just one person, so who are you to go against the majority? 'If everyone you meet is an asshole, then the one thing in common there is you.' Yeah, because maybe I am the only yuyak in an entire village filled with ch'ikan..." Raqi's voice quietened. "I guess, compared to the things that landamaeri society threatened me with, domestication isn't really that bad. Part of the reason I used to stay hidden away in my hab all the time was what Fleetsec did to you if you got on the wrong side of the law. Prison for kuruki is... unsurvivable. Maybe for a month, tops; but do you know how long they can put you in for just for taking drugs? Seven years. For taking them; not dealing them. Seven years in hell, all for wanting to feel a bit better about yourself..." "It's why I never worked up the courage to try drugs before I came to the Compact. I know that some people can cope with going to prison, but I'm not one of them. I know I wouldn't survive it. And... more than that, I was scared of how hard it'd be to commit suicide in a situation like that. That's the even worse part; they don't just let you die if you want to. You'd think that, if you were disobeying society and being problematic, they'd just want to get rid of you; but no, that isn't enough. You have to stay alive throughout your punishment." Her voice had turned distant once again. "Imagine trying to kill yourself, and the state responds by locking you up in the worst place you've ever been sent to, exacerbating the issues that made you feel that way by a hundred times, then putting you under constant surveillance and depriving you of any possible way to get out of it." The ways in which Raqi had spoken up until now had held a sense of composure within them, even through despair and tears. But when she spoke next, that sense of dignity had faded, and in its place spoke a voice that sounded as if it belonged to a small, frightened animal. "Mobile Fleet society was so fucking terrifying. It just... wasn't possible to ever feel safe there. The knowledge that, for being unwell, your punishment was to be tortured for years on end and left unable to even kill yourself to make it stop... it... it scared me so much. It made me so frightened that I didn't want to go outside; because I'd rather be miserable in my hab all day than catch the eye of some fleetsec officer or mental health worker and get sentenced to hell." "I tried really hard to be composed around everyone else, but the truth is that most of the time, I was just scared. Because I knew that the only way I could stay safe was not to be seen, and that if anyone did ever take notice of me, that was it. I couldn't defend myself in any meaningful way." Punica heard Raqi take a deep, shuddering breath. "It's the same thing here, I suppose. If one of the affini decides they want to inject me, that's it. The only defence I have to stop that is the same one I had to keep myself safe back home: my words. It's... it's part of why I've practised and gotten so good at talking. I can't run, I can't fight; but I can talk. That's how I've kept myself and everyone else safe so far." Silence fell once again. This time, it stretched on for many minutes, and the next sound that Punica heard was of shoes against the dirt. "Even back home," Raqi spoke, "what I really wanted was just... the chance to live, and to find out if I was right. I just wanted the time and the space to see which one of us was correct; me, or everyone else." The footsteps continued, each growing gradually more quiet than the last, until Punica could no longer hear them. . . . It was a long time before any thoughts formed in Punica's mind. She felt overwhelmed, almost to the point of inability to process. And so, perhaps because of that, her mind took all of the information that she had received from Raqi and coalesced it; avoiding analysing any specific pieces in favour of focusing instead on the overall picture. As she brought it all together and beheld the image that it formed, the doubt that had raged like a storm in her core for the past days finally fell silent. I will not leave her. She no longer cared to ask herself if it was what was best for Raqi or not. That, as well as all of her other previous considerations, seemed to have suddenly lost their meaning. The words as she thought them became absolute; her statement to reality, which could be neither questioned nor denied. She did not know what form their relationship would take, nor what would become of either of them in the long run, but she was now certain of one thing; that whatever path forwards they took from this point onwards, the two of them would walk it together. I swear by the Everbloom's roots that I will never leave you again, Raqi. Never, ever again.
The next day, Punica had gathered sufficient strength in order to finish reblooming. She could have done so many hours earlier than she eventually did, but she chose to wait; opting for a time when Raqi had left the room as she sometimes did in order to make her way out from the ground and begin constructing a body. It was in part because she did not wish for the girl to see her in the very earliest stages of her reformation, in which her form might appear somewhat grotesque to xenosophont eyes, and also because she wished for one last chance to collect her thoughts before the inevitable reunion between them. As thousands of feelers stretched out and began forming grafts with the roots and stems of almost every plant in the garden, Punica felt herself starting to stretch. It was a strange feeling to have vines again; it had only been a few days without them by her reckoning, but it had felt so much longer. The last time she had been sessile before this was prior to her uplifting, back when she was not even sapient. Being returned to that state had been odd in many ways that she had not had time to reflect on, and she was eager to leave it behind once more. As she reacquainted herself with the organs and appendages of her new form, one of the first senses to return to her was sight. She had crafted only a small number of photoreceptors prior to finishing her reblooming, just enough to be used to tell when Raqi had left, but now she was returned to having thousands of visual inputs once again. There had been a few moments in which her sight had been about on par with what she imagined Raqi's to be like, and that too had been a strangely novel experience. The thought pushed her mind in a particular direction. As she continued moving her vines back into place and re-establishing her internal processes, she knew there was one matter she had yet to decide upon. Punica had decided that she wanted to remain with Raqi, and there was nothing more to consider in that regard. But what form was their relationship to take, going forward? As the situation stood, Raqi's domestication upon their return to Compact space was essentially a foregone conclusion. Punica had continued thinking about it, and she could not see any way out of that. There was still no set timeframe for when she had to take Raqi back, though, and in the meantime, she needed to decide how she wanted to structure their interactions going forwards. The most obvious answer was, of course, to domesticate Raqi as soon as she re-entered the room. There were some practical benefits to this, such as ensuring that she would be able to be responsible for safeguarding the integrity of Raqi's self upon her return to the Compact, but the real main draw was that Punica wanted incredibly badly to take the girl as her pet. She wasn't sure if it was a side-effect of reblooming, but any capacity she had previously possessed to lie to herself about that fact had died along with her first form, and the idea of taking Raqi by force lit a fire within her core. Or, rather, it would have under normal circumstances. But at the present, the thought did not sit right at all with her. The xenosophont's words from yesterday remained crystal clear in her mind, and they had the effect of rendering the thought of forcible domestication completely devoid of any appeal. There is no way that I could domesticate her by force and maintain a good relationship with her. It wasn't even because she was worried Raqi wouldn't forgive her for it; she knew that she could easily make her do so. It was that she wouldn't be able to forgive herself if she did. For whatever complicated thoughts Punica held about respecting Raqi's autonomy, the idea of collaring her by force right after she had spoken about her fears of having her autonomy stripped away in order to be tortured was completely unthinkable. It would be the worst possible betrayal of her trust. Punica knew that some affini would point to the difference between the horror of internment into a landamaeri medical ward and the bliss of domestication, but she felt like they would be missing the point entirely. If we opt to discard our pets' fears simply because we view them as unfounded, then what precedent does this set for their emotions as a whole? Are we to simply do whatever we think to be right, with no consideration for their subjective experience? She knew that most affini would say 'yes' to this without hesitation. Two weeks ago, she probably would have as well. But now, the thought felt wholly and utterly wrong to her. How much of Raqi's personhood is embedded in those fears? How much of her complexity would she lose if I was to simply force my way past them, and push her into calmness? In one sense, it was contradictory. Raqi herself had acknowledged that she wanted help, and it could be said that the outcome she desired was the same as if Punica were to simply reach in and remove her worries. Only the method differed, and it was here that the problem lay. Most affini would happily say that the end justified the means, and that the path one took to happiness was much less important than the destination, but the more she thought about it... What would it be like, if we were all simply born into happiness? Punica wondered. If all life in the universe was, at the moment of its conception, placed upon a variant of class-O's that somehow guaranteed their survival and reproduction. Every living being would experience eternal, unbroken happiness and perfect sensory bliss, and would not need caretakers or to take steps to maintain their species. At the same time, the entire universe would fall into stillness. Nothing would ever move again, and in essence, there would be no more 'life' to speak of. Living beings, though still alive, would become functionally inanimate. The existence of class-o's had always bothered her somewhat. Most affini were horrified by their existence, and the reasons why seemed obvious; but if the Compact's goal really was to maximize happiness, then why did they find them so aversive? Punica felt the movement of her vines slowing down. The Affini Compact has existed for a mere hundred thousand years in its spacefaring age. Though I thought us at the end of history, I wonder now: where will we find ourselves in another hundred thousand? ...Or in a million, perhaps? She tilted her head in the way she had seen Raqi do so many times before. What will we do when we have learned how to expand faster than the universe itself, and every xenosophont species that exists has been domesticated? What will the people living in Triangulum do, when there are no more stars to rearrange? The conundrum bothered her. It was not something, she knew at once, that she had any hope of solving before Raqi returned; most likely, it was not something she had any hope of solving in this bloom- maybe not even in the next dozen. She knew that the question of eternity was one of the only matters that still frightened many of the affini, and she would have been far from the first to grow unsettled by it. Eternity is a very long way away... She turned her head back to its original orientation. But the present is right here in front of me. While she was lost in thought about the distant future, the five or so minutes she'd anticipated having before Raqi returned to the garden were rapidly drawing to a close, and she was still yet to make a decision over the matter of the girl's future. Several of the flowers on her new body gradually began to unfurl their petals. I suppose that... there is no need to commit to domesticating her right now. There is still much time yet before we are to return to the Compact, and I only need have decided what I am to do by then. The thought gave her pause. Now that it occurred to her, she didn't think she had even once thought about when she would begin preparations to return with Raqi to her kin. Given the circumstances, it struck her as the kind of thing she ought to have been more interested in, but this was the first time she had really thought about it. And now that she was thinking about it, she felt herself inclined to push the matter right back out of her mind. So long as the two of them were alone on the Rending Talon, they had all the time in the universe to work things out. The moment that the time came to return to the Compact, all of that would come to an end. So why not take things slow? It wasn't like she was in a rush to get back to the Longbough, after all. Yes, returning to the Compact could wait; she had far more important things to concern herself with, such as- At just that moment, Punica felt a surge of pressure against one of her vines, and her entire body froze. She turned her photoreceptors upon the point of origin for the sensation, and that was when she saw it. Standing there just in front of the doorway, staring up at her with a look that was part shock, part disbelief, part awe, and part wordless joy, was her most important thing in the universe.
A L E R T : : t h o u g h t f o r m s_d e t e c t e d
I D : : withering away :: The Prism System :: Intoxicants :: Book 1
TerraTranslate :: Raqi Marr :: Punica Granatum :: The Affini Compact :: Landamar Mobile Fleet :: Hormone Replacement Therapy :: The Chimera Module :: Affini :: Intersidera :: Posters :: Magnesium :: Wonderland :: The Hundredth Time: Part I :: Communication :: aftermath :: Physical Confrontation :: Garments :: Interspecies Comparisons :: Touch :: Equality :: Hypnokink :: Speaking :: ahftrojn,lpijmnhfkg :: Pretheya :: Magic :: scared :: Materas Marr ::