It Takes Time <To Be Properly Taken Apart> - Chapter 28
Chapter 28
Chapter Length: 5,500~ wordsTreasured Companions
It took a few moments for Punica to regain the wherewithal to actually compose a response to Raqi. "Before anything else: I take it by your mention of 'headmates' that you are yourself a plural sophont?" "Oh! Uh, yeah." Raqi's eyes turned sideways, and her tone dipped in enthusiasm somewhat near the end of her sentence. Punica was distracted enough by the bizarre circumstances she found herself in that she did not notice this slight change in Raqi's mannerisms, however. "Well." That, and she was too busy feeling foolish for not having noticed earlier. "In hindsight, this explains a great deal about- well, about a large number of things, actually." I really cannot believe this did not occur to me before; though I suppose it is the kind of thing that is somewhat difficult to gauge from an external view. While Punica had read a fair bit about plurality, it was a topic that was covered only comparatively scarcely in her education. It was not something that a majority of sophont species experienced naturally, from what she knew, and so information on it was generally confined to being taught in classes related to those few species that were naturally plural. The dozens of 'Terrans are adorable!' classes which she had attended had only very briefly covered the subject, and it had been mentioned as something that one was highly encouraged to research in further detail, should a pet of theirs turn out to be plural. "I had been wondering ever since your play about the notable similarities between the ways in which you seemed to prefer communicating, and some of the things I had heard about florets pluribus," she continued. "That you yourself are a system rather handily explains why you seem so uniquely well-suited to biorhythmic communication." It also explained why Raqi seemed to have so much experience with dissociative states, and probably also played a part in her relationship with hypnosis, Punica theorised. Raqi felt a little bit uncomfortable. She wasn't really a system - not any more - but that wasn't a conversation she wanted to have with Punica right now. "Yeah. I got a lot of practise visualising stuff and learning how to feel around in my own head from my early days being plural. We did lots of symbolism stuff, as well, and so a lot of our internal architecture is based off of that." Even before she had finished speaking, Raqi could sense something changing in Punica. She couldn't put her finger on it, but the plant's presence seemed to almost invert; going from warm and welcoming to cold and- not distant, more like... very very uncomfortable? Raqi still didn't know how it was that she was picking up on this. It's not like she has facial expressions that I can use to read her. I mean, she does, but they're all fake. She wondered if there might be something else in her body language that she was picking up on, but she had no clue what, if anything, that might be. Her suspicions were confirmed, however, when she heard Punica speak. "Raqi. Was that flame in your mind- the one that I extinguished- such a mechanism?" Although Punica's voice sounded calm externally, it had that same inexplicably anxious quality to it that the rest of her was radiating. Raqi was starting to become sympathetically anxious. "It- it was, yes." She could feel both pain and guilt begin to radiate out from Punica upon the conclusion of her answer. Raqi despised the feeling; she hated making other people feel bad because of her actions more than anything. "To be clear: That mechanism in particular - the brazier and the flame - are meant to be able to go out, so like, you didn't break anything by putting it out. It's basically a representation of... not quite my energy- not physical energy, anyway- but I guess 'mental'- no, strength isn't the right word... Fuck, I don't have the vocabulary for this. Uh. It's basically a vibes-o-meter. The higher the flame burns, the better the vibes; the lower the flame, the worse. It fluctuates naturally over time, and it does tend to go out- or at least down to a very low level not that infrequently." She hesitated. "It just... doesn't normally get blown out outright, which is why..." There was no need to finish what she was saying. The discomfort emanating from the affini was already such that she felt a strong urge to try and pull away from her, and began wriggling in an attempt to get out from her nest. Punica quickly obliged, and Raqi was deposited a safe distance away from the empathy-hazardous plant. When she turned to inspect Punica once again, the blindingly vibrant colours she had been sporting when Raqi had re-entered the room had dimmed down to a set of far dimmer- if still bright- hues. The affini's voice remained layered as she spoke, but lacked any of the enticement it had earlier possessed. "I see. I... I foolishly mistook it for a very different kind of flame. I believed at that moment that it was what stood in the way of allowing you to accept the comfort I was offering, and so I... erroneously concluded that the correct course of action was to attempt to snuff it out, so that you would not be forced to go back to being alone ever again." Raqi's eyes gradually widened. At first, she thought she must have been misunderstanding, but after a moment, she realised there was only one interpretation for what Punica had just said. "You... you tried to domesticate me?" Raqi watched as the colours drained out of Punica's eyes. They went from bright rainbows to the same dull brown as they had been during her first bloom. "I... did, yes. I..." Her gaze flickered, mouth contorting in discomfort. "I..." Punica did not know what to say. She felt as if any explanation she tried to give for her behaviour would come off as nothing other than excuses, and she could not be certain that they were not excuses. Apologising, too, felt as if it would serve no purpose; there were some wounds so grievous that a mere 'sorry' did nothing but exacerbate them. There was also the fact that, as Raqi had rightly pointed out, she could not apologise for attempting to domesticate her. It was not that part that Punica felt guilty for; she had genuinely believed in the moment that it was the right thing to do. The part she felt terrible about was how utterly she had frosted the entire thing up. But apologising for that would have been worse than doing nothing; she knew how the girl felt about the idea of forceful domestication, and knew that she would only interpret such words as an insult. With that in mind, she was left with nothing which she could think to say, and so instead turned her gaze downwards towards the floor and waited for the sophont to reply. Raqi stared ahead at Punica. Yet, shortly after, her own gaze turned downwards as well. There was so much that she could say right now. So very many options presented themselves to her: She could be angry, she could be frightened, she could demand an apology- but none of these appealed to her. She had to some extent already been through this situation in her mind a number of times. What were the fundamentals at play here? Firstly, she did not want to return to the Mobile Fleet. She checked briefly, and that had not changed; she had no desire to return home. This meant that, by extension, she was stuck with Punica. Secondly, the fact that they were stuck together meant that both anger and fear - at least unreasonable amounts of either - were not productive emotions to feel towards the plant. Circumstances had decreed that she wished to stay with Punica, and that meant that what she wanted was not revenge or retaliation; it was the creation of a productive working relationship between the two of them. What she wanted- what this situation said that she needed, was to solve the problems that had lead to Punica trying to domesticate her. She needed to communicate the necessary information to this plant that would explain to her why it was so imperative that she not be domesticated, and to try and find a way to convince Punica to stop considering forcefully domesticating her. In the end, that was her win condition, the thing which she had been angling for since day one of her time with Punica; to find a way to convince the plant not to forcibly domesticate her. If she could pull that off, she would have all the time in the universe to explain everything else that she needed to explain, and to work out all the kinks in their relationship. She'd be off of a timer, and could take her time and do things the right way, instead of having to act in anxious haste while also trying to push down very strong desire in the way that had lead to the catastrophe three days ago. She needed, in essence, to finally stabilise this relationship. [tebe The question was, though: how in the void was she supposed to actually do that?
Have you tried, I dunno- clearly communicating with her about it?
As opposed to putting on a play
in which you don't actually directly communicate any information whatsoever
and instead put the onus on her to infer everything from your weird depiction
of a girl who looks nothing like you running around on top of a spiderweb.
Raqi's expression flattened. ...Honestly, no: I have not tried that.
in which you don't actually directly communicate any information whatsoever
and instead put the onus on her to infer everything from your weird depiction
of a girl who looks nothing like you running around on top of a spiderweb.
well I mean gee; that might not be a bad place to start then
The voice had a point. The play had been a good idea at the time, but it had only been meant to provide a vague overview of her life so as to avoid subjecting Punica to any of the Severely Ouch parts. Instead, Punica had gotten subjected those by probably-maybe having her consciousness directly dipped into them; or whatever her half of the icecube incident had felt like. There was certainly no point in trying to hide any of that any more.
She knows what I'm like now. I suppose the next step would be to, as you say, actually tell her some concrete details about what we're doing here.
That would probably be a good idea, yes.
When every other method of communication failed, it had been Raqi's habit to resort to just openly telling people things; rather than attempting to be manipulative and indirect in the way ch'ikan sociality tended to require of most people. While this was a near-objectively better way of communicating, there were a lot of reasons that had to do with in-built social expectations as to why you couldn't just walk up and do it to someone. Usually, she waited until her attempt to be indirect failed and she subsequently exploded, because this did a great job of conveying genuineness to other people and made them more inclined to believe her when she was open with them afterwards. Having now well and truly spontaneously combusted in front of Punica, she was quite sure the plant was assured of her honesty; and so she decided it was time to stop being shit at communicating.
"Okay, so..." Raqi took a deep breath. "Let's skip the 'guilt allocation minigame' and all the apologising and feeling bad over shit. You've- I think literally been inside my head, or at least pretty close to it? I have no idea what you saw there, but I am going to assume it was enough to show you that I don't work the way most people do."
Punica looked back up at her, expression rapidly stabilising. Surprise was radiating off of the plant again; which was just as confusing as before as to how she could sense that, but she decided she was going to have to just ignore it for now, and so continued: "There are a bunch of things I haven't told you yet. Half of them are because I figured you'd domesticate me on the spot if I mentioned them; the other half were because we just never ended up having time for them. One of the ones in the first half is: I don't really care about getting 'injured', in the psychological sense anyway." Her tone grew abruptly dismissive. "It happens to me pretty much all the time; to the extent that I have largely devalued it as an emotional experience. Which, before you say it- yes, I know that is bad, I know that is fucked up, I am aware that is a red flag- you are going to need to be patient with me here or you will be interrupting me every ten seconds to tell me how screwed up or unhealthy the stuff I'm about to say is."
The affini did indeed look as if she had been about to say something, but by the end of Raqi's sentence, her vines settled down into their usual holding pattern. "I will let you speak. Please, continue."
A fair amount of relief flooded through the xenosophont. "Thank you. Okay, so, continuing- Part of this is I don't care about the 'who did what wrong' thing. There's a time and a place for it, but, in terms of the relation between it and guilt- guilt is a fucking waste of time; I don't care about that or needing people to feel bad over things, I just want shit to work properly. Apologise, identify what went wrong, and try not to do it again. That's the ideal way of going about things, in my view." She took another deep breath. "In this case; that would pertain to the Big Fuck-Up three days ago." More deep breaths. "...Which, to save us both agonizing, let's just say was both of our faults."
She could once again sense that Punica was not at all inclined to agree with this, but the affini held her- not-tongue? That metaphor did not work here- whatever.
"I don't want to be domesticated," she continued. Upon feeling a surge of several emotions in Punica, she moved to clarify- "Or, well-" Her expression darkened. "I guess you know that's a lie now. Or... It's not fully a lie." She focused on the wording. "I don't want to be domesticated. I do, however, want to be dominated." She left a pause, and her tone grew measured. "I do not know if you affini actually recognise a difference between those two things, but I do. Domestication is domination in which one gives up every part of themselves; their autonomy, their personhood, their right to self-determination. It is the farthest extreme that submission can go to, and it is not an extreme that I want. I do, however, want a lesser version of it."
She had realised upon getting that response from Punica that pretending not to be very very badly into this was no longer going to work. Instead, it was time to explain why it was she found domestication so unappealing. "I can't let myself be domesticated, Punica. It's not only that I just don't want it; I can't let it happen to me. The reason why is... it has to do with part of why I came here to the Compact in the first place. To do with... the people I left behind, in the Mobile Fleet."
There was a visible shift in the affini's body language this time. Her vines started to sway faster, and she tilted her head in a manner reminiscent of Raqi's own habits. "Are the people you speak of the ones who appeared in the play?"
Raqi nodded. "Yes. They are my partners; the three people in the universe whom I love the most. Their names are Marya, Locke, and Charyllis." Her voice grew uneasy. "I... left them behind, when I departed from the Fleet. I didn't really have any way to bring them with me, and..." She shook her head. "I'm getting off topic. The point is: they are my pinnates. They are some of the only people I really care about, and... I came here, in large part, because I wanted to find a way to save them."
Punica's expression suddenly shifted, growing abruptly concerned. "To save them? Are they in danger?"
She shook her head. "No, no- not in immediate danger. It's... It has to do with the state of things in the Fleet. Basically, Marya and Charyl are both transfemmes; like me. They're both also very, very poor; Locke is as well, though his situation isn't nearly so bad. We..." She had started blinking quickly, and her face went through a number of expressions. How do I summarise this to her? There's so damn much to say that I don't know how to put it into just a few sentences. Fuck...
She swallowed. "The quality of life that we all lived with was not good. Charyl is a farmer who looks after animals called tebe'aych; they're kind of analogous to Terran goats, if you know what those are. Her work involves spending five hours every single day without any breaks watching them while they eat, because her family can't afford a proper enclosure to keep them contained in during feeding time and they run the risk of getting into neighbours' crops or running off otherwise."
"Hold on a moment." Punica raised one hand to interrupt. "I am confused. The Landamar Mobile Fleet is an entirely space-faring civilisation, is it not? The kind of farming you are describing sounds like something that would be done planet-side, not on a ship."
Raqi's voice grew terse. "You'd think, but no. Charyl lives on the Incava; one of the shittiest island-ships in the entire Fleet, despite also being a pre-Data Loss ship like the Gliese. We don't have the history any more, but, for some reason it was incredibly deprived before the Data Loss. Apparently, there was some sort of... feud, between the Incavans and the people on the Landamar? Something very, very one-sided by the sounds of it, because the way the Incavans got treated basically amounted to slavery for the longest time. The entire ship was a lower-class zone with no accommodations or infrastructure, and the people living there were basically used to churn out low-cost goods and services in the pre-Chimera module days."
There was distinct discomfort in her voice as she continued. "Exploitation that bad isn't legal any more - primarily because it stopped being profitable - but instead, the ship is kept as a kind of replica of pre-data loss society. They keep the conditions there atrocious and have people work in recreations of pre-spaceflight industries and professions, then let people from other ships visit it for tourism. It's incredibly popular and makes tons of money, but none of the profit ever goes back to the actual people working on the Incava."
"So the average day for Charyl includes the aforementioned five hours of tebe-watching, which has to be done with nothing other than a tablet to entertain her during it; and sometimes not even that. Then she has other animals to tend to, has to wash up and clean around the house... by far the worst part is when it's baby season for the tebe though. She ends up having to wake up before simulated dawn on the ship for something like an entire month, then spend every waking hour of the day looking after the babies, or they just up and die. This might not be that bad, but she's kuruki like me, and she's trans, and the infrastructure on the Incava is so bad that I've tried, and I physically cannot get hormone replacement therapy sent to her. Like, any order I place just doesn't arrive; it always gets lost in inter-ship transit, and there are no producers on the Incava itself."
By the time she had finished explaining and took a break to breathe, Punica's vines had fallen almost completely still. The plant regarded her with a look that was a mixture of empathy and distress, but there was an undercurrent of something else that Raqi still wasn't sure how she could sense: disgust.
"The conditions you are describing are appalling." Punica's voice was low, and the disapproval was much more audible in it than it had been in her appearance. "To keep sophonts in such poor conditions purely for entertainment is deplorable, and absolutely barbaric."
It felt a little bit strange to Raqi to hear someone utter such a strong condemnation of the Fleet's practises. Punica was right, of course, but this sort of thing was so normalised to her by now that having strong feelings about it felt uncomfortable to her. "Yeah. In terms of living standards, Charyl has it by far the worst of the three of them. I started with her to set the tone, but Marya and Locke's situations aren't nearly as bad. Or, well..." She hesitated. "Locke's definitely isn't, but it's hard to say that for sure with Marya."
Discomfort far worse than what she had felt while speaking about Charyl's situation began to rise inside Raqi. Of her three partners, Charyl was the one she knew the least well; the two loved each other, but Raqi wasn't the Incavan's primary partner, and that had meant the two had never become quite as close to each other as she had with Locke and Marya. In truth though, that was only part of the reason why she demurred to speak of this particular topic.
"With Marya, it's... She's not economically unstable in the way Charyl is and I was. She lives on the Spytkyza; the Spytkyza sucks a lot in rural areas, but she's in the capital so it's not nearly as bad. Her family also aren't poor the way Charyl's are; I don't think she's ever been at risk of running out of money, but... The problem is her relationship with them. Marya is trans as well, and her parents don't like that- at all. She came out to them a little bit before I left, and her mother responded by screaming at her and telling her she was getting groomed by a 'pedophile sex cult' and that she was going to end up getting addicted to drugs and becoming a prostitute, then die on the street after someone beat her to death for..." Raqi's voice grew even more uncomfortable. "In her words: Being a tranny."
"Frost and flame." Though she was not familiar with the slur, Punica could infer its likely meaning, and the emotions she felt in response were enough to send several freshly-grown leaves falling from her body onto the ground. "That is vile beyond words. Are parent-child relationships in Landamar similar to those of Terrans and their offspring?"
Raqi hesitated for a moment, then nodded. "I think so, yeah? Generally speaking, anyway."
She watched as thorns began to emerge all across Punica's body. "Then for a caretaker to speak such words to their charge..." The thorns seemed to shake in waves, causing a bristling effect to run up and down her body. "That is utterly unforgivable. That woman would be in line for immediate forcible domestication, were we to assume control there."
"Yeah, I think we joked about that once," Raqi said, a dry smile forming on her face. "We both agreed she'd probably deserve it." Seeing the look on Punica's face at this, she amended: "I know you don't see forcible domestication as a punishment, but- even ignoring that aspect, she definitely needs it. She's inarguably a threat to other people, and probably to herself as well."
The affini nodded. "I do not find that hard to believe." Her brow furrowed. "Wait, pardon me. You said that you joked about it? Do you mean that your partner also knows what domestication is?"
Raqi's eyes widened. "Ah. Right- Yeah, that is what I meant. If you can wait, I'll get to that eventually. Just let me finish what I'm talking about here first, okay?"
Punica was immensely curious to hear more specifics about knowledge of the Compact within Landamaeri society, but she nodded nonetheless; knowing it could wait until they were done with the current topic.
"Cheers. Anyway, as I was saying: if that was all that was wrong with her situation, then it might not be too bad. What I just described represents probably ninety-percent of trans people in the Mobile Fleet, and as a community, we've kind of gotten good at surviving without our parents now." Her voice grew momentarily quiet. "Most of us, anyway... But er- The other thing is, as part of how she got away from her family, she had to go to med school. I'm not sure how familiar- well, I guess not at all, so... Uh, basically, medical school in the Mobile Fleet is hell. We have an entire stereotype of med students turning to drugs- the not good, not safe kind; not cool ones like xenodrugs- in order to get through it. She's got a terrible sleep schedule as a result of it, she never does anything except work more or less; and to my knowledge, she doesn't have any friends other than me. And she also doesn't- didn't talk to me more than once every two weeks or so back when I was in the Fleet, because... I guess because she was busy with school."
Punica sensed something off about Raqi throughout her description of her second partner's circumstances. Despite focusing in on it, she was struggling to ascertain what the disturbance was. There was a great deal of discomfort in the description, but it wasn't the kind that had been present when she had spoken of Charyl. Instead, it was almost as if she felt uncomfortable for herself, rather than on behalf of her partner. But if that was the case, then Punica had no clue why that might be.
"I worry a lot about her," Raqi continued, "because of the whole 'having no friends other than me' thing, and also, because she's so obsessed with her work that even when she does have breaks, she just uses them to work more. She hates having fun on a philosophical level; thinks it's a waste of time she could be using to do so-called 'productive things', like learning a new language or improving at drawing, etcetera. She's got the worst case of Fleetist ideology poisoning I know, even worse than mine." She shook her head. "I've tried to talk her out of it, but she doesn't listen to me, and I worry she'll end up burned out eventually. When and if she does... I don't think she would cope with not being able to work any more."
Punica wondered how such a person would adapt to life in the Affini Compact. Sophonts who came from backgrounds in which they had been forced to, or had otherwise learned to compulsively overwork themselves and to tie their value to their productivity often struggled immensely to acclimatise to post-scarcity life. From the severity of this Marya's symptoms as Raqi described them, Punica suspected the girl's partner would probably have a very difficult time adjusting to living within Compact society.
"Anyways: Last and also somewhat least is Locke. He's the only one of us who has an at least somewhat normal life. He's yuyayni like all the rest of us, but he's not trans and so he doesn't have nearly the same 'everything is shit' vibe to his life. The worst thing he's got going for him is that he has kind of a bad relationship with his parents- not even remotely in the way Marya does with hers, just like, normal levels of dysfunctional- and also he's been out of work for a couple years now and hasn't been able to find a job. Beyond that, he's doing pretty alright for himself."
"It is good to hear that at least one of your partners has at least somewhat less dire living conditions," Punica said, meaning every word of it.
Raqi snickered. "Yeah. I wouldn't call him happy in any sense, but things could be a lot worse for him." She paused, shifting around where she stood for a few moments. "So, yeah. I have- had, I guess- a bunch more friends too, but those are the three I'm closest to. Most of my friends are also a lot closer to the Charyl-Marya end of the spectrum than the Locke one, as well, and that's generally been true of most of the friends and partners I've had in the past as well."
Something shifted in her voice. "I've always been the odd one out, in that regard. I got on well with my parents, was relatively financially secure aside from some complications, and could get by on benefits plus what they left me without having to work." She glanced up at Punica. "For that reason, I've kind of always been the one who most had their life together of the group. It's my job to make sure that everyone doesn't starve to death, and to try and get them out of the circumstances that they found themselves in. And to that end..."
She spread her arms out to her sides. "That was the other half of why I set out for the Compact. In the event that the affini did turn out to be real, finding you and bringing you back home would guarantee an end to all the shit I just described for my partners." She let her hands drop back down. "On my own, there was virtually nothing I could do to help them. I don't have any ability to make something of myself in the Fleetist system; I'm disabled, I can't work at all, and being unable to accrue capital basically means you can't do anything in that society." Her gaze hardened. "I figured that if I couldn't do anything to help them myself, though, I could at least find people who could." She nodded at Punica. "Which is where you, and the rest of the affini come in. The reason I had no objection to you asking me to sell out the Mobile Fleet was that I always planned on doing it in the first place. Domestication of the Fleet is integral to both my, and my partners' survival; and so there was no question that I was always going to seek it out."
There were so many questions that Punica wanted to ask Raqi. But one stood out above all the rest; one which she had been wondering about since the day they had met. "Raqi, how did you know that the Compact existed before coming here?"
"Ah, right- that." Raqi had been sounding almost uncharacteristically composed up until now, but at this, the familiar stammering crept back into her voice. "Okay, so..."
Several seconds passed, and Raqi seemed to have just trailed off into silence. Her expression was growing increasingly more awkward with every second that passed, and Punica was beginning to wonder if the girl had inexplicably short-circuited. Just before she could ask, however, Raqi looked up at her with a sheepish expression. "Okay so: Remember when I asked you if domestication was a sex thing?"
Punica's expression shifted almost imperceptibly. "Yes?"
"So, um... The way that I found out about the Compact was through a fictional series- setting, um- shared universe, called the Landamaeri Domestication Guide."
Punica's expression went completely blank. In a moment of great irony, the exact flavour of vacancy upon her face almost perfectly mirrored the one Raqi had worn when Punica had first mentioned biorhythms to her. Unlike Raqi, however, she had the self-control not to allow her confusion to escape her verbally, and instead confined it to her thoughts:
The Landamaeri *what* guide?
Book 2
withering away :: The Prism System :: Intoxicants :: Plurality :: please believe me ::
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 ::