Kanagen

  The first thing Trish became aware of was the birdsong. Next came the soft trickling of water, and the wind swishing through innumerable leaves. Then there was the soft, warm surface she was lying on, silky smooth to the touch. As she came to, she sucked in a deep, sudden breath, and the scent of flowers came along with it. Her eyes opened on a strange clearing in a forest, like something out of a fairytale or cartoon; the water she was hearing was a perfectly reflective waterfall spilling into a basin, and half the trees around her either had doors on them like some kind of naturally-formed wardrobe or shelves carved into them.

  I'm still in their hab, she told herself, even though the evidence of her eyes insisted she was outdoors — the sun was shining warmly through the leaves overhead, throwing a gently dancing pattern of light over everything. She pushed herself to a sitting position, and slowly levered her legs off the incredibly fluffy bed. Someone had taken her shoes and socks off, and she could feel the soft grass between her toes. A sound drew her attention — a curtain of hanging vines being disturbed as someone pushed their way through them.

  "Have a nice nap?" Leah was all sunshine and good cheer, as usual, slipping into the room with a big smile on her face. Her dress was the exact same shade as the flowers on the vine curtain, brilliantly crimson.

  "What happened?" Trish grunted, blinking against the still-too-bright light. "The st thing I remember is-" She froze, her blood running like ice in her veins. "What did she do to me?!"

  "Miss Tsuga?" Leah asked, the very picture of innocence. "She said she had to take a look at you. You were already napping in here when I got back from the vet, though. She and Mistress are talking about it now, and I think they're talking to Miss Scoparia about it too. Don't worry, though," she said, taking a seat next to Trish on the bed. "Everything's gonna be okay. Promise!"

  Trish felt the bile rise inside her. She'd escaped total obliteration, somehow, at least for the moment, but she had no doubt that the axe would fall sooner or ter. "Are you even capable of imagining things not being okay?"

  She shrugged and held out her left arm, tracing an almost invisible hairline scar that ran the length of her forearm, elbow to palm. "You were a doctor, so I probably don't have to expin what this is to you. Does that answer your question?"

  Trish had seen all manner of self-inflicted injuries during her residency, some of them awful enough that even with a doctor's cadaver-b-trained detachment the image never faded. Trish could easily see that Leah had meant that cut. "Surprised you didn't have the memory of it removed," she muttered.

  "Oh, it was blocked for a long time," Leah said, letting her arm fall. "But I told you, Mistress took all those blocks out. I remember everything. Good and bad. I'm just not held back by the bad anymore."

  "Because you have all this?" She gestured at the false clearing. "A fairytale life, so long as you don't question it?"

  "Why would I question it? I get to be who I always wanted to be. I have a wife who loves me, an Owner who takes care of me, and friends who are all living their own best lives too. There's no downside to it at all."

  Affini propaganda, happily parroted by a woman with an alien parasite in her brain. "You don't consider having no free will a downside?" she said, not bothering to keep the snideness out of her voice.

  Leah looked up at Trish with a strange expression on her face. She was silent for a moment. Finally, she asked, "Have you ever been loved unconditionally?"

  Trish furrowed her eyebrows. "What?"

  "Have you ever been loved unconditionally? Loved, not despite your fws, but for them?"

  "I don't see what that has to do with anything," Trish said, "and their love is not unconditional. They make you sign a damn contract."

  "Do you know why I tried to kill myself?" Leah said, not flinching in the slightest. "A lot of it was self-hatred, of course. I hated myself, more than can really be expressed in words. Every waking moment I would have these horrible thoughts about what a waste of air I was, how I should just space myself, or blow my brains out with my sidearm, or whatever way of ending it all was most convenient."

  Leah let out a sigh and fell backward onto the bed, arms sprawling above her. "All day. Every day. The Stelr Marines taught me to point that outward, but that was just a coping mechanism; I still hated myself underneath it all. And when the Affini captured me and were nothing but kind to me, I couldn't understand it. I thought it was some kind of psy-op, you know? Like they were just trying to get me to break, to reveal information. The sort of thing the Stelr Marines put in your head. But it was none of that. They just wanted to help. And when I realized that..." She bit her lip. "How dare they love something I hated so much? That was the thought that went through my head while I was doing it. I don't know that I realized it at the time, but I did it, at least in part, just to spite them for loving me, because I refused to be loved."

  Trish said nothing, but her fingers tightened on the silky-smooth sheets.

  "And they didn't care. They still loved me even then." A rapturous look came over her face. "And then Mistress came, and she figured out what was wrong with me, and she fixed me. It took her years and years but she fixed me. She fixed all the things that living in the Accord did to me. She gave me my life, the life I'd always wanted, the life I was supposed to have, when all I'd ever been allowed to be was a hateful little wretch who hurt others because she was hurting. And now I get to make others smile. I get to help others with their own worries or problems. I get to bake so many cookies. I get to listen to Lay read to me and I get to understand maybe like half of it." She ughed and sat back up. "That's unconditional love. It's love that pnts the seeds of more love."

  "None of that changes what they've done to you," Trish whispered. "What they've done to Cass. What they did to Rod and Meg. What they've done to so many people who never asked for it and didn't need it."

  "Just because you don't see the need doesn't mean it doesn't exist," Leah said, putting a hand on Trish's. It was warm and soft. "It's not something you need to worry about."

  "Considering they're trying to do it to me for the fourth time, yes, yes I very much do."

  Leah simply shook her head, her smile unfazed. "You don't need to worry, Trish, because either they won't do it, in which case you're worrying for nothing, or they will, in which case you'll be happy and thinking how silly you're acting now."

  She gred at Leah. "You do understand that 'they'll just mind control you' isn't reassuring in the slightest, right?"

  Leah shrugged. "I've been a floret for most of my life. It's possible I don't really get how independents think anymore. But by that same token you can't possibly know what it's like to be a floret, and therefore have no reasonable basis to fear it the way that you clearly do."

  Trish rolled her eyes. "You think that fearing losing my agency and free will aren't reasonable?"

  "I have so much more agency and free will in my life now than I did before," Leah said, "so I'm really not a good person to ask that question. But I do know that if you're domesticated, you'll be happier than you are now, and you won't ever wish you could go back to being independent."

  "Because they won't let you wish for that," Trish argued. "Won't even let you think it."

  Leah shrugged again. "Maybe. Or maybe being a pet isn't as horrible as you seem to think it is." Her eyes brightened suddenly and she turned to face the vine curtain. "Mistress?"

  And less than a heartbeat ter, the brilliant red flowers on those vines seemed to multiply as even more flowers of the exact shame shade and shape pushed their way through, attached to an affini Trish was all too familiar with. "Hello, little flower~" she purred, reaching out with a few vines to tickle Leah, who colpsed into a gigglefit on the bed — and though she squirmed and thrashed, she never once tried to push a vine away. "And hello to you too, Trish. How are you feeling? Any disorientation? Any unusual sensations?"

  "No," Trish said, looking away as Polyphyl humiliated her floret. "Just the usual ck of respect for the concept of consent from your species."

  "Oh, you're not sore because Tsuga entranced you a little, are you?" Polyphyl slithered over to the bedside, still tormenting Leah, and bent down to face Trish. The waterfall of little red flowers that served as her hair swished forward over her shoulder, bringing a heavy floral scent with them. "You must understand, she was very concerned for your well being. You were demonstrating very unusual, not to mention unhealthy, behaviors."

  "Not liking her or wanting to be around her is an unhealthy behavior now?" Trish spat, refusing to meet Polyphyl's gaze. She'd fallen for that once already today, and she wasn't about to repeat the mistake.

  "Please don't be disingenuous, Trish, it doesn't suit you." She lifted Leah up into her arms and cradled her there, rocking her back and forth, and the gigglefit resolved into a contented, likely drug-induced murmuring. "Tsuga was concerned, and appropriately looked into the situation. We've discussed the matter with your guardian, and she agrees it was the correct course of action given the circumstances."

  "Citing Scoparia is not exactly making your argument seem more rational. She's the only reason I'm in this damn wardship to begin with, so of course she thinks that tinkering with my head is all fine and dandy."

  "No one 'tinkered' with your head," Polyphyl said in what was no doubt intended to be a soothing tone. "I tested you and found no evidence that Tsuga left any kind of post-hypnotic trigger behind, and I certainly didn't either. We simply wanted to see what was going on in your mind that was- well, no, I should stop here," she said, kneeling down and taking a seat on the floor, making her almost level with Trish. "We agreed that Scoparia should be the one to discuss this with you. You are her ward, after all. That makes this her responsibility — though I may wind up being called in for a more thorough examination, or at least to consult on it. Then again, it's not as if there's any shortage of specialists in Terran mnemonic cartography on the station," she added with a perfectly mimicked demure chuckle, complete with using a vine with broad flowering branches to cover her smile. "Rest assured, little one," she continued, "you're in very good vines."

  "Yeah," Trish muttered. "That's what I'm afraid of."

  "Okay, I think it's hot enough. Now, you hold it like this, tap it against the edge a couple times like so — see the little crack? That's what you're looking for. Now, just a little pressure and-" With utter grace, Tara cracked the egg neatly down the middle, the bright yellow yolk slipping out along with its transparent caul to nd with a gentle plop in the frying pan. Almost immediately, the white began to set. "Now you do yours."

  "Okay." Nerves tingling, Haven held the egg out and tapped it gently against the frypan's edge. Nothing happened — the egg's shell was unbroken.

  "A little harder." She tried again, and still nothing. It was only on the third try, when she gave it a little more force than she thought was wise, that she broke through, leaving a wedge-shaped trench that egg white began to leak through. "Okay, there you go! Now crack it into the pan!" Bracing her thumbs against it, Haven pushed. The egg came apart, the shell cracking as the yolk and white slipped out and plopped, rather less gently, into the pan next to Tara's perfect egg.

  "Crud," Haven muttered. "I think I broke the yoke."

  "It's fine, it happens," Tara said, holding out a bowl for Haven to deposit her eggshells into. "Give your hands a quick wash while these set. Then I'll show you the trick to get a perfect sunny-side-up egg."

  Haven nodded. The water from the tap above the sink came out at just the right temperature, hot enough to wash with but not so hot that it burned — not that Haven was sure the sarcotesta could burn — as she thered and rinsed. I can't believe I fucked up the yolk like that. The sick feeling was rising inside again, the knowledge that her presence here was unwanted sitting like a brick inside her.

  But only a heartbeat ter Tara's arms closed around her body from behind, hugging her gently. "You in there?" she said, her voice heavy with her smile. "Here." They reached past Haven and filled a little shotgss with some water from the tap. "Watch this." They guided Haven back to the stovetop. "First, a little salt, then-" They cast the water into the pan, where it immediately fsh-boiled into steam. Before it could escape, Tara cpped the frypan's lid into pce and trapped it. "Now we turn down the heat and wait. That way, it doesn't keep cooking through from the bottom, just sets the top. That's how you get the whites set but the yolk still runny."

  "Wait, that's it?" Haven, who had never seen an egg that had not already been prepared for her, was stunned at how...straightforward the process was. She would have thought there'd be some kind of fancy appliance involved to somehow strip all the white away from the egg after it had been boiled, reliquifying everything and shaping it into what a sunny-side-up egg looked like. "You just... fry it and then steam it?"

  "Yup!" Tara said, smiling. "Cooking's not so hard. Terrans have been cooking eggs for thousands of years. It's just a step by step process, you know? All of cooking is. And yeah, some recipes are more complicated, but shit, I'm not gonna throw you in the deep end and tell you to make a souffle or something. I don't think I could make a souffle without screwing up a bunch of times first. But that's how you learn, same as anything." With a hand around Haven's waist, she pulled her close and gave her a squeeze. "You'll pick it up quick. And I bet you really enjoy it, especially once you can do solid foods. There's nothing like eating something really good that you cooked for yourself. You get the satisfaction of having done something right along with a good meal."

  "I guess that makes sense," Haven said. "Are the eggs done?"

  "Should be just about," Tara said, nodding and and lifting the lid. The steam rushed out, and Haven could see the two perfectly-shaped fried eggs within. Well, one perfectly shaped and one slightly fttened — her own yolk had indeed lost its cohesion in the cracking, and had leaked out across the white to set against the hot surface of the frypan. Tara have the pan a gentle shake. "Ah, see? That's what you're looking for. The yolk still wobbles, but the white mostly stays where it is." They slipped a spatu under one egg, lifting it and depositing it on one of the slices of toast they'd prepared ahead of time, then repeated the act with the other. "And a little pepper on top, and bingo. Quick and easy breakfast, delicious, filling, and more-or-less healthy." They winked and took a big bite of theirs, the yolk popping as they did so. "Mmmf. Fuck that's good," they mumbled around it.

  "I guess I have to take your word for it for now," Haven said. She was sure that, when the time came to do it on her own, she'd manage to fuck it up even worse than she had this time.

  "You'll get there," Tara said. "And in the meantime, you get to have stuff like that amazing vichyssoise Anix made. Honestly, I want to make that with you sometime," they added with a smile and a little hipcheck. They finished their egg-on-toast and cleaned the escaped bits of yolk off their hands while Haven fought an internal war between how much she desperately wanted that and how much she knew she shouldn't be allowed anywhere near a kitchen.

  I don't want to fuck it up, if I fuck it up they'll realize what an awful little waste of air I am and never want to see me again. Which would be the best thing for Tara, of course, but Haven was starting to realize just how much she liked, wanted, needed to be around Tara. No one had ever been this warm or kind to her (except Anix and that was...different, somehow), which made sense because she didn't deserve it, but now that she had it she didn't ever want to let go of it.

  At the same time, how long could she really hope to hang onto this? Tara was certain to realize she was horrible and unloveable eventually. Wouldn't it be better to just rip the bandaid off? To get the inevitable return to baseline suffering out of the way before she got used to having someone around who actually cared about her? To make the inevitable crash hurt a little bit less for having let herself experience something good?

  She felt Tara's fingers under her chin, felt their lips against hers, felt their tongue gently explore them. She opened her mouth to it, and it slipped inside for a heartbeat, testing the waters by brushing against her own tongue. She didn't quite know how to respond, but Tara certainly knew what they were doing. An arm wrapped itself around Haven's waist and pulled her close as Tara began to explore her mouth. Fingers interced with, then gently gripped her hair (her wig, really, even if it had long-since bonded with the sarcotesta via some kind of strange Affini technology-ssh-magic), holding her firmly in pce. The kiss went on, broken only by Tara's occasional gasp for breath, a problem that Haven didn't have — the sarcotesta continued to breathe for her regardless of what her mouth was doing.

  The hot, tingling, almost electrical feeling began to build again, trickling slowly up her spine, knotting itself in her belly, clouding her thoughts with a familiar hunger. It was different, somehow, than how she remembered it. Was it the css-G xenodrugs that Anix had her on, slowly altering her as she healed beneath the sarcotesta? She was dimly aware of Tara marching her backwards across her hab, out of her kitchen and into her sitting room, as she realized that what she was missing was the jealousy, the hurt, that had come when she'd satisfied her physical needs with pornography. Her body wasn't involved, not in any way she recognized it, on any level that mattered — Tara was pying with the sarcotesta, and she felt it, and she felt herself respond to it. She felt Tara's weight as they pushed her onto the sofa, as they straddled her, as they leaned into her. Their teeth seized her lower lip and gently pulled, and Haven thought she would lose herself entirely in that simple tugging.

  She wasn't here. She wasn't ruining things. She could let Tara have her fun and enjoy herself in the process. This had never happened before. Can they bury me deeper? she thought as she felt the sarcotesta give under pressure as Tara cupped one of her breasts with one hand and-

  oh fuck

  -gave it the tenderest of squeezes. It was more than just the brilliant, searing arousal she felt — something warm and comforting seemed to creep through her. It was like all the times Tara had been pyful with her, had taken her by the arm or held her hand, had towered over her or pinned her against the wall of their office. It felt right.

  She wanted this. She wanted this forever. Haven wanted to bury herself deep in this feeling, to lock herself away within it and throw away the key. She wanted to belong to this feeling. She wanted to feel right.

  Tara pulled her lips away, only to lean in closer and whisper in her ear: "Hey, beautiful? You in there?"

  "U-uh, y-yes?" Haven whimpered.

  "Good." Tara buried their nose in between Haven's shoulder and neck and inhaled deeply. Haven felt fingers on her thigh, sliding effortlessly beneath her skirt. The sarcotesta primed to feel and feed her arousal, she felt those fingers like an oncoming tsunami. Tara's other hand took one of Haven's, and guided it between her own legs, pressed it against the stiffening bulge in their shorts. "Now, let's see if I can get you to make some noise for me, hm?"