Dinner hadn't been a complete disaster. The chicken soup had been delicious. Piper even managed to keep herself from giving any more glowing reviews of the Affini and domestication in general. Trish had turned in, bone-tired, and fallen asleep surprisingly easily.
There were, thankfully, no dreams. At least, none she remembered as she sat at the table the next morning warming her hands on a cup of fresh-brewed coffee. In the grand scheme of things, Trish had found very few problems that a good night's sleep and a good cup of coffee couldn't solve, or at least improve.
Unfortunately, her current situation was one of them. The knowledge that Koer had used her hung over her like a cloud, even as Piper settled in next to her and poured herself a mug of coffee.
"Hey, Auntie Trish. Oooh, that smells good. Miss Scoparia, what's for breakfast?" she called out.
"Pancakes, bacon, and scrambled eggs," Scoparia's voice replied from the kitchen. "In just a few moments, flowers."
"Oooo, nice!" She took a sip of coffee and let out an appreciative groan. "Mmm, that is good. I wonder if it's compiled. If it is, I gotta get the code." She smiled and reached out, her fingers brushing Trish's shoulder. "Hey, you okay?"
"Hm?" Trish gnced at her not-quite-a-granddaughter, mind catching up with what she was hearing. "Honestly, I don't know," she muttered. She, too, took a sip of the coffee. It was every bit as good as Piper said.
"Well, if you want to talk about it with someone who isn't an affini, I'm here. I don't know if I can really do much except listen. But I can do that."
Trish nodded. Scoparia hadn't told Piper over dinner, so she must have done it after Trish had gone to sleep. She felt strangely thankful for it. The thought of going into it all over again just to expin it to Piper left her gut twisting. "Thanks, kiddo."
"Hey, come on, I take care of Grandma when she needs it, I can't take care of you?" She smiled and gave Trish a wink. "You're gonna be okay. You and Grandma are like, the toughest people I know."
Trish snorted. "Bullshit."
"No, I mean it! Like, yeah, you're weird about stuff, I'm not saying you're not-" She paused. "Though, honestly, that weirdness makes a lot more sense now. You're even weirder than Grandma about things. You'd never let Mx. Oroxylum come over and help you out while I was gone like Grandma is."
"... she has an affini coming over regurly?"
"Yeah? Mx. Oroxylum checks up on her every so often, and I asked zem to, y'know, step it up a little while I'm away. Grandma's like a hundred and twelve, I couldn't just leave her alone."
"An elder care wardship might just be necessary sooner rather than ter," Scoparia added, swooping in and gently ying down a pair of broad ptes loaded down with mountains of breakfast. "But I'll leave that in the capable vines of this Mx. Oroxylum, who no doubt knows the situation better than I. Eat up, you two!" She gave a pair of little cps with her hands, and a smile that said I am going to find this absolutely adorable.
Trish sighed, picked up the fork Scoparia had id down alongside the pte, and dug in. The pancakes were fluffy and rich, soft enough that the fork easily cut them, and imbued with the butter and maple syrup melting atop them. The scrambled eggs were moist little clouds that all but melted on her tongue. The bacon had bite without crunch, perfectly cooked. It was delicious.
Something bubbled up inside Trish, a itch she couldn't quite put her finger on the source of. This is really nice, she thought, and between swallowing and spearing another mouthful on her fork, she let out a quiet, "Thanks."
"Flower, it's my pleasure," Scoparia said, ruffling Trish's hair. She felt her shoulders tense for a moment, but that was all. Scoparia didn't maintain the contact, and the food really was good. "You deserve only the best," the affini continued, "and I intend to provide that for you in the here and now and to ensure that you receive it in the future, whatever form it may take."
Trish rolled her eyes. "I can just see it now. Scoparia Cryptantha, advocate for my independence."
"If it's what's best for you, my dear, then yes. I told you that I mean to make things right, did I not? Did you think I misspoke?" There was some kind of energy radiating from Scoparia, invisible yet somehow palpable, and Trish shivered before it. "Did you think I lied to you? That I made such a statement casually, without meaning every word of it?"
It took Trish a moment to collect herself. She covered by taking another bite of pancake. "I think," she said after swallowing, "that your conception of "what's best for me" and mine are very different."
Scoparia sighed, and reached down to gently stroke Trish's hair again. "Though it pains me to remind you, you should remain aware that your present conception of "what's best for you" is not your own. Or at least, not what it would have been."
The handle of the fork dug into Trish's hand.
"I say this not to trouble you," Scoparia continued, "but to encourage you to let go of preconceptions that do not serve the cause of your well-being. Seeing me as diametrically opposed to you somehow does not help you. It only makes it more difficult for me to help you."
"Miss Scoparia's right, Auntie Trish," Piper said, reaching out and putting a hand on her shoulder again. "She just wants to help, and you don't have to hang onto weird feral stuff from sixty years ago anymore. You just have to be you. You're actually kinda cool when you're not going maximum feral, you know?" she added with a smile.
Trish heard the words, but they slid off her without the slightest friction. She was too busy processing the truth: that she hadn't meaningfully reevaluated herself or the world around her, the structures upon which it was built and the reality of existence within it, for six decades. As far as her brain was concerned — or at least, as far as it had been concerned up until very recently — it was still 2554, and she was still fresh to the generations-long struggle to preserve the st little ember of human freedom against a promised future day when it could rekindle a fire.
Koer had turned her into the perfect soldier to fight Cass Hope's war.
You fight for as long as you can, and when you reach your limit, know it and say it. That had always been Cass's rule. But Trish either couldn't know her limit or didn't have one. Cass had long since given in, given up what she thought of as a personal war against fascism, a personal war for revenge, and here Trish was, sixty years ter, still in the trenches, and if not for the colpse of Koer's hypnotic programming, she'd be as fresh-faced as she'd been at the beginning.
"Auntie Trish?" The hand on her shoulder jogged her just a little. "Hey, you okay?"
Trish let her eyes fall closed and remembered to breathe. "Yeah. Yeah, I'm okay."
The arm went off, a gentle chime that pulled Haven all the way up from the twilight zone she'd been dozing in to full wakefulness. Something tickled in the back of her mind at the sound. She had to get up, wash up, get dressed, and make breakfast. A list of discrete tasks began to line themselves up, one by one, in her head.
First was pulling back the bnket she was nestled under. She rode the momentum of the arm to get that done, swinging her feet out of bed and letting them down to the floor. She pushed off, rising to a standing position, the sarcotesta keeping her perfectly banced the whole time.
She made her way to the bathroom, climbing up on the stepstool so she could reach the sink. She washed her ck of a face and hands, then picked up her toothbrush — she had teeth to clean again, after all. After a rinse and spit, she put it back, and returned to her room to dress.
She'd picked out what she wanted to wear today the night before to make it easier. The long, colorful socks went on easy, as did the bra and panties that perfectly matched the "skin" tone of the sarcotesta — she was getting good at fastening the hooks behind her back. Then, the swishy floral-print dress, resting easily on her shoulders, gently brushing against her thighs. She took a moment just to twirl in it, and it felt heavenly. She stepped into a pair of slippers, brushed her hair into something approaching shape, and stepped out to...
Wait, what came next?
She'd gotten up, washed up, gotten dressed...
Was it food? But what should she have? The compiler could make literally anything, and of course if she'd pnned ahead she could cook something, though naturally she'd have to limit herself to anything her stomach could tolerate at this point in her healing process-
"Okay, it seems we've hit a roadblock there," Anix said, her vines coiling around Haven and squeezing her gently. "But you were doing very well up to now! Good girl, Haven! May I ask what the sticking point was?"
"Uhm." Haven shook her head a little bit. There was still the itch, like she hadn't quite finished saying what she'd meant to say. "I know I'm supposed to make breakfast next. But I didn't know what, and then I started trying to figure out what to make, and I just sort of ... froze, I guess? There's just so much I could have."
Living with the cyclokatapnothane in her system was a challenge. Choosing to do things required serious effort, and quickly exhausted her reserves. Conditioned responses, though, seemed to be rather easier, and so that was what Anix had been working on. The new arm chimes were meant to prompt her morning routine.
Anix nodded. "I see. Option paralysis. Might I suggest oatmeal?"
Oatmeal. That was easy. Hot water, oats, maybe a bit of yogurt or brown sugar. She could do that. "Okay," she said, setting out across the hab. Once she'd ordered everything out of the compiler, she climbed up on the kitchen stepstool, took down a pot from the rack, filled it with the appropriate amount of water, and began to heat it up. Everything came together easily enough after that, and soon she had a bowl of perfectly acceptable oatmeal on the table.
"Very good! Once prompted, you handled that quite well. A hab AI could likely jog you out of a sticky pce like that, but it's still something we'll have to work on and fine-tune." She took a seat at the table across from Haven as she took a spoonful of oatmeal and brought it to her mouth. It was warm, rich, and satisfying, and she'd made it herself, and that only made it taste better. Anix's vines stretched out across the table and began to gently stroke her. "And of course, with time and therapy, your dosage can likely be titrated down, which will make things easier for you."
Haven nodded, swallowing her mouthful of oatmeal. It was hard work, having to relearn how to work up the willpower to do even simple things, but it beat reflexively hating herself every moment of every day. It was frustrating, sometimes, but nevertheless Haven had never felt this good in her life. She had everything she could possibly need, she was out from under her monster of a father, her body was healing, she had friends, actual friends, she had Tara-
The warm feelings had nowhere to go. She felt as if she ought to be crying, but of course cked the means to do so. She froze again, the sarcotesta losing track of what she was doing, spoon halfway between bowl and mouth.
"Haven?"
It took her a moment to focus enough to respond. "I'm okay," she said. "I'm just...happy. And a little overwhelmed by it." She slipped the spoon, and the oatmeal on it, into her mouth. Even something as simple as oatmeal could be bliss when things were going this well.
"I see," Anix said, smiling as her vines coiled around Haven. "Well, as far as reasons to have pses in concentration go, I think that's a pretty good one."
"You really think I'm going to be able to be independent like this?"
"I think it's very much within the realm of possibility," Anix said, giving Haven the tenderest of headpats. "You are a very sweet and very charming little sophont, no longer being pulled under by your own brain trapping you in a vicious cycle of self-hatred. You have other challenges now, of course, but I see no reason why you shouldn't be able to meet them. And even if you fall short, things will be okay."
"Because I'll be domesticated." She took another mouthful of oatmeal.
"Do you find that objectionable?"
She shook her head. She'd done enough reading on the subject the st few days, at Anix's recommendation and with her help to expin certain things, to know that it wasn't anything like what Trish had described it as. She wondered how Trish had ever gotten it in her head to begin with, honestly. "It's more that- Tara definitely doesn't need it, and I don't want to be the reason they choose it. Not because I'm inherently awful or anything like that. It's just that they've already done so much and given up so much for me. They shouldn't have to do more. Does that make sense?"
"It's not the worst reason I've ever heard," Anix said, "but my dear, that's just how love is. There's no sense trying to fight it. Even we Affini have long since been conquered by it."
She sat with that for a minute, taking another mouthful of oatmeal, and then another. There was something to what Anix was saying, of course. With only a moment's thought, Haven realized that if Tara were the one being domesticated, she would follow them into it, without question. Not because she felt she was undeserving of being independent, or of being herself, but simply because she wanted to be with them. So why couldn't it be the other way around?
It could. Simple as that.
"I guess so," she said. It was still strange, if a tremendous relief, to be able to look at herself like that.
"I think you would make a marvelous little independent sophont, but for this issue — and if we can't correct for it, then you'll make a marvelous little floret, and all the happier for it."
Haven nodded. "So, if we can't get me to that point of being able to take care of myself, you'd be keeping me?" It was a question she'd been puzzling over, to be sure, but had never really found the proper time to ask.
All of Anix's vines, most notably the ones stroking her hair, went still for a moment. "Flower, I-" She hesitated, then began again: "Someone will, yes, should it represent the better outcome for you. But it will not be me. Not because you are not a charming, wonderful little sophont whom I very much enjoy the company of, but because I am-" Another pause, and a subtle coiling inward that Haven felt more than saw. "I am not in a position to adopt a floret at the moment. I am still mourning the passing of my st floret, and it would not be fair to another floret to take them on while I was still so preoccupied. If you had come into my vines a century from now...well, that might be a little different. Were my core not still riddled with grief I would cim you so fast the movement would not even register in your vision. Which, to be fair, is not actually that fast. I would be moving significantly faster than is necessary to accomplish that feat were I to submit a Notice of Intent to Domesticate regarding you."
Haven knew that even just a few days ago, hearing something like this would have absolutely destroyed her. Even now, she felt a hollow form in the pit of her stomach, but Anix's kind words soothed the ache well enough. "Who would do it, then?"
"We would find the perfect owner for you, my dear." Anix gave Haven a squeeze and pnted a kiss atop her head. "We would look across the whole Protectorate, the whole supergaxy, the whole Compact if we had to. You deserve nothing less."
"But...what about Tara?"
"Tara?" Anix lifted Haven's chin with a vine. "Petal, what do you mean?"
"You'd find the perfect owner for me, but what about Tara? I don't want to drag them into something if it's not perfect for them, too."
"None of that," Anix said, her vine pressing against Haven's lips and silencing her, even if she hadn't been talking with them in the first pce. Reflexes were reflexes. "It is clear to me that Tara is very enamored of you for the same reasons I am; you are charming, sweet, thoughtful, and entirely willing to put others' needs ahead of your own. Though, I suspect that the tter is yet another lingering symptom of your self-hatred. We're going to have to work on getting you to be just the slightest bit greedy, I think."
Haven's guts clenched, and even through the veil of xenodrugs she felt something sick churning inside her. She shook her head. "I don't want to be like him."
"My dear little Haven, though I've never met him, I can assure you that I don't think you could ever be like your father even if you tried. And I am not asking you to try to be like him — I am asking you to treat yourself as you would anyone else. Your brain isn't getting in the way of that anymore, but it's still a skill you need to learn. Don't try to be endlessly giving, Haven. It's very sweet, but leave that to us — we are made for it. You, my little flower, were made to receive, just like every other little creature in this cosmos."
The guilt and discomfort Haven were feeling, by comparison to the st couple of days, was very uncomfortable. By comparison to the constantly churning ocean of self-loathing she'd been drowning in before, though, it barely registered. She didn't like having to think of it that way, but at least it got those feelings under control. She wasn't going to spiral over this, even if she felt a little bad.
Discomfort aside, she still didn't want to drag Tara into domestication. Tara didn't need it, and as far as she knew had never expressed an interest in it at any point before or after she'd woken up in this strange new future. She should get to choose what she wanted to do, who she wanted to be. Though, that thought gave her pause: this wasn't something she had any control over, anyway. If the Affini chose to domesticate her, that was their decision, and if Tara chose to follow her into it, that was their decision. Hating herself over it was kind of silly — this wasn't something that was really in her control. She hardly even knew anything about what being a floret was like.
But, she realized, she was sitting across from someone who could expin it all to her, in detail. Affini were crazy about florets, and if Anix really as as preoccupied as she said she was over her st floret, and had been holding back about them the entire time she'd been looking after Haven, it probably wouldn't be that hard to get her to talk about them. "What were they like? Your floret, I mean."
"Prrtrüantk? Oh, you would have loved her, Haven. And she would have loved you. I do wish you could have met her, but you're about eighty years too te for that. She's taken up her part in the Eternal Chorus, and when it's quiet I listen for her song. Have you ever heard a vreeüt singing, Haven?" When she shook her head, Anix added, "Oh, well, we have to rectify that. Hab, please py back Prrt's concerto for the aquacultural festival, oh, let's see... 38th Year Küütsktek? Yes, I think that's the one." The hab made a chiming noise, and the sounds of a crowd began whispering from the corners. "That's around, oh, I think about 2410 by your calendar," she added in a whisper as the crowd noises slowly died away.
Haven felt the sound before she heard it, a kind of vibration that set her teeth on edge before the resonances became apparent to her ear. There was a low keening slowly pushing itself into the audible range, wavering just on the edge. Then, other voices joined in, higher in tone, staying where Haven could properly hear them, striking notes with fluttering swiftness that no human voice could ever have hoped to replicate. Haven had been dragged to any number of "cultural" events like operas by her father, who she was pretty sure had no appreciation of anything approaching art and did it only because he felt he had to be seen doing it based on how often he fell asleep during performances — but this was something wholly outside her experience, bizarre but not quite off-putting, but thoroughly beyond her understanding.
"There," Anix whispered as another fluttering, multitonal voice joined the song, "that's Prrt! Oh, what a voice..." She squeezed Haven tightly and made a kind of chittering sound of her own. "Can you believe that prior to domestication they had her cleaning spillways? But we made it right, and just listen to her..."
Haven didn't quite get it. Whatever Prrt had been doing, she'd clearly been good at it, if Anix's reaction was anything to go by, but whatever artistry there was to the strange overtone birdsong, it wasn't anything Haven understood. Not yet, anyway.
"And we'll make it right with you too, Haven," she whispered. "That is the Affini Compact's promise to you. It will be made right, no matter the shape that takes."
"I know," Haven whispered back.
