Kanagen

  By the time Scoparia and the others finished pnning whatever arcane Affini bureaucratic shenanigans they had in mind, Leah had joined Lay and Trish on the sofa. She brought with her cinnamon rolls, three different kinds of cookies, and a braided tear-and-share loaf of spiced bread. The two florets had successfully gotten her to try a little bit of all of it; it was all delicious. They'd even gotten her to unstopper and begin drinking one of the fruit juice bottles, something tangy and sweet with an oddly savory undercurrent that made Trish think it was probably not of Terran origin.

  "There you are," Scoparia said, leaning over and ruffling Trish's hair. "Feeling a touch better with a little bit of confectionary in you?"

  "You tell me," Trish replied, her voice croaking under the strain of the tears that had been flowing not that long ago. "You figure out whatever paperwork nonsense you're going to do?"

  "Please, Trish," Tsuga said, taking a seat on the couch next to Lay and promptly wrapping two or three vines around her; Lay immediately let out a whimper and practically melted into her. "There's nothing nonsensical about bureaucracy. That's sort of the point of it, in fact."

  "Nice, clean, neat, logical paths for information and action," Polyphyl added, taking a seat on the far side and scooping Leah up into her vines, tickling her relentlessly. "And in this case, well, we get to figure those paths out essentially from zero," she added over the sound of Leah's ughter. "It's quite sad what happened to you, flower, but we will take care of you, even if you present a rather novel problem."

  "Oh, yes, terrible tragedy, Koer not getting to domesticate me," Trish grumbled, though without much rancor — she'd spent so much emotional energy on sobbing into Lay that she had little enough left for anger or frustration. "Gaslighting me for sixty years, that's fine, but not domesticating me..."

  "Trish." Scoparia knelt down and put one of her massive hand's on Trish's legs. "A pn was in pce to ensure your happiness. That pn fell apart. This is not a common thing in the Affini Compact, but it does happen on very rare occasions. I can tell you that, having been in touch with the local branch of the LTNRD, they are no less pleased with this turn of events than we are, or for that matter, than you are. No one is happy with this turn of events, and we will not only fix it, we will take steps to ensure that it cannot happen again."

  "Forgive me if I don't believe that you're going to refrain from using anyone to gaslight others into getting domesticated ever again." She crossed her arms and tried to look away, but no matter where she looked, there was clear evidence of the Affini.

  "Ever? No," Tsuga said. "It's sometimes necessary. But I can confidently say that, across nine blooms, I have only heard of hemerosyncretic wards being used a handful of times. It is not our first choice of tool, Trish. We only use it when necessary and appropriate."

  "Which, no doubt," Polyphyl added, Leah still cackling helplessly in her p, "is how this error came to be made in the first pce. With infrequency of use comes opportunity for misunderstandings, errors, misjudgements, and so on. Koer was misjudged as able to bear the burden of handling a hemerosyncretic ward. The fundamental problem, the mistake, was made long, long before its signs became apparent to anyone, even those directly involved."

  Scoparia's hand tightened just a little around Trish's thighs. "We are not perfect, Trish, and we are very much aware of that. But one thing we have become very good at is learning from our mistakes. This will not happen again, and you will be made whole, one way or another."

  "One way is looking a whole lot more likely than another," Trish mumbled.

  "It's possible," Scoparia acknowledged, "but my dear, you will be happy regardless." A vine slithered out of Scoparia's arm and brushed a few loose hairs out of Trish's eyes. "You look awfully tired. Perhaps we ought to take our leave?" She gnced first at Tsuga, then at Polyphyl, and added, "Thank you both so much for your assistance in this matter. And for the assistance of your lovely florets."

  "Of course!" Polyphyl said. "Anything we can do to help."

  "Not least for an old friend of this little sweetheart here." Tsuga gave Lay a squeeze, and Lay made a happy little squeaking noise that Trish couldn't help but turn her head toward. There she was, lying in the vines of the alien invader who had brainwashed her, gazing up at her with nothing but adoration in her eyes. The woman she'd been would have been terrified to see her like this, Trish was certain — but then, the woman she'd been had chosen this. Cass Hope had chosen to become Lay Sequi, maybe not entirely of her own free will, but certainly more so than many florets. Far more so than Rod and Meg.

  Trish remembered to breathe, pulled in a lungful of air and let it out slowly. "Yeah," she said, pinching at the bridge of her nose and rubbing away the ghosts of her tears. "Yeah, I think maybe that's a good idea."

  "Don't forget the care package!" Leah managed to squeak out out before being dragged back under a riptide of ughter.

  "We won't, little one," Scoparia said, smiling and giving Leah a scritch behind her ear. "What an adorable and talented little thing you are, aren't you?"

  While Scoparia doted on Leah, Trish turned her attention back to Lay, still checked out in Tsuga's vines. It wasn't right, she knew it wasn't right, but it was what was. There was no denying that, no hiding behind light-years of distance and decades of time. This was who the woman she'd known as Cass Hope was now. Maybe who she'd always been, underneath it all.

  Her hand was warm when Trish reached out to take it. "Hey. You there?"

  Lay let out a soft noise and slowly shifted her gaze back over to Trish. "I'm here," she said, smiling and squeezing Trish's hand, her fingers finding the spaces between Trish's own.

  "Yeah. Yeah you are." A moment passed. "We're, uh, leaving now, I think."

  Lay nodded, a nguid motion that let her deep, dark eyes stay locked on to Trish. "We'll talk."

  Trish nodded. "We will. Until then?"

  "Until then."

  And then the vines were coiling under Trish's arms, around her body, and lifting her away. "Up we go!" Scoparia said, cradling Trish in her arms while her vines piled all the remaining snacks into the basket with the leftover juice bottles. "Once again, thank you for the aid and hospitality, but this little cutie needs her rest." A few more pleasantries before the goodbye, and Trish was outside before she knew it, still rocking gently with the motion of Scoparia's stride.

  Cssic Affini. Never even bothered to ask. "I'm not totally infirm, you know," Trish grumbled. "I can walk."

  "Of that I've no doubt," Scoparia countered, not hesitating for even a moment. Step by long step, she continued onward. "I do keep very careful track of your health, after all. But isn't it nice, sometimes, to not have to walk? Especially when one is very worn out physically and especially emotionally?"

  Trish didn't bother replying to that. Instead, she gave voice to the thought that had been sitting, curdled and half-formed, in the back of her head most of the afternoon. "Is anything really going to happen to anyone because of all this? Because of what Koer did?"

  "First of all, little flower, this isn't about what Koer did — it's about how Koer was failed by their superiors. Second, you say this as if you're expecting some kind of punishment or retribution, but surely you know that isn't how we do things."

  Trish grunted. That much was true. As far as Trish knew, the only kind of consequences there were for anything in the Compact were roads that all led to domestication. "So all this paperwork is just blowing smoke."

  "Oh, no," Scoparia said, forcefully enough that Trish felt the word reverberate through her body. "Trish, I am beginning to think you do not understand what a colossal failure this situation represents for us. The local branch of the LTNRD is so wracked with shame and guilt over it that I should not be shocked were any of them to refuse to so much as set root outside their habs for a full bloom. Much of that time, I should think, will be spent on dissecting every possible iota of information regarding your wardship, Koer's approval to be your handler, and everything leading up to the whole event. All of it will be studied in the kind of detail your species once reserved for aviation accidents. Individual conversations will be debated for years. The consequences of their failure will echo throughout the Compact as the wider Bureaucracy integrates what the investigation learns, and new recommendations for how to safely select handlers for hemerosyncretic wards will be made, along with best practices for ensuring emotional support and wellness for the handlers during their mission. This mistake will not be repeated."

  Trish slowly let it all percote through her head. "But you won't stop doing it."

  "As you heard Tsuga say, we do not lightly make use of hemerosyncretic wards," Scoparia said, stroking Trish's hair with a vine. "But the work you do- Trish, you helped so many little terrans find their owners much sooner than they would have, find happiness in the Compact so much sooner than they would have. None of them had a Koer looking out for them and them alone, engineering their life down to the tiniest detail to ensure happiness even with a feral mindset. As miserable as you have felt throughout this experience, my dear, the experience of a true feralist, one clever enough to hide their feralism long-term, is so, so much worse. You have done a good thing, and if there is one thing I want you to fully and holistically integrate into your understanding of events, it is that no one — no one — has any grudge or upset with you regarding it."

  Trish stared off into the distance, following a river that wound its way up the side of the cylinder. "Except me."

  "Now that's quite silly," Scoparia said warmly. "It's not as if we gave you a choice in the matter."

  Her jaw was sck, but nothing was happening. Something inside Haven, some reflex deep in her brain, told her that she should be gasping for breath as she squirmed and bucked beneath Tara's weight. It didn't know that the sarcotesta was doing the breathing for her, keeping a steady flow of oxygen moving through her bloodstream, didn't care that even if she needed to, she couldn't breathe with her lungs. She tried to gasp, and nothing happened.

  "You're so good," Tara half grunted, half whimpered. They were wedged into an awkward position above Haven, their length sandwiched between Haven's soft thighs, her heels resting on their shoulders. They pressed her thighs together and thrust into them over and over, a slow, agonizing rhythm that guided it right along Haven's lubed-up nulge every time. "You're so good. Good girl, good girl."

  Haven clutched at the sheets, arcs of electric, tingling joy shooting up into her belly with every thrust. She squirmed, tried to arch her back, tried to press into each of Tara's thrusts, trying to squeeze out just enough extra sensation to push her over the top.

  There had to be a crest. There had to be a crest. She let out a whimpering sound that slowly twisted itself into needy "Pleaaaaaase!"

  She felt Tara's fingers against her face, against her lips, turning her head ever so gently. She focused her vision on Tara's face, on their eyes staring hungrily down at her, at their lower lip pinched between their teeth. She could feel the groan coming out of them as they finished all over her thighs, all over her stomach. They didn't stop thrusting, didn't stop giving her nulge long, drawn out strokes, until they began to go soft, whereupon they reached down with one hand and cupped the soft little outcropping of sarcotesta and began to massage it, squeeze it, py with it with their fingertips. If what had come before was blissful agony, this was something else entirely, a hurricane of sensation and pleasure, the overpressure of which pushed every other thought, every other feeling, everything else inside her completely out of the way. It became all she could feel, all she was really aware of.

  The crest finally, blessedly came, and Tara kept her there for what felt like hours but what was probably just a handful of minutes before they flopped down on the bed next to her, red in the face and grinning almost drunkenly. "Good?"

  Haven let out a whimper. It was about all she was capable of.

  Tara ughed. "Yeah, same. I swear, every time you're softer." They ran a hand along her thigh, setting off little tickling aftershocks. "I can't wait until you're out of this thing and I can properly fuck you." They cuddled up to her, folding a leg over one of hers and pressing themself tightly up against her. The sarcotesta dutifully informed her of the scent of them, their weight against her, and the pressure-

  How are they already getting firm again? With no small amount of mental effort, Haven pushed herself into rolling over to face Tara, snuggling into her. "I want that too," she said quietly. She wanted to feel Tara inside her, wanted to feel that much closer to them, as close as one could get to someone else.

  The closer you were to someone, the harder it was for them to slip away — right?

  Haven's stomach clenched around that thought, that worry. The cyclokatapnothane was doing its job, and the impulsive and intrusive thoughts of self-harm and self-hate were thoroughly suppressed, but it didn't stop her from just pin worrying, and Haven was worried. But the worry wasn't that Tara would slip away. She had been reassured on that score several times, most recently in a very physical sense. There was another worry hidden beneath, a reflection of the thought that slipped into and out of Haven's mind as its twin grew to eclipse it.

  I'm going to get her domesticated if I fuck this up.

  How Tara knew, Haven couldn't fathom, but within heartbeats they had reached out to cradle Haven's cheek in one hand, thumb resting against her soft lips. "Hey, you okay in there?" they said. "Crashing a little?"

  Was she crashing? "Maybe," she said, lips quivering around Tara's thumb. "But it's nothing."

  "It's not nothing," Tara said firmly. "It was 'nothing' for how many years and I let it lie? Let you suffer? No. Tell me."

  Haven squirmed, but Tara held her firmly pinned, legs wrapped around one thigh, arm draped over her. Part of Haven was actually kind of turned on by that, but she put that thought aside. She probably should tell Tara, she thought, because keeping in all her hurt before had only meant she'd had to keep on feeling it. Tara might not have a magical xenodrug to fix this worry, but they at least deserved honesty from her.

  "I'm still just worried you're going to be domesticated because of me."

  "Still?" Tara sighed, leaned in, and kissed Haven on the forehead. "Sweetheart, I don't care. Domesticated, not domesticated — so what? I'm already happy. What are they going to do to make me more happy that they haven't already done? So I have an impnt and have to call someone Mistress or whatever, so what? What matters is being with you." They pulled Haven in close and squeezed her. "Because I love you. I have for a long time."

  Haven felt a warmth spread throughout, permeating every inch of her body. She tried, in vain, to remember the st time she'd heard those words.

  "Even before. When I was working for you. I never pnned to do anything about it, I mean, I was just some nobody from the Russosphere and you were going to be one of the richest people in the gaxy, and I didn't-" They swallowed. "Even if I could have worked up the courage to tell you, I worried that you'd only think I was after the money. But I don't give a fuck about the money. I never did. I got to see sides of you that I don't think anyone else did, things you never showed anyone else. You tried to hide it, but I could see how much you were hurting, and I felt like we had a connection in that, and before I knew it..." A smile slowly spread across their face. "And then I got to meet the real you, the you I was sensing beneath who you had to pretend to be. And I love her even more."

  "...really?"

  "Really really." They ughed, and added, "You know, I wanted to wait until this thing was off." They ran a finger along the curve of Haven's face, smooth and featureless save for her lips. "I wanted to see the look in your eyes when I said those words. But you needed to hear them now, so I wasn't going to be selfish about it. I love you, Haven, and wherever you go, not only will I happily follow, but I'll feel lucky to have the opportunity to do so. So don't worry about me. Okay?"

  Haven leaned forward and buried her face in Tara's shoulder. "Okay."

  She was still worried. But maybe just a little less than she had been before.