Work Text:
David Wu kissed his husband, Johnathan Wu, through the masks they wore to protect against the smog layering the cityscape. It was a silly act brought about 52 days ago when Johnathan had forgotten his beloved’s goodbye kiss before putting on their masks, and decided to exchange it anyway. Since then, it had become a ritual to share both pre and post masking kissies as they got ready for work. That day was no different, it was a completely ordinary day.
They left their apartment, hand in hand, but all too soon David withdrew his hand to his heart, savoring the lingering heat on his fingers as he parted with Johnathan. They shared a hatred for this place, the intersection of Main and Maple, the road where they separated each day to their places of employment. At least David knew his other half’s warmth would help him push through the day until they could be reunited, as it had for a decade.
The monotony of work at the textiles factory couldn’t even be broken up by the ongoing war, even three years into the thing. Gossip whispered among bored workers muttered that the mysterious plant xenos had already entered the Sol System and would likely reach Terra within a month. David was terrified, as was everyone, but even moreso, he was tired. The war demanded supplies, creation of those supplies demanded labor, and labor demanded increased hours and quotas. A small, traitorous part of him was just looking forward to the war’s end, regardless of outcome.
Hands radiating with the pulsating ache of a day of hard labor, David unlocked his phone. The act was met with a sigh; it looked like the conflict hit Johnathan’s corporate data entry position even harder. The Blue Moon Tavern was always his time killer of choice in this situation. It had a rustic, almost fantasy aesthetic he vibed with, and its close proximity to their apartment meant that he could rush home the moment Johnathan’s irregular schedule ended. He had gotten off late enough in the day for the bar to be full, and its patrons raucous. Wanting to pass his time peacefully, David took up his favorite table, alone in the back.
Hours later, another apologetic text from his love woke David from his stupor. He would spend this night alone, it seemed. It was time to get home then, he already had one or two beers more than he should’ve. Stepping out of the bar, he stuck a groggy, sore hand into his pockets, causing his wallet to unceremoniously fumble into the dark alley beside. He stooped over to pick it up, but another had reached it quicker.
“Bad luck, bud. Sorry ‘bout this,” the gruff voice of a man now known as Ace Punicae, Second Floret, echoed between the enclosed walls of the alley.
This week’s paycheck was in there, if David lost that, they wouldn’t be able to make next month’s rent prepayment. Without further thought, he lunged.
On March 25th 2556, at 1:07 AM, David Wu passed away from blood loss out of a stab wound on his abdomen. He made it four steps out of the alleyway, towards his and his lover’s apartment. The security camera picked up a faint muttering in his final moments as he reached for home.
“My Johnny…”
–
Peony May loved plants. Even within her tiny closet of an apartment, she loved plants as much as the space would let her. Little pots containing numerous types of succulents, grasses, and flowers dotted every flat surface of her room where even the vines of an English ivy grew up her walls. By far her favorite was the Blue Myrtle cactus that sat as tall as her, right by her bedside.
Her arms were covered in bandages with little cartoon tree and flower designs. All her cuts came from the clumsiness that followed waking up next to her cactus. Each and every time she was poked, she’d giggle out a “Oh, you’re a little prickly today, ain’t cha!” that eventually turned into a full-bellied laugh as she reached towards the perpetually open first-aid kit next to the cactus.
Early April saw the closure of the florist boutique she worked at. The war devastated the little shop’s sales, but especially this late into it, nobody had the time nor cash to spend on the luxury of flowers. Peony loved what she did and was never bothered by its low pay. But due to this, she had no savings and was locked out of her space within the week. Her possessions, her plants were disposed of.
Destitute and devoid of the types of experience needed to quickly find replacement work, she trekked to the last public park in a 10 kilometer radius. Within the lush greenery, she begged for food amongst a crowd who could hardly feed themselves.
On April 14th, at 3:57 PM, Peony May sat in the shade of a grand oak, and never got back up.
–
Albert Morrison was a wealthy man. Inversely to most terrans, his prosperity only grew with the continuation of the war. Running an interplanetary logistics megacorporation had its benefits when raw materials across the entire Terran Accord needed to be put towards a united cause, he loved to boast.
He had a habit of performing a tap tap of his index finger above his temple when explaining a concept. That day was no different. On a video call with his two sons who had long since left the nest in order to pursue their own ventures in the deep reaches of space, a tap tap punctuated a lengthy conversation about business risk and competitive advantage.
It flashed like lightning across his vision. A blinding light across both eyes accompanied a nausea that saw him fall from his chair. “Dad! What happened? Are you okay?” and “Do you need help? Should I call a doctor?” Made up the contents of the two voices he heard, but what scared him most, more than the loss of vision or pulsating migraine, was that he couldn’t differentiate the voices.
The first one was Bennett’s, right? It carried that inflection he put on questions he had since talking for the very first time, but then why didn’t Albert know for certain. These were his progeny, his boys, how could he not recognize them?
Brain cancer was the answer. Over several months, some of the most accomplished doctors on Terra waged a war within Albert, and won. It was grueling, it was miserable, it was lonely, oh so lonely, but it was over. Albert was on the fast track to a full recovery.
Albert lay on the same bed he hadn’t meaningfully moved from in months, on a video call with Bennett and Noah, professing how the two of them not coming to visit him at any point was indeed the correct move. In truth, he was heart-breakingly lonely.
There were times throughout the process when he couldn't even recall his loved ones’ faces, but he couldn’t ask them to be here. His boys were at delicate points in their own start-ups, to ask them to abandon profits purely for reasons of sentimentality and comfort went against everything he had taught them.
A tap tap capped off his insincere speech, and an all too familiar nausea overtook him. All the money in the Accord couldn’t get those howling voices to their father’s side at that moment.
On April 14th, at 10:45 PM, Albert Morrison passed away due to unknown medical complications, with an unintelligible wailing of sounds reverberating through his ears.
–
My work was fulfilling. The Office of Transitional Neoxenoveterinary Archaeobureaucracy wanted records of all the little sophonts for each of the planets we liberated. While living terrans were always the priority, those that passed before we could save them needed documentation, too. Filling up files and binders with observations pulled out of security camera footage, government records, advertisement data, and perpetual cell phone recordings that some areas mandated from before our arrival was satisfying. It felt like breathing just a miniscule bit of life back into those gone. Those we failed.
A dull hum from my overworked comms device was the only sound in the hab. This was good, I could concentrate on my work in peace. A glaring blue light radiating off my monitor was the only light in the hab. This was good, I didn’t need the distraction of anything else. Another bundle of dry leaves sloughed off of me from… somewhere, it didn’t matter. This was good, less mass meant I didn’t need as many nutrients and sunlight, so I could work more.
Speaking of, I looked away from the documents and recordings for the first time in hours, or days, maybe? Time didn’t really matter. My two-gallon jug of mineralized water, the largest my compiler could produce, that I always kept some tendrils in had emptied at some point. I swiveled my chair to face the compiler, and was met with a floor littered with discolored and decaying leaves. The thought of navigating my mess brought about an emptiness that I knew would be filled with more work.
It was fine to put off refilling my water, the worse that would happen is the loss of more leaves. No, that was a good thing, I had to remind myself. How come I didn’t feel very good, then?
Knock Knock
The annoying rattling noise bounced between the small walls of my studio hab. An even more obnoxious voice chimed, a bit muffled through the thick door, “Darling, don’t you think you’ve been in there a little too long? How about you open up for a chat?”
“I’m busy, leave me alone!” I intended to shout back. Instead all that came out was a dry, reedy whisper. Realizing that I couldn’t tell her to dirt off , I moved to turn my hab to soundproof mode, slightly confused that it wasn’t already. As I tapped the switch on my comms device to do so, an error message popped-up at the same time the outside door shot open.
“Dear, if you’re going to be uncooperative, this will be all the more difficult for us both. I don’t want to force anything, but I will if necessary. We voted, and with 93.73% for, this is an official wellness check,” her unwavering sing-song voice declared. Her voice and vines were just as magnificent as the day we met. Just as beautiful as the day I started my work a month ago, the day we broke-up. She stood taller than I remembered, though.
“A wellness check? That’s absurd. All I’m doing is important work for OTNA,” I scoffed.
“Yes, dear, your work is all you are doing. There is more to life you must see to, I am here to ensure that.”
“What about the lives of the little ones that didn’t make it, the ones we failed? Someone must see to them,” I shot back in a weak voice that almost failed to reach its target.
“And they will be, by their friends, by their loved ones, by the many, many we have saved. That is why your work is done, no? For those alive who wish to grow closer to the ones lost. This is not a burden you need to bear alone,” her gentle voice intoned.
“Lena Avery,” I started softly, my speech boldening as I continued, “was disowned by her single father when she told him she was a woman. With a loss of funding for her university fees, she dropped out and found whatever work would take her. It happened to be a trucking job, delivering materials all over the continent for the war, our war. The frequent displacement never allowed her to form connections with anyone, anywhere. No friends, no family, and certainly no doctors that she was around long enough to get an estrogen prescription from. Her only companion was the sheep plush she held onto her entire life, perpetually strapped into her passenger seat. Lena conversed with it day in and day out. I have recordings, wanna see?”
My vines frantically navigated my comms device as the larger affini stood still as a statue. Quickly, I pulled up Lena’s profile, and hovering the first video file with a vine, I quavered out, “How about this one where she giddily belts out to her favorite pop songs with the radio?” A shaky vine moved half-way down the profile. “Or this one? A shouting match with herself in the dead of night, cursing out her father, her job, the world, God, and those fucking weeds ,” I spat with a venom that I hoped mirrored her own. It was hubris to expect myself to understand her, but I wanted to connect with Lena, even if it was an infinitesimal amount. Eventually, I scrolled down to the final recording. My entire body trembled, I couldn’t tap the file, even if I wanted to. Still, I spoke, “There are no words in this one, just the unstifled, full-body sobs of a woman as she drags her favorite pocket knife through her-”
“Enough! I will not standby and allow you to harm yourself any further!” The other affini’s shout did little to dispel the frenzy that so thoroughly engulfed my everything .
“Do you not understand! If we had been here just a little sooner… We failed them. I failed them all! All I can do… All I can do is remember, make sure their memory lives on forever!” Thorns rose across my vines like raised hackles, pointing towards the being that slowly approached.
“This was the path chosen by the Compact’s most experienced strategists and analysts. What has happened was the optimal solution. The unavoidable losses were unfortunate. Horribly, disgustingly unfortunate, and it is not your responsibility to carry that burden. If ‘remembering’ is killing you, then you should not,” A frigid voice I don’t think I recognized chilled me like the void of space.
“How rotting dare you!” I was upon her, thorns lashing out before my roar had ended. As our forms entangled and we toppled over, I felt sticky sap flowing out of her several lacerated creepers start to coat my thorns.
Our scuffle ended just as quickly as it began. I struggled to flail much further as the sap slowed my movements. Furthermore, my shedded mass allowed the other affini a significant size advantage. Longer vines that far outnumbered my own entangled and knotted around each and every vine connected to my weeping core. Pushing and pulling with every fiber of my existence allowed not even an additional millimeter of freedom.
At this point, our previous terran impersonations had completely untangled, only our heads held any semblance of form. We lay just like that for several minutes, my morass of unshapen vines atop and firmly interlaced with her morass of unshapen vines. My face looked down upon hers.
“I just… I don’t understand it. How do you, all of you, keep going?” A dry whisper emitted from the few vines within my head that still held form. A soft crack rang throughout the motionless room as tears began to form beneath the eyes of my wooden mask.
Maybe she knew that no answer could satisfy me, maybe she just didn’t have an answer, or maybe an answer simply didn’t exist, either way my captor sat silent. In place of an answer, she gently ran a lone tendril down my cheek. Following in its wake, the tears grew and grew until my mask shattered entirely. The instant it did, several creepers shot up to catch the ones in my rapidly unfurling head. Now, no part of me held shape. I was a layer of vines, with every last one firmly interwoven and bound by the larger affini’s.
It was warm and comfortable and relaxing, this body which was literally incapable of holding tension. Nothing was expected of me as I could not move, nor even speak. At best, I could coil a single vine a tiny bit, only to be met with the same action performed by her vine that held mine. I did so across my entire body, a single tendril at a time.
I squeezed and she squeezed back. Then, I squeezed and she squeezed back. Then, I squeezed and she squeezed back. We continued this dance until I knew every last vine of mine was firmly embraced by one of hers. It was her way of letting me know she was here to support me. It was my way to ask for reassurance, and receive it without judgement.
I was safe. I was warm. I was loved. There were scary things within me, but in this moment they didn’t need to exist. In this moment alone, maybe, just maybe, I could let myself live.