Chapter Text
Something is amiss, Satya knows it. The feeling is familiar, an awareness that she has said or done something to offend someone, to upset or anger them. She does not know, of course, what that something was, so it is rather difficult to remedy the situation.
Usually, in the past, she has not tried—often, guessing as to what a person has been upset by only exacerbates the situation, for reasons that she can never quite place her finger on in the moment. In hindsight, when she tries to take an accounting of the situation, it is easy to see where she has made a mistake, but somehow, invariably, she says the wrong thing in these conversations. So, instead, she prefers to simply hope that things will blow over, because it is better, in most cases, to offend someone once and to wait for them to recover, to forgive, or to confront her, rather than to seek them out and risk adding fuel to the fire.
Naturally, this has its own drawbacks. Some people have thought her cold, or unsympathetic, have thought that she does not care about them or about having hurt them because she has chosen not to try and apologize immediately. That is not so, but too often she catches their anger too late to give a simple apology. It has never been as easy for her as it seems it must be for other people, where they say something which evidently is wrong and apologize promptly. She tends to notice others’ emotions in hindsight, or only once they have escalated beyond the point of a simple smoothing over.
By then, she knows, a blanket I apologize is taken as insincere. Too often, people think that if she does not know what she is apologizing for she cannot mean it, that her words are merely an attempt at appeasement. That is not so—she regrets that she has caused them distress. And she does regret her action, too, she just cannot easily name it, not if they do not tell her. To ask that, however, only invites a worse response; most people seem to think that one ought to know what one has done to feel contrition. It is not enough to simply regret an outcome, one must regret the act.
(But is her displeasure with the outcome not a regret for the act itself? Evidently not, to some, but to her it is more difficult to disentangle. How can one regret the outcome and not, in some way, regret ones’ actions? Even when she thinks she has made the right decision, it is clear to her that her execution is flawed in some way when the results differ from what she expected. So she regrets the act, even if that regret carries only to the execution.)
But what act? She cannot say. All she can be certain of is that she has upset them—and likely some time ago. She rarely catches these things in a timely enough manner, sees them only when they are too much to ignore, have passed from minor offense to proper anger.
Here, a silence when she returns to their quarters and finds Mei cooking. Is it anger, simmering below the surface, Mei unwilling to say anything for fear that she will be too terse? Or is it distraction, her lover absorbed so thoroughly in the process of deboning the fish that she does not notice Satya’s question? Could she be withdrawn, her thoughts far, far away as the result of a memory, returned to her, of someone she has lost?
Satya cannot be certain, not in the easy way other people are. She can see the impact of an emotion on Mei’s behaviors, and she knows her lover better than most people, has a longer list of her particular mannerisms categorized, knows that Mei is angry but does not want to fight when she goes and does the washing up without speaking and closes the cabinets a little too loudly, knows that Mei is happy when she hums to herself while she writes in her journal, her pen light as it glides across the page, knows Mei is sad when there are far too many blankets piled on the bed and the candle is lit which reminds her of home—but knowing these things, these lists, does not mean that she can always read the emotion itself. Sometimes, it is just a cold day and Mei feels like lighting a candle. Sometimes, the dishes need to be done and she accidentally closes a cabinet with too much force. Sometimes, there is a song stuck in her head and she feels the need to write something, but the memory is actually a sad one, even if she remembers it with fondness.
Another person, Satya knows, could more easily intuit the difference, would not have to take stock of a behavior and guess at what it means. Most other people do not have to ask, as she does, “Are you angry?”
(And she despises that, the need for asking. Mei understands why she does, by now, but not everyone takes it so kindly. Some people are offended by the implication. Some people are made angrier by having been asked. Some people find it rude, or invasive. But what else should she do? Ignore it? Then they are too often upset too, feeling she does not care enough to say something. It is a quagmire.)
“No,” Mei tells her, but she does not look up from the fish and her answer is short, not something longer, reassuring. Usually, she clarifies what she is feeling for Satya’s benefit, even if it is not necessarily pleasant to hear.
“But you are upset?” Satya is relatively certain of this. She has been wrong before, but she knows Mei by now as well as she knows anyone and all the signs are there. If she is wrong, Mei will tell her, and she will be a little embarrassed, perhaps, to have misread things—because she does not like being wrong, even if she understands that it happens sometimes—but that will be all. They will go about their evening as if it did not happen.
(Blessedly, Mei lets these little embarrassments lie.)
But Mei does not say no, she says, “I am.”
“With me?”
“Not exactly.”
Unhelpful, Satya thinks, but does not say. What is she to do with an answer like that? She cannot fix things if she does not know what is wrong and how it involves her.
It is, however, possible that Mei does not want her to do anything, does not want to talk about her feelings at all; indeed, that may be likely, given that she said nothing until prompted by Satya. “You don’t want to discuss the matter,” says she, an observation Mei is welcome to correct.
“Not yet,” Mei tells her.
“Very well.”
Although she does not wish to drop the matter, she knows better than to press. Mei deserves space and time to think, and she is careful, when she speaks to Satya, to not make promises she cannot keep, so when she says Not yet it is a promise of later.
Knowing as much does not make the waiting any easier for Satya, but still she does her best. If the snowflakes she carefully weaves to calm her thoughts give her away, Mei does not comment on it.
They are not quite silent throughout dinner, but their conversation is light, the sort of pleasantries that Satya has never cared much about, but knows are necessary to the maintenance of a relationship long-term. She has little to report when Mei asks about her day, but she speaks to fill the space. Now that she knows Mei is not happy, the silence is discomfiting.
(In and of itself, Satya thinks that silence is a fine thing, it is only the situation that makes it unpleasant. Ordinarily, she would be quite pleased to pass a dinner in amiable silence with a person of whom she is fond—were she not so accustomed to silence as a prelude to anger, this, too, would not bother her. Mei is not the cause of that, but nonetheless the association is a difficult one to shake.)
Once dinner has passed, Mei retires for the night—early, Satya notes, by several hours—and she is left to contemplate the nature of her offense. It is difficult to be certain; she and Mei did not speak today, save for a brief kiss good morning, and for the week before Mei was away on a mission. Reason would dictate that it is something she said before that point, but what?
She mulls over their last few conversations in her mind. She doubts it was about the fact that they need to change over to their winter quilt, soon, even if Satya prefers the switch be made a week or two before Mei does. She thinks, too, that it cannot be about their disagreement over the merits of Anh Dinh’s most recent novel—Mei may have been bitterly disappointed with the ending, but that is not Satya’s fault. They have not quarreled recently over the cooking, or the cleaning, and they have never had an issue with finances, so that leaves… what?
The cause is not politics, certainly, and neither of them cares enough for religion for it to be the source of any conflict. Most of their disagreements—and they are very few and far between—are about work, but if that were the case, Mei would surely have said something already. Neither of them is afraid to speak their mind when that is the case, and they do not wait to do it, either. It must be personal, but Satya cannot for the life of her imagine what it could have been.
(If they argued more often, this might be easier, because then Satya would know better how Mei reacts when she is hurt, would have been able to notice it sooner and to respond more quickly, had a better chance at guessing what she said wrong, even if she might still not know why it was so, but they find themselves having serious disagreements so infrequently that Satya has not been able, yet, to learn to read Mei’s hurt.)
Perhaps it was something that Satya said which was not directed at Mei, but she took personally?
That is an accounting all its own, and it takes Satya the better part of a day before she has settled on what she believes to be the answer. It is, she thinks, a misunderstanding, as things so often are. Either she does not communicate her meaning clearly enough, or others read into her tone something which is not there, and take her flat affect for anger, or sarcasm. Sometimes, yes, it is a matter of what she means, or not knowing what to say to someone, not being able to respond to them appropriately, but most of the time, if people would only listen to her explanations, their disagreements could be easily rectified.
(When, of course, she does not mean offense. When she does—that is another matter.)
Fortunately, Mei always listens to her, is much better at understanding than most what Satya means when she says things, and is more open to accepting that, in fact, she meant something else entirely than how her words were taken. So when Satya realizes something has gone wrong, she simply sys as much, and they are able to move on. Usually, she does not bother with prelude, either, does not need to.
“I don’t want to be a mother,” says she.
(It is a simplification. She likes children, and thinks she could have been happy as a stepmother, or perhaps rearing a child of her own, provided her partner was able to handle them in those situations she has more difficulty navigating, but it has never been, for her, a goal, is only something she would have pursued if it were her partner’s dream. Because Mei does not want children—is very clear on that, and has felt that way for years—Satya is perfectly content to not have any. She has considered, perhaps, mentoring, if Overwatch ever becomes more legitimate again and she finds herself with the time, but for now she is happy with her life as it is.)
“Oh,” says Mei, “You don’t?”
“No,” Satya confirms. “I did not mean to imply that I did.” She knows Mei does not want children, that she likes them well enough but has absolutely no desire to be responsible for the upbringing of another person.
“I don’t remember you implying it at all,” Mei says. Reassurance, Satya can tell—not a correction.
But that confuses things further, “Is that not how I upset you?” It is the only thing she can think of that was out of the ordinary, and even then it was a fleeting comment about their friends’ plans for the future.
“You didn’t upset me.” This is a correction, but a gentle one, “I upset myself.”
That is a situation with which Satya is quite familiar, having thought herself into unhappiness more than once, and she would let it go, but, “You upset yourself about a matter which involves me?” It is half a statement and half a question.
“I did.”
“And you do not wish to tell me what it was?” Another half-question. She knows the answer, but does not understand it.
Mei inhales more deeply than usual before responding. “I don’t think you’ll like it.”
There are a good many things Satya dislikes, but the feeling that she has missed something—something other people might know instinctually—is very high on the list. “I do not like not knowing, either.”
It annoys her, a little, to have to point this out. Hypocritical though it may be, she feels that Mei ought to know that about her by now.
“I know,” Mei tells her. “I’m not trying to keep you in the dark.”
“Very well.” Satya can appreciate that intent and outcome do not always align. She will not be angry with Mei for struggling with such.
“Very well?”
“You said we were going to discuss the matter.” Mei keeps such promises, she knows—and Satya did not mean to force a conversation, only wanted to apologize as promptly as possible. “I will wait.”
To her surprise, Mei shakes her head, “Maybe we shouldn’t.”
“No?” Satya was trying to be understanding, in offering to wait, and she is happy not to, but it surprises her that Mei has changed her mind on this. “It wasn’t my intent to pressure you.”
“It’s okay,” Mei tells her. “I wanted to sort out my feelings first, but we should talk about it.”
That is concerning. Satya knows that she could say, again, that she is willing to wait, and she is, but what she is willing to do and what she wishes to do are not always in concordance with one another. She does not want to suggest something that she might begrudge Mei doing; it would be unfair.
“I would prefer if we did,” she agrees. “What is the problem?”
“You don’t want to marry me.”
Of all of the possible sources of offense Satya considered, that is not one. “You said you did not wish to marry me, either.” In fact, it is Mei who first expressed as much.
“That’s why it’s taken me so long to talk about it,” Mei explains. “I don’t think it should bother me.”
“Is it not enough that it does?” She does not mean that the reason Mei is hurt is unimportant—knowing that would prevent this happening again in the future—but she does not want to have hurt Mei no matter the reason.
“Feeling rejected because you don’t want something which I also don’t want isn’t an easy problem to address.”
This reservation is one Satya can understand. She prefers a clear path forward whenever possible. In the absence of one, however, she does not want to be idle. It is better, she thinks, to at least try to solve a problem, and guessing at people’s motivations is something with which she has some experience. “Did you wish for me to desire marriage?”
“No,” Mei tells her. “That would have made things much more complicated.”
“It would seem, then, that this is not about marriage.” It is an obvious conclusion, Satya knows, but she does not want the conversation which will follow underpinned by a flawed assumption.
A gesture, from Mei, half a shrug and half something else—imprecise as her feelings. “It is and it isn’t.” As answers go, Satya finds that thoroughly unhelpful.
“Is it about what marriage represents?” This is not the sort of question Satya would like to be asked, nor is it one she would find at all useful to attempt to answer, but she has noticed that others often find it enlightening.
Mei’s answer comes quickly; likely she has considered the matter already. “Yes.”
“And what would that be?”
“Commitment,” Mei says, “Which I know is unfair.”
This confuses Satya, and hurts her a little, too. “Do you not think I am committed to you?” She had thought it obvious; never has she been one to say that she loves another unless she is certain that she means it.
“I know you are,” Mei tells her, “But most committed people want marriage.”
Obvious though it may be, Satya points out that, “You don’t.”
“I didn’t say it made sense.” That is true enough, Satya supposes; if anything, Mei implied the opposite. “But we’ve never talked about it.”
“About marriage?”
“About what we mean to one another,” Mei corrects. “I don’t want to make promises we can’t keep, but I do want you in my life for the foreseeable future.”
“Then we are in agreement.” Satya, too, does not like the idea of vowing to love someone always. People change, and the future is uncertain. “And if you wish to be confident in where we stand with one another, I find that a long-term partnership without marriage requires more commitment.”
“Do you?”
“Yes,” she confirms. “If we are not bound to one another, we could decide to leave at any time. In not doing so, we are choosing one another every day.”
“I’d never considered that.” Mei’s tone is one Satya cannot quite place.
“Most do not.” Oftentimes, it is to Satya’s detriment that she thinks about things so differently than other people, even when she is in the right. Many people are upset by it, feel that she is challenging them by disagreeing with their implicit assumptions. Even if she does not show it, she worries that people will misunderstand her.
Instead, Mei smiles at her, softly, “I’m glad you did.”