Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Dys is having an awful day, professor Hal kept asking him questions in class even though he knew that he wouldn’t be able to answer, meanwhile Tangent was trying to hide her expression behind her holopalm, but he could totally still feel her laughing. Honestly why does he even bother going to class? Also, Solane just woke up today and they were mocking him already, saying there were huge wriggly monsters and stuff, they haven't even looked outside of the wall! How could they know, they had to be mocking him.

At least now he can go up the wall and actually look at Vertumna and It is so big! He’d much rather be out there than inside the colony, but the adults decided that only the surveyors can go out and uncle Tonin already caught him trying to sneak through the main gate and he got scolded for, like, an hour.

He is walking on top of the wall near geoponics when he notices it, a tiny figure scurrying behind the green houses, it’s too small and too far away from the creche to be one of the younger kids, and it doesn’t move like the vacuums. Curious Dys comes down from the wall and starts looking around, being careful to avoid the people working there.

“Dys?” He hears a voice call, apparently he wasn't careful enough. Turning around slowly he finds Cal… Well, he kinda looks like Cal if Cal was a mud monster lurking behind geoponics. 

“...What happened?” Dys had to ask, Cal was COVERED head to toe in purple mud.

Cal looked surprised as if Dys was the weird one for asking. “Um… I was just doin’ some tricks, y'know, with my hoverboard? And I kinda crashed into a BIG pile of mud, I think it was s’pposed to be a pile of dirt, but I guess the sprinklers got to it? Anyway, auntie Flulu had asked me to be careful with the stuff there so I wanted to get to my room without her seein’... you won’t tell, right?”

Dys’s face remained impassive through Cal’s tale, making him fidget nervously “... I won’t” He says and then turns to leave, the thing he was following probably left already.

“Wait! Um… were you searching for something? I’ve spent some time here so maybe I can help you find it?” Cal offers with a small smile. 

Dys considers it a moment, but Cal would probably believe he was just seeing things so he decides against it. “No, I’m fine” He responds as he leaves. He will have to come back another time to see if the catches the figure again.

The next day Dys skips class and goes back to the place where he saw the figure, being extra careful to not be spotted by the adults, even though none of them could make him go to class. They weren’t his parents but they still acted as if they could boss him around, so better be safe and go unnoticed.

He searched for a bit but found nothing, so he decided to play on his holopalm, in the end he got bored of the games and decided to check out the colony’s holonet for new stuff the surveyors have discovered, apparently they found  a creature that was something between an animal and a mushroom, they called it Vikri, and it looked so cool in the picture. He spent his time checking the archive for new things, not noticing when lunch passed or when it started to get dark, until suddenly he heard a thud, then another, and another one getting closer. Dys turns slowly and finds… a strange creature, that looks like a purple mouse… but bigger… and with only one foot… and FOUR eyes. It gets closer cautiously, seemingly curious of Dys, sniffing in his direction. When he tries to extend his hand so it can sniff it easier it gets spooked, thumps the floor with its foot a few times then quickly hops away, he tries to run after it but it’s faster than him and after it gets inside some bushes and he can’t find it again.

Dys thinks it might have gotten trapped inside when the walls were built. It must suck, a bunch of people suddenly getting in your home and tearing down your stuff, trapping you in a place where you don’t want to be in, feeling like you have to hide from everyone…

He decides to try to help the little creature, if someone else finds it they might try to do experiments on it or something.

So, step 1: Secure a way out

The colony was still being set up, surely there was another exit, besides the main gate.

The next week Dys spends it searching the walls, until eventually he finds a drainpipe with a grate that easily comes off near the garrison, he looks both ways making sure the coast is clear before tries it.

…Wow…

Outside is SO big, it just goes on and on, there are HUGE mushroom-like trees (or are they tree-like mushrooms?)

Dys can’t help himself, he takes off running towards the hill in front of him, he can feel his heart beating fast in his chest, and it's not because he’s running, its… excitement. He feels alive.

Once on the top of the hill, his chest pounding, his breath heaving, he takes in the view. There’s spark snow covering red tinted grass, several different plants look as is they were mixed with mushrooms from earth and there’s a herd of dinosaur-like animals downhill. It is awesome, so much better than just looking at it from the walls!

Time to explore!

He manages to perform reconnaissance on the area surrounding his secret passage, and moves some branches so its difficult to find for someone who doesn’t know it’s there. 

Once the sun begins to set, he reluctantly starts to make his way back towards the colony when he feels a somewhat familiar thud , but multiplied, when he finds the source he sees four purple mouses- Hopeyes, the surveyors named them recently- they are smaller than the one he saw inside the colony, perhaps they are younger? They seem to be playing, hopping around each other and feinting kicks. He observes them for a while, and then goes back inside the colony. 

Time for step 2: capture the hopeye

Chapter Text

Step 2 has proven to be more difficult than he first thought. He didn’t have enough kudos to try and nanoprint a trap, so he tried something that he saw in holovids that looked simple enough: a box held up by a stick with a string attached, he wasn’t quite sure how it was supposed to work so he just sets it behind geoponics and waits, meanwhile he starts to search other possible traps in case this one doesn’t work, but he finds that most of them aim to kill or injure the animal, like setting a noose or making something fall on top of them so it kills them… people on earth were brutal. And the traps that just capture the creatures look more complicated than they are worth.

Eventually it gets dark and he doesn’t see the hopeye, so he decides to leave the trap there just in case.

The next morning auntie Seedent stops him after breakfast and gives him a talk about how professor Hal was worried since he hadn’t gone to class last week, and how education was important and doesn’t leave him alone until he promises to go to class. So there he was, in the back of the class doodling Auntie Seedent, Professor Hal and other adults with the words “Nag Nag Nag” around them.

After class is dismissed he goes to check his trap, but it’s empty. Ugh. He really doesn’t want to spend the whole day waiting again, so he decides to go explore the outskirts of the colony and see if he can learn anything more about the hopeyes.

This time he finds a group of five adult hopeyes when he is going back to the colony at dusk, he always seems to find them late in the afternoon or at night, perhaps they’re nocturnal? This time they are huddled together eating… some rocks? As he gets closer to get a better view, they see him and hop away, he feels something hit him on the head and then fall to the floor, he looks up, the tree has some rock shaped stuff on its branches, some of them have fallen on the floor, he picks up one of the strange rocks… are this nuts or something like that? He takes a bunch of them to see if he can use them to improve his trap with some bait.

Once back inside the colony he follows his usual route on top of the wall toward the green houses. But before getting down he sees a humanoid figure hunched in front of a bush, moving. Since it’s getting dark he can’t make out what they’re doing. Worried a colonist might be hunting the hopeye he jumps the rest of the way down the wall to create a distraction and allow the small creature to escape.

“I’m not doing anything!” shouts an startled Cal, while hiding something behind his back. Dys can hear a thud thud getting farther away and Cal looks disappointedly towards the sound for a second, before turning towards Dys, blocking the view of what he assumed was the hopeye making their escape. “Dys!” Cal says relaxing a fraction and trying to muster up a smile “Hi dude! What are you, um, doing here…?”

Dys narrows his eyes“...Exploring, what are YOU doing here?” 

“I was um…” Cal looks around in a panic, and while Dys might not be good with people it’s obvious to him he’s trying to think of an excuse. Then Cal extends his hand which is holding some lettuce leaves “...having a snack?”

Dys looks at him unimpressed and Cal starts to shift from one foot to another nervously, he looks at Dys contemplatively for a moment. “...Can you keep a secret?” Cal doesn’t wait for an answer, he looks at both sides then leans in “ I found a hopeye inside the colony ” He whispers with the reverence of a Vertumnan shaking secret.

“I promise they are not dangerous! They are actually kind of weak so I’ve been tryin’ to feed ‘em some of our food” He slumps his shoulders “So far I rarely find ‘em and when I do, they only accept a bit of lettuce”.

“You’ve managed to get close to it?” Dys says genuinely surprised, each time he as much as moved near a hopeye they’ve escaped very quick.

“You knew about Captain Hoppy?” It was Cal’s turn to be surprised.

“Yes, I knew about Captain… Hoppy …” Dys mumbles awkwardly then asks "And what about the agriculturists, have they seen them?”

“I didn’t think so, since I’ve never seen Cap’n near the fields, I only saw them by chance that time I was trying to get to my room unnoticed. But today I found a trap! so I’m worried someone IS tryin’ to capture them…” Then Cal perks up “I have an idea! Perhaps the both of us can investigate who wants to capture them and convince them that Cap’n Hoppy is nice and to keep them secret!”

That would be an extremely naive expectation if the person that was trying to capture the Hopeye was anyone other than Dys.

“Nah, they’re good. I don’t think anyone else is trying to capture them” Dys responds and Cal looks at him, betrayed. “YOU were trying to capture cap’n?”

“I wasn’t going to do anything weird to them if that’s what you’re trying to say” Dys says as he crosses his arms “I was just trying to capture them so I could get them outside”

A smile stretches over Cal’s face “that’s a great idea! How were you going to do it? I mean, there’s always a surveyor at the main gate”.

“...I have a way I can get them out, but first I must catch it” Cal might’ve been able to keep the hopeye a secret so far, but Dys is not telling him about his secret passage.

“What about befriending them?” Cal suggests “Cap’n is shy and all, but they'll warm up to people eventually… I think. Lately I’ve been able to get closer, I was sure today they were going to eat out of my hand and then… well you know, they can still hop away really fast even if they are thinner” Cal looks worried, and then Dys remembers what he found on his little expedition, his plan was to use them as bait, but if Cap- the hopeye gets too weak it wouldn’t be able to survive outside. He decides to give them to Cal and search for more tomorrow.

“Take this” Dys extends his hands with the nuts he had collected.

“Thank you? I don’t know what I’ll do with these rocks… but I like them” Cal says as he takes the rock shaped nuts.

“These are nuts, and they’re not for you, nullhead” Dys says with a roll of his eyes “I think is what hopeyes eat”

“Really?” Cals now holds the nuts much more carefully, closer to his chest “how do you know? There’s barely any information about the hopeyes in the holonet, they were only recently discovered by the surveyors”

Dys now was getting impatient, why couldn’t Cal just take them and shut up. “Look, they’re yours now, you can use them or not it’s up to you” He then turns and goes to leave when Cal calls out to him. “Dys wait! If I can gain cap’n trust and manage to capture them… could you set them free? I won’t ask you anymore how you’d do it, I promise!”

Dys considers it, that could be useful. It would allow him to spend more time exploring the outskirts of the colony, collecting more of those nuts and learning more about the hopeyes. And even if Cal can’t gain their trust, Dys would have more time to prepare a more effective trap.

“Okay” He says, then starts to leave again, thinks for a second and adds “If Cap’n likes the nuts I can find them more” He doesn’t wait for Cal's response.

It seems that step 2 has been updated: Let Cal feed the hopeye while he prepares a better trap to capture them.

Dys spends the next weeks exploring, he gets to observe different groups of hopeyes in several occasions and has managed to lean a few things:

1. They seem to be nocturnal
2. They are always in groups
3. They are omnivorous, eating mainly nuts and insect-like creatures

“And number 4! They’re really cute!” Cal said with a smile when Dys told him his discoveries, which earned him another unimpressed look from him. 

For his part Cal’s been able to get closer to the hopeye. Around twice a week, when the sun begins to set Dys goes to check on their progress. He always comes down from the walls because it’s actually easier get there unnoticed by the people “on watch” rather than going to geoponics through the middle of the colony. It’s not because it’s fun to startle Cal, nope, that sure ain’t the reason he jumps the rest of the way down the stairs.

“Hey dude!” Cal greets cheerfully not moving from where he’s sitting on the floor with Captain Hoppy eating a few feet away from him, there is a trail of nuts that eventually would lead them right next to Cal, it seems that they’d come to expecting him dropping by, as the hopeye just jumps a bit nervously but then continues eating.

“They look healthier” Dys says in lieu of a greeting, not getting closer since usually his presence makes the hopeye more jumpy.

“Yeah! Cap’n Hoppy has been a good little hopeye and eaten aaaaall their food, haven't you cap’n?” The hopeye looks towards Cal for a second then jumps to the next set of nuts, a little closer to him and continues with his feast. Cal looks at Dys with a huge smile on his face.

“It’s been three weeks already, don't they let you touch them yet?”

“Not really, one morning I found them by chance, I tried to look smaller so they wouldn't be so scared, I was laying on my stomach looking at ‘em and they jumped on my back and layed there for a while, I was stuck there for, like, an hour , until they just left” While Cal is distracted talking to Dys, the hopeye quickly snatches the nuts closest to him and peaces out. When he realizes Cal hurries to say “Bye cap’n! Don’t get in trouble!”

“Here have this” now that the hopeye is away Dys can get closer and give Cal the stuff he’s gathered, thankfully Cal has stopped asking where he gets the food and how he knows things that aren’t on the holonet, he also doesn’t look as put off as most people by Dys short answers and prolonged silences.

“Radical! You’re really good at this Dys” Cal says as he gets up and Dys doesn’t get it, it was just picking up some nuts, literally anyone could do it, that was probably the only reason that Dys was able to, he wasn’t smart like Tang or Solane, wasn’t strong like Anemone or Cal and wasn’t good with people like Marz or Tammy.

“Sure. Whatever you say” He says looking at the ground, as he is starting to turn to leave Cal leans a hand on his shoulder. Dys stiffens and Cal let’s go.

“Sorry! I didn’t mean to make you uncomfortable, but I’m serious! I don’t know what I’d done with Captain Hoppy if it wasn’t for you. We never really played together in the strato, so I wasn’t sure what to expect, but you’ve been really cool! So thank you for your help” Cal finishes with a soft smile.

Dys first instinct is that Cal has to be lying, they’ve barely spoken and suddenly Cal thinks he’s cool ? Yeah sure. But the thing is, Dys has seen Cal lie before and he’s so bad , so what he’s saying must be true. Dys’s chest feels tight so he just nods in acknowledgement and leaves.

Chapter Text

Dys is overwhelmed, it wasn’t enough that remembering his conversation with Cal makes his chest feel tight, but Solane keeps trying to talk to him, they’ve specifically searched for him in several occasions and tried to make small talk of all things, even going as far as giving him gifts. What was he supposed to do with a flower?

Sol was Marz’s friend, maybe she set them up to befriend him as a joke or something, but that still didn’t explain Cal. It was so different to the strato where they’d just leave him alone .

So he’s been spending more time in the walls trying to avoid them, he still leaves food for the hopeye behind geoponics when Cal isn’t there, he’s not a monster, he just needs to be away from everyone for a while. 

That’s it. He’s staying out of the colony tonight, he’s more familiar with the outskirts now, there’s a place that’s secluded enough that the surveyors won’t find him and since Tang will spend tonight helping doctor Instance it’s probably the perfect moment. 

He prepares a backpack with everything he’ll need and gets out by his secret passage. As soon as he is outside he feels better, no one to crowd him or judge him, just nature, survival of the fittest.

Once he sets his camp he sits down to have a snack, he tries to eat the nuts that they feed Capitan Hoppy, but it’s just like trying to eat a rock. He will have to forage, luckly the sun hasn’t set yet so he has daylight to search for food. He finds a red egg and that’s when he realizes that: One, he doesn’t know how to start a fire and two, he doesn’t have anything to cook the egg with. Whatever, food is food, he makes a small hole in the egg, tips his head back and drinks it, blagh! The texture is gross but that’ll probably be enough to keep him going for today. Walking back to his camp he finds some bobber fruit. Huh , He must have missed it the first time, so he grabs it now in case he gets hungry later.

He looks at the setting of the second sun, stretching his back, now this is living! Everything outside feels so real, he’s much more at peace now.

With a sigh he sits on the ground, looking at the horizon he thinks about Sol and Cal. 

Sol… they’re Marz’s best friend so they might be playing a joke on him… or maybe they are genuine, he guesses he can give them the benefit of the doubt, he will still be cautious of them, but he’ll stop trying to avoid them and doubting everything they say.

And Cal… well, he’s never really been mean to him, never stopped anyone being mean to him either so Dys just assumed he hated him like everybody else, but now that he thinks about it Cal’s pretty friendly with everyone , and even if Dys doesn’t want to, he’s still part of the colony (for now, a part of him whispers). Besides Cal has a tendency to exaggerate, he mentions how Tammy’s the best, but a minute later he might talk about how auntie Flulu’s the best, as if anyone he likes is the best. So maybe him saying that Dys was cool was like the being indifferent of a normal person. Yeah that’s probably it, he should just remember that Cal tends to exaggerate.

Feeling more composed Dys can finally have a good night's rest, he wakes up to the rays of the first sun filtering through the fabric of the tent. If only every day could be like this. But if he stays longer Tangent would probably start making a fuss, worried he might get her in trouble. So, reluctantly he makes his way back to the colony.

There’s no sign of Tang on their room, so he takes it as nobody noticed he spent the day outside. In any case he goes to class before auntie Ann decides to scold him again, once he enters the classroom he hears Marz call out “Finally you decide to show up, if you keep disappearing like this you're going to force the adults to spend resources searching for you” She says flipping her hair. Next to her Sol frowns but doesn’t say anything and Tangent gives him and indifferent gaze.

He tries to ignore Marz and goes to his seat in the back of the classroom. Why do people insist on getting on his business, he doesn’t ask for their help, he doesn’t want them to search for him. In the end he spends class doodling with more force than necessary and doesn’t pay attention to whatever useless topic professor Hal had decided to annoy them with today, probably poetry.

Once class is over he leaves before Solane can approach him and goes straight to his secret spot in the walls. Today had started so good, why did he go to class?

He opens his holopalm and opens up one of his documents, reading over where he left off he continues writing about the stuff he found yesterday, remembering that he gets calmer and starts to relax, at least until he hears a familiar voice.

“Dys! Dude I finally found you” Says Cal with a crooked smile, it is strange seeing him outside geoponics, he rarely went to class but Dys never sees people nagging him about the importance of education.

“What do you want” It seems that people are determined to annoy him today.

Dys warning tone goes over Cal’s head “Dude! You won’t believe this! Two days ago Captain Hoppy finally let me pet them! Woohoo!” As he says this he extends his hand for a high five, but Dys doesn’t reciprocate. That’s why he searched for Dys? He hasn’t even captured it yet! 

Cal lowers his arm, appearing disappointed that Dys wasn’t more excited about the development.

“Is that all?” Dys responds, and when Cal nods his head defeated he goes back to his holopalm, thinking he would just leave.

“Wow, I had never seen Vertumna like this. It’s so pretty!” Instead of leaving Cal seems mesmerized by the view. That’s something that Dys can understand, he remembers when he first saw this view, how it just goes on and on. One could just chose a direction, walk and never look back.

After that Cal just sits and looks at the landscape, once it seems that he’s not intent on leaving or bothering him he goes back to his holopalm, drawing a bobber fruit to complement his descriptions of them. He can hear Cal shift from time to time, at first he tenses thinking that he’s going to interrupt him again but after the first few times he just accepts it as more ambient noise. honestly he’s surprised Cal can keep this quiet for longer than a few minutes, he thought Cal would explode if he spent a few seconds not playing around. 

That afternoon Dys does the same thing he would if he was alone, but it was different somehow with some else just there , it was… nice, in a way.

After a few hours Cal gets up, stretches, takes a deep breath and says “This was pretty relaxing, I can see why you’d like this spot” Then adds softly “Thank you for letting me be here, do you think I could come back sometime?”

Dys shrugs, trying to appear nonchalant “I can’t tell you what to do”

A smile stretches over Cal’s face “Radical! See you around Dys!” He says waving at him as he leaves and Dys raises his hand in acknowledgement. 

In the following weeks Cal goes the wall to relax from time to time. And even though he’s not as quiet as the first time he was there, it doesn’t bother Dys as much as he thought it would.

…

“What are you drawing?”

“Just some stuff”

“Can I see?” Once Dys shows him his drawing and Cal starts laughing. Dys immediately starts to regret showing him the drawing of Marz with big teeth and looney eyes, it seems it was just a matter of time for Cal to make fun of him.

“She looks like one of those earth animals! Like the ones with loooong ears!” Cal says between laughs. Surprised that Cal wasn’t actually making fun of him he looks at his drawing again and lets out a little laugh, he decides to finish his drawing with whiskers a pair of ridiculously long ears, which only makes Cal laugh harder.

…

“What are you doing?”

When Dys arrived at the wall Cal was already there only he was standing over a mat, with his right foot on his left thigh and his hands touching palm to palm in front of his chest.

“I’m a tree!” Is Cals incoherent response and Dys decides to not pry any further, still it seems that Cal doesn’t get the memo and explains anyway.

“One of my parents has been teaching me yoga! He can maintain some crazy poses but says it’s best if I start with the easier ones” Cal informs him and Dys just lets it slide, that seems really pointless

…

“We tried everything, but the citric beans aren’t really growing like we hoped”

“It’s probably because of the lack of spark snow, those stalks usually grow faster when there’s a lot of snow”

“Wait. Really?!”

…

Once again they were relaxing in the walls one afternoon when out of nowhere Cal exclaims

“It’s just so pretty!” 

It was really breathtaking, each patch of lingering sparksnow reflecting the fading rays of the setting sun looked like stars in a pink sky, budding plants that would soon flourish on pollen, and the wormhole looming above them giving the landscape an ominous feel.

Dys loses himself in the view for a few moments, remembering the time he camped outside “It’s just the way that vertumna should be” Wild, free . “I can’t wait to get out there again” he says under his breath, forgetting for a moment that Cal was there.

“Will you join the expeditions?” Cal asks him not looking away from the sunset and Dys lets out a little sigh of relief, it seems that Cal didn’t hear the last thing he said.

“I would if they let me, but uncle Tonin says I’m too young ” He responds rolling his eyes.

“But wouldn’t that be useful? Having someone small that can fit where adults can’t?” Cal sounded genuinely surprised that they haven’t allowed Dys to join them.

“Yeah, but he keeps going on and on about how it’s dangerous outside. I can handle it, I’m not scared!” It really upsets Dys that the adults don’t let him go in expeditions, they came to Vertumna to make a new life here, shouldn’t they be allowed to live here? 

Dys glances at Cal, he was also interested in the planet. Maybe Dys could actually show him his secret way out…“What about you, do you wanna join expeditions?”

Cal looks pensive for a moment “Not really… it does sound dangerous, I’ve seen pictures of manticores, their teeth are super sharp. And I can actually help here! Maybe it’s just shoveling dirt for now, but auntie Flulu told me that if I learn more biology she’d let me help with the farming! Like helping stuff grow it’s just the coolest and it’s not even harvesting season yet!”

Dys tries to ignore the part of him that feels disappointed and tunes out Cal as he goes on about farming, until he feels a hand on his shoulder.

“Oh, right! I just remembered, I have awesome news! Cap’n finally let me hold them! We can totally set them free now” Cal says with a smile that stretches across his face.

“Finally” Dys responds and allows a small satisfied smile on his own face.

Chapter Text

Finally step 2 (amended): Cal gains the hopeye trust, was complete! Now it's time for step 3: Dys sets Captain Hoppy free

They decide to do it the next day, in late afternoon, since Cal’s mom would be worried if he isn’t home for dinner (Dys tries to ignore the pang in his chest that comes with that thought)

This time they both get to geoponics by walking on the wall. It is harder than usual to go unnoticed since Cal keeps humming the theme of some spy holomovie while they try to avoid the people on watch near the gates, but they manage to get there by the time the first sun is setting.

"Cap'n! You can come out, it's safe" Cal loudly whispers and then they see a little head poking out from some bushes. Capitan Hoppy jumps out and starts going in circles around Cal and Dys, not unlike what Dys has seen young hopeyes do to play around with each other.

"Come here my little hopeye" Cal says as he hits his chest softly to call their attention. Hoppy jumps to his arms and starts nuzzling him while he hugs them, all with Dys close next to them. “That’s my little Cap’n, a good hopeye that has already eaten all their breakfast” 

It was Dys idea to leave food for them in the middle of the afternoon, all so the hopeye would be sleepy when they got there. But somehow it looks like Captain Hoppy is even more energized than usual.

"Huh, they do trust you" He says as he opens his arms so Cal can pass him the hopeye, however Cap’n seems to sense something is going on and squirms out of Cal’s hold, jumping around them and feinting kicks, before hopping quickly towards some bushes near a mountain of purple mud.

"Wait! Cap’n, come back!" Cal runs after them, he’s faster than Dys thought and starts to close the distance, however when he is about to catch them, the hopeye turns 180° and jumps over Cal, making him crash face first into the mud.

Now Captain Hoppy is between Cal and Dys, so Dys readies himself in case they try to jump over him too. Cap’n lets out little thrills of excitement, happy to be able to play around in a group.

They keep chasing Hoppy for over an hour, but it appears that the hopeye is more agile (and smarter) than they are. They end up dirty and exhausted while Cap’n looks as if they’re having the time of their life.

“This- isn’t- working” Dys manages to say between huffs, sitting with his back rested on the wall of a geodesic dome meanwhile Cal is laying down on his back, in what Dys has come to learn is called the corpse pose… or maybe he’s just laying back. He was covered in mud, dirt and branches. In his efforts to capture the hopeye, capitan managed to make Cal crash into the pile of mud and the bushes next to it several times.

“Do you think- that the nuts- are some kind- of stimulant?” Cal asks with the little energy he has left. Hoppy realizes their friends are not playing anymore so they gingerly leave to do whatever it is they do at night.

“Ugh, that might be the case” Dys concedes, defeated. The second sun setted a while ago, Cal’s family is probably wondering where he is. “You should leave”

“Huh?” is the sleepy response that he gets. They stay like that for a few more minutes, catching their breath, until suddenly they are illuminated by a holopalm’s flashlight.

“Cal? Sweetheart… how did you get so covered in mud again?” Dys guesses this must be Engineer Tiramisu, even though he can’t see her face, her tone is similar to auntie Seedent when she talks to Anemone.

“Mom?! What are you doing here?” 

“Oh my, dear, I can barely see your face” As she says this she adjusts her holopalm to a soft light that makes it easier to see each other, kneels down next to Cal, takes out her handkerchief and starts rubbing his face.

“Moooooom” Cal whines and Dys decides to take this distraction and make his escape. However, as he gets up, the noise makes the green haired mother and son look at him. He freezes and before he can say anything, auntie Tirah gets up and greets him.

“Hi there, you’re Dys right? Little Tang’s brother?”

“Yeah…” Dys responds as he shifts from one foot to another. Adults usually talk to him to scold him for something so he waits for Cal’s mom to start nagging him about getting Cal dirty or something.

“It’s rather late, why don’t you accompany us for dinner?” She says with a soft eyes and a lopsided smile that for some reason makes Dys consider saying yes. 

“Uhhhhh-”

“Come Dys! It’ll be fun! Ceph said he’d cook tonight and he’s gotten his hands on some Vertumnan vegetables!” Cal says getting up, suddenly once again energized. He looks at Dys with pleading eyes but doesn’t make a move to touch him, which Dys appreciates.

“Sorry, but I should get home too or… uh…” Regardless of Cal’s request he can’t imagine enjoying being forced in an enclosed space with four older strangers.

“Awwww, come on dude! We could-”

“Now, now, Recalcitrance. If Dys doesn’t want to do it that’s okay, that's up to him and you wouldn't want him to feel forced to accept and have a bad time, do you?” She scolds him softly.

“No, I don’t” Cal responds, slumping his shoulders and Dys lets out a sigh of relief that they won’t insist on him going with them. After a moment Cal straightens, looks back at him and says. “It’s okay if you don’t want to, but if you’d ever like to come to my room, you could!... is that okay?” He finishes looking at his mom.

“That’s better my dear, as long as next time you leave it up to Dys to bring up” She tells him, stroking his head and trying to get the mud out of his locks, while Cal looks adoringly at her.

For some reason Dys chest feels tight. “Okay… bye” he says and runs towards his living quarters, glad he’s managed to escape that situation.

Once he gets to his room he’s surprised to find Tang there on her desk, working on something on her holopalm.

“Are you always coming back this late?” She asks him, putting down what she was working on. 

“What does it matter to you?” He responds, crossing his arms.

“An average human our age needs to sleep 9 to 12 hours per day, also the other colonists have been noticing you walking around late at night and have been asking me about it.”

“So? Just tell them it’s none of their business” he says rolling his eyes and going to his bed, there he finds a paper bag with some food from the cafeteria.

“I noticed we were low on food so I brought some non perishables from the cafeteria, we won’t have to worry about that for the next week at least. Also, while I was there, chief steward Antecedent asked me to give you that bag. She gave me one as well” She explains in a tired tone. There isn’t a package near her so Dys thinks she must’ve already eaten it, which is why he gets surprised when Tangent opens a drawer and takes out her own dinner. 

In the strato they used to spend night cycles together, since they both rather eat in their room than in the cafeteria and there wasn’t much to do around that time in the spaceship.

They both eat their dinner in silence with a strange nostalgic feel surrounding them.

Before he goes to bed Dys has to ask “Why are you here?”

The slight upturn of her eyebrows makes him think he took her by surprise.

“The engineers kept interrupting me, telling me how I should take some weeks off since apparently I ‘need a break every now and then’. So I decided it would be more productive to continue my work in here for now, at least until an appropriate amount of time has passed for them to think i took a break” She says closing her eyes and scrunching up her eyebrows as she tends to do when someone annoys her. She lets out a sigh and continues what she was doing before Dys arrived.

That means that he’ll have to arrive earlier to avoid suspicion. It’s such a bother. He can still see captain in the time between the two sunsets, but it’ll probably won’t be enough time to get him free in the place he wanted since it was a few hours away from the colony. Luckily, he forages by day, so he’ll be able to collect more food for the hopeye.

He sighs, changes into his pajamas and goes to sleep to the familiar noise of Tangent’s subconscious mumbling. Despite the upsetting thoughts, that night was almost as restful as the one he spent camping outside.

The next time that Dys finds Cal, he's chasing the hopeye again, only this time is more playful rather than desperate like it was last time.

"Hey" He calls out, which startles Cal, almost making him trip and fall into the bushes… again.

Dys tells him that he won’t be able to free Capitan Hoppy this next few weeks and Cal takes the news surprisingly well.

“Actually, I had an idea of what we might try now” he says hesitantly, avoiding Dys eyes and kicking a little pebble in the ground. 

“What is it?” Now Dys is curious, Cal’s ideas are often naïve or rely on a ridiculous amount of luck.

“Well, last time we failed because Cap’n didn’t want you to hold them. So I was thinking… Now YOU should earn their trust!” Cal says, clearly excited by the idea.

“ What… ”

“It’ll work! They already trust you a lot, it’s not enough for them to let you hold them yet, but with some more time it will!” he explains, jumping a little in place.

"Do I have to? Can't you put them in a box or something so they're easier to carry?” Dys asks him, frowning. Cal's idea wasn’t awful, but it'll mean that Dys has to spend more time near geoponics, when what he really wants is to keep exploring outside.

Cal looks affronted " Dude , no, they would freak out! We’re not doing that. Besides I'm sure if you spend just a little more time with ‘em, they'll trust you" 

Dys sighs "Fine, but they have until Tang goes back to working on engineering at night, if they don't let me hold them by then, I'm going back to my original plan with the traps"

"Deal. Don't worry, they like you a lot so it won't take much time" Cal says with a confident smile but Dys has his doubts, after all Captain keeps getting nervous whenever he gets too close.

It seems Dys's plan keeps changing. Now:

Step 3: Dys Gains Captain trust?

Over the next weeks Dys explores in the morning or sometimes he goes to class but it's just enough so the adults don’t bother him about it. After lunch he continues foraging or goes to relax on the walls. Then, at first sunset, he goes behind geoponics to see if he finds Captain Hoppy and/or Cal. Finally, at night he goes back to his room, eats dinner with Tang and falls asleep with the sounds of his sister working on her desk. It's been really busy but his nights are the most restful he's had since he was little… probably because of how tired he gets during the day. 

…

"Now you have to stay reeeeeally still and let them come to you" Cal says letting go of Captain Hoppy,  who then starts to make his way cautiously towards Dys’s extended hand.

He doesn't move a muscle and after just a moment of hesitation the hopeye begins to eat from his hand, their whiskers tickle his palm and their little nose scrunched up when eating the tougher nuts. It's adorable and Dys can’t help but let out a little smile.

"Radical! You did it!" Cal exclaims and crouches next to Dys who gets a little self conscious about how close he is, and Cap’n who pays him no mind even as he starts to pet him. However as Dys goes to pet them as well, the hopeye jerks back and gets some distance between them.

"One step at the time" Cal tells him with a soft smile. 

…

Dys finds Cal on the wall one afternoon looking at a piece of string with a stupid smile on his face.

"What's that?"

Cal startles a little with the sudden voice, but relaxes immediately when he sees Dys. His face goes a little red as he answers, staring intently at what upon closer inspection appears to be strings woven together to make a bracelet.

"Tammy gave me this bracelet, she's been really busy helping with the kids since we arrived, but she still found the time to make me this! Isn't she amazing?"

The smile Cal gives him is radiant and sincere. Dys can’t help but wonder how someone could be so happy with such a simple gift, that was too big for him to even wear properly.

Cal keeps looking and turning the bracelet in his hands the rest of the afternoon.

…

One night while having dinner, Tang starts conversation about Vertumnan flora, Dys can contribute with what he’s learned when he goes to explore (without telling her the source of the information, of course)

It's nice to be able to talk to her like this, it feels like forever since the last time they were able to have a conversation without upsetting one another.

…

Dys sees Cal playing with Anemone near the garrison on his way to geoponics.

That day he manages to pet Captain Hoppy. He turns his head, already embarrassed for the compliment that usually follows his small advances on his bond with Cap'n. His chest feels empty when he realizes Cal hasn’t come, and then he gets upset about how he's gotten used to Cal’s presence. It's not like they've agreed on when to meet, it's just something that happens most of the time when Dys goes to geoponics.

Whatever, it's not like Dys needs him. He hasn't needed anyone these last few years.

…

Solane has found him a few times and tries to make small talk, they don't really have much in common and Dys doesn’t really get what they're trying to do. But at least they aren't mocking him.

…

The next time he finds Cal it's when he's relaxing on the walls. Dys takes the chance to tell him about petting Captain and Cal immediately stops his yoga and gets closer to him.

"Really?! That's amazing! You have to show me!" In his excitement Cal takes his hand and starts to lead him to geoponics.

"I don't think they are awake yet" Dys says, stopping Cal on his tracks.

"Oh dip. You're right. But later you're showing me how you did it!" As he says that, he realizes he took his hand and lets go. "Sorry dude"

"It’s not a big deal" Dys says with a roll of his eyes. It really isn't a big deal, but Cal’s been self conscious about touch ever since Dys tensed when he laid his hand on his shoulder. He has noticed Cal is a tactile person and while Dys is not, he won't get upset about it. Although it is a little awkward in his opinion.

"Really?" Cal asks hopefully.

"Yeah…" Dys responds. Cal nods and  leaves it at that.

…

They're at the end of the first month of pollen when Cal approaches him after a biology lesson (one of the few times they’ve been together in class). “Hey Dys!”

Tang glances at them for a moment, but she still goes after professor Hal to ask her remaining questions as she tends to do.

“Um…Do you need something?” Dys asks him, Cal doesn’t usually talk to him when there’s other people around… now that he thinks about it, he hasn’t really encountered him in other spots besides geoponics or the walls.

“Nah, I just wanted to tell you that auntie Seedent is making some new sweets today! Well, I guess they’re not new , since they used to have ‘em back on earth but they’re new to us!” He tells him excitedly. “Tammy is telling everyone so they can have one, but she doesn’t know where you hang out so I told her I could invite you. Do you wanna go get some? Apparently they’re reeeeeally fluffy”

“Not really” Dys tells him in a deadpan tone.

“Oh, okay” Cal says disappointed, then looks both ways to ensure there’s nobody else in the room and leans closer to whisper “Do you want me to save some and give it to you later?”

“I don’t really care” Dys responds, although he’s a little curious about it.

That afternoon he happens to get earlier to geoponics. Thinking about the new candy that Cal might bring him, he doesn’t notice that uncle Tonin it’s not at the gate. Once he is at the geodesic dome he’s just thankful that things are quieter than usual with the agriculturist.

When he sits on the ground he lays the nuts next to him, soon after he does that Captain Hoppy gets there, a little more jumpy than usual, they eat their nuts but they seem nervous.

After they finish eating cap’n jumps on Dys’s lap and makes little distressed noises, so Dys pets them to try to calm them down. Eventually Captain relaxes and their painful noises turn into content chirps.

Dys tries to stay like that until Cal arrives but he doesn’t show up. He probably ended up hanging out with Tammy after getting the candy… It doesn’t matter. He’ll tell him tomorrow and once Tang goes back to working on engineering he’ll take Captain to a safe place in the outskirts of the colony.

After Captain leaves him, he gets back to his room. There he finds Tang complaining angrily and, surprisingly, wiping at her eyes. 

“Something happened?” He asks. It was really unusual to see Tangent cry, so much so that he thinks it might just be whatever substance she was working with what was making her tear up.

“What? Now you care about other people?” She turns her gaze towards him an even though her tone is angry, he could see real hurt and confusion on her eyes. He keeps his gaze steady and she continues. “If you must know, Tammy just died”.

Chapter Text

Tammy died.

Tammy died.

He’s stunned for a moment and Tangent turns back to what she was reading, closing off to further questions. 

Dys can’t wrap his head around it. How? She has barely stepped outside since they arrived on Vertumna. Out of all of the children, no, out of all of the colonist she is the one that takes less risks since she’s afraid of everything . 

He knows he won’t get more answers out of Tang so he leaves their room and quietly enters the lounge. On the couches he spots a group of engineers talking softly, some voices quivering. He gets as close as he can to be able to hear what they’re saying, even then he can only get glimpses of their conversation.

“-maintenance more often - can’t let something like this happen again-”

“-maybe a curtfew- children safe”

“-can’t ban the children from the creche-”

“- It was a simple holoprojector- ”

The way they talk, as if afraid that a slight raise in volume would break them, makes him believe they are discussing the incident with Tammy. From what he maneges to understand the event took place in the creche, something about a holoprojector malfunctioning? Those things weren’t big enough to hurt the children, it had to be an electrical problem.

He goes to the creche to investigate, but there are two soldiers standing guard at the entrance, he quickly realises that he wouldn’t be able to get pass them. He has never seen them so concentrated (they certainly have never been that alert while patrolling the walls).

Without other leads to investigate he gets back to his room, eats the first thing he finds, changes into his pajamas and lays on his bed. 

He can’t stop thinking about Tammy, about what that must’ve been like. Was it like in the cartoons where you can see the person’s skeleton as they are electrocuted? Or was it like in the holomovies where the body is thrown backwards with a sickening WHAM as it collides with a wall and then falls limply to the floor? Did it leave a wound? Was it instantaneous or did she have the time to notice she was going to die? He has many questions and can’t help but fall sleep imagining the different ways that Tammy’s death might’ve played out.

Dys: Age 9 mid pollen

The next day he awakens to Auntie Seedent on their room. Ugh, Tang must’ve opened the door for her. She notices him stirring awake and greets him with sad eyes and a subsided, false, smile. “Morning Dys, I was just telling your sister that we’ll be expected at Tammy’s service after lunch. Be sure to put on some nice clothes so you can say goodbye to your friend, okay?” She doesn’t wait for an answers and just leaves, probably to inform the rest of the creche children about the ceremony.

Right. Tammy is… dead.

“Are you going or are you running away?” Tang asks him without looking in his direction, pretending to search for a change of clothes for the funeral, her movements are no less angry than they were yesterday.

“Apparently we have no choice” He responds in a flat tone. He doesn’t see the point in going, it’s not like a funeral will change anything. But remembering the conversation of the engeineers last night, the adults would probably make a big deal of him not showing up and them not knowing where he is. And the last thing he wants is more restrictions placed on them because the adults don’t trust the kids.

Once in the recycling room they are made to stand next to Auntie Seedent with her kids and the other creche children. 

As much as he tries to distract himself he can’t help but remember the last time he attended a funeral, his mother’s. Tammy’s body looks so much smaller than her’s did, but the wailing and the suffocating grief feels the same as it did back then. 

His mom… When she passed, Auntie Seedent told them it was a natural death, but that was a lie, just as when she said she would take care of them as if they were her own kids. He learned from a young age than he couldn’t trust the adults to take care of them, after all if his mother couldn’t do it, not even when she was alive, how could he expect the other colonist to?

He doesn’t know when he started holding his sister’s hand, but when he notices it he doesn’t pull away. They don’t talk nor look at each other, but when the particle disintegrators begin their work and she squeezes his hand, he squeezes back.

As they begin to leave he looks at uncle Tonin, he’s openly weeping with his eyes staring unfocused on the recycler, next to him taking his hand and crying, ugly broken sobs, is Cal.

He remebers just a few day ago Cal with a smile radiant and sincere as he stared in adoration at a piece of woven strings, and wonders for a moment what it would be like, to lose someone you love that much.

The next few days he spends mostly outside the colony. A lot of people are grieving, the surveyors are on leave and he’s not expected to attend to class as much as he was before. Which means he has more time to explore the outskirts. 

It’s quite bizarre, the time that the colony is grieving is the most relaxed Dys’s been for a while, or it would be if it wasn’t for his trips to geoponics. He gets to collect a lot of food for Captain Hoppy, and goes to visit them more often, sometimes during the day even though its least likely to fim them at those times. He does it to visit Cap’n… but he manages to catches glimpses of how Cal’s doing.

The day after the funeral he went to geoponics five times and didn’t see Cal, not even once. After that whenever he sees him he’s crying with one of his parents, or an agriculturist, or Sol. Dys tries to convince himself that’s good, Cal’s more of a people person so him being surrounded by people who care for him must be a good thing.

Which is why he’s surprised when he finds Cal sitting quietly on their spot on the walls, he’s tearing up while hugging his knees and looking at Vertumna.

Dys shifts from one foot to another, unsure of what to do, Cal doesn’t turn to look at him even thought he must’ve heard him arrive. Dys decides it would be weird to leave when he’s just gotten here, so he sits next to Cal, being careful not to touch him as to not startle him in the low chance that he hasn’t noticed him yet.

For his part, Cal keeps looking ahead, he doesn’t acknowledge Dys. After a few minutes and by no apparent reason his silent tears become open weeping. Dys gets alarmed, he doesn’t know what to say in these situations, but he feels as if he must do something, so he lays his hand carefully, unsure, on Cal’s shoulder, which only makes him sob harder. Not knowing what else to do, Dys rubs Cal’s back, the way he’s seen people do in the holomovies when someone cries, he feels awkward and for a moment thinks it would be best if he just leaves, but in the end he continues anyways.

Eventually Cal’s sobs subside, he sniffles, lets out a deep breath and turns to Dys for the first time. When he makes eye contact, his eyes are red and puffy “Hey…” Cal says, his voice raspy.

Dys nods in acknowledgement, still not knowing what to say. Cal stands up, and looking at the colony he says “I came here because everyone asking me how I'm holding up and trying to get me to talk to them is just… too much. But when you got here I realized that I didn’t want to be alone either” He turns to Dys, his eyes still sad, but his small lopsided smile is real as he adds “thank you”

For what he feels is the thousandth time that day Dys doesn’t know what to say, and yet, somehow, it seems that silence is the right answer because Cal hugs him quickly before leaving with a small wave.

Dys is stunned, he didn’t do anything, so he isn’t sure what Cal’s so grateful for, so grateful that he felt like hugging Dys of all people. As he stays in the walls remembering the first time Cal hanged out with him here, both of them quietly doing their own thing, how it was somehow different than being alone, he thinks that maybe he gets it. And the thought of having helped Cal feel better (if only a little) has him with a sense of accomplishment that he’s not used to when interacting with other people.

The rest of the month Cal is always surrounded by other people on geoponics, which means he isn’t able to meet Dys and Cap’n behind the geodesic dome like he used to. Hoppy really misses him, always looking around as if expecting to find him at any moment and clinging to Dys to the point of following almost to the lounge.

And even though Tang has gotten back to working on engineering at night, Dys hasn’t freed Captain Hoppy yet… It just feels wrong to do it without letting Cal say goodbye. So he has decided to wait until things have returned closer to normal, after all, they can’t keep Cal occupied forever.

The moments they can hang out are the few that Cal manages to get to the wall. Still, Dys can admit he’s glad to see small signs that he’s getting better.

…

“How’s cap’n?” Cal asks one afternoon. That day, unlike any other, Dys is the one that carries the conversation, with Cal listening quietly with a small smile on his face.

…

“Sorry about the other day, I know the hug was sudden” Cal tells him, avoiding his gaze.

“I already told you, it’s not a big deal” Even though Dys says that with a roll of his eyes, he can’t help the blush that spreads across his cheeks. If Cal notices it, he doesn’t say anything.

…

“I think Sol tried to comfort me a bit and I’m grateful, but in the end I guess they felt awkard, because they just left” Cal says scrunching up his nose, as if the memory is giving him second hand embarrasment. Dys is surprised, Sol is one of the most friendly people in the colony, the tought of them making a faux pass in a social interaction is had to imagine.

…

“She really had a gift, she could take stuff most people would consider trash and turn it on a toy! Once she gave me this handmade doll with really funny eyes-”

As Cal talks animadetly gesturing with his hands, Dys allows himself a small smile while listening to his stories about Tammy

And as the days go on, with Cal regaining his smiles little by little, Dys starts to think that even though talking about the people that died won’t change the facts, perhaps it can help those who cared for them to share their memories.

Chapter Text

Things have started to slowly return to normal in the colony. Classes have resumed, the surveyors, even uncle Tonin, have returned to work and the rest of the kids act like before. Cal has even visited Cap’n a few times and he looked better.

… or at least that was Dys thought until he met with him that afternoon. 

Dys is behind the geodesic dome when he finds Cal sitting with his back to the greenhouse hugging his legs with his fist clenched tight and staring pointedly to the wall as if it had offended him somehow, and Captain Hoppy, farther apart than he's seen them before, even when they've just started gaining the hopeye trust.

As soon as Dys gets close Hoppy jumps to his arms, making him stumble a little at the unexpected extra weight. That's when Cal notices his arrival "...Hey" He greets with an unusual plain voice.

"...Hi" Dys responds.

"..."

"..."

Well. This is awkward. He probably shouldn't get involved in whatever has Cal upset enough to not comment on Dys actually holding Captain Hoppy. 

"Um… I should probably-"

"I just don't understand!” Cal exclaims suddenly, throwing up his hands. “How can they be so…so normal!" 

"Wha-" Is the only thing Dys manages before Cal continues.

"They’re acting just like before- before she-" He gets choked up and angrily rubs the tears gathering at the corners of his eyes. Dys can see in his clenched fist there’s some torn woven strands that at some point might have been a bracelet. 

"They're her creche sibs, how can they just… forget her like that?" He trails off on a broken voice. Dys is very confused, is he talking about the younger kids? Cal slumps his shoulders then adds "I mean, don't you miss her? Don't you feel the spaces where she was supposed to be?"

It's the first time he looks at Dys in his eyes since he arrived and Dys feels pinned by the intensity of the stare, searching for grief that Dys is unable to muster.

This time he's silent so Dys can speak.

This time Dys doesn’t want to.

He averts his eyes. "I mean… she was nice, I guess?" This is really uncomfortable and he can’t leave because he’s holding an anguished cap’n. It’s not like he has much to say about Tammy, she wasn't actively mean to him, her comments about his torn clothes and 'scary' behavior probably weren’t meant for him to hear. She was more confusing than most people, after all fear is a weird concept for him, and the idea that someone can be afraid of everything is even more so.

Cal's eyes are wide, as if he'd never expected Dys to respond like that "Of course she is! She's the nicest! She cares about you! She's- she's your creche sister "

" She was never my sister! " Dys shouts and Cal looks as he’d just punched him in his face.

Creche children are raised communally, with auntie Seedent as the closest they have to a mother, but Dys had a family, his mother and sister, so they weren’t creche children, not really, he never considered them family. And neither was Tammy, she actually had a parent that cared about her, but she still followed auntie Seedent around as if she was a baby hopeye. 

Cal stands up, his fists are shaking and he's looking at him like he was a monster for not caring about the death of a girl he barely interacted with. He has never cared about the other colonists, it's not like it's something new about Dys, and maybe he said something weird, but that doesn’t give Cal the right to look at him like he had betrayed him.

A squeak of protest makes him realize he had started to squeeze the hopeye on his arms. He loosens his hold and Cap’n quickly hops away from the angry humans until they're out of sight.

"Anyway, why are you complaining to me about this? Honestly, it's been a month you should move on" He can't remember very well, but he doesn’t think he 'mourned' his mother for more than a week. Tammy died, big deal, everyone dies eventually, at least her death was cool. He doesn’t say that last part since he still remembers Sol reaction to that comment.

" How can you say that?!" Cal shouts. And that calls the attention of a nearby cultivator.

"What's going on here boys?" Ask an older agriculturist that Dys is unfamiliar with. While his question was to both of them he is staring worriedly at Cal, but before he can ask anything else, Cal takes off running. At that moment the old man turns his judging gaze on Dys. "What did you do to upset Recalcitrance?"

Of course, he immediately thinks that what happened must be Dys's fault.

"It’s none of your business" Dys grumbles, it’s so unfair that people always assume the worse of him.

As he turns to make his exit the man grabs his wrist. "Not so fast young man, that's no way to speak to your elders, little Anne will hear about this”

Despite his protests, the old agriculturist takes him directly to auntie Seedent and tells her about him 'instigating fights' and 'disrespecting the adults'.

"You're a good girl Anne, I trust you'll set this boy straight?" The old man says as he finishes spewing his garbage.

"Please don't worry mister Digitaria, I'll take it from here" 

Somehow Dys went from the geezer’s iron grip on his wrist to auntie Seedent firm hands on his shoulders.

Once the cultivator leaves, chief Steward turns him around and kneels so they're eye to eye "Dys… picking fights? this is unlike you-" As she begins what Dys assumes would've been a scolding session, a worried Kombucha enters the lounge.

"Mom! Nougat is climbing the frame of one of the new buildings and we can't get her to come down!" Kom's panting, he probably came running to get help for his sister.

Auntie Seedent quickly stands up and spares Dys a glance as she says "I have to go check on Nougat, but we'll continue this conversation in another time"

As Kom and his mother leave, Dys can sense the eyes of the rest of the people of the lounge on him, some of them whispering or looking disappointedly in his direction. He can feel his face burning and tears gathering at the corners of his eyes as he leaves towards his room.

As expected his room is empty. That’s a good thing since he doesn’t want his sister to see him like this, or at least that what he tells himself as he he lays face down on his pillow. 

Stupid Cal, stupid old man, stupid chief steward, stupid colony.

Stupid, stupid, stupid stupidstupidstupidstupid.

A sob pours out of his throat, he struggles to take in a breath and try to exhale slowly but he only manages to cry harder. If Tang sees him like this she would call him crybaby again…

And she would be right, the only thing he does when something like this happens is cry.

His angry tears continue to soak the pillow as the hours pass, in that time Tang doesn’t enter their room and auntie Seedent doesn’t come back to check on him.

Good. He doesn’t need anyone. No friends, no family, no colony. He doesn’t need them, so why should he stay?

He thinks about Tangent, always so perfect, acting so grown up even though they are the same age. He remembers their quite dinners, her rare, soft smile when talking about Vertumnan flora… and the way she held onto his hand at Tammy’s funeral searching for comfort in a way that she so rarely does these days. (Not like before, when Dys was the only one that knew her as his sister and not his brother)

Okay, maybe he can’t leave forever. Only because he doesn’t know how to survive in the wild yet. But he can camp outside again. 

So even though it’s late in the night cycle, he makes his backpack and leaves through his secret passage.

Everything is dark, the only light is coming through the wormhole, and yet it is enough that the trees and mushrooms casts shadows on the ground, it would be a beautiful picture of a quiet night if it wasn’t for the different noises around him, some are familiar like the echoing thuds af a family of hopeyes and some are new, like the distant growls accompanied of the sickening sound of crushing bones… He decides to quietly walk in the opposite direction of that sound.

As he steps deeper into the forest he feels like something is looking at him, he tries to see if he can spot anyone, but it’s too dark. He has felt this gaze before, he always assumed it was a surveyor that, unlike any other, decided to leave Dys be. However there are no surveyors that go out this late, so whatever is following him can’t human.

He feels his heart beat faster in anticipation, could it be? Was it… an alien? He wants to believe it is. 

He has read that earth animals have a hunting instinct that gets triggered when they see prey running. Time to find out if what’s following him is a predator he decides as he rushes forward.

He’s sure he hears something in the trees, but whatever it is it hasn’t tried to attack him yet… Being distracted by whatever is next to him he sees the hole in front of him when it’s too late to stop.

However before he can fall to what most certainly it would’ve been his death something pushes him back, he only catches glimpses of a dark hair as the figure gets away.

Dys heart feels like it will beat out of his chest, an alien! It has to be! 

“Wait!” he call out but the figure must too far away to hear him, or perhaps it is just ignoring him. Has it been following him the whole time? Were those fruits that he coincidentally found when hungry it’s doing? Is it friendly? He has so many questions! But it seems he must try on another time as he can no longer feel it gaze on him. 

He sighs and looks around, he recognizes the area, the only reason he didn’t remember the hole was because he was distracted. At least this place is good enough to set up camp. He is far enough from the colony that he can use his holopalm’s flashlight on its lower intensity. It’s harder than usual to set up his tent but he manages. Near the last peg he places he find some bobber fruit.

Huh, he is sure those don’t grow in this area, so someone must have left them here for him to find. He tries not to get his hopes up too much, it would only be a set up for disappointment.

As he lays in his sleeping bag and takes a deep breath he instantly feels better. Outside of the colony he feels like he can think more clearly and really try to understand what he’s feeling…

Usually when interacting with other people he feels embarrassed, because often he says things that other kids find weird.

Often he feels frustrated, especially with Tang and the adults that try to control him.

Rarely he feels… happy, mainly when exploring Vertumna or interacting with captain Hoppy (and Cal a part of him whispers but he pointedly ignores it).

But now, now he feels angry, even though being outside has calmed him a bit he still feel the anger simmering, as if just the smallest thing could make it reach the boiling point to rage.

He’s angry at the colonist that just assume that he did something wrong. (Not ever listening to his side of the story)

He’s angry at Auntie Seedent for believing the agriculturist straight away. (And not asking if Dys was okay after being led against his will by basically a stranger)

He’s angry at the cultivator for escalating the situation. (And not giving him space when he clearly needed it)

He’s angry at Cal for… for doing exactly what Dys knew he would do from the beginning, finding out that something is not right with him and just… leaving . (For making him believe that he could get to know Dys and still like him)

He can feel the tears spilling down again, and sniffles. This is so dumb. He cries for the second time that night, it feels a bit like mourning, but he isn’t sure for what.

The next day he wakes up with his heart feeling lighter even though the air is suffocatingly hot inside the tent. When he gets out, the suns are high in the sky, the days have been getting warmer as they approach the next season, most flowers have started to lose their petals preparing to grow fruits instead.

He scavenges nearby for breakfast, or lunch? probably not dinner. When he gets a message on his holopalm, it’s from Tangent

Professor Hal asked about you today, be sure to show up on class soon or they’ll keep bothering me about it

He decides to ignore that and keep exploring. He knows these parts, it’s close enough to the colony that he can wait for the first sunset to go back.

He spends a pleasant afternoon collecting nuts, writing and drawing on his holopalm, and pointedly not thinking about Tang nor Cal.

Once he is back at the colony he goes to geoponics, but doesn’t comes down from the walls, he doesn’t see Cal, but just to be sure, he throws the nuts he’d collected so that Cap’n can find them and then leaves.

The next few weeks he maps the changes on the outskirts that have occurred over quiet and pollen, he finds more strange animals and discovers even more plants. He feels someone watching him from time to time, but can’t catch another glimpse.

He barely goes to class and only attends humanity's, since Tang and Cal frequent biology and he really doesn’t want to interact with them. 

He has stopped going to his spot on the walls to relax and only comes down to geoponics when he’s sure Cal’s not there.

Today is just another day like any other when he notices that someone else went through his secret passage. He looks around carefully but doesn't find anyone close by.

As he gets outside the colony he hears some familiar loud whispers, only wobblier than usual. He steps closer to the voice, being careful to not make any sound, it’s like this that he spots Cal just standing there and looking around him at every little noise.

“Dys? Dys, ar- are you close by?” he asks uncertain, his hands rubbing together nervously.

Dys is about to leave when he hears Cal again.

“Dys? I- I want to talk to you- I… I want to apologize”

That makes him stop and look back at Cal, he is actually sweating, he knows it can’t be because of the heat, Cal has told everyone about his augment.

Dys is still angry, but he’s also curious, what has Cal found so important to say that he went outside to try and find Dys.

“I’m listening” He says without preamble and Cal jumps giving an startled shout.

Dys can’t deny that felt good.

“Dys! You’re okay!” Once Cal recovers he hurries towards Dys and hugs him. Now it’s Dys who makes an startled noise.

“H-Hey!” Dys exclaims as he pushes Cal shoulder, he can feel his cheeks getting red. How dare he just hug him after what transpired the last time they ‘talked’.

“Sorry! I’m just relieved. When Sol told me about your secret passage I thought about how I hadn’t seen you these last weeks and got really worried” He says quickly as if afraid Dys would just run away, now he was loosely holding onto Dys’s shoulders.

Dys has told him he doesn’t mind casual touch, so he feels like he can’t really ask him to let go, however Cal must see something in his eyes because he lowers his arms and takes a step back, looking at him as if searching for injuries. “You seem okay” He says relieved.

“Yeah, yeah. You said you wanted to apologize, was that all?” Dys snaps back.

“No- I mean yes?- I mean, I want to talk about what happened last time” He stumbles over his words looking down as if ashamed. “My mom says it is important to tell other people how you’re feeling, because otherwise they can’t be sure. And! You also have to listen to what they’re feeling or you can misunderstand. She says that people always talk about the importance in communication with their partners but that it is really important in friendships as well, so I wanted explain what I was feeling then and maybe you can tell me how you felt?” As he finishes his statement he looks at Dys hopefully. Is he for real? Does he really consider Dys his… friend?

Cal takes his silence as permission to continue, it might as well be, because Dys is speechless right now.

“The day we argued I was really angry… I had gone to the creche to try and cheer up the kids, since- Tammy isn’t there to take care of them anymore and they were just- playing as if nothing was wrong! And Auntie Seedent was there just smiling like always even though it was obvious there was someone missing next to her! And then you looked as if you’ve never cared about Tammy and I just exploded… I’m sorry, it was unfair to you” Cal speaks candidly, it’s obvious that remembering that still makes him angry, but his apology seems genuine. Dys is still processing the word friends .

“I mean, I’m still upset you told me to forget about her, I’ll never forget about her! no matter what anyone else says!” Cal’s eyes looked determined, it seems like that’s a point he won't give up on.

Dys is shocked by Cal’s intensity until a realization knocks him out of it “I never told you to forget her…”

“You told me to move on… But that’s the same thing! I won't act like nothing’s happened! I won’t just go back to what things were like before” Cal voice is trembling, Dys feels that if he had any tears left they would gather at the corner of his eyes again.

“That’s not what I meant nullhead” He grumbles and Cal looks surprised for a moment

“Huh?”

“I didn’t tell you to stop thinking about her, only to stop being all mopey” Dys clarifies with a roll of his eyes.

“See! That’s a really rude thing to say!” Cal says, frowning.

“Oh… Then I’m sorry I guess?” He thinks it’s only fair to apologize about that, sometimes it’s hard for him to tell when he says something weird that might offend someone,

Cal nods as if that was what he was searching for. “I want you to know that I wont stop remembering her and… I’ll probably get sad when I do…” He sighs and then looks at Dys eyes “Now it’s your turn”

“Huh?”

“Now you have to tell me- no wait mom said I can’t force someone to talk-” he mumbles that last part but Dys can still make it out. “Now you can tell me how you felt then, if you want” Cal looks at him with pleading eyes, Dys can’t make out the anger that just seconds ago was reflected back at him.

“Um… I got… angry…” he says, and Cal waits patiently for him to continue even though Dys wanted to leave it at that. “I, um, am not a creche child” …and she wasn’t either he doesn’t say because he doesn’t think Cal would appreciate that comment.

“And then you left me with the cultivator and got me in trouble” As Dys says that Cal gets surprised.

“With grandpa Tar? But we were just arguing?” He asks confused, which was fair enough, it seems that Cal relationship with the old man was friendlier so he probably wouldn't have gotten in trouble. Dys just nods and Cal adds “Uh, Then I guess I should apologize for that too… I’m sorry I didn’t think that would get you in trouble…”

Dys nods in acknowledgement and then they’re both silent.

Eventually Cal asks “...Are we still friends?”

There was that word again, friends, they are supposed to be people you hang out and have a good time with. He hangs out with Cal, and the time they spend together isn’t awful (not counting their argument), so he guesses they WERE friends. The question now being if Dys wanted to keep being friends.

It seems that Cal hasn’t realized yet that something is not right with Dys, does he really want to set himself for disappointment like that? But… even though Cal thought he was rude towards Tammy, he looked like he still wanted to be his- like he still wanted to hang out with Dys.

Before he can talk himself out of it he gives a small nod.

“Radical! Then I guess I’ll see you soon?” Cal says and turns to leave, but then stops in his tracks. “I, um, don’t remember the way back to the colony…”

Dys sighs “Follow me”

As he leads Cal he hopes he won’t come to regret giving this ‘frienship’ a chance.

Chapter Text

Dys starts to hang out with Cal again, it's similar to before but there’s vulnerability there that makes it feel more fragile somehow.

….

They're play chasing Captain Hoppy, Dys's pretty sure that it's a safe activity that won't lead to an argument. 

Suddenly Cap'n jumps into his arms to get away from Cal. They both stop and look at the hopeye in silence for a moment.

"I… didn't know you could hold Cap’n… that's neat?" Cal says with a half hearted smile that doesn't reach his eyes.

Dys isn't sure why Cal feel reluctant to acknowledge that they can now free the hopeye. He knows that he doesn't bring it up because they're a safe topic in their… friendship.

"Yeah… you were right, they do grow to trust people  eventually…" Dys hopes that Cal doesn’t mention their plan to free them.

"Actually, I think it's because it’s you, Dys" this time, Cal’s soft smile is genuine.

They both remain quiet, not knowing how to continue the conversation, an awkward silence when before it would've been comfortable.

They were in the walls, each doing their own thing when Cal stops his yoga and sits facing Dys, who pretends to not notice.

"Can I ask you something?" Cal ponders after a moment.

Dys tenses, not knowing what to expect. "... Sure" He tries to appear nonchalant and it seems that Cal is too lost in thought to notice how nervous he is. 

"Are you really not sad about… Tammy?" Cal asks, barely loud enough for Dys to hear.

He dreaded another question like this, that could make Cal angry again, but he is not going to lie, if Cal is gonna hate him… might as well get it over with.

"Only a little at first… since she was never mean to me" at least he's pretty sure not on purpose. "But after the funeral... I only think about her when we talk, I never really hanged out with her so it's easy to forget…"

That makes Cal frown “Didn’t the two of you play together in the creche?” He asks, tilting his head looking confused.

"No, we didn't" at Dys’s response Cal looks even more confused. "Why do you ask?"

"It’s just… weird. Tammy used to mention how she got worried when she didn't see you get back at night, or when she saw new tears in your clothes… I remember one time I found her asking Tang about your favorite color… So I guess I thought that you guys played together or something…” Cal says that with a distant look as if lost in memories that were once fond filled with sweets and dolls, and now are tinted with sorrow.

“That’s weird…” Dys replies frowning. “Do you think Tammy was planning an ‘intervention’ like the ones that Marz makes?”

Cal lets out a breathy laugh “Tammy, confronting someone? I don’t think so ” 

Okay, fair enough. 

“I think…” Cal trails off looking at Dys, unsure to continue, he might think that whatever he’s going to say would upset him, but Dys is ready to hear whatever issue she had with him so he nods to Cal to go on, and he does so in a soothing voice as if afraid he would spook a cornered animal. “I think she really cared about you, that’s why she worried”

Dys recoils. That… was not what he was prepared for. And while he wants to deny it… some memories would make more sense that way.

A young pink haired girl in the strato asking him to accompany her to dinner shortly after his mother’s passing and his silent retreat thinking that she wanted to corral him with the creche children.

A nervous voice wondering if he slept well when he arrived in class and his grumbled response, never imagining that she might be worried after not seeing him come back to his room one night he spent exploring the ship.

Fidgeting hands offering to help fix his clothes.

Convenient ‘left over’ sandwiches for him and Tang to carry to their room.

A clumsy doll in his favorite color.

Dys feels a lump in his throat, him and Cal spend the rest of the afternoon in silence, each lost in memories.

…

It doesn’t make sense, nothing has changed. Tammy died. Why does he feel like crying now ?

…

The next time when Cal’s mentions Tammy he pays more attention. 

Cal smiles and even laughs while telling him about the time he got covered in flour while baking and started chasing Tammy around to cover her in flour. Dys can’t help a small smile as he pictures the scene.

The temperature keeps rising until it goes from warm to hot. Dys reluctantly leaves his hoodie in favor of a short sleeved shirt. In contrast Cal who does not feel hot and could wear a hoodie all year round is currently shirtless on the wall.

He's just really weird.

"Come on, don't look at me like that, a lot of people are shirtless!" He tries to defend himself. 

"Yeah, because they feel hot" He responds with a roll of his eyes.

"Well… clothes are a bother anyways, if you don’t need them to keep warm why use them?" Cal says with a little huff.

And Marz says he lacks common sense, clearly she doesn’t spend enough time with Cal.

Of course he eats the worm, he won't back down from a dare!

He is a little surprised when Sol doesn’t back down and eats it as well. 

Heh, they can be cool sometimes.

Dys is writing about mushwood when Cal arrives at the walls and runs up to him.

“Dys! That was amazing!” He says kneeling at his side, suddenly really close. “The song was so cool and you performance really took me by surprise! I was rooting for you, I totally thought you were going to win!”

He can feel the blush rise up to his ears, he had decided to join the competition on a whim to distract people from Marz, he hadn’t expected to do well . “It was a last minute decision. You, ah, did really well in the bot wrestling”

“Thanks! It’s really fun, and it doesn’t have to be a competition! Are you going to participate in the talent show next year?” Cal is still very close.

“I dunno” He replies with a shrug, he hasn’t given it much thought.

“You should do it! You could definitely win! You can try to sing, or another lip sync, or dance or comedy or-” 

They keep discussing Dys possible acts for next year, from burping a popular song to magic tricks to acrobatics, each idea crazier than the last.

Cal promises he can help him set up his show next year.

It feels like it’s been a while since he had something to look up to.

Chapter Text

As things begin to reach a new normal and the days get longer and longer, Dys decides it's a good time to set Captain Hoppy free.

He tries to think of the best way of breaching the subject with Cal.

"I should take Captain out of the colony" He blurts out, deciding to stop beating around the bush and just say it.

Cal comes to an abrupt stop in the place he is chasing Hoppy and slowly turns to look at Dys. Meanwhile Cap'n jumps around him feinting kicks trying to get him to keep playing with them.

"Actually, I, um, wanted to talk to you about that" Cal says and Cap'n decides to try their luck with their other human, hopping over to Dys. "Can't they just… stay here?" Cal looks at the hopeye, who then jumps into Dys’s arms. Cal looks scared as if Dys would just run away with them.

Dys’s frowns “Of course not, they’re a wild animal, we can’t keep them here forever”

“But look at them! They’re happy here with us!” Cal argues as he gestures towards cap’n who gives a little thrill while comfortably nestled with Dys.

“You mean how they’ve gotten clingy, trying to follow us to our rooms when we leave at night? They’re a pack animal Cal” Dys tries to explain in a patient tone but his frustration leaks through. “They only see us for a few hours and then we leave, being alone is not natural for them”

“But- but-” Cal keeps looking at Captain Hoppy with a worried gaze. “But what if something happens to them! What if they’re not accepted or- or something hurts them! It’s really dangerous outside the colony! I only went out once for a few hours looking for you and I saw a plant eat a small animal! That could’ve been captain a-and I-” Cal’s voice breaks and as has been common these lasts few months tears begin to run down his cheeks.

Feeling their human in distress the hopeye worms out of Dys’s hold and hops into Cal’s arms. Cal kneels, hugging them close to his chest and looks pleadingly at Dys “What if they die, I can’t lose them too” He finishes in a small voice.

Dys is stunned, he hadn’t expected him to react like this. Every time they had talked about setting the hopeye free Cal had been really excited by the idea, at least he was. But the last time they’ve talked about it was before Tammy… And after their fight Dys had been reluctant to breach the subject because playing with captain Hoppy is an activity that doesn't lead to potential arguments.

He had realized that Cal was avoiding the subject as well, but he thought that it was for the same reason, not because he had changed his mind about freeing Captain.

Nevertheless, this is something that Dys won’t compromise, he won’t allow another living creature to remain trapped inside the colony. 

He kneels next to Cal and hesitantly lays a hand on his shoulder.

“Yeah, it’s dangerous outside” He responds and Cal looks hopeful for a moment, until Dys continues “That’s why I chose a spot more than an hour away from the colony. There is a place with dozens of hopeyes and very few predators around because of the thick foliage. I want to leave Capitan there and see how the other hopeyes react to them. It’s likely that I will have to stay the night but that means that I’ll be able to make sure that Hoppy gets accepted by their new pack” As Dys finishes Cal looks sadly at a confused hopeye that doesn’t know why their humans are being so weird today.

After a moment Cal slumps his shoulders and with a defeated sigh says “Fortune”

“Huh?” What is he talking about?

“They say that finding five hopeyes is lucky so a group of hopeyes is called a fortune” Cal explains “And I guess you were really lucky to find a place like that… Captain could be really happy there”

Seeing that the situation has calmed down, Cap’n has gotten bored and goes to their lunch a few hops away.

Dys lets out a sigh of relief, it seems that Cal agrees with him. The calm is short lived as Cal quickly turns toward Dys, now his worried gaze aimed at him. 

“Wait” He says holding Dys by his shoulders and making him maintain eye contact. “You said you’re going to spend the night outside?! ” Cal says in a slightly frantic tone and Dys is dizzy with the quick change in emotions.

“Yeah…why?” He tries to think why Cal would be hung up on that, he knows Dys explores outside.

“Why? Why? Dys! That’s really dangerous! That plant could eat you ” Cal eyes are wide, looking at him as if he could disappear at any moment.

Dys tries to make nothing of it and rolls his eyes. “Come on, those plants are really easy to evade, you just avoid the flowers that it uses as bait. Besides, I’ve already camped at that spot”

Contrary to his intent, that only makes Cal look more alarmed. “What?! You’ve already spent the night ou- hmpf”

Dys covers Cal’s mouth with his hand “Shhhhhhh, you’re going to make the old man show up again and this time really get me in trouble” He says frowning

They stay like that for a moment, when it seems that they didn’t catch the attention of the agriculturists, Dys lets go.

However Cal is determined to finish their discussion and whispers “But how did you do it? I would’ve thought that Tang would notice and tell auntie Seedent”

“Nah, she’s been too busy at engineering, she comes every four days to sleep for a few hours and then gets back to whatever she’s studying, so it’s easy to predict when she’ll be in our room” She should arrive today, so he could arrange his camping gear and set Captain Hoppy free the next few days or next week at the latest… if he manages to convince Cal.

“ Dys , camping outside is really-”

“Yeah, yeah, it’s ‘dangerous’ you’ve already said that. But I know the outskirts, I’m not afraid” He replies with confidence.

Cal still looks worried as he takes his hand “This is not about being scared or not, it’s about being careful, there’s a reason they don’t let kids outside the wall, you could die ” He squeezes his hand and keeps his gaze on him, begging him to understand, to reconsider.

Dys didn’t want to get to this “Staying in the colony didn’t save Tammy”

As he finishes the sentences he can feel Cal’s hand squeeze tight and sees him close his eyes as if in pain.

“...What if I told the surveyors” Cal mumbles looking down, and Dys has to do a double take, did he really… threaten him?

“What did you say?” He doesn’t want to believe it, Cal knows how important it is for Dys to not feel trapped to explore, would he really take that away from him? Was it a mistake to confide in him?

“I said-” Cal straightens up and gazes into his eyes with a stern look, however, whatever he sees in Dys makes him falter. “I-I said…” He starts to look around, lost, and then, having made up his mind, focus back to Dys “I said that I’ll go you”

Dys blinks once, twice, trying to make sense of what Cal is saying, just seconds before he was talking about telling on Dys and now he wanted to accompany him? As he tries to understand what happened, Cal looks more and more sure in himself, a huge smile stretching across his face.

“Yeah… Yeah! That’s right! If I accompany you I can see that Cap’n Hoppy is happy with their new family and I can also make sure that you’re ok! It’s a perfect plan! ”

Dys opens and closes his mouth trying to think of a response. “You can’t, what about your parents?”

“That’s easy, I'll just tell them I’ll spend the night with you!” Cal looks really sure of his plan. It's not a bad idea, Dys knows the way and he’s reasonably confident that they can arrive there safely, so why does he feel apprehensive about letting Cal tag along? 

He can’t think of a reason to refuse him and Cal probably wouldn’t accept other conditions, so he nods. “Ok, let me prepare some stuff, then we can go next week”

Cal beams at him in response.

The day has arrived, Dys has prepared a backpack for whatever they might need tonight, it's a bit heavier than what he’s used to but he can manage.

They agreed to meet in geoponics before first sunset, there he finds Cal pointing a laser on the ground and Captain Hoppy chasing it around.

"Hey" Cal greets him with a nervous smile before Dys can say anything. "You brought a lot of stuff"” He comments as Dys sets down the pack.

“You’re the one that wanted to be careful” As he responds he spots Cal’s bag. “You brought very little” He adds as an observation 

" You're the one who said to travel light" Cal defends himself.

He hadn't meant that comment as an admonishment. "Yeah, you did well" He tries to clarify as he picks up Captain Hoppy who got close to say hi. 

“Oh, That’s good then!” He replies with a lopsided smile. 

A little yawn calls their attention to cap’n who is snuggled comfortably with Dys, their eyes struggling to keep open. Cal’s smile grows wider and he continues in a whisper. “I found ‘em early today, they had a big meal of lettuce and snapgrass and have been playing with a laser pointer since then”

Dys nods in approval “Good”

It was certainly better than their last attempt a few months ago, when they fed cap’n a lot of nuts leaving them even more active than usual. 

All right, backpacks and hopeye secured, everything seems to be in order “Let’s go”

“Wait, we have to do something first” Cal whispers as he starts to rummage through his bag and takes out a bed sheet.

Dys raises a questioning eyebrow and Cal tries to explain “It’s to make a sling to make it easier to carry Captain, Tammy taught me how to make one once and I think I remember…”

That sounds reasonable, the trip will be easier if both of them can use their hands.

“All right, what do I do?”

Dys carefully lays a sleeping hopeye next to his bag and then extends his arms to let Cal tie the sheet around him, after a few tries he’s successful in constructing a functional carrier that won’t fall apart (probably).

As they turn to pick up Cap’n, they find them head first in Cal’s open bag exploring its contents. 

Dys quickly puts his hand over Cal's mouth so he doesn’t shout at the hopeye.

"We can't be loud, things will be easier if they are sleepy" Dys reminds Cal, who nods in understanding.

Dys let's Cal take care of the situation, usually the hopeye is easier to calm down when Cal is around. He picks them up from his backpack and they complain for a bit, until he puts them on a baby hold, then they calm down and start to get sleepy again.

Once it seems they have settled down Cal puts Captain inside the sheet, they look quite snug against Dys’s chest.

Dys looks down at Captain sleeping face and hears a *click* He looks up and finds that Cal has taken a picture with his holopalm. Dys can feel his face heating up while Cal is smiling fondly at the picture.

"Last year I'd never have thought that you could be so caring" Cal says softly.

Dys is sure his face is even redder now, he's still hasn't gotten used to Cal's easy compliments so he tries to play it off with a joke. "Big surprise, I'm not a monster" He says trying to regain some control of the situation.

Cal lets out a breathy laugh "Quite the opposite I'd say"

Can Dys face get even more red? By the way it’s burning he doesn’t think so.

“Let’s just go, nullhead” he says as he goes to pick up his backpack, however Cal gets to it first and easily swings it over his shoulders.

Dys opens his mouth to protest that he doesn’t need help, but Cal speaks first “Since you’re carrying Captain Hoppy I think it’s only fair that I carry your backpack, so it’s easier for you to move”

He does have a point, however…“What about your bag?” As Dys asks this, Cal just puts his bag backwards, so the backpack is against his back and the bag against his chest and just smiles confidently.

“Lead the way!” Cal signals with his hand towards the wall, Dys scrutinizes him for any sign that the weight is too much, but Cal seems genuine enough. Well, he is two years older than Dys.

They end up having to take the long way towards the secret passage, going up and down the wall to avoid the people on watch. Luckly they arrive without being spotted.

Cal takes out the grid and Dys steps outside the colony. This is the first time in months that Cap’n hasn’t been surrounded by walls, part of him wishes that they were awake to see it but the rational part of him knows it’s better that they continue their nap. 

How can such a short distance feel so different? It’s as if as soon as he steps out, the wind is cooler, the colors more vibrant and his body feels alive.  

As Dys takes deep breath enjoying the fresh Vertuman air he realizes that Cal hasn’t stepped out yet. “Are you coming?” He asks, just loud enough for Cal to hear.

That seems to knock him out of whatever had staring blankly at the passage “Y-yeah! I’m going” Dys can hear Cal take a deep breath before going through.

As soon as Cal steps out his eyes are darting around nervously, not quite knowing on what to focus on.

Why is he being so weird? The first time Dys got outside the colony he took off running, meanwhile Cal looks as if he’s glued on the spot.

“We’re… really doing this…” He says in an incredulous tone.

“Well, yeah, that’s what we agreed on” Dys responds with a roll of his eyes and starts to walk towards the setting of the first sun, they have over an hour of walking ahead. 

Cal jumps a little and follows him close behind, it seems that he can’t stop looking around which means he’s tripping a lot , however Dys is not going to let that slow them down and continues at his normal pace which means that every so often Cal has to hurry to keep his preferred distance of right behind Dys.  

It seems that this will be a long trip.

…

“So, how do you know where to go?” Cal gets really close and whispers for some reason.

Dys tries to take a discreet step away “I’ve gone there often to search for food for captain” He also has a crudely drawn map, but he’s not showing him that mess. 

Hearing Dys reply in a normal tone makes Cal look around frantically as if manticore would just jump out of a bush and eat them, when he sees there’s no imminent threat he continues. “And you’re sure you know how to come back?” He’s still speaking softer than usual, but at least he’s not whispering anymore

“Yes” Dys is confident in his knowledge of this part of the outskirts.

“But are you sure sure?”

He only levels Cal with an unimpressed stare and continues without answering the question.

…

“Is that snap grass?”

“Yes”

“But it looks so different to the bunch we feed Cap’n”

“That’s because the color changes when-”

“Ouch!”

“...You tried to touch it didn’t you?”

“...”

“Cal, it’s called snap grass for a reason”

…

“Careful Dys!”

That shout is the only warning he gets before Cal pushes him to the side.

“What’s going on?” Is something attacking them? Did Cal actually see a manticore?

Cap’n Hoppy startles awake and looks around confused, once they see Dys they get comfortable in their carrier and settle down looking around cautiously. It seems they don’t spot any threats, otherwise they would have attempted to hit the ground in warning.

“You were about to step into a carnivorous plant!” Cal tells Dys.

“Huh?” Dys is very confused, those plants are usually in the opposite direction, he looks around but doesn’t find signs of it. “Where is it?”

Cal looks at him worried and points at a flower “right there”

Dys looks towards what Cal is pointing and lets out a sigh. “Cal that’s just a flower”

“Didn’t you say those plants used flowers as bait?”

“Yeah, but not any kind of flower, it’s a very particular, eye catching, yellow flower”

“Oh…”

“Wait, did you think we were surrounded by carnivorous plants the whole time?” Dys says trying to contain his laughter

Cal's face gets red in embarrassment “Well, there’s no information on that plant on the holonet! How was I supposed to know?”

“That’s why you were acting like a baby!” Dys manages in between laughs, fear can make people come to the weirdest conclusions.

“I was not-”

...

Cal has been pouting silently for the last ten minutes, almost a record in the time Dys has known him.

During that time Cap’n has been growing more and more restless.

“I think we should change”

“Why?”

“Cap’n gets calmer when you hold them, we're getting close, you should be able to carry them in your arms the rest of the way, I’ll carry the stuff”

“Okay” Cal takes off the bag and backpack and gestures to Dys to pass him the hopeye. Once they are in Cal’s arms they give little thrills of contentment, smacking Cal’s face gently with their tail and making him laugh. And just like that Cal is out of his sulking, as if it had never happened.

…

"Are you ok?"

"Yes"

"You sure? You're breathing weird"

"Must be the shimmer"

"But we're in dust. If the packs are too heavy-"

"I'm fine . I don’t need help"

"Ok, if you're sure… I was just thinking that it's kinda unfair that you're carrying both our packs"

Well, when Cal puts it like that it does seem kind of unfair.

"Ok, take back your bag"

His only response is Cal’s self satisfied smirk

…

They are close, the trees are thicker and the mushrooms and bushes taller, getting harder and harder to walk through. 

Eventually they get to a small spot of even ground surrounded by thick foliage with just enough space for a small tent.

“We’re here” Dys says as he takes off his backpack and tries to discreetly catch his breath.

“Wait, Captain, calm down” Cal tries to soothe the hopeye, but Captain Hoppy keeps struggling until they get out of Cal’s hold.

Luckly, instead of taking off they just get close to a bush and make some rhythmic thumps on the ground, when they finish three hopeyes jump out of the bush and start to sniff at Captain while keeping a careful watch on the humans.

Dys stays very still, hopeyes are really easy to spook.

“Look Dys we found a fortune!” Cal gestures widely as if Dys isn’t purposely frozen in place so they don’t run away.

At Cal’s tone the wild hopeyes jump nervously but Captain starts to hop cheerfully between their humans and their new friends. 

It must be because Dys has gotten familiar with Cap’n but the other hopeyes look very distinctive, they have different shades of purple, one being closer to pink, and the little lighter spots they have on their bodies don’t match with the ones that Captain has on their back, so even when they start to play together Dys can easily spot Captain Hoppy.

He looks at Cal, who’s watching this scene with a small smile and sad eyes.

The wild hopeyes jump around Captain and then go through the bushes, Cap’n hops around Cal and Dys and then goes to follow them with little thrills of excitement.

“Bye Captain Hoppy” Cal’s says softly.

“We did it, we got them out” They actually accomplished it, they weren’t found out, captain is free . Dys can’t help the smile that stretches across his face, he can only imagine what Captain must feel like, having vertmuna to themself for the rest of their life. “We actually did it!” In an uncharacteristically enthusiastic impulse he extends his hand towards Cal for a high five.

“Yeah, we did” Cal responds with a short laugh high fiving Dys. “They looked happy” Cal says with a wobbly smile, and sniffs while bit rubbing a few tears from his eyes.

After a few minutes of them gazing at the direction Captain left, Dys opens his backpack and begins to take out stuff. “I should set up camp before the second sun sets”

“Here, have a sandwich, we still have daylight for a while” Cal is right, they managed to make good time on their journey so they have time to have a snack and then set up the tent.

“Ok” Dys takes the sandwich that Cal is offering him and sits down to eat, Cal does the same. This are not the ones the Auntie Seedent makes so it must be from one of Cal parents.

What would that be like? Having four people as your parents, four people that are watching you constantly, telling you what to do, where to go… Sounds exhausting. Four people that make you food, that care if you don’t come back. 

As Dys is lost in thought looking at his sandwich he almost doesn’t hear Cal “I was meaning to ask, how did you get a tent?”

Dys freezes for a second and takes a bite of his food so he has some time to think of an answer. He doesn’t think that ‘I took it from the surveyors’ is a response that Cal would appreciate.

“I… have my ways” He doesn’t make eye contact.

“Ok…” It seems that Cal doesn’t believe him but won’t push the subject, Dys gives a sigh of relief. That is one of the things he appreciates about Cal, he doesn’t push for information that Dys doesn’t want to share.

They continue eating their snack in companionable silence and after they finish they set up the tent.

Once inside and with the door closed so bugs can’t come in Cal opens his bags and says “Time for dinner!”

“Um… didn’t we just have dinner?” Dys aks confused.

“Nuh uh, that was just a snack! I brought something special for dinner… Ta dah!” 

Cal opens the box in his hands revealing a small cake. “I wanted to bring something special so I asked Ceph to make a cake! I helped with the frosting” He explains with a wide smile, looking proud.

Dys can only look at it with disgust, wrinkling his nose. “That seems like a waste”

“What? no way! Its delicious!” Cal looks flabbergasted “Wait… Do you actually not like cake?! How? It’s the best! Sweet and soft and yummy-”

“I just don’t ok?” Dys replies pushing the cake towards Cal

“Oh… ok” Cal looks disappointed for a moment but then startles and looks at Dys ”Does that mean that I can eat all of it?!”

“Be my guest”

“Radical!” But before he digs in, he searches for something else in his bag. “What about hummus wraps? Do you like them?”

“They’re good I guess”

“Great!” Cal hands him a small container with hummus wraps and starts to devour the cake. It seems that Cal has a sweet tooth.

After dinner they play some holo games and then set the sleeping bags.

Before Dys can fall asleep Cal asks softly “Do you think they’ll be happy here?”

Dys thinks about it for a moment “I think that this is where they are meant to be…” He closes his eyes remembering Captain hopping excitedly around the wild hopeyes “And that they can be happy here” He adds quietly.

Cal just makes a small sound of agreement and they both settle to sleep.

The next day they have to wake up early, eat some of the rations bars that Dys brought and dismantle the tent.

After a look in the direction that they last saw Captain, they leave in silence.

This time Cal is not so clingy towards Dys, probably because he doesn’t see every plant as a threat anymore.

The trip is comfortable, even fun, Dys talking about the different plants they encounter and Cal about their possible uses in the colony.

Once back inside they’re about to go their separate ways when Cal turns to Dys and hugs him “Captain probably doesn’t really understand what just happened, so I’ll say it in their place, Thank you Dys”

Dys freezes for a moment and then just awkwardly pats Cal’s back, he’s surprised by the way the hug feels pleasantly cool in this warm morning and guesses it must be because of Cal’s augment. 

When Cal pulls away his smile is wide and sincere as he leaves Dys with a wave “I’ll see you at the walls”

Dys waves him goodbye and feels a cold dread taking hold of him, now that they’ve freed cap’n they don’t really have a reason to hang out anymore.

Sometimes Dys feels the impulse to go to geoponics, even when he remembers that Cap’n is no longer there.

The next time he sees Cal is at the walls one afternoon, it’s at the same time they’d usually hang out with captain Hoppy.

Cal keeps hanging out with Dys at the wall, sometimes they each do their own thing and others they just spend talking, mainly about Vertumna.

The more he sees Cal the more he feels the cold get swept away by Cal’s warm smiles

Chapter Text

Now that Dys doesn’t have to worry about having to collect food to maintain a healthy hopeye he can examine in more detail the different species living on Vertumna. 

Since he began to explore the outskirts he’s had a document on his holopalm where he writes about his findings, mostly cool facts and simple drawings, but given how interested Cal’s been in what he’s learned about the planet he’s been thinking about taking his notes more seriously.

“Today, we will be practicing our handwriting” Congruence announces to the class snapping him out of his thoughts.

Immediately Tangent starts to protest, for how mature she claims she is, she always throws a fit when she doesn’t agree with the method of a class.

Apparently they are passing this activity as a ‘history lesson’ and something else that Dys can’t be bothered to pay attention to.

He grabs some paper and crayons, puts some music in his hearspeak and starts to practice the alphabet.

It’s… actually kind of nice. It’s harder than he expected, his letters turning out shaky and barely understandable, but it’s also relaxing and once he manages to write his first word ‘Vertumna’, it somehow feels more real than anything else he’s written before.

He decides to keep repeating the alphabet and it slowly starts to become more legible.

“Dys, we’re done for today, you’re free to go” He hears congruence says and that makes him lift his head. Looking around he realizes he’s the only one left in the classroom.

“Oh, ok...” As he stands up he decides to ask “Will we practice writing again?”

“It’s highly unlikely, once the basics are taught what’s left is only practice, and that can be left as self study. If you wish for more tips may a recommend approaching professor Hal, he might be better equipped to give more practical instructions on the topic”

Great, the one class he has actually liked, and they’ll never have another one like it. What’s worse is that they’re leaving it as self study which means he won’t be able to practice it much since he doesn’t have kudos to spend on paper or crayons…

As soon as he has that thought he looks back at the supplies that Congruence gave them for this class, he pockets the crayons and the paper he used. She doesn’t mention it so he takes it as permission, grabs more blank paper for practice and leaves quickly before she can say anything.

That afternoon he spends it by himself in the walls, giving his words life that he wasn’t able to give before.

Writing becomes one of his favorite activities to do in the walls, so it is just a matter of time before Cal finds him staring intently at a piece of paper… his last piece of paper.

“Hi”  Cal greets, more subdued than usual. “What are you doing?” He asks as he lays on his stomach next to Dys. Apparently he can’t see that Dys’s not in the mood for him today.

 He only grumbles in response. “Nothing”

“Were you trying to draw in paper? You do know the holopalm’s stylus doesn’t work on it, right?” Cal keeps asking questions, and isn’t that just typical of him. Whenever Dys has a problem Cal rambles, trying to reach solutions by thinking out loud. As if just because they’re friends he has the right to get in Dys’s business.

Instead of answering, Dys stands up, folding his paper and putting it on his pocket, and goes to sit further away from Cal.

Dys opens his holopalm trying to let out some steam with a game with explosions. 

He sees, out of the corner of his eye, Cal getting closer to him and shuffling uncomfortably from one foot to another instead of just leaving as Dys had hoped.

“Um, are you angry with me too?” Cal asks hesitantly. Why wouldn’t he just leave .

“No” Dys responds without looking up from his game, he isn’t angry at Cal, he just doesn’t feel like interacting with other people.

Seeing that Dys won’t continue the conversation he asks softly “...Do you want me to leave?”

“Yes.” Dys response is punctuated by a sound from his game of a bomb exploding.

“Okay” Cal’s says, barely audible, unlike his steps as he gets down the wall.

After Cal leaves, Dys is even more annoyed, he keeps thinking about how Cal sounded sad. Did Dys hurt his feelings? He doesn’t really see how, it is not the first time he’s wanted to be alone and he’s said worse things to Cal when they argued.

Besides, something about what Cal said bothers him… ‘angry with me too?’ Too. Did he upset the agriculturists somehow? Or his parents? Was he in trouble? 

These questions keep repeating in his head, only stopping when he decides to go check on him.

He isn’t at the garrison playing sports ball nor with Anemone, so he goes to the wall closest to geoponics but he doesn’t see him shoveling dirt like usual either.

Just in case he checks behind the geodesic dome where they used to play with Capitan Hoppy less than a month ago. There he finds him crouched, drawing on the ground with a stick, his movements sluggish.

He probably isn’t in trouble with the agriculturists, otherwise he wouldn’t be so close to them. However that only leaves Dys more curious about what happened to leave Cal sulking.

He comes down from the wall and stands in front of Cal, who first looks at him surprised and then confused.

Dys is the one who approached him so he should probably speak first “... Hello”

That only makes Cal look more confused “Um, hello?”

He should’ve thought about what to say before hand, right now he’s not really sure how to continue.

“...is something bothering you Dys? Do you want to talk about it?” Cal asks him as he stands up and tries to give him a reassuring smile.

Thankfully Cal’s better at conversations than he is and has given him an opening. “Actually, I wanted to ask you if something’s bothering you”

Cal eyes get wide for a second, but avoids Dys’s gaze before he can see anything else “Me? No, I’m… fine”

He’s an awful liar. Still, at least it isn’t about Dys and it doesn’t seem to be anything too bad, so he could probably just let it be and Cal would resolve it on his own.

Dys should just leave it be, it is none of his business, but thinking about that doesn't sit right him so he continues “You mentioned something about someone being angry with you”

Cal flinches “Did I?”

Dys just nods.

Cal keeps silent for a moment, before giving a sigh and explaining “It’s nothing really, Nemmie just got angry with me because we have not been playing together as much as we did in the strato, and when I said it was because I was busy helping in geoponics she called me a liar… I thought she would just tell me to not spend so much with the agriculturist so her calling me a liar really took me by surprise”

Cal lift his head and seeing that Dys’s still paying attention, he continues “Apparently she has gone to geoponics to ask me to play sometimes and hasn’t found me so she thinks I’ve been avoiding her. Even tough Kom and I organized a BIG sportsball game for her birthday last month! When I tried to explain that there are others things I want to do beside playing sports she got upset” he finishes scrunching up his nose.

“But how come she hasn’t been able to find you?”

Cal just looks at him waiting for him to get it. But what else is it to get? Usually Cal’s either playing with Anemone in the garrison or helping the cultivators in geoponics, he also goes to creche sometimes, but that’s getting rarer theses days. He’s easy to find when he’s not at the walls.

Right. The walls .

“ Oh ”

“Yeah…”

Dys doesn’t like where this is going. “Then, I guess I won’t see you around as much?” After all, it doesn’t make much sense for Cal to keep going to the walls if it’s getting him in trouble with his friend.

“What? No!” Cal shakes his head vigorously “Gee dude, do you always have to think the worse of me?” he says rubbing his forehead.

Dys takes a bit of offense to that, he thinks it is a reasonable conclusion.

“You are my friend, I’m not just going to stop spending time with you” Cal says that so matter of factly, as if it could never be in doubt.

“And I’m not going to stop hanging out with Nemmie either! She’s upset for now but she’ll understand and we’ll get over it!” Cal proclaims with a confident smile, raising his arm as in victory, looking more like himself. “Wow, I feel better now!”

But how? Literally nothing about Cal’s problem changed… but just like he said, he’s looking better. Dys decides not to question it.

“What about you?”Cal asks him sitting down and patting the spot next to him urging Dys to sit with him, without thinking about it, he does.

“What about me?”

“Why were you upset?”

Right, he was bummed because he only has one piece of paper left, he feels childish being upset about that, but when he writes in paper he feels like he’s actually doing something, something real , as if that is proof that he is also real and not just there .

“It’s nothing” Dys mumbles and Cal furrows his brows and his lips tighten

“ Dude , It’s bothering you so it’s not nothing. If you don’t want to talk about it that’s ok, but I don’t think you should pretend it doesn’t matter… And sometimes speaking about it can help! Like you helped me!” Cal reassures with a smile. 

“Ugh, you always do that” Dys complains laying back on the ground. Cal can get embarrassing so quickly.

“Huh? Do what?”

“Thank me, saying I helped you when I didn't do anything! Like the meaningless compliments the grown ups do with the little kids like ‘ooooh you did such a good job not pooping your pants’”

Even though Dys is talking seriously Cal laughs at his comparison “I do not do that”

Dys can only reply with a blank face.

“I’m serious! I meant all those compliments, you’re a great friend” Cal then adds in a softer voice “like, you came here to check if I was okay” As he says that he lays back looking at the sky, Dys turns his head to look at him and sees his eyes focused on a point infinitely above them. “I have great friends… Nemmie is so much fun to play with, Sol has some hilarious stories and you are really cool! But Nemmie just jokes around and doesn’t take anything too seriously and Sol tries to get out of conversations about feelings… And yet even though you also get uncomfortable when talking about feelings you are my only friend willing to listen when others don’t and I’m really grateful for that” Cal turns to look at Dys “So if there’s something bothering you I can listen, it doesn’t change the situation, but talking about it can help you look at it differently or at least help you let it out of your chest”

Dys thinks about it for a moment, he still feels childish complaining about this, but decides to give it a chance “It’s stupid, I’m just out of paper”

Cal lifts his eyebrows but keeps silent so Dys can continue, however he just closes his eyes because that’s basically it.

“Umm, that sucks? Can’t you make a requisition for more?”

“I don’t have any kudos”

Cal looks surprised “You don’t? But doesn’t your- doesn’t Auntie Seedent give you some? Or professor Hal or the surveyors?”

“No they don’t. I mean, why would the surveyors give me kudos?”

“For all the stuff you’ve found out about the planet!”

Dys lets out a humorless laugh “I haven’t told them about it nullhead,the can’t know I sneak out”

“Dip, you’re right… And do you need paper?”

Dys sighs before admitting “Not really, that’s why it’s stupid! I don’t need it I just… liked writing in actual paper”

“Oh, I’m sorry dude, that sucks”

Dys only nods in agreement, at least he still has his last piece of paper.

They stay silent just looking at the sky and the slowly gathering clouds.

Eventually the silence is broken by Cal “Do you think that cloud looks like a manticore on a hoverboard”

Now, that’s ridiculous, it clearly looks like Seeq being jumped by a group of hopeyes.

In the end Dys just keeps his last paper on his pocket, he decides to use it when he has something important to write about or when he needs to feel connected to something.

He keeps barely going to class, sneaking out of the colony, hanging out occasionally with Cal in the walls and rarely with Sol near the gates when they have a present for him for some reason, at least the roots the gave him last time might be useful.

He’s sitting at the walls planning his next camping trip when he hears loud approaching footsteps and then the greeting he’s come to expect “Dys!”

He turns his head and sure enough Cal is approaching quickly, once he kneels next to him he takes off his bag, doesn’t even wait for Dys to acknowledge him and exclaims “Look what I’ve brought!”

Cal opens his bag and instead of the snacks he was expecting (since that’s usually the reason Cal gets excited). He finds a bunch of paper and a new box of pencils.

“Ta Dah!” Cal says with a wide smile that makes his eyes crinkle at the sides, Dys looks at him open mouthed not knowing what to say, did he use his kudos to get this or did he ask his parents? How much did it cost him?

Dys feels… conflicted. On one side he’s excited to have more material to work with, but on the other he really doesn’t like people getting in his business. Then again it doesn’t bother him as much as he expects because it’s Cal and aren’t friends supposed to do stuff like this? However that doesn’t excuse the fact that Dys doesn’t need help, not even from his ‘friend’.

Cal doesn’t seem deterred by Dys’s lack of response and just sets the pages down, takes one from the top and laying on his stomach and looking expectantly at Dys he asks “Would you teach me to write?”

That seems like a reasonable request, and Dys would have to take some of the paper to teach him.

“Um, okay”

Dys lays next to Cal and stars to show him how to hold the pencil and then how to write the alphabet. Opposite of what Dys expected Cal’s handwriting turns out small, and just like he expected barely legible.

“Now you just keep repeating them until you learn them”

“Okey dokey” Cal keeps practicing concentrated, with his tongue sticking out.

Dys grabs another piece of paper and looks at Cal, to see if he gets upset that Dys is taking another piece of paper, when he only nods distractedly, Dys resumes his writing where he left off last time not noticing Cal’s furtive glances and him trying to hide his smiles.

He had missed this, as soon as the pencil touches the paper his hands just moves, he’s not sure if the sentences make complete sense, but he can figure it out later. As he gets to the end of the page without really thinking about it he takes another one and continues.

Just like the last times he’s been inspired writing he doesn’t really notice the passage of time, at least until Cal speaks “Well, I think I’m done for today”

Startled Dys looks at Cal and sees that he’s used just one page, having repeated the alphabet only twice. There’s still more than twenty sheets of paper left.

“It was fun but I don’t think writing is for me” Cal says as he gets up and stretches. “Would you do me a favor and take these papers to the recycler? Ok, thank you, bye!” Cal says that quickly, not giving Dys the chance to answer.

Dys has to give him some credit, he might not be a good liar, but he can be sneaky. He can’t quite contain his smile as he collect the left over materials and carries them to his room.

He’s on his way to the walls, as usual he sees Anemone talking to Kom.

“-play sportsball for Cal’s birthday too!” As he hears that he stops and tries to keep listening without being noticed. Cal’s birthday is soon?

“He said that his parents will make him some lunch to celebrate and he’ll be free the rest of the afternoon so we could compete for a cool trophy! I’m sure Marz and Sol will want to play as well” Anemone looked really excited by the idea, even though Dys doubts Cal would be enthused about the competition aspect, trophy or no trophy.

“And you’re sure they’re free tomorrow?”

… Tomorrow? His birthday is tomorrow… That’s good to know, most people like to celebrate their birthdays for some reason. Dys should probably tell him happy birthday or something. That’s something that friends do, right?

With that new piece of information he goes to his room instead of the walls

The next day he tries to keep an eye out for Cal.

He sees him laughing with his parents in the cafeteria, then with a huge smile playing goalie in a match of sportsball, after that Sol accompanies him towards geoponics where the cultivators surprise him with some cake.

Dys is keeping watch on geoponics from the walls when he sees Cal leave and go behind a geodesic dome, now it’s his chance.

He can feel Cal’s eyes on him as he comes down from the wall.

“Hey dude, I caught a glimpse of you looking at geoponics, do you need something?” He asks him with and open smile.

Dys takes a deep breath and begins “No, I just… wanted to say…” He averts his eyes and continues in a small voice “Happy birthday”

Cal’s smile stretches wide his hazel eyes full of happiness and life that Dys hadn’t noticed it had been missing since… the first month of pollen.

“I also came to give you back your paper” As he says that he pushes some sheets of paper onto Cal arms and takes off running.

His face feels hot in embarrassment, he tries to convince himself it’s not big deal, that he just returned Cal some of his paper, only with a few notes about native flora. No big deal.

When he gets to his room he’s a bit calmer, until he sees Tangent is there, looking at him surprised. He can feel his face get red again.

“What happened to you?” She asks

“Nothing” Is the only thing he responds before laying on his bed and pretending to sleep

The next day Cal finds him in the cafeteria finishing breakfast.

“Dys!” he says as he runs towards him. Some of the adults look curiously for a moment before they return to their food.

Cal wraps his arm around his shoulders and tousleling his hair says “Thanks for the notes dude!”

Dys is surprised, not by Cal’s actions but by his feelings about it, instead of feeling observed, judged or embarrassed he feels… glad.

“I’m going to biology class today, want to walk together?”

“Sure?” Dys can’t help ending it like a question, still Cal just smiles brightly and lets him go so they can walk more comfortably.

When they arrive in class Tangent looks surprised to see him in biology, but must assume he arrived with Cal by chance because she doesn’t make any further comments and looks down to whatever she’s studying, missing the fact that they both sat together a few seats behind her.

H doesn’t pay much attention that class either, but trying to distract Cal with doodles of professor Hal proves to be more fun than he expected.

Perhaps he can assist to biology every now and then.

Chapter Text

Tangent has been spending more time in their room at night, always sitting at her desk. Even when he wakes up in the middle of the night, she’s awake studying something on her holopalm. He doesn’t remember the last time he saw her sleep for more than an hour, let alone use her bed .

Seeing her more often makes him feel as if he has a roboplow laying on his chest.

He still remembers how just a few years ago they would sometimes lay in the same bed talking about anything that came to mind. 

He remembers waking up and seeing Tang already on her holopalm waiting for him to have breakfast. 

He remembers her waking him up with a mischievous smile because she wanted help to sneak into the lab. 

He remembers taking the top bunk bed because she was scared to fall down. 

He remembers her crying when their mother didn’t spare a glance to them and how the tears stopped after she passed away.

He remembers seeing her happy, angry, sad, determined… And how now he barely sees passing curiosity or worse, a smug empty smile while she looks down at the rest of their classmates… and him.

Even now that she’s clearly trying to look at him without being noticed her face remains emotionless. When did she begin to hesitate to talk to him? He knows she thinks he’s stupid, but he has always thought… that at least she could still tell him her worries.

He’s probably just being dumb again, Tang is smart, she doesn’t spend time worrying about stuff, she’s too ‘mature’ for that.

The next time she throws a furtive glance in his direction he doesn’t bother hiding his annoyance as he looks back at her. In response she rolls her eyes and goes back to her holopalm.

That hurts makes him angrier than he expected. She just dismisses him? not even bothering to explain even when SHE is the one that keeps looking at him? 

“What? You’ve got something to say? Then say it!” He says louder than he intends, getting close to the desk, his hands making fists at his sides. 

She gives a sigh and then turns to look at him with a disappointed look at her face “If you’re going to be so emotional even before I say a word, I don’t see the point in talking” 

Her tone is condescending, like the ones the surveyors keep using with him when they tell him he can’t go on expeditions or the one professor Hal uses when he gets wrong the answer to an easy question.  

And he hates it. It makes him so mad he’s shaking. There’s no way he can react right now that won’t make Tangent feel that she is correct in thinking he’s too immature, too emotional.

There’s no right answer, so he just leaves their room, even though it’s the middle of the night or that the gathered clouds make it so he can barely see outside of the lounge. He just goes to his secret passage, grabs his backpack (thankfully he decided it was better to just leave it hidden there just in case) and gets outside.

Even being outside the walls doesn’t help him calm down. He sets his holopalm to a low light, just enough to see in front of him and starts to walk in a random direction, for once not caring if someone spots him.

He can feel a warm sensation on his cheeks, his blurry vision tells him it must be tears. Why this again? He’s angry, not sad! He clenches his teeth and tries to concentrate on not tripping, but he can’t ignore the emotions swirling inside him. Why couldn’t his augment be unable to feel? That would be so much better than whatever this is. Maybe then people would stop treating him like a baby, or at least he wouldn’t care.

He can feel his legs getting tired, but that’s a better kind of feeling than the anger, so he keeps pushing forward until the pain in his legs suprasses the one in his heart. 

When he finally stops he’s not sure where he is or how long it’s been. He barely has enough energy to get into his sleeping bag and succumb to unconsciousness.

Dys wakes up feeling like his face and right arm are freezing, grabs the covers but they feel thicker than he’s used to and they oppose resistance when he tries to pull them up. The memories of last night still fuzzy, he camped outside? So this must be his sleeping bag then.

Reluctantly he opens one eye and instead of finding the familiar dull orange of his tent, he makes eye contact with what appears to be a conglomerate of little mushrooms… with several eyes. He blinks trying to comprehend what exactly is happening, however that seems to startle the mushrooms because they close their eyes and remain unnaturally quiet, even for a plant.

That’s… new. Does one of them have a tentacle?

Dys sits slowly, the cold being the last thing on his mind since he has found something extraordinary. The little mushrooms don’t react, by all intents and  purposes they could be confused with many of other eyeless fungal life in Vertumna, but Dys knows what he saw.

He needs to draw them! Before he forgets what their eyes looked like. As he goes to grab some paper he finds his backpack only has the leftovers of his last trip, that’s when everything clicks and remembers why he’s outside, and why he didn’t have enough energy to set up camp. 

Remembering that really sours the experience of his new discovery, and he can’t help but be aware of the cold seeping into his skin and the noises of familiar and unfamiliar Vertumnan wildlife.

He starts shaking, unlike last night, this time it’s from the cold (or was he shaking from the cold last night too?)

Luckly inside the backpack there’s a thermal blanket for emergencies, he wraps it around himself and looks at his surroundings. 

He doesn’t see the walls from here, and can’t spot his landmarks either. However there’s a lot of mushtrees, taller than he’s ever seen before, so he’s probably south of the colony. To return to the colony he only has to open his holopalm’s compass and go north.

But… he doesn’t feel like going back right now. So, he sits in his sleeping bag, with the thermal blanket around him and quietly opens his holopalm to draw the weird… mushrooms? Yeah, mushrooms, in front of him.

He gets absorbed in his task, his mind using its full capacity to observe every bump and change in color of this new fungi, at one point it opened its eyes again, but closed them quickly when it saw Dys still there. 

Once he is satisfied with the result and goes to close his holopalm, he sees it’s a few hours after lunch and hears his stomach give a  loud rumble in protest. He decides to pack his stuff and forage in his way back to the colony… he misses his hoodie, next time he storms off he should remember to take it with him.

Besides, if someone realizes he’s gotten so far outside of the colony he’ll be in so much trouble… Then again that’s if anyone notices… 

Would anyone notice? Would anyone care ?

He sighs, he knows Tangent would notice, if only because she doesn’t want people to bother her asking if she’s seen him. There’s also professor Hal, whenever he misses a few classes in a row he talks to Auntie Seedent so she can give him a lecture about ‘the importance of education’. And lastly there’s Cal, last time he thought something had happened to him, the nullhead went looking for Dys outside, even though he doesn’t know anything about survival, hell if Dys hadn’t found him he couldn’t have gone back on his own. 

With another sigh he begins to pack his sleeping bag.

The way back feels much longer than he remembers, at least he’s close to the colony now, he’s approaching the bottom of a cliff  he often sits to sketch on. He looks at it quizzically, the rocks are irregular enough that it might be possible to climb, besides his backpack it’s lighter than usual.

He thinks other people might be afraid of climbing a cliffside without the proper equipment.

He rolls his eyes, other people are stupid. With that thought he grabs some protruding rocks and lifts his leg to begin his ascent.

The rocks are slippier than he first thought, but he manages to hold on. 

His legs are fatigued by all the walking but he’s already halfway up and keeps pushing forward. 

His breath is labored and his lungs burn, but he’s about to reach the top, the next rock is just out of reach. He thinks he can get to it if he jumps. He’s preparing for the small leap, when a frantic Sol peaks over the edge of the cliff and with a shout of his name they grab his forearm as he lets go in surprise.

The loss of the support makes him scratch up against the cliffside, he can feel a tickle of blood from his chin as Sol is trying to pull him up.

He gains leverage with his legs and with the help of Sol he climbs over the edge.

Why are they here? What are they doing? How did they know that Dys was climbing the cliff? Dys should have been able to see them on the top before they leaned over the edge.

Sol is looking over him with their hands hovering close as if they are about to touch him to see if he is okay, but they don’t dare to.

“Your chin” They say, pulling a water bottle and wetting some gauze. Why do they have that?

As Sol goes to clean the scratch on his chin, Dys grabs their wrist on instinct.

“What are you doing?” he has so many questions right now, he didn’t think any of the other kids were brave enough to step outside… Well, except Cal those two times. And how did they find him? Were they searching for him? Why would anyone search for him?

Solane gives him a look “I’m trying to clean your wound! You know, the one you got when you were about to fall from a cliff! ”

Dys frowns “I was fine ” He could’ve totally made that jump, even as tired as he is.

“No! You were about to fall from the cliffside and die ” Solane’s eyes look crazed, unfocused. They’re usually pretty goofy, always good at making people laugh, but right now they look like a completely different person. 

“Whatever, what are you doing here anyway?” Dys asks them, since they have parents that would worry if they find out they’ve been sneaking out.

Solane closes their eyes and shake their head, breathing faster and uttering incomplete, nonsensical sentences “You were- I couldn’t- not again-”

And they begin to sob, muttering apologies. To whom? Dys is not sure.

He lets go of their wrist but still finds himself trapped, between an emotionally distraught kid and a cliff.

As Sol continues crying he considers trying his luck in climbing down the cliff. However before he can try it he hears a set of familiar heavy footsteps and a voice.

“Is everything okay over there?”

That’s definitely the voice of uncle Tonin. He tries to pat Solane’s shoulders, shushing them to calm them or at least make them quiet down so the chief surveyor doesn’t find them, but Sol is completely out of it.

“What’s happening? Are you two okay?” Uncle Tonin approaches them trying to keep a calm demeanor, but his hurried steps and trembling voice give him away.

He puts a hand on each of their shoulders and gently pushes them away from the edge of the cliff.

Once they’re on safer ground he keeps looking between them and seeing that Sol is unresponsive to words he turns towards Dys, his eyes focusing on his chin and then back to his eyes.

“Do you know if they are hurt? Did something happen?” 

Dys doesn't know what he expected, but of course he only cares about Solane, everyone likes Solane.

“Dunno, they just started crying out of nowhere” He responds with a shrug.

Uncle Tonin is about to ask more questions when Solane starts to breathe faster, grabbing their chest, looking like they were choking. That makes the chief surveyor turn their full attention towards Sol.

“Hey there, calm down. It’s okay, you’re okay, I’m here”  He kept talking, looking lost.

Solane must’ve been like that for a few minutes but it felt like an eternity for Dys. He couldn’t leave -Sol.- since Chief surveyor Tonin kept sneaking glances at him. 

Eventually they manage to calm down and uncle Tonin takes them and Dys back to the colony.

Once back at the entrance to the colony, the patrol at the gates sees uncle Toning with a kid clinging to him for dear life. One of them takes off running to search for a doctor and the other approaches them to check the situation, which calls the attention of  some nearby agriculturist, including Solane’s mother.

“What’s the meaning of this?”

She sounded angry.

Luckly for Dys, everyone, including uncle Toning, seems distracted by Solane’s distraught state, giving him the chance to blend in and sneak out

When he enters his room, Tangent is there. She quickly looks up to him and does a double take, her mouth open.

“...what?” He’s too emotionally exhausted to be angry at her staring right now.

That seems to snap her out of it “You’re hurt” She says as she stands up and grabs their first aid kit.

Right, his chin.

“It’s just a scratch” He tries to play it off as nothing but she levels him with and unimpressed stare and gestures for him to sit.

He rolls his eyes but does as instructed.

She doesn’t ask him what happened or demand an explanation, just quietly begins to clean and disinfect the injury.

It’s not the first time she has taken care of his scrapes, but it’s been a while. The gesture is comfortable, and the familiar look of concentration on her face as she tends to his small injury helps him breathe easier.

“There, now it won’t get infected” She tells him with a small self satisfied smirk.

He just gives her a small nod of acknowledgement. “...good”

They both stay there, unsure on how to continue or perhaps simply unwilling to break the moment.

Eventually Tangent sighs “I should return to my studies” Her face once again neutral and disinterested she just sits back on the desk and opens her holopalm as if nothing happened.

But Dys knows, something did happen, he saw a glimpse of his sister, she’s still there somewhere under that ‘perfect student’.

Since she has gotten back to her work she doesn’t catch his own smirk.

The next day he gets woken up by Tangent shaking his shoulders “Wake up, chief surveyor Toning wants to speak with you”

“Huh?” he says, rubbing his eyes, and sure enough, when he looks up uncle Tonin is at their door, greeting him with a little wave and a pathetic shadow of a smile that doesn’t reach his eyes.

“Mornin’. Sorry to bother you so early, but I wasn’t sure that I would be able to find you later in the day.”

“You can come in, chief surveyor, I’ll be going to my engineering class now” She says as she leaves, not waiting for an answer.

“Um, thanks Tangent” Melatonin says to her retreating form as he steps into their room, he stops in front of Dys who is sitting on the edge of his bed.

Dys’s trapped, at least he’s on the top bed so he can look down on uncle Tonin

The chief surveyor takes a deep breath and begins to talk “Listen Dys, what you did yesterday was very dangerous” Dys can’t help but roll his eyes, however uncle Tonin has his eyes closed and doesn’t notice “This time you got out with a few scratches but next time might be worse. I know you want to join the surveyors but you’re still so young, so fragile” the last part is soft, barely audible, and it looked as if it pained him to say. “I won’t tell Annie for now, but if I or one of my surveyors see you outside of the main gates, we’ll have to involve her in this”

To Dys, it all sounds like empty words. What does he know about danger? For being the ‘chief surveyor’ he always ‘surveys’ the same paths or the gates. And he was threatening him with telling Auntie Seedent? As if she would care enough to keep him from sneaking out? A part of him wanted to laugh, yeah right, she’d give him a lecture at best.

Seeing Dys face without a single change in expression Uncle Tonin lets out a sigh and adds as an afterthought “Right, because of what happened yesterday with Solane, professor Hal is going to give an compulsory lecture to your age group about mental health and how to handle panic attacks”

As if on clue he gets a message on his holopalm from professor Hal, informing him of the very same thing. Now it is Dys turn to let out an exasperated sigh

He’s sitting on the back of the class as the rest of his classmates fill in.

Cal and Anemone arrive together, roughhousing as they come in. When Cal meets his eyes his waves to him in greeting, his smile doesn't quite reach his eyes, Dys just lifts his hand in acknowledgement. For a moment it looks as if Cal will go sit closer to Dys but Anemone pulls his hand towards another set of seats and Cal just gives him an apologetic smile. It seems like this will be another boring lecture.

Tangent sits in the front as usual. What’s definitely not usual is the fact that Marz sits next to her, probably because Solane is not present.

Eventually professor Hal arrives “Good morning students, Today we will be breaching a subject that’s not usually on the curriculum and that is mental health!”

Anemone lifts her hand and without waiting for permission she asks “Professor Hal, we still have to wait for Solane to arrive, can we play in the meantime?” At the mention of Sol, Dys flinches, he also notices that Cal looks uncomfortable and that professor Hal is making a really weird face.

“Ah, yes, about them. They’re in-”

However before he can finish Marz’s voice booms in the classroom “They’re excused for today, and that’s the only thing any of you needs to know” As she says that she fixes each of them, including professor Hal, with an icy glare.

“Yes, don’t worry, congruence will make sure that they receive their material on the subject”

The class is not what Dys expected, not because of the subject, but because of Cal’s and Marz’s reaction to it.

Surprisingly Cal knows a lot about the topic, answering many of the questions, even giving practical tips to professor Hal's more theoretical class.

Marz stays quiet and with laser focus on the lesson, when usually she spends it talking with Sol and only paying attention to new facts about earth.

Besides that the lesson carries on as usual.

When class ends Cal and Anemone approach him.

"Hey dude!" 

“Hi Dys!”

They both greet him, getting in his line of sight, Anemone is almost jumping in place, he’s a little taken aback so before he can bring himself to answer Anemone starts talking.

“We were thinking about playing sportsball but Cal says that Sol can’t play today, and since the two of you hang out sometimes I was thinking that maybe you could join us!” She says puffing out her chest, clearly proud of her great idea to fill their teams. And then lays both hands on his desk and gets her face close to his. “What’d ya say?”

He leans back, trying to make sense of what she was saying “Um-”

“Come on Nemmie it’s not just for sports ball” Cal admonishes and with a hand on her shoulder makes her back off a little. He then gives Dys an apologetic half smile “Actually, I was tellin’ her that you’re a pretty cool dude and we should invite you to play sometime, It doesn’t have to be sportsball, perhaps we could even make a new game!”

“That’s basically what I said!” Anemone retorts, trying to get Cal in a headlock, however he manages to hold her wrist and then tries to get her into a headlock.

As they continue to play fight and Dys considers sneaking out before they notice, another person gets closer to their group.

“Well look at this! This is certainly an unusual group of people.” Ugh. That voice.

“What do you want Marz” Dys asks, frowning.

“Well It looked as if you were finally getting an intervention, so I decided to come to contribute with my own opinion. Should I start with your clothes or your manners?” she says crossing her arms and lifting her chin, in contrast Dys hides the bottom of his face in the neck of his sweatshirt.

That makes Cal stop what he is doing “This isn’t an intervention, we are just inviting him to play!” taking advantage of his distraction Anemone tackles him screaming “Gotcha!”

“They invited you to play?” Marz seems genuinely surprised, then hums inquisitively  “Hmmmm, I guess we do need another person to even out the teams... Yeah, you’ll do, you can’t be worse than having one less player”

He opens his mouth to retort but Anemone beats him to it.

“Great! Let’s go!” She says standing up and pulling Dys by his arm.

“H-Hey!” He says yanking his arm back from her hold. “Cut it out, I never said I was going to play your stupid game!”

That makes Anemone shut up and pay attention to him. She narrows her eyes and a stomp of her foot replies “Sports ball is not stupid! You’re the weird one that never wants to play!”

Despite Anemone's loud voice, Marz keeps looking at Dys and says “So you do have a backbone” She sounds… pleased?

Dys can feel his face getting hot, he knows he’s weird, but still, Anemone doesn’t need to shout it.

Before Dys can answer either of them Cal gets between them. “Come on guys, we haven’t really listened to what Dys wants to do. And honestly… I don’t really feel like playing sportsball today either”

“But Caaaaal the other games aren’t as fun. And Mom says we won’t be able to play sports ball as much once the ‘rain’ starts”

As Cal and Anemone argue and taking advantage of Cal’s taller frame Dys starts to back off, trying to leave through the back door. When he leaves he catches Marz's eyes, her expression once more one he's familiar with: displeasure. He ignores it and runs away.

The next time he hangs out with Cal, he apologizes in behalf of Anemone.

“She says you can join us to play whenever you want!” Cal tells him with a hopeful look on his face.

When Dys only gives agrumbled “‘kay” in acknowledgement his smile falters and his shoulders drop. 

…

Whenever he hangs out near the gates he can feel the surveyors eyes follow his every move. Still, he keeps hanging out there because he can observe them in turn. It’s a good thing he doesn’t go there to see how Solane is doing because they don’t show up, and if he leaves the gates annoyed is because he doesn’t manage to learn anything useful and not because he hasn’t seen signs of the colonist socialite.

…

He’s awoken by deafenig rumble of the skies outside. His bedroom window is covered in… water? It’s pouring down from the clouds! He has heard that those gathering clouds meant that it would rain soon, but to actually see it… 

“These storms should be similar to the ones on earth, it’s likely there’ll the noise is by product of a charge transfer in the form of ‘lightning’” Tang voice snaps him out of it, he looks at her from his bed, she’s alternating looks between their window and her holopalm.

Whatever, he’s not that interested on how or why it’s happening, only that it is. What’s the purpose of knowing about it if you can experience it? He leaps from his bed, ready to go out and experience this ‘rain’ when Tang speaks again.

“The strato’s prepared to withstand weather, even lightning storms” She tells him as she keeps pointedly looking at her holopalm, but Dys can see that her eyes are unfocused. “There’s nothing to worry about”

Pft, some water doesn’t scare him, but Tangent is acting weird. As he takes a few more steps towards the door he looks back at his sister, it’s only for a moment but he sees her hand tremble before she makes it into a fist.

“Ugh, this noise won’t let me sleep” He says laying on the bed on the bottom bunk.

“That’s thunder, usually when there’s lightning…” As Tangent keeps explaining the physics behind lightning storms Dys makes noncommittal sounds to signal he’s listening, he sees her gradually relax as she looses herself in basically giving a lecture.

…

The constant rain and frequent lightning storms mean that he hasn’t been able to go out of the colony and ends up spending most of his time on his room or the longe with the other kids.

He’s so bored he even let Marz paint his nails in exchange of some kudos.

“If you let them on as long as you can to see how many days they last I’ll even throw a few extra kudos” She tells him with a wink as his nails dry.

“Hey guys! Wanna play tag?” Shouts Anemone from across the room where she and Cal had to stop playing on the hoverboard because it ran out of battery.

 “Of course, I have to prepare for my return as a striker” Marz responds as stands up and looks expectantly at Dys.

“What about you Dys, want to play?” asks Cal, once again a hopeful smile on his face.

… Well… He is pretty bored. “Sure” He stands and gets together with the others, he doesn’t miss the way he keeps looking at him as they played, as if expecting that Dys would leave at any moment and every time he finds him still there it looks like his smile stretches wider and wider.

At the end of the game Dys realizes he’s smiling too.

Chapter Text

Wet is so boooooring. It doesn't stop raining and whenever he's outside, uncle Tonin or one of his surveyors keep watching him. He can feel it in the back of his neck, it makes his skin itch, thinking they’re about to approach him to scold him, so he doesn’t spend much time outside.

There is also the fact that the last time he tried to write while on the walls his paper got all mushy… and it's not like he has infinite amounts of it! Sure, Cal keeps sharing some with his friends on the pretense of drawing or making origami or anything else, and when they finish he "asks him" to take the leftovers to be recycled, and having Cal constantly worried about him feels... weird, like he ate something bad. Still, he hasn't found the way to approach the subject yet. He thinks that if Cal just straight out gives him the paper he could accept it. Probably.

So he has no choice but to spend more time in the lounge. It's been strange hanging out with the rest of the kids his age again, somehow it's like they haven't interacted in decades, even though it was less than a year ago when they spent most of their time physically close together in the strato’s creche.

It feels especially weird because Sol's absence is impossible to ignore, how someone is missing giggling next to Marz, passing the ball with Anemone, studying with Tangent or trying hoverboard tricks with Cal.

So when they come out of their room everyone crowds them immediately.

"You're back! Where were you? Were you sick?" Anemone's voice can be heard across the lounge.

"Dude, it's so good to see you! You have to see the new hoverboard tricks I've learned!" Cal says as he tries to pull them by their arm.

"They should probably catch up with our classes since they missed the mushwood experiment we did in biology" Retorts Tang looking disappointedly at Cal.

"That’s lame! If they’re feeling well we should play something!" Exclaims Anemone grabbing Solane’s other arm.

"All right everybody listen up! I'm calling best friend privilege. They'll hang out with me first" Marz tries to say with her usual flippant attitude, but the way she glances at Sol betrays concern.

"Everybody! I'm fine, my head just felt kinda woozy for a while" Sol says, freeing their arms from Cal and Anemone's hold.

Then they hold their head and scrunch up their nose "And now the only thing I feel is…" That quickly shuts up everybody, worried something was happening to Sol.

"... an intense…" they drop their head, their eyes screwed shut. Everybody gets closer. Dys can barely breathe, his chest tight.

"BOREDOM" They exclaim, laughing, moving quickly and putting their arms around Marz and Anemone. "Only the most intense game of sportsball could possibly cure me!"

That effectively broke the tension, most of them let out a relieved laugh, Tang rolls her eyes and leaves with a small smile, Dys only manages to let out a shaky breath.

He looks at them, making sure they’re really ok. They’re laughing, appearing as if they had not a care in the world, as if the last time he saw them they didn't break down on the edge of a cliff over three weeks ago.

Still, something in his chest loosens seeing Solane acting as usual. He lingers close by -to make sure they’re ok- because there’s nowhere else to go. When he catches their eyes they flinch and look away, and that… hurts. More than he expected.

"Come on, I wanna know what a sportsball match in this 'rain' is like!" They say with a sense of urgency, leading their little group towards the doors and purposely leaving Dys behind.

He feels betrayed, he knows he shouldn’t, he always knew Sol just talked to him so they could make fun of him with Marz. But then why keep the pretense for so long? Why the gifts? Why search for him?

Before the group reaches the doors Cal exclaims "Wait!" Then turns around and shouts "Dys! Do you want to play with us?"

For a fleeting moment Solane looks uncomfortable, but the others seem to miss it.

Dys doesn’t say anything, just keeps looking at Sol, who puts their hand on Cal's shoulder and says "Come on Cal you know Dys doesn’t like-"

"I'll go" He interrupts them, surprising everyone including himself. Before he can regret his decision he catches up to the group, Cal and Anemone welcome him with loud celebrations.

"Wait, this means that if we can convince Tangent to play we might have enough for a fair match! Kom can just be the referee!" Says Anemone with a sudden realization.

"On it! Wait for us in the fields I'll go convince her" Marz tells them with a hand on her chest, exuding confidence, she goes in the direction that Tang left.

In the excitement of a sportsball match unlike any other before, nobody but Dys seems to notice that Sol is quieter than usual and seems to be avoiding his eyes.

So they wanted to get rid of him? Well, bad luck, he has a friend that does want him around! So even if he doesn’t really feel like it, he'll go play… sportsball.

Yeah, sportsball…

Okay, maybe he regrets his decision a bit. But this is about proving a point!

(And maybe if Tang doesn’t show up they'll cancel the game? Maybe? Hopefully.)

The group heads to the fields, talking loudly about the game while a light rain falls down. Dys walks with them but somehow it feels like he’s not part of it, he can’t keep a pace that feels natural, constantly having to hurry or to slow down, and not being able to include himself in the conversation.

He thinks about talking with Cal, but he has his whole attention on Sol. Dys clenches his teeth, great, he is here to hang out with his friend, but he seems more than happy to ignore him. He keeps looking ahead the rest of the way, now purposely ignoring the conversation.

Thankfully the fields are not that far from the lounge, they find Marz and Tang already there waiting for them. Tang’s cheeks are slightly red, did they come running? The thought is amusing.

"Finally! We were waiting for ages" Marz scolds them, hands on her hips.

Sol just rolls their eyes goodnaturedly "I'll make it up to you, promise"

"Yeah, you will, by making me one of the captains" Marz tone leaves no room for arguing, but that doesn't stop Anemone’s reply.

"That’s not fair! This is about Solane, so we are going to be Captains! Right Sol?" She proclaims and looks towards her friend for support.

Sol doesn’t even get to answer as Tang interjects “If this is about Sol, Do I really need to point out the contradiction of your statement?”

The sound of a whistle cuts through the argument. There is Anemones’s brother, Komsomething, everyone keeps silent waiting respectfully for him to speak, it seems that even Marz respects him.

“Well if these aren’t the top sportsball players” He tells them with a smile that crinkle his eyes. “If you really can't decide on team captains we'll draw lots”. As he says this he picks up some sticks, holding them in one hand he asks each of them to pick one.

Dys looks at his stick, betrayed. He got the second biggest, which means…

“Well! It looks like our team Captains are Sol and, um, the little surveyor!” Kom tries to pass his hesitation with an awkward laugh. For his part Dys is too preoccupied with his mortification to see Solane's flinch or hear Tangent repeating their names to Anemone’s brother.

And then, to make matters worse, he wins the coin flip.

Now he's next to Solane and everyone is looking at him weirdly, when he catches Anemone’s eyes she scrunches her nose as if she smelled something foul and then stares intently at Sol, probably no one wants to be in his team. Why did he even come? He could have slipped away on the way here and nobody would have noticed. However, as that thought crosses his mind, he makes eye contact with Cal, and he gives him a thumbs up and an encouraging smile.

Right, he’s not alone here.

He has never been the captain before, but he only has to say a name right? And so he does.

“What? Sorry buddy I didn’t hear you”

“Marz”

Everyone looks surprised at that, but he knows that Marz is intense, and the thought of unleashing her on someone else for a change makes him have to hide a smile behind his sweater.

She approaches him with a smug stride “Would you look at that, you can have good taste”

Sol chooses Anemone. And as Dys goes to call for Cal, he thinks Tangent looks… dejected.

“Tang” It slips out before he can really think about it. Ugh, why? He’s probably imagining things. After all, why would Tang care about getting chosen for sportsball? But as she approaches them he hears Marz whisper to her “Told you smart girls don’t get picked last, and I wasn’t even a team captain!” then louder for both of them to hear “Okay! Listen up! I have a plan”

Usually he’d be upset that Marz is so bossy, but since he doesn’t really want to deal with this, he lets Marz take the lead. She’s in front and seems more than happy to handle most of the plays.

Near the back is Tang, she doesn’t have great stamina so her role is basically to give passes to Marz.

And lastly Dys is goalie and actually pretty good at it! He’s got good eyesight and reflexes, so even though Anemone and Sol play sportsball often he manages to catch several of their throws. On the other hand Cal…

“Come on Cal you have to take it seriously! They barely play and they’re winning!” They can hear Anemone even from their side of the field.

He can’t hear Cal’s response but he definitely hears Anemone’s. “Well, I’m not happy!” She stomps. “I’m mad! How can I have fun if you just let them win?!”

The other team is arguing, Sol looks like they want the earth to swallow them, and Marz seems ready to join the argument. However before she can take a step Kom intercedes, talks with Sol’s team and the game resumes.

For the rest of the game the other team is out of sync so It’s an easy win. Anemone stomps off as soon as the game ends.

Sol pats Cal’s shoulder and then approaches their group, however when they catch his eyes they mumble something unintelligible and run off, Marz follows them giving Dys an accusatory glare. Meanwhile Tangent simply watches with a raised eyebrow and discreetly tries to calm her breathing.

Dys awkwardly receives Anemone’s brother’s congratulations. He is soaking, tired and covered in mud. Everyone looks upset but he feels… Strangely vindicated? He didn’t let Solane just leave him behind like they wanted, he actually played sportsball and did better than he expected, even though it was just a stupid game… he won.

He is still catching his breath when he hears someone call out to him “Hey Dys! Congratulations on your win!” He smiles at the familiar voice, even before he turns towards Cal.

He’s covered in mud, not quite as much as when crashed in the mountain of mud behind geoponics, but close. When he gets next to Dys he gives him a side hug and ruffles his hair a bit. “Why didn’t you say you are such a goalkeeper master, huh? When you stopped Nemmie’s spike It looked as if you just flew! Like Whoosh and then Bam the ball was out, it was radical!”

He knew Cal was going to exaggerate like this, still he can’t help but be embarrassed, so he playfully pretends to push Cal away and hides his grin and his red cheeks in the neck of his sweater.

Chapter Text

The next days are… awkward to say the least. Anemone and Cal aren’t talking to each other, and since they have to spend most of their time in the lounge because of the storms, that means that Dys has no choice but to see Cal sulking. Even when they hang out he’s distracted and quiet. Well… quiet for him. 

The worst part is that there’s something he could do, but it is something he really doesn’t want to do. But Cal is sulking and that is making him feel bad , and maybe a little guilty, because if he had chosen Cal in his team the day of the sportsball match as friends are supposed to do, then he wouldn't have had that fight with Anemone and wouldn't be sad now.

He decides he’s had enough of his moping when he realizes that Cal has been staring at the same puzzle piece for almost an hour. Dys has already completed the rest of the puzzle! It’s literally the last piece!!!!!

“Cal” He tries to call his attention, but no response.

“Cal!” he says louder, making other kids look at him like a hopeye who grew a second foot. Their judging gaze feels uncomfortable but at least that did the trick.

“Huh? What? Oh, sorry, I guess I got lost in thought, he he…” Cal’s smile is forced, giving him the push he needed to get out the words.

“This is boring” He states.

“Sorry, I know I wasn-”

“Let’s go play at your house” Ugh, he just said it and he already regrets it.

“Huh??????” Cal looks genuinely confused. This is Dys moment, he can take it back, he can pretend he didn’t just voluntarily offer to go Cal’s home, where Cal’s FOUR parents live.

“Ugh” He rolls his eyes and tries to look exasperated instead of nervous “YOU were the one who invited me, remember? And now what? Did you change your mind?” He knows Cal hasn´t, still he can't help but hope that maybe Cal has changed his mind.

“Huh? No! I still want you to come to my home!” He shouts standing up. “Come on” He grabs Dys wrist to pull him up and run with him to his house.

Wait, this is too fast, isn’t he at least going to finish the puzzle? He was staring at that piece for an hour, maybe he can spend another hour putting it in place so Dys can reconsider his decision and escape? “The puzzle-” Dys says as tries not to trip as Cal drags him along.

Cal looks at him but keeps a fast pace “Don’t worry I have puzzles at home! And toys! And Perk’s model starships! And, and- Ow” 

However, not looking where he was going meant he was more likely to crash against stuff “CAREFUL!” or with Auntie Seedent holding desserts, which spill over them, staining them with frosting.

Great, now his hair is sticky. He tries to get it off his hair while avoiding looking at the chief steward, but he stills hears her sigh so he hunches up his shoulders getting ready for the scolding.

“Sorry! Sorry Auntie Seedent! I wasn’t looking where I was going!” Cal explains tripping over himself in trying to pick up the platter and ruined pastries. Dys wants to warn him against trying to explain himself knowing that it would only lengthen the lecture.

“Oh?” auntie responds good naturedly with light mirth in her voice “And where are you boys going so quickly?”

“We’re going to play at my house!” Cal states energetically almost dropping everything he had just picked up.

“That’s nice of you Cal, It’s good to see Dys getting along with other kids” Surprised at not getting scolded Dys looks at Auntie Seedent, seeing her condescending smile makes him grind his teeth. She sighs resigned “There’s nothing to do about the spilled cupcakes, don’t worry, I’ll take care of this, you boys can go play” She pats their backs as Cal takes his hand and, saying thanks, he leads Dys in what he assumes is the way to his home.

…What was that? It was the opposite of what happened with the old cultivator, when Cal and him were arguing and the old fart thought it was Dys’s fault. Now auntie Seedent sees it as a harmless accident and just lets them go. Was it because it was Cal? Or… or was it because it wasn’t Dys? He tries to imagine what would have happened if he alone had crashed with her, it’s too easy to picture her disappointed sigh, her false cheer hiding discontent as she ’Asks’ him to help her clean the mess he made.

…Does she even nag the other kids half as much as she nags him?

“We’re here!” Cal’s voice is loud, even though he is just next to him. Right, he was trying to cheer up Cal. But now he feels it’s pointless, why should he care? When Cal already has so many people that care about him, he’s not like Dys, who only has one friend to count on.

Dys’s been staring absentmindedly at the door when Cal speaks up again “Hey Dys… I know you were the one who said we should come here but, if you’re not feeling up to it… we don’t really have to do it you know? We could just go back to the lounge and finish the puzzle” His voice is much softer now, he’s still smiling but it looks sad.

Dys swallows a lump on his throat and with a roll of his eyes he answers “It’s not a big deal, I’m just waiting for you to open the door, nullhead” 

He’s not good at talking with people, his curt and ‘rude’ answers often makes them upset. But Cal positively beams, it’s impressive how expressive his face can be, always wearing his heart in his sleeve. Dys thinks that Cal is too easy to please, but still… maybe it doesn’t matter that Cal has other friends, maybe Dys is just one of many, but he’s the one that has Cal beaming for the first time this week, so he’ll continue cheering up his friend.

And who knows, maybe one day Dys will be as good a friend as Cal is to him.

As they step inside Dys is surprised at how big and quiet it is. There’s a living room area with couches, a Holoprojector, shelves filled with model ships and several gaming consoles in front of an old fashioned screen (he had read about these consoles on his holopalm, but he didn't know there were any on the ship!).

Still, his gaze is drawn mostly to the pictures adorning the space, some were the holoimages he was familiar with, but several others were printed, he didn’t know people could ask requisitions for something stupid like that. Why have them printed? The image won’t be able to change now, meanwhile the holopictures keep shifting between predetermined images.

“Sooooo, what d'ya think?” Cal’s tone is deceptively casual, he keeps his hands on his pockets, but the way he shuffles on his feets gives away his nervousness at a simple glance.

“‘s okay” He keeps his tone as casual as he can, trying to look around discreetly. Before coming here he had assumed everyone had rooms like his, with only the essentials, a bunk bed, a desk and a closet. They go to the kitchen to try to clean up a bit (Kitchen! they actually have a kitchen!) and then they go back to the living room.

“Sooooo, what do you want to do? We can play here or go to my room, I have video games, movies- Oh! I said I would show you Perk’s collection” Cal excitedly pulls him towards the shelves with the model starships, he doesn’t know much about the ships, but he has a story for most of them, Dys tries to pay attention but he feels overly aware that at any minute one of Cal’s parents could appear.

“Mom says that when I was small I got the piece stuck on my nose-” That caught Dys’s attention

“What? Why would you do that?” That's gross, but he still lets out a breathy laugh at the mental image.

“I dunno dude, I was like two or three. Anyway, so that’s why it doesn’t have that left wing thingy-”

“And what, they couldn’t just requisition a new piece?” He had to get on his tiptoes but he could kinda see the spaceship Cal was talking about.

“I mean, he probably could? Honestly I don’t know why he doesn't. He also hasn't fixed the one that Ceph sat on or the one that mom melted” Dys is trying to look where Cal is pointing, but it’s too high for him. “Here I’ll help you up so you can see them better” He can barely process the words before Cal somehow lifts him, carrying him on his shoulders, he almost falls backwards but he manages to hold on to Cal’s head. 

Cal laughs “Sorry, I should’ve given you more warning”

Dys only retaliates with a soft laugh and a playful smack on Cal’s head with no force behind it. “Why? Don’t tell me people actually get scared about things like this, I’m not even high up” It was surprising more than anything.

Cal’s voice carries his good humor “Of course you wouldn’t be scared, you’re really brave! Now, can you see the spaceships I was talking about?”

Sure, a little higher he could see a lopsided model that looks distorted, like a blackhole was sucking it in, and another… thing? Surely that wasn’t what Cal was talking about? It’s just charred plastic.

“They look like thrash”

“I know! But Perk insists on keeping them” Cal sighs exasperated and Dys is amused, he didn’t know Cal could do exasperated “Anyways the coolest one is aaaall the way on top”

Dys tries to catch a glimpse but can only see part of the wing “Mmmmm I can’t really see it. Don’t move, I’ll stand on your shoulders so I can take it off the shelf”

“Cool! It’s been so long since I played with it!” Good, Cal sounds really excited with his idea.

Getting up is a little shaky, but the shelves are a big help, still the ship is juuuust out of reach. Dys stretches as much as he can until finally… Ha! He gets hold of the fin, as he pulls it back, the body of the model falls into both of his arms “Oof” It's heavier than he expected, the force of it tilts him back.

And back, and back, both of his hands are holding onto the spaceship so he can’t reach forward. He’s falling.

“DYS” Cal steps back trying to compensate but crashes into the side of the couch, luckily that means that when Dys falls he does so on the couch.

“Oof” Dys is still holding onto the model. 

“Dys! Are you okay?! Did you hit your head?!” Cal is panicking next to him, for his part Dys can only laugh like a mad man.

“Haha, Success!” First he almost falls from a cliff, now actually falls from Cal’s shoulders. If he had any other augment he would probably develop a fear of heights. But as it is, he only finds it amusing, eventually Cal joins him with a nervous laugh.

“Wow, that was really close, maybe we don’t do it again?” 

“What? But it was fun! And look, the model is fine!” Dys shoves the ship towards Cal. Who receives it a bit clumsily looking startled at first, but then quickly recovers and turns back to the excitement from before.

“Dys, look! The door of the cargo bay actually opens and you can see inside it! It even has detachable escape pods!”

“Those don’t look the right size for a human crew, maybe it was actually piloted by aliens and they used this pods to take a dump and then throw it to space”

“Ewww, why would they do that instead of just using the bathroom?” Cal scrunches up his nose, but still laughs at Dys crazy theory. 

“Because it’s poisonous, Duh” Surely there could be Aliens that expel poison.

“Hehe, but since they’re running out of escape pods they have to find a new planet fast!” Cal plays along and carries the ship over his head as if it was searching for somewhere to land.

They keep playing with the spaceship and their made up aliens, Cal’s smile constant and sincere and Dys worries about Cal’s parents long forgotten, both of them just adding more and more extravagant feats to their aliens (“They have an exoskeleton!” “Nu uh they have a skeleton made of corundum!” “WAIT. THEY HAVE BOTH”), more perils to their travels (“Then the meteor tries to eat them!”) so they can make daring escapes (“That doesn’t make sense” “Yes it does! It’s the power of friendship!”).

Eventually they hear the door open and a deep voice call.

“Helloooo! Anyone home? Guess who got home early from the surveillance trip with the video of a baby hopeye!”

Immediately Dys goes still. On the other hand Cal shouts “Ver!” and runs to the door.

Slowly Dys turns towards the door, there he sees a broad shouldered man with a surveyor uniform and tattoos in his neck and both his arms, pulling off his boots, while Cal stays a few steps away almost jumping in place. Even when the man stands to his full height, Cal doesn’t make any moves to step closer until the surveyor opens his arms and Cal basically throws himself at him. “Ver! You’re back early!”

“Heh, It’s good to see you too buddy”

Dys looks away, embarrassed on behalf of Cal, isn’t he too big to act like that?. At least both of them are distracted, Dys could make his escape now… if they weren’t still hugging and blocking the door!

While Dys is contemplating exit routes the surveyor catches his eyes.

“Ah, you invited over a friend?” He seems nervous as he talks to Cal. Was Cal not allowed to invite people over? Did he get him in trouble? Cal certainly looked guilty.

“Yeah… I’m sorry I didn’t tell you, but I thought you were coming back tomorrow!” Dys flinches a bit at that, so he really wasn’t supposed to be here.

“Sorry? Why should you be sorry? Of course you can invite friends over!” He tries to encourage Cal, but the way his voice gets more high pitched and the little twitches of his fingers makes Dys anxious. “Hello, you’re little Dys right? Chief Melatonin has talked about you” That’s definitely the condescending tone that adults use with really little kids, that makes him a bit angry, but he is Cal’s parent so he’ll try to be… polite.

“Yeah…”

That’s polite enough right?

“...”

“...”

“Oh! I haven’t introduced myself! I’m Perseverance, one of this little rascal’s parents, hehe…” 

“’Kay”

“...”

He really doesn’t know what else to say, is the surveyor testing him or something? Seeing if he’ll catch him being rude so he can tell the chief surveyor, is that why he mentioned uncle Tonin? As a threat? 

Dys narrows his eyes at him, if he thought he could intimidate him he chose the wrong target.

He watches the surveyor squirm in place. Good.

“Oh! You said you got a video of a baby hopeye?” Cal’s voice cuts through the tension. Dys breaks the onesided staring contest.

“YES” the surveyor basically shouts, then clears his throat and continues at a more normal volume “um, I mean, yes, I do. Although it’s more like a video of a family of hopeyes, here I’ll show you guys”

They move to the couch, Dys can’t help but keep an eye on the surveyor, so he catches when he does a double take at seeing the spaceship they were playing with and then the place high on the shelves where it was kept, for a moment it looks like he’s going to say something but then just shakes his head and pointedly ignores it, going back to connecting his holopalm to the holoprojector.

Cal’s seated in the middle of the couch with Dys on his left and the surveyor on his right.

Suddenly an image appears of what Dys knows to be the outskirts of the colony, the following pictures are a mix between the landscape, flora and fauna of the area “So we were traveling towards the valley of vertigo, when suddenly we see a Hopeye, and while that’s normal enough what was weird was that it began to approach us! In all my previous expeditions the hopeyes only ran away, but here it was this hopeye just following us around like it wasn’t afraid of us! look!”

Sure enough the following images are of hopeye approaching and even jumping from one of the surveyor’s boot to the other. It was clearly asking for pets, Dys knows that because that is what Captain Hoppy did… Or rather, that’s what he does, because the Hopeye in the pictures is clearly Hoppy.

“And then you wouldn't believe what happened!”

Suddenly a video begins to play, on it Dys could see Cap’n jumping, then begin to make some rhythmic thumps and out of nowhere four baby hopeyes appear next to the surveyor's boot, he hears a high pitched squeal and then the video is on mute.

The surveyor lets out an awkward cough, his face red “Um, it seems that the audio got messed up”

But Dys doesn’t care about that, his eyes are stuck on the screen, on the adult hopeye that looked healthier, happier than the last time they saw them.

Cal is sniffling.

“Awww, buddy, they’re really adorable aren’t they? Enough to move even the toughest to tears!” Cal’s dad gives him a half hug as Cal lets out a wet laugh.

“Can you send me the video?” Cal’s voice is tentative, soft, it’s a tone Dys doesn’t often hear from him.

“Of course! Although soon you’ll be able to find it in the archive” Still, immediately the surveyor sends Cal the video, and then Cal sends it to Dys.

He’s really glad Captain is doing okay, the place they freed them has few predators but nature can be brutal sometimes.

“Mmmm, it seems Ceph and Tirah are going to bring dinner and Perk is staying late in the lab… Is Dys staying to eat?” 

Cal leans forward and opens his mouth as if he’s about to answer, but Dys beats him to it. “I should be going home…”

“Oh…” Cal drops his shoulder but makes no further comment to ask him to stay. 

Dys accomplished his goal, he cheered up Cal for a bit, he should be able to go home now. Even though Cal looks awfully disappointed like… like he really wanted to keep hanging out with Dys.

“... But I guess I could stay for dinner” Dys mumbles on his sweater and Cal immediately perks up.

“Really? Dys, really?! Awesome! Come with me, mom and Ceph will arrive soon and I still have to show you my room!” 

Once again Dys finds himself being lead by Cal, he looks back and sees that the surveyor is staying in the living room and Dys lets out a sigh of relief, it was really uncomfortable having one of uncle Tonin’s minions watching him so closely.

“Ta dah!” Cal says as he extends his arms showing off his room.

This is more like Dys expected the house to be, a small room with a bunk bed, a desk and a closet. It’s similar to Dys and Tang’s room but at the same time really different. It's a lot more… cluttered. There are shelves with toys, figurines and plushies, several old looking tabletop games, what Dys assumes is part of a school project scattered on the floor and an earth plant that looked well taken care of.

The thing that calls his attention is the bed “Are you going to have a sibling?”

Cal raises his eyebrows in surprise “No???? Why would you ask that?”

Dys narrows his eyes “Then why do you have a bunk bed?”

“Ah, Ver sleeps there sometimes. Mom says the other room can get ‘overwhelming’ and Ver… Doesn’t deal well with feeling crowded. In the strato he used to go to sleep to another house sometimes, but one family needed the space so he agreed to leave it to them and started to live with us more permanently, at first he had to spend a lot of nights in the couch, but whenever one of us got up in the night he would startle awake. But then Mom says I gave them the idea of a bunk bed! I don’t really remember that, but it worked! And now that we’re in Vertumna, Ver has been a lot better! Although that means we rarely have sleepovers anymore…”

That’s weird, if you don’t feel comfortable around people why would you date three? Dys can’t wrap his head around it, imagining dating one person already feels like a chore, but more than one? Sounds like a nightmare.

“Anyway, do you want to play something?” Cal asks, so Dys picks up a game that looks interesting.

They barely get through the first round when a voice calls.

“Recalcitrance! Dys! Time to have dinner!” The voice that calls them is distinctly feminine, it must be Cal’s mom.

“Coming!” Cal calls back and then turns to him, come on, let's go eat. Once again Cal grabs his hand to lead him, even though the kitchen is just a few steps away. Still, when they arrive and Dys seems himself surrounded by adults, he is grateful for Cal’s steady hand on his.

Engineer Tiramisu welcomes them with a soft smile, the surveyor and who Dys assumes is Ceph are setting the table “Hello Dys, I’m glad you agreed to stay for dinner. Even though I'm sure Cal’s been a good host and offered snacks and refreshments?” 

Cal stills next to him “Um-”

“Yeah but I wasn’t hungry, we had already encountered some cupcakes on the way here” Dys tries to cover for Cal so he doesn’t get in trouble, technically not all of it was a lie.

“Man, I wished I had ‘encountered’ cupcakes as well, but alas there were none left when we got to the communal kitchens” who Dys assumes to be ‘Ceph’ gives a theatrical sigh “Anyways, welcome to our home Dys, I’m Ceph. I hope you liked the model space crafts we have here. Did Cal tell you about the one that lacks the elevon on its left deltawing?”

Dys can’t help but snicker remembering the story “Yeah…”

“Okay everybody sit down, I’ll serve the water for those who want tea” The surveyor says as the others each take their place. Clearly each of them has their own place on the table, the different mugs make it obvious, so Dys sits next to Cal with a plain looking mug, holding it tight, shoulders tensed.

“So Ver, how was the reconnaissance mission?”

The adults begin to talk with each other and Dys slowly starts to relax, he’s not used to being surrounded by adults, usually they only approach him to nag him about something.

He panics a bit when the male engineer asks him a question, but when his one syllable answer doesn’t seem to upset him and the conversation just continues to flow, the knot on his chest loosens.

Cal keeps putting food on his plate and talks about their make believe game, Dys can feel his face getting red, isn’t that something little kids do? Why is Cal telling them about it? Why would they care?

Dys thought they would just nod along and quickly turn back to their grown up conversation, but instead they ask them questions about their made up aliens and their made up stories. Ver speculates over which conditions poops would be classified as enough of a biological risk to have to throw it off the ship, and auntie Tirah and Ceph discuss the benefits of an exoskeleton versus a skeleton made of corundum. It’s… really interesting actually, Cal’s parents are knowledgeable in their fields, so Dys feels like he’s learned more listening to them talk than in any biology class. And when he interjects with an opinion he’s adamant about (that their made up aliens shouldn’t keep quarantined on the ship), instead of just brushing it aside, they actually take it into consideration. It even triggers a surprisingly deep conversation about self sacrifice and freedom.

Eventually they finish eating and it’s time for Dys to go home.

That whole experience was… not as awful as he thought it would be, he could even say he enjoyed himself at times, most surprising of all he even found not hating the dinner.

Ceph and Ver shout their goodbyes from the kitchen, a “Bye Dys! Come back whenever!” and 

“Rest well” respectively

Meanwhile Cal and auntie Tirah accompany him to the door.

“Thank you for coming today Dys I hope you had a good time” Auntie Tirah says with a smile that’s so much like Cal’s that Dys can’t help but feel warm in his chest. “You’re welcome at anytime”

Before Dys can answer Cal hugs Dys tightly and whispers softly “Thanks”

With that, the warmth in Dys chest gets pushed aside to the burning in his face, he keeps hugging Cal so he can compose himself before letting go and rolling his eyes. “You don’t have to make a big deal about it”

A soft laugh escapes Cal, his eyes bright “You’re the best Dys” And with that he waves goodbye and closes the door.

----------------------------------------------------------

The storm continues for the rest of the month, eventually Cal and Anemone make up and start to play together again. Also Dys notices that Sol stops leaving whenever he enters the room, but they still don’t talk, Dys won’t talk to them if he can help it.

Luckly, if the longue feels too noisy or too crowded, or maybe Dys simply wants to hang out alone with Cal, they go to Cal’s house. There they play whatever they want, sometimes some of Cal parents are home, other times they arrive later, more often than not Dys accompanies them to have dinner and each time it’s a little more easy to relax and even talk a bit.

And if he gains a spot in Perk’s special shelf with a spaceship that had an unfortunate encounter with some paints. Well, that’s just for Dys and Cal’s family to know.

Chapter Text

It’s a pretty boring (normal) day, the storms are receding but they still are being told to stay inside more often than not. Dys is laying on one of the couches of the lounge, playing on his holopalm when an unexpected person approaches him.

“Hi Dys!” Anemone’s voice startles him, making him lose the streak in his game.

Annoyed he looks at her “What do you want”

His response makes her frown but she doesn’t comment on it “have you seen Cal?”

“No.” Having finished this conversation he turns back to his game, however Anemone is still there.

“Hey! Do you know where he is? We were supposed to get together to try some tricks on his hoverboard and-”

Dys forcefully closes his holopalm “I’m not his nanny, just message him or something” He gets up to go to his room, but before he can get away Anemone grabs his wrist.

“Wait.” Anemone still looks upset, her grip is uncomfortably tight, he has half a mind to just yank his arm out of her hold, but her next words stop him. “Do you know if he’s okay?” Her face scrunches up as she says it, the hesitance in her voice makes him think that maybe he was mistaken and she’s worried instead of angry. 

That makes him uneasy. Has something happened to Cal and he hasn’t realized? He turns towards her and she lets him go.

“...Why wouldn’t he be okay?” They’ve hung out as normal, but if he thinks about it… maybe less often than they usually do?

“That’s what I don't know! We made up but we’ve been barely hanging out, and usually it is easy to find him, if he’s not with me he’s with Sol or with you! But lately he just disappears” She crosses her arms, worry made evident her tone. “So I just thought that maybe you knew something about it, since you’re his friend”

“I don’t” He doesn’t really know what else to say

“Maybe…” Anemone scratches at some scales growing on her elbow “Maybe you could talk to him about it? I tried but he told me not to worry about it” She pouts

Ah, even Dys knows that telling someone to ‘not worry about it’ only makes things worse. “I can try…”

Anemone narrows her eyes, examining him for a minute before breaking into a huge grin “Galactic! Once he’s feeling better maybe we can see who’s the better goalie of you two!” She gives him a punch on the arm and then without saying anything else just runs towards her brother.

He rubs his arm, even though it doesn’t really hurt. That was weird, he interacts with Anemone even less than with Marz, so for her to approach him when she clearly didn’t want to talk to him… She must be really worried about Cal.

If he thinks about it, Cal has been more sparse lately, but he just thought that was because he made up with Anemone so Dys got down on the list of Cal’s friends or something. 

He feels uneasy, he had gotten comfortable thinking that he had cheered up Cal while he was making up with Anemone. If something is wrong, and he didn’t notice… 

He is no good at being someone’s friend.

Anemone asked him to talk to Cal, but would he even tell him what’s wrong? If he didn’t tell Anemone, his oldest friend, his best friend. Then what chance does Dys have?

___________________

He doesn’t search for Cal, it feels pointless. Why even try if he knows it’ll fail?

“Hellooo, Vertumna to Dys, anybody there?”

Still, it seems tha Cal has found him. He looks up from his notes and searches Cal’s face for any sign that something’s up but his smile looks genuine. At least until Dys takes too long to answer and then he looks worried.

“Sorry, is this a bad time? Are you busy?” Cal says shifting from one foot to another. Nervous. Easy to read as always 

“Nah, I’m just bored” He’s just resuming some notes on his holopalm to then write them down on paper, since he has few pieces left.

“Great! Sooooo, I was wondering if you’d like to try to learn some hoverboard tricks?”

Trying hoverboard tricks? What about… “Weren’t you going to play with Anemone?”

That catches Cal off guard, he was already stepping into his hoverboard, apparently expecting Dys to agree. “Uh?, I was but- Well, I arrived late and her mom had asked her to help with something, so we didn’t get to hang out” He says rubbing the back of his neck. “Um, why do you ask?”

“Earlier she was searching for you” Dys debates a second whether he should try to find out more or just stay out of it, in the end he continues softly “she looked worried about you”

He flinches at that and then says quietly, as if to himself “I told her It’s nothing”  

Dys narrows his eyes, so there is something going on “What’s nothing?”

“Uh?” Cal looks up, apparently not expecting Dys to have heard him, and starts to shuffle nervously again “Aw, come on, not you too! Really, nothing is happening. There’s no reason for you to feel worried! Ha ha” His voice is too high pitched, the laugh is too fake.

“You’re an awful liar. If you don’t want to tell me then don’t, but stop acting stupid and trying to lie” With that Dys just leaves, Cal doesn’t try to explain himself nor follows him.

He knew it would be useless, if he didn’t tell his best friend why would he tell Dys. He doesn’t feel disappointed, he also doesn’t feel worried. He. Doesn’t.

—----------

The next few days he doesn’t come out of his room because he has no reason to.

He opens his holopalm just to see that there is no game that interests him and closes it again. 

He hasn’t been able to go to the outskirts because of the storms.

He thinks about using his last piece of paper but then decides against it.

He just looks at the ceiling.

…

This is ridiculous, it's not like he’s avoiding Cal or something. He definitely isn’t, so he gets up and goes to the lounge… 

Cal isn’t even there.

Well… That’s good! Since he isn’t searching for him.

He passes next to Marz and Sol, when he hears Marz say “Ewww, have you showered?” She makes a point pinching her nose and turning away from him, at her side Sol just gives an awkward laugh and avoids looking at him.

He just steps faster, they’re stupid. Why are they bothering him? He barely talks to Marz, Sol doesn’t approach him anymore, so why do they get in his business?

Trying to get away quickly he crashes with someone “Whoa there buddy” One of Cal’s parents steadies him with a hand on his shoulder causing Dys to tense, he can hear Marz snickering “you know, not looking where you’re going is the reason my Vega C model is now green” 

The words are reproachful, like he’s being scolded, but the tone is the same as Cal’s good natured jokes, making his chest feel tight.

He chances a glance at the engineer confirming that he crashed with Perk. Well, it could be worse, he could’ve crashed with the surveyor.

Right now he’s not in the mood to be polite, so he steps back making the engineer drop his hand. But before he can leave, the person that he definitely isn’t searching for arrives panting.

“Perk Wait! Is-” Cal stops a few seconds catching his breath “is there anything else I can help with?” He is red faced, still panting when he notices Dys. “Oh! Um, Hi?” Cal greets him with a wave and an awkward half smile, Dys just nods in acknowledgement and uses the distraction to slowly step away.

The engineer looks tired when responding to Cal “Sorry kiddo, you’ve been exhausting yourself, no more tasks for today. Just hang out with your friends and relax, you deserve it, doesn’t he Dys?” 

He stops moving when Perk turns back to him. Damn, he was so close to sneaking away  “Um, sure?”

With that Perk turns back to Cal “See? Now, Cal, go play with your friend. Dys, make sure this little man rests for a bit, okay? I’ll go get some ingredients for dinner and I better find you two relaxing when I get back” As he says that he pushes Cal towards Dys, and leaves.

Cal sighs and looks apologetically at him “Sorry about that, Um, actually I should probably go see if auntie Seedent needs help with something”

Dys grabs his wrist before Cal escapes “Didn’t the Engineer just tell you to rest?” He says frowning, Cal has a lot of energy, he spends most of his time in physical tasks like shoveling dirt on Geoponics or playing with the other kids, even when upset he channels those feelings towards an activity to keep him busy and ends up working even harder. His slightly hunched over form and low shoulders can mean one of two things: he is exhausted or… “Are you worried about something?”

Cal doesn’t look at his eyes, “I…would prefer not to tell you”

Dys feels that sentence like a punch to the gut, he lets him go and flinches back, he knows he asked Cal to not lie to him, but the refusal still hurts more than he expected. In turn, his reaction makes Cal look panicked, hovering his hands around Dys as if wanting to comfort him but not knowing if it would be well received.

“It’s nothing bad! I promise! And, and, I will tell you! Eventually! I didn’t want you guys to notice but- It’s just- I’m kinda frustrated because I’m not sure I’ll have enough time and I thought I’d be able to do it before-” Cal trips over his words trying to explain himself “And I can’t tell Anemone because we just made up and I’m not sure how she’ll take it-  And I obviously can’t tell you because- Well, because I can’t!” Cal, not knowing what to do with his hands, ends up running them through his hair messing it up “I can’t tell you and I don’t want to lie to you and people are making a big deal of this and then I’ll tell you why and you’ll be disappointed and everything will be pointless-”

“Cal! Nullhead, just breathe” Dys calls to him loudly so he stops rambling, luckily Cal listens to him and breathes deeply. 

“I just… really don’t want you to worry” Cal says looking at the floor

Dys doesn’t understand what he was talking about, but… “You’ll tell me eventually, right?”

Cal perks up immediately “Yeah! I will! I promise!” he flinches a bit before adding “but, ah, don’t don’t be mad if it’s stupid, ok?”

Dys makes a show of rolling his eyes “I can’t make that promise. If your reason is stupid then I’ll just call it what it is” His words are harsh but with a gentle shove at Cal’s shoulder, he hopes that he takes it as the well intentioned teasing that he intends. 

Cal laughs softly, like it is the most natural thing in the world  to understand Dys’s sentiment behind his words and not something everyone else misinterprets. “Hehe, I guess that’s fair”

Cal respects Dys’s space and when he doesn’t want to talk about something, and that friendship stuff should go both ways right? If he’s honest with himself he might be just a tiny bit worried about his friend. The least he can do is wait for him to be ready to talk about it. In the meantime he can help him relax and rest for a while.

“Come on, I bet I can beat you in that old racing game before dinner” Dys grabs Cal’s hand so he doesn’t run away to whatever he was going to do with auntie Seedent, and starts to lead him to his own house. As he looks behind him Cal’s smile is lopsided. Tired. Sincere. Easy to read as always. Unfortunately he also catches Marz’s eye who only raises one inquisitive eyebrow at him, was she listening to their conversation? Dys feels his face heat up with embarrassment and turns back to walk faster. Why does she have to ruin everything?

In the end he doesn't beat Cal. It’s not fair since Ceph always plays with him so he’s had more practice, but they had fun searching for different disadvantages for Cal, from him playing with one hand, to upside down, even with his eyes closed (although Dys is pretty sure Cal cheated on that one)

—-----------------------

The days pass with Cal busy helping his parents or doing homework of all things. Whenever they can they play something that doesn’t require much energy.

Once they’re allowed outside they spend less time together, since Cal spends most of his time working on geoponics and Dys reacclimates himself to the outskirts of the colony. After so much time trapped inside or closely watched by the surveyors, his first steps outside feel like he is shedding an old, constricting carapace. It’s impressive how much easier it is to take a breath and just… live, when he’s outside the walls of the colony.

From time to time Cal messages him and they hang out on the walls, the lounge or his house, and surprisingly, those places don’t feel as stifling as the rest of the colony

—----------

It’s approaching the end of the month when Auntie Seddent wakes them up.

“Good morning sleepy head~” Her sickly sweet voice is grating in his ears “Come on time to get up! Today is an important day~ Tangent is already dressed and ready!”

“Ugh” He sits on his bed and tries to discreetly glare at the chief steward.

Right, today is a ‘special day’. Ugh, if he had remembered he’d gotten up earlier so he could escape this, but now it's too late. Better to just get over it, so he dresses quickly and follows auntie Seedent to the creche. There, the chief steward calls the attention of the little kids so they get around the table with an awful purple cake and ten candles on top.

This is awful. The worst. The chief steward does this for the creche children and. Dys. Is. Not. A. Creche. Child. 

He tunes out as much as he can of the event, Tang looks just as uninterested as him, the plastic tiara on her head looks ridiculous, probably just as much as the plastic crown on his own head does. The kids are younger than them, the little attention they have solely on the cake. Their wishes for ‘Happy birthday’ are half hearted at best.

Auntie Seedent looks at them expectantly “Do you have something to say to your guests?” 

The chief steward must be blind to not see that their ‘guests’ are barely keeping quiet, playing with their snacks, probably the only thing keeping them there being the cake. Do they even know their ‘hosts’ names?

Auntie Seedent looks upset at their lack of interest but refrains from scolding them. That only makes him angrier, why should she be upset? They didn’t ask for this! They didn’t want this!

When she turns back to distribute the cake Dys takes the chance to slip away, but before he gets far he thinks better of it and takes a big piece of the cake before escaping. At least there’s something he can do with this.

—------------------------------------

He searches for Cal in the communal kitchen where he usually has breakfast. He isn’t there, but he does find one of his parents.

“Would you look at that! If it isn’t the birthday boy himself! I thought Annie would still have you trapped on her ‘Super Duper Fun Party~’”

Ah, Ceph, he could be quite childish for an adult. Dys often gets second hand embarrassment seeing him act like that, and now gets even more uncomfortable in the way people are paying attention to them, some of them looking as if they want to get closer, but for what? Could it be to wish him happy birthday? Ew. He is going to ask about Cal so he can leave quickly when Ceph continues.

“I had told Cal he could find you in the creche, but, alas, it seems I was mistaken” With a dramatic sigh and exaggerated movements he gets up from the table “I must bid you adieu my friends, since I originally only came for more Blep tea” he says to the rest of the colonists in the kitchen “and everyone else is home for breakfast today” With one hand carrying a box and the other lying gently on Dys’s shoulder Ceph begins to lead him away. “Come on, let’s hurry before Cal goes on a pointless quest searching for you”

Dys is glad of escaping the eyes of the other colonists, but he’s still confused about what’s happening. Cal was going to search for him? Did something happen?

“Sorry about that kiddo, sometimes my mouth gets ahead of my brain, at least we managed to escape their eyes rather gracefully if I get to say so myself~” Ceph lets go of his shoulder as they continue walking towards his home. Like Cal, it seems he’s quick to apologize, even for silly things. Like, yes, Dys was uncomfortable when Cephs mannerisms called attention to him, but in his experience adults don’t apologize to kids for making them uneasy. 

“‘s okay” He mumbles, and continues walking at his side. Ceph turns to smile at him, the way his right fang looks higher than the rest of his teeth making it look out of place. It isn’t a pretty smile, not like Cal’s, but it isn’t mocking nor fake either, so Dys finds that he doesn’t mind the crooked smile at all. And despite his theatrics the engineer doesn’t try to fill the silence with pointless chatter, which Dys appreciates.

After a few seconds it occurs to Dys to ask “Was Cal really going to search for me?” Or was that an excuse for Ceph to lead him away?

He gives a breathy laugh “He really was! He got up earlier than ever to catch you before you left Annie’s party. Tirah convinced him to wait for a bit and I already messaged him that I found you, so they’re waiting home”

They? Huh. That makes him kind of nervous… Is this going to be an intervention? Like the ones that Marz likes to do?

Before he can really think about it, they arrive at the front door, which Ceph kicks open. Well, Dys guesses that since it’s his home he’s allowed to do that…

“CEPH! I WON’T REPLACE THE DOOR AGAIN” They hear someone scream from the kitchen

…Or maybe he isn’t.

“It’s fiiiiine Ver, look, it closes just fine” Once they step inside Ceph kicks the door close with a loud noise. Luckily for him it stays closed. “See?” He calls back to the kitchen.

The front door slowly starts to open again, but Ceph discretely pushes it back with his feet and locks it before anyone else approaches them.

“YOU’RE ON THIN BLASTING ICE”

They hear a lot of noises, all of them coming from the kitchen.

“Come on! You can’t be mad at me when I just catched a Dys in the wild! I even managed to lure him here with promises of getting him the fu—dge away from noisy people”

As they step into the kitchen Dys is regretting his choices, wasn’t there a time when a ‘hey! Come have breakfast with four weird adults!’ was a sign to get away as quickly as possible?

But now here he is, in a kitchen with the lingering smell of smoke, a man that looks out of place calmly holding a fire extinguisher next to something charred beyond recognition, another man frantically running something through water, a woman looking sadly at an empty bowl and Cal absolutely covered in meringue and awkwardly waving at Dys (and he should really have expected that one, some way or another Cal always ends up covered in something)

Next to him Ceph begins to cackle maniacally, which is not at all the correct response to this. In between laughs he gets out a few words “I leave you guys in charge of the kitchen for ten minutes ” he wheezes

“You! left! for! half! an hour! AND You said you’d arrive on time to check the oven! Now come here and help me savage this!” The surveyor does look rather desperate… is this the kind of person they let out in missions? Dys at least could keep calm. Actually, that’s what he’s doing right now! Keeping calm! Not at all frozen in place not knowing what to do with the cake he’s still holding.

Auntie Tirah sighs and leaves her bowl on the sink, says something softly to the surveyor that has him giving up in whatever he was doing, with a look sends Cal out of the kitchen (presumably to shower), calls the attention of Perk who blinks slowly and starts to deal with whatever the charred mess was, greets Dys and takes the box of blep tea from Ceph hands and leaves in the table. “For the record I just wanna remind you to check the oven is empty before baking something”

Her, scolding? Has Ceph. An engineer. A father. An adult, pouting “But I’m not the one who leaves the pans there” They way he emotes with his whole body (right now pouting, slightly hunched over, with his arms crossed like a little kid) looks much more practiced than Cal’s usual reactions, he's also very expressive, but in a more natural way, instead of attempting to catch as much attention as he can the way that Ceph.

“We’ve kept them there since before Ver joined us” Her tone carries the tiredness of an old argument. Regardless of the chastising words she kisses Ceph’s nose “Just be careful dear”

Dys feels like he’s intruding, regardless of the chaos when they arrived, and even though there are too many people for the size of the kitchen, each of them moves with familiarity, easily dodging each other, continuing tasks another lefts unfinished until, remarkably quickly, things have a semblance of normalcy

“I’m sorry you had to see that mess Dys” Auntie Tirah smiles at him apologetically. Cal definitely got his smile from her. 

Cal comes back from the shower and gives him a quick hug whispering happy birthday. Thankfully he doesn’t make a big deal out of it and lets go easily. Although the way keeps glancing at the top of Dys head has him self conscious until he remembers.

He never took off the plastic crown.

His face feels on fire as he discretely throws it in the garbage. He hopes it’s just his imagination the way Cal’s parents pointedly don’t look at him when he does so.

Once they’re all sitting at the table Auntie Tirah stands up “Well! Better late than never, at least now we can have birthday breakfast. I’m sorry we couldn’t save the lemon pie Dys. We wanted to have something sweet to celebrate and well… you saw how that ended” That got some awkward laughs around the table, but nobody looked bothered by the comment. “Thankfully Cal’s friend is more functional than the adults on this table and thanks to him we have some cake to share!”

“Yeah!” It seems Cal can’t help a little cheer. He sounds really happy about the cake, Dys’s glad.

“Anyway, I just wanted to say Happy birthday Dys, thanks for being Recalcitrance’s friend”

Different calls of happy birthday sound around the table, some energetic, some softer, one barely audible. The same words that used Auntie Seedent, the creche kids and the random colonists in the kitchen, why do the same words uttered by these people feel so different? Is it because they said it while looking at his eyes? because they didn’t attempt to give him cake? because they’re not making it a spectacle for the sake of other people? Because they don’t look at him like they’re expecting gratitude?

He feels a lump on his throat, he probably couldn't speak even if he wanted to, as he goes to drink some blep tea to push it down he realizes they must have given him the wrong cup. Usually he uses a nondescript green cup, while the rest of them have varying designs. He looks around the table, Cal’s has a sports ball design, Auntie Tirah’s has a ‘Best mom’ messily written on it, Ver’s changes with warm water from black to a picture of the outskirts and Perk’s has some pun about fungi and a small notch on the edge. 

All of them have their right cups, maybe they found the others too boring and requisitioned some with hopeyes designs for their guests? He chooses to believe that, even when auntie Tirah catches him looking at the cup and gives him a wink. Because when he begins to consider the other option, that they bought it for him , it makes the tightness in his throat even worse.

The conversation flows as usual except for Dys who keeps silent. After an inquiry about his birthday plans ends up with a curt response they don’t touch the subject. He feels bad for ruining the mood so he tries to engage a few times, but it’s too awkward so he just stops. Only the surveyor shoots him weird glances, but the coward looks away when Dys catches him. Despite that, the rest of breakfast is pleasant. Eventually Dys gets to relax and simply listen to other people talk, enjoying the retelling of old stories that everybody must have already heard several times but still laugh along the fond memories.

By the time they have to clean up Dys feels much lighter 

“Don’t worry about dishes boys, just go enjoy yourselves” Auntie Tirah tells them with a wink. Cal wastes no time in grabbing Dys’s hand and starts to lead him to his room. 

“Soon we’ll be leaving for the labs, if you need anything you can tell Ver or message one of us!” She says to their retracting backs.

“Kay! Have a good day!” Cal shouts back.

Once in his room Cal looks really nervous, which instantly puts Dys on edge. He opens his mouth and is about to tell him to just spit it out when he remembers that he’s trying to be ‘understanding’ and ‘respectful of boundaries’ and shuts his mouth with a click.

For Cal’s part he opens and closes his mouth several times, seemingly unsure on what to say.

He tries to bite his tongue but his impatience gets the best of him “What’s wrong?” he flinches as he says it, so much for not pushing Cal to talk about whatever this is.

He gives an awkward laugh “Nothing is wrong, pinky promise. I just… Here, um, Happy birthday?”

As he says that he takes a heavy looking box from his desk and leaves at Dys feet. He just stares at it, uncomprehending “Huh?”

Cal is shuffling nervously in front of him, at the other side of the box “It’s a present, I’m sorry it isn’t wrapped but I forgot to requisition wrapping paper” He mumbles the last part, his face tinted pink. He takes a deep breath and then in a more energetic way continues “Anyway! It’s for you! You can open it or just take it home if you like! Or just leave it here if you don’t- I mean you don’t really have to take it if you don't want it, so, no worries. Itwasprobablyastupidgiftanyways-” 

Not really knowing how to respond he just bends down and starts to open the box, which stops Cal’s rambling as he waits for his reaction. At the top of the Box there’s a set of colored pencils and another of graphite pencils, stuffed to the side there are some pens and markers, underneath the pencils there’s a clear accordion folder and a set of five notebooks.

Dys just stares at the stuff, it’s… so much. He can feel a familiar prickling sensation at the corner of his eyes, and keeps looking down so Cal doesn’t notice. He doesn’t understand why his body wants to cry! He knows he cries when he’s really angry, but right now he isn’t feeling angry, or sad for that matter, he’s feeling… He doesn’t really know what he is feeling. His throat is tight again and his chest hurts a bit, but at the same time he doesn’t feel bad. Do good feelings make him cry as well? That’d be awful since that’s what makes Tang call him a crybaby and dismiss him.

“Um, Ta dah?” Dys barely hears Cal’s awkward attempt to break the silence.

Once he manages to swallow the lump on his throat he stands up and responds softly “...Thank you” It comes out a little choked but at least there are no tears.

“Do you like it?” Apparently barely audible is the volume setting on Cal today.

Like it? Lingering too much on thoughts of the gift makes his feelings too overwhelming so he concentrates on more practical stuff. He can actually do field research the way he wanted! Thinking about that gives him a giddy sensation “Yeah… I do” Even though it’s a little uncomfortable he doesn't hide his smile. 

“Radical!” Cal pumps his fist in the air, his smile is big and bright, the kind that he rarely sees since Tammy’s passing. “I’m glad you like it, I know that it’s not as personal as the notes you gave me, but I’m really happy you like it!!!!”

Not that personal? Dys is pretty sure only Cal would’ve thought to give him something like this, before the last gift he had received was mushwood from Sol. And all of this stuff must've been requisitioned, It surely was expensive… But Cal should have plenty of kudos from his parents right? Marz always has kudos to spare and she only has two parents. Besides the only other way he could get kudos is from class or his work on geoponics.

Hum…he feels like he’s on the verge of something. 

His parents. School work. Geoponics.

“Wait. Is this why you’ve been acting weird?!” He didn’t mean to sound quite that accusatory, but if this is the reason…

Cal’s face gets red, giving him away immediately. Dys can’t help it, he’s had too many emotions for one day, he starts to laugh “Cal! Why? Nullhead you didn’t have to get me anything! I wasn’t expecting you to even know my birthday!” 

Cal’s face gets even redder but he laughs as well, sounding relieved more than anything “How could I not??? Your gift was amazing! It was the reason we saved the last crops of dust!”

Dys just rolls his eyes, ah, he could count on Cal for exaggerating Dys actions as better than they are. At this point he doesn’t even try to correct him.

“Then you’ll stop acting weird then?” He has to ask just to be sure.

Cal pouts “ I thought I was handling it well enough”

“Dude, even Anemone noticed” Dys deadpans

“She’s observant!”

“You know she isn’t”

They spend the rest of the day together, at one point Cal is in the bathroom cleaning his face from the doodles Dys made to see how he would look with tattoos, when Ver approaches him.

Dys immediately tenses, the surveyor doesn't like him and is probably going to ask him to leave, he just waited until Cal wasn't there so as to not look bad in front of him. Well, bad luck for him, Dys isn’t intimidated.

“Hey Dys” He keeps moving his hands, or shuffling his feet. It's weird the way it seems to take all his courage just to speak “I know it’s not my place… But I just want you to know that you don’t have to push yourself here”

Huh? That isn’t at all what Dys expected

“If you don’t want to respond to certain questions or simply don’t feel like talking, then you don’t have to” he takes a big breath and then looks at his eyes “trust me, even though there are big personalities in this household, nobody here minds a bit of silence” The surveyor- Ver tries to smile to him to… reassure him? Hard to tell with how awkward it looks

Dys doesn’t really know what to say, and since apparently here is not expected, he just nods. Ver takes this as a valid response and leaves quietly but quickly, in a way that kinda looks like escaping.

The surveyor’s words sound fake, Auntie Seedent and professor Hal have made it clear that silence is not a valid answer. He guesses he’ll have to try and see how true those words are.

Lunch is a quiet affair, with only the surveyor sharing the table, mostly Cal talking about other games to play with Dys making small noises in agreement or displeasure to express his opinions. Ver just keeps to himself and when they finish eating he deals with the dishes.

Much later, after everyone else has arrived, they have dinner, it’s a comfortable affair. Perk asks him what he thought of Cal’s gift and he feels it’s safe enough to respond honestly, then they start to tease good naturedly at Cal for leaving everything for last minute and having to rush getting the kudos he needed.

When he leaves Cal accompanies so he can carry his gift, and as they say their goodbye Dys lets himself get carried away by a sudden impulse and quickly hugs Cal, who doesn’t even get to hug back as Dys rapidly steps back and closes the door on his face. Dys hears a soft laugh on the other side of the door and then energetic steps getting away.

As he starts to organize his new materials he can’t help the smile that breaks across his face. Somehow the day made a 180, staying at Cal’s house helped him avoid the chief Steward, he ate some good food (at dinner since Ceph cooked), and even had fun playing with his friend. Honestly he doesn’t remember ever enjoying a birthday. Is this a one off or will next year also surprise him? Surprisingly instead of his usual pessimist thoughts he thinks about Cal and hopes that maybe next year he will get to try the lemon pie.

Chapter Text

The days keep getting shorter and shorter, until one morning Dys wakes up and goes to check the time in his holopalm, only to see a holostream from Marz.

“Good morni-” He immediately closes it, seeing Marz first thing in the morning? The worst way to wake up. 

Unfortunately for him, he can still listen to Marz’s voice from Tangent’s holopalm. As he goes to cover his ears with his pillow he catches something interesting “- They’ve named it Glow season, because, like everything is craaaaazy glowing out there in the dark.”

A new season? He remembers that earth had only four, although he doesn’t recall if they were like Vertumnan seasons. Glow season…What would that even entail? 

“I am staying the heck inside for the next month. What’s the point in even going out if you can’t see anything? It’s going to be a long boring month”

Dys peeks out of the window. What he sees outside makes him shudder. Even here, inside these awful walls, there are plants and… insects? Glowing, absolutely covering the ground and even beginning to creep up some buildings, it looks as if Vertumna is reclaiming the colony as part of itself, refusing to be ignored. 

He can feel his heart beating quickly, not giving it much thought he just leaves his room running. He goes through artificially bright corridors with that annoying light that makes his eyes sting, he ignores the call of one stupid adult (Probably Auntie Seedent) and keeps going across the colony until he’s standing at the top of the wall.

If he thought it looked cool before, right now it looks breathtaking.

The wormhole is the biggest he’s ever seen, like a massive firefly in the sky. The planet must be very close to it now. And out in the jungle, something new is taking place. The plants are flowering, glowing, iridescent blooms, and everything is full of life . There are also strange new sounds; long hooting calls and gurgling roars, Vertumna saying I am here and Dys wants to roar with it. 

He doesn’t know how long he stays there just looking at such an impossible sight, it’s like the first time he saw outside the walls, the way the jungle seems to stretch infinite around him, making him feel like the colony is just an insignificant speck of metal. That thought makes him smile.

It’s only because his spot on the walls is close to the gates that he notices them, a group of surveyors approaching loudly, quickly, and… carrying some logs? 

The guard on duty doesn’t notice them, because of course he doesn’t, he’s stupid enough to fall asleep standing during his shift. Dys takes his chance and goes to leave before someone decides to berate him for some reason (and they always find a reason) when he notices that the logs the surveyors are carrying are stained with a dark color reminiscent of blood. 

Because it is, because those aren’t logs, they’re people, and the surveyors are approaching quickly and loudly, probably wanting to call the attention of a guard who’s asleep. 

Was there an accident? Is someone’s body being carried back to the colony, bloated like the dead hopeye Dys once found in the outskirts?

He climbs down but stays close, curious to see what could’ve happened to those surveyors.

Eventually the guard wakes up and lets them in, four of them are hurt, from what Dys manages to catch they were attacked by a herd of animals previously thought to be harmless, resulting in four surveyors being bitten and with profuse bleeding. The guard must’ve sent a message because quickly the colonists assigned for emergency care arrive and they carry them away. Dys can’t get a good look at them, but he gets a disturbing feeling that he recognizes the tattoos on one of the surveyors being hurried towards the med bay.

He goes to follow to see if Cal’s parent is one of them, but a crowd of noisy people forms around them so Dys can’t see anything, at least until Auntie Tirah arrives with Cal next to her. As soon as she approaches the other colonists part to let them pass. 

That might as well be a confirmation of  Dys’s suspicion.

The crowd keeps talking at the entrance but they are only letting certain colonists pass, probably only the family of the injured.

Well… it isn’t like Dys standing there is going to change anything. He’ll know if someone dies if there’s a funeral. He’s uneasy about his mixed feelings about this, on one hand if the colony is once again struck with grief he’ll have more freedom to explore, just like last time. On the other hand, if the one who dies is Perseverance… how would Cal handle that?

He can still remember how sad he was when Tammy died, he’d probably feel down if the same happened to one of his parents, or maybe he won’t? After all, surveyor Ver is (was?) the newest acquisition to his family… 

Who is he kidding? Cal is the type of person who would be sad even if Dys died. After all, he can still remember his worried advice against Vertuman carnivorous plants a few months ago.

He has never understood Cal, the way he can stand having so many people fussing over him and the way he cares about them in return. His parents, his friends, cultivators and even random adults. After all, hasn’t all his suffering since they’ve arrived been because of people he cares about? What good was his friendship with Tammy if it left him a crying mess for days? What good is his friendship with Anemone if it leaves him staring blankly every time they have a little fight? Why even care about a surveyor if they can die in any outing?

…Will he regret their friendship when Dys dies?

Perhaps… perhaps Dys should reconsider this whole friendship thing, he didn’t have this sort of worries before befriending Cal. Maybe what’s best for both of them would be indifference.

With a sigh he shakes his head trying to get rid of those thoughts, after all he had already decided to give this friendship a chance and he plans to stick to that decision. Besides, the colonists should be distracted because of the incident, he could use this chance to explore Vertumna during this new season.

However, as he approaches his secret exit he finds not surveyors, but soldiers guarding the perimeter, and they’re actually taking their job seriously, not giving Dys a chance to slip by.

He’ll just have to try another day. 

Later there is a notice from the council, warning everyone to stay safe inside. Tammy’s dad and the other surveyors have been called back and the gates closed for the month. After that there’s a tension in the air, as if everyone is waiting for something.

The days pass and none of the injured surveyors die, which means that there aren’t colonists sick with grief asking for days off their shifts, and with everyone on edge Dys can’t get past the soldiers.

Occasionally Cal sends him messages updating him on Ver’s health for some reason, as if that was any of Dys business, saying sorry for not having much time to hang out, and inviting him to his home to play. Dys acknowledges the messages but doesn’t go visit, even if he tries not to think about it, he can't stop wondering if their friendship is a good idea at all.

There are many kids in humanities that day, probably because there’s not much to do outside or maybe because their parents wanted them to catch up on class missed during wet season’s storms.

Since there are other students he discreetly opens a game on his holopalm. But of course, despite the options, of course professor Hal would ask him a question, just so everyone else would see how stupid he is when he’s unable to answer.

“Um…” In the panic at being called to answer he didn’t pay attention to the question, he tries to remember what it was but nothing comes to mind. 

His train of thought is interrupted by Marz copying and exaggerating his tone of voice “Uh- Um um”. He hears her snicker and Solane laugh along.

Dys feels his face heat up and tears gather at the corner of his eyes. 

“Crybaby” He sees Tang roll her eyes, he doesn’t think she means for him to hear, but she’s sitting next to him so of course he does.

He thinks about just storming off, but professor Hal already looks on edge trying to make them pay attention and he would probably tell auntie Seedent he’s being disruptive or something. So he hides as much of his face in his sweater as he can and just replies “I don’t know”.

He blinks quickly trying to stop the tears, when Tang sees him she whispers to him “just stop being so immature and pay attention instead of playing on your holopalm” with a sigh and judgemental look she adds “if you weren't so emotional people would like you more”.

He spends the rest of the class feeling like he would start to cry if he tries to speak, so the next time the professor asks him a question he just shakes his head. However professor Hal insists that Dys knows the answer. He must really enjoy showing everybody how stupid Dys is because he keeps looking hopefully at him.

“I don’t know the stupid answer” He replies through gritted teeth, which only prompts more snickering from his classmates. 

Professor Hal frowns and opens his mouth, however as he goes to speak, Solane raises their hand and without waiting for permission, gives the correct answer.

Show off. Wasting no time in proving how much smarter they are than Dys.

Thankfully, the teacher accepts the answer and doesn’t bother him again in the few minutes left of the lesson.

When class ends he sees Solane approaching his desk, probably to mock him some more. So before they’ve got a chance to open their mouth he shoulders past them ignoring Marz’s indignant huff.

He starts to walk with no particular place in mind since he doesn’t know where to go. The walls are being patrolled by soldiers so that’s a no go, for the same reason he won’t be able to go outside the colony, there’ll be more people to pester him in the lounge and Tang may go to their room.

In the end his feet carry him to a familiar spot behind a certain geodesic dome. He tries to control himself but once the first tears begin to fall he can’t contain the sobs that racked his whole body.

Why is he such a crybaby? Why is he so stupid ? Why does his sister hate him now? Is it because of something he did? Or has there always been something wrong with him? Even his mother couldn’t love him… maybe she always knew he was broken, wrong, a monster. What other reason could it be for people to look at him with such disgust?

He doesn’t know how long he has spent there, when suddenly he has to squint because there is a flashlight pointing towards him and a soft voice calling “...Dys?”

The person behind the flashlight lowers its intensity, enabling him to see Cal with a worried frown. Dys wipes his eyes and turns away.

After a moment’s hesitation, he hears Cal step forward and feels him sit next to him, he tries to stop crying but can’t quite manage it. He doesn’t know what possesses him at that moment but he begins to talk

“You’re lucky you have a family who cares about you, you know? My mom is g-gone, and my sister thinks I’m stupid” He sniffles “I’m never gonna go back to class. I hate being around other people and I hate doing schoolwork and I double hate it when the teacher asks me questions. I’m not Tang! I don’t know stuff like she does!”

Dys hits the wall of the dome a few times - bang bang bang - then bursts out into tears again, pulling at his hair “I’m just dumb, okay?! People ask me questions and I freeze up and I say something s-stupid, and then everyone laughs at me! Even Tang!”

And that hurts, much more than what he’s willing to admit, even to himself.

He feels Cal’s hands turning him around and then wrapping him in a loose hug. He could easily slip away, but he finds he doesn’t want to. Instead, he hugs back, which only makes Cal hold him tighter against his chest.

He should feel uncomfortable or awkward or trapped, instead he gets the strength to continue talking, even when the sobs interrupt his words “Tang laughs the h-hardest. She’s embarrassed by me. I know she is. Today she just told m-me people w-would like me more if I stopped being so sensitive and immature.”

Cal makes a discontent sound and Dys feels the way it reverberates in his chest. Of course Cal would be upset by Dys being such a crybaby, he had never seen him like this. “Dys… I don’t think she hates you”

He lets go of Cal and rubs his nose in his sleeve. “W-what would you know, Everyone likes y-you” 

Cal’s frowning, it’s clear he’s upset, so Dys continues talking before he can get a word out. “I hate her. Everyone thinks she’s so smart but she’s just a big meanie. I hate everyone here. I hate being here. I just want them to leave me alone!” He gets carried away and shouts that last part. Panting he sees Cal’s shocked face and adds “Except for you, I guess… Sometimes it feels like you’re the only person who’s ever tried to be my friend. But people will think you’re weird too if you hang out with me… Maybe you-” 

should leave me alone too . Dys can’t bring himself to say. Even with his thoughts regarding how his friendship might hurt Cal in the future… he can’t make himself say it.

He truly is an awful friend. He can’t look Cal in the eyes.

“Dys…I- I never knew you thought like that” Cal’s voice is tentative, is a tone Dys is getting to know as the one he uses when he’s about to say something he thinks Dys doesn’t want to hear. “I mean, you’re, like, really cool and super brave. I was so scared that time outside the colony, but you walked so confidently and that was probably the only reason I took more than a few steps outside. Also! You are so smart, you know more about Vertumna than anybody else I know. And the saves you had on the sportsball match were awesome! And! And I thought…” Cal voice that had been increasing in enthusiasm turns tentative again “I really thought you knew that. And that was the reason you looked embarrassed whenever I said so, because I was stating the obvious”

He knew Cal would say stuff like that, but how could he believe him? Everyone else always says otherwise, they’ve called him crybaby, stupid, weird, and even worse are the looks they give him when he speaks, like he’s something disgusting, wrong.  

But Cal is calling him things like cool and smart, and even though Dys knows that’s not true, even though he knows Cal only says that because he sees people through his rose tinted glasses, still, somehow, hearing him give that little speech in his defense, cheers him up the tiniest bit. 

“...And It kinda hurts that apparently you don’t believe me” Cal tells him with slumped shoulders.

Dys doesn’t feel like arguing, so he tries to give Cal a smile in return to mollify him, but fears it might look more like a grimace by the way Cal still looks upset.

Thankfully it seems Cal decided to drop the topic.

They stay in silence for a while, he still feels a pressure in his chest, but it is not as stifling as it was a few minutes ago. This time to reflect makes him realize something, the last months in the strato the same weight on his chest had been building up, accompanied by a chill that had been spreading from his fingers until it had almost reached his heart. It was something Dys had learned to live with, until now he hadn't noticed that the oppressive sensation and coldness had been mostly absent. Could it be that the fresh air lets him breathe easier? O perhaps the fact that there is a season characterized by heat? Regardless of the reason, Dys hopes that soon he can go back to breathing easy and feeling warm.

Speaking of warm, it seems that at some point Cal fell asleep on his shoulder. It looks uncomfortable, since Dys is shorter than him, his neck looks crooked like it'll hurt when he wakes up. Despite that, Dys keeps still, and with nothing better to do, he decides to just rest his eyes for a bit, afterwards he'll wake up Cal he tells himself.

He startles awake when someone touches his shoulder. As he stands up he hears a thud and a groan next to him.

He blinks quickly, eyes trying to get used to the light and tries to make sense of the familiar voice in an also familiar exasperated tone.

“-ped maybe this time you wouldn't be covered in dirt”

Auntie Tirah is, once again, cleaning Cal’s face with a handkerchief. It occurs to Dys that Cal is probably the reason Auntie Tirah carries a handkerchief in the first place.

She looks at him, strangely Dys doesn’t think she's going to scold him. And he's right, she directs him a soft smile as she speaks “Hello Dys, How are you? Did you boys get so tired playing that you just fell asleep in the dirt?” She tells him with a characteristic soft smile, however her eyes are inquisitive.

Dys doesn’t really feel like talking right now, he tries to hide as much as he can in the neck of his sweater, hopefully it’s not obvious that he was crying just a few minutes? hours? ago.

Thankfully Cal takes care of answering “Not really, we were just talking and um, I guess we fell asleep like that?”

“Uh huh. Well, I hope you had the chance of finishing your talk before the impromptu nap, because right now it’s time to go home” As she says this Auntie Tirah stands and turns to look at Dys “It’s rather late, why don’t you accompany us for dinner?”

A shiver runs through him at the feeling of deja vu, almost a year ago auntie Tirah found them behind this geodesic dome, cleaned Cal’s face and made him the same offer. Which he refused at the time, despite Cal’s insistence and pleading eyes. 

But right now he doesn't want to be near Tangent, and the thought of being near Cal’s parents is no longer such an awful prospect.

His throat feels scratchy, and he still doesn’t feel like talking so he just gives a small nod and hopes that Auntie Tirah doesn’t get mad that he’s being rude.

“That’s great” She closes her eyes with a pleased hum and then continues “You boys should go ahead to our house while I go get our dinner from the cafeteria”

“‘Kay, thanks mom” Cal says with surprisingly low energy, and then takes his hand to lead him to his house.

A part of Dys wants to tell him that he already knows the way to his house and doesn’t need to be led by the hand like a baby, however a bigger part of him appreciates the way that Cal’s warm hand chases away the chill that had beginning to creep up his arm, so he continues to say nothing and just lets himself be led.

They arrive at Cal’s house with a surprisingly sedated “I’m home” from Cal, and only Perseverance calling back from the living room.

“Welcome back bud! Did you find your friend?”

“Yeah, and he came to have dinner with us too” Cal answered while leading Dys to the kitchen and starting to set the table. 

Ver’s words made Dys do a double take. What? Did Cal leave only to search for him?

Since Cal wasn’t in class with Professor Hal today, Dys thought that he must have been working in geoponics and saw Dys go behind the geodesic dome or something, and that was how he found him.

He goes to ask Cal why he was searching for him, when the surveyor enters the kitchen.

“Hey Dys” He says as he starts to wave his right hand. He can’t help but notice the scar on his wrist and the way his pinky and ring finger don’t extend fully like the others. The surveyor, seemingly self conscious because of that, ends up making a fist at his side and giving an awkward laugh.

He’s curious, but doesn’t feel like talking with him there, so he just gives a nod in acknowledgement to Ver. 

He just looks at Ver and Ver shuffles in place looking at him, until after an uncomfortable silence he says “I, uh, leave you guys to it then” and leaves.

Dys can’t help his sigh of relief, however it is short lived because as he turns around Cal is just blankly staring at the plates. With the light of the kitchen he can see bags under his eyes, and feels bad for taking up his time instead of letting him rest, since it seems like he needs it.

However before he can do anything about it Cal turns to him and hands him the plates as if nothing is wrong. Well, not quite like that since Cal keeps moving slowly and quietly.

They continue to set the table in silence. Eventually auntie Tirah comes back and they sit to eat even though Perk and Ceph aren’t here. Since nobody questions it, Dys just goes along with it. 

Dinner is a quiet affair with only some small talk from Cal’s parents and the sounds of the surveyor fidgeting. Meanwhile Dys mostly just traces the hopeye on his mug. 

“I’ll take care of the stuff here, you boys can go play… or continue your talk if you need to” Auntie Tirah says as she gives them a little wink.

“‘Kay, thanks mom” Cal answers as they leave the table.

As soon the door to Cal’s room is closed Dys has to ask. “Are you okay?”

“Huh?” Cal looks at him with a frown, his head tilted to the side “Yes? I am? Why do you ask?”

“Dude, you look like you’re about to fall asleep at any moment, are you overworking yourself again? Because you said you’ll stop being stupid about it” Now it's Dys turn to frown.

Cal huffs and crosses his arms “That wasn’t stupid, It worked! And I haven’t done it again anyway”

“Then why do you look like that?”

“Ugh, I’ve just… haven’t been sleeping well lately, since…well” Cal looks around as if searching for someone hidden in his room and then whispers “since Ver’s accident”

Ah, that makes sense. Dys thought that Cal would probably be affected if the surveyor died, but now that he thinks about it of course he would be worried even when he survived.

Especially if there are constant reminders like… “Is his hand like that because of the accident?”

Cal closes his eyes with a deep breath and gives a terse nod.

Seeing Cal like that, makes Dys feel the need to give some encouragement “At least he’s not dead?” He flinches as soon as he says it, that probably wasn’t the right thing to say.

“I know he got lucky, his condition was really severe when he arrived because of the lost blood but after the transfusions and the skin grafts for the big wounds he was left with only scars and some nerve damage on his hand. My parents even joke about his claw ”

What Cal is saying is good, however he is still frowning and he sits on his bed with more force than necessary, making him bounce a bit on the mattress. Dys just sits on the desk’s chair keeping his attention on Cal so he can keep talking and say what’s really bothering him.

“But even though he has been having more nightmares, more panic attacks. Even though he knows he was close to death he just- he- He just wants to go out again! ” Cal stands up and starts to pace from one side to another “And my mom, Perk and Ceph, just. Just accept it! Like is no big deal, like he'll just go back to the expeditions as soon as glow is over, even though his hand is still painful and he keeps dropping things! As if it isn’t even more dangerous now for him to leave the colony!”

Cal stops pacing, staring at a hiking backpack at the feet of the bed, Dys knows those are the ones the surveyors use “And I’ve been trying to help, he’s been staying in my room, we’ve walked through the colony, I even suggested he can help in geoponics instead of leaving the colony. But! He! Still! Wants! To! Leave!” He emphasizes each word with a stomp of his foot, his hands on shaking fists at his sides. 

Suddenly he slumps as if all the anger left him at once, leaving a more familiar grief, with a sniffle he says “Why does he care more about leaving than our family?”

After that, tears begin to fall in a kind of quiet crying that unfortunately Dys saw often after Tammy’s death.

Luckily, this time he knows what to do, since he only has to follow what Cal did earlier today, and what he’s learned through this last year.

So he stands up, hugs Cal and doesn’t say anything.

Now he knows that even if a hug makes someone cry harder, it doesn’t mean it’s not working. So when Cal’s silent tears turn to sobs, he just holds tighter.

He has also learned that in these moments Cal just needs someone to be present and listen, so that’s what he does. Even though the only thing he listens to is sniffling and incoherent mumbles. 

And even though what he wants to say is that he agrees with perseverance, that he would rather die mauled outside, than be trapped here forever.

Eventually Cal’s cries subside and lets go of Dys. “Sorry about that, I guess it was bothering me more than I realised”

“‘s okay, we’ve both been crybabies today”

That gets a huffing laugh from Cal. “I guess so”

Cal looks calmer now, although still tired, so Dys wonders if it’s ok to ask the question he had since Cal began to pace.

As he’s wondering this, Cal waves his hand in front of his face, when Dys looks at him, he looks exhausted, he doesn’t say anything, but, somehow, Dys knows he can ask “Have you talked to your parents about it?”

Cal frowns, but he knows it because he doesn’t understand and not because he’s upset “Why? We all know Ver got hurt, and that he wants to go back to the expeditions”

Dys rolls his eyes and flicks Cal’s nose.

“Hey!” he says rubbing his nose

“I mean if you have told them this is bothering you, like, you seem upset about the jokes about his hand”

“Yeah, because it is a serious injury!”

“And I don’t think your parents are the kind to keep making jokes when they know it upsets you” That is still weird to Dys, since usually adults don’t care about stuff like that. But this family, just like Cal, is weird . “Wasn’t your mom who said something complaining and listening to others complain?” At least Dys is pretty sure he remembers something like that from the time when they fought, when Dys first learned that Cal saw him as his friend.

Cal scrunches up his face “What? No! You mean when she said to tell other people how you’re feeling, because otherwise they can’t be sure. And to listen to what they’re feeling, so you don’t misunderstand.” 

Talking about feelings, complaining, personally Dys doesn’t really see the difference 

Cal stays pensive for a moment “But, maybe you’re right” With a defeated sigh he continues “I guess I should try to talk with them about that stuff”

Dys also sighs, but out of relief, hopefully his parents won’t screw up that talk.

“Sorry about that, now it’s late and we didn’t get to play anything” The pout that accompanies that statement is more along Cal’s playful ones, so Dys just rolls his eyes and replies.

“You can make it up to me accompanying me to explore what's left of the strato”

Cal raises his eyebrows clearly not expecting that answer, but then grins widely and says “Deal”

They hear a knock on the door, and then Auntie Tirah’s voice “Boys, it’s getting late, we should accompany Dys to his room so he can sleep”

Cal slumps his shoulders and replies “‘Kay mom”

He should really leave for his and Tang's room. His and Tang’s…

…

He really doesn’t want to see her, he can still easily picture her disappointed gaze.

“Dys?” Cal call to him from the door to his room

“Tang may be in our room” He says into his sweater, kicking at the carpet.

“Oh” Cal replies shifting from one foot to another, when suddenly he stops “Wait! I have an idea, why don’t we have a sleepover!”

“A sleepover?” Cal’s mom asks from a few paces behind her son.

“Yeah! pleaseeee can Dys stay for a sleepover?” He pleads to him mom with his still red rimmed eyes

She gives a sigh “Okay, okay, as long as Dys doesn't mind using your pajamas, and are you sure you’ll both fit in the top bunk? Remember that Ver is also sleeping in this room”

Cal is frowning, for some reason Dys is sure he is worried about something stupid like kicking Dys from the bed.

Dys looks again at the backpack and has an idea “Living room?” He says before he catches himself. Mother and son are looking at him now, Auntie Tirah confused and Cal understanding.

“We can use the sleeping bags and sleep in the living room!”

Dys gives a small nod, that sounds better than seeing his sister.

Auntie Tirah smiles softly at them “Alright, then prepare for bed boys, I’ll send a message to the chief Steward so she knows that Dys is staying here tonight”

“Woohoo!” Cal exclaims with his arms in the air and ransacks Ver’s backpack

Dys snickers and goes to help him.

After finding the sleeping bags with a little help from Ver, they prepare for bed, now in a more comfortable silence.

Dys tries to think of stuff to do on sleepover that he’s seen on holomovies, however as soon as he lays down his head the exhaustion of the day comes crashing down, he only manages to hear a soft “Night Dys” before falling asleep.

Chapter Text

Dys gets rudely awakened by the sound of someone falling to the floor.

It takes him a moment to reorient himself and remember that he was sleeping in Cal’s living room. It’s dark but he can see Cal’s outline in the sleeping bag next to him, it looks like he hasn’t woken up.

He hears a voice whisper from the entrance “Ceph, are you ok?”

He is curious about what's happening so he gets up quietly and moves to be able to see the entrance. The light coming from the hallway makes it so he can’t see the faces clearly but he can still distinguish Perk standing at the door and, by context, it must be Ceph the one who is laying on the floor.

“Ugh, man down! If only there was a hero to help with this grievous injury!” 

Can someone shout while whispering? Because Dys is pretty sure Ceph just did.

“Shhhh, remember Tirah warned us that Cal and his friend are having a sleepover, I know that you’re not completely sober but let’s not wake them ok? We’ve probably already awoken Ver” Perk says while extending his hand to help him up.

As if on cue the door to Cal’s room opens and the surveyor steps out. At the same time Ceph, still in the ground, crosses his arms refusing to take Perk’s hand and says “I’m not drunk”

Dys tries to hide in the shadows as much as he can, luckily the light coming from the hallway plays in his favor and Ver arrives at the entrance without noticing him. 

He already knows what’s happening, so he wants to go back to his sleeping bag, but he’s afraid that they’ll notice if he moves. And if they do, then they’ll probably get angry that he is eavesdropping, they might even take him to auntie Seedent to see that she educates him, the way other colonists have done before when Dys annoys them.

So he stays quiet, and willingly or not, listens to the conversation taking place.

“Night Ver, sorry to wake you” Perks keeps whispering

“Ah! A brave surveyor here to save the day” And Ceph keeps whisper-shouting.

Dys hears a snort and a “Worry not a hero has arrived!” 

It takes him a moment to recognise the amused and playful tone as the surveyor’s voice, not because of the whispering, given that since Dys has known him he’s always been soft spoken. But because of the confidence.

He hears some shuffling, which Dys assumes is Ceph standing up.

“How did you even fall?” the surveyor asks.

“ Someone was trying to act all smooth and leaned on the door, even though he knows it doesn’t close properly” Whispers Perk as an answer

Dys knows that Ceph kicks the door open sometimes, it caused quite an impression the first time he saw it.

“It closes perfectly fine when you lock it afterwards” Is the response with a rather dramatic huff that could only be Ceph.

“Oh? And should I’ve locked it? Did you guys actually take your keys with you this time?” The surveyor phrases it like a question but his tone is confident.

Neither Ceph nor Perk give an answer to that.

After a dramatic sigh the surveyor continues “Alright love birds, go to bed. We can talk tomorrow about the door and the date, that is, if Ceph can actually remember what happened. Meanwhile I’ll check on the kids”

Dys barely processes the “Hey! I’m not drunk!” and subsequent “Shhhh!”. In the time it takes him to decide to go to his sleeping bag and pretend to sleep, the surveyor has already entered the living room.

Dys keeps as still as he can. It’s really dark now, they must have closed the door since there’s no light coming from the hallway. He sees the outline of the surveyor walking without any light source, approaching what must be the place Cal is sleeping, then he stops and starts looking around the room, probably searching for him.

Suddenly, even though he can not distinguish his eyes, he’s sure the surveyor is looking straight at him. He knows it is obvious that he was eavesdropping, still, he tries to look like he did nothing wrong and attempts to stare daringly where he assumes the surveyor’s eyes are.

“...”

“...”

He hears the figure start to fidget so his stare must be successful.

After a moment it starts to whisper “Ah, sorry, did we wake you?”

“...No” 

Admitting that they woke him up would be like admitting he was listening to their conversation, so he doesn’t. No sir, he definitely didn’t hear a trio of adults bickering like children.

“...”

Will the surveyor call out his lie? Will he wake up the rest of Cal parents to admonish him? Or will he take him personally to the chief Steward?

His eyes are growing more used to the darkness, so he can see the fidgeting turn to shuffling.

“I, um, I’ll let you sleep then” He says as he leaves quickly and remarkably silently.

Dys can only blink in surprise, he stays quiet for a moment, but doesn’t hear anyone coming to kick him out. He thinks about going back to his room, since his sister is probably asleep right now, but in the end decides against it, not wanting to risk waking her up.

So he goes back to his borrowed sleeping bag, even though it is the surveyor’s, it is still the same kind as his own so it feels familiar. 

Tired and resigned to the scolding that is sure to come tomorrow he closes his eyes. However before he can fall asleep he hears movement and Cal’s voice mumble. “Ver, is it Hoppy’s turn to harvest?”

Sleepy and with that nonsense out of nowhere, Dys exhales a laugh. “What?”

“ Is it Hoppy’s turn to harvest? ” Cal says again, making the same amount of sense, which is cero.

“Dude, what are you even saying?” he can’t help feeling amused, is Cal even awake? He doesn’t think so. He had heard about people sleepwalking, but not about sleep talking .

Despite his question, Cal doesn’t answer, confirming that he must be asleep.

More lighthearted, Dys closes his eyes again, falling asleep before he can think of what was worrying him.

When he next wakes up, the light from the kitchen gently illuminates the living room, he can hear voices and people moving stuff.

He can’t help groaning as he sits up. Ugh, yesterday was so embarrassing, he and Cal both acted like babies. Still, somehow, he feels better today, calmer, less like he’ll start bawling if he tries to speak.

He looks next to him where Cal is still sleeping and feels a bit guilty. He didn’t know Cal was so upset, since he had kind of been avoiding him.

Right, he’d been avoiding him… Why was that again? It’s still early and continuing thinking about it would only upset him, so he decides to let it go for now. The last thing he needs is to start crying again . 

He lays back on the sleeping bag for now, just enjoying the calm for a moment, before he has to get up and, ugh, interact with people.

He starts to doze off when he hears movement next to him. Cal must’ve woken up.

He sighs internally at the loss of the tranquility and decides to get up before someone tries to wake him up.

After a big yawn that has Dys wondering if Cal could eat a medium cake in one bite, the boy in question turns to him with a huge smile saying “Good morning Dys!” 

Surely that’s too much? He can’t be that happy that Dys is here right? Still, in the name of friendship and avoiding more sentimentality he gives a small smile and nod in acknowledgement.

Keeping his big smile and bouncing in place Cal continues “Did you sleep well? Are you still tired? Hungry? Maybe bored? Do you want to play something?” 

Those were too many questions! He just woke up, he hasn't even had the time to feel bored yet.

Before he can begin to formulate an answer, auntie Tirah enters the living room “What you should do is get dressed and ready for the day. It’s still early enough that you can have breakfast before your biology class, but I don’t think you’ll have the time to search for clothes in your house Dys, so Recalcitrance can lend you some”

“But mooooom, It’s our first sleepover in our house and we didn’t get to play anything last night!” Cal was fully pouting right now.

“Well, then you have to make sure to plan your next sleepover better. Classes are important Recalcitrance” Cal’s mom has her hands on her hips, she seems immune to Cal’s hopeye eyes.

Cal keeps looking at her until she sighs “How about you have another sleepover this weekend? Then you won’t have to go to class afterwards”

Seeing that is the best he’ll get, Cal turns his expectant look to Dys.

Now that he’s looking more carefully Cal’s eyes are a bit red rimmed, probably from sleep, but it reminds him too much of last night, maybe it’s a bit of guilt what makes him answer “...Okay”

“Yay!” Cal pumps his hands in the air as if he had just won something.

Dys just rolls his eyes, so dramatic.

They get dressed, Cal lends him some clothes he has outgrown and that fit Dys just fine. He still puts on his own sweater, since Cal only has shirts. “Seriously, not even one hoodie?”

“Why should I have one? I don’t feel cold, more clothes are just more of a bother”

That still doesn’t make any sense to Dys, then again Cal doesn’t make any sense to Dys.

After getting ready for the day, they have breakfast in the kitchen with Auntie Tirah and the surveyor, the latter of which begins to tell them about Ceph’s fall last night. Cal and his mom listen amused, while Dys is tense, waiting for the moment he’ll reveal that Dys was eavesdropping and should be chastised, but it never comes.

Has the surveyor decided to just ignore him? He seems to avoid making eye contact with Dys.

Maybe he’s waiting for a better moment for the reveal? Or maybe he plans to blackmail him to stop hanging out with Cal or something like that?

He stares, trying to make sense of the surveyors intentions, but only succeeds in making him fidget more and, possibly, being the reason he drops his cup, which shatters in the ground. 

Dys refuses to feel guilty even when the surveyor looks extra pathetic.

Despite that little hiccup, breakfast ends amicably enough, with the surveyor leaving for physical therapy, whatever that is.

Now, Auntie Tirah is taking them to class. They’re not so little that they need an adult to accompany them, but she says that since she’s going in the same direction anyway, she might as well.

That’s unfortunate since Dys wasn’t going to go to class today, much less to biology with professor Hal.

But auntie Tirah leaves them at the classroom door, and then Cal takes his hand and leads him to some seats next to each other in the middle of the classroom.

Unsurprisingly Tangent is already seated, when she sees him arrive she looks at him open mouthed. Dys almost laughs out loud, he doesn't remember the last time he saw Tang so surprised.

Dys sighs in relief when Congruence tells them that professor Hal is occupied with other stuff so she is in charge of the lesson, not only that but Marz hasn’t arrived so she’ll probably won’t be attending class today!

Class goes pretty well, since his partner for the project is his seatmate. He and Cal have fun answering the questions and finish their work before the last class of the day.

Afterwards Anemone comes through the door, looks slightly surprised at seeing Dys, but not nearly as much as Tangent was. Despite this, she approaches them practically bouncing “Hey guys! Finally! Congruence took forever!”

“Hi Nemmie! It really wasn’t that long, maybe you felt like that because you were waiting outside?” Cal looks at her with fondness, Dys gives her a small “Hi” and then just stays quiet, maybe he should leave?

“Well, duh. I couldn’t risk you disappearing after class! I’ve barely seen you this month! And not only because it’s dark!” With a huff she puts her hands on her hips and continues “So, I’ve decided  you’ve spent enough time cooped up in your house, time to breathe some fresh air and play outside! I’ll even let you choose the game!”

She has a huge grin, clearly pleased by her magnanimous offer. Then as if an after thought she adds “Oh, and Dys can come too if you want”

He’s a little surprised at being extended the invitation, although he doesn’t think he wants to accompany them, a lot has happened since yesterday so he would like to be alone for a while.

As he goes to answer Anemone he notices that she’s only looking at Cal, then he realizes that she didn’t ask Dys, but Cal.

Cal looks at him with a silent question in his eyes. At the very least he isn’t answering without Dys opinion. 

Instead of having Cal answer for him he addresses Anemone directly “Sound boring. I’m leaving”

And moves towards the exit of the classroom ignoring Anemones indignant “Hey!”

However before he can leave he hears a “Wait!” and feels someone grab his wrist. He tenses and looks back at Sol. “Wait, Dys, we need to talk”

How dare they. Instead of responding he yanks free his wrist and exits the classroom stomping. 

He knows there are soldiers at the wall, but he can’t keep looking at the colony right now, everything he sees just makes him angrier, why does going to class always end up like this? Even when the class itself it’s ok, then something happens right after that ruins his good mood.

Once at the top of the wall, one soldier approaches him “You shouldn’t be here kid, this is no place to play”

He ignores her and sits looking at Vertumna.

He hears heavy footsteps approach “Hey! pay attention when I’m talking to you!”

He looks at the soldier, who seems taken aback by Dys’s gaze, he doesn’t know what she sees in there but whatever it is at least she backs off “Alright, you can stay till the end of my shift, but if I catch you doing anything else that’s not staying seated at a safe distance of the edge, then I’ll have to tell your guardians”

He wants to scoff, but he hadn’t actually expected his glare to work, so he tries to give a polite nod, not wanting to test his luck.

Seeing the jungle helps calm him down, it looks even more beautiful than he remembers. He takes deep breaths listening to the sounds of the animals at the other side of the wall.

If only Dys could be out with them.

Once he feels calmer he opens his holopalm, and sees new messages from Solane and Cal. He ignores Sol’s and reads Cal’s. There are the ones from yesterday when he was asking him where he was, the last one is from a bit earlier today, a simple “U ok?”

He thinks about replying with a “ye”, but looking up decides to send a picture of the view instead.

And after that a “ye”. Just in case Cal doesn’t understand what he means with the picture.

After a few seconds he gets his answer 

>“!!!!!!!”

>“So cool!”

>“Btw I’ll be playing with Nemmie near the garrison if you want to join us!”

His sweater hides his smile as he closes the messages and goes to choose a game, but before he can distract himself he remembers he has something to ask Cal, so he sends him another text asking him why he was searching for him yesterday. 

After a few minutes of playing a game about squishing bugs he gets his answer.

> “Sol told me u looked upset and said they couldn’t find you. So I wanted to see if u were ok”

Sol again, weren’t they avoiding him just recently? They don’t have to pretend to want to be his friend anymore, the gig is up. Or do they think Dys is so stupid as to fall for it again? Maybe Marz put them up to it.

Ugh, he gets nothing by thinking about annoying people, it doesn’t matter what Sol wants to do since he won’t play their game.

He spends the rest of the afternoon in that spot in the walls, even when the soldier looked at him like he was an animal, it was better than being near other colonist who just seem to be in a competition to see who can upset him the most

Tang doesn’t talk to him, but from time to time he’ll catch her giving him strange looks.

He doesn’t care. He doesn’t.

One day, out of the blue, he receives a message from Cal.

>U were right

He squints at the message, as if that would make it make sense. Giving up he replies.

????<

>I talked t my parents about the accident

>U were right. The jokes were for tryin t make me feel better. 

>And Ver says he can wait a bit more before rejoining the expeditions

He sees the three dots meaning that Cal is writing for a while, he thought he would have written a whole paragraph but it ends up being a single sentence.

>I still don’t want him to go

Dys doesn’t really know how to respond to that, so he doesn’t. As much as he hates admitting it, he’s on the surveyor side on this one.

He stops avoiding Cal, even though he’s pretty sure a good friend would do what’s best for both of them and end this friendship. He’s slowly making peace with the fact that he isn’t a good friend to Cal.

He can’t say he feels guilty about it when thanks to that he can have moments like this.

They’re in the sleepover in Cal’s house, his parents haven’t arrived home yet and Cal is laughing so hard he’s clutching his stomach and having trouble breathing, but Dys just has to continue in his best/worst impression of Seeq’s voice while complaining about the dirt in geoponics not being symmetrical.

“Dys- Mercy. Plea- Hahah!”

Cal’s laugh must mean he nailed the dismayed expression of Seeq when the sunfly landed on their shoulder. And sure maybe he broke character by laughing and he exaggerated a bit with the fainting, but Cal demonstrates to be someone who appreciates fine art when he gives a one man ovation to the dramatic ending anyways.

Chapter Text

He’s in the lounge writing in his notebook when it happens. Suddenly the colony’s emergency sirens start up and he gets a message to go to the closest assembly point.

Some of the adults at the lounge start to run outside, others start to argue with each other.

What could cause the use of the emergency siren? It’s supposed to be reserved for natural disasters or attacks to the spaceship. But there’s nothing to think it could be a natural disaster, and they’re the only humans on the planet, so it can’t be an attack on the colony.

He has to see what’s happening, but as he starts to leave the lounge a figure blocks his path.

The woman looks at him with a smile faker than ever before, with at least five children trying to get close to her and Anemone’s little sister on her hip. “Thank the wormhole, It’s so good I found you Dys. Come with me, I’m taking the children to the assembly point on the creche”

With her free hand Auntie Seedent grabs onto his own, usually she leads him along with a firm hand on his shoulder, but right now she’s holding on tight and keeps stealing glances at him to make sure he’s still there, as if he had the ability to just banish out of nowhere.

She pulls him alongside her, calling the attention of other children in the lounge or other colonist assigned to help, yanking him around like a misbehaving pet that has to be kept on a short leash.

When they get out to go to the creche he catches glimpses of what’s happening, even though there are no other humans, the colony is under attack, from Vertumna itself.

He sees soldiers shooting at different creatures, some he knows from his explorations, others that he’s never seen before.

He sees the way the colonists are massacring those animals. It doesn’t matter whether they are big or small, whether they are harmful or not.

Once they arrive at the creche he sits down away from people, but he can still feel Auntie Seedent's eyes on him, at least he thinks so as he rubs his hand.

Have the animals grown tired of the humans invading their territory? Are they trying to reclaim what’s rightfully theirs?

But how could several different species agree to attack at the same time? Or are the adults hiding stuff from them? Perhaps they knew the animals were angry and instead of doing literally anything else, they chose to attack them first and now the animals are just defending themselves? After all, he knows the adults were lying before, since they wouldn’t need the walls if the colony was truly safe..

“I don’t want to fight” he hears from a little bit away, he looks towards the voice, seeing Sol covering their ears and their eyes closed tight.

Even though they don’t get along, he silently agrees with them. Grownups always have to solve everything with fighting. If they only tried to avoid it, it may go away on its own. Who knows, maybe they even provoked this attack.

After all, whenever the colonists encounter something they don’t agree with, they fight it. With anything that’s outside their little concept of  what’s good. They’ve never tried to understand -Dys- Vertumna, just to own -him- it.

He can hear shooting and shouting from outside, he doesn’t know for how long.

Eventually they play the all-clear tone.

Suddenly a group of cultivators arrive. It takes him a moment to notice a smaller figure between them, ashen faced and shaking more than a dancing willow. 

Two cultivators leave the group, the one he’s almost sure is Sol’s mom guides Cal with a hand on his shoulder while they approach Solane.

The male cultivator next to them hurries towards Sol “There you are my little gooseberry!”. He has the same hair color as Solane, he must be their father. “I’m so glad to see you are safe, come here” He opens his arms and Sol basically shoots towards him.

“You did very well coming here” He barely hears the chief cultivator say, since his focus is on Cal, who keeps his gaze ahead, not looking at anything.

Dys hates how he’s gotten familiar with Cal’s lost look, although… usually Cal cries in this type of situation. It greatly perturbs him that he looks so… numb.

While Sol and their parents have their little family reunion Cal just stays there staring ahead at nothing in particular. Dys needs to know what happened to leave him like this. 

Did… did one of his parents die?

Before he can determine how to best extract him, Cal suddenly turns to stare at his hands and in a raspy voice stutters “I- I need to wash my-y hands”

Dys tries to look at his hands from where he’s partially hidden. They’re dirty, but that’s not unusual since Cal often helps shoveling dirt in geoponics, it’s understandable that they’ll be stained if he spent the day there.

Cal moves as if to leave and Dys prepares to go after him, but before Cal can take even a single step the chief cultivator interrupts “I don’t think you should be alone right now Cal” She leans on her cane and something in her voice makes Cal’s eyes focus on her as she continues “You were very brave and did the right thing protecting the colony. But that doesn’t mean it’s easy. Why don’t you accompany us until your parents arrive, hm?” 

Now Cal is tearing up, looking up at the chief cultivator as if she holds all the answers and gives her a little nod.

That means that Dys is left hovering uncomfortably nearby, partially hidden. Still, he feels eyes on him, looking away from Cal he makes eye contact with Solane. They look like a mess, clearly they’ve been crying. He tenses for a moment not knowing what they’d do, thankfully it seems they are too tired to mock him since they just turn towards their dad again.

The place is getting crowded as more parents come looking for their children, the entrance is unguarded so he goes to leave. 

After all, he knows that if he doesn’t leave on his own nobody will come for him.

Outside is a mess, somehow the entrance to the colony looks intact. How did the animals get in if they didn’t break the door?

There’s also still a few fires being extinguished which give him some light to examine the bodies on the ground. Part of it is what he expected, predators with gunshot wounds that were their ultimate downfall. But others… others just don’t make sense , under what circumstance such excessive force is necessary for a Hopeye or a floatcow… Dys doesn’t think they could hurt a colonist even if they tried, after all what would they do? Float at them?

He goes to examine the front half of a manticore (How did that even happen?), when he feels someone grab his shoulder iron tight.

He can’t help but tense as he looks at the frowning soldier. “Careful there, we’re still securing this place. You should go to the creche until your guardians arrive” He gives Dys a worried once over before continuing “Have you heard from them yet?”

He wants to roll his eyes so bad, either that or just burst out laughing. Ah, adults are always so eager to hand him to his ‘guardian’. He wants to reply ‘unless ghosts can use holopalms I don’t think so’ But he knows that’ll mean this soldier would take him to auntie Seedent…

…So lying it is.

“Mom told me that she’d met me in our house” He says while looking straight at the soldier with all the confidence he can muster.

The colonist sighs relieved and Dys knows that he fell for it. “Well, you shouldn't dally here then. Chop chop”

Regrettably Dys won’t be able to examine the bodies -to see if captain is- to study them closer. 

Well, it’s not like he’ll never have the chance to encounter those animals in the future. Besides, looking at the amount of human blood on the ground is making him feel like he has to go to his room right now.

As soon as he enters his room Tang looks at him from her place on their desk.

He freezes for a second, not expecting her whole attention so suddenly, but before he can even begin to question it, she quickly turns back to her holopalm, her ponytail whipping around like a slap to his face.

However he doesn’t feel the usual anger at looking at her, actually for some reason he can’t part his gaze, looking at her from head to toe.

She’s unharmed. As that thought crosses his mind he feels his restlessness quiet down.

“Did you suffer head trauma or are you just extra stupid today?” She asks him while keeping her eyes on her holopalm. 

Regardless of her mean words he doesn’t feel his usual anger at her, so without acknowledging what she said he keeps checking her over, it’s only because he’s paying close attention that he notices she’s trying to furtively steal glances at him as well.

When she realizes that he caught her, she turns toward him and crosses her arms “Well? Are you going to answer or did you forget basic sintaxis?”

As much as she’s trying to conceal it, for once Tangent is the more ‘emotional’ of the two. And she is not disguising her worried look as much as she thinks she is.

Dys just smirks at her and shrugs which only seems to upset her even more.

“If you’re so determined to hide your injuries you better not be counting on me to treat them for you” She tries to regain a semblance of control, turning away when she finishes speaking.

His heart clenches and his smirk turns into a sad smile but he makes sure Tang doesn’t see it by hiding it in his sweater

After a few hours there's a knock on the door. Before they can answer Auntie Seedent steps in.

Why even bother knocking if she’s not going to wait for an answer?

“Is good to see you're both here” She tells them from the middle of the room from where she can keep an eye on Tang in the desk as well as Dys on the top bed. “But Dys, you disappeared on me. You have to know that in case of an emergency you have to wait for me so I can make sure you're safe. Did everything go alright on your way back?”

How can she expect him to follow rules they have never specified before? Why does she even care? Dys is not her problem. Clenching his teeth he just nods.

“ Dys ” She repeats, her tone firmer.

He raises his hands exasperated “Nothing happened! What else do you want me to tell you!”.

She’s frowning now “Just that would’ve been enough, but you have to be careful with that tone. We’ve talked about this before…”

She closes her eyes for a few seconds before plastering on that fake smile and turning to his sister “Tangent how are you feeling? Did everything go okay in the labs?” 

“Yes, there was no incident” She says with her hands folded on her lap and a bored expression on her face, but even then she isn’t scolded for being rude.

“I’m glad to hear it” Auntie Seeden’t responds as she takes some plastic containers from her totebag. “Since things are kind of hectic right now I’ve been handing out dinners” 

As she hands Tang her food she strokes her head gently. Tangent's face gives no indication if she feels anything at all at the gesture.

Then Auntie Seedn’t  goes to him and hands him his dinner, as she extends her hand towards him, he leans out of her reach. Maybe he’ll get scolded for being rude, but he’ll take that over her fake concern.

She stays in silence for a moment, her hand laying next to his in his bed. He looks at the container to avoid glaring at her.

Then he hears her take a step back “You can always talk to me if you’re upset Dys”

He clenches his hands. Yeah, right. 

It was just after Auntie Seedent had told them their mother died, she had explained to them how she’ll be the one to care for them from that point on.

“Your mother is no longer here but you still have me. If you’re upset, you can always come to me”

He never really got the opportunity, since it was always other colonists taking him to her. 

They’d say that he’s rude, that he lied, that he got where he wasn’t supposed to, that he upset Tammy and that there’s something wrong with that kid Annie.

And she’d always respond “Don’t you worry colonist X, I’ll see that it won’t happen again” With her hands holding him in place. 

And then the colonist would leave and she’d turn to him. “I don’t understand what happened. Why would you do that?”

At first he’d wanted to explain, to tell her that he didn’t mean to be rude, that he didn’t lie, that he was just playing, that he didn’t know why Tammy got upset, that he doesn’t know what’s wrong with him. But before he could ever get his sentence together, she’d sigh and start her lecture on manners or respect or whatever stupid thing she thought he needed to learn. 

Eventually he realised why he never got the chance to respond, it was because she never thought he would. She didn’t sigh like she was disappointed, but like she never expected anything different from him in the first place.

Now he could still feel her standing next to him. Hearing her sigh before leaving makes him want to tear something to pieces.

He’s gotten to a point where he can admit to himself that he worries about Cal. What to do about it? Well, that’s another thing altogether.

He has frequented the places Cal usually uses to hang out on, but he’s not on geoponics or the lounge or with Anemone.

Of course he hasn’t actually asked Anemone. After all, he's pretty sure she wouldn’t want to talk to him.

Then again, nobody ever wants to talk to him.

Well, except for Cal. Because Cal is weird like that.

Right now, what’s most likely it’s that he is in his house. Since that’s what he did when the surveyor got injured. But that time, even though he was sad and worried Cal kept messaging Dys, but now he’s been radio silent. 

Sure, technically it’s only been a day since the attack, but still.

And Cal is always the one to message him first. So how could Dys begin the message?

-Hey nullhead-

-Stop acting stupid- 

-I’m worried-

“UGH!” he throws himself back on the couch, arms folded over his chest.

He could probably search for one of Cal’s parents, maybe they…

Who is he kidding? They only put up with him because of Cal. They may take that chance to tell him to not go back to their house or to stop hanging out with him…?

He closes his eyes frowning and tries to picture it. Auntie Tirah’s familiar smile curving down with distaste, Ceph’s playful eyes dimming to indifference, Perk’s soothing voice turning cold, the surveyor’s fidgeting hands reaching to grab him on an iron grip.

For some reason it’s really hard to imagine, he can’t quite picture it. Maybe it’s because he sees so much of Cal in them, the soft smiles, playful eyes, soothing voices, even the restless hands. So trying to picture them like that it’s like trying to picture his friend as a hateful person, so impossible it actually makes him let out a startled laugh at the mental image, a person like that couldn’t even be Cal anymore.

But only because he can’t picture them like that it doesn’t mean it wouldn’t happen. After all he could never have imagined half the things he’s seen in Vertumna.

His train of thought is interrupted by a presence next to him. He keeps his eyes closed hoping that whoever it is would take the hint and leave him alone. 

But of course he can’t be that lucky and the figure next to him starts to speak “Dys”

Breathe even. Breathe even. Solane has to leave eventually. 

“Come on Dys, We really need to talk and I know you’re just pretending to sleep”

By the wormhole, What on Vertumna do they want?!

He sits up at once, startling Solane, however before they can begin to talk Dys starts to stomp in the direction of his room.

“Wha? Dys! Wait!”

He hears them behind him and tenses in preparation of them grabbing his wrist again. But Sol just hurries to keep his pace.

“Please Dys, I know I’ve been acting weird but-” Their words are interrupted by the effort to keep up

He sharply turns a corner, he’s getting closer to his room now. Sol jogs a bit to stay next to him. “But I’ve realised that-”

He closes the door to his room on their face and leans with his back to the door.

He doesn’t know if Solane is stronger than him. If they try to open the door Dys guesses they’ll find out.

“Please, just, listen to me”

He rolls his eyes at their pitiful voice. What is there to say? Once they got bored of the game they were playing with Dys, then Solane didn’t want anything to do with him. That’s great. Perfect. He doesn’t need them.

He waits while keeping his weight in the door in case Solane tries to open it. Just when he’s beginning to think they might have left he hears them through the door.

“I can tell you what happened to Cal during the attack”

That surprises Dys. What happened to Cal? That makes it sound like he was hurt or something. But that’s impossible, he saw him in the creche, he wasn’t hurt.

Or did he get hurt somehow when he was leaving the creche? Maybe a straggler attacked him, maybe right now he’s in the infirmary in serious condition and Dys is being the worst friend feeling resentful because he hasn’t messaged him.

Reluctantly he opens the door.

“Speak”

They look surprised, like they didn’t expect that to work. They compose remarkably quickly “Will you let me come in?”

“No. Speak. What happened to him?”

Sol pouts “How do I know you won’t try to get out of the talk after I tell you what happened?”

“You don’t”

“...” They look at him contemplatively for a moment “ Will you let me explain myself afterwards?” they say, narrowing their eyes.

Dys clenches his teeth and nods once.

“Alright. So, my parents told me that Cal was with them during the attack, and that some monsters with many eyes attacked them. Apparently at one point Cal killed one of the many eyed creatures that was going to attack Lamiaceae. I tried to…”

A part of him knows Solane is still speaking but his mind got caught up on ‘Cal killed’. Cal killed an animal from Vertumna? Just like the rest-

No, that’s not right. He takes a deep breath, he is pretty sure Cal would kill a creature just because Dys knows Cal loves Vertumna and the life that resides here, he wouldn’t want to hurt any of them…

… And that is why he is so despondent isn’t it? Because he didn’t want to do it. He didn’t want to do it so much he’s not even leaving his room. Things make more sense now.

When he focuses again on Solane they tilt their head “did you hear anything that I just told you?”

He scoffs “Enough of it. Now tell me what you wanted and be done with it” He braces himself for the next part, he doesn’t know what they would accomplish with this.

“I’m… Sorry” They say while looking at the floor.

“Great. Was that all?” He thinks he knows where Cal must be now.

“No! But… that’s the gist of it I guess? I’m sorry about avoiding you after… the incident”

Oh, It is ‘the incident’ now is it?

Solane continues most likely choosing to ignore Dys disbelieving face “I… had some nightmares. And you were on a lot of them, so I didn’t want to see you, because I didn’t want to think about it”

“You acted stupid… because of a dream?” Really, that’s the best excuse they thought of?

Their faces get really red “Y-yeah, kinda?”

He rolls his eyes “Great. Just. Perfect. Anything else?”

“Wait, does that mean that you forgive me?” they look at him hopefully, seriously do they think he’s that stupid?

“No. I said I would listen and I did, now I’ve got somewhere else to be”

He shoulders past Sol's slumped figure and heads towards Cal’s house.

He arrives at the front door. He could message Cal or knock on the door…

What he chooses to do instead is softly pushing the door. It opens almost without resistance.

He quietly steps inside, he hears some noise from the living room. Someone is listening to some LOUD music. 

Luckily that works in his favor as it allows him to walk to Cal’s door without being noticed by Perk in the living room.

He does knock on Cal’s door, hopefully Perk won’t notice.

“Come in” Is the uncharacteristically muted reply.

He steps inside quickly and closes the door behind him.

“Dys?” Cal is blinking owlishly at him from the bottom bed, like he thinks Dys is a hallucination.

“Hey” since Cal hasn’t kicked him out, he’ll take it as permission to stay here and sit next to him “You looked like a mess yesterday” And today too he doesn’t say. His eyes are red rimmed and swollen probably by a lot of crying.

“Oh, sorry I…” It looked like it pained him to speak, he even leaves the sentence incomplete, hanging in the air. 

It doesn’t matter. Dys didn’t come here to ask for explanations. He knows what he wants, and he’s pretty sure it is what Cal wants as well.

“You don’t need to talk. I won’t either” And with that he just takes his notebook from his bag and begins to write.

“Uh?” Cal is looking at him confused, but he just smirks and shrugs as a response before turning back to his writing.

He feels how little by little Cal begins to relax, he even changes positions to get more comfortable. And he can feel the tension slowly draining from his own body as well.

After all, this is something that he learned from Cal. That sometimes, just being there is enough.

When he steals a look at Cal he sees him reading one of his comics with a soft smile on his face. And when he catches his gaze, the smile gets bigger, crinkling his eyes.

There it is, that’s the correct expression on his friend.

Chapter Text

In the end Cal doesn’t tell him what happened, and this time Dys manages more self control and doesn’t push him for it. He’s actually really proud of himself for that one.

Days pass and eventually Glow season comes to an end.

They’re in quiet once again and seemingly in honor of its name, as the sparksnow falls, the unease in the colony begins to dissipate. The classes resume as normal, and most of the colonists return to their usual workplaces instead of having to help clean up after the attack.

As soon as the soldiers and surveyors relax the tiniest bit, he escapes to the outskirts. It was a close call, for a second he thought that uncle Tonin had heard him and had to stay extra quiet, crouched in an uncomfortable position until he moved on.

Once he steps outside the effect is instant, he closes his eyes and allows a moment to just be. No adults to nag him, no kids to mock him. It might have been just one season, but it felt like forever.

This. This is home.

After a few seconds he opens his eyes, alert once again, the surveyors might not have renewed the expeditions yet, but there are still soldiers regularly patrolling the walls.

He goes through familiar landmarks until he passes a small hill. He wanted to come here because this is a blindspot. When he arrives he lets out a loud cackle and falls backwards into fresh fallen sparksnow. Ah, he will have to be careful when he comes back to the colony or he might accidentally shock himself because of the static the sparksnow makes with his sweater.

It is a lesson he’s had to learn a few times.

He spends a pleasant day searching for interesting plants still remaining from glow season to add to his notes.

When the soldiers are called to resume their training, he goes to the walls, hoping that he’ll be able to hang out in his usual spot away from the rest of the colony. 

Surprisingly he finds Cal already there, sitting facing towards the outskirts. There is a surveyor in look out duty, Dys can’t really recognise their face but they must be one that has seen them here before, because they don’t spare them a second look.

He steps towards Cal, who lets out a startled noise when he feels Dys sit next to him. 

Right, Dys forgot that people can be scared by… noises? Surely that isn’t it, otherwise people would be scared all the time. Or were they scared by touch? With a sigh he resigns himself to check his list of things that people fear, but he’ll do it after hanging out with Cal.

He should… probably apologize for scaring him?

“Dys! Wow dude you can be so quiet!” Cal says, holding his chest and letting out a little laugh. Then bumping shoulders he continues “Are you sure you’re not a ninja or somethin’?” 

Or maybe not. Honestly what did Dys expect? For Cal to have the expected reaction and be mad at him? Of course he wouldn’t.

So he just rolls his eyes, perhaps a bit more dramatically than necessary so it can distract from the honest smile on his face “Don’t be stupid, aren’t ninja’s only from, like, that one place on earth?”

“Huh? Wait, aren’t they just made up? You know, like mages and stuff?” 

Neither of them really expected the argument that came after.

…

“Nuh uh” 

“Are too”

“NUH UH”

“ARE TOO”

…

“If you don’t stop saying nonsense I'll poke you with a stick!”

“Where did you get that? There’s nothing up here!”

…

“You’re laughing! that means that you think I'm right”

“That doesn’t make any sense! I'm just laughing because the stick just tickles!”

“...You're ticklish?”

“Yeah? No! Dys wait-”

…

“Don’t make those faces while I’m talking!” if he was trying to sound threatening he should really stop laughing, but Cal doesn’t look angry so Dys just continues to imitate him.

“DoN’t MaKe ThOsE fAcE- OW Hey! Give me that back!”

Cal now has the stick, and that's not allowed. Time to get it back!

…

Unfortunately while play fighting for the stick, Cal makes a dreadful discovery.

“Wait. Are YOU ticklish?!”

“...”

Well, dreadful for Dys. He’s sure the smile on his face as he prepares to defend himself must be the same Marz had described as maniac. But Cal doesn’t look perturbed at all, on the contrary he looks absolutely thrilled (and maybe a little bit maniac himself).

…

They ended up both laying down, exhausted, Cal giggling to himself out of nowhere like a mad man, although Dys guesses he’s not much better since his smile is actually making his face hurt.

He didn’t know that was possible and it doesn’t make any sense. How could a smile hurt?

“Truce?” Calls an amused voice next to him.

Dys looks at him consideringly for a second, a false truce may give him the upper hand…

But he does feel exhausted and he lost his weapon during the battle, so instead he answers truthfully with a nod “Truce. For now” 

That only makes Cal giggle some more “For now” he agrees.

Dys can’t help but notice that the surveyor doesn’t get closer to investigate. He doesn’t know if it is because he understood that they were just playing or they really thought they were fighting and didn’t want to get involved. Whichever it is, he’s just glad they weren’t interrupted.

Once they are calmer they sit next to each other looking at the outskirts.

The silence feels natural. Once every so often one of them would shift to get into a more comfortable position, but other than that it was easy to ignore the noises in the colony and just look at Vertumna.

“Cal?” Dys ask in a soft voice, not wanting to break the peace of the moment.

“Hm?” Cal answers absentmindedly.

“Why did you come here today?”

Cal face scrunches up at the question for a moment. He hums while keeping his eyes on a group of unisaurs before answering.

“After all that happened in glow… I just needed to look at Vertumna” When he turns to look at Dys his expression is serene.

Dys lets out a relieved sigh, It’s not often Cal gets into a contemplative mood so he had gotten a bit worried, but he looked at peace. 

“The planet is really wonderful” Cal finishes looking ahead, wind playing with his hair. 

Dys silently agrees. He doesn’t feel the need to continue speaking, so they both go back to their quiet contemplation.

His days begin to fall into a routine. 

He goes to class only when it’s strictly necessary,  if possible he prefers biology. Even if it’s more likely to find Tangent there it's also more likely to find Cal and that usually makes classes less boring.

“Dys I’m trying to pay attention” Cal whispers to him while trying to contain his laughter.

“What? I’m just helping you by repeating what professor Hal just said” Dys responds with a self satisfied smirk.

“He doesn’t say it like that” Cal hisses, trying to keep his attention on professor Hal.

“Whaaaat~ Likeee~ thiiiiis~” He hides his mouth in his sweater and says it just loud enough for Cal to hear, all the while looking ahead like a perfect student. 

He hears a thunk, and when he steals a glance at Cal, he sees him with his head in his desk, shoulders shaking.

Heh, point for Dys. That means they’re 3-0. It might be kind of unfair since Dys discovered that Cal finds his impressions of other colonists really funny… Okay he’ll do it just one more time, this time for real.

He did it several more times, the score ended up being 7-1. Poor Cal is just unfortunate that Dys can laugh on the inside while keeping a perfectly neutral face. He allowed him one point for the tickles but they had to ban them for the risk of triggering a tickle fight in the middle of class. 

Cal didn’t look upset at all at his loss since he was only ‘Competing against himself’. Which was ridiculous. Sure Dys didn’t tell him the rules or when exactly the competition started, but he still won. Cal couldn’t take away from that. 

Sometimes he goes to class and Cal isn’t there, or he is sitting with someone else. If possible those times he sits alone and hopes that the teacher will ignore him. The results vary depending on the day. 

Something new that’s been happening is that when Dys is asked a question, Solane answers before he can say anything. He doesn’t know since when Sol became such a show off in class, but at least those times it distracts the professor enough he forgets he had asked him.

He’s unwillingly sitting in the classroom after Auntie Seeden’t dragged him there, waiting for the next class to start when Solane approaches his desk.

“Hey!” they say in a fake upbeat tone. Dys only spares them a brief glance and then continues to ignore them.

“I- uh, found something I thought you might like” They say quickly as they lay some roots in Dys’s desk.

They linger for a moment before leaving the classroom altogether. Once he’s sure they’re no longer there Dys takes a look at the roots…

He’s thankful Solane left so he doesn't have to admit to their face that their present is very cool, the roots are such pretty colors that seem to change as he moves them to inspect them, and somehow he doesn’t think he’s seen them before.

This is bad, a part of him really wants to ask Solane where they found them, which plant was it from, if they got it from inside or outside the colony. 

It keeps happening from time to time, when class ends, Solane goes to him and hands him a root, vegetable or fruit that is native to Vertumna. Once, when the flower they gave him was truly something he had never seen before, not even in the holonet, he craves and asks Solane where they found it. They looked so smug, Dys kind of wanted to poke them with a stick.

If he doesn’t have to go to class he explores the outskirts, he’s on his way to reacquaintance himself with the terrain enough to plan another camping trip. If only Tang’s schedule right now wasn’t so sporadic…

When he doesn’t feel like dealing with stupid people, at least more than usual, he goes to the walls. At least there the only stupid person he has to deal with occasionally is Cal, whose brand of stupid is more tolerable than the rest of the colony and who respects if Dys doesn’t feel like talking by doing some of his yoga instead of pestering him.

Mostly when Dys hangs out with Cal they do so at the walls, since there’s not much reason to go to Cal house now that the weather is milder and the colonists aren’t on edge. 

They are sitting next to each other when they look at the next group of surveyors leave for their expedition, among them a familiar face, waving at some people with a hand that doesn’t look quite right. They watch as the figure grows smaller as he gets farther and farther away. Dys doesn’t ask Cal why he didn’t go to see Ver off, he also doesn’t mention how the surveyor looked happier than any other time Dys has seen him… Except perhaps the very first time he saw him, when he greeted Cal after coming back from an expedition, before he saw Dys and started acting all awkward.

At least Cal didn’t stay cooped up, he has learned that’s usually a bad sign. Right now, even if he’s upset, he’s searching for comfort, that means that he’ll feel better for a time.

Looking ahead at the expanse of the jungle, for the first time, Dys really hopes a certain surveyor makes it back safe and sound.

A few times he goes to search for Cal, however usually he finds him busy, whether it’s working in geoponics or playing with Anemone, Solane or any of the other kids, Cal seems to live a very busy life. After all, he has a lot of friends, and Dys isn’t a needy baby that needs to constantly hold his hand. So when he sees Cal is busy he leaves before he can notice him and do something ridiculous like invite him over.

Right now it’s one of those times, he’s bored and goes to geoponics to see if Cal wants to hang out.

Cal seems to be scrubbing his hands at a water barrel, away from the cultivators. He’s alone and isn’t working which means this time they may get to hang out like before they had to free Captain Hoppy.

As he gets closer he notices that Cal seems to be scrubbing his hands rather forcefully, maybe trying unsuccesfully to get all the dirt from under his fingernails? It’s weird since usually Cal doesn’t look upset at being covered by dirt, maybe he changed his mind?

“Stupid” He hears Cal mutter “Stupid… argh!” Cal, jerks his hands out of the water and holds them to his face. He looks a bit like he wants to cry which confuses Dys a little, why would washing his hands make him cry?

“Hey…” He speaks before he can actually formulate what to say.

Cal turns as soon as he sees him, wiping at the tears gathering at his eyes “O-oh! S-sorry, I didn’t see you there” he says. “I-I was just, um, washing my hands”

“And that made you upset?” Dys asks with narrowed eyes

“No, it’s just-” Cal tries to dry his hands on his pants which only results in them getting dirty again, when he realizes he looks at them dismayed and slumps his shoulders before continuing. “It’s just... I can still see it y’know?”

Dys doesn't know “...see what?”

“The blood” Cal whispers

Dys is taken aback. That’s unexpected and more alarming than any other answer. Did Cal kill someone????

Before Dys can even begin to formulate even more ridiculous scenarios, Cal continues. “I didn’t want to hurt it, even if it was a monster. And now it’s… dead. Because of me” Cal sniffles, clearly this is something that has been eating at him “What if it had puppies? Friends? Now they can’t go back because of me. It’s not fair, I didn’t want to do it.” The tears begin to fall silently, when Cal goes to wipe them away his face gets stained with dirt.

Something in Dys heart settles. He had suspected that Cal hadn’t wanted to kill that animal, but this confirmation sets him at ease, Cal isn’t like the rest of the colony attacking indiscriminately. He regrets it even now, months after the event.

Touch. Dys knows Cal finds touch comforting. So he lays one of his hands on Cal’s shoulder, Cal grips his arm back desperately.

“I really didn’t want to do it Dys” His eyes are begging to believe him, to understand.

“Good. Then don’t do it again” Dys says it with certainty, as if simply wanting something gives you the ability to achieve it.

That changes Cal’s disposition, he looks at Dys determined “I won’t. I really, really, won’t” 

Dys nods, but as he starts to let go, Cal grips his arm a little tighter, before quickly enveloping him in a hug “Sorry for being such a bummer, after the incident my parents suggested inviting you over, but I didn’t want to bring you down with me so I didn’t tell you” 

Dys raises his eyebrows a little at the fact that Cal’s parents had wanted him there. He can’t look at Cal’s face because of the hug, is it intentional?

“Instead, you came on your own. And… It helped. It really did. Thank you Dys, I’m really lucky you are my friend” Cal says as he lets him go, a fond expression on his face.

Meanwhile Dys feels his face getting really red, Cal can be so embarrassing!

Chapter Text

The native flowers are in full bloom this time of year, Dys is still in awe at how different Vertumna can be from one moment to the next. Even now that he has been exploring the outskirts regularly again, the terrain appears to change constantly. 

For example, he swears that the huge pirate hat  mushroom has been advancing north ever so slowly.

He refuses to call it magnus fungus. Because really, big mushroom? How unimaginative can the surveyors be?

Anyway, now that pollen is here, the pirate hat shroom has what looks like flower buds growing on its stem. As he goes to take a closer look so he can draw them on his field notebook, he hears a melodic voice he doesn't recognize.

“I wouldn’t  touch it if I were you”

It makes a chill run through his body. He stops for a moment, worried that a surveyor might’ve found him, but he doesn’t see anyone around him. Even then, he knows there’s something… or someone. Because he can feel the weight of their gaze on him.

His pulse quickens at the thought that it could be, maybe, possibly, hopefully… an alien?

Just the idea makes him feel breathless and he tries extra hard to see whoever is hiding.

If they really are an alien they’d probably wouldn’t want to show themself to a human, after all they've been invading their home since they arrived. 

“If… If you’re really an alien- You should come out! I’m- I’m not with them. I won’t hurt you!”

His heart hammers in his chest, someone spoke to him, no colonist would try to give him advice, they would scold him, mock him, and take him back inside the walls. So they have to be an alien, they have to.

“Please?” Despite his pitiful tone, no voice answers back.

A sudden noise makes his head turn lightning quick, but he only sees the pirate hat mushroom shaking.

He narrows his eyes at it, he’s sure that mushroom moved while he was turned away. How does it know if Dys is looking?

Suddenly he gets an idea, the voice advises him not to touch the buds… Maybe if he does touch them, the owner of the voice will have to reveal themself.

It was an stupid idea anyway, no one revealed themself, alien nor colonist, and now he barely manages to sneak back and behind a geodesic dome to call Cal’s attention.

“WHA- Dys?!” 

“Shut up”

“Why are you covered-”

“I said shut up!”

What right has Cal to judge him anyway? Half of the time he spends it covered in dirt, or flour, or paint, or frosting or literally anything else. He can’t judge Dys for a few pink spores dusting his sweater.

…and pants. And face. And hair. And maybe he should have expected that a fungus wouldn't have flower buds but rather a mechanism to release its spores, but he had no way of knowing that it would basically explode at a single touch!

Cal looks like he really wants to say something. So Dys cuts him off and says “I need your help”

Despite knowing that Cal won’t react badly, he still flinches a little after asking that. He’s not letting Cal speak AND he’s asking for favors? He really is a handful.

“Sure dude, as long as you’re sure you’re ok, just tell me how I can help”

Although expected, that answer makes him let out a sigh of relief “Great. You have some water barrels in geoponics right? Bring one here so I can wash this off without the other colonists noticing” Since he has no way of explaining what happened to any adult without getting in trouble, he needs to get rid of as much of the evidence as he can.

Cal takes a second to answer. When he does, he looks uncomfortable “Um… I don’t think I can do that” 

Dys… didn't actually expect Cal to refuse.

Idiot. He knows he can’t trust in other people, humans will always put their own interest first.

Without looking at Cal, he responds “I’ll just get out of your way then”

As he moves to leave he crashes into Cal who moved to block his path “Woah Dys, What’s with that face? I can’t bring a whole barrel, but maybe I could bring a bucket instead? And we just refill it if we need to. Is that ok?”

Oh. Cal actually wants to help? Or is he just searching for a way out without ‘hurting Dy’s feelings’?

“That sounds like more work, why not just bring the barrel like I said?” He narrows his eyes and stares down Cal as much as he can, who just looks back at him confused.

“Dude, I’m flattered, but there’s no way I'm strong enough to move one of those casks, even if it is half filled. Those things are really heavy!” Cal extends his arms as if that could somehow communicate just how heavy the barrels are.

He goes to say ‘But aren’t you really strong?’ thinking of the time Cal had somehow carried both of their packs or when he just lifted Dys on his shoulders like it was nothing. But before he can say it, he remembers, Cal augment isn’t strength. And while he is a strong kid, he is still a kid and Dys has seen strong adults struggle to carry those things. 

He tries to brush off his embarrassment at his unrealistic expectations of Cal by not looking at his eyes and just moving on. “A bucket will do”

His face is not red. His face is not red. If he thinks it enough, maybe it’ll come true.

He hears Cal’s enthusiastic voice “Radical! I’ll bring one then!”

While Cal is gone, Dys takes a moment to compose himself. So what if he forgot for a moment Cal’s augment wasn’t super strength like one of those comic books heroes! It’s not like they have their genetic modifications written in their foreheads, it's something easy to forget!

When Cal comes back with the water he has already put his embarrassment out of his mind… Well, more like in the back of his mind, but close enough.

He washes his hands, face and hair as much as he can but…

“For a second I thought it worked but… You’re still very pink, Dys. Kinda like a Manticore” 

When he looks at his hands they no longer look like they’re covered in pink dust, but more like they’ve been dyed pink. 

In a rather desperate attempt he turns the bucket over his head, startling Cal.

“And now?” If this doesn’t work, he really hopes warm water and soap will do the trick. Otherwise he might have to hide until it eventually goes away. He refuses to think it won’t.

Cal shakes his head “Sorry, still a manticore. Maybe a real shower will help?”

He scrunches up his nose “I can’t cross the colony like this, I’m sure some stupid adult would be annoying about it and take me to the chief Steward”

“And nobody saw you walking here?” Cal sounded impressed.

It made him instinctively want to roll his eyes, so he does. “Of course they didn’t, they’d have taken me to the chief Steward otherwise. Besides I got used to getting here unnoticed from when we took care of Hoppy”

“Wow, Radical! you could be a ninja, if, y’know, those were real and all” Cal jokes. Dys breathes deeply, willing to keep the truce only because he still needs Cal’s help and he doesn’t have a weapon. 

After thinking for a moment Cal continues “And can’t you just sneak back to your room?”

If only.

He shakes his head “There’s not enough hiding places, someone will definitely catch me”

“Surely if you tell them what happened-”

“I can’t. It happened outside. I don’t know of anything in the colony that can cause something like this” He can see a bit of his hair out of the corner of his eye, it’s definitely pink.

Cal flinches at his words, which takes Dys by surprise, he hadn’t expected the way his friend’s demeanor would change.

“Ah, you’re- um, still going out?” Gone is the playfulness from seconds before, replaced by a quiet, intense stare.

Now it’s Dys turn to be confused, this can’t be news to Cal, he knows Dys explores the outskirts. 

“Yeah?” It ended up sounding like a question, that wasn’t Dys’s intention.

“But why? Captain Hoppy is free! You don’t have to search for food for them anymore. And it’s so dangerous, you’ve seen the carnivorous plants and Ver’s injuries and- and-” Cal stops, realizing that while he was talking he has cornered Dys against the wall of the geodesic dome, so he steps back to give him space. 

Dys keeps blinking, but before he can process Cal’s little speech, he goes for an encore. “I don’t get it! Why do you take risks like that? There are other things you could do inside the colony! There are ways you could help here! Don’t you know that you could die outside? Why are you so eager to get yourselves killed?!” Cal says walking back and forth not looking at Dys, not even caring he is stepping all over the mud, although he probably wouldn’t care if he was calm either.

Dys is preparing to argue back when he notices it, ‘yourselves’. Plural?

And it clicks, The surveyor hasn’t come back from his latest trip yet, hasn’t he?

“Hey” He stops Cal’s pacing with a hand on his shoulder. “Have you heard from The surveyor?”

He looks surprised at his question and starts to refute it “What does that have to do with-” Dys can only look at him with quite an unimpressed stare.

Cal slumps his shoulders and starts to play with his hands. “We chatted yesterday, today they are exploring some new place in the Valley of Vertigo, they don’t know what they’ll find there yet…”

“So he’s okay so far?” Dys asks, but he’s pretty sure of the answer. 

Cal nods anyway. “So far. But what happens if tomorrow he isn’t? If tomorrow you aren’t?” he looks at Dys pleading.

He doesn’t know what to say to make Cal understand, he tries his best anyways. “We came to this planet to live here. Cal, that’s all I’m trying to do, live here” he says looking straight into his eyes, hoping something in them will communicate what his words can’t.

It doesn’t seem to work. “I don’t understand” Cal’s words sound like a plea, but it’s for something Dys can’t force himself to do. 

Instead he lets out the words that might as well end this problem from the root “I don’t understand you either, you know? You shouldn’t care about me, I know I upset people and if I only make you sad… Well, you didn’t care about me before we landed here, if you got back to that you wouldn’t hurt this way”

Ah, he said. It was only a matter of time honestly. He tried to delay it as much as he could, but now the words are out. Dys has outright told him that the only thing he gets from this friendship is pain, even Cal has to see the truth of it. 

He gets some comfort knowing that if this is his final moment as Cal friend, at least it’s finally being a good one.

“What?” Cal looks astonished and… angry? “That doesn’t make any sense! I can’t just- not care. And even if I could I wouldn’t want to” Cal holds both Dys’s shoulders, holding him in place, his gaze piercing “You’re my friend Dys, just as you are. Maybe I don’t understand you and I can’t help but worry about you, but that doesn’t mean I would change it, not for anything in any world. And I guess… I wouldn’t want you to change either. I really feel like I’m repeating myself but you’re really amazing Dys” 

That didn’t go in the direction Dys expected, it’s not what would be best for Cal but he can’t help but feel so glad, he’s not even embarrassed from Cal's exaggerated words. 

He sees Cal’s expression go from hopeful to determined “And I can see you don’t believe me yet, but don’t worry I’ll keep trying until you do, until the truth of it settles in your bones, ‘Dys is awesome!’”

That sounded like a threat, he says so to Cal, who only laughs and responds “It is”

Dys is not very sure what just happened, but things seem to have calmed down once again.

It isn't until Cal flinches looking down at his now pink palms that Dys remembers his current predicament.

“I guess we still have to figure out what to do about this” Cal says while trying unsuccessfully to clean his hands on his pants.

Dys is about to suggest simply trying to run for it, when Cal suddenly crouches down and sinks his hands in the mud from where he turned the bucket, with a thoughtful expression.

Before he can ask what he’s doing, Cal stands and takes off running while shouting back “I’ve got an idea!” And then as soon as he’s out of sight he doubles back “Almost forgot the bucket!” he says before grabbing the bucket and going away again, as if that explained anything.

Dys waits, staring at the mud as if that would give him the answer, he even tries grabbing a handful, thinking that maybe mud could somehow clean the spores? But when he wipes his hand it’s just as pink as before.

Eventually Cal comes back, with a big smile on his face and carrying the end of a hose instead of a bucket. “Look! Grandpa Tar lent me a hose”

Dys gets closer to Cal to see whatever this idea is in action “And he doesn’t suspect anything is weird about it?” The last thing they need is that old fart to come and find Dys.

“Nah, he says that kids playing with mud reminds him of his childhood on earth, so he’s always happy to lend us some water when we want to make mud pies with the little kids”

Once Cal is happy with his mud pit he cuts off the water from the hose, extends his arms and falls back into it.

“...” Dys stares down at him, no longer sure if his plan is for helping him at all.

“Come Dys, lay in the mud with me!” Cal invites him, patting down the space next to him with some wet slaps.

“Will that help get rid of the pink?” He really doesn’t get how getting dirty with mud will help him get clean.

“No, it’ll get us both pink, but the right kind of pink” He says, while grabbing a handful of pink mud and throwing it in Dys direction, hitting him in the arm. “And sure, we’ll get some attention, but it wouldn’t be the first time I’ve gone back home covered in mud from geo-” Cal gets interrupted by some mud straight to the face.

Heh, Bullseye.

He gets the plan now, and it might just be stupid enough to work. So he grabs more handfuls and prepares to strike. Truce officially over.

Their little game works wonders at getting Cal covered in mud. The same can not be said about Dys. 

“Come on dude! The plan won’t work if you’re not covered too!”

“Then I guess you have to improve your aim!” as he says it, he can barely dodge Cal’s throw. In reality it isn’t that he has bad aim, it’s just that Dys has better reflexes.

In the end to make sure Dys is sufficiently covered he has to roll in what remains of the mud pit. He can imagine the kinds of things auntie Seedent, Marz or Tang would say about it. They’d say that Dys is being inconsiderate, behaving like an animal, being immature.  Luckily Cal’s laughter at pretending to be vriki emerging from the mud drowns out those thoughts.

Once they are properly disguised. They walk out from behind the geodesic dome, maintaining a quick pace, Dys tries to avoid eye contact so as to not call unwanted attention, but even then he can hear cultivators snickering at them. He knows they look ridiculous, both him and Cal laughed about it just a few moments before, but it feels different when somebody else does it, he doesn’t like it.

Cal quickly returns the hose and catches up to Dys. “So far so good, Auntie Flulu just sighed so I think that's a good thing? And grandpa Tar got a real kick out of it” Cal tells him with a breathy laugh. It seems Cal is not as affected as Dys by being mocked.

“Ewwwww. How did you get so dirty?”

Ugh, he could recognize that annoying voice anywhere. 

He looks directly at her “Mind your own business Marzipan” 

“That’s what I was doing until you crossed in front of me and made it my business” Surprising Dys she turns her attention to Cal. “Seriously Cal? covered in mud? Again? I hope you followed my advice and had a mud bath like on the spas on earth, after all we’re trying to build civilization here. And this place really needs a Spa”

Cal slows to answer Marz and Dys adjusts his pace, thankful that her attention is on somebody else, he thinks about just leaving, but he doesn’t want to leave Cal alone to deal with her. “Sorry Marz, it ended up being more of a mud pit than a mud bath, but if I ever make one, I’ll be sure to tell you”

Marz lets out a satisfied huff “That’s what I like to hear” She glances at the side and looks surprised at seeing Dys still standing there. She smiles at him, which is unsettling, why would she do that? Before he can linger on that thought she continues as if nothing happened “Now shoo, you both stink” She dismisses them with a wave of her hand, not sparing them another glance. 

Not wanting to waste a chance to get away he grabs Cal’s hands and keeps walking, before he has any brilliant ideas like keep talking with her.

They arrive at the lounge. There Dys hears some surprised noises and murmurs about them, but nobody approaches them and the comments seem to be more leaning in fond exasperation towards Cal than suspicion towards Dys .

Unexpectedly for Dys, things go according to plan and they arrive at the door to his room.

“Woohoo! Mission accomplished!” Cal extends his hand for a high five that Dys reciprocates a bit astounded that the plan actually worked.

They say their goodbyes and Dys steps into his room, tensing when he meets Tangent’s direct stare.

It is rare that Dys sees her surprised enough to have her mouth open and close with no words to come out.

Eventually what she decides to ask is. “Was that Cal’s voice?”

She says it frowning like it upsets her somehow. Why does she care? Lately she only talks to him to scold him, as if she were already an adult and not the same age as Dys, she has no right to judge his friend.

He feels strangely defensive about this for some reason, he doesn’t want to hear her opinions about his friendship with Cal, so he ignores her and grabs a change of clothes to go to shower.

The soap works better than just the water did, he’s pretty confident that his hair looks ok, the problem is that his face and his hands are left with a bit of a pink tint to them. He hopes other people won’t notice.

His hopes get squashed when as soon as he steps out he hears Tangent’s disappointed sigh “Did you really spend so long covered in mud that you’re still pink? Even the little kids know they can get sick doing stuff like that”

Huh, he guesses he can use that as an excuse if anybody asks. Or better yet, he’ll just walk away without acknowledging the person asking… Yes, that sounds better.

“It’s none of your bussiness” he grumbles as he leaves his dyed clothes in the laundry basket

He doesn’t have to look at Tangent to know she rolled her eyes and went back to her holopalm.

The next day he’s relaxing in his room in the afternoon when he hears a knock on the door, he doesn’t bother to try to answer, since he knows it won’t matter anyways. 

Sure enough, after a few seconds Auntie Seedent steps in. “Dys, is good that I found you here”

Well, duh, who else did she expect to find here, Eudicot? He levels her with an unimpressed stare

“Oh my, Professor Hal is right, you really are pink, do you have any other symptoms? Itchy throat? Runny nose? Did you also get the shimmer last pollen?”

…What?

“Uhhhh” He’s unsure in how to answer, those were a lot of assumptions

As always, before he can formulate a sentence, Auntie Seedent continues “Dys I can’t help you if you don’t let me. If you’re not feeling well, we can go to Instance and see if she can help, there’s plenty of other colonists that are going through the same as you”

He’s flabbergasted, what even is ‘the shimmer’? “I’m fine” He doesn’t know what else to say.

“It’s okay if you aren’t, these things are mostly new to you kids, but on earth we used to have more allergies, most are mild but sometimes people could have severe reactions. So it’s important that you ask for help if you are not feeling well, we have medicine to deal with some symptoms. I think that, just in case, we should go to see Instance to make sure you’re ok”

He sees her get closer as if to grab him, if he dodges her she'll just get upset and carry him with a tighter grip. Trying to think of a way to get out of it he exclaims “It was mud!”

She stops mid movement, looking confused “Huh?” 

“I- um, got some mud on my face and arms yesterday. Even though I showered I still am a little pink, It isn’t the shimmer” Whatever that is

Auntie Seedent looks at him quizzically, probably not believing him, so he rolls up his sleeve, showing a clear line where the pink stops. The chief stewards studies it for a moment before accepting Dys’s explanation.

Her soft laugh takes him by surprise and makes him feel uncomfortable, so he quickly fixes his sleeve. She’s looking at him with a strange expression, he thinks she looks constipated “I imagine Cal was involved?”

He tenses up since he doesn’t want to get his friend in trouble. He doesn’t get to deny it since she doesn’t wait for him to answer “I’m glad you two are getting along” She makes an aborted movement like she’ll try to touch him, so just in case she tries again he inclines out of her reach.

With another loud sigh she continues “Alright, it seems it was a false alarm, but what I said still stands. There are plenty colonist that are developing allergic reactions to the pollen, if you start to feel sick, just tell me and we’ll go to Instance, she’ll help you feel better, I promise”

As if she’d ever kept her promise before. At least after that last statement she leaves him alone.

An allergic reaction to the pollen? That sounds really stupid, they’re surrounded by the stuff during this season, there'd be a lot of people with sick leave if that were true.

Unless it really is only a runny nose and itchy eyes, in that case there is no way he'd tell Auntie Seedent, he would rather just deal with it alone, even if he does get ‘the shimmer’.

The next time he is out of the colony he goes straight to the pirate hat mushroom. 

Dys feels so stupid for what he’s about to do. 

He takes a deep breath and starts to speak to the air “If you can hear me… please look after a surveyor. His name is Perseverance, he is short for an adult, and has flower tattoos on his neck and both his arms and fidgets a lot”

There’s no response, he’s acting like an idiot, he should really shut up and leave.

“If you do… I’ll owe you a favor”

No one answers. Well, at least nobody saw that pathetic display. He can just pretend it never happened.

When he turns to go back, he sees a Bobber fruit that he's sure wasn’t there before, he takes it with shaking hands and holds it to his chest, hoping that is a good signal.

Tammy’s death anniversary is approaching. He realizes it since Cal has been spending more time at the walls and is often staring at what remains of a friendship bracelet too big for him.

Mostly Dys just lets him be. But it’s making him wonder about the different ways people deal with death. He has been thinking that the death of someone you know is like a wound, if it is a person you barely know or isn’t important to you it can heal without a trace, meanwhile the closer you are to someone… While it can scar, what remains may leave a mark on the person, maybe even permanent damage.

He thinks that for Cal, Tammy’s death was like Ver’s wound after the attack. Something that would have killed him if he hadn’t received the proper care and even then, it left him with permanent damage, impossible to forget every time he tries to do something as simple as wave to someone. 

He wonders what it means for himself since he hasn’t mourned anybody like that. From time to time he wonders if whatever is wrong with him it’s what makes it so he can’t care about other colonists… but then, there’s Tang, she’s always the exception. Those feelings give him hope that he isn’t so broken as to not care about his own family. However with how much they’ve been drifting apart lately he has to wonder if that’s still true. 

But as he’s losing his connection to her, he has gained another person to care about. Maybe it isn’t that he’s incapable of caring, but that he has the limit of caring about one person.

And is that worry about somebody else that has him aware of the date and looking in some of his old stuff for a certain doll.

Today is the day of the anniversary of Tammy’s death, he knew he would find Cal in the walls looking at those frayed strings, so he came prepared. Without looking at him, Dys sits next to him and starts to speak softly so as to not disturb the reverent atmosphere.

“Last year you asked me about Tammy, thinking that we were friends, and while we weren’t, I think… I think maybe she was trying to be” He extends what he’s holding towards Cal, who takes it and cradles it carefully in his hands, holding the doll made of green scraps of fabric, Dys is sure can instantly recognise it as Tammy’s work.

Cal clutches it close to his chest “Of course she was” He sniffles before continuing “She really cared about you and I know you two could have been such good friends”

Cal starts to cry softly while holding the doll, probably lamenting what could’ve been.

Dys doesn’t really agree, she may have tried to care for him, but Dys knows he scared her even when he wasn’t trying, if she had tried to get to know him she’d probably be horrified, maybe she’d even convince Cal to stop hanging out with him and if it was between him and Tammy… He doesn’t doubt that Cal would have always chosen Tammy.

In any case, It’s useless to wonder what could have been. That’s why he chose to give Cal the doll, Tammy never got to mean anything to him, but she still means a lot to Cal. Dys knows he doesn’t have left many of the presents that Tammy gave him, since he used them to play with the little kids who often broke or lost them, after all Cal never thought that Tammy wouldn't be there anymore to make him another toy or accessory. 

Right now the friendship bracelet is almost unrecognizable, but the doll is sturdier, it will last longer if he keeps it out of the little kids' reach. When Cal tries to give it back, Dys refuses. He accepts the doll but not before giving Dys a tight hug in return. Having seen it coming, he lets him.

It’s approaching late pollen when he hears Marzipan tell Sol about Saint Valentine’s, it sounds like an excuse for Marz to ask for candy, as if she wasn’t the one who could requisition the most with the kudos her dads give her. 

So he leaves before she can end the explanation of her made up holiday. Cal stays because of course he does, he’s the type to care about stuff like dreaming about the people he’s going to marry.

Meanwhile Dys…

Nobody is going to pick you anyway, you stink.

He knows she’s right. Everybody knows she’s right. She didn’t need to say it, much less in front of…

Whatever! It doesn’t matter! It’s just an stupid fake holiday anyway.

Nobody is going to pick you anyway, you stink.

As he walks towards his room, he gives in and, making sure nobody is watching him, smells his clothes. He doesn’t think he stinks, but Marz says it so often, and no one has said she’s wrong… Do they all think he smells?

Asking that question feels embarrassing so he decides to just keep more distance than usual from the other colonists and goes to the wall instead, just in case Tang is in their room.

Once there, he tries to distract himself looking at Vertumna, then searching the holonet about new discoveries from the surveyors, but he can’t concentrate.

Nobody is going to pick you anyway, you stink.

Why did he choose to come here, in a place where people can find him? A part of him wonders, why not go to the outskirts? Surely nobody will bother him there, and… 

Nobody is going to pick you any-

“Hey Dys! Are you ok?” 

Logically he thought that there was no reason for Cal to come here today, yet somehow he’s not really surprised at seeing him here. Like despite the logic, a part of him was hoping he’d come. Shouldn’t Cal be searching for Anemone or Solane or any other of the kids he hangs out with? 

His heart beats faster, he feels like he’s expecting something, but he’s not sure what. 

In his confusion he only gets out a “Huh?” While Cal is frowning worriedly at him

“Sorry about that. Marz shouldn’t have said that, you looked upset when you left. I tried to tell her but… I don’t think she understood what I meant” He looked genuinely upset “Are… are you ok?”

Ah, he only got worried about Dys. Before getting to know him, Dys hadn’t thought he’d be such a worrywart, then again he hadn’t really thought about him much before coming to Vertumna.

He doesn’t feel disappointed, the heavy feeling in his chest must be because they’re talking about Marzipan. With a roll of his eyes he responds “I'm fine. Why are you apologizing anyway?” Marz was the one acting mean, not you.

Cal looks at the ground as he answers “I felt like someone needed to apologize to you, and Marz wasn’t gonna do it so- and besides! I also had to apologize, I should have said something at that moment, I was just distracted thinking about the whole saint valentine’s thing. Sorry”

He just shrugs in answer. He hadn’t really expected Cal to say something then, after all nobody tells Marz off when she makes comments about Dys.

After a beat of uncomfortable silence that’s unusual for them, Dys decides to let Cal go back to whatever he was going to do before having to search for Dys. “Well, you’ve seen I’m fine nullhead, you can go now”

Instead of just leaving, Cal tenses up “Um, actually… there is another thing…”

Curious, he can't help but raise his eyebrows “Which is…”

“You see, there’s a huge dirt pile in geoponics, and they aren’t going to use it. I also found a sheet of metal that could fit two or three kids. So I was thinking about making a mudslide! Would you… want to come?”

“Um, sure?” He’s a little confused, but he sees no reason to refuse, after all he could use a distraction.

“Radical, let's go!”

They go to geoponics, Dys keeps his distance from the cultivators while Cal asks for the hose. 

They successfully make the mudslide and spend the afternoon sliding down in the sheet of metal, trying (and mostly failing) to do tricks.

As it’s getting latter Dys decides it’s better if they stop, so Cal can go and do the give his best friend a gift. “Okay, we should stop now”

“Awwww, Are you sure? You’re about to nail the spin! Just give it another try!” Cal says while looking at him hopefully.

He does want to keep playing, but he also doesn’t want to be the reason that Cal doesn’t dream with whomever he’s going to marry, just in case Marz wasn’t lying. “Maybe another day, it’s getting late, if you don’t search for Anemone now her mom might send her to sleep before you can find her”

Cal tilts his head, and blinks rapidly as if trying to understand “Huh? Why am I searching for Nemmie?”

Dys frowns, has Cal actually forgotten? “Y’know for the whole Saint whatshisface thing”

Cal flinches at that. “Oh. I- um, wasn’t going to…” he trails off, not finishing his sentence.

Dys is a little surprised at his response, despite their fights, he thought that Anemone was still his best friend “Oh. Shouldn’t you search for Solane then?” 

“What? Why would I…?”

Dys shrugs, he figured that if Anemone wasn’t his first choice then surely it’d be Sol, but maybe it’s one of the little kids? Or one of the cultivators? Maybe that’s why he’s so calm, because they’ve been playing real close to the geodesic domes. “I’m just saying, it looked like you cared about this ‘Holiday’, you should find whomever your best friend is to give them a gift, Marz said you had to do it before the end of the day”

Cal grabs his hand, even though Dys hadn’t moved. Why is he looking at him like that? With big eyes that look about to tear up and a trembling bottom lip?

“Dys… I’m sorry…” Even his voice sounds choked up.

Why on Vertumna is he apologizing? For the life of him Dys can’t figure it out, he can’t help but frown “Don’t apologize for no reason. Go do your thing nullhead, I’ll just go to my room” Despite his words he doesn’t pull away.

“No. I don’t think you understand, I’m sorry for not giving you a gift today”

Nobody is going to pick you anyway, you stink.

He flinches at that, it stung a little, he knows he’s not anyone’s best friend, but he hadn’t expected Cal to just say it like that.

Feeling awkward he goes to pull away but before he can, Cal continues “I’m not going to give anyone a gift today”

That’s… a bit surprising. Does he really have that many friends he can’t choose? Somehow, he has a nagging feeling that’s not it. “Why?” 

Cal just looks at the ground not answering. But he’s still not letting go of Dys’s hand.

“If you want to say something nullhead, just say it. When you don’t, you act extra stupid” He pokes him in his stomach, making Cal grumble in protest, but it works and he starts to talk.

“It’s just… Do you think what Marz said is true? That you’d dream about the people you’ll marry? Because… I don’t think I want that” Cal spoke softly, as if afraid of admitting that.

That’s… surprising, with how much Cal cares about other colonists, Dys thought that he would want to date all the people he falls in love with. Besides, Cal has always struck him as the naive romantic of the holomovies

He can’t help his surprised expression and asks out of genuine curiosity. “Really? You wouldn’t want to date anyone?” 

“Yes. I mean no, I-” Cal face gets red, he looks flustered. “It’s just that, before, I used to picture me and Tammy” Somehow his face gets even redder. “When we used to play house she was always the mom and I was always the dad, and I thought that would be us when we grow up and now…” He looks at the ground as if ashamed. “But it’s not only that, It’s that I-” He seems to choke on the rest of the sentence, not being able to let it out. 

Dys knows that he’s being pushy, but the curiosity gets the better of him “It’s that you…”

“It’s that I…only pictured Tammy and me, with no one else” He says it without making eye contact. Dys waits for Cal to continue and tell him what’s so Vertumna shattering that would leave him like this, but he doesn’t say anything else.

Dys frowns, if it were anybody else he wouldn’t continue asking because the other person would think him stupid for not understanding, but he knows Cal won’t think that. “And that’s a problem?”

“Yes!” He says raising his arms “I mean, it’s weird isn’t it? Like, I know that there’s people that don’t want to date anyone and that’s ok, but this is different!”

Dys is still very confused “Is it?”

“Yes! It’s not that I don’t want to date anybody, it’s that I don’t want to love more than one person. And that’s weird, because you can’t control who you love, so when you love someone and they love you back you should date them! And love is endless, so you can love as many people as your heart wants! So it’s weird isn’t it? That I only want to love one person? And… for them to only love me back? Isn’t it weird and… selfish?” He says the last part softly, Dys barely hears it. 

What’s weird is wanting to date anyone at all, the thought of it sounds like such a chore, even more after seeing Cal’s parents, they are so needy.

“Aren’t there a lot of colonists that are dating only one person?” Dys doesn’t really understand the problem.

“Sure, but that doesn’t mean they wouldn’t accept another person, only that they haven’t found them yet! So it’s different!”

Dys is not sure about that, but he doesn’t know much about relationships, maybe what Cal is saying is true. However in the end it doesn’t matter. “This is stupid, who cares if you date someone or not?”

“I do!” Cal says pouting.

“What I mean, is that it’s nobody else’s business nullhead!”

“I guess…” He sounds unconvinced. After a moment he slumps his shoulders defeated “It doesn’t matter anyway, It’s not like I’ll date anybody anymore. That’s why I don’t want to see that dream, I’m scared I’d see someone since that means I’d betray Tammy. Still, I feel bad, because of that, I left you without a gift. I thought It might be okay since you don’t usually care about stuff like that, but it was selfish of me, you’re my best friend! You deserve a gift!” After that statement Cal runs off as if he hadn’t just dropped a bomb on Dys.

Nobody is going to pick you anyway

You’re my best friend.

He must look like a real idiot standing there with his hand extended where Cal was holding it just moments before.

My best friend.

With his face getting progressively redder if the heat on his cheeks is any indication.

Best. Friend.

Staring blankly at the place Cal just left, trying to process the words. He barely registers when Cal comes running back, takes his hand, and leads him behind a geodesic dome.

“Here!” Cal says as he holds out some white flowers “These are white astrantia, they are the first earth flowers to bloom on Vertumna! Aren’t they cool? They’re kinda like you!”

Dys feels very disoriented, how on Vertumna is he like some flowers? Why are they hiding? How is Dys of all people his…

You’re my best friend! You deserve a gift!

Not getting an answer out of Dys, Cal starts to fidget and then to ramble “Sorry for assuming you wouldn’t care about Saint Valentines. Thank you for being my best friend, I know the present isn’t much, butIhopeyoulikeitanyways”

Dys feels choked up, he can’t trust his voice, so he gives a rather jerky nod. And then immediately feels like an asshole, Cal is giving him a present and Dys only nods?

But, despite that, Cal gives him one of his big smiles, the ones that crinkle at his eyes and reflexibly makes him want to smile back.

Dys makes the effort to swallow the lump at his throat and tries to find his voice “I, um, don’t have anything to give you…”

Cal is looking at him amused, and he appears to have some kind of realization because suddenly he bursts into giggles “That’s great! Everything worked out then!”

“Huh?” How is it a good thing?

“Well, Marz said that you had to put the present your best friend gives you under your pillow and then you’ll dream about the people you’ll marry. So if you don’t give me anything then it’ll definitely won’t happen! Whoooo!”  Cal extends his hand, and automatically Dys responds the high five.

Cal looks content, while Dys has two emotions trying to one up each other. 

On one side there’s the disbelief and distrust, thinking that this may be a joke, even when he knows Cal wouldn’t do that. 

And then, there’s the pure giddiness. He’s really trying to squash it down so he doesn’t do something ridiculous like burst into giggles or, alternately, burst out crying.

“Hey… just so you know, technically we’re not allowed to pick those flowers sooooo, you should really use your ninja skills so that auntie Flulu doesn’t see you” Cal tells him with an apologetic smile.

Dys huffs and answers teasingly, trying to ignore the strange feeling taking hold of his chest and regain a sense of normalcy “Why should I worry? I didn’t pick them”

Anyone else would have misinterpreted him, anyone else would have gotten angry. But Cal? He understands and responds good naturedly. “Heh, I guess you’re right, nothing to worry about then!”

He can’t ignore the tightness in his chest much longer so he starts to leave towards his room. Before thinking better of it, and just in case there’s any doubt, he turns to Cal for some last words “I didn’t give you a gift, but… you’re my best friend too”

As soon as he says it he takes off running. He can barely get the words out and end up mumbled, and he couldn’t look Cal in the face as he said it, so he doesn’t know if he understood or if he could even hear him. Besides it shouldn't surprise anyone, Cal is his only friend, that makes him the best (and worst) by default.

But he did say it, so he decides to take it as a victory regardless. A Victory against who? Cal? Marz? Himself? He doesn’t really know, but a victory nonetheless.

As soon as he enters his room, he leans against the door, eyes closed. He tries to take deep breaths but they end up shallow and shaky, with some trepidation he opens his eyes.

He sees he is holding the bouquet of white flowers- white astrantia- still there, real, a proof that someone, that Cal , considers him…

You’re my best friend! 

He can’t keep the feeling contained in his chest anymore, he smiles so big he’d be embarrassed if there was anyone there to see, even though he’s alone he hides his smile in the flowers.

Since there’s nobody else here he can stop trying to restrain himself and starts giggling.

The giggles start soft, with his whole body tingling, happy. Then turns to laughter, not being able to stop it, he laughs so much it begins to be hard to breathe. And then it turns to him sobbing into the bouquet, every time he thinks he’s gotten himself under control he opens his eyes and seeing the flowers he can’t help but remember Cal’voice You’re my best friend! And starts crying again.

He had tried to convince himself it wouldn’t happen, that it wouldn’t make sense for Cal to choose Dys as his Best friend, he didn’t want to hope. But!

You’re my best friend! 

He feels so relieved. Marz was wrong, and Dys was right by staying somewhere Cal could find him.

Eventually he manages to get all those feelings out, probably looking like a mess he puts the flowers in some water like he’s seen doing in the holomovies.

That night he decidedly doesn’t put the flowers under his pillow. That’s probably the reason he can’t really remember the face in his dreams.