Chapter Text
Tammy’s guiding a tiny little version of herself by the hand. Her hair is long, fluffy, and voluminous, and the expression on her face as she looks at the child is pure adoration.
There’s a tall and broad shouldered man making his way down the pathway. He sets down the keg he’s carrying and cocks a genial grin, hands settling confidently on his hips.
Dys’s head snaps up, eyes wide like a hopeye in the headlights. There’s a snarl of wires and components in his hand, and despite it being far too late, he still tries to hide the bomb behind his back.
Tangent sprawls on the roof of engineering, fatigue and pain etched across her face. She’s wearing a labcoat, and there’s a strange glow behind one eye as she turns her head.
A door swings open, Anemone and Vace are ferociously making out inside the storage room, and the door is hurriedly shut again, though not before Anemone’s eyes flicker over.
The tall man laughs as he catches a spray of mist square to the back. He strips off his shirt, still laughing, water trickling down his chest. His hair is green.
“You can pick your jaw up any time, Sol!” teases the man she does not know.
-
Absolute blinks awake. The cage of meat and bone purporting to be a body lodges a strenuous protest at this decision. Her mouth is dry and desiccated, her vision a blurry mess of incoherent nonsense shapes. Is it nighttime, or are her eyes too full of grit and sand to see?
The question, much less its answer, drifts out of Sol’s grasp. Her dreams have been even stranger than usual since—they’ve been very strange. Maybe it’s all of the painkillers. Dreams of things that never happen isn’t outside of the ordinary, but since—lately they’ve been entirely impossible. Futures without a single matching jigsaw piece. Faces of strangers in places she doesn’t recognise.
A few more slow blinks. Sol decides that it is night. Medical is only this dark at night. She shifts, prompting her mutinous body to escalate its complaint. A wheezing groan, or perhaps a groaning wheeze, emits from her mouth.
Something stirs in her peripheral vision. For a confused moment, Sol thinks it’s the dream man, but instead it resolves into a dishevelled, white-haired figure. It takes her another moment to recognise Vace as he pulls himself upright. His hair must have been in a bun at one point, but it’s disintegrating.
“Shit, you’re awake. Uh—here.” He thrusts a mug at her, and she dutifully drinks some water. It’s become automatic at this point. His hand is steady and he doesn’t angle the mug too high—scattered memories of spluttering and choking flit through Sol’s mind, but she manages to keep it down. Just barely, she musters the energy to wave Vace off, and she regards him quietly as he replaces the mug at her bedside.
The chair has had a few different occupants while Sol’s been here. Tammy most of all. Dys and Nem about tied for second. Tangent for stretches after she’s done with classes. Mom and dad a couple times each; the farmwork doesn’t stop just because Sol’s—hurt. It’s kind of hard to keep track. She’s so in and out all the time and stuff just gets bleary, faces running together and her dreams and memory playing tricks on her.
Vace, though, is a first, and one that doesn’t really make a ton of sense, a feeling that grows as he just sort of, sits there, looking awkward.
Sol’s too tired and hurts too much for tact. “No offence, man, but why are you here?”
Vace starts to laugh, but smothers it in his hand. He casts a guilty glance over his shoulder. Are there more—wounded here? Sol can’t remember if she saw others being discharged or only dreamed it. Vace looks back to her. “Fair. Been volunteering for some shifts. First time you’ve woken up during.”
Huh. Sol is pretty sure she’s never seen Vace on a single non-garrison work detail. Even the handful of expeditions ridealongs were assignments rather than something he picked. He’d made that very clear at the time.
“That’s different,” she says at length.
Vace’s expression shifts to something Sol can’t read at first. Self-consciousness is an alien look on him. “There… just aren’t enough medics, is all.”
Not the type of sentiment Sol expects out of Vace. She supposes she doesn’t know him all that well, at the end of the day, so maybe it’s on her for being too quick to judge.
“Speaking of,” Vace continues. “Need anything?”
“I’m fine,” Sol mumbles. Her focus is starting to drift as fatigue rears its ugly head again.
“Alright.” He leans in closer. “I’m… not good at this shit, but if you ever want to talk, I’ve been where you are.” He tips his head, frowning at his own arm. The prosthesis. “...somewhere close, anyhow.”
There’s a lump of glass in Sol’s throat. She desperately looks anywhere but down to where her legs are supposed to be. “...okay…” she rasps.
She hears Vace shifting around. After a few seconds of silence, he mutters an “Anyway.”
For once, Sol’s glad to let her heavy eyelids close as she slides back into sleep.
A group of toddlers fixes a young Tammy with rapt attention as she tells a gentle tale. Her voice rises and falls sweetly, hands weaving through the air in carefree accompaniment, eyes soft with affection.
The green haired man stands defiantly in front of a juvenile dillypillar, shielding it from a cluster of levelled plasrifles. Moments later, it’s curling into a ball, rolling onto its back, happily performing tricks. The man looks over and smiles, flooded with relief.
-
Pollen is beginning to burn away into Dust by the time Absolute is finally liberated from the confines of medbay. Too bad the freedom is as false as her recent dreams.
Sol swears loudly as the wheelchair bumps off a patch of uneven ground and skews awkwardly to the side. Twisting in place, she fumbles at the wheel, struggling to realign it until somebody does it for her, drawing the wheelchair back from behind her.
“I can do it myself!” Sol snaps over her shoulder, then instantly feels guilty. “Sorry, Nem, I just—this is way harder than I thought.”
Nem, positioned at the wheelchair’s handles, hesitates, then shrugs. “It’s cool, Sol. Hasta be weird.”
“Sure,” Sol mutters. “Weird.”
Tangent speaks up from Sol’s left, and there’s something so frustrating about having to reorient herself in this damn chair just to face her. “I apologise again that I was unable to integrate a motor. I’m sure I’ll be able to figure it out by the end of the year.”
Sol clenches her teeth to hold back a groan. “Tangent, like I keep saying, it’s already pretty amazing that you managed to build this from blueprints in your downtime. You don’t need to apologise for not adding something we literally can’t make here.”
She’s simplifying, but the point stands. It’s not like the nanoprinters can just spit out an entire motor, much less one specifically customised for a wheelchair.
Tangent frowns. “You just deserve my best, Absolute.”
Sol’s face warms, and she looks away. It’s only since her—injury that she’s properly realised that Tangent cares for her quite a bit. They’ve always been on decent terms—Sol makes an effort to keep Tangent included, and they’ve studied together since they were little—but Sol mostly splits time between expeditions and geoponics, and Tang’s attendance of both of those can be counted on one hand.
Mostly split time. That’d be more accurate.
She tries to swallow her anxiety and dread as her, Nem, and Tang inch their way across the colony—as Nem and Tang put up with her snail’s pace. What the fuck is she supposed to do now? She can’t work the farm. She can’t survey. Even if they park her behind a desk, she’s not good at logistics or communications or any of the other things that don’t require physical labour. That don’t require the ability to stand.
“Absolute,” says Tangent, softly. “You’re hyperventilating. Try to take deeper breaths and hold them for a moment before you let them out.”
Fuck. When did that happen? Sol nods unsteadily and tries to follow what Tang’s telling her, tries to get herself under control. Nem starts doing the breathing along with her and it’s just about enough to work.
“Fuck,” says Sol, hating how wet and weak and pathetic her voice is.
“Sorry, Sol,” mumbles Nem.
“Was there a trigger? Do we need to return to medical? It may be best to conduct another examination—”
“Knock it off, Tang,” Nem cuts across Tangent’s anxious barrage. “She’s just overwhelmed, and asking her a billion things at once isn’t gonna help.”
“I—fine, but Sol, if these symptoms are recurrent, it’s imperative you have yourself checked over.”
Sol nods. “Okay.” Nem is only partway right, but Sol categorically cannot face up to yet more time in medbay.
They’re closing in on the quarters when the main entrance slides open. The wheelchair jolts as Nem stops in her tracks.
Kombucha is bulky with muscle these days, his garrison uniform emblazoned with the chevrons the Helio brought along with them. His hair is buzzed at the sides and short up top. Sol can’t remember the last time she saw him carrying a sportsball instead of a weapon.
For a moment, he too is frozen, caught in the doorway. Then he smiles. “Sol! It’s good to see you up—uh—out and about.”
“Yeah, thanks,” Sol answers with a throat full of gravel.
“Good morning, Kombucha,” Tangent says stiffly.
“Hey, Tangent.” Kom pauses, eyes drifting over Sol’s head. “Anemone.”
“Move, Kom,” Nem snaps.
Kom’s expression darkens slightly, but then he smiles again. It looks forced. “My bad.” He begins to step to the side, then stops. “Oh, right. In case you haven’t seen on the holonet, we’re restarting self-defence sessions later this week. You’re… more than… welcome to attend…” His rehearsed patter falters as he meets Sol’s eyes.
There’s a look on his face. The realisation of a faux pas. An ‘oh shit, that might be offensive’. A couple of the Helio guys in geoponics have worn that expression while talking to Sol’s mom, but Sol’s never had it directed at her.
She despises it instantly.
“I’m afraid I’ll be preoccupied teaching the children actual lessons, Kombucha,” Tangent interjects, voice like acid.
Kom hesitates. Then, he finally tears his eyes from Sol, that damn look shifting at last. “I’d argue that it’s just as important for them to know what to do when they run foul of a xeno, Tangent, but have it your way.”
Anemone snorts. “Get bent, Kom.”
When they were kids, Kom was a gentle mentor. He could be firm, but he was always patient. He never looked down at them. He never sneered. Not before the Helio. “Get over yourself, Anemone,” he retorts. “Without us, you wouldn’t have the luxury of prancing around taking holos and picking flowers.” With that, Kom stomps past them, beelining for—where else—the garrison.
“My goodness,” Tangent says, remarkably mildly. “Your brother is a bit of a prick, isn’t he?”
Nem—who had been getting dangerously red in the face—bursts out laughing. It’s tinged with anger, but at least she isn’t blowing a gasket. “Yeah. Yeah he is. Thanks, Tang, I needed that.”
“Oh, erm, of course.”
They’ve wheeled barely a metre closer to the entrance when a voice hollers at the top of their lungs.
“SOL!”
Sprinting towards them, overall-clad and dirt-streaked, is Tammy.
She skids to a stop alongside the wheelchair, heaving great lungfuls of air. Sweat plasters her short pink locks to her forehead, and she looks very much as though she just ran halfway across the colony to—oh. That’s absolutely what she did.
Before Sol can say anything, Tammy wraps her in a fierce hug. Strong, muscular arms lift Sol bodily from the chair—wow Sol has seriously mixed feelings about this—as Tammy squeezes, then finally sets her back down. Immediately, Tammy draws herself to her full height, hands on her hips.
“You lot! Why on Vertumna did nobody tell me that Sol got out today!?”
Nem looks like a kid with her hand in the cookie jar. “Uh, ‘cause geoponics is mad busy this time of the—”
“Who cares about that?!” Tammy flails her hands in the air. “Sol’s way more important!”
“We were concerned you would be overexuberant. Somewhat like you are now,” Tang says dryly.
“I… oh.”
Sol gives Tammy a pained smile. “Sorry. I actually, uh, I—”
Didn’t want you to see me struggling. Didn’t want to embarrass myself in front of you. Needed to pull myself together before I saw you. Was worried you’d tell my parents and they’d show up.
“—sort of wanted to surprise you,” Sol mumbles.
Tammy huffs. “Well… alright. Consider me surprised. I’m just glad they finally let you out.”
“Me too.”
“Shall we stop blocking the doorway?” Tang suggests.
Tammy laughs awkwardly. “Right, right.”
Tang gets the door open ahead of them all.
Sol braces herself, preparing for curious eyes and people pretending not to gawk. For her new normal.
Her breathing gets faster again.