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My mate is different now.
I am happy, of course. Happy that they are home; happy that, out of the 22 scientists we sent to investigate the last living star, it was my mate that came home.
I am happy.
But my mate is different now.
They don’t want to stay on the station, in our home that we build together, carving our harmonies into the walls. They flinch when other people speak with them, hesitate before replying, when once they were one of the friendliest and most welcoming of us – always the first to say hello to newcomers, to show them around the workspace and labs. They still speak, but it is rough and choppy – short phrases, small words, like they have forgotten how to express themselves to those who can listen.
They spend all their time on the other ship, the <Hail Mary>, with the damp, blobby alien they found. The alien is called <Grace> and helped save our planet and their own planet too. We are of course very grateful and are working hard to help keep it alive – it is running out of food, and we do not produce anything suitable for its consumption. It has learned to eat the <astrophage> that threatened to destroy our sun and has left our world struggling with cold and lack of energy, and that is good, but it is apparently not sustainable for this being, this <human> who we now must care for.
My mate is an engineer, a respected one, once praised as the top engineer of the space project we were forced to develop to save ourselves. They learned other things for the project, how to recover from sickness and injury and what little we were able to learn of this strange substance eating our sun, but they were, and still are, an engineer.
I tell them that this <human> is no longer their problem. They are an engineer; we have other people well-versed in medicine who are better suited to determining its nutritional needs and living requirements. Who have designed enclosures for those born with additional care needs, or for the other creatures that inhabit our world that we wish to study. None are quite so leaky as this <human>, but the people who care for them are respected, top scientists in this field, and will be better at caring for the <human> than my mate.
My mate does not listen. They have spent too long alone, I fear, trapping with this strange creature and no one else to watch them sleep. Losing the rest of the crew must have been horrifying; they tell us that each succumbed one by one to an illness caused by invisible waves in space, called <radiation> by the alien; its people have studied it for generations, can even <see> it with their strange blobby senses, and knew how to fight it, but ours did not. My mate alone survived, alone for many years before finding this alien who could explain what happened and help protect my mate from it. I cannot imagine the horror my mate must have endured in those years, alone and afraid.
I try to be sympathetic. I am, after all, happy that my mate survived and returned home. I am grateful to this alien that saved them, and I hope that we can help save it in turn. I have joined the team working to assist in its care; so many have clamored for the opportunity to work with the first alien we have encountered, but my mate is happy for me to be there, so of course I was able to join the team. And I am, of course, pleased to be there; it is an amazing opportunity to increase our knowledge of the world, and what scientist would give up that chance?
I am grateful. I am happy. I am sympathetic to my mate’s experiences.
But my mate is different now.
They refuse to come home. They do not take breaks from their work on the <human>, not for anything. None of the things I did before seem to please them; they ignore light teasing, grow irritable when I am firm. I can tell that they want to spend time with me, but they grow frantic and afraid when they part from their <human> for too long. The things we used to do together no longer interest them; they pretend, but I can tell they no longer hear the harmonics of the Singing Caverns, nor care for lectures by other scientists. Unless the lectures are relevant to their <human>, in which case they are so intent and excited they barely hear me, sitting next to them.
If I am to watch them sleep, I must do so on the <Hail Mary>. I was able to entice them home the first few times, but they grew restless and panicked, even when I press into them and hum, a soothing song they always loved before. Now, it does not help.
Still, I am happy they are alive, and grateful. I am very grateful. This is what I tell the other people who ask, and so many do; it seems wrong to say otherwise when so many others did not return. And it is not that I wish my mate had died, of course. I am so, so happy they are alive. But I am worried, and I find myself discontented with this new state of things.
I do not know who I can confide this to. I have mentioned my worries to my friends and colleagues, and they urge me to be patient; of course my mate was changed by their experiences, and in time, they will move past the trauma, regain equilibrium, and settle back into society. I understand this, of course. But how can I explain that I am not worried about my mate’s place in society – they are a hero, after all – but their place in my life. It feels selfish, when my mate was the one who experienced such terrible horrors, but they have changed, and I do not know if I like this new person my mate has become.
I cannot tell the others this, of course. My mate is the Hero of Home, and I am their beloved, who waited so many years for their return, mourned alongside the other mates and families whose beloveds did not return. How can I be so ungrateful? That is what they will say. How can you reject this gift the universe has given you?
But the fact remains that my mate is different now, and I do not know how to love them.
But I will try.
I will spend time with their <human> and look for the things that they find so endearing about this messy, watery creature. I will learn its plain, toneless means of speaking and I will work to keep it alive, if only for my mate’s sake. (Sometimes I wonder if it would be better for it to die, to release my mate from this strange bond forced upon them; but I also fear it would be worse, that my mate would break completely should the lifeline that saved them so many times be lost. Sometimes I worry that my friends are right, that I am a terrible, selfish person for wishing death on this innocent creature, whose only crime was to give my mate the companionship I could not.) I will learn to accept this creature, and I will learn to accept my mate’s connection to it. I will show my mate that they can trust me to support them, and that they can lean on me when they need help; that there are others who can look after their <human> as they do, and that they are no longer alone.
I will speak to them about my fears, and I will trust that they will listen. That we will find new things to do together, that we can build a new home together, that we can find a new normal. I will trust that I will fall in love with this new mate of mine, and this new person who is my mate will remember how to love me.
My mate is different now. But I have decided that I will keep them anyway.
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