Sometime in the middle of the night - she hoped it was the middle of the night, at least - Carbon awoke to the unpleasantly familiar feeling of being about to throw up. She groaned, the sound itself being a mistake as that just seemed to encourage the disgusting rise of vomit in her throat. Silently, she willed it to just stop, to return to where it came from, and to just not do this right now.

It took her a moment to recall the events of earlier in the evening, though some were a bit hazy through the throbbing pain in her head. The Tsla’o sighed and immediately regretted it, chewing back the surge of bile trying to escape. She would not be throwing up on Alex twice in one night. This was entirely out of the question. It would not occur.

It took longer than she cared to think about to get things settled. Maybe it was just the headache. She couldn’t see the clock without moving and that seemed like a stupid thing to try doing right now. Staying curled up in a ball with her head pressed against Alex’s chest was fine, it was the thing to do. It was dark and comfortable in the bed and she was once again glad that Humans appeared to be just as fastidious as Tsla’o were.

Her body started to make its displeasure about the situation clear, muscle aches and a general sense of unwellness from everywhere. By the hells, she promised herself she’d never drink lacan again, ever, as long as she lived.

Carbon’s mind wandered, slowly, lest it upset the body more, and her hands did as well. It was a strange thing, all this skin that Alex had. Yes, there was a vanishingly small amount of fur... no, hair. They distinguished between the two. What a strange twist of evolution, leaving them so exposed, as though humans had never had to worry about the climate on Earth. Would the Tsla’o be so different if Schoen was a warmer planet? Perhaps, though it did not take much of a breeze to cut through her fur.

She withdrew her hands from him upon realizing she had just spent several minutes idly groping his chest. There were a lot of similarities in the musculature there, yes, but that had not been for a clinical inspection at all. Just keep your hands to yourself, there will be more appropriate times for further... observations.

That was an odd way to put it. Why did she automatically try to separate herself from this interaction? It is what she had wanted, after all. A thing he had very much encouraged even after being shown her absurd little fantasy and gotten a taste of the way she’d isolated herself from everything since - when had it started? It had been decades now, she couldn’t pinpoint the first time she had withdrawn anymore.

Right, this sense of freedom was an unusual exception to her life until this point, and she would probably be going back to that in a week or two. Or they would be... She declined to think about the alternative to their shot at escaping from this system working out. Not much to do about it if things went wrong.

But there was going to be so much to do if it went right. If she was being honest with herself, and she did not want to be right now, there was no way they could get another ship like this one. They had eighteen weeks worth of scans, with several good options for habitable planets. They would be going their separate ways and that was just how it would be. Back to their respective species. It would be fine.

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Part of her scrambled for options anyway. There would be no way to get herself out of returning to her duties on a different ship as a Lan, not with the way things were now in the Empire. She would not end up back on the Kshanev, she was pretty sure. A battleship would not even bring on civilian crew, let alone a Human civilian. But perhaps if she could pull a few strings, use the connections she’d built so far in life that her father had always said would be so important, she could get herself lined up for one of the ships they would send to explore the viability of the planets they had found.

And of course bring along the Human that had helped find them. Look at all this first-hand experience, who would say no? Caught up in the moment, she allowed herself to smirk, feeling entirely self-satisfied about this plan.

It probably wouldn’t work, of course. There were moving parts she wasn’t privy to right now and that had a tendency to oversimplify things, a problem she had run up against with Alex mere days ago. He was much more accommodating than the maze of bureaucracy she would have to navigate to pull something like that off, which had good and bad sides. Certainly she was enjoying this dalliance, but she knew that having just kept it broken off would have been simpler. Easier to deal with, if not more painful.

There would be ramifications she could not predict. Social, political. Carbon knew she was respected, well liked among her peers and subordinates. That was no small thing. But coming back from this mission, involved like this with a Human. The perception of that against the backdrop of the ongoing disaster on Schoen, nearly all of their species trapped in the ashfall. She inhaled slowly and sighed. It would not look good. It already felt a little bit like betrayal. They were nowhere near a genetic chokepoint, but there were already growing expectations about everyone ‘doing their part’ to ensure it stayed a distant problem.

Her father would hate this. The irony, having worked with humans on peace treaties and the occasional trade deal for nearly all his career and now his daughter is caught by one. He would be furious that even this faint entry into a relationship with a Human occurred. Perhaps not before the disaster, but the loss of her mother had been particularly unkind to him. He boiled constantly now.

The only one who would react worse would be Eleya. She gritted her teeth, the mere idea of her aunt setting off her fight or flight instinct, and crammed that thought right down into the deepest, darkest hole she kept her worst feelings in just as soon as it crossed her mind. There would be no thinking about her unless she had to, and certainly not when she was somewhere she wanted to remember fondly.

She missed Neya, though. Poor, sweet Neya, always earnest and honest to her core. What would she make of this? She had lost everyone in the disaster, save for Carbon. None of her family or friends on the planet had been in a shielded city at the time, though most had been in the caldera so at least it would have been a quick end, as cold as that comfort was for the living. Could she even tell Neya about this relationship? She would find out eventually, and hiding something this significant from her would only be hurtful. Yes, she would have to.

Carbon dared to stretch her legs, the motion triggering a yawn and an autonomous response as she stretched everything else from her neck all the way down to her toes, all her muscles complaining the entire time. She felt better afterwards, though very much far from feeling well. Her brain still felt like it had a spike driven into it, even as she pressed her forehead to Alex’s somewhat cooler chest again. Even through this headache she couldn’t stop thinking about all the things that could go wrong, all the ways she would hurt the few remaining people she cared about.

She sighed once more into the dark and wished her mind could stop as she waited for sleep to come again.