Moving from the state where they were still separate entities to the shared place, where Alex and Carbon became a combination of each other was much smoother the second time around. He sort of slipped down into a different frame of mind this time, not the sharp jolt of their first mind link.
Carbon’s part of their shared space crackled with nerves, unsure of where to start or if she even could. Alex smoothed himself out and tried to present a calming front for her. Trepidation that he was able to hide face-to-face showed through here, though he remained resolute in his desire to make things right. It seemed to help her a little, almost frantic energy dying down as she started to order the things she was to show him.
The first thing that she brought up was a collection of memories, snippets of school and conversations she had with her parents. It wasn’t as personal as a single memory, whispered echoes of knowledge that filtered from one mind to another, but it carried much more information and gave him the background to understand concepts and events as she did. Baring your legs just wasn’t something you did in casual company, and was often an invitation for a more intimate relationship. It didn’t help that stout ankles and knees were attractive features to them. Alex, about a head taller than Carbon, had deliriously durable looking leg joints.
His assumption that the unnaturally pale skin of his freshly rebuilt legs and the rather abrupt way they just transitioned back into the original had been the thing that surprised her. It wouldn’t be hard to avoid that in the future, but might make selling tropical vacations a bit hard.
The Carbon part flushed with embarrassment and fled that topic, bringing up another memory of a time with her father. Alex fell into her place again, far younger than the previous memory. In a large, cool room with a few other Tsla’o, Carbon waited with her father to meet an alien - a Human. She clutched her father’s leg, face pressed into the fabric of his pants, partially hidden and afraid. She could feel the dense bone and sinew in his knee and knew he was strong. He’d protect her, she was sure of that. It didn’t make her feel any less afraid, but it made her less nervous knowing he was there for her.
The alien they were there to meet came into the room. It was unimaginably tall, strangely colored, had weird rounded ears and only the top of its head had fur. The thing crouched and smiled and gave her a little wave and she squeezed her father’s knee harder. It still felt strong and made her feel a little safer. Her father patted her shoulder and urged her to greet it as well. She managed a little wave back before she lost her nerves and fled the room, her father and the alien laughing politely behind her. She peeked around the doorway as they sat down at opposite sides of a table, both looking very amused.
The memory ended and he realized it had been tainted with later introspection. She had been four at the time and her father had brought her along to spend more time with her... but he also wanted to use her as a prop for the human representative. A precocious child running about, making the alien seem less alien. He’d kept her along for dealings with other Tsla'o as well, ever the family man. Alex got the impression he was actually some sort of bureaucrat.
They skipped forward. By the time she was ten she was still going along with her father on these business trips, but interactions were much more orchestrated. In a dark, ornately decorated side room, her aunt regarded her with cold eyes and coached her on what to say nothing and what to do sit still and look pleasant and interested in what is going on before ushering her out to some function. The memory ended abruptly, much more so than he was used to her memories ending. There was no trailing off here, just a jarring move to another thought. Whatever the function was, she didn't want him to see it.
Another meeting about trade deals a few years later, a long table with several Tsla'o and Humans at either end. She was bored with politics and Humans. She barely saw them as different now, just unusual. She still loved spending time with her father, but the political theater wasn’t something she liked. It felt like too much dishonesty and backroom dealing, too much saying one thing while thinking another. Both her father and her aunt assured her she’d learn the ways of politics and fit in perfectly when she was older. That prospect frightened her.
Carbon rolled them forward again. Tightly controlled snippets of her life showed him the experiences leading up to her becoming Lan. She enrolled when she was fourteen, the youngest one could start training. She had spent a few years pushing herself to be an acceptable candidate at that age, ignoring most other aspects of her life. She hadn’t done it out of personal interest - though it did interest her, the whole thing was tinged with spite. It was prestigious, Lan was one of the highest titles you could earn, and no one would stop her. No one would make her be part of something she didn’t want.
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It had been a rigorous process, burning through eight years of her life between school and several long apprenticeships. She did it easily. Driven to excel so she could have some control over her life. But that wasn’t what she got.
Her first assignment had been a huge step, the Kshanev class dreadnought. The memory was rife with nerves and excitement. It did keep Carbon away from her father’s politics but the duties swallowed her whole. It was a powerful ship and needed constant maintenance. The crew saw a lot of combat. She had a large pool of engineers and medical personnel but she still had to check everything. Paperwork was endless. On a slow shift, she’d put in a half-day on the decks and then spend a few more hours reviewing logs.
Her life never slowed down until she came aboard the Kshlav’o. She switched between doing maintenance on the waveriders and the sublight engines, occasionally some other system while ignoring Alex as best as she could. He initially had struck her as annoying and a little offensive. He awkwardly tried to talk to her off duty and worse, passed messages from his still-living mother to her. She hadn’t meant to take it out on him but the strange, cramped conditions on the ship and years of untended stress showed through. The Carbon part radiated regret, knowing well that her training should have prevented that.
The Eohm attack changed everything. Almost nothing needed to be done after it, aside from fixing the waverider engine and tending to Alex while he healed. Her daily reports dwindled from pages to paragraphs, and then to paragraph. For the first time in 16 years, despite the situation they had found themselves in, she had free time.
Carbon had time to think. She had time to enjoy things again. She had taken long showers while he had been stuck to the mediboard, able to use both shares of water without guilt. The Alex portion laughed at that, or did something as close to laughter as he could.
She continued on, determination now firming up her presence. Carbon had started to develop an unexpected affection for him. She didn’t find him annoying as she had before, once they began to speak as equals, allowing her to know him better. Unable to communicate with the outside world, shielded from all but her most basic duties in a ship that pretended to be dead, she found that there was room in her life for something other than running that she had disguised as work. The short pants had been an incredible turning point. She knew better, of course, he wasn’t Tsla’o. Despite that, she wanted to believe that someone trusted her so deeply, wasn’t put off by her station, and perhaps wanted more in their relationship.
Carbon pressed ahead, awkward as she felt but wanting him to know how she felt wasn’t his fault. She’d never tried to court anyone before, nor had anyone expressed that kind of interest in her. She pressed another memory into him, this one not even a week old, both crisp and fuzzy at the same time. She was returning to her cabin from a long day, brimming with excitement. It was a Tsla’o ship, the deep reddish-purple arched hallways and doors were familiar to her, but not a specific ship... It was just in her imagination. She keyed the door controls and walked in, and there Alex was, reclining on her bunk in his short pants and reading a tablet. He looked up and smiled, said something in flawless Tsla and she warmed with happiness before crawling up onto the bunk and relaxing in his arms, perfectly content and secure in the knowledge that they belonged to each other. Carbon stopped the memory there, veins of guilt running through her presence.
"When I asked you to stay with me, and you turned me down, I realized that the politics I had sought to leave behind were deeply entrenched. I like you, Alex. Perhaps I love you, but I cannot say for certain. I have treated you like my father treated me, wanting nothing more than to turn you into set dressing for my life, with no regard for what you want from yours. It is unfair and harmful."
"You didn’t do it on purpose."
The Carbon part cracked like too-thin ice on top of a river. "The engine will be ready in a week. If it works, we will be back in known space in a month, or less if Search and Rescue is quick. If they do not, we are both dead. I have destroyed our relationship and I do not think that I will ever have the chance to try again."
Before he could respond, the isolation Carbon had imposed on herself for so much of her life broke free of the controls she exerted over it and came back as a terrible, uncontrollable rush of loneliness, crushing them both beneath its weight.