---Belonging---
---Alchyinad’s perspective---
The slim Terran male in nanoforged clothes with a scarred, Eurasian featured face (somewhat reminiscent of my husband’s) enters the room without knocking, strides across it without offering a greeting and sits without needing to be invited to.
I smile and, speaking my native Northern Spelvuzh (a translator equipped) since the only Terran language I’m fluent in is one he doesn’t speak, greet him “Mr Nulgynet… It’s good to meet you!”
He nods, his expression blank and his eyes not meeting mine.
“How would you like me to address you? Mr Nulgynet?… Tymancha?… Eagle?”
“…Tymancha’s… fine…” he says, hesitantly, his voice devoid of tone.
“Tymancha then… Now, before we start, I’ll just go over the basics of how this will ideally work… Is that alright with you, Tymancha?” I say, kindly.
He nods, wordlessly.
It seems he might be a somewhat… uncommunicative client… A little tiresome but it’s nothing new to me…
I spend the next few minutes explaining the ground rules of Terran therapy, regularly inviting questions from him… which are not forthcoming(!)
Having finished and given him some moments to ask me to clarify anything unclear, I resolve to start “So… Tymancha… you’ve had therapy services available to you for a while … Is there a reason you’ve chosen now for your first session?”
He spends the next [30 seconds], or so, not saying anything but, from the subtle expressions playing over his inexpressive face and the opening and closing of his mouth, it’s not hard to tell that his silence isn’t for having nothing to say…
“Something… happened… on the planet we were on most recently…” he finally manages, haltingly.
“What happened, Tymancha?” I ask, kindly.
“I… got to hunt again… and… I realised… that… I had really missed it!”
“I see…” I say, leaving space for him to provide more details which, thankfully, he does.
“…There was this boy… he wasn’t supposed to be at the landing site… We turned around and, being able to guess that his first instinct would be to dart back for the cover of the brush, I ran ahead to place myself on a blind corner that I was nearly certain he would round at speed… It worked, perfectly… I caught him… and it was very satisfying… Then, Mr Taylor decided we needed to go back and show ourselves to the village… ‘stealth recon’ was ‘aborted’… There was technically no need for me to be there, at that point, but I was not asked to leave… After, maybe, 20 minutes of walking I noticed the boy start listing away from the group… I was about to say something when he bolted for a gap in the brush that he was just able to struggle through… Taylor turned to me to ask what I thought the best course of action was and, when I said that the quickest way to catch him would be for me to go around to a more easily accessible path, he ordered me to do it… I chased him for maybe half an hour, through the brush paths, along the edge of a marsh, then over the hidden trails across it, through a tunnel in the wood to the south of that city… I had nearly caught him!… He was no further from me than you are now!… Then, I heard the music of my [holo]… Taylor was calling off my hunt… when my quarry was practically in my grasp… It was immensely frustrating!”
He ceases speaking here, so I ask “Do you believe you might have hurt the boy if you had caught him?” dreading that this might be a rare situation where I have to breach confidentiality due to considering him a threat to others…
Thankfully, he flatly says “No… I do not… On my home continent, hunter and quarry is a game that little children play… I know I would have been able to catch him without hurting him… That’s not the issue…”
“I see…” I nod “…so what is the issue, Tymancha?”
He doesn’t exactly sigh but there’s definitely an uncomfortable exhale before he says “I feel… incomplete…"
“Incomplete?”
“I never knew how much a part of me it was, to hunt… It was never something I had a choice about whether to do… Where I was born, it was something you either did or you starved… I mean, I could have travelled to Ilmakta Tura, to ask to be resettled offworld… and I often thought about doing that… but, short of that, I had to hunt… If you had offered me the opportunity to eat without hunting, to be able to visit a doctor whenever I was sick or injured, to sleep in a warm bed… with a beautiful woman, every night… and then you told me that you would be paying me… and all that would be required is to use my skills occasionally and exercise under instruction, to keep my muscles from atrophy, I would have said it sounded too good to be true… I did say that… but, now…”
He trails off here.
“I assume the ‘beautiful woman’ you’re talking about would be Ms Stone?” I ask, naming the woman who’s my husband’s client, primarily due to him having a Korean mother and, thus, speaking her first language.
He nods.
I smile “Was sharing a bed with her part of the job offer(?)”
He shakes his head, not smiling at the quip, and flatly says “No… but meeting Jae is a wonderful opportunity I never would have had if I hadn’t taken it.”
“I see, Tymancha… Would you mind going into a little more detail about what exactly it is about hunting that you feel you’ve been missing?… Why is it that your attitude to it has undergone this shift?”
I see the muscles of his face tighten in consideration (in a way I don’t think would have been visible without thermal vision) before he says “It’s the… there’s just this sort of… thrill you get from running down the track that’s left by a quarry… I’m using my body, sure, but not like in Yuán’s [qìgōng] classes… I’m… not just using my body to use it… I’m using my body for something… There’s a goal… My senses are engaged… I’m smelling for the quarry’s scent, listening for its sound, looking for its tracks… and I don’t have the time to second guess myself because, while I’m tracking it, it’s running further and further away… Then, when I have it in my sights… and I can just see that distance close, as it tires and I don’t… There are no words to describe that feeling…”
I give a sympathetic nod and ask “Have you talked to anyone else, about this need of yours that you feel is going unmet, on this ship?”
He frowns very slightly “I spoke to Jae… she recommended me seeing you… Who else might I talk to about it?”
“Weeell, this isn’t a recommendation, just an observation, but… you could speak to Master Yuán about this?”
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He shakes his head “I don’t want to be a martial artist.”
I smile “Not quite what I’m saying; yes, one of his duties is honing the skills of the combat personnel, but his other duty is seeing to the health, fitness and enrichment of every Terran aboard… Perhaps, you and he might be able to work something out to go some of the way to substituting for your hunts?… Maybe, you could serve as the hunter in a game of [hunter and quarry] with his students or something? That way, they’d be training for how to flee and avoid capture and you would get to hunt… after a fashion…”
He sits, contemplatively, with that for a while before answering “That’s an interesting idea but… I don’t know…”
“What makes you so uncertain about it?” I ask, kindly.
This time, he unmistakably sighs before answering “I guess… I just don’t know if I would… belong…”
---Marc’s perspective---
“Would you clarify what you mean by that, Tuun?” I say to the rapid talking, blue skinned woman.
“Just what I said!” she pouts “It feels like I don’t belong!… Twice now I’ve had to stay behind because I would have been a liability if I’d come! I mean, it made sense both times but, it still hurt, you know! Like being back at school and no one wanting me on their team in PE because, even though I was tall and fast, everyone knew I had glass bones and no stamina!”
“Tuun…” I smile, warmly “…we’ve talked about this before, do you remember what we said?”
She rolls her glowing white eyes and, doing a not bad impression of me, answers “*sigh*…’Think about all the times they’ve gone out when you haven’t been left behind, Tuun!… Think about all the complements you get on the skills you have, rather than focusing entirely on what you don’t’ I know… but…!”
She gestures frustratedly.
“But it doesn’t stop it hurting when the man you call the ‘love of your life’ looks you in the eyes and says ‘I think it’s best you don’t come’…?”
“Exactly! No matter how sensical it is! No matter how much I know it isn’t a personal rejection! No matter how many times they complement the skills I do have! None of that helps!”
I smile “I’d say, that’s because you’re trying to logic your way out of a feeling… and you know how well that usually works, don’t you…”
“I know, I know… I just wish that cuddling up with Victor was enough to make me feel like I’m not a failure of a Security Officer!”
---Alchyinad’s perspective---
“That’s a strong word, Ms Hunter!”
“It’s an accurate one… A man I was staring straight at took one step forward and struck my charge… I failed to protect her… therefore, I am a failure.”
“But you subdued him immediately afterward, didn’t you?” I enquire, acting as if I didn’t see the news segment and am only taking her word for it.
“Irrelevant…” she refutes, flatly “…he’d already struck her by that point… I failed to do my one job of keeping her safe… what came after she’d already come to harm doesn’t matter. If he’d drawn his weapon, she could be dead… I failed… I am a failure.”
I look at the strong woman and consider my words carefully before conceding “You did fail, Thran…”
Her expression barely changes but there’s a subtle, resigned acceptance to it as she gives a slight nod.
“But… There is a big difference between failing and being a failure, Thran… Doing a bad thing does not make you a bad person…”
Her prominent brow creases as she says “I’m sorry, I don’t understand the difference… ‘Fail’ is a verb, ‘failure’ is a noun meaning ‘one who fails’… doesn’t that mean that, if you fail, you are a failure… by definition?”
I smile and shake my head “Personally, I don’t think I agree with your definition, Thran… To me, ‘failure’ implies some level of consistency… I think I would define it as ‘one who repeatedly fails, one who’s existence is characterised by their recurring failures’… And, personally, I don’t think that applies to you… One instance is not a pattern…”
Her creased brow becomes a full on frown as she says “But it is a pattern, though!… I couldn’t react in time because I failed to read his intentions… Reading people has always been my biggest weakness… Shīfu Yuán is trying to train me to be better but I don’t know if it’s something I’ll ever really be able to do…”
I smile broadly at the girl and say “Has Emiko berated you for failing to keep her from being struck?”
Miserably, she shakes her head “No… she said ‘you fall down seven times, you pick yourself up eight, Thran!’… but she doesn’t need to… I don’t need anyone to tell me I fucked up!… Maybe I’ve chosen the wrong career… maybe, if I quit now, Emiko will be able to get someone to replace me from the ODR on Citadel… If she had a Sapiens bodyguard, they would probably be better than me at reading people’s intentions.”
I smile “Could you remind me of the name of the strongest Sapiens alive…?”
“Haile ‘Hercules’ Saengthong…” she answers, instantly.
“And… what is his overall ranking?”
Her eyes narrow as she answers “418th strongest person alive… last time I checked…”
“And everyone above him is what, if not a Sapiens?”
“Either a Neanderthal, a Denisovan or a hybrid who’s at least half Neanderthal or Denisovan…”
“Is Mr Saengthong a trained, licensed bodyguard?”
She shakes her head.
“And what is your overall position? How many natural, sapient people are there who are stronger than you?”
Her mouth twists as she says “I’m… 7th… The strongest woman… There are 6 men who are stronger than me…”
“Are any of them bodyguards?”
“No… but there’s more to being a body guard than just being strong!” she says, frustratedly.
“Yes, there is…” I concede.
“Just being strong and knowing how to fight isn’t enough! Just being willing to stand between your charge and danger isn’t enough!… You’ve also got to be alive to threats before they occur! And that’s just not something I’m good at… compared to most Sapiens at least…”
“Thran…” I say, about to break the rules a little and talk about myself “…did you know I used to be a bodyguard?”
She looks at me curiously and shakes her head.
“I did… I was part of the Honour Guard to my great grandmother, [Papess] Thtëi of the Northern [Papacy], one of Spelva’s two Diarchs, the other being the Southern [Emperor]… On no fewer than three separate occasions, my failings, my ‘fuck ups’, lead to the [Papess] almost being assassinated… and every time the shame I felt was nearly unbearable… Every time, I offered her my resignation and, every time, she refused it… ‘I don’t expect perfection from you, Alchyinad’ she said ‘Only the Nameless One Herself is without flaw!… Continue to do your duty and protect me, I need you now more than ever!’… I think it would be quite natural for anyone in your position to doubt themself but, it seems to me, you belong in your position and no one but you doubts that fact…”
Her mouth twists below her prominent nose.
“I know, Thran, that your insecurity around your lineage is something we’ve talked about before… Is there a reason you’re thinking about it again now?” I ask.
She takes a deep breath before answering “I guess… going to that planet where there were no Neanderthals… where the first boy we met singled me and Xon out as obviously not Human… where Victor asked us to stay behind so we didn’t frighten people who wouldn’t recognise what we were and where, when I did go to the town and meet them, I got stared at more than anyone else… It just reminded me that my kind’s existence is… not natural… I know, we’ve said before; natural doesn’t equal good, right or proper… but…”
“But knowing it and feeling it aren’t the same?” I suggest.
She nods and continues “It’s just… hard not to feel like an imposter sometimes… A girl, born of a species that should be extinct, in a profession that requires social skills that she doesn’t have… She can fight, she’s strong but… that often doesn’t feel like enough to justify it…”
“To justify what?” I enquire, patiently.
“…My… existence… I suppose?” she answers, uncomfortably.
“Does your existence need to be justified?”
Her mouth twists but she stays silent.
“Alright, Thran. Let me ask a different question; the people on that planet… did they need a reason to survive?”
“I… I don’t know what you mean?”
“I mean that they managed to cling to survival for 400 years of isolation… Do you think any of them ever asked what the point was?”
“I’m nearly certain some of them did…” she answers, cocking an eyebrow, suspiciously.
“I’m nearly certain of that too… And yet… they survived… They didn’t give up and allow themselves to succumb to death… Why do you think that is?”
“I suppose… they wanted to live… and… they hoped that they might be rescued one day…”
I smile “I think so too!… I think, wondering what the point is is quite a natural part of the condition of sapience… but… I would say… survival doesn’t necessarily need a reason… To live is its own justification… It’s easy to get despondent if you only measure your existence in terms of its instrumental value to others but, if you’re able to shift to thinking about your life’s worth as something intrinsic to it, I believe you’ll find that more fulfilling… Easier said than done, I know!”