December, 2558

There is nothing so horrible as waiting. Caught in the balance of hope and dread, all you can do is simply exist, and there is nothing you can do to save to wait, wait, wait. Patience was a virtue I had long tried to cultivate, but a handful of decades couldn't prepare me for what I felt as I waited for Camassia. I think a handful of centuries wouldn't have helped; a handful of millennia, perhaps, but I doubted it. The only thing holding me together was Karyon, her vines interwoven with mine and preventing them from completely abandoning the pretense of form.

"She's taking too long," I whispered, not bothering to articulate my mouth.

"Maybe that's a good sign," Karon said, giving me a tender squeeze. She was leaning into me, her core adjoining mine, and her biorhythm was washing over me like waves lapping at the shore. She was worried too, of course, but her worry was for me as well as for Judy. "Maybe it means this time-"

"Don't say it, you'll jinx it."

"...I've never known you to be superstitious," she said curiously.

"When it comes to this, I'll take all the help I can get." The exam room was much the same as it had ever been, though it certainly felt smaller than it used to as far as I was concerned. Add in the tension and it began to feel a touch claustrophobic. "I don't want anything to screw this up for her."

"I know, my love." Karyon coiled a vine around my core and tugged it a few centimeters closer to hers. "I know. And for the record, I feel the same way."

"I don't know what I'll do if-" I froze as the door slid open, revealing Camassia standing behind it. Every single photoreceptor I could bring to bear locked onto her at once, looking for any sign, any hint, any long and forlorn hope that this time, it had worked.

But a simple glance at her, vines drooping and biorhythm muted, told me everything.

"Not again." I let out a plaintive noise and practically dissolved into Karyon's vines. "Not again."

"Again," Camassia said quietly, taking a seat next to me and putting one of her long arms around me and Karyon. "Parenchymic decoherence. I'm sorry." Parenchymic decoherence — in other words, the substance of my core's substrate, the sample that was supposed to integrate with the haustoric implant, had disintegrated and died on a cellular level. Again.

This had been the third attempt; Camassia had one last idea to try to help shore up the core sample, altering its phytochemistry and pumping it full of various pharmaceuticals to try to induce growth before decoherence could set in. Obviously, it hadn't worked. My core wasn't good enough. I wasn't good enough.

My poor friends. My anguished biorhythmic wailing was probably overwhelming. Even now, in the depths of my grief, I couldn't quite stop worrying about others, about the impact of my actions. I was Affini enough for that, but not Affini enough to do the one thing my floret wanted in the whole universe. I was a root-rotten frostbitten failure.

"Obviously the artificial parenchyma is the problem," Camassia explained. "I thought I'd corrected for the metabolic differences between natural core tissue and the phytotech substrate, but those differences appear to be quite critical. For obvious reasons, there isn't a lot of research on this subject, but as it is..." Her vines coiled around and intertwined with mine, the best she could do for a hug given the shape (or lack thereof) I was in. "Based on the results of this last experiment, I don't believe there's any way to stabilize a sample of your core in a haustoric implant."

I wanted to scream. I wanted to rage. I wanted to break absolutely everything in the room, then move onto the next room and break everything there, and on and on and on. I wanted anywhere else to put the hurt. I wanted to create some kind of monument, leave some kind of concrete mark upon the world, that reflected the feelings I was drowning in.

But that wasn't who I was I anymore. I had left that part of myself behind, and that last little Terran impulse screaming out of my greymatter was no match for the sheer weight of responsibility that came with being an Affini. So instead, I simply said, "Thank you, Camassia. For trying."

"I'm sorry I couldn't make it work," she said. "I know I said it was unlikely to, but... I still feel as if I got your hopes up only to leave you wanting."

I wound enough of my head together to shake it. "You've done so much for me and Judy," I told her. "Please don't feel bad." I finally wrapped a few vines around her, and slowly began to reshape myself into my usual form.

"I imagine the two of you would like to be alone," she said, "but feel free to stay as long as you need to, and please, if there's anything I can do, let me know." She said this more to Karyon than to me — she was holding herself together much better than I was.

"Of course," Karyon said. "And again, thank you." She held me as Camassia disentangled herself and quietly left the room, and she held me for a long, long time after. We said nothing; there was nothing to say. Our biorhythms washed back and forth as she desperately tried to play counterpoint to my deep, all-encompassing sorrow.

It was over. There was nothing more to do. There was nothing more to try. I couldn't give Judy the haustoric implant she deserved, and I was going to have to live with that. I was going to have to live with having my dreams realized, having my body finally reflect who I was, at the same time that she was going to have suffer having her dreams dashed. I felt disgusted with myself, with my selfishness. The Terran parts of my brain demanded tears, demanded a stomach to turn over in frustrated nausea, demanded hot bile and pumping blood — but I had none of those things. I was an Affini. I was an absolute, abject, total failure of an Affini.

"I don't even know how I'm going to tell her," I whispered, after what felt like hours.

Karyon said nothing for a long moment, but simply cuddled me tighter. Finally, with hesitation in her voice and a faltering biorhythm, she spoke. "There is one thing..."

"Camassia said she'd tried everything," I said. "Please don't give me false hope."

"No, listen," she said, lifting my head, "and look at me with those pretty eyes of yours. There is something we can do. The problem is with your parenchyma, right? It begins to fall apart when it's separated from the whole, because- well, alright, I don't really understand why, just that it doesn't hold together on its own. But that's not a problem other Affini have. That's not a problem my core sample would have."

Every single one of my vines froze, taut as a bowstring, as my biorhythm cratered suddenly. She wanted to take Judy. She was going to take Judy away from me, give her an implant of her own, bind Judy to her instead of to me. Judy would adapt — the haustoric implant would ensure that. Karyon would shape her, Karyon would make whatever changes were necessary. Karyon would be the center of her universe, and she would be happy that way.

And that was the worst part. She'd be happy that way, and because of that, I would let it happen. I felt like my core would split, like my Terran brains would wrench themselves out of me in mindless fury at what I was contemplating. I was an Affini, and the happiness of other sophonts, especially xenosophonts, was more important than anything else. I didn't know how I would live without Judy, but that didn't matter. Nothing mattered except Judy's happiness.

"Please don't say that," I whispered. "Please don't." It was so selfish of me to try to hold it all back, to try to prevent it. I would give in, I knew I would, but not without fighting it, even just a little. I loved Judy too much to just let go so quickly.

"What? No, Tam, listen. I've been doing a lot of reading, and I think...well, I know I'm not a veterinarian, and I'm certainly not as brilliant as Camassia, but if the problem is parenchymic instability, why don't we use a piece of my core-"

"Karyon, please-" It was going to happen. I knew it was going to happen. I could see it happening, every single one of my thoughts converging on it. It was coming and there was nothing I could do to stop it.

"-to give your core sample something to bind to," she finished. "Camassia's been so focused on trying to get your core sample to function on its own, but if mine would thrive naturally, maybe that'd be enough to support yours."

I had never before experienced every single one of my trains of thought derailing at once. The effect was something like a bomb going off inside my head, and for a moment nothing made sense; vision was just a confused jumble of light, sound was meaningless noise, even taste and smell and touch fell to pieces. I finally managed to drag myself back to coherence on the back of a single thought.

"Tam? I know its a lot to ask, but-"

"What are you even talking about? Why would... what do you mean? Put both our core samples in the implant?"

"Yes!" She brightened and leaned in, resting her faux forehead against mine. "I love Judy, and I love you, and nothing would make me happier — but of course, she's your floret, and I feel like I'm imposing to even ask..." She trailed off, unsure, I think, what to say next.

"Okay, hold on. Back up. Explain. Is that even possible?"

"Of course it is," Karyon said. "It's not common, but it's not particularly rare, either. Many Affini share florets, Tam, and they do it by hybridizing their core samples within the haustoric implant. I, uhm...I may have been thinking about this for some time," she added, the vines in her cheeks riffling ever so slightly and shifting the way the light caught them — a very cute way, I had to admit, of simulating a blush. "Judy is such a wonderful little pet, and she warmed to me right from the beginning, and- well, I confess that when I was still entertaining thoughts of domesticating you, I was absolutely planning to take her right alongside you, of course. Even after, if she wasn't already yours, I'd have been all over her in an instant! But, she is yours, and so..."

"...so you were fantasizing," I said, smiling just a little up at her. "You were thinking, hey, wouldn't it be hot if-"

"Y-yes," she admitted, laughing awkwardly. "Reading texts on hybrid implants and just... imagining. And when I was caring for Judy when you were recovering from surgery, I might have indulged in a little bit more imagining. But that's all I meant it to be, really, I would never just bring it up like this, to try to force my way into the relationship between someone else and their pet. Even after we began living together, it felt like it was too much to ask. But then you had your difficulties with the implant, and it just occurred to me that...maybe it'd be a little less selfish to ask, if it was something I could give you."

"...and you really think it could work?" After three failures, I wasn't sure I could handle a fourth, but if there was even the slightest chance that this would work, that this could give Judy what she wanted...

"I don't know," Karyon said, "but I think it's worth a try. And Tam? Even if you had bloomed Affini to begin with — or even if I'd found Judy first, and she was my pet rather than yours — please believe me when I say that I would want this anyway. I love you, and I love Judy, and I love the way we share our lives, and I want to keep on sharing myself with the two of you."

I believed her. "I love you too, Karyon. And I know Judy does too." My voice, my biorhythms, were still shaky. I wasn't sure I could stand, let alone walk. I wasn't sure about this hybrid implant idea — not about the idea itself, but about the possibility that it, too, might fail. But I had to try. For Judy, and for Karyon too, now, I had to try. "So...we should probably go get Camassia, then?"