Neptune - Part 13

Part 13- Comfort

Letter To Venus From Neptune, 03/02/2075

Dear Venus,
I can't imagine the world that you may have inherited. I will be dead by the time you receive this message, so I have not bothered with a return address. I am glad that you will be with Mercury. She needs someone to look after her. There is a duality to her character that makes it seem impossible to get close to her. While she is strong, she is also fragile. Without someone to be with her through trying times, I fear that she will do something regrettable.
I wish that I could have been her companion, but that is not my fate, it's yours. And for this, I am eternally grateful, as I know you have been the best friend to her possible and that she loves you for it. I am also sorry, for all that you've had to go through, for no doubt bearing the resentment that Mercury now harbours towards me, for all the things I have left to you and for all the things we had to do to get by. I know that we all had to do things we are not proud to have done, but you were once the most innocent of us all. No longer, I suppose, but you have my apologies.
Forever in your debt,
Neptune

***

As in the station, I have to guide my companion along, keeping her from distracting herself with whatever happens to catch her fancy. She keeps trying to veer off, seeing leaves misplaced in a yard, or excessive dirt on the street, trying to stop as if the order of the world is in her hands and her hands alone. Her hand raises, and I do not even pause to check what she is doing, merely pushing down on her arm with my hand to keep her from her nonsense tasks. I remind myself that we are almost home, only paces away from my front walkway, only paces more before I can medicate her and focus on these more important tasks.
I feel my shoes tap against the stones of the way, one of the comforts that remind me I am home after a difficult day has passed.
"You are not supposed to be here," I hear. Is that my voice? The words escape my mouth before I am even able to process the woman sitting on the stoop outside of my home, waiting.
Nova rises from her seated place, eyes focusing on Samara for just a moment before returning to me. "No? I understand your hesitation, this being your home, where the media's eyes are out for you, and where your children stay." She approaches me, uncomfortably close if it were anyone else, but even in my annoyance, I feel intoxicated by her very proximity.
I open my mouth to speak, but she quickly raises a finger over my lips, hushing me as if I were but a child, cutting off my speech. I give a slight furrowing of my brows to display my annoyance, which she promptly ignored.
"But perhaps I have not come to pay my farewells to you, Errol," she says, the finger on my mouth sliding away across my cheek before that sensation of touch also fades. Her eyes focus on Samara, and a few more delicate paces are taken, taken as light as a feather, as if her steps need be hidden. "I have a friend in need. You haven't been sleeping, have you?" Her voice takes almost a mothering tone, her focus on nurturing. This makes her even more beautiful in my eyes: I had always wanted to be a father, and to help my children to become people of worth. Cheryl, on the other hand, seems to think of children as nothing more than inconvenient nuisances: perhaps what bothers me more than anything about her character is her complete lack of motherliness. She is cold when she should be comforting, indifferent when she should be loving and cruel when she should be supportive. Nova has no such inability for care, and even though she tries to put on her distant veneer, I know that she really is a loving woman.
In response to Samara's silence, Nova reaches under her chin to raise it up so that their eyes may meet. I almost reach out in protest, knowing that touching Samara's skin anywhere can be disastrous, leaving the one touching in a bloodied state and the touched in the throes of a panic attack. This time, however, that is not what happens. Samara merely looks up and seems flustered, finally answering the question, eyes flickering towards me for just a second, before whispering back to her friend, "I keep expecting him to come back to me, to keep me warm. I just wait for him all night, watching the door... and he never comes. He's never coming back. It still feels like he should."
"Shush..." speaks Nova softly, putting her arms around her friend in an embrace, her gaze falling towards me to give a meaningful look, to tell me my presence is no longer welcome. I take it as my cue to leave, and I turn to finish the walk down the pathway, but I still hear their voices, fading as my distance increases, "I can keep you warm for now. You need to take care of yourself, okay?"
My hand grasps the cold, classically styled steel of the doorknob, and I hesitate to listen further, hearing Samara's voice, a soft and sad sarcastic chuckle escaping her, "You won't charge me, will you?"
The door opens before me as I pull the knob, and closes behind me as I shut it. Their voices are faded, not even muffled behind the weight of the door, but completely muted. I wait there at the doorway for a second and shake my head. Though I was upset to see her here, how I wish her visit had been for me. For this thought, I feel guilty. I know that Samara is in a pain that I cannot comprehend: an androgyne, debilitated as she was by her own mental state, has little opportunity for what she had. To have such a thing torn away from her, I cannot even relate to her pain.
And yet, somehow, I find myself dwelling. I move from the doorway, ascending those stairs, not even needing to ignore my wife as I pass by to give my greetings to my children, my mind preoccupied for now by other things. If she had come for me, then it would mean that I was right. That she really cares about me. Am I merely projecting my desires? I pause at the top step and look down as I hear the door open again. Samara and Nova enter together, but I only see their feet from my vantage point, which rest in my field of vision for only a matter of seconds. It is irrelevant. I have long forfeited that kind of romance for both a purer kind of love and a purer kind of lust, kept completely separate yet balanced.
I walk towards Paris's room first, as I usually do, passing by Natasha's door on my way. My older girl might be more interested in talking tonight than usual, though, so I stop to examine the skull and crossbones 'keep out' sign on the door. Her door is firmly closed, so I knock. There is no response, and I wait for a few seconds before knocking again. "I'm coming in."
I open the door and peer inside, to see Natasha at her desk, working on her laptop computer. An open window is hurriedly minimized as I step inside and she looks up towards me. She seems to have resolved to continue wearing boy clothes today, but at least today she looks a little less ridiculous, having chosen a baggy movie t-shirt and a pair of tattered jeans. They look like thrift clothes. She's wearing her glasses, presumably to make out whatever she was looking at on the screen, as she looks up to me. "Hey, dad," she says softly.
"Good afternoon, Tash, what are you up to?" I glance towards the computer to indicate that I noticed the screen when I came in.
For a moment, she seems defensive, leaning away from me as I ask the question. She glances to the screen, though, and seems to re-evaluate as she considers the question. "I was on a forum, talking to people from the support group at a local school."
I assume this is the support group for alternately gendered children. Because of our strange genetic histories, various types of intersex conditions are far more common in recom children, but these groups often accommodate transgender children. Inexplicably, recoms also have a higher incidence of this than humans had, but neither is so common that it makes children with these conditions feel normal. Thus, just about every large school has such an organization to give these kids a sense of belongingness, while smaller schools direct such children to the support groups in larger ones.
I am curious, however, how Tash had obtained this information: It's generally something that my private tutors would have to consult me about, and yet I have not had prior notice on my child's situation. I sit down on her bed and ask, "How long have you been part of the forum?"
She considers for a moment and shrugs, adjusting the cap she's wearing, "I don't know. A couple years, maybe..."
I feel a pang of guilt. Two years? That's two years that she felt too ashamed to ever talk to me about her feelings, two years where I've failed to notice and be there for her. I cannot help but to avert my eyes, because even now I'm failing to understand her feelings. She's a beautiful girl, if she only wore clothes that suit her. How could she want to be otherwise? I lean slightly forward slightly, "I'm sorry that you've had to feel alone for so long. I admit, I'm still trying to understand, but I do not need to understand to love you. And I'll always love you, no matter how you want to be and who you become. You're my child, and that will never change. If you ever have anything that is weighing on your mind, you can come to me, okay?"
Natasha looks down and nods, folding her hands together. "I wasn't as afraid to tell you as having mom find out. I mean, I guess it's just kind of scary in general, but... She's very, um, Martian. "
Martians tend to be a little more judgemental when it comes to these things. Because it's thought to be partially genetically linked, and Martians are obsessed with genetic purity, they tend to try to isolate and prevent any maladaptive genetic traits from continuing by preventing the individuals with those traits from being able to pass them on, in order to help recom society become fully independent of genetic engineering technology as humans were. While this is good for society in theory, it makes mutants and alternatively gendered recoms into pariahs of Martian society, where they are excluded from most social events, making them into analogues of Untouchables from more primitive societies.
Cheryl in particular, though, holds these views close to her. Her contempt for androgynes, even though most androgynes are in practice extremely productive members of society, is an example of this sort of thing. I imagine Natasha knows how 'Martian' Cheryl is because of the way she talks about Samara behind her back, among other things. I frown and nod at my child, "Your mother can be pretty set in her ways. But I will talk to her for you, okay?"
I only hope that Cheryl will be able to recognize that Natasha is her child, and unconditional love should be a requirement for being a parent. This unfounded hope, I fear, will be disappointed the next time I speak to her.
"Okay," says Natasha, getting up from her computer chair and sits next to me on the bed. She folds her hands on her lap and stares down at them. It appears as though she is on the edge of saying something, but continuously stops herself as if to reconsider the words she wants to use. I wait patiently, watching her expression continuously in change. Since she remains silent, I gently rub her back to try and offer comfort to all the things troubling her.
She looks up at me, "Dad, even if I want to be a boy... is it okay if I cry? I miss them, and I'm scared."
I return her gaze and give a small nod and a small sympathetic smile, "Of course, Tash, of course." I put my arm around her and hug her close to my body. In return, she puts her little arms around me, burying her face in my chest and trembling slightly as she begins to cry.

***

I walk to my library, passing by the soft murmurs emerging from the guest room, my conversation with Paris having passed without event. Though usually the library is one of my few sanctuaries of silence, I open my cell to examine the screen for a moment.
I dial Cheryl, dreading the inevitably hostile conversation to come.