He doesn’t regret it, the decision to leave. To follow her wherever she led him. It saved his life. It saved his soul, if such a thing exists. But he wonders, some mornings, if this feeling will ever go away. The Ache.
Not for the drugs, that’s a different ache, one he knows he will probably never be rid of, a hunger that will be his constant companion until the day he dies
No, this is an ache for something familiar and easy: his comfort foods printed for him, the softness of synthetic fabric draped over him after a long day wired into a terminal, clothes with an easy soft but silky texture that never scratched or caught. The view of the wormhole from Port Free Commerce before he shipped out for a mission. The ice cream dispenser by concourse D2 that sold a flavor that was an artificial recreation of a fruit that had gone extinct a century ago but that he’d get himself as a treat after a particularly hard job. The smell of recycled air.
The food here on Preservation is excellent. Better for him, healthy, fresh, sustainably produced. The textiles are a source of cultural pride, all hand-woven, hand-dyed, and mended with care. Colorful and long-lasting. And the sunrises! So rarely seen in his previous life, he can now see the sun rise and set nearly every day, smelling fresh air and drinking coffee that Pin-Lee roasted for him, with a deep and complex flavor that a part of him still wants to drown out with artificial sweeteners and dehydrated creamer. It’s good here. Life is good here, better than it had been any time before. He never wants to leave. Never.
So why does he still yearn to go back? Why does he long for a home that chewed him up and spit him out, a home that nearly devoured him? A home that couldn’t love him back?
There was a certain easiness to his life before. The horror and humiliation was mundane in its familiarity, the same way the kindness of his new life still registers as dangerous and strange. Every interaction is fraught with pitfalls: things he says that should be normal that make his friends look at him with either horror or pity, rules he is still learning and constantly breaking that make strangers look at him askance, norms that he fears he will never truly feel at ease with. Better to be an outsider and be alive and loved than to die beneath the heel of the CR, but he still wishes it was easier.
He’s started learning to weave fabric. He’s apparently good at it, too. A blanket, the first one he’s finished, lays over his lap as he watches the sunrise. The fabric is textured despite his best efforts to make it smooth and uniform. Bharadwaj says the texture is a part of the final product, part of the appeal. He wishes he could run his hands over the fabric without feeling like he failed. He wishes he could eat Mensah’s cooking without needing her to make him a milder version. He wishes he loved the way his room smelled like wood and wildflowers and sunshine and that he didn’t miss the scent of recycled station air. He drinks his coffee not black, but not with the sweetener and powdered creamer Mensah had secured for him. Today he drinks it with just a bit of oat milk and vanilla syrup, both from Mensah’s farm.
Maybe one day it will feel normal.
