Venisin took her to one of the unused rooms in her hab and when they entered, Kira could immediately see why they hadn’t been here before. While the rest of Venisin’s space carried a kind of jungle aesthetic that Kira had found immediately cozy, this room was bare.  Just white walls, white flooring, and a kind of diffuse light coming from a white ceiling. Kira hated it. 

 

Which was probably the point.

 

Dimension wise the room would probably have been small for an affini, but to the comparatively small Kira the space felt large. Empty. So bare that Kira felt physically cold.

 

In her half dissociated state, it took Kira a moment to notice that wasn’t just her feeling of the space–it was actually colder in here than it had been in the other room. The texture of the ground, a kind of metallic hardness, also sucked heat out of her bare feet much faster than the earthy floor of the rest of Venisin’s hab. 

 

It seemed that Venisin had continued her psychological research. If she still had close access to her feelings she probably would have found that kind of hot.

 

“Alright.” Venisin broke the silence. “Here’s how this is going to work. Every–actually, no. I’ve continued my xenoveterinary psychology research and apparently uncertainty is distressing to little human sophonts like yourself.”

 

Venisin tapped a vine to the ground.

 

“So, you have permission to do what you wish in this room. It’s a former clean chamber from when I was experimenting with some technical projects, which means the ground and walls are perfectly smooth and there’s absolutely nothing in here for you to get troublesome with. I’ll be back when I choose to be, and ask you whether you want to answer me at least once a day.” Venisin had given up on maintaining the facial expressions on her simulation of a human face, giving her the appearance of a druid-like demon mask on top of a cloak of leaves interspersed by glowing vines.

 

Kira stared at Venisin, her own face expressionless as well, and nodded.

 

This was roughly what she’d been expecting, and shouldn’t be a problem for her. The cold would make things worse, but… she’d suffered worse and come away grateful.

 

This would be different though–there would be no after.

 

Kira suppressed the unproductive thought and focused back on her mantras.

 

She looked back over to Venisin to see her extend a pair of vines, one taking off her chastity belt, the other removing her collar. Even through the haze Kira felt their loss, and couldn’t help wishing that it hadn’t come to this. For what little time they’d had together, Venisin had been good to her. Even this was its own kind mercy. She’d rather a whole suitcase of sharp knives than the xenodrugs.

 

Kira ran her finger over a small patch of skin between her navel and her hip, the scar there almost invisible.

 

The first strike came so suddenly Kira didn’t register it at first. It was a searing pain, left shoulder to lower back, and Kira didn’t find the breath to scream. The second one came fast–she’d gotten too lost in thought and Venisin must have gotten behind her. But Kira was no amateur, so by the time the third vine came down she gave the pain a hug and let herself drown in it.

 

Then things became easier, the subspace layered on top of the disassociation, and Kira screamed but didn’t feel.

 

——

 

Humans responded to pain differently than Kvėnzrkromans. A debate, a heated argument, then a concession to the winner. Each of these steps involved pain, but on a toxic world pain was just a fact of life. There wasn’t this level of… distress. It resonated with her, even more than the application of violence. The thought was concerning. It brought up questions about herself she thought she’d settled when she’d first left Affini core space. Still, she was no sprout, she would stay in control of herself. And because she was no sprout it was also clear to her that Kira was reacting differently than the last time she’d received a serious whipping. The only time she’d received a serious whipping. 

 

It wasn’t lost on Venisin how little she’d gotten to know Kira, and how much was still shrouded quite deliberately in mystery. It might have made sense to push sooner, but that would have just made this moment come sooner. At the very least they’d had half a week for Kira to tune to her song, and for her to get an instinct for Kira’s behavior. Either way it wasn’t in Venisin’s nature to regret. What happened had happened, and now they were here.

 

Kira’s reactions to the whipping were muted, almost from the get-go. By the fifth strike she was still screaming, but instead of the searing emotional response of the punishment yesterday, she was flopping for just a moment, like a horse out of water, before going back to laying perfectly still, like a sack of potatoes.

 

Venisin finished 15 moderately hard strikes, then said nothing as she left the room. This wasn't something she expected to work with the first application. The bright lights, cold temperature, and bland food she planned to feed Kira would weaken her over time. Meanwhile, she would need to continue her research into Terran psychologies.

 

——

 

Kira figured it was later that day when Venisin came back the third time. Time distorted in this kind of headspace, but she’d been in it often enough to have a loose guess. An instinct, where her memories frequently got cloudy. The other times had just been another whipping. But this time Venisin’s demeanor seemed different.

 

Vines grabbed her, and she was gently placed into Venisin’s lap. Venisin began stroking her, placing some kind of soothing cream on the welts covering her upper back. Kira resisted the siren's call to come out of her shell, and let Venisin take care of her physical body. Even when Venisin began feeding her. Even when Venisin held her close and tight and whispered soothing words into her ear. 

 

She remained deep inside her own mind. Distantly she smelled something delicious coming from the other room, hinting of onions and garlic. Fuck, Venisin definitely remembered her food preference. Kira took a deep breath, accepted that she almost certainly was not going to get to eat whatever was making that smell and exhaled back into submission.

 

She didn’t let the comfort get to her too much either. Venisin had gotten really good at holding and stroking her through distress, especially after three days on a continual tease-and-denial regiment, but this comfort came with a price and Kira wasn’t willing to pay. So she accepted it, but remained deep inside her shell.

 

All of this meant that when Venisin asked her to talk, the answer was simple.

 

“No.”

Venisin simply nodded in response, placed some plain nutrient cubes in front of Kira, and left. 

 

——

 

Venisin walked into the room on the second day and froze. It took her a second to realize why, but then she felt it. Kira was kneeling a few feet from the back of the room, eyes closed, hands on her knees, head slightly down, and she was completely silent. Not in the spoken word way, in the much more subtle rhythms-of-the-body way that mostly only the Affini sensed consciously. In parallel with the drugs from their nectar, it was this hypnotic song that had first allowed affini to domesticate the world around them. It was what differentiated affini from shrubs. And it was what differentiated a domesticated floret from any other non-affini sophont.

 

Kira had been resonating with her just yesterday. Only shallowly, for sure, like an instrument that had its strings clenched down and muted, but it had been there. At this stage a weak resonance was expected. It was even expected that if Venisin were going about this wrong the song might be disrupted, like a pianist playing in the wrong key. But Kira wasn’t resonating off beat or off key. No, she was still, perfectly and utterly still, in the way even a pre-domesticated human wouldn’t be. Taking a sophont here usually required specialized Class C xenodrugs, and was generally only done in extremely controlled situations ahead of deliberate bonding.

 

No, that wasn’t quite right either. It was barely a whisper, like someone singing to themselves. But it was neither Venisin’s tune, nor the bit she’d noticed of Kira’s own chaotic melody when she’d first been handed her. Sure that could have been confused by the number of affini that Kira had been in close proximity to before, but if she’d really picked up their song it was unlikely she would have been so disobedient.

 

So this had to be whatever had infiltrated Kira’s brain, presumably taking her name and who knows what else. Venisin almost wanted to just stay there and watch for a bit, to learn what she could of the song. But she had her own role to play here, and it was to break Kira.

 

She centered herself, and prepared herself for the progressively less enjoyable task of making her unresponsive floret suffer.

 

——

 

Kira figured it was just about day three. Venisin had whipped her eight or so times now? Twice she’d just used the electricity of her vines to zap Kira until she was close to blacking out from the pain. It was a shame, this was all so… graceless. Like a sonata played beneath the window of a lover that was wearing headphones. It felt almost sacrilegious, something that so often in her life had been beautiful made crude and disgusting by her own disconnection. And she thought Venisin could feel it too. There was no passion in this anymore.

 

Twice now, she assumed it was once a day, Venisin had bundled her up, held her warm, comforted her and applied cooling salves to her wounds. It was the only time she wasn’t physically cold. Had shown her the comfort that she could have, if she would just give in, if she would just break, and then asked her the question.

 

And ironically, if Venisin had gotten to her five years ago, it would have worked. She would have thanked her for it, eagerly given herself over to it, but that spot in her heart was taken. Kira would have broken, but she’d already broken for someone else and they would not let her do so again. She’d never had much strength for herself, but for her Mistress she would–

 

So at this impasse they would stay until Kira got to make the ultimate sacrifice. Though she wasn’t sure how that would end since Venisin was feeding her and presumably wouldn’t kill her by accident. The thought that this could go on for years was simultaneously daunting but also a little bit peaceful. It was the nature of her submission. She was in service, and this was the price she would pay for that service. So she’d pay it, secure in the knowledge that she was giving all of herself to the one who owned her.

 

Kira curled onto her other side and tried to rest.

 

——

 

Venisin sat at an impasse. She’d been monitoring the room and listening to Kira’s resonance. It didn’t carry the hypnotic qualities of an affini melody, which meant that it was human. An overnet search made it clear that wasn’t a common thing among florets captured after working in the Terran’s OCNI, which ruled out some kind of intelligence operation to create resistant operatives.

 

Worse, her ongoing research had made it clear there were some gaps in the ramshackle course on Terran xenovetrinary psychology she’d given herself on the way over here. Although it was clear that Kira had responded to physical enforcement incredibly well, and had even expressed that she liked it, in general what Terrans called “enhanced interrogation tactics” only worked in old television content and something called “fanfiction”. Why some subset of Terrans enjoyed writing fiction about ventilation devices was still unclear.

 

All of that together with Kira’s behavior suggested that Kira’s rhythm had been set by or attuned to an individual entity and that entity had prepared Kira for intelligence operative levels of deception and resistance to outside influence.

 

It was time for a different approach.

 

——

 

Sometime between what must have been the third or fourth day Venisin came in and Kira immediately felt something was different. She neither took her tentacles out to inflict violence, nor did she lift Kira into her lap for one of her breaks. Instead she sat down in front of Kira, and waited. When Kira finally looked up from her kneeling position, Venisin spoke.

 

“These methods are not going to work on you, are they?” Venisin asked calmly.

 

Kira coughed, it always took her a moment to remember how to talk after long periods of silence.

 

“No Master,” Kira eventually whispered.

 

“And I assume neither will much more standard Terran interrogation tactics.” Venisin’s face didn’t move as she talked, focusing intently on Kira instead.

 

“That is correct, Master,” Kira whispered.

 

“And that leaves standard Affini interrogation tactics–pumping you full of the xenodrug equivalent of a truth serum–which is I’m guessing why you negotiated that away.” One of Venisin’s vines idly tapped the ground.

 

“That is correct, Master,” Kira whispered.

 

Venisin nodded. “And I don’t think if I’m making a leap when I guess that previous affini drifting too close to that sort of xenodrug usage is the origin of your rather violent attempts to remove yourself from the universe.” 

 

“That would not be a leap.” Kira kept her eyes on Venisin. She didn’t even spend the energy considering where this conversation might be going. Part of it was the walls she was still keeping up, part of it was exhaustion. Part of it was that she, underneath it all, genuinely did not like being in opposition to someone who had seen her better than anyone since her capture. Possibly since– well, that was why she was in this room wasn’t it?

 

“And would it be a leap to suggest this is why you got captured alone, on a small Terran scout vessel in the middle of an asteroid field?” Venisin asked.

 

Kira didn't respond, instead matching Venisin’s blank mask.

 

“I see.” Venisin’s face started moving again. Her idle vine tapped the ground three times then retreated into her body. “Ok. In that case I simply won’t ask about any of this again.”

 

Kira’s mind returned to body amidst the one thing she hadn’t expected. Her mask faltered, and she couldn’t help but show just a fraction of her surprise on her face.

 

It seemed that was enough for Venisin to read. 

 

“My primary responsibility as your owner is your care. It seems you think it vital to hide this information from me, and likely the Affini more broadly. Since it is almost inconceivable this information might in any way alter the remaining pacification efforts,” Venisin explained as she unfurled her front vines, ”the additional difficulty we might encounter as a result of not knowing it does not justify causing you irreparable harm. No Affini would ask me to keep punishing my floret indefinitely over something as trivial as military intelligence.”

 

Kira took a moment to process what Venisin had just laid out. It was… compassionate. Mercy, as well, since Kira knew that Venisin very well could punish her indefinitely for either the information or for the defiance of withholding it. An impressive amount of flexibility for a culture that seemed even more imperial than terrans. It was… a relief.

 

Kira was still trying to wrap her conscious mind around what just happened as she collapsed to her hands and knees. She felt herself crawl forward, into the opening of Venisin’s vines. They were gentle, not forcing, but helping her turn and curl up into her Affini’s lap.

 

“Thank you,” Kira exhaled. 

 

Kira let herself sink into the one entity who had promised her the safety-of-mind she so badly needed. Who seemed to understand her beyond reason. There was a quake, then a shudder, and then, a few seconds later, the dam broke and Kira started sobbing. 

 

——

 

Venisin recognized it as a combination of relief and gratitude. She adjusted her little leaf in her lap, held her down with vines the way she liked, and stroked her body through the covering of vines. Meanwhile the tears kept flowing. It was a relief well earned, her floret must have been holding this in since the moment she stepped foot on the ship. Always a danger, always a risk, constantly in fear of what the steady unraveling of domestication might eventually uncover.

 

“Shhhhh, I’ve got you, shhhhh.” Venisin whispered.

 

She was such a strong little thing, Venisin adored it. She wasn’t just a leaf, she was a willow. She’d bent in ways most Affini wouldn’t consider possible for a Terran. She’d given in, given ground, opened up, all while maintaining nearly perfect control over how, hiding her secret in plain sight, emotionally and intellectually, until Venisin had finally been the one to pick up the trail. And she’d acted out, deliberately, inconsistently, but enough to distract from the anxiety and other signs she couldn’t hide. The only thing she’d failed in was killing herself, but even that had worked to her advantage, hadn’t it? After all, she’d gotten Venisin pulled from across the stars and gotten her to make the xenodrug agreement.

 

Venisin started to slow her strokes as she felt Kira’s breathing settle. She was falling asleep, as she always seemed to after difficult experiences. She deserved the rest, after fighting so hard for this little victory. 

 

Venisin was glad Kira felt safe again.

 

But Kira was wrong. In scoring this victory, Kira had revealed too much. To show Venisin the box couldn’t be smashed open, she’d had to show Venisin the shape of the box. But now Venisin knew. Of what she was, of how her internal landscape had been bent, of the foreign song that sometimes played in her soul. And Venisin was the most patient predator in the universe.

 

Venisin was Kira’s owner, and her floret would not be holding anything back.