Yvette is currently asking the plant about her favorite subsets of people on board the ship! Does she know about families? She met a plant that thought of another plant as her little sister, it was super cute!

Sister... like these people? Wait, no, these people? Maybe these? Oh these people call each other sister but they're not like the others... not related! Are sisters sometimes not related?

She doesn't have favourites! All humans are good! But if she did have favourites these people would be them. Oh, or maybe these. Or those over there? Those are so good! There were also those—oh, never mind, those are from a past journey, they're not here right now.

She wasn't expecting the plant to be able to manage to pick favorites, but it's cute to watch her attempt to. More relevantly, it gives some hints at the underlying preferences. Everyone's good and also her favorite, but it's very telling which good ones and favorites come up first, and she's starting to get a feel for the pattern of it.

Yvette may be over-pattern matching it because eventually the plant gets to her FAVOURITEST EVER and that is YVETTE AND ZASH. They are the best. Everyone else is also the best but Yvette and Zash are the best. Here is a fractal of memories of Zash being Zash, her own plus the filtered memories of her sisters that she's met before and also everyone on this ship that's met Zash, including Yvette herself. The fractal of memories she has of Yvette is less thorough but also beautiful! Look, Zash and Yvette are both beautiful!

There was a little part of the plant's processing power that was still worrying over what sisters are and how families work but when that bit reconnects to the thoughts about Yvette and Zash a new pattern emerges: a fractal of couples, of parents, of lovers, of brothers and sisters—no, not those—friends—enhhh—promises of undying love, engagements and marriages and a life together, all in one big packet of information which then gets bundled with the Yvette-fractal and the Zash-fractal and a simple, pure, unconfusing feeling:

[?]

Zash hasn't been paying enough attention. If he had been, he'd have noticed this intention and been able to redirect it, or recover, or, or something. As it is, by the time he understands what exactly it is that the plant is asking she's already asked it and he's suddenly shut down all communication and rolled over and away from Yvette in a sudden panic. He manages not to fall on his face but it's a near thing, and he quickly scoots away and doesn't look back at her, because wow Stampede you really outdid yourself there. Might as well have handed her a signed confession.

"... Um," says Yvette, who has gone from comfy snuggle talking time to Zash is over there and almost falling on his face. "... Are you okay?"

"Yes."

"I can definitely tell how okay you are. It's very obvious."

He pulls his knees into his chest and hugs them.

"I can still hear your feelings, you know."

She looks down at her lap.

"Oh," she says. She hadn't realized that his distance for empathy for her had expanded like that, that the feeling of her wistful sorrow was so easy for him to pick out.

He hugs himself more tightly. "I don't suppose we could forget the last thirty seconds happened."

The pang of agony from her is definitely not difficult for him to feel.

".......... we can, if you'd rather."

He shuts his eyes for a second, and then he turns around to look at her, a wild, pleading look on his eyes, his face rapidly reverting to normal. "Can't, can't you say no instead? Can't you be selfish? God, Yvette, I'm sorry, I—"

"... I suppose this would be much easier if I were, wouldn't it."

"...no. I mean, yes. But no. I don't. You're. You're you."

"Ha. How comforting that must be to you, hm?" she says softly. "... I'm sorry, I know, I. Um. Words are hard, can you just. Come back, please?"

She holds out her hand to him.

...yeah. Yeah he can do that. And he can take her hand... though he doesn't project at her. At first. Because he's a coward, that's why.

Well.

She already knows he loves her.

And also she knows that this is approximately the worst thing she could possibly do to him, because she'll die. And he won't. And, really, that's all that matters in the end, more than such trivialities as 'she loves him back' or 'they are pretty good together, actually.' He's dealt with loss so, so, so many times, and. He shouldn't have to deal with more. She didn't mean... didn't want to... love isn't supposed to hurt like this and she hates that it feels like she's consigned him to a horrible fate. She wasn't trying to, it just. It happened. She's sorry. She didn't want to hurt him. And. Now he's going to be hurt no matter what she does, and he's the last person she'd want to hurt in the world.

"Yvette, you, you, you stupid person, what the fuck are those feelings, you're—! You're the one who's meant to rub off on me not, not, not vice-versa," because of course he loves her, the feelings come flooding as he gives the fuck up on trying to pretend and on trying to block it out and carefully dance around it, of fucking course he loves her, how could he not? He's been trying so, so hard to not be in love with her, he's been lying to everyone and to himself, it was obvious even to Vernon months ago. "What, do you think my life would've been better somehow. Yeah, I'm gonna be hurt no matter what, but how, how are you making this, how are you managing to feel like this is your fault somehow, that's my line!!!!"

He is, perhaps, falling apart a little bit here.

"I have been stealing those a lot, haven't I," she giggles, a little hysterically. "It's so much more awful to see it in someone else, huh?"

"Well, well stop that." He squeezes his eyes shut again, and leans his head against her lap and gives up on words because words fucking suck. And he doesn't need words to communicate that she's, she's the dumbest human he's ever met, when he gets into this sort of trouble he knows he'll survive but she won't and she does it anyway and he loves her so much for it. He loves her so much. He has been in love with her from the beginning, he was already in love with her in Jeneora, when before she even knew about plants she was already so, so herself. [Do you see it? Do you see why?] he asks, wordlessly, and he offers his own fractal of memories of her, all of them, all of the reasons he loves her, her heart and her competence and her temper and her devotion and her honesty and her bravery and her fierceness and her fire and just, just, her. All that she is, here, all that he sees in her. [How could I not love you? I hate it, I hate it so much, I love you and I don't want to and I couldn't stop and I don't want to stop either. This is so, so stupidly human, isn't it?]

"Yeah. It's, so, so stupidly human. It sucks." Sniffle. "But I love you too. Sorry."

"Why!"

"Zash, that is such a stupid question. Yeah, I wonder, how the fuck could I love a man who has, seen all of the worst parts of humanity, had their stupidity burned into his skin and shot with lead through his heart and had children stolen from his arms and turned into war machines and who knows what else and still. You still love them, you still fight for them, you're. You're ridiculous and stupid and sweet and I'm a fucking plant engineer you dork of course I love you!!!"

He can't look up at her, his eyes are still firmly shut, he's not sure he'd be able to stop himself crying if he saw her.

"Stop that," he says, and his heart isn't in it. "I can't, you, you deserve so much more. I can't be home for you. I can't be home for anyone. I'll never be home for anyone. I'm Zash the Stampede, I'm the Human Typhoon." And if you're caught by a typhoon you die. That's what happens. You die. "You deserve so much more than I can give you, Yvette, you deserve to love someone who can give you happiness, who can, who isn't risking your life just by being in your presence."

He does have to look up at her, then, into her eyes, so that he can say, [You deserve someone who can be home, for you. But you're home, for me.]