Chapter Text
Tangent.
In a past life, one where her academics went sorely neglected — unattended to in favor of sportsball matches with Nem and roughhousing with other kids — Sol asked Tang what her name meant, while bored out of her mind in one of Mr. Hal’s classes. She had to flick a bobberfruit near her table just to annoy her into giving an answer.
She recalls Tang telling her that if she didn’t know what “Tangent” meant even after all her extra make-up classes with Congruence, the effort and time spent teaching her the concept would be better used on useful things, like her research or her own much more advanced studies.
Sol — then called Solane — recalls that in that past life, he found Tangent distinctly one-note. The girl didn’t like to play with any of the other colony kids, preferring to stay in the labs with Doctor Instance for important science-y stuff that Solane thought was better left to the adults that had to run the colony.
Sol didn’t get why Tangent was always so proud of being more “mature” than the rest of his friends. Maturity meant dumb things, like studying, or farming, or studying. Tangent seemingly also never slept. Solane found that creepy, though he never said that outright.
The few times he felt anything more than a passing indifference to the girl was when he caught glances in the subtle cracks of her facade. Solane’s eyes were much better than their peers, always able to pick up the small things people never wanted to show. Moments where the weary nights caught up to her in the lab, eyes flitting in and out of consciousness even while she was piled deep in xenobiological specimens or a multitude of holo-screens, limbs moving even when all biological factors were begging her to stop.
Moments when Solane caught Tangent staring just a measure too harshly at her reflection in lab beakers and measuring glasses, like the warping of her appearance in the curved surfaces made her even more aware of how her body didn’t quite move the way she wanted, or work the way it should’ve. In that life, Solane felt an odd kinship with that disgust in Tangent’s eye, a familiarity Sol only came to terms with a few lifetimes down the line.
Solane had begun working then, adolescence having stripped away his petty notions of a life spent only on sportsball.
He had started ferrying equipment around the colony, in between physical conditioning and combat training. Solane had worked his life in halves, time for the colony, and time for the attack. Eyes always darting to the next place he had to be, or the next threat they had to face. Sol remembered how antsy she was in that lifetime. The seasons were hard, the crops grew thin, more lives were lost. Tammy. Professor Hal. Uncle Tonin. Governor Eudicot. Mom. Dad.
Solane grew his hair out. Tang shaved all of hers off. The two were almost polar opposites.
The incursions had mounted worse and worse throughout the years, and Solane had become increasingly frustrated with the girl who was always huddled out of sight, hiding in the labs when things got tough. For all her spouting and exclaiming about the powers of science and technology, Solane had yet to see Tangent out during Glow, expending blood, sweat and tears to claw back some form of defense against the Vertumnan monsters. Solane had thought that they needed more soldiers, not more scientists huddled so far into their holo-palms they could turn a blind eye to the actual fighting.
Sol remembers she had lived that life angry. Angry at her loss, angry at her own helplessness. Angry at Tangent even despite their shallow friendship. Solane had grown to care intensely for what little of his family, his friends, his people, that had lived through the years.
Each season brought some new disaster, or calamity their way, Solane had gone out of his way to help wherever he could, taking the burdens of whatever errand needed attending to all so others could find even a simple moment of rest amidst the havoc . The only exception being Tangent. Her repeated insistence in rejecting her own needs, always walking the line between unconscious and hyper-focus, was the only thing on Vertumna that visibility irritated Solane. He had grown to find that girl an eyesore. A testament to the stubborn mindset that tore rifts in his colony.
The need to be busy, to be working, when what was needed was respite, time to process their losses and their loved ones long gone, even while the scars in their memory were still fresh.
As the years passed, and the colony found a suitable if shaky foundation on the planet, Solane could count many members of the colony as friends, even many of the old Helio crew. All except Tangent. In their adult lives, they only met when it came to work. When Sol needed to deliver the remains of his hunting quarry to the labs, or when Tangent needed a captured specimen to experiment on.
In that life, Solane had died a hunter. In that life, Tangent was a name that barely intersected his. In all of Solane’s adult life, Tangy was the one funeral he was absent for. He remembered an ugly thought bubbling to the surface of his memory when he heard the news of her, in all honesty, unsurprising case of cardiac arrest.
“It’s not like her passing was unexpected. She brought this onto herself, and it would’ve happened sooner rather than later.”