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“I see you believe this,” Khoth said with a nod. “You are training him. You can best assess his piloting and your--your comfort level with him.” He still did not agree with what she was saying about Jack, but it felt like an argument to have at another time after they had settled old differences. “But it seems we are off track. I came here in the hopes that we could discuss what happened between us when I made the decision to--”

“Insult me?”

“To… yes, to insult you in order to end our friendship,” he said stiffly.

She snorted. “Which would have protected me as you betrayed the Alliance in your oh so spectacular fashion.”

“Yes, but you have already told me that was in error. You would never have chosen to stay with the Alliance,” he said as her lifted eyebrow went higher. “Yet I do wish to apologize for the insults I--”

“No,” she cut him off.

“No?” he asked, tilting his head to the side.

“No, I won’t let you apologize, because you believed what you said. On some level at least. Maybe the level that you’re leaning into here,” she said.

“That is not true. I indicated by word and deed that I did not respect you. That you were somehow lesser. That I would not ally myself with you,” he stated. “But I do respect you. You are my equal. You are my… friend.”

“You can actually believe two things that are completely opposed to one another at the same time. There should be some dissonance to it, but I think for Thaf’ell it’s quite easy to do,” she said and grabbed a long, red rope and took a bite out of it. She offered him one. “Liquorice?”

“No thank you. Jace already required me to partake of too much of this junk food.” He shook his head and the lack of clacking selchitte sounded louder in here than anywhere else so far.

“We’re indulging while we can though the Osiris is learning to make space paste taste almost like Slim Jims,” she said as she chewed speculatively. “I like my sugar and fat pure.”

Khoth tried to bring the conversation back around again to their disagreement. “Flight-Commander… Thammah, I do not believe those things I said to you in the hangar bay.”

She focused on him. “You’ve changed.”

He blinked, confused by her non sequitur. “Since when?”

“Continually, I think, since Daesah was captured. After that, in human parlance, you had no fucks left to give. You abandoned all the Thaf’ell ways to do what was right,” she said with a crooked smile. “Then you came here and were determined to prove yourself a good Thaf’ell, but then you met Jace. And again, the no-fucks-left-to-give-Khoth came out once more and you did what was right. You discovered your mother’s plot against humanity and this--”

“That is not another Khoth. It is me,” he stated. “I am the same Khoth.”

“I think it is you too. The real you. The you that you would have been if the Thaf’ell training hadn’t gotten to you. The you that you would have been if your mother and father hadn’t been in the positions they were. If they were poets instead of warriors and justiciars,” she said sadly.

“This real me,” he touched his own chest, “does not believe the things I said to you.”

“But the other you, the Khoth-who’s-a-superior-Thaf’ell does believe those things,” she corrected. “That Khoth is still there. It’s what makes you look at Jack and automatically think he’s lesser and that I must have hit my head to want him over two random Thaf’ell pilots.”

“Logic is--”

“Stop! Oh, by the gods, you must stop with that!” she cried and covered her head as if trying to hide from it herself.

“I do not understand your aversion to my Xa.”

“Because your Xa is aligned with the other Khoth! The Khoth who could think of all those cutting, awful, but true for Thaf’ell things you said to me,” she told him. “That Khoth cannot win out or we’re all in trouble.”

His forehead bunched up. “I do not understand.”

She leaned forward. Her elbows resting on her knees. She put her hands together as if in prayer. “Jace’s whole plan is to create a crew who are not all one thing. Each individual will have pluses and minuses. And he must be able to evaluate those cleanly.”

“My Xa will be very useful in that--”

“Not if it is infected by Thaf’ell superiority!” She shook her head. “Not if your Xa makes you believe what they told you instead of what is really there. Think about what we were told about humans. Is that true of them?”

He grimaced. Of course humanity did have some of the qualities that his mother and the other Thaf’ell painted them with. But those they had exaggerated and they had missed so many other qualities that were good. He knew this. Those who spoke of humans like this, and who had met them, were doing so because they either wanted humanity to be viewed badly by the rest of the Alliance or were simply too blinded to see them otherwise.

He could tell Thammah that people who spoke this way were not using their Xa. But he had assumed they were. He had taken their word for it. Only coming here to Earth and being forced to interact with humanity had changed his mind. But doing those same things hadn’t changed his mother’s.