I'm intrigued by your worldbuilding, and would be interested to learn more about the other Kith species. (Great word for the concept, too!)

I'm sliiightly dubious about the psychology in play here—I think most of us naturally seek out human companionship when we need it (humans are common on starships when this is set, yes?), and know our own needs well enough to ensure they'll be met, especially if we know we're going into a situation of hardship (i.e. a long space voyage). I also know that our real-world space program vets its astronauts with extreme care to ensure physical and mental stability, and I wouldn't expect future space exploration to take place without a similar level of care. Plus, if we take zero responsibility for looking after ourselves and letting others know of our needs, that's on us and no one else.

That said, individuals are individual. I believe that something like this could happen as an unfortunate collision of personal and systemic screw-ups. I very much like that everyone takes steps to understand each other better and correct their mistakes at the end.

A couple non-story notes on accessibility: I read this on mobile, and it's a good thing, because I got a plain, unformatted version of the text. I don't think I would have tried to read it through the rather small, fancy font you're using. It's pretty, but that sort of thing is best saved for headers. At the very least, consider making the text bigger.

Also, the tags only appear at the bottom of the post. I'm not sure, but I suspect that making people scroll over text that may contain triggers to find the warnings for them may discourage folks who have triggers.

~Neshomeh

I like the way you handled truly alien aliens – not so unfamiliar with things like feelings and love as to be incapable of understanding, but different enough for there to be some miscommunications. I also liked the heartwarming message about humanity. Overall, I think you did a fine job.

Also I thought we were smarter than to tie a knife to a cleaning robot and get attached to it, but speaking as the guy who got emotionally attached to a clear marble rock thing, I can't complain.