“I’m staying.”
The truth of it drops hard.
Jamie’s face crumples.
“And I need you to be brave enough to go anyway,” Jack says, and now he’s crying openly, not trying to hide it, not pretending strength means the absence of tears. “Please, Jamie. Please. For me. For them.”
The rift shrinks again. A loud, tearing sound runs across the sky, like reality is protesting the strain of holding itself open this long.
Every nerve in my body lights up.
This is it. This is the moment.
My whole life tilts.
I could go.
The thought isn’t soft anymore. It’s not wistful. It’s not theory. It’s a real, brutal possibility with edges and urgency and consequence. If I move now—if I make the decision and run and jump and trust the impossible one more time—I could be on the other side before anyone stops me. I could smell Earth air again. I could stand under a normal sky. I could stop being completely other.
And Varek?—
The bond hits me so hard, I nearly lose my footing.
Need. Fear. Focus. A terrible, magnificent steadiness at the centre of violence. He’s still fighting. Still alive. Still mine in whatever way that word belongs to us now. He can’t know whatI’m looking at in detail, but he knows enough. He must know enough. Every scrap of me is lit up like a beacon.
My hand goes to my chest by instinct.
Useless.
As if pressing my palm there will help me hear him better.
What I need is him standing in front of me, eyes on mine, making me hold the truth of my own heart. What I have instead is distance and urgency and a door in the sky that isn’t going to wait for anyone’s grand romantic resolution.
I think of Earth.
I think of Varek.
I think of ten years of surviving just to one day maybe have the chance to leave.
I think of the way home has been an ache I carried so long, it felt like a second skeleton under my skin.
I think of his hands on me.
His voice in the dark.
How he learned my boundaries and held them sacred even when it hurt him. How he listened. How he chose me every time I made myself difficult to choose. And the way he kissed me like the whole bloody universe narrowed down to one point and I was it.
The rift tears inward again.
“Pax.”
Sonny’s voice.
Close. Alarmed. Knowing.
I turn my head and meet his eyes.
He sees it.
