Page 198 of Every Almost

Her memories rushed back to the first window she saw on the Emberkind, that first time she'd pressed her palms to the glass and grinned like a lunatic because the impossible hadopened around her. That day, some part of her had found wonder before fear could stop it.

She tried to find that again now. But instead, her reflection just stood above the stars.

She pulled her hand back, backing away from the viewport, and pushed forward. She pushed past the narrow service alcove, made a right at the junction with the flickering wall seam Tavi kept meaning to fix, then down the long corridor where the lights dimmed before the final turn.

Charlie stopped in her steps. The Observation Room was just around the corner.

Her first instinct was to turn back immediately. Her subconscious arrival brought to light something she was too weak to confront. The room had been anything but neutral for weeks. Between the bench, the stars, and the goddamn Captain's voice at 0300, Charlie knew this room was large enough to contain silence from noise, and the noise inside her own head.

And it was then, barefoot and shaking in the corridor, she understood with terrible clarity that she had not been wandering.

Her subconscious had been coming here.

Charlie tookone step very slowly, followed by another, and then rounded the corner.

The Observation Room door was already open. Starlight poured in through the multiple viewports surrounding the room, pale silver laying itself across the floor and the benches. Space filled the glass from edge to edge. No planets, no moons.

But Charlie wasn't looking out at the vastness of space. She was looking at the bench. The one that had welcomed Charlie every night around 0300.

Reyna was there.

She sat on that same bench, still in uniform, which meant she had either not gone to bed or had never intended to. Her markings were steady gold; her hands rested in her lap. She faced the stars, but she did not lose herself in them. One shoulder was angled toward the door, the space beside her left open.

Charlie stopped in the doorway.

Reyna turned.

For a second, neither of them moved. Charlie noticed how the starlight caught across Reyna's face. She should have looked like the Captain, still in her uniform, sitting with her hands folded as a proper way to wait inside disaster.

But Charlie watched as the look on her face changed before she could stop it.

A single breath, then a shift in her eyes. Her mouth softened, a change that didn't align with command, duty, or any concern Reyna could report to Vondra. It was the face of someone caught a half-second before she meant to be, the look of having waited for something and still not being ready when it arrived.

Reyna had known. It was that simple. She didn't know everything. She wouldn't have any idea about Katie's face in the dream, the streak of white hair that gave her age away, or even the terrible kindness that was shown to Charlie. But whatever compelled her, it was enough to come to the place at 0300, enough to leave the space beside her open.

Charlie looked at that space on the bench, and the thing she'd been holding all night started to give.

Reyna's gaze moved over her. Charlie could only imagine what she thought when she took in her bare feet, the overshirtpulled wrongly at one shoulder, and the half-loose hair with strands loose down her neck. She watched Reyna take all of it in, and she didn't ask whether Charlie was all right. Instead, she looked at Charlie and understood the question would only make it worse, setting it down unasked. At the realization, Charlie felt her throat begin to close.

Reyna stood, just enough to meet her from across the room, one hand lifting at her side and then going still, as though she'd started to reach and stopped herself, leaving the distance for Charlie to close.

That reach, the one Reyna decided not to finish, almost undid her.

"Hi," Reyna said softly.

The word crossed the room, striking Charlie with a force that the coil she'd been holding tight since Med Bay began to unravel.

Charlie opened her mouth, but no sound came out.

Reyna's hand opened at her side, her fingers releasing from its grip, like the start of a reach she wasn't sure she would go through with yet. It was small; too small for anyone else to catch. But Charlie caught it, along with the breath Reyna didn't quite finish.

It wasn't a surrender. It was one step short of it, and that step blurred Charlie's vision.

Reyna was looking at her now, her gaze stripped of the usual wariness she showed others. She wasn't the displaced human, or even an Emberkind crew member. Reyna was looking at Charlie. Just Charlie, barefoot in the doorway with her sister's ninety-year-old face still trapped behind her eyes.

Reyna took one tentative step toward her. Just one.

And that was where Charlie finally came apart. She felt her face break before she understood it was happening, her last piece of composure marking the complete loss of her control.