Page 206 of Every Almost

Charlie looked like she might say something else. But then her mouth tugged, and what came out instead was almost a smile. "Try to sleep at some point," she teased, before her expression softened, her gaze holding Reyna steady. "Rey."

Reyna felt the impact more than she could have ever expected. She didn't know if Charlie saw it. So, instead, she decided to take a path closer to their teasing, an avenue Reyna could navigate with more ease than whatever this was.

Reyna lifted one eyebrow. "I believe that advice applies more urgently to the barefoot engineer who wandered half the ship after a nightmare."

Charlie glanced down at her bare feet as if surprised to find them in that state. "Huh. That was poor footwear planning."

"Among other questionable decisions."

Charlie's eyes raised back to Reyna, a single eyebrow rising. "Wow. I fall apart in front of you one time and suddenly you're critiquing my emergency wardrobe."

"One must maintain standards on a Coalition vessel, Wickett."

Charlie looked at her for a long moment before her expression softened into something quieter, the teasing slipping beneath them again. Charlie sighed before speaking. "Goodnight, Rey."

It was almost morning, but Charlie said it just like that anyway. Because neither of them had slept, and they'd spent a full night cycle on a bench, saying things they'd never expected to feel comfortable enough to say. And Reyna understood completely. "Goodnight, Charlie."

Charlie nodded once, then turned and walked through the open door.

Reyna listened to Charlie's footsteps as she walked down the corridor outside, slow at first, then steadier as she moved further away. Charlie did not turn back, and suddenly Reyna was grateful for that. If Charlie had turned back...

The footsteps faded in the distance and the Observation Room settled. Reyna remained standing until she could no longer hear Charlie at all.

Then, she sat back down on the bench. The space beside her was empty again and Reyna realized that should have been familiar. It had always been empty, for years, in fact. The emptiness beside her had always been here after the nightmares, and even in Borran's kitchen after Jere's letter, or in Elena's office where she'd waited so long until she felt she knew how to sit in it.

But suddenly, this was different. The emptiness was no longer empty, it seemed to have a shape now. Now, Reyna saw that Charlie left an outline in the place next to her. Not a ghost or an absence in the way Elena and Jere were absent in her life now. Instead, it thrummed as something alive enough to leave the space yet still linger.

Jere's voice came back to her, as it so often did when the room grew too quiet.

You have a soul match too.

Reyna almost laughed because the thought was unbearable, and Jere had, of course, left her with questions on what he could have meant. There was no biological signal, no Qorrathicertainty. She was Kaelari. How would she ever be able to find what it was he knew with as certainty as the moment he found it?

She thought about Charlie asking if she would be here again tonight, and the relief in Charlie's shoulders when Reyna answered that she would. She thought about how her own answer had felt less like reassurance and more like...

I'll be here, she'd said it to Charlie. But she was realizing she had meant it for herself too.

The star pen she was still holding warmed in her hand. Outside, the Emberkind continued waking. Her ship and her crew, her day ahead of her with all its reports and repairs and the inevitable possibility that Reyna would feel the exhaustion hit before she'd even hear Borran's first complaint about the vents in his kitchen.

She began to think that she should move. Begin her day and start her rounds, meet Torvax before he'd wonder why she wasn't in her quarters.

But she didn't move. She sat a moment longer, letting herself occupy a place in herself that she realized she left open for Charlie. Her eyes closed as she listened to the ship hum around her.

TWENTY-FIVE

FOREVER YOUNG

Charlie sleptuntil the midday cycle turned over.

It hadn't been the plan but when she'd gotten back to her quarters, she'd sat on the edge of the bed intent on staying awake and going about her day, because sleeping could lead to dreaming about Katie aging in a corridor she couldn't run fast enough to reach. But the exhaustion hit her immediately and pulled her down onto the pillow with the authority of knowing she needed it without her consent, and she was asleep before she could even argue against it.

And gratefully, she didn't dream.

When she woke, the ship's lighting had climbed to midday peak. She padded across her room, noticing someone had left a tray just inside her door. She immediately knew it was Borran because the napkin had been folded into a shape that was either a swan or an extremely confident triangle, and because the bowl held the grain porridge he'd started making after Charlie had made the mistake of describing oatmeal to him. Borran hadn't knocked or asked if she was hungry, he had just decided she needed feeding and made it happen.

As she ate, she thought about the night before. Not the Med Bay or the numbers, though they were present in her mind regardless.

Mostly she thought about Reyna.