Page 212 of Every Almost

“Okay,” she said, quietly. “That... that means a lot. Thank you, Rey.”

Reyna looked back out at the stars, but her shoulder stayed exactly where it was against Charlie’s. “Don’t thank me yet. I haven’t done anything.”

“Yes, you did.” Charlie said this with intent beyond what she was willing to admit. She didn’t say the obvious thing, which was that Reyna had taken the worst question Charlie had ever asked out loud and answered it by turning it into a problem she could solve.

Charlie was beginning to understand that this was Reyna’s whole language, solving problems. She just hadn’t learned yet how much it meant when Reyna decided to stay for you.

After that, they both came back the next night. And the next, resuming their pattern from before. The Observation Room became theirs because of their repetition. It became theirs by the slow accumulation of nights on the same bench in the same starlight, talking around what was growing between them, both of them refusing to be anywhere else at three in the morning.

Some nights they talked for hours. Charlie told Reyna about Caltech, about the professor who’d said she thought like an engine and meant it as the highest compliment he had ever given a student. Reyna told her about Novahall, about the two-truths exercise and the table Elena had claimed with a tray and a dare. They passed the stories back and forth, each piece handed over without being asked, insights into each of their souls, shared for the first time with someone they each wanted to know.

Some nights they didn’t talk at all. They just sat and the silence was more than enough.

Somewhere in the accumulation of those nights, Charlie’s nightmare stopped. The corridor with Katie aging at the end of it came less, and then it stopped altogether. Charlie woke in the mornings to the ship’s hum and the smell of whatever Borranhad decided was for breakfast. She did still think about the math, the bracelet on her wrist tying her to a sister whose time ran three times faster than her own now. The weight of that concept hadn’t gone anywhere.

But it had stopped being the only thing she was holding.

Because if Charlie was being honest, she was holding the Observation Room now, the bench, the steady gold of a captain who was there with her at 0300, not asking why Charlie kept coming, every night, because she didn’t need to, even on the nights she arrived back inside her quarters before dawn. She also held the weight of the Emberkind around her as well, the parts that mattered like Tavi’s hands going warm around hers when she’d said the worst of it out loud, or Maren’s steady hand on her shoulder, or even how the two of them sat with her grief and didn’t flinch or leave during a moment she didn’t realize how much she needed them.

Reyna had caught Charlie in the dark. And her friends were the ones keeping her upright in the daylight while the wound began to close.

And somewhere in the small hours between cycles, in a bay that smelled of coolant, in a room that smelled of nothing but starlight, Charlie Wickett stopped surviving the Emberkind and started living on it.

Cael blockedthree of her repair requests that week. Not just denials but full-on blocks. Charlie realized this was worse, because a denial could be appealed. Instead, he left them sitting in the approval queue, waiting indefinitely while the systems they addressed kept quietly degrading.

Charlie routed the most urgent one through to Maren who had the authority to flag a safety priority, skipping Cael's queue entirely. It was the same maneuver she'd learned as a woman at Caltech. She was good at it, even though she hated being good at it. She hated more that on this ship, the one place that had started to feel like somewhere she belonged, she still had to be good at finding her way around people with authority who underestimated her.

But in the background, Maren flagged it without a word, her shimmer flickering every time she noticed, and every time Charlie had to route through her, filing the request and the reason and the date, the way she'd been filing Cael's failures for seven years. Noethans didn't forget. And a ledger that long would eventually be read out loud, whether they wanted to or not.

PART FOUR

SKIN AND STARS

TWENTY-SIX

THE LANGUAGE SHE SPEAKS

Reyna had foundreasons to be in Engineering twice that week, and both times her feet had carried her to Charlie's console first.

She had a reason, of course. She always did.

Cael had been slipping for months, and there was no harm in a commanding officer taking an interest in her own engine bay. In fact, in this case, it was even true. And to be honest, that was the irritating part. It was the truth, but deep down, Reyna knew it still wasn't the full reason.

She went to Charlie's console first because she wanted to. It was just that simple. She could try and cover it in oversight all she liked. In fact, Kess would probably have several words for it, most of them delivered with a raised brow.

What began as checking up though became a bigger problem, one Reyna was navigating as Captain now instead of just wanting to be at Charlie's console. And Cael had noticed. His markings gave him away, the sullen blue-green of a man who couldn't decide if he was angry or ashamed. He gave Reyna a wide berth in the bay now, and she let him. She kept note of hismissteps but also had other things to watch. Not a single one of them were him.

Charlie told her the next Earth Night had been scheduled. She told herself she was going to go for the crew. And even though that was true, it also wasn't the full reason.

Earth Night had thinnedto just the regulars by the sixth one. Orion had planted himself near the shelves, close to Charlie, but made no move to the center of the room. Reyna watched as he kept glancing at Charlie, as though something he's been waiting for is really about to happen. Whatever Charlie had told Orion beforehand, he'd plainly been looking forward to her telling the rest of them. And as soon as Charlie began to speak, Reyna understood why. Charlie was handing the Emberkind crew something close and personal. But this crew, especially this group of regulars, had become hers over these last months. Reyna saw that Orion had the best view in the room for it, and he looked like he wouldn't trade it for anything.

Tavi sat on the floor near the front, elbows on his knees, tipped toward Charlie the way he always did when he couldn't stop listening to her. It was the same look he had when Charlie talked about baseball.

Borran stood over the spread he'd laid out, minding it and the people eating it in equal measure.

Selowen sat in the good chair, as she had since the second Earth Night. Since then, no one had ever been rash enough to contest it.

Reyna decided to lean against the shelves behind the rest of the group attending. If it happened to face Charlie directly, well, that was between her and the shelf.