Page 215 of Every Almost

Reyna caught the words. It was a man's voice, low, and then it climbed. It kept climbing past the point where it should have stopped, gathering weight as it went, and Reyna's chest tightened around it, not loosening. She sat very still on the floor. She felt Charlie shift next to her and chanced a glance over. She was laying her head back against the shelf, her eyes open, looking up at the ceiling.

The song went on for a while, and Reyna listened to every word, every musical note. She heard the story of the two people in love, defying the guards and the guns on the wall. But she also listened to Charlie's breathing, how she took a deep breath when the music got louder.

Then the song ended, startling Reyna.

"I know. It's long," Charlie said with a soft laugh, breaking the silence immediately. "But I never seem to notice when I'm actually listening to it."

"To be honest, I was surprised when it was over," Reyna admitted.

"Really?" Charlie asked, completely innocent as she looked over at her. Reyna only nodded in response.

After that, neither of them moved for a few moments, their eyes locked on one another as the wire hung between them.

Charlie looked at her, open and unguarded, and Reyna felt that land somewhere she had kept walled off for a long time.

Hadn't she been careful? She was always careful! Yet, somehow, without her express permission, her walls had been breached anyway.

It was already so much bigger than it had any right to be, and that frightened her.

"It's a great song," Reyna said softly, breaking the silence.

"Yeah," Charlie said, her eyes moving between Reyna's. "Yeah, it is."

Reyna went backto her quarters to try and sleep. She needed to at least try.

But she ended up just laying in the dark, staring at the ceiling, willing herself to find sleep.

Eventually, she gave up, sitting up in her bed and staring at the wall instead of the ceiling. She rolled her eyes at herself.

"You've tackled some of the universe's deadliest animals. Sleep should be easy for you, Solas." It had been a long time since Reyna had talked to herself. But it had also been a long time since Reyna needed a pep talk.

As the minutes ticked by, she reached out and pulled out her datapad, figuring she could try and get some work done with the time she had. But as she looked over the reports Torvax had sent her, reviewed the messages still in her message center, and reviewed requests from various departments aboard the ship, she realized her focus was useless.

As she stared at her datapad's native screen, she saw something there that she'd never opened before. She stared at the software program for Tavi's music system. After tonight, hearing Charlie's most impactful song, she knew this library had been filled for months of music from Charlie's world. Yet she had never once opened it herself.

So, she did.

She scrolled through the songs. Songs with names like "Elvira," "De Do Do Do," and "Hungry Like the Wolf." She wasn't looking for anything in particular. Frankly, she didn't know what she was looking for at all. She figured she was doing what Charlie had taught her just tonight. She was looking for a song that brought a feeling, letting the pull of a title carry her toward something she couldn't put to words. Words she couldn't find because part of her wasn't ready for them to be real.

But then she found it. By title alone. She had no idea what it was about or how the music would sound, yet somehow she knew it was the song that would give her words. Words in the silence of her quarters were safe to be expressed, at least for now.

"With or Without You" by U2.

Something about that title is what truly caught her, before she even heard the sound. It was the impossibility folded into the conjunction. How both conditions were present, both true all at once. Someone you can't live with and someone you can't live without, all held in a single breath.

She pressed play.

The sound came out of her datapad, the intro bright and ringing, building on itself in long shimmering lines like starlight through the viewport. Then the voice arrived, raw and climbing and enormous, and Reyna sat alone in the dark and listened to a man from Charlie's world sing the exact interior of what she had been carrying, and understood, finally, all the way down, why a species would invent an art form for this. Because she found the feelings that had outgrown language. And suddenly, she felt so desperate to find a place for these feelings that it was clear they could only be kept here, in this exact song, the one that she'd found in Charlie's music, on Tavi's software, in her quarters in the middle of a night cycle where she couldn't sleep becauseCharlie had shared the most impactful song in her existence. And Reyna felt it all.

She pressed her hand flat to her chest as it tightened against her ribcage. She held it there and let the song do what her discipline could not.

She played it again. And again. Three times, four, in the dark, alone, in her quarters where no one could see her markings, and yet she held gold anyway.

Except there was no one to hold it for, not in her quarters. She closed her eyes and let her datapad fall to her lap as her hands gripped the bedding. She told herself she could let the color go, that here, where no one was, she could let it rage through pulses and colors with abandon.

But she didn't do it. Instead she sat with her fists around her sheets, her markings holding gold, her jaw set, and she did not let go, because as long as no one saw it, it was not yet true.

I can't do this again,she thought.I can’t let myself care for…