24. What We’ve Lost #4
"I have carried it every day since, and she carried the fork.
She had it on her, the day she went down to the surface on the mission that went wrong.
It was the only thing that could have pulled her home.
" Reyna felt her voice stay even as something bubbled to the surface.
"The fork had been mine. I calibrated it, I made that PERS system work myself.
I set every anchor protocol on this ship, and now, well, I know the whole generation was flawed.
But I handed her the one thing that was supposed to keep her safe, the one thing that was meant to bring her back, and I—"
Reyna stopped.
She'd said too much. She heard it in the quiet that followed, and in how close she'd come to handing over the rest. I gave her my anchor and it didn't bring her back.
She had never said that to anyone. She wasn't going to start tonight, on a bench, to a woman who'd come here carrying enough of her own.
So she closed it. "It was a long time ago," she said again, and let the sentence close the door on the subject.
But, to Reyna's surprise, Charlie didn't take the opening Reyna expected her to take. She didn't ask the next question or fill the silence with something kind or playful. Reyna watched as Charlie just looked at her for a moment, steady, like she'd heard the entire sentence Reyna refused to finish.
Then Charlie just let it go. She didn't push or press. Instead, she just sat with Reyna on that bench, under the stars, and made room for the quiet.
Somewhere in it, Charlie's knee came to rest against Reyna's. It wasn't big. In fact, Reyna wasn't even sure it was intentional. But it felt small, just an ordinary fact of sitting close to someone, asking for nothing.
Reyna realized it was the same thing she'd been doing for Charlie all night. Listening, sitting close, asking for nothing. They both sat there, in the room surrounded by stars, leaving room for the other without barriers.
Reyna didn't move. She didn't want to.
"What happened?" Charlie asked, breaking the silence. "When she disappeared?"
Reyna let her hand close around the pen, closing her eyes and breaking her focus on where Charlie was sitting.
"She was on a surface mission and the equipment failed.
The PERS system began pulling members of our team back.
Everyone returned, one by one. Jere, the rest of the crew.
" She looked down at the pen. "But Elena didn't. She saved a crew member who couldn't get the PERS activated on the surface.
She did exactly what she needed to as a Captain. "
Reyna paused, and Charlie waited. No pressure, no insistence. Quiet and calm and present. Nothing more.
"We searched for days. On the fourth day, Jere told me we had to call it.
I told him no." The memory rushed to the front of her mind, the sounds of it coming back, even her own voice on the bridge and how it was too loud.
"I did not take it well. I know I shouted at Jere.
The crew around us had gone silent while Jere held me.
Right there, on the bridge. It was with him that I finally understood Elena was not coming home.
Moments later, I gave the order to end the search for my captain. My best friend."
Charlie didn't speak.
"Elena was classified missing," Reyna continued. "Not dead. That matters, officially."
"And unofficially?" Charlie asked gently.
"Unofficially, I spent thirteen years learning that not knowing can be crueler than gone."
Charlie's face tightened.
"Jere and I worked through all of it together, after Elena disappeared.
But as a Qorrathi, his species has something they call a soul match.
It's technically a biological recognition that happens when their bodies suddenly know they've found their true match in a partner.
" Reyna began to laugh softly. "For a long time, he thought that I might be his.
" Her laugh quieted as her mouth softened.
"But he was wrong, which he eventually informed me with great theatrical solemnity.
" Reyna rolled her eyes and saw Charlie smile gently.
"He told me I wasn't his match because I was his family.
" The words landed differently here, after Reyna found out everything about Katie.
"That we loved each other in an entirely different way, but no less important.
At least, for that time." Reyna took a deep breath.
"But then, ten months later, on a mission where he had to take on the shape of a human, he found his soul match. On Earth."
Charlie went very still.
"Yes, exactly, a non-contact planet, where he could not explain who he was, where every law that protects your world also took him from us. From me."
Charlie's knee suddenly shifted away, and Reyna felt the absence immediately in ways she could not explain.
Instead, she kept going. "His shuttle came back without him.
I read his transmission in Elena's office, standing at her desk, because even ten months later I still would not call it mine.
He apologized and told me he could not come back.
He told me to keep going, to be the captain Elena and he believed I could be. "
"What did you do?" Charlie asked.
"I went to Borran's kitchen, actually."
Charlie laughed, a real one, right out loud. "Really?"
"Yes," Reyna answered, but let her voice go solemn.
"But not for the reason you may think." Charlie's expression softened again.
"There used to be three settings at his counter.
After Elena, there were two. Then, that night, there was only one.
" She took a deep breath. "He fed me and I ate because refusing him would have taken more strength than I had.
But, after that, the ship still needed a captain.
So I kept the consoles lit and the stations manned and the ship rescuing what Elena, Jere, and I built it to rescue. "
Charlie looked at her, close enough that Reyna felt the need to meet her eyes. "That's not the same as being okay."
"No," Reyna said. "It is not."
Charlie's eyes were on her, steady through the redness. But there was no pity. Instead, Reyna saw recognition.
Reyna looked away first, moving her gaze over the stars because they were easier to look at. But also Charlie had a way of looking at her that made it near impossible to look away.
Beside her, Charlie shifted. Reyna expected distance immediately since that was the Kaelari way. It would have been appropriate.
Kaelari grief had an architecture and at its center was space.
Space to process, distance to allow for one to overcome the feelings that could threaten the Kaelari holding.
Her species did not crowd pain. Instead, they waited at the threshold and let the grieving person decide when, how, or even whether to invite you in.
But Charlie did not know that. She couldn't have. And so, she moved closer. Only an inch or two, but enough that her shoulder pressed into Reyna's.
And Reyna stopped breathing.
The contact was not accidental this time. It was clear and poignant. Charlie had specifically aimed it with the same care she used fitting a component into place.
Charlie didn't say anything, and Reyna realized it was that which made it different overall. Not the touch, though that was something all on its own. No, it was that Charlie didn’t explain it or ask permission after the fact, she didn't fill the space with words.
She just simply put herself where she had assumed she was needed, answering Reyna's grief by just staying.
Reyna blinked slowly, and when she opened her eyes, she saw that the stars hadn’t changed, the ship still moved. But she felt the space beside her no longer feel empty anymore.
Reyna did not know how long they sat that way. Eventually Charlie shifted, only enough to ease the pressure between them, her hand resting on the bench. Reyna raised her eyes to Charlie.
"Rey," she said.
Charlie looked to her. Reyna had not meant to say the name like that.
But she figured the simplest explanation was the best. "Jere called me Rey first," she said.
"At the academy, the first night we met, in fact.
He'd known me less than five minutes and somehow discovered something sacred before I even knew it to be.
" Reyna laughed softly. "I really should have corrected him. "
"But you didn't," Charlie stated.
"No," Reyna said, looking to Charlie.
"Why not?"
Because he had said it as if he already knew her.
Because no one had ever claimed familiarity with her without trying to take something from her.
Because he had made the shortening sound less like a liberty and more like a place at a table.
She didn’t say any of that, though she didn't know why. "I told myself it was efficient."
Charlie's brows furrowed. "But was it?"
"Technically, yes," Reyna said.
"There," Charlie said, raising her hand and pointing at Reyna. "There it is."
Reyna looked at Charlie with a confused expression. "What?"
"That... thing you do," Charlie stated matter-of-factly.
"'Thing I do?'" Reyna repeated, a single eyebrow rising.
"Where you make something sound emotional, real, and then you whip it upside down, as if placed under logistics, so nobody can accuse you of being a person."
Reyna stared at Charlie blankly. She noticed her voice was still rough, but something threaded through it now. Warmth.
As Reyna stared at her, Charlie looked back, exhausted and pale and somehow still Charlie enough to have said it.
A laugh slipped out of Reyna before she could stop it. Not big, just one breath of sound, startled loose from somewhere too close to the ache. Reyna watched as Charlie's eyes changed when she heard it, and the laugh softened into silence.