24. What We’ve Lost #5
Reyna realized that Jere and Elena would have exchanged one of their looks across the table in a moment like this, entirely insufferable. Suddenly, their absence pressed in, but not as sharply as it had in the past. And Reyna realized it was because Charlie was still there.
"Jere used it like it belonged to him," Reyna said softly, letting the emotion slip back in, at least a little. "Elena too, but usually only when she wanted me to stop arguing with her."
"Did it work?"
Reyna scoffed. "Almost never."
Charlie's smirk suddenly spread across her face for the first time Reyna had seen since the news of her aging was given.
"So," she began, the teasing in her voice returning as well.
"If I walk into your office tomorrow and say, 'Rey, I need authorization to recalibrate the secondary coolant routing because Cael has been personally victimizing the concept of efficiency,' I could possibly, maybe have a chance? "
"Possibly, with some discussion," Reyna replied with a soft laugh again.
"Yeah," Charlie said, the sound small and rough, almost a laugh herself. "I thought so."
The quiet came seeped back into their bubble slowly. Charlie looked down at her hands while Reyna looked at the place where Charlie's shoulder still touched hers.
"But you can," Reyna said quietly.
Charlie looked up. "I can what?"
"Call me Rey."
Charlie's face changed before she could hide it. Her eyes looked down at her bracelet before returning and focusing fully on Reyna. "Okay," she said gently, the word careful. "Rey," said softer, almost fragile.
Reyna heard the name in Charlie's voice, and something in her chest eased. in a way Reyna hadn’t expected. Somehow, hearing it now in Charlie's voice, careful and soft, was the first time the name had soothed her since Jere and Elena.
The ship's artificial dawn began without ceremony, a warm line of light creeping under the door.
The stars outside stayed unchanged, completely indifferent to the Emberkind's cycle schedules.
But inside the ship the systems would begin to shift from night to morning, and somewhere several decks away, the zero-shift crew would begin waking, taking their places.
Charlie noticed it first. Her shoulder lifted from Reyna's by the smallest measure, suddenly remembering its existence after a long time holding still. "Maybe I should go," she said, the words thin and lacking.
"Okay," Reyna said, though the answer felt strange in her mouth.
Charlie nodded but didn't make any move to stand. So, neither did Reyna.
For several seconds they sat with the word between them, agreed to in theory yet ignored in execution.
Then Charlie drew a breath and pushed herself up.
Reyna rose with her and knew the moment she did that it had been too quick to pass for courtesy.
But the truth was that if Charlie caught it, she let it go.
She only stood facing the viewport, the bracelet reflecting bright against her wrist in the softening light of the ship's dawn.
Suddenly, Reyna realized the room looked different to her now. It contained the same benches and the same wide curve of glass overlooking those same beautiful stars. But now Charlie had come apart here, she'd said Katie's name here.
Charlie had called her Rey here.
The room would hold these memories, Reyna knew, though she had no evidence for it. But she knew, in every future occurrence where she'd walked through the door, the memories would come rushing back.
She watched as Charlie suddenly turned toward the door and took two steps toward it. But then she stopped, looking back to where Reyna stood.
"Will you…" She began, and the hesitation in Charlie's voice made Reyna hold her breath.
Charlie Wickett, who had argued with her Chief Engineer, had told her crew they had been wrong about the ship's efficiency, and had questioned Coalition protocol as an outsider from a non-contact planet, suddenly seemed so unsure how to ask one question.
So Reyna gave her the silence, and patience, to find the words.
"Will you... will you be here tonight?" Then Charlie shook her head. "Or, I guess... tomorrow morning?"
It was a small question, but Reyna heard Charlie ask it like it wasn't. She wasn't asking about a schedule.
"Yes," Reyna said almost immediately, and she watched as Charlie's shoulders came down, just slightly. "I'll be here."
Something in Charlie's face settled, and this time Reyna didn't care that she felt it in her chest. "Okay," she said.
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 Qorrathi certainty.
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.