32. She’s Nice #3
At the end of the day, Reyna felt as if a weight had been lifted off her when she finally got the chance to leave her office.
After barely any sleep the night before, the Engineering emergency early that morning, Cael's dismissal and Charlie's promotion, and the emotional upheaval Reyna was trying to navigate, part of her felt that leaving her office tonight was akin to an immense relief.
Until she saw that Kess was waiting outside her office.
She was propped against the corridor wall opposite her door. Her arms were crossed, her silver-blue steady, and she was watching Reyna with the patience of someone who had decided a long time ago that Reyna was worth the wait.
Reyna stopped. "If this is about my markers—"
"It isn't," Kess said, lifting off the wall and letting her arms fall to her sides.
"If it's about the dismissal paperwork—"
"Filed. The clearance done." A slight pause. "Thorough."
"Then... what, Kess? What is it?"
Kess looked right at her, and Reyna knew the look.
This wasn't the ship's doctor or the friend who needled her for sport.
This was the oldest Kess, the one who had come aboard just before Reyna lost everything and had simply never left.
The woman standing here was the one who stayed through the losses and the dreadful nights and the mornings where the gold cost too much.
Reyna felt her face betray her. The pained longing of what she wanted so badly but was too afraid to say out loud. And Kess caught it, because she would. That's why she was Reyna's friend above all else.
"She seems nice, Rey."
Four words, and not a single one of them clinical.
Reyna didn't answer. She couldn't. She just stood in that corridor and held her breath. But she also held, with everything she had, the answer that was fighting its way out.
"Kess—"
"I'm not pushing you, I promise. I'm not asking you anything." Kess moved closer to Reyna. "I'm just telling you what I see." Kess looked into Reyna's face, her eyes shifting between Reyna's own. "And let it be known I'm telling you as your friend, not as the person who signs your medical reports."
And Reyna understood that this was not going to be one of their usual silences where Kess pressed a little and Reyna gave a little, and then they both went their ways with the real topic not even touched.
Reyna saw that Kess had pushed all of that aside. Now, she was just standing in the corridor, being the person who had known Reyna the longest and loved her the most stubbornly.
"She seems nice," Kess said again, softer. "And you look like someone I have not seen in a very long time."
Reyna's jaw worked before her eyes began to sting in a way that had nothing to do with her markers. Kess Pheras had just said out loud what Reyna had been refusing to say since a woman dropped out of the sky into Borran's kitchen and would not stop being so incredibly important.
"I can't," Reyna said, her voice catching. It came out before she could stop it, stripped of every wall she had spent the whole day rebuilding. "Kess, I just, I can't. Not again."
"I know."
"If I let this happen, and then I lose her—"
"I know, Rey."
"I won't survive it."
And there it was, out loud, spoken so quickly Reyna didn't have a chance to catch it before it was allowed to be out in the world. Reyna closed her eyes. "I barely survived Elena," she whispered. "I know I won't survive her, Kess."
Kess stepped in close, close enough that Reyna could see every fixed point of her silver-blue markings, held steady the way they always were since the day Kess walked onto this ship and chose never to leave.
"You didn't barely survive Elena," Kess said softly.
"You survived Elena completely, Reyna. You built a ship and a family in this crew.
You built a life, Rey, and you did all of it holding a color so hard it should have cracked you in two.
" Kess tilted down in order to get Reyna to open her eyes and look at her.
"But it never did. It never did because you are not a woman who 'barely' survives things, Reyna Solas.
" She held Reyna's eyes as Reyna let out a wet laugh.
Kess's hands came up and held Reyna's arms gently. "Listen, I'm not going to push you. I already said that. But, Rey, there is one thing I do need you to hear."
Reyna shut her eyes and nodded. "What?"
"Whatever you decide, I'm here. I'm here, and I'll be here, and I'll always be here, just as I've always been here. That will never change. You hear me?"
Reyna looked at her friend, her head tilting to the side in deep and profound appreciation. She nodded gently, and Kess squeezed her arms softly.
But Reyna knew they weren't done. Kess didn't move, instead waiting for Reyna, waiting for her as she always did.
Finally, Reyna knew what she wanted to say.
"She is nice." It was said barely above a breath, but it was also the closest she'd come to an admission in this whole conversation. It was the closest to an admission since Charlie Wickett had landed on the Emberkind.
Kess's face didn't change much, but something moved behind those pale green eyes, the same ones that had seen everything, something soft that Reyna had seen from her only once before, in the Med Bay after Elena, when Kess said nothing and stayed with Reyna until morning.
"Yeah," Kess said. "She is."