Epilogue
Declan
Six Months Later
I made it to Vaeron’s grave without the cane.
It waited beside the cabin door in case I changed my mind, which Doctor Keller would have called responsible planning and I called an insult.
The snow had melted two months ago, leaving the path soft with pine needles and last year’s leaves.
Every step pulled at muscles still learning their jobs, but my legs held all the way to the rise above the lake.
Avena followed close enough to catch me and far enough to pretend she wasn’t planning to.
“Your right knee is compensating for weakness in your left hip,” she said.
“Good morning to you, too.”
“It was good morning when you ate breakfast. It is now nearly midday.”
“Earth has flexible greetings.”
“Earth has imprecise greetings.”
Her voice carried the same formal displeasure she had once used to criticize my coffee in a cabin neither of us believed was real.
Now she stood behind me in jeans, boots, and one of my old flannel shirts with the sleeves rolled past her elbows.
The midday sun caught in her loose white hair while the breeze blew strands across her face.
Blue light traced her temples, and a thin line of pink had already appeared along her throat.
Some things about Earth had been easy for Avena.
She loved weather, open windows, and grocery stores large enough to offer twenty-seven versions of coffee creamer which she declared made my terrible coffee bearable.
Other things remained incomprehensible. She distrusted toasters, believed every government form had been written as a test of character and still stopped speaking whenever someone did a double take at her white hair and striking purple eyes.
Khevari who weren’t soldiers were not common and there were many people who were still suspicious of her.
It made me crazy, but Avena refused to let me fight every stranger who stared.
“You cannot threaten everyone who looks at me,” she said.
“I haven’t threatened anyone.”
“Yesterday, you asked the grocer if he wanted to keep staring with both his eyes.”
“I was just making conversation.”
She rolled her eyes at me, a very human habit she’d picked up that never failed to make me smile.
I held out my hand.
She took it and walked the last few feet beside me. And there it was.
VAERON OF THE FIRST HOUSE
HE RECOGNIZED ALL HUMANITY
He had lived twenty-three days on Earth.
Long enough to see the lake beneath real snow.
Long enough to claim Grandpa’s chair as superior to every piece of Dominion furniture ever designed.
He also complained that human tea required too much water for too little result and sent one message through the resistance channel to the granddaughter who had saved his compass.
Ilyra’s answer reached us four hours before his death.
I will keep asking.
Vaeron died while the sun came up over the frozen lake with a peaceful smile on his face.
No alarm rang. No machine stole him before we understood what was happening.
His heart simply stopped beneath Avena’s hand, and he left the world knowing exactly where he was.
And who he was. We buried him beneath the pines three days later.
Grief had not become smaller since then, but it had changed shape.
The first weeks, it filled every room. Now, it waited in specific places: Grandpa’s chair, the World’s Greatest Fisherman mug he drank his tea from every morning while complaining about it, sitting next to the ugly fish mug we’d found in a cupboard.
She laid the yellow flowers on top of the stone before resting her fingers against it, in a sort of reverence.
“The first transmission window begins tomorrow,” she said.
“He’d complain we took too long.”
“He would be correct.”
“You don’t have to agree with him every time, you know.”
“Death does not make his conclusions less accurate.”
I laughed. The sound no longer ended in a cough. That accomplishment had taken nine weeks.
Recovery had not happened in a clean line.
The last internal respiratory connection came out after eleven days, but my lungs needed support for another month.
I first stood in the cabin’s front room with three people holding me upright and Avena directly in front of me.
Four seconds left me shaking. She reacted as if I had crossed another galaxy.
By the end of the second month, I could reach the porch with a walker.
In the fourth, I made it down the steps.
Two dormant neural leads remained near the base of my skull because Keller and the Janus engineers had not found a safe way to remove them.
They belonged to me now, as much as every scar the Dominion had returned with my body.
The first time Avena kissed me outside the cabin construct, I still wore nasal oxygen and could barely lift my hand to cup her face. She asked permission, waited for my answer, and then asked again because my pulse had jumped wildly.
Her real mouth was warmer than the one I remembered. Less perfect but more at the same time. Her lips trembled when they touched mine. And made all of me shake.
The first time we went farther happened late in the fourth month, after I could cross the bedroom without the walker but before my body stopped punishing me for the effort.
Rain tapped against the windows. Avena stood near the bed in one of my shirts, watching me finish the short trip from the door as if I were attempting another escape from the Dominion.
“You are fatigued,” she said.
“I’m interested.”
“Those conditions can exist simultaneously.”
“You’ve been waiting all day to use that against me.”
Gold flickered under her skin. “Only since breakfast.”
I sat on the edge of the mattress and held out my hand.
She crossed the room, but instead of taking it, she lowered herself in front of me until we were eye to eye.
Her attention moved over my face, my breathing, and the unsteady muscles in my legs.
I knew what she saw. For years, other people had read my body as a set of functions.
Avena was trying to make sure she did not do the same thing for kinder reasons.
“Ask me what I want,” I said.
“What do you want?”
“Help me with the shirt. Not as a patient.”
Her fingers found the first button. “As what?”
“The man who loves you.”
Everything beneath her skin went still. The next breath shook when it left her.
“I love you, too,” she said.
I had imagined hearing it in the cabin, where every touch came through a field and every promise might vanish with the room. The real words were quieter. They entered ordinary air in a breath and lingered. Calm and steady and right.
Avena unbuttoned the rest of my shirt slowly. The interfaces were gone, but pale circles remained across my chest and abdomen. A longer scar curved around my side toward the place where the Dominion conduit had entered near my spine. Her hand stopped above the first mark.
I took her wrist and brought her palm down over it. “You can touch them.”
“Do they hurt?”
“Some days.”
“Today?”
“Not enough to stop.”
She accepted the answer. No third question. No attempt to decide that pain canceled desire. Her palm moved over my chest, warm and careful without becoming clinical, and every muscle beneath it tightened at the memory of her hand as well as the newness of it.
I pulled the flannel loose from her body and pushed it from her shoulders.
Pink light followed my hands as I learned the shape of her again, in the real air, the natural Earth sunlight.
She was softer here, warmer, alive with small imperfections the field had smoothed away.
Her pulse jumped beneath my mouth when I kissed the lights at her throat.
Her weight settled across my thighs as she straddled me, real enough to press me into the mattress and remind me that neither of us could disappear when the moment became too much.
“Education is important,” she said in her best Khevari citizen tone but her newly learned smirk gave her away. “And I do enjoy history.”
“I always appreciate a scholar.” My lips found her collarbones.
“Tell me if I hurt you,” she said.
“I will.”
“And if your breathing changes…”
“Oh, it’s going to change, sweetheart.”
Her brows pulled together.
I kissed the concern from her mouth. “That’s part of this. If we do it right.”
The solemn look lasted another second before she kissed me back. Her hands threaded into my hair, careful of the dormant leads beneath the skin near my skull. I ran my palms down her back and over her hips, guiding her closer until the heat between us made patience impossible.
I reached toward the bedside drawer. Avena caught the foil packet before my fingers did.
She had read the human medical instructions twice and asked Doctor Keller enough questions to qualify for a second career in the months we had been waiting for me to get strong enough to get to this point.
We weren’t entirely sure Khevari and humans could create children but figured we’d play it safe.
This time she opened it without offering a report.
“Still yes?” I asked.
Pink and gold spread across her chest. “Yes. Still yours?”
I looked down at my lap and grinned. “Pretty sure that’s a yes.”
The pink brightened, and she leaned forward and kissed me.
With my hands on her hips, I guided her down over me.
She took me into her body slowly, not from hesitation but because my body still required patience.
Avena watched my face while I watched the lights move beneath hers.
When she began to rotate her hips, sensation gathered and pooled in nerves that had spent fourteen years carrying nothing I had chosen.
I hadn’t even been sure they would still work after everything my body had been through.
After everything the Dominion had done to it.
After a few moments, my breath caught too hard and Avena froze.
“Wait,” I managed.
“Do you hurt? Do I need to stop?”
“No. Give me a second.”