2. Two Truths #7
"I'm requesting you," Elena repeated in a tone that ended discussions. Reyna imagined this was the tone she'd inherited from the generations of Voss officers. But Elena's version had care underneath, and it was that care that made it impossible to argue with. "Unless you have a better offer?"
Reyna didn't. She hadn't expected any offer from a captaincy placement at all.
In all truth, she'd expected to be assigned wherever the Coalition needed a body for some routine posting, in a small corner of space where her competence would be useful and her lack of pedigree wouldn't matter.
She had not, in her most unguarded moments, allowed herself to imagine that the person she admired most in the universe would turn to her first.
Reyna stared at Elena. The assembly hall was almost empty now, graduates celebrating and commiserating in other areas of the academy. But Elena Voss was standing in the middle of the open space, offering Reyna the one thing she'd never dared to want.
"You're going to regret this," Reyna said. "I'm going to argue with every decision you make."
"I'm counting on it," Elena said. And she smiled, her real one. "That's why I want you."
Reyna opened her mouth to speak but then closed it again when she realized she had no rebuttal.
So she nodded, just once, and Elena's smile grew wider. "Welcome to the Emberkind, Solas."
Later on, they discovered that Jere wasn't assigned to a starship. Instead, his Animal Specialist track routed him elsewhere, performing a traveling post that would visit research stations and habitat assessments.
He still congratulated them both, his genuine and bright nature fully in tact.
If Reyna didn't know how to spot the things he kept from those around him, she wouldn't have seen that his take made it easy to miss the real dimming underneath.
He hugged Elena so hard he lifted her off the ground, and when he turned to Reyna, she didn't wait for him to reach for her.
She stepped forward and wrapped her arms around him and held on, and if it lasted longer than was strictly appropriate for a Kaelari in a public space, she didn't care.
They would be broken up, for the first time in almost four years.
He was leaving, and that fact had settled into her chest like a stone.
Holding onto him was the only thing that made the weight bearable.
"I'll be on comms every week," Jere said into her shoulder. "You won't be able to get rid of me."
"I know," Reyna said, opening her eyes and seeing Elena standing there. "I'm counting on it." Elena smiled.
Their last meal was at their table, the same table from their first night together at orientation, avoiding the icebreaker events. The same one a stranger had put a drink on and changed the course of her life.
Jere made sure to be funny and kind, and he definitely talked too much, as he usually did when he was trying not to feel.
Elena was already planning. She really couldn't help it.
Her mind was on the Emberkind and the first things she'd want to work on, such as crew rotations and what she'd need, and also what she'd have to fight for.
Reyna listened, already noting in her datapad all the tasks they would take on together as they took over the ship.
She could see in Elena's eyes how she went slightly distant between sentences, already aboard the ship and finding her footing.
Reyna was quiet, sitting with the weight of all the thoughts she was sifting through, some she didn't want to name.
She kept looking at the two of them, and took the moment to capture the three of them at a table with drinks and laughter and nothing between them.
This exact configuration that had been the first real semblance of family and relationships that Reyna had ever had, and now it was about to change in a way she couldn't control.
When they parted, Jere pulled her aside. Elena pretended not to watch, but kept her eyes on them anyway. Reyna could feel Elena's gaze, but she didn't mind.
"Take care of her for me, Rey," Jere said, nodding towards Elena. His voice was lighter than usual. "She's going to forget to eat."
Reyna laughed softly and looked directly at him.
At the ridiculous, bright-eyed person she hadn't asked for and who had decided, in the space of thirty seconds, that she was worth knowing.
The one who shortened her name before he'd known her for an hour, who had made it his life's work to make her smile, and had succeeded so completely that somewhere along the way, he'd become her family.
"I'll make sure she eats," she said.
Jere grinned. But his eyes were too bright when he walked away.
Reyna watched him go. She stood in the corridor of Novahall next to Elena, and watched the first person who had ever chosen her walk toward a future that didn't include them staying together, and she let herself feel exactly how much that hurt.
Then she turned to Elena.
"Ready to report for duty, Captain." Elena smiled broadly, her eyes depicting the next few months of excitement and work that they had in front of them.
And as they walked toward the docking station where the Emberkind waited for them, they felt the structure of their new lives take root, one step at a time.