Epilogue Day One #2
Every mixtape you ever made me helped teach an entire ship full of aliens about Earth music, Kit.
Fleetwood Mac in a nebula. Springsteen at three in the morning.
Then, there's Tavi, who fell in love with Led Zeppelin on a shuttle to a mission, and I lost him after that.
He built a music program for the whole ship from scratch so everyone could listen.
And do you know what I did, Kit? I made a playlist, adding songs one at a time, never thinking about why, until it became clear I was writing a love letter.
Every single song was about her. I wrote it for months before I understood I was writing it at all.
Charlie stopped.
Beside her, Reyna set down her own datapad, and a hand came to rest between Charlie's shoulder blades, warm, not asking anything. Charlie leaned back into it for a second, then bent to the page again.
Her name is Reyna.
Kit, I'm not going to be able to do this part right. I've got the pen and the paper, and I still don't have the words.
She's the captain of this ship. She is the bravest, driest, most infuriatingly contained person I have ever met, and underneath all of it she loves like the whole universe depends on it, and somehow, for reasons I will never fully understand, she chose me.
Not a version of me or a me that had to be smaller or easier or quieter. Me.
You know, there was a time when I was somewhere she couldn’t reach me, and do you know what she did? She spoke to me in music.
I wish you could meet her so badly it aches.
You'd see it in about four seconds, the way you saw everything, even the things I couldn't. You'd take one look and go, "Oh, Charlie," in that voice, and you'd be right.
I know you would love her. Immediately. You would pretend you were still deciding, obviously, but I'd know the truth. You’d ask her questions when I left the room, and she'd answer every one of them honestly. She is completely incapable of giving a convenient answer when a true one is available. There would come a day when you’d both start looking at me the same way whenever I was being unreasonable, and I would hate it.
I want it more than I know how to say, Kit.
You know she tells me that she loves me all the time now?
Not always in words. Sure, sometimes she says it quietly when we’re alone.
But she'll also say it by bringing me food because I forgot dinner, or in her hand finding mine under a table.
There are times she'll walk into Engineering, look at my face, and know immediately that something went wrong, even though nobody has told her.
She does little things like come and kiss me as she passes my chair, as if she has done it a thousand times. We haven’t had a thousand times yet. But we will.
Everything is different now. Everything is better. I keep waiting to get used to being this happy, and I just don't. It keeps being new.
She is the love of my life, Kit. There’s no smaller way to write it.
Now the part I need you to hear.
I miss you, Katherine. Every single fucking day.
I think about you and what your life must be like constantly.
I hope it becomes enormous, that you become the anthropologist you were always going to be.
And I hope you find someone who sees you, someone who lets you show up and shows up right back.
I hope you have a ridiculous, full, loud, wonderful life, and I hope you know that everything good in it, you earned.
I'm watching from the stars, Kit-Kat. That's not even a joke anymore. I'm up here, and I'm watching, and I'm so proud of you. I've always been and always will be.
Just one more thing.
I’m going to ask her to marry me, Kit. Soon, in fact.
They have marriage out here, it turns out, and it's a beautiful, strange thing and I'll tell you all about it one day but the point is I'm going to ask her, and I hope she's going to say yes, and the only thing wrong with any of it is that you won't be standing there.
I wish you could be here when I ask. I'd pay good money to see your face afterward with that look you get when you’ve known the answer for ages and have been waiting patiently for me to catch up.
I want you to meet the woman I’m going to spend my life with. I know she would love you. She already does, a little because you helped us get here, Kit. You were the first person who made me understand what it meant to be chosen, and I know that’s why I recognized it when it happened again.
So I'm telling you here. On paper. With Frank and Helen's kind of letter, the kind that's real whether it's ever delivered.
I found my whole life out here, Kit. I just wish it hadn't cost me you.
I love you, more than the sky, the stars, and universe.
Always, and then some,
Charlie
Charlie let the pen remain on the paper.
She could hear Reyna’s fingers moving over her datapad beside her. She’d been on the same page of the report for at least fifteen minutes, but she hadn’t looked over once.
Charlie read one line again.
I’m going to ask her to marry me, Kit. Soon, in fact.
Her heart thundered against her ribs.
Charlie put the pen down.
Reyna’s hand stilled.
“Are you finished?” she asked.
Charlie nodded.
Reyna turned off her datapad without even checking where she’d left off.
She looked at the pages, then at Charlie.
"Okay?" Reyna asked, quietly.
For a while Charlie didn't say anything, and neither did Reyna, whose hand had never left her back.
“Do you want me to read it?” Reyna asked.
Charlie covered the letter with both hands.
“No!” Charlie shrieked.
Reyna’s eyebrow rose.
Smooth, Wickett.
“There is classified information in here.”
A smile began at the corner of Reyna’s mouth.
She reached beneath Charlie’s hands and took one, drawing it away from the paper. She lifted Charlie’s fingers to her lips and kissed the underside of her wrist, then her palm, and then each fingertip, one after another.
Charlie watched her intently, seeing the soft shirt, the loose hair, and the rose beginning to gather along her near where they touched.
Their connective color.
“Did it help?” Reyna asked.
Charlie thought about the letter.
“Yes and no.”
Reyna’s thumb moved over her knuckles.
“No?”
Charlie closed her eyes.
“It still hurts.”
Reyna raised her other hand to Charlie's cheek again, and Charlie leaned into it, opening her eyes to see Reyna nodding gently.
Charlie looked over at the pages again.
“But yes, too. Because now it's here," Charlie pointed at the pages. "And not here," Charlie pointed to her head.
Reyna brought their joined hands down to rest between them. “Then I believe Kess will consider the assignment complete.”
“And Orion?” Charlie asked.
“I'm sure he'll want to archive it. Just for the paper alone.”
“He is never seeing this," Charlie insisted. "But he'll be tough. I know his tactics."
“I’m sure you can defeat a librarian, Charlie.”
“You say that like you’ve never met Orion.”
Reyna laughed and that sound loosened Charlie’s tension, as Reyna's laugh always did.
Charlie turned back to the table and folded the pages over carefully once, and then again.
She wrote Katie’s name across the outside and placed the letter inside the desk drawer.
When she closed it, Reyna was still beside her, still holding her hand, exactly where she’d said she would be.
Soon, Charlie had written.
She looked at Reyna and smiled, knowing full well the whole crew had been helping her prepare to propose to Reyna tomorrow.
Exactly one year since she'd arrived on the Emberkind and fallen in love with its captain.
EARTH YEAR 1996 / COALITION CYCLE 506
SIX YEARS LATER
? PASADENA, CALIFORNIA, UNITED STATES ?
January 1, 1996, 03:18AM
The shrill ring of her phone in the middle of the night was not on Katie Wickett's new year's bingo card.
She popped one eye open, looked over at her nightstand, and groaned at the time.
The clock showed 03:18 AM.
The phone rang again, and Katie whispered expletives she was glad Helen couldn't hear her say. She turned over slowly and grabbed the receiver.
"Hello?" Her voice worked, barely.
"Katie?!"
"Emma?" Katie began to creep up her pillow, trying to get into a sitting position. "Are you okay? Wait, where are you?"
"I'm at work."
"At three in the morning?!"
Katie heard rustling through the phone. "Yeah, well, the promotion comes with obstacles."
Katie listened to Emma say the word 'promotion' with her British accent. It always gave Katie a little boost to hear how Emma pronounced things just a little differently with certain words. "Did you even go out tonight?"
"Out? Why?"
Katie raised her palm to her forehead.
"New Year's Eve?"
"Was that today?"
"Yeah, Emma, that was today. Or, rather, yesterday. So, happy fucking new year."
"Ah, there's the eloquent anthropologist I know."
"Emma," Katie said, her voice settling. "Why did you call me at three in the morning?"
There was a pause on the other end.
"Katie, I found something."
Suddenly, Katie was wide awake. She switched the receiver to her other ear.
"What is it?" Katie's heart rate skyrocketed which, truthfully, was something she was used to when she was around Emma. But she could unpack that later.
"Well, see, that's where this promotion comes with benefits as well. Benefits like access to classified files?" Katie could hear the slight tease in her voice.
"Classified, you say?"
"That’s what I said." Katie heard more rustling. "Such as access to a particular file, numbering a particular box, that just so happens to have been decommissioned and placed in the highest classified level on one particular day in 1990."
Katie's heart stopped. She pretty much forgot how to breathe.
"What particular day in 1990?"
"Now, see, that's the funny thing. You say today is New Year's Day? Well, it just so happens that this box was decommissioned at 23:30 on New Year's Day, six years ago."
"January 1, 1990."
"January 1, 1990," Emma repeated.
Katie couldn't stop her hands from shaking.
"Emma..."
"I know," Emma replied, her voice gentle. "Just come here tomorrow morning at seven"