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Suletta stays awake for as long as she can.
It takes everything she should never have to give, pure effort and energy pulled from tomorrow. She remembers Aliya explaining the gist of what’s happening to her—as far as they understand it anyway—something about burning from the inside out. Her mom’s going through the same thing, both of them lying on a table on opposite sides of a makeshift infirmary. She can’t see her from here, and Suletta wonders if it’s okay that she’s a little angry with her for—for everything, really. She can’t grasp a single reason, almost wishing that she could, because maybe then forgiving her might be easier.
A thought for later, she decides, because there are more important things. Miorine, for one, hasn’t left her side since she pulled her out of the stars, sitting on the table Suletta’s lying on and ignoring the buzzing from her phone. She’s needed elsewhere, always. But she’s here, and Suletta is grateful.
“Sleep,” Miorine asks of her, a murmur, low and soft and just for her.
She could. She’s so tired, and everything hurts. The table is unkind to her bones. She doesn’t know if it’s freezing or if she’s burning or it’s both somehow. She vaguely remembers bits and pieces of conversations that were had as soon as they got her out of the pilot suit. Dr. Belmeria saying that they’ll have to go straight to a hospital, Miorine calling ahead to save time, Nika on the intercom promising to get them there as soon as possible. She thinks Chuchu might’ve said something to her, maybe even the rest of Earth House. She can’t remember this part. It’s all a blur.
“Don’t want to.”
Talking hurts. Breathing hurts. She thinks she’s been in more pain these past few months than she’s ever been.
Miorine’s hand comes to hover over her cheek, coming close before it stops abruptly, like she didn’t mean to. Suletta doesn’t have it in her to resist; she tilts her head—ouch—and completes the motion for her.
Miorine gentles, eyes carrying something soft but desperately sad. Suletta wishes she could do something about it.
“Why not?”
“Scared.”
Miorine brushes her thumb over her cheekbone, featherlight and not enough. “You’re scared?”
Suletta tries to shake her head. It makes her dizzy. She fights to keep her eyes open, because Miorine’s hand is trembling, because she looks like she might cry, because she’s here, finally, and Suletta never wants her to leave ever again.
“You are,” she mumbles, getting a little lost in the feeling of Miorine’s palm against her cheek. “S’okay.”
She doesn’t know if she’s saying all this right. Miorine’s lip quivers.
“Mio,” she croaks, syllables escaping her grasp. “Don’t cry.”
Miorine sighs. It sounds like it caught in her throat. “I’m not,” she lies. “Are you in pain?”
Suletta doesn’t want to answer her. But—“S’okay,” she repeats, because it is. She chose this, and she’d done the best she could, and she’s proud of it. She just wishes it didn’t make Miorine look like this.
“Stubborn,” Miorine quips, shaky and still so, so sad.
Suletta manages a smile.
“Worry about yourself for once,” Miorine pleads gently. “You can’t move. You’re hurting. Your mom—” She inhales sharply, gaze straying from Suletta’s to the hand on her cheek. “I nearly lost you. Again.”
Suletta’s heart trips a little in her chest. Oh, that helps. It’s been a while since she’d felt that.
“Missed you.”
Miorine’s hand travels down to her collar, or at least, Suletta thinks so. She can’t be sure. A shaky exhale escapes one of them.
Miorine folds a little, shoulders curling inward, and she seems a little helpless. “Why—Why are you smiling?” She asks, both confused and exasperated.
That’s easy. “You’re here.”
This time, Miorine does cry, tears building slowly in the corners of her eyes before they start to fall, one drop at a time. Suletta makes a sound in the back of her throat. There’s so much she wants to say, but something deep in her bones tugs at her insistently, and it’s getting harder and harder to stay awake even if it’s for her. She wants to hug her, pull her close, be tucked against her so tightly that she can hear her heart beat.
“C’mere?” She slurs, jaw heavy, mouth slack. She doesn’t want to sleep yet.
Miorine sniffles and doesn’t argue, leaning down to rest her forehead against hers. They share a pocket of air, a moment in time, this space where it’s just the two of them.
“I missed you, too,” Miorine murmurs.
Suletta tries—really, she tries—but her eyes close against her will. She’s so tired, and everyone’s safe, and Miorine is here.
“Sleep,” Miorine asks of her again. “I’ll stay.”
Suletta believes her.
She sleeps.
After all has been said and done, Miorine stays.
She doesn’t think to sit. She stands by Suletta’s bedside, watching her breathe. Her lungs labor through one inhale and stutter through an exhale, the oxygen mask doing its level best to carry her through another cycle. Her brow is furrowed in a way that pins Miorine’s breath in her throat. Her cheeks, her skin, the lines that shouldn’t be there glow like her blood is no longer blood, and Miorine—prays.
That she’s not being made to fight for a life that she’s only now starting to claim. That she’s not hurting anymore. That she comes back.
The bed rail groans at the mercy of her hands. She wants to touch. She’s afraid to do so. Suletta has always been the one with all the courage, and her hands have caused more harm than she had believed they could.
Her knees ache. She’s so tired. She hasn’t slept properly in weeks. She keeps standing. If she sits now, she might not get up. Maybe Suletta will wake up in another minute—we can’t be sure, we’ve never seen a case as severe as hers—or two—it’s a miracle that she was even conscious—or three—don’t give up now, she’s still here, after all. She wants to be right here, just in case.
Air tumbles past her lips, and she doesn’t realize she’s crying until it’s hard to breathe and hard to see.
Still, she stays. She stays.
Earth House comes. They linger by the door, and Miorine wonders if they’ll ask her to leave. Someone had convinced her to sit, or was it that she could no longer stand? How long has it been? Suletta sleeps.
Someone sighs something annoyed before breaching the room, dropping a box on her lap. Miorine doesn’t understand what it is. She stares at it, trying to think past the beeping and the sound of bustling in the hallway. Her neck and her back creak, pitiful and weak and exhausted from holding her up for however long Suletta’s been asleep. She looks up.
Chuchu glares at her, clicking her tongue before muttering something indistinct and irritated. She drops to her haunches in front of Miorine, scowling fiercely like she hates that she has to do this at all. She doesn’t have to, Miorine thinks distantly, the thought passing her by quietly. But this is just the kind of people that orbits Suletta.
“Eat,” she orders, rough and just a little angry.
Someone shuffles in. “Chuchu, maybe—”
Chuchu doesn’t falter. “Eat.”
Miorine hesitates. She doesn’t have any fight left in her, all of it going to tamping down and swallowing the fear that Suletta won’t wake up, that she won’t come back, that she’ll—
“If not for yourself, then for her,” Chuchu insists, opening the box to reveal chicken over rice, taking her hand, and pressing a spoon against her palm.
For her. Always, for her.
Her hand trembles as she lifts a spoonful, and she wants to give up halfway through the motion, but Suletta wouldn’t like to know that she’d wasted her favorite food, so she keeps going, mindless and aching.
“Chew, Spacian.”
Miorine listens. The chicken is dry and bland, but the rice is warm like it’d just come out of the microwave. Her eyes burn. Her nose itches. Her throat closes. She swallows. Earth House takes it as permission to enter, not that Miorine would’ve ever stopped them; they might be the only people on the world she would trust with her life. After all, she’d done it once before.
Nika—her eyes sad and weary; she looks no better than Miorine feels—pushes a bottle of water into her hand, and Miorine thinks about putting a fight or a front, a still-growing part of her embarrassed to be seen like this, can’t quite trust them the way she would offer her brokenness, her unkemptness, her mess to Suletta. She tries to refuse the bottle, and Nika shakes her head.
“Let us,” she pleads softly. “Just for today.”
“Yeah, because you have to get the fuck up at some point,” Chuchu snipes, her bite more worried and less cruel. “About time to stop being stupid.”
Miorine sinks her teeth into the inside of her cheek. She thinks of the last duel, thinks of Quinharbor, thinks of all of them showing up to be part of a fight that could’ve killed every single person in this room twice over.
The sound that comes out of her throat is nameless, jagged and chest-deep. “I’m so sorry.”
Chuchu falters. She sighs. “Is that all?”
Miorine holds the bottle and the spoon a little tighter. “And thank you.”
Nika comes to her side and rests a hand on her shoulder. Chuchu considers her, jaw tightening before it releases alongside the tension in her shoulders. She motions for Lilique, who approaches instantly, sniffling and trembling like her body doesn’t know how else to be in this aftermath.
Miorine lets them do what they want. Lilique sets a bag of her clothes beside her chair and asks her to use the shower, Aliya reminds her to drink and promises that they won’t leave Suletta alone, Chuchu glares her into eating and threatens to sit in the bathroom with her to make sure she cleans up. Nuno, Martin, and Ojelo have struck a low conversation by Suletta’s feet, Till and Aliya have begun taking notes on Suletta’s vitals, and—
Suletta sleeps.
(It’s fucking stupid. All of it. Suletta’s shit mother and Spacians in general and this tiny ass girl who’s supposed to be the president and the trophy and the bride of whomever. It’s all so fucking dumb that Chuchu can’t—for the life of her—douse the seething anger in her veins. It runs hot, and she feels like she could hurt an entire planet of people. Suletta battles hellfire on a bed, and Chuchu doesn’t understand why she—why any of them—has to go through this just because the adults can’t do anything right.
“We’ll keep her under for a while longer, but it’s a good sign that her breathing seems to be stabilizing,” the doctor tells them.
Chuchu glances at the girl who’s supposed to stand atop the world and figure out the impossible task of guiding it. She doesn’t look like she can do it. Not that she should. At least, she’d showered. She’s standing by Suletta’s bed, hands hovering over Suletta’s arm, the lines of her face ironed by something sad and afraid.
“Is she in pain?”
Chuchu glares at her feet, because how is she supposed to hate her when she sounds like that?
The doctor shakes her head. “We don’t think so.”
“Can I—” Miorine’s voice breaks.
Chuchu grits her teeth. Anger is so much easier than whatever the fuck she’s feeling now because Suletta burned for them, because Miorine—of all people—can’t pull herself together, because they’re all crammed in a hospital room instead of in school, studying and learning and being young. She feels like they’ve been robbed blind and beaten half to death.
She growls.
“Just—” She doesn’t expect the lump in her throat, and you know what? Fuck that, too.
She marches over to Suletta and wraps her hands around her ankles. Miorine swallows, eyes on Chuchu’s hands.
“Is this hurting her?” Chuchu asks the doctor because no one else will.
“We hope not.”
“Is there anything you know for sure?”
“Chuchu,” Nika immediately tries to appease her, tone low and gentle. “Suletta’s an exception. No one else has done what she did and… survived it.”
“I know that,” she spits. “But—”
“Oh,” the white-coat gasps softly.
The room hold its breath as Suletta’s heart rate picks up a little. Chuchu feels tears rise from somewhere deep, scratching their way from her throat up to the corner of her eyes.
“Suletta,” Miorine murmurs, one of her hands landing at Suletta’s collar, the other over her knuckles, all of it so slight and tender and afraid. The furrow in Suletta’s brow shallows, her oxygen mask catching what could be a sigh.
Chuchu doesn’t have a word for the look on Miorine’s face, but it saps her own anger away, leaving a marrow-deep exhaustion that pulls her shoulders down and curls up like a trembling weight in her chest.
This is all so stupid.)
Suletta dreams of home. Not Mercury or the room she shared with her mom or even her bunk bed in Earth House. The greens here are vibrant, well-fed and deeply loved. The vines grow and grow, and she watches yellow flowers bloom then bear fruit, the tomatoes ripe and big enough to fit in the palm of her hand. The greenhouse is far away from everything she’s ever known. It’s quiet here, and peaceful. She thinks she could stay here forever.
She dreams of love. A miner’s wife clambers onto Aerial’s hand before it can fully lower, arms wrapping around a barely breathing man, blood and sweat ignored for the sake of being as close as possible. Suletta stands above them, her body halfway out of the cockpit, unwilling to intrude. Her mother makes her way through the crowd and settles a hand on Aerial’s fingertips, whispering something Suletta can’t hear. She wonders what it would feel like to be held like that, to be touched like that, to be the first person someone reaches for in the aftermath. She wonders if she could ever be that person for someone. She hopes, and she aches, and she floats far, far away from it all. There’s somewhere else, someone else, maybe.
She dreams of belonging. Tiko on her lap, napping an afternoon away. High up and weightless and among the stars. Sitting at a busy table, hands reaching for food and fumbling with plates, smiling faces turned to her or elsewhere, someone up above snoring through the night. They’re good and warm and tender, but not quite right. Somewhere else, someone else. She looks for her until she finds her, tucked away like always. The ache in Suletta’s chest feels sweeter, like a deep, deep breath finally had. The hand in hers is smaller, but they fit in her spaces, and maybe this is home, maybe this is love, maybe this is where she belongs.
The world, when she wakes up, is not how she’d expected it to be. For a moment, she doesn’t know who she is or where she is or what happened to her. The ceiling is gray or maybe white. It’s day or night. She was where she felt like she belonged, and now she’s not. The sheer hurt of it all wrings her heart dry. She casts blindly for a memory, somewhere or someone—
“Suletta.”
A hand presses gently on her chest, and Suletta blinks once, then twice. She drags air into her lungs, and her chest pushes against the hand.
Here, and her.
The world rights itself. The hurt recedes into a dull throb. Her life—the whole of it, the good and the bad and the beautiful—comes back to her in small waves.
Her first word, a name for the feeling she’d looked for in her dreams, “Miorine.”
The Calibarn and Ericht and endless space. She tries to curl her fingers, looking for something to hold onto lest she gets carried away. She doesn’t think she manages it as much as she wants to, but there’s a responding squeeze, and she watches, awestruck, as Miorine lifts their hands and presses her forehead against their knuckles.
“Oh.” She thinks she’s starting to understand. “A… dream?”
Miorine exhales a laugh, a watery, wonderful thing. “I hope not. How long were you planning to sleep?”
Suletta doesn’t know what to say. She’s catching up, a little at a time. “You… told me to? I—” She frowns, testing her fingers again. It doesn’t seem like a good idea when Miorine sniffles in response. “Hi?”
Miorine holds her hand between both of hers and guides it to her cheek. “Hi. I need to call the doctors.”
“I-I think,” Suletta swallows, mouth and throat dry, parsing through what’s real and what were dreams. “I was looking for you.”
Miorine’s hold around her hand tightens. “I’m right here.”
Suletta grins, a sudden thing, like a bubble bursting in her chest. “Hi.”
Miorine moves, leaning over her and pressing a kiss against her cheek. Something beeps aggressively in response, and Suletta kind of hopes it’s a dream after all.
“Miorine-san?” She asks, abruptly wide awake.
Miorine presses a kiss against her temple before leaning back just enough to look at her. She’s blushing too, pink dusting her cheeks, and she’s teary, a look on her face like she’s breathing for the first time in a long while. Suletta has never seen anyone so beautiful. Somehow, impossibly, she settles. Warmth blooms in her chest, and she feels tender, like she might cry. It all feels worth it, everything that it took to get to this moment. Suletta wouldn’t have it any other way.
Miorine swipes a thumb under her eye. “You’re okay,” she murmurs, even though she’s starting to cry too. “You’re okay, Suletta.”
Suletta nuzzles into her hand, closes her eyes, and cries with her.
“Everyone’s alright,” Miorine tells her after the doctor leaves them with a long list of everything that went wrong.
Suletta doesn’t know how to feel about it yet – the years it’ll take before she can regain even half of her control over her body, the medicine she’ll have to take to combat the rest of the infection, the permanent reminders that she’d come so close to finding out how her life ends. She’s not sad. At least, not yet. If anything, her regrets are small. She wishes she’d danced with Miorine at the incubation party, that she’d hugged her friends more, that she'd done more.
There will be time for sadness later, she thinks, because she’s still human no matter how she came to be. But for now, here, she’s just glad to be alive at all. She decides to believe Miorine, to trust that when she says everyone, she means her mother and Ericht too. She doesn’t want to worry, doesn’t want to be scared or anxious or sad; she’s had enough, a lifetime’s worth lived in weeks and months.
“Do you want to sleep again?” Miorine asks quietly, perched at the very edge of Suletta’s bed and still holding her hand.
Suletta smiles at her, glad that the nurses from a little while ago raised the bed a bit so that she can sit and look at Miorine properly. They hadn’t wanted to, and they’d been right when they told Suletta that she might fall asleep again. She feels close to it, but Miorine’s here, and for the first time in what feels like a very long time, it’s just the two of them. Sleep and the rest of the world can wait.
“Not yet, please?”
Miorine nods. She looks exhausted, her clothes a far cry from the pressed and perfect state they always seem to be in no matter how Miorine maintains her room. Her sleeves are wrinkled like she’d gripped onto them, her hair a little mussed like she’d carded her fingers through it. But her shoulders are relaxed, and Suletta can feel her trace her knuckles gently. It’s nice, and warm, and Suletta hopes she won’t think to stop anytime soon.
“Suletta.”
She hums, refusing to look anywhere else lest she blinks and finds that this is just a dream.
Miorine studies her, hesitant. She looks like she has something to say before deciding against it with a subtle shake of her head. The corner of her mouth quirks.
“We’re going to have to build a new greenhouse.”
Suletta grins. We, she’d said. “Can we have watermelons?”
It startles half a laugh out of Miorine, sudden and quiet. “What for?”
“They always have watermelons for summer. It looks like fun to eat,” Suletta muses, thinking about the shows and the manga and everything else she had in place of friends.
“It’s messy,” Miorine tries to dissuade her, half-hearted and amused.
“You don’t think it’d be fun?”
Miorine huffs a little. “I… didn’t say that. Is it part of your list?”
“No,” Suletta responds, though, now that she thinks about it, maybe it should be.
She can see it; the way Miorine would grimace just before biting into it, the way she’d roll her eyes when she spills on her clothes anyway, the way Earth’s sun would kiss her crown and turn it into something golden and precious. She can feel it; the warmth of the summer, the weight of a fruit coaxed to life, Miorine’s shoulder bumping against hers. She can taste it, something sweet at the tip of her tongue.
“I think… I just want to do everything with you,” Suletta says before she can convince herself not to. “Even if it’s messy.”
She likes how the blush sits on Miorine’s cheeks, likes how she looks down at their hands. She seems almost bashful, and Suletta’s heart swells two sizes too big for her chest to hold.
Miorine exhales what might be a laugh, and when she looks up, Suletta has to wonder if anyone has ever looked at her this way. It makes her aware that she is flesh and bones and heart, soft in all the places that matter, someone to another. Her eyes warm, and she thinks she might cry.
“Do you know that I love you?” Miorine asks her, low and soft and true.
Suletta’s voice shakes when she says, “You do?”
Miorine scoots closer, laying their hands on her lap and reaching over to tuck a strand of hair behind Suletta’s ear. Suletta wishes, fiercely, that she could pull her closer.
“I do,” Miorine whispers. “I love you. I want to do everything with you, too. The watermelons,” her breath hitches, “and the dresses and the rings.”
Suletta didn’t think that she could cry any more than she already had, but here she is, a sob tumbling clumsily past her lips.
“I’m sorry,” Miorine leans in and presses the apology into her cheek. “I want to love you better this time, if you’ll let me.”
Somewhere deep and hidden, something heals. Suletta shudders in relief.
“Yes,” she whimpers. “Yes, please.”
Miorine cries too, pressing closer, nuzzling her nose. The world is small to Suletta in this moment, stardust and wishes and prayers all around them, the space just big enough to hold them and the fading hurt and the love Suletta only ever dreamed to have. Anything seems possible, happiness is twined around her fingers, something lost finally found. She is glad to be alive.
“I love you,” Suletta tells her, unafraid and just as true.
Miorine breathes a shaky warmth against her lips. Suletta leans in and is met halfway, the first of many. It isn’t perfect, and it is. Miorine pulls back, and Suletta gives chase, and they fall back into each other over and over again until the heart rate monitor informs them that there’s only so much Suletta can take before someone barges in and thinks she’s dying.
“Miorine-san,” she murmurs, breathless and so wonderfully alive.
Miorine squeezes her hand. “Don’t Miorine-san me,” she huffs, cheeks rosy, eyes warm.
Suletta starts giggling for reasons she can’t explain. She feels fuzzy, like if she tried hard enough, she’ll discover that she can fly. “Mio-mio?”
Miorine leans back a bit, scrunching her nose. “I love you, but no.”
Suletta will never tire of hearing it. “I love you, too, Miorine.”
The smile that blooms on Miorine’s lips looks like a dream come true.