Chapter Text
Dawn breaking delicate and crisp through the window glass takes Eris by surprise. She has never wakened with these eyes unshielded from its light. It shines so softly, yet it is so brilliant to her. Shimmering rays spill across the curve of Ikora’s slumbering shoulders like a softer kind of Light. Her bare arm still drapes over Eris’ waist. Her skin is smoother and a shade darker than the fabric it lays against - yesterday’s clothes Eris never changed out of. The cloth resists wrinkling remarkably well. If Eris got up and went about her work as normal, it would still serve passably. But she has no such intentions right now. Rather, she merely shifts just enough to relieve the pressure on her bad ankle without waking Ikora.
Though the call of Eris’ always-unfinished work ever pulls at her mind, its urgency has muted to a patient hum. Her people have always been the one thing that could pull her away from the task at hand when she gets too caught up in its throes. Sai used to come find her and drag her back to the City after too long alone out on patrol. Eriana always knew what to say when Eris netted herself in a snarl of her own thoughts. When he thought she was being too serious, Omar always knew how to make her laugh. She has been so alone for so long, she had forgotten.
But slowly, slowly, people have crept back into her life. Asher’s irreverent yet deep kinship and respect, the Guardian’s careful attendance and fierce protection, Ikora… oh, Ikora.
Eris remains where she is, simply watching the rise and fall of her breathing in the burgeoning daylight.
When the rays coming through the window have slid halfway down the wall, Ikora rouses enough to stretch languidly. The arching of her body lifts her away from Eris’ for the first time all night. Her eyes crinkle, squeezed shut with lazy effort. Eris takes in the faint shadows of their every crease. A soft feeling weakens her core.
Limbs go slack against the sheets once more. Ikora cracks open sleep-heavy eyes just long enough to find Eris. She lifts her hand to Eris’ chest, lays her palm right in the center of it. Once Eris lets her lungs swell into its touch, Ikora curls closer once again. She rests her head right over Eris’ heart, making a small contented noise in her throat. “Good morning, love.”
Unmoving, Eris blinks. Perhaps Luna’s trials were not the strangest turns her life could take. What is she to do with such breathtaking gentleness? Surely this comfort cannot last. It has never lasted this long, or through this much contact before. As soon as she thinks it, the thought snags in her consciousness like clothes caught in thorny brush.
Even as she lets her arm fall around Ikora so lightly, weighted only by gravity, she braces for the moment too much touch scalds her once again. Yet that sparking wire-wrapped fear doesn’t come. The wick does not catch despite the flame she holds to it. She doesn’t understand. She holds Ikora close to her heartbeat, feeling everything without faltering, simultaneously treasured and troubling.
“Hello,” Eris says in a voice lost between baffled wonder and growing unease.
Ikora squints up at her with a little more alertness. “Are you alright?”
“I - yes.” This is exactly the kind of comfort and even joy that she never dared hope for, that she desperately needs. But she also needs to understand it. The dissonance of it all tugs at the ends of her nerves, keeping her from fully sinking into this moment’s beauty. If she lets that feeling fester, it will overwhelm her and force her to fully withdraw once again. That would be unacceptable. “Give me a moment. I’ll put the kettle on for you.”
After pressing a brief kiss to Ikora’s brow, Eris extracts herself and rises, not without without affectionate half-hearted complaint from her partner. Eris mourns the loss of warmth when the cool air of the room hits her. She shakes out the long rectangle of her mussed headscarf and drapes its swath of iterating geometrics over herself once more. Truly, it is a beautiful gift. Re-wrapping it close about her neck and head without bothering to pin it, she pulls both tails around to the front so they don’t dangle down her back. Its softness keeps the chill away from her skin. She smooths her tunic down and starts toward the door.
A smaller piece of cloth dangling carelessly off the bedside table catches her eyes. A strip of gauze lies strewn over top of the little pile of her talismans and her bagged stone where she left them out of the way last night. She hesitates mid-stride. Then she picks up the scrap of thin fabric and takes it with her into the sunlight-lanced kitchen. Air breezes fresh and cool like flower petals against her entire face as her unshod feet carry her in silence from thick rug to smooth tile.
Still clutching the cloth, Eris fills a curving glass kettle one-handed from the pitcher of spring water on the counter. She sets it on its conductive heat mat to boil for Ikora’s omnipresent tea. Tiny bubbles quickly appear on the base, gleaming like polished pinheads. Eris gets lost for a time in their shifting texture as they grow larger and larger, at last leaping for the surface again and again and again.
By the time the sound of the water boiling has sunk from a high-pitched rush into a low shuffling rumble, Eris thinks she can bear being looked at again. She drifts back toward Ikora’s room, close but not quite entering.
“Water is ready,” she calls through the doorway. She returns to the kitchen.
Eris opens the tall cabinet with Ikora’s tea things in it to fetch her a gaiwan. She usually prefers to make green tea in it in the mornings. Eris sets her cloth down. With both hands, she lifts the little cup with its lid and saucer carefully from its shelf. When she sets it on the counter near the kettle, it makes a friendly click of porcelain on wood. She’ll leave the brewing itself to Ikora. She traces the many contrasting grains of the woodblock counter with her fingertips as much as her eyes, until the rustle from the bedroom gives way to the sound of Ikora’s footsteps on the tile.
“Oh, that’s just the one I wanted. Thank you.” Ikora enters trailing a boldly patterned dressing gown that moves like light on water. She heads right for the tea cabinet. Eris crumples up her blindfold in her hand again and steps back to let Ikora by, but she doesn’t stray far. She retreats from the main counter toward the little island that separates the kitchen from the living area. Ikora skirts around her with ease and rummages through the cabinet.
“Are you doing alright?” Ikora asks again. Her back is turned to Eris. She pulls a tin out to examine, then puts it back.
“Yes. Perhaps too much so.”
“What do you mean?” She finds the tea she wants and tips some of the leaves into the bowl of the gaiwan.
“I… do not understand.”
Ikora pauses in her routine at Eris’ troubled tone. She leaves the tea aside to turn and look at her. “What is it that you do not understand?” she asks gently. She offers a hand up between them. Eris takes it, holds it in her own. Still, inexplicably, it comforts her. She shakes her head in frustrated confusion. She meets Ikora’s gaze once again with her own unconcealed eyes. Gauze dangles from the loose fingers of her other hand. The sunlight reflecting off the wood of the counters lights up Ikora’s irises beautifully.
“Why am I not in pain?” The words come out like a plea. “After all this, I should be. Yet I am not. Why does that make me as restless as if I were?”
The soft expression on Ikora’s face cracks like a broken heart. “Because you are not used to it.” Though she does not move, her eyes grow even brighter. A shining tear trails down one cheek.
Eris’ heart catches in her chest. “Ikora - oh, please do not cry.” She reaches for Ikora, only to have her hands brushed away with impatience as those beautiful eyes brim with more tears.
“No - this is not about me right now,” Ikora says thickly. Her voice quivers with intensity. “Listen to me, Eris. You are alright. You are safe. This is normal.” Her vehemence brings Eris up short. She listens, captivated. The short distance between the two of them seethes with vibrant emotion.
“It may take time for comfort not to feel wrong,” Ikora continues, voice wavering yet strong. “It has taken time. If we have moved too fast, we can slow down, or go back. Your relationship with all of this may change or fluctuate over time, but it is your own and no one else’s. Let yourself feel whatever it is that you feel. And whatever you need - more space or time to yourself, more closeness, company, anything - I am here for you.”
Eris steps back as the full impact of Ikora’s impassioned words hits her. Ikora must be right, because this wave of fierce love and care breaking over Eris makes her pulse quicken and her muscles tense as if she has heard a strange cry in the field, a possible threat. The very feeling she’s been waiting for. It makes sense.
It makes sense.
Because you aren’t used to it.
You are alright. You are safe.
She leans back heavily on the island counter to hold herself up in the gale of that revelation. Her restlessness is just a horror-honed habit. Nothing is immediately wrong, even if her history would tell her so. It’s just another of the paradoxes that define her life. That complexity is her truth. And leaning into that truth has never yet failed to help her move forward.
Neatly, she folds the gauze that spills soft from her fingers and sets it on the counter within reach.
All right, she thinks. All right.
She longs for the comfort of Ikora’s touch once more, but some combination of her body and heart and mind cannot accept it yet. Even as she unconsciously leans toward Ikora, her shoulders stiffen as if they wish to grow spines of their own.
“I wish I could touch you right now,” she says. Sorrow spills through her mournful voice. “Can we simply sit here for a time?”
“Of course. I can even go for a while, if you need time alone -“
“No,” Eris says. “Please…” Her voice trails off into a whisper. She lets her hands fall soft to her sides. “Stay near to me. Only do not touch me yet.”
Such softness has never so suffused Ikora’s face. “Of course, love.” Though the fearful part of Eris flinches from that endearment as from a passing arrow, the rest of her blooms toward its warmth, and Eris knows that summer will follow the cold snaps of spring.
They return to shared silence with a buffer of space between them. This, too, is right.
As Ikora turns back to tending her tea, Eris seats herself at one of the tall stools on the opposite side of the island and soaks in the stillness. She breathes in, then out. Again. She waits for the wave of tactile repulsion that has overtaken her to break. It will eventually turn tide and flow back into the longing she has grown so used to being able to sate. I am safe. Small clinks and burbles of tea being made tell her where Ikora is at every moment even without looking. The sounds of presence pressing against her keep her moored here, unable to drift too far away nor too deep into the thickets of her own thoughts.
Keeping her motions slow and deliberate, Ikora leans across the counter toward Eris, staying well within her sightlines. A small rounded bowl of steaming tea is set down not too far from her hand with an unassuming clink. Then Ikora draws away again to pour one for herself.
The little cup is smaller than Eris’ palm and only half as tall. The tea in it is so light that the liquid scarcely shows against the bone-bright porcelain in her dust-pale hands. With one arm splayed at rest against the smooth-sanded wood, Eris raises the small bowl carefully to her lips to drink. Its warm, subtle sweetness loosens her tight chest in increments. When she drains it and sets it aside, Ikora soon takes the cup and brings it back full once more.
They pass the day in quiet as Eris makes the long trek back into feeling more herself. She spends most of it with her journals. It’s one of those times where spoken words are too complicated, an inappropriate approach to the internal work she is attempting. Through writing, she tries to spin the wisps of her revelations into a stronger narrative strand she can follow to new conclusions, new truths that were hidden to her before. In between stints of deep focus, she fetches her talismans from the bedroom and readorns herself. Her blindfold, however, she keeps on the counter nearby.
For her part, Ikora pores over reports and research for most of the day, seemingly absorbed in her work. Datapads and Vanguard files cover half the kitchen island while Eris writes on the other side of the counter. Yet her eyes find Eris every so often, assessing but ever warm and welcoming, and never far away.
As Ikora makes herself another round of tea, the familiar cloth on the counter catches her eye. “Is it not too bright for your eyes in here? I can pull the curtains closer.”
Eris looks up from the coarse paper of her journal. At midday the light is bright, yes, but without the direct shine of morning or evening it is not overwhelming. Rather, the glow from the windows reflects off the cabinets and catches on every surface and texture of the shape that makes up Ikora, throwing luscious shadows from the soft drape of her robes and the smooth curve of her hands on the kettle, defining the whorls of her ears, deepening the shine of her eyes.
She is staring. “No, it is alright,” Eris says, blinking and ignoring the faint warmth that flushes her cheeks. Folded gauze cushions her hand from the hard wooden surface beneath. “I have this, should I need it.” But she does not. Here and now, she needs shielded from neither the harshness of hot light nor cold regard. In this moment, at least, it is enough - it is everything - to have the option to draw that protective line and yet not to need it.
“If you are sure. But it would be no trouble.”
“I like seeing you in the sun.”
There is no doubt this time, not in that encompassing illumination: Ikora’s cheeks definitely darken with a blush. Eris smiles like an open secret.
It is a rare thing to have a day such as this, where they find enough time to spend most of it together. The two of them had planned on a brief visit into the City today. Yet after the events of the past night and morning, they’d reached an unspoken agreement to remain here. Eris is grateful. She could not possibly tolerate the people and noise of the City bustle today.
When Eris eventually moves from her barstool perch to the corner of the sofa, Ikora follows her into the living area. She seats herself on the sofa’s opposite end, not too far and not too close. Her work spreads out haphazardly on endtables and cushions.
Ikora does not even make her usual short visit to the Tower on her “day off,” instead taking a few calls through Ophiuchus and staying by Eris’ side. Gratitude fills Eris’ lungs instead of air and leaves her light-headed.
By the time evening falls far enough for Eris’ eyes to illuminate the gloaming, the tide of her restless unease has drawn back out to sea. She finds herself able to lean close against Ikora’s side once more. Gratefully, she nestles into the arc of the arm that slips around her waist. She soaks up the warmth of Ikora’s presence like a parched amphibian sinking into a pool of clean water.
It’s only because of that proximity that Eris notices the way Ikora tenses minutely during one of her calls with Zavala. Eris had long since tuned out the words to drift in the wash of her partner’s cashmere voice, punctuated by the achingly familiar mechanical buzz of a voice projected through a Ghost’s synthesizers. Withdrawing from the thick pages of her journal, Eris catches only the tail ends of sentences littered with codewords. Some of them she knows from her intelligence work with the Hidden. Others remain unfamiliar.
Ophiuchus continues to hover nearby, silent since the call ended. The breath Ikora slowly exhales is a little too measured to be casual. Out of Ikora’s sight behind her shoulder, the Ghost meets Eris’ watchful gaze with his single eye. He rotates his ornate shell once before decompiling in a splash of light.
“What is wrong?” Eris says into the cooling dusk.
“Don’t worry about it.” Even when approached directly, Ikora deflects. Eris stifles a chuckle.
“I ask not after the status of classified missions beyond my own; only after your wellbeing.”
Figures on the nearest datapad occupy Ikora’s attention as if she has not heard, and she adds a few more notes to it. Oh, but Eris is patient. She had to wait years upon her own survival; years more for the lightning moment she could spring her vengeance like a trap. She knows too well how to bide her time, how to sustain her intent in perpetuity. Even if it were not for the fiery motivation that invisibly fuels Ikora’s calm front, Eris could outwait her.
Finally, softly: “I lost three agents today. High-risk mission. Not enough intel to be prepared for what met them.”
“That is ill news. I am sorry, Ikora.” She does not reach for Ikora’s hand, does not lean closer. It is enough of an oddity that Ikora has not pulled away already, removing herself from comfort as she does when trying not to feel something. “Remember, you cannot prevent every ill end that seeks to bring itself about.”
“I know. But I have prevented many. There is no knowing if this could have been one of them.” Now Ikora does withdraw her arm. Her voice is calm, dry, disaffected, though Eris knows she is anything but.
Silence holds the shadows of the room for a moment. “They knew what they risked, Ikora. We all do. And yet we choose to do the work despite it. You did everything you could to give them the best chance, but in the end that choice is not yours. Do not count theirs among your own.”
The sigh Ikora releases takes something with it as it leaves her. Her head bows, her shoulders sag, her brows crinkle with rarely seen pain. Eris scarcely dares breathe.
“Ikora?”
No answer.
“It is not your fault, my love.”
Finally, Ikora looks at her. Anguish skews her features, but something else just as intense bleeds into its twisting, softening its harsh lines more and more.
It isn’t until that other ache has overtaken the first that Eris recognizes it as adoration. The delayed knowledge strikes her deep, like a skipped heartbeat. She almost turns away. But she cannot leave Ikora behind when she needs something Eris can give. Not anymore.
Eris opens her arms. “Come here. Come here. Come here,” she whispers.
Ikora watches the repeated words form on Eris’ lips. After a long suspended moment like a cresting wave, she falls against Eris like surf upon stone, covering her.
Trembling arms tighten around Eris’ waist as the weight of a woman falls against the shelter of her breast. Ikora does not weep, but the desperation in her limbs speaks far louder than tears. Though Eris would hold her there endlessly, Ikora has already moved. She lifts her head to search Eris’ unveiled face, perhaps looking for fear or judgement. But the apprehension that cinches around her two eyes is Ikora’s alone.
The weaving together of their lifelines has proven to Eris time and again that she need not fear Ikora. The way she has made Eris feel so loved from a distance today means just as much as the way she held Eris close through her grief the night before. It is terribly humbling, to be so thoroughly loved. Eris meets her now unblinking, unafraid, wanting nothing more than to give her, in turn, whatever she needs.
For once, Ikora is the one to take Eris by the face with shaking hands and capture Eris’ mouth with her own in a passionate kiss. Eris digs her fingers into Ikora’s shoulders and holds her close. She’s lucky Eris decided to forego the scarf pins today. Perhaps they both are, for when Ikora is finished stealing Eris’ breath, it makes it easier for her to trail kisses down her neck, tasting her pulse, even scraping her teeth delicately against Eris’ tender throat.
Eris shudders, and not just from the positive intensity of the touch. It’s the way Ikora pours this boundless passion over her yet still makes her feel safe. It’s the way she completely gives in to the comfort Eris offers precisely because Eris doesn’t force it on her. They can take what they need without hurting each other, and isn’t that the miracle? It is nothing sword logic could understand. Though she long had to live by it, deep down Eris still remembers something else from the time before. The tragedies piled upon her buried it almost too deep to ever bloom again. Almost.
It’s moments like this that make Eris imagine a world that might come after all of this. What might arise anew after the end of centuries of war? She doesn’t often think on it except in her darkest moments, when she needs to remember why she still fights. Yet lately her mind has wandered there even when she is furthest from despair, like now. Never before has she thought to imagine herself as part of that world. There are a thousand seeds of the future in her that she is terrified to water yet, before it is safe, before she has done everything she must harden herself to do. But they bide their time within, as she did, and they give her dangerous ideas that make her tremble at her own audacity.
A small noise of concern escapes Ikora when Eris’ tremors reach her. Holding them both still, Eris breathes slowly, deeply, until she’s convinced both of them that it is alright. Despite her misgivings, her mind remains as clear and certain as the day she asked Ikora to kiss her; the day she first convinced Ikora to lean on her; the day she told Ikora she loved her in an inescapable outpouring of truth. Each time, Eris has unknowingly been nurturing that lost part of herself, the part that remembers, the part that dreams.
“Would you do something for me?”
Ikora lays her head on Eris’ chest. “Anything.”
Holding Ikora’s hands in her own, Eris rises to stand before her. Releasing them, Eris deliberately turns around, bows her head.
Nothing but cloth protects her. Her shoulders twitch with memory. The phantom slash from behind that does not fall nonetheless licks like ghostly fire up her back, all the way around to her collarbone. She waits until that fire burns low.
“Ikora.”
Without looking, she extends one hand behind her.
Once again, it hovers in the air there between the two of them: both a question and an offering.
“It is alright,” Eris says faintly. Her words resonate like the intonation of a spell. They echo off the tile and fade into the curtains and cushions of the quiet room.
Warm and firm, Ikora takes her hand. She rises to her feet as well.
At first, nervousness hums to life in her chest at the unseen contact, at something alive so close behind her. Rather than distance herself from that tension, Eris holds it close like a creature to comfort, sharp-clawed yet quivering. If she can keep it here long enough and keep it calm enough, she can give it something new to experience besides pain and fear. As her body catches up to her mind, it recognizes the familiar reassurance of Ikora’s touch.
She tugs Ikora closer by the hand. When Ikora makes to step up beside her, Eris shakes her head and reaches her other hand out behind her without turning. The aborted sound of an unasked question escapes Ikora. But for once she puts her own hesitance aside, and simply trusts Eris.
In a single fluid motion, Eris draws Ikora’s arms around her shoulders like a shawl. Chills break out across her skin from head to toe.
“Oh,” Eris says in a small voice. It’s heady and terrifying and there’s a familiar old refrain somewhere in her head screaming danger, but this time it’s wrong - and this time, Eris damn well knows it.
Eris crosses both their arms over her chest and pounding heart, as if leaning into the wind howling out of the heart of a storm. “I’ve got you,” Ikora whispers next to her ear. This time, a trusted touch grounds her and that piercing clarity guides her. Held in her own shape from without and within, she can let that terror fully pass through her without choking on it. Her breath comes as a shudder and goes as a sigh that pulls two people closer together in its wake. This is nothing like what left scars written across every aspect of Eris’ existence. This is Ikora.
Never has Eris felt as vulnerable around anyone else. The same immensity of care and compassion and loyalty that led her into the pit also led her back out of it, twisting into a self-contained maelstrom that impelled her onward, only reaching beyond the borders of her self to rage and rail in the name of what was lost. It had nowhere else to go. But that truth of her past is not the truth of her present. Ikora has so constantly met her with such careful, honest love. The space between them has shaped a place where Eris’ ever-burning passion can take a form of love that she can finally give and give in turn.
Eris holds her ground until the deafening whine of her terror fades. The storm blows itself out. Her short breaths slow and lengthen again, deep and nourishing. Something new pools in the immense ringing space left behind. Whatever it is has the potential to grow into something just as all-encompassing, yet infinitely kinder.
Engulfed in sensation, she leans back into Ikora, shoulders and all, their flat blades met with softness. Following her lead, Ikora tightens her embrace and tucks her chin neatly over one shoulder to brush their cheeks together. One broad sleeve of her dressing gown is caught bunched at the elbow. The other drapes over Eris like a silken wing where Ikora’s arm circles her.
“Is this alright?” Ikora asks without loosening her hold. “Are you?”
A few last jitters shake themselves out of her limbs. “Mm. Yes.” Eris floats on a rush of adrenaline from the newness of this, the heady power over her past in this moment if no other. It’s certainly a kind of victory, to be able to do this without breaking. A seed has broken the line of the soil and shown her a new way she could be.
But at the same time, it’s just another form of touch, another shade of the greater gift she has already been given: a safe space. This isn’t necessary, Eris realizes. It is just one possibility among endless others. She’s done the once-unthinkable, but she doesn’t need it to be free.
Turning within the arms that hold her, Eris loops her own around Ikora’s neck, bringing them face to face, so close. “But I think I prefer this,” she purrs.
Hands run off her shoulder blades and down her back like water, calling up a deep, deep shiver, one not born from fear. Arms secure themselves in their familiar place around her waist just above her hips, leaving her shoulders as free as a bird’s wings.
“And what of you, Ikora? What do you want?”
Ikora hides her face in Eris’ scarf. “I want you to be alright.”
“Don’t you know how much of a difference you make in that regard? How much kinder and more beautiful my life has been since you reentered it? Look at us in this moment.” Very lightly, Eris places one hand on the back of Ikora’s close-cropped scalp, velvety soft with barely-there curls. “Do you find joy in this, as well?”
“Yes.” Ikora straightens with alacrity, shaking off Eris’ hand to meet her eyes. “Traveler’s sake, Eris, yes, of course.” Gentle fingertips stroke along the line of Eris’ jaw.
“Good.”
Turning her head just so, Eris brushes her face against Ikora’s cheek and blinks her left eye against the soft skin in a butterfly’s kiss. Though she has little in the way of eyelashes anymore; perhaps it is less like the delicate touch of antennae and more like the brush of a moth’s wings flickering in the green light. Curling ichorous smoke lingers on Ikora’s cheekbone for a moment. Eris draws back just far enough to watch it vanish from Ikora’s visage, revealing the raw, tender emotion rampant there. Even if this only lasts as briefly, Eris thinks, it is worth it.
“I don’t want this to be brief,” Ikora says. Her voice catches like shallow water stumbling over smooth stones. Either Eris spoke aloud or Ikora has read her thoughts right off her face. “I want to come back to you, and for you to come back to me, again and again. Even when the work we are called to do takes us far apart. That is what I want.”
Running a thumb over her cheekbone, Eris holds her gaze. “I cannot promise that my life will never be on the line. Nor can you.” She blinks slowly. The lights reflected in Ikora’s eyes phase from spheres to crescents to lines and back again. “But I shall promise that while I live, I am yours.”
Ikora shivers violently under her touch. Eris replays the words that just left her. She cannot tell whether the heat on her face comes from Ikora’s cheeks or her own. Evidently, neither of them expected quite so serious a confession. “So of course I will come back,” she rambles on, eyes averted, face burning. “At times I will need my space, but even then it is much easier to be around you than most, and I miss you terribly when I am away, and - I -“
“Eris. Love. Breathe. I hear you.” A smile delights in Eris’ favorite voice. Ikora gathers her into an encompassing embrace and presses her hard against her heart. “I hear you. I promise, too.”
“Well, then.” Eris quivers in that embrace, then goes as still and calm as a smooth pond. She feels simultaneously as frail as the first delicate blade of grass in the spring and as unshakable as the tallest tree in summer, and it is the same feeling. Together, they have grown deeper and deeper into this place where the lines separating strength from weakness vanish as if they never existed at all. “Did… we just…”
“Make vows?” Ikora chuckles unsteadily. The exquisite sound echoes through Eris’ chest, brimming with equal parts astonishment, embarrassment, and absolute delight. “Not what I had planned for the evening, but I certainly cannot complain.”
With the slightest shift in balance, the City beyond the windows, the mountains beyond the Wall, Luna beyond the atmosphere and the rest of the universe itself feel a little less terrifyingly immense, and Eris’ own infinitesimal single life feels a little larger, a little more real than it has for a very long time. All she can do is watch the woman before her, hear her breath, feel her touch.
“May I kiss you again, Eris Morn?” The fondness in that warm voice could challenge even the cold of hard vacuum.
Words have left Eris, so she nods wordlessly. Then she holds up a hand. Ikora waits. A question rises in the line of her brows.
Ikora’s face is the most precious thing Eris’ shattered hands have ever held. That is what Eris tries to say by leaning in to brush another moth-wing kiss upon Ikora’s forehead with her center eye.
She cannot tell if the sentiment comes across clearly. But with her other two eyes, she can easily see by the tears forming in Ikora’s that it does not really matter.