Chapter Text
“Wake up, little bug,” a deep voice says, and Firefly awakes.
Her eyes crack open slowly. Just now, she had died.
The man grimaces down at her, and her eyes rove up his body. His arms are crossed, stance relaxed, head cocked just enough for his scruffy dark hair to fall into his face and cast upon it long shadows.
“Gallagher,” she says, voice cracking around the vowels, and wonders if the hound is out for her blood tonight. Wonders if she has any blood left in her veins.
“Can you stand?” he asks, and she nods in response. “Good.” He turns on his heel, and Firefly winces as light floods her vision temporarily. “Welcome to Dormancy.”
Her knees bend; she grips the edge of the bench she is sat on, pushes up and stands straight. The air is moist, almost gel-like against her skin: thick — practically dripping — with Memoria. She rubs her arm; her fingers come back dry. “Is this a dream?”
The Bloodhound’s silhouette is large and lonely against the blue glow of the dreamtown. When he speaks, he does not turn. “If you say so, miss.”
”Firefly,” she fills in.
Gallagher chuckles. “I know.”
He brings her somewhere, somewhere past dark winding alleys down dark gritty stairs. There is no sky in the dream: pooling over her there is only a haunting blue glow, saturated with tranquility and haunted by something a little like the remnants of loneliness, too bright for night and too deep for day. A wind runs through her hair, syrupy and suspended in time. She keeps a hand fisted around her blazer’s ribbon.
Gallagher had explained the mechanics of Dormancy during the walk before lapsing into silence. His eyes were thoughtful and heavy. He does not tell her where they go. Firefly trails behind him, shoes clacking through the somber quiet against the tiled ground. When he comes to a stop, she stands beside him.
“Miss Samuels,” he says, and she jolts. “That’s what you go by in Penacony.”
Firefly’s gaze shifts to the ground. “Yes.”
“After all, stowaways are not registered in the system.”
She swallows. “Yes.”
Gallagher sighs, deep and weary. “I’m not here to berate you, kid. Bloodhounds have no jurisdiction here anyway. You’re free to roam.”
Firefly looks up, but Gallagher’s already gone. When she turns around, he has already melted into the shadows, and she is alone once more. Blue light creeps down the ground from ahead of her, beckoning. She steps forward.
You’re free.
She steps forward. The watery light soaks into her skin.
Periwinkle is a colour she won’t forget. She had familiarised herself with bright green and deep blue and pale yellow over the long and ever-decreasingly lonely years, and periwinkle came into her life like a rippling flag signalling something new and life-changing. It was the colour that drew her eyes in the dusky alley when her heart felt like it was flying out of her throat.
Periwinkle falls as soft and tempting as it was the first time she saw it. And her heart is flying once again.
Robin stands in the townsquare, gazing off to the side. Her hair flows in the sweet wind.
There is a thunderstorm raging in her heart. There is salt on her lips. Firefly wipes her face, eyes wide and aching.
“Robin!” she calls, and if she was thinking properly she would have second-guessed the casualness that she said her name. But Firefly is not thinking. Lightning adrenaline pools in her blood, hot as fire.
Robin turns.
“Firefly,” she says, just soft enough to hear, brows furrowing in a way that seems like she is thinking too much. “We meet again.”
“Yeah,” Firefly says, walking to her. “I’ve been thinking — regretting the way I left. I would have loved to stay a while longer, I’m really sorry, there was just —”
Her smile drops. She does not know how to continue.
Firefly is bound by duty; if not with the Cavalry, then with the Hunters. How does she explain? That Firefly had to run away so Sam could step forward?
Perhaps that is not what she should try to explain. Perhaps she should be contemplating how to let Robin down gently, which knife to give her to cleanly cut her losses.
“Firefly,” Robin says, then pauses. “I don’t know anymore. Is that even your name?”
“Yes!”
“I asked my brother. To check the databases, that is. Firefly,” Robin says, and Firefly feels smoke settle heavily in her lungs, “You don’t exist.”
It comes pouring down on her like ice cold water. Firefly is not a fool, but sometimes she acts foolishly.
She shouldn’t have approached Robin — she has made a mistake. Her shoulders ache with an imaginary weight, her bones dissolving and crystallising and dissipating into effervescence.
Sometimes, she feels that she doesn’t exist too.
God, Robin’s the sister of the Oak Family head, daughter of the Dreamweaver, love of a million stars across the galaxy. What is Firefly doing?
Betraying Robin, or perhaps jeopardising herself. She doesn’t know. She has to do something anyway. They are soulmates, and it could mean nothing at all.
“Ah,” she says, suddenly out of breath, “I should have expected you would find out. I suppose it’s on me to clear things up. That day we met, I said I wasn’t normal. And I’m not, Robin; I’m a stowaway, I’m —”
Too much. A Stellaron Hunter. A criminal, and an enemy.
Not enough. A sick girl. One of a hundred thousand girls, all looking the same. (But she is flesh where they are scattered ashes and char. She is the only who has held her palms up to the sky and felt a droplet of clear rain.)
“Firefly,” Robin says sadly, “I don’t know what to make of you. But I want to know you, and I want you to let me. So don’t lie, and don’t stay silent.”
Firefly bites down on her tongue, hard. The iron tastes like chains in her mouth.
Robin reaches out, almost tentative but always tender, and she flinches away ever so slightly. Still does her hand come to rest gently upon her arm, and that silk glove is cool against her skin. Robin’s brow furrows, and the glove comes peeling off. There are bare knuckles against her forehead, gentle as summer rain.
“Firefly,” she whispers, “You’re burning.”
She is burning. Her eyes are strained and aching with heat.
When she lets her tears fall, it feels like liquid fire.
“I’m a Stellaron Hunter,” she confesses.
And Robin is an idol and Robin is an Oak and maybe the circumstances are impossible. And Robin’s hand is already drawing back like betrayal burns her skin, and she slips back on her silk glove like she’s hiding a scar.
“I don’t know how to respond,” Robin admits, and averts her eyes.
“Don’t lie,” Firefly grits out eventually. “Don’t stay silent.”
Robin turns, shifts, turns back again. Rubs a hand heavily down her face, barely making a smudge on her eyeshadow. Inhales shakily, exhales deeply.
“Okay,” she says, then she doesn’t speak for a while. “Okay, I’ll talk. When I was a child, I had this dream. About me and my soulmate. I guess I should call it a dream about us.”
She tells Firefly about dawn in the gardens. And Firefly listens and feels like she’s dying.
“I don’t have that dream anymore,” she whispers. “The garden is now gone. And Penacony is more stagnant dream than land. And when I’m out of Penacony I’m in a new planet’s afternoon before the previous one’s night has even come to an end and it feels like the day never ends and the sun never rises and — Aeons, Firefly, you’re a criminal. I would have never known. Because I looked at you and it was dawn. I looked at you and I thought the night was over. I felt hope. How do you make me feel this way?”
Firefly can only stare.
She did not dream; she still does not dream. But she has always carried with her that trace of hope — inked in green and yellow and blue, brushed by auroras and fireflies and mixed with a droplet of rain, splotched against the grey like the darkness was finally peeling away. It had — Robin had bled into her hope.
“I’m sorry,” she says, because she does not know what else to do. “I can’t say I understand you — I didn’t have dreams like you. I didn’t have the luxury to. So I don’t understand how it feels to have them crushed, and I can’t tell you I know how you feel. But Robin, you gave me the strength to live. And I’m alive, and I —”
I want to walk barefoot on warm asphalt with your knuckles brushing against mine. I want to dance on rainsoaked soil and breathe in the smell of your shampoo mixed with petrichor. I want your face flushed with summer heat, your hair slicked with winter rain. I want cake on your fork and sugar on my lips. I want —
It’s like the floodgates have opened.
Firefly smiles sadly. “I’m so stupid. I just realised I have a dream about us.”
“You can’t just say that,” Robin says. “You can’t just — Aeons, Firefly. Tell me more.”
I want to see you in the mornings, basking in the golden sunlight. I want to recognise you blind by your warmth and by the slope of your nose against my shoulder. I want to think of you and know you are thinking of me in turn. I want to pull you close and not think at all.
Firefly wants — Firefly longs.
She desires so many things, too many things. Things lying in a future as inaccessible as a destroyed past. Things too selfish to say aloud. Perhaps she can understand Robin, in the worst possible way.
“I want to hug you,” Firefly says instead.
“Okay,” Robin whispers, “Okay.”
Her arms are as warm as Firefly imagined. She wraps around her gentle as a blanket of snow, and pulls her in snugly. Firefly melts into the touch, hugs back, featherlight. Robins hair smells like flowers and honey, and feels soft and smooth where her fingertips brush.
They slot together like puzzle pieces. Robin’s skin feels clean and Firefly feels like she is burning inside out, coal breaking off from her bones in chunks and ash ripping away from her skin. Somehow, she feels whole. Robin’s breath is slow; she memorises its feeling against her skin.
Robin is warmer than a bonfire, cooler than gunpowder burning.
“Then what?” Robin asks.
“This is…” Firefly swallows. “This is enough for me.”
“Okay,” Robin says.
“Okay,” Firefly repeats.
For a moment, there is silence. Then Robin is pulling away, making just enough distance to cup Firefly’s face in both palms. “Dance with me,” she says.
“I can’t dance,” Firefly laughs, but her hands settle at the other woman’s waist anyway. “I’m no idol like you.”
“I was afraid, that day we met. You told me you wanted to be normal, and I thought I wouldn’t be able to give you that.” They’re swaying now, slow and soft and to a silent song. “My job is so much more than a job. It’s not just music, it’s… bringing hope, and relief, to the galaxy. It’s not something I can throw away so easily. If I was given an ultimatum, I know what my answer would be, even if it tore me apart. I felt like I was being torn apart, those days after you left.”
Firefly can only smile sadly. “Oh, Robin, I was talking about myself. I’m — inherently — not normal. I’m… well, apart from being a Stellaron Hunter…”
“But being a Stellaron Hunter is enough to just. Go against what I stand for.” Robin’s gaze darts away, soft and sad. Firefly had once wondered if her soulmate’s eyes would burst with the violent power of a golden Stellaron — but the pain she feels comes in a blow of muted orange, heavy as a pane of stained glass baked in the sun and toppled over her chest.
“I’ve seen war, dedicated myself to relief efforts — I have seen death. Firefly, have you killed? Aeons, I’m sorry, that was a bad question to ask.”
Firefly thinks of heat and gunpowder and the splattered juices of the Swarm. She thinks of ivory white metal scorched black and devoured by grey. She thinks of Kafka, smelling of rosewater and wine, shooting a man in the head and giving her his gun. She remembers smiling at her wobbily, the trigger of the gun still warm with body heat.
And she remembers that Robin does not know her.
“I think it’s not as black and white as it may seem. But I’m not… an impartial opinion. Robin, you don’t know all of me. It’s hard to explain.”
“I don’t know if I want to know you,” she whispers back.
”You want to dance with me.”
“I do,” Robin laughs, choked up. “I do.”
“Does it matter?” Firefly asks, the words festering on her tongue like bacteria in honey. “We’re in a dream. Let’s dream. God, isn’t this selfish?”
Robin’s eyes are dark and glittering, her gaze like an accusation.
(She thinks of a girl she once knew. If that girl had longer hair, they would be mirror images. She once told Firefly her soulmate had eyes the colour of flames, and Firefly did not know whether to envy her.
Sometimes, she wonders if that girl found it beautiful when her body was burnt alive, soft flesh dancing with blazing fire in a heap of broken steel. It took a small spark — a gentle spray of water could have extinguished it. But the battlefield only leaks organs and black oil, and on the battlefield it does not rain.
Firefly wants to ask her if she has the right to be selfish, when Firefly’s alive and making bad decisions when she’s nothing but ash. But she cannot ask, and she cannot remember her name.)
”Selfish, yes. You tear me apart, Firefly. My soul feels like it’s ripping at the seams.” Robin laughs. “What kind of person would I be if I didn’t make my soulmate’s dream come true? No, don’t talk right now. We’re in a dream, aren’t we?”
So they don’t talk. They dance, silently, feet silent and careful like there are flowers rotting at their feet.
“Let’s do this when we meet again. Let’s do this in the sun and in the rain and in the nights and in the days. Let’s meet again.”
”Firefly,” Robin starts.
”Let me dream,” Firefly says. “For a moment, let me lay everything else to rest. And we’ll wake up, and it’ll be like —”
— peering through a rain-streaked window in the corner of your strained eyes, losing yourself in the hazy lights of morning. The sky is grey and cloudy, but the air tastes like summer dawn. There’s morning dew soaking into your clothes, or maybe it’s cold sweat. You don’t remember what you were dreaming about; it has risen from your skin and melted into the fog, slipping away like sand, down and down the gentle hissing of the hourglass. Your bones feel like sand and you can’t move from your bed. There’s morning dew soaking into your clothes, or maybe it’s warm sweat.
You are tired, too tired to lift your arms. If you could, you would summon green flames in the palm of your hands — stare at them and watch them flicker out before they are extinguished in the grey chill, and wonder if you’re hallucinating. There’s someone you could have known, who could dispel all doubt and verify the truth of your existence; you can’t seem to remember her. She’s stuck in the dream that has risen from your skin and melted into the fog, rinsed away and swallowed into the wind. And it is almost too easy to part with a fragment of your soul — so perhaps you have been fragmented all along, never to fully awaken. So you close your eyes again. And you’ll wake up, and it’ll be like —
“It’ll be like a dream come true,” Robin murmurs, “And the next time we dance there will be music.”
“…Robin?”
“Hush, darling. We are still dreaming. The next time we dance, perhaps I will sing. I could sing for you now, if you want.”
“Don’t strain yourself,” Firefly says, “With you, I can also enjoy the silence.”
Robin hums. “Then next time I will.”
“You’ve told me so much about yourself today. I’m glad.”
“Meaningless things, Firefly.”
”I’m glad you weren’t silent,” Firefly continues anyway, pulling away and breaking their tempo. “I just wish you also wouldn’t lie.”
”I’m sorry, darling. Everyone must be familiar with the structure of Penacony’s success; they trap you in dreams of indulgence. I never thought that I too would fall prey.”
”It’s okay,” Firefly says. “But, at the very least, you owe it to me to now be honest. Tell me, Robin, why does life slumber?”
And Robin smiles, and it is a secretive thing. She stands dwarfed under the empty void of blue light, pale as a sliver of starlight, and when her hair flutters in the sweet wind she reminds her of a ghost.
“I am not lying now,” she says, voice muffled by a breeze that brushes slow against Firefly’s ears. “And I will not lie to you any further. So ask me tomorrow when the sun has risen, and when we have awaken. Let’s meet again. My heart feels like it is tearing itself apart — but if it’s you, it will not break.”
And Firefly believes her, foolishly and full of hope.
“Tomorrow then,” she says. “In the real world.”
Firefly turns her gaze to the blue glow overhead, and its emptiness holds no answer for her.
Robin smiles, and it is like a herald of all things to come.