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Wind blows gently through the trees as Victoria finishes her story. She brushes her thumb at the corner of her eye, wiping away tears before they have a chance to fall, though she's sure her watery eyes haven't escaped Sahuna's notice. It's a sad story, and even though it ends well for her, she's still not happy at the end. All she feels, all she's ever felt, is staggering relief. "Someone found him dead in an airlock about four months later."
Companionable silence falls around them. Silence usually makes Victoria uncomfortable, especially after sharing that particular life experience, but Sahuna has a way of making it warm, safe, even soft. She could live inside this silence, just sitting forever in a place that feels like family. Like home. Like she belongs.
Odd that her parents had to die, her brother had to be in a coma, and she had to leave the galaxy to find a place like that. Even odder that she found it among aliens. She pushes the thought away - an analysis for another time.
"You haven't told them," Sahuna says softly after a moment of contemplation.
The setting sun turns the Havarl sky into pinks and oranges and brilliant purples. Little pinpricks of starlight flicker at the edges of the oncoming night.
Victoria blinks at Sahuna. Their tea is long finished and smells of dinner have begun wafting outside through an open window. She looks out at the mountains beyond and the valley below, and swallows. No, she hasn't. "I don't know how," she admits. She shifts against the large plush pillows beneath her, bringing her knees to her chest, loosely hugging her legs.
Sahuna reaches out over the space between them and clasps Victoria's hands with hers. "You told me," she says simply.
Victoria looks back at her. "Not easily." She pauses, and then offers Sahuna a little smile. "Plus, you asked."
Smiling in return, Sahuna lightly squeezes her hands and then lets go. "I'm nosy and have no shame. You know this."
She laughs and lets her knees fall back to the pillow, tucking her feet underneath her. "It doesn't seem relevant," she says, playing with her necklace. Her fingers trail over the scar on her collarbone, the scar Sahuna had asked about. "It's over, I'm okay enough. And I know Liam and Jaal would never do anything like that. So I - " she exhales a short, frustrated sigh. "There's nothing about it they need to know." Now that she's said it aloud, it sounds like the lousy excuse it is. She stares at her hands.
"Perhaps not," Sahuna says. "But it is part of you, my dear. And they love you. Quite a lot, if the way they look at you is any indication." She waits until Victoria looks up again. "I know my son. This will not diminish what he feels for you. I doubt it will diminish Liam's feelings either."
Victoria swallows. Though she's never truly doubted their feelings for her, there's a little part of her that always whispers you're too damaged to be with anyone. Sahuna's right, of course. But Sahuna's only the third person Victoria's ever told - the rest who know found out on their own somehow - and this is the first time she hasn't dissolved into tears. Jaal and Liam have seen her cry, but her tears have been for things outside of her, not something unfortunately a part of her. It's different, and she doesn't like it. She pushes a stray strand of hair out of her face and sighs.
"I won't tell them," Sahuna promises. "I understand if you wish this to remain between us. But," she smiles at Victoria in a way that makes her think of someone else, someone long buried in Indiana with a handful of daisies, "I think they would like to know."
Victoria looks away and glances inside through the window. She's too far away to hear them, but Jaal's teaching one of his younger cousins how to build a fire in the open-air pit near the center of the compound. Liam subtly sneaks a piece of vegetable from the tray beside them, only to be caught by Jaal - though his only punishment is a smile and a kiss to his forehead. Liam turns and blows a kiss to her; she waves at him and smiles.
"Yeah," she says, looking back at Sahuna. Six hundred years later and a galaxy away, it's past time to stop running from a ghost who never deserved her at all.
***
The sun's long set, and dinner long eaten and cleaned up, and the littlest ones long put to bed. Victoria sits down on the upper balcony, letting her feet dangle in the empty air. The mountains brighten and pulse with the glowing plants - a band of blue here, a patch of purple there, a swirl of pink in between.
Liam sits down on her right, Jaal on her left. She leans forward against the low railing and rests her chin on her hands. She knows she's been strange ever since coming inside for dinner - quiet, distant, holding herself just a little too stiffly. No one else in Jaal's family knows her well enough yet to notice it, but Jaal and Liam do. They sit quietly beside her, waiting. They've all learned over the past months that not one of them responds well to pushing.
"My ex-boyfriend used to hit me," she says softly. No pretense, no preamble. No setting up the story like she did with Sahuna, explaining that it all began with her mother's death and running to Omega and being so consumed by her grief she didn't realize what was happening until it was too late. Just the bare fact of it. "A lot."
She feels them share a look over the top of her head. She can almost picture the look - worried, perhaps even horrified, Liam's mouth falls open just a little while Jaal's eyes shimmer, both torn between hugging her and killing someone six hundred years and a galaxy away dead.
Night bugs hum and chirp and sing in the silence, a chorus of insects trying to attract each other's attention.
"Tori?" Liam settles his hand on her lower back, and Jaal puts his hand on her knee.
She sits up straight, draws her legs up, and turns so she's facing them both. "I'm okay," she says. "I just, I wanted - actually, Sahuna wanted me to tell you," she tries to lighten the mood. Because the way they're looking at her, like she's the most precious thing in both their worlds and they're trying to figure out how to protect her from absolutely everything all at once, is just a little too intense.
She loves them with all her heart and then some, but sometimes it scares her how much they love her.
"Darling one," Jaal whispers, his voice thick with tears. He reaches out and cups her cheek.
"I'm okay," she repeats, and lets Jaal draw her close.
He kisses her temple and guides her head to his shoulder. His hands gently stroke her hair, smoothing out the little hairs that have escaped from their loose crown braid, before settling on hers. She turns her palms over and softly grasps his hands.
She pulls away, kisses his scarred cheek, and turns. Jaal's arms circle around her waist and he tugs her into his lap.
"Is that how…?" Liam trails off and brushes his fingertips - feather-light, as if she's still hurt - down her left temple.
"Yeah," she says. One break of many. She can point to them all, though she'd rather not.
Liam tucks a small piece of hair behind her ear. "Can we do anything?"
Victoria smiles - he's always trying to fix things, even things that were broken years ago and don't need to be fixed anymore. She's just a little chipped, and always will be. It took her a while to come to terms with that, but she's okay with it now.
"No," she says. Maybe she'll tell them the whole story one day, from the beginning, from sitting down in Afterlife to the bodyguards to Aria telling her they found him dead on the wrong side of a decompressed airlock. But she probably won't, not unless they ask; she's done thinking about it, done remembering. She reaches out and cups his cheek, brushing her fingertips through his hairline. "But thank you."
He clasps her hand, and then turns and kisses her palm. She strokes her thumb over his cheekbone.
Jaal hugs her tighter, strengthening his arms around her. Victoria leans back into him and twines the fingers of one hand with his, letting her other fall from Liam's cheek down to his hands. He catches hers and brushes a kiss to her knuckles before letting their joined hands drop to his lap.
Bats - or Havarl's equivalent, she's not heard a name for them yet - flap through the nearby trees, and Victoria looks up at the starry night sky, streaked with purple and pink aurora. Bioluminescent leaves blow gently above them in the wind. What a strange planet, and yet it feels more like home than Earth ever did. Maybe it's the company.
"I love you guys," she says quietly. This isn't the first time she's told them, but it somehow seems more important than it did before, more solid. Permanent. Real. They're all a little chipped and broken.
Jaal presses a kiss to the top of her head and then smooths out her hair. "I love you," he whispers in return.
Liam leans forward and bumps his forehead against hers. "Love you," he murmurs.
She sighs contently and lets them just hold her for a while. Shadows pass over them as a family of great beasts flies above. "I'm okay," she says again, when they show no sign of ever letting go. "I wanted to tell you, that's all."
And that's the truth of it. Though Sahuna encouraged her to tell them, Victoria would be lying to herself if she said she didn't want them to know. And as much as Victoria wishes she weren't - Sahuna was right, and what happened is a part of her. The men holding her are her world and they deserve to know everything, even the broken bits.
Victoria nuzzles Liam's shoulder and shifts out of Jaal's lap. She scoots forward to the edge of the balcony and dangles her legs over the ledge again, though this time she braces her hands behind her and leans back, looking up at the sparkling starry night sky. Liam and Jaal settle in beside her, sliding their arms around her waist. She smiles and lifts her pinkies, curling them around her partners' fingers.
Though she'll always be a little chipped because of it, what happened in the Milky Way is past, over. She's found the two men here with her on the balcony, and she's safe with them, forever, and that's what matters.