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“Elisabeth?”
The exo’s body shifted beneath the sheets with obvious discomfort, though it was the erratic strobe of soft white light that stirred the awoken hunter beside her from sleep. Elisabeth’s approximation of a jaw fluttered open and closed with unsteady breath and mumbled words, causing each burst of vocal lighting to feel more and more like a flash bang to Isolde’s rousing senses. “Too late,” said Elisabeth in her uniquely tinny voice. “Gone. All gone. Need to find another. Can’t lose–”
Isolde shifted up to her knees and took her lover gently by her polymer shoulders. “Elisabeth, I’m here. Come back to me,” cooed the hunter, but the hushed call was drowned out by the sounds of the exo's panic. Isolde’s hands trailed down Elizabeth's arms until she could free them from the cocoon of bedsheets. She lifted the tips of the other woman’s fingers to her lips and kissed them gently, the gesture bound in the warmth of solar light in hopes that it would bring Elisabeth out of her nightmare with comfort.
It wasn’t until Isolde rested the cool, blue skin of her forehead against her lover’s hands that the light in the exo’s eyes flickered on and her gasping breaths began to slow.
“I’m here, my love,” said Isolde, her voice barely above a whisper. She lifted her head so that their eyes could meet. “I’m right here. It’s alright.”
“Isolde?” Elisabeth’s voice had none of the dryness a flesh and blood throat would upon waking, though it was, however briefly, shaky with uncertainty. The exo’s snow white eyes shifted with the slightest of whirrs and clicks. “Am I–”
“You’re here, with me, in the now,” said Isolde, bringing her lover’s hands up to her lips once again to gently kiss the exo’s knuckles. Elisabeth had warned her about this, before the two became romantically entangled. That her experiences in the dark future and so many other failed timelines were not easy to forget. That they would creep up in her unconscious mind at night, as if a stand-in for the crypt all the others like her dreamed of. They were vibrant and real, to the point that Elsie would sometimes wake and still feel the sensation of her sister Ana’s blood on her hands or the ash of Isolde's remains burning her cheeks. ‘I’m not here just for the good days, darling,’ Isolde had told her at the time. ‘I’m here for the bad days, too.’
“We’re on Europa,” said Isolde, squeezing Elisabeth’s hands gently with her own. “Far, far away from the dark future.”
From the way Elsie’s shoulders were practically touching her ears, Isolde could tell there was still more than a little tension in her lover’s body. Gently, she ran her thumbs over the exo’s hands. “Will you go through the steps with me?”
Elisabeth nodded and Isolde turned so that she could pull the other woman’s shoulders and head into her lap. “What can you see, darling?”
Elisabeth’s eyes shifted once more, narrowing with focus in the dark. “The picture of Ana and I when we were younger. The console, left open. My cloak, hanging on the door frame. Galahad, asleep. Your cold weather jacket.”
“What can you touch?”
Elisabeth’s fingers flexed and closed in Isolde’s grasp until they were returning the gesture. “Your hands. The pillow. The blanket. My night shirt.”
“What can you hear?”
The soft light of Elisabeth’s eyes flickered off. Isolde could feel the panicked gallop of the exo’s heart had started to slow beneath her touch. “Your breathing. The purifier. The generators.”
“What can you smell?”
The exo inhaled through her olfactory unit, the simple act of it seeming to calm the trembling in her limbs. “The cold in the air from outside,” she said, before exhaling slowly. “Your perfume.”
“And what can you taste?”
Elisabeth sighed the rest of her held breath, her artificial body relaxing back into the comfort of Isolde’s lap and their shared bed. “Nothing,” she said after a moment. Her eyes activated once more and Isolde met her lover’s pale gaze with her own. “Which I suppose could be worse.”
“Shall I change that?” asked Isolde, running a hand across the exo woman’s smooth cheek. Her own pulse settled now that Elsie was reattached to her tether. “I can fetch you a coffee or tea or...”
“--no. Well. Yes,” Elisabeth said with a slight smile on her lips. She propped herself up on her arms, eliminating all but the last few inches of distance between herself and the hunter. “I want to taste you. Kiss me.”
“For as long as you want, darling.” Isolde leaned in the rest of the way and pressed her lips against the malleable curves and ridges of Elisabeth’s own.
“Forever,” Elisabeth whispered.
The two slowly became one as the frigid night went on until the stress had left them both. Isolde laid her arm across her lover’s body and held her close until they both finally returned to sleep.