Work Text:
Like most jobs that are terribly important, Watching is a lonely undertaking.
This has never been a problem for Tallinn, who has always been comfortable in her own mind and had long ago identified herself as someone too self-contained to properly give herself over into romance. She reads people well, understands them, but intimacy? Vulnerability? Sounds awful. Always has.
Tallinn has been content for just north of two decades, watching Renee Picard grow from a distance; watching her become, develop into who she is now – a stunningly beautiful young woman of twenty-two, sitting around a bonfire on a beach with some of her brilliant friends, singing songs in her clear, pleasant alto, laughing. She’s lit in orange/gold from the flames, smiling winsomely. But even now, Tallinn knows, her eyes are on the stars.
It's the first time that Tallinn is aware of something terrible; the pull in her chest as she sits here, several yards away, well outside the warm circle of firelight, feeling for the first time a coldness in her isolation. The sea breezes tug at loose strands of her hair like a child needing attention. She wants to be over there, in the light.
She wants to be near Renee, basking in her warmth.
This is terrible.
So, she sits in a dismal little pool of cold moonlight, and takes out paper, of all things, and more absurdly, a pen. Paper, because it burns. Voice memos, text files, those can get sucked away into the ether and resurface again.
Paper can be controlled. She writes it, to control it:
Your eyes are on the stars. Since you were a small child, your eyes were on them, and they were in your eyes. Your importance has always shone around you, a glow that everyone can sense even if they can’t see it. Your eyes have always been beautiful, and always full of stars.
It stands to reason that if you are special enough to have a Watcher, you are special enough to be loved, and I have watched a few loves come and go without understanding what they were seeing when they saw your light, or trying to simply take it for themselves, borrow your warmth without having the faintest clue how to give it back. These human frailties, these are the things I can’t protect you from. How I’ve often wished I could.
I’ve always been ready to lay down my life for you, and someday I may, but it strikes me as I sit here on the sand, in the dark, that I’ve already laid down my heart.
Like most jobs that are terribly important, there are risks they cannot foresee, cannot forewarn you about. Like most jobs that are terribly important, there are moments you will never be able to explain to anyone else. The isolation surrounding the heart of one who has always thought she was happy to be alone… this is one of those things.
At nineteen, you mapped a new constellation discovered by a new telescope that you helped build. You named it after a forgotten queen you read about in a history book that anyone else might have neglected. You wrote her a poem after you named the stars for her. What am I to do with that? Ask me how I have remained aloof since then, I can’t tell you. I don’t know.
Space waits for you. Legend and history wait for you. You are special enough to be Watched, and there has never been a day when that labor has been a burden. You have gifts, Renee, more than one woman rightly deserves, but you earn them every day. You make a gift of yourself to the world, to the stars, to the future of your people.
It’s possible no Watcher could resist the call of your warmth, no Watcher could watch you and not feel what I feel; that it’s not enough to see you each day, but rather they would long to be seen by you, just as I do now. How could they not? How could they not want to have your attention fixed on them, your kind intelligence, your sweetness. How could they see your smile and not want to bring it to your lips again and again?
Perhaps no Watcher could guard or govern their heart in the face of it. But I am the Watcher you were given, and I remain steadfast. If I’ve come to love you over these many years, I will not break my code. If I catch myself dreaming of staring into your eyes without hesitance and hiding, I will not discuss it. If I wonder what promises your soft cheek and tender mouth might hold, I won’t speak it to anyone.
I’m light years away from a moment in the sun.
She finishes scribbling.
Renee is on her feet, singing in French, a song of love and loss, something well known to her friends, practically a French national anthem. They love it simultaneously with and without irony. Tallinn stands, folds the piece of paper. As Renee continues to tipsily sing, Talinn walks across the sand toward the circle of firelight.
Renee doesn’t notice her as she draws near, and it’s just as well. One of her friends glances up at her with a questioning glance. She smiles tightly, holds up the page. “Something for the fire.”
He shrugs.
She leans in and watches the page get consumed and turn to ash in an instant. For an instant, Renee turns, catches her eye. Tallinn only lets herself linger for a fraction of a heartbeat before turning away and retreating to the dark again.
But the stars in her eyes, and the warmth, the mirth, the joy. It will feed her for another decade at least, Tallinn thinks.
The warmth, good Gods, the warmth.