Chapter Text
The rover wheels strike an uneven patch of rocks along the planet's surface, jostling Sara in her seat. Another series of bumps come, and Sara abandons the map in her lap in favor of reaching for the handle in front of her, gripping it tightly. “I told you to go around this area,” Sara mutters, shaking her head as the rover rattles over the rough terrain, “This area isn’t easy to move through unless you take the south path around the rocks.”
To her left, the rover’s driver says nothing, not that Sara expected her to. Scoffing quietly, Sara maintains her grip on the handle as she turns her head to look out at the planet around them. Sector Eighty-one, known for the jagged terrain running through it. It is easily Sara’s least favourite area on Pliny-X-19, and yet traveling through it is a necessary evil if they are to reach the excavation sites they marked up two days ago.
Bright green rays of light stream down from two of the three suns that surround the planet, lighting up all of the bleak blue terrain below. Sawtooth cliffs break out from the surface, casting shadows on craters and man-made pits down below them. In the distance, Sara can already spot a zone that has been marked for excavation in the upcoming days. “We’re not far,” Sara remarks, leaning back in her chair as she taps the holographic map in her lap, “It should be right up ahead.”
Unsurprisingly, there is yet again no reply from her companion. Cliffs and craters continue to fly by the fast-moving rover as Sara shuffles in her seat and looks to the driver. From this angle, Sara can’t see Ava’s face where it’s tucked behind the shield of her helmet. There’s too much glare coming from the bright light of the third rising sun in front of them.
Yet, Sara can see the tight grip that Ava has on the wheel, and the stiffness of her posture where her back doesn’t meet the seat. She can both see and hear the sound of Ava’s left foot tapping anxiously on the rover floor. And she can hear the soft sounds of Ava’s breathing coming through the communication link embedded in her own helmet. Just as Sara is about to turn around once more, to let Ava to sulk in stubborn silence, her eyes fall to a patch on the upper arm of Ava’s suit.
The patch isn’t large, and Sara doubts that anyone else would notice it seeing as it’s tucked just under their company logo. Until now, Sara hadn’t even noticed that it was there. A small yellow canary is placed there on Ava’s suit, faded and frayed. It’s aged with time, but Sara remembers the day she neatly sewed the patch onto Ava’s sleeve, the way Ava had beamed at her when she came home and saw it. In her lap, the hologram chimes to alert her that they’re close to the planned excavation zone, but Sara ignores it. “You never got rid of it,” Sara murmurs, her eyes still caught on the stitched patch, “Almost a year, and you kept it.”
Over comms, Sara hears Ava’s sharp intake of breath, followed by a light clearing of her throat. For a moment, Sara is convinced that Ava isn’t going to say anything at all, that she is going to ignore Sara just as she has ignored any other questions or references Sara has made to their time together at The Academy. “It’s sewn on permanently,” Ava replies in a clipped tone, her voice quiet.
“You could have gotten a new suit,” Sara points out, her stomach twisting as she waits for Ava to respond.
Seconds pass, with no reaction from Ava other than the tightening of her hands around the wheel. Then Ava turns her head to the side, only slightly, but enough for Sara to catch sight of the slight frown pulling at her lips and the grey-blue color of her eyes. “I didn’t want a new suit,” is all Ava says before facing forwards once more.
The pit in Sara’s stomach only grows, her frustration mounting as she bites back any further comment and looks beyond the rover viewscreen once more. Ava isn’t going to talk. Sara can’t make her, and yet all she wants is to get the answers she can’t help but feel that she deserves. However she made Ray a promise last week, one that she has truly been trying to keep in an effort to maintain peace amongst the small crew at the base. So Sara says nothing still, she just takes in a slow, deep breath and lets the scenery pass by.
It doesn’t take long before familiar cliffs and craters come into view, followed by a flimsy post sticking from the surface of the planet that lets Sara know they’re finally here in Sector Eighty-four. Ava brings the rover to a stop just as Sara spots their planned excavation zone in the distance. Both sections have been marked off with bright red tape that forms neat squares along the ground, and yet, even from here Sara can tell that something is off. Large banks of silver speckled powder blanket the site in the distance—powder that hadn’t been here when they had left yesterday. “Everything we did yesterday has been buried,” Sara groans, impatiently shoving her door open before dropping down into the shifting sand below, “It’s going to take at least an hour to clear this away before we can start.”
“I expected as much,” Ava mumbles. On the other side of the rover, Ava is tossing tools and containment units into a sling bag. Stepping close to the back of the rover, Sara places her hands on the trunk rim as Ava glances upwards. “I was up late last night,” Ava says by way of explanation, her shoulder lifting in a shrug, “There was a massive solar storm that moved through this quadrant, I brought the right tools just in case we encountered moon dust like this.”
Laughing in frustration, Sara shakes her head and jerks her bag from the trunk. “That would have been useful information to have in advance,” Sara mutters, no longer having any patience for trying to keep the peace with Ava.
“You could have checked the weather,” Ava retorts, sounding entirely unapologetic, “Ray adjusted the radar the other day, so it’s working again—would have taken you a minute, if not less.”
Her bag in hand, Sara completely ignores Ava and leaves her there by the rover as she makes her way to the first excavation zone further from the main crater. If Ava wants to be difficult, then Sara won’t do her any favors today. Ava can figure out how to dig moon dust and artifacts from the crater while Sara recovers objects from the flat terrain in the first zone.
Already a layer of dust roughly a foot deep covers the surface of the zone that Sara had carefully dug around and marked three days ago. Not a single artifact top is visible in the ashy-silver powder, and Sara mentally reconsiders just how long removing this is going to take. Using her arm, Sara sweeps as much of the dust to the side as she can, trying to find the top of the armour pieces that she knows rested just here by the corner. “That’s not safe,” Ava comments, her back to Sara as she walks away towards the crater in the distance.
“I think I’ll manage,” Sara remarks, faking a smile as Ava looks over her shoulder. Over comms, Sara can still hear the scoff that Ava fails to suppress. “Unless you brought the particle remover, I don’t know how else to remove this from the site,” Sara sighs, sitting back on her heels as she stares at the vast recovery zone in front of her, “We might have to wait for tomorrow when the rain passes through.”
Ava says nothing, however when Sara looks up, she’s holding the bulky particle remover in her hand. Barely suppressing her eye-roll, Sara pushes to her feet and makes her way over to where Ava is already laying out her tools along the powder-covered ground. “Of course you brought this out here,” Sara mutters, taking it from Ava’s hands and checking to make sure the battery is fully charged, “You knew what the weather was, so you knew that we were going to find this here.”
“I don’t want to fight, Sara,” Ava sighs, her voice sounding quiet and almost tired, “Can we please just have one easy recovery trip.”
All at once, the heavy feeling is back in Sara’s stomach, the pressure returning to her chest. Swallowing thickly, Sara lets out a halfhearted scoff as she looks to Ava’s face, finally seeing her clearly now. “You really want to get into this now? Out here of all places?” Sara tests, failing to keep her frustration from her voice. Instantly, Ava looks away, her hands falling down by her sides as Sara can hear her quiet inhale. Disappointment crashes through Sara as she shakes her head, “That’s what I thought.”
Turning on her heel, Sara prepares to head back to her zone and attempt to clear up the mess left behind by the storms. But before she can take even two steps, a hand wraps around her wrist and tugs lightly. “Sara, please,” Ava breathes out. Staring ahead, Sara silently contemplates what she wants to do now. She could walk away now and pretend this never happened. It would only be fair after Ava has walked away from her countless times. Or Sara could turn around and see if maybe this time Ava is going to tell her the truth. Taking a chance that Ava will do the right thing, Sara backs up, standing between Ava and the edge of the crater. “It’s,” Ava pauses and then shakes her head with a sigh, sounding nothing but nervous, “It’s complicated Sara but—”
“The way I see it, things aren’t complicated at all,” Sara cuts her off, an ache in her stomach and her throat as she stares back at Ava, “Seven months Ava. We were together for seven months and then I came home to find you and all your stuff gone—replaced with just a single letter that didn’t explain anything.” Ava averts her eyes once more, her hands toying with the oxygen and navigation belt around her waist. “Then you just show up here,” Sara throws her hands up, letting out a bitter laugh, “And nothing has changed because you still won’t explain anything.”
Ava lets out a quiet mumble, something that Sara prompts her to repeat once more. After sucking in a quiet sigh, Ava glances up once more, her eyes meeting Sara’s own. “I didn’t know you were here,” Ava says, her voice still almost inaudible. Yet Sara hears the words loud and clear. The ache in her chest only grows, the weight in her stomach pressing down further.
“Is that supposed to make anything better?” Sara demands, shaking her head and looking to the side as she lets out a quiet disbelieving laugh, “All you have to say is that you didn’t know I was here? That you were going to avoid me forever if you could.” When Ava doesn’t reply, Sara knows that is all the answer that she’s going to get. Nodding slightly, Sara purses her lips and glances back to Ava. “Then you know what?” Sara takes a step back, throwing her hands up, “Have things your way, Ava—”
“Sara,” Ava takes a step forwards, already frowning as she reaches out with a single hand.
“No,” Sara jerks her arm away from Ava, taking a further step back, “You’ve made it clear the past few weeks that you’re not going to explain anything—”
“Sara,” Ave cuts in once more, her voice louder this time.
Moving her foot backwards again, Sara ignores Ava’s outstretched palm and continues on, “Just forget that I ever—” Before she can finish the sentence, Sara fails to find purchase on the ground, her feet slipping under her as she wobbles backwards. There’s no stopping her fall, so Sara draws her limbs in as gravity pulls her down into the shallow crater. The impact knocks the air from her lungs, her descent only softened due to the freshly fallen moon dust that billows around her in a hazy cloud of sparkling silver flecks.
A crackling sound comes through the comms, filling Sara’s ears as she waits for the dust to settle. Looking up to the top of the crater, Sara finds Ava there, smiling brightly as she laughs. Scowling, Sara clucks her tongue and sits up, already brushing the ashy specks from her bright blue space suit. “I’m sorry you just,” Ava pauses to laugh once more, kneeling down by the crater’s edge, “I kept trying to warn you.”
When Sara looks at her again, Ava is still sporting that wide smile. This time the ache in Sara’s chest is different, a low tug that is somehow worse than the frustration from before. She doesn’t think she has seen Ava smile like that in over a year. Certainly since Ava got to the base Sara hasn’t seen any sign of a smile this real. The corners of Ava’s eyes are creased, her eyes bright and just the hint of dimples appearing in her cheeks. Despite herself, Sara feels her own smile threatening to form. “Come on,” Sara shakes her head, standing to her feet and reaching her hand out to Ava, “Help me out of here.”
With one more grin flashed her way, Ava reaches her hand out as well. The moment their palms make contact, Sara raises her brows and finally allows herself to smile. All it takes is seconds for Ava to catch on, her lips dropping into a frown as she shakes her head. “Sara,” Ava warns, trying to jerk her hand away, “Don’t you dare.”
But Sara doesn’t listen. Instead she plants her feet along the side of the crater and tugs Ava’s hand hard. As Ava falls, Sara topples backwards into the powder behind her, setting off yet another billowing cloud of silver, shimmering flecks. Sitting just to her side is Ava, completely covered in moon dust, looking shocked and dismayed. The fall has turned off Ava’s helmet, something that isn’t necessary so long as they’re within the boundaries of Sector Eighty-four. “You’re a child,” Ava scoffs, but Sara can still see the hint of a smile pulling at her lips, “Now how are we going to get out of here.”
Sara shrugs as she presses a button along her gear belt and her helmet fades away, not really bothered by their situation seeing as she’s fallen into plenty of craters before. “This is just an occupational hazard,” Sara replies nonchalantly as Ava rolls her eyes, “We’ll get out eventually.”
“It's the eventually I’m concerned about here,” Ava mumbles, still brushing powder from her legs. It’s a useless effort. Ava is completely covered in the shimmering dust. Silver flecks cling to her hair, tangling in with the strands as the rising sun strikes them and turns them green. Even Ava’s cheeks have traces of the powder, a shimmery glow settling in over her skin.
Before Sara can even think, she reaches out to gently brush a larger fleck from Ava’s hairline. The moment her fingers make contact near Ava’s temple, Ava jerks and turns her way. Sara freezes, her hand caught there, her throat constricting as Ava stares back at her with wide blue eyes. “Sorry,” Sara mutters, brushing away the dust before retracting her hand and looking to the side, “I wasn’t thinking.”
A few beats of silence pass before Ava sighs quietly. Sara stares at a rock just in front of her feet, focusing on the dents in the surface and trying to ignore the fact that Ava’s hair is just as soft as she remembered it was. Sara does her best to forget the nights that Ava laid her head in Sara’s lap and let Sara comb her fingers delicately through silken locks. “It’s okay, Sara,” Ava murmurs, her voice quiet and hushed, “You don’t have to be sorry.”
And yet, Sara does. A year ago she could reach out and tuck Ava’s hair behind her ear without a second thought—in fact she did, all the time. Ava has always had a habit of letting it fall down in her face whenever she reads or whenever she’s focused on something. It was common for Sara to arrive back at their quarters and find Ava buried in a new book about harnessing energy from supernovas or some other obscure subject. Each of those times, Sara would come to the couch and brush Ava’s hair from her face, pressing a kiss to Ava’s cheek and feeling Ava’s smile growing under her lips. But now, this isn’t something Sara is allowed to do. From the moment she came home and found that letter left on their kitchen counter, Sara lost every right to do that with Ava.
Instead of saying anything else, Sara looks to Ava once more. Still focused on clearing her suit of the powder, Ava isn’t paying her any attention. Free to stare as she wants, Sara’s eyes fall to the neckline of Ava’s suit where she can see the edges of Ava’s gray uniform shirt peeking out underneath. It’s the same uniform that Ava wears around the base every day—the very uniform that Ava once used to laugh about with Sara as they watched the Planetary Archeology Teams coming back into the Main Hub at the Academy.
Sometime in their year apart, Ava adopted the standard uniform they would mock, and Sara doesn’t know why. She has tried asking, but Ava was quick to shut her questions down. “You’re not the same as you were before,” Sara murmurs, not even thinking before she speaks.
Ava’s eyes meet her own once more, and this time there’s something sad about her gaze and the slight downturn to her lips. “Time changes people, Sara,” Ava sighs, clearing her throat slightly as she looks to the side, “I lost something back then too.”
The ache surges up in Sara’s chest, her heart faltering at Ava’s first acknowledgement of the past. Hearing Ava finally talk about it hurts more than Sara expected it might. “Maybe,” Sara says gruffly, shoving the ache down as Ava turns back to her, “But you’re the one who made the decision, not me.” This time, there’s no mechanical sound of the comms to mask the sound of Ava’s abrupt inhale. “We were happy back then, Ava,” Sara breathes out, feeling her own frown forming as desperation swells inside her. Dropping her gaze to the sand, Sara brushes her palm over the top of the silver dust and sighs, “At least I thought we were.”
“Sara,” Ava says, her voice sounding strangled. When Sara takes a look at her, she finds Ava’s gaze fixed on her own hand, a conflicted expression on her face. “Of course,” Ava murmurs, her eyes flickering up to Sara before she looks up to the bleak green sky, “Of course we were happy, Sara, but I—”
“But you can’t,” Sara fills in, resignation taking over once more. For a moment, Sara swears that she can see the beginning of tears glistening in Ava’s eyes, but then Ava turns to the side and her hair covers her face once more. “Right,” Sara states, already pushing down any hope she had of having a real conversation, “Then we better find a way out of here so we can do the retrieval and head back to base.”
No reply comes from Ava, but this time Sara really wasn’t expecting one. Standing to her feet, Sara surveys the side of the crater before raising her arms up and gliding her hands along the rim. Finding purchase in an indent along the edge, Sara lifts her body upwards, throwing a leg over the rim as she slides her body up and over the precipice. Rocks dig into her suit almost painfully, but Sara ignores them as she hauls herself back to the surface.
Down below, Ava is now kneeling in the very dust that she had so meticulously cleared from her suit. “I think there’s something buried here in the dust,” Ava remarks, already digging through the very powder in the same manner she declared was unsafe before, “If we just broke an artifact because—”
“If we broke it?” Sara questions, her brows creasing as she stares down at Ava, “You’re the one who landed on it.”
“I wouldn’t have landed on it if you hadn’t pulled me down,” Ava fires back, turning over her shoulder to level Sara with a glare, “Just—can you bring a containment bag. Whatever is here, it’s moving—I think it might be alive.”
“You think it’s moving,” Sara repeats incredulously, letting out a scoff as she finds Ava’s gear bag along the crater’s edge, “In my sixth months here, I’ve never once found anything that moves—but somehow three weeks on the job and you’re convinced you’ve found some alien life revealed only by a solar storm.”
Sitting in the top of Ava’s bag are the palm sized containment bags that Ray specially created for the teams. Drawing the bag open, Sara watches as it doubles and then triples in size, courtesy of the shrinking technology Ray embedded in the fibers themselves. Down below, Ava makes what might be an impatient sound and Sara sighs quietly, “I’m coming—just let me get back down there again.”
Carefully sliding down the crater bank so as to avoid another rough landing, Sara walks over to Ava. Ava’s back is to Sara, but there’s a strange golden glow illuminating the edges of her face. “Ava?” Sara questions, moving hesitantly around her body. Now standing in front of Ava, Sara sees the problem. Right in front of Ava, partially buried in the powdery moon-dust is a glimmering golden post. “Did you touch it?” Sara asks, kneeling down and carefully inspecting the object that stands straight up from the ground.
“No, I didn’t touch it,” Ava hisses out, her eyes caught on the object, “We don’t even know what it is—it could be dangerous.”
“It looks like a stick,” Sara mutters as Ava scoffs lightly. Carefully bending down, Sara hums, “Maybe a staff of some kind.” Intricate patterns swirl around the outside of the staff, each one neatly engraved in the surface. Golden light pours from some of the etches, casting Sara and Ava both in a warm glow. Earlier Sara had laughed when Ava said that it was alive, but even now, the staff rotates in a slow circle, never leaving a single indent on the sand.
Before Sara can say something again, the ground under her shifts abruptly. “Sara,” Ava warns right as Sara scrambles backwards. Falling backwards on her hands, Sara watches with wide eyes as sand and dust shift along the crater ground, revealing something underneath. Her heart beating rapidly, Sara sits back in astonishment as a second staff pushes up through the crater’s surface. Sand, rock, and dust part out of the way as it hovers above the ground, standing just as tall as the one in front of Ava.
“We need to radio the others,” Ava mumbles, shaking her head as Sara leans forwards once more, “I’ve never seen anything like this and we should be prepared for whatever might happen when we try to remove it.”
Too busy to respond, Sara brings her face close to the second staff while Ava makes her way up the steep side of the crater. This artifact is nearly identical to the first, but rather than leaching golden light into the clearing, this staff is silver. Each of the patterns correspond to those of the first, but this time Sara notices something she hadn’t before. “Ava,” Sara calls up to the planet’s surface, “I think they might be the same artifact, there’s fissures along the top of the silver one that match the bottom of the gold.”
It’s nothing like Sara has seen before on this planet. They’ve had some strangely shaped artifacts, and even some glowing ones, but never something quite like this. The air around the artifact almost seems to pulsate. Humming quietly, Sara spares a glance up at Ava and finds her occupied with the radio tucked inside her back, likely calling for the others.
Inching even closer on the ground, Sara tentatively reaches out with her hand. The air around the staff is filled with vibrations that pass through Sara’s space suit. She can feel the almost magnetic pull of the object even on her bare hand tucked inside her gloves. When Sara moves to sit back again, her feet shuffle along the ground, but her hand remains rooted in place. Her heartbeat faltering, Sara tries to withdraw her hand once more, but it’s as if she’s completely lost control over her movement. “Ava,” Sara murmurs when the pull grows even stronger, “Ava, we have a problem!”
“Sara what are you—” Ava’s voice cuts off as Sara looks up at her, finding Ava watching her with a frown, “Do not touch it Sara, I told you that—”
“I can’t move my hand,” Sara exclaims in exasperation, planting her feet and shoving backwards, trying to force herself to move. The pulling sensation grows even stronger, and Sara’s breath catches as her hand moves closer, her fingers almost touching the edge of the staff. In the distance, Sara hears Ava’s muttered swear followed by a rapid series of instructions given over the radio. Taking in a slow deep breath, Sara attempts to calm her nerves before she tries to pull back one more time. “I did not come all the way out here to get bested by some stick,” Sara mutters, shaking her head in frustration.
Shoving backwards with all of her body weight, Sara uses her free hand to push off of the ground. Nothing happens, though Sara can feel the object’s pull growing stronger. The muscles in her arm burn, and sweat is already forming along her hairline from just this effort alone. “Ava, stay back!” Sara yells, looking up to where Ava is already moving back towards the crater. Rocks skitter along the ground where Ava slides into the crater’s brim, but Sara already knows it’s too late. A bright beam of silver light splinters out from the artifact just as Sara feels her body being jerked forwards. The moment her fingers make contact with the rock, burning pain jolts up Sara’s arm.
Blinding light fills Sara’s vision even as she squeezes her eyes shut. Light bursts behind her eyelids as the pain in her arm ricochets through her body. The sand shifts under Sara’s feet and she feels something pressing into her side, steading her even as she curls in on herself. Sara can hear someone speaking in a low and gentle tone, but she can’t make out the words over the ringing in her ears. Something warm and soft envelopes her hand, and for a moment the pain dulls. As the voice draws closer to her ear, Sara can smell rose and vanilla, just like the shampoo Ava always uses. Sara wants to warn Ava, to shove her away, but before she can, the light cuts out, and everything goes dark.