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It could be hours she spends sobbing into her arms. It could be years. It could be decades, centuries, aeons, with the crew long buried and the ship scrapped for metal and her own shaking form fossilised, strangled with ivy and straining with moss, and she wouldn’t know. Time has never been kind to her. It has never broken her fall, just dragged her deeper down, clamping around her ankles like shackles she will never escape.
But eventually her body runs out of moisture, and no more tears come, and she thinks that if she’s going to run dry then she could at least be bleeding out too, watching the stain on the carpet bloat bigger as the lights dim around her, like when she was a kid and her mother would read her a bedtime story and she’d never get to hear the end.
And her throat is aching, as is her chest, and eyes, and shoulders, and legs. It would be so easy to collapse. To sink into the mattress and close her eyes and be numb, for at least a few hours, letting exhaustion bludgeon the usual terrors in her dreams.
But she doesn’t. Her clothes are sticking to her, sweaty and humid, worn too many times in a row, let alone through murder and sparring and weeping like a child. There is a fresh Starfleet uniform in her wardrobe, safely glowing red, a comfort she can cling to like rope.
So she drags her heavy body up. It’s like moving a dead body, no support from the other person as you tuck your hands under their arms. Her quarters are blurred, not quite real, not quite anything. Maybe if she squints she’ll find herself in the blue light of an autumn’s evening, another body next to her’s, almost too close, almost inside her. A warmth; solid and stable. A presence that she can lean against, if she wanted to. A taunting refuge.
And his exposed skin, shirt riding up as he changed clothes, the pale curve of his back, soft like the moon. A beacon, as if he was the lighthouse to her raft as she flailed in black open waters, set for the rocks. A blearing light that engulfed her senses completely, disarming her in a way she never knew possible. A back that must know the weight of the sky, just like hers does.
An open doorway, his figure still in the position he’d curled up in on the sofa. “You take the bed,” he’d said; left no room for argument. And she’d laid down on the white sheets, head moulding the pillow, and reached out to empty space. Not unusual; no different to any other night. But there was a sudden absence, a vacuum of familiarity. Strange how quick a body is to adapt. She was adrift again, untethered like the white noise of a ship, something she’s filtered out entirely until it comes to the evening and there is no silence. Every creak and bleep and hum, heard with such visceral clarity, and then she wonders how she tunes it out in the first place.
Her uniform fits her perfectly. Her fingers find the raised bands on her sleeves. Maybe she should change into her pyjamas. Maybe she should stay right here, and nothing could ever touch her again. No one but Una comes by her quarters. What would she do, if she came in now? What would she say?
Instead, she turns her attention to the bundle of clothes on the floor. Bending down is an effort; perhaps a joke by gravity. She could just sit down, curl up on the floor, lie down until the morning. Her jacket is stained, his blood so dark against the black leather. She feels sick. She doesn't want to wash it out. It is proof of life. It is evidence, even if it is damning against her. His wet face, his wide eyes, his choking gasps. The heaviness of his body in her arms. The cold tiles pressing against her knees. The fuzzy tang of gunpowder, alight in the air. His name, so strange on her tongue as she begged with him, the world blurring at the edges, ripped apart like an old photograph.
She’s seen enough people die. She knows what to expect, in theory. But every single time, life is like water through her fingers, and she’s trying to cup it in her shaking hands, and it is never enough to save them. It is never enough. And his blood is underneath her fingernails, just like dirt, his life rooting onto her body.
She hangs the clothes up in her wardrobe, separated from her spare uniforms. Maybe she’ll burn them one day. Maybe she’ll keep them forever. Maybe they’ll have disappeared when she wakes up tomorrow, another victim to the cruelty of time.
The watch still sits on the ottoman. She can’t quite look at it just yet.
So instead she sits back down. Her mouth is dry but the replicator is on the far side of the room and she might collapse if she tries walking that far. She itemises every other grievance her body has, headache being the most prominent and the most painful, aside from the obvious. Could also be fixed with water, but she’s just sat down. Instead, she slowly lifts her arms up to her scalp and begins to take down her hair.
“Your hairstyle looks painful,” he’d said.
“It keeps my hair out of my face.”
They were sitting on the back of a bus, halfway into their odyssey to Vermont. The wind and sleet had tugged her hair too loose so she was rectifying it, pulling each plait taut as he’d looked on with an empathetic grimace. It was painful, truthfully, especially near the end of the day, but it did keep the hair off her face. The severity of it was safe, a routine she stuck to each morning, a flare that the crew recognised to mean, don’t get too close.
“Can I try?” he’d asked, and she’d scoffed.
“No.”
His deft hands, almost dainty with those chess pieces; knowing every move and how to get there, never once faltering. How he knew how to bend the bars of her rib cage, almost without her knowing. Almost. Truthfully, she’d felt every nudge and twinge. She knows herself, of course she does; knows how to regulate every breath and every thought. And he unravelled her every defence. Perhaps she had helped him, let down her hair to tug him closer, even if she’d deny it under any oath. Perhaps her desire budded under his fingertips, her skin so cold for so long, longing for warmth like wax under feathers.
Hair like an oil spill, thick ringlets around his fingers. The heat from his palm against her scalp. The gentle tug of his hands, how she could’ve let him, and laughed as he undoubtedly tied her hair into knots that she’d then have to untangle and call him an idiot, and he’d laugh, and maybe her cheeks would glow and ache in a way she didn’t know they could.
Her hands are shaking as they weave her hair together. She shouldn’t be plaiting her hair now, anyway, if she’s going to sleep soon. But she’s in her uniform and her hair is tidy and pristine, not damp with Canadian sleet. And she’s in her quarters, cross legged on her bed, as empty as it ever has been. And she can reach out, and still find nothing. What is she wanting to be there, anyway? His chest, rising and falling? His lifeless body, prepped for burial? None of it was ever meant to happen. None of it was ever even real.
And yet his blood is under her nails, and on her jacket. The watch is discarded on the side. His body, under her hands. His name, forever tucked under her tongue. His love, a fist seized around her heart; a love so enormous it blacks out the entire sky, it gouges out her eyes, it entombs her trembling body without mercy. A love so enormous it’s palpable even now, centuries later, emblazoned on every sunset.
So she sits, and stares, and waits for nothing at all.