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When the alarm goes off Helena is already awake. She has been awake all night, tossing and turning, eventually settling on her back, staring up at the ceiling in the dark.
She doesn't generally sleep poorly, but it's the night before a very important morning.
Helena's fingers don't work quite as quickly as they used to. She fumbles a little with the switch on the alarm, finally catching it and turning it off. Beside her, Myka snores on. It's gotten worse over the past years, the snoring, the way everything droops and sags and gets a little worse with aging.
And Myka, who lived in a cube with a buzzer for such a long time when she was young, always needs something a little more assertive than Helena's tinkling alarm to pull her out of sleep. No matter: Helena will have her moment in the bathroom, she'll put the kettle on for morning tea, and then she'll come back and rouse Myka.
Slowly, she levers herself up. Her feet find the slippers by the bedside, and her hands fumble only for a moment in tying the knot in her housecoat.
After she's used the toilet, Helena eyes herself in the bathroom mirror. Her hair, white as a cloud, is cut short, as it has been for close to two decades now, since it began to thin in earnest. Right now it sticks up in the back: she wets her hands and pats it into place. Her fingertips trail over the crow's feet at the sides of her eyes, the deep smile lines in her cheeks and the corners of her mouth.
/
"I thought I might find you here."
Helena barely startles, but her hands tighten around the clay cylinder she holds. She curls her body protectively around it, creating a hollow beneath her ribcage where it can fit.
She glances back over her shoulder at Wolly, who closes the door behind him. He walks toward her slowly, and then carefully drops to the ground beside her, feet coming to dangle beside hers off the edge of the platform into the viewing cell below them.
"I don't like coming here," Wolly says. He extends an arm forward, toward the glass, but it's just a few inches too far away from him to reach. "Just this glass," he says. "Nothing but this glass between us and the vastness of space."
Helena's hands, with the cylinder in them, lower to her lap, but she gazes out, through the window, into the distant, open beauty of space. "Not glass," she says. "Ocuperma, more than three quarters of a meter thick. We could collide with an asteroid ten times our size and it would barely make a scratch."
"Spoken like the engineer you are," Wolly says, with a quiet laugh. "All I can think is that there's three quarters of a meter of something transparent between us and the vacuum."
Helena could point out that the residential units line the outer wall of the ship, and that wall, with its layers of metal and insulation and reinforcements, is far thinner than three quarters of a meter. There's less between him and the vacuum when he sleeps than there is right now. But she doesn't need to look down to know that he's gripping the edge of their platform with white knuckles. She chooses to say nothing.
"How does it feel to hold Christina again?" Wolly asks.
Helena looks down at the cylinder in her hands: Christina's urn. Her thumb traces one of the decorative lines etched into it surface. "I haven't the words for it."
"Like pressing a bruise, I'd imagine," Wolly says. "Painful but satisfying at the same time?"
Helena laughs once, drily. "It's not like that at all, no. But I suppose that's the closest metaphor."
For a moment they sit quietly, sharing breath.
"This was the only thing she liked about travel," Helena says, very quietly. She doesn't need to comment that these days, when the Agents can sit on these viewing platforms and admire the stars, are infrequent: only one or two of them between each planet, when the ship stops moving so the navigators can calibrate coordinates to ensure they don't zap themselves into a black hole. She and Christina would bring a tablet to the platform and use it to identify and learn about the stars.
"I know," Wolly replies. "But—but you still think it was the right decision. To fetch her."
The cylinder spins in Helena's hands again. She can't bear to let any part of it become cold to the touch. She has been sleeping with it under her blanket, tucked against her chin, and when she's working, doing her engine check rotations, she nestles it beneath her pillow.
(It was all she could do, that first day, to keep from tucking it inside her shirt, against her skin, and taking her rotations that way.)
"It was the right decision," Helena says. "Even if it's only to remove her from Illyria and bring her to rest on Terra, where she was happy."
Wolly inhales and holds his breath, for a moment, as though steeling himself, before saying, "Speaking of happiness on Terra—"
"Not now, Wolly, please." Helena swallows. She has so many regrets about their last stop in Terra. About the love she'd been offered there: a love she'd not so much accepted as she had plunged into it, absorbed it, fed from it, filled herself past the brim with it and poured all that excess back to its source, knowing all the while that it would end in heartbreak for both of them. "Tomorrow," she says. "Today, with the stars, is for my grief. Tomorrow can be for my guilt. I promise to sit quietly if you wish to berate me then for breaking your daughter's heart."
"Helena," Wolly says sadly. The floor moves a little as he shifts himself closer to her and slips an arm around her shoulders. "Is that truly what we've become?"
Her shoulders stiffen and she feels their rigidity refer up and down her spine, a double-ended arrow pulling in both directions. She breathes once, twice, shallowly, and then lets herself sink into him before she can convince herself not to. Her head drops to his shoulder and he resettles his arm, curling it around her back.
More and more often, she forgets that he's younger than she is.
/
Helena is lighting the stove when she hears the creaking of bedsprings and old floor panels. A few minutes later, the sound of the toilet, and then footsteps that make their way into the kitchen just as the water starts to boil.
"Pefect timing, darling," Helena says, "Good morning."
"Mmm, good morning," Myka says. She slips her arms around Helena's waist from behind and presses a kiss to the side of her neck. "Are you ready for the big day today?"
Helena closes her hand over Myka's hands where they rest above the knot in her housecoat belt. "I've always told myself I could be ready, and I've never managed to do it," she says. "I think it's time for me to stop pretending, after all these years."
They're ready to go by the time there's a knock on the door. It's Cole, Tracey's grandson, there to drive them to the landing.
Helena follows Myka out the door and is jealous, not for the first time, of the way she's aged. Her hair, a grey streaked with brown, never thinned, so even now, at ninety years old, she can wear it down in loose curls over her shoulders. She moves well, too, without need for support, though her struggles with arthritis in her hands. Helena has a tricky hip and, as a result, walks with a cane.
"Here you go, Auntie H," Cole says, as he helps her into the front seat of the transport. A moment later, Myka settles into the seat behind her. She reaches over the seat-back and rests her hand on Helena's shoulder. Helena brings her lips down to kiss those fingertips, and then tangles the fingers with her own, linking them for the duration of the drive.
/
"What will you do when we get to Terra?" Wolly asks.
Helena lifts the urn to her lips, as though it might help her find the words. "I don't know," she murmurs. "I… I ache from missing her. I lost half my heart when Christina died, and when we left Terra, I left behind most of what remained. But so much time will have passed by the time we get there, Wolly. She'll have someone else to make her happy by then."
"But what if she doesn't?" Wolly asks.
Helena doesn't answer, because it's an empty question. Someone so kind, so intelligent, so thoughtful, so beautiful as Myka will surely have been swept up by some kind-hearted, doting, and deserving suitor.
"Are you trying to be rid of me?" she jokes, instead.
Wolly laughs. "Never."
Through the window, the stars coast by. The ship is rotating slowly: the residual effect of the reverse thrusters that halted their travel.
"Sometimes I think about how both of us lost our children," Wolly says.
At this Helena stiffens, shifts as though to pull away from him, saying, "You can't be serious with that comparison—"
But Wolly tightens his grip and says, "Of course our situations can't be compared. Of course not. That's precisely the point."
"I don't understand," Helena says. Reluctantly, she sinks back down again, into him.
"Your daughter was ripped from you by a terrorist," he says, "And my daughter… by the time I found out I had one, there was no place for me in her life. I would have loved to be her father, H.G., but another man did that job."
Helena remembers bruises slicked across young Myka's jaw. "A lesser man," she says.
"A lesser man," Wolly agrees. "But she turned out so wonderfully anyway. I feel proud, when I think about her. And then I wonder whether I have any right to that pride. I've done nothing, really, to help her become the person she is. And if I could live my life over again, H.G, I would stay on Terra. I would have missed you terribly, but I wish I had stayed on that planet and been a father to my daughter."
The conundrum of time, of causes and effects: Helena is not happy for the abuse Myka suffered growing up. It wasn't so long ago that her own affections for Myka had been those of an adult for a kind and precocious child, when she and Wolly had contemplated taking her with them, under the Child Endangerment provisions of the Seven Worlds Treaty. If Wolly had stayed on Terra those years ago, if he had raised Myka as he says he wishes he had, then Myka would have had a better childhood. But she would have grown into a different person, as well; one who might not have looked at Helena the way Myka looked at Helena, one who might not have taken Helena as her lover.
(Helena would have loved her, regardless. Helena cannot imagine any version of Myka that she would not have loved.)
"You would be an excellent father, Wolly," Helena says.
"Perhaps," he says, "But I don't know, do I? I've given her nothing."
"Wolly—"
"And that's why I want you to know, H.G., that you have my blessing to stay there, if you want to. If she wants you. Because I've an instinct that she will."
Helena sits up, the churning in her gut making the world spin faster than the ship as it glides through space. Her mouth opens and works silently as her mind trips through the answers she could possibly give. She settles on humor: "Oh, come now, Wolly, your blessing? She's not chattel to be given away."
"You know that's not what I mean," he says.
She does know, but she doesn't stop him as he speaks. In her hands, the urn turns, turns, turns.
/
There are already crowds at the landing site, but Cole drives Helena and Myka right to the front. This would be uncouth, normally, but they know that nobody will battle them on this. Nobody battles Helena much on much of anything when it comes to Starlings.
Especially these Starlings, who are about to land.
Caturanga, when he disembarks, looks the same as he has always looked, to Helena's eye. He greets the President, and the Head Archivist, and then breaks protocol to come and stand before her.
"You recognize me," Helena says, with a wry smile.
"Of course," Caturanga says. He hugs her gently but warmly: "It's good to see you, my old friend."
Then, only then, does he raise his hand to invite the others to disembark.
To nobody's great surprise, Wolly and Claudia are at the front of the queue; they come barreling down the gangway only to screech to a halt only a few feet away from herself and Myka, respectively.
They are young. Helena keeps track of the math: Wolly is 38. Claudia is 29. It feels strange to be taken into Wolly's arms as she is. He used to clutch her fiercely, but now he cradles her as though he fears she might break. Which she might. The space travel in her youth was apparently not good for her bone density, at least by planet-dwelling standards: she is at perpetual risk of fractures.
"Stars, it's good to see you, Helena," Wolly says.
Beside them, Claudia is stepping out of a hug with Myka. She glances around, eyes searching, and then asks, "Pete?"
Myka smiles sadly and puts a hand on Claudia's shoulder. "I'm sorry," she says.
The wind rushes from Claudia's lungs, but then she sets her jaw. She had steeled herself for this possibility, Helena can tell. "When?" she asks.
"A little over a year ago," Myka answers. "In his sleep."
The calm in Myka's voice belies the depth of the grief that she continues to feel. There are still days when Helena takes her by the hands and leads her into their bed and holds her, cradles in her in her arms while she cries or mourns or grieves.
"Are you staying with us?" Helena asks.
Claudia grins, breaking the sad moment. "Duh!" she says. "Let's get you guys home and then I'll come back and grab my stuff."
Claudia always stays with them, and not in the Starling housing, when her ship comes around.
/
"Would you want to stay with Myka, if she'd have you?" Wolly asks.
The etchings on the urn are blurring. The urn itself blurs, and then her hands, holding it, because Helena is crying. She closes her eyes against the tears, but they trickle down her nose instead; she wipes them with a sleeve tugged over her hand and nods yes, yes, yes.
"All right," Wolly says, quietly. "And—and we can't both have you, Myka and I. So while I'll miss you more than I can possibly imagine, I just—I'll support you. If you decide to stay on Terra with her."
She hadn't know she'd needed to hear that, but the physical relief is palpable, a weight gone from her back. She sags back against him, against his shoulder, her arms wrapping around him, and they are both sad, they are both devastated, but she, at least, is soothed by the barest inkling of hope taking root in her gut.
/
A month later, Helena and Myka sit side-by-side as they watch the ship launch, the ground rattling beneath them.
Helena is 93. She will not see this ship land again.
That afternoon, she and Myka take a walk through the trees. They stop at one tree in particular. Beneath Helena's feet, there was once an urn. She prods absently at the ground with her cane, but she knows that the roots of the tree must have found that small cyliner long ago. It makes Helena happy, to think that Christina lives on as part of her beloved tree.
Myka steps close, wrapping Helena's free hand in both of hers. "Saying goodbye to them today, seeing them still so young," Myka asks softly. "Do you—do you ever regret staying?"
Helena turns to her and smells warm spice over familiar skin, sees a body she knows as well as she knows her own. The hands touching hers are hands that have nursed her through sickness, have held her in grief, and have touched her in pleasure, all more times than she can begin to count.
She smiles, and leans in to kiss soft, familiar lips. "Never."