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They don’t talk about it in the morning.
Camp is packed away quietly, a deliberate distance kept between them as they work. It’s been weeks now since they fled Rivet City, and by now they’ve well established their routine. Harkness checks their supplies. Hypatia checks their heading.
“We should reach the Hudson by tomorrow,” Hypatia murmurs, hunched over the worn map.
Harkness grunts in return, slinging his pack over his shoulder. Hypatia’s gaze slides to his back as he wanders off silently, no doubt off to scout the road ahead before they depart.
Her fingers itch for a bottle.
Instead they trace the length of the river as she forces her attention back to the map, brow furrowing as she tries to shake the thoughts of him from her mind.
The Hudson River. She remembers reading about it in school. It flows north to south, cutting through the majority of New York before dumping into the Atlantic. More importantly, it marks the half-way point of their journey and another step towards the unknown.
She only hopes the next half of their journey is more bearable than the first she muses, folding the map away into her pack. She’s not sure if she can deal with another Allentown.
“Fucking disaster that was,” she murmurs, shouldering her pack and setting off after her charge.
The day passes slowly, as most do.
One foot in front of the other, the sun beating high overhead.
Sweat drips from her brow.
One foot in front of the other, a brief pause to check their heading and chew a piece of brahmin jerky.
Her vision tunnels some time in the afternoon, and she has to remember how to breathe.
One foot in front of the other. The sun kisses the tops of the trees. One foot in front of the other. On and on.
Harkness says nothing until they stop for the night.
“I’ll take first watch.”
Hypatia nods absently, dropping her pack at her feet as she stretches. This, too, is routine, and Hypatia has long given up on arguing with him on the matter.
Camp is set up with the same brisk efficiency as it was torn down hours before. Hypatia lays out her bedroll beside a fallen tree, resting her back against the log as she digs for their food. Dinner turns out to be a cold and quiet affair, their encampment in the open air necessitating a lack of fire for the night.
Hypatia picks at the chipping finish of her canteen, flakes of cracked leather littering the hard earth beneath her feet. Her mind is far away while Harkness gets up to check the perimeter, offering him a small noise of acknowledgement when he steps away. By the time he returns, she’s lying on her side, arm tucked under her head as she tries to sleep. She hears him stop beside her bedroll, and she waits, breathing stilled, for…Something. Anything. She pushes aside the disappointment she feels when he offers nothing but a small sigh and moves on, though disappointment about what she cannot say.
An hour later, she heaves a sigh and rolls onto her back.
“You should be sleeping.”
“Probably,” she agrees, groaning as she pulls herself up from the bedroll anyways. Harkness watches her as she moves to settle beside him on the fallen tree.
“Hypatia.”
“I can’t , alright?” She shoots him a sharp look, somewhere between a glare and begging for understanding. “Haven’t in months.” She drops her head back, casting her gaze up at the night sky. She can feel the weight of Harkness’ stare, can practically hear the way his brow furrows. She sighs a little, speaking softly. “Bottle’s the only thing that helps.”
Harkness stares for a few moments more, the silence between them heavy once more. She does her best to ignore it, to keep her eyes trained on the wonder of the stars in the night. She wonders idly, what it must be like to walk among them. She stretches her hand towards them, reaching for the vast infinity. How was it that mankind had the stars at their fingertips and yet wasted the Earth in squabbles below?
Greed. Pride. Power. The same way the Enclave took everything from you in an attempt to claim Purity for themselves.
Hypatia grits her teeth and casts her gaze back to the dirt, hand dropping back into her lap and fisting into the fabric of her jeans, shaking off idealistic thoughts. Those, she’s learned, would only serve to get you killed out here.
Her father taught her that, at the end.
She doesn’t realize that she’s trembling until a hand, warm, if not a bit rough, settles over one of her own. She looks down at the hand for a moment, a lump forming in her throat, before looking up at Harkness. The concern she finds there is nearly her undoing.
“What happened to you out there?”
Hypatia shakes her head, tearing her gaze away from his.
“Don’t ask me that.” She swallows, pulling her hand away from his, the touch feeling all too intimate after what happened the night before. “Not tonight.”
“Okay,” Harkness agrees, pulling his hand away. He glances at it for a moment, pursing his lips in thought. “Fine. But we need to talk about last night.”
She flinches, hands twitching in her lap. “No, we don’t.”
“I won’t let us ignore this.”
“Fuck you.”
“Hypatia, please.”
She stands, a frustrated groan falling from her lips. Her fingers itch for the familiar neck of a bottle once more, and she feels heat rising in the back of her neck under Harkness’s stare. Her nails dig crescents into the soft flesh of her palms. “Fine,” she bites out. “We slept together. Big fucking deal. The world goes on. There, we’ve talked about it.”
“Jesus—that’s not all, and you know it.”
“That’s all it needs to be.”
“And what if it wasn’t?”
She tries not to flinch when she turns around and meets Harkness’ gaze. She flicks her eyes away, brow furrowing, trying to fight the rising panic that bubbles uncomfortably in her breast.
She doesn’t want this, doesn’t want any of this. If she were the praying type anymore, she would be on her knees, begging for God to take these feelings from her, this traitorous affection that threatens to drown her and take Harkness down with her.
“You don’t understand, Hark,” she says hoarsely, hating herself for sounding so damn small . “I can’t. You can’t.”
Harkness stands, closing the distance between them in several strides. Hypatia holds her ground, despite the urge to run, to run from him, from this and the mess she’s gotten her heart into.
“And why not?” Harkness demands. Her fingers twitch.
“Because caring about something is the only sure way to get it killed!” Hypatia shoves him back roughly but Harkness catches her hands in his, preventing her from making distance. She shakes her head, sucking in a ragged breath as she squeezes her eyes shut while she grips his hands. “Don’t make me add you to the ghosts that haunt my sleep, too.”
He’s quiet at that, drawing a long breath in and out of his lungs— so human, she thinks . Not an android. Real. Real and just as capable of leaving her as anything else.
“You aren’t built for that kind of loneliness,” he says eventually. Hypatia’s brow furrows, a protest at the ready, but any words that come to mind just feel empty. Hollow. The truth of it stings as much as it soothes, and a part of her hates him, and herself, for it. Her hands start to shake and she feels the walls start to close in once again, the edges of her brain going numb with static as her vision starts to tunnel and—
Harkness steps forward, releasing her hands to cup her face gently, and slowly the static retreats.
She watches him silently, Harkness’ expression inscrutable as he searches for… something in her gaze.
She thinks that he must find some sort of answer, because with a slowness that gives her ample room to deny him should she want to, he leans in and he kisses her.
It’s different from before. There is no urgency, no misplaced anger, no desperate need to feel something, anything , other than the battles within them. Harkness kisses her slowly, carefully, as if he’s scared that she might bolt like a startled animal into the wilds at any moment. Which, Hypatia thinks, as her eyes slip shut, lips moving softly against his, isn’t an entirely unfair assumption given her recent behavior.
He’s still gentle with her even as her tension ebbs away and her lungs find a steady rhythm, content to continue this unhurried exploration.
It doesn’t fix things between them, within themselves—not in the slightest—but it does make the canyon between them seem a little less daunting to bridge.
It’s Harkness that eventually pulls away, eyes remaining closed for a moment before their gazes meet once more. A question hangs in the air, and for a moment Hypatia considers letting it linger. But then Harkness smooths a thumb across her cheek in that gentle motion once more, and the canyon shrinks just a little further.
“What now?” She asks quietly.
Harkness simply looks at her for a long moment, silently ruminating on his answer as he asks himself the same thing.
“I don’t know,” he admits, tone carrying a slight edge of frustration, like he wishes he could give her more than that but can’t quite yet. “We keep moving towards Boston. After that…We’ll figure it out.”
We’ll figure it out.
Together , she thinks, understanding the word gone unspoken. Her fingers reach for his wrists, tracing the spanse of flesh she finds there and she takes a long breath.
“Okay.”