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I think I might be happy with you forever.
The thought comes to L out of the blue. She really has no reason to have thought it. They’re walking on some unmarked, half-overgrown trail to avoid the main road. There’s mud sucking at her shoes, and her skirt keeps catching on wayward branches, but all L has eyes for is the sweat beaded on Nell’s brow and the light of the Powers reflected in it, like crystal. In a hundred years none of this might be here; the path forgotten even to Shapers and the both of them returned to the earth, if they’re lucky enough to have something left to bury, with no one having heard Lephon since the first Seekers ascended those thousand years ago.
But that’s not what L’s thinking of. She’s only lived ten years; another ten or twenty more might just as well make up eternity. The average Shaper apprenticeship lasts four or five years. The faster ones end at three, but the longest—? That, L’s not so sure of. She’s never much been interested in failure. Now it’s too late for her to ask, but she wonders, as she walks, just what it might be like to put the Heart behind them and never go back. After all, they can’t assign Nell another apprentice if Nell never shows up to take them.
Of course, Nell would never go along with that. That’s what L tells herself. She’s all about responsibility and obligation and doing things right. There’s no way she would ever abandon her duty to the fledglings on the Heart by removing herself from the already strained and dwindling number of masters.
(Nell’s hand in her hair in the dawn hours, when she thinks L is still fast asleep, all the fond looks Nell gives her over firelight or when L’s got her latest treat smeared all over her cheeks— those are just fond memories. That’s all L allows them to be. In two years or three they’ll say their goodbyes; she’ll hate it, and cling to those moments all the more, a vessel filled to overflowing that will burst once Nell is gone.)
It’s disconcerting. Such sentimentality is unbefitting of a prodigy such as herself, but as L has learned so often during her apprenticeship, thinking something and doing it are two different things entirely. On those cold nights, when the nearest town is still a half-week’s journey away, L squeezes in close to Nell and tells herself it’s for warmth. She takes their shared cup from Nell with hands that linger where they touch for too long and pretends she does not wish to turn it and drink from the same spot Nell placed her lips.
And then there are the jobs: hours spent huddled over Air-engine turbines; crawlspaces so tight their limbs scrape the walls when they breathe; proximity and shared air and the way Nell wets her lips with her tongue when she’s thinking hard. It all runs together, what happened and what might have, that touch on her wrist that means job well done but that she wishes means something more, that empty smile Nell gives to the ordinary people she speaks to and the real ones she gives L, thoughtless and effortless like the warmth and light of a Power.
Laying on her bedroll at night, L tries to put all these thoughts in order, and finds that she can’t. She keeps getting distracted. By a spasm of her fingers, by Nell rolling over in her sleep, by Nell’s breathing or how she looks when she’s turned unconsciously to face L, all the lines of her face relaxed. It occurs to L then that she’s the only one who’s seen Nell like this; she wants to remain the only one, and all those things Nell told her that she swore to herself she’d remember start trickling from her thoughts like sand between her fingers. She’s still not confident enough to ask Nell to repeat herself. She’ll have to wing it if Nell asks her to work on an Air-engine on her own any time soon. It’s a weakness that L thought she stamped out long ago; she knows she’s getting sloppier, messier, unforgivably so, but—
…well, isn’t that love?
In her heart, L knows it’s never going to happen. In her heart, she knows this is the most likely end: Lephon won’t say a word to either of them. In a few years’ time they’ll part ways on the Heart; Nell will offer her a hug and L will take it, clinging to Nell as she might to her last breath until Nell asks her to let go, since she still won’t have it in her then to disobey. Maybe they’ll see each other again, up on the Terra. Maybe one of them will have a little tag-along shadow, but it won’t be L, since she’s decided once she’s parted from Nell she’s never going back to that place the others call home; it’ll be tainted forever for her.
But maybe, on those coldest of nights where even cramming into the same sleeping bag isn’t enough to stave off the chill, Nell will think back to her. To the apprentice with the eyes that shut her off from the world, and that time when Nell had unknowingly opened up her heart. To that night when L, eyes half-lidded but wide awake, murmured, “You’re beautiful” against Nell’s palm.
She watches Nell’s mouth flutter, watches that awkward smile unfurl across her face. It’s the kind that tells L that Nell’s never heard that before, doesn’t know how to begin to receive it; doesn’t know either that her reaction’s sent something warm blossoming in L’s chest in turn.
That night, Nell falls asleep first, a rare sight. She’s got one arm tucked beneath her head and the other draped over L’s hip, like she’s cradling a pillow and not all the love this world holds for her. She doesn’t stir when L presses closer; doesn’t make a sound when L presses her ear in over Nell’s chest, listening for her heartbeat. She imagines it a lullaby; she imagines Nell pulling her closer; she imagines Nell smiling as she does. She imagines things that might be real, and dreams of things that aren’t.