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Evidently, Lune needs to get more sleep. Sciel is lying by the edge of their camp, eyes peacefully closed, and she very nearly becomes the reason Lune trips off the cliff and plummets to her death.
"I would have thought someone so focused would at least notice an entire person on the ground," Sciel laughs, grin stretching wide as her arms do, tucking them beneath her head as a makeshift pillow. "Working yourself late again?"
"No," and it's true, for the most part. Her contingency plans were as solidified as she could get them, and had been trusted to the least brash Gestral she could find. "I was…making sure everyone was resting," she says, in a resemblance of the truth. "Tomorrow is going to be a long day. And the day after that."
Sciel huffs, closing her eyes again. "And here I was, thinking you might have been looking for me."
Lune had been, actually, but decides to omit that particular detail.
It was almost comforting, now, watching Sciel look at the sky with an almost peaceful reverence. Lune sits beside her, not quite lying down, if only to watch her face for a moment longer. "What do you tell them, anyway? The stars."
She's expecting anything, from the Nevrons to the Gestrals to the admittedly beautiful plains of the Continent, or the appearance of their new straggler, or…or Gustave, or even Maelle. Maybe even—
"Tonight, I'm telling them about you."
—Well, not that.
"You're…telling the stars about me?" she says, just a bit too loud, too surprised.
"Maybe a little," Sciel opens her eyes for a moment to glance at her, with a small smile. "Why? Would you prefer I didn't?"
Sciel had told the sky about her, of all things. Sciel talked to the sky about things that made her feel.
When I was scared, or anxious, or even when I was happy— driven by insatiable curiosity, Lune wonders which umbrella she falls under. Happiness, once, was a rare commodity that she doesn't remember allowing herself to indulge in, after the Gommage that had taken her parents and her final moment of peace, but some selfish part of her hopes it might be this.
Sciel shifts; Lune realises she has left her answer a beat too long. "It's nothing bad," she amends quickly, "of course. I don't have anything particularly incriminating to tell them. In case you're worried."
"I wasn't, though I wouldn't be surprised if you did," Lune says, suddenly guilty. She was brutally trained to see only logic and reason, and could be almost cruelly ignorant of any sense of sentiment, and she knew— she knew— it could be more destructive than she means it to be. Lune had seen Maelle's face, had watched Sciel's face twist for a single moment before turning to comfort the girl.
"I don't. I never do," she insists, almost earnestly. "We all have our flaws. We all have our moments. I've only ever whispered about the good parts of you, which is most of it, anyway."
She pauses, idly wondering— and perhaps hoping— that Sciel will continue. That Sciel will tell her what is good about her, that Sciel might even say what she likes—
"It's not the first time, anyway, that I've said anything about you, and it's about the same as last time. When we were young."
Oh. The Crooked Tower. That had been so long ago, the memory shrouded in her mind in a dense fog, brought about by age and single-minded stubbornness.
"You thought about me then?" Lune is reaching, now, almost desperately for any scrap of reassurance. To know that despite all she had done, the times she had lashed out, there was something redeemable about her in Sciel’s eyes.
"Oh, so much. I told you already— it really did mean a lot to me. That day, the two of us. Even if it was just a moment. Losing people hurts, Lune, you and I know that more than anything, but…" a deep breath. "Hurting together feels a little better than doing it alone."
Lune knows she would not have believed it, had Sciel said it before they'd boarded the boat that led them here. Now, she does. Now, it is easier to admit. "Hurting with you was a lot easier than doing it alone," she says. "These last few years, these last few days…it's been so much."
"See, there it is," Sciel says, and Lune looks to her. "Here's one of the many things I like about you. You're stubborn, Lune, but you're no idiot. You're smart. You're good at admitting when you're wrong," then she laughs, "most of the time, anyway."
Oh.
"What else? Oh, and you're pretty, of course. You're beautiful."
Oh.
Sciel adjusts her position, so she's lying partially on her side, tilted towards Lune. "I wondered, sometimes," she says idly, "whether you thought of me like I thought of you, when we were young."
Of course Lune had thought about her after that night. For a time, it was almost like that was all she thought about, like a broken record in the corner of her mind, a stain on a perfectly empty page. A single warm moment had defined the corners of her next few weeks, Sciel, Sciel, Sciel.
She was still what Lune had thought of after fighting against every instinct telling her to find Sciel again. She was still what Lune had thought of after scrubbing every part of her life to only the parts she thought she needed. Over and over and over again, the music in the background of what she had believed to be her only future. In her juvenile yearning, she had imagined them in their Gommage together, being close enough that the flowers that would replace them as they faded away would intertwine together, would be so entangled that the Paintress herself wouldn't be able to distinguish them…
Lune had barely been old enough to know what her future would hold before she decided not to live one of her own. That night, Sciel had been so close to changing that, and now— a year before the end of her life, ticking ever closer— she wonders whether she still has a chance of doing so.
"I did," she murmurs, first too quiet for Sciel to hear. This is her confession to the stars, she thinks. And then she says it again, louder: "I did think of you."
She doesn't add, almost constantly, but judging by the smile on Sciel's face, she had heard it nonetheless.
"Well, then," Sciel whispers, leaning in as if she doesn't want the stars to hear— as if this were a moment just for them— her breath dancing across the plane of Lune's cheek, "do you think of me now?"
Once upon a time, Lune would have said goodnight, Sciel. Get some sleep. We have a task, a mission, an expedition to complete. She was determined and stubborn and hard-headed, and could be almost ruthlessly dedicated to protocol. Indulgence was not part of the protocol. Feeling was not part of the protocol.
Of all fucking things, love was not part of the protocol.
Even so—
"I do," Lune says honestly. "I do think of you."
She's not sure which one of them moves first, but there's a split moment of movement before Sciel has a hand in her hand and another on her waist, and her mouth is on Lune's, and the music returns in an orchestral crescendo, as loud as it had been when they were young— Sciel, Sciel, Sciel— and it is, undoubtedly, wonderful.
To think she had deprived herself of this so long ago. To think she was finding it again, almost too late.
Sciel pulls back after a moment, eyes wide in bleak moonlight, gaze full of warmth. "You know, Lune, we've got one year left to live," she whispers. "Stay with me?"
Lune, younger, would have recognised it as a distraction from her work, her parent's legacy. Lune, grown, knows it to be the most beautiful comfort she's ever been given.
"I will," she says, and it is a promise. Sciel smiles wide, and Lune kisses her again with a smile that is wider.