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The first time she makes Marya blush, hardly a week after… everything… it is an accident.
They are still dancing around each other, finding a new balance between the past and the present and a future that never was versus the one that lays ahead now. Ludmila is not entirely without scars —physical or otherwise— and Marya has her own that she does not speak of in any detail. Sometimes, when her over-active nerves wake her to pain along the metallic edge of her augments, Marya is holding her so tightly that makes her heart ache.
It wasn't even a conversation, that first night. Olethra showed her about the ship, flirted with her (badly, but oddly charming) — and Ludmila is intrigued, yes, but the idea of sleeping anywhere without Marya? Incomprehensible.
And they have slept like this every night since, just listening to the other's steady, strong heartbeat.
Most days, Kočka helps Ludmila with her repairs, but Marya still hovers sometimes, that familiar, discerning look in her eyes that she most often bestows on salvage that has potential. She has always been able to see well past discard and refuse, has always found what-could-be in what-already-is.
It is no surprise, then, that when Ludmila wakes again, wincing and rubbing the junction of skin and metal, Marya is already setting out up toolkit.
"Why are you awake?" Ludmila asks, stifling both a yawn and a grimace as she rubs the outside of her thigh. It's her hip, tonight, and she has suffered worse —the burns and those initial days of repair in Zern were far worse than this— but it's a dull sort of ache that makes sleep difficult to maintain.
Marya arches her brows, waiting for Ludmila's brain to kick in again. Wordless, trusting that she will come to it on her own. It's something that her protégé has always appreciated; in problems and puzzles, Marya does not handle her with kid gloves. She is happy to let Ludmila think through them on her own.
Even things as simple as this.
Ludmila sighs, rolling her neck, and they both grimace at how it pops. "You need rest, too, you know."
The dismissive wave she receives in reply, Marya's attention already focused on gathering tools, is unconvincing. "I'm fine. You, however—" she gestures to Ludmila's tight hip. "—are not."
"It is not so bad," she starts, stretching her leg, and the pain immediately sharpens, shooting through the joint as if stabbed. Ludmila stifles a yelp, barely, but her grunt of pain does not go unnoticed. "You cannot spend all your hours on me."
Marya tsks at her, flicks her gently on the forehead as she settles in beside Ludmila and gestures for her to lie down. Ludmila bites playfully at the offending finger and Marya rolls her eyes, but cannot hide the smile playing at the corners of her mouth. "I'm making up for lost time."
And, well.
Ludmila cannot argue with that.
Marya talks her through what she adjusts, and Ludmila only half-listens, relaxing into the feel of faintly-calloused hands working the knots in her muscles away as she manipulates the metal so that it scrapes less against bone and skin. She can't feel it as strongly, but it is a surprise to realize she feels anything at all on the iron.
By the time Marya pats her hip to tell her she's finished, Ludmila is half-dozing again, pain vanished entirely.
She cracks one eye open. "Maybe you should do all of these repairs," she hums, shifting so that Marya has room to lie back down with her. "With hands so much more talented than mine."
The light is dim and Ludmila is boneless and content, and so it is difficult to see clearly… but just before Marya turns away, to sort her tools back into their set, Ludmila sees the faintest tinge of pink across her cheeks.
⁂
It is far more obvious, the next time it happens.
They have to make an emergency stop right on the edge of the Biazi Desert, one of the engines rattling angrily about something. They're lucky this time, having landed about a day's walk to a city that Sylvio assures the crew is safe. While Olethra, Maxwell and Monty —and his dinosaur, which Ludmila still isn't used to— head off toward it, she and Marya stay behind to locate the problem. If it's fixable regardless of what the others find, even better.
Marya, genius that she is, has the damn thing repaired within hours. It isn't even a simple fix — there are a whole lot of things wrong with the fuel intake and the converters and several other things Ludmila is less familiar with, her own knowledge lagging a decade behind the Zephyr Mark II's build. She does spend a good amount of time cursing at it —and hits something with a wrench, at some point— but she gets the entire thing up and running again.
"We would be lost without you," Ludmila marvels, watching from a slight distance with her chin resting on her clasped hands. "And to think, you nearly sent us off without you."
"I did not," Marya snorts, rolling her eyes, but even here in the engine room, Ludmila can see the flush across her face clearly. "I said that I might vacation for a while."
Ludmila hums and gets to her feet to help Marya gather up her tools and seal the last of the vents closed again, move all the cables back into place, and then holds her hand out for Marya's heavy tool bag expectantly. "And I would not blame you for it, but it is very nice to have the best pilot in history with us in the skies."
"The youngest, not the best," Marya argues, something a little more than humbleness in her voice. Something that Ludmila does not like; dark and doubting. But the flush deepens alongside it, and this time, it sparks curiosity.
"Well," Ludmila says, taking Marya's bag from her when she does not hand it off willingly, to weak protests. "You are the greatest pilot to me, and my opinion is the only one that matters."
Marya's brows shoot up, a surprised bark of laughter escaping her. Oh, how Ludmila has missed that sound, bright and light. "Oh, is that so? Nobody else's?"
"Nope," Ludmila answers, popping the end of the word obnoxiously like Olethra sometimes does. "Do you not trust your darling protégé?"
"My darling protégé has a very strong bias," Marya scoffs. There it is — the undercurrent of self-doubt that follows Marya like a poltergeist, intensified by a decade of grief that Ludmila cannot even imagine.
"A correct bias, you mean." She bumps Marya's shoulder affectionately. "I was taught by the best, and so I am right. I will hear no arguments."
"I'm not— you're—"
Ludmila grins, perhaps a little too arrogant, but she knows Marya, even now. Framed like this, arguing against herself would also mean denying that Ludmila is brilliant. She is all too willing to discount herself, but she will never risk adding fuel to the fire of her protégé's self-doubts.
With a huff, Marya mutters something that might be an insult under her breath, too low for Ludmila to decipher. But she does not argue.
She also cannot meet Ludmila's eyes the rest of the day without getting flustered. And that is truly interesting.
⁂
As they find their footing in this new reality, things start settling back into place. The time between them has not changed the tether that had already steadily been shortening between them before Straka, and so it is inevitable that it would pull them together again. Ludmila would have waited those thousand years, easily, for Marya.
But she is also not one to waste a second chance, and she has known for a very long time that what exists between them is not just mentor and protégé.
Still, it's been a decade for Marya. It's a long time, plenty enough for feelings to change, and it is over drinks with Olethra that she finds herself seeking reassurance. Not in as many words, no — but her eyes drift to Marya, across the deck, elbow-deep in a salvaged mech, and when she finally turns her attention back, Olethra is watching her with bright eyes and a brighter, knowing smirk.
"I fucking knew it."
Ludmila could feign innocence, maybe, but why bother? She stays quiet instead, brows arched in silent question, and Olethra only scoffs.
"C'mon. Star-crossed lovers across time? It practically writes itself." Olethra leans back, striking a pose that is hilariously similar to the one Daisuke takes when he imparts what he considers old wisdom onto the crew. "You should totally go for it. Or… go for it again? Were you guys—?"
Ludmila nearly chokes on her drink. "Not before. No. But…" She chews on her lip, trying to find the words. Are there words, really, for this kind of pull? Something that is so soul-deep, written into her very blood… how is she supposed to describe that? She sighs. "It was months for me. It was years for Marya and — I just got her back. I do not want to scare her off."
Olethra is not known for subtlety, something that Ludmila has discovered over these weeks in her crew. And so her voice is a little too loud and a bit slurred when she says, incredulously, "You have got to be kidding."
Ludmila blinks.
"Oh my god. I thought I was bad. You know she kept a picture of you, right? This whole time? And I mean, yeah, she cried when we all first saw it—" Ludmila winces. "—and she has been single-mindedly focused on you. Even when—" Olethra waves at the sky. "—even when you were. Y'know. Not you. She never gave up on you."
"She is a very good mentor."
For a long, long moment, Olethra stares. And then she, very gently, grabs Ludmila's hands. Stares her dead in the eyes for a second, and —very, very quietly, which is a feat for her— hisses, "She is in love with you."
Here is the thing — Ludmila knows this. Marya is skilled and weathered and grief-stricken and still deeply silly, but above all else, she is a creature of love. And, as she always has, she holds that love with the ferocity of a stray with a bone. But it has still been a long time, and Marya has a decade of grief without context; grief that Ludmila will never truly understand.
"Also," Olethra adds with a squeeze of her hands, dragging her back to the present. "Literally none of the rest of us can get her to blush like that." A pause. "Or at all, really."
And that is… certainly some information to put aside.
Information that Ludmila can use — later. Because she does not want to interrupt Marya, who is having the time of her life ripping apart the salvaged mech for parts, and Ludmila loves nothing more than watching her in her element.
⁂
It is on another quiet night that Ludmila finds herself under Marya's care again, this time to adjust something in her heart. There was an off beat, hardly fitting of the word skip, but it was enough to alarm Marya. And so she is here again, watching Marya's hands disappear into her chest and trying very hard not to feel all that she is feeling.
The fact that Marya touches her actual heart is a kind of intimate that Ludmila struggles to put into words.
She busies herself with studying Marya, who has not looked up at her once since she started fussing with the metal. Her brow is furrowed, deeper than the crease that Ludmila remembers from before but still all Marya, and her hands itch to smooth it out, to watch the tension fall away after so long. Her jaw clenches and relaxes almost rhythmically with each adjustment she make to Ludmila's heart, the anticipation of something going wrong smoothing back into determination each time. Her eyes do not falter, and her hands are even steadier.
Her face isn't as sharp, now, the valley of her cheeks steadily filling back in. Her collar is less noticeable with each passing week, her wrists no longer skeletal. It isn't quite right to call her more beautiful this way —Ludmila was just as enamored with her when she was gaunt with grief— but she has to hold her tongue between her teeth more often now.
Something that is much harder when Marya is so close that Ludmila can count her eyelashes.
"You are right," she murmurs, low between them. Marya's hands are as sure as ever, but her gaze flicks up to Ludmila's for an instant. "I should not call you the best pilot in the world —clearly, you are the most skilled artificer in the world."
Pink blooms on Marya's cheeks, hands still unwavering, breath steady, but this close, Ludmila can hear the way she swallows hard, too.
"Hush," she says, voice harsh and rasping. "Don't distract me."
Oh, it would be so easy to keep going, and it is so tempting. But Marya is serious, the set of her jaw still too tense as she works on Ludmila's body, so she acquiesces with a pleased hum. She can wait until Marya is no longer singly focused on the systems keeping her alive to tease, at least. Besides — it will be more fun to see how Marya responds when there is nowhere else to direct her attention.
And because Marya is deeply skilled, it isn't much longer before she closes the panel back over Ludmila's heart with a gentle pat. "I think I figured out what was causing it. How do you feel?"
Ludmila is quiet for a moment, assessing. Her pulse is perfectly steady, nothing feels numb or lacking blood flow, and she does feel a bit stronger — but that could just be a result of the way Marya watches her with that soft, fond expression.
"Perfect," Ludmila says, leaning forward to bump her forehead against Marya's affectionately. "No surprise there, with the best of the best working on me."
Marya makes a strangled kind of sound and Ludmila pulls back just in time to watch her barely-present flush deepen to a striking pink. "I am doing my job," she grouses, moving to turn away. Deflecting, again, that twinge of unease seeping back in.
Ludmila catches her arm and the startled, wide-eyed expression she gets in return is not one that she likes. There was a time, not long ago for Ludmila but a lifetime for Marya, when it was normal for her to reach out like this. Expected, even, and now it feels as though Marya has forgotten that Ludmila will always seek her out. As if she has forgotten she is wanted, an idea too painful to let her steep in.
"I mean it. You know I would never give you empty flattery," says Ludmila, quietly, both of them stock-still in the evening light. Marya inhales, quickly, through her nose, as if steeling herself, and as if no time has passed at all, Ludmila softens in turn. "When I say you are the best, it is because you are."
Compliments were never Marya's strong suit, even before, but now she is all but completely closed to them, batting away Ludmila's praise with practiced cynicism. There is fear, too, cultivated in the brine of sorrow and sharp against her protégé's positivity. Marya called it "stubborn optimism" once upon a time, tinged with awe and held up against the backdrop of old wisdom — be pessimistic, or be silent.
Stubborn enough to wait a thousand years, in another life. Stubborn enough to hold on, even now.
Marya tries to tug her arm back, gently. Ludmila does not release her. If she lets go, Marya will flee, will rebuild all the barriers that she must have constructed in Ludmila's absence, and Ludmila will not have it.
She is tired, too, of dancing around what they both know to be true.
"Listen — do not roll your eyes at me, listen. Did you not once say I was wise beyond my years?" This earns her the barest hint of a smile, at least. Ludmila takes her other hand and traces the newer callouses on her fingertips. "I would trust no other hands as much as I trust yours, because you are talented, yes, but you are also skilled. As a pilot, as a tinkerer, as my mentor."
Here, Marya's sharp inhale also comes with a flash of trepidation. Ludmila does not stop long enough for her to argue. "I would not be here if you did not come for me. Nobody else could have done it."
"This would never have happened in the first place if—" Marya cuts herself off, eyes roving over Ludmila, catching on the metal integrated with her body now, and releases a shuddering breath. "You have suffered. Because of me."
"No." Ludmila shakes her head. "No. You could not have known. You did not have to come for me. You did not have to save me, especially after…" She doesn't like to think of what she was, what she became and never became at the same time. There is a version of Ludmila known to this world, this crew, Marya, that she has never lived as. "But you did. You found a way to me, and you did not give up on me."
"Never," Marya says, voice cracking.
She strokes her thumb across the back of Marya's, over the scar that Marya has not told her the origin of but that Ludmila suspects had something to do with her. "I don't understand everything, but nobody else could have found that path."
It's an innate sense of knowing, from all the time Marya spent studying the Biangles well before Ludmila fell into Zern, but also from Ludmila's discussions with the crew. Comfrey MacLeod's death —her heart twinges with guilt— is still fresh, but the crew has talked enough about her many, many exploits through time for Ludmila to know that even she could not change it. Maybe she had the technical skill, because she went through the Biangles hundreds of times, but for this?
It had to be Marya, because it was only Marya's faith in her that saved them.
Marya ducks her head. "It was the only one that made sense."
And that is not entirely the truth, Ludmila knows, because Marya is as pragmatic as she is chaotic, and she is fiercely protective of those she loves. She has watched Marya calculate cost-benefits assessments in real time, has watched her take astronomical risks only when the payoff is greater than the potential for harm.
Zood and Zern are both decimated. Ludmila has seen the metallic shell herself, watched the great metal bird of rot and ruin fall. There is no world where killing her entirely was not a safer, saner choice than rescuing her.
She doesn't call Marya's bluff. She does not need to. Instead, she cups Marya's face in her hands so that she can meet Ludmila's gaze. Marya has held her many times like this, so it is only fair of her to return the favor.
"The best artificer," she repeats, arching her brows in silent challenge when Marya opens her mouth to object, before snapping her jaw shut again. Marya will never accept a compliment on her own merits, though, so she continues, "Who is the reason I knew how to make the door in the first place."
"Mila," Marya warns, frowning, with such affection that it warms her heart.
"Do not 'Mila"' me," she smiles, pecking Marya on the forehead and smirking when she flushes again. "The best pilot, who flew across three realms and two Biangles for me."
"Anyone could have done that."
"Marya," Ludmila scolds, shaking her very gently as she narrows her eyes. "Let me compliment you."
The tension in the air eases, lightens, brightens. The haunted thing behind Marya's eyes does not leave, but it retreats. "Oh, is that what you are doing?" she asks, feigning obliviousness, the glint in her eye far too sharp to be anything but knowing. Maybe she will learn to accept Ludmila's praise honestly, one day, with a lifetime ahead of them, but this is good enough for now.
Ludmila inhales, holds for a few seconds and exhales harshly in an exaggerated show of frustration.
"Beloved," she sighs, exasperated, and — there it is. The catch in Marya's breath, eyes going ever-slightly wider the way that they have always, even when it was a lighthearted teasing rather than the true endearment Ludmila now means it as. "You are skilled and so very brave—"
"Stop," Marya says, almost a whine, trying to turn away again, and Ludmila catches her chin to hold her in place.
"—for diving into time itself, risking your life to save me."
Neither of them like thinking about that brief moment, the could-have-beens in the moments between Ludmila waking and Marya's rescue, where she was floating in nothingness, the crow of destruction hungry for a soul to replace Ludmila's. If it were possible to owe Marya more of herself, she would offer it — but Ludmila has belonged to her in entirety long before she was taken by Straka.
Marya is quiet, quiet, quiet, eyes wide and breath stalled, searching — for what, Ludmila isn't sure, but they are so close. Marya is warm under her touch, alive and present, a healthy flush across her skin and the lines of her face less stark now that she is healing.
Ludmila takes a breath, holds it, releases it slowly as her thumb strokes the curve of Marya's cheek. "My talented, brave, beautiful Marya," she murmurs, and Marya tugs her in.
It was inevitable, always, that she would fall into Marya's orbit, Ludmila gravitationally locked to her like a moon to its planet. It is fitting, then, that Marya's mouth would feel like home to her; that, when she swallows Marya's gasp and tilts her head to deepen the kiss, it feels like sustenance. A thousand years and a decade and months, time uncountable and no time at all, all meeting and parting, woven into something both familiar and exhilaratingly new between them.
When they break for air, panting, Marya's cheeks are rosy and her eyes are bright and, for a moment, Ludmila sees the sky-eyed woman who first brought her aboard the Kingfisher, excited and happy and unburdened.
"It is unfair of you to be this adorable," she coos, and Marya wrinkles her nose, drops forward, and buries her face in the crook of Ludmila's neck with a groan. Ludmila loops her arms around Marya's waist and drags her over, pulling Marya down onto the bed alongside her.
"Milaaa…" she whines, muffled. "Do not mock your elders."
But she is smiling; Ludmila feels the curve of it against her throat, wide and unburdened, if only for this moment. She presses a kiss to the top of Marya's head, just where her hair transitions from salt-and-pepper to shock-white at the front. "I would never joke about this," she chuckles, letting her lips rest there. "You know that I take cuteness very seriously."
Marya shifts to look up at her, eyes narrowed. "Kočka has gotten only more unhinged," she says, unearthing an argument from years ago about whether he was unhinged or adorable — one that they had both compromised on 'both' when they were too tired to keep going.
"And it is adorable. You cannot argue," Ludmila grins, pressing another kiss to her forehead, giddy with closeness. "Just like you cannot argue that you are the best pilot and artificer and mentor." Another groan, another kiss, this one to Marya's nose, just before she buries her face in Ludmila's neck again. Ludmila laughs.
"I can," she mutters. "But then we will go in circles for hours."
"Correct." There is an incomprehensible string of grumbling against her shoulder, and then a huff of defeat. And Ludmila, drunk on life and touch and the prospect of tomorrow, presses just a bit further. "And also," she says, and Marya's long-suffering sigh and gentle headbutt to the side of her throat makes her laugh again. "The most gorgeous girlfriend."
She is aware, somewhere at the back of her mind where all of her doubts live, that it's presumptuous — but she is also fairly certain that Marya's affections have not wavered much in the years past. Particularly with Olethra's pointed reassurance.
A small pause and an additional grumble, and then, easy as breathing, Marya pats her chest — just over her heart.
"That one, I will argue. Because that is you. Obviously."
"Okay, you cannot—"
"I can, I will, and I am pulling rank for it," Marya smirks, and Ludmila is about to argue further when teeth nip at her neck, stealing her breath and a sizeable chunk of her higher thinking. "No? Nothing to say now?"
"I am a bit distracted, beloved." She does not need words to argue her point. Ludmila moves, presses Marya into the mattress and twines their fingers together to immobilize her, and Marya does not fight her. She only stares up at Ludmila with a bright smile and the glint of a dare in her eyes.
"Are you?" Marya arches her brows, tilts her head — challenging, but also baring the alabaster of her throat tauntingly.
Ludmila rolls her eyes, dips her head, and there are no other arguments for a long while.