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In the ice hard three years since Arrival Day, ornament was a forgotten ideal. Nothing existed on beauty alone.
Small glimmers of beauty existed in items that had been useful first, or that had endured long enough that people no longer remembered the original purpose. Wood was rough, splintered, because smoothing it took time and calories that could not be spared. Metal was battered and bruised. Fabric took on hues that were a matter of argument - patched until the original was unrecognisable. Even holidays were cautious - repurposing only what could be spared without taking away from the whole.
When Audrey arrived she joked that she’d lived three different lives already. But now, nothing could prepare her for the sheer effort required to stay upright.
The first sign had been tiredness that didn’t behave how tiredness was supposed to behave. Not the honest kind of tired from the train, from a long night with Joseph, or grief that settled like a permanent blanket. This tiredness could not be out-rested. It nestled deep in her bones and remained there, replacing the hum of the perpetual engine and making standing upright an active commitment. She had learned how to lean without looking like she was leaning, how to finish a song sitting down as if it was on purpose.
The communal bakery was warm that morning, and Audrey had been dressed for New Eden’s dawn frost. Clouds of flour seemed to hang in the air, catching the early morning light. Audrey had been awake before the sun, moving more slowly than she cared to admit, breath shallow in the way she always blamed on the old burns on her lungs. Her chest had been tight for months, back then, voice rasping and unreliable. To the rest of the world it had seemed to pass eventually, but sometimes she still felt like she hadn’t quite learned how to trust her body again.
She bent to lift the floor sack out of the way, and the floor rose up to meet her.
It was probably the least dramatic Audrey had ever been. No pain, no warning, just the sudden absence of strength in her legs and her knees folding under her. For a second, the cloud of flour danced above her like snow.
The room seemed to go still for a long moment.
By the time Audrey regained her sense of self, the heat of the oven was making her sweat. She was vaguely aware of her name being called, but answering would need breath she couldn’t seem to catch.
And then Bess was there. One knee on the floor, dark against the flour dust, on hand cradling under Audrey’s neck. The other, she raised flat against the growing crowd. The same signal she had used in other lives - riots in Detroit, the tail, the rebellion - saying don’t crowd, don’t make this worse.
Audrey managed a smile, one that wouldn’t have been amiss on the stage.
“I’m fine,” she said, because she didn’t want to admit anything else.
Bess didn’t argue, for the same reason. She just stayed close until Audrey could be helped back to standing, then perched on a chair someone had brought from the hall.
The trip to the clinic didn’t happen immediately. Audrey hated fuss, and there was work to be done. Every man to his post, even if he had to sit down more often than stand. Bess hovered, in that practiced way she had of hovering where Audrey might be. Only later, when the sun was high above the mountains and the dizziness still hadn’t shifted, did Audrey acquiesce.
The clinic could not be described as anything more than austere. Clean in a way that ought to be comforting, but empty. Shelves of supplies arranged to be counted, recounted, and made to last. Peloton closed the door behind them and took her time. Checked Audrey’s vitals twice, and then a third time. When she asked questions, Audrey answered so honestly that she surprised even herself. About tiredness, about weakness. About the feeling that her body had not been her own for quite some time. About the lingering breathlessness.
The doctor crouched beside them both, instead of standing over them. It was a small mercy, the costless kind that was all she had left to offer.
“Some of this is explainable,” she started carefully. The train, gemini, the cold. She paused for a second, letting her eyes close for a moment. When she opened them again, she spoke more slowly. “Some of this we’ll need to investigate.”
The tests took longer than any of them would have liked. Blood was not drawn easily, and Audrey squeezed Bess’ hand weakly. The equipment - that had long since only worked when it felt like it - whirred for long minutes. There was a limit to what could be seen in that empty clinic, but there were some things that even the end of the world could not miss.
The word cancer came later in that same clinic, spoken quietly. The kind that didn’t announce itself early. The kind that grew in silence, quietly stealing strength. Dr Pelton explained kindly what that meant. What they might be able to try. What they couldn’t.
“This didn’t start recently,” Pelton followed gently, “Most likely been there a while.”
Audrey nodded once, as if accepting something already known.
After that, time seemed to narrow.
Audrey still spent her dawns in the bakery, measuring her movements alongside the flour. The chair brought from the town hall was never returned. Her routines shortened, and she leaned against the worktop openly, waiting for the shallow breathing and the swaying to pass. Sometimes, when she was tired - and she was always tired - her hands shook with a fine tremor that she tried to hide by keeping them busy.
She sang when she could. The songs were shorter now, less dramatic. The notes felt thinner, each one deliberate as though not wanting to waste each breath. The crowds seemed to lean closer without meaning to, as if they might hold her upright. No-one said anything, and that was life since arrival - knowing when not to speak.
Bess too, noticed but did not speak.
She watched how Audrey hesitated at doorways, paused at the bottom of the stairs as if negotiating with them. She adjusted automatically. Walking one step slower, keeping the room quiet when Audrey needed rest, and filling it with noise when she needed joy. She learned to read the kind of day it would be in the way Audrey held herself before dawn, the same way she’d once read crowds of people looking for trouble.
In the cold evenings, Audrey wrapped herself in Bess’ jacket, sometimes quietly wandering to the edge of the square and sitting to watch the town settle down for the night. She watched the fading light catch on salvaged metal, on the repurposed train windows now set into new walls. On the anniversary of Arrival Day, she watched the town itself try to catch the light - people smoothing down their cleanest clothes, trying to make something deliberate out of the scarcity. Audrey always looked for the beauty.
Bess noticed that too.
The idea of a wedding didn’t arrive suddenly, but as an accumulation of moments stored away like clues. Audrey’s gaze lingering on new growth in the greenhouse. The way she lingered, leaning carefully, when music drifted down from the bar even on days she was too tired to sing herself. She treated other people’s moments as precious jewels, cataloguing each thing that mattered whilst the rest of the world thought only of survival.
Bess herself had never been sentimental in this way. She understood survival. Structure. Responsibility to the whole. She understood how to hold things together long enough for something bigger to take its place. This felt like that, somehow. So she planned it the way she planned anything. Quietly, stoically, minute by minute.
She spoke to the others one at a time. Asked for help as repayment for favours long uncalled upon, or favours still to come. Sykes produced two branches of blossom that should have been left to bear fruit. Javi coaxed a string of lights back into service, each bulb glowing with uncertainty. Chairs were borrowed not just from the town hall but from houses, the bar, the workshop. Mismatched and wobbly on the rough ground.
There was no abundance, only intention.
The hardest part was Audrey herself. When the morning arrived, Ruth intercepted her before the bakery, her hand light but insistent at Audrey’s elbow. She brushed off the questions, even when they had to stop for Audrey to catch her breath, the tiredness settling again in her bones. She brought Audrey to a room near the square. A store of some kind, though there was little left within it. On the table, a dress.
Audrey stopped short, a breath half inhaled.
The fabric was unmistakable - heavy, close woven, pale and clean in a way Audrey had not seen for years. FIrst class curtains, once meant for a world where comfort and beauty were gatekept. A different life. Someone had cut them with care, stitched them into something clearly designed to move. To be seen. Audrey pulled her hand back from the fabric, as if afraid of making it dirty with her fingers.
Ruth helped her dress, waiting when Audrey had to sit. She knelt to adjust the hem, and steadied her when she swayed. There was a reverence alongside the practicality.
“You look,” Ruth began, then stopped. “Just right,” she finished softly.
When Audrey finally stepped into the square, she had to pause, bracing herself against the back of a chair as she took in the scene.There was no archway of roses. No garish drapery. Just people, gathered close enough that warmth seemed to emanate from them despite the chill of the dawn. At the front, two branches of blossom trimmed short and placed into glass jars, and all around, lights flickering and humming as if to say welcome home.
Bess waited. Her shoulders were held straight, posture deliberate and strong. But if anyone had looked closely, they would have seen the pale marks of her knuckles as she watched Audrey cross the space slowly, with measured steps.
The dress moved, bounced, shimmered in the light. It hid the quiet wobble of her walk, the shallowness of her breath. When she reached Bess, she took her hands and felt the quiet tremble, the fear held tight beneath the discipline.
“Yes,” Audrey said simply, before any question had been asked.
Two chairs were brought forwards, and Audrey sat carefully, trying not to wrinkle the dress. Ruth’s voice carried the words. Some from lifetimes ago, some from the train, and some New Eden alone. To one side, Melanie stood, her eyes drifting to Ruth and then back to Bess and Audrey with a quiet smile.
When it was time for Bess to speak, she did so simply and plainly. “I’m here,” she promised. “I will keep choosing you, day after day.” When Audrey answered, it was slow, like the morning sun, like music, like the way Bess helped her out of bed when her strength failed her.
When they kissed, the square stayed quiet. Another New Eden celebration marked in sincerity and austerity. But the love shone through, in the quiet smiles, the squeezed hands, the inevitability of it all.
Later, they danced carefully, the piano music carrying them across the square. Audrey leaned into her wife without apology, her weight an honest kind of love. The borrowed fabric caught the light as they turned, slow and deliberate.
Around them, New Eden held on a little longer. Patched, colour unknown, but alive.
And for now, that was enough.