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When they are alone, when the high and the panic and the hope have all had time to settle, Vespa stands in the middle of The Lighthouse and realizes it’s… done.
It’s over with. That part of her life, that long nightmare, is…
It doesn’t… it doesn’t sound real. She half expects it all to dissolve into shadows, for her former… boss… to snap at her to get back to work.
But then hands touch hers, calloused and old, older than she has ever imagined them, and Vespa looks up at scars that hurt her — the proof of how much time has gone by, the pain that Buddy has been made to suffer — and it’s…
“You’re here,” Buddy whispers, voice breaking halfway through the words.
“You’re here,” Vespa breathes back, heart racing in her chest.
She loves each single one of Buddy’s wrinkles, the crinkles at the corners of her lips and her eye… even the lost eye. The radiation scars. The spots of discoloration that are not a sign of old age, but of time lost unprotected by the dome.
Buddy looks nothing like Vespa last saw her, but she looks radiant anyway.
Buddy’s hand is just as warm against Vespa’s cheek as the air outside.
“I love you,” Buddy says quietly, moisture gathering at the corner of her eye. “Thank you. Thank you.”
Vespa breathes in, shaky and overwhelmed and lost and found. “Thank you. I love you, Bud. Gods… I thought…” She laughs weakly. “I thought I’d never see you again.”
“You’re here. I’m here. We are here.”
“We are— we are.”
It feels like a dream. She’s so sure it will turn out to be a hallucination, just another creation of her mind — but she has never seen Buddy like this before, only ever the 30 year old Buddy she saw before that dreadful day at the train.
This is not that Buddy. This is… this is a Buddy that time has touched, a Buddy that feels infinitely old and infinitely away from her and infinitely new.
Vespa wants to know her. Vespa wants the opportunity to know everything that has changed and everything that has stayed the same and what it feels like, today, to love and be loved by Buddy Aurinko.
Vespa kisses her.
She tastes different and just the same. New and old, strange and familiar. She still fits perfectly in Vespa’s arms, still feels like home.
She hopes they have all the time in the world to begin anew.
When they part, still standing in the place they made a promise of what feels like a lifetime ago, there is time and pain written across the face that looks at her, but Vespa knows, deep in her heart, that one thing is still sure.
Vespa loves Buddy Aurinko, and Buddy loves her back.