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Jane's gaze turns far away sometimes, and in those moments you know she's thinking about someone else.
It's not always Jake, though you know she thinks about him more than she'll ever admit. She also thinks about her father, wandering lost somewhere through the void, and to a lesser degree the people she's left behind. She has actual cousins; you barely knew the concept existed outside of passing mentions in your mother's library. When she tells you about her last birthday, a big celebration with a cake nearly as tall as she was and whole buses full of extended family, you can't imagine it at all (or, you can, but it leaves you feeling a little panicky and a little crushed by what you've never had, and you wish you hadn't.)
She puts her face in her hands for a long moment, carried away by some reminder of someone no longer here, and you put your hand on her shoulder. “Aw, Janey, don't worry,” you say, “you've still got me.”
“Thanks, Roxy,” she says with a sigh. Then she straightens her back, nods quietly to herself, and moves to another part of the room to accomplish some new task. Your hand falls to your side and you watch her work, a self-powering dynamo working longer and harder than she should in order to keep her thoughts at bay, and you think: this is what society can do for a person. They're a source of strength that Jane still pulls from, even though she's the last survivor from her place and time.
Jane and the others are all you have, though—all you've ever had. The game surrounds you with creatures and places long since dead, and it barely registers as a change. You conquer pyramids and monsters out of nightmare and still sleep well at night.
She doesn't.
You awake to the sound of low moaning, and see her thrashing in her sleeping bag. After you jostle her to consciousness she clutches at you for one heart-stopping moment, her softness pressed all against your front, her warm breath blowing against your bony shoulder. You gather her up gently, the way you think she's expecting. (You do have one thing in common—neither of you really knew your mother—but you think this is what a comforting person would do.)
She wakes up quickly, though, and pushes herself out of your hold. “Sorry, Roxy,” she says, rubbing at her eyes with a bone-tired expression. It breaks your heart a little, seeing her face so pale with such dark circles under her eyes. She wasn't like the rest of you: she was always well-fed, well-rested, happy. You wanted to spare her from this, somehow.
“You got nothing to apologize for,” you say. “Come 'ere.” You pull her in again and she's stiff at first, but eventually relaxes.
“What were you dreaming about?” you murmur after a while.
“I don't want to talk about it,” she says, and her voice is tight with irritation—at herself, you know. She's never been one to let her emotions run away with her, not like you. You don't know between the two of you who has it more wrong.
The two of you are a lonely huddle of warmth amidst the neon-lit structures. Her hands rest limp against your thighs and you keep your mouth shut. It's a gesture of trust, for both of you—that she trusts you enough to be this close for this long, that you trust her enough to let the silence lengthen.
“I'd be your family, if I could,” slips from your mouth eventually, without you meaning to.
Jane looks at you with a quiet sadness. “You are family, Roxy,” she replies.
You give her a weak smile. In a way, she's not lying—you'd die for her, she'd (probably) die for you; you're her companion and confidant, a most trusted friend. But it's not entirely the truth, either. She doesn't need you the same way. She knows what it's like to have a parent to read her bedtime stories without the help of camera recordings.
You squeeze her tight, then let go. “Let's throw you a birthday party, Janey,” you say. “We wouldn't want you to miss your big birthday bash this year, right?”
She laughs. “The four of us?”
“Excuse you,” you say. “Fefeta counts too.”
“Of course,” Jane replies, and the dry humor is creeping back into her voice. It makes you smile, to hear her normal mood returning. “I would never leave out Fefeta.”
“I'll text the boys tomorrow and tell them to come,” you say. “We'll bake a cake and everything.”
She chuckles, torn between liking the attention and being embarrassed by it. A beat passes before she slips from your arms and back into her sleeping bag, and you want very badly to kiss her then—she's so close and so beautiful in the dim neon light—but you don't. Because for all the times she pauses in her work and looks off into the distance, you know it's never once from thoughts of you.