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Rhys is leaning on her shoulder.
Night has fallen; Fiona’s spent the last half hour, at least, staring silently at the fire. The Stranger tried to talk to them, and Rhys was describing something - a Bunkers and Badasses game from their time spent travelling to the Gortys upgrade, she thinks - but she hadn’t paid attention. Now, the Stranger is elsewhere, finding food, and Fiona is stranded in the middle of a wasteland. Sand has found its way into every crease of clothing. There doesn’t even appear to be a bandit camp (let alone actual civilisation) nearby, and the Stranger knew this, which was why he left her sat in front of the fire.
And Rhys sat with her. And now he’s asleep on her shoulder.
And this time, she can’t seem to bring herself to push him off.
Her mind wanders to the caravan journey, sharing beds, playing games, telling stories; everyone was happy. Even Athena smiled occasionally. She wonders if that’s the last time she was really, truly happy.
Fingers curl around a twig. Rhys snores. Fiona remembers Vaughn’s paralysed face, Sasha’s bright smile, Athena’s quiet smirk, Loader Bot’s bluntness and Gortys’ innocence... and Rhys. Rhys, pretending everything was okay. Rhys, harbouring a dictator in his brain.
Fiona’s head tilts, and her eyes look at him now. He’s drooling. Even that doesn’t convince her to push him off.
“I remember the game,” she tells him, and he doesn’t respond because he’s asleep. “The - Bunkers and Badasses. Athena flipped the board. It took me ages to pull that little bandit figurine out of the vent.” She twists the twig in her hands. “You were driving next, but you told me to stick with you so you didn’t fall asleep. And I did.”
Rhys stays quiet, because he’s asleep.
“We sat at the front of the van, and you told me a load of dumb stuff about Helios - the outdoor swimming pool you’d die if you tried to go in, that one meeting room that spun around so fast you had to practise going inside and leaping into one of the chairs, the - the water cooler. That pissed me off.” She huffs a laugh. “Helios was stupid.”
There’s a sharp, but distant, cawing. Fiona doesn’t recognise the sound to match it to a creature. She doesn’t even know where on Pandora they are.
Still, she continues, the memories bubbling up inside her and spilling out her mouth before she can even think. “You told me Pandora was beautiful. But Elpis - Elpis looked better up close. Pandora was brown, Elpis was purple. You said you liked the purple, but you didn’t see Elpis a lot, ’cause that’s on the wrong side of the station to you. I told you I get to see Elpis whenever I want.”
Looking up, Fiona sees Elpis planted firmly in the sky, carving a hole into the picture of the scenery she recognises well. Helios doesn’t carve out a place in the sky anymore. It looks barren without it.
“Then you said Pandora wasn’t awful. You know, you hated being stuck here, but you’d probably never get the chance to go back to Helios, and you were glad.” Her voice thickens on the word. The twig snaps between her fingers. “You said you were glad you’d found us. You could’ve found anyone, and you found us.”
Angrily, she raises her hand, tossing the two halves of the twig onto the fire. The movement is sharp, jerking. She turns her head away from Rhys.
“You liked Pandora. You liked it because you could see Elpis. Because you could experience the real world. Because you met us.” Her voice is thicker, now, and she can’t help it. “Did it - did it ever occur to you we felt the same? I felt the same? Did your dumb, damaged, stupid brain ever think, hey, maybe she trusts me as much as I trust her?”
Her fingertips twitch. She wants to push him off her shoulder, wake him up. She wants him to be uncomfortable and tired and confused, just as she was - just as she is.
There’s a rustle from the bushes. The Stranger emerges, carrying something that looks gross, but unfortunately, edible. Fiona sighs.
Rhys awakens as his pillow jerks from under him, blinking, mind foggy from the sleep. His eyes open in time to see two twigs land on the fire. A moment later, he realises he is on Fiona’s shoulder.
He’s about to move, but she starts talking. “You liked Pandora.”
And so he stays quiet, and so he listens.