The Space Between (In Dreams)
Everything about her is brilliance. Her mind, her body, her eyes and hair. Her voice. It's terrible when she shouts--a landslide of molten brass.
"Challenge him, then! Do something!" Her eyes flicker with temper, like an ocean gone storm-hot. "You're better than he is; they'll have to see it!"
"It's not how things are done. Koval is department head! I'd be suspended, or worse." He reaches for her. "It's nearly summer, anyway."
She turns away, twisting in his grip with a look of pure disdain. "Coward."
He moves without thought, blind, furious. Her eyes are huge, rimmed in white on all sides, and the shadow of his arm blots out her light.
"Dont. Touch. Me." The words are small and hateful, cinders in his ears.
He stares at the tips of his fingers and lowers his hand with a deep sigh, knowing it's over. I'm sorry freezes on his tongue. She brings out the ice in him, the shade, everything cold and cutting about Air.
There's such Fire in her. This was a bad match from the beginning.
"Come with me," he says then, releasing her, "to Mnaeha, just once." His face is breaking, peeling back on itself; his eyes water as he smiles. "There's someone I want you to meet."
Turning over, warm and safe and lazy; the days are hot, this far inland, and all their arguments are long done. They will come and find him, soon.
He can't stop laughing. It's the third time they've primed the holo for this capture, but she keeps making those outrageous faces and he's ticklish--they both are--so he's helpless to do anything else.
They are wonderful together. She is more brilliant than ever, a star that has become the sun--and with another man beside her, stronger in the way she needs, a mountain who has become her whole world. And Ayel is what he has always been, a world apart, cooler and slighter, sheltered in the shadows between them.
Ch'Rihan, Ch'Havran, Eisn: the heart of an Empire, proud and strong.
Oren. Ayel. Mandana.They are an empire unto themselves, perfect and eternal.
No, they didn't go swimming; it didn't rain, why is his face...Not yet; don't wake yet.
He shoves the heels of his hands against his cheeks until sparks flash white and green on the backs of his eyelids. He rubs twice and opens them, spends a dazed moment feeling for a warmth that isn't there, wondering how he got out of his coat, why it's draped over him.
His fingers reach and reach, and touch the mattress edge. Empty. And then it hits him, everything, all at once.
Gone! Treachery after all. Separated! Treachery always; they're Feds, he should have expected this, this and worse. Betrayed! It sends him springing, half-dressed and barefoot, lunging on the disruptor and setting it as high as it will go as he flies down the hall. They'll be vaporized. I'll kill all of them. If they're still here.
Nightmares are so much easier to live with.