He had his opinions; she had hers. They simply had to agree to disagree.
They approached a Haldeel checkpoint and were quickly waved through.
"What are you doing here anyways?" Jin asked. "I thought you and yours had a policy of noninterference."
"Jin," Kira warned. "You know the rules."
"Aren't you the least bit curious?"
Maybe, but she didn’t want to have this conversation with Finn present.
Alexander wasn't like Selene. If any important secrets were to be exposed in Finn's hearing, Alexander would try to kill him.
Kira wasn't sure he'd succeed—Finn wasn't exactly a pushover—but the damage would be done. She'd like to avoid that sequence of events if possible.
"It doesn't concern us,” she said firmly.
In fact, the less they knew about the forty-three and their plans, the better.
Jin sighed. "Fine. Fine. Forget I asked."
Alexander stopped in front of a door. "We're here."
Kira stared at the door in question but made no move to walk through it.
She’d always thought when she finally caught up to Elise, she wouldn't hesitate. That she would seize the opportunity to fix the mistakes she'd made in the past.
Yet standing here, all she felt was the fear of failure and the yearning for what was.
A decade of planning. Endless nights of grief followed by days where it took everything she had to crawl out of bed.
All of it leading up to this moment.
It didn't feel real.
At her hesitation, Alexander adjusted his glasses. "It's not my place to say, but I think you're making a mistake."
"You're right. It's not." Kira pressed her hand against the door, unsurprised when it opened under her touch. "You gave up that right long ago."
When he and the rest had refused to consider trying to save Elise.
Kira stepped into a darkened room, barely taking notice of the others standing there. All that existed was the woman seated at a table on the other side of the viewing window.
Elise.
It was really her.
Kira had prepared to be disappointed, yet there she sat, looking the same as all those years ago.
Her hair was drawn into a messy bun, tendrils escaping to curl around her face. Her eyes held the same bright curiosity Kira saw in Elena's.
Thick, dramatic eyebrows, high cheekbones, and full lips lent her expression a playfulness even when she was trying to be serious.
Kira felt like a hand had reached into her chest and squeezed her heart. Like a floodgate had been released, all the emotions Kira had repressed from that time surged forth. The grief and heartache, the pain and rage.
Kira didn't fight it, immersing herself in those emotions and letting her feel their entirety.
She allowed herself five breaths to experience what she'd spent years trying to ignore.
