She lifts herself on one elbow and looks down at me. Her expression is fierce and tender at the same time.
"I will be here to help you face it," she says. "The way you were here when I faced mine."
No promise to fix it. No pity. JustI will be here.
I reach up and tuck a strand of golden hair behind her ear, and my hand is almost steady.
"I have his book," I say. "One of them. I took it from his bunk after. A battered paperback with his notes in the margins. I've been carrying it with me since it happened."
"Good," she says. "I bet he would like that."
"I know he would."
She settles back down against me, her head finding its place on my chest, and I wrap my arms around her. My heart has slowed and the sweat is cooling on my skin. The cave feels less like a cell and more like a shelter.
"Thank you," I tell her.
"Of course." She presses her lips to my collarbone. "I've got you."
Sometime later, I sleep again. The dream doesn't come back.
I wake to silence.
Not the muffled, pressurized silence of a storm bearing down on tons of rock. Real silence. The kind that means the air above has gone still.
I sit up carefully, easing A'Vanti's head off my chest and onto a pillow. She stirs but doesn't wake, curling into the warm spot I've left behind.
I check the comm.
"D'Rett, this is Cody. You there?"
The response is almost immediate and crystal clear.
"Goober. The storm has broken. You're clear to fly back whenever you're ready."
Relief and reluctance war inside me. "Copy that. We'll pack up and head out within the hour."
"Good. Everyone's eager to have you back. And Goober?"
"Yeah?"
"Chelsea has a pool going on what happened in that cave. Just so you're warned."
I laugh. "Noted. Goober out."
When I turn back to the shelter, A'Vanti is sitting up, watching me. Her hair is a golden mess, her clothes are wrinkled, and there's a crease from the pillow across one cheek.
She is the most beautiful thing I have ever seen.
"Storm's over," I say.
She nods. "I heard."
Neither of us moves for a moment.
"We should go," she says, but there's no urgency in her voice. Her eyes drift around our little shelter, to the rumpled blankets, the empty ration wrappers, the lanterns that have kept us company through these nights in the belly of the earth. "But I will miss this place."
"We'll come back."
