LUSEA
Clothes? And a shower? And a real bed? Gods above, I can barely remember the last time I saw any of those. I manage a weak and shaky grin, raising my head enough to let a matted lock of hair fall across my face. Ugh, I must smell horrible and look worse. A shower will be miraculous. "I really am in heaven," I say, laughing hoarsely. "And you is 'n engel."The cold has permeated through the cloak by the time we reach the hearth of her clinic, and the warmth and light that radiates from within may be the most beautiful thing I've ever seen. As Phoebe fiddles with the key I close my eyes a moment, lingering back away from the door, steeling against the possibility that I am, quite literally, walking into the light. Worse, what if this is a trap? And if not even that, well, there is still danger that someone is looking for me, that he is looking. I have to be careful.
I have to be smart.
Vaguely I can hear her calling out to someone, though the words still sound like they're coming through water. Ah, fuck, I need to pay more attention. Checking to make sure I'm at least vaguely presentable, I follow Phoebe into the clinic, looking up to see...
...to see...
...him.
I am looking at him, and he is looking at me, and the space between us has never felt so distant, so impossible to close. He drops a glass, and I know it shatters, but all I can hear is my thundering heartbeat, all I can see are his eyes, his eyes, as grey as the floodwaters, as familiar as my own, the last thing I saw before-
-he steps toward me, a ghost, a reaper, a hallucination, because there is no way I can truly see him, because there is no way he is here, wherever this is, because it definitely isn't Korofi, isn't anywhere, it's hell and I am-
-silent as his voice meets me, the only thing I've ever heard, the only thing I know, my own language on his tongue, his tongue, and my knees are shaking, and my face is pale, but I don't move, I can't move, because I feel like if I do I'll shatter, because I feel-
-hands on my face, on my cheeks, in my hair, rough and calloused despite his noble birth. I remember kissing them when they were bloody, laughing as he moped after a loss, feeling them on every part of me, symphonic, harmonic, electricity I did not know could be incited. I remember holding them as we turned to leap off the roof, to escape it all together. I remember-
-where I am. I am not dead. I am not in heaven. I am in a clinic in a world on a planet in a galaxy in a universe that is not mine, but somehow, somehow, Sunjata is also here. And so maybe I am home.
"Sunny," I whisper, searching his face, finding tears in his eyes (when did you get so soft?). My own expression feels strained, flat and calm, disbelieving. Slowly, carefully, I raise my arm-
-and slap him, hard, across the face.
"Oh. So you are real."
By the grace of the fire and the flames
You're the face of the future
The blood in my veins
