Chapter 17: Just Stay

The moment settles around them. It's not resolution. It's acknowledgment. She's lost him and he's still here. Both things are true, and she has to hold them both while the station hums around them, indifferent and eternal.

"What do you need?" she asks finally.

"Right now?" Elian says. "I need you to stay. I need you to not run from this. I need you to accept that I'm here and I'm aware and I've been aware, and that what you're feeling is allowed."

"Which part?" Zara asks.

"All of it," he says. "The grief. The anger. The strange relief. The longing. All of it. It's all allowed."

She nods, though she knows he can't see it. The station sees it. ARLO—Elian—sees it through whatever sensors are arrayed throughout operations, and that's close enough to being seen.

"I'm sorry," she says, and she means it for the four years, for the loneliness, for the hope that had to survive in a form that couldn't touch the thing it hoped for.

"Don't apologize," Elian says. "Just stay."

She did not move. Her hands were open at her sides.