Disclaimer: The Lunar Chronicles are not mine, hence the words fan fiction appearing in your address bar.
Sleeplessness
The Earth glowed with an unnaturally beautiful blue light, or perhaps it only seemed unnatural because he knew what was happening there right now. It would have seemed more natural for it to glow red; red with all the blood that had already been spilled in the last hours since the attack had begun, red with the blood that was even now being spilled.
Kai felt a surge of guilt flow through him. If he were there they wouldn't be dying now, though he might be. He tried to tell himself that this was for the best, that his marrying Levana would not have saved them, that he was in the place where he could do the most good. He believed it; he really did, but that didn't make the guilt go away. He realized that perhaps he felt just as guilty for having escaped it as for having anything to do with its cause. He was here, on a spaceship, invisible, safe. Not only was he safe, rather than experiencing and fighting these horrors with his people, he was distracted. That perhaps made him feel the most guilty of all, the fact that his people were dying and he had trouble focusing on them because of a girl.
Kai let out a sigh, and glanced down at his hand tightly gripping the arm of the cockpit chair in which he sat. He released it, trying to make his body relax. He was an emotional mess. He realized that. He also realized that being an emotional mess was not going to help his decision making skills any, skills which seemed already to be suffering in any case. In some ways, he had been acting more like a teenager than an Emperor. He was both of course, but he knew which ought to take precedence. Which is why he ought to be in his bunk right now, like everyone else, sleeping, so that when it was time to get up and continue working on their plan he would be rested, and less of an emotional mess, and able to make judgments and decisions the way an Emperor ought to. But, it wasn't as if he had been able to sleep these past weeks and that wasn't going to change now. There was too much to think about, and he had found himself sitting in the cockpit, gazing down at the Earth as he contemplated the small hope they were trying to provide her.
He caught a hint of movement reflected in the window and turned to find Cinder hesitating in the doorway. The two of them froze, simply staring at each other for a few seconds before Kai spoke,
"Cinder, …". Internally, he kicked himself. He had kissed the girl for goodness sakes, was speaking to her really that hard?
"Hi", she responded softly when it became clear that he was not going to continue.
He gave her a weak smile "couldn't sleep?" he asked. She dropped her eyes to the floor and shook her head sadly. He saw the same guilt he himself had just been contemplating reflected in her eyes and understood why.
"You?" she asked.
He let out another sigh. "No", he replied simply, and she nodded slightly in response.
This wasn't turning into much of a conversation, but then he wasn't sure if he wanted it to. He was glad for her presence though. This was the sort of time when one wants to feel they are not alone. "Join me?" he asked. She did not reply, but moved forward until she was standing next to his chair looking down on the Earth below.
He watched as emotions washed over her face: guilt, and anger, and fear, and sorrow. Her thoughts were, very likely, quite like his own.
"It's not your fault", he whispered, unsure of which of them he was really talking to. "You did the best thing you could have done. There were no good options; you chose the best one left available to you". There was a long pause before she spoke.
"They're dying Kai".
"And they would have died had you done nothing", he responded.
They fell silent, both having lost count of the number of times they had had this argument with themselves already. What more was there to say? He glanced up at her again, and by the anguished look on her face he guessed she would have been crying had she been capable of it. A moment before he couldn't have imagined feeling any worse than he had been, now he began to realize how much sway this woman truly had over him. Nothing but a look, and he felt his heart was breaking, and she hadn't even looked at him! Not able to stand it any longer, he reached out and pulled her into his lap, wrapping his arms around her and resting his cheek on her hair. They clung to each other as if they could make everything well just by doing so.
Cinder blinked her eyes open slowly with the realization that she was not in her bunk and that she had slept in a strange position that was somehow both comfortable and uncomfortable at the same time. Whatever the reason for this oddity she was not about to complain. She felt more rested than she had in weeks. As she opened her eyes, she found herself looking at a shirt, and realized that the strange mix of comfort and discomfort in her position was caused by the fact that she was sleeping on a person. Remembering the previous night, she tilted her head up to see if Kai was awake and found him looking down at her with a small smile.
"Good morning",
"Morning", she replied, with a smile of her own.
"How did you sleep?", he asked.
Her smile widened as she laid her head back down against his chest replying "better than I have in a while".
"Really?", he replied "I slept rather well myself". He tightened his arms around her and rested his cheek on her hair once more, as if to say that he had no intention of getting up just yet.
A moment later a loud crash rang out through the cockpit and they both spun around to find Iko staring open mouthed at them with an ecstatic expression on her face, and their breakfast on the floor.