Lena thinks for a long time that the nausea is never going away. On top of everything else, she's going to live the rest of her time-travelling ghost life—existence—perpetually on the verge of vomiting.
"I really want to just chuck," she says to Emily, who of course can't hear her. Em instead resigns herself to pacing around their flat, chewing on her thumb like she always does when she's worried. Lena steps in front of her as she completes a lap, relishing the whisper of contact as her girlfriend passes right through her. It's the only tangible thing she can feel—besides the nausea—and it gives Emily a bit of a start when she does it. She blinks and stops, pressing a tentative hand to her belly and holding her breath, as if anticipating something.
"Can you feel me, Em?" Lena asks to her back, watching her falter for a moment. Then Emily resumes pacing, like she always does, and Lena sighs. Maybe she'll try shoving a hand through the alarm clock in their room again and see if Emily gets the message this time.
Not that she wants to go into their room again. She tries to avoid it at all costs; it's messy and dark in there, and Emily spends too much time laying on Lena's side of the bed with one of her sleeping shirts clutched to her chest. She doesn't want to bring Em in there more often than needed. Not that Emily sleeps much now, anyways.
"You really should get some sleep, love," she says, watching Emily complete one more lap around the living room. "Pacing'll just run the rug bare."
Lena also wonders how it's possible to cry when she doesn't have a body. She can't feel any wetness on her cheeks or pressure behind her eyes, but the heavy ache in her chest and throat—or the general vicinity where those body parts should be—are familiar. She doesn't know how long it's been since the Slipstream malfunction, or how long she's even been standing in the living room of their flat. The numbers on the clocks and the dates on the calendar beside their fridge have all lost their meaning, because the present is only really a temporary position for her now. Sometimes she'll just float, slipping out of regular space without warning. The world will shift around her until she can't see anything or feel anything or hear anything, and it's like an eternity inside her own head with nothing else to think about except how lonely it is to drift through history—
And then she's back in London again, watching Em sob quietly into the sofa cushions and ignore phone calls from her mum and Lena thinks that maybe drifting is better than the lead ball in her belly that weighs her down and makes her arms ache with the want to just hold Em and tell her she's not gone, she's here and alive and misses her so bloody much—
And then she drifts some more, feeling nothing and wondering how a person can exist in the folds and drags of time.
Maybe she'll try talking to Winston again. Yelling at him and banging on the walls of his lab and trying to grab at his peanut butter hadn't worked, but she can't time-haunt her girlfriend for the rest of her life, assuming she could even die in the first place. There are still battles to fight; still wars to win and cities to keep safe and loved ones to protect.
"I'm gonna go talk to Winston, Em," she tells the room. Em's sitting down now, fiddling with the lens cap of her camera—Lena hasn't seen her take any new photos since the crash, and she tries not to worry about that too much—but of course she doesn't respond. "I'm gonna come back, with a body next time, and then we're gonna go out for a beer and I'll tell you all about this." Lena walks up to the couch where Emily is sitting. She's staring at the wall, at something Lena can't see —that makes two of them, then. "I'll be back," she repeats, reaching out a hand and swallowing around the lump in her throat when her fingers pass through Em's wrist. "I lov—"
The world shivers, smearing into a dull blur and stealing her breath. Emily dissolves in front of her, along with her words and the phantom warmth of Em's skin and the rest of their apartment, and she's back in liminality again.
So Lena floats for a while, watching history go by in some incomprehensible way that her brain can't process, waiting to catch on a drag in time she can pull herself back through. She fancies herself with practicing the grand story she's going to tell Em when she gets back to pass the time—ha, time—anticipating her big happy eyes widening in wonder at the impossible tale and the smell of her hair when Lena gives her the hardest, longest hug she's ever given anyone.
That, and she tries her hardest to ignore the ever-present urge to toss her lunch, which is ruining her reunion plans and giving her a metaphysical headache.