Brief Note: I've always been a Trek fan, and Star Trek: Enterprise is the latest series in this particular "universe". This is an Archer/Sato fic that popped into my head while I was listening to a song of the same title by Jodie Brooke Wilson. The lyrics made me feel quite angsty. This was written in light of everything that's been happening to them in the Expanse, especially to Archer's character.
Disclaimer: Jodie Brooke Wilson's song is not mine. Star Trek: Enterprise is not mine. I just love them both and I'm borrowing them for the purposes of this little fic.
She looked down at his sleeping form, faintly illuminated by starlight, her eyes tracing the lines of his face. In sleep, the frown that now seemed to perpetually mar his brow had disappeared and the lines of his features had softened.
She watched his chest rise and fall with every breath, the events of the past few hours replaying in her mind. Who would have thought that a simple meal they had shared could lead to something deeper and unexpected, opening up floodgates of feelings she never thought she had, leaving her forever changed?
And him? She had once thought him open and transparent, his feelings easily read. They had always been friends and she had always known where she stood with him. But events changed people.
And after tonight, she wasn't sure what they were to each other anymore.
She touched his face, wondering how, in one night, he suddenly came to mean so much to her. Or maybe she was reckoning everything wrong. Perhaps her heart had always been that way, even long before this night ever happened. Maybe that's why having him close felt so right. Why loving him came so easily.
She suddenly realized that he had never really spoken of love. There had been that gentle look in his eyes as he held her. But he was so quiet and she, afraid that everything was a dream and one word might shatter the moment, dared not speak. Yet his tenderness had been real.
What did this night mean to him? Was it merely his way of escaping from the burden that fate had laid on his shoulders, a way of forgetting everything that had happened, of running away from things yet to come? Was he trying to find solace from the anguish and she was the only person he could turn to? Or did he want something more?
In her heart, she dared to hope that he wanted more, just as she did. Everything that had happened to them had made her see that life was too short to spend yearning, wondering what might have been. She didn't want to do that anymore. She was going to live and love with every little moment she was given. And when she had seen the look in his eyes, she knew that moment had come. The gauntlet had been thrown and she was ready to take it.
And yet…and yet…was he ready?
She didn't know.
She leaned over him and brushed a stray lock of hair from his face, trying to read from it what she had not heard him say. "Do you love me, Jon?" she whispered softly.
She had never felt both the closeness and the distance between them as acutely as she did at that moment, as she lay circled in his arms.
Outside the window, the stars were scattered across the vast expanse of space. She lifted her eyes and looked at them, thinking how some of the stars seemed so close she could almost touch them. They were so near to the heavens, yet so far.
Enterprise was halfway to paradise.
So was she.
And until that moment, she never realized how lonely it could be.