a l l t h e s p a c e b e t w e e n
-irishais-
Their story starts among the stars, in a ship, with an admission, an embrace. With rotting monster corpses in cargo holds, with magic burning through her veins.
Before that, it starts with the voice in her helmet- thirty seconds of oxygen, twenty seconds, nineteen, eighteen, seventeen. She thinks she is going to die out here, in between the stars, in dead space where her last words won't matter.
The air comes thin, metallic, whistling through her lips. It hurts to breathe, it hurts to think.
(I'm gonna die like this.)
(I'm gonna die.)
Her eyelids are so heavy.
Life support terminated, the cool voice tells her.
(I'm sorry.)
This is the end, and his ring is the last thing she sees, the jewelry a tiny silver glint against the vast void beyond.
xx
He finds her on the porch, in her thin nightshirt, her hair blowing around her face as she stares out at the sea, at the moon hanging low on the horizon.
She turns her head before he can say anything, glancing over her shoulder as he approaches. "I didn't mean to wake you."
"You didn't," he replies, around a yawn.
"Liar."
He rests his hand at the gentle curve of her back, and she leans her head against his shoulder. The stars are out in force tonight, an explosion of them scattered across the sky. Squall picks out constellations he remembers from Instructor Gabriel's astronomy course, so many years ago- the dog, the bear, the warrior, shapes sketched in tiny pinpricks of light millions of miles away, tiny figures in a vast expanse of frozen, soundless nothingness.
"Do you remember," Rinoa says, after a long moment, "when we first got on board the Ragnarok?"
He nods, as if he could forget chasing her through space, knowing that she had only a moment to live, knowing that he had to catch her or he would lose her forever. It keeps him awake at night sometimes, even now, five years later.
"Do you remember what I asked you?"
He doesn't have to think very hard to recall her words verbatim. "You asked me to hug you. Because you wanted to believe you were alive."
She buries her face into his shoulder, her arms tight around him, her fingers twisting in the fabric of his t-shirt, and he thinks that she might be crying, but he isn't entirely sure why.
xx
Over coffee and slightly burnt cinammon rolls the next morning, they don't talk about it, and Rinoa is okay with that. She fills her mug again from the carafe, stirring in a bit of cream to blot out the darkness of the coffee. The dream still hangs with her, too much a real memory to shake with simple waking. There are certain things she can shrug off, things that she only half-remembers, things that she can almost pretend have never happened. Time compression, possession, the endless journey. After five years, the details begin to slip away, until only the glossy whole remains.
Her husband brushes a flake of cinnamon roll off of the front of his uniform jacket, frowning at the place where it had been, but there is nothing there anymore, just pristine black fabric.
Seventeen, sixteen, fifteen.
Rinoa barely makes it to the sink before she throws up her breakfast.
xx
She inhales for a count of seven, and exhales for a count of seven, Kadowaki's stethoscope cold against her skin.
"Again," the doctor instructs, and she does. "Again. Good."
xx
He keeps an eye on his phone throughout the entire meeting. When it rings, finally, thirteen minutes to the second after the meeting is done, she tells him that she is fine.
There's a hitch in her voice, though, something that instantly sets off alarm bells in the back of his head. He has his secretary forward his calls to his cell, and cancels his last meeting of the day. He puts a valiant effort into not breaking more than one speed limit on the way home, and fails miserably.
She meets him at the door, before the door, actually, stepping out of it as he's getting out of his car.
"What's wrong?"
Rinoa smiles cautiously, and when she finally tells him, it takes him a long while to fit the information together, because it defies everything they know about Rinoa, about sorceresses, about succession and creation. Everything they have gleaned and gathered in the past five years is shattered with his wife's careful smile and a copy of a lab report.
xx
Twelve, eleven, ten-
She is all alone out here, cast out like so much debris.
Fight, a small part of her says, but the voice tells her she is out of air.
Nine, eight, seven-
Her eyes slip closed.
(I'm sorry.)
Six, five, four-
Rinoa-
Three, two-
There is a voice in her ear, a faint whisper from far, far away. She forces her eyes open, and he is there, suddenly, his arms around her, telling her that she will be alright.
xx
Their story grows in a small house by the sea, with an entire future left to fill.