21. sunset
He's gone. He's really gone.
It was finally starting to hit Sam. Now that the desperate fight for her life – for the lives of every human being on Sera – was over, she had time to stop, take a breath, and process what had happened in Mercy only hours earlier.
Dom was dead. It didn't feel real, but she knew it was. She'd seen the explosion with her own eyes, seen the mangled, smouldering wreckage of the tanker he'd jumped in, felt the heat of the fire on her skin. Some part of her brain was trying to work out a way Dom could have survived his suicidal drive, but the rational part of her knew it to be impossible. He'd taken out so many Lambent and Locust with the blast – enough to give Delta Squad their lives – there was no way he would have been able to walk away from it.
Tears welled up in her eyes, blurring her vision of the setting sun over the ocean. Dom had given his life so she could be standing here, staring at the beautiful scene before her. They could have all easily died in Mercy, and wasn't it just like Dom Santiago to put the wellbeing of his friends above everything else? She was alive because Dom was dead.
She felt relieved, horrified, guilty, anguished. All the emotional turmoil that should have overwhelmed her in the moments after Dom's sacrifice had been pushed aside. They'd still had a submarine to fix and fuel, a secret island to find, a planet to save. There hadn't been time to absorb and deal with what had happened at the time. Now, however, she had all the time in the world.
Wiping the tears away with the back of her hand, Sam turned her gaze towards her fellow Gears. Marcus and Anya were off by themselves, out on the beach. She couldn't even imagine what Marcus was going through; losing his father and his childhood best friend within only a few hours… That would leave a wound that would take a long time to heal. The others were giving the couple a respectful berth. Jace, Dizzy, Cole, Carmine and Baird were all lined up by the railing of the hotel's balcony, looking out over the sand and water. She could go and stand by any one of them. Dizzy would probably be worrying about his girls back at Anvil Gate. Carmine had survived yet another brush with death after his brief encounter with Myrrah's Tempest. She had just been with Jace, helping the Gorasni come ashore. Cole always had a smile for her, and would probably be the easiest to talk to about Dom. And yet, Sam found her feet carrying her towards the man standing just a little bit apart from the others—Baird.
"Take care of yourself, okay?"
Those few words had completely thrown her off. As had the way he seemed to have a hard time looking at her as he spoke. It was so odd, such a change from their normal interactions. The previous few days had been business as usual: firing sarcastic comments back and forth with the same precision that they fired bullets. Joking banter, thinly-veiled insults, the occasional barb that went just a bit too deep. Sam hadn't thought anything of it. But now that she thought back, maybe there had been a few abnormalities.
In Hanover, her crack about them living together with a house and a fence had given him pause—just for a moment, but it was still unusual. When Carmine had joked about grabbing a beer together, Baird's comment about Dom had been just a touch more acidic than usual. And on Centennial Bridge, after she'd stopped him from falling, his mock confession of love had sent her heart rate skyrocketing; she'd attributed it to the adrenaline rush of surviving a collapsing bridge.
She sidled up beside Baird, keeping a short distance between them. He noticed her right away; she could tell from the way he tensed up and stared very deliberately right ahead. Then, when he seemed to collect himself, he turned and gave her a sheepish smile. It was the same smile he'd given her when she'd responded "Yeah, you too, Baird."
Maybe she was reading too much into it, making mountains out of mole hills. Or maybe the signs had been there all along, and she'd just been too hung up on Dom to notice.
Dom. Shit.
It was going to hurt for a long time; she knew that from past experience. But Sam had been able to move on—from the death of her mother, from the loss of more friends than she cared to count. But she could move on—and it gave her the tiniest bit of hope that there might be someone to move on to.