"I could use you," she chokes over the words. What she means is that she needs him. It's too soon after too long.
She's seen him be many things over many years. Determined, defiant, awkward. She's seen him dance, she's seen him love. She's seen him angry and mistrustful.
She's never seen him so vulnerable. She never thought of him as fragile until now.
Jeryn blinks back the tears from whiskey coloured eyes. He's never seen her cry. She knows he can't see her now, but she still won't do it. It doesn't matter.
"I should have talked to you before Mars. I should have made the time," she loses the words in her struggle to keep the tears at bay.
Firmly, she places her hands on the bed rail, and her arms shake. They tremble so violently. She's held it together. She's endured. She's been to hell and back again. She always looks it in the face. Always puts the mission first. There is no time to break down. No time to lose control. This war is too big and too much is at stake.
The tears are like shards as they betray her facade.
She can no more stop them than she could stop the invasion on Earth. She fails to keep them back just as she failed to stop the synthetic from brutalizing him. Quietly, she sobs.
It could have been minutes or hours, she doesn't know. She jumps when she realizes the doctor is behind her, kindly and politely giving her space. He can sense he's intruding on a very intimate moment.
Embarrassed as she's never been, she scrubs the heels of her palms across her eyes. Her head pounds in the unfamiliar way that comes with heavy crying. She pretends that her face isn't swollen or splotchy and she puts the mask of Commander back on, if clumsily.
"If you need anything, doctor, you know where to reach me." She can barely get it out. She can barely breathe, but she demands herself to sound authoritative.
Pausing, just for a moment, she lays a hand on the door. A still shaking hand.
"Don't die." The words close her throat and make her gut drop out of her. Lifting her chin, determined that the rest of the universe will not know this weakness, she breathes deeply. Exhales audibly. "That's an order, Major."
Don't. Die.
The words sear into her mind, the most over-used words in recent days. They don't even sound like words any longer.
She's not ready to leave the room. To leave him.
She has no choice.
With lips pressed into a hard line, she exits, making a line for the Presidium.