((No 8))

"Well, if it ain't the St—" he tries, pausing halfway into rising politely from his chair as you interrupt his nonchalance.

"Sam Coe," you say, with a lazy grin. You decide to meet his nonchalance with even greater nonchalance. "Descendant of Solomon Coe."

"Yeah—" he tries again.

"Son of Jacob Coe," you go on, and watch as his eyes narrow a little, his mouth still open from trying to get a word in. "Father of Cora Coe."

"Okay," he ventures.

"Ex-husband of Lillian Hart," you add, ticking off another finger. "What else?"

"You tell me," he says, giving up. His face is redder than usual, and you know it's both embarrassment and irritation.

"Ex-ranger," you say. "Ex-freighter. Handy with a rifle. Bad at math. In a love-hate relationship with his own hometown."

"Let me know when you publish my biography," he drolls.

"Not that you'd read it," you return.

"Right," he says. "But Cora would."

You see he's on the teetering precipice of whether to walk away and refuse to talk to you ever again or be intrigued enough to bite. It makes you grin – something about being so reckless with Sam's notoriously scrounchy feelings feels liberating. His eyes flick to your grin and it seems to slump him over onto the intrigued side. You did let him see your face, after all. Your Starborn armor lies stuffed under a chair in your Lodge room.

"They weren't kidding when they said you already know everything about me," he says.

"Probably not everything," you offer generously.

One side of his mouth ticks up in a little half smile and you realize you might have to hide behind your armor for a while.

"C'mon," you say. "Let's go kill some stuff."

He chuckles.

"Kill some stuff, huh?" he muses. "Well, that's a new one."

"Gotta keep it fresh, you know?"

You can see he finds you bewildering, but his curiosity is killing him.

"I'm predicting a distinct imbalance of power in this relationship," he says, though he reaches for his rifle.

"Trust me," you say. "There isn't."

Your sudden sincerity causes him to stop in his tracks and he looks at you, and for a moment you feel as if a multitude of universes have just overlapped like layers of film over a bright light; as if space and time have folded and everywhere has merged into this one spot. As if Sam is and ever was and the linear time which has scoured you through universes like sand-swept wind has simply stopped.

He knows. You can see it in his eyes. Somehow, he knows there is no imbalance of power, nor will there be, between you. You're certain he doesn't know or understand why, but he does see in this moment of odd clarity that what you've just said is true.

The moment ends and spacetime lurches, grinding forward into its typical momentum, and Sam is strapping his rifle across his back.

"Sure," he says. "Let's go kill some stuff."

And you do.

(((((Nos 9-12)))))

And you do. And you do. And you never let him get close enough to bite.

Yet, there is something occurring you didn't expect: those layered universes begin to pile up, and as they do, there's a previously unfathomable depth that builds within you. It's like you've been holding a fan of playing cards in your hand but now you realize they can be pushed together in a stack, looking like one card from the front, yet thicker, denser, containing more. The Jack of Hearts may be the top card, but each successive card is different, yet the same shape – their existence creates subtle variation, each important in its existence for what it adds to the whole.

You are only beginning to wrap your mind around the change occurring in you, but you also have come to know you have all the time the universe can offer to sort it out.

You begin to enjoy Sam's company more than you ever have, but in a different way. You let him talk, you listen, you enjoy another moment in the dusty Akila twilight. You move on.

But Sam becomes like your rifle; you learn him down to the most minute mechanisms. Never is one purely identical to the next, yet the mechanism always works the same. Aberrations give each universe a quality of interest. Another card in your hand. More depth. Greater understanding.

You're always clear about what you are. You're Starborn, and you already know him before he's ever met you. He's never comfortable with it, at first, but Sam's the type to adjust to circumstances with an adaptable ease you find admirable.

He almost always tries to get closer to you, and you learn the gentlest methods to hold him at bay. You get good enough at it that he doesn't even know you're holding him back.

Sometimes you wonder why you're holding him back, but you can't go through it all again with him, with Cora and Jacob and Lillian. It's too much, it's too chaotic, too messy. Some part of you feels guilty for being so unwilling; so selfish. There's only so long you can travel the universe with Sam before his unspoken needs start to stack up; so, you cut every universe short by going through the Unity.

It is both your escape and his first discovery, every single time.

((No 13))

You tried to go through this universe without him, you really did. You felt as if it wasn't fair, how you would do this with him every time. You would take him with you, experience the depths of discovery together, and then leave him at the shimmering ring. Some would call that an imbalance of power. You know it isn't. He has you at his mercy, and he always has.

"When I was young and really, really stupid, Ecliptic tried to recruit me," he is saying, and it makes you grin.

The two of you are leaning your elbows on the great wall of Akila City, overlooking the savannah, fragrant with desert shrubs and dusk. This is where you like him best, deep in the city where his darkness and light meet in a gorgeous twilight, where he never wants to linger until you've become his closest confidant. Your presence always eventually gives him the stability to lean into his roots.

"Thank god I didn't take them up on it," he muses.

He always talks about his younger self like that, as if he was the worst, dumbest human ever to be young. You don't try to argue, knowing it wouldn't make a difference, but you also know being young and stupid is just one part of being.

"Might have been interesting," you offer.

He looks at you as if you're crazy.

"It might have," you grin, shrugging.

"You think I should have been a pirate?" he asks you.

"I don't," you reply.

He stares at you for a beat.

"Oh, you want an explanation?" you ask, turning around to lean back against the wall, allowing the glowing lanterns of the city to illuminate you.

"I'm not sure what I want," he remarks, his gaze turned outward, into the darkening wilds.

"Yeah, me neither," you muse, folding your arms. The people of Akila City move slower at dusk, with less urgency, with the knowledge that the day is nearly done.

The two of you share a long, comfortable stretch of deepening moue. You wonder how long you'll stay, this time. You kind of like this one.

He moves closer, subtly, only enough to where your shoulders touch, just barely. You shift your weight, and he draws a breath, as if to stop you from moving away.

"Tell me something," he says, his eyes still trained on the savannah outside, as if searching for Ashta. But you know he's focused like a pinpoint on you and your shoulder against his.

"Yeah?"

"What's a Starborn doing hanging around me so much?" he asks.

"Oh," you say, considering how to reply to that.

"Don't you have more important things to do?" he asks.

"Like what?" you ask.

"I don't know," he says, grasping. "Cosmic stuff; interplanetary negotiations or whatever garbage is actually important."

"You're pretty important," you say, and he laughs.

"Sure," he chortles.

"Well, okay," you say, settling in, letting your shoulder truly lean against his as you deign to get philosophical. "Let's pull this apart, shall we?"

"Do what?"

"Take it piece by piece," you say, and you glance over at him, and your eyes meet. He doesn't know what you're going on about but he's withholding judgment. "Cosmic stuff: isn't everything we do 'cosmic' by definition?"

"Don't get all literal, you know what I mean," he says.

You shrug and say, "I'm just saying. And importance is in the eye of the beholder. Tell me what's actually important, Sam. What really matters to you?"

"This ain't about me," he says dismissively, casting a glance out at the shadowed mountains.

"Okay," you say. "Fine. I'll tell you what's important to me."

You're feeling bold this time, in this universe, and you patiently wait for his eyes to return to yours before you continue.

"You, Sam."

You see a shuttering happen in his eyes, a tremor within him, an incomprehension, a sudden development, essential ingredients he didn't expect appearing from seemingly nowhere.

"You're important to me," you say gently, and you surprise yourself with the depths of adoration which wind through your timbre. Perhaps even you hadn't known just how many layers had piled up until you allowed yourself to vocalize it, like shining a light through stacked panes of colored glass.

He tears his gaze away, back to the dark plains, and you see a hardening around his brow, in his jaw. You know he doesn't believe you. He doesn't think his worth is enough for you to say such a thing to him, in such a way. Somehow you know this, and you're sorry he doesn't believe you fully, but you understand.

You huff a little and smile to yourself, watching a few of the Akila folk drift through pools of light along the terraces, and letting Sam be with his own thoughts for a while. His shoulder never leaves yours, held stubbornly as if the connection were a lifeline; an unspoken parley between human and Starborn; a molecular bond.

"You don't even really know me," he says, but there's a vulnerability that wraps around his voice like the pale golden leaves of spring.

Time stretches as it does sometimes, a moment expanding into a nothing of pure sensory awareness. You consider whether to pull back or lean in, but eventually you decide to lean in.

Turning to face out towards the darkened Akila landscape, you press your shoulder and arm flush against his as you share the same viewpoint. You take his rough hand, and he lets you.

"I know you," you say, surprised to find tears stinging your eyes, because you know this is going to mean it's time to go, and you like this one. You like this one.

He glances at you, and he sees it, and he drags you into his crushing embrace, and you're sure you might die, or suffocate, or stay forever. The gravity on Akila is just so strong.