Flauraan, Abigail is 16, Sophie is 17

I have spent a long day at the learning centre studying, working on some of my internship projects for the healing centre. It's not too long before I start studying there officially and I want to have everything prepared. My brain is filled to bursting with anatomy and pharmacodynamics and techniques but it feels like it will never be enough. I am filled with dread, born anew in the wake of the recent incident on Halapatov. A Weraynian incursion. In the same town that I fought the ghosts with Sophie and Riowyn. It can't be a coincidence. I am once again feeling the urgent fear that war is soon to break out, but with the new knowledge that I have almost certainly played a part in hastening it. The incursion was thwarted at least, thanks to the help of a Weraynian who is supposedly on our side, which should be more comforting than it is. I have spent the months since feeling like I will never escape this fear, like it will follow me for the rest of my life. I stop by the markets on my way home; it's the season where my mother works late with the harvest and keeping everything organised. She is startled to see me, and I realise that something, today, is abnormal. I set to work analysing her expression and try to not to fear the worst.

“Have you talked to your father?” She asks innocently and alarm bells are ringing. My parents can get messages to me while I am at the learning centre but they'd never do it unless in an emergency. It's also unlike my mother to talk so indirectly to me. She looks afraid - of how I'll react? Is it something to do with my brother? Mari's pregnancy? Did something happen to the baby and they're blaming it on me?

“Mum, tell me what's happened.” I demand. She sighs and places her items to the side, places an arm on my shoulder and walks me out of hearing distance of her fellow vendors.

“Abigail, Sophie showed up at the house today. She's waiting for you now. I just-”

I don't hear anything else because my ears are ringing. I am blindsided. My head fills with fog. I have lost all feeling in my limbs. I can't say what happens next, what she says to me, whether I walked calmly away or dropped everything and ran. All I know is that when I come to my senses I am pelting down the path to my home, the shadows of the forest chasing me, encroaching on me.

It can’t be true. She can't be here. Sophie's, alive? She's waiting for you. The distance to my house isn't that great but right now I'm convinced that I'll never be able to breach it. It can't be possible that I am about to be reunited with the person who's haunted my thoughts for over a year. Maybe I misheard my mother? Maybe I'm hallucinating now, finally broken down by everything that life has thrown at me since that accursed Earth ship descended on my planet.

I pass house after house, tree after tree, drawing ever nearer. I flinch at every movement, at every figure in the distance. Familiar landmarks, neighbours, all of these instilling a flight response in me. As my house comes into focus someone approaches me on the path. It’s my father. I slow down, try to give myself a composure not befitting a maniac. He smiles at me.

“So your mother passed on the message?” he asks gently and I nod mutely. He pats me on the shoulder. “I’m going to go help your mother pack up. Enjoy your reunion.”

He continues on down the path and I now have to contend with a completely stunned nervous system. I am so close to my home but afraid to draw any nearer. It’s hard to conceptualise my feelings at this moment. A part of me is still convinced that I will walk in the door and it will be like any normal day; empty. I will shake my head and feel silly for indulging a fantasy, and life will go on as normal. In spite of the evidence to the contrary, I can’t picture her in there, can’t even begin to construct a conversation. What do you say to someone who abandoned you? Who you thought was dead? How do you continue to have a relationship with that person?

I am steeling myself to walk up to the door - consider that maybe this is a lost cause and I just need to give up and go live in the mountains for the rest of my life - when a devastatingly familiar mop of brown hair makes an appearance as she pokes her head out of the door first, then the rest of her as she sees me and a stupid brilliant grin breaks out over her face.

“Abi!!!” Her voice carries across the air. I haven’t heard her voice in so long. She locks on to me and rushes towards me. It is a fairytale-like reunion scene; I have a brief vision of leaping into each other’s arms, jumping and spinning. Instead I barely hold my ground as she reaches me. I survey her, with my Paladanian gaze. She looks older, obviously. Her hair is marginally longer though just as wild. Her clothes are slightly different from what I remember. Her bag is more worn. The teleport watch is still on her wrist. I try to glean something more, get an assessment of what possibly could have happened to her since we parted ways but all I see is joy and relief in her eyes. She is happy to see me, ecstatic even. Before this moment I could’ve been easily convinced that she never even cared about me.

She reaches me, throws her arms around me. I don’t know how to handle this. This is all I’ve wanted in longer than I can remember. But I am angry, furious even. “I missed you so much.” she says into the crook of my neck. I am now slightly taller than she is. I want her arms around me but I push her away roughly.

“Sophie-” I get out but then I start choking on my anger and fear. Start sobbing. Sink down onto the floor and grab onto her legs and just shake and shake.

“Abigail, what’s wrong?!” She crouches down worriedly. I can’t stand the sincerity in her eyes, her voice. She really doesn’t know. I spent the last year poisoned and she doesn’t even know. I continue to sob and splutter unintelligibly.

“Why don’t we go inside, Abi?” I can tell she’s panicking but her voice is gentle. I don’t fight against it, somehow pull myself together, follow her into my house, a place she doesn’t belong and it feels wrong for her to exist in. She stands anxiously by as I sink into the chair at our kitchen table, offers me water, food, asks if there’s anything she can get me. I shake my head but I still can’t speak. Finally she stops hovering worriedly and sits down across from me. I can’t meet her eyes. She is at a complete loss at what to say, where to start. We sit there together, like old times but not really at all, silently contemplating each other and with an awkwardness between us befitting of strangers. I have spent so much energy teaching myself not to think of her, to put everything that happened out of my mind. Unfortunately now that she’s actually back I have no choice but to address it.

“You promised me you’d come back…” I say finally, sounding appropriately tiny and wounded.

I sneak a glance at her and watch her face contort, take an odd pleasure in it. She reaches out for my hands, then seems to think better of it. “I’m- I’m so sorry Abi- I didn’t- I couldn’t- I mean, I wanted to come back. I thought about you every day. I just- I’m sorry.”

She hangs her head, examines the table antsily. Her words thrill through me; it is undeniably cathartic to hear that she was thinking about me, possibly as much as I thought of her. She still doesn’t get it though.

I lean forward, put pressure behind my words. “I thought you were dead. The way you left after… after Halapatov. I was so scared for you. It was hard not to imagine the worst things happening. I never want to feel like that ever again.”

She looks up at me sharply. I feel a glint of satisfaction that at least she hadn’t considered the idea that I was mourning her.

“Abigail…” she clearly has no idea how to respond to any of this. “What can I do? I wasn’t trying to put you through anything like that… Do you want me to leave?”

“No.” I say instantly, trembling a little at the thought. “Just… tell me what’s happened since I saw you last.”

There’s a sudden darkness to her gaze that somehow reflects so perfectly the way I feel when I think of our last meeting. Death hanging over us. A visceral sense of desperation, but also of defeat. The explosive whirl of our friendship and everything we did together culminating in complete awfulness and tragedy. I can see she wants to relive the last year almost as little as I do, and I feel suddenly selfish for pinning so much blame on her for my own suffering when she obviously was suffering too. She eventually swallows and starts speaking.

“Well… I pretty much tried to just focus on searching for my dad. I was constantly moving, I guess I was trying to distract myself. I did a lot of work on the teleport watch, and I tried to track down my siblings. I kept running into problems that had nothing to do with my father’s expedition.”

“Like with the Eridanus II?” I say, the memory of our first meeting playing fondly in my mind.

She hesitates. “Sort of. More humans starting a fight where they shouldn’t have. And other things as well. There’s always bad stuff happening.” She takes a deep breath. “I found my siblings a couple of weeks ago, they’ve been in a foster home on my planet. They- they thought I didn’t care about them, that I’d run away and left them behind. I had to explain to them what happened when our ammi died, that I didn’t have a choice.” She’s not looking at me. I am drinking the information in. She’s never really talked about her family before. She barely even wanted to tell me about her dad. “So I’ve been spending a lot of time trying to be there for them again. And I guess it made me think that maybe I could come back, here, and spend time with you. I really am sorry I left it so long. I couldn’t face it - I felt like by bringing the teleport watch here I’d hurt people. But it’s more than that I guess…” she fidgets awkwardly. I realise that she is telling me things that she never planned to because she feels like she owes me; which she does. She hides her face from me and chokes out. “I lost my friend Aldred. A long time ago. He used to travel with me. He helped build the teleport watch. We were supposed to find the expedition together. But I watched as he- well- he-” she chokes on her words.

“I understand. Thank you for telling me all this.” I reach out for her and grab her hand. She relaxes, relieved of the burden of elaborating further. I’d guessed, in the midst of all of the ghost stuff on Halapatov, that she’d seen someone die before, not just her mum, but obviously had not been able to ask her about it. “So you’re still looking for the expedition?”

She nods. “Of course, even though I think it’s probably a lost cause at this point. There’s really been no sign of it anywhere. Just a lot of dead ends.”

I squeeze her hand. “So are you staying here for a bit or do you have to get back to it?”

She looks at me properly again, meeting my gaze and this time I return it levelly. “I will stay as long as you want me here.”

I become overwhelmed with emotion again just beholding her. I try to beat down the accusations of selfishness and weakness that my brain is trying to hold against me, for not properly accounting for everything Sophie had gone through. But I can’t deny the agony that I have been in since the last time I saw her, and it continues to be a miracle that I have her back with me now. And she wants to stay. Was almost a year of agony worth this new vulnerability shared between us here today? Maybe. I still don’t know where we go from here. Right now I am relieved and I am tired. I get up from my chair and she rises with me, anxious again but I simply want to embrace her again after all this time and so I do and we stand there in my kitchen, wrapped in each other’s arms, saying nothing for a while and simply breathing. I pull back and smile at her, watch her eyes trying to read mine.

We sit and chat more casually after that, and eventually my parents arrive home and excitedly catch up with Sophie, listen intently to retelling of stories of adventures she’s been on. Food is prepared and we eat together around the table of our reunion. The night devours us and before long it is bedtime.

Sophie heads towards the cupboard, dutifully aiming to get out the mattress she always used to sleep on on my floor, but I follow her a bit frantically and grab her by the wrists.

“Sophie, please, would you sleep in my bed with me?” I beg her, not even embarrassed to make such a request. The thought of waking up and reaching out for her even with that small distance to the floor between us fills me with an anxiety I don't want to feel ever again, now that she's back. I want the reassurance, even for one night, of her secure in the bed next to me. I've freaked her out in general with my reaction to her return, but I can see in her eyes that this plea is doing something new to her.

“Yes, Abi, of course. Of course I will.” She lets me drag her to my bedroom, stands by as I settle myself in the bed. I make space for her and lift up the blanket for her to crawl in next to me. She obliges but she is watching me so carefully, measuring my every movement, and suddenly I know that she wouldn't have refused me even if she'd wanted to. I don't know how to feel about that, so I push that feeling back and let simple relief wash over me. I lie down and pull her with me, cling onto her in the dark, try not to sob into her body again.

* * * * * * *

Abigail has finally fallen asleep. I lie half on my side with her arms wrapped tightly around my middle, and I think to myself (not for the first time) that I must be some kind of idiot or something. This reunion was prompted, mostly, by seeing my brother and sister for the first time in four years, but even their reactions had not prepared me for Abi’s. Looks like I have a habit of leaving people behind and never considering the idea that they might even miss me. That they might not agree with me that I'm doing the right thing for everyone involved. I left my siblings, and Abi, in similar desperate situations, and I didn't know how to go back. A part of me didn't feel like I deserved to go back. I mean, I don't feel like I deserve to be rewarded for my thoughtlessness with the person I love most wrapped around me the way she is right now. I move my hand from her back and run my fingers through her hair, wrap it around my wrist. Here you go Abi, you've got me now. I can't leave when I'm trapped like this. She stirs a little and mumbles. I let go and settle in, close my eyes and breathe deeply.

I make a silent promise, to Abi, and to myself, that I won’t let anything like this happen again. That I will be better. And I hope for both our sakes that I can somehow make sure of it.