Flauraan, Abigail is 16, Sophie is 18

I find myself staring at all the notes and research littering the table with a hollow feeling in my chest. All of these options, all of this potential, all these futures Sophie has available for her; it’s all too immense. She sits across from me with her eyes shining, and the problem is that I can see all of these plans for her, I can see her living all those lives, but every last one of them is so far away from me. Not that it would change that much about our situation; for almost three years now Sophie and I have been friends long distance. For a long time of that I didn’t know if I’d ever see her again, yet now I had at least the surety that she wouldn’t intentionally disappear from my life forever. We are able to steal precious weeks at a time for sleepovers and adventures and stupid conversations. She is the most important thing in my life. She is a creature of light, especially when without her my thoughts are clouded by thoughts of doom, of the Weraynian war. I stare at the notes and almost feel sick. How could I be thinking these things? How could I begrudge her the exciting life she led? How could I selfishly, foolishly, contemptibly, long for her to sweep all these other options off of the table and choose me?

So when she asks me, for the hundredth time, “So what do you think I should do?”, I hesitate for a moment, the only real answer I have threatening to stumble past my lips. I give a noncommittal shrug and make an erudite observation about the comparative appeal of this or that experience, and as she follows the path of my finger to one of the notes with interest I resist the urge to grab her by the wrists and implore her, Sophie, stay with me. Please. I want you to stay.

Flauraan, Abigail is 16, Sophie is 18

So we’ve reached the end of another few weeks together, hopefully far from our last. Abi has kindly indulged my silly quest for a real big girl career, some new task to give my life some sort of direction. Ultimately, we came to no conclusions. I can’t really say I’m too bothered by that. This was, after all, a thinly veiled excuse to visit her. Being with Abigail for any length of time makes me feel like my life hasn’t been an utter waste. From the moment I teleport into Flauraan’s atmosphere and take my first breath, I am immediately treasuring the chance simply to be breathing the same air as her. I don’t know where I’d be without her.

I wonder if she knows; what a pathetic mess I really am. I mean, of course she does, she knows everything. But sometimes I get this feeling of guilt when she looks at me, like she sees a better person than I deserve to be seen as. I have spent the many months since I found dad’s expedition being treated as a hero, and maybe I am, I don’t know. It doesn’t all feel very heroic. Since my purpose in life, my reason for utter and complete drivenness and focus, has fallen away and left the rest of me a gaping void, I can’t help but contemplate the creature I have become, through years of running away from any problem I had as if it would solve things.

The thought of self-loathing that gnaws at me the most is that it is a miracle I am here with Abigail at all, that she has allowed me back into her presence after all I have put her through. She escorts me to the hill to say goodbye, with my half-hearted plan to look into spaceport work, and all I can think of is the time we were on this hill and I hurt her. Where she grabbed onto me and begged and pleaded; “You don’t have to do this. Please, stay.” and I wrenched myself away from her. And I left her. And she didn’t even know if I would be okay. If I would survive. And even though I’d promised her I’d come back to her, for a long time I stayed away, out of guilt and fear and shame. Believing I didn’t deserve her friendship or loyalty. But once I realised what an idiot I’d been, I went back to Abigail and she forgave me and she understood that I was wrecked and blasted and damned and maybe I could pull myself back together now and be a real person.

The guilt is still there though. Saying goodbye to her always feels like a betrayal. I can hardly stand it. My stance now is that she runs the show. That’s why I’m here at all, I need her to know that I’m not going anywhere or doing anything without her knowing about it. I need her to know what she means to me. I probably haven’t done a great job of that.

All I know is, if she asked me to stay, if she’d let me live here on Flauraan with her, I’d drop everything else in a heartbeat. I could spend every day by her side, taking care of her, planning things for her. I kind of can’t imagine anything better than that.

And yet we still go through the routine, the setting of the teleport watch, the going over of last minute details, the drawing out the goodbye, and then she hugs me and I can feel her heart beating and I almost lose all resolve and beg her myself, Please, Abigail, ask me to stay. I let you down last time but this time I will be there for you. But of course I know she’d never trust me for that, never want that from me, not anymore, even if she’s long forgiven me. I pull back from the hug, loosen my grip on her hands and teleport away with a final goodbye, but not without leaving a part of myself behind in the process.

Like always.

Flauraan, Abigail is 19, Sophie is 21

Though I have horrors from the war to unpack, and there is still so much work to do in days ahead, I am nonetheless giddy to have brought Sophie home with me for good this time, with no looming date where she will be ripped from my side back to her usual day to day life. Flauraan is her day to day now.

“I feel a little bad keeping you tied down here.” I say lightheartedly in my room as we get ready for bed there for the first time as a couple, and Sophie fixes me with a sharp look that I can’t decipher. I grab her hand and rub it against my face, trying to let her know I’m not being too serious. “A whole universe out there and you’re settling down on Flauraan with me.”

“Abi,” she says, squeezing my hand between her fingers. “I’ve wanted to settle down on Flauraan with you basically from the day we met. I delayed my search for my dad for you. I want this, and you are not holding me back from anything.”

I am stunned by the intensity of this, that she feels the need to instill this in me. I search her face for some sort of reasoning behind it, but I can’t place it. “I know.” I say simply. “I want this too.”

She sits down on the bed, pulling me with her. She lets go of my hand and caresses my cheek. I place my hand on her thigh. She continues, almost absentmindedly after the previous intensity. “If I’d known you wanted this, I could’ve lived with you years ago. Do you remember, after I found the Eridanus, how I came to visit you to figure out what I would do next? I wanted so badly to just stay here forever, but I didn’t feel like I could. I guess I was too hard on myself, I never imagined we could have what we have now.”

I am speechless. I remember that visit so clearly, have been a little bit haunted by it. I wanted to beg her to stay, and never would have guessed that she actually wanted to. It would have meant everything to me to have heard this, back in the day, before the Alliance and everything else that has happened since.

It’s embarrassing to remember my childish response to meeting Sophie’s friends, her family. Instead of being happy to meet people she cared so much for, I became insecure, jealous. It’s difficult to reflect on, but the truth is when Sophie and I became friends I had this romanticised idea of us as two outcasts finding refuge in each other. I was a lonely awkward kid who struggled making friends and it seemed she was too. At the time we met I was mostly right. Before me Sophie had mostly encountered people who found her annoying or tedious, and despite technically living with Louise on Earth she didn’t really have anywhere she could be herself, a real home where she could feel safe. She found that in me, and that instilled in me a great sense of pride and, perhaps, possessiveness. Even when we spent months or years apart I always felt sure she would come back to me, that what we had was special.

When Sophie first told me about her new friends she made when she joined the Alliance, a part of me was happy for her, but a more selfish part of me was totally blindsided and afraid I was being made redundant as her friend. I found it hard to believe that she would want anything to do with me after that, I was so far away, so inconvenient a person to care for. What reason would she ever have to choose me over people she spent all the time with?

But it was never about choosing. I know now, what I didn’t then, that it’s delusional to expect two people to be everything for each other. All that does is put you both in a box, limits and restricts you. Sophie’s friendships, her community, have only enriched her life and mine, and even though I will still spend a lot of time missing her when she’s not here, I won’t worry about losing her any more.

I am rubbing circles on her leg with my hand, overwhelmed with emotion, looking at her and just thinking about how much I love her, how I don’t feel like I deserve her. She is still cradling my face but removes her hands after a minute, just stares at me, trying to assess my reaction. I still feel foolish but suddenly I can’t take it anymore and I tackle her onto my bed, hover my face over hers, take it all in, bright brown eyes and everything that she is to me, and I kiss her, try to offer her all the emotion that I don’t think I will ever be able to put into words.