Flauraan, Abigail is 20

I am exceptionally familiar with pain. Really, for someone relatively young, I have been through so much more than I ever could have imagined. I have dealt with injury and despair. I’m sure my mind is damaged in ways that will never heal.

I’ve learnt how to cope with a lot of it. My injuries from the war took me weeks, if not months, to recover from, and even though I sometimes struggle with phantom sensations from my time in the Machine, mostly I am learning to deal with it.

Strikingly, the thing I've been struggling the most with is the emotional toll of the war, and in particular the consequences of my attachment to Lexie and Jayken, now that we are separated by so much distance. It causes a physical ache in my chest to not be with them. I never expected to have this problem.

The ache is bad enough that I find myself yearning for our days keeping vigil in cramped rooms during the war. The Weraynian War was agony unlike almost anything else I have experienced, but at least we were together. I learnt to love those two in the midst of my desperation to keep them protected, and my reward for that devotion was to be parted from them once the war was ended. I cope the only way I know how, the same way I did when Sophie was away at Alliance Base 17.

I sit at the data unit for long stretches most days, sometimes only getting up to refresh the hot water in my mug. In theory I have plenty of work to be attending to, meetings to organise with councils, materials to upload to the datashare. And I often am deep in these projects, but more often than that I am bereft; I am sitting at the unit staring blankly at the screen, refreshing different pages and feeling melancholy in a way that feels new to me.

Of course, it is a feeling I associate with Sophie being away, either in the Staarus System or back across the galaxy doing work with the Alliance or visiting her loved ones. But it’s more than that. I have felt it when she is here as well. I love Sophie. She is completely precious to me. Spending time with her can distract me from the ache a little bit. But the truth is I miss Lexie and Jayken, and they are so far away and I want to be near them.

Some days are incredibly nice. I sit at that data unit and Jayken and Lexie are both thankfully free and we sit in a call for hours and hours, talking, catching up, but also just working on things separately with the knowledge that the others are on the other side of the screen, listening to you breathe and mutter to yourself and shift things on your desk and call out across the house. It fulfills, in some sense if not in others, the desire to be close to someone, to be connected to them, sharing that space with them. It calms down my nervous system the same way sharing a room with them on Werayne did, even if it can’t truly replace being together in person, in reality, to be able to reach out and be assured of the solidity of the other person. But it has to be enough, and it often is and I go to sleep content with the time I’ve been able to spend with them.

Lexie is often drawing on call, and will send through pictures of updates on pieces she’s working on. I always love seeing them, and I equally love listening to Jayken tell stories at length about his life with a level of detail and enthusiasm that makes me deeply sentimental to hear about. Sophie will pop in and out on calls if she’s away; I know it’s important to her to show up as much as she can, even as she gets pulled in so many directions by everything in her life. Her anxiety at the separation isn’t as deep as mine, she weathers it expertly, but she still makes an effort, caring deeply about them alongside me. She’s not as present and even Lexie and I spend more time in calls alone with each other than with Jayken, but through it all we are still a team, devoted to each other irreparably.

I can hardly believe it as time flies by, as I’m forced to consider that it has been six months, a year, since we have last seen each other. We have all been so busy since the war (though I’ve been the least busy) but despite the endless array of tasks that need doing we seem to be approaching a slightly less busy period, and we start to discuss that most momentous occasion of our reuniting, of a trip to Werayne, to stay with them for at least a week if not longer.

The whole concept of such a trip makes me extremely nervous, but I know it will be worth it. I need to go to Werayne. I need to be with them. My anxieties might feel daunting but I can confront them, and conquer them, and reap the rewards.

So we discuss the idea, and the concept gradually goes from abstract to a real solid plan with dates and details. They've mostly settled in with both their families in the place they got allocated to in the aftermath of the war, and are keen to host us. I'm so interested, if also a little scared, to see how much Werayne has changed since I was last there. It will be a momentous trip in many ways, and on my more anxious days I need to push all that aside and just focus on the joy I will experience being reunited with my friends whom I love. I try to visualise what we will do, how we will interact without the war hanging over us, translating our online dynamic to real life. We're hopefully going to get to see Lexie's band perform while we're there, and Jayken has a long list of places he wants to show us, and I'm considering letting him teach me how to surf but even if we don't do that we will go to the beach.

Overall, it should be wonderful, and now the ache of separation, of distance, is replaced with the ache of waiting.