Rora. Her voice lacked energy and vitality, but it was her. How could Brenn ever forget that voice? It spoke in her dreams. In the quiet moments of life, it sang beautiful memories. She’d pleaded with God to let her hear it one more time. Now she had, and all she wanted was to hear it again, and to keep on hearing it, and never stop listening.

Rora was here.

Brenn choked back a sob and forced her lungs to work the way lungs ought to. She blinked away the tears clouding her eyes. It took effort not to push past Tara, safety be damned.

“I’m going to step inside a little more so my companion can come in as well, and then I’m going to take out a light.” Tara kept her voice level and calm. “We’ll stay in the doorway. I’m unarmed.”

Tara glanced back at Brenn and seemed to read the truth in her face. She frowned and gave a soft nod before forcing the door open the rest of the way.

“Rora, it’s me. I work for the Org now.” Brenn spoke in Irish as she stepped in. Even squinting, it was tough to make out anything except a shadowy figure clothed in pale fabrics a few meters away, pressed against a partition of some sort. Even the shape of her faded into the shadows, like a half realized dream.

“I’m with Ostara Eridani, she’s Field Marshal Eridani’s daughter—I know you were going to meet with the Field Marshal’s people. She sent us to find you when you didn’t show up.”

The tightness in her throat threatened to strangle her words. Tears attempted to blind her. Brick by brick, she changed the shape of the wall inside her mind, opening a window. Rora’s pain first trickled through, then flooded. She pushed back against the flood, projecting calm and order instead. Projecting her intentions. She had to keep her own fear and worry locked up tight. It wouldn’t help either of them right now.

Light seared her eyes as the torch flared to life and Brenn squeezed them shut. Behind her lids, the world became a warm, red, glow. She stood there longer than necessary. When she opened them, the Universe was going to make as monumental of a shift as it had three-and-a-half years ago. This dream—this hope—would become a reality. Her wife, and a baby. An instant family if Rora still wanted her. It didn’t matter either way. Nothing would be the same again when she saw Rora’s face.

Pathetic, mewling cries rose. Angry little sounds from a hungry and exhausted baby, and the first noises it had made since they’d opened the door. The light, probably. The child had been born into darkness. How many opportunities had it had to see the sun outside these walls with Rora so weak?

She blinked open her eyes and allowed them to focus. The larger bits of her heart turned to dust and the tears finally fell. They itched at her cheeks.

“Rora,” Tara asked, “Can you put the gun down?”

Her beautiful wife didn’t hear. She stared back at Brenn with sunken eyes, framed by dark circles, her expression caught somewhere between recognition and delirium. Sweat glistened on her brow and bare shoulders. The thousands of freckles that covered her skin were stark against the grey-tinged paleness of the rest of it.

Rora worked her cracked lips as if to speak, but said nothing. The wee babe, far too small and still covered in fuzz, fussed at a cracked and bleeding nipple. It gave a few frustrated grunts before letting out another mewl and falling silent.

It had on a nappy made from torn bits of what might have been an expensive blouse once. Rora’s eggshell skirt was stained with blood and tied between her legs and on top she wore only a filthy camisole, pulled down on one side to expose her breast. A pile of what Brenn assumed were used nappies lay on the floor nearby. There weren’t nearly enough of them for a healthy babe.

Soiled nappies weren’t the only thing there wasn’t enough of. A green, metal bottle no bigger than 750ml lay on its side in the dust and a few wrappers from hiking rations littered the floor beside it. Even if she’d been able to refill the bottle once or twice—Jesus. If Brenn ever discovered who had abandoned Rora here… No, now wasn’t the time to think about them.

Rora’s gaze sharpened as Brenn took a step forward and she leveled the gun. Her aim would be true if she fired. Behind Brenn, Tara gasped and Brenn held up her hand to stop her friend from moving in. She had to do this.

Rora’s insecurities trickled through the window in Brenn’s mental wall. The poor thing was aware her mind wasn’t rooted in reality and she didn’t trust her own eyes and ears. Hope was a delicate chain, too easy to break. In the fury and the fog, it was an impossibility for Brenn to be here now. But she wanted it to be Brenn. More than anything, she wanted to find the home she’d carved out long ago in Brenn’s heart and mind.

God how Brenn wanted to give her that home.

Brenn holstered her own weapon and showed Rora her empty hands. “I’m going to come to you, mo chroí.”

With a nod to Tara, Brenn approached again. Her heart didn’t so much race as it hummed. Closer and closer. From here she could see how much Rora’s gun hand shook. How much she shook, really, her wire-thin body wracked by shivers. A butterfly of fever red painted her cheeks and nose beneath the dirt. Her breath came in quick, shallow bursts and it wasn’t just from fear. Two battles Rora fought. One against her sanity, the other against her body.

Brenn knelt. Jesus, she’d forgotten how dark Rora’s eyes were. A deep, pine green. They’d always given her away as half-Cousin back home.

“I know I used to make you pretty angry sometimes, but I think if you’d wanted to shoot me, you’d have done so years ago.” Brenn tried to force a smile through her tears. She projected more calm. More love. Kept a running mantra of how much she didn’t want to be shot—again—going through her mind. She’d called many a person a gobshite for much less than approaching an armed and delirious woman, but if she couldn’t trust her wife, her wife wasn’t going to trust it was her. “I’m going to take the gun now.”

Her own hands shook, too, as she enclosed Rora’s gun hand with both of hers and gently manipulated the nose of the weapon toward the floor, away from anyone it could harm. Rora’s skin burned with fever, but Brenn didn’t allow herself to scan vitals. Tara would collect that information—was already collecting that information—and would impart it soon enough. Touch would tell her far more than any instrument ever could.

Rora released the weapon into Brenn’s hands. She slid it across the floor, keeping hold of her wife with her other hand. The babe had fallen silent and listless, but wet, steady breaths reassured Brenn it was alright for now. Rora wasn’t. The gun gone, she slumped and curled into herself, fingers wrapped vice-like around Brenn’s hand.

Skin to skin, it was easier to open herself up to Rora without losing herself, so she did. She tore down the wall and replaced it with a more malleable membrane. She touched the detritus and filth on the floor in the physical world to ground herself there and stepped into the membrane, passing from her mindscape into Rora’s. Her fingers curled, nails scratching dust and metal the further she moved into her wife’s mind. Rora’s world was one of internal ice and external fire. Unbearable pain tore at her joints, and yet it was nothing compared to the pressure in her abdomen as something twisted and compressed her gut from the inside. Rora’s finger’s closed tighter and Brenn’s free hand formed a fist, the metal floor panels biting her knuckles. She clenched her teeth. This had been coming and going in waves, and the wave was building again, reaching its peak, almost ready to roll over on itself and crash into the shore.

“Le do thoil,” Rora whispered. Begged, really. Please. Please make the pain stop. Desperation flashed in her eyes and her exhaustion ran so deep in her bones the need to find rest and relief had overtake most of her conscious mind. For a moment, the strongest person Brenn had ever known wished for the pain to end, no matter what it took.

Brenn climbed back into her own mind and body, slammed the wall back up. Rora cried out and rocked back and forth, whimpering, eyes on Brenn.

“I’m here now,” Brenn said again in Irish.

A subtle shift fell over Rora’s face, like the movement of a shadow. Her pupils shook and she wet her lips as she seemed to actually see Brenn for the first time. Her hand slipped from Brenn’s and floated up until it came to rest on Brenn’s cheek, her dry, rough palm infused with fire. The heat of it radiated beyond her touch.

“It can’t be.”

A whisper from a long lost voice in the language of home. The impossible made possible. A prayer answered a few years late, but answered all the same.

“It is, and I am going to take you and the babe away from this place, somewhere you can be free. I promise.” Brenn brought her own hand up and rested it on top of Rora’s. “We’re going to take good care of both of you. I’m not going away.”

The air moved, disturbing the dust, sending it up into the murky torchlight where it coated Brenn’s lips. Rora winced and groaned, balling her hand into a fist and pulling it back to her chest, the cords on her neck standing out. The baby made an indignant grunt.

“Childbed fever,” Brenn told Tara in a low voice. Postpartum infections had once kept Rora busy in the Old City, no matter how the handful of midwives in Galway had tried to deliver babies in safe and sanitary conditions. There were always homes and situations where it was impossible, and even the hospitals were overrun with antibiotic and nanite resistant bacterias—at least the antibiotics they had access to.

Rora would have known well the battle she faced as the pain crept in and the fever rose.

“She’s D’Ana?” Tara asked to confirm what she already knew and at Brenn’s nod began to fill and program an injector with various medications. A list popped into the message section of Brenn’s interface: a painkiller that also acted as a sedative; mild full-spectrum antibiotics considered safe for most Cousin species; a heavy duty steroid to knock out inflammation and ease her breathing. Temporary measures, and guesses, all of them. There was a scant amount of information on D’Ana biology in any Free Territories’ database. They preferred to hide in plain sight and keep to themselves and had for centuries. Feck them for making this so much harder. At least most human medicines were somewhat effective on most Cousins.

“My friend Tara’s going to give you some medicine to take away the pain and give your body the strength to get back to our ship.” Brenn said, switching back to the Creole for Tara’s sake. The dip of Rora’s chin was almost imperceptible, but the desire that flowed through their bond was as overpowering as a sudden squall in the open seas. “I need to take the baby now so you can rest.”

Jagged fear cut through, so sharp it stung. Rora physically recoiled towards the wall. She cradled the babe with both arms now, eyes slitted with suspicion as she peered over its tiny, bald head. An errant image passed between them of Brenn carrying away the baby and shifting, with shadows melting off her, into one of the fair folk, prize in hand. A new baby to make their own.

Brenn switched to Irish again, “I would never take the child born from your blood and pain from you. All I have wanted for three years is to have you back, and isn’t your baby a piece of you?” The baby grunted and rooted, and grunted and rooted again. He let out a wee cry but didn’t have the energy to sustain it. Brenn knew the signs of a starving newborn. “I can feed him. I promise we’ll both be here when you wake, mo chroí. Let me take him so he can eat and you can finally rest. Please, you need to rest.”

Rora’s eyes shook and her jaw trembled, but tears didn’t fall. That well had run dry. Instead, she softened, tension bleeding out of her body, replaced by an all consuming weariness. Brenn inched forward and reached out, gently plucking the babe from Rora’s breast, and pulling its almost weightless body close to her chest. A breath of relief passed from Rora to her followed by a tendril of twisting, strangling guilt.

Why? Because she had been glad to give up the burden of caring for another when she was too poorly to care for herself?

“I love you,” Brenn whispered as Tara approached with the medical injector. Rora didn’t flinch or move away. Gaze still locked on Brenn, she bared her neck. As the medicine began to work, she slumped to the side where Tara caught her, and for the first time, a glint of something metallic caught Brenn’s eye. Wrapped around Rora’s left ring finger was a claddagh.

Her wedding band.

“Come, wee one, let’s get you taken care of,” Brenn managed to say. She needed to get away from Tara’s watchful eyes. Away from the reality she might have beaten all the odds and found her wife only to watch her die again. This time for good.

She needed to get away from the question that now played itself over and over in her mind. If Rora had been alive all along, if she’d made it this far out into the stars, had joined a new Resistance light years from Earth in the year after her supposed death, then why hadn’t she tried to find Brenn? Why hadn’t she looked on Earth or in the registry of refugees. It couldn’t have been she didn’t want Brenn anymore. If she’d wanted to leave her behind to live another life, why would she still have her wedding ring on after all these years and all she’d been through?

It meant something to her if she still had it. Brenn meant something to her.

The babe shook its little head and rubbed it’s nose around Brenn’s chest in search of a meal, and finding only fabric and an unfamiliar scent let out the strongest and most aggrieved wail yet. It rang through the building and reverberated off the walls, like the cry of a newborn who’d just come into the world, angry at being taken from the comfort and warmth of it’s mother’s womb.

“Aye, so you do have some lungs on you. That’s a good wean. You’re a strong one, just like your ma. I know you’re hungry, but you won’t get anything to eat from me that way. I promise I’ll get you as much formula as you want as soon as I take care of a couple things.”

“Temperature is 41,” Tara announced both for Brenn’s benefit and the visual log the Interface took whenever they were on a mission, in case legal action needed to be taken. Not that it’d do any good this time when no one could know about Rora’s baby. They’d lock these files right up as soon as they got their charges stabilized. “Pulse 118, respiratory rate 27 breaths per minute. She’s septic. I don’t even know how she’s alive right now, never mind how she was still awake.”

Brenn struggled to remove a small blanket from it’s compression sack with only one arm available. Her injured one, at that.

There, finally.

“The D’Ana have a healing ability I don’t really understand and Rora didn’t understand it much, either. Her cells use ambient solar energy to regenerate and heal faster than a human does.” She sniffled as she laid out the blanket on the ground, her back to Tara so she didn’t have to watch her triage her wife. “Her human immune system is completely bollixed, but the healing is usually faster than the bugs. We called her our delicate flower because she always needed the sun when she was wilting. Suns and stars are important to her people.”

Tara didn’t say anything in return, busy now with her work, and Brenn left her to it, turning her attention to Rora’s child. The babe grunted as she placed it at the center of the blanket. Such a tiny little thing, it was. Naught but a skeleton with yellowed skin stretched over bone and bulging blue veins beneath. A little ugly, if she were to be honest. Like a changeling child right out of the auld tales. But all Rora. There wasn’t a trace of Sig on that tiny, un-Aesir face that would continue to grow until it was as beautiful as its mothers. The eyes, especially, matched hers.

“Let’s see what’s going on here,” she said as she removed the rag serving as a nappy. It was bone dry. “Oh lad, when was the last time you had a dirty nappy?”

“I’m attaching a fluid and nutrient bag. I don’t think it’s wise to wait until we get back to the ship. It’s going to take longer to get back in the dark than it took us to get out here.” A current of anxiety beyond her base level ran beneath Tara's professionalism. Brenn didn’t have to ask to know things didn’t look great.

They weren’t great over here either. She quickly read through the baby’s vitals and the Interface’s recommendations and scoffed.

“The wean is heavily jaundiced. He’s dehydrated, heart rate is too high, and he’s having trouble regulating his body temperature. I’d feel better if he were crying more, but he’s too exhausted, which means it’s been a while since his belly was last full” If it had ever been full. “The Interface isn’t much help, there’s hardly anything we can do here beyond feed him. I’m going to put him directly against my skin in the carrier to help with temperature. It’s what Rora always ordered for babes back home.

This baby had to live. She’d promised Rora, and right now she’d give Rora anything in the Universe.

From her pack she took out a doll-sized cloth nappy and wrapped his tiny bum in it. “There you go, I bet that feels a wee bit better.”

“When you have him settled, it’s time to get her on the stretcher.”

“Aye.” Brenn lifted her undershirt over her head and tossed it to the ground, leaving her torso bare save for a sports bra. From her pack, she pulled out the infant carrier they’d packed along.

The wean was warm against her skin. She cradled him close with one arm while she tightened down the carrier with the other. The formula pocket on the carrier moulded itself to her breast and she popped a pouch in to heat up. 20, 19, 18… The babe smelled the formula and began nosing around. She guided his mouth to the nipple and he latched on. A moment later came the wave-like shushing of a baby filling its belly.

“Good lad. Eat up and stay strong so you can see your Ma soon.” She packed her things up, careful not to disturb the lad, then turned towards Tara. She placed a kiss on his velvety head. “We have to take a very long walk now to get you and your Ma to safety. If you can be strong and keep going, I think I can too.”