Standing in the open doorway to his cabin, Kelcie’s brow furrowed as she watched Davion sleep. His breath came deep and even as he lay in his bunk, stretched out on his back, head turned to one side to face the wall. The tension she’d sensed was absent as he slept, as she watched him.
At least he doesn’t seem tense. That says nothing about what I’m like right now.
Her fingers tightened around the mug of tea she clutched as much for warmth as to drink. She’d hoped that it would help settle her jangling nerves and the deeply rooted guilt she was feeling over what had just happened.
He’s abandoning his whole life—temporarily, permanently, who knows—to get me to safety. He didn’t have to do any of this. He didn’t have to save me, didn’t have to get me off-world, none of it. It was a selfless thing he did and I don’t know how I can thank him. I don’t know if I even can.
She chewed her lip. There had to be more reasons than what he’d mentioned for why he’d stayed in the Protected Zone—it couldn’t have just been as simple as he made it out to be. There was more there, much more, but at the same time she could understand why he might be reticent to tell her.
I’m basically a stranger, right? Regardless of anything else, he doesn’t know me—he knows who I am, my identity, but he doesn’t know me.
Then again, I don’t even know me.
She rubbed at her temple, closing her eyes for a moment, then sighed. He said it’d come back. I have to believe him. I just—I wish it would just happen. How long does it take for shit to clear, anyway?
She didn’t have an answer and she wasn’t sure that he did, either.
She straightened from her lean, sighing again as she turned and headed back to the galley. He’d been asleep for two hours now; she’d set a timer in the galley to check on him every half hour to make sure he was okay. It was probably overkill—she was starting to think that if anything was going to happen, it already would have—but it made her feel better. At some point, though, she’d need to rest herself. The adrenaline hadn’t worn off yet, though, so she hadn’t started to feel the effects of her broken sleep—at least not yet.
That’ll come sooner than I think it will. She dropped into a chair at the tiny galley table and closed her eyes, rubbing her temples. He hadn’t told her where they were going, but she figured that was fine. Her frame of reference was narrow enough that just about anywhere would have been a surprise at that point. As long as he said it was safe enough, she was willing to take his word for it.
She got up again, refilled her cup, and set the timer. Then, she sank back down at the table, sipping her tea and half-heartedly reorganizing the medical kit, trying to forget the sight of him unconscious in the deck, of the blood on his face.
She wasn’t exactly sure what it left her so unsettled, but it did on a level deeper than she was willing to admit. It was bone-deep, down buried at her core. It shouldn’t have happened. It happened because of her—even if it hadn’t actually happened because of her.
At some point, halfway through her cup of tea and before the timer went off, she fell asleep. It wasn’t until Davion was there, shaking her shoulder, that she startled awake, bleary with an aching back and crick in her neck.
“Who—wha—” She stopped, blinking, trying to get her bearings. She’d been dreaming, but now the dream was evaporating like water in the desert. Rubbing sand from her eyes, she slowly pushed herself upright, staring at him.
He looks as tired as I feel. “What time is it?”
“Does it matter?” he asked, the smiled wryly. “Was the bunk that uncomfortable?”
“I never made it that far,” she said, reaching for her mug and gulping down some of the tea. It was long cold, suggesting that it had been at least a couple of hours. “I guess the tired caught up with me faster than I thought it was going to.”
“I think that’s a mutual feeling.” He turned to the stove and started a pot of water, then leaned against the counter. “Headache’s better.”
“But not gone?”
He shook his head slightly and sighed. “It’ll sort itself out. Might not be from the knock.”
“What else would it be from?” She turned in the chair to face him, leaning back against the edge of the table and drawing one knee up to her chest.
“It’s been a minute since I reached quite that far and twice in fairly rapid succession isn’t going to help that. I’ll be fine. It can just get a little taxing.”
“Reaching…you mean finding the safe course?”
He nodded. “Yeah. I think a lot of folks believe it’s a lot simpler than it really is. You’re born with the gift and someone tells you how to use it and it’s just like that—easy, nothing to worry about, you just do it. And it is kind of like that but it’s also a hell of a lot more complex.”
“I’m guessing it’s also a lot more strenuous than most people think it is.”
“That would be one way of putting it. There’s definitely a decent amount of energy that it takes to do it and it’s easy to overextend—usually before you realize you’re doing it. It happens a lot to newer pilots but typically not that often. The first time you do it, you remember what it feels like, and if that first time was really bad, a lot of folks do just about anything to avoid it happening again if they can help it.”
“From the way you said it, I’m guessing that there are scenarios where you can’t help it.”
He smiled wryly and tapped his nose. “Perceptive. Definitely more than a few. This wasn’t that, though—this was more like overtaxing a muscle you haven’t used in a while because you didn’t have enough time to warm up and stretch.”
She frowned, resting her chin on her knee as she wrapped her arms around her leg. “So that might have caused the headache?”
“Yeah. Or it’s a combination of that, the stress, the knock to the head, all of it. Either way, it’ll clear up before we get to where we’re going.” He took down a coffee press and a small canister of grounds. “You want some of this?”
“Considering how good it smells? Please. Has that been up there all this time?”
“I tried to keep things stocked just in case.” He poured some water into the press, leaning against the counter as he started to brew the coffee. “Sometimes I wondered why I kept the ship but I always knew the answer. It was a precaution—my just in case. Not just for me, but for my friends back there, too.”
“Are they going to be okay?”
A trace of pain flickered through his expression before he glanced down at his bare feet. “I don’t know. Probably. They’re smart and they’ll keep their heads down until everything blows over. Val—he’s the one who came to warn me—he said they’d be fine. He’ll keep an eye on the house.”
That startled her. Didn’t he hide it? “He can see it? I saw you put the illusion over it that hid it. He can see through that?”
“He knows where it is,” Davion said. “That’ll let him see beyond the illusion—kind of like how I always could see where the ship was even though I had an illusion cast over it to hide it.”
“Is that something they teach you in pilot school?”
He choked on a laugh. “No,” he said, starting to pour the coffee. “No, not at all. It’s something I learned a little on my own, a little after I came to the Zone. A lot of by touch and feel and reading and practice. I could do a lot before I went to ground, but I learned a little more from a few other folks in the Zone before I ended up settled on Centrallia.”
She nodded. Gut check here says that I knew none of this at any point before now. “Do you think a lot of people realize that being able to—to be a pilot means that you’re also able to do the magic that you’ve done?”
One corner of his mouth kicked upward as he brought her one of the mugs of coffee. “I don’t know. Honestly, I only had the barest inkling because maybe I’ve read too many legends and started to wonder. If a lot of people haven’t figured it out, it’s probably not a bad thing. Can you imagine what we might be asked to do? Never mind what pilots are already asked to do and what happens to us more often than any of us want to talk about, but can you imagine what kind of awful shit we might get asked to do if people realized what we might be able to do?”
She winced. “I didn’t think about it that way.”
“I know you didn’t,” he said quietly. “I’m glad you didn’t.”
She choked on a laugh. “You know what? Me too. Me too.”
He sat down in the other chair, leaning back against the table as she was, and took a long, slow sip of coffee. “I wish I couldn’t, but it’s one of those things that you don’t have much of a choice about in some ways, not when you’re like me. You have to think about how people might try to use what you can do in ways that would turn your stomach. You have to figure out what your uncrossable lines are.”
She stared into the depths of her mug. “You strike me as someone who has some pretty significant ones.”
“Sometimes you have to,” he murmured. “And you’re right—I do have some pretty significant lines that I’ve drawn for myself. Everyone’s got some kind of code of ethics that guide their behavior and mine might be a little overtuned.”
“I’m going to guess that yours being overtuned is probably what made you rescue me, so I’m going to sit here and be grateful for it.” She smiled faintly at him. One corner of his mouth curved up and he nodded.
“Probably right. I just can’t sit back and let bad things happen to folks who don’t deserve it if I can do something about it.” He lifted his mug to take a sip, pausing before he did. “Probably gets me into more trouble than I’ve needed to be. That’s not something I want to dwell on for too long.”
“Well, I appreciate what you did,” she said. “What you’re doing. You saved my life at least twice now. I just hope that it all turns out to be worth it.”
“It will,” he said with a confidence that she didn’t feel herself. “I have zero doubt of that.”
“I’m glad someone does.”
They lapsed into silence, sipping coffee, each staring off into nothing. She could see him in her peripheral vision, his gaze so distant that for a moment, she wondered if he was just lost in his thoughts or if his mind really waselsewhere. She was slowly coming to realize how possible that exact scenario might be.
“Can I ask you something?” She finally asked, her voice soft. “You might not know the answer.”
“Won’t know until you ask,” he said, his eyes coming back into focus. He’d answered too quickly, she decided, for him to have been doing anything other than simply thinking. “Fire away.”
“Do you know if whatever they were giving me would spark nightmares?”
His brows knit. “Why? Are you having them?”
“The dream you woke me from was definitely not fun, though I’ll be damned if I could tell you what it was because I can’t remember now.”
“Probably a small mercy,” he said, squeezing her arm. “I’d have to dig, but it wouldn’t surprise me if it was some kind of side effect. Hopefully it won’t get any worse.”
“That’d be nice,” she murmured, staring into her mug. He reached over and gently took it from her hand. She glanced over at him, blinking. He just smiled.
“You should go to bed,” he murmured. “You look like you’re still as tired as I feel.”
“Are you?” She asked softly.
He nodded. “After I check a few things in the cockpit, yeah. Probably no more than another hour.”
She closed her eyes for a second and sighed. They still felt gritty, and he was right about how tired she still was. “Probably a good idea.”
“Hopefully no more nightmares,” he said as he got up, then offered her his hand. She grasped it, pulling herself to her feet.
“Hopefully,” she echoed, then smiled. “Thanks.”
“Sweet dreams.”
She squeezed his arm and then shuffled toward the door, the corridor, and her cabin beyond.
