Turning

Fen had started calling him partner, which was, from a man who'd needed a full day of grudging tests before allowing that William wasn't entirely useless, about as close to a formal ceremony as William figured he was ever going to get in this settlement.

"You've got a good hand for this," Fen said, through Ar's translation, watching William close up a junction panel he'd spent the better part of the morning rebuilding from parts that shouldn't, by any reasonable engineering standard, have still worked. "Better than most of the younger techs I train now. They know the theory. They don't have the patience for the actual fixing."

"Patience is mostly just stubbornness wearing a nicer coat," William said, and Ar, translating, allowed himself a small smile at the phrase.

"He says that's the truest thing an Old World visitor has said to him yet," Ar relayed, and Fen, hearing his own words repeated back, grunted something that might, in a more expressive man, have qualified as agreement.

William straightened, wiping grease from his hands, and looked around the workshop that had become, somewhere in the last six weeks, less a place he visited and more a place he simply belonged — tools arranged the way he liked them, a half-finished project of his own sitting in the corner that Fen had stopped asking about, having apparently decided William's private tinkering was his own business.

He'd stopped counting the days since the jump. He noticed that, standing there, the way a person notices they've stopped doing something only once the absence itself becomes visible. He'd counted obsessively at first — every morning, some grim internal ledger keeping track of how long they'd been stranded, how long since Hope , how long since the lights went out. He couldn't remember exactly when he'd stopped. Somewhere in the last few weeks, the counting had simply become less urgent than the work in front of him.

That felt like it meant something. He wasn't sure yet what.

He found Ar waiting outside the workshop that evening, patient as always, and fell into step beside him for the walk back toward the settlement's guest quarters — a route they'd taken together often enough now that neither of them needed to discuss the direction.

"You seem different today," Ar observed. "Lighter, perhaps. Fen tells me you completed the atmospheric processing repair he'd been stuck on for nearly a decade."

"Turned out to be a design flaw nobody'd caught, not a maintenance failure. Some assumption baked into the original build that never quite held up over time. Took some doing to find it, but it wasn't complicated once I did." William shrugged, though he felt the small, private pride of it anyway. "Fen actually thanked me. Out loud. In words. I think that might be a bigger deal than the fix itself, honestly."

Ar smiled, but there was something considering in his expression, the same careful, thoughtful look he'd worn the night William had first admitted, half by accident, that he hadn't figured he'd find anything here worth staying for.

"I've been meaning to tell you something," Ar said, as they walked. "I mentioned you to a colleague of mine, some weeks ago — someone who oversees training for new engineering apprentices across three settlements. She asked, half in jest I think, whether Oris Norma might ever consider offering an Old World visitor a formal teaching post. I told her I doubted you'd be interested, given everything. She asked me to mention it to you regardless, in case I was wrong."

William felt something catch in his chest at that, unexpected and larger than he wanted to examine too closely in the moment. "That's — that's a strange thing to hear, Ar. A job offer. In an actual position. Like this could be a real life, not just something I'm doing to pass the time until a decision gets made for me."

"I think that was rather the point of mentioning it," Ar said, gently. "I don't say this to pressure you. Only because I think you deserve to know the possibility exists, whatever you eventually decide."

"May I ask you something," Ar said, "that I've been turning over since that evening in the workshop some weeks ago?"

"Go ahead."

"Have you decided? Whether staying is something you actually want, or whether it remains something you're merely enjoying in the moment, without having weighed the whole shape of what it would mean."

William didn't answer right away, walking a while in silence, turning the question over with the same careful attention he'd have given a mechanical fault that refused to announce itself plainly. "I think I've decided," he said, finally. "I haven't said it out loud yet. Not properly. Not to Darrell, not to anyone. Saying it feels like it makes it real in a way that just feeling it hasn't, so far."

"What's stopping you?"

"Fear, probably. Same as it usually is." William managed something that wasn't quite a laugh. "Darrell's my oldest friend, Ar. Fourteen years. We've been through more together than I've been through with anyone else alive — or anyone else who used to be alive, I guess, given where we are now. Telling him I want to stay here, in a world he's spent every day since the graveyard trying to leave — that feels like the kind of thing that changes something between us. I don't know how to say it without it landing like a betrayal, even though I don't mean it as one."

He found Darrell alone that night, sitting outside their shared quarters in the strange, unfamiliar quiet of Oris Norma's evening, looking up at a sky neither of them had ever fully learned to read.

"You're up late," William said, settling onto the low bench beside him.

"Couldn't sleep. Kept thinking about the archive. About Mara's sentence, the one that never finished." Darrell didn't look over, his eyes still fixed on the strange constellations overhead. "You ever think about how much of this whole thing has just been sentences that don't finish? Priya's message. Mara's recording. That name on the wall in the shelter. Feels like the whole universe decided to speak to us in fragments and just — leave the rest for us to guess at."

"Feels that way sometimes, yeah." William was quiet a moment, gathering himself, understanding that the conversation had already, without either of them planning it, opened a door he'd been circling for weeks. "Darrell. I need to tell you something, and I need you to let me get all the way through it before you say anything back. Can you do that for me?"

Darrell turned to look at him properly for the first time, something careful entering his expression. "Alright."

"I've been doing a lot of thinking," William started, and then stopped, frustrated with himself, and started again. "No. That's not honest enough. I haven't just been thinking about it. I've been feeling it, every day, for weeks now, and not saying anything because I didn't know how to say it without it sounding like I was choosing this world over you. That's not what it is. I want to be clear about that before I say the rest of it."

"Will."

"Let me finish. Please." William took a breath, steadying himself the way he'd steady his hands before a delicate repair, one that didn't leave room for a shaking grip. "I don't want to go back through the Silex Sxar. I've turned it over every way I know how to turn something over, and I keep landing in the same place. I don't have anyone waiting for me there, Darrell. Not really. My sister and I hadn't spoken in years before any of this happened, and even if some miracle let me go back to the exact day I left, I don't know that anything between us would be different than it already was. There's no family archive scene waiting for me. No unfinished sentence I need to go stand somewhere and hear the end of. There's just — a life I'd already mostly stopped living, even before the star went off."

Darrell didn't say anything, and William made himself keep going, the words coming easier now that he'd broken the seal on them.

"And here — I don't know how to explain this without it sounding smaller than it is. I fixed a water sensor, and an old man who wouldn't look at me the first hour started calling me partner. I fixed a decade-old fault in a processing system nobody else could crack, and it means something, Darrell — real people, breathing easier air because I noticed something everyone else missed. I haven't felt that in years. Maybe ever, if I'm honest. Back home I was good at my job and nobody particularly noticed, because that's just what the job was supposed to look like. Here, being useful means something different. It means people are still trying. Still reaching, even in a small way, even after everything that convinced most of this settlement reaching wasn't worth the risk anymore."

"You've made a life here," Darrell said, quietly, when William finally stopped.

"I think I have. Or I'm building one, anyway. I don't know if that's the same thing yet." William looked at his oldest friend, searching his face for the hurt he'd been bracing for, and found something more complicated instead — grief, yes, but underneath it, something that looked almost like understanding. "I need you to know this isn't about you. I'm not choosing this world over our friendship. I don't think staying here has to mean losing you, even if it means we're four million years and one impossible star apart. I just — I can't go back to a life I'd already stopped living, Darrell. Not when there's something here that feels like it might actually be alive."

Darrell was quiet a long moment, looking back up at the strange sky, and when he finally spoke, his voice had gone rough in a way William hadn't expected. "I'm not angry," he said. "I want you to know that first. I'm not angry, and I don't think you're betraying anything."

"But?"

"But it's going to break my heart, Will. However this actually goes — however the choice sorts itself out for all of us — the idea of saying goodbye to you, really goodbye, the kind where there's no coming back from it, no next mission, no chance meeting somewhere down the line — that's going to break my heart in a way I don't think I've fully let myself feel yet, because I've been so wrapped up in my own grief I haven't made room for this one." He looked over, finally, meeting William's eyes directly. "Fourteen years, Will. You're the reason I made it through some of the worst years of my life before any of this happened. The idea of a version of my life that doesn't have you in it somewhere, even far away, even just a message every few years — I don't know how to hold that yet. I'm not going to pretend I do."

William felt his own throat tighten, the careful composure he'd built up for this conversation finally cracking under the weight of Darrell's honesty. "I don't want to lose you either," he said. "I've been telling myself that staying doesn't have to mean losing you, and I think I actually believe that, in some abstract way. But I know what the actual shape of it is, Darrell. I know what it means, distance like that. I'm not naive about it."

"Then why," Darrell asked, gently, no accusation in it, just genuine question. "Why choose it, if you understand exactly what it costs?"

William thought about that a long moment, turning it over one more time, wanting to give Darrell an answer that was actually true rather than simply comforting. "Because I think everybody gets one chance, maybe, to actually want something enough to build a whole life around it, instead of just managing the life you happened to end up with. I never had that before. Not really. I was good at my job and loyal to my friends and I called that enough, because I didn't know there was more available to want. I know now. I found it by accident, fixing a water sensor for a stranger who wouldn't look at me. I don't think I get to un-know it, even if knowing it costs me you."

Darrell didn't answer right away, and when he did, his voice had gone soft, worn, but steady. "That's about the most honest thing you've ever said to me. And I've known you fourteen years."

"High bar to clear."

"You cleared it." Darrell was quiet a moment, and then he asked, carefully, "Is there anyone here? Not just the work. I don't want to pry if it's not mine to ask, but I've noticed how you talk about Ar sometimes. And Fen. I wondered if there was more to it than a job you're good at."

William felt his face warm, unexpectedly, at the directness of the question. "I don't know yet," he admitted. "Ar's become — I don't have a clean word for what he's become to me. A friend, at minimum. Maybe more, if I let myself think about it too long, which I've mostly been trying not to do, given everything else there's been to think about. I don't think that's the reason I want to stay. But I won't pretend it isn't part of the shape of it."

"That's allowed too," Darrell said, gently. "You don't have to justify wanting more than one thing."

William managed a small, grateful laugh. "Feels like you're giving me a lot of permission tonight."

"Feels like you need it. Feels like you've been carrying this alone longer than you needed to." Darrell reached over and gripped William's shoulder, the same gesture he'd used on the tarmac before launch, a lifetime and four million years ago, and William felt something in his chest settle at the familiarity of it, the sameness of the gesture even now, even here, even with everything between them about to change. "I'm not going to ask you to change your mind. I don't think that's mine to ask. I just need you to know — whatever I decide, whenever the window actually comes — I love you, Will. However this ends, that part doesn't change."

"I love you too," William said, rougher than he meant it to come out. "I'm sorry it has to be like this."

"Don't be sorry. You found something worth building. That's not a thing to apologize for." Darrell managed something that was almost a smile, tired and sad and genuine all at once. "I just get to be sad about it while I'm proud of you. Both things, same time. I'm learning that's mostly what this whole experience has been teaching me how to do."

They sat together a long while after that, not saying much else, the strange sky wheeling slowly overhead, and William felt something settle in his chest that had been unsettled for weeks — not resolution exactly, not with so much still unknown about how the actual choice would play out for the rest of them, but the specific relief of having finally said the true thing out loud, to the person who most needed to hear it from him directly."I still haven't told Rachel or Xavier," he said, eventually.

"You should. Soon. They deserve to hear it from you, the same as I just did."

"I know. I think I needed to say it to you first. Needed to know I could survive saying it to you before I trusted myself to say it to anyone else."

Darrell nodded, understanding, and looked back up at the sky, and William followed his gaze, the two of them sitting together under stars neither of them had ever learned to name, holding, in the same quiet evening, both the weight of what was ending and the fragile, stubborn shape of something new enough to still be called a beginning.