Author's Preface
They requested the meeting formally, through Ar, and Rachel understood, watching Seli's chamber fill with more attendants than usual, that word of what they intended to say had already traveled ahead of them, the way word always traveled in Oris Norma faster than anyone could properly contain it.
Seli received them standing near the wide window, the same spot she'd occupied the first evening they'd arrived, and Ava stood a short distance apart from her — not beside Seli, not quite apart from the crew either, positioned in the careful middle ground of someone who no longer fully knew which side of a conversation she belonged on.
"You asked for this meeting," Seli said, gentle but direct. "I understand from Luxneth that you've reached a decision. I'd rather hear it from you plainly than have it filtered through rumor before it reaches me properly."
Rachel glanced at Darrell, who nodded once, and she understood that the four of them had agreed, without needing to say it aloud again, that this part belonged to her — the scientist among them, the one who'd carried the Silex Sxar's discovery from Ava's workspace into all of their lives in the first place.
"We intend to use the window," she said, steady, meeting Seli's eyes. "When the Silex Sxar reaches ignition. Not all of us — William has decided to stay, and we support that decision fully. But Darrell, Xavier, and I intend to attempt the return, assuming Xavier's condition allows it, and assuming the window behaves the way Ava's models suggest it should."
The chamber went quiet. Rachel watched Seli's face carefully, saw something complicated pass across it — not surprise, she thought, more the specific weight of an answer she'd clearly been bracing for without knowing exactly when it would arrive.
"I want to thank you," Seli said, finally, "for telling me directly, rather than allowing me to hear it secondhand. I know how much that costs, in a settlement where privacy is difficult to maintain." She paused, choosing her next words with visible care. "I won't pretend this doesn't complicate things. I've spent weeks building support, slowly, carefully, for the possibility that your knowledge might remain available to us for longer than a few months. I'll need to recalibrate what I've been arguing, now that I understand the actual shape of your intentions."
"What does that mean, practically?" William asked. "For you, politically. Are we about to make your position here harder?"
Seli considered the question honestly before answering. "Some, yes. There are colleagues who supported keeping you here partly because they believed it a permanent arrangement, a genuine addition to what this settlement could offer its people over the long term. Learning that half of you intend to leave will give them room to argue the investment was never going to pay out as promised." She held William's gaze steadily. "I don't say that to make you feel guilty. I say it because I promised you honesty from the start, and I intend to keep that promise even when the honesty is inconvenient. I'll manage the politics. That's my responsibility, not yours."
"We're not withdrawing our help," Rachel said quickly. "Whatever time we have left here — whatever we can offer before the window comes — we intend to give it fully. Ava and I have real progress on the catalyst model. I don't want that work abandoned just because I won't be here to see the end of it."
"I appreciate that," Seli said. "I want you to understand, also, that I don't resent the choice itself. You have every right to want to go home, however complicated that home has become. I would think less of you, honestly, if you'd simply decided to stay out of obligation to a settlement you've known for a handful of months, at the cost of whatever remains for you on the other side of that star." Her gaze shifted, briefly, toward Ava, still standing apart, silent, her expression carefully composed in a way Rachel had learned, over weeks of working alongside her, to recognize as a mask stretched thin over something raw underneath. "Not everyone in this chamber shares my view on that point."
"Ava," Rachel said, turning to her directly. "I wanted to tell you myself. Before the formal meeting, if I could have managed it, but everything moved faster than I expected once the decision was actually made."
Ava was quiet a long moment, her composure visibly costing her more than Rachel had ever seen it cost before. "I appreciate the sentiment," she said, finally, her voice careful, measured, the tone Rachel recognized from their very first meeting, weeks ago, before either of them had let their guard down around the other. "I want to be honest with you, Rachel, the way I've tried to be honest with you since I first showed you the model. I understand your reasons. I even respect them. But I would be lying if I told you this doesn't feel like a door closing on something I'd allowed myself to hope for, more than I should have."
"Ava—"
"Let me finish, please." Ava's voice had gone tighter now, the careful composure straining visibly against something underneath it. "I have spent eleven years fighting to make people care about a problem that won't kill them in their own lifetime. I told you that once, and I meant it as history, not as a warning about what was coming. But sitting here, hearing you say you intend to leave — I understand, now, in a way I didn't fully understand before, exactly what it's going to feel like to lose you specifically, not just your knowledge, not just the fresh angle you brought to my models. You. The person who asked, in a way nobody else in this settlement ever has, whether I wanted to talk about the loneliest parts of this work."
The chamber had gone very still. Rachel felt her own throat tighten, understanding, watching Ava's careful composure finally crack open in front of witnesses she'd clearly never intended to let see this much, exactly how much weight had been sitting underneath every careful, measured conversation they'd shared for weeks.
"I'm not gone yet," Rachel said, gently. "There are still months before the window. I meant what I said — I intend to keep working with you, fully, for however long I have left here. This isn't me walking away today."
"I know." Ava's voice had gone rough, and she made a visible effort to gather herself back into something more composed, though the effort itself was plain to everyone watching. "I know that logically. I'm having a harder time than I expected making my feelings match the logic." She looked away, toward the window, toward the sky beyond it holding its slow, patient secret of a dying sun and a star building toward its own violent, uncertain rebirth. "I told you, weeks ago, that I wasn't certain I was glad I'd found this door for you. I think I understand now why some part of me resisted telling you as long as I did. I think some part of me already knew exactly what it was going to cost me, long before I let myself examine the shape of it honestly."
"Ava." Seli's voice, gentle but firm, a warning wrapped in concern. "Perhaps this conversation would be better continued privately, once—"
"I'm alright," Ava said, though her voice suggested otherwise. "I'd rather say this now, in front of everyone, than let it fester into something I manage badly later, in private, where nobody can help me hold it properly." She turned back to Rachel, something raw and unguarded in her expression that Rachel had only glimpsed once before, in the science wing, late one night, talking about a mother who'd taught her that failing at something enormous was the loneliest kind of failing there was. "I want you to know, whatever happens — whatever the window does when it finally comes — that working with you has been the best eleven weeks of a career that's spanned eleven years. I don't say that lightly. I don't think I've ever said anything like it to anyone, in this settlement or before it."
Rachel crossed the space between them before she'd fully decided to, and pulled Ava into an embrace that she felt the other woman resist for exactly one startled second before sinking into it, her composure finally, completely giving way.
"I'm not gone," Rachel said again, quietly, just for her. "Not yet. And even after — even if the window works, even if I actually get back — I don't think what we've built here just disappears because of distance. I don't know how to explain that in a way that makes the math work. I just know it's true."
"That's not very scientific of you," Ava said, muffled, and Rachel felt something that might have been a laugh, wet and unsteady, against her shoulder.
"No," Rachel agreed. "It's not. I've decided I'm alright with that, for this specific thing."
They stood like that a moment longer, and when they finally separated, Ava's composure had settled back into something more familiar, though not quite as guarded as before — softened, Rachel thought, by having let herself be seen this plainly, this openly, in front of people who now understood exactly how much this work, and this particular working partnership, had come to mean to her.
"I should say," Darrell offered, into the quiet that followed, "that whatever any of you decide to feel about our choice — we're grateful. All of us. For the welcome you gave four strangers who fell out of the sky with nothing, for the honesty, even when the honesty was hard to hear. Whatever happens with the window, I don't think any of us will forget what this settlement gave us, at a moment when we had nothing left of our own."
Seli inclined her head, something like relief entering her own careful expression. "Thank you for that. I'll admit, I've been dreading this conversation for weeks, half-expecting it to feel like a defeat. It doesn't, particularly. It feels like exactly what I hoped for, if I'm honest — not the outcome I wanted for myself, perhaps, but proof that reaching outward, even briefly, even imperfectly, was worth the resources my colleagues warned me against spending." She looked to Ava, something warm passing between them, old colleagues finding common ground after weeks of quiet disagreement. "I think we should discuss, soon, how best to use the time remaining. Practically, I mean — fuel requirements, logistical preparation, whatever the window will actually demand of all of us when it finally arrives."
Xavier, who had said little through the whole meeting, spoke up quietly from where he sat, still tiring more easily than he liked. "I want to say something too, if that's alright." Every eye turned to him, gentle, patient. "I don't know yet if I'll be well enough to make the trip when the window comes. Nobody does, least of all me. But I wanted you both to know — Seli, Ava — that whatever happens, finding out what I found out in your archive gave me something I never expected to get. A daughter. A whole life I got to learn the shape of, even secondhand, even in fragments. I don't think I can ever fully repay that. I just wanted to say it, while I still can, in front of everyone."
Ava's composure, already fragile, seemed to catch again at that, and she nodded to him, unable, for a moment, to trust her voice with an answer.
"We'll need to talk about fuel specifically," Ava said, her voice steadier now, the scientist reasserting herself over the raw emotion of a moment ago. "I have some ideas. None of them simple. I'd rather not discuss the details until I've had more time to properly assess them."
Rachel caught something careful in the way she said it — a door left deliberately unopened, a complication not yet ready to be named — and filed it away, understanding, with a small, uneasy premonition, that whatever came next in this settlement's slow, careful negotiation between hope and loss, the fuel itself was likely to become its own difficult chapter before the story finished telling itself.
For now, though, she let it sit unexamined, and looked instead at Ava's face, steadier now but still carrying the visible cost of what she'd just allowed herself to say out loud — and understood that whatever the coming weeks held, some things, once spoken, couldn't simply be unsaid again.