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Sara waited in her favorite chair as Gideon announced her guest’s arrival. She listened to the sounds of the ship in passive stillness until she heard the footsteps approaching. She hadn’t heard them in years, but they were familiar. She began to wonder if Kendra looked any different. She made a mental note to ask Gideon to save the footage so someone could describe it to her.
“Hey, Captain.” Came the teasing voice to Sara’s right “You look different without the stubble and the trench-coat”
Sara rolled her unseeing eyes “I even lost the British accent and propensity for pointing out flaws.”
Kendra laughed as she walked further into the room.
Sara didn’t realize how much she’d missed the sound.
The woman was still chuckling to herself as she pulled up a chair across from Sara. “So, tell me- is the Captain’s room twice the size of everyone else’s?”
Sara felt herself smile “Not quite. Jax measured it at about a room and a half.”
“Fair” Kendra assessed
Sara felt the other woman take her hand -as soft as she remembered- and bring it to her face.
“I got a nose piercing.”
Sara’s eyebrows raised “are you serious?! I wish I could see that.”
“Why do you think your hand is on my face, Lance?”
Sara’s expression faltered “I meant seeing with my eyes.”
“I know what you meant,” Kendra guided the Captain’s index finger to the side of her jeweled nostril “But until you get that ability back, this is how you see.”
Sara felt the small stud against her friend’s face and smiled just a little. “Is your hair different?”
“No more bangs.” Kendra tugged Sara’s hand to her forehead “And I usually wear it in a braid or a bun these days. It’s too long to let it just hang there.”
Sara touched the plaited strands and slowly traced the shape of Kendra’s face. “You never told me you were blind in a past life.”
“I’d forgotten all about it until Gideon called. And I’ve never been born blind, so it was only a small portion of my extensive memories.”
Sara allowed her thumb to stray across the shape of Kendra’s brow “Extensive might even be an understatement.”
“Maybe just a smidge.”
The Captain felt Kendra’s lips brush her palm as the other woman spoke and almost pulled away entirely. This was wrong. It was too intimate for a woman she hadn’t seen in years, a woman she hadn’t been brave enough to kiss even once. It wasn’t fair to her current partners.
“Sara?” Kendra guided the hand back to its owner’s lap “You okay?”
“Not really. I was thinking about... about never seeing them again.”
“The Legends?”
“Yeah. And my girlfriends.”
“Ah. I see.”
“You’re not freaked out by the plural?”
“You’d know I was freaked because my hawk wings would’ve come out.”
Sara found herself laughing at the deadpan humor before she’d even fully processed it. “Fair.”
“Besides, I know the feeling. And before you say ‘it’s different because you’d see Carter in the next life’, it wasn’t that simple. I was blinded the day that I met him in that life. I never got to see him at all.”
“Ouch. Hell of a first date.”
“Exactly!” Kendra smiled- Sara could hear it in her tone “It’s okay to mourn the way things were. It’s okay to be angry and sad and scared and tired. That’s all completely normal. I promise.”
“Thanks. And thanks for coming. I don’t... I don’t think anyone else really gets it.”
“Of course not. And they likely never will. But they want to be here for you. Let them. Okay?”
“Okay.”
“I’m gonna hug you now.”
Sara leaned into Kendra’s guiding hands as she pulled the Captain to her feet and wrapped her in an embrace of arms and wings.