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Vespa was in a cavern of some kind. The stone walls stretched out before her, shapeless and out of focus in the blackness. It took her eyes a moment to adjust and another moment to recognize where she was. Somewhere on Balder, ground level. It was the rendezvous point she and Buddy had agreed on, once their heist was finished. The problem with that was that Vespa couldn’t remember the heist finishing.
Okay, so something must have gone wrong and they’d gotten separated. Fine. Vespa could deal with that. She and Buddy always had an escape plan. Obviously, her part worked just fine, and Vespa refused to believe that Buddy Aurinko was somehow less competent than she was, especially given all the evidence to the contrary. There was no use worrying, Buddy would be here soon.
Vespa passed the time by knocking out rhythms on the walls, trying not to let her thoughts get the best of her. The voices that were always present around her were whispering things. Things like, “You knew your time was up,” in her father’s voice and, “I always knew you’d be my downfall,” in Buddy’s.
Except, that didn’t make sense. This was on Balder. Vespa hadn’t been exposed to radiation yet. She hadn’t started hallucinating yet. And Vespa never arrived at this cave, she’d been too injured to do much of anything before she got nabbed by the Board of Fresh Starts.
Footsteps echoed like the rhythms she’d been tapping. Vespa looked up to see Buddy, ten years older with a mechanical eye, bearing down on her. “You didn’t do your job, darling.”
“No,” Vespa shook her head as if to shake the vision away, “This isn’t real. We never made it here.”
“Oh, but we did, Vespa,” Fake-Buddy said, “You did at least. And I didn’t, all because of you.”
Vespa shook her head harder, bringing her hands up around her ears, “That’s a lie. That’s not how it happened. Our plan fucked up and we got separated, but it wasn’t anyone’s fault.” She knocked out rhythms against her temples, “This isn’t real.”
Fake-Buddy or Real-Buddy or whoever she was moved closer. She pried Vespa’s fingers from around her head with a gentleness that shouldn’t have been possible given the harsh tone of her voice. It made what she said next so much worse.
“Oh, Vespa. Is anything?” And her grip on Vespa’s fingers tightened until—
Vespa gasped awake, hands tangling in the sheets as she tried to get a good look at them in the dark. Her heart was racing, and she could feel the sweat dripping down the back of her neck. When she wrenched her hands from the blankets, all of her fingers were unbroken and accounted for. That was a strange one, usually her dreams went for the throat.
Buddy stirred next to her, but Vespa just laid a hand on her shoulder and whispered, “Go back to sleep, Bud.”
“You think I don’t know what you’re dreaming about? ” Buddy’s voice said, but her lips weren’t moving. ”Do you honestly think that it won’t be true one day?”
The real Buddy, the beautiful woman sleeping next to Vespa in their room aboard the Carte Blanche, blinked the sleep from her eye and rested her hand on top of Vespa’s where it lay on her shoulder, “Are you sure, darling?”
“Just another nightmare. It doesn’t matter.”
“I think…” Buddy hesitated, and Vespa prepared for the worst. A; These nightmares are awfully inconvenient, you’ll have to sleep in a different room, or something just as bad. She always knew their time together was on a countdown. She’d just hoped to get one more night out of it.
“I think this is something we need to talk about,” Buddy said, breaking through Vespa’s thoughts.
The response of, “I don’t have to talk about the nightmares if I don’t want to,” was on the tip of her tongue. It was a phrase Buddy had encouraged her to use as the crew had gotten more...personal. There were things Vespa was allowed to keep private if she wanted to, traumas that didn’t need to be unearthed at the dinner table. But Vespa wasn’t so sure that this was one of them anymore.
She didn’t want to talk to Buddy about the fact that the dreams that woke her up sweat-drenched and gasping were usually of Buddy. She didn’t want Buddy to know that she was counting down the days before the weight of being with Vespa was too much for her to handle.
“Because she’d agree,” Juno’s voice said from somewhere to her right. No, that didn’t make sense. No one was in this room but Buddy and Vespa.
“Get out of my head, Steel,” she growled.
Buddy looked confused, but she stayed silent. Just another difficulty Buddy had to deal with, being with her.
“Useless,” Ransom’s voice said. “Pathetic.”
So no, Vespa didn’t want to talk to Buddy about the nightmares, but a part of her knew that if she didn’t say anything, they’d keep getting worse. And if Buddy was going to decide that she was more trouble than she was worth, she’d rather pull the bandaid off than let that resentment fester. Buddy could say she never wanted to see Vespa again, but she didn’t know what she’d do if Buddy Aurinko said she hated her.
“You keep leaving me,” Vespa said, all her cards on the table. “In the dreams. Or dying because of me. Or making it clear it’s my fault things went wrong.” She gripped Buddy’s hand like a lifeline, wondering how long until she pulled away.
“Oh, Vespa,” Buddy all but sighed, not condescending or pitying, but full of emotion regardless. She sat up in their bed, bringing her other hand to rest against Vespa’s cheek. Vespa leaned into the touch.
“ You’re not meant for love.” Her father’s shadow said from the corner. Vespa shut her eyes.
“I know the other shoe will drop.” She grinded out. “The dreams just make it more real.”
Vespa couldn’t see Buddy with her eyes closed, but she could feel the hand in hers give a squeeze, could feel the hand caressing her face tilt her chin down.
“Vespa, do you think I’m going to leave you?” Buddy asked, voice so gentle Vespa almost couldn’t handle it.
“I know the other shoe will drop.” Vespa insisted again. She opened her eyes to see an incomprehensible expression on her love’s face.
“I wouldn’t.” Buddy’s voice was resolute. “I won’t. I have no plans to, and you know me, darling;” A bit of mirth entered her tone. “If I think I may want to do something I always have a plan.”
Buddy leaned over and planted a soft kiss on Vespa’s forehead, “I love you, Vespa. All of you. And I understand that we haven’t exactly made any public vows, but I’ll let you in on a secret. I’ve made a personal one.” Her voice lowered to a whisper. “I will not lose you again.”
Vespa wasn’t sure what to say to that. The voices in her head were trying to drown out Buddy’s words, claiming that she was lying, that Vespa’s bad feeling had been right before and it was right now, that Buddy Aurinko wasn’t someone that could be with someone like her for much longer. Vespa shook her head to try to silence them. She needed to think. The hand that was still on her cheek shook with her. The silence stretched on.
Finally, she said, “You can’t know that, Bud.”
“On the contrary,” Buddy said, “I take promises to oneself incredibly seriously. While I can’t predict the future, I can be confident in knowing that I will do everything in my power to make sure we stay together for as long as we’re able.”
Vespa felt the protests crowding her thoughts fade away. Buddy sounded so sure of herself, always so steadfast in everything she did. It was one of the reasons Vespa had fallen in love with her. When Buddy Aurinko looked at you and said that you could steal the rings off of Saturn before anyone else noticed, you believed her. When Buddy Aurinko looked at you in the bed that you shared, wrapped up in the sheets you’d picked, and said that she wouldn’t lose you again, you believed her.
And Vespa, despite every instinct claiming otherwise, believed her.