Chapter 15

For one spectacular moment, I'm holding her hand.

Then, I'm falling down a glittering golden vortex, being swept through the boundary like a snowflake in the wind, and I'm vaguely aware of Elijah next to me and the rest of the crew tumbling just behind—

And then I'm lying face down on the ground.

The ground. It's rough, mossy, the opposite of the Other Place's frictionless surfaces. It smells like dirt, and plants, and moisture and cool stone and nothing like the lightning made solid that we've been breathing for twenty years. My fingers close around the pulsing purple tendrils of moss, and even though my head is aching with the sudden assault on the senses, I drink it all in. The colors, the smells, the textures. The world.

I hear Eli groaning as he pushes himself up to all fours beside me, and I heave myself up onto an elbow so I can look at him. His hair is in his face from our fall, and his nose is wrinkled up from the sensory overload, and he's smiling, wider and freer than he has in God knows how long.

"Hey, Bill," he says, and he laughs in wild relief. And I grab his hand in mine, and I laugh too.

And the others, all 201 of them, are lying and sitting and staggering to their feet around us, in this cave full of shimmering columns of stone stretching up to a ceiling I can barely see. They're also laughing, and hugging and crying and touching everything they can reach.

Until they're not, until they're turning, pointing, yelling, because we aren't the only ones here. At the center of the cavern is a blazing ball of light, two figures at its core and three others around its periphery, and I don't have to scramble up and push my way through the crowd to know who they are, but I do anyway.

And I see Kris, heat rising off his skin and glowing from his eyes, looking too pleased with himself for how close he is to destroying a dimension and maybe himself.

And I see Cleo, and she's shaking with the effort of holding two universes together, and she's shining like the sun.

***

The time between the end and the beginning was only seconds, only a few vibrations of the universe, but to Cleo it felt like an eternity.

The end: A hole opened up in the Other Place, and Cleo was vaguely aware of 203 somethings streaming out of it. She was a bit distracted, though, by the strain of keeping all of existence from ripping apart along the weakened seam they'd just busted open.

Very good.Halvorsen's voice was too big, too happy, taking up too much space in Cleo's head. Now let go, Ms. McQueary. Let it fall—

Nope, Cleo thought, letting the refusal reclaim her mind. It's over, jackass.

Another end: Somewhere, outside of the everything that was burning through Cleo, she finished that countdown. And Ros knew what to do, because they could feel it, and they gripped the syringe tighter in their hand.

"Kal!"they yelled, and threw the cure into the air—

And with a crack, and a curdling scream, Kaleisha appeared at Halvorsen's side and plunged the needle into his neck.

Another end: Cleo breathed out, weary and triumphant, and waited for the light around Halvorsen to fizzle out. But instead it got brighter, shone more strongly through the cracks in the artifice of his body, even as his eyes dulled and his arms sagged—and Cleo's awareness was split, one last time, by a white-hot crackle of lightning.

The pain was unimaginable, every cell threatening to combust as the Other Place's mortal blast tore the very bonds of my molecules apart. So was the falling, falling away from paradise, through the golden river between, toward this frozen wasteland and certain death—

But no, not certain, never certain, because the dark energy was still coursing through my veins, and with the resolve built over a lifetime of wanting it was easy

(not easy, it was agony and nineteen years of sleepless feverish nights tying and retying the knots of a body that wanted to unravel, but what other choice did I have?)

easy to keep it together, to defy the entropy they'd planted in me, Ms. McQueary, long enough to see the plan through—

Cleo wrenched her mind away from Halvorsen's memories. And she saw, in the real world, that without his powers there was nothing keeping Halvorsen's body from unspooling into a stream of dark energy—

oh—

and Cleo knew, she knew how to fix everything, and it was perfect. But it wasn't, not really, because she was watching Halvorsen's face breaking apart in front of her. She spared herself a fraction of a second—or maybe a long, uninterrupted moment—to recall what it felt like to be seven years old, watching Dr. Dark Matter hold the stars in his hands on television as he told her that anything was possible.

No—her dad watched those videos with her, every time. He was the one who had shown her the stars first.

And so she let that feeling slip away into the space between universes, leaving only the broken man before her and the knowledge of all the things she'd been wrong about.

Are you happy now, Ms. McQueary?

Not really, no. But I think I will be soon.

Hmm.

And somewhere, Halvorsen's body fizzled away into gold-dark light. And somewhere else, the light wrapped itself around Ros's fingers.

The beginning: Ros gently, ever so gently, let those strands of dark energy flow into the Other Place. Kaleisha, the muscles in her arms and the energy running through her straining, bent the boundary back into shape, and Cleo wrenched the door closed, particle by particle. There were hands—nothing like any hands Cleo had ever felt or seen—helping them, holding the edges together and drinking the light back into themselves. And when she put an ear up to what was left of the gap, she heard a voice, or voices, that sounded kind of like her dad and kind of like her mom and kind of like nothing at all:

Thank you, Cleo McQueary.

Of course. It's the least we could do. We'll do our best not to mess with your shit anymore, okay?

Something like a wry chuckle rippled through Cleo's blood. Same to you.

***

Cleo opened her eyes to a smothering feeling, and panicked for a split second before she realized that it wasn't Halvorsen's hands or the choking golden air of the Other Place—it was her friends. They were hugging her so tightly that she couldn't move if she'd wanted to, Abe laughing and ruffling her hair, Kaleisha kissing her cheek and getting her own happy tears all over her, Ros trying to cling to her and check for injuries at the same time. And Cleo clung to all of them right back, reveling in the realness of their bodies, their joy, and letting the seconds tick by just like that. There was no rush, now. No more countdowns.

Eventually, Kaleisha broke the group hug and, wiping her nose, pointed behind her to the sloping sides of the cavern.

"Look, Cleo," she said. Cleo grabbed her hand and, together, they stumbled forward.

An absolute hostof people in blue-gray Providence uniforms were crawling to their feet and spreading out across the cave, eyes permanently wide and mouths permanently agape. Two hundred and three of them, if Cleo had to hazard a guess. And some of them were directing their awestruck elation at the cave or the moss or each other, but a lot of them were looking at Cleo and her friends—

And then the breath was knocked out of Cleo's body by a hurtling collection of golden hair and gangly limbs, and there were arms wrapped around her middle in a hug so forceful it lifted her feet off the ground and spun her around.

"Cleo," Elijah Lucas said in her ear, "you found us."

A smile spread across Cleo's face, and she squeezed him right back. "'Course I did."

Elijah pulled back, his green eyes shining, and started rattling off questions in a way that made Cleo certain that they would get along famously. "How did you do it? Did you speak to the Other Place? Where did Kris—"

But then he saw something over Cleo's shoulder and cut himself off. "I'm actually going to—I want to introduce myself to your—"

And Cleo only had a second to process what had just happened before—

"Hey."

She heard that voice, and felt a hand on her shoulder, and spun around and saw that face,and her body reacted before her brain even had a chance to put it all together. She scrambled backward, knocking the hand off her shoulder, and felt her breath go cold and hard in her lungs. Everything—the purple-green cavern, the crowd of crew members, Elijah determinedly talking the ears off her friends—fell away.

It was Billie. No, not Billie. But yes, Billie, and she looked exactly the same—scowly, beautiful, not a day older than she'd been when she disappeared in a flash of light—save for the Providence uniform she was wearing. Her hand was still outstretched, still frozen in the space where Cleo had been, and her eyes were wide open.

"Hi there," she said, the corner of her mouth almost twitching into a smile.

"Fuck," Cleo breathed.

Billie frowned at her. And God, if Cleo had ever thought that this Billie might be different enough that she could separate the two in her head, that dream was crumbling down around her. Cleo knew that frown so well, had loved that face so recklessly, and to see it pointed at her so uncomprehendingly was more than she could stand.

"Sorry." Cleo screwed her eyes up, just for the second she needed to stop herself from doing something irredeemably pathetic like crying, and then opened them again. Billie—Captain Lucas? Are we making distinctions again?—had lowered her hand, but was still watching her warily. "I just—you wouldn't know, you can't, because you—you don't know me, Captain Lucas, but—"

"Cleo."

That stopped Cleo's rambling. How did—

Captain Lucas—Billie?—licked her lips nervously, which was one of the absolute worst things she could have done for Cleo's fragile resolve, and stepped closer. Cleo could feel—shit, she could feel the woman's molecules vibrating, and the dark matter flowing between and around them, all of it solid and warm and still glowing with residual dark-gold energy. Real.

"I do know you." Billie's voice was soft, and as close to tentative as Cleo had ever heard it. "I—I could see you from the Other Place. I saw almost everything."

Cleo's hands came up to cover her face of their own accord. She could feel the shame rising, hot and caustic, in her cheeks. "Jesus," she mumbled. "I am so, so sorry."

"What are you apologizing for?" Billie said, and for a woman who'd been put in the unenviable position of having to break up with her computer's girlfriend, she sounded so, so kind.

Cleo lowered her fingers an inch to see Billie still staring at her. She was close enough to reach out and touch. There was nothing Cleo had ever wanted to do more, and nothing she had ever known with more certainty would trigger the immediate heat-death of her universe.

"For being so embarrassing." Cleo hated how small her voice sounded. "I let things get way out of hand with"—with you—"with your hologram."

Billie nodded, slow and careful. "You loved her."

"Yeah. And I know that's insane, and I don't want to make things weird for you, so I'll just"—launch myself back into space—"I'll leave you alone."

Billie's eyes fell closed, and Cleo saw her take an unsteady breath. "Right," she said, and her voice was rough with emotion the way Cleo had heard it get just hours ago. "I understand."

Cleo blinked. She was seized suddenly by the overwhelming feeling that she was missing something. Her hands dropped to her sides. "Understand? Understand what?"

Billie rubbed a hand over her mouth, eyes locked on the ground between them. "That you don't, uh. Want me."

Something in Cleo's chest crashed down through her stomach and into her feet. Her heart, maybe.

"What." Stupid. She sounded stupid.

"I should be embarrassed," Billie said, "because I was watching you all that time and it was so hard to distinguish... I mean, I let myself"—she pinched the bridge of her nose—"I love you too, Cleo. That's how I—that's what you grabbed on to, to open the boundary. Me, reaching out for you. Except you didn't—you don't know me, so I can't expect you to—"

"Stop talking, Billie." Cleo's voice came out strangled and trembling, as she remembered. The hand on her heart. That gentle, insistent tugging. That feeling that had no words, except maybe it did, and they were I do, Cleo, I love you, it's stupid how much I love you. "You—wait. You love me? So much that I felt it across dimensions?"

"Of course," Billie said, like it was the simplest thing in the world.

Cleo was falling. Flying. Jumping to lightspeed. Breathe through it, McQueary. "Just like you said you would." Billie inclined her head curiously at that. "Holo-Billie," Cleo clarified. "She said that you'd feel the same way she did, but I didn't believe her."

Billie's eyes narrowed into that Rubik's Cube–solving stare that took all of Cleo's breath and doubt away. "I'm sorry, you thought I wouldn't want you?"

"I don't know why," Cleo said, taking a tiny step closer just to hear Billie's breath hitch in her chest, the way she'd known it would. "Something about lightning not striking twice?"

"Idiot." There was a smile creeping across Billie's face, wide and dimpled and full of desperate hope. "That's a myth. Lightning strikes twice all the time."

"Then I thought you'd be different, maybe." Cleo tipped her head up to look into Billie's eyes. "But you're not. You're still you."

"I've always been me, Cleo."

"Yeah, but most folks are okay only having one of themselves. You had to go and duplicate yourself just to stress me out."

Billie breathed out a chuckle, and the puff of air on her face was the most electrifying thing Cleo had ever felt. "Right. Just to stress you out. Not like my foresight saved the galaxy or anything."

"Hey now, I think I'm the one who just saved the galaxy." Cleo grinned at Billie for the first time, or the thousandth, and definitely not the last. "But distinctions aren't important."

The first part of Billie that Cleo learned how to touch was her chest. Softly at first, then firmer, she spread her hand out over Billie's heart, so she could feel it pounding for her. So she could shut up the tiny this isn't happening part of her brain with a yes, yes, it is, feel that, she's alive.

Billie, for her part, reached for Cleo's face like she had so many times before. But this time, she didn't stop herself, and she didn't flicker away into nothing. Instead, gloriously, her fingertips brushed Cleo's cheeks. Softly at first, tickling the tiny hairs there with featherlight strokes, then firmer, until Billie was cradling Cleo's head in her hands. Cleo's eyelids fluttered shut involuntarily when Billie rested their foreheads together. It was ridiculous, really, how hungry she'd been for this, how much the want had been burning through her, how close she was to doing something irredeemably pathetic like crying, now that it was finally happening.

But then she looked back up into Billie's Earth-green eyes, and saw that Billie was already crying. So Cleo didn't have to feel embarrassed about a goddamn thing.

There was nothing softly-at-first about it when she kissed Billie. It was fireworks and Cleo surging up on her toes to press closer, galaxies colliding and Billie tangling her fingers tightly into Cleo's curly hair. It was like stars exploding, Cleo thought as she learned how Billie tasted and touched and loved her, into the stuff the universe was made of.

***

(If she'd wanted to, Cleo would have heard Kaleisha sighing happily and Elijah laughing triumphantly. She would have seen Abe looking away with an embarrassed grin, and Ros rolling their eyes fondly. But Cleo was busy. Time for all that later. No more countdowns.)

***

Eventually they all wandered away into the branching tunnels in search of soft places to sleep, because despite the crew's exhilaration at being free, they were all remembering how rough switching dimensions was on the human body. And Cleo and Abe and Kaleisha and Ros, muscles aching and minds overwhelmed with the what next of it all, agreed that sleeping for no less than fourteen hours before trying to do anything else was the best—"Nay, the only," Cleo said—course of action.

So Cleo gave Kaleisha what she hoped was a passable don't come a-knocking look, which Kaleisha of course returned with an even saucier eyebrow wiggle. And Cleo grabbed Billie's hand, which was just as strong and calloused and warm as she'd known it would be, and tugged her away down one of the glowing tunnels.

As soon as Cleo found the perfect little chamber off one of the minor passages, one with an extra-cushiony layer of moss on the floor, Billie dragged her inside and pushed her up against the wall. The luminescent moss felt warm against Cleo's back, but Billie felt even warmer as she planted one elbow next to Cleo's head and ran her other hand up her ribs.

"What do you want, love?" she said roughly, softly, like the words would shatter them both if spoken too insistently.

"Whatever you got." Cleo fisted her hands in Billie's shirt and pulled her down into another supernova kiss. "Could you tell, from over there?" she whispered against Billie's lips. "Could you tell how bad I wanted—"

Billie groaned into the kiss and pressed closer, so Cleo felt her all over—heart beating, atoms pulsing, everything about her radiating heat and love and need. "Wasn't sure," she said, and buried her face in the curve of Cleo's neck. "Couldn't tell what you were thinking."

Cleo couldn't stop the high, trembling sound that came out of her at the feel of Billie's mouth on her skin. "Well, can you"—Billie ran her tongue over the dip above her collarbone, and Cleo gasped—"shit, Billie, can you tell now?"

Cleo felt Billie smile, then press a leg between her own, right where she was burning hottest, then smile even wider as the back of Cleo's head thumped against the wall. "Might have some idea," Billie whispered.

It wasn't long before her hand was slipping under the waistband of Cleo's pants, and her fingers were slipping inside her. Cleo expected Billie to make short work of her from there, but instead Billie froze as soon as she touched wet, her breath stopping in her chest and her forehead dropping to Cleo's again, like she'd been at sea for years, and Cleo was her homeland.

"Keep going," Cleo whispered, her hands coming up to Billie's cheek, Billie's hair, Billie's mouth.

"I just—you feel—"

"I know." Cleo let her words hang between their lips. "I need to feel you."

In one fluid motion, Billie breathed in and moved her fingers. Cleo moaned and clung tighter to her, moaned as she stroked in deeper, moaned with each curve of Billie's hand. She hadn't realized how deep the feeling went, that feeling of needing to crawl out of her skin that she'd had for weeks, or months, or maybe her whole life. Now Billie was breaking her open, peeling back those layers of desperation one by one.

Cleo came faster than she would have thought possible, clenching around Billie's perfect fingers and muffling her cries in the curve of Billie's neck. Billie held her through it, letting Cleo tremble against her and running her other hand through Cleo's hair.

"Fuck," Billie whispered, and Cleo could feel her trembling too. "You're so beautiful."

Cleo smiled into Billie's skin, nibbled lazily at her earlobe. "Your turn."

She got Billie's uniform off in (if she did say so herself) record time, and got to work learning the body that had haunted her dreams. She learned that Billie was ticklish between her ribs and at the tops of her knees, which was hilarious, and when Cleo touched her there she would squirm and Cleo would giggle and Billie would roll her eyes and drag Cleo back up her body for another breathless kiss. She learned that Billie liked having her stupid ponytail pulled, just a little, just enough to make her gasp and dig her fingertips deeper into Cleo's skin. And she learned—once she had Billie spread out on the mossy floor, both of them naked and glowing purple, blue, and green together—that she could bury her head between Billie's legs and pull the most ungodly sounds she'd ever heard out of her.

She got Billie off like that, Billie's hands tugging at her curls and Billie's legs wrapped around her and Billie's taste filling her mouth. As soon as she was done, Billie rolled her over, kissed her deeply, and ran a hand between her legs. Cleo was already wet again, and Billie smirked at the feeling of it.

"Yeah, yeah, don't get too cocky," Cleo murmured.

"I won't." Billie ran the tip of her tongue over Cleo's nipple, and Cleo gasped. "But I do plan to keep fucking you until neither of us can see straight. If you're game."

Cleo groaned. "Hell yes. Yes, Billie. I think I actually need you to never stop fucking me."

Billie looked up from kissing her way down Cleo's stomach and grinned. "I think I can make that happen."

Cleo learned a lot of things that night: She learned that Billie was happy to drive her crazy with her mouth, with her fingers, with every tool in her arsenal designed to dissolve Cleo into a babbling mess; she learned that, once she asked for it, Billie could always find the spot inside her that would make her come like mountains crashing to the Earth. She learned that Billie sometimes needed it soft, needed it tender, needed Cleo's hand on her cheek and Cleo's mouth at her ear whispering, I love you, Billie, I love you so goddamn much. Most of all, she learned that Billie just felt right, like a home she'd grown up in, like a movie she could quote from memory, like a dream she'd had every night of her life—

Cleo's eyes flew open. "Shit!"

"What?" Billie looked up from eating Cleo out. It meant that she wasn't doing that thing with her tongue anymore, but the instant look of concern on her face was so endearing that Cleo couldn't mind too much. "What's wrong?"

"Nothing." Cleo ran her fingers through Billie's now loose and sex-ruffled hair with a small laugh. "I just realized that I wimped this."

Billie leaned into Cleo's touch and frowned. "This? This specifically?"

"Precisely that thing you just did with your tongue, yes."

"Then how did you not know I was—"

"I thought it was a dream. A series of dreams, actually." Cleo sat up. Billie did too, with just the faintest of grumbles. "A few weeks into our spaceflight, I started having these horny dreams about you. Like every night, Billie, it was absolute torture. I guess I just didn't realize they were visions."

Billie cracked a smile and brushed a curl out of Cleo's face. "Dumbass."

Cleo swatted Billie's hand away, but when Billie leaned in to suck at her neck again she tilted her head to give better access. "Sorry I didn't immediately assume that my wet dreams were a sign you were actually pining away for me from your interdimensional space prison. How silly of me."

"I forgive you," Billie said, her chuckle muffled in Cleo's skin. She bit softly at her shoulder. "Did you dream this too?"

"No, this part's all new," Cleo said, and she ran her hands down Billie's back to pull her closer.