I'm not over it. This is unfinished and awful and it Does cut off right when things are getting interesting because i'm a bastard
Olesya watched Stratt become even more impossibly fine tuned and machine-like, even less human, as the final launch day creeps up on them. She tries to steal the little moments they had before, bumping elbows in the hall, talking mechanics and engineering in her office, their one sided ribbing and the tiny breaths of relaxation Stratt allowed herself once in a blue moon, when even she couldn't bear the strain. Olesya misses the glimpses she used to catch of Eva sometimes, the ones she teases Stratt relentlessly about but keeps tucked safely against her chest, pulling them out to turn over when she lays in bed at night and stares out at the moon, and knows she can't really see it growing dimmer, but she can feel it deep in her bones, the creeping absence of a light that has always been cold and pale but beautiful in its own right.
Stratt doesn't stop once in the final three days. Olesya knows she must sleep but she never sees her trailer door locked, and when she finds herself wandering the base at night, there's always a telltale light on in the admin building. She's been growing restless as the launch draws closer, not nervous, not anticipatory, just...buzzing with energy, with the fact of what she's preparing to do. It'll be like going to sleep, she thinks, it'll be barely a night to me.
T-minus 20 hours to launch. There's no clock, but everyone knows, everyone is keeping their own neurotic count. She saw her mother yesterday, she kissed her goodbye, she told her to keep warm, and her mother smiled, her eyes glassy, and said she'd hardly notice.
She doesn't know when, exactly, she decides to walk the almost-familliar path to Stratt's trailer. The one beside it sits empty, as it has for days, its occupant lying still in the medical bay. They all pretend that it makes sense, because there's no time to do anything else. Olesya feels floaty, unmoored, her stomach twisting with somrthing that isn't quite nerves; she doesn't have a long enough life left to be nervous, but it is her last night on Earth, she'd rather spend it on something good.
The lights are on in the trailer, and she feels like she's stepped into a perfect moment, like the way has been laid for her and all she has to do is walk it. So she does. It carries her down the worn path and up the creaking metal steps, and when the door opens, she's left on her own, with nothing but her hand on the doorframe and her foot over the threshold. She's not a woman who shies from things like this, as a rule, but she is nervous, now.
'Ilyukhina.' Stratt says, raising one brow by a tiny fraction. There's no tone to pick out in her voice. She just sounds tired.
Olesya smiles, and takes a chance. 'Eva! You are in kicking distance of bed. Is cause for celebration!'
Stratt's lips tighten, and her gaze flickers over to the cot Olesya knows is sitting tucked into the corner. She wears strain in everything she does, and always has, but it's been especially bad since the accident. Her shoulders are tense and hunched, the worry lines between her eyebrows and etched across her forehead more prominent than ever in the yellow trailer light. Olesya remembers what it was like to hug her, to feel the tension coiled in her arms and back, the way her breaths came shallow, smothered, as if there wasn't enough room in her ribcage, as if the weight of the world was piled on her chest. She remembers the brief, rough warmth of Stratt's skin as Olesya brushed her cheek with her own.
She wants to know more of that.
She wants to know more of her.
Someone else might say that it was far too late to be realizing things like this, but she's never liked that idea, so she shuffles into the traiker, and she is not stopped.
'I...have idea for celebration. We do not need to leave.'
