Sunlight

"Can't you just get a divorce like a normal person?" Severin asked down the flickering commlink. Their skin was tinted blue by the wavering signal. Solis rolled her eyes and twisted in the captain's chair. Her spine crunched loud enough to compete with the grinding of the drive engine.

"Do you know what a slim percentage of the galaxy has divorce? I'll give you a hint, it's slimmer than the percent that has marriage."

"Barbarians," Severin hissed, leaning into the blue flame of their alchemical set to catch the tip of a jarru root cigar on fire. The movement sliced and spread their body like fruit across the ever-cycling screen. It was a good reminder for how far away from home Solis was. Severin reformed standing starchily upright with one hand cupping their elbow, long fingers holding the cigar between their lips.

"No being can own another. It doesn't sound barbaric," Solis teased. She understood Severin, it was a harsh place when things could not be undone. She glanced at her arm, fingers tracing the blue veins that stood out even more starkly against her skin than usual. Long Space Hauls had a way of bloating the body and pressing everything closer to the skin. Especially in a ship like the Siege. She was old and the various pumps were out of rhythm with one another.

"You don't belong to him," Severin's words cracked against Solis. She looked back at the screen, embarrassed the course of her thoughts had been that transparent.

"Of course I don't," Solis said through falsely smiling teeth. "It’s a misunderstanding. I might not even have to see him."

"It would be better if you didn't," they stubbed their Jarru root out into a small dish with pretty glaze patterns beneath the years of ash. Solis kept her focus on the tiny jumping sparks. Severin's shoulders were already relaxing as the Jarru root wound between tense muscles.

"I don't know what to expect," Solis clarified. "But I have walked into worse situations with less intel."

Severin leaned into the counter, bringing one eye close to the screen. It warped as the lens tried to adjust; the translucent glowing white of their sclera melting across the display and as their pupil contracted in a violet iris. Solis instinctively leaned back into the captain's chair and farther from her friend's scrutiny. "I don't believe that."

"I am meeting friends," Solis assured Severin. Their unsure look persisted. "I am."

"I know all your friends. They're me and I am several hours and six Guild Points away."

"The enemy of my enemy is my friend," Solis answered before cutting the connection. Severin had every right to be suspicious, but Solis knew that if they even suspected the whole truth then they would have insisted on coming. And the only thing worse than seeing Hale again alone, would be seeing Hale with an audience.

It had been years since she had seen him, too many to really count; space travel was like that. It extended years, inflated them like the bodies speeding through the vacuum. She moved through the narrow curving hallways of the ship, their panels uncharacteristically smooth and glassy for a vessel. Ancient technology, built by beings of incredible empathy and mental fortitude. Solis couldn't even imagine accessing the complete interface, she imagined it would fry her from the inside out. A feat considering she was the first and only Day Breaker, with untold energy locked inside her cells, but kinetic energy was not the same as psychophysical power. The Siege contained power that would burn something ephemeral out of her leaving her body intact but empty. Solis shivered and wrapped her arms around her body so her fingers were no longer tempted to trail along the unnaturally cold surface.

She had risked that emptiness once already, with Hale and his people. Sometimes she wondered if her sleeping body engaged with the ship, a hand flung out unconsciously until fingers brushed the wall or floor. It would explain the dreams, the nightmares, that persisted.

Her feet were taking her to the medbay, the only room where the lights were strong enough to chase away the gloom of inky glass. Here the panels were silvered to reflect light, dozens of curving mirrors that made it seem the padded table was floating. Solis made no reflection as she crossed the small room and rolled onto the table. Her phantom stretched and reflected in every other room, but not here. With the blinding bright lights she wasn't even a shadow.

She lay on her back and unbuttoned her shirt to reveal a sternum puckered with scars. She pulled the hem from her waistband so she could part the shirt fully. Her skin was tingling from the moment she entered the room. Her scalp, her hands, her face, her throat; anywhere the light touched recharged her cells. She looked especially bluish and corpse-like under this light, soon she would glow a ghostly green. The colour of bioluminescent plankton, or the butterflies Severin kept in their strange nightshade solarium. Here she could be nothing more than her cells, under the bright lights she was only Severin's experiment. A proof of concept. The organelles in her body, plant, animal, and Fergolian, unfurled in the rays. The medbay mimicked the light of a sun, and she was reliant on it for her strength.

Severin explained that was why she had been so weak when Hale found her - took her - because she had been kept from sunlight. Without even understanding it, he had been killing her. What irony? He had come the closest to his goal of destroying her, when he had been trying to save her.

She needed to be strong for what was to come, and to conserve as much energy as possible before then. She hadn't lied to Severin when she had said she didn't know what was waiting for her. It was possible the Hanastari had summoned her to finish what had been started decades ago, that they wanted Solis the Day Breaker, and not Solis of Hale House.

All she knew was that she had to answer, that she could not hide in the darkness of space for this trial to pass. Cowardice now would only prolong the misery, or worse, bring against her greater enemies than Astar Hale, Traslyvaian's Dog of War.