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Stay alive, but stay the same

She had always wanted more than this. As Lt. Grayson witnesses her future self—lonely; divorced; an adept commander but never a captain; a friend when she’s needed but never anything beyond need—she feels only resentment, a temporary & misplaced disgust that burns against her inner throat. Lt. Grayson knows that she will return home eventually, because, to her detriment, future Kelly still exists to shroud disappointment around her shoulders. She hasn’t been erased by timeline changes. She’ll get out of this one day, she’ll fight forward for it. John and Isaac are still working on a way to get her home, and her time is running out—soon she will forget all of this, her mind cleansed of this pain. It is the only thing she has to look forward to: an end to the shattered mirror that reflects back someone Lt. Grayson simply cannot stomach.

They’re both lonely. She suspects that Kelly is lonelier, because she kisses like it. She’s lonely when she rings at Lt. Grayson’s quarters right after her shift ends, she’s lonely when her hands give an inviting, invigorating brush of skin-to-skin, the same brush Ed had given her after drinking far too much, she’s lonely when she reaches out and touches her younger self on the cheek and a hot electric shock sparks off of her fingertips at the contact. She’s so, so lonely, it is almost pathetic. But Lt. Grayson kisses back like sacrificing vulnerability to something higher, like succumbing. In her mind she says I see you—I understand—I feel it too—I’m burning here too, just as much as you are, don’t act like you have a monopoly on burning, but in your arms the glass of your mirror cuts against my skin and I’m starting to think I have bigger problems than the fact that the lips of my future self are nipping over the curve of my jaw and magnetizing downward to my inner neck. It feels—good.

They’re both lonely. Kelly pushes Lt. Grayson down against the bed of her quarters in a gesture of desperation wearing the facade of dominance. As Kelly kisses down over her collarbone and breasts, the realization is unbearable: she actually isn’t as disappointing as she seems. She hasn’t achieved any of her goals, but she’s saved lives, she’s still dedicated to exploration, and she’s damn good at her job. Things could be much worse. She has a ship full of crew that adore her, that would do anything for her. A roll of wet over her inner thigh, and Lt. Grayson cannot stop her gasping now. They skimmed over the this is wrong hesitation and went too far into the touching, too far into the deep end of the pool and too far out into the edges of known space. Now they’re drifting, alone together and hand in hand, all throughout the cold. Inexplicably, the loneliness lifts as she floats into ascension underneath Kelly’s tongue, her touch a sudden healing.