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It took them two weeks of travel to reach the big water. They moved slowly, hunting on the way, exploring plants and trees with the help of Elise’s book, making camp each night. Juliette came to love the nighttime routine of staring into the flames for hours before it was time to sleep. Sometimes with one of the kids in her lap, talking her ear off. Sometimes with Courtnee and her friends from Mechanical, enjoying the odd spoils of this new world. Her natural curiosity reveled in everything they found. She was immensely grateful for Elise’s book and of Solo’s extensive knowledge of the world, obtained through years of lonely studying the Legacy books.
There was one person who possibly knew more than the rest of them combined. She barely ever spoke though.
It was during those serene nights around the fire where Juliette thought Charlotte might break and start talking. One night she almost did, only to burst into tears and uncontrollable sobs. They only ever had two conversations, Jules and Charlie, yet she quickly realized that out of their group, she is her closest person. So Jules shuffled from her bedroll, sat next to her and patted her back. She didn’t really know what to say, but was saved by Elise bringing Puppy over, letting him lick the tear streaks off her face.
When Charlotte settled a bit, Jules sent Elise to her tent, it was time for bed.
“Do you want to talk about it?”
When the silence stretched, Jules went on. “I like looking into the fire. Though not as much as looking at the stars. Makes me both happy and sad.” She thought of Luke. Her sweet Luke.
“I wouldn’t even know where to start.”
Jules let the hand rest on her back, enjoying the closeness of another human. The events of the last couple of months truly changed her. Charlie didn’t seem to mind the touch.
“Donnie talked a lot about you, you know.”
“He did?” Before she learned the truth from Charlotte Jules hadn’t trusted him, hadn’t been nice to him at all. It was Luke who’d decided to trust this disembodied voice from silo 1.
“He would be so happy to know that you made it all the way out here. And that you managed to save all these people. He really admired you.”
“He didn’t even know me.”
“He knew you enough. I thought he might be a little bit in love with you.”
It was a surreal idea for Jules. She didn’t know what to say.
The thought of Donald made Charlotte’s words run dry, too sad to go on, so they just sat there.
“It’s called the sea,” Charlotte said about a week later, when they stood on a beach in awe. The kids ran through the sand, squealing with joy. The adults quickly joined them.
Jules was speechless, drinking in the sight of the vast blue, stretching where her eyes could see.
“Take off your shoes,” Charlotte said.
“What?”
“Trust me, take them off,” she spoke as she unlaced her own boots.
Jules followed her example, removed her socks, too. Felt the sand between her toes.
The sound of the waves rushing towards them, this strange, wonderful smell and now the sand beneath her feet, it was unreal. And the view, better than any of those Legacy picture books suggested.
“Well?” Charlotte was looking at her, smiling.
“It’s incredible.”
“It really is. Come on, I can teach you how to swim.” And Charlotte ran towards the others, joining them in their fun.
“I’m sorry, what?” Jules called after her.
Their new settlement was close enough to the beach that they fell asleep every day to the peaceful sound of the rolling water.
Charlotte didn’t know much about fishing or putting crops in the soil, but offered her insights about hunting and gathering, consulting with Solo and the book. However, her best contribution turned out to be knowledge about setting up a camp. She knew all about the tents and how to pitch them right so the rain wouldn’t soak them through. She knew about the latrine and the necessary distance from freshwater, about making enough wood and storing it safe and dry.
One evening, when they stared into the flames again, side by side, Jules asked, “Is this how you lived before? Did you not live in those big aboveground silos that we saw on the horizon? How do you know all this stuff?”
Charlie tensed.
She got better at the talking lately. They both did. Jules gave her time.
All of a sudden Charlotte didn’t want to talk about the world that no longer existed, with states and powerful people in charge of so many, and armies and wars. Practical knowledge from her military days certainly came useful. After days of talking and explaining a multitude of things that she had always taken for granted as the most common and basic knowledge, she just didn’t feel like talking about this. Should she ever even mention it again at all? How do you even begin to explain a war to someone who knew so little?
But then Jules knew things, didn’t she. She witnessed violence, packs of people forming, fighting, only to turn on each other and fight among themselves over food or women. She knew the scheming of the powerful as well as the terrible instincts of the desperate. She lived through it.
She might not know how to swim or what a building is, but this war business Jules might understand.
So she talked. And then she couldn’t stop. Talked about the basic training, about the drone strikes, about the man and his family vanishing in front of her eyes and how she went down to the mess hall to eat a sandwich after. How when she finally broke, Donnie got her a good doctor to help. And then she talked about her family, her parents, even Thurman, who was so much like a father, before everything, before all of this. And then she talked about how on one sunny day she saw her brother and her friends on an event near Atlanta, how the earth was still moist from the recent rain and the place was packed with happy people and then explosions rained at them from the sky and next thing she knew she was put through orientation that raised more questions than answers and then she was so cold and Donnie was there and he told her that she slept for hundreds of years and that everyone she knew was dead and everything she knew was gone forever.
And she cried.
Her retelling gathered a small crowd, but no one said anything.
Jules’ hand drew steady circles on her back.
They stayed up longer than most others.
“Do you hate me for what I did? For what I used to do as my job?” Charlie finally asked with a hoarse voice.
Jules didn’t have any hate in her left, certainly not for the woman who gave them hope, gave them the word of the green paradise.
“You know my actions killed almost everyone in 18. I have probably killed more than you did.”
“You did everything you could to help them. None of that shit was your fault.”
“Yeah, some people keep saying that. It’s not true.”
Charlotte looked at her.
“It’s not,” Jules insisted. After a stretch of silence she asked: “How did you cope with it?”
“Do I look like I coped with it?” Charlie chuckled.
“What about that doctor Donald got you? What did he do exactly?”
“Well, he helped. We talked regularly. And there were pills, but those don’t exist anymore, so.”
“Hmm. You got nothing else?”
Drinking was an option, but a really bad one. Besides that, there used to be another thing that worked for when it all got too much in her mind. Charlie almost said it, almost mentioned that being two knuckles deep inside a woman used to do the trick for her, albeit temporarily. But she bit her tongue in the last moment, didn’t feel comfortable saying it. She shook her head and leaned against Jules’ shoulder instead.
Juliette tensed and then relaxed, resumed her gentle stroke over Charlotte’s back. Charlie ran her hand up and down Juliette’s shin. Comfort for comfort.
Juliette loved to sleep outside, under the stars and the moon. Only on the rainy nights she hid inside a tent. The rain hit her face in the dead of night. For a moment she was disoriented, thinking back to the deep, pitch-black waters of silo 17, before she shook the sleep from her head and realized where she was.
The few people that slept outside that night scurried to their tents, with hands full of bedding.
Jules hurried to the tent she rarely shared with the kids. Solo was snoring sprawled over her spot, probably fell asleep when he put Elise and Puppy to bed.
She turned and ran through the thickening rain to a smaller tent, unzipped the flap. Two eyes peered at her.
“Well, get in. Come on.”
Jules threw her bedding on the free space next to Charlotte, pushed inside and zipped up behind her.
“I didn’t wake you?”
“No, I wasn’t sleeping.”
Sometimes they slept next to each other outside, shook each other out of bad dreams.
She turned on a small torch hanging from the roof of the tent. Juliette spread her bedroll and climbed into her sleeping bag.
“Wait, you can’t sleep like that. Here, off with those.”
Charlotte rummaged through her sack and handed her a spare undershirt.
“It’s fine.”
“You’ll get sick.”
“No, I won’t,” Jules said, but took the clothes and extinguished the torch. Charlie made a show of looking the other way, even in the dark.
Juliette never changed in front of other people and only went to wash herself in the water after dark.
“It was the air in 17. My father noticed some strange things on the dead. And on the living. There were several things I shouldn’t have survived. Only I did.”
“Right, Donnie told me. That was Anna’s doing, he said. She reversed the thing that was supposed to wipe that silo, instead it’s healing, keeping bodies together.”
Juliette thought back to when Charlie explained to her about the clouds of invisible robots in the air, killing the cleaners. “My scars are disappearing. Slowly, but they are. In a few years, I don’t think one of them will be left.”
“That’s great. Will you let me teach you how to swim then, since you refuse to do it now?”
“It’s not just about that. I almost died underwater in 17, I’m not keen on doing that again.”
“That is what swimming is for. Teach you how not to drown.”
Jules put the pile of wet clothes to the corner of the tent and slid into the shirt and the sleeping bag, sighing. Charlie turned to her, making out the vague shape in the shadows.
“And I don’t think people would care about your scars, really. A lot of us are still pretty beat up. Have you seen my arm?”
The gunshot wound was nasty, but according to her father it was healing.
“At least you only have one. My skin is messed up all over. I look like a roast pig after being carved up.”
“Oh, poor you. Well, yours don’t hurt anymore, do they? Cause mine hurts like a bitch and I still can’t raise my arm.”
Jules enjoyed Charlie’s occasional swearing. She would fit right in down in Mechanical. There was no more Mechanical though. She chased the thought away. “No, no, they are fine. Don’t hurt. They are sensitive though.”
“Hmm?”
She didn’t mean to say that. When Lukas touched them, she wanted to beg him not to stop, to keep touching her like that forever, though was always too shy to voice that thought. She wished she had told him when she had the chance.
“It feels… I mean. They feel good when touched gently. They tingle, but in a good way.” She thought to a few days back, when Charlie ran her fingers up and down her shin. Even through the leg of her coveralls it felt good. “I don’t like to talk about the stupid scars.”
She huddled deeper into the sleeping bag and zipped it all the way up even though it was warm.
A lot of Charlotte’s friends from the army had scars. Not her though, not the drone pilot. All she got was a messed up head and soft body.
“You look good.”
“Just go to sleep.”
“You look good. Try not to stress too much about it. Maybe just enjoy the tingles before they disappear.”
Enjoy the tingles.
She touched the scars on her thigh, the ugly raised skin puckered into weird shapes. It felt good. She wished it was Luke touching her. Or Charlotte.
She stopped and went to sleep.
She should not have said anything. Shouldn’t have even changed her clothes, she wasn’t that wet. Could have just slept damp. And then none of this would be happening. First time it happened the very next day, when the two of them helped pitch a tent for Rickson and Hannah and their little family. The young pair wanted some privacy from the younger kids, whispered about having another child.
Jules already helped set up several tents, she knew how to do it. Yet one moment Charlotte appeared behind her, sneaked a hand over her arm and adjusted the rods she was putting together. It was over in a second, left a trail of gooseflesh and Jules suddenly had no idea what she had been doing at all.
Another time they were in a small party trudging through the woods, looking for something edible or useful to gather while Solo hunted. The air was hot and heavy with moisture from the previous nights’ rain. Jules offered her canteen to Charlotte.
“Drink?”
“Sure,” Charlotte said, a bit out of breath. Their fingers brushed as she took it. “I can’t wait to be back in the water tonight. This heat is shit.” She took a few gulps and returned the canteen. “Thanks,” she said as she brushed her hand down Jules’ arm from shoulder all the way to the elbow. She lingered there just a moment longer, drew a circle with her thumb and just like that she turned around and caught up with the group.
Despite already having some water right before, Juliette drank again.
It kept happening over and over. A few days after their party returned, when they sat side by side, looking into the fire after an early dinner, Juliette was thinking on when had this become their routine as she drew comforting shapes on Charlie’s back. They did that almost every evening, only sometimes they looked at the sunset instead of the flames.
Charlotte put her hand on her knee, rubbed up and down her thigh. Juliette held a breath, not wanting it to stop. She should say that. Just tell her not to stop. She wondered what would happen, if Charlie would listen to her.
She had wasted a chance in the past. Not keen on repeating her mistake, she pushed out: “Don’t stop.”
“Hmm?”
She mumbled it. Dammit.
“I wanted to ask if… fuck, Charlie…” the hand on her thigh disappeared and before she could think on it or speak more nonsense, she grabbed the hand and pushed it right back where it was.
Charlie looked at her patiently, hoping. Jules looked elsewhere when she asked, “Do you wanna get out of here? For a walk?”
And Charlie flashed her a brilliant smile. “Yeah. Let’s go.”
They were giddy and held hands as they made their way through the village of tents and firepits. People nodded at them, wished them good night. They couldn’t get away fast enough. Not wanting to chance the woods at nightfall, they followed the beach. Jules kept a fast pace and occasionally glanced back to make sure if they were far enough already, never letting go of the hand in hers.
Every time their eyes met a wave of joy hit Juliette’s chest. Over and over, like the sea lapping at the sand beneath their feet.
Charlie grabbed her and connected their lips. Jules melted into the kiss, tightened their embrace. She yelped as her legs were pushed from under her, Charlie caught her inches above the sand. “Gotcha.”
“Asshole. Get down here,” Jules pulled her into another kiss. Charlie was soft against her and despite her eagerness and the playful beginning, she was gentle when touching her.
Legs tangled and sand in their hair, Jules wanted to live in that moment forever. Until Charlie was opening her coveralls, which she favored even during warm days.
“Wait, wait.”
“What?” Charlie looked up from kissing her neck. “You don’t want to?”
“No, no, I do. I mean just… fuck. The light, there’s too much light.”
The sun was setting behind the trees and the sky above the water was slowly turning inky blue.
“Really, Jules? I told you you look good, I don’t mind the scars. If anything I want to touch them all over and see you squirm.”
Jules opened and closed her mouth. Cursed herself for her terrible way with words and hideous body. “Maybe after the sun sets completely and the sky is dark? The moon is getting smaller, I think that would be ok.”
They sat in the sand and watched the waves rushing towards them and slinking back. Charlotte was pressed behind her, rested a chin on her shoulder and held her. Jules relaxed into the embrace. She lasted all of five minutes before she turned her head and found Charlie’s lips again.
The arms circling her got busy, touching her wherever they could reach, thighs, belly, chest. Jules squirmed and made small noises.
“Let me under? I won't look.”
“Ok, yeah.”
The clothes were opened with urgency. Jules only stopped kissing her when breathing got too hard as Charlie busied her good arm between her legs. She leaned her head back and rocked into the motions.
“That's it, baby.”
Lost in the ministrations, relishing the gentle hand on the scars on her belly as well as the other one ruining her sanity, she tried to keep her eyes open, to see the sky.
She slumped after she came and needed a moment, turned for a lazy snuggle into Charlie’s neck and a soft kiss.
They looked at the waves together, slowly getting swallowed by darkness.
“So, will you sleep in mine tonight?”
If anyone heard them, they didn't say a thing. Charlie couldn't keep quiet. Jules reached up, pressed a thumb to her lips, fingers caressing her cheek. She didn't stop though, kissed her and licked her until Charlotte pushed on her shoulder, mumbling about “too much.”
They were hardly the only ones and since the making of the first cabin was a painfully slow process of trial and error, they all just had to get used to it. Jules was glad that at least the tents were not see-through.
“Put something over your mouth next time.”
“It's your fault! You're fucking amazing and then you go around blaming me. Seriously.”
“You're full of shit.” Jules climbed up her body and silenced her rebuttal with a kiss.
“And you're fucking perfect, Juliette Nichols.” They kissed some more. “If only you weren't a chicken about swimming.”
“Not this again. Alright, you know what? Tomorrow. You and me, in the water and let's just get it over with, ok?”
“Really?”
“Yeah, dammit. We are doing this.”
Charlie could hardly believe it. “Alright. Yeah, this is great. So, you're not scared anymore?”
Jules was honestly terrified, but Charlie would be right there with her and wouldn’t let her drown.
“I trust you.”