Page 299 of Operation: Defiance

I gather her in my arms—stiffness and pain be damned—and settle for knowing that we’re still here. We’re still aligned. We’re still together.

By the time either one of us is ready to put even an inch of space between us, the rain has stopped.

She helps me with my t-shirt—the last time I tried to lift my arms by myself, I ended up on the floor without knowing how I got there—and we shuffle out to the kitchen. My steps are almost straight, almost steady, and that’s a win I’ll hold onto for the rest of the day.

Raine has to make the coffee. I tried working the grinder at lunch yesterday and it was an unmitigated disaster that sent at least an ounce of beans down the garbage disposal. But soon, we’re on the couch together, Law and Order playing quietly in the background while Raine opens the laptop and checks out News Now Seattle for the latest updates.

“They spelled my name right this time,” she says over the rim of her mug. “But that photo is not me.”

I almost choke on my sip of coffee. The woman on screen has fiery red hair, freckles, and can’t be more than twenty. “Well, we don’t have to worry about you being recognized on the street.”

“No. We definitely do not.” Her thumb drifts to her index finger, stops, and stills. I refused to take my dad’s challenge coin back, and she keeps it close, but I know she misses her ring.

“I think we should file a complaint with the news desk,” I say, hoping to distract her from anything overly serious. “They haven’t covered the marjoram story at all.”

Her mouth opens. Closes. Opens again. Then she laughs, her fingers trailing over my cheek, and shakes her head. “I need a new project now that this particular institutional evil has been eliminated,” she says. “Maybe I’ll find every single recipe in the world that uses marjoram, and convince you to try all of them.”

Her phone buzzes on the coffee table. Raine glances at it, then smiles. “That photo was apparently Inara’s doing. ‘Thought you’d appreciate being able to go out in public without that terrible hat.’”

The two exchange a few messages while I let my body absorb the nectar of the gods and try to decide if today’s the day I try to remain upright long enough to shave. But then I remember the conversation we’d started the previous night. Before the walls had started to blur and I’d passed out with only a couple mumbled words of warning.

“Raine? When this is truly over—when the hearings are done—have you thought about where we should go? We could stay here in Seattle. Or Boston. Canada. France. Italy. Anywhere.”

She mutes the television, and turns to me. “Somewhere new. Somewhere that’s just ours. Italy might be nice. I had an op there once. It felt…alive, but steady. The kind of place that’s been itself for a long time and doesn’t intend to change.”

“I’d like that. Life that’s figured itself out. We can start there.” I set my mug down on the coffee table with a wince, then wrap my arms around her. “I choose you, Raine. Always.”

“I choose you, too.”

Epilogue

One Month Later, Italy

Raine

The toothpaste is wrong.

Not bad. Just…not right. Too minty. Or maybe not minty enough? Something in the texture doesn’t match what my brain expects, and my mouth keeps trying to reject it like a foreign object.

I stand at the sink longer than necessary, staring at the tube like it personally betrayed me.

Out the window, the city is all angles and stone and a language I still have to translate before it fully registers. We’re safe here. But being in a new country means nothing is familiar enough to fade into the background.

Different detergent. Different shampoo. Different tea. The sheets feel almost right, but they’re either not soft enough or too soft, and I can’t tell which one. My skin keeps clocking the difference even when my mind tells me it’s nothing to worry about.

I can live with almost right, though. Because the one part of this that is right is Asher.

Everything else just takes a little work.

Asher comes back from the market while I’m still cataloging what I can tolerate today. If I feel steady enough to explore the city, or if staying inside is safer. Windows open or closed. Whether the church bells two streets over feel like texture or noise.

The door clicks softly behind him. He sets the bags down, and even though we’ve only been here a week, moves easily through the space like he’s already learned its edges. My nervous system is still catching up to the idea that new doesn’t mean dangerous. I’ll get there. Eventually.

“I may have overcorrected,” he says, his cheeks bright red as he starts unloading the bag onto the counter.

Toothpaste. Toothpaste. And more toothpaste.

Six tubes. Different brands. Different labels. One that looks aggressively clinical. One that smells faintly herbal even through the packaging.