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Title: Day's End
Rating: PG
Prompt: Family
Summary: The end of a long day.
Hera’s asleep. She’s asleep, and the warm weight of her is heavy in Sharon’s arms, head lolling on Sharon’s shoulder as Sharon leans against the wall of her rack, half asleep herself. Its been a long day, a long week, even, too few pilots for too many jobs, and it seems like she’s hardly seen Hera at all, only enough time to put her down at the crèche in the morning, and pick her up again in the evenimg, then ten minutes with her before Sharon has to go to bed, so that she’s awake enough to fly the next morning, and she knows that Helo hardly sees Hera any more than she does.
God, how Sharon wishes that it didn’t have to be this way.
But it is, and, barring a miracle, its going to stay this way for a while, so Sharon’s just going to have to manage.
The hatch creaks open, and Helo slips in, shutting it behind him, and Sharon’s heart goes out to him, because he looks so very, very tired. She shifts Hera so that one arm is free, and holds it out, hugging him the second he gets close enough, and turning her head up for his kiss.
After a few moments they separate, and Helo sinks to the bed next to her, brushing fingers over Hera’s hair. Sharon presses her head to his shoulder, taking comfort from his presence.
Helo moves, and Sharon slips forwards slightly as he gets behind her, squeezing in so that he surrounds them, encompasses them, tucking Sharon’s head under his chin, moving his arms so that they wrap around Sharon’s midriff.
“Love you,” he mutters into her hair.
“Love you too,” she says back, and relaxes, letting her limbs go loose. Hera moves a little, snuffles, and one of Helo’s hands comes up, covering the back of her head.
Sharon rests there, holding her daughter, both of them in her husband’s arms, and thanks God for her good fortune.
Title: Mazes
Rating: PG-13
Prompt: Lost
Summary: Sharon dreams of mazes.
She is on a base star, she knows that, but there are no rooms, just endless corridors, twisting and curving, forking and rejoining, all of them identical, no way to tell them apart.
And Sharon is running. Running as fast as she can because of Hera, she can’t find Hera, and Hera’s meant to be there, and Sharon will find her if only she can run fast enough, because she’s just around the corner, Sharon can hear her, laughing, and singing tuneless nonsense.
Sharon speeds up, right, left, left, right, a twist that turns her 180 degrees, right, left, left again, and she sees the edge of a bit of fabric, disappearing around the next left turn, and its Hera’s blanket, the one she has taken to chewing, constantly. Sharon finds one last burst of speed, turns the corner, and stops.
Dead end, nothing there but grey metal walls, and she turns to re trace her steps, but the way back’s a dead end too, and she’s stuck in a box, nowhere to run, and the walls are moving into her, and no, God no, and Sharon can’t breathe-
She sits up in bed, sweat-sticky sheets tangled around her legs, and Helo next to her, opening bleary eyes and making noises of concern, reaching out a hand to give a comforting pat to whichever part of her he can reach (her right hip), and she scrambles out of the bed, towards Hera’s crib, praying, praying to God that she’s there-
And she is. She’s sleeping peacefully, chewing at her blanket, and Sharon reaches out and strokes her soft curls, gently as she can, and Hera blinks a little, then shut her eyes again, breathing deep and even.
“Sharon,” says Helo, sitting up in bed, “Sharon, are you alright?”
Sharon stumbles backwards, sinking down onto the bed, and he wraps an arm around her, brings his head down to her shoulder and mutters “Sharon?” into her skin.
She brings her legs up, onto the bed, and turns, curling into his embrace.
“I’m fine,” she whispers, “Really, I’m fine,” and she presses her head against his warm skin and takes a long deep breath. He tightens his grip.
“You sure?”
“Yeah,” she breathes, “I’m sure,” and she feels Helo press a kiss into her hair.
“Love you,” he whispers, and Sharon lifts her head, and kisses him.
“Love you too,” she murmurs against his lips, into his mouth, and feels him murmur back, "You really sure that you're okay?"
"It was nothing," she insists, "Just a bad dream."
"Oh?"
"I dreamt that I was lost," she says, and then smiles, "But then I woke up, and knew that I was found."
Helo grins at her, and pulls them both down onto the mattress with a thump, and begins to prove, over and over again, that she is found, and found, and found.
