Black Marion

Epilogue

Summertime, 2596.

The ocean salt blessed the breeze, a caress that gently stirred the worn pages of her journal. Character by character, Alex inked the script of the day, smiling as the lines took on an air more fluid than last month. It had been a week since she had written an entry, and there was much to say. Progress on her latest program with network therapy. Disaster with a new kitchen recipe, and oh the laughs she'd gotten from it. Most of all, tales of little Maria—a glow from her art project, a fright with two starfish, the incessant Korean lullabies hummed while she learned her second alphabet.

She takes after him, wrote Alex, and like spellwork, the ink preceded a mechanical rumble.

She closed her journal and looked over her shoulder, and there beneath the evening summer sky was Haneul. A broad grin adorned his face as he swung off his rider and latched it to the post. He carried two bags of groceries in his hands, but these, he set at the steps of their small cabin home before walking onto the beach. A moment later, he settled beside Alex, sliding an arm around her and kissing her brow.

"Welcome home, doctor," said Alex, smiling. "How was work?"

"Mm. Busy. Got a pack from a recent riot, but the injuries were light."

"A riot? Again?"

"You sound surprised."

Alex leaned against his shoulder, turning her gaze to the rolling sea, sighing. "I suppose it is a good thing to be surprised over it, no? Ah, these past three years are starting to make me complacent..."

Haneul chuckled. "It'll be decades before the dust settles right. But if a few minor riots are the worst we have to complain about, I'll take it."

"And education funding," said Alex. "Skies, if someone doesn't get on that soon..."

"You will?"

"Maybe we could offer some network programs. I've a few more months left to go on the therapy project, I think, and..."

Haneul pulled her face up and kissed her, swallowing her wayward thoughts. When he pulled away, it was with an endeared smile that he said, "He asked me to let you rest, but you never do stop working, do you?"

Alex returned that smile, softened by the mention and her lover's unburdened eyes. She threaded her fingers through those silver-lined locks, and said, "I don't think of it as work."

Haneul's lips loosened gently. His gaze traced the lines of Alex's face. Murmured, "Where's Maria?"

"She's with Kai's kids for the weekend. It's just us."

The hand at her cheek slipped down, skin skimming sensually along her throat, the bared bones of her collar. Alex closed her eyes, smiled, hummed—and soon the warm sand was a sprawl beneath her back, washing over the locks of her hair. Out beneath the open sky, healed by the years, she felt only love, lust, and an unadulterated happiness as rich as the sun. No pain, no heartache, just the riveting heat of Haneul's body, the beautiful taste of his skin, the thrum of his deep, powerful loving, the swell of his climax, and the softness of his kisses in the aftermath, like ten years had not dulled the passion of her heart even a single shade.

A lifetime, thought Alex.

A lifetime and then some more. The fire between them that had changed a world would not die out.

"Saranghae," said Alex, and gently, Haneul echoed her.

They laid there for a time before the horizon, on the edge of the world, where all was at peace.

At last, Haneul said, "I should get the groceries inside. What do you want for dinner?"

"You've had a busy day, no? Go wash up, and you can find out."

Haneul chuckled, kissed her one more time, and obliged.

Alex rose after him, collecting her clothes and dusting the sand from her body. As she approached the house by the sea, her gaze turned to the landscape behind it—the image of the State, of the Sky and the Ground, and the line where two worlds met. She paused there, her eyes tracing the highest Tower in the far distance, where upon the tip, the Statue of Prosperity once spread her great arms, her face skyward. In its place now stood a woman whose gaze was cast down among the people of the State, and below her great arms hung a scale of equity.

"How did you come to be a Regent?"

Vaughn chuckled. "You know, we've had this exact same conversation before. Can you guess what you will say at the end of it?"

"What will I say?"

"'You gave up too soon.'"

"What does that mean?"

"It means there was a time when I let you down. So I'm trying very hard not to do it again."

Alex smiled softly. She laid her hand upon the wall of this little seaside house, as if so many miles away, she could touch Vaughn like this. Ten years had passed since they shared those words. In the revolution of a society, it was but the blink of an eye. But in ten years, that single promise had rewritten the paths of centuries.

"Vaughn," she whispered. "Thank you."

And though these words would not carry from the horizon to the high sky, if ever the Regent should fly near enough the edge of the world, he would see the warm lights flickering in his seaside cabin, and know.