Chapter Text
Chapter 23: New Beginnings
Consciousness returned in layers of discomfort—the dull throb of healing tissue, the stiffness of muscles that had been pushed past their limits, and the particular ache of surgical sites reminding her they existed. Terissa opened her eyes to find morning light cutting through her apartment's cheap blinds, painting stripes across the ceiling she'd stared at a hundred times before.
Everything hurt.
She fumbled for the painkillers on her nightstand, dry-swallowing two tablets with the practiced efficiency of someone who'd done this too many times. The pills scraped down her throat like a promise of future relief, and she lay there for a moment, letting her body catalog its complaints before attempting anything as ambitious as standing.
The smell reached her first—coffee, rich and real, accompanied by something savory that made her stomach clench with sudden, desperate hunger. Her apartment didn't have food that smelled like that. Her apartment barely had any food at all.
Terissa pushed herself upright, the movement sending fresh protests through her torso. The bandages held, which was something. Her legs cooperated when she swung them over the edge of the bed, which was something else. Progress, measured in the small victories of a body learning to function again.
The walk to the kitchen took longer than it should have, each step a negotiation between will and weakness. She wobbled once, catching herself on the doorframe, and found Judy standing at the stove with a spatula in one hand and a look of concentrated focus that Terissa had previously only seen directed at BD equipment.
"You went shopping," Terissa observed, her voice rough with sleep.
Judy glanced over her shoulder, taking in the sight of Terissa propped against the doorframe like she might collapse without its support. "Your idea of groceries was instant coffee and protein bars that expired two months ago. I'm amazed you haven't died of malnutrition."
"I eat out a lot."
"You eat like shit, is what you do." Judy turned back to the stove, where something that looked remarkably like actual eggs sizzled in a pan. "Sit down before you fall down."
Terissa's stomach growled with enough force to be embarrassing, and she shuffled to the counter without further argument. The stool accepted her weight with a creak of protest, and she found herself staring at a kitchen that had been transformed in her absence. Fresh vegetables on the counter. Real coffee in the pot. The particular order of someone who'd taken charge and wasn't interested in objections.
"You look terrible," Judy said, setting a plate in front of her with more force than strictly necessary. Huevos rancheros, perfectly assembled, steam rising from the eggs like an invitation. "Eat."
"Yes ma'am."
The first bite was transcendent—actual flavor, actual nutrition, the kind of meal that reminded Terissa she'd been surviving rather than living for longer than she wanted to admit. She ate with single-minded focus while Judy claimed the stool beside her, their elbows almost touching as they worked through their respective plates.
The food disappeared faster than Terissa intended, her body demanding fuel with an urgency that overrode any pretense of dignity. She was scraping the last of the salsa from her plate when Judy stood, gathering dishes with efficient movements.
"I can—" Terissa started.
"You can sit there and recover." Judy's voice carried no room for negotiation. "Doctor's orders."
"You're not a doctor."
"I'm the person who's going to be here every day making sure you don't do anything stupid, which makes me close enough." The dishes clattered into the sink with pointed emphasis. "So sit. Rest. Try to remember what relaxation feels like."
Terissa opened her mouth to argue, then closed it again. There was something in Judy's posture—the rigid line of her shoulders, the controlled precision of her movements—that suggested the conversation waiting beneath the surface. Arguments about dish duty would only delay the inevitable.
She shuffled to the sofa instead, lowering herself onto worn cushions that molded to her shape with familiar comfort. Her head fell back against the rest, eyes drifting closed as breakfast settled and painkillers began their slow work. The sounds of Judy cleaning filled the apartment—water running, dishes clanking, the domestic symphony of someone making themselves at home in her space.
Part of Terissa wanted to resist it. Years of self-sufficiency, of trusting no one enough to let them this close, screamed warnings about vulnerability and dependency. But another part—the part that had been alone for so long—found itself relaxing into the care with something approaching gratitude.
The cushions shifted as Judy sat down beside her, one leg tucked beneath her, body angled to face Terissa directly. The air changed—charged with the weight of everything they'd been avoiding.
Terissa hesitated for a moment, then opened her eyes and gave Judy her full attention.
"We need to talk." Judy's voice was steady, but her fingers fidgeted against her knee. "The sooner the better, I think."
Terissa nodded slowly. "Okay."
Judy studied her for a long moment—the bruises visible above her collar, the careful way she held herself, the exhaustion that no amount of sleep seemed to touch. When she spoke again, her words came out measured, controlled.
"What the hell were you thinking? At the spaceport?"
It wasn't quite an accusation. More like someone trying to understand a puzzle whose pieces refused to fit together.
Terissa took a breath that pulled at her healing wounds. "You want the full story?"
"I want to understand why you nearly died. Again. For someone who—" Judy stopped, jaw tightening around whatever she'd been about to say. "Yeah. The full story."
So Terissa told her.
She started with the warehouse—finding So Mi huddled over her console, the corruption spreading across her skin like digital cancer. The moment when putting a bullet in her would have been the cleanest solution, the kindest mercy. The choice to push past what the Matron would have done, to be someone different than the weapon she'd been forged into.
She told Judy about the turrets, the fighting, the desperate scramble through ventilation shafts while her body screamed its objections. About carrying So Mi when her legs failed, about the shuttle bay and the soldiers and the particular mathematics of survival when the odds turned impossible.
She told her about Reed.
"He was waiting at the shuttle." Terissa's voice had gone flat, stripped of emotion by the telling. "Had the whole thing locked down. I had maybe three seconds to decide—keep walking, surrender, or..."
"Or what?"
"Or be faster."
Judy's expression cycled through something complicated. "You killed him."
"He shot me first." Terissa touched her bandaged stomach absently. "I just shot better."
"Jesus, T."
"It gets worse." A ghost of dark humor touched Terissa's lips. "After I got So Mi on the shuttle, after Reed was down... Rosalind Myers showed up."
"The President." Judy's voice had gone dangerously quiet. "Of the NUSA."
"In person. With enough operatives to invade a small country." Terissa met Judy's gaze directly. "I told her So Mi was dead. That the corruption had finished her before the shuttle could launch."
"And she believed you?"
"She believed I wasn't worth the trouble of pressing. For now." Terissa shrugged, wincing at the movement. "So Mi's gone. Tycho-bound. Out of reach. And I'm..."
"Here. Bleeding. Again." Judy's jaw clenched, anger and fear and something else warring for dominance. "Let me make sure I understand this. You put yourself in danger—again—for this woman who betrayed you. Who kidnapped me. Who was dying anyway. Who was being hunted by the fucking President of the NUSA. And at the end of it all, what did you get?"
"Well—"
"Another gunshot wound." Judy's voice cracked. "That's what you got, Terissa. Another hole in your body and another nightmare for me to add to the collection."
"Well, when you put it that way—"
"If you ever do anything so fucking stupid again," Judy interrupted, her words coming fast and sharp, "I will break up with you so fast—"
Terissa froze.
The words hung in the air between them, heavy with implications that Judy seemed to realize a beat too late. Her cheeks darkened, but she didn't look away, didn't try to take them back.
"Break up," Terissa repeated slowly, carefully, like she was handling something fragile. "With me."
Judy's chin lifted, defiance replacing embarrassment. "Yes."
"That would require us to be..." Terissa felt something warm spreading through her chest, something that had nothing to do with the painkillers. "Dating."
"We are now." Judy stabbed a finger at her, the gesture carrying all the force of a legally binding contract. "And you'd better not do anything to risk that."
Terissa's smile started small—just a twitch at the corner of her mouth—and then grew into something genuine, something that made her healing wounds ache in ways she didn't mind at all.
"Judy Alvarez," she said, her voice soft with wonder. "Are you asking me out?"
"I'm telling you we're together." Judy's finger hadn't lowered, her expression fierce enough to start fires. "There's a difference."
"Pretty sure that's not how dating usually—"
"Do I look like someone who does things the usual way?" Judy's voice carried an edge that dared Terissa to argue. "I've spent the past week or two by now watching you almost die. I've pulled you out of toxic mud. I've been kidnapped as leverage against you. I've sat by your bed while doctors put you back together twice. At this point, I think I've earned the right to skip the awkward 'will they, won't they' bullshit."
Terissa's grin widened despite her best efforts to maintain some dignity. "You have a point."
"I always have a point." Judy finally lowered her hand, some of the tension draining from her shoulders. "So. We're dating. You're recovering. And if you try to get yourself killed again before our first actual date, I will personally haunt you in whatever afterlife accepts idiots who can't stop getting shot."
"That's almost romantic."
"Shut up." But Judy was smiling now too, small and reluctant and impossibly warm. "This doesn't mean I'm not still angry at you."
"I know."
"And we're going to have about a hundred more conversations about boundaries and communication and your apparent death wish."
"I expected nothing less."
Judy studied her for a moment—the bruises, the bandages, the exhausted lines around her eyes—and her expression softened into something that made Terissa's breath catch.
"You scared the shit out of me," Judy said quietly. "When you called from that shuttle bay, when I heard your voice like that... I thought I was going to lose you before I even figured out what you meant to me."
"I'm sorry." The words came out rough, weighted with genuine regret. "I'm not good at... letting people in. Letting them worry about me. I've been alone for so long that I forgot how to factor other people into my calculations."
"Well, start learning." Judy's hand found hers, fingers intertwining with a naturalness that felt like coming home. "Because you're not alone anymore. And I'm not going anywhere."
Terissa looked at their joined hands—her scarred, calloused fingers wrapped in Judy's ink-decorated grip—and felt something shift in her chest. Something that had been locked away for years, protected behind walls of professional distance and careful isolation.
"So," she said, a hint of her usual humor surfacing despite everything. "Girlfriend, huh?"
Judy's eye roll was magnificent. "Don't make it weird."
"I'm not making it weird. I'm just... processing."
"Process faster. I need you functional enough to take me somewhere nice once you're healed."
"Somewhere nice." Terissa pretended to consider this seriously. "I know a cave in the badlands that has running water and only minimal radiation."
"I hate you."
"No you don't."
"No," Judy admitted, her thumb tracing circles against Terissa's palm. "I really don't."