Title: Keep Breathing
Fandom: Magic Knight Rayearth
Rating: PG
Length: 1,100 words
Content notes: Future character death (unnamed terminal illness).
Author notes: Never-Ending Giant Robot Shenanigans. Set a bit after the first chunk of this I posted here. What is linear writing! (What is writing longfic when snippets are more fun and I can ignore the boring bits of plot in the middle?) (Though dammit, this isn't a happy-ending-for-Emeraude fic/series, and I wish it was.)
Summary: Clef and Emeraude have a long shared history, including a fair number of secrets. A few of them are becoming more of a strain.

oOo

Several weeks passed after the incident where Selece’s failsafes failed to work, and Clef was still barely speaking to Emeraude.

It wasn’t even so much that she’d made a bad command decision. That wasn’t what stuck, after the first few days – she was his commanding officer, but she was also human, and bad decisions happened. Going around him and ignoring his recommendation that the upgrade wasn’t ready without telling him she was uploading it – that hurt, but the thing which lurked most at the back of his mind was the way she’d ordered him to leave Umi behind and get himself clear.

It was his program which had caused the problem, with its unfinished safety measures. Her decision to put it in place. And Emeraude had tried to stop him saving the person they’d put in danger.

(And the person in particular – that was another factor, one he was trying so desperately to avoid thinking about because that was yet another can of worms and he just… couldn’t.)

Umi was back on her feet – her shoulder was still immobilised most of the time, but the leg had been a surprisingly clean break, and healing well. More than could be said for the break between the Director General and her second in command, which had created a singing, waiting tension through the whole base, everyone keeping their head down when the two of them were in the same room.

Not that they’d been in the same room that often. Clef had been keeping himself to Development and to helping with the extensive repair work needed on Selece, barely coming up to Command – only for the weekly meetings he couldn’t avoid, in which he said very little. But today there had been too much he’d been putting off, and he was back at his desk in the control room.

He worked through lunch. Someone brought him a sandwich at some point, and there cups of tea appeared almost regularly on the edge of the desk, so he barely had to move while he worked his way through the bits of paperwork he could only access from here. And all the time he was constantly aware of the unnatural hush in the room, of Emeraude sat in the corner – and no one daring to sit in the desks between them. Through the afternoon, as people came and went, and he grew steadily more unhappy with the atmosphere. If he could just get all this admin stuff done today, and get back to his own space-

The next time he looked up, afternoon had faded into evening, and Emeraude was the only other person left in the room. He saw her look up and realise the same thing, and both of them stiffened; his hand tightened so much on the mouse he held that the cursor jumped on the screen.

He wanted out of there, out of that silence. Clef stood, turning away and gathering his things together. He could come in early tomorrow, get the rest done by breakfast. He’d just have to drag himself out of bed early…

“So you can’t even bear to be in the same room as me anymore, is that it?” Emeraude said, voice heavy in the dimly lit room. “All because I – I made a decision you disagree with-“

“You lied to me.” He said, flatly. “You didn’t trust my recommendation, and you went behind my back, endangering those three girls – and when I tried to put it right, you ordered me to leave Umi behind.”

Emeraude grabbed the back of her chair, knuckles visibly white even from this distance. Her voice was rising quickly. “I ordered you not to throw your life away!”

“The results say I did nothing of the sort.” He stood, stiffly, back cracking after so long in the chair. Keeping his own voice level was harder than it had any right to be, and he fell back on formality, the same way he’d made it through the last few weeks. “If you’ll excuse me, Madam Director-“

“That was sheer luck, and we both know it! Selece’s reactor could have gone at any time-“

“And so what if it had!” He dropped the papers as he lost control of his temper, finally, spinning back to face her. “It’s my life!”

“As long as you are under my command, it’s my life, and I didn’t give you permission to spend it so easily!”

“We both know Umi is worth more to you and this project than I am, now we’ve come this far-“

“You’re the head of development, and you think a rookie pilot can be worth more than you are?”

“A trainee we waited almost a year for! How many other candidates are there who fit your profile, Emeraude? How long would you have to wait? How long can you wait?”

Emeraude was on her feet now, chair pushed aside, cheeks flushed. “You still disobeyed a direct order so you could-“

“So I could do precisely what you’re planning to do!”

“It’s different!” Emeraude shouted, and she was shaking with the force of her anger. “It’s different for you! You’ve got a future, but I’m already dying!”

...Silence. Clef choked on the ashes of his temper, wordless. Neither of them had said it aloud, before. Not in the five years since Eleru, in all the time since the doctors had shaken their heads and talked in hushed voices about pain control, slow degeneration. Clef drew in one shaking breath, then another, staring at her-

And when she coughed, slipped choking to the floor, he stumbled across the room to catch her.

Emeraude sagged against him, pressing her head against his shoulder and letting him take her weight as she coughed again and again, the sound wet. Her shoulders shook, and she was half laughing, half crying. “I’m sorry, Clef. I’m sorry.”

“So am I.” He whispered, and it was true. He’d never meant to keep holding onto his anger this long, until it was eating him, but- he hadn’t wanted to forgive her. Because he was as angry with her for wanting him to live at the cost of someone else – when she would never let herself do the same – as he was with the plans which they’d been working towards for those same five long years. Plans he thought he’d managed to accept, a long time ago.

Apparently not.

“I just – I couldn’t lose you too. Not now, not so close to finishing everything, winning this-“ Emeraude said, words cut off when she started to cough again, shaking against him. She was right. The end was coming into sight – and he was struggling with that, more than he’d known.

“Ssh.” He pressed his cheek to her hair and held on, trying to ignore the too-warm heat of the liquid soaking into his shirt, too thick for tears. His own eyes were prickling, cheeks damp. “Don’t talk. Just – breathe, Emeraude. Just keep breathing.”

For as long as you still can.

oOo