”I know that… It’s only… I want to know about her… nothing more. I don’t doubt you. I don’t think I could ever doubt you…” She told her, the faith she had in her very evident in her voice. What was unsaid though, Kes thought, was that it wasn’t so easy for her to have faith in herself… to not doubt herself… That’s what this was partly about, Kes was coming to realize. But, if Anara needed more assurances of her own worth as a person, Kes was very willing to continue to provide them at every given opportunity.

Kes moved up to kiss her wife’s lips. Anara responded and kissed her back, that lasting for minutes on end until Kes could feel her wife start to relax more. When that happened, Anara broke off the kiss and looked down at her sightlessly. ”I want to be close to you again, to share our hearts again… as we did before…” Anara told her softly. ”Please, Kes? Will you?” She asked hopefully.

–Yes… of course we can do that…– Kes replied telepathically, smiling to herself. Perhaps this was the best way after all? She considered.

She looked up into Anara’s eyes, nearly sightless as they were, and let her mind do what it had before… what she’d been so tempted to let it do again ever since the last time. It was so easy and felt so good, to be entwined with her wife this way, to share like this…

–Would you… would you like me to show you?– Kes asked. –I can show her to you… if you want?–

–…Yes, I want to know– Anara replied.

In bed, they snuggled up together and closed their eyes and Kes showed Anara her memories of Tae, or highlights of them at least, imprints… The day of her birth when they first met. When they took their first steps together. A day when they talked about the future for the first time when they’d promised to always be friends. The day when they first met Lona and Daggin. The day they went swimming for the first time. The day Kes realized she was in love. The day she realized what it meant that she was in love with someone of the same gender. A day when Tae slept over at her house and they spent all night talking and never went to sleep (they were very tired the next day). The first time she tried in earnest to really show Tae how she felt about her and how Tae didn’t seem to notice at all. The day Tae told her that Daggin liked her (Kes had honestly not noticed before that). The day Tae told her about the boy she liked. The day she’d confessed her feelings for Tae to Lona. The day Kes spent with Tae trying again to see if there was any chance that she would or could feel the same way about her and again had no success. The day she’d sat looking out over the water just thinking and Tae had come along and sat down with her and they’d talked and Tae had told her that Daggin was beginning to think that she wasn’t interested in him at all and asked her if she had another boy she liked and how Kes had made an excuse and left and found someplace where she could be alone to cry and scream where no one could hear… And, finally, the day she’d seen Tae kissing… him… and how she’d felt something inside of her break at that… how she couldn’t stand to stay…