Sunday morning came with the particular chaos of an airport that hadn't quite woken up yet.
Alex and Fidelia found their way to the private lounge after check-in, both of them running on too little sleep and too much adrenaline. Fidelia had been glued to her phone since the car ride over, thumbs moving fast enough that Alex wondered if she'd worn a groove into the screen.
"You've been on that thing for twenty minutes," Alex said, sipping water she didn't really want, mostly to have something to do with her hands. "What could possibly need that much attention before we've even boarded?"
"Your image, baby girl. Somebody has to manage it." Fidelia didn't look up. "I'm updating your Florelia accounts, letting people know you're landing today. Some fans are already talking about meeting you at the airport."
Alex lowered her water bottle. "I have fans in Florelia? Since when?"
That got Fidelia to look up, and the expression on her face said everything about how obvious the answer should have been. "Since last year, at least. You've been one of the most talked-about faces over there for months, even working out of New Bell. You think those contracts came out of nowhere?"
Alex hadn't thought about it that way. She'd assumed the contracts were a door she'd had to force open through sheer persistence, four years of positioning herself exactly right. It hadn't occurred to her that somewhere, without her knowing, a country she'd left as a child had been watching her climb.
It should have felt like a victory. Instead, it just made the whole trip feel more exposed than she'd braced for.
She put her headphones in and let the noise of the terminal fade out, replaced by a song she'd downloaded months ago because the melody matched something she hadn't been able to name at the time. She still couldn't name it now, not exactly. Something between anticipation and the specific dread of walking back into a room you'd once been thrown out of.
Fidelia, meanwhile, had found something new to occupy her attention — a man who'd taken the seat directly across from them, dressed down in a way that didn't quite disguise how expensive everything on him was. Alex caught her staring over the top of her sunglasses and nudged her friend's arm.
"Don't look now, but I think you've got an admirer," she murmured. "He hasn't stopped watching you since he sat down."
Fidelia's head came up so fast it was almost comedic, her eyes locking immediately with the stranger's. Whatever she saw there was apparently enough, because she was on her feet a second later, crossing the small distance between them with the kind of confidence Alex had always envied and never quite managed to borrow for herself.
"Hi. Fidelia," she said, offering a hand. "Nice to meet you."
"Christopher." He took it, unhurried, like he had nowhere else in the world to be. "Though most people just go with Christ."
"I'll try not to take that as a sign I should be worshipping you," Fidelia said, and something about the dry delivery made him laugh, a real one, surprised out of him.
They fell into conversation easily, the kind that skipped past small talk almost entirely.
"So," Christopher said, leaning back in his seat with the easy posture of someone used to being looked at, "do I get a last name, or is Fidelia going to remain a woman of mystery?"
"Rodriguez. And I wasn't aware I owed you my whole family tree five minutes in."
"Fair. I'll earn it." He tilted his head toward the gate behind her. "Business or pleasure?"
"Work, technically. Though I intend to make time for the second one." She said it without blinking, and Alex, half-listening from two seats over, had to bite back a smile at how unbothered her friend sounded, as if flirting with strangers in airport lounges were simply another item on her itinerary.
"And you?" Fidelia asked. "You don't strike me as someone who flies economy for fun."
"Meetings. Family business, mostly. Less interesting than it sounds." Something flickered behind his eyes when he said it, gone before Alex could decide if she'd imagined it. Whatever it was, Fidelia either didn't notice or didn't care, already moving the conversation somewhere lighter.
Alex watched for a while — the way Fidelia tilted her head when she wanted to seem more interested than she was, the way this Christopher didn't seem to need the trick, already leaning in like the conversation was worth having on its own merits — before she let herself drift, tuning back into her music, granting her friend the privacy of a stranger's undivided attention.
That was Fidelia in a sentence: brave in every way Alex wasn't, quick to fall and quicker to move on, treating every airport lounge like it might contain the next great love of her life. Alex had lost count of how many times that particular story had played out. This one would be memorable mostly for being roughly the fifth this year.
Boarding came an hour later. Fidelia slid a business card into her jacket pocket before they even reached the gate, already glowing with the particular satisfaction of a woman who considered the trip a success regardless of what happened once they landed. They found their seats, and Fidelia spent the first hour of the flight texting the number she'd collected, thumbs moving with the same focus she'd give an actual work emergency. Alex let her, watching the clouds thicken outside her window until there was nothing left to look at but her own reflection in the glass.
She thought, not for the first time, about how strange it was to be dreading a place and craving it in equal measure. She'd spent four years imagining this flight — rehearsing arguments she'd never get the chance to make, picturing her father's face when he finally understood what he'd lost by cutting her off. None of those imagined scenes had ever included the ten hours of stale cabin air and turbulence in between, the ordinary discomfort of getting from one life to another. Revenge, it turned out, still came with a boarding pass and a seatbelt sign.
Somewhere over open water, exhaustion finally caught up with her, and she let her eyes close, the last thing she registered being the low hum of the engines and Fidelia's voice, quieter now, still talking to a man she'd known for less than an hour.
She didn't open her eyes again until the flight attendant's voice cut through the cabin ten hours later.
"We are beginning our descent into Florelia. Local time is four in the afternoon. Thank you for flying with us today."
Alex blinked awake slowly, her neck stiff from sleeping against the window. Beside her, Fidelia was already alert, phone in hand, thumb moving.
"Did you get what you wanted out of that?" Alex asked, stretching as much as the seat allowed.
Fidelia held up a business card between two fingers without looking away from her screen. "You mean this? Obviously I got what I wanted. Something tells me Florelia is going to be interesting."
"So you're here to work and flirt, is that the plan?"
"You know me best, baby girl." Fidelia finally glanced over, grinning. "The good-looking ones need to watch out. I'm coming."
Alex laughed despite the knot sitting low in her stomach, the one that had been tightening steadily since they'd boarded. Somewhere below the clouds was a country she hadn't seen in thirteen years, a father who hadn't called in ten, and a fanbase she hadn't known existed until this morning.
She pressed her forehead briefly against the cool of the window and watched the clouds start to break apart, the first hints of coastline emerging beneath them. Whatever waited down there, she'd built herself into someone capable of facing it. She just had to believe that for the length of one landing.
The plane began its final descent, and Alex Michell — Alex Porter, if anyone down there still remembered that name — closed her eyes one more time and let herself feel, just for a moment, exactly as frightened as she actually was.