Work Text:
The first flickers of consciousness against the back of Nomi's mind don't register at first. She's wrapped around Amanita, her hand rubbing slow circles over her hip, pressing soft kisses to the back of her neck—Amanita arches, beautiful and warm and solid in Nomi's arms, back pressed against her chest.
But then she feels it again—Nomi stills in the middle of a kiss, and Amanita turns with a questioning look—and then it comes, stronger, a surge of connection crackling back to life. "Oh my god," she breathes.
"What?" Amanita turns over, her hands reaching up to cup Nomi's face. "Nom? Babe, you're scaring me."
"Riley and Will," Nomi tells her, and then she blinks and she's on a boat, and they're there, they're back—
They'd been cut off for three days now—Riley and Will had fallen off the radar during the escape, right as they were driving into the mountains, and no one had been able to sense them since. Nomi had felt their absence. It was a tangible thing, the emptiness: she'd curled up in Amanita's arms the night they'd disappeared and cried, the pain of it wracking through her body, gripping her bones. The rest of the cluster hadn't fared much better. Kala had appeared by her bedside, briefly, looking just as wrecked as Nomi. "I know, I know," she'd said, wretchedly, at Nomi's distraught expression; Nomi had hugged her, and hadn't let go for a long, long time.
Now, they finally know where Will and Riley are, that they're alive, and the empty space they'd left fills like a dry lake in a monsoon. The pain recedes so fast, Nomi barely remembers what it feels like: the only thing that matters is that they're back, that Riley is sitting in front of her, whole and unharmed; that Will is cradled in her lap, a syringe lying on the seat next to him; that the rest of their cluster is there with them, leaning up against the sides of the boat, sitting on the benches, all of them there, all of them exhaling, as one, in relief.
Nomi turns her head into the wind, reveling in the spray of water over her face, and smiles; from all eight of them, there is the overwhelmingly distinct sense of coming home.