“Can’t sleep?”

Jihyo doesn't turn her head at Jeongyeon’s voice, only sinking into her embrace, Jeongyeon’s touch warm even through her shirt. “It would have been my sister’s birthday today.”

Jeongyeon quiets then, but her silence is deafening. Jihyo understands, knows that even in the years they’ve spent on Earth, it never got easier to speak of their home. The people they’ve left behind. “She would have been as old as Tzuyu and Chaeyoung, right?”

Jihyo hums softly, gazing upon the stars that dotted Earth’s dark night sky, nothing like the curtain of diamonds that draped over their planet back home. “Just as beautiful too, I’m sure.”

A laugh tumbles from Jeongyeon’s lips, soft and low and warm, her breath tickling Jihyo’s ear. It draws a smile onto Jihyo’s face, the heaviness in her chest and tightness of fading away, even just for this moment. “Can you see it?”

“No,” Jihyo answers, resting her head against Jeongyeon’s when she plants her chin onto her shoulder. “Every time I try to get past the next galaxy it’s just… empty. Empty where it shouldn’t be.”

Jeongyeon only nods then, tightening her hold around Jihyo and Jihyo lets her, sinks further into her arms and lets the blue fade away from her eye. “I’ve been here for so long but it feels like Nayeon and I just landed yesterday. I can’t imagine how Mina and the younger kids must feel. In no time, they’ll have spent more time here than they have there.”

“Sometimes I wonder if they even remember it,” Jihyo admits, her fingers tracing over the ones Jeongyeon linked over her stomach, over the faded scars from their first crash. She still remembers it, pulling Nayeon and Jeongyeon from what couldn't even be called a ship anymore. “Sometimes I start to forget, too.”

“We’ll build our own memories then,” Jeongyeon murmurs, lacing her fingers through Jihyo’s. “With Sana, with Nayeon and Chaeng, Mina, Tzuyu… Dahyun and Momo.” Jeongyeon takes a breath, and Jihyo knows how difficult it must be to say regardless of the truth behind her words. “Our family.”

Sana calls for them then, whining about the emptiness of their bed, and she and Jeongyeon share a smile, starting to make their way back to bed. Sana grumbles about the cold, about how she and Jeongyeon always seem to go missing in the middle of the night.

“As someone who has invisibility,” Sana mumbles, voice thick with sleep and near slurred. “You two make a very good job of disappearing.”  

But she plants kisses on their cheeks, tender and understanding, and Jihyo smiles, meeting Jeongyeon’s eyes from over Sana’s head. She watches them, watches Jeongyeon whisper reluctant apologies against a sleepy Sana’s shoulders and Jihyo sighs, settling into their tousled sheets.

The old radio on the windowsill crackles, for the first time in years, but Jihyo doesn't bother to get up, not when Jeongyeon draws her closer, not when Sana tucks herself underneath the crook of her chin. She smiles, and she closes her eyes and she knows.

This is their home now.