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Alara doesn’t get better. They said she would get better.
Her legs grow weaker after The Orville leaves, and she wonders if the connection to her crew was the only thing keeping her anchored to stability. She doesn’t regret her decision - yet. She’ll stay home even if she gets worse, because this is the first time her family has ever truly seen her, the first time she has been truly witnessed by her parents, all of her rough fighting essence finally bared to their acceptance.
She just had to save their lives in order to get there.
She tries not to think about the fact that her parents would not have changed their mind about her competence if they hadn’t almost been killed, but sometimes, in the night after Solana has helped her climb into bed, she wonders about Solana’s reaction. She wonders what Solana thought about her before, and she wonders what Solana thinks of her now. They've never been — Alara has always wanted — maybe things can be different now.
Solana would often comment about Alara's absence when she still lived at home, would tell Terlus about how much she missed her sister even during their nights out at Xelayan dining establishments, would dream about her return. She tried everything to make the dreams go away - medication, herbal supplements, meditation - but Alara's ghost never lifted, never stopped lingering around her frame.
Now she's back, and it isn't like any of those dreams. Alara is getting sicker. Xelayan doctors are saying she might never walk again. She's still the same Alara, her beautiful little sister who stole her lipstick and ruined her clothes and begged for her attention in childhood. She just can't walk anymore.
Alara needs her, though, even if she'd never admit it.
Terlus doesn't take the news well.
"You're postponing the wedding because of me?"
The door to her room opens, and Alara's mobility chair comes hovering in fast. It looks, at first, like she's angry, but Solana likes to think she knows her, even if she maybe doesn't — Alara's red lips are snarled but curled down, Alara's fingernails are painted red but have been picked to bleeding in her anxious sorrow. Solana stiffens.
"You're getting worse, Alara," she says, turning around in her vanity seat. "I want you there, and I want you to have fun."
Solana hears something under her breath, a pant that sounds almost like how can I when you're with—
"But you deserve to be happy."
"I'll be happy when you get better, hm?" Solana says, forcing a smile. "You're my baby sister. I missed you. Terlus is fine with it. He understands."
It's a lie, but Alara doesn't need to know that.
"Look," Solana replies. She stands up, walks over to Alara's chair, takes her hand. At the contact, Alara jumps, and lurches forward. Stops herself. She must not be able to control her movement. "I haven't been a very good sister. I know that. I'm so, so sorry." She looks away. "I want to make things right."
Alara squeezes her hand. When Solana looks back, she sees only relief in Alara's expression. "Thank you," is all that Alara says back, and Solana really expected more of a protest.
Alara is starting to think that Solana might feel—
It doesn't matter, but it matters more than anything else she can imagine. Solana is all she has, these days, at least while she's still sick. She wants Solana everywhere—she wants Solana when she's sick and she'll want Solana if she gets better and she wants Solana despite it all. They can have a new relationship now, woven together in the womb of a cocoon to emerge as something more beautiful.
Terlus hasn't called in days, and Alara knows how to tell when people are bluffing—they taught that in Union Point security classes, of course, but she also knows Solana. She's not a very good liar.
She never liked him anyway. He wasn't good enough for her.