A/N: I think I can say definitively that this is my longest-running work-in-progress, and it's a little hard to believe it's finally done. Thanks to my patient beta, moviemom44, and to all of you who have read and reviewed and shared this journey with me.

I haven't been posting on this website in a number of years, and don't particularly intend to come back to it after this fic. However, I am still writing fanfiction, and Dragonriders of Pern remains my "home" fandom, as it were. If you've enjoyed this or any of my other Pern fics, I invite you to come check out my profile on Archive of Our Own (I'm calenlily there too), as I have quite a few more Pern stories there that are not posted here.

Epilogue: Full Disclosure

Several months later...

"'Well,' R'gul admitted gloomily, 'a flamethrower or two will be some help day after tomorrow.'
'We have found something else that will help a lot more,' Lessa remarked and then hastily excused herself, dashing into the sleeping quarters.
The sounds that drifted past the curtain were either laughter or sobs, and R'gul frowned on both. That girl was just too young to be Weyrwoman at such a time. No stability." - Dragonflight, p279

F'lar stared after the ex-Weyrleader for a minute, then shook his head – some people never would learn – got up, and went to find Lessa.

She had collapsed onto the sleeping couch. She was laughing, as he suspected, but there was a note of hysteria to it. He recalled with a resurgence of worry how shaky she had looked when she arrived at Ruatha, standing motionless as he hastened across the court to her and staring ahead with glazed eyes.

She looked up when he settled himself beside her on the edge of the bed. Slipped into his arms without hesitation, which was a small victory in itself and a welcome reassurance.

She buried her face in his shoulder, and he was content to simply hold her until she calmed, relishing the feel of her body warm and solid against him as he'd thought he'd never have her again.

"Lessa," he murmured, almost reverently. She raised her head to meet his eyes, and he looked on her with concern. "Are you well?" he inquired carefully.

"Well enough. Better, now that I'm home."

So am I, he thought. He wasn't certain what to say next, whether to admonish her never to scare him like that again or to express his pride in her.

Before he settled on a response, she spoke again.

"I missed you," she admitted, and her tone indicated a weight of meaning beyond the surface value of the words. From one so guarded, he recognized, that was a rather extraordinary confession.

He had long struggled to maintain his customary emotional reserve with her. Now that reserve seemed to have shattered entirely on Ruatha's stones. "That makes two of us," he replied, one candid admission for another. "I was half-mad without you, love."

Lessa was more pleased than she could say to be back at Benden and in her own time. There was no expressing the relief she felt to be safely returned, back among familiar people and surroundings. Strange to think she'd left this morning a month ago. All she wanted now was to rest, for this endless paradoxical day to be over.

She thought of her many restless nights in the Oldtime, for all too frequently sleep had been evasive. Once she was healed, she'd taken to spending her nights curled up with Ramoth, for laying in the wide bed alone had come to feel too strange.

She'd been beyond anxious to return home. But at the same time, as the day of their departure had neared, her mind had been increasingly troubled by fear - fear that F'lar would never forgive her for the risk she'd taken. She could not have done other than she had, and she refused to feel guilty for it. But if in saving Pern he was lost to her, well, she thought she would hardly be able to bear it.

The desperate joy with which he greeted her upon her return, and the way he'd hardly left her side since, had gone a long way in dispelling that fear. But she knew she wouldn't be able to truly relax until they'd had the time to talk privately.

She wasn't sure what she'd been expecting from that conversation, still half-braced for chastisement or recrimination. Whatever she might have expected, it certainly wasn't the sudden tenderness he showed, nor his raw confession, "That makes two of us. I was half-mad without you, love."

Funny, not so long ago she'd have had trouble believing it. He'd always been so reserved, as if he were holding himself back somehow. But he was holding nothing back now.

Then his choice of words sank in, and she did a double take. Had she heard that right? Had he really... "Love?"

He nodded seriously, and murmured confirmation, sending a rush of warmth coursing through her. His arms tightened around her.

For her own part, she was not ready to admit love, not yet. That word was still a step too far. But she cared for him, more than anyone in her life save Ramoth, more than she'd dared to care for any human since the long-ago days of her abruptly-ended childhood. And she trusted him, all but absolutely.

He bent to kiss her, softly at first and then with sudden urgency. His hands roamed over her, and he laid her back on the bed, stretching out alongside her. She was beyond tired, but more than happy to put off sleep a little longer in favor of letting him tumble her back into the furs, of reacquainting herself with her mate's body. A month away and she missed his touch like an ache, the kind of absence that's felt most keenly when the lack is finally remedied.

When at last she fell into an exhausted sleep, enfolded in his arms with his skin hot against her own, it felt like home.