The crowd thinned as people began to wander away, many still looking back with smiles, and that was when Apollonia realized that Brooks was standing only ten meters away, watching.

He was smiling just a little, but still looked overall as serious as ever.

And she felt her own feelings of failure return.

“I can take her now, I think she needs some rest from this excitement,” the assistant said.

“Sure,” Apollonia said lifelessly. “Will . . . Can I see her again?”

“Of course,” the woman told her. “She’s one of the ship’s dogs now.”

The woman left, and Apollonia just stood there, watching Brooks.

He finally came over.

“I’m glad we finally got the ship dogs,” he said evenly. “It’s taken almost a year.”

“I hear you’re a free man,” she said flatly, ignoring that.

“Free was not in question. But I am still captain, yes.”

He began walking, and she found herself walking with him. That annoyed her, that she’d just start following him. Like a damn puppy, herself.

“I guess I didn’t manage to fuck it up all the way, huh?”

He looked surprised. “You did nothing wrong, Apple.”

She scowled, not wanting to look at him right now. Partly out of anger, partly out of shame.

“Then why the hell did you sneak me out of there like I was a shameful secret?” she asked.

Brooks took a deep breath. “Director Freeman was trying to pull off things to have you transferred into his control. To be quite honest, I do not trust the man’s motives. I wanted you back here – it was safer that way.”

Brooks had led them out of the Gardens, to one of the banks of inter-ship shuttles. The pod could move any orientation, taking a person to almost any section of the ship, or at least close.

They got on in silence; Apollonia said nothing until the doors closed. Brooks pressed a button, and it began to slowly move.

“So . . . you just sent me away, didn’t tell me why. To protect me?” she burst out.

“Yes,” Brooks replied.

“Would it have really been too hard to say?” she asked, anger surging through her. “Just a few words!”

“I knew you’d have questions, Apollonia, and we didn’t have the time-“

“And did you really think I’d be so naive as to follow the bad man offering me candy? I mean, that’s all he could do to really entice me, isn’t it? Offer me some fancy stuff, a bigger room, all that, and I’d just go along like a dumb kid?”

She stepped away, towards the wall of the pod, throwing out her hands in frustration.

Brooks saw her stop, try to become still. Taking several deep breaths, she seemed to succeed in containing her temper.

“I’m sorry,” she said deliberately. “I shouldn’t have lost my temper. But I’m not crazy, being angry here, am I? I feel like I was treated like a child. And honestly – who’s to say I wouldn’t maybe want the opportunity to move elsewhere? Freeman maybe wouldn’t even have to trick me – did you ever consider maybe I’d be happy going elsewhere?”

Brooks hesitated. It would be easy for him to say that if it had been someone – literally almost anyone – else in the human government he wouldn’t have tried so hard to block it, and given her the choice.

But he wasn’t actually sure that it was the truth.

“Freeman wasn’t wanting to give you any choice in the matter. His transfer was to be non-negotiable – to strong arm you into his control. The way he was going about it was not right – not for you, and I think you’d have agreed.” He sighed. “If I had told you. So no,” he continued. “You’re not out of line. You are right to be angry.”

She threw up her arms in anger. “Why can’t you be pissed back, Captain? Dark, I’m trying to have an argument here and you . . . you just . . . you’re being reasonable!”

He was not sure how to reply to that. Perhaps in this one case, being defensive would be appropriate?

Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

But he didn’t want to give into the temptation, and just stood silently.

“And me, I’m like a fucking feral animal out here. I told Admiral whats-his-face that I had rabies!”

“That was pretty funny,” he admitted. “But you are not ‘feral’, Apollonia.”

“In comparison to you people I am!” she said. “Look at me, you had to look me in the eyes and tell me a few days ago that no one was going to shiv me on Earth! I really couldn’t fucking believe it and I just realize more and more how much I’m not like you people!”

“You come from a different place with different conditions,” he said. “Conditions that formed you into who you are now. You can’t undo that – I fully understand that. But that’s not a fault or a failure of yourself. You’re still a person who deserves a future.”

“And you want to give that to me?” she asked dryly.

His answer was without guile. “If I can. Yes.”

“God, you’re so fucking selfless,” she said, rolling her eyes, though the true anger seemed to have drained out of her. “And I’m being such a bitch. But you just . . . you don’t even seem like the rest of us, Ian. You’re like one step down from Kell’s lifelessness. Do you ever feel envy? Selfish? Eat all the ice cream from the tub you were supposed to share?”

He snorted in amusement, but paused before answering. “I’m as human as anyone else . . . Though I’m not fond of cold food.”

He laughed, then, but it was suddenly dry and bitter.

“I say it as a joke, but it’s true. I absolutely hate food that’s cold. It reminds me too much of my past.”

He paused for a moment, thoughts racing behind his eyes. “It’s one of those things that triggers the bad memories. Not just memories – the feelings themselves dredged up from the worst times. You remember those moments, those fucking moments forever. When you were suffering from something. Freezing to death, needing to eat. But the food was as cold as the world outside.”

He stepped aside now, facing one of the walls of the pod, that was a screen showing what floor they were passing. He seemed no longer able to keep his eyes on her.

The pod had come to a stop at some point, she realized.

Years seemed to gather on his face, in every crevice as he turned back to her. “Sometimes people say that Antarcticans have ice water in their veins. I’m a pre-eminent example, I suppose. But it’s important for the captain to be stoic and look infallible.”

“You might take it too far,” she said. “You don’t have to be perfect all the time.”

“Maybe,” he agreed. Then, softer, he spoke again. “And sometimes I am selfish, yes.” His eyes flickered every so briefly over to her.

She felt a plummeting feeling in her stomach as she realized what he meant.

“Why do I deserve it?” she asked. “It’s not because I’m a CR. You don’t even care about that, do you?”

“It’s not something I can ignore. But no, it’s not the reason.” His eyes went down, the shadows crawling down his face, hiding his eyes and humanity, and for a moment he was less of a man, no one special. Just regular, with all the faults and failures and doubts that everyone had.

“Not everyone gets a chance,” he said. “No matter how much they deserve it. But I thought that if I could just give a chance to someone who had none, then maybe . . .”

He trailed off, and looked away, turning his shoulder. “It was selfish, in the end. And I showed that with what I did, making decisions for your future without you. Not even telling you what was going on.”

There was a silence between them, so complete that it felt like one could hear the roar of their own blood, feel the beat of their own heart.

Apollonia reached out, slowly. Her hand stopped for a moment, and she felt terrified to so much as touch his shoulder. She’d never been someone who reached out. At a young age she’d learned that it got you hurt, that others were too afraid to accept another’s hand. That they’d lash out.

But she was living on borrowed time anyway, wasn’t she? She should have died on New Vitriol. She had died, her old self. Everything about Apollonia Nor of Vitriol, a parentless fringe-dweller who considered the best of life to be getting a hot dinner and a soft bed without anyone trying to stab her for it.

And those fears, those instincts still were in her, not to reach out. To take no risks, because if they didn’t pay off the cost was too high.

Then, she bit her lip and did it anyway.

Brooks started as her hand rested on his shoulder.

“You did give me a chance,” she said quietly. “That’s . . . from where I’m standing, that wasn’t selfish.”

He could not find words to say to that. His shoulders relaxed slightly, but he could not come up with words.

From the moment he’d seen Apollonia in that cell, something more than human, yet living a life that was less than any deserved, he’d wanted to make some difference for her.

And he still did. Even if she wanted to leave. No, especially if she wanted to. It wasn’t about him, even though, through cosmic injustice and vicissitude, he was the one who had this chance to give her. Something that should have been her birthright, been everyone’s birthright, the most basic thing of all; just a life.

The simplest thing to imagine, yet what humanity had struggled with for eons, first from nature itself, and then from each other. Even as technology should have leveled them all equal, they had struggled. Even when they could reach for the stars with one hand and dim them, they stumbled.

Apollonia hugged him, suddenly, her arms wrapping around him and the only thing he could think to do was embrace her in turn, as a stinging grew in his eyes.

He couldn’t remember the last time he’d felt that. It was another proverb about Antarcticans that they only cried when the peak winds blew in their faces.

But it wasn’t the cold winds doing it. They howled far away.

“I think I do want to stay on the Craton,” Apollonia said quietly.

“I’m glad,” he replied, his voice just as soft. “The ship would feel a lot more boring without you.”

She chuckled. “You mean without a feral woman prowling the decks?”

“Exactly.”

They were quiet a moment longer before he spoke again. “I make model airplanes,” he finally said.

“What?” she asked, pulling away and looking at him in confusion.

“Model airplanes, with engines in them so they fly. It’s my hobby, when I’m off-duty and not busy. Which isn’t that often, to be honest.”

“Model planes?” she scoffed.

“I like the engineering,” he said. “I actually run the club for it.”

“Oh, of course you do,” she said with a laugh.

“It’s just me in it. We meet every ‘whenever I have one spare moment’ day.”

She chuckled some more, and stepped away, rubbing the back of her head.

“I don’t think I want to build model airplanes,” she admitted.

“Good,” he replied. “I’d hate to have to schedule regular meetings. Find your own hobby.”

She laughed again, and the awkwardness of their naked emotions was gone, leaving behind, once more just Apollonia Nor and Ian Brooks.