My eyes drifted open slowly, and I stared, half-lidded, up at the ceiling. It was a messy array of exposed utility piping rather than the familiar flat steel pattern I was used to waking up to in my heart, but it didn’t take more than a moment to reorient myself in my map of Theseus and recall where I was. Aisling’s room. I’d been far too tired to get up and move to the medical bed after my emotional trial the previous night, and as nice as it would have been to go into torpor instead, I knew the healthy thing to do was get some real human sleep. Aisling’s bed was so much more comfortable than Doc’s examination table, too. I don’t think I’d slept this well since my journey began.
I turned to my side and was a little disappointed to see the other side of the bed empty. Aisling must have gotten up earlier and snuck off. More likely, she hadn’t slept yet. I’d seen Aisling sleep when she was injured, and I wasn’t sure if I would have been able to sleep through her snoring.
Not that an interruption to my sleep would be unwelcome. I’d grown used to my nightmares by now, but that didn’t make them pleasant. And now that I knew more context to my past, it wasn’t hard to draw meaning from them. Being grown in a tube, being forced to live in simulation for most of my life, the terror of an impossibly overwhelming force consuming me... it hardly felt like a mystery why I dreamed about these things anymore. Being aware of them didn’t make them go away, though. And now, they were smattered with flashes of a certain exploding starship in the distance as well. It was some kind of twisted comfort that my nightmares were finally finding inspiration in my new, more real, fucked up experiences, rather than solely drawing from my hazy fucked up past.
I sat up and stretched out my arms and back, frail muscles waking up from a more restful sleep than usual, and I crawled over to the edge of the bed, sitting on the edge and taking another look around Aisling’s room. She didn’t actually keep much in here, since a lot of her more practical belongings were up at her desk at the helm, but I looked at the bedside table she had righted again in the night, and the pile of paper books stacked on it.
As anyone probably would with something as precious as printed books out in the fringes of the system, it was obvious she took good care of them. They were wrapped in blank fabric book covers that didn’t have titles printed on the covers, and I hadn’t bothered to ask what she was reading last night, so I was curious. I took the top one in hand and flipped it open to a few pages in. The Book of Five Rings. I read a few paragraphs into the first chapter, but it was too dense for me, written in an archaic style. Philosophy. Ancient philosophy, from pre-colonial Earth. Interesting that it was something the captain liked, but not interesting to me.
I shut the book and set it back where I found it, deciding I shouldn’t pry any further or risk bending the spine. I wasn’t absorbing any of it, anyway. If it were a file, would I be able to take in the knowledge as instantly as I could any other data? I probably wouldn’t comprehend its meaning very well that way, but maybe.
Setting that idea aside until I could search the other terminals on board for e-books, I stood up and let out a satisfied sigh, stretching out again. I needed to ask if I could get a room and bed of my own once we had a chance to dock somewhere and get some actual jobs and funding going. I didn’t mind sleeping in my heart, but this was a bit of a wake up call that I could easily do way better.
Stepping over Aisling’s pile of dirty clothes, I slid the door open, rubbing my eyes with my other hand. Out in the hall, Shaw stood staring down at his terminal. He looked up at the movement of the door, and his eyebrows shot up. That’s when I realized what this probably looked like. I was crawling out of the captain’s quarters, bleary-eyed and ragged in the aftermath of my meltdown. “Uh, Hey Sh-Shaw.” I started. I wasn’t sure how best to handle this, so I said the first thing that came to mind, “Just... sleeping.” Smooth.
He gave a quiet laugh, a smile growing on his face. “I bet. Was it a satisfying night?” He chuckled.
“Shut u-up.” I obviously couldn’t just tell him why that wasn’t even possible. I closed my eyes and checked the time. It was afternoon already. I guess I slept in for once.
“That was quite the turbulence we had yesterday.” He looked back down at his terminal. Shaw hadn’t exactly been helpful during the battle. He’d been cowering in his ‘room’, for lack of a better term, for the entire battle. It was a pile of spare sheets and linens on the bare floor of what had once been his prison. At least I got the medical bed. “Good job,” he said with a nod.
I opened my eyes and raised an eyebrow at him. That was a weird thing for him to say. “Thanks?” I muttered, stepping out into the hall and closing Aisling’s door behind me. “Look, don’t start any stu-stupid rumors or anyth...thing. Nothing ha-happened. I was just... really t-tired.” I didn’t want to talk to Shaw about my emotional crisis, either. He would not be a good source of consolation.
“Oh relax, I’m not going to blackmail you or anything. We’re friends, right?” He gave that slimy smile that I absolutely hated. “It doesn’t matter to me if you and the captain are a thing or not. Not even worth a scandal, anyway. You don’t exactly make it a secret which way you swing, and the captain’s preferences hardly surprise me, either.” He gave a chortle. As long as he didn’t make a big deal out of it, then whatever, I guess. He could believe whatever he wanted.
Still, I couldn’t imagine myself wanting to play nice with him. “G-Go to hell, Shaw.” I huffed, taking a few steps toward the stairs. I just wanted to force my breakfast down, then get back into the core module while I still felt refreshed.
“Oh, come on now.” Shaw whined playfully. “I’m playing nice. I’m working with you guys, and I’ve put myself in danger for this ship. What’s it take to get your respect and end the spiteful cold shoulder treatment?”
I sighed, waving him off as I turned the corner, heading toward the stairwell. Shaw had shown he was competent and useful, in certain ways. But he wasn’t my friend. He still held me up at knifepoint when we met face to face for the first time, and he still almost killed Doc shortly after that. I wasn’t going to forgive him. I repaired his implant for him as thanks for getting us the codes to get off the Venus colony, but that didn’t wipe the slate clean. It was pretty obvious that he wasn’t really sincere about any of this. He was using us somehow, and I knew he was going to disappear on us once we got to Io. He could try to sell us out to Foundation, though, so Aisling might keep him on a leash a while longer. Either way, he wasn’t to be trusted.
I stepped down the stairway, putting Shaw out of my head and taking a deep breath in preparation for swallowing down a bowl of protein slop. As I entered the mess hall, though, I grimaced for another reason.
Mouse was sitting at the table, one of the synthetic skin panels on his left arm propped open while he dug around inside his prosthetic with a probe hooked into his terminal. Diagnostic work, I assumed. He was still trying to work out all the kinks in his cybernetics after the hard reboot Skygraves forced. I stopped in place as he looked up and we made eye contact with each other for just a moment. We both looked away in silence. Maybe it was best not to open that wound again just yet. I walked around the circumference of the mess and grabbed the open package of ration powder from the pantry.
This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
“I’m sorry,” he said quietly when I reached for a bowl. I froze, expecting us to keep a silent truce. I would have just hurried through with my meal and gone away. Those words, however, were very unexpected. I lowered my arm, trying to figure out what I wanted to say back to him. It felt like I would step on a landmine if I uttered anything at all. “When I said that, I didn’t know what happened out there yet.” I turned around slowly, this time locking eyes with him properly. A frown came over my face, unsure if I deserved that apology yet. I’d forgiven myself, on some level, but Mouse’s words from the previous night still stung. He was glaring at me, but less intensely than usual. There was no point in reading too much into it. That was just his resting expression, same as the captain, only more intense. “I know you didn’t mean to hurt her. I was just... mad. I don’t like seeing Ray get hurt. She....” He trailed off. He couldn’t bring himself to finish the thought.
I still didn’t know what I was supposed to say to satisfy him, but I felt compelled to fill the silence. I took in a deep breath and said, “I... re... reviewed the f-footage of the fight. You were right. I’ll... k-keep active turning in m... in mind for crew s-safety from now on.” I took in a quick breath and focused on my speech to keep my stutter under control.
His shoulders drooped slightly, and he looked shocked. “You... watched it again?” He muttered quietly. It was obvious why he’d backed down last night. Aisling had told him I’d had to kill someone. He remembered his own fragility when he’d gone through this, and he felt like he made a terrible mistake confronting me when I’d just gone through that. He did, but I felt bad that now he pitied me when he hated that treatment himself.
I swallowed, looking down at the floor, frowning and reaching a hand across my chest to squeeze my arm tight, tensing up. I nodded quickly. “A lot.”
The silence returned for another moment before he repeated with a tone of sincere finality. “I’m sorry.”
“It’s okay.” I nodded and looked back at him, mustering my courage to set things right between us. “A-Aisling talked me through... that. I-I think I’ll be okay. I-I mean I... I’m not just... o-over it. No. N-No, I’m def...initely not over it. B-But she... got me th-through the n-through the n-night. I’ll... I’ll be okay.”
He didn’t stop giving me that sympathetic glare, and gave me a slow, affirmative nod. “I understand. Sorry.”
“How i-is she?” I asked, trying to change the subject as I turned back around and continued prepping my meal.
“Still asleep... But Doc says she’s gonna be fine. She’ll just be on bed rest the rest of the way to Io.” I heard the miniscule clinking of steel that let me know he’d thankfully returned to his own distraction.
I stared down into what had quickly become the paradoxically dry slush I’d unfortunately become accustomed to, and sighed as I made a risky decision. I turned and sat down at the table opposite to Mouse. He looked up for a moment, his work interrupted, but silently went back to it as I began eating. I could have easily left and ate somewhere else on the ship, but that would just be reinforcing my bad habits. And that’s what it always was. Me hiding from things that I could have just dealt with then and there. I wasn’t going to leave the awkward, bitter rift between us to fester. Maybe I could make it up to him. “Mouse...” I started. “Just s-say it. I can t... take it. Let it out.”
There was a tiny scratching noise of his tool, and he looked up again, eyes up in surprise. I wondered, had he heard those words before? He glanced back down at his deactivated arm, then put the tool down and looked back up at me, expression returned to neutral seething. “I already said what I wanted to say. I said more than I should have said. You know what I think. What more can I say?”
I tilted my shoulders in a shrug and asked, “What you’re f...eeling, maybe?”
He put his hand down hard against his tool as if to grab it while pounding the table. It made me flinch. He was still hesitating, but he chewed on his lip for a second, gathering his own thoughts. “Isn’t it obvious? Fine, I’m angry! At you, at myself, at the fucking corps that won’t let us just live our lives! At the fact that no one else seems to be as pissed off as I am!” He looked down at his arm, glaring with renewed hatred. His voice lowered to a simmering growl. “It’s frustrating. The state of the system... The state of our lives... I don’t get how anyone can feel anything else. Looking at my own life makes me mad. Looking at the state of everyone else’s lives makes me mad for them. Everything’s fucked.”
Mouse wore his heart on his sleeve. He really was just always that angry, it seemed. It wasn’t a tough guy act or some kind of over-enthusiastic show of masculinity. He legitimately held in all that rage, constantly. It was horrifying that someone his age even had the capacity for all that ire, but it made total sense knowing what he’d been through. His mood was intimidating, but I’d been bolstered by the previous night, far more than I had been by distraction. He didn’t scare me as much as he normally would right now. “Is there an-anything you w-wanna do?”
“I wanna make every corpo exec in the system spontaneously combust with the flip of a switch.” He mumbled angrily, picking up his tool again and picking at the internals in his arm with more force than he probably should have.
I grimaced at him. “Real... Realistically, Mouse? I m-mean it. What’s something you can d-do right now that’ll help you b-blow off steam?”
He grumbled something to himself, putting the tool aside again and then closing the panel of synthetic flesh, flexing the fingers on his reactivated hand. “Why’re you still here, Meryll?” He spat.
“Cause I w-wanna help.” I told him. I hoped there was something I could do for him. He scowled at the words. I knew he disliked being patronized more than anything, but he wasn’t handling his issues himself. He might not have the experience he needed to be able to handle it himself. Not that I had much room to talk about matters of authentic experience. And his feelings were way different from my own. He was honest about what he felt, but it didn’t make him feel better like it had for me. He’d worked through his fury, and beneath it was just more rage. I wondered what it would be like if I never ran out of tears. What would happen to me if I could stand to feel despair forever? If the well of sorrow never ran dry. No, there had to be something more to Mouse than that, somewhere far beneath that roiling ocean. There had to be a way to help him find peace. “C… Can I help you?”
He pushed himself up out of his seat and turned toward the door, stomping his way toward the cargo bay without another word. I guess there was no way to find out right now. He didn’t want it, and I didn’t have the force of personality that Aisling commanded to make him face it. I doubted that would work, anyway. He wouldn’t take well to being forced to do anything. It would just make things worse.
My hand was shaking by now, running to the edge of my gathered nerve, but I had to reach out one last time. “If... you d-do wanna talk about anyth-thing, I’m always listen... listening. Anyw-where on the ship. No judgement. When you’re r-ready.” My stutter kept me from making my point quickly, and I eventually had to raise my voice after him because my words didn’t stop him from leaving.
I sat back in my chair and let out a quiet sigh. So much for mending that divide. I thought I’d only managed to reignite his ire. I hoped he understood, though, that I was trying to make myself available to him, as a confidant if he needed it. But as I picked up my bowl and tilted it toward my mouth to gulp it down as quick as I could, I heard a strained voice from right around the corner of the door, “Fine. Thanks.” Then there was only the sound of a small pair of boots stomping away.
I smiled despite the horrid taste assaulting my tongue, and after a moment, gave a disgusted grunt and stood up to rinse my bowl.
As I stepped alone up the stairwell and walked into my heart, I stopped to stare at the psychic damper module, still resting at the back corner of Doc’s counter. I watched it for a few minutes, feeling no fear, but it still radiated apprehension and exhaustion. It was still too overwhelming. I had the knowledge and experience now to know I needed to get it over with. I needed to pick up that cylinder and finally integrate it back into my system. I needed to face that other aspect of myself. But every time I thought about it, I recalled not only my vague memory of Cassandra’s face, but I also dreaded my own dead-eyed reflection of ruthless, unfeeling logic.
“Meryll…?” Doc asked from behind me, and I flinched, finally breaking my eyes from the module. I shook my head in silence and walked up the catwalk without touching it. Maybe some habits were just too hard to break all at once. I’d faced enough for now.