RP Entry: Rightful Share

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As always, my thanks go out to Andy. Thanks, Andy!--Maer


Wednesday, 29 Jan 2521
Blue Sun ASREV
En Route to Summer's Gift
0030hrs, ship's time

The ASREV was humming right along, the pitch of her perfectly tuned engines singing sweetly into my bones. Whatever you might want to say about Blue Sun and its agents, they maintained their rides well. And they spared no expense, as I discovered as I pored over every inch of her. All her pieces and parts were top-notch, cutting edge, supremely geared to do their jobs and do them well. It took a couple of hours before I ran out of things to examine in the main cabin and the clock had already tipped into the next day when I finally made it aft to the holding cells.

Even there I found things had been built to Blue Sun's exacting standards. The locks on the doors, for instance, had a few features I'd never seen before and though small, the cells had everything needed to house, restrain and interrogate a prisoner. Soundproofing, too, I saw as I ran a hand over the acoustic wall panels. It had no sink or flip-out head and I wondered if prisoners ever lived long enough to need them.

Up for'ard, Nika made a minor adjustment to our speed and heading, and I felt the ship change her tune in response. Infinitesimal, but there if you knew what to listen for. Arden was racked out on the passenger seats grabbing some shut eye and Joshua was manning the copilot chair, learning to pilot. Which was a good thing, I thought.

We're going to need a back-up pilot if we're keeping this ship. Lots of lucrative packages need fast passage with no questions asked and this girl's built for stealth and speed. It would be nice to make some money for a change and have a ship fast enough to run from trouble should it come knockin'. Nika's a blind fool if she can't see the possibilities.

So ran my thoughts as I stood in the cell, eyeing the fittings and planning for the future. The contradiction of contemplating freedom in a structure built to deny it didn't escape me and I had to snort a laugh. In my line of work—or as defined by crewing on the Gift—fortunes turned on a dime and one had to keep things in their proper perspective.

Easy to say and hard to do, given recent events, and I was grateful I'd wandered aft. Now that I’d examined the ship from stem to stern, there was nothing to distract me from the fact that Rick was dead and that he’d died so that I could live. Nika had said it best, in the brief manner of military comrades everywhere: it’s been nice servin’ with you. At the time, I’d said nothing, letting her speak for all of us. Now aboard the ASREV, I regretted it. It didn’t matter that everyone present understood the need for brevity. It didn’t matter that Rick had made his peace with his decision before we ever set foot on Colchester. What mattered was I’d let a good man go off to die without a personal acknowledgement of respect and gratitude, and the guilt was fierce, the sense of failing a friend intense. The dead are dead and beyond such concerns. It is the duty and the burden of those still living to observe the forms of decency and pay their respects to the departed. In the absence of a body to bury, without any physical reminder of the deceased, the difficulty is increased tenfold.

Rick was gone.

All we had now were our memories and the pain of losing him. We had to grieve and manage our own regrets, our own demons, our perceived failures and successes with the departed. Intellect takes a backseat, emotion holds sway. And standing there with the ship humming around me, alone in a plain empty cell, I could see that chain-yanking grin of his whenever he pulled a fast one, could acutely feel his grip on my ankle when he caught me while EVA in the Halo. I could hear him saying his catchphrase, to everyone’s amusement and annoyance. Only now when he was gone could I begin to map the depth of his friendship, to measure his dedication to us as family and crew.

‘Parting is all we know of Heaven, and all we need of Hell.’

Privacy in sorrow was preferable to public fuss and breathing deep, I listened to the ship, checking to see if it were safe to mourn our loss. Footfalls made their way to my position and I knew it was Joshua. I'd recognize that ambulatory cadence anywhere.

The last thing he needs, the absolute last, is you blubbering. Suck it up.

So I shoved everything down and locked it up tight and lingered in the cell to let him find me.

***

Joshua made his way aft, looking for Rina, his head still swimming with the dials and readings of the pilot's console. He had reached his overload point for the day and decided to call an end to the lesson. He hadn't really talked to Rina since they had taken off.

As he entered the holding area, the cells (or least that he assumed they were) were the last place to check. As he turned into the second cell, the only one with an open door, he saw her standing there, in her familiar coveralls, her face with all its little subtleties - as beautiful as ever. He felt a little dizzy and a sense of déjà vu swept over him.

Why did it seem like he was seeing her for the first time again?

Maybe, he told himself, because just like the first time, one of her crew members was dead with some of the responsibility resting on his shoulders. He could see himself carrying Rick out the door of the Trafalgar medical bay, with Rina following behind and then falling to the sonics. He didn't know her then, but the memory brought sudden, fresh pain at the sight of her collapsing...of Rick unconscious. He closed his eyes and willed the memory away, put it back in the room in his brain. The feeling passed and he was in the little Blue Sun ship again, Rina standing in front of him.

"Hi,Rina," he said as he walked through the doorway. "Do mind if I come in?" Left unsaid but hovering between them was Joshua's unasked question. Did she blame him for not staying to save Rick?

***

I had my back to the cell door to give Joshua a graceful out if he chose to avoid me. I had no reason to believe he was looking for me. For all I knew, he was frozen in Zelle's Blue Hands mindset, undesirous of company, and was only stretching his legs after a long stint in the chair. His voice told a different story, however, and I turned to him with a wan smile.

"No. Please do. I'd love the company."

***

He walked past Rina, and propped himself up against one of the walls. He needed to stand after being in the seat too long and it felt good to stretch his legs. He looked down at the floor, not quite brave enough to look her in the face yet, not completely sure what she was thinking. Her voice sounded right, but he needed to give himself a minute to build up to it. Still hanging on to the last vestiges of the impersonation, perhaps. "How are you holding up?"

***

"Long day," I said, putting the weight of my fatigue behind it, carefully concealing my hurt. I saw him avoiding my eye and addressed it obliquely. "You?"

***

"I'm okay, I guess." He raised his head to look up at her. He couldn't stare at the floor forever, and she didn't seem like she was upset, at least not with him. He decided to go at his question sideways by asking Rina about something she specialized in. "I wanted to ask you..."

He paused for a minute, almost deciding to just ask directly, but in the end he stuck to his plan. Everything seemed too raw to do otherwise. "I wanted to ask you about my tactical performance on Colchester. I don't feel like I did well under fire. I felt like I was never in the right place, never doing the right thing, standing around aimlessly. Oftentimes, I wasn't just missing being in the right place - I was in incredibly the wrong place.

***

“Until the end when you were the only one who could save our asses. And you did it beautifully.” I didn’t like the direction this was going, guessing the cause of his upset, and addressed it square. “And as for Valerie, what? you should have pulled her down that ladder with you during the firefight? Shaky as she was? V'seriozna. Be serious.”

***

“I’m not saying I wasn’t of use on Colchester. I’m saying that I could have done things better. Including,” he continued, referencing her comment, “getting Valerie out of harm’s way. Barring that, if I had been up there, I could've helped Arden and he might have been able to save her life.” Doing anything would have been better than the nothing he had ended up doing.

***

"Don't go there, Joshua."

I could see the self-recrimination and doubt eating at him and for a searing instant I wanted to slap the shit out of him. Hard on that emotion was the realization that I’d been guilty of the same and it instantly cooled my temper. What had he said once? Put your own house in order before you look into your neighbor's.

***

Joshua heard her tell him not to go there and defiantly went there anyway. "I was wandering like a chicken with its head cut off, doing nothing, serving no purpose. Had I been thinking of Valerie and her safety, she'd be alive today to appreciate her name being cleared."

***

"Or she may have lost her grip on the ladder and fallen into the nitro. A stray shot might have taken her out regardless." I growled a sigh and planted my hands on my hips and stared at him. "Or she might have survived with her name cleared legally, but spent the rest of her life justifying her actions to everyone she met. It's not like she had any hope of remaining anonymous, not after the security vid went out. Sometimes the court of public opinion is harsher than the legal one, Joshua, and some people will never get their good name back. For some, that's as good as a death sentence."

I should know. That verdict had been read to me ages ago.

"I don't pretend to have all the answers. I just know that past a certain point, it's useless to marinate in the what-ifs and the if-onlys. You can't sacrifice what you have now over what you could have had in the past. Do that and you lose a chance at a future."

***

"There is a difference between marinating in the what-ifs and accepting your rightful share of blame when you make a mistake." He stared right back at Rina, not giving any ground. "I didn't do the things I should have done and someone died as a result. Is it completely my fault? No. But some of it belongs to me, and what kind of person am I if I can't accept it?"

***

"I'm not saying you weren't to blame. I'm saying don’t take more than your share and having taken responsibility for what is rightfully yours, don't let it keep you from going forward. Guilt paralzyes the same as fear, Joshua." I ran my hands through my hair and fisted them. "If I had done better at my job, we could have broadcast our wave and gotten out of there before those bullets ever had a chance to find Valerie. You ever think of that?"

I wanted to pace but kept still. I was worked up enough as it was.

"And not just Valerie, but everyone on that catwalk was at risk the longer Rick and I delayed getting inside. We could have gotten the topside door open, gotten everyone inside and under cover." I could hear the bitterness creeping into my voice and I breathed deep and modulated my tone. "I’d botched the hook-up, fried the connector, and had to start over again. And that’s when I lost my grip on my line and only just managed to grab it before it ran out on me. That's why it took us so long to get inside. Rick was too busy hauling my ass to safety to kick open the door."

***

"Like I said, I'll take blame for what's mine. I'm not going to wallow in it." He let out a deep breath he didn't realize he was holding. "I'm going to find a way to make sure at least my part of it doesn't happen again. I'm going to be fine, Rina."

***

I searched his face, caught his expression. Measured his resolve. Gave him his due.

"Good. I'm glad to hear that." I was, really. "And I'm glad that you were there at the end, when we needed you. No one could have pulled off what you did. No one."

I glanced down at my boots, debating what to say next, and looked up through my lashes at him.

"You knew. Before the rest of us. What did she tell you?"

***

"She had to open her mind to me. Let down her barriers so I could get the mannerisms I needed. As I was finishing, I saw it there in her thoughts, as plain as day. She wasn't planning on coming back." He thought back to that moment, that calm certainty he gotten from her. She had looked certain death in the eye and chose not to back down. He may not have liked the way she did things most of the time, but Joshua thought he could learn from that.

He found the cell’s pallet and dropped into it heavily, letting his weight just carry him into it. "Then I asked her if she wasn't coming back. And if Rick had known that they weren't coming back and had chosen it anyway. When she confirmed that, I made a decision not to tell everyone else until we were away."

***

I heard the words, turned them over in my head. I thought about what he'd encountered and tried to imagine it—of how he’d kept the unwelcome knowledge from the rest of the crew, knowing full well if he'd revealed the news we'd have refused to leave without Rick. With one team member already dead and several of us wounded, with the thinnest tissue of lies to cover our escape, any delay could very well have killed us. If it had not been for Zelle's willingness to give Joshua the mindset he'd needed for the charade, had it not been for his borrowing ability, had it not been for his judgment, chances were good we'd be rotting in a brig somewhere. Assuming we weren't immediately taken out back and shot.

God, I felt old.

"I'm sorry," I said. It was lame, but it was all I had. "I'm so sorry."

***

"Don't be." He looked up at Rina and motioned with his right hand for her to come and sit with him. "He made a choice to give his life for the mission...and for us. And I made a choice to respect his choice." He had said it to Nika and meant it then too. "Having to hide that from you would've been harder if I hadn't been already been in that emotionless mindset of the Blue Hands. But even if I hadn't been, my job on this crew is to make sure we keep flying smooth. Keep flying free."

He thought about all that he had been through since joining the Gift such a short time ago. "If that means having to make a hard choice and suffer through some emotional pain, that's the least I can do. Two crew members have died since I've met you, one I didn't know at all and one I knew very well. Whatever price I pay is nothing compared to theirs."

He shook his head firmly. "Never again, if I can help it, will I let us be put in a position where we're not making the choices." His voice grew deeper as he repeated, "Never again."

***

I'd been careful not to touch him, not sure if he wanted the contact as he shed his assumed persona. While his impersonation of Zelle hadn't been a full-on borrowing, it had been harrowing enough even so. I had never seen him so cold and detached before and though at the time I had kept my misgivings to myself so as to keep our escape plan firmly on its rails, once we were free and clear I worried about how it had affected him. Seeing his invitation eased some of my worry and I have to admit it wasn't without some measure of comfort as well. In such times as these, it helped to have someone to touch and hold, to keep the ugliness at bay.

I sat beside him, took his hand and laced my fingers with his. I wanted to do more but held off, knowing that he might still be emotionally raw.

"You won't," I said quietly, having to content myself with speech. "And you won't be doing it alone."

***

"Thank you," he whispered. The contact of her hands with his felt like returning home. Since he had taken on Zelle's mindset, he had been alone, isolated. Only a few hours in time total and only maybe 30 minutes of that on Colchester. But it had seemed much longer. But now he could be human again. "Thank you for understanding why I did what I did. I'm so sorry I kept everyone from a proper goodbye to Rick." He had been worried that they might not forgive him. But even if they hadn't, he had been willing to pay that price.

He leaned over to her and kissed her on the lips, treasuring the sweetness of it. "Thank you for trusting me."

And thank you for loving me in whatever way you can. He thought it silently, knowing she'd hear it in her heart. The mental strength he had found on Colchester came directly from her willingness to give her love. Joshua was glad she could be with him to help him to explore that new found strength. At least for a while longer. Then his thoughts turned down a dark path, visualizing Rick and Zelle walking off towards the data core together, never to be seen again. Colchester was a reminder that nothing lasted forever. And he pressed himself into Rina, gathering comfort from her presence.

***

Joshua leaned in and his kiss was gentle, lingering, and I wrapped my arms around him. He was warm and solid and my resolve wavered. We were alone. Only Joshua would know. I felt the first tendrils of grief slithering through my chest, making my breath shudder into him, and I finally let go.

***

Joshua could feel her shake as she started to softly cry pressed up against his side, and as her grief, hot and painful, flooded his mind, the last barrier he had put in place against his emotions melted away. Tears started to pour out and he found himself quietly crying with Rina, holding her tight to him. So much had happened and there had been no time to even think about all they had lost. The frantic rush and desperate nature of their missions had kept it all in. But now he could admit it to himself. Rick was never coming back. Nothing was going to change that.

Standing above the nitrogen ocean on Colchester, there had been a time to fight. A time to stand strong when things seemed hopeless. A time to walk calmly through their enemies. But now as they left that place...and Rick behind them, now it was time to grieve.


Since this season turned out to be RP heavy, it's only fair to include the link to everyone's efforts.

Go back to Unanchored | Skip to He Was Not A Robot (Season Three Hiatus)
Go to Peripatetica - Rina's Journal entry and RP log
Go to Rina's Russian Glossary
Go to Rina's Crew Page
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