The End of All Our Exploring

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No more crying, Steve ;) Takes place perhaps 5 days or so from arrival at Boros. So a month+ after events of the last game, before funerals.--Terri



"We shall not cease from exploration. And the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time." --T.S. Eliot




He watched her from the far side of the docking ring. He’d been watching her from the shadows without her knowledge the whole trip. This run was a special kind of hell for him; they had come full circle. The last time they’d shared a ship she’d been grieving her father. At least then she’d turned to him. This time she seemed… less fragile but more deeply hurt, maybe. But he couldn’t stand to watch her distance herself from everything anymore.

His footsteps were quiet on the deck, but he had the notion that he could have done a line dance through the docking bay and she’d have not noticed. Her focus was her ship, which she had yet to board, with those strange midnight blue eyes. Those eyes—dear God, it had taken him nearly two days en route to Pericles to realize what had been different. Her eyes were windows to her soul, and he’d missed the fact that they weren’t even the same color because her soul was still there looking back at him.

Just like now. She pinned him to the deck with a simple look. Brian felt his heart skip a beat in his chest. It was almost like being gut-punched, to see that pain there again.

He proffered the cup in his hand. “Coffee. I hope you still like it strong, white, and sweet.” Nika’s eyes flickered as if puzzled by the offer. “You’ve been standing here for about two and a half hours now,” Brian said quietly. “You gonna pull on your big-girl panties and go aboard, or you gonna wait a while longer? Ain’t gonna get any easier.”

There was a moment after he said it that he wondered if the echo of the past—and he could feel the past standing between them—was perhaps pushing her too far too fast. It was the faint smile that quirked the corner of her lips that eased the concern.


She took the cup from his hand and returned her gaze to her vessel. He stood there quietly with her, slightly behind and to the right, waiting. He’d almost given up on getting an answer, of getting any response at all from her, when she spoke. “No one’s talked about my big-girl panties in years.”

Feeling his way through the conversation, knowing the awkward pits of quicksand that awaited the unwary, Brian pursed his lips. “Doubt you’ve needed anyone to ask about ‘em in a long time,” he observed. “Hear you’re a hell of a captain, lady.”

Her shoulders went taut. “Yeah,” Nika replied bitterly. “Hell of a captain.” He’d seen her in the same pose, one arm crossed over her chest with her elbow propped on it to keep her coffee near her jaw, more times than he could count.

“You think that losing two of your crew makes you a bad captain?” he asked in a curious tone.

Those blue eyes, stormy with her emotions, cut to his face. “Don’t you?” she retorted.

“Nope.”

Nika stared at him and then looked away, back toward her ship. “You don’t know me anymore,” she told him.

“Whose fault is that?” he asked her in a calm tone. “I’m not the one who said I was coming home and then ran off first chance she had.” He’d long ago stopped being mad about Miranda and its aftermath but he wasn’t above pricking her where it hurt to get her to talk to him. He watched her closely.

She was still taut and her jaw clenched. It took a long time for her to speak. “You could have come after me.”

“You could have stayed.”

“I felt responsible,” Nika said finally. “I … We weren’t even sure you were going to ever wake up. I couldn’t face that.”

“Ah,” Brian nodded, his eyes on her ship. He crossed his arms over his chest and pursed his lips. “So you never outgrew being a coward after all.”

She reared around, rage flashing in her dark blue eyes. “Coward? Who ran off when I said I couldn’t marry you in the conditions you were asking for??”

He couldn’t smile. She’d punch him in the mouth if he grinned. But he still had her number—she’d engaged. There might be some hope after all. “Uh-huh. And after brushing me off, you turned right around and strung Arden along for a couple more years. Admit it, darlin’, when push comes to shove you would rather run away than commit to anything. Kinda shocks me that you didn’t ditch the ship sooner.”

He was so gonna get his ass kicked. He could see the anger pushing at her, and Brian knew she was going to launch something ugly at him. It was the way she operated. Only she threw him a curve.

“I almost did,” Nika replied, banking the anger. She kept her eyes on him, though. “I’ve been through a hell of a lot with some of this crew, and there are too many times to count when I thought about running. But I learned something—finally. Took me gorram long enough. They’re my family. I bailed on my sister. I bailed on you guys. I don’t think very many people are lucky enough to get handed the kind of family I’ve had, both blood and ship, a third time. And I didn’t want to blow it this time.”

There was a look of regret in her eyes that he wasn’t entirely sure he understood. So he merely waited, holding her gaze.

“If the Verse has a grand design, we are where we’re supposed to be at any given moment,” Nika said softly. “If I hadn’t left all of you, I wouldn’t have met this crew. If I hadn’t met this crew, I never would have been in the right place to take you lot off Miranda in the company of the right people to keep you alive when you tried to turn yourself into pumpkin stew.” She paused, forcing a small smile.

“Circles within circles. If I had run from this crew… I wouldn’t have been in the right place at the right time for Arden to save your life. Again.” Her deep blue eyes were shadowed. “I balked on the possibility that the Ark existed. What kind of crazy talk is it that sends you out into uncharted space on a million-to-one shot? It wasn’t until the plague got personal that I was willing to risk it all—not because the plague was hurting all of us. I was willing to bide my time and wait for someone to come up with a cure despite the rest of my crew wanting to come out here. It was when I realized that you were dying that my choice was made. And no matter what the years between have wrought, Bri… I couldn’t live with that.”

He stood transfixed, stunned by what she was saying. He had no retort, no sharp remark. He could only stare at her.

Nika shrugged a little. “And Arden, the man you blamed for all your troubles, still was willing to come out here on a shot this long. Not for you or because I wanted it and he loved me. He came for far more altruistic reasons—and he and my little brother gave their lives to save the Verse. Under my command, without talking to me about it first, they loosed the cure into the atmo knowing it would kill them.”

She looked back at the Exeter. “I don’t think I’m a coward anymore. I don’t know if I’ll ever be as brave as those two were, or as Rick was when he stayed behind and died on Colchester to make sure the repository was destroyed, or as Jake was when he died on Trafalgar trying to make sure the truth got out. But I’m pretty sure coward doesn’t apply to me, either.”

Not that she hadn’t always been formidable, but Brian got a glimpse behind the low, calm words of the woman that she’d become when he wasn’t looking. And he pulled in a breath realizing that while much of the same girl he’d known still lived inside the woman, there was far more to her now.

“You’re right,” he said quietly. “But even the strongest person needs their friends when people they love die.” He held out his hand. “Permission to board, Captain?”

Nika looked at his extended hand and then up into his face. “It isn’t the way I wanted to meet up with you again.”

He nodded slightly, regret flashing across his features. “I know.” His hand remained steady, simply waiting on her to either accept or reject his offer of friendship.

When she slid her hand into his finally, he drew her close and wrapped his free arm around her shoulders. “I’m sorry you lost them, Nika,” he whispered into her hair.

She rested her head there on his shoulder looking at her ship for a few more minutes, her coffee cradled beneath her chin. And then she disengaged. “C’mon. Hell, the old girl’s more than lived up to her legacy, don’t you think?” Nika offered him a faint grin. “Browncoats savin’ the Verse. Again. Who’da thunk?”



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