Editing Recalibrating

<span style="color:#800000">''' ''As always, my thanks go out to Andy for playing this out with me.  Thanks, Andy!--Maer'' ''' </span>




'''Monday, 14 Apr 2521''' <br>
'''Lucifer's Landing, Angel''' <br>
'''Kalidasa (Xuan Wu) system''' <br>
'''0530 hrs, local time''' <br>

My watch woke me with its beeping and I woke with none of the disorientation that had plagued most my mornings dirtside. Our respite from the Black was over. Today we'd dust off and leave Lucifer's Landing...and leave the people we loved behind. My duffel was packed.  I'd slept in my shirt and shorts. My boots were waiting for me in my puddled coveralls. Dressing was simply a matter of shoving into them and hauling the coveralls up. Three zips and I was done. I flipped the bedclothes straight, shouldered my duffel and took the stairs down.

Christian and Lem were already in the kitchen, breakfast spread on the table. Lem was plowing through a stack of pancakes and waved with his fork as I arrived. Christian wordlessly handed me a cup of hot tea and poured the extra in a thermos to take with me. I took my cup into the bathrooom and brushed my teeth, stowed the last toiletries in my kit. I stared at myself in the mirror: Small woman. Thirty-something. Dark hair cut military short. Head up, shoulders back, eyes forward.

Damned if I'd cry.

I pasted a smile on my face for the menfolk, snapped off the light, and left the bath to say my goodbyes.

'''***'''


The heat of the air weighed on Joshua, a tangible presence pressing on his shoulders and arms as he sat on the steps leading into the ''Gift''. He wouldn't even consider it spring by the calendar but already the heat was becoming oppressive when the sun was up. Lucifer's Landing would never be a tropical paradise, he mused, but it had been home, at least for a couple of months. He would miss being on land, even the semi-barren environment of Angel. Which is why he was sitting outside, taking in the world around him. Everything of his in the ''Gift'' was ready for departure; it had been for weeks.

Tomorrow could be for spending time in the familiar confines of the ''Gift''. Today, he thought as a slight breeze blew across his body, was for remembering the things both physical and emotional he was leaving behind.

'''***'''

Christian and I had agreed to make my leavetaking as low-key as possible for Lem's sake, so it wasn't long after breakfast that I'd kissed him goodbye like any other morning and left them in the kitchen cleaning up the dishes.  The street was still, the air already heating up with the promise of a scorcher, and I stepped off the porch with the sense of crossing a threshold.  

Joshua had the right of it: I had family here and in the last two months I had cemented my ties with Lem in a fundamental way that shipboard living precluded.  Nine months ago it had been different. Leaving Lem back then had been a matter of hope and relief for his future.  Today it was nothing but pain.  

The Morningstar offices were closed up and dark in the brightening light of dawn and beyond them lay the ''Gift''.  I ran a practiced eye over her and saw the airlock door was open and the stairs were down.  Sitting toward the bottom was Joshua.  It had been a week since we’d last talked.  My heartache turned bittersweet as I approached him and I wondered what he’d say.

'''***'''

Joshua saw Rina heading slowly towards the ''Gift'', the air shimmering in front of her. His observer's eye looked her over as she approached and he could see she was hurting. Her shoulders were slighly slumped and she carried herself like every step was painful. And maybe it was, he thought. Saying goodbye to Lem had to have been brutal for her. Motherhood suited her, suprisingly and Joshua was glad he had stepped out of the way for her to have the uninterrupted chance at family life away from the Black. While he still hurt from that goodbye - the farewell to the relationship they had, she needed him as a friend this morning.

As she got close, he stood up from the steps, took a single step towards her and held his arms open wide, inviting her in for a hug. "Come here," he said quietly but in a tone that invited no argument. If they couldn't manage to be there for each other as friends, he thought, might as well not even bother to board the ship.

'''***'''

Somewhere between one step and the next, I’d lost my duffel and walking into his arms was like coming home.  I said nothing but held him tight, gave in to the hurt I couldn’t allow Lem to see, and silently wept.

'''***'''

Joshua held her close with one arm and let her cry as he softly stroked her hair with the other. After a minute or two when the quiet tears had stopped, he leaned his head down and kissed her on the forehead. "He'll miss you too."

'''***'''

I gave a watery sniff and pulled out my handkerchief to repair the damage. As usual, Joshua saw right to the heart of things without needing an explanation first.

"You're amazing when you do that," I said, meaning it. "Sometimes scary-amazing, but amazing nonetheless. Thank you."

I stepped back and in a gesture reminiscent of his, I ran a hand over my shorn head and realized I'd lost my cap along with my duffel. Fluffing my hair, I cast around for both.

'''***'''

Joshua gained a small smile as she commented on his reading abilities. "If Blue Sun was going to destroy my life and force me to do evil in their name, the least I deserve out of it is the ability to comfort damsels in distress." As he said it, the fact that she had done something to the hair he had been stroking filtered its way up into the actual working parts of his brain. 'Did something to her hair.' Keen observation there, Joshua, he thought.

''Clearly more of those high powered observation skills at work''.

But having noticed the obvious, he gave himself a minute to really take the new haircut in as he waited for Rina to collect the things she had dropped. Definitely different but he liked it. A down to business look to fit the work of getting back into the Black. In some ways, a reflection of what made Rina...well, Rina. But he admitted to himself that he would miss the longer hair a little. She wasn't always all business and he hoped losing the longer hair didn't mean she had decided to shed that part of her too.

'''***'''

I didn't miss him watching me or eyeing the new cut. Even after more than a month of separation, I was still very aware of him. The pull he'd had on me was still there as well, but it wasn't the imperative it once was. I retrieved my cap and slapped the dust off, hauled my pack to my shoulder again, and decided that the background hum of him on my radar was something I was grateful for. Like the sound of a loved one's voice in a nearby room it was a touchstone and a comfort. So I gathered myself along with my things and drew even with him again.

"I had Christian do it for me last night. I hope you don't mind." I dropped my pack at the foot of the stairs and sat on the bottom step. "Aside from the safety issue, I thought the change would make things easier. Like your beard after you put away Jackson."

'''***'''

Easier on who? Her? Him? But rather than going down a road he wasn't sure he wanted to travel, Joshua mentally shrugged the thoughts away. "You're a big girl, Rina." He smiled at her, letting her know he wasn't serious. "Why would I mind?”

''It's not like we're in a relationship or anything.'' The thought bubbled to the top of his brain despite his best efforts.

'''***'''

Despite his smile, there was something ... edged... in his response and I blinked, surprised.

"You asked me about your beard," I said, trying to explain. "Which, by the way, I like." I did, really. It was neater than before, sharp, and well suited to the rest of him.

'''***'''

"Thank you. I try." He couldn't control the 'Verse but he could control his appearance. He was pretty sure he could find a life philosophy buried somewhere in there. As the thought of starting a religion based on neatness crossed his mind, Joshua realized he hadn't actually told Rina what he thought. She was probably thinking he hated the new 'do.

"The haircut looks good, Rina. Easy to maintain too, I imagine." He could feel the conversation starting towards awkward small talk. He had reached peace with where they were, what they had to be, but he hadn't quite reached the stage where he knew how to be just friends. He kept wanting to say things that would be bad for both of them. The only way to avoid those thoughts was action, so he looked up the steps into the ''Gift'' and raised his arm in that direction. "After you?”

'''***'''

Oh the awkward elephant was back in the room again and damned if I would step aboard our girl with it trailing behind us. I rose from the stairs and looked him in the eye.

"Joshua. One hug from you won't make me jump you or anything. That's not to mean that everything we've had never existed. We're still crew, we're still friends, we're still close. It's just that we've stopped expressing that with our bodies, you know?"

God knows, the matter of expression was a touchy subject right now and I wanted to settle it before we were stuck in a tin can with nowhere to escape from it.

'''***'''

He nodded curtly. "I know, Rina. I'm not expecting it to all fall apart just because we hugged. I'm not quite THAT fragile." How could he explain it wasn't the physicality but the conversation he was struggling with? Learning how to adjust his words to come from a friend instead of a lover? Instead of trying, he just chickened out. "I'm fine. Drop your stuff off in your cabin and I can help you run through pre-flight checkup." Action, not words. Definitely the way to go, he thought.

'''***'''

''Sometimes it's better to shut the hell up and let things lie, awkward or not''.

"Okay," I said quietly. "Let's go."

And I shouldered my duffel and climbed aboard. I waited for him inside the airlock, already thinking ahead to the pre-flight. I’d finally gotten the thruster package back online, recalibrated a few things, but hadn't had the opportunity to take our girl aloft to check them out. Today's lift off would have to serve as a shakedown cruise for the new repairs. If I've done my job right, we'd survive it.

'''***'''



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