20. Don’t Get Me Wrong #3
At Reyna's sincerity, Charlie felt the weight of the observation. This time, it felt earned. Reyna had called Earth Night 'incredible.' Not 'good job,' or even 'well done.' But incredible, even if it did start out as a quip. It became specific, from a woman Charlie knew did not throw words around.
"Thank you, Reyna." The name still felt new on Charlie's tongue, even though it had been hers to use for weeks now, ever since Reyna had insisted on it. "I'm glad you came."
Reyna's eyes softened. "I made a promise."
And there it was again. That same feeling from Engineering, the one she'd tried not to think about. The immovable promise, kept.
Charlie watched Reyna walk away, beginning to feel nerves of what may be happening here.
"That's strike two, Spark Plug," Tavi stated, pulling Charlie from her thoughts.
"Strike two, Tav?"
Tavi nodded. "Strike two," he repeated, enunciating his words as he walked away.
One night, Charlie couldn't sleep. Her mind was running rampant, replaying the Earth Night evening.
But it wasn't about the stories, or the music, or the crew's reactions.
It was about Reyna. Her face, her eyes across the room.
Reyna saying incredible with a weight that turned their banter over the word into something that had a heartbeat.
And no matter how hard Charlie tried, she couldn't control her mind's rampage.
Giving up, she just accepted that her mind wouldn’t let it go.
She got up and decided to just walk the corridors, just as she had multiple nights now, using the movement and the exercise to push the excessive energy out of her system.
She had to admit it had been a while since she'd last done so, now that she felt more at home and more comfortable on the ship, especially the more time she spent aboard.
But it still worked, and was still her favorite way to work things out of her system.
She didn't have a destination, but her feet took her to the central atrium, to the railing that overlooked the Aetherfin's zero-gravity sphere.
She stopped, leaning against the railing, watching the creature's slow bioluminescent drift through weightlessness.
To Charlie, as she stood there, she began to consider it something akin to a visual lullaby.
But Charlie stopped in her tracks when she noticed Reyna was already there.
Leaning against the railing and watching the Aetherfin trace patterns through the sphere, Reyna looked over when she heard Charlie's footsteps. Charlie watched as her face opened to a smile at seeing her behind her.
"Can't sleep?" Reyna asked.
"Apparently not," Charlie answered with a soft laugh. She hesitated at the edge of the atrium, suddenly aware that she'd walked here in bare feet and pajamas, not having thought about what she'd do if she ran into someone along her traverse through the ship.
However, she remembered the time she found Reyna in Borran's kitchen, the conversation the two of them had, with laughter and honesty and care. And then she specifically remembered a captain who'd said I don't mind the company.
"You told me once," Charlie said, "that if I ever found you in a quiet space, I shouldn't feel the need to run away."
Reyna's expression softened. "I did say that."
"Well," Charlie gestured at the atrium, watching as the Aetherfin drifted through their sphere like a slow-motion dream. "I have now found you in a quiet space. But, fair warning, I did not bring a banana peel. However, I'm sure I can probably improvise."
The corner of Reyna's mouth lifted. "Well then I guess it's only fair that you join me," she said. "These improvisational skills need to be tested."
Charlie let out a soft laugh before joining her at the railing.
She watched as the Aetherfin pulsed with the same slow blues and purples that then reflected off the sphere walls, painting the atrium in shifting, underwater light.
She and Reyna stood in silence for a while, watching the creatures drift through the habitat.
But the silence felt easy. Easy in a way that surprised Charlie.
As if she were sitting in a comfortable silence between two people seeking the same thing.
"They are so beautiful," Charlie said eventually. "I know I've said that before. But every time I see the Aetherfins, it's like the first time. We have nothing like them on Earth."
Reyna smiled over at Charlie before turning her gaze back to the habitat.
"The Aetherfin have that effect. Their bioluminescence actually shifts based on their emotional state.
Oranges can mean aggravation, greens can be health related.
But their blues and purples signify contentment.
" Reyna paused, looking over at Charlie, then back at the Aetherfin.
"Now that we're talking about it, it seems they look bluer since you arrived. "
"Since I arrived?"
"I mean, you talk to them, right?"
Charlie didn't move a muscle. "I do not talk to them," she said, but even she could hear the rise in her voice and the quick speed of delivery.
Reyna scoffed, but her eyes were soft. "Charlie, I have it on good authority from three separate crew members that you stand at this railing on your lunch breaks and narrate your engineering problems to creatures that cannot hear you through the sphere walls."
"First of all, it's therapeutic. Second, I'm not narrating, I'm thinking out loud. Third, how do you know it can't hear me? Maybe it finds my voice soothing."
"Soothing."
"Yeah, maybe I calm them down, help them work through their problems with my James Earl Jones narration instrument."
"What is 'James Earl Jones?'"
"Oh for the love of —"
"You know what?" Reyna interrupted, her laughter spreading through the atrium and catching Charlie square in the chest. "I stand corrected. Perhaps you don't talk to the Aetherfin and use them to work through your engineering troubles. Perhaps it's all just a ruse against the Earthling."
Charlie leaned her head back and took a deep breath.
"So maybe I talk to them," Charlie muttered, quiet and quick that she purposefully slurred her words. Her head shot back up. "But, hey, I stand by that it could possibly hear me and find my voice soothing."
Charlie stared at Reyna with an expression that resembled an invitation to an argument. But she felt her own expression shift as Reyna's went soft.
"Maybe it does."
The way Reyna said it made Charlie's breathing stagger, just slightly.
"What about you?" Charlie asked, redirecting before anything could betray her. "Do you find yourself here a lot?"
"I usually come here when I can't sleep. Which, if I'm being honest, is more often than a captain should probably admit."
Charlie studied her before continuing. "Bad dreams?"
Reyna didn't answer immediately, nor did she look at Charlie. Instead, she watched the Aetherfin, and Charlie saw something flicker behind her eyes, as though an opportunity had opened up but then been stolen away. It was so quick that if Charlie had blinked, she would have missed it.
"Sometimes," Reyna answered. She took a deep breath before continuing. "The ship gets very quiet at 0300. Some nights the quiet is good." She paused and her voice went quiet. "But some nights it's too much."
Charlie understood that. She understood it on a level perhaps Reyna underestimated about her. How the quiet of some nights carried things the daylight kept at bay.
"Well," Charlie said, "If the quiet ever gets too much, and you're ever standing at this railing at an unreasonably horrific hour, and a barefoot Earth human in her pajamas just happens to wander by—"
"You'll step right in and slip on a banana peel?"
Charlie grinned. "Promise."
Reyna turned to look at her, and the Aetherfin's light caught her face in a wash of blue and purple while she smiled.
This smile was one of the real ones, and Charlie's vision, all over again, begin to narrow in, erasing the world around her fixated gaze on Reyna.
Only this time, a weight in her chest started to feel warm, and all of a sudden Charlie had something brand new to add to the list of things she kept choosing not to examine when it came to Reyna.
"I'll hold you to that," Reyna said, determined and solid.
They stayed at the railing for another hour.
They talked about more about the Aetherfin's color choices and how to read them, about how far the ship was from the nearest star system, about whether Borran's attempt at a human breakfast had been a success or a war crime.
They talked about nothing important and then everything that mattered in the same breath, and when Charlie finally said goodnight and walked back to her quarters, she realized her mind was clear.
The second night, Charlie went back to the atrium. But this time, Reyna wasn't there.
The Aetherfin drifted through its slow patterns, blues and silvers shifting through the sphere, but the railing was empty.
Charlie stood there for a few minutes, watching the creature pulse in the dark.
She realized she was disappointed. Disappointed because the whole reason worth visiting the atrium was because of who was in it. And she wasn't here.
She almost went back to her quarters, back to bed and perhaps a night of broken sleep.
But instead, something compelled her to walk the ship.
It was quiet at this hour, a vessel of this magnitude where the corridors dimmed to their night cycle, the hum of systems the only company.
Charlie drifted through passageways she knew in the back of her mind, but looked different in the dark.
She let her feet choose her direction, leading her through corridors and hallways, until she turned a corner and saw light.