25. Forever Young #2
“Sweetheart.” He waited until she looked at him. “I’m about to be sincere, which is a big deal. Maren will confirm this happens roughly twice a decade.”
Maren made a sound that was most likely agreement.
“You came onto this ship and made yourself useful before you even knew how a datapad worked.”
Charlie scoffed. “Hey, you know what, it’s not like I—"
“Charlie,” Tavi interrupted, causing her to stop and look at him directly.
“For the love of all things Led Zeppelin, please shut up for five minutes.” Charlie stared at Tavi, but within seconds, she felt the corner of her mouth forming into a smile.
She nodded gently. “You arrived knowing how to fix all sorts of things, solve all kinds of things. You came in as this remarkable human who only laid claim to ruining Borran’s batter the day you landed.
” Tavi smiled at her, his thumb moving over her knuckles.
“But Charlie, you don’t have to prove your worth with us, you know that, right? ”
Charlie felt her breath hitch, her expression returning to careful stoicism. But Tavi continued.
“You’re crew. You’re Emberkind.” Charlie looked at her hands in his. At Maren, steady on her other side. At the bay where she’d argued with Cael and laughed at Tavi and watched Maren stop dimming her shimmer. “You don’t have to be useful to be ours, Spark Plug,” Tavi continued. “You already are. “
Charlie felt that thickness return to her throat, but for an entirely different reason than before. She heard Tavi’s words, heard what they were saying, and though they wouldn’t bring Katie back, they settled in her bones in a way that gave her the first semblance of hope for whatever came next.
“That’s a low bar, Tav,” she said. “I ruined the batter the moment I arrived, before meeting any of you.” It came out rougher than she anticipated, but she saw the words land with Tavi.
“And we kept you anyway,” Tavi said, his smile warm and stretching across his face. “Tragic, I suppose, but we’ll cope.”
The comment pulled a sound out of Charlie that was half laugh and only a little wet. But she let it, because neither of them tried to make it into more than it was. Maren’s shoulder stayed against her while Tavi’s hands stayed warm against her fingers.
She’d come into Engineering to outrun her own head. But instead she dropped bombs on her friends, and they hadn’t flinched. Somehow, that made the room easier to breathe in than it had been an hour ago.
The song ended, and Tavi reached for his datapad, queuing with specified precision “We Are Family,” because grief had made its appearance but Tavi had standards.
He squeezed Charlie’s hands before moving back to his console, while Maren placed a quick kiss against Charlie’s cheek before going back to the Gliders.
Charlie watched them walk back to their stations, notably lighter than she had been since the news of her aging had made itself known.
She picked up maintenance report and began to read it again, fully absorbing the words this time.
Later that afternoon, Orion sought Charlie out in Engineering.
"Do you have time to talk about your Earth music collection today at the library's archive?" He asked gently. But Charlie understood it wasn't just about the archive. More than likely, it concerned her news that had gone through the ship like wildfire.
Charlie could feel the way people's eyes found her and slid off. She noticed it in Kess's extra-gentle check-in, in Borran leaving a second Gula Cake next to her tray at breakfast, and now Orion was offering her an hour in the calmest room on the ship, doing something that always steadied her.
"Yeah," she said, letting herself relax into the opportunity. "I've got time."
The library was cool and dim, smelling faintly of the old paper Charlie had been surprised to find Orion had started collecting because of her.
"What do we have to add today?" Orion asked from his desk as Charlie sat down across from him.
"To be honest, I'm not sure." Charlie pulled out her datapad, finding the music player and opening up the list she'd been adding to the past few days.
While he settled in across from her, she began to play him something.
As they made their way through her playlist, he'd ask what it meant and she'd try to explain what a saxophone solo was for or why a whole generation had agreed a particular drum machine sounded like the future.
Orion tilted his head at the sound. "The rhythm in this one. It's very precise. More precise than the others."
"Yeah, that's probably because it's not a person behind the beat," Charlie said, sitting forward.
"That's what's called a drum machine. It's a box that makes drum sounds for you.
You program the pattern and it plays it back exactly the same every time.
No drift, no fatigue, no drummer getting tired in the fourth hour of a session. "
"A machine that performs the music," Orion said, obviously intrigued.
"Part of it, yeah. And people hated it at first. Drummers especially," Charlie said with a laugh.
"Which I can understand. But there was a whole panic that it'd put musicians out of work, that music made by a machine would come out soulless and mechanical.
" She pulled up another track. "Some labels ended up putting stickers on the album saying, 'Featuring no drum machine,' almost like a warning. "
"And were they correct?" Orion asked. "Did it put musicians out of work on Earth?"
"No," Charlie said, a real smile gracing her lips.
"That's the good part. People ended up taking this machine that was supposed to replace music and instead made new music out of it.
Whole kinds of new music that couldn't have existed before this machine, built on that steady pulse on purpose, because it did things a pair of hands never could.
The tool everyone thought was the end of it opened a door nobody knew was there. "
"So, the fear was misplaced," Orion commented with a smile.
"Isn't fear always a little misplaced?" Charlie asked.
Orion smiled at her. "I suppose it is."
Charlie cued the next song before the last one even finished.
"In this case, people saw a new tool and decided it was going to take the art and beauty and soul of music away.
But what it did was bring about a way for those without money or instruments a way to make their own music. It changed what music could be."
Orion made a note before asking her to play the next one. As they listened to the next song and the next song, Charlie felt Orion's eyes on her. She looked up at him after playing the most recent song she'd added to her datapad.
"You have been adding to this," Orion observed, scrolling. "More often lately."
Charlie considered his words, thinking back on what had occurred recently. "It was a time for it, I guess." She kept her voice level. "Music's good for... eventful times."
"Mm," Orion hummed, examining her list a moment longer than the comment warranted. "Is there something that connects them? These ones you added? The ones you've returned to?"
Something in the question snagged at Charlie, just for a second. She kept her eyes on the datapad, scrolling, looking through the rest of the songs.
"They just say things I can't always say myself," she said. "For me, that's the whole point of a good song. It communicates for you what you didn't have words for just moments ago, getting there before you do. It helps saves the trouble of finding the words."
Orion put down his pen, looking over at Charlie. She felt his eyes on her, and looked up into his gaze. His smile was warm, gentle, soft and connected. "The songs speak for you."
Charlie smiled, appreciating Orion's consensus. He got it, and that made a bigger difference than she thought it would.
"Yeah, they do. Sometimes, at least. My dad, Frank, used to say a song could do what words couldn't." She lowered her eyes back to the datapad and smiled a little. "The moment he told me that, I've spent my life learning he wasn't wrong."
She cued the next track and let it play. She let Orion hear the songs she'd reached for this past week, songs she'd added without looking for any connection that ran through them.
Charlie's eyes brightened when the next song began.
"Okay, so this one I added after our second Earth Night," she said.
"Remember how the whole crew turned out, people even staying late and asking when the next one would be?
" Orion nodded at Charlie's words. "And even Reyna showed that time, after having missed the first one.
" Charlie smiled to herself now as she remembered the way Reyna had responded to the Earth Night gathering. "She called it incredible, even."
"She told me the same," Orion remarked. Charlie smiled and looked back at her datapad, continuing to scroll, her smile still in place. "Yeah. So, there's that one."
Orion made a note in his journal. As he watched Charlie scroll, he pointed his finger at one song on the list. "And this one?"
"Oh," Charlie said, a soft laugh on her lips.
"I couldn't sleep one night. So, I decided to walk the ship and ended up watching the Aetherfin drift around their sphere for at least an hour or so.
" As the song continued to play, Charlie felt a smile on her lips again.
"Turns out, I wasn't the only one up." Charlie looked up at Orion, her smile still firmly in place.
"I added this song after I returned to my quarters. "
"Hmm," Orion remarked.
Charlie moved on. "This one here was just from a clean repair in one of the habitats. Sometimes, when a fix goes right, you want to mark it."
"A success is worth noting," Orion commented, making Charlie smile.
"Exactly."
Continuing to scroll, Charlie found another. "Now, see, this one's Katie. But really, anything that reminds me of her ends up in this list." A beat passed between them, soft, before Charlie continued to scroll.