25. Forever Young #3
"What about this one?" Orion asked, pointing at a new song that caught his eye.
"Well, this one is from the galley one afternoon.
There were a bunch of us at a table. Tavi, Maren, Kess, Selowen.
We just gathered together and stayed after we were all done eating.
Reyna eventually sat down with us too, and we all just ended up talking for an hour, maybe more.
" Charlie smiled with a shrug. "It was a good afternoon. This was the song for it."
"I'm glad to hear you've been talking with the crew more, even the Captain."
"The crew has been incredible in welcoming me. Many of them are friends now, dear friends."
"That makes me happy to hear," Orion said.
Charlie scrolled to the very end of the list. "This one I put on the other night and even placed it on repeat.
I just felt this need to hear it over and over again.
" Charlie stopped, a wrinkle in brow developing.
"Now that I think about it, it was after realizing the Observation Room was needed for me to sleep," she said with a laugh, her brow smoothing.
"You need the Observation Room to sleep?" Orion asked.
Charlie huffed a laugh. "Well, not exactly.
I mean, it's silly actually. As I said earlier, I'd walked the ship often when I couldn't sleep.
But to be honest, it happened more than I'd like.
Still does, even. In the beginning, I ended up at the atrium most nights, doing what I said and watching the Aetherfin drift around their sphere. "
"They are peaceful to watch. I'll say I've even watched them for a time, not knowing how long I've been there until I break away," Orion stated. Charlie nodded.
"That's how it was. But one night, a while back, I decided to keep walking. I ended up going further than I ever had and found a different room I didn't even know was there."
"The Observation Room."
"The Observation Room, with its big windows full of nothing but stars.
It had the benches and the railing to oversee the whole of space just outside those massive windows.
" She turned the datapad slowly in her hands to turn it towards Orion.
"That first night, Reyna was already there, sitting in the dark, almost like she'd been doing it for years.
" A small pause. "I found out that it turns out, she had. "
"And you stayed," Orion stated softly.
"I stayed. She'd told me once, a while before that, that if I ever found her in some quiet corner of the ship, I shouldn't feel the need to run away.
That she didn't mind the company." Charlie smiled at the datapad.
"So I didn't. Run away, I mean. I just...
sat down on the other end of the bench. We watched the stars a while, and I finally felt like I could breathe.
" She scrolled, not really looking. "Then I did it again the next night.
And the next. It kind of became a thing.
Three in the morning, that bench, not saying much.
" A shrug. "Now I sleep better after. So, that's the room. And I guess that's this song."
Orion studied her for a moment while Charlie continued to scroll through her datapad.
"I'm glad you found the room, and that you have a song for it. For the words."
Charlie did look up now, her eyes on his. "It's the right song."
"I think it is." Orion made a note, not asking anything further.
Charlie kept scrolling. She told Orion about a song for a nebula that drifted past a viewport while she was up too late, but she didn't say if it was in the Observation Room.
She told him about a song that came on as she walked to Engineering where someone fell into step beside her, but she didn't say who.
She gave Orion the songs along with the reason for each one.
Orion didn't push. But then, he rarely did.
Instead, he made his notes, and let the quiet be comfortable, and asked her to play the next one, and Charlie, who had come in braced for another conversation about the thing everyone suddenly knew, found she wasn't being asked to talk about it at all.
She was just being kept company. Somewhere in the second song, her shoulders came down for the first time all day.
"I'd like to formally add these to the archive," Orion said, when the list had wound down. "Human music is poorly represented in our records. It should not be."
"Yeah." Charlie looked back down at the datapad. "I'd like that, actually. Feel free."
Orion nodded. He looked at the list one more time and set it a little apart from his other work, the way he handled everything he meant to keep close, interested and special.
That night, as discussed, Charlie went back to the Observation Room.
She’d walked the path enough times now that her feet knew how to get there. She knew to go past the library, past Engineering, past the storage bays with the flickering seam Tavi kept meaning to fix. It should have felt ordinary, and the truth was, most nights it did.
But tonight it didn’t. Tonight was different.
Last night, Charlie had come apart in this room. Last night, Reyna had caught her, and Charlie had said things she’d never said to anyone. Granted, last night was after unprecedented events for her, and probably Reyna as well. But it wasn’t just Charlie’s news.
Last night, Charlie had called her Rey.
Charlie knew she wouldn’t be able to make that less important than it felt. Not something like that.
So, tonight, the walk felt different.
By the time she reached the last corridor, she’d half-convinced herself that Reyna wouldn’t be there. That last night had been a one-time allowance, a response to a traumatic event where the Captain helped one of her crew members. A time the daylight had already quietly revoked.
But when Charlie walked through the door, she saw her. Reyna was there, on the same bench as always.
But it was what happened when Reyna looked up and saw Charlie in the doorway.
Charlie watched the Captain’s face ease in a way she would never have expected.
It was relief, relief at the same thought that had crossed Charlie’s mind on the way here.
It was clear that some part of Reyna hadn’t been sure Charlie would come back to their room after letting herself be seen like that.
But it was clear she was glad Charlie had, almost trying not to show Charlie just how glad.
Charlie felt her chest tighten.
“Hi,” Charlie said.
“Hi,” Reyna said.
Charlie walked over to the bench and sat down in the space she had occupied many nights now.
But the distance felt different tonight, closer than it had been.
Neither of them mentioned it, neither of them moved, and as naturally as could be, their shoulders leaned against each other gently. Contact, no pressure.
Their conversation was easy. It flowed naturally, gently. They didn’t talk about the age-slowing, or about Katie or Elena or anyone they’d lost. Instead, they talked about the small things.
Reyna asked whether the Canoplyn habitat was holding temperature. Charlie asked about the next mission and whether any crew members had ever tried to keep any of their rescues as pets. She was surprised to hear just how many crew members had tried over the years.
They even argued amiably about Tavi’s latest upgrade to the music system and whether Torvax had ever, in recorded history, actually laughed.
“I’ve never seen it,” Reyna said. “I have seen Expression Seven and what he himself insists is a chuckle. But actual laughter? Nothing yet. For thirteen years and counting.”
“I’m going to make it happen,” Charlie said with determination. “I am going to find a way to make him laugh. Heartily even. And it will happen, it’ll happen before—"
Charlie stopped cold.
Before her six months were up. That was what she was going to say.
It was how every sentence had ended for the past few months.
It was held against the little clock she’d hung her whole world against. Six months of travel back to Earth, and when the Emberkind reached her home planet, she’d be gone, back home, back to her life.
Except, now the Emberkind wasn’t taking her home. Not after the discovery of her aging problem. And, suddenly, she was flooded with thoughts of how a ship wouldn’t spend six months of rerouted missions, as well as a year of course corrections, to deliver a human that could no longer be delivered.
Charlie realized that it wasn’t just the clock that stopped, but the whole purpose of where the Emberkind even was in Coalition space had been completely erased.
“Never mind,” she said quietly. “Turns out, I don’t have a deadline anymore,” Charlie said with a forced laugh. She had meant for it to sound light. But it wasn’t convincing. Instead, it came out flat. She even felt Reyna go still beside her.
The quiet stretched between them. Charlie’s mind started to work in overtime, turning the thought over in her head, looking for it to make sense. But she couldn’t find an answer. She couldn’t make it make sense.
“What happens to me now?” she said softly, her voice quiet and serene. There was no drama to her question. But she didn’t know what this made for her. So, she approached it like anything else. An engineer asking about a system in an undefined state.
“I know I can’t go home,” Charlie looked up at Reyna, and the look in her eyes almost made Charlie stop the conversation completely.
But she needed to know. “Even the ship that was taking me there doesn’t need to take me anymore.
Which makes me a variable,” Charlie stopped, taking a deep breath.
“A variable with no assignment.” Charlie shook her head, feelings she carried last night resurfacing.
She dropped her gaze from Reyna, staring at the floor.
“You’re not a variable, Charlie,” Reyna said softly but with a determination in her voice that Charlie found difficult to argue against.
“Well, then I don’t actually know what that makes me, especially on a ship like this.”