36. I’m Sorry, Captain #4
Reyna glanced up at Orion again, and he waved his hands forward.
"Go on," he said.
She glanced down and began to read.
The first entry was "Don't Get Me Wrong." The Pretenders.
500.43 / Added 0247. Four hours after the corridor on Deck 12. Prior to this entry she hadn’t altered the list in eleven days.
Reyna knew exactly what happened on Deck 12 that night. Charlie had come around a corner too fast and Reyna had put a hand out to steady her. She had stood there for a second and a half, and then Charlie had said something about the deck plating and left.
Reyna didn't realize she remembered exactly how long she'd had her hand on Charlie.
She scrolled.
"Everywhere." Fleetwood Mac.
500.44. / 0611. Next morning. She didn't sleep.
She didn’t sleep?
"Fragile." Sting.
500.48. / 2314. Added within the hour of leaving the library.
Reyna did not need Orion's note for this one either.
She remembered the floor, both of them with their backs against the same shelf, and the inch of air between their hands that she had spent the better part of an hour not closing.
She remembered reaching for her mead. She remembered exactly how carefully she had made it look like nothing.
But Charlie had gone back to her quarters and added a song called "Fragile."
After that, there weren’t any additions for a while.
Reyna continued to scroll but the list didn't move. She checked the dates twice.
Note: No entries for twenty-seven days. This is not a lapse. The pattern holds everywhere else. She adds a song when something aches. She wasn't aching.
Reyna sat in her chair with a datapad in her hands, which were starting to shake.
Reyna checked the dates against her own memory and found them immediately, because she'd been there for all of it.
That was the month it stopped being difficult.
When Charlie stopped asking permission to be in a room at 0300, stumbling upon Reyna when she couldn't sleep.
It was the month when she started sitting next to Charlie in the galley.
She did it once without deciding to, and then she did it again.
After a while, it was simply where she sat, and nobody ever said a word about it.
Reyna had thought about that month a great deal. She'd assumed she was the only one.
Apparently, she wasn't. Charlie had been happy. She hadn't needed a single song.
Reyna scrolled further.
500.75. / "Forever Young." Rod Stewart.
Added night of the age-slowing discovery. NOTE: grief is directed at the sister, no one else. Do not confuse this entry with the others.
Reyna remembered. The Observation Room. Charlie leaning forward and the weight she'd been holding after learning she couldn't go home.
Reyna had caught her.
And then Charlie had gone back and added this to her list.
Reyna scrolled with her thumb and stopped reading the notes.
500.98. / "In Your Eyes." Peter Gabriel.
Reyna didn't need a note for this date. She remembered.
She'd sat on a library floor with one headphone in and six minutes had gone by like forty seconds.
She'd said something honest out loud without meaning to.
But, to Charlie, she'd gone back to her quarters and found a song about how she was feeling.
500.121. / "I'm on Fire." Bruce Springsteen.
Reyna remembered this date, too. Charlie's hands on her waist in front of the entire crew when learning the ‘Thriller’ dance.
500.154. / "Never Tear Us Apart." INXS.
The cascade. Three inches of air between them in that shaft with Charlie's fingers on her jaw. Reyna had turned around and walked out.
500.161. / "Steal Away." Robbie Dupree.
This note she read.
Subject: wanting private time with a specific person. Away from others. Added 8 days ago, same day she began planning the Captain's birthday.
And then there was a hole in the list.
Reyna looked at it. She scanned that open space on the spreadsheet. Orion hadn't marked anything because there was nothing to mark.
There was nothing where the loudest entry in the world should have been.
Because it wasn't on the list. Charlie Wickett hadn't put it on a list. Instead, she had stood in the middle of a library in front of everyone and sung it, straight at Reyna.
The one Orion couldn't find was the one Reyna had watched.
Reyna looked up at Orion, her eyes wide and glassy.
"Charlie's... playlist!" She cried, a genuine smile spreading across her face.
Reyna covered her mouth with one hand while scrolling through all of Orion's notes and Charlie's songs.
"How...?" Reyna asked, looking up at Orion, her voice hoarse. "How did you...?"
"Ah! Now see, that's a good story." He turned and looked at Reyna, then at the rest of the crew on the Bridge. "Shall I tell it?"
"Please," Reyna answered. "I'd really like to know."
"I'm sure you would, Captain," Orion said, nodding his head once.
"Now, our Charlie here has been so open with us about her music, it was one of the first things I noticed when we started our sessions to record Earth's data.
" Orion walked over to stand in front of Reyna, addressing the whole Bridge.
"Then Tavi created the music program, and it became ship-wide.
So, naturally, one day I used my datapad and opened up the program, wanting to see all the music Charlie brought to us. "
"Now, I'm no engineer like Charlie or Tavi, but I did some poking around in that program and found a log file that showed the people who were using it, and how often they accessed it.
Not to mention it showed their action—whether playing a song, adding it to a playlist, or some other variance—along with the time and date stamp. "
Orion clapped his hands together.
"Now, naturally, Tavi was the one who was at the top of the list. And my goodness, that boy has a lot of playlists."
Reyna laughed.
"But the second more frequent user was Charlie. And Captain." Orion stopped, turning to look at Reyna directly. "As you can see from my analysis, Charlie's log tells a story."
Reyna felt tears pool in her eyes.
"And, frankly? I think it's a story about someone she's crazy about."
"You do?" Reyna asked softly.
"I do. In fact, I think the playlist is an unintentional story about Charlie falling for her."
Reyna let out a sound that was part sob and part laughter.
"You really think she...?" Reyna started, her voice breaking.
Orion smiled at her, quietly, with nothing but warmth.
"Yes, Captain."
Reyna looked down at the datapad again.
Every timestamp on that datapad lined up with something she remembered. All of it. Down to the minute. Every corridor. Every suppressed warmth.
Every almost.
Months. This was months of Charlie Wickett telling her, over and over, in the only language she had.
Then Reyna scrolled to the last entry, timestamped tonight.
"Right Here Waiting..." Reyna read.
500.169 / Added 0114. Unplaced. No corresponding event in my records.
"Yes. A good song, actually. I took a listen," Orion added gently. "I just don't know what caused the addition."
Reyna dropped her hand from her mouth to select the song on the datapad.
It began to play softly from the small device speaker, barely audible over the Bridge's operational hum.
Reyna stared at the entry on the datapad. She remembered. She had walked out of the Observation Room when the alarm went off. At 0106.
Eight minutes. Eight minutes after Reyna took her arms off that woman and arrived on this Bridge, Charlie Wickett had sat back down in the dark and put a song on a list about staying exactly where you are and waiting for somebody to come back.
Reyna stood up, reaching for her datapad at her station.
"Torvax. Get me Breck."
"Captain, the shuttle is—"
"Now."
Two minutes later, Torvax was handing Reyna the headset for the second time that night. She was going to need to make sure Borran set aside some Gula Cakes especially for him tomorrow.
"Go for Breck."
"Tavi." Reyna heard herself use his first name and not care.
"Captain?" It seemed her voice made him snap to attention, instantly.
"Can you send music to a specific datapad through your software?"
A short stretch of silence pulled at her patience.
"Yeah, Captain. Absolutely."
"How?"
He walked her through it.
Tavi was always efficient, especially about his own systems. As he walked Reyna through the steps, he did it in a voice that gave her hope.
"Open the library. It's the icon that looks like a stack. You'll see the whole music collection there. Don't panic, it's alphabetical."
Reyna's hands were shaking. She opened the library.
"Find your track. When you do, hold on it. Don't tap! Hold. A menu should pop up. Last one on the bottom is 'Send.'"
"There is a list of devices."
"Yep, but she's on there. She'll be WICKETT, C."
Reyna scrolled through, then stopped.
“How did you know I wanted to send a song to Charlie?”
The line was quiet.
“Come on, Cap. Don’t insult me.”
Reyna half laughed before continuing to look for the track.
"Jesus, Tavi. This is a lot of music."
"What can I say? The girl knows her stuff," Tavi replied, his voice warm.
Then she saw it, right in the middle of the screen.
"Heroes." David Bowie.
If that's not love, I don't know what is. Charlie had said that on a library floor to her about a song. This song.
She'd spent months teaching this ship a language, one song at a time.
So, Reyna was going to use Charlie's language to say it back to her.
Reyna held her thumb on the track.
The menu came up. She found WICKETT, C. in a list of over fifty crew names.
She pressed SEND.
"Loading," Tavi said. "And... sent! I see it. It's routing."
"Did she get it?"
"Hold your horses, Captain."
Reyna waited what felt like hours. It was probably only thirty seconds.
"Tavi, did she get—"
"Cap, I love ya, but for the sake of all that is holy... Please! Just give it a few minutes. I promise I'll let you know."
More seconds went by. More torturous, lingering, pitying seconds.
And then Tavi Breck came through the speakers of the Emberkind's Bridge, his voice warm.
"She got it, Captain."
CHARLIE
The datapad chimed in her thigh pocket.