#lyder

To: [email protected]

From: [email protected] (encryption engaged) (proxy transmission #6 engaged)

Dear Dr. Shunga,

[Note: Add some sort of greeting here.   It’s weird to just open the message cold.   Maybe he wouldn’t mind, but I would. -Zatte]

I get angry at my wife sometimes.  That's only natural.  Sometimes I worry that I take that for granted, and get angry with her when I shouldn't.  

I mean, she can be a real slob.  She keeps the kitchen and dining areas clean enough, but she treats the rest of the ship like one giant clothes hamper.  The service robot handles most of that, but it's still disgraceful.

And she's really moody.  Sometimes it's like she just doesn't want to open up, even when we're all alone.  She growls a lot.  She always says it's because of things she smells in the air, things that I can't smell.  I think it's just an excuse to be grouchy.

And... she kind of cheated on me.  I blame myself, really; I should have paid more attention to the situation.  She needed me and I wasn't available to her because I was so focused in that damn murder investigation.  It's not like she had sex with him, so there's mitigating circumstances, right?  Stuff I tell myself to help me forgive her.  But she still did it, and I can't pretend it doesn't bother me.  

I try not to deny those feelings.  They keep me grounded, because I always get starstruck when I'm around her.  I have to remind myself that she's not a goddess or an angel or anything like that.  But I do believe she's a miracle, and that's hard to fit into a marriage.  So it helps to remember that my beloved miracle leaves her dirty socks in the engine room for no good reason.  It's important to consider that the woman I'd die for has betrayed me.

I don't have a lot of friends, not since the colony fell.  I'm too wrapped up in Luffa's world to bother socializing.  I feel like a one-woman cult sometimes.  But it's not wrong.   My people believe that there are focal points in the universe where history is changed for the better.  We have a word for them: xan-nil'Dor, and a sacred duty to find and cultivate them in whatever form they appear.   The Dorlun race has been doing this for millennia.  It only seems creepy because I'm the only Dorlun around lately. It only seems cultish because my xan-nil'Dor is five-foot-three and adorable.

I've suffered for her.  The colony fell and we fought to the bitter end, each of us thinking the other was dead.  I was captured by demons who forced me to stalk her and corrupt her.  I fought against her enemies and wore my wounds like badges of honor.  We used to share in a mental communion that was so beautiful, but she had to put a stop to it because the intimacy of it was too intense.  I feel like a moth circling a flame sometimes.  If I stay with her, I'll be destroyed.

I'll take that chance.  Risk.  Among my people, "risk" is a dirty word.  Luffa whispers it into my ear sometimes because she knows it drives me wild.  I'm not like the other Dorluns.  I don't want to die--don't get me wrong--but I'm more aggressive about it.  Hiding isn't my style.  I'd rather face a threat head-on, or at least prepare to face it head-on.  I think that's what Luffa likes about me.  It's not quite the same as Saiyan battle-lust, but it's close enough, I guess.

She's been training me ever since we got together.  I mean, she was training me before that.  Back on the colony she did combat exercises with the Dorlun militia, but now the militia is down to just me, and the lessons are more intense.  Early on, Luffa singled me out as the strongest Dorlun in the colony, and she took an interest in seeing how much stronger I could get.  Once we were married, she took that project even more personally.  I'm nothing compared to a Saiyan, but she's always told me that isn't the point.  It's a matter of pride.  She wants me to be the best I can be, for my sake and for hers.  It's tough to live up to that, but it's inspiring too.  Like I'm a piece of raw iron she's forging into a great sword.

Maybe I romanticize this stuff too much.  I think of Luffa like this mythical heroine who does all these wonderful things, so whenever she blows off laundry I make end up making excuses for her.  We don't always get along, but when we do it's like nothing I've ever felt before.  She's like a living inferno, and I want to dive in and burn for her.    The weird thing is, Luffa thinks I can be cold towards her.  I shouldn't be surprised, given how passionate Saiyans are, but I'm pretty sure most Dorluns would be embarrassed to see how I carry on around her.  Or maybe they wouldn't, and I'm just being self-conscious.

I'm getting away from the reason I wanted to write you this message in the first place.  It's the same reason I had to transmit it in such a convoluted way.  Well, I haven't done that yet, but I'm planning to bounce it off several dozen interstellar relay stations in order to make it harder to trace.  Luffa and I can't go back to your planet anymore.  We're not sure what will happen if the Saiyans find out we've been there.   They might attack Wrantool VII, and maybe even destroy it.  That's why we missed our last appointment for couples counseling, and why we won't be able to reschedule.  I hope you understand.

I just feel like we're running away from the issues that led us to see you in the first place.  So I thought maybe if I explained some things in a letter, it would help convince me that our marriage is going to be okay.  I think that's why we came to you.  We both wanted a third party to tell us we were doing it right.  Well, that's not a luxury we can afford these days, so I'll have to make due with what we have.  I'll tell you a story, and I'll have to hope you're as convinced as I am.

[Note: I should probably explain everything that happened since our last session, but later.  -Zatte]

So, after everything that happened with King Rehval, we had a lot of downtime on our hands.  Our ship was badly damaged, especially the computer.   It took us weeks just to get to a planet that could do the repairs, and they had to order a lot of custom parts, so we ended up taking a vacation neither of us really wanted.    They had some nice lodges out in the mountains, but we just weren't in the mood to enjoy it.    Luffa was anxious to get back to Planet Saiya and confront King Rehval, and I... wasn't sure what we should do.    I had hoped we would figure it out while we waited for the ship to be repaired, but all I could think about was what we had been through.  

It was a nice place to try to sort things out, though.   I probably shouldn't say the name of the planet, in case this message gets intercepted somehow.   The less you know, the better.  Now that I think about it, I should probably change the names of the people and places in this story.  Only I can't think of any good fake names, so I'll go back and do that later.

[Note: Don't forget to do this!! -Zatte]

So,we were on Planet Thrush, about 6000 light years from Pflaume.  I had managed to convince Luffa that we needed to keep a low profile until we got the ship repaired.  Luckily, we still had enough money to cover a place to stay and new clothes to keep Luffa from standing out too much.   She spent most of her time monitoring interstellar news reports.    She was determined to keep up with King Rehval's movements as closely as she could, to find out what he would do next.   We weren't sure if he thought Luffa was alive or dead, or how he might respond if he found out she survived.   As it turned out, he didn't really do much of anything.  Luffa compared it to trench warfare, where neither side was willing to risk taking the initiative.    Maybe he was waiting to see what we would do, or he wanted the rest of the galaxy to find out for themselves that Luffa was gone.

The standoff frustrated Luffa, but it also convinced her that laying low was the right move, and that seemed to get her to relax a little.    She focused more on trying to apologize for her makeout sessions with Rehval.   She cooked my favorite foods, massaged my feet, kept the hotel clean (relatively speaking), and she even took me dancing.     She was... well, it was like you said in one of our sessions a few months back.   She was trying too hard, hoping to repair past failures by overcompensating in the present.   It was all a little much, but I liked this better than her brooding over how to take revenge on Rehval.   And things were hard for Luffa too, with her learning her son was alive.    I thought it was best to let her deal with that in her own way, and I think it helped her to know that I'm still part of her family, even if her son has rejected her.  

So one day we decided to go hide out in the mountains and just live off the land for a while.   It's helped us connect in the past, and we never get to do it enough because we spend so much time in space, surrounded by technology.   I was glad to have Luffa away from the news dispatches for a while, and I think she was just happy that I was going along with her suggestions for spending time together.    The thing is, I'd love to say all this downtime is good for our marriage, and it's brought us closer together.    I'd also like to say that the experience with Rehval was good for our marriage, and it's brought us closer together.    But I also have to question if I'm just looking for excuses to say everything is all right, so I can ignore the problem.   Maybe that self-doubt is what's holding me back.   Maybe Luffa has the same trouble.  

Anyway, we had been out there for three days.   Luffa had finished loading our barbecue pit, and was taking a nap in our shelter.   This was just a sort of tent we made out of logs and brush.  We didn't plan to stay long, so we kept it simple.    I was scouting the terrain.   We didn't really need to do that, since we had an aerial view of the place when Luffa flew us in, but my energy manipulation powers let me detect things that normal senses might miss.   I was on my way back when I heard a noise from our camp.   By the time I got to the shelter, Luffa had stepped out, carrying a little boy by the scruff of his tunic.  

It took a while for us to figure out what had happened.   He wouldn't talk at first, but after a couple of hours, he got hungry, and the smell from Luffa's pit probably helped loosen his tongue.   His name was Bred, and he was on this quest to save a kingdom from an evil wizard named Lyder.    We never really got to the bottom of it, but we're pretty sure he wasn't from Thrush.   He used some sort of magic mirror to transport himself from his world to ours, and he had to do that several times in order to collect items and weapons he needed for his mission.   This time, the item he needed was my wife's scalp.

I think the strangest part of life with Luffa is that she's more than just a extra-special Saiyan.   It's tempting for me to think that the "Legendary" in "Legendary Super Saiyan" is a redundancy.   Any Saiyan that powerful would have to be noteworthy for centuries to come.   But it's more than that.    There are people out there who remember the past Super Saiyans, like the Plantians, or the people of Bigreen, or the faerie folk of the F-Tunnel.  For them, Luffa is like the fulfillment of an ancient prophecy.   I think that's the only magic Luffa really appreciates.   She doesn't put much stock in the Dorlun concept of xan-nil'Dor, but she's proud to be part of a lineage of larger-than-life Saiyan heroes, and I think she looks to them for strength.   Maybe its more of a rivalry.   The point is, it's easy for me to think of her as normal, since she's the Saiyan I know best.    Then you have people like Bred, who think of her as a cryptid, like the Hellmoth, or comet-walkers.  

I was about to use Basilisk X as an example, but I forgot that he doesn't count because he's real.   Luffa and I had dinner with him last year.  He's not nearly as deadly as the stories say.   He doesn't kill with a glance, but it can stun you if you're not careful, but he usually reverses it once he's had a chance to calm down. 

[Note: Maybe I shouldn’t bore the guy talking about Basilisk X. -Zatte]

Bred was supposed to undergo a trial of courage to progress through a certain dungeon.   It's kind of complicated, but his quest involved gathering a lot of relics from dungeons, which he'd then use to unlock other dungeons, and so on and so on.  The trial of courage was a portal leading him to a mythical beast, and he would have to slay it and bring back its pelt as a trophy.   The portal led to our campsite on Thrush, and he recognized Luffa as a Super Saiyan from old stories his grandmother told him.  I guess Chanisp or one of Luffa's other ancestors must have paid a visit to Bred's world.

I think that, more than anything else, caught Luffa's interest.   Bred had tracked her all the way to our campsite, found her sleeping in our shellter (he called it a 'lair'), and managed to draw his sword before Luffa woke up and caught him.  I was amazed that she didn't kill him on instinct, but it's easy to forget that her reflexes are as enhanced as her strength and speed.    Once she realized Bred wasn't a threat, she let him live, but Bred continued to struggle, and she was blown away by his bravery.

"This guy doesn't back down from anything," she said.   "He reminds me of you."

Looking back, I think I let the compliment go to my head.   Otherwise I might not have agreed to her plan, which was to go back with Bred and present her scalp as proof that he passed the trial.   Luffa figured that if the rest of the mythical beast was still attached to it, then so much the better.    I wasn't sure about going off on another adventure, but like I said, she talked me into it.   We had nothing but time on our hands, and she didn't think Bred's enemies would be much of a threat to us.    So I agreed, and Bred's magic mirror could take us all back with him, and off we went.  

The gatekeeper who presided over the trial of courage didn't exactly see things Luffa's way, but he wasn't in much of a position to argue.   Luffa took offense to a lot of things in Bred's world.    There were a lot of locked doors and secret passages, and a lot of rules and preconditions you had to meet to be allowed to pass.   She didn't like that at all, since Bred was a nice kid, and she didn't think it was fair to make a nice kid jump through a bunch of hoops just to fight an honorable battle for the good of everyone.    

"If he was a grown man, that'd be different!" Luffa explained to me after she cut down a battalion of Lyder's monsters.    "This boy's just getting started as a warrior, and they expect him to solve a bunch of puzzles, and run errands?"  

I asked her if it was right to interfere like this, but she didn't see a problem with it.   In our own universe, that's how Luffa does things, after all.    She finds people who need help and crushes their oppressors.    Originally, it was for money, then for sport, and eventually she realized it was more than just was way to pass the time.    She really cares about the little guy, I guess because she's been the little guy before.   Maybe that's what she saw in Bred, now that I think about it.    It wasn't too long ago that Luffa and I were a couple of kids, not much older than Bred, facing down a horde of monsters by ourselves.   It would have been handy to have an invincible warrior to join us that day, but Luffa wasn't a Super Saiyan yet.   I guess that was what bothered me about helping Bred.   I couldn't put my finger on it at the time, but it didn't seem quite right to step in and handle things for him.    If someone had done the same thing for us, then Luffa never would have lost that battle, and never would have become a Super Saiyan.   What if we were denying Bred a chance to become something important himself?   What if Luffa was saving him from an ordeal that he needed to experience?

On the other hand, I doubt I could have convinced Luffa, even if I had thought of any of that stuff at the time.    She and Bred formed a sort of bond.    Her son was taken from her while was still pregnant, and raised to be her enemy.    Bred never knew his mother, so they each sort of had what the other was missing.   We spent several days in that realm.    It was pretty.  The sand was bright yellow and the trees were greener than I've ever seen anywhere else, and all the rocks were purple.   Luffa would smash down doors that refused to open, or sometimes she would help Bred find items he needed, even though she had the power to make them unnecessary.   She taught him how to shoot a bow and arrow.    I didn't know Luffa had ever handled one.    She prefers unarmed combat, but she said she played with a lot of weapons as a child.   She even showed Bred how to shoot using her feet.    I can't even explain that right.    Like, you're on horseback, and you grab the saddle with your hands, and curl your back until you've got your butt over your head, and then you use your legs to work the bow... I watched Luffa do it and I still don't understand it.  

Eventually, Luffa defeated all of Lyder's invasion forces, so we started taking the fight to the enemy.   I helped with a lot of that.   My powers made it pretty easy to recon the dungeons and loot them of anything useful.    If I ran into any serious obstacles, Luffa could handle them.   Once they were clear, Luffa would turn the entire stronghold into a crater.    I couldn't help but think this was something akin to how Luffa would have raised her own son, if she'd had the chance.    Bred was no Saiyan, and I think it made him a little nervous to take lessons from one,  but the affection Luffa showed him was real, and I think that made up for some of her gruffness.  

We were feeling pretty confident when we stormed Lyder's fortress.    Luffa tore through the wizard's defenders like they were made of wet paper, and Bred barely had to lift a finger.   There was a large gate that required several totems to open it, but Luffa simply shattered it with her ki.   There were a lot of "key = ki" jokes made during this campaign, what with all the locked doors we came across.    

We thought Lyder would fall as easily as her forces, but it things went poorly as soon as we met her in person.    She had a failsafe, a weapon to defeat anyone who approached her, no matter how strong they were.    It was like a virus, and we had all inhaled it the moment we entered her inner sanctum.   Apparently, we goofed when we smashed our way in.   If we had used the right items, we could have deactivated the virus and entered safely.  

Somehow, my own body managed to hold out against it.   I felt nauseous and weak, but I could still stand and avoid Lyder's attacks.    Bred wasn't affected at all, and Lyder suspected she knew why that was.    When she had created her defenses, she had designed them to make herself immune to them, and that immunity was passed on to her offspring as well.   That was when she revealed that Bred was her son, and she had abandoned him at birth when she discovered that he wouldn't be suitable for some mystic sacrifice she was planning.  

That was when Luffa lost it.   She transformed into her Super Saiyan form to attack Lyder head on, but that just amplified the virus's toll on her body.    Before, she had been struggling to stand, but when she transformed, she managed to get about three steps towards Lyder before she collapsed.    

I rushed to her side, ignoring my own symptoms, and started checking her vitals.   Her pulse was bad, and her eyes were glazed over, but she was still breathing.  There were all these purple lesions on her skin, and I had no idea what they meant, but I knew it wasn't good.   I knew we had to leave.   We had to find some way out of this place, and get her to a doctor while there was still time.   I guess she knew what I was thinking.   On second thought, I was probably babbling a lot while I tried to pick her up.   She probably heard me panicking and knew I wanted to get her out of there.  

Then she took my arm and said: "Forget about me!   Go and help the boy!"

I tried to argue with her.   Tried to tell her that I was barely in any shape to fight, and even if I had been, I couldn't just leave my wife to die.  Not just my wife, but the xan-nil'Dor, the hope of the universe.    

She coughed and made a face.   I can't really describe it well.    It was sort of like she was too weak to scream but she needed to release her frustration anyway.  

"Damn it all!   We came here to help that brat!   He's just a kid.    We can't just abandon him now!"

I tried to tell her to calm down.    That Bred didn't need our help.   That she was destined to do great things and none of that would happen if I let her die there.

"If... if you believe any of that crap," Luffa said,  "then you know I have to see this through.   If I can't survive this, then it doesn't matter what I might have done later."

She took my hand in hers, and her expression softened.    I thought she was going to cry.    

"I really screwed up," she said.    "Took it all too lightly.   This 'quest'... our marriage... everything.    But I love you."

I didn't know what to say.   It was like she was saying goodbye to me without actually leaving.

"Guess if I die here, it proves I'm not a xan-nil'Dor, but whatever you think I stand for... whether I really do or not... you've got to fight for it, Zattie.   Even if I fall, you still believe in my cause, don't you?"

That's what I love and hate about her the most.   Luffa sees things beyond mere survival.   All I've wanted was to fight for her, alongside her, and there she was, telling me to carry on without her.   It makes me upset just thinking about it, but I knew she was right.  I had to let her go.  

And so I left her behind a nearby pillar, and I helped Bred as best I could.    He didn't need much.    Lyder was strong, but predictable.    She needed time to prepare her worst attacks, and she couldn't defend himself while she was deploying them.    Bred's sword seemed to hurt her more than anything else, and there wasn't much point in me joining his attack.   Instead, I used my powers to disrupt the illusions in the dungeon.   When Lyder tried to turn invisible, I warped the light around him to reveal her position.    When she summoned creatures to swarm us, I fought the real ones so Bred could ignore the phantoms.   When things got too hot, we took cover behind a bunch of pillars that seemed to be impervious to her attacks.   I don't know how long we kept this up.    I just remember thinking that Luffa wouldn't make it through the battle.   I remember wanting to run back to the pillar to check on her, but every time I thought of it, I would see Bred fighting and I couldn't bear to turn my back on him.  

Then, the enemy changed tactics on us.    Instead of firing ki in one giant burst, he started launching a wide field of it.   Now, we had to use the pillars for cover, and wait for the attack to subside before we could go back on the offensive.   I remember making a break for the pillar where I had left Luffa, just to check on her.    I remember Bred covering me, and asking in a terrified voice if 'the beast' was all right.  

I couldn't answer him, because she was gone.

Just as Lyder tried to close in on the boy while he was distracted, I saw a yellow light from the other side of the room, and there was Luffa, on her feet.    She looked awful.    The purple lesions were worse, and there was blood coming from her nose.    Somehow, she had managed to transform, if only for a moment, and she raised her hand to fire a ki blast at Lyder.    

She said something badass in that moment, I'm sure of it.   But her voice was weak and the noise of the battle was enough to drown it out.    Her eyes told the whole story, though.   Lyder would have to finish killing Luffa before she could harm a hair on Bred's head.  

I wouldn't say this frightened Lyder.   I think she understood her virus well enough to know that Luffa would die that much faster now.    But she still turned to focus on Luffa anyway, as if she wasn't quite as certain as she had been.   I've seen a lot of enemies underestimate Luffa, only to pay with their lives for the error, and Lyder seemed to guess that this was no one to be taken lightly, even if she seemed to be doomed.  

Maybe Luffa could have held out against Lyder, but my guess is that she never would have survived.    Luffa was ready to die in that moment.   She just... didn't care.    Not because she wanted to die, but because she wanted me and Bred to live that much more.   It was that fiery Saiyan will of hers, and she used it to trick Lyder into overestimating her instead.   In that moment, when Lyder turned to face Luffa, Bred saw his opening and attacked Lyder with everything he had.   It was amazing to see.   He didn't hesitate, he just went in and got the job done.    Lyder was destroyed.  Her body immolated into a cloud of smoke, and I think it took her virus with her.    All I know for sure is that I felt a lot better once she was gone.  

As for Luffa, she survived, but only just.   Bred had an elixir that healed her, but only to a certain extent.  I ended up getting her to a hospital on Thrush, but the short version is that she'll be okay.  At the time, though, it looked pretty dicey.    Even so, she was smiling the whole time, and she kept mouthing the words "I'm so proud of you both".

Maybe this story doesn't really prove anything like I thought it would.  I wanted to tell you our marriage was fixed, in spite of everything that had happened.  I wanted you to read this and say that you agreed with that, even if I wouldn't be able to hear it.

But it doesn't really work that way, and the more I think about it, I can't really send you this letter anyway.  It's too dangerous, and there's nothing tangible to be gained.  I think I knew that all along, but I had to get this far to accept it.

I guess I just wanted to say good-bye.  There's a good chance Luffa and I will never see you again, and that bothers me, because you helped us out so much.  I've had to part with a lot of important people in my life that way.  I don't like it, but that's just how it has to be.

Well, I think we're going to be okay.  I want to tell someone that, but even if I can't, I'll write it down where no one can see it, and I guess that will have to do.  After what happened, I believe our marriage will work.  We have work to do, and nothing's guaranteed, but my wife never stops trying, and I've pledged myself to support her in any way I can, so I guess I won't stop trying either.  It might not be the most elegant relationship, and it might get dented and scratched up along the way, but we'll make it.

I think that maybe you were waiting for us to figure that out all along.  You knew we could do it without you to tell us that.  Well, there's no way to know, so i guess it doesn't matter.

But I want to thank you anyway.  Thank you for putting up with our bickering and our ridiculous problems.  Thank you for listening to us when we wouldn't listen to each other.  We'll try to make sure your efforts weren't in vain.

--Zatte.

She finally moved, expression a little less skeptical, and leaned against the side of the couch where he didn’t have to crane his neck to look at her.

“Alright, I’ll bite,” she told him. “What personal problem do I have that this trust exercise will help with?”

He scratched at his neck.  Here’s the dangerous part.  Gotta be light on his feet or else blow ‘em off stepping on a mine.

“Well, maybe it’s more a problem we’ve all got.  The whole crew.  See, out there, with your gear on?  You’re golden.  Buuut, we’ve all just met each other, and I think it’s a little tough for you, right?  Bunch of strangers, all the responsibility yours.”

Her eyes lowered, looking at something in the vicinity of his boots.

“See?” he said. “That’s what I mean.  Eye contact.  You don’t trust us all yet, and that’s fine.  We’ll get there, but why not speed it up a little?  Starting here.”

She made a point of looking back at him.  Studied him.  Would probably try to find the right protocol log in the manuals to deal with him if she could.

She finally sat in front of him on the couch, their knees a breath away from brushing, and nervously tucked her brown curls behind her ears.

“Okay, what do we do?” she asked.

He grinned to set himself and her at ease.  With various success.

“Alright, Mira,” he said, pointedly using her name. “We sit here, and we look at each other.  Keep eye contact for five minutes.”

“That’s it?”

“That’s it.”

She exhaled, closed her eyes, and straightened her posture.  Shaking nerves or something out of her shoulders.

“Alright,” she said. “SAM?  Set a timer?”

“Of course,” SAM intoned, both everywhere in the room and nowhere.

Liam still got bugged out about that sometimes; forgetting that the AI existed for long stretches, getting reminded by him suddenly speaking up, and thinking afterwards about how he’d been observed the entire time.  Pathfinder probably didn’t have that luxury.  SAM was in her head, all the time.

She settled down though, into that crusty old couch, and looked Liam in the eye.

“Started,” SAM immediately stated at this.

Yeah, it was his thing, his suggestion, but Liam couldn’t help it.  He grinned as he met her gaze, giggled a little.  And that set her off: she smiled for the first time since she’d entered the room, her top lip attempting to suppress the upward curve of the bottom one.  It was natural: this exercise often started with the nerves and the laughter that came with it.  Because it was nerve-wracking, sitting close enough to feel the brush of each other’s breath and looking right into each other’s eyes.

It made you feel vulnerable, and people so often try to cover that with humor.

She lost her fight against her own smile, and shifted.

“Hey!” Liam mock-warned her. “No looking down, remember?”

She said nothing, and that smile faded away to a fullness in the cheek and a sparkle in her eyes.  Shame.  It was a really good smile.  White teeth against peachy lips, amber skin, the quirk at the corner of her mouth.

His own grin faded after a moment.  It wasn’t quiet, exactly.  The hatch to the cargo bay was open, and Gil was tinkering on the Nomad, dropping tools and muttering to himself.  Vetra was out there, too, working on inventory logs or something, occasionally making a comment to Gil.  And the Tempest always had this super low, almost sub-hearing hum, especially in the areas nearer to the drive core.  And when it got “quiet” you could hear a rustle of wind sometimes: the air filters doing their job, praise the Goddess or whatever.

Her eyes were dark.  Brown and deep.  Long lashes that you could braid, probably.  Dark, serious business brows that were somehow both in contrast to the soft roundness of her face and yet perfectly in place.  He watched those subtle movements of her eyes slowly blinking, the bit of furrow over the bridge of her nose, the way her cheeks worked as she shifted her jaw.

She had freckles.  Lots and lots of freckles.

(Note to self: don’t ever compare them to a constellation or some crap if you ever get the balls to actually hit on her.  Cheesy, awful stuff.)

(Addendum to note to self: he probably will anyways if he’s in his cups or something.)

Wait, what?

Liam forced down the self-curse that wanted to roll off his tongue.  Hit on her?  Him, Liam Kosta, local village idiot hit on the Pathfinder?  Hero of the Hyperion?  Heleus’s best chance at normalcy?  What was he even thinking?

And that was when he came back to reality, when she caught a hitch in her breath that washed over him like summer heat.  He only realized then that he’d been staring at her lips.  And she had noticed.

His gaze darted back up to her eyes.

They’d gone wide, wide and white.  And the message in them was quite clear: what the hell.

Shit.

Shitshitshit.

He wanted to grin and make some dumb joke, ease the tension.  But he couldn’t quite summon the humor, couldn’t quite take his focus from the dark bloom flooding all those freckles, and the way the two of them were really close-- like, really, really close.  Like, feel the heat radiating off each other close.  And he could smell the scent of gun lubri-- shit, fucking hell Kosta, do not think that word-- the scent of Initiative issued soap-- why again had he decided to wait until later this evening to use his shower ration?

And it was hardly fair, the way her lips parted just a little bit.

“One minute has passed,” SAM intoned.

They both jumped.  Broke eye contact, and jerked back up to reconnect.  Grinned sheepishly.

One minute, though?  Seriously?

Just one?

There was no way he could be feeling this constriction in his spine, and this growing tightness in his calves and thighs from just one minute.  No way his heart valves could be pumping like that, like prize-winners at the darby.  Constricting and bursting open at a neck-break pace.  Not from just a minute.  No way.

Liam stared back into the Pathfinder’s eyes, cursing himself and wondering how the hell he was going to last another four of these century-long minutes.

“Ryder,” Kallo’s voice suddenly blared over the ship’s comms, “There’s some undocumented Scourge in our trajectory.  I’m adjusting course, but ETA will be delayed.”

She leapt to her feet, mashing her omni-tool’s transmitter. “I’ll be up there in a sec!”

Relief flooded Liam’s extremities, making him feel all noodle-y.  And...  Regretful?  Uh, yeah.  A little regretful that she was going.

“What?  It’s fine, you don’t--” Kallo stumbled over the comms.

“In just a sec!” she repeated.  She turned to Liam with a sheepish smile. “Rain check?”

Her voice pitched.

He cleared his throat in a completely un-awkward way.

“Yeah, yeah,” Liam told her, making shooing motions. “Uh, yeah.  Uhm, good work, though.  Pathfinder.”

She was already halfway out the door, and smiled at him again over her shoulder.  Her eyes slid away from his, though.  Hah, what was that about good work?  But it couldn’t have anything to do with the way his own face had gotten all hot, and his head all swimmy.  Surely nothing to do with the way she’d seen him stare at those freckles.