Upon Vestia: Chapter Thirty-Four

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"We could stay here and see if Vestia can start getting some movies on file for us." Shane said with a shrug.

Ellie considered the question. "Sort of, yeah." It was nice to have Shane there, and it was nice to not have the secret be quite as secret, but it was still going to be hard to think about for a long time to come. She smiled weakly at him. "We're all gonna be okay." Maybe.

Esk nodded. "I will. Last thing I want is to go fucking deaf."

"Good, I'm glad it's a little better for you." Shane said honestly. He moved, kissing her cheek gently. "I'm here for you."

~~~
Dawn nodded then smiled softly again. "Right, no deafness and no hearing things that aren't there. Want to go back to watching the movie?" She asked as she turned to take off the gloves and coat.

Ellie smiled at Shane a little more genuinely this time. "You're the best." She kissed him back briefly. "Good listener, good plant mover, and so cute." She didn't want to dwell on the subject of death for too long. It was hard to think about.

Esk sighed. "You know... I think i'm gonna go..." He was unsettled. "I'll see you later"

Shane smiled at her compliment, settling again since the sharing was over. He kept her in his arms though, not wanting to let go just yet.

~~~
Dawn frowned a little but nodded. "Alright, just don't go where Vestia can't see you in case it is a head injury or something." She didn't want him to pass out where he was unable to get help quickly.

Esk looked at her, tilting his head. She was actually worried about him huh? He shook his head. "I'll be fine Dawn. " It was probably nothing. Or so he'd keep telling himself.

"It could very well be nothing, but I would rather be safe than sorry." Dawn replied quickly. "If it's not a head injury, it could be something from that rift or the time travel. We don't know enough about either to know for certain."

Esk nodded. "Don't worry about it, there's always someone watching." He looked to Vestia's cameras. He was pretty used to being constantly watched, if anything, it made him feel slightly safer.

Dawn nodded then sighed and finished cleaning up. "Just be careful." She said softly.

"I always am." Esk reminded her, heading for the door. He glanced back. "Take care Dawn..."

Dawn looked to him and offered a smile "I will." She said. She would check on the remaining patients before heading back to her room though.

Esk went back to his room, frowning a little. He had an unpleasant feeling in the pit of his stomach, an intuition that something was seriously wrong, but until he figured out what, he didn't want to alarm anyone, much least Dawn.

He went to the bathroom to splash water on his face, staring at his reflection in the mirror and frowning back at it. He wasn't losing his mind, he wouldn't allow it damnit.

In the quiet the noise was louder, he closed his eyes, holding the basin with both hands, listening, trying to isolate it.

Ellie was happy to cuddle with Shane. It was reassuring. And the bamboo tent was a good place to stay.

~~
Vestia stayed silent, but she watched Esk and Dawn's conversation. She resolved to keep watching Esk closely. Whatever was going on, she'd been around long enough to know that you shouldn't just ignore unexplained weirdness.
Whether it was hearing damage, or something more sinister, she would do her best to listen or keep an eye on him. In case something happened.
Hmmm....

Shane was happy to just cuddle with Ellie too. It was nice just to hold her and be in this living tent.

Web and Matt settled somewhere, drinking a few beers Matt had yanked out of pocket space as they chatted. There was SO much to catch up on.

Web was still extremely reluctant to talk about Jarral's mother though, Matt sighed and gave up asking.

"Have you seen the kids?" He asked instead.

Web nodded. "I visit as often as I can. Asher and Nova are extremely patient, it's thanks to them Moone got some sort of childhood i'm sure. Danika looks.. so much like Kay when she's in humanoid form, it's uncanny. It's easy for forget she's not his biological child." He shook his head, looking bemused.

"and Lana?" Matt asked, he looked uncertain.

Web smiled. "She... reminds me a lot of us at that age." He chuckled. "Only she has an actual teacher."

"So she hasn't set fire to anything..." Matt smirked at his brother.

Web nodded. "She's smart, a little too smart for her own good i'm sure. She's befriended most people on the station." He shook his head, she seemed to have inherited her father's social extroversion for sure. Even if she preferred the company of adults in most cases.
"Sometimes she says something and I see you... " He looked pained.

Matt frowned. "I'm sorry."

"You didn't mean to be gone." Web looked so tired. All these years of uncertainty really had taken a terrible toll on him.

"Even so... " Matt sighed. "thank you, for.. going back to them, for visiting at least. "

"I made you a promise." Web replied.

Matt opened two new bottles and handed one to his brother. "You look tired."

"I am." Web admitted. "but that's not your fault. "

"It can't have helped."

Web shrugged. "It's been a long ten years." He admitted. "For so many reasons."

The lapsed into silence, drinking their drinks, being together again still felt surreal to both of them.

"I missed you." Web said at last.

Matt put his arm around his twin. "We're back now, and we're gonna do a lot more of THIS."

"getting drunk and depressed?" Web asked.

Matt rolled his eyes. "No, hanging out. Idiot." He nudged Web playfully.

Web nodded. "I think.. i'd like that."

"good, because you don't get a say anyway."

"Oh really?" Web smirked at Matt. "You'll what, come drag me out of meetings?"

"if needs must! "

Web smiled softly, shaking his head. He knew Matt was using this as a distraction, he could feel the pain radiating off the other man, but for just now, both of them were content enough to pretend things were okay and they weren't both hurting a great deal.

AUGUST 16, 2800

A week passed as Vestia continued her long trek toward Unity station. There weren’t many people this close to the Rift these days, most people who valued their lives preferred a larger buffer area between themselves and the hellish beings beyond the abyss, so she encountered no other ships save for a few that barely entered sensor range before fading into the distance. Vestia’s hull still ached and she traveled more slowly than usual, the damage from the battle was still healing even after those repairs and the magic Starr had used to speed the process, but she could limp along at a pretty decent speed at least.

She didn’t mind the distance to Unity all that much though. This was why she had a crew after all: they were there as much to provide entertainment as they were there to help with maintenance. They kept space from becoming lonely, and she was grateful for that.

~~
James had scheduled his shifts so he could avoid being in the med bay when Kay was there, preferring instead to work alongside Tori or Dawn whenever possible. He knew he should probably apologize to the guy for comparing him to an android owner, but he hadn’t quite managed to make himself do it yet.

He was still trying to push down his paranoia about demons, and kept thinking that people were acting funny, imagining odd behaviors were there probably weren’t any. They’d had so much bad luck recently, it was easy to fall into the habit of expecting more.

~~
Tala’s wounds were mostly healed now, and the residual effects of the gas were mostly gone from her system. She’d thrown herself back into her fitness routine, and helped out with heavier work around Vestia.

She missed her mate terribly, but she knew they couldn’t rush straight to Haakon. It was all the way across the Imperium from where they were, and getting there, much less in one piece, was a job that involved a fully repaired ship and a lot of planning.

She would be patient. Nadira had waited this long, she could wait a while longer.

~~
Ethan wasn’t overly sociable at the best of times, and his grief for Sawna, the old library, and Hewitt certainly didn’t help. He spent a lot of time in the new library as usual, working. Micromanaging such a big project did help his mood.

He probably visited Starr sometimes, figuring she might like to talk to someone who didn’t see her as a god or a monarch. Since he was bad at being sociable, he usually brought her books, and kept his visits brief. He didn’t mind whether she actually read them or not before returning them, it was more about the gesture than anything else.

Occasionally Ethan couldn’t resist the urge to look in on Hewitt, and the sight of the man so badly injured always put him in a terrible mood. He hated what had happened to Hewitt, and he hated himself for caring. Afterwards he always hid from everyone for hours until his fury died down, knowing that nothing good could come of talking to anyone when he was so close to the edge.

~~
Ellie spent a look of time with Shane, she probably kept getting him to stay in her room at night if she could. She kept having nightmares about explosions and the stench of blood, and not sleeping alone helped. A little, anyway.

During the day she went looking for Matt sometimes, trying to cheer him up. Or visited the baby dragons, because it was hard to be sad around them. She visited Hewitt regularly to monitor his condition, and also kept working on Hydroponics, making sure it was running smoothly.

She was glad she had a lot of things to occupy her mind.

~~
Moriah would probably train with Luka, trying to learn the basics of self defense. She wasn’t much good at it, she was too nervous about actually hurting someone to focus fully, but she tried. She also visited Ivor from time to time, maybe teaching him to read or just talking with him.

~~
Asher wrote messages to Kay, James, and Starr pretty much every day, trying to keep them up to date with any news, and trying not to let the painful silence and awkwardness stretch too long. He probably hadn’t gotten up the courage to write to Matt again though, so unless Matt had written to him, they probably hadn’t talked again yet.

Web only stayed for a few hours before he inevitably had to return home. He promised he'd meet them at Unity though, and Matt was at least mostly appeased by that.

Jarral too didn't stay on Vestia, even though he was probably supposed to. Vestia's cameras would pick up the weird distortion of his shadows, him sinking through them and disappearing, and reappearing in much the same way, often with a new book to read. Sometimes he was gone for hours, whatever it was he did and wherever he went, he clearly believed it to be more important than sitting around waiting for the crew to come ask more inane questions.
But he'd been told to keep an eye on them, so he always came back eventually.
Albeit a little begrudgingly.

He didn't bother to bid his father farewell when Web left and Web didn't really seem to expect it. Their relationship was, at best, frosty.

---

Armin visited Starr regularly, babysitting Luna when neccisary so Starr could get some time to herself and just being a companion to the Queen.
He also tried to look in on Matt whenever he got a chance, though he wasn't quite so good at cheering the man up as he'd have liked.

---

Matt took it one day at a time, fluctuating between anger, which he took out on anything around him and intense despair and grief which drove him to drink. By day 4 he'd taken himself off to the deepest pool and sank into the water to avoid everyone.

Kay explained that's what he did when he was overwhelmed and it was probably best to just leave him to it.

---

Kay messaged Asher regularly, even if they had nothing much to say. He kept him up to date about whatever he thought was important or interesting, though carefully omitted a great deal of the drama.

He noticed James' work schedule but that suited him just fine. He was still angry with the android and preferred not to have to look him in the eye after that.
He hadn't appologised either, even though he should, he was too proud for that.

---

Esk tried to keep busy, he obtained some paper and pencils from one of Vestia's stores and while it wasn't quite the same as having a proper bound sketch book, it gave him something to do when things got unsettlingly quiet.

The wierd whispering noise was still there, sometimes he though he could almost make out words. He wondered if he was going insane.
And he didn't bring it up again to anyone. He wasn't accustomed to asking for help and he didn't want to panic Dawn. If he was losing his mind, he'd figure it out. He was used to solving his own problems and he couldn't help but find it grimly ironic that after all this time trying to keep everyone elses' mental states intact, he was the one finally cracking up.
Fucking typical.

He threw himself into practical things, minor repairs, idle conversation with people, picking up the slack left by them losing so many bots.
He'd even asked Rigel if he needed any help with the Devil's repairs.

---

Luka and Rigel had of course spent a lovely hour or so together before returning to work as thought nothing had happened, but Luka wasn't really able to hide things so easily around other people. She looked guilty whenever Rigel appeared, and simultaniously very very happy.
It was totally suspicious.

She tried to train Moriah, encouraging her. Eventually they'd go to the holodeck where Moriah could fight non organic opponents so she could be encouraged to NOT pull her blows.

---

Hewitt remained comotose, leaves wilting slowly.

----

Mourn kept working on things. He didn't really have the parts to get Amity's holographic projector back up and running, those fragile lenses were pretty specialised, but he did manage to straighten out the fans and get the drone airborn again.

And he managed to cobble together a makeshift camera lens to replace the damaged one, so Amity could... mostly see.
He just had no bodily form.

But because he couldn't see as well as usual and because his fans were still not fully aligned and meaning the whole drone often lilted to the right, Amity remained with Mourn for the time being. They had to communicate through a computer, but at least Amity didn't seem any worse for wear by the whole ordeal. As always he was amicable and cheerful. Silly hologram.

---

Ivor enjoyed spending time with Moriah, he was starting, slowly, to trust her. He gave his all to the learning to read thing, but he really struggled with it. He had the disadvantage of being 22 and having never really been taught to read and most if not all of the children's books being in a language that wasn't his native one. He found Galactic Common script weird and confusing and even when things were translated, it was fairly painful to work through.
He was so utterly reliant on his telepathy for most everything that learning things the normal way didn't come naturally at all.

Still, he enjoyed Moriah's company. She was kind and gentle and he was grateful to her for trying.

---

Silence did as she usually did, lumbered around exploring and poking into things she probably shouldn't.

She also asked Vestia to try to find her mother, which was a pretty tall order.
But she needed to know if the woman was alright. Silence didn't have much family, out here Ivor was all she had and he was busy with the android woman. Was she jealous? Okay maybe a little. She was so used to Ivor being utterly reliant on her, it was a big change having him actually feeling safe enough to leave her side and go do things independently.
She didn't really know what to do with herself if she wasn't protecting her baby brother. Bah.

James had probably continued to help Mourn with repairs to the bots and Amity when he could. It wasn't exactly the kind of work he liked to do, but helping Mourn was fun. The felid's enthusiasm was just too infectious to resist, and repairing bots was a genuinely useful thing to do.

Right now though, he had something else on his mind. He hadn’t talked to Luka much recently, and he wanted to see her again. So he went looking for Luka.

Luka had gone back to work on the Devil, she still had a few bits of electrics to repair around the ship, lighting, ventiliation, a lot of circuits had blown in the firefight.

Vestia told James Luka was on the Silver Devil, so James headed there. Of course Vestia couldn't tell James where on the Silver Devil Luka was, so it was up to James to find that out for himself.

He headed onto the ship. "Luka?" he called, "You here?"

thankfully the Devil was a pretty damn small ship.
She was in the main living area, fixing a light. "I'm down here!" she called.

James followed the sound of Luka's voice to the living area. "Oh hey, there you are. How's the home improvement going?" he asked brightly.

Luka smiled softly. "Getting there slowly." She tightened up something with a screwdriver. "Poor old girl took quite a beating."

James nodded. "Yeah, you guys were out there being damn heroic. Without the Silver Devil's guns and Vestia's shuttles, we probably wouldn't have won." He reached out to pat the wall fondly. Yeah, this ship kinda scared him, but where would they be without it?

Luka beamed. "We did what we needed to do. I was just following my orders." She set her tools down. "I don't mean to be rude but.. why are you here?" She asked. "I can't be the only person no board to talk to." She hesitated and reached out a hand "Not that I mind of course! I like the company!" eugh, so awkward.

"Still, we appreciate it," James told her. He flinched a little at the question, "We don't get many chances to talk these days, so I thought I should come say hi. I won't bother you if you're busy though."