A familiar voice calls out from the door.

"Erika! There you fucking are!"

Sargon is there, with a couple new scars but very much alive, darting between tables and ducking past patrons to reach her as quckly as possible.

...Erika contemplates her drink.

On the one hand, if she's hallucinating dead friends, she's either too drunk or not drunk enough, and one of those is easier to fix than the other. On the other hand, this is only her second, so unless there's something really freaky in these she's probably not hallucinating.

"Well, sorry, I'd have made myself easier to find if I'd had any fucking idea you were still alive!"

He stumbles coming around the last table between them, and half-falls, half-lunges into a bone-crushing hug. It would be difficult to hallucinate a hug of this magnitude.

"Missed you," he mumbles. "Everything's all fucked up."

...She is. Not going to cry. In front of these people.

"I missed you too--a lot--is--anyone else...?"

Sargon looks like he might cry, which is not very usual for Sargon.

"Anwar's - well, he's alive. He hasn't been taking it well."

"What kind of not well?"

"If we don't figure something out he's going to drink himself to death inside a year. That kind."

"Have you tried physically preventing him from being in the same room as alcohol?"

"What am I gonna do, chain him to a wall?"

"That'd probably be difficult in rented lodgings, true, landlords complain about that kind of thing..."

"And it's not what I'd call a sustainable solution!"

"Does he regularly get drunk enough to pass out? We could kidnap him to my parents' place."

"Don't need him to pass out for that, we can just drag him there."

"Great. Mom can fix it."

"If you say so."

Shrug. "Edie Eisenhardt Lehnsherr has a better chance than two also-traumatized vets, regardless of being a mother."

"Sure. C'mon then."

She stands up to leave with him.

"Where do you think you're going?" asks one of the other Dust Devils.

"With my friend," she says firmly.

He moves to block their path. She punches him in the face. He goes down like a sack of bricks.

"Anyone else?" she asks.

No one gets up.

"Good."

Sargon snorts and claps her on the shoulder.

"I'm so glad you're not dead," she says as they leave.

"Yeah, me too."

"Where's Anwar?"

"Left him sleeping in our hotel room."

"Alright. Go back there or book tickets to Hera first?"

"Mm... hotel room first."

"Lead on, then."

So he takes her to the hotel room.

Where Anwar is indeed sleeping. On the floor.

"Ugh," he sighs.

...Of course. First order of business: is there any alcohol that's in the room but not in Anwar.

Yes: there is some in the carpet. "Ugh," Sargon repeats.

"At least he's not choking on it."

"Yeah. Could be worse. Well, let's get those tickets."

"We should roll him over so he won't choke if it happens again or something." She does this.

There aren't a lot of great options for getting to Hera any time soon, but the not-great options are fine. It's not like any of the three of them are addicted to creature comforts.

They sure aren't. Not-great options it is.

"So how've you been?"

"Slowly piecing myself back together. Joined an illicit resistance movement. Grieving pretty hard. What about you, have you had anything going on aside from keeping Anwar alive?"

"He kind of makes himself a full-time job."

"Yeah.

If I'd known you two were alive--"

"Did they tell you we were dead?"

"Not--exactly, but--there was a lot that implied it. And I. Was so tired of hoping."

"I know the feeling."

He hugs her again.

Hugs. "I thought if I was going to hope for anything it should be that--somehow, you two got to see Cardea again--because at least with that one I could never know I was wrong."

"Well. Not yet, anyway."

"I'm so tired of losing people. I'm so glad I don't have to lose you yet."

"Yeah." Hug. "Yeah."

"We should--go back to the hotel. Ideally before Anwar wakes up."

"Yeah."

Back to the hotel they go.

She sits on one of the beds and hugs Sargon if hugs are offered and watches Anwar.

Hugs are definitely offered.

That's good because she's not exactly emotionally competent to take the initiative on that one right now.

She will pretty much just sit like this until Sargon does something or Anwar wakes up.

He sits quietly and leans on her.

And eventually Anwar wakes up.

"...Erika?" he says, peering dizzily up at her.

"Yes, I'm here," she says. "I would have been sooner if I hadn't thought you were dead. If you actually die on me after I've found out otherwise I'll never forgive you."

"Ah, fuck," he mutters.

"Go have a shower, you smell like regret," says Sargon.

He makes a rude gesture, but follows this suggestion.

Erika sits and hugs one of her not-dead friends for a while longer while waiting for the other one to be done showering.

He emerges clean and wearing clean clothes and still looking thoroughly haggard and disreputable.

"We're going to Hera. Neither Sargon or I am emotionally competent to handle you right now so we're roping my parents into it."

He flops onto the other bed and mumbles, "Fine," into a pillow.

"I'd ask if you knew what it was like, thinking you were dead, except you're clearly worse off than I was," she mutters.

"I knew he was badly off after Cardea, but he made it through the entire rest of the war, I thought..." He sighs. "As soon as we heard about the surrender, his will to live was just gone. I'm not even sure I'm doing him a favour, but I can't just sit back and watch my best friend die."

Nod. "If it's selfish of us to keep him alive I'm willing to be selfish."

Hug. Sigh.

Hug. "Fucking Alliance."

"Yeah."

"Hera," she mumbles. "We'll go to Hera and then we'll figure it out from there."

"Easy," he says wryly.

"Easy," she muses. "I'm not convinced that exists."

"If it does, I sure haven't seen it in a while."

"Maybe it died."

Snort. "Maybe it surrendered to the Alliance."

Snort. "Not much of a difference."

He laughs, not very happily.

No, it wouldn't be.

"How did you find me?"

He shrugs. "I looked."

"Well, I'm glad you did, anyway."

"Me too."

"I probably shouldn't go out much between now and leaving," she observes a little while later. "There's people who won't be too glad I'm going."

"Yeah?"

"Dust Devils. They came recruiting from the remains of the POW camp I was in after the Alliance turned us all loose."

"And they won't wanna let you go?"

"I expect they'll want to try to talk me out of it, at least. And maybe yell at me for punching that one guy. I don't have the emotional energy for either of those things right now."

"Got it."

"Mhm.

Thank you for keeping him alive."

Wryly, "You're welcome."

"Or something vaguely approximating it, anyway."

"He's at least not dead."

"Yeah. And that means it's at least possible to get all the way back to alive at some point, which is important. But I'm not sure I'll be able to consider him actually alive until I'm sure he's had an emotion other than 'booze' and 'regret' and 'booze-sodden regret' in the past few months."

"Yeah, that's fair."

"Our ship leaves in two days. Do we have food here or just carpet regret?"

"Yeah, we have food."

"Good."

They can pass two days being traumatized before their ship leaves, then.

Sargon is quiet and huggy and clearly has a lot of practice handling Anwar.

In its own way that's almost as heartbreaking as Anwar is by himself.

Anwar is pretty depressing. He'll eat if you put food in front of him, and shower if gently bullied into it, and that's about the extent of his voluntary activity.

As long as he performs all activities needed for continued survival and doesn't attempt to drink alcohol Erika isn't going to ask for anything else right now.

Apparently he can't muster the energy to try to find a drink when there are two of them to keep watch on him.

Good. And he'll cooperate when the time comes to get off-planet, right?

They only have to drag him out of the hotel room; he walks the rest of the way on his own, head down, shoulders slumped.

It would have been so much better if it had been her that died, instead of Cardea.

She sends a message to her mother before they take off explaining the situation. And then they can babysit him for the week it takes to get to Hera.

He continues being very depressed and not much else.

Erika considers telling him Cardea wouldn't have wanted this, and decides not to open that can of worms.

Cardea certainly wouldn't have wanted this, and yet here he is.

Yeah.

Well, the success at preventing booze is...not literally nothing. Probably.

They arrive on Hera. He follows Erika to her parents' place.

Her mother comes out to greet them.

Hugs for anybody who wants hugs.

Anwar will stand still to be hugged if hugs are the order of the day.

Sargon hangs back; he does not know Erika's mother that well yet.

Hugs. Hugs hugs hugs. Hugs hugs hugs hugs hugs...

Hugs and crying, as all the tears she's been unable to quite shed for the past year make their way to the surface.

Yep. Hugs. All the hugs she wants.

Eventually she calms down. It takes a while, though.

Still hugs.

"Welcome," she tells the others. "Erika's told me a lot about you two."

"Never something I like to hear from a girl's mother," snorts Sargon. "Hi. Nice to meet you."

"You helped keep my baby girl alive. As far as I'm concerned, that means more than anything else ever could."

—he smiles, at that, a real genuine smile.

"Hey, anytime."

"I'm glad to hear that. It's good to know she has people like you at her back." She sighs. "And vice-versa, of course. Come on in."

He steers Anwar into the house.

(She is sad about Anwar. She would have liked to meet him before Cardea died; she is not sure if she will ever be able to meet the man her daughter described so admiringly in her letters. She hopes so, but--

someone needs to be thinking about what to do for Erika and Sargon if he never gets better.)

"I didn't know if you would be hungry when you arrived, so I have something set to come out of the oven in a few minutes, but it won't suffer if it sits on the counter for a while. Guest room's up the stairs and to the left, or there's an air mattress in the closet if the three of you all want to stay in Erika's; her bed's not big enough to fit three--"

"Mom."

"--but we can probably work around that if you want. Or you could and leave me out of it altogether, if that's more comfortable."

...Sargon laughs.

"I like your mom," he says to Erika.

"She's the best when she isn't discussing my sex life, honestly Mom--"

"I didn't say a word about that. There are plenty of non-sexual reasons for three traumatized people to want to be as close as possible in vulnerable moments.

That being said, since you brought it up, if you do get up to anything like that, just remember that this isn't the most soundproof building in the world, and your father is a light sleeper."

"This was obviously a mistake," Erika tells Sargon. "Quick, let's go back, and hope the Dust Devils were more offended by my leaving than I thought and will put me out of my humiliation."

"Nah. I like her, I'm keeping her."

"Well, I'm doomed."

"Of course, dear."

Deadpan: "Woe is me." More seriously: "She's...not wrong about the trauma thing, though--do you want to sleep on the air mattress in my room?"

"...Yeah. Yeah, we should do that."

"Okay. Let's deal with the air mattress, then," she says, as her mother goes to deal with the thing in the oven.

Sargon can help deal with the air mattress!

Anwar can sit quietly in the chair where they put him!

"I wonder if he'll still be this passive when he's not probably suffering alcohol withdrawal," Erika says quietly to Sargon.

"I think this might just be how he is now."

"There's got to be something we can do for him."

"He needs - something to do," says Sargon. "But I don't have anything for him to do."

"Yeah. I don't know."

"Maybe we'll think of something."

"We will. It's not like we have anything better to do than work on the problem."

"Yeah."

She hugs him.

Hugs.

"I'm glad you're alive."

"I'm glad you're alive too."

"It's been real fucking lonely with just him around."

"That's really not surprising." Hug. "You're not alone."

Hug. "I know. I—" More hug. "I know."

"No matter what happens, I'm far too spiteful to go passive like that."

He laughs. "That's true."

"And I'm far too stubborn not to get Anwar back if I have to drag him kicking and screaming."

"Also true."

"We'll survive this. We survived--everything else--we'll survive this."

"Yeah."

More hug. So much hug.

Yep.

The partially-inflated mattress can just sag over there on the floor for now. Hug is more important.

Hug is so important.

The most important.

Yes.

Edie deals with food things. When it has been long enough that they're probably getting hungry she goes to check on them. When she sees what's going on through the negligently-open door she sneaks away and comes back to leave a tray outside the door for when they want it.

It'll be a while, but eventually: "There was gonna be food?"

"...Yeah. That was definitely a thing."

He can let go of her long enough to look for food.

Look! Food! That was easy.

"Oh, Mom left a tray. Cool."

"You have a good mom."

"Yeah, I do."

So: food.

Food! They will all eat. Including Anwar.

Yeah.

And after food: more hugs.

Hugs.

They do have to get that air mattress set up eventually, though. He sighs and detaches himself to inflate it.

She looks at Anwar.

"I wish I could think of more things to say to you that aren't really a bad idea."

He snorts softly.

"I'm not good at being sensitive, you know that."

"Yeah."

"Look! A word! And here I was starting to worry you left your voicebox behind when we left that planet."

He snorts again and shakes his head slightly.

"I miss you. You're right here and I miss you and you could be--not this--and you're not and I'm angry but I know why and--I just. I don't know how to deal with this.

It should have been me. I should have died instead of Cardea. You'd be alright if I had died."

He sighs. He rubs his face with both hands.

"I'm just so - tired," he says.

"You think I'm not?"

"My father. My wife. My planet. My war," he recites softly. "All I have left is two friends I don't deserve."

"I know I didn't love her like you did but that doesn't mean I didn't love her."

He lifts one hand slightly in a vague wave that encompasses the room they are currently in, and perhaps the planet they are currently on.

"I know. I know. I know how lucky I am, but--

I can't say none of them would have wanted this because you know that, it's not the point--if you're all that's left, don't they deserve better, but I don't want to put that on your shoulders too--"

Sargon stares thoughtfully at Anwar.

"--I need to be not here. I'll be back. In an amount. Of time."

"All right."

She leaves.

She goes downstairs and finds a pillow and curls up and screams into it until her voice goes hoarse.

Oh, poor girl.

Edie comes in a few seconds in and tentatively places a hand on her daughter's shoulder. When it isn't shrugged off she hugs her.

She doesn't say anything, even when the screaming stops.

"I love you," Erika says a few minutes after she finishes.

"I love you too. Always. Forever. More than anything."

"I know.

You and Dad are the only people who love me who wouldn't be better off if I had died instead of Cardea Newton."

"Is that what that was about?"

Nod. "I need to not be a bitch about it to Anwar but it's hard. I just want to snap him out of it--"

"I know. I know it's hard. But you're strong. You're one of the strongest people I know. And sometimes that strength gets misaimed, and you need someone to help you get it back on target. But you are so, so strong. You can do this."

"Yeah." Deep breath. "I survived the Battle for Serenity Valley. I can do this."

"Yes. Yes you can."

"I should go back before Sargon gets worried or something. I love you."

"I love you. Go back to your friends," Edie says.

"Yeah."

She does that.

Sargon appears to be deep in thought.

"I'm sorry about that outburst," she tells Anwar, less because she expects him to care and more because she wishes he would.

He shrugs slightly.

Yeah that's about what she expected.

If Sargon is deep in thought she will not disturb him, she will just. Sit on the bed.

"Okay, I have a crazy idea," he announces.

"Do you think there are non-crazy ones that would work?"

"Probably not. The crazy idea is 'buy a ship'."

"...what," says Anwar.

"Seconded."

He stands up and starts pacing. "No, trust me, I'm fucking brilliant," he says. "Look—" he gestures to Anwar, "you need something to do, something that matters, but doesn't matter too much and isn't too hard, and you need - you need a home, not just somewhere to be but somewhere to belong to - and I don't know of any small towns we could take over, and a small town's probably too much to start with anyway - so we buy a ship, and we make you captain, and we, I don't know, run cargo. Rob banks. Something. We'll figure it out."

Thoughtful nodding.

"I'm not robbing banks with you," says Anwar, but he's very nearly smiling.

Gosh. "This is an excellent plan."

"I know," says Sargon, grinning. "I'm the best."

There are so many things Erika isn't going to say in response to that.

Instead of any of them: "There's a decent shipyard relatively nearby."

"Great!"

"We should figure out a budget--how much money each of us have, how much the ship is going to cost, what we're going to have to pay the rest of the crew--there's going to need to be a rest of the crew."

"We should try to get something we can keep in the sky with as little help as possible," he says. "But yeah, we'll need a rest of the crew."

"I don't know about you, but I don't think there's a ship in the 'verse I could keep flying with only my own mechanical knowledge."

"Me neither, unless there's a ship out there that repairs itself when intimidated."

Anwar snorts.

"Yeah. So we'll need a mechanic. What else depends on the ship."

"We can start looking tomorrow."

"Yeah, it's more than a little late for it today."

"Yeah."

His giddy happiness is draining rapidly. He still feels accomplished, but now it's accomplished and daunted rather than accomplished and gleeful.

Hug? Hug.

Hug.

Hug.

It has been quite a day. They should probably, like, sleep or something.

Yeah.

Erika's bed isn't big enough for three, but it can fit two when the whole point of that is cuddling.

Good plan.

Yep. Erika may not be great at the finer points of tact, but hug-related strategizing she can do.

And that is something Sargon really, really appreciates right now.

Yeah. He's not the only one this is helping. She's very, very glad he's alive.

This is probably going to be the best sleep he's had since before Serenity Valley.

Yep. Not that that's saying much.

And in the morning they can pool resources!

Sargon... has an amount of money that suggests his 'robbing banks' example may not have been totally hypothetical.

They were probably Alliance banks so Erika doesn't give a fuck.

Erika has significantly less than that. The Dust Devils specialized in much more nonprofit forms of crime.

Still, it's enough that buying a ship isn't totally out of the question. Maybe not a great ship, but at least a functioning one.

They can head out to the shipyard, then, at least for a preliminary look around.

"You're coming," he says to Anwar.

He grunts. "Fine."

Maybe they can even get him to express an opinion at some point. That would be nice.

There is a salesperson at the shipyard. He...is a used vehicle salesperson. 'Nuff said.

Sargon pretends to be interested in what the used vehicle salesperson has to say.

Anwar, meanwhile, wanders despondently among the used vehicles.

He is talking up a relatively expensive ship.

Wander, wander...

He stops in front of one across the yard from the salesperson's chosen lure. It looks like crap. But it looks like... the right crap.

Ugh. Has Sargon actually managed to get him to care about something? It was so much simpler to just float through life in a haze of bleak despair.

He sighs.

"That one," he says, grudgingly.

Erika comes over to inspect it.

"We're going to need a mechanic sooner rather than later," she says eventually.

He shrugs.

Sargon glances over at them, and walks away from the salesperson mid-patter.

"Oh, good, you found something."

The salesman is sort of bemused that they want this ship and makes a token effort to talk them up to something that runs.

Sargon, once he has the measure of the situation, haggles ruthlessly. They can't afford any more than - an amount that is slightly more than half of their actual budget - and they're going to have to drop a third of that on repairs, so they absolutely cannot take this at the asking price, but they'll still pay more for it than a junkyard will, and who else is going to do that? Yeah, that's what he thought. Pleasure doing business with you.

By the end of this the salesman is not exactly able to be sincere about saying the experience was a pleasure but he is a salesman so he says it anyway.

And now they have a ship! And all they need is a decent mechanic and a slightly intimidating list of replacement parts! Sargon is in a good mood again.

"Mom probably knows someone who knows someone, mechanic-wise."

"Great!"

"So I'll handle that and you can go frighten people about the parts we need."

"It's a deal."

Hug. "I'll go call her."

Hug! Off to frighten people!

It's almost a pity Erika's not emotionally stable enough right now to find that hot.

Edie does in fact know a guy who knows a guy.

And Sargon manages to acquire everything on their preliminary list of replacement parts, although the mechanic is probably going to have more to say about that once they bring him in.

The guy who knows a guy who knows Edie actually has another gig lined up, sorry, do they want to talk to his buddy who's looking for work?

Sure, they'll talk to him.

He has a really good reputation! He's kind of...laid back...but he can probably get the ship in the air.

If he can get the ship in the air, he can be as laid back as he wants.

He totally can!

...Theoretically.

Perhaps he should be a little less laid-back.

...Bester does more things faster but less carefully when there's a scary person hovering over him.

Eh, not quite what he's going for. He backs off on the hovering.

The next time he comes down to the engine room he will see Bester's boots sticking out from under a bunch of mechanical stuff. Maybe he's actually getting something done.

Or maybe not. Those aren't the most machiney noises ever.

...

Really?

"Really?"

The noises continue. If Bester heard him there is no sign.

He leans against the wall by the door and waits.

It doesn't take that long before Bester climbs out, still mostly naked. He yelps when he sees Sargon and the look on his face.

The look having accomplished its goal, he relaxes somewhat before whoever Bester was carrying on with can emerge and be terrified. Bester isn't their fault, after all.

She pops up behind the engine, half-dressed and not particularly bothered about it.

"Oh, hi there," she says to Sargon. "This your ship?"

"Might as well be," he says. "And did our mechanic hire an assistant while I wasn't looking?"

"No, but maybe he should have," she says cheerfully. Turning to Bester: "I don't know what you're talking about, there's nothing wrong with the secondary grav boot."

"...What? Yes there is!"

"Is not."

She holds out her hand in Sargon's direction. "Toss me that wrench over there?"

This should at minimum be interesting.

"Sure," he says, and he picks up the wrench and tosses it to her.

"Thanks!"

She catches it neatly and ducks down behind the engine again. There are assorted tinkering noises. A smallish engine part comes sailing through the air and bounces off Bester's head, an impressive feat of aim considering the large solid engine blocking her line of sight. "Reg couple was bad," she announces. "Useless thing, all it does is provide an extra point of failure on the g-line, you're better off without it." A few more clanks and a grunt of effort, and the engine starts to turn. She pops back up and dusts off her hands. "All set!"

"What'd you do?"

"Bypassed the reg couple, plugged the g-line straight into the port pin-lock. Easy."

She notices that she is not wearing a shirt, ducks down to retrieve it, comes up still pulling it over her head.

"I'll get off your boat now, Captain Scarypants," she adds, slightly muffled.

...he laughs.

"Name's Sargon. And I'm not the captain. And I don't think you're the one who should be getting off my boat."

"Huh?"

"What's your name, girl?"

"Tina! Nice to meet you!"

"Fancy a job as a ship's mechanic, Tina?"

"Sounds like fun!"

"You're hired. Get lost, Bester. You can keep your first week's pay since for all I know you managed to do us some good while you were here."

Bester sputters and protests but it takes only a minimal amount of scary face to get him off the ship.

"I'll go pack," Tina says brightly.

"I'll go tell the captain."

He returns to Erika's house.

"Had any luck intimidating sense into the idiot?" are the first words out of Erika's mouth when she opens the door.

"Nope, but he was fucking a girl in the engine room and when I showed up she said hello, picked up a wrench, and fixed the engine in half a minute. I hired her as our new mechanic."

Snort. "Good riddance."

"Yeah. Let's tell Anwar we're in the air."

Nod. "On a less cheery note, I've been going over our finances again."

"Yeah? What's the bad news?"

"Had a couple of unexpected expenses--come in, I'll show you," she stands aside and gestures at the area where she was working on stuff. "There and there, see. So we're running slightly in the red right now."

"Fun," he sighs. "Well. Show it to the captain, maybe he'll finally start pulling his weight."

"Yeah."

She goes to show it to Anwar.

Anwar grouchily examines their finances.

"Looks like about time we started hauling some damn cargo, then, doesn't it?"

Grouchy is an emotion that is neither booze nor regret and therefore very exciting.

"Which we can now do, because Sargon found a competent replacement for the idiot."

"Great."

"I'll ask Sargon if there's anything else that needs to happen before we leave."

"Assuming Tina doesn't unexpectedly take days to pack, I think we're good to go."

"Good. Anwar was grouchy at me when I showed him the finances! That's an emotion that isn't 'booze' or 'regret' at all!"

He laughs. "Progress!"

"Progress!"

She goes to hug her mother good-bye given how soon they're leaving.

Sargon packs.

He thinks he might also like to hug Erika's mother goodbye. Erika's mother has made an impression.

Hugs are absolutely available.

And then they can go.

Tina is waiting by the ship with luggage. She waves.

"So you're the idiot's competent replacement."

She giggles.

"Tina Lalonde. Nice to meet you."

"Erika Lehnsherr."

"And this is Anwar Koskin, our captain." Sargon nudges him. "Thought of a name for the ship yet?"

"Serenity."

"Well that's morbid. I like it."

Sargon laughs.

"Welcome to team Traumatized Browncoats. You get to be the token psychologically healthy person," she tells Tina.

"If being psychologically healthy is a job requirement, I'm outta here," she jokes.

"Not if we grade on a curve."

"All right." She picks up her bags to haul them inside.

They don't have a designated pilot. That's alright; she and Anwar are both competent to fly this thing.

Tina checks over the engine again, declares it fit to fly, and then starts fiddling with the cooking equipment in the galley.

Sargon completes the vehicle's registration now that they've got a name to put on the paperwork, and then he hunts around for cargo-hauling jobs that they can accomplish with available supplies. He finds one that will just about pay enough to keep them in the air another week; that seems to be the best thing on offer. Well, it's better than nothing.

It gives them another week to find something as good or better. It'll do.

Also their stove works now!

So much better than the idiot.

"Nice."

"I like fixing stuff! I'm gonna go check out the air filters."

"Thank you," she says, because this is what you say to people who are doing things that benefit you that they don't have to.

"Welcome!"

She traipses off. She fixes the air filters and the funny smell vanishes from the air. She overhauls the water recycler and it starts reporting 98% efficiency instead of 85%. It takes them three days to haul their first cargo from Hera to Aphrodite, and by the time they land, Tina has fixed more things than they knew were broken.

"Holy crap. What did you ever see in that idiot Bester?"

"He said 'hey, babe, want to see the engine room of a real starship' and I said 'yes'. I didn't, like, know him."

"I expect most girls wouldn't have responded quite so well to that pickup line."

She giggles. "Probably not!"

"Well, he was an idiot. Thank you for allowing us to kick him out of our lives."

"No problem!"

They manage to find another job on Aphrodite. It's not very good either, but it's something.

It would help if they had a reputation, but the only way they can get a reputation is by doing more jobs.

On the next planet after Aphrodite, Anwar actually participates in the search. Finds something, too.

Erika waits until the next time she happens to be alone with Sargon before breaking out into a grin over this and hugs him fiercely.

He hugs back just as fiercely and grins even wider.

"He's gonna be--not okay, but--alive, actually alive, not just a zombie with a heartbeat--"

"Yeah. Yeah. He will. We did it."

"You're a genius, this was the best idea ever."

"I am a genius."

"Thank you so much for finding me, I don't even care how you did it."

"We'd never have got this far without you." Hug.

"I haven't actually done much. I mean, besides piloting. And--well, my mom did most of the rest of the stuff finding me was useful for."

"You helped watch him enough that he stopped drowning his sorrows in frighteningly awful vodka, and you got him to talk."

"True.

I'm so, so glad you two are alive."

Wryly: "Yeah, me too."

They find another job after that one. They're living hand-to-mouth, a bit, but there are hugs and Anwar isn't a zombie. So.

And Tina is a ray of sunshine. A ray of sunshine who keeps the ship in improbably good shape.

But after a couple more jobs, they have a particularly rough takeoff and she comes up to the bridge once they're in the sky.

"Hey, problem," she says. "The primary grav rotor assembly is making bad noises. We'll make the next landing, but we're going to be grounded at least a day after that while I climb all over the ship kicking it back into shape, and if I'm right about what's got it so whiny, it could be an expensive fix. Well - expensive fix if you want it done right, cheap fix if you want it to spring loose again in two months."

"Thank you," sighs Anwar. "Well, let us know when you find out."

"If we go with the cheap fix can you fix it again the same way in two months?"

"Ye-es. But a month or two after that you're gonna start having bigger problems."

Nod. "Hopefully it won't come to that."

"Hopefully, yeah."

So, yeah, the ship is going to be a somewhat tenser environment than usual until they make landfall.

As promised, they make it safely all the way to the ground. Tina immediately heads out to climb up the exterior of the ship and fiddle with the primary grav rotor assembly. She's back inside fifteen minutes later.

"So, bad news: it's exactly what I thought it was. Good news: we don't need to rent a spot in a maintenance dock to fix it, because I'm a genius and live fixes on grav rotors are cake. Do we have the coin for a replacement part, or am I doing the temporary version?"

"Temporary version. If we're very lucky we'll have the coin in two months, but don't expect to eat well for a while after that."

"All right. Well, I'm off to save you a maintenance rental fee."

"Aren't live fixes on grav rotors stupidly dangerous?"

"Particularly on a ship whose landing gear isn't capable of supporting its weight unassisted," says Anwar.

"Oh, sure," she says, "if I fuck it up the legs'll fold and the ship scuffs its tummy on the ground, but I'm not gonna fuck it up."

"Considering her track record, if she says she can do it I'm inclined to believe her."

"Go ahead, then," says Anwar.

"You got it, Captain!"

Off she goes.

"Cute kid. Were we ever that young? I think I've forgotten."

"Hey, she's not that much younger than we are. Well, than some of us are."

"A statement in no way motivated by the fact that she keeps checking you out, I'm sure."

"She does?"