Chapter Text
New Zealand, 2371
He exits the warden’s office, grey pants legs smooth, ankle monitor gone.
She stands from her chair and, in a continuation of a performance worthy of a Federation Theatrical Association Award, tells the Rehabilitation Commission officials, “Starfleet appreciates your cooperation. Thank you.”
He falls into step with her. They walk to the shuttle, grass crunching underfoot, and she reminds herself that it’s impossible for the penal settlement’s monitoring system to detect the ache in her chest.
The hatch closes and she taps her console. Thrusters and engines power up.
“So,” he settles into the passenger seat, “I’m an ‘observer.’ That means you’re not my commanding officer, right?”
“Technically, no.” Her cheeks become warm. “But we’ll behave as if I am.”
The shuttle rises.
He looks out a viewport.
She thinks of the stories he told her about when he was a little boy staring out of his bedroom window, hand held flat so he could pretend it was a shuttle and he was inside, soaring far from the house in San Francisco, far from parents and sisters and expectations.
His shoulders relax.
“Thanks, Kath.” Stars appear through the viewports. “You didn’t have to keep your promise. I wasn’t even sure if you would remember.”
“I remember.” Her voice is soft. “But you know we can’t —”
“I know.”
There’s a beep from her console — the self-extracting algorithm she programmed before leaving headquarters.
“Uh-oh.” A corner of her mouth curls upward. “Looks like I’m losing helm control. Want to take over from your station?”
A familiar grin spreads across his face.
Her breastbone tightens.
“Letting an ‘observer’ fly a Starfleet shuttle? Sounds to me like someone’s breaking protocol.”
His fingers tap and the shuttle arcs toward the moon. She knows he’ll take the route she loves — a loop through the gravitational field, a swing around New Berlin, then a dip so close to the Sea of Clouds that it’s like she could touch them. No one else can maneuver a shuttle like this. No one.
“I’m not breaking protocol.” The first glimmers of lunar glow brighten his side of the shuttle, catching his blond hair. Her father called her Goldenbird, a nickname that became a prophecy for meeting this golden-haired man who can coax any craft to take wing. “I’m just bending it a little.”
“I see.”
They loop through the gravitational field.
He wipes one sweaty palm, then the other on his trousers. How long has it been since he flew? He’s worked so hard all his life to project a calm he doesn’t feel. Even she used to be fooled by it sometimes.
“If the Rehab Commission lets me out of prison after this mission, then where does that put us, exactly?”
She shakes her head, but he barrels on.
“I mean, I won’t waste anybody’s time by even trying to reapply to Starfleet, and that takes care of —”
Her eyelids flutter closed.
“I’m engaged.”
The shuttle jerks. Her eyes snap open as he corrects the axis of their swing around New Berlin.
“Well, yeah,” he attends to his console, “I mean, of course. I’m sure you did better. A lot better. Good for you. Good for your fiancé. That’s great.”
She wants to tell him she’s sorry.
But she’s not.
She won’t risk this mission, won’t risk the chance to get him reinstated like Admiral Patterson promised her might be possible, won’t risk his future or hers for a past they both need to forget.
Outside the viewports, the Sea of Clouds becomes so close it’s like she could touch them.
But she knows she can’t.