I've been feeding her from my chest.
That's something I'd stayed sure I wasn't going to do- but once I was holding her the first time, I wanted to.
Waking, it was much farther into the morning and she's hungry, so I do it again.
“You know,” I tell Harrison, though the room is quiet enough anyone could hear it. “I always kind of thought the caring part would be difficult. Since my mother never did it, I figured she had a reason. But every time I'm holding her, it's like a job I've been doing my whole life.”
He reaches for my shoulder, tired pride in his eyes. None of us have rested well here. Harrison especially. The old man is showing his age at the moment, heavy bags below the eyes. But the joy there, too. The smile he's always giving us like we're apple-orchard falls after that dead tough hike last summer. Proud and miraculous.
His eyes don't leave his Captain.
The rest are less obliged. Luke and Richard bicker politics outside the door with coffees. Skippy snores on the bench by the window. Tristie and Alice share the armchair by the door, playing Adeline's video games.
She comes in with a muffin. Her lively brown eyes flare with excitement when they see mine, open at last.
“Good,” she says, “You're up. I brought you some things. We've been collecting.”
Her bags by the door, a duffel and a carpetbag, she hoists to the foot of my hospital bed. Her arms are even broader than the last time I saw her, pure cushioned muscle. She's always had big bones to fill, but the balance of strong and heavy is finally filling them. Her smile, dotted with freckles, shines on me.
“There's more in the bus,” she says, “We found you a car seat that changes size, and one of those pop-up baby cages.”
“You mean a playpen?” groans Skippy as we wakes, stretching out.
“Prolly.” She unzips the closest one and starts pulling out clothes. She's got baby and toddler sizes, onesies and pajamas and clothes that look like smaller versions of what grown people wear. Tiny jeans and hoodies, a little dress with stars on it, and a tiny pair of sneakers with laces and all.
Their game abandoned, Tristie and Alice gush over every bit. Skippy grins with his arms crossed.
“This stuff,” she pulls over the carpet bag, “Is for you.” She's got postpartum soothing stuff, balms and hot pads. She pulls out cookies that are supposed to help my vitamins, candies that are supposed to help me sleep, and a long sheet of fabric she gets real excited about.
“Nora's gonna have to show you this,” she says, spreading it across her full wingspan like a sail. “It's a wrap to carry her with. She made it for you from some nice bedsheets.”
I can't imagine what that means. Looking at it, it's just one long, sewed-together strip of dark gray.
“Where are your crew?” I ask. The room would be double-crowded with all my Sirens and all her Flintlocks. A real party for the baby.
“Banished to the parking lot until you're up for them,” she says with a wave. “I expect we'll follow you and camp up together a while once you're let out.”
That sounds cozy. More arms to hold Tempest. To protect, once outside the Hospital's strict ceasefire.
Already, her care is offloaded to all my Sirens. They've watched her through the night, and apparently fed her formula the nurses brought during my few hours passed out.
I need more sleep, but I'm too energized now. My stomach growls loud enough to hear.
Adeline holds out the other half of her muffin, and it's gone in three bites.
“I'll get you a real breakfast,” says Harrison.
As he gets up, Adeline raises her eyebrows, waiting for him to leave the room.
“I didn’t want him stealing this last bit,” she whispers, reaching into the bag. “I guess this is for whenever you’re off breastfeeding. If you struggle to wait, I can have Skippy hold it for you.” She pulls out a pint jar of bud, three quarters full and beautiful.
“Jesus Christ.” Harrison wouldn't steal, but he'll be fucking jealous.
“That’s Wellerman’s weed,” she brags, handing it over for me to see in the light. She calls it a ‘push present,’ “Even though she wasn't pushed in the end.”
I look at it glitter through the glass, layers of different strains of weed. Purple-green, silver-green, orange-green and all shining.
“Yeah,” I say, “Skippy better keep this safe for me.”
“I charge tax.” He takes it from me, grinning. He has a backpack with him, and exchanges the jar for a hoodie inside. Not safe with anyone I guess.
“Never enough to make a difference, and we’re square,” I say, “How long am I waiting?”
“For her to wean, you mean?” says Adeline, “Few months to half a year. Depends how much she likes your cooking.”
They been reading. Every time I ask someone a baby question, they have a sure answer. Relief, for sure. “Harrison’s cooking, more likely.”
Skippy laughs. “Let’s count on half a year,” he says, “In case she doesn’t like tin.”
The other three laugh with him, but I hurt too badly.
“It’ll still be fresh, if Skippy doesn’t open it more than once,” I say.
“One tax,” he repeats, “Heard, Captain.”

They wanted me walking by the end of the day. They say it’s bloodflow to keep me healing, and honestly it feels better to be moving. The restlessness of the pain is fed, holding Tempest and pacing around the room. They check all the things attached to me and make sure we’re doing well.
I keep her unwrapped a while, after the first diaper I change for her. My crew has done all of them before now, but being upright gave me the opportunity.
Memories I didn't know I had creak with rust. Changing diapers for my siblings at far too young myself.
Standing there, Tempest tiny and red below me, I'm a million miles away until I'm finished. Cleaning her off. Feeding her tiny limbs into tiny clothes.
Even once she's fresh and diapered, I'm unable to move from the spot.
Richard catches it, squaring his hands on the bassinet across from me.
We both watch her kick her short legs. Exposed is the scab from her umbilical cord, dried and red, and looking like damage. Normal, maybe. Still a focus to look at.
“Captain,” he whispers, but I can't tear my eyes from her.
He reaches across and takes my hand. Mine have gotten soft, his callouses apparent in contrast.
“Aye,” I manage, but he knows it's hollow. No meaning to it, just response.
“What's in your head?” he says.
Saying it brings it closer, when all I've been trying is to push it back.
“Home,” I say. More won't come.
I scoop her up and close, pacing around with her limbs free. Her face rests on my shoulder, and Richard drapes one of our blankets around both of us.
"I have-" I say with more volume, "A standing order."
It's not all my crew in the room, but they'll spread it.
"Aye, Captain?" Luke says behind me. Richard still watches with a worry on him, elbows in his hands.
"Sober," I say, "To hold the baby."
The quiet says that's obvious. The quiet says that's not.
"Aye, Captain," says Richard in a serious tone.
I'm glad no one else stepped on him saying it. To fend of withdrawals, I know he's drinking in the parking lot every chance he gets. And not to blame him, but the smell on his breath did half the work steeping me in sibling-parent memories. Richard needs the order more than most of us.
“What are you up for?” he asks, after minutes of my pacing.
Meaningful, he's up for offering after my near-accusation.
“This,” I say, “Why?”
“I could bring up the instrument,” he says, “Feels like the only thing I ever offer.”
But that's his language. Any honest emotion I've ever gotten from Richard came out music first. And his music, out of any, gives me the clearest pictures.
“Please,” I whisper, “Do that.”
I'd love nothing more than the comfort of him, picking out our quiet soundtrack for as long as I'm healing in this room.
He keeps it minimal, citing the nurses kicking him out if the music takes him.
But, his sound changes the room. I finally relax, like his fingers up and down the fretboard are massaging my vertebrae.
An hour upright is all I can stand before sitting back down. Tempest finds other arms to rest in, swaddled tight again for warmth.
They bring me cash dinner from a barbecue place across the parking lot.
Not to disparage free food, but hospital tin doesn't beat ribs and macaroni. I eat more enthusiastically than I have in weeks, all of us sharing mealtime like we're supposed to.
“A whole day!” Luke whisper-celebrates with the baby, “You’ve been here a whole day.”
They're on the bench by the window, her propped in his knees. He has a fist latched onto each thumb, waving them in the air. She's got a hell of a grip for her size.
Luke hasn't slept much either. It's still in the air if this baby is his, and he's holding his breath with the rest of us. His dark hair is a loose mess around his face, half-kept in a bun at his crown. His beard is uncombed, too, making his eyes look more wild than excited.
The baby opened her eyes again and she's keeping them open, blinking heavy every once in a while. She wants to know what's going on.
I feel like Richard’s music has something to do with it.
“So, did they know she was going to be trouble, or was labor a surprise?” asks Adeline.
“I had a slow heartbeat,” I say, “And swelling. They had me in here on bedrest the last week and a half, anticipating issues.”
Harrison had to translate a lot of the medical for me, what I should and shouldn't be worried about. For someone without formal training, he knows his shit. He'd had a book in his hand about birth and babies since the moment I was sure of keeping her.
“We were ready for you, weren't we, Tippi?” says Tristie, grinning around Luke's shoulder. She devours mashed potatoes from a cardboard takeout cup. Her hair is as much a dark mess as Luke's is, matching stormblown hoods. Her eyes twinkle with an endless smile and the blue sky and snow through the window.
Already a nickname. Of course Tristie would.
She coined Skippy's, too. Now, his solid name.
Tippi is nice. I like it.
“They did not expect labor to start out of nowhere, though,” says Harrison to the other Captain, “They talked about induction, but not for another week at least. And she was breech. Didn’t have the time to turn around, yet.”
Earlier, he said the same on the phone to Morrigan while everyone but us and Alice were getting lunch. Alice rocked Tempest back and forth in one of the office chairs while Harrison used her phone to talk to Dr. Hue, pacing the far half of the room.
I'd said hi, too. As always, she asked about my side, and I told her the scars had faded more during all this. She said it's my body sweep-healing everything it can.
“Your skin in general will be different right now,” she says, “your bone structure, your brain. During pregnancy, you're undergoing a transformation, too.”
I picture myself like a caterpillar in its case, stirring up all my liquids so I can come out different after.
Some gloom is cooking, tugging behind the eyes. Holding her feels right, but nothing else does.
My crew are attentive to both of us. They talk about normal things. The road and the weather.
"Imagine my surprise, going south and getting colder," jokes Adeline.
No one expects me to speak, and I don't. They visit in their own time, when time moves on. Luke with both his hands in mine, Skippy helping Tempest eat. Tristie, kissing me a dozen times or more, all over my cheeks and forehead. I had ice cream, there and gone. My hands slide away, down longer and longer arms.
I’ve never been alone one second.
But, after dinner, when the room is quiet and the only one still awake is Skippy, holding Tempest by the light above the sink-
I feel alone.
For a moment, I imagine my mother, lonely as she always was. Her offers for allies were never trusted long enough. She pushed them all away.
She used to complain that I scared off her parents, like getting pregnant with me was their last straw for her. And not the drugs, the drinking, the kind of man she favored.
Young, I pictured an ultimatum. Them saying if you don’t get better, we’ll step back.
As if anyone who’d abandon children to her was a good person. I was the first, the chance to change our fate.
Me and my brothers wanted so badly to be rescued, we imagined grandparents who never existed. Put personalities to them we had no proof of, just so someone cared.
I only met either of them twice, and they were accidents. My mother cussed them out when she caught sight, shouting down questions with screaming in the van.
Yes, she was alone with me in her hospital room. No crew to hold me, or follow her home when I was done cooking in the ICU. No tin to trade for her hospital bills.
She gave blame about for years after. How expensive I was.
She had me early, too. Guess I might have known my daughter would take after that.
Going through that fear alone might have made me angry, but never at her. Tempest did none of this to me. I did it to me. To give her a chance.
I won’t understand. But it’s close.
My heart hurts for how it would have been if she had what I do. If we had crew, growing up, or whatever pre-ascension had like it.
Family.
I wish we’d had family.
Skippy sneaks up on me, putting her into my arms.
“You look lost,” he whispers, sitting on the edge of the bed.
Her weight anchors me to the crust of the earth, spinning against the stars. They gave me a fresh dose of painkillers for bed, and they’re hitting me now.
“I am,” I whisper back. I pull Tempest up and kiss the crown of her head, her blonde fuzz peeking out of the cap.
“Right after giving birth,” he says, “I had a lot of flashbacks from being a little girl. Holding Emily, kind of thinking, ‘she’ll never feel what I felt.’”
He puts a hand to the top of my head, running fingers through the shag of my hair.
All my weeks in the hospital, I hadn’t gotten the chance to trim it. I’ll feel so much better once I do.
“I was thinking how alone she must have been,” I say, “My mother.”
He keeps rubbing my scalp, turning into nails to scratch. I lean into it, and he uses both hands.
“No one to do that,” I sigh, leaning back when he’s done, “To hold baby Josephine. To bring her food and keep her company. How lucky I am, and how much worse it would have been alone.”
He’s quiet a while, sitting in the office chair by my bed, hand still tucked into the back of my neck.
“I wish you were there for mine,” he says, “I- Greene talked me into keeping it private. Really, I saw his point, about it being ours, about being retired and- god. Fucking thinking back, he was full of shit. He said it like y’all were coworkers or something. Like I’d left.”
Knowing Eric Greene when he traveled with us, that makes sense.
He came and he left, a summer internship with pirates before settling into his real life and being a doctor.
Greene left a job, but Skippy held onto him like crew.
The look on his face says he still misses him like crew, even as mixed with rage it is now.
“Crew’s forever, Skippy.”
“Yeah,” he says. He sounds frustrated, with himself and Eric. “I know that. But I was fragile. My outside life, too. Feeling safe and stable in a world that’s never been either. I relied on him for that.”
Tempest starts turning towards my touch on her cheeks.
I test it with a finger and she tries to bite, all gums inside. She’s hungry.
Skippy shakes his head. “We always had so much to say, but neither of us were listening. And it blew up after.”
After losing Emily. It's hard to look his loss in the face, holding Tippi now. The fragility of life is never lost on me.
I flip the baby, to feed her on a new side than last time. No one had to teach me that. I can feel when they get heavy, and I know when Tempest wants to eat. So much of it is the same instinct I’ve relied on to stay alive.
Skippy watches me, face heavy and dim. “It’s so easy, isn’t it?”
I thumb the options.
Easy to lose everything?
To fall into relationships that aren’t good for us?
Or easy to care?
Easy to find a way, despite the changes.
“Easiest thing in the world,” I say.

The night is spotty. She’s picked up crying now.
Every time I wake, someone new is trying to calm her, including Striker, one of Adeline's.
He came up to ask his Captain if they could move outside of town instead of staying in the busy parking lot.
“It’s crowded,” he says, “Peter woke everyone with worry, again.”
It’s like they rushed her into his arms, with conversation in progress. Or maybe, he was that eager to try. She quiets with his rocking.
“Right,” says Adeline, “You should go, then. Now, when pigs are sleeping.”
“Some of them.”
He smiles more than I’ve ever seen him, holding her. Once they realize I’m awake, he comes over.
“I’ve never held a baby before,” he says.
“You’re doing great.” Something warm squishes out between my ribs, an odd pride that doesn't quite make sense. He's not my crew, but he's close. And holding our baby.
“Most pirate name I’ve ever heard.”
It sounds like a compliment, so I take it that way. Striker’s tone has always been a different language than mine.
Then he’s gone, again, and handing her to Skippy.
A beeping goes off on my machine. The room empties out. They’re all told to let me rest, and close the curtain on me.
I ask for Harrison to stay.
“It’s just your heartbeat,” he says, stroking my forehead.
“Just,” I say. I can feel it, lurching behind my ribs.
“It’s expected,” he clarifies, “Your issues don’t go away just because she’s born, now.”
“Right,” I say, “Healing, yeah?”
“Some,” he says, “We have to see how long it lasts.”
I’m tired again, and that’s a worry, too.
Previously, waking mid-night would mean being awake for a while, but I’m nodding in and out since surgery.
“Rest,” Harrison encourages.
He’s right. I need it.
I’ll equalize in time.

It’s the last night in the hospital.
After a while, there are no new firsts.
After a while, time blurs.
I pace the same hallways I’ve been stuck in for weeks.
But, the nurses ask to get Luke in the room with us when he was outside. I know something will change.
They’ve got the parentship results back. They want all three of us to be there.
God, I’m not ready to know.
They make it too formal, all three of us sitting in chairs. Luke fidgets with the buttons on his sleeves, and Harrison leans forward, elbows on his knees.
She’s so much mine and ours to be anyone else’s. I don't want his brutal blood in her, the truth on paper, or Aleck’s name on her birth certificate.
But-
They have a match, the nurse smiles. “It’s Harrison.”
And the rest of her words fade out backwards.

We celebrate tonight, but there’s barriers in my ears. I smile with them from the atmosphere, and from the bench by the window.
Tristie dances, holding Tempest tight to her chest, bobbing and spinning across the room. Richard plays, both lively and quiet.
They took her ankle monitor off. We’re cleared to leave.
She’s the freest she’s ever been, from my cord and all of theirs- and they’re dancing.
My eyes fill up with tears that sting, salt on my skin attacking my eyes. I squint, fighting back, but they stick closed from it.
God, it’s fucking Harrison.
Skippy nudges a tissue into my hand, and my skin heats up in flush. I figured they were all still looking at Tempest. Leave it to my Shipwright to solve every problem.
“She’s the luckiest kid in the world,” he says.
Once my eyes are dried, they open proper again, meeting tears in his eyes, too.
That just starts mine again, kissing him on the cheek. “Yeah.”
He shakes his head, looking over the room of us. All of our crew, and Adeline.
“I wish he knew,” he says.
It comes during a lull in the ambient noise. Almost everyone heard him. Especially me, gumming up my throat like undercooked bread. Wish he knew she was never his. Wish he knew he has nothing on us now. Nothing but- Well, but Miley. After nine years, her absence still twinkles obviously on our outskirts. She haunts this hospital room, standing just behind whoever I'm not looking at.
“I-” Alice hesitates, her tongue peeking out between her teeth. “I could text Miley.”
But do we want Aleck to know anything.
I’m not even sure he should know I had her, in the end.
Let alone that she was never his. What would unload weight for me might ignite vengeance in him. I won't make Tippi enemies before she's old enough to make her own.
But- that's not true. Leaving in the morning, we're passing directly under the eyes of law and pirate enemies alike. She's as wanted as the rest of us, just by being born mine.
“We don’t have to talk about this now,” says Trisite, “Like, it can wait.”
“Yeah,” says Alice, “Of course it can wait.”
But now it’s in the air. And it'll linger bitter until I do something with it.
“I want Miley to know,” I say, “She can do what she does with it.”
“Here,” says Alice, handing me the phone. “You do it.”
“Aye.” I plot out my words.
I’m not a common texter. I’ve only done it a few times. This kind of news, never.
‘Miley, it’s Jo. Had the baby. Tempest. Tested her blood, she’s Harrison’s.’
Is that too short? It has everything I need in it. And rereading doesn't add ideas.
I don’t warn her off telling Aleck. I want to leave it her choice.
Miley wouldn’t take it well as an order anyway, since I’m formally not her Captain anymore. She's stubborn to the bone. Maybe that's why she left.
Once sent, I hand it back to Alice right away.
I’m not going to hang onto the edge of my words until she answers. It’ll come if it comes.
Everyone else moves on from thinking about it, too. They chatter about the news and celebrate real family. Blood family. She'll have both parents.
Every time the thought comes through it hits different.
She’s Harrison’s. Shock.
She’s Harrison’s. Joy.
She’s Harrison’s. Relief.
He takes me by both hands, sitting beside me on the bench.
“I never thought,” he says.
“Neither did I,” I say, “I don’t know why I didn’t.”
“Nah,” he says, “He didn’t let you.”
He passes his bottle off to Luke, leaning on the wall behind me.
I catch his breath on his way sitting back down.
Harrison's smell paired with the smoke on his sleeves drags up a heavy memory. When I told him I was pregnant, on a sidewalk by a lake.
Before I told Aleck.
At the time it felt like usurping some right. Now it feels like serendipity.
“Remember our ‘last kiss.’” I say.
He huffs, but it’s sad.
“God,” he says, “Yes.”
He leans in and gives me one now, sweet and laced with the drink he was celebrating with.
When I told him, we were distant. Pushed apart by Captains' demands, and Aleck.
Harrison was sure pregnancy would take more of me away. He wanted one last kiss.
And he was right.
After that day, we didn’t touch again for months.
“Look at us, now,” I say.
He pulls me in for a hug, faces over shoulders. I'm still sore and bandaged, but nothing we won't handle by ourselves.
“You wouldn’t have kept her if he didn’t make you,” he says.
That’s not a lie. I didn’t want kids. It wouldn't have been a second though to get rid of it, if it wasn't half another Captain's genetics.
Around us, our crew talk. Laugh. Close and loud and happy.
Even if outside, we will find danger.
I didn’t want to put someone through that. Getting raised by me.
The trouble my mother called me isn’t how I feel about Tempest. So sure the world owed her better.
I don’t know what I’m owed. I know what I’m getting.
Our baby lies cradled in the safest arms, passed to arms, passed to arms-
She won’t grow up the kind of cold and lonely I knew.
And if that’s what she’s getting, I’m glad she’s here.
“There was this moment,” I say. I pull back to show my face to his. “In the dark one night, when it was-”
I can’t finish that, even now. Can’t tell him how close it got.
“She leapt and- It felt like fight,” I say, holding my middle as if she were still in there. “I wasn’t alone if she was fighting with me.”
Across the room, Tristie gazes down at her with a wide grin on her face. She says something to her under her breath and kisses her on the forehead.
“I mainly-” Harrison shakes his head. “I wished we could go back.”
I nod with vigor. “Every damn day.”
How much easier to rewind than to made a fucking decision.
“But she’s-” He frowns, choked up in an instant, “I never-”
He swallows it, and I kiss him again. He pulls me in rough by the jaw.
My fingers lace his ears, thumbs along his cheekbones. He doesn’t let my face go for a minute.
When he does, he kisses my nose, too, then my forehead.
He sits there for a second, just breathing my scalp. I stroke both hands down his chest.
“We’ll be more careful with condoms,” I say, and he scoffs.
“Not you,” he says, “Not anymore.”
Fuck, wait.
He’s right.
I turn to see if Luke is still behind me, and more than that, he grins like he’s been listening. I get him in the thigh with my elbow.
“Didn’t think of that, yet, did you?” he asks.
“I was too busy thinking of the hormones,” I say.
“Too practical,” he smirks, “Look for the fun.”
“Your fun, sure,” I say, “What if she was yours, huh? Would you be grinning as much?”
He nods, pushing off the wall. “Absolutely. I’m happy for you, Captain.”
I think that's everyone in the room. Happy for me.
“Speaking of hormones,” says Harrison.
Luke walks off to trade bottles with Richard.
“Have you put any thought to how you’ll take it?” He combs his peppered tangle out, hair as messy as everyone else's.
“Estrogen?”
He chuckles. “I’d imagine, unless you want the other one.”
My quiet, and he catches up with me not joking.
“Do you?” he asks.
“I think I do,” I say, “I told Skippy a few days ago, and I’ve been thinking it through since.”
“When?” His eyes search mine.
“After she weans,” I say, “Nurses want me coming back around then to look at her anyway. They’ll give me a whole year, like Skippy gets.”
“Really?” He’s astonished, but it’s warm. A smile that’s widening with each of my words.
“I never felt like my body fit right,” I admit, “Maybe changes will do something for it- and maybe they won’t. I don’t think I’ll be worse off, anyway.”
“That’s- That’s fair enough,” he says, “I’m fucking sure all this didn’t make that clearer.”
“No,” I say, “And I want these heavy tits off. They got bigger and they bug me.”
“You’ll shrink a bunch of ways,” he says, “These next weeks.”
“Sure, but not everything,” I say, “Not all the way. I want ‘em gone.”
All of a sudden, it feels like defending myself. Fighting back until he says, “Well then, good riddance.”
Something’s on his mind beneath. But that can be it. I don't want to dig between his ears for an argument.
“It’ll be more than a year before that,” I say, “Skippy says they wait to see what the shots do to you before they cut.”
“Aye,” he says.
Like he learned about pregnancy, he read up on top surgery and care by the time Skippy got to that. He knows the mechanics much more intimately than I do.
Then, I catch him staring. “I’ll miss them though.”
There it is. Of course you will. “You can have them as long as I do.”
Checking with a glance that there’s no nurses in the room, I flash him.
He grins, and so does Richard within eyesight.
Coming out to him will take more thought. I’m lucky I have ages to find a natural way to bring it up.
Eh, we’ll get there. I’m their Captain, in the end.
Richard is an odd case, in that I'm never sure what he'll feel on things. He's got his own theories and biases.
They've never gotten between him and crew.

Time passes faster since she got here.
I blink and the party's over.
She's asleep in my arms, and it's the last sleep I'll have in this goddamn hospital room.
“C'mere,” whispers Adeline, “let's let mama sleep.”
I shake my head. “Nah. Don't call me that.”
“Right,” she replies, “let's let the Captain sleep.”
She says it like she's joking, but that is much more comfortable.
“I'm terrified,” I admit.
Adeline tucks Tempest into her cot for the last night. She's already brought her car seat up for the morning, the kind with a handle you can carry her with.
“Yeah?” she says.
“To leave ceasefire in the morning,” I say, “scrambling out of Atlanta before the break of dawn.”
“Yeah,” she says. She takes my hand. “We're with you all the way.”
We're safer than civilians. Than locals.
But the moment we leave this hospital, Tempest is a pirate like the rest of us with all the consequences of that.
She never got a choice like we did. I picked for her, to keep her with me.
Stepping out of those doors tomorrow, she's part of the world I chose to bring her into.
“What's the plan,” Adeline says, “Where are we going?”
Her crew are leaving their campsite to rejoin us outside the city.
“North,” I say, “West by a bit, into the valley.”
The mountains are beautiful, and far more comfortable.
I know how to handle those roads. Those people. The freight heading up and down 81.
In another world, I would want her growing up there anyway. A world with a house and a yard for us.
But that world she wouldn't have crew.
I still think this is the better half of the deal.
“One day at a time," says the other Captain, "We'll get out of here and find somewhere quiet.” She kisses my forehead, and I feel tucked into bed. “You're on maternity leave as far as I'm concerned. We can be a fleet until Peter gets a call for his transplant.”
However long that takes. It's an unpredictable deadline.
“Hey.” Alice scratches her scalp from the corner, sleeping leaned against Tristie on the floor. She holds up her phone. “Miley responded.”
They get the phone into my hands.
‘I want to meet her.’
Goddamn it.
Fuck.
Knee jerk, it’s of course. Of course Miley should meet her.
Then reality comes in, the Kraken. I can’t. She can’t.
I give the phone back. “I won't have a response to that tonight.”
Alice shakes her head.
“She can't have both,” she says, “Right? She picked them.”
“But it's Miley,” says Tristie, voice croaky from unorthodox sleep.
“I won't respond tonight,” I repeat. It comes out an order.
“Aye, Captain,” both say.
But my mind is busy between those same two points, and they whisper long after I'm trying, and pretending, to sleep.