Short Leave on Return: Melancholy on the Bridge

[PurpleRiver]

The 'walk in the park' as Captain Broom (his actual name, Briar came to learn) had called it came to a rather anticlimactic end. The Brass Ferret was refueled and made it safely back to base on Beylix. Captain Maverick got an earful from Zeke about the whole incident. David took his reaming without a single uttered excuse or rebuttle and, as usual, that resulted in the wind taken out of Zeke's sails faster than if David had argued back.

Once that was done, David returned to the ship and set the crew to work to figure out why the ship's computer had not  flagged the insufficient fuel store when the route had been set into the nav computers. If it was due to a leak, that would be serious; if it was just a computer error a simple re-calibration ought to fix it.

Sadly, Carrie handed in her resignation. That took David by surprise; he guessed it had taken Carrie by surprise herself. Fond farewells and best wishes were exchanged as Carrie gathered her things and left.

David sat in the bridge alone, door closed, deep in thought. The damsel in distress had been saved - so the mission had to be regarded as a success. But on the other hand, he'd lost a crew member, the ship had failed and he was being laughed at by co-workers.

David shook his head. He was thinking negatively. It wasn't like Carrie had died, it was only a minor failure in the ship's systems, and he didn't really care what Broom and the Swift Return crew thought of him.

No, he shook his head again and shook himself out of his brief melancholy.

[Freya]

The silence in the bridge seemed to stretch on into infinity, becoming almost palpable and weighing down on the poor Captain as he though his melancholic thoughts on his own. It might have been peaceful, for him, might have been a time to gather and regroup away from the eyes of the remaining crew, but unfortunately, it wasn't going to last much longer.

A sealed hatch along one of the walls began to rattle a bit as though something behind it were pushing at the metal. A second or two later, the screws at each corner turned slowly, laboriously, before tumbling from their holes and hitting the ground with a clatter. Once the fourth screw landed with a clunk, there was a brief moment of silence... CLANG! The hatch tilted forward and hit the ground with a loud, echoing cacophony of noise. Behind it, Freya sat knelt in the tunnel beyond the hatch, her hands held out with fingers curled as though they'd been trying to grab something and  startled look on her face. Clearly, she'd wanted to slide the hatch aside quietly but had failed and pushed it instead.

Already, soot covered a large portion of her face and her braids were in tangles, despite Sienna and E.V's best attempts to tidy her up before they got dirt side. Her blue clothes were now a strange brown and in an unintentional silver lining, it seemed the inside of the hatch was much cleaner than it had been before. Vivid azure gaze looked around before she spotted feet, then legs, and up up up until she spotted a Captain sitting and looking in her direction. Once more her eyes widened, the red creeping across her cheeks almost shining past the dirt. What a beautiful and mysterious man their Captain was.

[David Maverick]

As soon as the hatch started to rattle, David snapped out of his reverie. He eyed it from his seat: a number of unpleasant possible causes springing to mind. When the screws started to turn, his brow furrowed in that curious way of his: studying the grating as if he could see more than met the eye. A hand moved instinctively to his service weapon secured at his hip but he couldn't imagine an intruder, more likely a prank of some kind...

He started to grin. By the time the grate clanged to the floor he was stifling a chuckle. He folded his arms and waited expectantly for her head to appear and her gaze to meet his eyes.

"Well hello there," he greeted her in a tone of playful surprise.

"Please, come in," he said as if it was perfectly natural that she was in a sealed hatcway. He stood and offered a hand to help her out.

"You know, you had me worried there. For a moment I thought we might have had an infestation of space monkeys."

His face dropped in sudden, feigned concern. "You, uh, didn't see any in there, did you?" He glanced fearfully at the open hatchway.

[Freya]

Freya tore her gaze from his face and looked down at his offered hand, slowly reaching out with her own to take it. Grunting ever so slightly, the girl pulled herself out of the hatch and into a standing position, absolutely covered in soot and dust. She looked like a living pipe cleaner, which, in essence, was what she'd inadvertently become on her journey through the bowels of the ship. She smiled timidly at his comment but looked startled herself when he asked her if there had been any of the dreaded ship monkeys back the way she'd come.

Her head turned and the girl peered back into the hatchway, her hand still holding the Captain's, although she hadn't realized she was doing so. "I think...it was just the one nest a' monkeys," she informed him, looking back up at David with a lopsided smile. The heat of his hand in hers reminded her that she was still in possession of his hand and the girl dropped it, cheeks flaming up a bright red once more. Blue eyes widened and Freya looked around at the bridge, trying not to stare at him so obviously.

"I was worried someone might change their mind," she told him, rambling nervously, " 'Bout me stayin'," she continued, gesturing back at the hatch. Worried they'd kick her off, she'd set off to find all the possible hiding spots she could curl up in until they were back out in the black.

[David Maverick]

Oblivious to her red cheeks and wide eyes, David folded his arms and perched in a relaxed stance against the edge of the flight console as she looked around. While she tried not to stare at him, he had no problem keeping his gaze fixed upon her. David had a way of studying people with a comfortable gaze, an light expression of amusement dancing in his eyes.

She expressed her worry about staying. David decided to speak to her as he would any other crewmember. He had no idea how one was supposed to speak to kids anyway.

"You've been hired to work a job. As long as you keep up your end and do the work, we'll keep up our end and let you." He grinned, aiming for light humour in his reassurance.

He breathed heavily and decided now was as good a time as any for a proper chat.

"But here's my question. Why do you want to stay here anyway? Wouldn't you rather be in school somewhere, dating boys and having sleepovers?"

[Freya]

His assurance that they wouldn't be kicking her off the ship relaxed the girl's shoulders a bit, but she still found herself a little tense in the company of the Captain. It was hard not to be. However, his following questions completely disarmed her and Freya stared up at the man as though he'd sprouted another head and was speaking in tongues.

"Datin' who and havin' what?" she asked, her brows furrowed in confusion and the bridge of her nose scrunched up. For as long as she could remember, she'd been out in the Black. Well, there were the bits when she found herself dirt side, and the vague memory of her parent's passing followed by bouncing around a couple different agencies before she decided she'd had enough and ran away. So really, the girl had no knowledge of what school was like, no idea about or desire to date any boys, and frankly the term 'sleepover' meant as much to her as 'quadratic formula'. It was all gibberish.

Her social skills were largely stunted due to spending so long hiding in crevices and compartments upon unsuspecting ships, and the interactions she had had with people were typically getting in trouble, taking on small (legal and illegal) courier-esque jobs, and having to do mandated community service before she was released and began her cycle of stowing away all over again.

Eyeing him as though he must've gone mad, the girl walked around him and looked out the front of the ship, crossing her arms over her chest and pursing her lips. Sure was different being allowed to walk around the ship rather than sneaking about when everyone had gone to sleep. She still found herself flinching every now and again and looking for the closest hatches, just in case. "I'm not sure what any a' that is, but if it's somethin' I'm s'possed to be doin' off ship, I ain't interested," she assured him, shrugging one shoulder and nodding a little, glancing at him curiously and trying to look mysterious like him.

[David Maverick]

At Freya's assertion that she was not interested in boys and sleepovers, he gave a little chuckle. "Fair enough."

A tiny crease formed between David's eyebrows as he pondered the girl in front of him. When it came to things of a personal nature, David treaded very carefully with women. A miniature one needed extra special care. He needed to know more about Freya but he felt unsure about how to go about it.

"What are you interested in? Aside from.. crawling around vents?" he quirked a grin, but he was actually asking her a serious question behind the humour. "What do you want out of life?"

[Freya]

The wild child turned and stared up at the Captain, brows furrowed in thought and a hand idly lifting to tug at one of her currently messy braids, the bead that had been attached to the end of it having fallen off somewhere on the ship. What was she interested.

Again, she shrugged a little and chewed on her lower lip, "I like tinkerin' with things. Takin' them apart and puttin' them back together. I was gonna help build a..." her hands lifted and she made an outline of a square with them, "...travelin' farm in some cargo containers, afore I shot myself out into the sun," she informed him.

While she wasn't classically trained to fix anything, she had a lot of free time aboard the ships she stowed away on and tended to play with the machines and parts she found there. Sometimes to some disastrous and expensive outcomes for the owners of said ships. Still, she got better over time...mostly.

[David Maverick]

She liked tinkering. That made sense.

David gave a small sigh. It didn't sit entirely right with him to have a young girl working on his ship when - he thought - she should be at home somewhere, having fun being a kid. But there she had affirmed it; what she wanted to do was the work of a mechanic. As long as that was what she really wanted, he could justify having her aboard.

As for shooting herself into the sun in a shuttle: "Why did you do that, by the way?" he asked.

[Freya]

Freya looked down at the pilot's seat and reached out to prod at it a bit, brows furrowed curiously, "Thought it'd be a good idea, at the time," she muttered, looking up at him and a mischievous glint in her eye, clearly not being serious about that. With a shake of her head that distressed her already frazzled braids, the girl sat down in the chair and crossed her legs, setting her hands on her ankles and looking at the console with tilted head.

"Got separated from my group an' some crazy men started chasin' me," she began, looking up at the ship's ceiling and reaching upward, her arms too short to reach any of the switches up above, although she didn't seem to be trying very hard to get to any of them. "Kinda just tried to get away and ended up," she lowered her hand, flattening her palm and mimicking a flying ship with it, "got out too far an then I couldn't get out," she concluded, glancing up at him with her hand still hovering before her, her brows lifted a little almost questioningly.

[David Maverick]

David wasn't sure yet what to make of this little wisp. He wanted to know what had happened to her. He had the basic facts from her Cortex record but he wanted the details, to understand. How had her life brought her on her current path?

She wasn't very forthcoming with details however and David didn't think well of pushing and prodding.

"Well, you're here now," he said with a smile. Maybe a little patronising. He hoped not. "Brass Ferret's newest recruit."