The words fell between them, heavy and final.
Hollis opened his mouth, then closed it again. For a second, something like uncertainty flickered across his face. Then it hardened into a mask of defensiveness. “You don’t use her to justify insubordination. I will have your career for this.”
Fly didn’t step back. “I’m not justifying anything.” He held Hollis’s gaze. “I’m accounting for it.”
Silence stretched. The storm rattled the windows at the far end of the hall. An officer cleared his throat nearby.
“Lieutenant Hollis, we’ll need you in Conference B.”
Hollis looked past Fly, jaw set. “The board will hear my side of this. You won’t be the only one explaining things.”
Fly nodded once. “We’ll each get our say.”
Hollis narrowed his eyes and walked away without another word, his stride stiff and aggressive. Fly stood there a moment longer, breathing steadily, shoulders squared, letting the weight settle where it belonged. Then he turned and went back to the room.
The crew looked up when he entered. Not all of them. Than didn’t move. But Bridge did. Joss did. Their eyes went to Fly automatically, like gravity hadn’t changed.
Fly took his place with them. No speech. No reassurance he couldn’t give.
He just stayed.
Outside, the storm kept pounding the bay.
Inside, nothing moved at all.
Time passed. Than had no idea how much. Whatever was in his cup had gone cold, yet he still held it without taking a sip. He set it down on a small table.
A door opened. The room went quiet in that way that meant someone important was about to speak.
Than felt it before he heard it. A shift. Air tightening. Bodies orienting without sound. He was still wrapped in a blanket that smelled like bleach and heat, his hands clasped together between his knees because if he let them go, he didn’t know what they might do.
An officer stepped in, rain still clinging to the shoulders of his jacket. He didn’t look at anyone right away.
“Midshipmen,” he said, voice steady, practiced. “The Coast Guard has recovered a body.”
Than’s chest tightened. Not a breath. Not yet.
“They’ve confirmed the identity.”
The words landed unevenly, like something dropped from a height.
Mei-Lin Harada.
Than felt the freeze crack open, sharp and sudden, like ice giving way underfoot. Heat surged through him, fast and brutal, his skin prickling as sensation came roaring back all at once. His throat closed hard enough to hurt.
“No,” he said.
The word slipped out before he could stop it. Soft. Broken. Barely there. The reality of it broke him open, denial already rising.
He lifted his head slowly, eyes fixed on nothing and swallowed against the burn climbing his throat. The room blurred at the edges from the sheer force of the realization settling into his bones.
When she had kissed him, when she had given herself to him, he had known his life would never be the same.
Now that she was gone, his life would never be the same again.
Joss made a sound beside him. A raw, strangled noise that tore free of his chest before he could contain it. He bent forward suddenly, hands over his face, shoulders shaking as something inside him finally collapsed.
Bridge reached for him without looking, her own eyes locked forward, jaw clenched tight as if holding herself together by will alone. She slipped her arms around him and pulled him close, and like a small boy, he settled against her.
