Thea

“I think Sora might already be starting to irritate me.” Bryce sighed as she rested her head back on the couch.

She hadn’t been lying, but I could tell that she wasn’t actually upset. I settled in beside her and leaned against her shoulder.

“Yeah, people who care about you tend to get annoying about the little things, like your health and wellbeing. Do you want help getting to the kitchen? You need food and I still need to unload what we bought anyway.”

Bryce gave a strained laugh at my comment before easing me off her shoulder so that she could get her arm around me. I gave a contented sigh, comfortable in the moment, but still hating the fact that it was going to have to be me who got us off the couch. Being the responsible one was such a burden sometimes.

“If being annoying is a sign of affection, then you must really care about me,” Bryce teased.

I growled at her, but since I was already being accused; I decided I may as well get the crime out of the way. I leaned up and stole a kiss before forcing Bryce to stand and half-carrying her to the dining table near the kitchen. She was clearly straining with the effort, but once I got her seated, she smiled and thanked me.

The bartop was low enough that I could leap over it to get into the kitchen without a problem, and the pantry was neatly labeled, which made finding it easy. The problems didn’t really start until I opened the pantry door.

The room was easily over four times as wide as I was tall and almost that deep. Shelves lined the walls floor to ceiling and then three more rows of shelves were in a maze-like pattern in the center of the room for good measure. Each set of shelves was packed with neatly labeled drawers, each of those drawers were filled to the brim with food, mostly different meats.

None of it was refrigerated, instead the drawers had a slowly rotating blue light that seemed to keep everything perfectly fresh. It was all incredibly impressive, and also a major pain in my ass.

I had a spacial ring full of fresh fruit and vegetables that somehow needed to be stored, and every drawer in here seemed to be full. I just stood there for a moment, tapping a finger to my lip in thought.

The amount of food I had in storage would take almost two of the sets of shelves. I would need to empty the drawers and then clean them out before I could store the fruits and vegetables. All of that would take time, which we admittedly had. I would just need to get Bryce something to eat first.

Cooking for an elf wasn’t something I had ever done before, but I knew Bryce had actually enjoyed the synth-chicken wings back at Sora’s strip joint. But she didn’t eat many of them. Instead, she favored the salad she had ordered.

I found a veritable bounty of ingredients, but focused mostly on a single shelf to make it easier for future me. I cooked up a truly excessive amount of chicken, then pulled some greens and pears from my storage to make a healthy sized salad.

Finally, because Bryce wasn’t the only person on the ship, I set aside three other plates of the chicken and added some of the pear slices for our foxy friends.

It was looking like a proper meal, but something still felt missing. So, I went back into the pantry and found some strong smelling cheeses to add to the plates, raw for Bryce’s salad, and melted over the chicken for the others.

I stored the entire array in my ring and grabbed a bottle of juice from underneath the bar before jumping back into the dining area.

As I landed, I felt the ship slow with a jolt and then sharply accelerate, causing me to fall forward, barely catching myself on the table.

“Are you okay, Thea?” Bryce asked from the other side of the long table.

Sora must have fetched the nano-boosters, because a pair of reflective pouches sat between them and Bryce.

“Yeah, just caught me by surprise.” I walked the length of the table and pulled the salad and one of the chicken dishes out of my storage, placing them in front of the pair. “Dinner is served. Oh shit, silverware, be right back.”

They both looked surprised, but I turned and did a running jump over the bar to grab four sets of silverware and four glasses. Returning to the table, I set out a set of silverware in front of both Bryce and Sora before pouring each a glass of juice.

“Here you are, for the lovely couple.” I spoke with an exaggerated accent before bowing at the table.

“Thank you, Thea. This looks truly amazing.” Bryce was smiling widely, and there was barely any trace of the dried blood left on her face. She looked radiant.

“This really does look delicious. Thank you, Thea.” Sora was there too

“You two start eating. I’m going to run Sami’s food to her while it’s still warm.” I said, before turning to leave.

“Wait Thea, she’s still working on the engines. I can take it down to her once she finishes.” Sora called after me, but I just dismissed their concern with a wave and called back.

“It’s fine. I felt us speed up earlier so she can take a quick break to eat.”

Sora called out after that, but I was already at the top of the stairs, and I wasn’t listening anyway.

The doors to the engineering corridors were wide open, and I could hear a stream of curses that were occasionally interrupted by mechanical work. I followed the sounds of Sami’s symphony, and found her tail peeking out from on top of something that was probably related to the engines, but there was no way for anybody to know.

“Hey Sora, if you’re done lurking down there, pass me the auto-spanner, the pink one that Al got me for my birthday last year, you know the one.” Sami’s voice was muffled by something, but I couldn’t see her face from where I stood.

I looked around for a bit before finding a pink tool that was much newer and really very out of place. I walked as close as I could reasonably get without climbing up beside Sami and reached it up.

“Here you go!” I called out.

A confused, dirty face wearing an oversized gas mask replaced the wagging tail. Sami pulled the mask up to her forehead before speaking down to me. It left a red ring around her chin and cheeks.

“If you’re looking for the captain’s bed, it’s upstairs, in her room.” Sami swiped the tool out of my hand. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m busy, and if I don’t make these adjustments, then we’ll all explode and die.”

She was lying. Not about Bryce’s bed, I knew where that was. But about the adjustments she was making. I still didn’t know what the adjustments were, but they weren’t nearly as critical as she was trying to make them sound.

“I brought you food!”

“I'm not hungry!” She lied again.

I looked around but didn’t see any clean or flat surface that wasn’t being taken up by a tool or disassembled part. So, I took a short walk out to the cargo hold and brought back a crate which I carefully placed in one of the few open areas of the room. Sami was still ignoring me, so I pulled out her plate of food and sat it on top of the crate. Across from that, I placed my own and poured two glasses of juice before I started eating. It didn’t take long for the greasy kitsune face to appear again.

“What are you doing?”

“Eating.” I spoke around a mouthful of cheesy chicken goodness.

“I can see that. Why are you eating here?”

Sami was talking to me, but her eyes were on the plate of cheese-covered-chicken and pears sitting across from me. This was going to be a lot easier than I thought.

“I thought you would be hungry, and I wanted to talk to you.”

“I’m not hungry, and we’ve already talked a lot, remember? You attacked Sora and forced us to talk about our traumatic past.”

We did actually talk a lot, and I did technically attack Sora, and their past really was pretty traumatic, even if she was trying to joke about it.

I couldn’t really think of a good rebuttal, so I didn’t reply. Instead, I just took a drink from my juice.

“Is that real chicken?”

“Yep! It's real cheese, too. Smells kind of funky, but it tastes fantastic.”

That must have been the magic words, because Sami dropped down from the engine thingy, and sat across from me. But she still didn’t pick up any of the silverware.

“Did Sora put you up to this?” she reluctantly asked.

“No, they actually tried to stop me from coming down here. I think they wanted to talk to you first. You know, about the whole me threatening to kill both of you thing.”

Sami took the mask off of her forehead and picked up the knife and fork.

“You’re weird.”

“Sometimes,” I nodded and, since I was still chewing, I held my hand in front of my mouth. “But I’m mostly just sorry.”

“You’re sorry that you threatened to kill us?” Sami asked incredulously.

“Not exactly? I’m not sure how to phrase this without sounding like an insincere bitch, so please try to take this the best way possible.”

I paused for a moment to collect all of my thoughts and feelings. But, once I had them all, I wasn’t sure what to do with them. So, I just kind of dumped them out of my big stupid mouth.

“I’m not sorry that I threatened you, and I’m not sorry that I attacked Sora because both were just a bluff to find out the truth. Which at the time, I thought was super important. And I’m really not sorry, because it did turn out to be super important, and because now we know that we need to avoid the syndicate, and I’m a little worried that this woman we’re going to go meet might be a part of them. So, it was really important that we knew about that before we tried to do any dealings with her.” I took a deep breath after I ended my barrage and Sami just stared back at me with a piece of chicken on her fork just outside her mouth.

“You really aren't very good at apologies.” Sami took a bite from the suspended chicken while just continuing to stare. I nodded in agreement.

“Yeah, I really don’t do them very often,” I exhaled. “What I’m trying to say is that I’m not sorry for what I did, but I am sorry for how I did it. I wish I had thought of a better way, but I didn’t, and I regret that.”

Sami finished the last of her chicken and started in on the pear slices before responding.

“I accept your apology, and I forgive you.”

She wasn’t lying on either account. She really had accepted my shitty apology, and she really did forgive me. That was probably the most surprising thing the entire afternoon, even more so than the giant tentacle monster, and definitely way more than Bryce saving us all while almost getting herself killed.

“You do?”

“Yeah, I do. Look, I understand what you’re saying. We shouldn’t have lied, especially after hearing Bryce’s story.” Sami leaned back from where she was sitting and looked towards the ceiling. “Sora was just following my lead when they lied the first time, and the second time they were probably just trying to push your buttons to see if you would actually try anything. They can be a real asshole like that sometimes.”

“Oh, that’s well, it’s not great, but it’s…” I wasn’t actually sure what to think about that. Sami seemed to agree, because she just shrugged and grabbed the last pear slice before standing up.

“It is what it is. Thanks for the chicken and you can consider us good. Hells, if you keep cooking like that, then you can even consider us friends.”