The Keeper Did a'Hunting Go

“Make no excuses for yourself in your own mind. If you look and sound like you know what you’re doing, everyone will start to believe you, including yourself. That’s the secret to abandoning your fears about not fitting in. Act like you belong, and everyone will accept you immediately.”

-from The Actor’s Guide to Making Friends (and Enemies) by Marks Chile

Sylva was getting herself familiar with the location of everything in the clinic. The clinic was a suite of a few rooms, none of which were really ideal. There was an entrance room, with a few chairs, a large desk, and cabinets holding supplies. The large machine that could churn out a bunch of common medicines (provided the ship had the supplies), was also in that room. It was a combination of office, waiting room, and dispensary, and it was by far the best maintained room in the clinic. Off to the right of the room was a bathroom, which included a single toilet and a bathtub, a rare luxury on a ship. Presumably it was for helping any patient who couldn't stand or sit up to bathe. Sylva hoped it wouldn't be necessary.

To the left was a long chain of rooms, each one less pleasant than the last. An examination room was first. It contained the usual bed, sink, and scanner for checking the interior of a patient. The scanner could operate in several different modes, and could give good pictures of the inside of a patient's body. It was an older model, but it seemed to (mostly) function. There was a note taped to the side of it that listed one of the imaging functions as broken. Maybe Sylva could convince someone to fix it, or to buy a new one. Really, though, she had no idea how a pirate ship went about obtaining medical supplies in the first place, so perhaps beggars could not be choosers.

The next room was the truly chilling one. It was nominally an operating room. It had the whole sterile atmosphere, all gleaming metal and bright lights ready to be moved into position. Seeing the operating table was scary in itself, but what was worse was the back wall. What looked like an abnormally large set of drawers turned out to be cold storage for bodies. She opened and closed them experimentally a few times, feeling the heft of the drawer as it slid smoothly out, and the rush of cold air that accompanied it.

After that was the lab. It was full of equipment that Sylva had no idea how to use. Test tubes, petri dishes, centrifuges, refrigerators, heating units. There was a note taped to one of the heating units. Sylva wondered who wrote it.

'need to buy more cultures for antibiotics. rmd respect. fix heating coil to avoid addtl wipeout.'

Sylva couldn't believe that she was going to be expected to grow her own antibiotics. How disgusting. She couldn't imagine how one person could deal with all of this. At her father's practice, he had a whole team of people, and a supply chain, AND he was only a pediatrician. Sylva was beginning to understand why the previous ship's doctor had met with such an unfortunate incident with his supply cabinet. He was probably going crazy trying to be… Oh, God, every type of doctor, and a pharmacist, and a mortician. Jalena probably felt the same way, but at least on Guild ships there was always the possibility of sending someone who was really sick off to a planet or station that could take care of them. That was legal. For pirates, they were completely alone. She wondered how any of them survived.

Let alone… Hadn't Yan told her one time about pirates genetically modifying their children? Was she going to have to do that, too? Maybe there was someone on a station who was paid to do that sort of thing. Sylva didn't know the first thing about genetics, and she hoped she wasn't about to have to learn. It was unnatural and immoral, anyway. She could participate aboard a pirate ship as a doctor, even if just a fake one, but she didn't think she would have the strength go fiddling around with the fundamentals of what made up a person. What God saw fit to cast, she had no desire to tear asunder, as it were.

It was while Sylva was examining the mishmash of tools and supplies in the storage closets in the lab that Sign's sister appeared. She walked quietly, for all that she was tall and heavily pregnant. She startled Sylva when she stood in the doorway of the lab and knocked on the doorframe. Sylva jumped, surprised, and dropped the test tube she was holding. It almost shattered on the floor, but it landed on her shoe instead and rolled away underneath one of the cabinets that lined the room.

"Sorry to bother you," Sign's sister said. She was tall, probably as tall as Iri, and she had strawberry blonde hair that was shaved across the sides but curly on top. Her shoulders were broad, and her heavily pregnant belly stretched against the pastel green jumpsuit she was wearing. Tattoos crept up the side of her neck towards her ears and peeked out of the sleeves of her jumpsuit at her hands. "I heard the doctor was here, and so I came to pay my respects."

"The doctor is indeed in." Sylva laughed nervously. "You must be Sign's sister?"

"I'm Keeper-of-Promises Del, but just call me Keep." She stretched out her hand to shake, and Sylva took it. She felt almost feverishly hot, but she looked fine, so Sylva wasn't too concerned.

"Sylva Loak. Pleasure to meet you."

"Do I have the honor of being your first visitor?" Keep asked.

"You do indeed. Though if your brother is to be believed, you're the only reason I'm here in the first place."

"Oh, don't listen to him. He's been paranoid his whole life. I'm sure as soon as you get settled in, everyone's going to come by complaining of all their ailments." That wasn't promising.

"Is everyone on the ship dying of some sort of disease?"

Keep laughed. "No, I'm joking. But we haven't had a doctor in months, so we've all had to make do. And, you know, when things are left like that, the complaints begin to build up. A chronic sore back here, a rotten tooth there, a weird rash on somebody…"

"I can tell that you've been short handed for a while. There's dust everywhere in here. Are these actual examples, or are you just listing possible problems?"

"Oh, they're all real. My baby cousin, Grace, she's got this weird thing…" Keep reached into the pocket of her jumpsuit and pulled out her phone. "Let me show you the picture." Clearly patient confidentiality was not going to be a prime concern on the ship. Sylva was glad that while aboard the Dreams she had never had reason to complain to Jalena about her own health problems. Though Jalena was a professional, it probably would have only been a matter of time before everyone suddenly knew about any weird rashes that she happened to develop.

Sylva examined the picture that Keep thrust into her face. Grace was a tall child, but her face still had the soft features of a four or five year old. The rash in question was an angry red thing that spread all over her chest in blistering bumps. Sylva had no clue what it was, but it looked painful.

"I'll have to look at that in person before I can give any real advice on it," Sylva said, trying to deflect. She cataloged the rash in her brain as best she could, and made a mental note to search up in the extensive medical reference library all the different types of rashes that a person could get.

"Yeah, I figured. I'll have Maze bring her around tomorrow."

"Maze?" Sylva asked.

"Amazement, she's Grace's mother. My cousin," Keep explained. Sylva remembered anew how convoluted the family relationships aboard a ship could get. She made yet another mental note to see if the ship's information system had maybe a directory of crew, and maybe a family tree.

"So," Sylva began, changing the subject. "You came for me to check you out?"

"I came to say hi, but my brother would murder me if I came away with anything less than the absolute seal of approval from you."

"Can I ask a personal question?"

"Sure."

"Is it just me, or is he a tiny bit overinvested?"

"That's hardly a professional question," Keep said, but she smiled. "I suppose you did warn me it was personal. I'm his little sister. He's always been protective of me. There's nothing more to it than that."

Sylva didn't know how to put this delicately. "And may I also ask who the father is?"

"Oh my God, are you worried that we–" Keep broke out into raucous laughter, so hard that she bent over coughing. "Oh GOD, no. My husband is Shielder D'Artro. He's from the Bird-of-Prey." She swiped around on her phone for a second and pulled up a picture of a brawny, bearded man with a stern face. "That's him."

"Sorry, I just had to ask," Sylva said. Her face was red and hot.

"No, I get it. We've had non-spacers come aboard before. You know if anyone tries something like that, they get kicked off the ship, right?"

"No, I didn't know that." It was a reasonable system.

"It's true. Or, it least it would be if we ever had any problems with that in particular. Which we don't." Keep was firm.

"I believe you," Sylva said. "Sorry for insinuating otherwise."

"It's fine. Anyway, like I said, my brother will kill me if I come away from here without getting checked out."

Sylva couldn't put it off any longer: her first test as a "doctor" had arrived. Looking at Keep, she was afraid of the responsibility that she had managed to place upon herself. In just a short while, unless something else went unexpectedly wrong, she was about to have two lives literally in her hands.

"Come on over here then." Sylva left behind all the test tubes and other supplies she had been examining in the lab room, and both of them walked out through the operating room and into the exam room. Sylva closed the door and drew the curtain. "Just so you know, I'm not trained as an obstetrician." Or anything. "And I also have no idea where any of the supplies here are, so you'll just have to be patient with me."

"That's fine, I'm a patient woman. Need me to take my shirt off?"

"Yeah, let me see about finding some equipment. You wouldn't happen to know where the vitals monitor is stored, would you? Wait, actually, let me weigh you first." Sylva puttered around the exam room, searching for the vitals monitor. Keep watched her with a patient and amused expression.

The scale was in the corner, and Keep stepped on it. Sylva jotted down the number on a notebook, and wrote Keep's name at the top.

"I'm just realizing how much I'm going to have to get used to. Whoever's in charge of the computer system will have to give me editing access to people's personal information…" Sylva muttered. She didn't have any access to the shipboard files, so she would just have to write down all of her notes on her patients longhand at the moment. Although it was annoying, it also was a convenient excuse for her to not embarrass herself with not understanding how to work the ship's file system yet.

"How many gravities is this ring running on?" Sylva asked, seeing that the number on the scale did not jive with Keep's tall and broad stature.

"Uh, point eight, I think." Sylva had felt lighter when she came aboard, but she hadn't been able to tell how much.

"Okay. Uh, get undressed and hop up on the table, I guess."

"All the way undressed or just the top?"

"Just the top." Out of the corner of her eye, Sylva saw Keep struggle to disentangle herself from her tight jumpsuit. The top of it flopped around her waist, and she pulled off her undershirt and sports bra as well, tossing them on the table next to her. Sylva busied herself for checking all the cupboards and drawers for the vitals monitor. She finally found it and held it up triumphantly. She put it down on the counter and washed her hands in the sink.

"I wish I had one of those privacy gowns to give you, but I didn't see any around," Sylva said, genuinely regretful as she turned back toward Keep. Keep's tattoos were clearly visible now, swirling red lines that traveled up her arms and back, towards her neck. They swept down and ended in the gulf between her breasts. Sylva wanted to ask about them, but decided it wouldn't be professional.

"It's fine. I've accepted that there's a little bit of indignity in the doctor patient relationship."

"Okay, so this goes on your arm…" Sylva wrestled with the device. She had practiced with similar ones aboard the Dreams, but the cord on this one had become hopelessly tangled. It needed the cord because it had been sitting in a drawer for months and was totally out of batteries. She finally got the monitor strapped to Keep's arm, and she read the vitals off the little screen on the device. As soon as she got her computer hooked up to the system, she would be able to do this automatically, but for now she just had to write everything down.

"How's it look, doc?"

"Your blood pressure is a little high, but I'm not surprised. It's nothing dangerous."

"Do you need to draw blood or anything?"

"Not right now. I don't have the lab even remotely set up, so I wouldn't be able to do much with it. Do you feel alright?"

"Morning sickness, aches, soreness, swelling everywhere, constantly needing to pee, bitching out my husband, cravings for things we haven't grown in the greenhouse for years… I’ve started having a bit of bleeding, but it doesn’t hurt."

"I think that’s fine,” Sylva said, though she had no idea. “If it starts to hurt or get heavy, then there might be a problem. But that sounds like the whole normal pregnancy suite. Is this your first child?"

Keep's face darkened. "I had a stillbirth once before, a couple years ago."

"I'm sorry to hear that," Sylva said. "Could you tell me the details?"

She shrugged helplessly. "The baby had severe defects and died around seven months. The doctor induced labor and got him out."

That didn't sound like anything that Sylva would be able to prevent if it happened again. "Do you know what caused it?"

"It could have been anything. I didn't know I was pregnant for a long time, so I kept doing my normal duties on board. I could have exposed him to extra radiation when I went on a spacewalk in-system or something. Or maybe it was just one of those things that happens sometimes." She sounded torn up.

"Was this an unplanned pregnancy?" Sylva asked, indicating Keep’s belly.

"No, we went on a station to get this one done. Got him fixed up nice and right." Keep laid one hand across her taut belly. "He'll be the strongest man on the ship." So they had genetically modified him somehow. If what had happened to Keep was common among spacers, she guessed it made sense for them to do it. Being inside the ship would protect them from radiation, with the massive bulk of rock that they lived inside forming a very impressive shield- but going out on EVA while pregnant? It was a disaster waiting to happen. She was honestly shocked that more spacers didn't die horribly young of cancer. Well, it wasn't as though Sylva had any actual medical knowledge.

"Sounds good to me," Sylva said, even though it actually sounded like the opposite of that. "Alright, let me just check your lungs…" She fished through the drawers to find the stethoscope. "Sorry again, this is just, moving into a new office is the worst."

"No, it's my fault, I probably should have given you time to get settled before I barged in and started demanding that you check me out."

"As long as you don't mind waiting while I search around for all my supplies…" Sylva muttered. She pulled the stethoscope out of the drawer. It wasn't one of the types that her father used in his practice, the digital ones that could analyze the sound and health of the lungs, this was one of the old fashioned kind. Pirates must not have access to the latest and greatest medical equipment. They probably only had the imaging machine because it was so useful for diagnostics that it had no equal. She wedged the uncomfortable ends of it in her ears. She pressed the other end to Keep's back.

"Ok, deep breath in," Sylva said. Keep complied, but Sylva had no idea what she was looking for. She scooted the stethoscope around and repeated the process several times. Keep could have been dying of bronchitis and Sylva wouldn't have known. She was just imitating what she had heard her father and Jalena do a hundred times. It was awkward for her to lay hands on this woman, especially since she wasn't wearing gloves, which she hadn't been able to find. She would need to find those fast.

"Sounds pretty good to me," Sylva said with a smile. "Let me just check your neck." She awkwardly rubbed Keep's neck, her cold fingers checking for any swollen lymph nodes or other abnormalities. She didn't feel anything that screamed at her as being out of place, so she dropped her hands to her sides and stepped back for a moment. "Everything is looking fine so far."

"Do you want me to do imaging on the baby now, or did you have something else that you wanted me to check first?"

"Let's look at the baby," Keep said.

"Sounds like a plan," Sylva said. "This is conditional on me finding the gel, off course."

At least Jalena had taught her to use all the functions of imaging machines. Sylva turned the machine on to make sure that the display worked, then searched through the adjacent cabinet for the gel that the ultrasound needed. The gel was easy to find, and there was almost a full bottle of it. She didn't know if she would be able to buy more, so she was going to do her best to conserve it.

"Alright, just lay back. Put your arms underneath your head." Sylva didn't actually know if that would help, but that was what Jalena had told one of the crewmembers of the Dreams to do when she was examining his kidney.

Keep settled herself back on the cold examining table, using her discarded undershirt as a sort of pillow. The goosebumps crawled up her arms and the fine hairs on her stomach stood on end.

"Sorry, this will probably be cold," Sylva said. She squirted the goop out onto Keep's stretch-marked stomach. "Let's have a look, shall we?"

The grainy, dark images showed up on the monitor as Sylva pressed the ultrasound wand into Keep's stomach, moving it up her stomach, starting just above where her jumpsuit lay open and flopping off the table and ending just under her ribs. Keep had an intense emotion on her face as the baby came into view. Keep's mouth was open in a gentle, silent 'o', and her eyes were wet.

“He’s beautiful,” Keep whispered.

"Have you not gotten to see him before?" Sylva asked.

"No, we haven't had a doctor," Keep said. Sylva held the wand in place so that Keep could continue looking.

"You know it's a boy though?"

"When we had him, uh, made, we asked for a boy," Keep said distractedly. That was good for Sylva, because she did not think she could confidently identify the sex of the baby from the blurry images that she was getting. She could see the broader features: a head, limbs, torso. But fine detail was lost on her, just as much as it was lost on Keep, who continued staring at her baby's face, utterly transfixed. Sylva knew it would be important to locate things like the placenta, but she couldn't find it. Moving the wand provided her with no information that she could make use of.

The baby twitched on screen, and Sylva felt the kick in her hand, resting on Keep's stomach. "He's awake, I guess," Sylva said, though Keep had certainly felt the kick much more than she had.

"He loves to wiggle around in there. It's been keeping me sane. And awake at night. Does everything look good?"

Sylva tried to orient the image in her head. The red line on the wand corresponded to the red x on the screen… And that was a problem. The baby was facing the wrong direction.

"Good news is, he's got all his fingers and toes, and his heartbeat looks good. Slightly more complicated news is that, right now, he's breech," Sylva said, trying to keep the panic firmly out of her voice.

"Is that a bad thing?"

"It just means he's pointing butt first here." Sylva pointed at the legs of the baby, pointing up towards the head. She wiggled the wand to get the clearest picture. "Plenty of babies are born breech without any problems, but it's more typical that the head comes out first."

"Is there any way to make him turn around?"

Sylva didn't have a clue. She made some bullshit up. If it was wrong, she would look it up later and send Keep a message to correct it. "Well, the best thing for you to do would be to provide a space for him to move around. The head is heavier, so we want to encourage the rest of the body to get out of the way. He might turn around completely on his own, but if you spent extra time in the no-grav sections, that would probably give him the help he needs."

"Should I sleep there, or...?"

"Are you still on active duty?" Sylva asked. "What do you usually do all day?"

"I run the workshop. Making parts for things that break."

"Alright, well, that doesn't seem like something you can up and leave, but if you could spend a little while every day in the no grav section, that would probably help. Not that I have personal experience, but you'll probably feel it if he flips himself over. He'll be kicking in a different place, after all. He still has plenty of time to flip over, if he doesn't decide to pop out early."

"And if he doesn't turn over?"

"It will probably be fine," Sylva said, putting her calmest possible face on.

"Probably?"

"Giving birth is always dangerous," Sylva said. "But women have been doing it since God put us all here, and in worse circumstances than this. While there is nothing sure, I swear I will do my best to see you through this safely."

Keep looked unconvinced. Sylva couldn't really blame her. After all, Sylva's best was really not very much, considering her complete lack of training. Not that Keep needed to know that. "Is there anything else I should do?"

"Eat well, try not to strain yourself too much, get as much sleep as you can, prepare your home for a baby, try not to yell at your husband too much…" Sylva said. "Oh, and if you're particularly friendly with any of the other women aboard who have given birth, you might want to ask them for advice, or even if they'd be willing to be here with you when it happens. I'm just one person, and I could use all the calm, experienced help I can get."

"Shielder will be here," Keep said. She was still looking at the images that were on the screen, those pictures of her baby inside of her.

"No offense to Shielder, I'm sure he's a wonderful, capable man, but he's just as likely to be panicking as he is to be helpful."

"I'll make him promise to be on his best behavior."

"Best behavior always depends on the circumstances, and I've heard stories about men who have needed to be banished from the birthing room."

Keep pursed her lips but didn't argue.

"In any event," Sylva said, "I'll need helpers here, and anyone you can rope into it who can keep their cool, I will take."

"I'll ask around," Keep said. "Can you print this picture for me?" Sylva still had the wand jabbed into her stomach.

"Uhhhhh…" There didn't seem to be a printer anywhere, but Sylva saved the still image to the computer. "I'll send it to you," Sylva said.

"Alright. Do you know how much longer this is going to be?"

"Your brother said you were eight and a half months?" Sylva asked.

"Thirty six weeks, give or take a few days."

"Ok, then you should have another couple weeks left, if everything stays on schedule. So no heavy lifting. Nothing that would encourage him to start trying to get out."

"Got it," Keep said. Sylva put the wand back on the tray.

"Any other questions?"

"Can I come see you again?"

"Absolutely," Sylva said, even though she absolutely did not want Keep to come visit her. The more patients she saw, the less her facade would hold up. "Anything that you feel is going wrong, come on by. Or wake me up if it's the night."

"Great," Keep said, and the relief on her face was so clear that Sylva felt immediate, intense guilt for tricking this woman.

"Now, let me find some wipes to help you clean this up." Sylva looked around for wet wipes to clean up the ultrasound gel, but didn't see any. She resorted to dampening a hand towel in the sink and handing it to Keep, who wiped herself off. Sylva tossed the towel in a nearby basket when she was done. She guessed it didn't make sense for a pirate ship to constantly go through disposable materials, so she would be doing a lot of laundry. Yet another thing to add to her plate of responsibilities.

Sylva busied herself with sending the ultrasound files to Keep as she got dressed. Thank goodness that it was easy to connect the machine to her phone, and from there send the files wherever they needed to go. She would still need to ask for access to all the personal data of everyone on the ship.

"Alright," Sylva said once Keep was fully clothed and on her feet once more. "It was good to meet you, Keep."

"Thank you for coming aboard," Keep said. "We've been looking for a doctor for a while."

"I think it was just a random coincidence that we ended up in the same place at the same time," Sylva said. "I didn't know there was a ship specifically looking for someone like me."

"Oh, there always are. Doctors are in short supply. I'm glad we got to snag you," Keep said with a grin. "You're all mine, now."

"I don't know if I like the sound of that," Sylva laughed.

"You're so little and cute," Keep said, and patted Sylva's head patronizingly. "You'll fit right in with us."

Why did every spacer insist on bringing up the height difference? It was hardly Sylva's fault that she grew up on a planet, and was slightly shorter than average even for planet bound people.

"Just as long as I never have to do an EVA," Sylva said. "The last ship I was on, none of the suits fit me right."

"I'll see if we can get one custom made just for you."

"You make your own suits in the workshop?"

"The workshop? No. But King does all our suit repairs, and he might be able to make one for you." King was apparently another one of the many people aboard the Warrior II that Sylva had not yet had the pleasure of meeting. Since she had only met Sign and Keep thus far, there must be at least two hundred more people she knew nothing about.

"I hope I won't need to go outside at all," Sylva said.

"Too bad. I like going out," Keep said. "I'm excited to get to do it again, just as soon as he's born."

"Alright," Sylva said. "Anyway, have a good rest of your day, Keep." Sylva walked Keep to the door of the medical clinic and watched her leave. The moment she was gone, Sylva shut the door and leaned against it, sliding to the ground. She would have screamed in panic, but she didn't want anyone to hear.

This was really bad.

What had she gotten herself into?

Sylva didn't have very much time to get used to her office and position before she began to ingratiate herself with the crew. As much as she was nervous about someone finding out about her fake identity, and more importantly, her fake medical license, she couldn't just isolate herself and hope that no one came. So within a week she was having friendly conversations with all the strangers aboard the ship, beginning to piece together their family histories, and making herself known to them.

It wasn't just friendliness that made her chat with people in the dining hall. If someone confessed to her that their cousin or brother or daughter was having stomach troubles, or persistent earaches, or had a weird growth on their leg, Sylva would then have time to research the problem before the person showed up at her clinic door. There was no way she was going to be caught unprepared. It was lucky for her, then, that spacers were such a gossipy lot. They always wanted to tell her all about somebody else's problems. Maybe the excitement would wear off after she stopped being a new face around the ship, but Sylva wasn't so sure. It may have just been her doctor persona that was inspiring such friendliness.

Still, as the days crept by, the pit in Sylva's stomach about Keep's impending delivery grew deeper. That was by far the most intense medical procedure that Sylva had had to do yet. Looking at a rash and prescribing a cream was one thing, pulling a living, breathing (genetically modified) human out of Keep's vagina was a whole other ball game.

And it wasn't as though Sylva could avoid Keep, either. She was a nice and friendly woman, despite being snippy and complaining about how much her feet hurt. She came to the clinic every few days, mostly to chat, partially to keep Sylva updated on how she was doing. Keep had managed to wrangle together a list of women who were willing to help with the delivery, and she provided that list to Sylva piece by piece. To hear Keep tell it, it had required paying her cousins and aunts pure gold bars to get them to be willing to help out, but Sylva could see from just looking at the faces of the other women on the ship, they all would have done anything they could to help.

One troubling thing was that the baby refused to flip over. He remained stubbornly head up. Sylva did look up other methods for getting him to flip, encouraging Keep to lay in a variety of positions designed to orient the baby correctly. She even went as far as trying a procedure in which she manhandled Keep's stomach to try to flip him manually. Keep had come away with bruises and not much else. Sylva had apologized, and tried to reassure her that there was still time for him to flip on his own, and that even if he didn't, it would still be fine.

And it was going to be fine, even if Sylva was quietly researching how exactly one performed a surgical delivery, and under what circumstances that would be necessary. She was making sure that the operating room was clean and stocked with everything she could possibly need, and she was trying to cover any possible eventuality. She kept all that quiet though, from everyone except for Iri, who she reconvened with every night.

Almost every night. On the first night Iri had not returned to the little room next to Sylva's, with their shared bathroom where they would talk over the day's events, Sylva panicked a little bit. She worried that they had been found out. She packed her bag to leave, cramming all of her important belongings into it, and breaking the lock on Iri's door to do the same. She used the power to do it, for the first time since coming aboard the Warrior II. Possibly even the first time since leaving Emerri. The power didn't come easily to her, and she was supposed to be keeping it a secret.

Once she packed Iri's bag, Sylva stashed it in her own room and began to search the ship, tracking down Iri's phone. Iri had made them both able to do that. She did have a lot of skills from her days as Yan's minder, apparently, and Sylva was grateful for it.

What she was less grateful for was sneaking through the halls, carefully opening the doors of what seemed to be a little used storage room, only to catch a glimpse of Iri and Sign as a tangle of limbs, jumpsuits discarded at their feet, Sign's tattooed back on full display, him kissing her neck. Iri, who was a much more observant person than Sign, saw Sylva standing in the doorway and glared at her, waving her hand in a shooing motion before raking her fingernails down Sign's back. Sylva scurried away, ashamed, and spent the rest of the evening putting Iri's belongings back where she had stolen them from and attempting to fix the lock on the bathroom door that she had smashed in her haste.

Sylva wasn't even sure why she had packed their bags. The Warrior II was jumps away from any civilization. Even if they had stolen a shuttle, they would have been trapped out in the middle of space forever. It had been a panicked overreaction. Sylva had been having a lot of those recently, but that was because the stress of everything was getting to her. She had brought it all upon herself, of course, but even as she admitted that, she still felt like she had no choice. Everything was the best plan she could think of, and she had to do something.

When Iri returned, several hours later, they both avoided bringing up the subject. Sylva couldn't quite look her in the eye. It wasn't as though she had seen very much of Iri (her body had been very much covered by Sign's), but it was a major violation of privacy. Granted, the two of them had been going at it in a public area of the ship, so it wasn't exactly Sylva's fault that she walked in on them.

"And no, if you're wondering, I'm not going to get pregnant, so you can put that out of your mind," Iri said, unprompted after a long and tense silence as they brushed their teeth together in the bathroom.

"I wasn't even remotely worried about it," Sylva said, which was a lie. She didn't know what she would do if Iri did get pregnant while they were out and about on this mission of theirs. At least Iri was taking precautions.

"Can you let me know when you're not going to come back here next time, at least?" Sylva asked as she rinsed her toothbrush.

"It's sweet that you want to look out for me," Iri said. That wasn't a yes.

"I just don't want a repeat of this," Sylva muttered, crossing her arms. Her pyjamas were soft and light green.

"I'm much more competent than you are, I don't think you need to worry about me getting in trouble," Iri said.

"Yeah, but–" Sylva protested.

"But what?"

"We're partners, right? We look out for each other," Sylva said plaintively. Iri looked at her in their reflection in the mirror, then nudged Sylva's shoulder with her arm.

"Yeah. We are. Partners in crime." Iri smiled and turned to go back to her own room. "I still can't believe you broke my door, by the way." Iri jiggled the handle and it flopped down, completely broken on the inside.

"Sorry," Sylva offered, though she wasn't that sorry. She headed back to her room. As she heard Iri start to close the bathroom door, she yelled out one last thing. "Was the dick good enough to be worth it?"

"Absolutely!" Iri called back. That woman had no shame.