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Val’s smile became more real, more fractured; but he came back and accepted the cuddling. “Are you practicing tactful ambassadorial techniques?”
“Yep. How’m I doing?”
“Very well, thank you. I’m all right, it’s just a nightmare.”
“I remember you said you get them.” Not pushing. Coaxing. Letting Val set those terms. Wrapped up in his arms, because Val had accepted that, and easily so. Blankets, both the Fleet standard-issue variety and one of Val’s personal allowance, a huge fluffy violet and bronze cloud puff.
“Yes.” Val nestled in closer. “I can tell you if you want. You can probably guess, though.”
“Cronus, and the fires?” Tam let his hand rub Val’s arm, lightly. Warming him.
“It’s not always that one, and sometimes it’s not exactly…” Val hesitated. His eyes were in shadow, but glimmering, grey as phantoms and stones and veils. “It is, because that’s where it starts—that was my second mission, first real mission, the first assignment was only an in-system cruise to test the drive improvements. And seeing that, the burning, the death of a world…knowing we’d run out of time…”
“I know.” Tam kissed the top of his head, very very gently. “I’d say you did everything you could—the whole Fleet did—but I know how it feels. When you did do everything, and people still died.”
“Yes.” Val sounded forlorn. “Thank you. I know it wasn’t anything I could have changed. I do know. It’s just…I was there.”
“Yes,” Tam said. “You were. It happened.” That was true, and real. “And you feel it because you’re a good person. Because you remember them.”
Val made a soft noise, and hid his face in Tam’s shoulder.
Tam whispered, hand stroking a colorful fall of hair, “I’m here. I’m here now. With you. Holding on to you, if you want.”
“Oh, yes, please.” Val relaxed a fraction against his shoulder “It’s better, now…It’s not always Cronus.”
“Hmm?”
“Sometimes the fire’s someplace else, home, my family’s farm…this ship, she’s on fire, and I can’t do anything, can’t stop it, the way we couldn’t stop it then…I know it’s not real. I think I’m a good captain, or I try to be. But in that dream there’s nothing I can do.”
Tam hurt for him, with him, hearing the fracture in his voice: the break, the wound, the tiny helpless need to make sure nothing ever went wrong, no one ever died again, no nightmares came to pass. Valentine had been very young, he remembered again, on that disastrous mission. A captain, but only just. Left with scars across all that newly-minted optimism.
The stars shimmered in voiceless wistful compassion, out in the universe, in swiftspace glow.
Tam kissed him again. A bit of nuzzling, his beard against soft skin, because he knew by now that Val liked that. “If it were real—a fire, a danger—you’d react. You’d protect your people.”
“Of course I would.”
“You know you would do everything for them. For anyone you could save. You did that already. Back then.”
“I know,” Val said, not exactly clinging to him, but not not doing that, either. “I did the mandatory Fleet counseling after a traumatic mission, you understand.”
“Yep, and you told them you were fine, didn’t you?” He ran a hand over Val’s hair again. “Like more than half the captains out there would. So you could get back to doing more good.”
Val actually laughed, a ghost of sound, leaning against him. “You know other starship captains, or you’re very good at predicting people, or both.”
“Little of both. You know that sometimes things go wrong. Because you’ve seen it.” He paused, added, “It’s one reason you are a good captain. You wouldn’t be reckless. Fun—and I know you are; your second lieutenant just had to tell me the starship race story and the bet about skip-bouncing on Mallowsweet’s clouds—but you’d never put anyone else in danger. Never.”
Val laughed more, half-shy about it, accepting the compliment. “Thank you. And I won that bet.”
“I know. They told me that, too.”
“I can see my crew and I are going to have a conversation later.”
“They care about you,” Tam said, “because you care about them, about everyone you’ve met, your transports and your missions and the people you help,” and followed the line of Val’s ear with a finger, under the hair.
“I do,” Val said. “I do. I love this job—I love everything we do. I love the Fleet, and the exploration, and being part of that, even as a little courier—I love every new discovery.” His eyes found Tam’s, pale silver in the night. “I just…sometimes it’s…the other parts too. The memories.”
“Well,” Tam said, and moved both hands to cup his face, to hold him, to ensure he heard, “I’m here for those parts. For all of you, when you need me.”
