Rich wakes up because somebody is calling him. Did they not notice his 'offline' marker or what?

"ID?" he mumbles, still half-asleep and reluctant to lift his head. "Call ID."

"Call from," his comm says in his ear, in its calm, genderless voice, "Athena Merrill, Fleet Delivery Operative."

Oh, is it that time of the week already? "Okay, okay," Rich grumbles. "Accept call—fuck!"

"Mwuh?!" says the person who just cuddled up to him. "Huh?!"

"Fuck," Rich says again, and presses a hand to his chest as his heart starts to slow down. God, he forgot Basil was here. "Holy shit."

"Rich?!" says Thena, alarmed.

"Huh?" says Basil again. His hair is everywhere, a mess of curls falling in his face, and he's staring around wildly. "Where, what? Huh?"

"Okay!" Rich says over both of them, not that they can hear each other; the call audio is still private to Rich's comm. "Okay, everybody chill."

He drags a hand over his face, then reaches out and gestures his berth's light on. Basil winces and then finally seems to catch on to where he is and what's happening. His eyes widen as his shoulders hunch up around his ears, and he starts self-consciously trying to fix his hair like he never jumped awake making panicky squeaking noises in front of a total stranger. At least he and Rich are both still dressed.

"Oh hey, who the fuck is this?" says Thena, eyebrows rising, and Rich glares at her.

"His name's Not, as in Not Your Fucking Business," he says, and pointedly pulls the comm screen over a few inches, aiming it away from Basil's flustered attempts to straighten himself up.

"Aww, come on, Rich," Thena chirps, "make the call public, don't be rude!"

Rich glares at her, then glances at Basil, torn. It is rude to have a one-way chat with Rich's sister when Basil's right there, but Rich is all too aware of the risks of letting Thena talk to Basil.

Basil looks from the comm screen to Rich, still wide-eyed. "Sorry," he says, "um, should I—I'll just—" and he moves to scramble out of bed like Rich might want to kick him out of the room.

"No!" Rich says, catching him by a shoulder, "no, it's fine, man." Resigned, he sets the call to public and moves the screen back to its original position. "Okay. You happy now, Thena?"

She should be; the bed's big, but Rich still takes up most of the available space, and when Basil settles back into place, his arm presses up against Rich's side. Rich can feel him breathing, and his own face is going stupidly warm. Thena is never going to let him live this down.

"Nice to meet you, Mr Fucking-Business!" Thena says immediately. "Richard Moran Fucking-Business, that's got a nice ring to it."

"Athena Maire Merrill, shut the fuck up," Rich growls, in that tone that makes everybody else freeze up and Thena just laugh. "I know where you sleep, and I'll come throw you overboard, see if I fucking don't."

"Hi!" says Basil, late and squeaky. "Uh! Hey! Are you, so, um."

"I'm Rich's sister, who he apparently has kept a secret!" Thena says. "Because that's not weird or anything!"

"Not everything is about you," Rich says grumpily.

"Is too," Thena says, with cheerful certainty.

"Uh, nice to meet you," says Basil, looking about as confused and intimidated as Rich would have expected. "I'm…Basil? Basil Wright."

"Nice to meet you, Mr Right," Thena purrs, smirking so broadly Rich can hear the really obvious and unfortunate pun. "If you can stand to untangle yourself from my big brother long enough to let me borrow him, I wanna—wait, are those earrings?!"

"Yes," Rich sighs, "yes, they are. They're very cool, I'm very cool, now what—"

"You're a humongous dork," Thena says, "but they're nice! Good work, bro!" She's smirking at him, tilting her head so the light glints off the multitude of shiny studs in her own ears, blue and green and silver. "Maybe someday you'll be as cool as me!"

"I can only dream," Rich says dryly. "So what were you going to try to order me to do?"

"You should come get breakfast with me today!" she says.

Rich frowns at her. "What time is it?"

"Like eight," says Thena.

"Fuck," says Rich, and rubs a hand over his face. His head is hurting again, the nagging edge of an ache that will blossom into a full-blown headache without his morning shot. "I dunno..."

"Oh, come on," Thena says, coaxing. "You're on a new boat, you've got actual money now, you work like a crazy person so I bet you've got the leisure allotment—come to breakfast!"

"I mean…" Rich doesn't feel all that much like going outside and hopping to another boat right now, no matter how cool it might be to see Thena in person after all this time. Some part of his brain is still whispering bad example, bad example. But...he hasn't seen her in so long, and she's got a genuinely hopeful, pleading look on her face…

"You should go," Basil says, and gives his shoulder a cautious pat as Rich blinks out of arguing with himself and stares at him instead. "I don't have any brothers or sisters, you should...enjoy yours." He shrugs self-consciously, and Rich finds himself helplessly charmed all over again. Why does he have to be this cute, this early in the morning?

"Thanks, Basil!" says Thena. "You're a pal."

"Okay, alright, fine," Rich says, and swings his legs out of bed, pushing himself upright. "Breakfast, got it. At like, the Reliant's mess, or—?"

"No!" Thena says like she's offended by the very suggestion. "This is an occasion, dumbass! We're going out, I made reservations at Sandra's."

"Seriously?" Rich says, startled. "She's still afloat?" The Merrill family used to go out to eat at Sandra's on special occasions, the three siblings and their dad taking up a significant chunk of the available deck space on the little restaurant pontoon. Rich always enjoyed looking out at the water through the trailing greenery from the potted plants hung all around, pretending they were in a forest instead.

"Yeah! Although I guess she's got a younger partner in training to take over, so it might not be Sandra herself today."

"As long as the tempura is still good," Rich says, then, "Wait a sec, so it's stopped raining?"

"There's a rain awning!" Thena says, and as he opens his mouth to protest, "Don't be a baby, you won't melt! Quarter to nine, see you there!" She closes the call.

"Dammit, Thena," he growls at the space where the comm screen was. "Ugh. Sorry about her," he says over his shoulder as he gets up and has his morning shot.

"She was fine?" Basil says uncertainly.

"She was a jerk," Rich grumbles, and thumps the vodka jug back down maybe a little harder than necessary. "Getting me out of bed first thing—god, why did I sleep so late?" Except he knows exactly why, and it involved being cuddled up with someone warm in his bed for the first time in much too long. He looks over and smiles sheepishly at Basil, who smiles back, cheeks going ruddy.

Rich goes and fumbles in his clothes drawer, pulls out a new sky blue t-shirt and a normal old faded black one, stares from one to the other. "Basil, does my sister deserve me dressing up for her?"

"Yeah, man," Basil says. "I mean, she's your sister, that's kinda special, you know?"

Rich huffs. "You don't have sisters or you wouldn't be so sure," he says, but he pulls the blue shirt out.

"You've got more than one?" Basil asks curiously.

"Not really," Rich says, his voice harder than intended. "One of them would rather I didn't exist, so we're ignoring each other these days. Thena's my sister. Angela's…reluctantly related."

"Oh," Basil says in a small voice. "Sorry, I shouldn't have—"

"No," Rich says, waving it off, "no, man, it's fine. You didn't know, it's cool."

"That sucks, though," Basil says. He's still got an amazing case of bedhead, and he looks earnest and dismayed, and Rich really wants to climb back in bed and put a completely different expression on his face. But he can't, because Thena, and breakfast, and he has to check Fleet positioning and find out where Sandra's boat is in relation to the Reliant right now. Which means if he wants a shower he'd better move real fast.

"I'll survive, man," he says, and ducks down to kiss Basil quickly. "Gotta run, but have a nice day, alright?"

"I—yeah, okay, you—you too!" Basil says, going flushed and shy and adorable. Rich ruffles his curls into an even bigger mess, and leaves while he's still spluttering.

-

The ride is damp and a little tricky because of the weather, but Rich gets to Sandra's without crashing the deck-hopper. He considers it a bit of an accomplishment, since pretty much the only flying experience Rich has gotten since qualifying to fly one in the first place is his handful of hops to Katrina's boat and back. But he manages to get the hopper parked floating on the water and hitched up to the rail of the boat, then dismounts onto the boat without actually flipping it over as his weight transfers from stationary hopper to the lurching, bobbing deck. Then he's standing under the rain awning, surrounded by hanging plants and lights to brighten the gloomy grey daylight, and Thena is right there, and she's grown so much. Before he can so much as lift a hand in greeting she's tackling him, squeezing the air out of his lungs with a rib-cracking grip.

"Rich!" she yells happily, right in his ear, and he can't help but laugh despite how his heart is pounding at the sudden assault.

"It's a Thena!" he says, twisting around enough to hug her back. "Where's the rest of the Thenes, huh?"

"Oh my god, you dork, that hasn't been funny in a decade!" But she's laughing, squeezing him so hard he can't breathe. She's still maybe a hand's width shorter than him, but her shoulders are almost as broad as his and her arms might even be bigger. She's well on her way to filling out from the awkward, piecemeal chunkiness of her younger adolescence.

Rich has watched her grow up through a screen over the last couple years, clinging to the one lifeline out of the Sympatico he had left, the one person in the world who still loved him, and it's startling and a little scary to feel how strong and heavy she's gotten in person. He's never had to deal with anyone that had the same huge, brick-shaped build crowding up in his space like this, holding on to him, and know that she could match him for strength like almost no one else in the Fleet.

Then she pulls back from the hug and she's just Athena again, his eager little sister, all dressed up to show off and grinning up into his face like she's waiting for him to be impressed. Her blood-red hair is braided back along the sides and into a ponytail, she's got purple and bronze eyeliner painted messily around her bright hazel eyes, and she's got a ridiculous number of even cooler earrings than she wore during the call—Rich's own earring acquisition must have challenged her. She's wearing a wrap patterned in bronze and gold eagle feathers along with a pretty blue shirt, all shimmery with little copper stars worked into the fabric. It's sleeveless, with thin copper chain straps that show off the full gene-tweaked effect of her shoulders and arms.

Rich briefly wonders how something like that would look on him, if he could work a bit of style sometime, take some pride in his size. But he thinks he'll probably never be bold enough to show himself off like that: it'd freak him out so bad as soon as someone looked at him, so it's dumb to think about.

"So you're really here, you actually came!" Thena is exclaiming, bouncing at him like a giant puppy, until the whole boat rocks around them.

"I did, I'm here!" he grins, catching at her shoulders before the whole boat flips over on them. "Shit, Thena, you grew up, you got so big!"

"Compared to when I was like fifteen? I'd hope so!" she snorts, and hugs him again, crushingly tight. "That was way too long," she announces, finally backing off. "We gotta get together regularly now. Once a month?"

"I can probably manage that," Rich agrees, and she raises a victorious fist before grabbing his wrist in a grip like an industrial vice and tugging him after her.

Sandra's boat is big for a dining boat, with a long bar-counter along the outer railing on each side from the landing space in back and the cooking space up front. There's tall revolving stools spaced along each length—less tall now than Rich remembers, but then, he hasn't been here since he was seventeen. He thinks the colors are different now, maybe. There's matching red cushions on all the stools, when he's pretty sure they used to be a whole collection of different colors, and the counters have been polished back down to bare blonde wood, when they'd been painted dark green before.

The plants are the same, though, a big hanging maze of ferns and sweet basil and green onion and parsley and moss balls in glass jars, all of which hang comfortably over the heads of most citizens but which Rich has been dodging since about age fourteen. The whole place probably seats twenty people, if they feel like crowding in, but right now there's only two other diners, an older couple with greying hair who lean comfortably together, talking quietly and feeding each other bites of fried fish. Something in Rich's chest turns over wistfully, looking at them.

Thena leads him to a spot along the bar towards the galley and pushes him at a stool.

"These definitely used to be bigger," Rich says ruefully, scooting his carefully back from the railing in order to fit his knees in.

"Yeah, I swear to god this fucking canoe gets smaller every time I visit," Thena says, settling just as carefully into her own seat.

"We take it in a couple inches every time we see you coming, Chili-Pepper," a guy says out of nowhere, and Rich startles badly. "Is this Rich? This must be Rich."

"Well, if I must," Rich says, lowering his hands back down onto the counter and trying to smile gamely. The new guy's got a big white grease-stained apron on and is maybe mid-twenties, and cute in that sturdy, comfortably solid way a lot of citizens are in the Fleet. Not too big, not too short, heavy stomach outlined by the apron, nice smile that's very bright against the deep tan of his face, and he has a really big knife shoved through his belt.

Rich clasps his hands on the counter politely, eyeing that knife. It's probably a chef's knife, because this guy is probably the cook.

"I'm Terry!" the guy says. "I'm the cook today, Sandra doesn't come out in the rain anymore, her bones don't like it."

"Cool," Rich says.

"Yeah, Terry's been here, what, a year now?" Thena says.

"Year and a half!" Terry says, throwing off a casual salute. "Time flies."

"So he probably won't poison us by mistake," Thena finishes.

"Yeah, Pepper, by mistake," he says, and gives her shoulder a playful slap. "So, what'll you have today?"

Thena cheerfully reels off her order, which gives Rich time to pull himself together and think about his.

"Do you have any walleye?" he asks.

"We do have some!" Terry says. "Not a whole lot, though, what with the So Long losing most of their stock last week—you want something else along with? I'm assuming you eat cargo-crate portions like your sister."

"Oh, sure," Rich says, and goes blank.

"You still like shrimp? Freshwater? Terry's probably got a couple shrimp put by," Thena says.

"You can have enough shrimp to sink this boat, pal," Terry says. "And everyone will thank you. There's too much damn shrimp any time anything goes wrong. Swear to god, the fish boats could hear someone saw a black cat once and start right in on filling their tanks with shrimp and no one can stop them."

"Okay, yeah!" Rich says gratefully. "Shrimp, please."

"You got it!" Terry says. "Anything to drink?"

"Green tea?" Rich says. "Sweet, if that's okay?" and Terry nods cheerfully and goes back into the galley area so Rich can stop fixating on his knife and relax, one taut nerve at a time.

"So," Thena says.

"So!" Rich says, with a smile he thinks is more successful.

Thena studies his face. "Those really are nice studs," she says. "You sneaky jerk. Going off and getting your ears pierced without even telling me you were going to!"

Rich snorts, relaxing further. "In my defense, I didn't know I was going to either," he points out. Somewhere behind them there's the quiet hum of a deck-hopper approaching, another diner coming in to land.

"Oh yeah?" Thena says. "Spur of the moment, huh?"

"Very," Rich sighs. "I got a lot of cool other stuff, though." He tells her about his shopping successes at the Mall, focusing on the purchases rather than the outlandish non-Fleet merchants, which she's probably used to. He's only gotten to the tote bag when the deck-hopper's hum cuts off and there's the quiet sound of someone climbing over the railing, the bobbing lurch of someone's weight settling aboard. When Terry calls out a cheerful greeting, Rich glances down the boat, and—

—Sees a Security uniform, a figure striding towards him, stun baton at the belt, blood-red hair in a tight, professional bun, a build even bigger than his, skin even paler, the kind of Hastings you'd see in movies, in magazines, in warzones. Her eyes seem brown until the light hits them and then they gleam red, too, rusty and dangerous and merciless. Angela's here, Angela who thinks he's a criminal, with a hand by her baton and her eyes fixed on his face like an apex predator, like the most dangerous mod anyone ever made.

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Heart in his throat, blood rushing in his ears, Rich scrambles off his stool and stumbles backwards, adrenaline sharpening everything to a jaggedly painful edge. He's growling a little in his chest, feeling his ribs buzz with it, and it's all he can do to keep it from spilling out of his clenched teeth. Incitement, a threat, he can't offer Security that kind of attitude, it's just asking for whatever they feel is necessary to take him down.

"Rich!" Thena yelps, grabbing his wrist. "It's just Angie, it's fine! Angie, back off!"

Rich is very well aware who it is and it is not fine. Breath rasping in his throat, he yanks his wrist away from Thena with a twist and keeps going backwards until he hits the railing. Angela's watching him, rust-red eyes wide in a still, unreadable face as she takes a couple slow steps back. Rich spares a quick glance behind him, but it's just open water, all the hoppers are hitched at the other end of the boat. He could jump the railing and swim to the nearest hopper, except she'd still be there waiting—he could just go drown himself—

"Rich, it's okay," Thena says again. "She's just here for breakfast!"

That gets Rich focused on her. "You called her," he says in disbelief. "You set this up."

"Okay, seriously," Angela says, frowning at him. "You don't have to make it sound like she planned a sting or something. This is a sibling breakfast, alright?"

"Oh, I'm sorry!" Rich snaps. "I didn't realize you still considered me a sibling!"

"Hey, you're the one who said you were done with me," Angela says.

Rich gives an angry snort. "Like you're not the one who threatened to arrest me as soon as you got the chance—like that's not what this is about—"

"Guys," Thena says. "Would you stop!"

Rich abruptly remembers where he is and glances guiltily around. Terry is openly staring, with raised eyebrows and a hand half-raised, as if to access his comms. The older couple looks concerned, although they're politely trying to pretend they haven't noticed the yelling match going on a few meters away.

Rich's heart is still going too fast, but the initial panic isn't clawing at his spine quite as hard now that Angela's been standing over there not going for her baton or calling in backup. He takes a slow, careful breath and glares at Angela. He can…he can work with this.

"Give me one good reason I shouldn't get the fuck out of here right this fucking minute," he says, and snaps up a hand when Thena opens her mouth. "Not you, her."

Angela takes a breath and shifts into a ready pose Rich remembers learning his first month as a cadet, feet shoulder width apart, hands folded behind her. "I saw what you did to fix the Mall, and…I went and accessed that witness interview from Officer Miletti after the incident you had with citizen Burton. I think I've badly misjudged you. I thought…we could sit down over a meal, and talk."

Rich isn't sure what to make of that, and searches her face for clues. She doesn't look resentfully pissed off, like she did on that awful final call they'd had, where she warned him straight out that she was going to be waiting for him to screw up the second chance that she didn't think he deserved. She doesn't even look stern and frustrated, her other default for him. She looks…watchful. Intent, in a way he's got no context for.

"Talking really works best when both parties are listening to what the other one's saying," he points out.

Instead of finally getting angry with him, she just says, "I'm listening." Patient, and calm.

"Come on and sit down again, man," Thena coaxes Rich. "You don't wanna give up shrimp tempura, do you?"

"I don't think the tempura is his first concern," Angela says, still in that weird, careful way. "Rich. What can I do to convince you to give this a try?"

Rich swallows, eyes falling to the baton at her belt again. "You wanna take the weapon off, maybe? I'm not a big fan of—that. Those. And I don't think Thena'd like seeing what they do. Up close."

"Shit," Thena says, quietly. "Rich."

Rich shrugs jerkily when his little sister steps over and tries to touch his shoulder, his eyes still locked with Angela. He doesn't expect her to agree, but she just goes still and blank, eyes on his face, and nods slowly before taking her belt off, stowing it in smooth, deliberate motions under a stool and sitting down. It'll take her an inconveniently long moment to get to it like that, and Rich edges back over to the counter, watching her closely. Thena takes the stool next to Angela, and pats the empty one beside her. Rich hasn't forgiven her for setting this up behind his back, but he is grateful she's ready and willing to serve as buffer between him and Angela.

"Be there in just a minute to take your order, ma'am," Terry calls, and Angela nods.

There's a long moment of intensely awkward silence as they all stare at each other.

"So, hey, Angie, did you notice Rich's nice new earrings?" Thena says, her tone determinedly, inappropriately bright.

Angela leans forward onto the counter to get a look. "They are nice," she says cooperatively. "Is that glass?"

"Yeah, from like, antique wine bottles, the card said," Rich says, reaching up to fiddle jerky and nervous with one stud. He's remembered the nanocream, so they're healed enough to only ache a little when he messes with them.

"Okay," Terry says, and Rich heard him coming this time and doesn't jump too badly. "What's your fancy, Officer?"

Angela orders lake trout and sweet potato fries and green tea with sugar, and Terry ducks back into the galley and comes out with drinks, Rich's and Angela's green tea and Thena's mint. It helps having something hot to hold and sip, settles Rich's nerves slightly.

"...You look thin," says Angela, eventually, and glances from Rich to Thena, frowning slightly. Rich blinks at her, startled and insulted.

"No?" he says. "I'm still inconveniently massive. Biggest guy on any boat."

"Maybe for a baseline, yeah," Thena says. "She's not wrong though. Your face is all sharp, and you're..." she gestures at his middle. "I mean, I don't think we're supposed to be this trim, are we? I've got padding."

"So?" Rich says, and he's fully aware it sounds defensive, but it's not his fault he hasn't been able to get enough to eat, and anyway he's not exactly wasted down to the bones or anything. "Not everyone's got Nanna and Tía and everybody back home piling home cooking on them at the end of every shift, okay?"

"It wasn't an attack, Rich," Angela says, frowning, and Rich frowns right back at her even harder. "If you haven't been taking care of yourself—"

"I do take care of myself," Rich says sharply. "What do you know about it, anyway?"

"Shrimp tempura!" says Terry, and reaches over Rich's shoulder with a basket heaped full of sizzling battered shrimp with a side of walleye. Rich jumps hard, controls himself enough to turn it into a flinch instead of completely bailing out—then goes really, really still, every nerve jangling with the knowledge that the guy's still behind him, knife in his belt. Terry doesn't comment, which Rich can hope means he didn't notice, just puts Thena's basket in front of her and goes back into the galley.

Rich takes a couple deep breaths as inconspicuously as he can, aware that Angela's cold red eyes are on him, hard and calculating, and that Thena's being sort of quiet as she digs into her own tempura. He's vaguely hungry, but his stomach is knotted up and he's not sure he can eat. He nibbles a shrimp half-heartedly, and then his hunger wakes up and he inhales half the basket before stopping to breathe.

"Shit, skinny boy, don't eat the basket," Thena says, elbowing him playfully, and he flips her off between bites. Terry brings out Angela's order a minute later, and they settle into silent munching that's at least not outright hostile, if not exactly companionable.

"So, I want to talk about what I saw from the Arcadia," Angela says after a while, and Rich goes tense, heart sliding up into his throat as he waits for her to bring up how he threw the first punch, he thinks even Basil said so in the interview, that he was the one to try to get Burton away from Basil but that still Rich did start it, he was the guy who made it physical, he was trying so hard to stay calm and he still screwed it all up.

"Can you tell me what Security was like, on the Sympatico?" she says.

It's such a non-sequitur he just stares at her. "What?"

"Wait, what happened on the Arcadia?" Thena says, looking from Angela to Rich. "Isn't that where you met the other guy you like?"

"Rich ran into an ex-crewmate from the Sympatico when he was on a job at the Arcadia," Angela says, calm as if giving a report, "and that man ended up hitting him with an illegally modified stun baton. Twice, according to the witness testimony."

"What?" Thena snarls, and the broken-engine throb of her growl echoes across the water. Rich puts a hand over his face. "Rich! I thought we just went over this!"

"Thena, stop growling," he says tiredly.

She lowers her voice to a sharp, dangerous rumble. "I thought I had been really clear how you can't hide things from me anymore! Things like you not getting enough to eat, and also things like some awful fucker from the awful fucking Sympatico going and attacking you! What the fuck, Rich?!"

He puts his other hand over his face, too. "Agreeing to this was a mistake," he tells the counter. Thena subsides into hurt silence, but at least she shuts up, maybe remembering that he's liable to walk out if she pushes too far.

"I'm not at all okay with Mr Burton's actions," Angela says, "and I sincerely hope he's comprehensively discharged from the Fleet for this. But I think the most notable part of what I saw was the way you clearly expected Officer Miletti to keep hurting you. What was Security up to on the Sympatico?"

He lifts his head to stare at her. First Mitch and now her, pulling this weird angle, acting like they're willing to side with Rich even though not a single Security officer has ever bothered before. The blatant show of sympathy makes him more jittery than the thinly-veiled threats, because why would they want him to rat on other officers? Is there some kind of politics going on, some faction Mitch and Angela might want dirt on? Do they even know that a citizen like Rich isn't likely to survive whatever politics they're trying to pull him in on? Would they care?

"Security was up to the same shit they always do everywhere," he says, tense and tight. "They look out for their own and ignore the rest of us unless we piss them off—then they make us pay for the trouble."

Angela's face tightens. "Details, Rich," she says, and he's about ready to snarl at her when she goes on, "They weren't breaking up fights? Or only selectively, or what?"

"Oh, they'd be happy to break up a fight if one of their favorites called them in," Rich says, "and then they'd wade in batons first even if you'd been the one getting beat on, it was nice and predictable. Anyone Security likes is golden and the rest of us can just shove a big dry shock-stick up our ass and say 'Thanks, Officer!' for getting to wake up afterwards."

Some bitter, reckless part of him is hoping the deliberate obscenity pisses Angela off, shakes her out of this awful calm act she's been putting on. But she stays still and quiet, that Security mask of hers fixed on tight. Rich thinks he sees a flicker of pain in her eyes, and feels a little proud of himself, even while the rest of him is sick with fear and anger. Thena, on the other hand, looks completely stricken, which wasn't at all what he meant to do. This sucks.

"It's okay, Thena, I'm fine now," he reminds her with a tentative smile. "Security hasn't bothered me since I got reassigned, the Reliant's a nice quiet boat—they like me there—hell, I'm practically a favorite now."

Thena lunges off her stool and hugs him so hard she almost knocks him off his. "I hate this," she mumbles into his shoulder, sounding wet and choked. "I hate that you had to deal with that shit and I didn't even know, we couldn't even help, that's horrible."

"That's not how it's supposed to be," Angela says very quietly. "Security is supposed to protect everyone, you shouldn't have had to worry about being safe from them, that's—it's against our oath, against everything we stand for."

"Yeah, well," Rich says, and he's trying not to keep picking this fight, but the words come out tight and low and bitter, loaded with old pain. "Security likes to write off the people they think are troublemakers, and they don't like changing their minds." He meets Angela's eyes, hurt despite himself and exhausted with it, so tired of being her stupid, delinquent failure of a brother. "...No matter how hard you try," he finishes, and rests his chin on Thena's shoulder, squeezing her. "Come on, squirt, eat your food. I'm okay now."

"You keep saying that," Thena says, and squeezes him back, hard enough to make Rich huff. "It keeps turning out to not be true."

"It is too true," he huffs, narrowing his eyes at her as she reluctantly lets go and gets back on her stool. "This time it really is, because I'm off that fucking boat! None of what happened to me back there is happening anymore, not even Burton—he's gone too, now, Security actually got him this time, it's fine."

Thena makes a grumbling noise at him and violently bites down on a sweet potato chip, chewing angrily. Rich rolls his eyes and eats some more shrimp.

Angela isn't eating anymore. She's sitting very still, staring at her half-empty basket, lips pressed tight together. It's been a long time since he's seen her close to tears, but this…looks kind of like it.

"I'm sorry," she says, quiet and steady, looking over at him. "I should have listened to you. Pressed for details instead of assuming you were just making excuses. I…I'm listening now."

Rich's mouth has gone dry and he swallows the shrimp with difficulty. Even if she realized she'd made a mistake and was willing to acknowledge any of it, he wasn't expecting an actual apology. It takes him a minute or two to get his head around it, figure out what he's feeling.

"So, so what?" he says, staring at Angela. "You see one vid of me pissing myself in front of an officer and realize I'm not a hardened criminal after all? That's what it took?"

"I never thought you were a criminal," Angela says, her jaw setting.

"You thought I was starting fights," Rich says, "slacking off on work, you were always calling me a delinquent!"

"And you told me you had too much work to do!" she snaps. "You didn't say a word about your crewmate being a drunk and your supervisor being an abusive freeloader and your crew's Security presence traumatizing you!"

"Oh yeah and you'd have believed me, I don't think!" Rich snarls back. "How many times did you tell me you didn't wanna hear my 'excuses', huh? That I needed to stop acting like the world was 'out to get me', that things 'couldn't really be that bad'! Yeah, if I'd tried to say 'Hey, I can't prove it but my boss is doing illegal shit there'll never be any evidence of, isn't that neat,' I sure fucking bet you'd have dropped everything to believe your lazy little whiny dead weight baby of a brother!"

He knows he's being cruel, lashing out with every intent to hurt, but she hurt him first. It hurt so much to be drowning under the workload and have her sternly telling him he needed to grow up and apply himself already, like he wasn't working his ass off every minute he was awake. He thought she knew him, he thought they'd been doing okay, even after he hadn't been able to make it as a cadet and she'd been so disappointed. He'd thought Angie had still loved him, even when he was a rude, cocky little punk who'd just qualified for technician, high on his own smarts and so obnoxious.

But as soon as he tried to tell her about how much worse it was, being a full-fledged technician on the Sympatico instead of an intern on the Reliant, she started treating him like some spoiled brat who just wanted to slack off and make trouble. Who wanted to quit as soon as things got difficult, like she hadn't seen him sweating blood over the aptitude placement tests to qualify out of the mechanics, or losing sleep over getting his IST accreditation before he hit eighteen just so he could win a placement on a smaller boat that'd give him more experience, more responsibility, more of a challenge, instead of kicking back and taking whatever easy gig got handed to him.

He'd thought she'd known that he'd never slacked off in his life, just took a little longer than most guys to find what kind of occupation suited him. He thought she'd see what a raw deal the Sympatico had turned out to be and at least feel bad for him, and she'd told him everything was all his fault and she didn't care at all. And that had been that, for having two sisters instead of one and a dangerous stranger.

Angela, here and now, unclenches her hands from fists and clasps them together on the edge of the counter. "I was wrong," she says, her voice vibrating with the effort of keeping steady.

Rich stares past Thena at his big sister for another long, aching minute and then looks away, looks out at the grey water, the curtains of rain falling against the ruffled surface of the lake. He's been fantasizing for years about how great it'd be for Angela to admit she was wrong and apologize to him, and now she's finally said it, and he doesn't even know how to feel.

"Did you actually think I might attack you?" Angela asks, still in that awful shaking voice. "When you asked me to take off my baton. You weren't just being dramatic and trying to make me feel bad, you were genuinely afraid I was coming to hurt you."

Rich can't honestly deny it, so he just shrugs, eyes still fixed on the lake.

"You said," he says carefully. "You said you'd get me, if I fucked up my second chance. That's what you said. And you don't lie any better than I do."

"Fuck," Angela says quietly, and Rich's head snaps around, because Security doesn't swear, they just—don't. Angie's been clean-mouthed since she was fourteen. 'We cadets shall henceforth uphold our Oath in word and deed, in thought and feeling, this we so pledge...' Now she rubs a hand over the base of her throat and just breathes, slow and rough, squeezing her eyes shut.

"Okay, but he knows now," Thena says, sliding off her stool on the other side this time to put an arm around Angie's shoulders in distress. "He knows you won't, right, Rich?"

"Yeah," Rich says quietly. He's clear on that right now. Just about any other Security officer, no, but he's safe with Angie again. She believes him now, finally.

"I'm—I'm trying really hard," he adds, not quite steady as his eyes drop to the counter. "I'm doing all my Behavioral Adjustment coursework, and trying to make friends, and okay, so I'm not a fucking model citizen, but I'm trying, I really am, I'm not gonna blow this chance."

Angela knocks Thena's stool aside on her way to grab Rich, and he freezes for the split-second she's hurtling towards him, but then her arms are wrapping around him and she's saying, "You are, Rich, you're doing fine, okay, you're—you're doing really well. I'm so proud of you," she adds very low, and Rich's throat closes as he hugs her back. "I should have been proud of you this whole time."

"Yes!" Thena says fiercely, and tackles both of them to join the hug. "I'm proud too!"

Rich manages a laugh that's only slightly damp. "Like I care what you think, pipsqueak."

"You definitely do," Thena says with a vengeful squeeze. "Because I know exactly where all your friends got those flying brooms from when you guys were ten, and you so weren't supposed to disassemble a float-tube for that."

"Athena!" he protests, in tones of absolute betrayal, "you promised you'd never tell!" and Angela starts laughing, and by the time they're all back on their own stools Rich is breathing normally again, just blinking some rain out of his eyes.

"So!" Thena says, popping her last piece of tempura in her mouth. "I haven't told Angie about your romantic prospects yet. I thought you should do that yourself!"

"Thena," he groans as Angela's eyes brighten with interest. "Can we not go on about my romantic goddamn prospects for one freaking conversation!"

"We can not," Thena says solemnly. To Angela, she adds, "I caught him in bed with one of 'em this morning! Cute guy, too, if you like 'em lean enough to pick your teeth on."

Rich puts his head down on the counter and moans pathetically. "You're the worst," he says. "This is torture."

"Oh, quit whining, citizen, we haven't even broken out the thumbscrews," Angela says with a glittering, wicked smile. "You wanna give us some names, ages, occupations?"

"Ugh," Rich complains, but…it's so nice to have Angela interested and attentive and not thinking he's a worthless reject, so nice to have more family than Thena to pester him about his love life.

"It's not like there's a whole list," he starts, and then his body reacts to the flash of metal in peripheral vision before he consciously registers it, one hand snapping up and back as he twists, catching the guy's wrist.

Terry stares at him wide-eyed, three forks in the hand Rich has caught. "Sorry! Uh, didn't mean to startle you, I just—"

"I am so sorry," Rich says, face burning as he very carefully lets go of the guy's wrist. God, he hopes he didn't leave bruises.

"—Thought you folks might enjoy some dessert!" Terry holds up a tray with three little bowls of sliced strawberries and salad leaves, glistening with dressing.

"Oh, that's so nice of you," Angela says as he sets a bowl in front of each of them.

"Thanks! You're the best, Terry!" Thena says, perking up.

"Seriously, man," Rich says, wishing he could sink right through the boat and go live with the selkies, or maybe just drown. Drowning sounds fine, right now. "I—it's very nice of you, I didn't—I'm really sorry."

"Hey," Terry says, and sets a careful hand on Rich's shoulder. "I've been warned before to make some damn noise instead of sneaking up behind people. Not your fault, bud." He pats Rich, smiles at the three of them and heads back to the galley.

Shoulders hunched, Rich finishes his tea as Thena digs into her strawberry salad gleefully.

"Nice reflexes," Angela says to him. "Thena, I thought you said he only got stabbed once?"

"Oh my god!" Thena says, turning to Rich in outrage as he drops his head, despairing. "Rich! You were getting stabbed all the time, weren't you?!"

"It wasn't, like, a bunch of times!" Rich hisses, glancing back at the other couple on the boat. "Thena, come on! It doesn't take more than like one or two cuts before you get really focused on making sure it doesn't happen again, okay? That's all!"

"Have you reported the people who did it to your caseworker?" Angela says, brow furrowing. "Assault with a lethal weapon is potentially a dischargeable offense, they could get dropped on-shore for that."

"Yes, I did, okay! She said she'd like, take care of it, so it's fine, we can change the subject already, okay?" He shoves a bite of the strawberry salad into his mouth, angrily, then pauses to chew. It's good, something tangy and sweet enhancing the milder sweetness of the fruit.

"So now here's another idea," he goes on, "Let's talk about something that's not the Sympatico and how much ass it sucked! Angie, what are you doing? Why do we never hear about all the people you're dating?"

He means it as a distraction more than anything—he'll take the familiar self-righteous spiel about suppressants and clarity of mind and dedication to duty if it means he doesn't have to talk about getting stabbed anymore.

He's not expecting Angela to blink and say, "Don't be ridiculous," then fix her eyes directly forward, taking a fast bite of strawberry and chewing determinedly. Unfortunately for her, she may have learned a Security poker-face, and she might have an intimidating amount of expressed Hastings traits like those intense eyes and stern features…but no amount of discipline can will away the deadly Merrill Blush. Her cheeks and the tips of her ears are steadily going a deep pink.

"Oh shit," says Thena—and then, as a vicious grin starts to spread across her face, "oh shit, really? You finally reeling some fish in, Angie?"

"No!" Angela says, glaring at her and then at Rich. "You know I don't engage in that sort of activity, Thena, could you not be obscene for five minutes, Security is—"

"On suppressants, yeah, we know," Thena says, "but that doesn't mean you can't be interested in people!"

"Yeah, who are you interested in, Angie?" Rich chimes in. It's always so much safer to stay on the offensive, not to mention way more fun.

"Nobody!" Angela says, but they're getting to her, her whole face is going pink now.

"Angelaaa," Thena says in her best annoying-little-sister tone, "it's not nice to lie!"

"I'm not—shut up! It's not important!" Angela says.

"Oh, but it is!" Rich says. He puts on a Family Fleet expression of manic concern, and leans forward, clasping his hands together. "Because you're important to us, Angela, so we're going to pry into every last little detail of your life, because that's what a nice big friendly family who loves each other does!"

She gives him a deeply disgruntled look as he smiles sweetly at her, waiting her out as she goes steadily pinker.

"I watch Family Fleet every day, Angie," he says. "You can't escape how well socialized I am now. Or how very much I care about you, and want you to be healthy, happy, and forthcoming about the juicy details of how you finally like-like someone!"

"Fine, but it's not a big deal," she finally growls, looking away first.

"Yesss," Thena hisses victoriously. "Who is it?"

"Just this guy," Angela says, shrugging helplessly. "In Administration, he works in the archives and he's really helpful when I need to pull footage for a case." Her face is bright red and she's steadfastly refusing to look at either of her siblings. "He's—nice."

"Nice," Rich repeats gleefully.

"Tell us everything," Thena says.

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