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Enterprise never would truly understand love, she thought. She was supposed to be the perfect ace. Mighty, stoic, dependable.
There was a time, once, when she loved. Before the great war, Enterprise and her sisters played as children. No one made fun of Enterprise when Hornet or Yorktown were around. They all spent time together - laughing, splashing, running. When winter came, Enterprise discovered Hornet's reaction to having snow dribbled down her back.
Hornet would yelp, and chase her sister all around. She never did get Enterprise back, no matter how much she promised every year she'd get Enterprise back for the snow down her back. Wasp stood there looking doubtful. Yorktown always shook her head as her younger sisters stumbled in, cheeks rosy from the cold. She made them hot chocolate, anyways. She'd always told Enterprise it was made with love. When the snow melted, Hornet would tell Enterprise "next year." Next year, she'd show Enterprise how you dribbled snow, and then they'd make hot chocolate like Yorktown did.
When it was summer they played in the water. Hornet always splashed her sisters, doubling over with laughter at their responses. Enterprise sprayed herself in the face with the hose (by mistake). Yorktown dried her off, and turned her sisters loose in the yard. Wasp would challenge Enterprise to see who shot bows better. Wasp won a lot, in those days. She'd run inside, Enterprise following her, and triumphantly declare victory.
As they got older, they met more shipgirls. Hornet was the first to find another type of love - a platonic love. It started with her dragging a darker-skinned girl to their house. Hornet claimed the other girl was new to base and she was showing her around, and of course she'd bring Northampton to meet her sisters. That was far from the last time. It seemed an odd duo, the boisterous Hornet and the reserved Northampton, but they kept up a friendship. Sometimes Enterprise heard them playing games, or listening to radio. Other times they spoke in hushed voices.
Then Yorktown found a destroyer girl. Hammann was a defensive girl, throwing up prickly shields to hide her emotions. Maybe it was because her cat ears were an object of ridicule, or because she didn't have any other destroyers to hang out with. Whatever the case, Yorktown took the girl under her wing, bringing Hammann to Yorktown's sisters' table. The girl soon had a bed in Yorktown's home, and a place at the table. When Hammann came back from lectures, it was always Yorktown who greeted her and helped her with her homework. It was also Yorktown who nudged the destroyer girl towards working, who gave her chores like Yorktown's own younger sisters had. (Maybe Enterprise heard Hammann call Yorktown 'mom' once. Hammann would always deny it, of course.)
And then the war came. There was so much blood. (Enterprise hated thinking about it, even decades later. She smelled enough of it in her dreams.)
So many sisters in arms died in those years. At first, the Sakura had them outstripped, outmatched, outmanoeuvred at every step. She saw it in Yorktown's eyes, Yorktown who went to fight. She saw Hornet launch a daring raid.
Then the war tilted in their favour, but at a terrible price. Yorktown died, wounded by Hiryū's dying retaliation. It wasn't Hiryū's death throes that finished Yorktown - Enterprise's sister. It was death from below, a submarine's torpedoes, ripping Hammann in two and mortally wounding Yorktown as she struggled. (Enterprise never forgot Yorktown's face as she left. By morning, Yorktown was dead.)
War is always a bloody affair. It's filled with death, not glory. And when Wasp died, Enterprise wasn't there. (She didn't know what to think of not being there. She didn't see those dying breaths, the blood. But maybe Enterprise could have saved her half-sister.) There was no time for if onlies; there was grief, and it hurt, but she still had Hornet. Until she didn't, her bow breaking.
There was no way to save Hornet. Enterprise was powerless, helpless, and the Sakura planes beat down on them both. She couldn't even ward off the planes as Hornet fell. (Her bow was useless. She'd failed so utterly.) Northampton tried to bring Hornet home. Torpedo bombers stopped her, and when it was over, Northampton's eyes were so very empty and Enterprise screamed. (It didn't matter that her emotions were too strange for others in that moment. She screamed and cried until she was hoarse.)
It wasn't any longer than a month before the last reminder was dead. Northampton charged into battle in a grief-stricken haze. She never came back. Something else died with her, too. (Something in Enterprise.)
And when Saratoga put her small hand on Enterprise's back, Enterprise had no more words, no more heart to give her. (She only had duty. She would finish what her sisters started.)
When the war was over, Enterprise left a piece of her soul behind.