Chapter Text
“Two seats, please.”
The dock attendant raises a thick, greying eyebrow, his hat hanging low on his face.
“Need tickets, or do y’all have passes?”
You show him the laminate passage cards; one for you and one for Lem. The pictures are grainy and harshly lit from the booth they were taken in, but you’re all identifiable and you suppose that’s what counts. You paid for yours a long time ago (sacrificing 80 hard-earned chits), but Ashton paid for Lem’s pass as what you both assumed was a thank you for helping try to keep his partner, another sleeper, alive. You don’t know where he got the money, and you still haven’t seen him since the funeral; even if the concerning amount of time he’s been gone gnaws at you, part of you thinks it’s best not to look for him.
You turn around to take in the faces of the slowly growing line of people behind you, all waiting for the ferry. Idle chatter makes its way throughout the tired limbs and bright faces. As the attendant takes the cards and slides them through a scanner, a pair of arms wrap tightly around your leg.
“You okay?” You ask the little offender. Mina nods, face buried in the side of your coat. Lem shakes his head, smiling.
“C’mon, Meanie, Sleeper can’t walk if you do that.” he says. “And if Sleeper can’t walk, they can’t get on the ferry.”
Mina pouts through the gap in the blanket she insisted on bringing as he pries her away from you. You almost want to let her cling to you upon noticing her scrunched expression, but you remind yourself that you indeed can’t walk with a small child attached to one leg- let alone the leg that’s been giving you trouble. The joint behind your left kneecap started clicking about a week ago, and familiar flickers of the artificial nerves in your body losing their hold on proper pain reception rose soon after.
It’s uncomfortable, but you can manage it until you get to Riko’s lab. You turn back to Mina after recollecting the cards from the waiting dock attendant.
“We can hold hands,” you offer to her. Her frown brightens in an instant, and she takes your outstretched arm without a second thought. Lem mouths a silent sorry! in your direction, and you give him a look that you hope says, don’t be .
The gates to the ferry open, and you all walk inside. It’s large for a shuttle ferry, but nowhere near expansive as the three of you head down the aisle to your seats. Ferrygoers in front of and behind you are mingling amongst themselves, making small talk or trying to find their seats. The crowd in the aisles slowly starts to clear as people get settled.
“What numbers?” Lem mutters to you as he scans the rows.
“G11, G12, G13.”
“Okay…Ah! Back here.” He pivots on his heel and you follow, Mina in tow. The two seats you’re assigned are closest to the walls of the shuttle, with the furthest right of the two up against a circular window.
“Want the window seat?” You ask Mina, who nods. You gesture for Lem to enter the row first with a dramatic flourish.
“After you,” you say. He laughs, and pride swells in your chest. You let Mina walk ahead of you as you both shuffle to your seats, and she climbs on Lem’s lap as you take the non-window seat next to them. A tall woman with a headscarf and an impressive amount of astromechanic certification pins sits on the other side of you; you should put her in contact with Bliss, you privately think. They’d be impressed.
“Hold onto me,” you hear Lem whispering to Mina. “This ferry can have a bit of a bumpy takeoff.” You smile to yourself at that. When you and Lem took the ferry for the funeral, you forgot to tell him about the rough start; he’d slid into an empty seat two places over with an uncharacteristically loud yelp of alarm. It took you both five whole minutes to stop laughing.
It was the singular moment you can pick out from that day that wasn’t dampened down by a heavy grief. Of course it was Lem who found a way.
Nevertheless, he’s prepared this time, and you bring down the arm of your seat in anticipation of the engine to start. After a few seconds you hear it rumble to life, and the usual announcements sound from the ceiling speakers.
“Welcome to the Founder’s Gap Ferry. Please remain seated with a belt at all times, and refrain from engaging in any deliberately disruptive behaviors. In the event of an emergency, the ferry will…”
You tune out and wait for the automated voice to start talking about the time of arrival. You turn to Mina, who is now gazing out at the dock with an expression that could only be described as rapt fascination. Glancing over at Lem, you find he’s already looking at you- your eyes dart away just as quickly, face warm, but not before catching the small smile tugging at the corner of his mouth.
“...This shuttle with depart at 10:00, with arrival estimated for 10:25.”
You click your seatbelt into the lock and grip the arms of your seat, waiting.
“We hope you enjoy your trip.”
A moment of silence, filled with the revving of the engine. Just before you start to relax the shuttle lurches into motion, all of the unsuspecting passengers leaning forward with a collective murmur of surprise. It takes a few moments for the movement to become steady, and you warily lift the arms of your seats back where they were. You nudge Lem on the shoulder.
“Hm?” He inquires.
“I can tell who’s taken the ferry before based on who knew the takeoff was coming.” You inform him. He makes a rueful face.
“You were so kind to tell me last time,” he says, and you can’t help but snicker. He opens his mouth in mock offense.
“You-!” He turns to Mina. “Meanie, can you believe this? Sleeper, thoughtful and considerate Sleeper , decided to leave me in the dark about the takeoff.”
Mina giggles. Lem continues, pointing towards you. “I could have been flung out the window, deep into space! Floating… waiting for the next ferry…” He hangs his head in despair. You shake your head in disbelief- he’s really milking this for all it’s worth.
“Sorry, Lem.” You say, patting him on the shoulder. “But it’s not my fault you didn’t have your seatbelt on.”
His eyes widen indignantly and he sputters, wordlessly backtracking as Mina squeals in absolute delight.
“Daddy!” She gives him an impressively accusatory glare.
“I-I didn’t, that wasn’t- I forgot- Sleeper !”
You should feel bad you’ve backed him into a corner. You don’t. “Oops,” you say, trying to keep the glee out of your voice as Mina repeatedly pokes him in the shoulder.
“Wear a seatbelt!” She says. “You tell me to!”
Even though he’s still smiling, you’re starting to feel a little bad for him now. “Don’t worry, Mina. He was going to, the shuttle just started before he could.”
Mina huffs. “Okay.”
She settles back down into her father’s lap, resuming all her attention towards the window. Lem rolls his eyes in your direction through a teasing glare.
How dare you , he mouths.
You turn away from him, helpless to the grin threatening to split your cheeks. You only get a few moments to revel in your victory before Mina squeals again.
“Look, look!”
You peek over to where she’s pointing out; in the distance, a hint of green beneath the glass of the Eye’s tall ceilings. She looks back at Lem, then you, as if to check if you’re both paying attention. You crane your neck to see past the back of Lem’s head, Mina ducks forward to give you space to look.
“Can you see out the window?” She asks. Truth be told, she’s leaning right into your line of sight, but you give her a thumbs-up anyways.
“I can’t, but it’s okay.”
“Are you afraid?” She asks. You shake your head.
“No, I’ve just taken this ferry a lot. I’ve seen it all.”
It’s true; about once a week you take the ferry across the Founder’s Gap to visit the Greenway. You visit the Hypha Commune, spending a morning or afternoon helping them cook or test plants from their labs. You tend to the mushrooms needed for Riko to make stabilizer, and more often than not you harvest a few and visit Riko herself. She’s always glad to see you, greeting you with a warm smile behind eyes misty with age.
This time, though, you aren’t visiting alone.
It was around two weeks ago when a muffled knock had sounded on the door of your little apartment in the Lowend, the one you were fixing up. You stood up from where you were hunched on the floor, having just finished sewing up a panel on your arm, and you tore the thread with your teeth before putting the supplies down.
“Just a minute,” You called. You knew who it was by the knock alone, and the thought of Lem showing up unannounced made you more nervous that you expected to feel. You wiped your palms on the knees of your pants- surely an old habit from when your body could sweat- and opened the door to find Lem, as expected, standing in the hallway with a ladder under one arm and a small case in the other.
“Hey,” you said, too quickly. Stars, you could do better than that. “How are you?”
Your second try at a greeting wasn’t much better, but Lem smiled warmly as he held up his belongings. “Sorry for the impromptu stop.” he said. “Work ended early and Mina’s still at care for another hour, so… I came by to fix those lights you were talking about. If that’s okay.”
You didn’t realize you’d just been still, staring blankly, until you noticed him shift his weight from one foot to the other.
“Oh- that’d be great, here.”
You opened the door fully so he could step inside while still managing to hold onto the ladder. He put it down on the floor, set the case on top of it, and looked around at your place.
It was nothing to look at, and still isn’t. You’d fixed most of the necessary aspects of it with help from various friends; the walls are all patched, the water works- and while you can technically withstand cold temperatures well, the h-vac ended up repaired at Tala’s insistence. The unit is one room with a bathroom attached, with the kitchen in one corner and the rest of the area bare. A faded, slightly ratty couch you found on a street corner rests beneath the large window overlooking the Lowend. All of your medical and mechanical equipment was shoved haphazardly into a pile on one end of the room, bed next to it. You should clean all that at some point, you remember thinking.
Despite the mess and the overall emptiness, Lem nodded in approval.
“It looks like you got most of the hard stuff out of the way.” He said. You shrugged.
“I just have to fill it.”
“Well-” he opened the case and picks out a small screwdriver from the row of tools- “having a ceiling light that doesn’t flicker all the time should help.”
“I was going to do it sometime this week.”
“Were you?” He gave you a knowing look. You raised your hands in surrender.
Lem worked on the broken ceiling light while you finally decided to organize the clutter next to your bed, throwing away used stabilizer vials and loose cables after determining they didn’t belong to anything important anymore. You carefully lined up the bins you kept everything in, ranging from a soldering tool to painkillers to the thread you used to stitch yourself up half an hour before.
“Could you turn the light off and on again?” Lem asked from his perch on the ladder. You nodded and flicked the switch twice. The lights brightened and he grimaced, squinting and leaning away. You hurriedly walked over to the ladder and held the other side still so he could climb down, which he did while still blinking rapidly.
“I should not have been looking right at it like that,” he laughed. “All I see are little halos of light.”
After leaning the ladder against the wall, you both headed over to the couch and sat down, hinges beneath the cushions squeaking under your weight. You surveyed the room silently. Lem was right; it did look better without the constant faltering into half-darkness. You glanced over to see his eyes darting to one corner of the ceiling to another, lips pursed in thought.
“You okay?” You asked him.
“Just thinking about what else I can do.” He answered, as if it was the obvious thing to do. You gaped at him.
“You’ve already done so much.”
“I’ve done it gladly.”
You don’t know what to say to that, or even what to do. He’d responded so plainly; full sincerity, no sign of hesitation. His arm was brushed against the sleeve of your coat. His hand was open, right next to yours.
You settled on changing the subject. “I’m visiting the Greenway again soon.”
He breathed in as if you’d shaken him out of a light sleep, turning to look towards you. “Yeah?”
“I was wondering… if, um, you and Mina wanted to come with me. To see it.” You said, pulling at the wrist of your coat sleeve and watching the fabric stretch. “I usually stay for most of the day to work with the commune and visit Riko, and- you don’t have to stay that long, I just thought Mina might like the green, and… yeah,” Your sentence faltered into a shrug. “You don’t have to.” you repeated, and then - against your better judgement- “It’d be nice with your company.”
Lem nodded slowly. You hoped for a way to sink through the couch, through the floor and into the unit below yours. You’d definitely be blushing if you were capable, and the realization of it makes the entire sensation worse twice over. You almost put your hands over your face, but aborted the motion halfway through; leaving your hands hovering in front your chin instead.
“It’d be nice for her to see somewhere a bit wild,” Lem finally said, then chuckled to himself. “It’d suit her.”
You looked up at him.
“I’ve got a rare day off in about a week,” he continued with a tentative smile. “If that suits your schedule.”
You'd nodded before you even checked it, and reminded yourself not to make that mistake next time though you were lucky and it turned out you weren’t working that day, either. You'd laid awake that night, watching the occasional transport pod cross through the air of the Lowend, thinking about the possibility of a next time.