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Marya was on the deck, but from somewhere aboard she could hear Maxwell shouting, "Maritime law doesn't ap-!"before a fiddle drowned out the rest of his sentence. She lit another match and dropped it for Kočka to catch. When she lit up another, a callused hand grabbed her wrist and brought the flame towards their own face.
"Those things will kill you."
"Let 'em try," Van growled with a toothy grin, exhaling smoke into the night air. This was good, this was all fine. Van held out a flask that Marya accepted and took a short pull from before absentmindedly pocketing. This was the way of things. Van knew she'd get it back. Maxwell's voice raised again, but this time in song and accompanied with Olethra's. Van turned around and leaned her back against the rails. "Those raisins have no idea what we're in for."
Marya shifted closer and her body felt as frail and unwieldy as it did the first time she and Van chanced upon each other in the darkness while their comrades celebrated a battle that could've been their last. "They will come to know it all. Glory. Death. New worlds. The sky's open embrace. More death."
"You can't sound turned on when you say things like that. You'll scare the youths straight off the ship!"
Laughter burst out of Marya like kindling added to a dwindling camp fire. She pressed her shoulder even tighter against Van's, the brass of the other's arm smooth in a way that didn't make her feel any more grounded. "Well then you must flex at her and she will come rushing back." Van scrunched up her face and Marya raised an eyebrow. "Baby Macleod has been following you around all day, my eyes-they see everything."
"Aye? And did your eyes happen to see your own face on that shirt of hers."
"This face?" Marya chuckled. "No. This face? No. What would anyone want with it."
"That face has launched ships, love. And those hands," she nodded down to where Marya's fingers were readying another match, "are worth more than all the uncharted lands in Gath. I won't hear a word against either."
Marya didn't suddenly feel young, but what she did feel was a certain very specific age. It was the year her supervision from the boatswain had been constant and unremitting, always a tweak there or an adjustment in a part that needed no adjusting, a growling 'that won't do' or 'better isn't good' and 'put the sweat in!' until the night they found themselves scarred and tired, but alive because one of Marya's contraptions had worked when before it had always failed. Van had asked if she had a match and she did and, before the older woman could open her mouth with some sort of terse acknowledgment of a job well done, Marya had kissed her. They'd kissed and kissed and kissed and in the morning Van palmed Marya an extra bit of hardtack to start the day with and that was the age she felt now. It was the morning after and her fingers itched to fix something that wasn't broken.
"Van..."
"Lots of sky to cover tomorrow, kid, shove off to bed. There's a good girl."
Marya straightened up, lighting another match and moving to stand in front of Van whose cigarette was still lit and dangling between her fingers. "Our marriage, it wasn't so bad. You must agree with me on this at least."
"I don't regret it. That's what you're asking, or rather what you're not asking. I don't miss it, but I don't regret it." She snuffed out the unneeded matchstick flame. "So don't go taking that as a challenge, junker."
"Never, sir." Gentler than Van did, but rougher than she would've twenty years ago, Marya grabbed Van's wrist and brought the nearly finished cigarette to her own lips for its final draw. Smoke unfurled from her mouth like clouds whipping into a storm. "But as you say-lots of sky to cover."