The Cape Rouge, Port of Fandom (and Beyond!), Wednesday afternoon

[betterthanaplan]

Duke had plans with Octavia today to show her the ocean -- or the parts of it that could be easily reached from Fandom in an afternoon, anyway. So while he waited for her to arrive, he puttered around his boat, checking over the engine and bilge pump, plotting a couple possible routes on his charts, and checking the weather reports and tides for anything that might give them trouble.

Everything looked good for a lovely day at sea. He put together some beer and snacks, and sat back on his favorite bench with his ukelele while he waited.

A pair of porgs hopped up on the crate by his feet. He did his best to ignore them.

[for one!]

Comments

[okteiviakom]

Octavia shot him a wry look back, but there was an odd note of warmth to it. Don't ask her why.

"I wasn't supposed to exist, because Mom already had Bellamy," she said. Just to clarify what it was really about. "And because I wasn't supposed to exist, I couldn't leave our quarters, ever. But, just in case that wasn't bad enough, there were surprise inspections. Guards would come in and check everything was how it was supposed to be."

And to harrass her mother.

"And there was this part of the floor that my mom had pried loose, and underneath, there was this tiny crawlspace that could be hidden by the piece of floor and then Mom's workbench over it. And that's where I would go, whenever there was an inspection. For sixteen years. And that hole did not get any bigger along with me."

[betterthanaplan]

Duke shook his head. "I had my share of hidey-holes growing up, but at least I got to pick mine myself. How'd you end up down on Earth? Sounds like if you'd been caught you would have been locked up until you were old enough to, uh, 'space'."

[okteiviakom]

"I would've had my trial at eighteen, then been floated," Octavia confirmed with a nod. She couldn't know whether that would have been the outcome, of course, but she'd always assumed. "Instead, I came to Earth at seventeen on a dropship. The Ark started running out of resources a full century ahead of schedule, but the ones in charge didn't know how far along Earth was in its healing process."

And here was where her tone got really dry. "So who do you send to the ground to check out if it's survivable yet? Good, law-abiding citizens, or a hundred of your most expendable?"

They'd literally been called that in Counsellor Jaha's video message, to their faces. Expendable. Explained some of Octavia's rather bitter tone, there.

[betterthanaplan]

"You mean kids, right?" Duke asked, a little sharper than he'd intended. "Like you were, just stuck in a shitty situation and trying to make the most of it? Fuck, I really hate people sometimes."

[okteiviakom]

Octavia did not seem to mind the sharpness one bit.

"If nothing else," she said, mildly, "at least I got to be the very first Ark-born person to step back on the ground."

[betterthanaplan]

"One small step for Octavia, one giant fuck you to the mankind you left behind. . . ."

[okteiviakom]

Octavia snorted.

"Not that anyone would believe it now," she said, her lips quirking into a lopsided little something that she tried to hide by tilting her chin down some, "but the very first thing I did on Earth was actually to scream 'we're back, bitches' at the top of my lungs."

In case he was wondering whether she'd always been this reserved and stoic.

[betterthanaplan]

"Scream?" Duke asked. "Or 'spoke slightly louder than your average speaking voice?'"

[okteiviakom]

"Scream," Octavia told him, glancing over, that lopsided smirk-thing still surprisingly intact. "What, you don't think I have it in me to be loud?"

[betterthanaplan]

"I'm sure you contain multitudes," Duke said. "You just strike me as being pretty . . . reserved."

[okteiviakom]

She'd even prefaced this thing with 'not that anyone would believe it now', so, fair.

The smirk waned as she shrugged one shoulder. "Maybe I wasn't, always."

[betterthanaplan]

"Apparently. Mind if I ask what changed?"

[okteiviakom]

This time the shrug was more in her tone than it was a physical action. "The ground happened to me." She'd thought about it a fair bit, lately, but hadn't come up with a better way to put it than that. "Warriors don't chase butterflies."

[betterthanaplan]

"I mean, they can. But I guess that'd be asking to get, like, shot or stabbed or something."

[okteiviakom]

"I think I just closed that part of myself off."

Just because it was kind of sad, didn't mean it wasn't true.

[betterthanaplan]

"A closed door is made to be opened," Duke said. "You want to head out into open waters, or keep cruising by the island?"

[okteiviakom]

"Open waters," Octavia said, without much in the way of hesitation. "Please."

Maybe she couldn't do boisterous, these days, but sincere was was still easy to hit even when she didn't necessarily want to.

[betterthanaplan]

"Aye-aye," Duke said, and steered the ship into a wide curve.

The ocean spread out in front of them, broad, empty, and deep, sparkling blue.

"God, I love that view."

[okteiviakom]

Octavia's little forward lean was not a conscious decision, and yet it was so very necessary.

She exhaled like there was a weight sliding off her shoulders. "It's beautiful," she said, though maybe mostly to herself, judging by how murmured it was.

(She didn't know it, and neither would he, but she looked almost exactly like she had when she'd first seen the butterflies she'd mentioned in passing before.)

[betterthanaplan]

Duke grinned, wide and lazy. “Some people think it looks empty. They’re usually just not looking hard enough.” He pointed to a patch of extra-turbulent water. “You see those little silver flickers?Those are fish, catching bugs over the water. A whole school of them.”

[okteiviakom]

"A school of fish," Octavia repeated, like she was committing that to memory. Because, hey, new terminology. She sighed again. "That's one of best things about being in this time," she said. "If you pay attention, there's so much life."

There had been life on the ground, too, but nature was still bouncing back. It was a delight whenever she saw something new here.

[betterthanaplan]

"There is," Duke agreed. "In all sorts of sizes and shapes." He pointed out past the fish. "And where there's one type, there's usually another."

Larger shapes were breaching the surface, visible more by their movement than by any contrast of color with the water. And by their small, pointed dorsal fins.

"Porpoises," he explained. "Having a feast."

[okteiviakom]

Octavia didn't so much raise her eyebrows as they just bounced naturally on their own. "Wait, aren't porpoises kind of like dolphins?"

She knew dolphins first and foremost from myth, but she'd also seen a nature documentary or two.

[betterthanaplan]

"They're very similar," Duke said with a nod. "A lot of people can't tell them apart, especially from this distance. But look at the fin: see how it's small and pretty triangular? Dolphins have taller, curved fins. Their faces are pretty different, too, but you'll only see those if they --"

Fandom being what it was, and the Cape Rouge being very close to Fandom, one of the porpoises obliged Duke by leaping all the way up out of the water. Duke beamed.

"-- Do that."

[okteiviakom]

Octavia was developing kind of a weird soft spot for his smiling, but anyone thinking she'd turn her gaze from that had to be crazy. It was like her eyes shone for a second.

"I saw it," she said, like there was any doubt. "Dolphins, they're slimmer in the face, right? Porpoises are more blunt, kind of."

... Relatable.