I’m Erica Ortegas. I fly the ship.
You find yourself saying it at the weirdest times, these days. Silently, in your head, obviously, because you don’t mind being the center of the Enterprise’s gossip mill every now and then, but not in the way you would be if people heard you walking around muttering the same seven words to yourself on repeat. But it’s always there.
In the shower, getting ready for your duty shift.
I fly the ship.
At the bar, half-listening as Christine, perpetually on the knife’s edge of some crisis or another, enumerates all of the… everything going on in her life.
I fly the ship.
It’s grounding, comforting, and the therapist they made you see after the war would probably be proud. You remember, somewhere in the very back of your brain, them telling you about acceptance and mindfulness and a lot of other things you weren’t ready to hear at the time.
It was annoying then, and it’s more annoying now that they’ve been proven at least partially correct. But it helps, and you’re a little better, these days, at remembering that there’s a person under the wisecracks.
You’re Erica Ortegas. You fly the ship.