Chapter Text
Epilogue: Fair Wind
It's all to the wind,
It's all in our hands;
'Cause we break,
And we burn,
And we turn it inside out
To take it back to the start,
And through the rise and falling apart,
We discover who we are.
Saturday, August 19th, 2243
Starfleet Academy Main Campus Commons
San Francisco, California, North America, Earth
The chatter at the back of the crowd was more of a buzz than a solid noise; whispers that broke occasionally into silence, then started up again just as unfathomably.
San Francisco was surprisingly sunny and warm. There was a good haze that made the Golden Gate Bridge look ghostly, but no true fog like there had been that morning. People had gathered, admittedly slowly, over the course of the hours approaching mid-afternoon, and it seemed as much like a big picnic as anything else.
Of course, the area near the water's side was packed, and the view was less than perfect higher on the hill and further back, but it was still all right.
Scotty had just gotten off shift at Lunar, having rearranged his hours as best he could to be here. He needed a shower in the worst possible way, and probably had more black grease showing on his face than clean skin, but that had its benefits, too: People gave him a reasonably wide berth.
Well, most people.
"You look like a grease monkey," Corry said, pulling no punches. Dressed in his new science blues, he looked clean, neat and not like someone who left his half of their former room in shambles. Unfortunately, Scotty knew perfectly well that appearances could be deceiving. "Smell like one, too," Cor added, wrinkling his nose up jokingly.
"Sympathy's as legendary as ever," Scotty replied, with a scoff, crossing his arms and glancing down at his stained up coveralls. "Been called worse, though."
"Like chicken. Or puppy. Or cub."
"Bastard."
Cor chuckled, "Yep. That's me."
Corry was leaving in four hours for Vulcan; had grabbed the last transport he could to the desert world that would still allow him to report on time. And despite all possible banter, Scotty knew that his best friend was struggling with it. As much as Scotty had been reaching for the stars, Corry had been trying to keep his feet on the ground (or on a boat's deck), and two years spent so far away was going to be difficult for him.
Then again, they'd managed to do some rather difficult things over the course of-- well, of a long time. In Scotty's case, maybe even a lifetime.
He had gone back with his best friend to South Bristol, had stood at Cor's side while the inevitable explanations had to take place with Corry's parents, and then he had gone back to Aberdeen alone to give his own report, despite Corry trying to insist on going, too.
In the end, though, there was no fury, just a kind of defeated, apathetic disappointment in his actions. And where he might not have been able to stand that in the not so distant past, at least not without walking around expecting something terrible to come down on him, Scotty could live with it now. It stung a bit, but he could live with it.
Somewhere back in all of that had been the very last thought he would ever have, about what he owed them, if he owed them; somewhere back in all of that, the last threads of control they had over him had parted.
He wasn't exactly sure what would happen from here, for him or Cor or any of them. He really only knew that he would keep his head up and work himself back out of the mess that they had gotten into; eventually, provided nothing else happened, he would be let off of corrective action and even if he had to fight for every single promotion from there on out, he still felt that it was worth it. Right or wrong, it had been worth it.
The schooner that had been a very big part of all of it was due to be tugged into San Francisco Bay, having been brought across the Atlantic, through the Panama Canal and up the coast by dynacarriers.
"I'm kinda glad they're tugging her in," Corry said, after a few minutes of quiet. "I don't know if I can take seeing her under sail without me."
Scotty wasn't sure that he could take it either, even if he still wasn't much of a sailor. But both of them loved that schooner, and even though there were a few scars they had gotten from working on her, it was doubtful that they'd trade those. Seeing the Lady Grey sail without them would be a little too much. "At least she's gonna have a good home, though."
"Yeah." Cor laughed, shaking his head, "I wish I could be here to see the first sail-training crew from Command School try to take her out. That'd be a more painless riot."
It had been Barrett's idea to send the ships built by the Engineering cadets over to the Command Division for sail training. An old naval tradition that had long since fallen out of practice, it was a way to salvage the tarnished reputation that the windjammers had gotten due to the race. The pitch hadn't been hard to make, and it was accepted by the brass without much fuss.
Now, as to the Barely Afloat -- the decision had been made to honor the deal that they had made, but that really had a lot of accompanying fuss. And that alone, despite hearing about it in the middle of one of those damnable good conduct classes, had forced Scotty to put his head down on his desk to keep his laughter from disrupting everything.
Command would honor the deal, and dedicate a starship with that name, but would immediately re-dedicate it to a name that was just a little more dignified.
When he called Corry about it, Cor had laughed so hard that he couldn't even really breathe, just setting Scotty off all over again. And while duty and scheduling conflicts had meant they didn't see all that much of each other in the time since the court martial, at least compared to when they lived in the same room, they still had managed to keep each others' spirits up.
That would get a lot harder in short order.
"Almost forgot," Scotty said, having been prompted by that last thought. He pulled the smallish box out of his pocket, rather glad that the box itself wasn't all that important, given the current state of his hands. "Here."
Corry looked at it for a moment, then took it and eyed Scotty, imitating his best friend in a worrying accurate way, "'Don't go gettin' sentimental on me, all right?'"
Scotty laughed, "I'm still drawin' the line at heartfelt discussions."
"Well, good," Cor replied, rolling his eyes. "Wouldn't wanna go have any of those, nope." But he was still smiling about it when he opened the box, and then the smile faded. "Cripes, Scotty..."
It hadn't been easy to get ahold of the pocket compass, but Scotty refused to spend serious credits on anything that had been less than well-made and he figured that it was an entirely worthy gift. Maybe not five hundred years old, but a solid three or so, it was one of the finest ones that had been made and still worked, despite some wear on the cover.
"This-- really had to cost way too many credits," Corry said, obviously getting a little choked up.
Scotty waved that off, even though he was kind of touched by the reaction. "Wasn't that bad. Besides, a decent piece of equipment like that's never really a bad investment."
Corry struggled to get himself composed, and finally said, "Thank you."
"It's so ye can find yer way back home," Scotty replied, not looking over, with a bit of a smile.
Corry nodded in his peripheral vision, a quick bob of his head, and Scotty wryly reflected that they really were getting into dangerously sentimental territory here. Still, though, if he couldn't be there to go and bolster his best friend's spirits, especially on Vulcan where Corry wouldn't likely have all that many people to joke with, a reminder couldn't be a bad thing.
He was polite enough not to look over at Corry wiping his eyes, either. Supposed that the same thing that made Cor who he was, was the same thing that made him get all misty-eyed when emotion got the better of him, and that it was a good thing.
"Well, uh-- since we're already all sentimental--"
"Speak for yerself," Scotty interrupted, a somewhat weak attempt to lighten the atmosphere.
"--here. Since you lost yours saving the Grey."
After a moment of staring at it, Scotty carefully took the new penlight.
He had reached for his old one countless times since he lost it, and missed it quite a bit when he was trying to work on something in cramped or low-lit places; he had kept putting off replacing it because it felt somehow wrong to just replace it with some mass-market version.
That penlight had really never left his possession from when it was given to him to when it slipped from his fingers under the Lady Grey, and despite not really saying anything about it, he had mourned the loss.
It was both surprising and not surprising at all that Corry had noticed anyway.
He looked it over, not holding onto it too hard for the sake of not marring the new matte black surface with the grease from his hands. Then held it out of his own shadow to read the little letters, etched silver, around the light-end of it.
"Wolf," he said, and wanted to make a joke about it being puppy, cub or mutt, but he couldn't quite make himself speak past the constricted feeling in his chest.
"In case you find yourself in the dark," Corry said, steadily, "at least you won't be there alone."
Mercifully, at least for his pride, Scotty didn't have to reply to that. He was having a hard enough time trying to even breathe past it. Like all of it -- the past couple of years, and all that had changed, and all he had gained, and lost, and given up, and still searched for -- all of it was summed up in just a few words. What it was to face the fire, what it was to face the water.
What it was when you trusted someone else enough that they could save you from both, and the dark cold places you knew too well.
The tug materialized out of the haze, and behind it like a ghost was the Lady Grey. Trim from stem to stern, clean practical lines, built from the keel up with blood, sweat and tears. The rest of the crowd got louder, pointing and talking in excited tones, at the first full-sized sailing vessel to grace the Bay in a very long time.
They didn't say anything, just stood and watched as she became more distinct, clearer, her fine details coming into focus. Kept watch as she was pulled to her new home on Hyde Street Pier, where there was a flurry of first year Command cadets who were staring at her in awe, their silence and stillness easily apparent even at a distance.
There was nothing more to say, at the moment. After the crowd moved, heading closer to the pier where the schooner was now being tied up, they both turned around and left, Scotty putting his new penlight in the usual pocket occupied by the old one.
There was nothing more to say, at the moment, about it all.
It had all been said already.
They walked away together.