Cohost writing prompt: @Making-up-Mech-Pilots — Mech Pilot who cannot sleep at night, so tempted by the offer
The fleet sallied out on the universe's last desperate hope for love, peace, and survival; against the dark, ravening heart of the Space Undead, taking the heroes, taking the heroes' shining mechs, and taking the secret radiant superweapon codenamed ALABASTER NOON.
And then comms went out.
The devouring tide hasn't arrived, so that's in the "we won" column. The entire galactic communications and transport network stopped working, so that's — less so.
Over the sixteen months since, discipline at Forward Base Echo-466 has, and Emery has to be honest about this, it's suffered. The human presence here reduced to a few hundred personnel, enough to keep the lights on. Supplies to last a fully-staffed base a decade.
Miles of tropical beach.
Cath knocks on the doorframe. Cath's wearing a long wrap dress made out of a maintanence dust cover for a Class-II scout walker, with her old battledress jacket slung over the top. It's not regulation.
"Permission to speak freely?" Cath says.
(They mockingly call Emery the General, sometimes. Because she's trying, dammit, she's trying to keep this all together. This isn't a beach holiday.)
"Don't make fun of me," Emery says wearily, not pausing as she writes in her Squad Leader's daily logbook. Trying to keep a record. trying to maintain a grip on any kind of normalcy.
"I'm not making fun of you," Cath says quietly. "I get it, Emery. We're cut off here and we might never see home again and we don't even really know what happened and it's a lot. I get it. But you can't — you can't be the military discipline for the whole base. I'm worried about you."
"Don't."
"I'm worried that if you can't unbend a little on purpose, when you can't hold back the fact that things have changed by sheer bloodyminded rulebook any more, you're gonna snap."
Emery turns over to a fresh page. "Noted," she says, trying for even. She just sounds pissed off, even she can hear that.
"Everybody needs time off, Emery. When's the last time you let yourself have time off?"
Emery doesn't answer. Cath waits, watches Emery with the point of her pen pressed hard into the blank new page, ink blotting out from it, unable to start writing. Chest tight. Head filled with pressure.
Cath sighs explosively, giving way first. "I'll be down at the dock fishing for a couple of hours," she says softly. "With a cooler of beers. And then I'm going to build a fire down on the beach and grill some fish, have dinner down there when the sun gets low. Maybe swim a little. You could—"
She breaks off, turns her head, leans her forehead on the doorframe.
"I just worry about you," she says, and Emery listens to her footsteps retreating slowly, all the way along the corridor outside, away from the silent admin offices.
The page is still blank, except for the inkblot, when the light fades enough that Emery's staring at it starts to hurt her eyes.