Cohost writing prompt: @make-up-a-starship-pilot — Starship pilot who lost track of where they end and the ship begins
Amber broke up with Tee two months ago, after she caught her plugging back into shipsense after hours.
"You know everything ever committed to paper or training video about over-use," Amber had said quietly. They'd had arguments about it before, about the per-period and lifetime safe limits, about how close to the redline she pushed it. This wasn't an argument. This was worse. "I've seen it. We had a pilot on the Thrace—" and she trailed off, staring at the wall.
Amber has nightmares about the Thrace. She'd never articulated exactly what was in them; the ship had never had a major safety incident. Tee had assumed long-term emotional wear from workplace toxicity, both on Amber directly and, as the ship's med officer, on everyone else that she got a secondary dose from being unable to fix.
"If I take second place to doing this to yourself, then...." Amber had shrugged, defeated. "I'm out."
Tee waits, now, for a night shift, one of the ones she knows Amber got moved to so they wouldn't bump into each other coming off duty. Creeps into sickbay, clutching the hem of her flight crew sweater so her hands won't shake.
Amber starts to say something when she sees her, then checks herself and stares into her face with a gathering frown. "Are you hurt?"
She hesitates. "Phantom pain," she says eventually, eyes sliding off Amber. Sounds small and shaky.
Amber starts to reach for her other hand, the robotic plastic one, and Tee shakes her head, an abrupt snap of movement, teeth digging into her lip.
"In my — in my core drive diagnostics," she says, in a horrible, scratchy voice. "I'm not plugged in and I can feel my stardrive and it feels malfunctioning. I've — I've fucked my brain."
Amber inhales, holds the air in, lets it out steadily. "Probably a bit," she says, with the professional smoothness of bedside manner. "First time? And for how long?"
"First time," she confirms. "Since — I dunno, I logged off feeling, feeling that kinda connected-too-long hangover, but I didn't realise it was wrong wrong until I had a nap and I woke up and realised I could feel—"
"If it's the first time," Amber says quietly, "mostly it's correctable at that stage." If, she doesn't go into.
"If I give you medical consent to notify the captain," Tee says, hating how small she sounds, how lost, "how long do I get yanked off piloting?"
"Six weeks, minimum. Then medical reassessment, and by ear." Amber looks away. "I'm not going to lie to you, and you know this anyway: no guarantee it'll be safe for you to fly again."
Tee closes her eyes and winces around a flare of pain in her — hardware. That she doesn't have.
"Now," she says shakily. "Do it now before I — before I get more chicken than I am now."
Amber's hands settle on her shoulders. "You're being brave," she says softly. "And smart. And I'm proud of you."
"I'm gonna spend the next six weeks being a hateful scumbag about being cut off," Tee says, and chokes up. "I'm scared," she adds forlornly.
"Yeah," Amber says, and leans their foreheads together. Her voice lowers, down past professional, into unmistakeably intimate. "But I've got you," she says.