“What am I supposed to do...?”
Pack rubbed his eyes with his paw. The
vision he had witnessed a few nights ago still weighed heavily on his
mind.
“Anyone! Please help me!”
He could still hear Lapse desperately
crying out for someone, and whenever he thought of it it was like his
chest was being squeezed. The thought of something happening to her
again tore him apart, and he wanted to go back to her.
But he could also remember how she had
been when she left. “I thought you liked me”, she said. Even
when she came back, it was clearly still bothering her: “We've
greeted him. I want to go now.” Hearing her say that cut through
him like a letter opener. Even if she needed someone, she wouldn't
want it to be him, not after what had happened. Surely there could
be someone else for her, someone who would treat her better than he
had...
He reached instinctively for the drawer
in his desk, but it was empty. He wished he still had his notebook.
Maybe he could read through it and remember how things used to be,
and then he'd know what to do. But it was too late for that now. He
had made up his mind, and he had squandered his one chance.
So why was he still unable to accept
it? “Your heart still cries out for her”, that voice had told
him. She was still out there, maybe they could start again. But
they had both changed so much. The woman he had met was not the one
he had remembered. She probably felt the same way about him.
He stood up and looked at himself in
the mirror. His fur was a mess, but tidying it didn't give him any
happiness right now. Just who had he become? Why did the things
that once seemed so simple now seem out of reach?
The answer still eluded him, and he
knew he was shirking his duties. “At least I can still address the
crew”, he thought, opening the door to his cabin and stepping
outside.
It was strangely quiet tonight. He
climbed up the stairs to the deck and found it empty. Quill wasn't
at his charting table. Relay wasn't running messages back and
forth. No one was cleaning the deck, mending the sails, or keeping
watch over the oceans. The entire ship seemed deserted. With some
trepidation he opened the hatch and climbed down below deck. The
moment he did so he heard distant voices, so he followed them, until
he found himself at the door to the common room.
“Don't worry”, said a voice, the
main one he had heard while he was in the hall, “the boss will be
back to normal soon enough.”
He peeked inside the room and saw Snag
speaking to the rest of his crew. He quickly ducked into a nearby
room and left the door open so he could listen to what was being
said.
“We all want things to go back to how
they were, but for now we just have to keep working hard and not let
on that it bothers us. If he found out he'd probably take it the
wrong way.”
There was a murmuring from the crowd.
“We'd better get going now”, Snag
said, “he'll notice if the work isn't done.”
People started shuffling around to
leave. Pack quietly closed the door he was hiding behind and waited
for them all to file out. When he thought they had all gone, he
opened the door and slipped out. Snag was still in the common room,
dusting the furniture.
“What's going on?” He asked,
startling Snag, who almost knocked over the lamp he was working on.
“Uhh, just cleaning, boss!”, he
responded hastily, still clutching the teetering lamp.
“Not holding any secret meetings,
then?”
His expression sank. “So you heard
that, huh? I'm sorry, boss.”
“What's going on?” he repeated.
“The crew is distressed, boss.
Everyone knows something's wrong. I was just trying to keep
everybody motivated. ...You're probably mad.” He looked totally
crestfallen.
“I'm not mad,” Pack reassured him,
“but I do want to know why you think something's wrong.”
“You've been acting so different,
boss. All you do is work and stay in your cabin now. You don't come
up with strange plans, scold me when I mess things up, or lecture
people about how to look sharp and work efficiently. It's like
you've lost what makes you you.”
Pack instinctively straightened his
whiskers with one paw. “What's wrong with focusing on one's work?
Is work not its own reward?”
Snag shrugged. “Work is fine, but
it's not wrong to want something more than that. You taught me that,
boss. I used to feel really bad all the time because I wasn't a good
worker, so I thought I wasn't much good to anyone. But you taught me
that there's more to life than just work. Even if I could never be
the best worker, I could still find a different goal for myself.”
“And what would that be?”
“You'll probably think this is
stupid”, he said bashfully.
“Please, I want to know.”
“Well, someday, I'd like to be
captain of my own ship.”
It was more ambitious than he had
expected. “And what would you do if you were captain?”
“Well, I'd have some adventures, help
those who can't help themselves, and try to figure out how to find
those who got lost so people like you wouldn't have to be sad
anymore.”
“It's more complicated than that.”
he said, resting his face on his paw. “Even if people come back,
sometimes it's not the same.” He sighed. “I think I'm starting
to understand what Corsair was looking for.”
“Boss?”
He patted Snag's head. “Don't give
up hope. Maybe you'll get your chance someday.”
Leaving Snag to his duties, he returned
to the the deck. His thoughts turned to Corsair. He regretted the
way he had acted the last few times they had spoke. He once thought
Corsair had all the answers, but he now realized that was just what
he had wanted to believe. Corsair had been suffering as much as
anyone.
“What divides us?” He wondered,
thinking about the way things used to be. “Something comes
between us and we just can't solve it. That's what you're looking
for, isn't it?”
He gazed up at the stars. “Please
let me know if you find it, old friend.”
As he walked back to his cabin, he
spotted a ship in the distance. “That couldn't be you, could it?”
he wondered aloud. But that was silly, Corsair wasn't just going to
appear with the answer he was looking for. It was more likely that
it was Lapse, and he wondered what he could possibly say to her, or
if he could even meet her at all. In the end it turned out to be
neither, but his relief was short-lived.
“Is Lapse with you?” he asked
Captain Sister as she came aboard.
“No”, Sister replied. “But she's
nearby. You should go and see her.”
“I can't.” He said sadly. “I
hurt her. I don't know how to face her anymore.”
“Then why did you spend so long
searching for her? What did you think you'd do if you found her?”
“I don't think I ever planned that
far ahead. I just felt so terrible about what I had done, and so
sorry for what she went through that I just had to make it up to her
somehow. But now that she's back I realize it would be best for her
if she just forgot about me.”
“Are you really that blind?” She
demanded, narrowing her eyes. “It wasn't just sympathy and guilt
that drove you to search for her. You wanted to be with her because
she made you happy. And she knew that. She always knew.”
“Even if we were happy once, that's
in the past now”, he said, sadly. “That became abundantly clear
when we saw each other again. We can't just go back to the way we
were.”
“Maybe not,” she said, “but
there's a lonely woman out there who knows exactly what you're
feeling right now. If you choose to let this go because you think it
was your fault and it's the noble thing to do, then we'll have two
noble people and no happy ones, because she blames herself for what
happened, not you.”
“But how could she blame herself?”
he asked, incredulously.
“Maybe you should ask her. She's
waiting for you. She's been waiting for a long time.”
And with that, she returned to her
ship, leaving everything up to him.



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