A/N: Thanks a lot for the feedback. It is highly appreciated.

And Natta: many, many thanks.

Chapter 51

She had tried to argue with Rommie, to issue orders, to squirm her way out of it, but Andromeda's avatar had been immovable in her conviction that her new captain was already going over the top while performing her duties. Brushing aside each and every one of Beka's arguments, she had sternly insisted that it was time for her to finally take a break, pointing out that according to the Maru's and her own log she had been on her feet for nearly 48 hours, that most of that time she had been busy digesting one blow after another; ultimately Andromeda cut the matter short by threatening to remove Beka from duty by force if she didn't leave for a break.

And now here she was, in front of the old, familiar hangar-deck of the Eureka Maru, staring at the doors with dry eyes burning from fatigue and dread.

"Beka?"

"Yes, Rommie?"

Still eyeing the entrance suspiciously as if some monster was about to emerge from the hangar-deck at any given moment, Beka barely tilted her head in the direction of the hologram.

"Beka, what's the matter? You've been standing here for the past three minutes and 24 seconds…"

"Nothing's the matter, Rommie," the young woman replied sharply. "I'm just thinking…"

"Well, can't you think on the Maru, lying in your bed?"

Beka cleared her throat.

"Yeah," she acquiesced hoarsely, "I suppose I could do that." But she still didn't move. Andromeda's hologram crossed her arms over her chest, looking something in-between inquiring and cross.

"So then why don't you?" she finally asked, her tone this time a bit sharper.

Rebekkah Valentine sighed, lifted her arm to insert the codes needed to open the doors, but then her hand dropped back alongside her body, she turned around and briskly walked away at high speed.

It was a good thing that the hologram of the Andromeda Ascendant was not programmed to stare open-mouthed. Because if she had been, she would have done so right there – which would have looked stupid. And that was so not a good look for a warship.

After a long, aimless walk through the at that hour almost deserted corridors of the huge vessel, Beka Valentine came to a halt in front of her old quarters onboard. It was only then that her ship's hologram reappeared in front of her.

"Beka, what are you doing here?"

"I've decided, Rommie, to stay here tonight…"

"Here where?" the ship inquired. "Here as in your former quarters? Well, you can't, I've given them to Doyle…"

"What?" Beka exclaimed outraged. "Why did you do that? What's she needing quarters for anyway? She's an avatar. Get her out of…"

"Beka!"

"Well, where am I supposed to…"

"Beka!" Andromeda admonished her harshly. "There ARE quarters here onboard for you…"

The woman frowned, her eyes ablaze with stubbornness and hurt and a glowing rage reaching far beyond the matter they were quarrelling about. Seeing it, the hologram almost wished she could sigh.

"I don't want some random quarters, I want the quarters that have always been rightfully mine…" Beka began again, ranting on.

"They've never been 'rightfully' yours, Beka," the ship cut in a more moderate tone, designed to calm her down, "they 'rightfully' belong to my first officer, who has preferred however to keep his old ones. You are now my captain: and I DID prepare quarters for you – not random ones, but exactly those that are now 'rightfully' yours," she finished, stressing the last word as she was driving her point home. "But I suppose that those antics about not wanting to retreat, not going to the Maru and so on are exactly about that, am I right?"

The human fixed her from wide eyes, with her mouth slightly open as if she wanted to cut in, but then she abruptly stalked off, marching right through the hologram towards the indicated rooms that she knew to be located only a few meters further down the corridor. But then she stopped again, staring motionlessly at the closed doors.

Andromeda's hologram reappeared next to her, a compassionate frown turning the pretty face into the very image of concern.

"Beka," the ship tried in a quiet, warmly vibrating voice, "why don't you take it slower? You don't have to do it all in once. Maybe the Maru is indeed the better idea for now…"

Her captain shook her head, her expression less stubborn rather than hunted.

"I… I can't, Rommie… You don't understand. I can't go there, not now. The last time I was with him alone and unobserved by others, it was in my cabin there…"

"I see," Andromeda replied thoughtfully. "Listen, with the triumvirs and their escorts onboard and fully manned I don't have any spare quarters left, but I could…"

"No," Beka fended her off, "don't bother, it's all right. Sooner or later I will have to do it and…" She fell quiet, not finishing her sentence.

The hologram exchanged a worried look with her own image that had appeared on a monitor inserted in the bulkhead behind the woman's back.

"I think I'll have Rommie come…"

"No," Beka interrupted her again, "no, really – it's not necessary, I just have to muster enough courage to…" She swallowed convulsively. "…to just get in there…" she then finished.

"Maybe it's not that bad," Andromeda attempted to console her. "It's not as if it were still the way you knew it, you know."

She was a ship. It was one of her tasks to always monitor all of her inhabitants' physical condition, most of all her captain's. It didn't remain a secret to her that at that statement Beka's heart rate spiked, although on the outside the young woman seemed to almost turn to stone, her features dropping into a rigid mask void of all expression.

"Beka?" she asked tentatively, but got no response. "Beka?" she tried anew. It took some more, seemingly interminable seconds until she finally saw a first blink, then heard her clear her throat.

"What – what do you mean?"

"I had his things packed and stored…"

She didn't get to the end of her phrase before Beka kicked into action, frantically rushing through her once more and towards the doors that slid open, revealing the huge suite behind them darkened, cool and empty. The furniture hadn't changed, but everything else that had been not standard ship furnishing had been removed. Storming through the living room, Beka almost ran into the adjacent bedroom, not waiting for the lights to flare up before turning around her own axis, a lost look in her eyes. Dylan had always kept the first room, often frequented by others, a bit neutral, displaying personal items only sparsely in there, using its inconspicuousness more as a last line of defence than as a real place to retreat. It always had been his second room, the one only few were allowed to enter, that he had used as his hideout from the world, that showed all of those items that everyone normally got to gather around oneself over the years: books, lamps, paintings, photos, superfluous things that documented a lived life. It had taken Beka, Trance and Harper more than three years to get through to that room, into the only place onboard where Dylan had permitted himself to be just Dylan, where he had left his mark as a person, not as captain…

Although she had been warned, it hit Beka like a fist burying itself into her stomach to see all familiar things gone from there, the huge space clean and almost septic and only sparsely furnished with a bed and some night cases. Even his bookcase was gone. Almost panting, she hurried to the walk-in cupboards, snatching the doors open only to find them too empty, the shelves grey and waiting for someone else to fill them. Nothing of him was left in there either, not even his scent.

For a brief moment Beka had to lean on the frame, fearing that her legs were just about to give in under her, for the first time in her life inwardly cursing Andromeda's all too efficient air filtering systems. But then she straightened up and stalked her way to the bed, sitting down gingerly as if afraid she might otherwise fall down.

Rhade had been right, she had known all along, hidden deep under as many layers of denial and anger as she could muster she had always known. Over the past, interminable hours she had even begun to accept it. Or so she had thought. But confronted now with the merciless emptiness of the suite from which everything that she had known, liked, detested, made fun of, wondered about had been removed as if it had never existed, she felt how an enormous, impossible to fill void was breaking up inside her very core, consuming, engulfing her like a tide.

"Why?" she heard herself scream, hardly recognizing her own voice in the harsh, savage, coarse cry of anguish. "Why did you do that?"

Andromeda's hologram, that had materialized in front of her, frowned, not understanding.

"Because either way, whether you accepted the commission offered or not, I had to get everything ready for my new captain. Beka, be sensible…" she tried in a pleading tone.

Leaning with arms outstretched and rigid on the bed under her, Beka glared at her darkly.

"What did you do with it?" she asked in a low, strangled voice.

"I didn't do anything with it," the ship answered her, beginning to look slightly upset. "I stored it. He… he named you next of kin. It's yours to dispose of it, but as you weren't…"

"Get it back," Beka interrupted her curtly.

"What? All of it?"

"All of it. And put it back exactly as it was."

"But Beka…"

"Do it, Rommie," she ordered sternly, but not raising her voice. The hologram contemplated her for an instant, then nodded.

"Aye, Captain," she said briskly. "I'll have it done first thing in the…"

"Right now, Rommie," Beka added, not waiting for her to finish.

At first it seemed as if the hologram wanted to protest anew, but then she reconsidered.

"Aye," she confirmed, disappearing.

Merely ten minutes later a small army of Maria-bots led by Rommie entered the premises, each of them carrying metal cases they placed in the middle of the living room. Through the opened bedroom doors, Beka – still seated on the bed – observed in silence as they began to unpack everything with mechanical, precise movements.

Standing in the doorframe, Rommie threw her a concerned look.

"Beka," she begun, but again didn't get far.

"Get me the boxes with his clothes in here," the captain cut her off.

Pressing her lips together as if wanting to suppress something she knew better to remain unsaid, Andromeda's avatar turned around with a sigh and grabbed one of the smaller cases, followed by five Maria-bots carrying in the rest.

"That's all?" Beka asked.

A thin, barely noticeable smile played on Rommie's lips as she remembered the sheer incredible number of cases Beka had carried onboard the Andromeda when she joined, not without informing her that she preferred keeping the largest part of 'her stuff' onboard the Maru. The smile quickly vanished though after throwing another look at her captain, who was now sitting slightly slumped over, with sagging shoulders on the bed so large she seemed completely lost in.

"Yes, that's all," Rommie confirmed.

"Thank you."

Pushing herself up with difficulty like an old, frail woman, Beka worked her way towards the cases, dropping to her knees in front of them. Wanting to help, Rommie motioned to come nearer, but with a brief shaking of her head the human indicated that she wanted the avatar to stay where she was.

"Rommie, would you mind giving me some privacy?"

"No, I wouldn't mind, of course I wouldn't mind, but Beka…" She hesitated. This was Beka, her friend, the one she had grown so close to over the years as if she were just some other facet of her own persona, but by now she also was her newly appointed captain. And so Rommie stopped, and thought for a fraction of a second, but then continued boldly: "Beka, what you're doing here isn't healthy! You… You have to stop this."

The woman looked up to her – and as it had happened previously with Doyle, the undiluted pain reflecting from her eyes made Rommie almost shrink back.

"I... I have to stop? I haven't even started," she heard her mutter hoarsely, "I know I'll have to stop eventually, but... Right now I don't even know where to begin... I... I just don't know how…" One after one she opened all boxes, time and again briefly stroking over some neatly folded sweater, shirt or jacket. "You see, I lost him, Rommie, and I'm still losing him…"

"I know, Beka, we all have…"

"No, you don't understand it. I…" A sob caught in her throat preventing her from continuing. She bit her lip, then went on: "I'm losing him right now. I try and try to remember him and I can't. I can't, Rommie!" she cried loudly before pressing a hand against her mouth. "For months I did nothing but block everything out that could have been even remotely related to you, to Dylan, and now I... I can't remember him anymore!" Searching for Rommie's gaze, she saw the avatar looking at her with something like envy, with coldness and maybe also some anger in her eyes.

"You should count your blessings! You don't know how lucky you are!" the dark, enraged beauty hissed out between her teeth. A puzzled expression stole itself into Beka's features.

"Lucky?"

"Yes, lucky, Beka!" Rommie stressed anew. "You see, I DO remember Dylan, down to his last wrinkle, I remember every pore on his skin, the way every single hair fell, the sound of his voice, its exact sonority in any given circumstance, the way his steps resounded through my corridors, the way his steps felt when he was walking, the precise amount of pressure he exerted when he touched me and the warmth his body exuded when he was near me, his scent, his way of thinking, the exact nuance of blue in his eyes. I remember it so well I could reproduce him perfectly. To me he's just as real as if he were alive. Only he's not here. Never again present. You can't remember him? I wish I had that luxury!"

Eyes brimming with unshed tears of sympathy, Beka nodded to her, but then smiled in a forlorn, lost, empty manner.

"I'm sorry, Rommie, I don't mean to diminish the hurt you feel, it's just that…" She searched for words, but then gave up, exclaiming: "Gods, I envy you!"

"And I envy you," Andromeda replied. "I'll never understand humans truly…" she then concluded. With a last look at the opened cases, she seemed to clam back up to android-mode: "Don't go through with this, Beka," she tried one last time though.

"I can't, Rommie, I just can't. I need to do this!" her captain exclaimed, burying her hands in the case in front of her and beginning to remove the clothing. "Please, could you just leave now?"

Andromeda's hologram contemplated the sight on the bed in front of her with lines of sorrow furrowing the normally smooth surface of her face. She had left as ordered, but Beka had forgotten to engage privacy mode – and Rommie had refrained from reminding her. And so she had come back to check on her friend.

"Oh, Beka…" she sighed, deeply concerned.

Curled up on herself in a fetal position, Rebekkah Valentine had finally fallen asleep, her features softened somewhat, her face tainted by traces of tears and, although relaxed in sleep, not losing the deep lines of grief and pain running down along the sides of her mouth. Her arms were tightly clutched around a huge, brown leather jacket that she seemed to hold on to as if her life depended on it.

Andromeda had observed her when she had found what had become one of Dylan's favorite pieces of clothing. From the very start when she came across the jacket, Beka had clung to it with a fierceness as huge as had been the sobs that began suddenly to wreck through her body. With the stupid thing in her arms she had made her way back to the bed, lying down and burying her face into it. Rommie suspected at least some of the leather to be ruined by now in the places where Beka had been crying into it. But then, what did it matter?

The ship's gaze fell anew on her captain's face, that was resting on some portion of the huge jacket. Rommie had had everything cleaned before storing Dylan's possessions away, so she knew that it smelled of nothing but a faint hint of leather.

Maybe it is enough though, Andromeda thought sadly, to help you find a splinter of what you had made him out to be for you. I wish we could switch places – for your sanity... and mine.