Cowardly Captain...

Static hissed through the bridge speakers like dry sand poured over glass.

Then came a breath... a sharp ragged hitch of air, and a laugh that was filled with so much relief that the speaker cone hummed with it.

"Nee-san?"

Ren's voice cracked right down the middle, the smooth Kansai cadence shattering into raw boyish disbelief.

"Aoi? Is that... is that really you? You're alive? You're actually ALIVE?!"

THUD!

Aoi's knees hit the base of the astrogation console.

She didn't catch herself. 

Her fingers clawed into the leather trim of the display well with her knuckles white and her whole body shaking from the crown of her head to the soles of her boots. 

Her glasses slid down her nose and she didn't push them up as hot blinding tears flooded her eyes and spilled over in unbroken tracks that dripped off her jaw onto the glass.