Cockpit
Sal found herself in a situation she couldn’t quite remember getting into. Up to her ankles, there was some red, thick liquid that was staining her clothes. Her nose wrinkled in disgust.
“What the?”
There was like, a whole ocean full of it, stretching for miles, what it seemed. What else was ahead of Sal, was an old, wooden door. The red liquid sloshed as she stepped closer to the door and opened it. What place she found her in next was… the cockpit of the Tulpar?
How curious, it looked so much different from when they were rescuing Curly. So clean and tidy, it reminded Sal of those old hacker movies with the green lighting, too. It was pretty rad, marveling at the look of it all.
Though, it was all short lived, because suddenly, the lights had turned red, and an obnoxious blaring siren was ringing into her ears.
Sal grunted at the noise. She covered her ears and closed her eyes as the saturated red was too much for her eyes to see.
When she opened them again, she saw the word WARNING flashing on the many screens that were in the cockpit. They were going to crash.
Sal helplessly tapped around on the many buttons on the control panel, trying to steer away from the imminent crash, even though she knew it was to no use.
“It’s okay, I can still fix this!” Sal tried to reassure herself, even though it was obviously all a lie. She banged on the control panel in frustration.
“It’s okay, I can still fix this!” she repeated and tried to take a deep breath, though no air was coming in. Shit. She could already hear her teammates calling for her on the other side of the door.
She tried banging on the control panel again and pressing as many buttons as she could, heck, she tried steering away from crashing the ship, too.
“It’s okay, I can still fix this.”
“It’s okay, I can still fix this.”
“It’s okay, I can still fix this!”
“It’s okay, I can still fix this!”
“I can still fix this!”
“I can still fix this!”
“I can still fix this!”
“I can still fix this!”
“I have to fix this.”
“I have to fix this.”
“I have to fix this.”
“I have to fix this.”
“I have to fix this.”
“SAL!”
Sal jerked awake and bonked her head against Anya’s. Damn, she must’ve fallen asleep, and better yet, now her head hurts because of Anya just having to be too close to her as she tried to wake her up. They both clutched their foreheads where the bonk itself had happened.
“Ouch! Guh, I should really stop doing that..” Anya muttered, a red spot now present on her forehead, Sal had one too. It was pretty amusing to Anya, though she didn’t say anything about it.
“Sorry, was I moving around too much again?” Sal asked, rubbing that red spot.
“Yeah, well, it was more of a sleep talking situation this time. You kept going on and on about fixing something. Was it another one of those dreams you have?”
Sal nodded and stretched her hands up over her head. “Yup, guess so. I think it was something about the cockpit?”
“Fixing the cockpit?”
“No, no, it was more preventing the whole crash thing from happening in the first place. Looks like even my subconscious mind is haunting me with the situation we’re in, huh?” Sal chuckled lamely.
“God, is she really joking at a time like this?” Anya thought. She took a small breath and got up from her mattress.
“I better go check on Curly.”
“Ah, okay-” Sal couldn’t even finish before the door to the sleeping quarters slid shut. “God, I should really learn when to shut up.”
Sal sighed and covered her face with her hands. What is wrong with her? Guess that’s what happens when you have close to no filter at all. Oh, whatever, not much she could do anyway. They’re stuck in space and she’s moping over a joke that didn’t land? Jeez Louise.
On the other hand, Anya was checking on Curly, as she said before. She gave him some painkillers, which made him make some really uncomfortable noises. It made Anya pretty uneasy, but it had to be done. Whatever it takes to keep her captain’s pain manageable.
Anya could hear someone clear their throat from behind her. Upon turning around she could see it was Jimmy.
“How’s Curly?” he asked.
“He’s… alive.”
“Really? I could swear he was dying by all the gagging noises”
Anya scoffed.
“Yeah, Captain has a bit of a problem with taking his meds-”
“Curly. I’m the captain.”
“Right. Captain.” Anya replied, pinching the bridge of her nose. “Sorry. A lot of stuff is on my mind right now.”
“Understandable. Tough work for the only nurse who actually does her job right. That reminds me, why did you switch with Sal to do the psych evals? You know she doesn’t like most of us on this damn ship anyway, why should she have that responsibility? “
Anya glanced away, obviously uncomfortable by all these sudden questions. As if she didn't already have enough on her plate.
“Uh, well-” Anya started, but she was shortly cut off. Again.
“Anyway, I better go back to checking on the others. Keep up the good work.”
Jimmy could feel someone stare daggers into his back. Low and behold, Sal was there, with her big, piercing, green eyes. Anya didn’t quite understand why Sal was so cautious around Jimmy, but she didn’t really like him anyway with his, uh… “passionate” love for cartoon horses. Maybe that was why Sal didn’t like him either.
Once Jimmy had scurried away, Sal stepped into medical with her arms crossed and a sheepish expression on her face, a complete 180 to the “get out of my face” look she gave Jimmy.
“Hey.” Sal leaned against their desk, the one just by the door.
“Hey.” Anya replied, her own arms now crossed while not quite wanting to look at Sal yet.
“Um, sorry about before. I know we’re kind of in a bit of a pickle right now. I should’ve known it was a bit too soon to joke about it.”
That made Anya look at Sal and her shoulders relax a little. She was gonna tell Sal later that she wasn’t really in the mood to joke about anything at the moment, but it made her appreciate that Sal cared enough to apologize, even if it wasn’t really that big of a deal.
They kinda just stared at each other for a moment, until Anya realized that Oh, yeah, she should probably respond to that.
“Ah, it was really not a big deal, Sal! I was just gonna tell you later that I’m not really in the mood to joke much right now.” Anya laughed sheepishly and scratched the back of her neck a little.
“Ok good, I, uh… Just makin’ sure, y’know?”
Another awkward pause. They both glanced away for a moment before looking at each other again. The look on each other’s faces made them smile a little, genuinely, for the first time since the crash.
...
“So… wanna play some board games?”