1Some Witty Title

"Harper, what's wrong with your girlfriend?" Beka asked as soon as she saw him again.

"She's not my girlfriend, I don't think, and there are a lot of things wrong with her," Harper wasn't going to get into specifics, but as an after thought he added, "Why?"

"Did she "sneak" around a lot on Earth?"

"She could get within five feet of a Nietzschean with out him noticing...Why?"

"She said she remembers me."

"But she never met...Oh." Harper's expression softened and Beka thought she could make out a hint of a smile.

"So what happened between you two?" Beka wanted as much information about their relationship as she could get. But for now she wouldn't pry if he refused to tell.

Harper shrugged. "It didn't work out."

"Ok." Beka played with one of his tools and stayed silent. She knew him well enough to know that eventually he'd talk. He was much too in love with the sound of his own voice.

"I did something stupid to hurt her, and so instead of facing her about it I went to look for a job, hoping she'd be more angry about me leaving than about what I did to her."

"But she wasn't," Beka guessed.

"And she was raging when I got back. I didn't handle it well, and I yelled back and told her about Bobby and how I was leaving soon so it didn't matter."

"Didn't take that too well either, huh?"

"She called me a vile-insensitive-conceited-asshole, then threw a few things at me until I left. I had my cousin go into our shelter to get my things for me. He ended up calling her a crazy bitch and she ended up giving him a black eye. She never took any shit from us," he remember that last part with a smile, but it faded quickly, and he busied himself with the fixing ofAndromeda.

Beka patted his back and left him to his work.


"Trance, why is she here?" Dylan probed his own little star.

"I'm not sure. But I don't think she can be all that bad."

"I think she's trouble. Any friend of Harper's is trouble," growled Rhade from a corner.

"Is that so? Who are we talking about?" Riley caught them all off guard. None of them had heard her approach. She looked pleased as she noted the surprise on the Nietzschean's face.

"You actually," Trance said before either of the men could. Who knew how long she'd been listening?

"I see." She raised her eyebrows. She was used to people talking about her, especially after her best friend had betrayed and abandoned her. After he left she kept to herself, and seemed to slowly go mad. It was the loneliness that drove her to finish Zoey; she almost never touched metal and tools. Riley preferred the organic stuff, Seamus dealt with the inventions. She wondered what rumor they were discussing.

"We were just wondering whether or not you were dangerous," Trance answered her thoughts.

Riley smiled and shook her head. "I grew up on Earth. The only way to survive as a female child and not be sold into slavery or raped is to be dangerous. But me, I found myself a group when I was young."

"Safety in numbers," nodded Dylan.

"Precisely, Captain. In that group we all had jobs specific to our talents. I was look-out, cook, and spy (when I had to be). Alone, very insignificant. But together..."Riley left her sentence hanging in the air around them.

Beka's footsteps clanked down the passage and all four of them watched her approach. "Having a party and no one invited me?" Beka joked as she drew closer.

"I think I'd better get going," Riley excused herself and left the room more noticeably than when she came.

Beka reminded Riley of her sister, Megan. Megan was older, and was her only family when the Magog came to Earth for the first time. Harper wasn't the only one who lost family to those parasitic scum. She begged Riley to kill her so that the larvae couldn't grow. She was five at the time; one of her first memories was killing her own sister. The memory was buried deep within her, and not a soul knew. She felt it to be a terrible crime, killing your flesh and blood. She grew nervous, sometimes hostile, when she thought about it. And she knew it wasn't helping her status with Beka at all.

It all frustrated her, and suddenly she was exhausted again. Worn to the bone by memories that would not fade. She wished she could forget, be overcome with some dream of better days.

She went back to Zoey and opened a panel in the floor. There she kept her treasures, her most prized possessions and smiled to herself as she pulled some delicate thing from the stash. It was a book, an ancient leather bound paper book, worth who knows how much to collectors. She sighed as she sunk into her bed. The book creaked in protest as she opened it, but soon settled into the bliss of being read. And as she was absorbed into battles, and banters, and quests, and love, Riley forgot all but the words. It was better this way.