Finished 26 July 2005
It took some time for Alex to get used to having Sophia in the periphery of his vision. She looks altogether too much like Yuris; he'd find himself in a faint haze of false comfort before he remembered that things were different now, and then he would blink and turn, focus, and have to fight to keep his expression stable.
For her part Sophia appeared one morning with her long hair elaborately braided and clipped in place at the nape of her neck and took to wearing glasses, and Alex spent a few days inspecting the crew with the distinct feeling that something was missing.
He didn't say anything about it. Neither did Sophia. No one really knew whether she was actually myopic, and when one day the Silvana hit a storm, knocking Sophia's glasses off her nose and shattering the lenses, she continued as if nothing had happened until the crisis was over and no one ever dared to ask. The glasses reappeared, repaired, a few days later.
After that it became progressively obvious that Sophia was horribly, utterly in love with Alex Rowe. She knows it and he knows she knows; the entire ship's crew knows and Alex knows that, too. No one says anything, but it's like white noise: silence that isn't quite silent.
(Once Alex was walking in the corridor and overheard the mechanics talking to Sophia, goodnaturedly and determinedly not naming names and agendas but utterly transparent all the same: the captain was a good man and deserved to be a happier person, he sort of had eyes like a goldfish but that wasn't his fault, he'd had a hard life, didn't she think he would be a lot better if someone was to take care of him?
"I think the captain can take care of himself," Sophia replied with a mild, amiable smile, and Alex blinked and silently made his escape before anyone noticed he was there.)
There is no space in Alex's life for Sophia, which is something else they both know. He's simply not capable of loving her. If no one brings the matter up, if all those words hovering just below the edge of speaking are never actually said, never made real, then it will be all right. He will not have to sack Sophia for personal reasons.
Sophia never drives him to this decision. He supposes she realises that Alex plays the strict but fair captain whenever possible – which is how she's managed to creep up the ranks to vice-captain, at his right hand and almost permanently in his sight now, and which is why his crew loves him so much – but also that if the only alternative is to resign as captain of the Silvana, he will do it. If Alex loses the Silvana he will not be able to get at Delphine.
And Delphine's death is the only thing Alex is living for now.
It's disconcerting to imagine Sophia thinking these things, though, contemplating the sheer eye-watering effort that goes into maintaining this grand illusion, so Alex doesn't and Sophia, in her smiling, unperturbed manner, continues to carry out her duties to perfection.
There is a momentum to stories like his, Alex knows. It all adds up, the number of words left unsaid by a steadily increasing number of people. Some night, drunk with pain and perhaps with more than pain, he is meant to stumble into Sophia's quarters, muttering Yuris' name – which is why he does not drink, and locks his quarters at night in the hope that searching for the key will give him enough time to come to his senses.
This cannot go on. But it must, it will, and it does.
And when Sophia finally resigns, unexpectedly, what strikes Alex first and hardest – more than guilt at being unable to give her anything in return for all her years of devotion except unnecessary cruelty – is profound relief, the prospect of white noise turning to true silence and suddenly no one needing to pretend that nothing is happening because nothing is happening.
It's an emptiness that he can get used to. He has other things on his mind.
