AN: I'm still alive! Here's a new chapter!
Leland was a young, new father the night he met Delbert Doppler. An amateur astronomer, he had been drawn to the community center one evening to attend a free lecture by a local scientist and his young wife.
Delbert had watched from the lectern as the door opened and a brawny, brown haired man ducked into the first seat available, his cap stuck into his back pocket. Across the lecture hall, Delbert observed this markedly different occupant.
Skin bronzed by long hours in the sun and hands made rough at the mast, the details are all there before him. This man was a laborer, the value of hard work cut into the early valleys of his face. This man was not a member of the scientific community on Montressor. It wasn't uncommon for him to encounter a few village hobbyists now and then, but they were little better than children in a sombre hall as this.
But this particular gentleman took in his surroundings in a calculated manner, eyes snapping between peeling outreach posters and notices of town events.
He begins. The slides of nearby nebulae blaze past him on colored light beams- and he is reminded of his tongue.
"Thank you for joining me this evening. My name is Doctor Delbert Doppler, and this lecture series will be the basis of your astronomical education." Somehow, he makes it through the first sentence without stammering or forgetting himself halfway through. Abagail is really the showman of the two, and he looks to her one final, pleading time. 'Please don't make me go through with this,' is all in his gaze.
From behind the projector, her blue eyes light in laughter. 'You'll be fine.' Her hand covers her mouth to stifle her giggles and her eyes revert back to the screen in front of her.
"The study of space, astronomy and astrophysics, can all be boiled down to life science. You, me, the ground beneath your feet and the stars in the sky are all alive, and we breathe as one." Delbert watches the eyes in the audience grow with anticipation, and wonder.
"All matter in the universe is made out of the same thing. Rows and rows of delicately placed atoms are knit together to make all kinds of things. We are carbon, so are the rocks, and so are the stars. On an atomic level, we are all the same. But unlike the rocks and the stars, we are in a position to ask why. To wonder, is the greatest sentient endeavor."
In this tiny room of mismatched tiles and wooden paneling and missing light fixtures, Delbert feels more at home than his large lecture hall at the academy. The bowed heads of furiously scribbling note takers is familiar, but a lone pair of silver eyes meet his from across the room, surprising him.
"We are the universe, made conscious of itself. Our biological rhythms are the symphony of the cosmos, music embedded deep within us to which we dance, even when we can't name the tune."
From the back of the hall, Leland is transfixed. Astronomy had been something of a passion of his since he was a small boy. Working at the shipyards, at the mast by day and studying the stars by night was almost satisfactory. Leland could learn to put aside the wanderlust that plucked at him when he looked up. How can one want something they have never experienced? How could he long so badly for the adventure that he had never had?
Leland stays for the whole lecture, hanging on the Doctor's every fantastic word. It's not a long lecture, maybe thirty minutes in total, but it carries the promise of weekly meetings. When it is over, and everyone is filing out the back door, he is surprised when the Doctor makes his way through the crowds to him.
"I uh, couldn't help but notice you were the only one who wasn't taking notes." He seems a bit offended, until he continues. "Everyone always takes notes, and most of the people here tonight have sat in my lectures at the university at some point. But I'm sure I haven't ever seen you."
Leland's eyes raise from the ground. "It's true, i'm no scholar, just a guy with a rooftop."
Delbert smiles, he was like him once. "I have a rather capable telescope at home, should you be interested."
Taken aback, Leland almost doesn't know what to say. "That's very generous of you, Doctor. My wife however," he teeters towards the door, as if his eye had just caught the late hour.
"Sarah's gonna kill me, I've got to get going." His hand brushes through his hair impatiently- and it's hidden underneath his cap in a moment.
Footsteps behind him- Abagail wraps her arms around his shoulders, her cheek pressing into his ear. "You did so well!"
When he turns, Leland is out the door, walking alone in the purple night.
Sterling is six when he comes to live at Mayhew Mansion.
Somber faced and sleepy eyed, he is marched in through the front door by the sheriff, the heels of his shoes scuffing the polished marble floors.
"Pick up those feet, boy!" His eyes snap up, catching glimpses of red chiffon through ivory columns. The woman of the house sauntered into view from the dark of the house. "You!" Her lace fan points at a servant hunched over a rag on the grand staircase, "If I don't see my face in that marble by noon, you'll have a date with the whip."
The sheriff stiffens beside him as she floats down the staircase, regal and practiced as their old traditions dictate.
"Now Sal," she purrs, "I thought we talked about this."
Sal backpedals, throwing his hands up in surrender. "You're always complainin' that you don't have enough help around here."
"So your response to that is to bring me every shipyard orphan you come across?" Her black eyes sweep down to Sterling briefly- disinterestedly and disregarding.
Sal shrugs, his hands in his pockets. "Workhouse won't take any more, say they're full up."
She sighs, her hands on her hips. "I don't know why I do you favors all the time."
"You're a peach, Lottie." Sal noses her cheek affectionately and her fan comes down hard on his arm.
"Don't call me that," her tone is long suffering, the kind only a sibling could have. "stay out of trouble!" she calls to his retreating form.
Lottie, or as Sterling would later learn Miss Charlotte, was the owner of one of the most profitable plantations this side of the pleadies. Having bought out the smaller family owned farms outlying her property, she had expanded her empire tenfold. It was the shining triumph of commerce, an ivory palace in the middle of the black wheat plains.
Sterling had started in the kitchens, plucking chickens and sweeping floors, and seven long years had eclipsed him in the service of Miss Charlotte. He had grown strong under her hand, and Miss Charlotte had grown to favor him.
He had been scrubbing dishes in the kitchen late into the night after a large dinner party. Eight plantation owners from the neighboring systems had come to Mayhew Masion for Miss Charlotte's annual Christmas Party. For the first and only time the entire year, the house was in full swing. Guests had filled all the spare bedrooms, and the staff had nearly tripled. But as night had fallen and the guests had all settled in, the house had returned to its silence.
By the time the kitchen was clean, the gibbous moon was awash in the middle of the marbled sky- midnight. It was unusual for him to be kept this late in the house, and when he turned to leave through the small door in the corner, a scarlet scream pierced the air.
The sound of smashing glass led him to Miss Charlotte's room on the third floor, away from the other bedrooms. Charlotte Mayhew, fierce plantation owner was cornered, her arm pinned above her head. In the deep brown eyes Sterling had served all these years, he saw fear.
With a silver candlestick, he struck.
It had been years since he had seen Charlotte Mayhew. When he woke up in his bunk, his heart pounding from adrenaline and her silken scream just a moment from his waking ears, all he can do is sob.
He doesn't expect a tender hand on his brow, or the mellifluous voice in his ear. "It's alright, we're here now."
Peeling his eyes open, washes of cream and brown splotches are indistinguishable, but the auburn and green beside him can mean only one person.
"Ma'am?" Voice hoarse and tongue thickened by sleep, Sterling swims the layers to marginal awareness in an uncoordinated flail. At once, hands are on his chest and arm, restraint first, then gentle reassurance.
"Try not to struggle, Lieutenant." It's now that he is aware of the needle in his arm, and the way the eggshell blankets were so very different to his own bedroll. "You're in the infirmary, do you remember anything?"
The clock hangs crooked on the wall across from him, it's ticking drowned in the various whirring machines and acrid splashes of disinfectant. Sterling remembers nothing.
Across the room, the doctor fiddles with a light box, jamming pictures of a brain into it and flicking the lamp on. "He shouldn't remember anything, actually."
Amelia's eyes narrow. "What have you found, Doctor Strallan?"
The tall, blonde doctor pulls a small penlight from his breast pocket, pointing to the pictures. "What Sterling experienced is commonly known as a 'fugue state'. The question is, why?"
"Why indeed, that brain looks fine." The nurse pokes up from her charts briefly, and Strallan turns, an icy glare in his crisp blue eyes.
"Back to your charts, Fieldham." Her furious scribbling fills the awkward, stretching silence.
Strallan turns to the Admiral, his thin lips pursed. "I did however find an unusual compound in his blood."
Amelia tuts, and a much more awake Sterling sits carefully in the cot. "Ma'am, I can explain." He can't meet her eyes, but he can only imagine what happened when he thought he had went to bed.
She snorts at his explanation, "Maybe you should explain to the serviceman you cold cocked in the head with your pistol?"
He straightens his shirt, throwing his legs over the side of the bed carefully. Were they hurt bad? He can feel the truth of it in his hands, and at once the horror of his actions is like an ocean. Pressing heavy on his chest, and pulling at him from every direction, it's as if he is being split apart at the soul.
Just as he finds himself spiraling, her autumn voice is cold. "You're compromised, Sterling."
He is alone after that, even the doctor gone to leave him with his sorrow. Sterling beds down with it, long though he is for sleep, and the silence deafens him.