Author's Note: See end notes for more information.
The ship under him is an Arleigh Burke-class guided missile destroyer.
She has a displacement of ninety-three hundred tons and has a length of five hundred and nine feet. Plus six inches.
He knows those six inches. He knows the twists and turns of her passageways and the smallest of compartments. He knows her crew and her sound and her power.
But for the life of him, he cannot help but feel out of place.
He thinks perhaps it isn't himself that feels so disjointed and disoriented, but rather the ship herself. He has a new crew, new faces and fresh officers, but that isn't what concerns him. It is the emptiness those passageways hold, the vacant space left behind when his ship was converted back to her original glory. There is a missing piece now, a void where there should have been whirring machinery and glass vials, plastic sheeting and hospital cots.
A void where there should have been knowing eyes and hidden smiles.
Thinking back, he can recall the tenacious doctor moving in as though she owned the space she'd taken. That woman fought for her ground and held it, no matter the form: ship compartment, opinions, research, and guilt. The last one cut him deep, opened a part of him wide that he hadn't felt in all his years of marriage. She bore her guilt on her sleeve, in place of her heart, even if she surrounded herself with what she thought were thick walls and iron will. And even then, he had backed her into a corner, and then persecuted her for acting as he'd designed; she had stood defiant, but he'd seen the pain there, the crumbling under that iron will. He had betrayed a tenuous trust they'd built, and yet there had been hope in her eyes when they'd stood in that hall, speaking with double meaning and desire.
He can remember vividly the glint in her eyes, the confidence in her posture. She had performed a miracle, and she was making her way to perform another. They had been out of their element with one another for all their time together, yet she had looked at him in that moment as though she had always known him, and always would.
She is forging ahead now, ripping into a new disease with the same bull-dog tendencies as before, though now she has government backing and lab assistants and an uncluttered world not built of seafaring and war. She will cut down this new threat, of that he is confident, returning victorious and worshiped, carrying more weight and hopefully less guilt.
There is little the world could do to repay her, and her sacrifices - not of the flesh but of the soul - will be lost to time; her deeds will become something of legend and myth. History will remember her as a hero, but he will remember her smile and her touch and her strength.
He knows the ship has a displacement of ninety-three hundred tons and has a length of five hundred and nine feet. Plus six inches.
He knows it feels empty without her.
Author's End Note: Not really much to work off of for this new season, so I looked back a bit and speculated on where they would be now. And thank you to those who have reviewed and favourited.