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Her quarters were completely silent. The boys were dead asleep, both of them, this late at night, and there was nothing but Claire, the stars, and the cup of hot chocolate she was hoping would soothe her enough to allow her to follow the boys into slumber.

It had been unsettling to see Paul again. Not because she had any lingering feelings for him. She had been honest with him that all that was past now. Not just the love, the passion, the excitement, but also the pain and the guilt and the incredible sense of inadequacy she had carried away from the failed remnants of their brief marriage.

Sitting there, sipping her cocoa, she tried to pull up those emotions, any shadow of them that still remained, but they were gone. All she had left was a fondness for Paul himself, a smile for the good times they'd had, and a sense of pity for the girl she had been, who'd had no idea what she was getting into.

Her life now was so much better than that girl with her broken heart could ever have imagined. She had Marcus and Ty, she had her pick of assignments, she had a home here on the Orville, she had friends.

And that was enough.

Or so she told herself. The truth—the one she liked to bury below her professionalism and the mantle of parenthood, the one she hid deep so it didn't slip out during long chats with Kelly and Talla over bottles of wine—was that she was lonely. These dark hours stretched out far into the night sometimes, just her and the stars. And Claire loved the stars. She had made her home among them by choice.

But tonight—many nights—they were cold companions.

The truth was that she missed Isaac. That was the secret that lay in the very bottom of her heart. She missed Isaac. Not just the simulated version, or the sex, either. Claire missed his presence in her life. She missed being able to reach out to him at any time she needed someone to talk to. She missed the certainty of a thoughtful conversation that might go just where she wanted but might just as easily go somewhere completely surprising. She missed being able to tuck her head into his metal shoulder and ask him to tell her something and learn about things in the galaxy she had never dreamed of.

She missed his bluntness, his complete unawareness that there were things people didn't talk about. Most of all, she missed knowing that she was special to him. Oh, he would deny it. He was a machine, after all. One person was just like another to him. But it was true. He used to seek her out, bring her a banana when he knew she hadn't eaten, save up things he had questions about to ask her. She had mattered to him. Out of all the organic life forms he had ever met, Claire had been significant.

She missed that more than she could possibly have explained.

For a moment, she thought about messaging him. Unless he was charging, he would be awake, working, and he would come to her if she asked. And why shouldn't she? He had rehabilitated his image with the crew, Claire herself had forgiven him long ago for his actions during the Kaylon invasion, the boys appeared to have moved past it after the incident with Marcus and the graffiti … why shouldn't Claire be with Isaac, if that was what she wanted? All the emotions Paul had wanted from her existed within her for Isaac.

But something in her held back. Something that was hesitant to reach out for fear of being hurt again. Claire had always prided herself on focusing on hope, on the future, instead of dwelling on the past and letting it hold her back, but in this case … she was afraid. And while she hated to admit to the fear, it was there, and she couldn't quite seem to get past it.

Isaac had determined when he first came aboard the Orville that learning to think the way humans did would be beneficial to his mission. At first, he had felt the experience negatively impacted his processing speed, but eventually as he got used to the slower, more deliberate use of words to calculate rather than pure data, he was able to be more efficient with it and thus to gain from it the benefit he had intended.

He had found this particularly useful when it came to his relationship with Claire Finn. She was extremely human, highly verbal, and contemplative in a way he found few humans to be. Conversation with her was often surprising; she had a way of making mental connections that he had not expected, leading to new thoughts and conclusions.

In the terminology of humans, Isaac had to admit to himself that he missed her. As he had said to the admiral, he found it hard to process her daily absence from his existence. And he felt … diminished, in a way, without that personal connection with her. Particularly in the dark hours when most of the Orville slept, and he was still operational, working in his lab. Those were the times he knew Dr. Finn would be awake, as well, looking out at the stars, thinking deeply as she tended to do at this hour.

Over and over, he had calculated the advisability of contacting her in the late hours, suggesting a resumption of their previous relationship, but somehow the numbers failed to provide him with a definitive answer.

The discussion with the admiral added a new variable to the calculation, however. The admiral had clearly hoped in his turn to resume relations with Dr. Finn, and had not found her receptive. If Isaac understood humans correctly, the admiral approaching him as someone who had been involved in a relationship with the doctor had been something of a breach of protocol—the type of decision made when a person wanted to gauge their former and prospective partner against someone else of their choosing.

Isaac, somewhat to his own surprise, had deliberately presented Dr. Finn as a person who did not need someone such as the admiral to alter the course of her life. That had not been entirely accurate. She was a highly passionate woman who had much to offer a partner, and who looked for a great deal of satisfaction from him—not just physical and emotional, but also intellectual, which was one of the many reasons Isaac had sought out her companionship over the course of his time on the Orville.

But instead of characterizing her that way to the admiral, he had chosen to keep those estimations of her to himself. Because he did not want her to resume relations with the admiral. He wanted her presence back in his own daily operations. Admittedly, the concept of wanting something was foreign to Kaylon processing. But he had run the optimization estimates enough times to be aware that he worked better when he had her to talk to. Everything else was semantics.

When the admiral was lost to the alien species, Isaac decided that he would make the approach. In the way of humans, Dr. Finn might need comfort, someone to talk to in her grief.

He found her in her favorite restaurant, eating alone, as she did so often, reading something on her data pad, sipping wine to the strains of piano music. Pedestrian piano music, in Isaac's estimation, but not all humans had Ty's aptitude for the instrument.

"Good evening, Dr. Finn."

Claire looked up at Isaac, thinking that he was just the person she wanted to see right now, and wondering if he had known. "Isaac. What are you doing here?"

"I am … checking on you."

"Excuse me?"

"I have observed that when a crew member aboard the Orville endures a traumatic occurrence, other members of their immediate social construct inquire 'how they are doing'."

Claire smiled. He never failed to surprise her. "That's true."

"How are you doing?"

"I'm okay." She was. Paul was lost, that's true, but he wasn't gone, not entirely. Some part of him remained. It was possible some day they could retrieve him—and Nurse Park, and the others. Stranger things had happened. And he had been lost doing what he loved, exploring space.

"Very well."

Isaac turned to go, and Claire's heart sank. She had wanted him to stay. Maybe … maybe this had been his idea of a first move. Maybe it was her turn now. She had told him she needed time to forgive him. "Wait. I hear the Admiralty has suspended further exploration of the Naclav sector for the moment," she continued as he came back to the table.

"That is correct."

"Probably for the best." Was this awkward small talk the best she could do?

They looked at each other for a moment, then Isaac said, "I—" and stopped, the hesitation uncharacteristic for him. "Wish to offer my condolences. On the loss of your friend."

He had come so far, learned so much about the ways of humans. Claire was proud of him for that. "That's very kind of you. Paul was a special person. I'm just … glad I got to see him, one last time."

"He spoke favorably of you, as well."

Well, that was a surprise. "You talked about me, with Paul?"

"Our shared history of social and sexual intimacy with you provided a common frame of reference."

A truly Isaac-ian clinical way of saying they had compared notes on her. Claire couldn't help but laugh. It was a point in Paul's favor that he had taken Isaac seriously as her ex-partner. What she wouldn't have given to be a fly on the wall for that conversation—if such a thing as a fly were to exist on the Orville, that is.

The laugh decided her. She would take the step they both appeared to want. "Do you know, I have missed you?"

"Thank you, Doctor."

She gestured at the seat opposite from her. "Do you want to sit down?"

Again, that faint and uncharacteristic hesitation, almost as though he was nervous. But then he sat, and they talked, and it was the same as it had always been, but it was different, too. They had learned what it was like to be without each other; they had determined they didn't enjoy it. It wasn't a full resumption of their former relationship—that would take time, and care—but it was enough that tonight the stars didn't look cold. They looked like home.