“Just how long has it been since your engineer went missing?” Stella asked, while I was busy having my Existential Moment.

Nice fucking move, Weaver.  I must have sorely underestimated the kind of time dilation we had experienced.  All that time, gone, and me with it, in a sense.

Stella squeezed my shoulder.  She was so… stable.  Sturdy.  She was taking everything impossibly well.  It helped me catch my breath, at least.  It was a life or death situation, I reminded myself.

“Miss Cleary hasn’t told you?  It must be almost thirty years now.  Why do you ask?”

Yep.  That would explain it all.

Something in the back of my mind had me jumping in front of that ‘Why do you ask?’

“I never told her the story,” I lied truthfully.  She had been there for it all.  “Good to know, though, because I modified our drive and was worried about time dilation.  We need to get our bearings.”

Cap’n narrowed her eyes at me in that way she always did when I opted for the forgiveness-rather-than-permission approach to a project.  Stella was looking at me with her head slightly tilted.  Very cutely.  Not the time, Weaver.  There were more pressing matters.  For example, why wasn’t I bothering to dispel the mistaken assumptions about me?

“You, Miss Cleary, are the spitting image of your father, evidently in more ways than one.  Frankly, I’m surprised he ever settled down.  He was married to his work almost as much as I’m married to my ship.”

“Well, the old bird always did have plenty of love to go around,” I said automatically.  Wait, shit.  Amend.  “...Is what Dad would always say.”

Had I seen Stella stifling a laugh?

Cap’n sighed and turned back to Stella.

“Lila Osman, by the way.  Do I have you to thank for bringing her home?”  She held out an arm.

“Stella Celera, pleased to meet you.  Weaver… helped me out of a tight spot in imperial space, and mentioned she knew a place we could go.”

Poor Stella went to grab Cap’n’s hand and was completely baffled when she got a hearty shake by the wrist instead.  I’d never seen her look awkward before.  I definitely laughed at the sight.  She’d learn, though.

The conversation turned to small talk from there.  ‘If you need anything, don’t hesitate to ask.’  ‘I’ve heard your ship is a stunning old custom job.’  ‘Tell us about yourself.’  And so on.

It gave me a little room to process.  Losing thirty years sucked, of course.  I had fallen behind my home and my crew, and I wasn’t sure where to go from there.  But Stella was rubbing off on me, and dammit, we were tenacious folk here in Sanctuary.  I was alive, I was home, and I wasn’t alone.  Strangely, being mistaken for my own daughter didn’t bother me all that much.  And Stella would probably appreciate the anonymity.  I wondered how she managed to be so unaffected.

“Say, Weaver, what do we do now that we’re here?”

Stella posed a very good question.

“I guess I always assumed I’d join ba—join a crew.  Pirate’s life for me and all that.  I guess there are a lot of things we could do, though.  There’s a place for everyone here somewhere.  Now that I think about it, I’d like to stick together, if we can.”

She nodded.

“Me too.  You and the Duchess are all I’ve got these days.  Captain, Aqila?  Do you have any thoughts on the matter?”

“Miss Cleary here seems so like her father I doubt she belongs anywhere but an engine room,” said Cap’n.

“New ships and sailors are always in demand,” said Aqila.  “Plus, a sweet couple like you starting a crew in an elegant old bird like yours?  Imagine the impression you’d make.”

“We’re—”

“Um—”

Stella’s face looked about as red as mine felt.  Of course, I’d have been lying if I had said it never crossed my mind, but…  Last I had checked we were just best friends who happened to have been living alone together for a few months while occasionally cheating death and coming unstuck in time and helping each other discover things about ourselves.  So sure, we had bonded a little.  We were in it together now.

“Ohhhh,” said Aqila.  “My mistake.”

She didn’t look at all sorry.

“Anyway…”  Stella cleared her throat.  “I’m open to the idea if Weaver is.”

Well, I had sort of fallen in love with that little ship.

“As if I could ever say no to that.”

---

Establishing the Duchess as part of the flock wasn’t going to be a single day’s errand, of course.  Sanctuary was by no means the lawless hive that imperials liked to imagine dens of pirates to be.  We were a world, and more than that, a world populated by runaways and refugees.  Sure, we had no kings, no masters, but that many people don’t thrive without organizing themselves.  And sometimes organization meant bureaucracy.  Nobody was perfect.

New captains had to be recognized by a council of standing ones.  Cap’n Osman, who unsurprisingly was a well-respected senior in the flock these days, assured us she’d put in a good word, but assemblies took time to arrange.  Add to that: choosing and awaiting refits to the Duchess, finding sailors, making plans…  Not to mention Stella and I needed to take some time to settle in and adjust.

It would be a while.

At least it was still easy enough to establish residency so we’d have cost-of-living accounts, especially with the head start from ‘Dad’ having history here.

When we finally turned in—aboard the Duchess for now; she was homey, and spared us the trouble of finding an inn or apartment—we were completely exhausted.  Sure, we hadn’t done terribly much yet, but there was a lot to take in.

So we opted for a quiet night.  Until Stella confronted me, that is.

“Weaver,” she said sternly, unprompted.  “Why not tell them who you actually are?”

I had been avoiding that one.

“I—”

“If it’s to avoid giving me away, you really needn’t worry.  30 years is a bit late for suspicion, and I doubt anyone’s bothered looking for me in a long, long time.”

Was that it?  I pondered it for a moment.  No, though I had hoped it would spare her some trouble.  Honestly, thinking about it all brought up that pressure in my chest, all the worries I was swimming in.  I had to keep my mind off what was lost.

“It gives me a fresh start, I think.  This way I’m not the shut-in, or the troublemaker, or the one who missed out on my crew’s lives anymore.  I’m just Weaver.”

She hugged me so tight I thought I might burst.

“You could be Weaver either way, you know.  But I’m behind you all the same.  And if you change your mind, I’ll back you up, okay?”

There were several other things that we needed to debrief ourselves about at some point, but for now we slept.

---

The next day I insisted on finally replacing my long lost clothing.

The first thing on my shopping list was to get sized for a new pressure suit.  The shape-memory materials they used were unlikely to tear from poor sizing, but with the new measurements I had in certain places, I didn’t want to risk my old suit becoming counterproductive and ruining my hips or ribs with too much compression.

They had apparently shifted to new materials over the past few decades, but the basic idea hadn't changed, and soon enough I had a brand new space suit, fresh off the autofab.

After that came the fun parts: spacewear, shipwear, casual wear.  ...Underwear.

Technically the outer layers I had worn when I met Stella were still passable, but they were also a bit… bland.  And there seemed to be options with newer types of shielding, so I went ahead and got a new set, including a somewhat dramatic long coat.

Everything else I was starting from scratch on.  And by the stars, I was going to make the most of it.

For shipboard, I stuck to the basics: pants, shirts, jackets, things that looked crisp and would have good distribution for magnetic weighting.  I very much appreciated the way they looked on the new me, though.  The rolled-up sleeves and ponytail look definitely felt my speed.

Casual clothes were an adventure.  I had hardly given what I wore a second thought, before, but now?  There were so many possibilities.  I came away with an armful of lightweight outfits ranging from cute dresses to lazy comfort to things I could work in and get ratty.

And of course, Stella begged me to show her everything.  I obliged, and I swear she smiled wider with each thing I tried on.  I know I did.

---

Stella found me in my cabin after we ate that night, and sat beside me on my bunk.

“Tell me more about Sanctuary?” she said.  “I want to get to know my new home.”

“We should spend some time planetside sometime.  It’s beautiful.  We’re a garden world, technically, even though there’s only so much water.  Plenty for us to feed ourselves, though.  There are a lot of deserts, but they’re all alive, and unique.  Not really any jungles, but the coasts are pretty lush, and there are plenty of plains, enough for more grazeland than we ever expect to need.  We grow crops in these tiered greenhouses.  I visited one once, it was fascinating.  Oh, and the mountains are incredible...”

I carried on, rambling about things I knew from my schooling or from visits during shore leave until Stella would ask questions about something else.

“If we’re self-sufficient, why the pirates?” she asked at one point.  It took me a while to get the words together for that one.  It was complicated.

We had enough to eat, but were poor in other resources.  Heavy elements that our sun was too young to have formed in its past lives, for one.  New technology.  Trade.  Information.  Safety.

The Governance of Sanctuary was founded with a set of central goals:  Needs met, knowledge shared, shelter given.  We had no standing military, barely any armaments, and plenty of places weren’t fans of our social order.  Imperial Galcorp certainly wasn’t.

So we found refuge in secrecy, and what we couldn’t make for ourselves, we took.

I hoped I explained it well enough to Stella.