When the ocean meets fire

~~~~~~~~~~~~Distraction~~~~~~~~~~~~

Dedicated to Weez32 because she helped me so much on this chapter! And she said this would cheer her up :)

Thank you so much for reading

ThoseSunsetEyes

Xx

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As Taz finally burst through the door to her room on the ship, she felt herself able to breathe again. Unfortunately, exhaling after the feelings from her past had flooded through her resulted in a large lump in her throat which threatened to surface as tears. She tried to breathe out as best she could but it was no use; she just felt even more light-headed. Sitting down in her bed, she folded her arms across her protectively and tried to think of something that would take her mind off the memories which still so badly affected her.

Come on Taz, jou've got to push de thoughts away. Jou can't let de bad things from jour past get in de way of jour job!

Just don't think about dem- don't think about Up...

Oh who are jou kidding? Jou can't not think about him! It's impossible!

Okay, so it's not all bad memories with Up; it's mostly good ones! Jou've gotta think of a good memory, and concentrate on dat.

Okay Taz, think. One of jour good memories with him- and it has to be a powerful one...

Taz would've snapped her fingers as the answer sprang into her head had she not been trying to stop the tears from falling. Of course: she cringed a little as she remembered her thoughts at the time, but dios muerto it was a great memory: the time he taught her calculus.

                                                                       ***

Taz  stared at the book. The book stared back at her. She felt like taking the knife that Up had given her a week after she joined the Academy and plunging it right through the calculus book which seemed to taunt her just by existing.

She'd realised that she'd been spending all her time in the gym, training for her combat exam, but she hadn't spent any time revising for the annoyingly compulsory maths test. All this was needed to get her out of the Academy, to become a real Starship Ranger, so she was going to try and cram as much of it into her head as possible. Unfortunately, this wasn't as easy as it had sounded to her before, and she searched her mind for reasons why she couldn't just concentrate.

It wasn't until the reason walked into the library, where she was studying, that she realised what, or indeed who, the reason was.

"Hey Taz!" her best friend, an almost-nineteen-year-old with dark brown hair, incredible bluer-than-blue eyes and a rather muscular build walked up to her and sat down in the seat next to her. She instantly felt her heart try to leap out of her chest and her palms start to sweat. Luckily, she wasn't one to wear their heart on their sleeve, and thought she gave a pretty cool and calm reply.

"Hey." she smiled but by the way he raised one eyebrow, she could tell through his absolute hotness that overwhelmed her, that he didn't believe her smile.

"Well that was enthusiastic; what's up?" he crossed his arms and slid down on the table so his chin was resting on his forearms and he was looking up at her through his eyelashes. So. Freakin'. Hot. Avoiding answering the question, she asked a question that she'd only just realised was quite important.

"Hey- what are jou doing at de Academy? I thought jou were meant to be at the G.L.E.E base?" he chuckled at the obvious change of subject, but answered anyway.