A Trip To Tuanaki

Chapter 11

Mal wakes after only a few hours' rest. It's reflexive, at this point; he's so used to his watch schedule with Gunny that even if it had massively changed for some reason, he has a feeling he'd still be unable to get more than a few hours' rest at a time. And then, of course, there are the days when he never gets any sleep, so at least this hasn't been one of those. In fact, it's been a better rest than any he's had in a while — he slept deeper, for all he's awake now.

The real problem is that awake now means preparing to go on watch or just wasting time, and if he's slept like he normally does, there isn't much time to procrastinate. Only just enough that he'll be ready before he heads up into the bracing night air, and no more.

With a sigh, he wrenches his eyes open — and immediately reaches for his gun. But as he blinks the image becomes clearer — it's just Alice, asleep in his chair.

The very same chair that he'd given up because she'd insisted she wasn't tired and she had lots of things to think about. He smiles to himself a little, wondering how long she lasted before falling asleep.

Then he hauls himself out of bed, pulls on his boots and very quietly makes his way over to the desk. In a smooth, swift motion, he gets his arms up under her and picks her up bridal style. He carefully settles her down on the bunk, and then, quietly as he can, opens one of the under-bunk storage drawers. From the drawer he pulls a blanket — not terribly heavy, but good enough she'll stay warm even though the pleasant heat from his little stove is dissipating.

He carefully spreads the blanket over her, and he'd've thought he'd totally succeeded at his sneaky bait-and-switch maneuver if she didn't curl into the blanket the moment it's been spread over her.

The fact that she speaks doesn't help with his feeling of accomplishment much either.

"Goodnight, Mal," she says. "Have a good watch."

Then she rolls into a tighter ball and pulls the covers up almost over her nose. Mal grins. "Goodnight, Alice," he says. "Sleep well."

#

He trades off with Gunny for what turns out to be an incredibly boring watch. Not that he expected much better, when he was going into it — honestly, he expected to be tired enough that he fell asleep on the wheel, but he's actually surprisingly energized for once.

He's just terribly bored. They're too far from Tuanaki to see land, even if you could see anything but stars at night. At least they're high enough up that the sea distantly beneath them isn't easily visible — there's just the ever-present whoosh of wind, and the stars, and the cooling night, and eventually the slowly-lightening sky. But oh, how the hours crawl after sending Gunny down to get some sleep.

Finally, he heads back inside to get some feeling back into his hands — maybe he'll ask Den to make a soup, he's always good at those. Mal gets tired of mushrooms — who wouldn't? — but anything warm and liquid that he could pour inside himself right now would be lovely, something to warm him from the inside out and not just the outside in.

However, he's barely landed in the upper hold when he hears Gunny's distant shout. He freezes, both trying to listen better and hoping that if he waits long enough she won't actually really seriously need him.

Gunny shouts again, and with a heavy sigh, he briskly rubs his hands together in a feeble attempt to get some warmth into them. After fitting his goggles back into place, he heads back up the ladder.

He finds her with a spyglass trained on a spot to their distant aft. As he approaches her she shouts again, without turning. Even if the shout weren't loud enough to rattle his boots, it would still startle him. Three times calling for him, and not even looking around to see if he's shown up since then? Clearly it's something important.