“And then there were the maneuvers.” He wheeled to face her once more, his expression twisted. “Damn it, I knew they’d handed you an impossible job after the way they gutted our armament! I knew it was impossible—and instead of digging in and helping you do it anyway, I let you carry the whole load because deep down inside I wanted you to fail. Captain, I’m a tac officer by training. Every single time something went wrong, every time another one of those goddamned Aggressor crews ‘destroyed’ us, something inside me kept saying I could have done better. I knew I couldn’t have, but that didn’t matter. It was what I felt. I tried to do my duty anyway, but I couldn’t. Not the way I should have.”

He came closer to the table, leaning forward to brace himself on its top and bend towards her across it.

“And then this.” He raised one hand to gesture at the bulkheads. “Basilisk Station.” He returned his hand to the table beside its companion and stared down at them both. “I told myself it was your fault, that you were the one who’d gotten us sent here, and that was another lie. But every time I told myself one lie, I had to tell another to justify the ones that came before it. So it was your fault, not mine, and all that nonsense about doing our duty, about meeting our responsibilities whether anyone else had ever bothered to meet theirs or not—that was crap, Captain. That was bright-eyed, runny-nosed, idealistic, Academy crap, not the real world.”

He looked up at her again.

“But it wasn’t, was it, Ma’am?” he said softly. “Not to you. I don’t know why Young dumped this on you. It doesn’t matter why he did. What matters is that you didn’t cry and moan. You didn’t slack off. You just dug in and—” He shook his head and straightened.

“You kicked us in the ass, Captain. You kicked us over and over again, until we got up off our self-pitying backsides and started acting like Queen’s officers again. And I knew what you were doing, and why you were doing it, the whole time, and I hated it. Hated it. Because every time you did something right, it was one more proof that you deserved the job I wanted.”

He dropped into a chair, facing her across the table, and raised one hand almost pleadingly.

“Captain, you were right, and I was wrong. What’s happening in this system right now proves you were, and if you want me off your ship, I wouldn’t blame you at all.”

He fell silent at last, hunched in despair, and Honor leaned forward in her chair.

“I don’t want you off my ship, Commander,” she said softly. His head jerked back up, and she waved a hand in the air between them.

“You’re right. You did drop it all on me. I wanted you to meet me halfway—needed you to—and you wouldn’t. Everything in the galaxy was coming together and falling on me at the same time, and you just sat there, refusing to open up, and left everything up to me. Oh, yes, Commander. There were days when I would gladly have sent you packing, with an efficiency report that would’ve put you ground-side forever, if I hadn’t been so shorthanded, if I’d had enough experienced officers aboard to replace you with someone I could rely on. But—”