True to her word, Thea had been quick about changing into something "suitable", and true to what he had said, Jim had nearly signed his own death warrant. As they walked up and down the halls and stairways of the Federation Headquarters, they received many scrutinizing looks from several of the higher-ranking officers, but those had also been accompanied by the wondering looks and wolf-whistles of his peers. Whether they were approving of the situation of him leading a young woman through Headquarters or they were admiring the girl he had in tow who, despite having transformed in a coach, looked like an expensive and eligible aristocratic lady. Jim would be lying to himself if he hadn't been a little caught off guard when she had emerged from her room in a ruffle of pale blue skirts and dark brown curls, as if in the midst of changing out of her street clothes and into a dress she had also been hit by a tornado, and that bewilderment had only increased once he had seen the full effect of Thea: street-thug-turned-lady. She hadn't been all put together when she left the apartment but had finished her wardrobe change in the coach he had called for them in the few minutes she had been gone.

Threatening to maim him in one way or another if he didn't either close his eyes or turn around while she finished getting herself together, he chose to follow her orders (just this once) and by the time their ride had stopped, he had helped a fine-looking, if not slightly flummoxed lady out of the compartment.

"Don't just stare at me, we have to go!" She had said loudly despite his close proximity, a few curls already coming loose of her haphazard bun, urging him on through the doors of the station.

He had grabbed her by the arm in attempts to lead her through the halls, but she swiftly tugged her arm away, her expression telling him she had no need for a chaperone, but he had caught her arm again, shooting her an equally commanding look that she thankfully didn't oppose. His fingers held tight to her upper arm, not in a hurtful way, but in more of a protective fashion. The skin of his hand could feel every bit of electricity that radiated from under the soft fabric of her dress.

The more time Jim spent in her company, or just thinking about the prospect of it, the more complicated the air between them became. He had to admit that it was becoming harder and harder for him to keep a hold on those hateful feelings he had had towards her. It was hard for anyone to dislike someone they were attracted to… but he also didn't want to cut her a break just because of the figure she cut in her dress.

Since leaving her with her wild hair and matching expression to wait in the hallway outside Captain Neyo's office, he was having a hard time focusing on what Neyo was saying to him when his mind was somewhere else…the way her skirt, although slightly askew, fitted effortlessly around a waist that had been hidden by her baggy street clothes, and the way the bodice cut a deep "v" that showed off the light freckles that dappled her skin all the way from collarbone, to chest, and possibly even lower, down to…

"Lieutenant Hawkins," the Captain's voice clipped through Jim's fantasy, "repeat what I just said."

Neyo sat relaxed in his plush, purple, cushioned chair, his surprisingly delicate-looking fingers threaded together over the finely pressed pearl white linen of his spaceman's jacket. Even though his posture exuded relaxation, his tone demanded attention, a phenomenon his subordinates found to be very unsettling.

Jim's eyes were wide as he racked his brain for the answer. "Umm… was it something about Ms. Wren?" He guessed, his tone sounding just as worried as his expression shown.

Captain Neyo pushed himself up, corrected his posture, and moved his hands to grip a quill and dangle it over a pot of black ink. He wasn't an unintelligent man, quite the opposite actually, despite his attraction to grand schemes of speculation and the unexplainable, in fact, he rather prided himself on his brevity of wit, and he had been young once, like most adults had been at one time or another, and he knew for a fact that even if he hadn't been talking about Thea Wren, the subject of the young woman had been exactly what his lieutenant had been thinking about.

"Incorrect, my young sir. I was addressing the subject of your flying reinstatement." He dunked the quill in the pot and dated the top of the white sheet of parchment that lay in front of him in one swift movement. Out of the corner of his gaze, he saw Jim's eyes shut in contemplative anger, most likely recalling the incident that had initially revoked that privilege in the first place. The boy, despite his noticeable efforts, was too quick to show his emotions, no matter how much he tried to bottle them up.

"So," the captain continued quickly, trying to deter his lieutenant from returning to any further daydreaming, "your reinstatement."

Jim straightened his posture.

"I and some other officers vouched for your character and secured you a voyage, that will, in its essence, allow you to prove that you do deserve a place among the officers deemed suitable for management of a ship." Jim straightened up at this even more, his attention now fully on the matter at hand instead of on other things…

"Thank you, sir." He blurted out, genuinely appreciative, and somewhat surprised that there were more than a few high-ranking officers that had assured his abilities as an upright officer instead of the recent firebrand he had shown himself to be. He knew that for a Lieutenant to be cleared for ship duty that at least seven higher commanding officers needed to clear his name, and he could only think of two who would, maybe three.

"Who cleared me, sir?"

"You know that's classified, Jim." He provided without looking up at him, his attention on the page laying on his desk.

"Okay, well then tell me what the catch is." This got the captain's attention.

"The catch?" Captain Neyo asked, adding a tone of puzzlement to his voice that almost convinced Jim of naivety. "My dear boy, I have no idea what you mean." He defended himself sarcastically.

"Aw, come on sir. You know I know this system well enough. What do I have to do? What is this mission? I'll be finding out soon enough so you might as well tell me. No harm in doing that, right?" He appealed to what he knew of his superior officer and his contempt for unnecessary secrets. Neyo was convinced they wasted precious time.

Captain Neyo gestured to a chair. "Why don't you take a seat, Lieutenant."

The door behind Thea creaked open, but she didn't turn around to look at whoever had decided to emerge from the Captain's office. She was preoccupied with looking at the graduating class of 4 years ago, her attention stuck particularly on the person second from the right in the very front row. The description at the bottom of the picture indicated that person to be non-other than her current glorified babysitter; James Pleiades Hawkins. The boy in the picture was young, much more innocent looking than the person she knew now, but there was no mistaking that this was him. The prideful posture was still the same, there was no denying that, and even though the picture was small, she was still able to recognize him.

"Ms. Wren, will you please join me in my office?" Thea turned around, her skirts sweeping the floor around her feet in a fluid motion. Jim stood behind her, door open and she could see that inside the office, Captain Neyo stood in front of his desk in the same learned stance typical of all officers.

"Only if you insist, Captain." She said purposefully with a mocking tone only so she could watch Jim roll his eyes. Thea walked through the open door and turned her head in time to see Lieutenant Hawkins close it at his Captain's request.

"So what's this proposal you have for me?" She said as she plopped down in the chair and folded her hands in her lap.

"You get right to the point, don't you?" He asked her inquisitively.

"I was taught the time is precious. And that mentality is very true, especially when you're a criminal like I can't seem to forget that I am."

He ignored the way she blatantly classified herself as a criminal in front of him and responded to something else she had said. "Who taught you that?"

Thelonious Spratt appeared in her mind and in a second her expression turned sour and the Captain noticed, that she, like Jim, was not very good at hiding what she was thinking.

"You know very well who taught me that." She answered through clenched teeth.

"I'm having a hard time recalling his name." Captain Neyo tapped his chin with a forefinger. "So many crime bosses on this side of the galaxy, you know, it's hard to keep track."

Fine. She thought. "Thelonious Spratt." She snapped. "Boss of the Kings" She swung one leg over the other and made an effort to smooth her skirt over her crossed legs, trying to make herself feel more at ease than she actually was.

"Ah yes! That's the one." The captain said as he walked around the desk and returned to his purple velveteen chair. "And tell me, how old were you when you were taken into his employ?"

Thea scoffed. "You make it sound so much nicer than it actually was."

"Well, then why don't you tell me how it actually was?" He dunked his quill into the pot of ink once more and poised it inches above a new sheet of parchment.

"How about not." Thea crossed her arms in defiance. Reliving that day once before was enough. She definitely wasn't going to willingly call those memories back up again to amuse the fetishes of some captain.

"Oh, but my dear, it would help this situation so much more if you provided me with as much detail as possible so I can help you—"

"Help me? You seriously think you can help me? You don't want to help me. You can't fix me or what I am. The deed's been done. I'm the monster they created me to be! I'm the product of terrible fate and even worse luck! They took whoever I was and whatever I was going to be and killed her!"

Thea had been up and about and storming around the office before she'd realized what she was doing. Everything had come spilling out all at once without her consent. Her heart was nearly beating itself out of her chest and she could feel her pulse in her ears.

They had killed whoever she was. That was what she had just said, but was that really what she thought?

So if they had killed who she was, who was she now?

Stupid.

She knew the answer to that question. They had turned her into a weapon to fulfill their purposes, made her into a villain and a criminal, then they punished her by abandoning who they had taught her to be!

Her face was red and her eyes prickled with hot tears that were prepared to spill over in an instant.

Before turning to the Captain, she wiped under her eyes for any tears that might have escaped. The look he gave her was one of bewilderment. "I told you, Captain. You can't help me. I'm beyond it. Just give me this proposal of yours so I can leave."

He set the quill down delicately on his desk and Thea watched as the ink dripped off the tip onto the bare piece of parchment.

"Ms. Wren, I can help you because I know who you are."

It took all he had not to listen at the door once he had closed it behind Thea, and even more of him not to open it when he heard her muffled yells escaping from the space between it and the floor. Then everything went quiet from the other side and that was the most concerning part of it all.

What if Thea had killed the Captain? No, that was ridiculous. What if she had jumped out the window? Well, if that had happened, Captain Neyo would've alerted Jim of it. Hopefully. But the silence not only made him think of what was going on in the office, but it also gave him the quiet his mind required in order for it to sneak back to what Neyo had said to him.

"Wait, so my reinstatement mission is to help Thea Wren find her family?"

The Captain nodded, looking pleased with himself while he scribbled something down with his quill.

"You've got to be joking." Jim blurted out.

The Captain looked up at Jim speculatively. "You know I don't joke, Lieutenant."

"You're being serious?"

"Completely serious. I thought you'd be pleased with this?"

"Well, I'm not!" He replied, agitatedly. "If what you're saying is that I'm supposed to fly her around the galaxy and help her uncover her lost identity, then no I'm not!"

At this point, all thoughts of freckled chests had now been banished from his mind.

"Don't you remember she robbed my ship, Captain? She robbed the Interstellar Federation, and she punched me in the face!", he pointed to his healing bruise for emphasis, "And you want me to help her?"

"I want you to complete this mission and become a great officer, Jim, this is just going to help you get there."

"Oh, yeah, sure, just through the most inconvenient of ways…" He sulked down into his chair.

The conversation continued with a discussion of the details of the voyage and how much time would be allotted for it and where they would take off from.

It was to be a six-month voyage to launch from Montressor's spaceport in three weeks' time. The crew would be hired within this time and the hiring was to be done jointly by himself and by Captain Neyo and whomever Jim chose as his second in command, which was just another thing he had to do before took Thea off to Montressor and introduce her to his mother. It was obviously logical that they would be staying at the Benbow with his mom before they went off to the spaceport, but with Jim knowing his mother, him coming home with a girl in tow was not going to be any more fun than he was anticipating it to be, which was not very fun at all. It was a three-day ferry ride from Mosli to Montressor and all the while he would be acting as Thea Wren's Federation Protectorate. He didn't even think anything like that had existed until Captain Neyo dubbed him so in his office twenty minutes ago.

Three days on a ferry with Thea Wren, introducing her to his mother, then a six-month stay aboard a ship with her? Based on the majority of their time spent together, Jim felt it wise to assume that one of them will have killed the other by the end of it all.

Captain Neyo's words echoed in Thea's ears, but she couldn't manage to comprehend them.

"You know who I am?" She whispered.

"I do." Captain Neyo said. "Your father and mother too. Oh, and your brother."

Father. Mother. Brother.

"Please, Ms. Wren, why don't you come back to your chair. You'd feel better taking this sitting down, I think." He walked over to her and gingerly grabbed her shoulders and guided her slowly back towards the chair, and Thea, unanimated and completely shocked, sat back down. She couldn't look at him; she couldn't look anywhere. Her mind was blank, void of all thoughts and words.

"Well, I haven't always known who you were." Captain Neyo babbled on. "I got a letter, see, a letter from your, um, mentor, I guess we'll call him that, stating your true identity and birthplace, and a lot of other things."

"A letter?" She whispered. "From Spratt?"

The captain nodded and started rifling through the papers on his desk.

"It was on my desk after I returned from the bar where we first met." He referred to it as if he was speaking about the first meeting of two old friends.

"Turns out I knew your father actually, although I never did meet your mother."

"Stop." Thea commanded. "Please, stop." Her voice was barely louder than a sigh.

"Ah! Here it is!" The captain exclaimed, ignoring what Thea had said. "Here. Take a look." He held it out to her but she didn't grab it. "Go on," he urged gently, "it's addressed to you."

Thea looked up to the Captain, a soft smile on his face and his long fingers holding out the letter to her. She grabbed onto it as if it was as delicate as the thinnest glass. Her tear-sodden eyes roamed from the bottom of the letter to the top where her eyes finally focused and she saw it.

"Dear, Thea Jameson."

She read the words out loud. Her own name being formed by her own mouth and her own tongue for the first time in 11 years.

After the first tear hit the pale blue fabric of her dress, it was followed by all the rest.