PART ONE | CHAPTER FOUR
OLD FRIENDS

Sidney glared at Rena down the hall while Dinah groaned and sat up on the floor, leaning on her elbows. She blew a strand of purple hair out of her face and joined her captain in glaring the blonde girl who'd thrown her across a corridor.

"You're so tiny, how did you even lift me?" Dinah asked in confusion.

"Is that seriously your problem right now?" Sidney raised an eyebrow at her.

"What the hell is going on?" Darren towered over his wife and looked outside.

Rena's expression softened. "I'm so sorry! I... I didn't mean to! I just wanted to go talk to Nyara and Dinah wouldn't let me! It was my time for a break and I've been working like crazy and after our discussion I remembered my sister and my nerves haven't exactly been well since..." she frowned.

"Yeah, right! I knew Tara! She was nothing like you! As if you could be related to someone like her!" Dinah yelled at her from the floor.

Rena's expression looked stricken and she gulped, blinking rapidly. She almost looked terrified as she turned to face Darren. "You told her? I thought I could trust you!"

"I needed to make sure your story checked out." Darren defended himself, though he looked guilty to have talked about Rena's past with someone else behind her back.

"How could she even know about that?" Rena faced Dinah, who got up and dusted herself off.

"Well, I guess the cat is out of the bag! I was with the Stars once, kid. Your sister was an awesome person. Judging from you, she got all the awesomeness in the family. No wonder she never mentioned you." she crossed her arms.

"You have no idea and no right to talk to me like that, especially when it comes to my family!" Rena stomped her foot, clenching her fists. Sidney and Darren glanced at each other.

"Oh, please! You're the same age she'd be if she was alive, right? You're supposed to be twins and you don't even have the same last name! I bet she changed it just to avoid the embarrassment of sharing it with you."

Tears started welling up in Rena's eyes and the rest of the crew started making their way to the source of the noise.

"You don't know Tara like I did," her voice cracked "and you have no clue what I went through when she died. I lost my family that night."

A sudden silence took over the suddenly quiet hallway. The news could be heard clearly from Sidney and Darren's room and Rena glanced inside. She glared at the screen, which was showing Ron Bowns, and turned to run away.

"Run like the coward you are. Tara never ran from a fight." Dinah rolled her eyes.

"Yeah, she did. But you wouldn't know that, would you?" Rena muttered, giving her a sideways glare. "Besides, you said it yourself. I'm nothing like Tara. My sister is dead and you've done a great job at reminding me."

"I'd rather have her here than you."

"Yeah, me too." Rena frowned and kept walking.

"It all makes sense now, though. She surely joined the Stars to get away from you."

"Let's see who's going to get me away from you!" Rena shrieked and lunged at her again. Dinah was soon pinned on the floor, taking one punch to the face after the other.

Shock took over everyone and Nyara pushed through the rest of the crew, running to the two fighting girls.

"Rena, stop." he told the blonde.

"Get off me!" Dinah tried to push her away, but Rena wouldn't budge. She just kept shrieking and crying and hitting.

Nyara, seeing as words were doing nothing to stop Rena, grabbed his friend by the waist and pulled her away with much difficulty. She kept thrashing and trying to escape his grasp to attack Dinah again.

Speaking of Dinah, she immediately scrambled backwards, her face, clothes and floor around her bloodier than her attacker's knuckles.

"Who's running from the fight now?" Rena sneered.

"Okay, that's enough." Nyara carried her away.

John helped Dinah up and took her to a her room down the other side of the hall to clean up.

Darren got a mop.

Once he was done and he joined his wife back in their room, Sidney whistled. "That kid has more guts than I thought."

"Babe, when you first saw her she was bleeding off an open wound she'd tried to stich herself and she shrugged it off as nothing." Darren sighed. "And she was being chased by angry Martians."

"Dinah doesn't know how to pick her battles..." Sidney muttered.

John entered the room without knocking.

"What the hell was that?" he crossed his arms.

"Dinah rudely brought up a really touchy subject and got her butt handed to her." Sidney told him.

"And Rena is just going to get away with assaulting a fellow crewmember? I don't get it." John asked them.

"Rena was in the rights in this one, but her behavior was a little out of line. We'll take care of her later, that's none of your business." Darren explained calmly.

"Or would you rather piss her off further and have us pick you up from a pool of blood similar to Dinah's?" Sidney added.

John's expression hardened, but he didn't say anything. "Any new suspicions?"

"Not so far. We do have some questions for you, though." Sidney narrowed her eyes at him.

"Excuse me?"

"You're excused. Now, for how long have you known Jol?" she smiled sweetly at him.

"Uh... Many years. We met when we were kids. My parents and I emigrated to Pluto when I was eight, so I'd say about sixteen years?" John made the calculations aloud.

"Is there anyone else you knew before joining the crew?" Sidney pulled out a chair and plopped down, a bored expression on her face.

"Yeah. We met Zoel a couple of years before we joined you, I guess. We travelled around a bit with her and met Gorno while on a trip on Saturn. What does this have to do with anything?"

"Nothing, we just wanted to make sure Jol didn't lie to us. You two are officially off the suspect list." Darren told him.

"For now..." Sidney narrowed her eyes at him again.

"What about Zoel?"

"That's what Jol said too. She has to tell us about this herself." Darren explained.

As if on cue, there was a knock on the door. John turned around and opened up. Zoel slowly made her way in.

"Am I interrupting?" she mouthed.

"No, Zoel. It's fine. What is it?" Darren asked her.

She only held up some photocopies. "The report." she mouthed again.

"Would you mind wait outside while we go over it? We'll call you back in in a few minutes." he told her. She nodded and walked back out. "You too, John. Go make sure Dinah doesn't go looking for Rena again. I'll meet with both of them later." he ran a hand through his hair.

John grumbled, but followed Zoel out.

After reading through the papers Zoel brought, they figured that her story checked out and was pretty much the same when it came to Jol, John and Gorno.

Sidney opened the door and poked her head out, looking down to face Zoel.

"Everything is fine, girl. Go have some fun or whatever. Oh, and the chips were amazing as always. Great job." she told her.

"Thank you." Zoel smiled and walked away.

Sidney waited for her to be out of earshot and slammed the door and locked it, facing her husband.

"Alone at last..." she purred.

"I've been waiting for this all day..."

And then they finally got the alone time they so desperately wanted.

In the meantime, Nyara was still trying to calm Rena down. He brought her some gauzes to wrap around her scraped and bruised knuckles and helped her wash the blood off. It had been quite some time since the fight took place and she was still fuming.

"Do you want to talk about it?" he asked her, tugging a strand of his green hair behind his ear.

"No."

"You never want to talk about anything. I didn't even know you had a sister up until now. What happened to her?"

"She was a mechanic at the Stars is what happened to her. Dinah was apparently with them once and thinks she knew her... She has no idea." Rena grumbled.

"You shouldn't have attacked her."

"She should have known better! She shouldn't have talked to me like that, especially concerning such a sensitive subject. She deserved what she got."

"You freaked Izzy out."

"I'm sorry, but Izzy is always freaking out about something. Yes, I know I shouldn't have gotten violent, but that doesn't mean that I was wrong to have done it. There's a thin line there and I'm right on top of it."

"Rena--"

"How are things between you and Kyle?" she changed the subject.

"Oh. Well... We haven't talked much this week, but I think it's better than when we first met. At least now I'm actually talking to him."

"That's good!"

"Do you have a special someone?"

"Uh... I've only had two relationships in the past and they both ended on strange circumstances. So, no. Not right now." she frowned.

"Do you want to talk about it?"

"Not really."

"There it is again! Whenever you start opening up you shut me out again!" Nyara crossed his arms.

"How is your sister doing?"

"Stop changing the subject."

"What subject?"

"Rena!"

"Look, I don't want to talk about my past. It's called past because it has passed, you know? I don't like looking back. I'd rather look forward, especially everything I've been through since Tara died. I lost too much that night. I'd just started to get my life back in line and let it go, when all this mess started again. I can't deal with it. Besides, my past is mine and mine alone. Nobody is entitled to know about it, unless I'm confortable with them knowing it. Right now, I'm not comfortable with talking about it and I don't think I ever will be. It hurts too much. I still have the right to my own privacy, do I not?" she asked him, her voice cracking slightly but multiple times.

"Okay, I get it. I just thought we were friends."

"I... I'd love to be friends with you Nyara, really, but I'm not in the right place right now. I'm sorry." she frowned.

His face fell. "It's okay, I... I get it. It's your life."

"That being said, I still like you more than most people on this ship." she punched his shoulder lightly. "I have to go down the engines again. Dinah is going to make a fuss about the beating she earned and not help out again for today, mark my words." she sighed, getting up.

"Good luck, I guess."

"Thanks. I'm going to need it..."

After a couple of hours of ineffectively working at the engines on her own, she got tired of thinking about her past. She went back to her cabin to take a shower. Her hand kept trailing down to the scar on her side, the one she'd tried to stitch up herself.

She frowned. That scar was just another reminder that she wasn't herself anymore...

A knock on the door snapped her out of it and she rushed ahead to put on her pajamas before opening up.

Dinah was at the doorframe. She had cuts and bruises all over her face and her left cheek was swollen.

"What do you want?" Rena asked her.

"To apologise for what I said about your sister. I... I was out of line. I deserved what I got. You're not the only one with a past you wanted to forget... Darren's interrogation brought back memories I'd buried for years and I lost control."

"I get it. Just... please, don't bring up Tara again."

"I won't. Never again."

"Thank you." Rena took a deep breath. "And I guess I owe you an apology too for what I did... I've been on edge lately."

"Girl, I've got you. I'm on edge all the time."

"Well, that explains a lot..." Rena laughed it off.

"Anyway, I have to get going. Goodnight, or whatever."

"Goodni--"

"Oh, and one more thing... This doesn't mean we're friends now. I'm not going to be nice tomorrow. This is the painkillers taking right now."

"I figured. Besides, I don't do friends."

"Wise choice..."

Dinah put her hands in her pockets as she walked to her own room. She passed by Jol and John's room on her way there and found the door open. She stopped and glanced at John, who noticed her staring. He gave her a small wave and she returned it with an even smaller smile before moving on.

Upon entering her bedroom she plopped down on her bed and buried her face in her palms. She got into her own sleepwear and undid her ponytail, letting her dark violet hair fall on her shoulders. She then pulled out a photo album from a drawer in her bedtable and started skimming through it.

She stopped when she reached the picture she was looking for and took it out of the album.

"No one can know..." she muttered under her breath taking a lighter from a second drawer and igniting the small flame.

With tears in her eyes, she lit the picture on fire.

Soon the photo of her kissing Tara Lowe with Ron Bowns standing a little further and playfully rolling his eyes at them, was nothing but dust. Five years had passed and so much had changed...

No one could know. Not even Rena.

"Goodbye..."