Bearing all

<Snip>
“Now, you said that I need think; but I thought alright – I thought like Brittany instead of like me and now...” her voice cracked and it was a moment or two before she could continue “Now I feel like I’ve scarred my soul. I feel dirty”
“Aw, shit. Cass...” Jay took a step towards her. This wasn't what he had expected or even wanted.
“It was the same with the Malodorians” she was crying now “It was just expediency – We needed that ship, we had nothing to bargain with and our backs were up against the wall”
She abruptly turned in her chair to spin it around, away from Jay, and thumped her her elbows down onto the desk before burying her face in her hands.
She didn't want to say anything else.
Even after having confessed all for the first time in either her or Brittany's whole life, she had still held back - How could she tell him that that her fear of loosing him had been the real reason she had been about to kill the Malodorians? - He didn't want to hear that from her!
For a moment, the soft sounds of her misery were all that could be heard in the room.
Jay cleared his throat
<end snip>
He said nothing however, as at that moment Jaxx and Eve entered noisily, and placed a datapad down on a nearby counter. Jay nodded his acknowledgement as they turned to leave the room.
He unfolded his arms and took a step toward Cass, only to be interrupted again, this time by Kenneth and Artemis.
Eventually, they left, and Jay turned his attention back to Cass, (pausing for a few moments to make sure no other fucker came in and tried to make the writer tie together a fuck load of snips, you gits)
He placed a hand on her shoulder.
“I’m sorry…” he said “I…I didn’t mean…I had no idea…”
“I’ve tried so hard to get away from the person I’d become. A murderer. You must hate me.”
“I won’t pretend to understand it.” Jay said “And, I can’t say I’d have done the same thing, but you were desperate, scared and helpless. Abused for years. I’ve never been in that position. It’s not my place to judge. I have no idea how I’d act in that position”
“Probably not the same way.”
“It’s not always easy y’know. To try to make the moral choice. In your position, I don’t know if I could have. Hell. I’m the one who launched a crusade against the ‘bugs all those years ago”
“That was different. They were a threat to everyone and everything. They had no innocents. All they wanted was to destroy us all.”
“I still did it. Commited genocide. To be honest when you told me a while ago that only the regional hive was wiped out, I was a little relieved. When I lost Kat the second time, I wanted to do the same to Lindstrom, and everyone who worked for him. But Lindstrom was the guilty one. The one who hurt us. The one who took her away. If I’d listened to my heart, instead of my head, I’d have made sure every person on that station died along with him, but I knew if I did, I’d be no better than him.”
“Same with you Cass. You’re better than Brittany. Don’t let her past control you. You’re not helpless and alone anymore. You’ve got us. You’ve got me.”
Cass smiled a little “How do you manage to take things in your stride so easily Jay?”
“Who says I do?” he held his hands up “I might put on a brave (and admittedly incredibly handsome) face, but losing Kat, and Max tears me apart. Though, admittedly, it got a lot easier since we found the Sovereign.”
“How so?”
“I found this.” He handed Cass a tablet, she read the screen.
“She was one of the engineers who helped build the Sovereign?”
“15 years after I left her behind. According to that file, she remarried.”
“I’m sorry Jay.”
“Don’t be. She’s happy. That’s good enough for me.”
“Does it say anything about Max?”
“Yes. At time of writing he’s 19. He’s just signed up for flight school. He’s training to be a pilot…like his old man”
“That’s great Jay!”
“When I lost them, it was the worst thing. It broke me. But, from the bad things, good things can happen. What happened with your dad brought you here, to us. You got a second chance. Take advantage of it. We’re all here for you.”
Cass said nothing. <tag Locke – care to fill in the blank?>
“I suck at this!” Jay said as he paced across the room and picked up Jamies pad.
“Hmm. Problem” he said
“What?”
“Jamie doesn’t think we can power the QT drive AND the Dwarf with the new core. We can get the ship up and running, but we’ll be dead in the water…”
Cass scanned the pad, her more technical mind making more sense of it than Jay’s did.
“We need an additional fuel source to power the Dwarf while the core powers the drive, or vice versa..…what about the ramscoop, can’t we create a reserve to use as a backup?”1
“It could work” said Jay. “But we need a source to draw fuel in from...unless we’re in a nebula, or the atmosphere of a gas giant, we can’t draw in more than a few molecules at a time unless we’re moving…and we can’t move, and power both..”
“So…what do we do?”
<tag people – any ideas how we can fix Jamies problem?>