behind, ahead

Ulysses and I used to play a game called Imagine. It was usually when I was sleepy and he wasn’t, which happened quite frequently. The man only needed a few hours of rest a night, but during those hours a hull breach wouldn’t have woken him. Jamieson, who was a freerunner, had let his body take on its own cycle in the darkness. That man lived strangely, and was twitchy as cats supposedly are.
Lys would let me lie there as he rambled on, outwitting me in conversation, until he got tired of the poor sport I provided. Then he’d say something like, “What will Tambor be doing in twenty years?” and I would make something up and tell him about it. Whatever images were presented to my tired brain, I would describe to him. When nothing came I would shrug and go to sleep. Sometimes he would ask what our next job would be, who would hire us, or what the next repairs on the ship would be. I would tell him whatever it was I thought, glad to play the game with him. Glad to do whatever silly thing that man took into his head to do, glad just to be near him.

One night he said, “When you come to your senses and leave me blast end behind, who will you go and work for?”
I was barely listening, and I said rattled off a list of people I thought of, starting with “a legend” and ending with “a pink shirt man”. Where all the details came from, I don’t know, but Lys frowned and seemed to shrink a little, as he always did when he was upset by something. I wrapped my arms around him and asked what was wrong.
“It’s just that you’re usually right.”
“What do you mean?”
He turned to look at me with his calm lion’s eyes, and he almost looked...surprised. As if he saw something obvious and was startled that I couldn’t.
“You know more than you should” he said finally.
“I’m just smart, is all.”
“I’ll say. So when you talk about things...after me...I get worried.”
“Don't be worried. I'm half asleep and I’m making it up. Besides, I promised I won’t ever leave you. Until the end, right?”
“Until the end.” He said, and smiled, and I loved him, just as I did every time he smiled.

The only reason this scene has cause to present itself to my memory is because I still don’t understand what he meant. But he never brought it up, and I never saw it in his thoughts again, and I never had cause to ask.
But I was right, about everything I said. I never noticed until after I had left…Jamieson, the legend, Li, Cassinelli, Blackthorn, now Caban. A pink shirt?

When I try to see my next captain --a solitary game of Imagine...I don’t see anything at all.