Stella’s eyes dipped to the Med-tech’s chest when he spoke of the antiseptic. She nodded, he’d borne it well but Mowzer was a fine specimen, fit and healthy and his claws were not to be dismissed. 

“Well then, you’d best come along and I’ll see what we have on hand. I haven’t been to see my office since right after I was brought on board and before I was put into stasis. I have only faint memories of what I’ll find there.”

She took a step towards where she thought her office might be and realized she wasn’t entirely certain which way to go. She bit her lip pensively and tried to ignore the feeling of rising panic filling her. Her eyes sought out the map high up on the wall, well above Mowzer’s notice. As per usual she’d forgotten her tablet. Tracing the map with her eyes she picked out a route that she thought would work. She looked back at her companion again and thought she saw something in his expression that put her a tiny bit on guard. 

She’d done it again, hadn’t she? Her expression turned somewhat sheepish and she turned back towards him with head bowed looking almost like a recalcitrant child down to the foot that scuffed the smooth surface of the hallway. 

“I must apologize Mr. Eadoré, I think I just used you.” 

She made herself look him in the eyes despite the discomfort and misery in her own. 

“I am not so good with people, as you may be observing at just this moment. It’s a result of lack of practice rather than lack of inclination and sometimes I get a little lost along the way. I am good with animals, they are easy and seeing Mowzer…” she twisted her fingers, looked down at them and then visibly forced herself to look back up at him. 
“Well you saw how I get. On top of that I’m admittedly a bit of a Luddite and all this,” she swept her hand around at the halls broken by doors and panels of softly glowing light and their accompanying screens. “All this has me on edge. I can’t seem to get past what we all lost and so I retreat. Into fur apparently.”

Her life was a series of losses followed by retreats. She watched her parents die and retreated into herself for years. Her grandparents died and she did so again, diving into academics, moving from school to school, program to program telling herself she was seeking the best education but really fleeing from attachment and roots. And when her degree was earned she simply kept on retreating. Her career was a long series of different posts as her wandering feet moved her before she could grow too attached to the charges she loved so much. She moved on before they sank their claws deep into her battered, untrusting heart. But now there was no further retreat to be had. She had nowhere to go. Funny for her to realize just then, in this sterile hallway before this stranger with his cat padding majestically away, that she’d reached the end. 
She laughed a tight, sad little laugh and cocked her head to the side, her curls bouncing from the movement. 

“I bet you never imagined when you turned to answer me, Mr. Eadoré, that you’d get such a long-winded and unsolicited confession. Perhaps I’d best retreat to my office and lose myself in my work and spare unsuspecting shipmates my odd little rambles.”

And there she was, retreating again. 

“Or we can get you that antiseptic and pretend that I did this right and wasn’t the neurotic and odd woman who forgets her fellow humans in the face of a fine piece of tail." her words came out in a rush and once started she couldn't seem to stop.

"I don't suppose there is a bar here? I feel like I owe you a drink or something. No, I imagine it's too early for that, not to mention it probably isn't regulation or what have you, but still, human invention and... perhaps I should just stop talking while I am ahead?” 

A sheepish apologetic smile peered out at him from under the curls as she held her breath waiting, not even certain which outcome was desired.