A/N: Thank you pallysd'Artagnan and SnidgetHex for reviewing! Okay, we come to it at last. Trigger warnings from here on out for anything the show has already given us, namely alcoholism, drug use, mentions of suicide, etc.

"Fall From Grace"

2385

Raffi felt numb as she sat in the Ready Room of the USS Verity with other senior staff, watching the recurring footage of Mars on fire. The Utopia Planitia Ship Yards were decimated, the entire rescue armada that was to save the Romulan population, completely obliterated. Flammable vapors in the stratosphere had been ignited, fulvous explosions that consumed the whole planet in a sea of flame. The death toll was in the tens of thousands, and the planet would likely not be inhabitable again for thousands of years.

It didn't make sense for the synths to suddenly turn rogue and attack Mars. Nothing on this scale had ever happened before. There had been no warning, no indication that there was a flaw in their programming…

The doors to the Ready Room swished open and Admiral Picard strode in. "We need options," he declared in that confident, "of course we're not beaten yet" tone. It had inspired many over the decades, and it inspired Raffi now to sit up straight and focus on the task at hand.

They worked at it all night, proposing ideas, discussing logistics and complications. They finally came up with a plan to replace the armada with mothballed vessels from the Beta Antares Ship Yards and the forty Eridani A Starfleet Construction Yards. It was their Hail Mary, but they could make it work. Raffi spent hours collecting the data, outlining every step of the process for when JL took the proposal to Starfleet.

And then they rejected it and Picard threatened to resign if they didn't change their position. It had been a gamble on his part, throwing such an ultimatum in their faces. It had never even crossed his mind that they would accept.

Raffi felt like the rug had gotten ripped out from under her.

She was summoned immediately afterward and reassigned from the Verity to be transferred back to Starfleet Intelligence stationed on Earth. The Romulans had been utterly abandoned.

…

"Are you okay?"

"Do I look okay?" Raffi snapped. She immediately shook her head at the screen. "Sorry."

"You're not used to defeat," Rios said in understanding.

"It's not even that we failed, it's that Starfleet isn't going to let us try!" She slammed her palms against the edge of her desk, causing the holo image to wobble.

"You saved a lot of lives in the beginning," he offered. "Relocated many Romulans to other worlds."

"A fraction of an entire species. It's not enough."

He sighed. "You can't save everyone, Raf."

"Would you ever accept that?" she retorted.

Rios just gave her a somber look in return. It didn't matter, because there was nothing left to do about it.

2386

Raffi sat at her work station, poring through the hundreds of data streams, trying to find that one piece that connected everything together. She didn't believe the synth attack on Mars was some random flaw in programming. There had been too much dissent over the rescue operation. No, sabotage was more likely.

She paused and captured a piece of data on her holo screen, brows knitting together. She kept coming across pieces that suggested the Romulans were involved, but that didn't make sense either. Why would they want to destroy the armada that was supposed to save their people?

It had to be bigger than that. The Romulans were crafty but there was no way they could execute an operation on this scale within the Federation without inside help. And Starfleet had turned down the backup proposal for evacuation efforts. Who was this Conclave of Eight that kept popping up too?

She downloaded her latest data and stood up from her station. No one looked her way as she strode out of the office.

Her comm beeped and she absentmindedly answered. "Yeah."

"Where are you?"

"At work," she replied irritably.

"You missed dinner." The unspoken again hung in the air judgmentally.

"Yeah, I know, I'm sorry, babe. Listen, I need to go out of town for a day or two. I'll see you guys when I get back."

She disconnected before she had to listen to any arguments. Stopping at the locker room, she grabbed her small go-bag she always had packed and headed out for a visit to Chateau Picard.

…

It was after midnight when Raffi returned home. She threw her bag on the floor and slumped on the sofa, frustration and anger pricking at her eyes. He'd given up, the bastard. The great Admiral Picard. Raffi had thought that of all people he would have listened to her theories about a conspiracy regarding the synths and the ban and the Romulans, that he would have helped her get to the bottom of it.

But he'd turned her away. Said he was retired and wasn't involved anymore. She didn't know when she had felt so shattered.

She pushed herself up and went to the replicator. "Red wine. Actually, no, vodka."

The replicator produced a glass of the requested alcohol. Raffi snatched it up and knocked back a long drag. It burned. She swallowed the rest and thrust the glass back on the platform. "Another."

The replicator whipped up a second. She took it and went back to the sofa to drown her miseries.

"Mom?"

She straightened. "Baby, what are you doing up this late?"

Her son stood in his pajamas, hugging his arms almost defensively. God, he was almost a teenager.

"I heard you come home."

"Well, it's late, you should get back to bed."

Gabriel waited for a moment, looking hesitant. Raffi took another drink of liquor. He finally turned and walked back to his room.

2387

Raffi hated the looks she got at work, the whispers behind her back. She could feel it. She was a pariah among her colleagues where she'd once been an esteemed tactician. Her bosses had told her to stop her seditious talk of conspiracies and Federation involvement in the Mars attack, so she stopped talking about it openly. But she didn't stop her research.

She arrived home late and exhausted as she did every night, only to pull up short at the sight of suitcases on the floor by the door and Jae standing in the living room.

"What's going on?" she asked, confusion morphing into a scowl. "If you're trying to force me into taking a vacation—"

"I'm not," Jae interrupted. "We're leaving."

Raffi faltered. "We…"

"Me and Gabriel. We're done. We can't keep living like this."

"Like what?" she exclaimed.

"You." He paused to take a calming breath. "You were always away when you were stationed on the Verity, but now that you're back on Earth we see you even less."

"That is not true. I come home every night!"

"Angry and bitter," he rejoined sharply. He shook his head. "You're not with us even when you're home. You're doing this." He turned and gestured to her various PADDs and holo screens mapping her research of the Mars attack and Romulan movements.

"It's my work."

"It's more important to you than your family. It's more important than the respect of your friends and colleagues! And we can't live with it anymore. Gabriel shouldn't have to grow up surrounded by it."

"Why does no one care I'm trying to get to the truth!"

Jae just shook his head and moved past her.

"No, babe, wait, don't go," she pleaded, grabbing his arm.

He gave her a sad look. "I'm sorry. I have to do what's best for Gabriel."

"Jae…" Raffi stood there helplessly. What was she supposed to say to make him stay? That she would abandon this work? She couldn't do that!

And so he pulled away, picked up his suitcases, and walked out.

…

"Raf, it's been two years. When are you going to stop going down this path?"

She shot Rios an incredulous look through the video link. "I'm just supposed to ignore that something corrupt is going on in the Federation?"

His jaw looked tense and he held himself stiffly with one elbow on the desk. "You haven't found any proof of that."

"That's why I'm still looking," she snapped. "Think about it, Cris! The synths attack Mars right when we needed the armada to rescue the Romulans, which a lot of the Federation was against anyway. And then there's a ban on all synth work, which means no one was allowed to investigate whether their programming was truly flawed or tampered with!"

Rios shook his head. "What good does it do now?" he pressed. "The Romulan sun went supernova. It's over."

"They shouldn't be allowed to get away with murder." Her expression pinched with anguish. Out of everyone who'd let her down, she'd thought Rios was the one person who would still stand by her.

He ran a hand down his face. "Raf…how are Gabriel and Jae?"

Her throat constricted. "They're fine."

Rios leveled a pointed look at her, and that lump grew spikes.

"They left," she admitted bitterly.

"Raffi, please, I don't want to see this destroy you."

"Screw you!" She slammed the holo screen and hung up on him.

The next day when she walked into work, she was fired.

2388

Raffi sat on the floor of her small, one-bedroom apartment, a bottle of brandy her constant and only company these days. She stared at her walls, superimposed with a holographic projection of images and reports with criss-crossing lines from piece to piece in an intricate web of subterfuge and underlying connections. It was right there, at her fingertips! Yet answers still eluded her after all this time.

She knew what she looked like now—a crazy person. Her family refused to talk to her. No one at Starfleet would take her calls. None of her old friends had bothered to reach out. She and Cris had drifted apart since that fight. He'd tried to contact her a couple of times right afterward but she'd ignored him, and then she'd just…never called him again.

She thought of calling him now. He'd probably forgive her.

But he'd see what her life had become and resume the same old argument every other person in her life had, and that would just lead to another fight. And eventually Raffi ran out of second chances and everyone she ever cared about despised her.

She couldn't stomach that happening with Rios. Maybe it already had anyway and she didn't need the confirmation.

She picked up the bottle and took a long drag. Mars had been destroyed in a day, but hers was a long, slow slide into ruin.