She put the kid in first. His little hands, his bright face, fresh bright green sparkling above the dense, muddled black of his death. The colonists were next, their haunting eyes pocking obsidian craters into the dark, simmering violet of their fear, and little Fig, a glowing blue that pulsed slowly with a heartbeat she remembered winking out. She hadn't felt this since that night. Hadn't let herself look there. But she made herself stare at the colours as they formed and shifted across the board, sounding the depth of them, the texture of the snarl that was still more shock than grief.
It was hard to surrender. To open herself enough to let it happen. Her hands shook as she sifted the sand between her fingers, fighting the instinct to resist something she knew would hurt, that would unleash rage and fear she wasn't entirely sure she could control. But she was too far gone already. The whole thing had spun so far out there would be no boxing it back up. Which meant she had to go forward. The only way out here was through.
It helped that La'an was there, steady and quiet, an unmovable object in a tumbling void. That she didn't ask what Chapel was doing, or watch to see whether it would work. That she simply sat, feet propped on the chair beside her, focussed on her PADD while Chapel waded through waves of pain that left her breathless and unsteady, sipping her tea, flicking her screen past page after lacking page with an intensity of purpose that was utterly reassuring.
Chapel watched the way the steam curled above her cup, studied her familiar frown, the way concentration pulled a soft crease between her eyebrows, and felt indefinably safe. As if none of it mattered. As if none of it ever would.
As the latest moment of white knuckled despair crested and broke she reached back into the bowl of sand to find it tinting midnight blue between her fingers, forming swallowtail ribbons that glittered like the night sky. Slowly, she wove them into the pattern she had created, breathing air into the tangle. Tracing gentle paths of calm between the chaos.
Layer by layer the mandala grew, memory weaving into memory, shock into grief into fact until there was hope in it too. Joy even, flickering and fractured behind the vibrant green, the primary red and blue and gold that flecked the darkness. People had died, but they had lived too. Still lived, all around her, everywhere. The universe was full of people, and all of them would die. You couldn't possibly stem the flow. But you could see them while they lived, and you could care enough to try.
She just couldn't quite look at whether she had.
"Hey." Erica's grin was a little hesitant, but she held the stack of boxes up gamely. "I come in pizza?" There was a slight upward lift to her voice, as if she wasn't sure how the gesture would be received. The characteristically terrible pun was telling too. Chapel really had been a complete monster. She felt a wave of gratitude at the fact that, despite the way she'd behaved, she apparently had a friend who would just keep showing up.
"Hey." She stepped back to let her in, trying to ignore the grip of trepidation that told her she wasn't anywhere near done yet. That she might be just as monstrous this time. She wanted this to be over. To be the person who had fun on nights like this. Who was fun. "Thanks. You didn't have to."
"Didn't have to as in I should go give these to whoever's down in maintenance, or…?"
"No." Chapel found herself actually smiling. "As in I've been a nightmare recently, and I'm sorry, I…"
"Hey, everyone gets to have bad days. Just proves you're human, like the rest of us."
"As opposed to what, exactly?"
Erica swept her up and down with the boxes. "This paragon of wit and charm and genius competence. You know some of us actually have to work at being this attractive, right?"
"Right Ortegas, it must be a constant battle." La'an's hands were working her hair back into its braids even as she unfolded herself from the floor. Erica turned to grin at her.
"Rumour was you might be here."
La'an scowled, disappearing into the bathroom without further comment, though Chapel imagined her inner monologue would involve liberal use of the word idiot to describe whichever crewmembers had been caught speculating. She smiled at Erica to disguise the sudden twisting weight the comment sparked inside her. "Put them over here."
Erica paused, looking down at the mandala. "Did you make this?"
"It sort of makes itself."
"It's really pretty."
Chapel supposed it was, from the outside. When all you saw was shapes and colours, rather than the twisting mess they signified. "Thanks." She shifted clutter across the table to make space for the pizza boxes.
"So, is this officially a thing now?"
She really had no idea. "It's..."
"No one else's business."
Erica glanced up at La'an as she stepped around Chapel to fill the water jug. "Yeah, but, come on, you're staying here, right? You've taken actual time off to stay here. That's..."
"What part of none of your business do you need me to repeat?"
It was interesting. Despite the flat delivery, the words didn't appear to hold any real rancour, and Erica didn't appear particularly rebuffed. It was a dynamic Chapel hadn't seen before.
"We're friends Noonien. That means I get to ask."
"And I get to tell you to get lost."
"Fine." Erica took a slice of pizza. "Then I won't be sharing what admiral Tveit said about Uhura's report when she requested a meeting with the captain."
"Knowing Tveit, something with audibly deleted expletives."
"You know, I've never actually heard anyone do that. It's a neat trick. Una was not amused."
La'an hummed the closest thing to a laugh Chapel had ever heard her produce in company. Somehow, over the past few days, something seemed to have shifted between them. Chapel wondered briefly whether she'd find out what, then let herself drift, coasting along with the conversation until Erica's eyes lit up across the table with suddenly remembered delight.
"We're on for shore leave tomorrow. It's an actual planet, totally uninhabited. We get to go anywhere. I'm thinking an afternoon by the beach, build a fire, bake some potatoes, cook some chilli, get Wattana to beam down some of those flaming cocktails when it gets dark..." She slowed, enthusiasm tempering at Chapel's lack of a response. "I thought it might be nice. To just, get out, you know?"
"Yeah, that sounds…" Like a party. Which should be fine. It should be exactly what she wanted to do. Only La'an… Chapel pressed her palms into the edge of the table. La'an didn't do parties. And right now…
"This had better not be one of those things where you invite the entire ship."
"It's a whole planet. What makes you think the whole ship's going to want to hang out with me?"
La'an snorted derisively. Because of course the whole ship wanted to hang out with Ortegas. That was the point. Not that Erica had the ego admit that. Not privately, like this, in a place where she wasn't reflexively showing off.
"I'm not spending my time off with people I don't know."
"See, that's the thing Noonien, you have to get to know them. Parties are how you do that."
"Parties are where intellect goes to die."
Erica sighed expressively, but her eyes were alive. "Fine. So if I curate the guest list you'll come."
"If anyone hands me a flaming cocktail I'm gone."
"Noted." Erica grinned, then nudged Chapel's foot under the table. "You heard that, right? She said she'll come. You wouldn't seriously pass up a party after that?"
"I never pass up a party." Only she had been, more and more recently, and the look Erica gave her told her they both knew that. At least she was tactful enough not to call her on it here. Unfortunately not quite disciplined enough to keep her eyes from straying towards La'an. It was a moment, but that was all it took. You didn't get anything past the head of security. It was why she had the job.
La'an pushed her chair back. "You two have things to talk about."
"No, really…"
"You have things to talk about. And I have something I need to get." She pressed Chapel's shoulder as she passed. "I won't be long."
Erica drained her glass before she fixed Chapel with a look. "Are you feeling better?"
"Yes." She really was. Yesterday had been impossible, but it had helped. Today had too. She could see her way out of this now, even if the path looked anything but placid.
"Ok. So, we both know she just volunteered to go to this party for you. And I'd put money on it you're the only reason she's taken time off in years. Which, by the way, you needed her to, because you were half way off this ship. You needed her to stay and she's staying, despite the fact she's La'an Noonien-Singh. So, even if it's none of my business, even if I have absolutely no idea how any of this works, please just tell me you're going to let her."
Chapel stared at the mandala, the delicate strands of blue suffusing a vortex of grief, and wondered how she would ever breathe again if she didn't. "I don't know."
"Ok." Erica rubbed her face in her hands, stifling what Chapel knew would have been a thoroughly frustrated groan. "In that case, I'm telling Wattana we're going to need all the alcohol."
The little black teapot looked as if it belonged, blending into the backdrop of Chapel's artefacts almost seamlessly. La'an had brought the cups too, despite the fact Chapel had her own. Chapel watched her spoon tea out of the old-fashioned tin, warm the pot with a splash of hot water, lost in a focus that suggested the ritual of it mattered at least as much as the end result. She still hadn't asked about the mandala, but when she handed Chapel her cup she paused beside her, taking it in.
"Is it done?"
It shimmered silently, colours shifting slowly against the board as Chapel stood, stalled, trying to make peace with the fact that she'd hit a wall. That the painful, exhausting process would offer little catharsis tonight. It had been too much to expect, really, that one day's work would fix anything. But she was just so tired of this.
She let herself sigh, rubbing at her eyes. "No. But I think I'm done."
La'an bent closer, studying the thing, watching it move and change. She reached down into the bowl of sand, running some between her fingers, watching the colours appear under her concentrated frown, and then she was stretching forward, out over the centre of the image, the swirling void Chapel hadn't been able to fill that loomed dark and depthless over the whole, and covering it in slowly twirling strands of gentle colour. Golden yellows, orange ochre, flecks of red so deep they almost glowed, a tangling gyre of startling beauty, warm and alive in a way that made Chapel's breath catch. Because that was her. Right at the centre of it, where she hadn't been able to make herself look, taking shape reflected through La'an's unwavering eyes; bright and complex and changing and whole.
For a second it made it completely impossible to breathe. Chapel pressed her palms into the cool surface of the table, trying to dull the bright, hot intensity of a feeling that would swamp her if she let it. Swamp La'an too, if she let it out. That wanted to rise up and claim her, wrap itself around her and never let go, because out of all the madness, all the chaos that was Christine Chapel, somehow, impossibly, what La'an chose to see was this beautiful, evolving work of art.
Her vision blurred, the movement and the colours swimming into a haze until La'an set the bowl down in front of her quietly. "Now it's done." She brought over the box of tissues, lifted the untouched cup back into Chapel's hands. "Drink your tea."
There was no medical reason it should help, but it did, because it was warm and smoky and comforting, made by someone who, somehow, loved her enough to stay and stay and stay in a way that was starting to feel like it could last. Like it really might not break under the weight of Chapel's insistence that it couldn't.
She blotted her eyes, and drank the tea, watching the mandala move until she felt like she understood it. Like she wouldn't forget. Then, finally, she swirled her hand through the colours until the image went blank, sifted the sand back into the bowl, slowly, feeling every grain, letting the thoughts and feelings they had contained dissolve in the flow.
Watching, as they tumbled, how every last one of them turned midnight blue.
Chapel dimmed the lights before she slid into bed beside La'an, but the way she tightened was unmistakeable, even in the gloom. It was that familiar blankness, that inward focus that Chapel had read as resistance for far too long. It seemed incongruous that this could be the same woman who had kissed her only yesterday, but that had been about Chapel. This was about La'an.
It shouldn't be surprising, really, that she would have trouble reaching for what she wanted. That intimacy would be a puzzle she had to work to solve. Chapel lay for a moment, just watching her, giving her time to process, to breathe, until finally her eyes refocused, working still, but clearer. "Too much?"
"No."
The way she shook her head made Chapel reach for her, fingers light over warm brushed cotton, move in closer until she relaxed, eyes falling closed with an inaudible sigh. "It was you, wasn't it? Shore leave."
La'an tilted towards her, hand finding hers under the blankets. "The domes weren't real."
"What's it like?"
"Pretty. Quiet. The ocean's cold."
Chapel let careful fingers stray into her hair, find the smooth warmth of her temple, the gentle rise along her ear, just to watch the way it made her breathe, the way it relaxed the baseline tension that kept her ready to run even in sleep. "Do you want to go to this party?"
"No." La'an pressed minutely closer, warm breath ghosting the hollow of Chapel's throat. "It's fine. Ortegas needs you to go."
"Will you let me take you out first?"
La'an smiled, grip tightening, curling inwards until her forehead met Chapel's chest. "You get to take me anywhere, Chapel."
The soft dome of La'an's head fit perfectly under her chin. Chapel combed slow fingers through her hair, down over her back, and wondered how it was that out of all the ways people had found to tell her they loved her, not one of them had been able to make her feel it quite like this.
