The faint sound of glasses clinking together is what finally started to rouse me from the kind of sleep that felt like being reborn. I hadn't moved from the position I'd fallen asleep in, and the lights that emulated daytime were off, casting the room in darkness, with nothing but the gentle glow of slow-moving space to illuminate my lids.

It was late. How late, I didn't exactly know. As I cautiously stretched my body in the smallest way possible, I was relieved to find that nothing ached. I slowly took stock of every joint, of the places that had been bruised, of the points in my head that had surged with near blinding pain earlier. All of it was gone, minus a few places that were still sore from yesterday's bullheaded spar.

Soft footsteps met my ears as I let my body return to its original curled-up position. A pair of glasses clinked against the top of the coffee table next to the couch, followed by the weight of a warm, solid hand resting against my back. The smile that spread across my face was reflexive — and so was what I did next.

I turned my body, pushing my back against the couch, causing his hand to slide around to the side of my waist as I reached up to take his face in my hands. Leaning up, I pulled his lips into mine, my fingers relishing the subtle stubble on his cheeks. I took my time kissing him, letting it linger in a slow, soft way that mimicked exactly how I felt having just woken up to find him back with me again.

My lips fell from his as I leaned back down, looking up at him intently in the soft glow of space. As usual, everything about his appearance screamed that he was tired. Exhausted. His eyes were tinged red, subtle bags underneath them puffing up as it was no doubt late in the evening. The collar at his neck was unbuttoned, his hair untidy as if he'd been running his hand through it on more than one occasion.

"Are you okay?"

Silence stretched out between us as his gaze rested on me, his eyes slowly moving back around as if he was trying to figure out each layer of the complicated question I'd just posed to him. A small smile of his own appeared along with a faint light coming to his eyes before he gave me an answer.

"I am now."

"I'm being serious."

My voice was quiet in the stillness of the large room. It was tinged with a firmness I hadn't used with him in a while. This, his mental health, was not a lighthearted topic that I wanted to brush aside. I didn't want to operate under the assumption that he was fine just because that was the way he portrayed himself to everyone.

"I must look like complete and utter shit right now."

"Jim." I rolled my eyes before forcing myself to sit up with a small grunt of effort. He slid his hand around to my back, helping me get all the way upright so I could at least be eye to eye with him as he toyed with me and casually avoided answering the real question he knew I was asking.

His arm wrapped around my back as he sat down next to me on the couch. I arched my legs over his, forming a peak where he rested the length of his forearm before turning his gaze back to me. He looked more stern this time around, and I hoped that meant he was ready to answer me in more than half truths.

"I should be the one asking you that question."

"You can ask me. But I asked you first, and I want a serious answer."

"You literally just woke up, and the first thing on your mind is grilling me about how I'm really feeling?"

My head cocked at him as he deflected my question again, and my eyes rolled again — this time with a bit more drama than before.

"I have no idea what time it is, but I know it's late, and I've had plenty of sleep considering it was the middle of the day when I laid down. I know what kind of day you've had. You alluded to it earlier, and I have a sneaking suspicion that things didn't just calm down and get magically less stressful after I saw you last."

Resting my chin on my hand with my elbow propped on the back of the couch, I settled in and pinned him down with an intent gaze, anxiously awaiting his response and ready to divert him back to the subject at hand if needed.

He let a sigh out of parted lips, his head turning away from me and facing towards the empty room. His stress was palpable. I could see it in the way his shoulders were tensed, pulled up towards his ears. In the way his jaw was clenched. In the way there was also something deeper and heavier hiding in his eyes, behind whatever lighthearted emotion played at the front — a facade.

"I'm alright, I think. And you're right, the rest of my day was no less hectic than the first half was. Meeting after meeting kept cropping up for various reasons, whether it was to triage requests from command to various areas and departments around the ship, or just general issues that always arise during travel, or dealing with the repercussions of my own arrogant, overconfident decision making."

My heart sank at the last item on his list, a frown twisting at the corner of my lips.

"The hearing."

He turned his head back to me as he said, "I'm not concerned about the hearing itself so much, although I probably should be. It's more of what got you to have to attend one in the first place."

Brows knitting, I leaned forward slightly, his arm adjusting around my back.

"What do you mean? You can't possibly think that you had anything to do with me engaging in a physical altercation with Spock?"

"Not directly. But It was my brilliant idea to have you come along on the ship for this, for this mission that has turned out to be nothing but an absolute hellish nightmare at every level and possible definition of the word. Not to mention the gross oversight of me not realizing how difficult it would be for you to conduct training sessions with crew members, study, deal with the fallout from the incident on Yorktown, and have me not be able to manage my feelings in a healthy, manageable, painless way."

I had to force myself to take a deep breath before responding to him. There was so, so much to address that my initial reaction was to cut him off mid sentence to tell him exactly why he didn't need to be shouldering those feelings. But I resisted the urge, instead letting him finish. He was near breathless by the end.

"Listen to me when I tell you, Jim, that our relationship in no way is something that I wish I didn't have to deal with. I don't regret it, and I sure as hell wouldn't want to sacrifice it just because it might make existing on this ship a little bit easier, which I'm not even convinced would be the case. I'm speaking for myself when I say that I'd rather have to go around being careful and potentially deal with repercussions from the board or command or whoever than walk around being miserable, just like we were not so long ago. I don't want to live like that."

He was getting ready to respond when I launched in again, wanting to empty out every thought I was having before I lost the chance to another bizarre headache episode, or Jim being called away for his duties, or some other unpredictable interruption.

"And as far as the difficulty of the circumstances of me being on this ship for this mission, please, please don't put that on yourself. Would I have liked to have done this in an easier, much more manageable fashion? Of course. But we don't get the luxury to go back in time and alter outcomes. This is how it is, and I wouldn't have it any other way. I'd rather be here, struggling through it than back on Yorktown, struggling in an entirely different way. And as far as the incident is concerned … Well, I'm not convinced that wouldn't have happened anyways. And you would've been gone, and I would've been alone. It's beyond terrible that it happened, but it did. And we figured it out, even though it was messy and a little painful. I'd take that over not being here with you every time."

It was my turn to be breathless. My thoughts tumbled out one after the other as he sat and looked at me intently, something like awe and affection spreading across his features.

"If you were back on Yorktown right now, I would've lost my mind and sanity dealing with this mission a long, long time ago. I don't regret it either. Any of it. It just frustrates and pains me to no end to watch you have to deal with the bindings of the bargain I had to strike with the board to get you here. It shouldn't have to be like that. Space should be for anyone who wants to experience it, and the academy's strictness around specialties is complete and utter bullshit. I just wish I could make any small part of it easier. Sure I can offer you my more comfortable bed, luxurious bathtub, and ridiculously impressive charm and witty humor, but you're still struggling, and now with these episodes that I had no idea were happening … "

I sighed as my own frustration with the annoyance of my episodes surged, rising to surpass his. It was my turn to move my face away, opting to stare down at the hand in my lap instead of his tired blue eyes.

"It's something I would rather not talk to anyone about, to be honest. Bones knows because, well, because he's Bones. He's a doctor, and I needed help. I thought it was a one off thing, maybe even just something tied to what happened on Yorktown that would fade over time as I worked at dealing with it. And that's what Bones thought too. But here I am with what I thought would be enough time passed and enough self-healing done, and they're just getting worse. I walk around feeling like a ticking time bomb."

His brows furrowed as he considered me. The conversation, the look of worry and concern on his face … It all made me want to get up and run laps around the ship until the only thoughts my mind was capable of producing were about pure physical exhaustion. Jim's gentle yet intense voice broke through my serious consideration of abandoning the couch and running for the door.

"What exactly happens during these episodes, Aria? I know you explained it to Bones earlier, but … What's going on inside of you?"

My mouth grew dry at the thought of having to recall what I'd gone through earlier today, and the handful of times before it while I'd been aboard the ship. But I owed it to him. The truth. Here he was, asking to know, asking to be a part of me and my life, unlike anyone before him. Not because he had to, like Bones, but because he wanted to. So for him, for the sake of the two of us continuing on this path that we'd decided to head down together, I found it within myself to dredge up the intense memories.

I took a deep breath in and out of parted lips as I drew my hands together in my lap, my shoulder now leaning against the back of the couch for support. My head cocked as I watched myself fiddle with my own fingers. Just as I felt his hand rub my back up and down in a slow, soothing rhythm, I found the courage to speak.

"It, the feeling, that is, is near primal. It's almost as if something else takes over my body entirely, especially this last time. The first few weren't nearly as intense, just headaches that grew more intense. I'd have to stop what I was doing and head back to my quarters, lay down and sleep it off. But even early on with just the headaches that had less pain, there was always this feeling of urgency that surged up inside of me."

"Urgency?"

Moving my fingers around aimlessly between my hands helped coax me through this conversation, along with the firm yet gentle pressure of his hand slowly going up and down my back.

"I don't know how to explain it. It feels as though I need to get off the ship, to go somewhere. It's this feeling of knowing that I really shouldn't be here. Almost like I'm late to something, or I know I'm going to miss something and need to try to get there as quickly as possible. And then there's the pain. That's gotten worse every time it's happened. This time, it felt as if my body was shutting down completely. I barely remember anything after stopping in the hallway and feeling the surge of pain coming on. The next thing I knew I was in med bay."

Frustration creased his face as his eyes flicked down to my anxiously moving hands and back up to my face.

"And now there's this mystery prescription added into the equation."

My heart rate climbed at a rapid pace at his mention of the drugs from command. Honesty, right? That's what this was about. Why hide things from him? Why keep it to myself any longer? All it did was fester inside of me, a constant reminder of the life I'd lived long before the dashing captain before me had come into my life with all of his charm, stubbornness and adventures.

"The mystery prescription isn't new. Neither are the feelings associated with these episodes. The pain and crippling nature of them, that's new."

His hand stilled on my back, and I felt it fall away as he leaned in closer to me.

"What do you mean, not new?"

I titled my head further away from him so my eyes could take in the marvelous display of stars and planets in the cold blackness just outside the floor to ceiling windows. It would be nice to exist out there among all the celestial wonder, unhindered by the burdens of a complicated, unclear life.

"The first memories I have are of being an orphan. There's nothing before that. No family, no place where I belonged. I was being passed around family to family through the system. I grew tired of that quickly, and at a young age, way too young, I set off on my own. It was brutal. It was messy. I learned to fight, and it came easy to me. It was intuitive. I was always scrambling from one place to the next, never staying too long to avoid trouble or being snared by the system again."

Pausing, I swallowed against the small lump that was starting to form in my throat. I didn't think about those early days often. They were not kind. They hurt in ways that crippled me, even now, so many years removed. With a shaky breath in and out, I kept my eyes locked onto the blackness of space and continued.

"I found myself in San Francisco when I was of age to enlist in Starfleet for the first time. It had been a long, painful journey to get to California, but I made it. The episodes had been plaguing me for a handful of months at that point, and when I ended up in San Francisco, it was not on purpose. But when a representative from the academy happened upon me fending off a couple of assholes in line at a food bank, it seemed too good to be true. They spoke of structure, of purpose, of a way to channel my energy into an education even though I'd never had one. It felt like divine intervention, so I took the bait."

The silence in the room was palpable. The sound of my own breathing in my ears felt far too loud. I could feel Jim's eyes fixed on me still, even though he remained quiet through each small pause I took. There was truly nothing to lose from telling him about where I had been and where I had come from — even in its most watered down and condensed form. There had been no one worth telling before, and since I had been carrying around the weight of it for so long, it felt good to shoulder off some of the burden, no matter how negligible it might end up being.

"There were no questions about where I had been, where I had come from, how I ended up in San Francisco. I simply applied to be enlisted, was accepted, and was run through the same physicals and testing as everyone else. They were aware that my formal education was severely lacking, and were even willing to help make accommodations to ensure I could catch up and be on track to graduate with the rest of my class. I didn't even think twice about the physical examination part of it — all the intensive tests to see exactly how high my fitness levels were, the endless list of medical tests, blood work —"

"Blood work? You specifically remember blood work being done?"

His sudden interruption caused the hair on my arms to rise up. I pulled my gaze away from the window slowly as I turned to face him, an incredulous look spread across his features that shocked me a little.

"Yes, I do remember blood work being done. There was so much of it, it felt like it was never going to end. I'd never had any type of physical before, so I just assumed it was standard procedure."

My gut twisted as I watched his face fall. I couldn't tell if he was shocked, saddened, horrified, or some awful combination of all three. Thoughts racing, I tried to keep my breathing and mind calm as I questioned him further.

"What do you know, Jim?"

More silence passed between us as I watched his eyes move away from me and instead stare off into the center of the room, focusing on something that wasn't there. Just as I was about to press him again with a bit more firmness than before, his voice broke through the uneasy quiet stretched between us. I noticed he looked paler than he had just a few seconds ago, earning a fierce churn from my gut.

"They told you that you had the most common human blood type."

If I had been watching the hands of an old, ancient clock from a different time, the hands would've stopped. Time, my heart, my thoughts, my very existence paused as the words left his lips.

"How do you know that?" It was a useless question that came out in a small, pathetic voice. I knew that it had to have been Bones. They were best friends, confidants. But it fell out of my mouth anyways, the knee-jerk response to needing to have someone else draw the dots together of a dark realization.

"Bones brought it to my attention weeks after what had happened on Yorktown. He ran blood work on you as a part of standard procedure, true standard procedure, and came up with no matches from the largest, most vast database at his disposal. When he pushed for access to your previous records through Command and the Federation, he was denied. Bones can see that your past record exists, and they will not allow him access to any of it."

I could almost hear the snag in my brain as I grappled with one small part of what he'd just explained. It gave me such great pause that I couldn't move past it without pushing him further.

"No matches? What do you mean no matches? They told me what it was all those years ago. I know that my planet of origin is unknown, but they explained that it was highly likely that I was mostly human, with one of my parents being full blooded, and the other being at least half or higher. Are you telling me that they lied to me? That I'm not even what I thought I've been all these years?"

"It would appear that they did, yes. They know something about you that we don't know. That you don't know.""

Leaning away from him, I felt everything inside of my body grow taught with disbelief while the air was simultaneously punched from my lungs. Lost. I was more lost now than I had been even before becoming entangled with Starfleet and the academy for the first time all those years ago.

"You're telling me that I'm not human." I hated myself for how feeble the words sounded leaving my mouth, quiet and weak.

"Scientifically, no, you're not, but that doesn't change anything about who —"

"Why am I here Jim? Why am I on this ship? Why are they offering another mystery prescription like they did when I first enrolled into the academy? When I was losing control of myself to these episodes? When I took those drugs once before, I became a version of myself that I couldn't stomach. Sure I felt better, but I felt nothing. No anger, no fear, no sadness, no happiness, no joy. Nothing. I could stub my toe, and it would't even fucking hurt. I wasn't volatile anymore, sure. I wasn't shooting death glares to everyone I came across. I was nothing, and they encouraged it. They told me I was doing great. Told me I was on track to graduate, that is until I drew a line in the sand when I realized the only thing keeping me going was the fact that I could use violence in my training every day. My only purpose had become to do what I was told, and I couldn't see that through. So I stopped taking the pills, dropped out, fell off the face of the planet and hid in another system."

"What brought you to Yorktown? Why did you come back to the Federation?"

The surge of emotion that powered through the core of my very being had me shooting up and off the couch. My breathing was heavy as feelings, some repressed, some brand new, started to drown out the rational and logical calm in my mind. My hands pressed against the sides of my head as I tried to get a grip on myself. I tried to keep my emotions in check, tried to keep the conversation level. But it was hard, and I was by no means an expert on effective communication.

"Fucking you! Even in the furthest reaches of space, where the Federation and Starfleet are hardly known to anyone, I was hearing tales of a cadet made captain that was making daring rescues of his crew and of other species and planets. Someone who was participating in political negotiations, attempting to save cultures and races from being wiped away from history. A man who led his crew with bravery, with selflessness, with confidence even in the face of adversity. A man who was helping defeat evil in those who sought revenge."

My voice was no longer quiet as I worked through the loaded question he'd posed to me. Anger mixed with anguish swirled inside of me, making it hard to keep my composure. And as the next thoughts streamed into my mind, I couldn't stop myself from turning on my heel to face Jim where he sat on the couch, still shell shocked from the revelations of our conversation. My hands still gripped the sides of my skull as I took him in. The image of him sitting so calmly, his posture nearly relaxed as he leaned against the back of the couch, sent me over the edge.

"I went to Yorktown because of you. Because I thought if you could rise through the ranks and make something of yourself, that maybe I could too, and the academy might be worth another chance if I could actually make something of myself without the drugs. I thought that maybe I'd just had a bad batch of officers at the academy. That the first time had been a fluke, and that things had changed. And then of course, within days of my arrival on Yorktown, you flagged me down at the riverbank. What the hell were the odds of that?"

Jim suddenly shot up from where had been sitting so calmly on the couch just mere seconds ago. A switch had been flipped inside of him, and he was no longer content to sit as I let my thoughts flow freely from my mouth. Tension pulled at his features, his eyes burning with something I'd never seen before — hot anger tinged with frustration. He wore no smirk, no smile. It was a similar expression to the one he wore when he had addressed the board back on Yorktown. Intense and unwavering. It was a look he'd never given me before.

"Do you care to elaborate on what exactly it is you're insinuating?"

We were toe to toe in the middle of his quarters, chests rising and falling steadily and quickly with the heat that fueled this necessary but painful conversation. My hands moved down to my sides, fists clenched and shaking with every thought and feeling that coursed through my body.

"Why are we out here, Jim? What are we doing out in space, going around in the same endless loop? It seems a little too convenient that we just happened to run into each other on Yorktown, only to have you take me out drinking to ply me with alcohol and stories about how grand and incredible your time with Starfleet has been. And now here I am, stuck with you on this ship, the same issues that plagued me before coming back to haunt me after I had tried so hard to escape them."

I watched as he clenched his jaw and took a half step towards me before bringing a finger up to point at his own chest.

"I had no clue who you were when I saw you that day at the river. All I knew was that I had seen you at the academy when I'd first enrolled. I wanted to take you out because yes, you are attractive, and I was drawn to you. You seemed so downhearted, and a little lost. You reminded me of me when I was trying to figure out what the hell I was doing. And as far as my stories of my time with Starfleet, I just wanted to share what it can be like to be a part of something with a greater purpose, share what gave me validation when I was lost. I stuck my neck out for you to get you on this ship —"

It was my turn to take a half step towards him now. The back of his wrist touched the center of my chest as I drew myself up to my full height. I matched his anger-filled, piercing blue gaze, staring back at him as the doubts that had plagued me for weeks on end finally rose up to the surface, crashing through the thin, fragile layer that had comprised the foundation of the relationship we were attempting to have.

"You're out here in deep space floundering, captain. You are blindly following orders, chasing your own tail as command asks you to jump, and you say how high. Where's the push back? Where's that fiery captain from all of those stories you told me? You are lost out here, Jim, and I'm out here, stuck on a ship that's going nowhere, in a situation I've already had to escape once. All the luxurious baths, nights spent in your quarters, and charming attention from you isn't enough to save me from whatever intentions command might have. I am trapped on this ship, waiting for my next episode to completely derail me. I shouldn't be here, and thanks to you and your innate ability to be a self-serving, womanizing prick, I jumped headfirst into something without giving it a second thought because of your promise of something better, something fulfilling, something important."

He took a step towards me where there was no room for him to, causing me to take a step backwards as he turned and pushed his finger into my chest. Whatever grip he'd had on himself was lost now. Anger spilled out of his eyes and out of his mouth.

"Taking you out that night had nothing to do with command. I wanted to give you a chance, just like I had when —"

"You may have seen a piece of yourself in me, Jim, but I am nothing like you. You are the son of a dead man whose legacy helped you stand up your own character enough to get to where you are today. You know your own misery, and do nothing about it. It's clear to me that you are lost out here, Jim. Just like me. And I thought I could trust you. But you are so tangled up in your duty and trying to figure yourself out that there's no way in hell you could've ever truly helped me or kept me safe from an organization that refuses to tell me what I truly am."

Everything in his posture fell as each word made its way into the small space between us. They had cut deep, I could see how wounded he was in his eyes. But the tightness in his jaw told me that his anger was still there, just as white hot as mine. Just as his lips started to move, I launched in again, not wanting to hear whatever lie he was going to continue telling himself and me. Sticking my finger into his chest, I locked eyes with him and set my face with a hard, cold look.

"There is not a day that goes by that I don't believe that command had something to do with that attack on Yorktown. Not a day. And to think I kept on holding out hope that someone else might draw the same conclusion, especially you. Stop playing at being something outside of the captain you've been for all these years. Stop playing at trying to help me when your head is so far up command's ass that you don't even know what the stardate is. This isn't a game, Jim. It's my life."

I pushed past him harshly, intentionally bumping into his shoulder harder than necessary to get by and to the couch. Grabbing my bag, I flung it across my body and stormed off towards the door. Before hitting the open button on the keypad, I turned to face Jim one last time. He still stood in the middle of the unwelcoming living room, mouth slightly agape as he stared at the empty space where I had been standing just a few seconds ago.

"And don't think for a second that it's lost on me that you seem to be the only antidote to my episodes. If there's anything being an orphan has taught me, it's that I've figured it out alone before, and I'll figure it out alone again. Good night, captain."