The room was bitingly cold, searingly bright. It helped a little, kept her mind on the physical discomfort, the fact that her fingers ached with the cold and her eyes stung in the glare while she cleared the shelves, methodical and relentless, leaving nothing behind.

She'd been horrible to Erica. Distant and harsh and eventually unkind, because she'd needed her to leave. Needed to stop seeing the mess she was through Erica's concerned eyes. She didn't want sympathy, or talking down, or any of the other crap that would have her going over and over the horror show they'd just been party to. If there was nothing she could do then the only way through here was forward. To set a direction and just keep going, to not look back. Never look back.

So she packed, keeping her mind on the cold and the noise and the light, and made sure not to look at what she was holding as she lifted each item into the cargo containers. They didn't work. They had never worked. The whole thing was just a stupid, puerile, vainglorious exercise in self-deception. A fairytale she liked to chase, as if looking inside herself would ever yield more than grasping vanity, screaming incompetence, the kind of vacuous, raging noise even the sound-systems couldn't drown. She shouldn't be here. She should never have come. And if the only way through here was out then she was getting out, as fast and as far as she could, with every last bridge left flaming behind her because that was how this always went. That was the only way this would ever work, and La'an…

She stared at the Pachelbel slate, numb fingers catching in the wrapping. She'd told her to leave. And La'an had left.

She'd told her to, and she'd meant it. Because this… No one should stick around for this. It was a freezing, hostile, spiralling disaster, so out of control she couldn't even stop her hands from shaking, couldn't stop her mind from reaching back, over and over to grasp points of pain she should never have forgotten. That she had to forget. Forward. The only way through was forward. It didn't matter that she didn't know how. That she couldn't imagine… If she didn't come back…

No. Enough. She forced herself back into motion, yanking the wrapping into place until the fabric ripped. No one wanted this. No one ever would. This was madness. Not the charming, sparkly, just-this-side-of-crazy kind people found so dazzling it kept them blind, but the real, dark, ugly kind that lashed out with claws. The kind La'an saw, and wasn't afraid of. The kind she stayed for. Every time.

Only this… This was so much worse. So extreme. So vicious. Maybe this time…

The door hissed. The smell of butter and cinnamon tinted the freezing air as a tray slid onto the table, carefully pushing aside the mess. Chapel stared at the tattered wrapping in her hands. She couldn't look up.

"Here." La'an came up beside her, shaking out the shimmering cloak carefully. Chapel pressed her eyes closed. She hadn't let herself think about it for months, but seeing it now sparked the realisation that she'd never actually stopped reaching for it. That she'd missed it with every freshly remembered jolt of grief. La'an wrapped it around her, hands lingering as she settled it close, gentle against her shoulders.

Chapel reached to grip into the soft fabric, pressing the familiar warmth to her face as La'an's hands ghosted over her arms, drawing swirls of colour, invisible in the stark overhead lighting but bright as sparks behind her eyelids, warm and deep and real and safe. It would all stop. Everything would be fine now. The noise would stop, and everything would be quiet. Everything would stop. She stood and breathed as La'an moved away, accessing the environmental controls.

The din in the room quieted until it was just waves against the beach, surf hissing over shingle. The lights dimmed until Chapel could barely see them in the darkness. Heat began swirling up from the floor, gentle against her frozen toes. La'an's hand pressed her into a chair, the touch drawing fresh sparks of colour from the cloak. Chapel sat and ran her fingers against the fabric, trying to elicit its soothing, depthless magic while La'an cleared a space in front of them on the table, poured tea that smelled of rose and lavender, cut dense, sticky pastries methodically into little bite-sized chunks.

"I'm sorry."

La'an passed her a cup and pulled a chair in close, blowing steam off her tea. "I should never have kept it."

She'd tried to give it back the next day. But she'd looked so truly awful that night, and it hadn't felt like it would matter. It shouldn't have mattered. Chapel shook her head. "I didn't think…" She dug her fingers hard into the fabric of the cloak in a way she knew wouldn't work. In a way she couldn't help. La'an reached out to skim a hand along her arm, slow and steady, bringing the colours back up for her. It was just pathetic. La'an had faced down the Gorn. All Chapel had been asked to do was stitch people up. "It's for children."

"So?"

So she was a grown woman, a scientist, serving aboard the flagship of the fleet. She shouldn't need a child's comforter to stop her falling apart. "I shouldn't need…"

La'an leant forward and pulled her into a hug, awkward and uncomfortable and overwhelming, flooding her instantly with a rush of endorphins. "Don't be an idiot, Chapel." She said into her shoulder. "Of course you do."

She was warm, solid under the uniform. Between them, the cloak lit up in a bright, rippling aurora Chapel never wanted to let fade. Don't let go. Please don't leave. She couldn't say it. Not again. Not like this. La'an had come back. Chapel didn't get to ask her to stay. She pulled away carefully. La'an let her go.

"Here." She pulled Chapel's badge out of her pocket. "You can't resign like that. That only works in films." She tilted the thing back and forth slowly, making the etching catch in the dim light before she put it on the table with a disproportionate click.

"You're not mad Chapel. It's always hell out here. Maybe there's a research vessel out there somewhere where people have time to be bored, but on the front lines, people always die. Starfleet is monumentally unlucky, and congenitally incompetent. They launched their first starship missing basic supplies. They never do a risk assessment, their standard backup plan is to wing it and they never, ever, learn from their mistakes. But they're all we have between us and hell, and the best place to be, to protect people, is right in the middle of it. So you accept the fact there will be losses, and you do your best to prevent them, and when you fail you take a breath and you move on." She reached over to run the shimmering cloak between her fingers. Chapel could feel the iridescent glow down to her bones. "If something this simple can keep you sane enough to do that…" She shrugged. "You're good at this job. That doesn't mean it's never going to hurt. It's fine if you let it."

It was strangely settling, as terrible motivational speeches went.

La'an took a long pull of her tea and pushed the plate of pastries towards Chapel. "Have some sugar. I'm going to put all this back." She lifted the abandoned slate off the table, shaking it free of its torn wrapping and dusting her hand across the surface before she stood to set it on the shelf.

Chapel drank the soothing floral tea, and ate the pastry, and watched her work. It shouldn't really have been a surprise that she knew where everything went. They'd spent so much time here together over the past few months. She pulled her knees up so she could hug herself into a ball, wrapping the shawl tight around her against the lingering chill. People were dangerous. Fascinating and captivating and bright in a way that burned if you got too close, ached if you kept your distance. She'd never been good at keeping the balance, and she'd stopped even trying with La'an. The whole thing was such a hopeless, irredeemable mess.

The unpacking didn't take nearly long enough. La'an was organised and efficient, winding the cotton wrapping into rolls, packing it back into the cargo crates as she lifted each object into place. Soon she was nesting the empty crates so they would fit back into the wardrobe, into the narrow space under the bed. Which meant she'd be done. Which meant she would go. Chapel dropped her forehead onto her knees. She should let her go.

La'an's hand settled on her arm, sparking the darkened cloak back into life. Chapel blew out a careful breath and made herself look up, meet her eyes without flinching. La'an frowned down, studying her.

"You don't trust me."

It wasn't really a question. Chapel blinked away, because there was no way she could look at her and deny it. But she couldn't bring herself to admit it, either. It wasn't quite true. Not all the way. It was just…

La'an's fingers shifted against her arm. "I'm doing this wrong." She stepped back, urging Chapel with her. "Get up."

Chapel felt herself unfold almost automatically. "What…"

"I'm doing it wrong. I haven't…" La'an frowned, exasperated and open. "You think I'd leave."

Chapel blinked down. She did. She should. None of this was her problem.

La'an stood for a second, quiet as her fingers lit up the cloak against Chapel's arm. "Ok." Then she reached forward, wrapping her into a hug that tightened until it was hard to breathe, until it was too much, and then suddenly not nearly enough. Chapel felt something inside her dissolve, found herself hugging La'an back until her arms ached, tighter and tighter because she wasn't close enough. She would never be close enough. La'an's arms cinched around her, pulling her in until the pressure tripped a switch and suddenly everything stopped and she was right there, warm and real and everything.

Chapel drew ragged breaths in the startling quiet and let herself sink into the embrace, press her cheek against La'an's neck, curl her fingers deep into her dark hair. She wasn't going to let go. She wasn't going anywhere.

La'an's fingers drew slow arcs into the cloak against Chapel's shoulder, lighting up the air. "I'm not leaving. You did this, and you had me. That was all it took."

The memory was still so bright. She'd hugged her because La'an had been jangling with adrenalin. Because it was fast, and non-invasive, and it worked. But mostly, really, she'd done it because she couldn't bear not to. Because La'an had been so hurt, so alone, and Chapel had needed so much to make her whole. She hadn't let herself think about how much of herself that would reveal. "That wasn't why I did it."

"I know, or it wouldn't have worked." La'an's fingers stilled, and for a second she went tight in a way Chapel recognised, that strange, unnerving blankness she hadn't seen for weeks. "I don't…" She wavered, fingers gripping into Chapel's shoulders. "I'm not going to say any of the things you're supposed to say. That's…"

Too hard? Too much?

La'an drew an unsteady breath as Chapel pulled her reflexively closer. Her shoulders relaxed. The hug tightened. "I know where I want to be. It's here. You didn't trick me, I made a choice. I want this. All of this. Everything. It's…"

Not enough.

She was being told she was loved. Again. Because somehow, she never managed to listen. "I'm a mess."

"It doesn't make any difference. That's not… I just…"

"Ok."

"Ok?"

Chapel nodded, not sure she could trust her voice.

"Good." La'an extracted herself carefully from Chapel's tangled grasp. "Now take off the uniform, you need some endorphins." She really had just said that. It was too absurd. Chapel snorted with barely suppressed laughter, feeling suddenly light, her face splitting into a ridiculous grin. La'an managed to glare as if she meant it. "You're doing that, not me. I'm the one taking you to the gym."

The deadpan only made it funnier. Chapel found La'an's hand and took a step back with as much sensuous sway as she could manage given the past few hours, throwing in a wink for good measure. "It would be very effective."

La'an shook her head, then pulled her back in and kissed her, soft and fleeting, lips barely brushing the corner of her mouth while warm fingers touched away her frazzled hair. It was sweet and tender. Impossibly gentle. "It wouldn't help. This is complicated enough."

That was an understatement. "Half the ship already think we are."

"Let them. It's none of their business."

Somehow Chapel's love life always seemed to be everyone's business. But this was theirs. Just theirs, whatever it turned out to be. Maybe it didn't matter. Chapel pulled her back into a hug and blew out a long breath as gentle arms wrapped back around her. I love you surfaced so easily she didn't even try to push it away, just breathed until it passed. She could feel La'an smile anyway, hugging her just a little tighter.

"You're going to need a different doctor."

"I hate doctors."

"You're afraid of doctors. I'm not going to let anyone near you."

"Fine." La'an squeezed her hard for a long moment before she let go. "Now get changed. I'm going to teach you how to hit things."

"I don't hit things."

"Trust me, you will."

Chapel had her doubts about that, but within thirty minutes it turned out to be true.

And it felt great.