On the long list of things Chapel hadn't made time for over the years, tutoring had to be near the top. Many of her classmates had; it was something of a given that you gave back to your community once you reached a certain level of academic achievement, but the whole idea had always been spectacularly unappealing. It wasn't just that she was busy, though that was the excuse she'd used. It was the dread of having to slow down, again. To be patient, again. To look happy while she did it, again. Making herself small enough to pass muster, to not be labelled a show-off. Again. Medical school had already been impossible. She just hadn't had it in her to spend her spare time in a straightjacket too.
It came as something of a surprise, now, to find she enjoyed it. Maybe it was the setting, the people she liked, the house open to the landscape, watching La'an knead bread with Alex, teach the twins mancala on a board carved out of an old plank with a laser scalpel, using coffee beans for pieces, triggering arguments that could be heard all over the house. The way she walked Casey through the academy's entrance requirements, helped him write his motivation letter for the preparatory program. Talked to Jessica as if she was a person rather than a child. Maybe it was all of that. Or maybe it was just that Zoë was clever, and that the last time Chapel had done biochem was half a decade ago.
Whatever the reason, she found herself enjoying the scattered afternoons that passed for quiet in the Castillo household. Zoë seemed less concerned about her exams than Chapel had ever been, applying herself consistently without wasting time on fruitless panic. Finding time to go out and play netball even, somehow. Maia tucked a toasted sandwich into her bag as she left. Put one down in front of Chapel too, cheese and kimchi on thick slices of La'an's latest loaf of bread.
"Thank you, for doing this. Biochem never was my thing, even way back when."
"It's been a while. So far she hasn't noticed I'm blagging my way through."
Maia slid a cup of coffee across the table, then sat and tapped blunt nails against her own. "You know, I always thought it would be Alex who had it hardest. I didn't realise how rough it can be, being too clever. Not until I had Jessica." She nodded out onto the terrace where La'an was arguing the merits of… something literary with Jake. "She's really helped with that. I thought she might."
"Is that why you invited her?"
"No." Maia sipped her coffee slowly. "You two needed a break. Somewhere you could just breathe for once, without everyone butting in. Without the world ending every ten minutes." She wasn't wrong, but 'you two'? What did that even mean? "I have to say, I didn't think she'd take to it quite this easily."
No, neither had Chapel. But once she'd realised she was welcome here La'an had unclenched enough to just... be, especially with the kids. Who would have thought she'd like kids? After a day or two she'd stopped checking around corners. After the waterfall she'd even been able to sleep. They'd walked the valley both ways, down into the farmlands and up into the hills. Chapel had shown La'an how the juice from a papaya could slowly dissolve a fly. She'd looked on in revulsion, then creeping horror as Chapel cut a fresh chunk and popped it into her mouth, tart and stringy and cool. Flatly refused to try it, lips pressing together as she averted her head like a child.
"Really? La'an Noonien-Singh, cowering from fruit?"
"It dissolves flesh. That's not cowering, it's self-preservation."
They'd toured Santiago, staring up at the scaffolded cathedral, poking around the winding 19th century streets, eating lunch by the river while the water rushed by and the world went on around them. The natural history museum had been too much for her, too busy, but they'd just left. Taken the trolley back. It hadn't mattered. Chapel had eased La'an's elbow away from the knife she kept folded into the lining of her satchel, had taken her hand instead, and La'an had let her, and everything had been fine. Better than fine.
Perfect.
"Why do you do it? Why do you leave?" This place felt like paradise. The Enterprise barely broke manageable.
Maia's eyes went distant for a moment before she sat back and considered her husband through the screen door. "Because I love them. Because it works like this, and if I had to stay, play mother, I'd be unbearable. The pregnancies… they got me through them, him and Theo, but they were a slog. It took them both, and even then, after seven years I needed to move. See the universe. Be a person. It was that or have them end up filing for divorce."
Chapel found it hard to imagine. Maia was always kind, always patient. The kind of mother who gave her kids confidence without seeming to try. But no one survived feeling caged, even surrounded by as much love as Jake and Theo provided. Even raising half a dozen implausibly wholesome kids. As soon as the lock snapped shut, out came the monster. That part Chapel understood.
She tried not to look at La'an. To think about how even the idea of her absence made it hard to breathe.
"It's like that, at first. You fall in love with someone, want to spend all your time with them..."
"I'm not."
"Not…?"
"In love." That was heady. Impossible. Made you stupid, not cautious. She knew the difference. Chapel waited for the knowing smile, the contradiction. Instead…
"No, I know, but that's semantics. My point is that it's new. It hasn't had time to settle yet. Once it does it gets less frightening, less intense, you get used to the fact that someone's going to stick around for you, be there when you need them. It makes missing them easier, like a pause rather than a looming end." Maia shook her head as if she could sense Chapel's rising protest. "You can't skip to that part, you can't rationalise your way to it, it's not an intellectual problem, it's a physical thing. A subconscious thing. It takes time. And doing it without the romance, without all the hormones taking the edge off, of course that's going to be rough. I remember the looming phase. It's exhausting. It doesn't last."
She made it sound like a given. Like there was no question they'd even make it that far. "I'm too much for her."
"You're the only person she ever smiles at. Have you noticed?" She hadn't. "Not even the kids. It's just you."
Maia left it at that, finishing her coffee, easy in the silence. Chapel stared at the tabletop and found that, for once in her life, she couldn't bring anything into her conscious mind at all.
0 0 0
The world was ending. Because of course it was.
The EPS surges were manageable now, holding despite the load being put on the systems while Pike's fleet was at sea. Chapel hadn't seen a plasma burn for days. Things had been looking up.
Well, not up maybe, perhaps that was going a bit far, but flat at least.
Not getting worse.
No one had been dying, imminently.
But now this.
She should have seen it coming. Of course the world was ending. Because really, when was it not?
0 0 0
At some point, almost four centuries ago now, some madcap British aristocrat had decided that what the foothills of the Andes, while scenic, were fundamentally lacking was a pipe organ. Having apparently more money than sense, he had consequently made it his life's mission to rectify the situation. The result was a perfect neo-Gothic chapel, arched and fluted to within an inch of its life, clinging to one of the more manageable peaks like the melting ghost of Wells Cathedral. Sir Geoffrey had not only modelled the incongruous limestone monument on the crowning jewel of his native Somerset, he had also imported a genuine 215 pipe Willis organ to finish it off. It was the kind of absurdity La'an appreciated.
Theo had mentioned the thing a few days ago, and now here they were, traipsing up a stepped, winding path cut into the dusty mountainside surrounded by one of the most spectacular views Chapel had ever seen and very little else. La'an didn't appear to be having any trouble with the thinning air. Because of course she wasn't. Chapel, on the other hand, would be lying if she claimed she wasn't getting a little out of breath. They were only around 9000ft up, it wasn't dangerous or anything, but it certainly wasn't comfortable. At least they were almost at the top.
There were people around, but not many. They all looked like they had actual things to do. Chapel dropped onto the bottom step under wide wooden doors to catch her breath while she pretended to admire the view. La'an frowned down at her critically.
"You don't look right."
"You don't look right. I look like humans are supposed to after a two hour climb at .2 grams of oxygen per litre."
"Oh." La'an handed her the water bottle, then stepped back to take in the ornate frontage carefully. "This is ridiculous." It had gargoyles and everything. "It looks like it's melting."
"He had it built out of limestone. Dissolves in the rain, cracks in the frost, easily eroded. They look like they're re-coating it." It was probably the only reason the thing was still standing.
"Moron." La'an muttered under her breath. She looked quietly delighted. Chapel was fairly sure she'd end up finding a biography of sir Geoffrey lying around her quarters, once they got back.
It was pleasant inside. Peaceful without being still, muted work sounds coming in with the breeze through the open doors and people at back near the altar moving around, talking to each other. Chapel touched ancient stonework, peered down through a glass case at some kind of faded relic, read the inscriptions, worn smooth with age, that decorated the ledgers they passed over. After a while there was a wave of knocking and coughing, shuffling amplified by the acoustics of the place that seemed somehow purposeful. Then the organ started, a couple of pre-emptive blasts followed by a brief, flourishing trill.
Chapel made to step towards the aisle, curious, but La'an had frozen. "What…?" Before she could ask the organ sounded again, a series of flourishing, introductory bars, and Chapel watched all the hair on the back of La'an's arms stand on end.
"Mama."
It was barely a word. La'an's eyes were open, but Chapel doubted she was actually seeing anything. Not the intricate masonry, not the choir currently drawing breath to sing, not even Chapel, two feet from her, hovering, unsure what to do. She'd been transported somewhere, taken by a memory so vivid she couldn't pull away.
The moment hung, a vision in aspic, until the voices started. Then La'an's legs gave way.
She crumpled to the floor, clawing at her chest in a futile attempt to control the wide, gasping breaths that were dragging steadily into sobbing, relentless and harsh the way only forever could be, never again, that yawning, all encompassing wanting nothing could ever cure. Never again. Impossible, until it had happened, then forever in an instant. Eternity made irrevocably real.
Chapel dropped to her knees, as close as she could get without touching as the choir set in what sounded like a refrain.
~ and the first tree in the Greenwood ~
"It's ok, just…" But there was nothing you could do. "This is grief. This is what it feels like. Just breathe."
The brain was a master at regaining equilibrium, and if anyone's had had the practice it was La'an's. Only she'd never felt this. It had never let her. Mama. Chapel pushed the tears off her own face. She couldn't even tell her nothing was going to break, because she wasn't entirely sure, right now, whether that was true. She watched La'an press backwards as the voices rose again, finding a surface to lean against, her wild eyes finding Chapel's through the blur.
"I read once that grief is just love with nowhere to go. I think it helps to feel it anyway. Because you're here, even if they're not. It's still real to you."
La'an's head tipped back against the column behind her, fighting for control. "I didn't."
She'd been so young. What kid that age stopped to examine whether they loved their parents? It was all fair or not. Routine frustrations. And then horror so deep everything had blanked. She'd probably been angry. Hated them for their decision, before that went blank too.
"Everyone does."
La'an blew out new sobs, deeper and more painful as another verse rose. She reached for Chapel's hand, gripping hard as Chapel moved to sit beside her.
"It's going to pass. You just breathe. It's all going to pass."
It had to.
Chapel soothed her palm over La'an's fingers, anchoring her as the storm waged and then finally, torturously ebbed, as the choir crescendoed triumphantly and the organ stretched out a quiet final chord to leave the space ringing, the choirmaster giving notes, paper shuffling, instructions, and then a new hymn, more complex than the last.
Eventually the tears stopped, leaving only ragged breathing that sounded too fragile still, too raw, La'an already wiping at her face with unsteady hands. Chapel let herself pass over the water, a handful of tissues. Kept herself from reaching out to pull her close. I love you. So much that it ached right now, but it wouldn't help to say it. It would just bring everything back out, and she wasn't sure what would happen, once it did. They had to get back down this mountain. Somehow, they had to make it home.
"Can you walk?"
La'an nodded, pushing smoothly to her feet. Because of course she could. She was La'an Noonien-Singh.
Bluescreening pain was her specialty.
0 0 0
"I shouldn't have let her go."
The admission had been brewing for days now. Perhaps since this whole thing had started. La'an was angry at Pike for disregarding her recommendations. She was worried about Spock, about Una, whose loss she wasn't allowing herself to contemplate. But she felt responsible for Uhura, and that one… Guilt was so much harder to shut down.
"It wasn't your decision."
"I could have said something."
Only she couldn't, not really. It wasn't part of her job, and just personally it was none of her business. Uhura had made it clear, though not explicit, that she didn't want friends here. That she didn't want connections. So pushing into her life like that would have felt unkind. Cruel, even, without the knowledge they had now. What was that old saying? Hindsight being 20/20?
"I was being a coward. I should have…" La'an curled back in her chair, abandoning the phrasebooks Shankar had prepared for the next surface delivery, a long shot at helping Pike translate his way out of the disaster they were currently facing. It had come as a revelation to Chapel that the Enterprise had a room dedicated to printing on paper, though not, on reflection, as a surprise. "This was how her family died."
Yes, that uncomfortable fact had been on everyone's mind since the Eratosthenes went down. That La'an had considered it beforehand was uniquely painful. She really liked the kid. Losing her would be…
"We're going to find her, and we're going to bring her back. And then you get to make up for it." La'an looked at Chapel then, finally. She clearly didn't think she knew how. The dichotomy made Chapel smile. "You're really good at that."
And she would be. They just had to get there first.
0 0 0
They had made their way back down the mountain in silence, onto the train where La'an had leant her head against the window, staring out at the passing landscape unseeing. She'd been pale, even after the walk, lost somewhere Chapel couldn't follow.
She'd been asleep ever since, barely bothering to undress before she'd pressed herself into the blankets, vacant eyes closing to leave her dead to the world for almost 18 hours now. The household had simply gone on around her; dinner, bedtime, the requisite teenage arguments. Then alarm clocks down the hall, battles over the bathroom, missing homework and shouted countdowns, someone burning eggs.
Chapel had tried not to watch her sleep, tried to smile, until finally, after the morning chaos had faded, Maia was left watching her cradle a cup of coffee in the middle of her bombsite of a kitchen.
"Is she all right?"
"I don't know."
"Are you?"
Chapel tightened her grip, shrugging into a mug that had passed tepid hours ago. "I don't know what I'm doing."
"What do you want to be doing?"
That she knew.
That one, when it came to La'an, she always knew.