La'an seemed to have done all the crying she was going to, a bodily excising of grief, shedding cortisol, releasing endorphins until she could talk again, sit up and eat without everything seeming so fragile it might crack, until the balance that had felt set to tip from metered pain to plummeting agony seemed to have stabilised on the side of sanity, of mercy, blanking the worst of it in a way that would allow her to survive another day, and another, skating above the crater of her memories without ever really looking down. It was a miracle. The brain was a miracle, and maybe, just maybe… maybe that meant she wasn't going to break. That all of this would just…
What, Chapel? Disappear? Go back where it had been hiding, poisoning her slowly from the inside? Maybe out was better. If she could survive out. If it didn't...
Enough. This wasn't something wishing could fix, and it wasn't something Chapel had the right to want fixing. Sanchez would do whatever it was he did, and maybe that would be enough, but if it wasn't, well, Chapel suspected this was why they were here in the first place. Because part of La'an had known the reckoning was inevitable, and she hadn't had the space to face it on the ship. Because she'd felt Chapel waver, again, and rather than lose faith in her she'd simply organised backup. Because La'an knew how to survive, and she was pouring all of that tenacity into fighting her way back to the surface, into clawing back her right to live.
It was spectacular, and it was terrifying, and right now Chapel's job was just to let her. To step back, however hard that seemed, and give herself time to breathe.
There was a lake behind the Castillo house. More of a pool really, tall overgrown sides and shallow, silty pebbles accessed by way of a small jetty. Chapel floated out to the centre of it, letting her focus rise into the still air over the still water, the vista rising all around her, trees and crags and endless sky. The texture of outside, all the little noises, the sensory wash of nature, so familiar at an evolutionary level that it lulled her nervous system still the way nothing else ever could, Earth's inexorable gravity subtly convincing her body it was home. Like this, drifting here, everything was right. She gazed up at the sky, letting her mind empty, the convection currents take her, letting time stretch until a figure appeared, just on the edge of vision, barefoot over the wood.
La'an slid soundlessly into the water, pushing out towards her, hair spreading like a halo as soft arms wrapped around her neck, heavy and warm, an impossible balm to an indefinable want. Chapel had never felt so close to anyone. So trusted. So wanted. So absolutely loved. She twined her arms around rough brushed cotton and used her toes to twirl them slowly, infinitely slowly as the water resisted, as the light began to ebb and the sounds deepened and the sky turned a careful, delicate, darkening pink. She loved this woman, loved her in a way she'd never loved anyone or anything, a whole body, bone-deep knowledge that this was where she needed to be because it was the one place, singular in all the galaxy, where she ever felt totally, consummately still.
Twilight began to stretch over the world as they drifted, timeless under a feathering sky, infinite shadows on dappled water, the whisper of sounds that didn't reach, texturing the quiet all around them, scattering harmlessly away. Chapel didn't need to see to know La'an's eyes had closed, that she had given herself over to the simple sensation of being held, of being cared for, safe and protected in a surrender that let everything go, that gave everything back. That made Chapel want to do this forever, tangled under what would soon become the first faint stars.
She could spend her whole life here, and it would be perfect. But it couldn't last. Nothing ever did. Someone shouted up at the house, a clamorous call to dinner through the silence, and then other voices, other sounds filtering in. Chapel shifted, not ready to let go yet, just waking from the trance, acknowledging they would have to return to reality, sooner or later. It wasn't conscious. It wasn't even a mistake.
It caused resistance to curl through La'an's body like a 'no' made substance, sudden and sharp and fast and bad, tightening her breathing and then her hands and then everything else as the brittle balance shattered.
"I won't let go. I promise, I won't let go." But it was too late. Something was coming, eruptive and devastating and palpably, irrevocably unstoppable. And the one thing Chapel knew right now was that that couldn't happen here. Because depending how bad it got, La'an might not be able to swim.
0 0 0
They'd got a signal through from Sanchez. For weeks now the nebula had been blocking any hope at communications, but Starfleet was getting closer by the minute, and shuttle teams had deployed relay beacons, and the very first thing La'an had done, when her personal slot had come up, was put in for the call.
It must have gone well, because she was smiling, watching something curled into the corner of Chapel's couch. This wasn't therapy. She never smiled like that for anything. She moved so Chapel could see the screen, making space against the cushions.
"Who is that?"
The boy had delicate features, dark eyes and light gossamer curls like a compact little angel. He was narrating a stream of consciousness at a pitching handheld camera, inexpertly adjusting what appeared to be some kind of rudimentary Rube Goldberg device. As Chapel watched the thing twanged and shuddered, launching an indeterminate projectile into a stack of battered tin cans. The camera swung to display the carnage.
"It worked! Papa! It WORKED!"
The image cut out, then looped quietly.
"Is that Sanchez' kid?"
La'an nodded, pressing stray tears off her face. "Christopher. I feel like…" She pulled in a wet breath, blinking up at the ceiling. "I did something. Not just…" She plucked at the uniform over her chest, eyes bright with something painfully new. "I did something. I did that. And it mattered."
She saved lives, every day, relentlessly. But that was duty. This was real. And she had a lifetime of it ahead of her.
"I told you, you're good at that."
La'an frowned back at the image, unwilling to accept the diagnosis. It was too complicated still. Too far from what she was used to being told she was. "You're biased."
"And right."
On screen Christopher fumbled the camera, providing a close-up of tangled elastics.
"I'll think about it."
"Good. Because now when that kid turns into the galaxy's next genius super-villain, people are going to come blaming you. You're going to need character witnesses."
La'an grinned, actually grinned as the stack of cans exploded again. "I thought you were supposed to be working?"
Chapel shrugged. "M'Benga threw me out of the lab." It had been happening more and more recently. It was getting worrying. But he wouldn't talk about it, and there were other things to do right now. "Want to come guard me from zealots while I try and vaccinate the locals?"
"Yes." La'an paused before she got up. "But only if you admit you're sequencing their genomes while they're not looking."
"I get permission." Which she did, technically. Sort of. If you took certain unavoidable liberties with the term 'informed consent'. La'an was watching her. "Look, they're isolated 17th century bloodlines, I just want to know if…"
"Evil. Genius. How are you any kind of character witness?"
Chapel went for her. She could get up a good shriek, if you caught her just right. It was the one physical weakness Chapel had so far been able to find, and it was utterly adorable; the formidable lieutenant La'an Noonien-Singh, squirming away from being tickled as if her skin was on fire.
It was a good job the walls were soundproofed. Otherwise people would really start to talk.
0 0 0
They made it back over the jetty, onto the grass, La'an's wild eyes black with terror as she fought to control her body.
"Everyone died. They all… Everyone died."
"They did." Chapel spent one searing, stolen second hoping she wouldn't have to see it, that she wouldn't have to watch her live it again, another hating the things that had done this to her, ripping her from her perfect family into a future of unimaginable grief. Then she pulled herself together. Reached to wrap a towel around her, acres of Maia's plush, oversized terry. "We're safe. I'm right here. If this needs to happen now that's ok. You'll be ok."
La'an's head shook, barely breathing, frozen on the precipice. Chapel cycled a few slow breaths, to demonstrate, to keep her own heart rate level. "It's ok. You can feel it."
An impossible silence, a twisting tension, then "No." La'an shook her head again, harder this time, an unnatural, prolonged motion as she coiled tighter. "No."
She didn't look like she actually had a choice. Chapel could coach her through the grounding, through forcing this back and away, but she was already shaking with the effort and it felt cruel, and pointless, and destructive and wrong. This needed to happen. It just couldn't happen like this. Chapel reached out to touch her only to have La'an flinch away, eyes blank with pain as she crumpled inwards.
"No!"
No. Not Chapel, not for this. Which left…
"I'll be two minutes. Don't move." Not that she could, but it was a simple instruction to follow, and right now, simple was good.
Maia was in the scullery when Chapel stumbled in through the back door, thankfully alone, filling a pitcher while the pre-dinner chaos went on behind her.
"What do you need?"
"Chin-Riley. Now." Chapel didn't need to waste her breath on anything else. Maia left the water, already moving towards the comm. as Chapel turned and sprinted back.
Interminable minutes passed as they waited, La'an curled in on herself, shaking as she fought to retain control while Chapel murmured things that didn't matter. "You just breathe, that's all you have to do, you just breathe." Then the tingle of static, the whine of the beam, and Una, materialising by the jetty in a uniform jacket that was hanging open, boots that had barely been laced. She dropped to her knees as Chapel moved aside, drawing La'an towards her by the wrists in a practised motion that would feel entirely inescapable, given her strength.
"No!" But La'an wasn't fighting, not really. Her body worked, curling with tension, shaking as her muscles strained against an incorporeal foe, but she wasn't twisting for freedom. Wasn't trying to run.
"You can't hurt me. Whatever you do, you know you can't hurt me."
There was a moment of piercing, raging silence, of pain so vast it couldn't find a voice, and then the world shattered into the kind of noises a human shouldn't be able to make, not screaming exactly, because screaming would carry, but merciless, wounded, harrowing in a way that would haunt Chapel's darkest moments for a lifetime.
Maia knelt beside her, wrapped a towel around her, a steadying arm, squeezing tight as the battle waged and twisted in front of them, stretching until it became unbearable, until Chapel wondered whether La'an would ever come back, would even survive this. How could anyone survive this? And then it was over, suddenly over, and the darkness rang with the echoes of her ragged, shuddering gasps.
Una's grip relaxed a little. Too soon. Much too soon. La'an tightened away from her. Beside Chapel, Maia shifted.
"We should…"
"No." La'an's voice was raw, her eyes hollow. Chapel knew there was no way she was going back to the house.
"She needs to go home."
"I'll take her." Una straightened, already pushing herself to her feet. "You pack." It was all wrong, but La'an was standing, keeping out of Una's reach, and Chapel nodded mutely as the communicator crackled, as coordinates were given, the familiar shimmer, and then nothing.
Maia's hand softened, forgotten against her back. "You need a hot shower first."
Right. She was shivering. Only it was probably the adrenalin over the cold. "I'm fine."
"You're not. No one could be."
No. And she wasn't. But also… "I will be. I have to get up there."
"She wouldn't have gone if she hadn't wanted to."
Only that wasn't true. La'an would do anything for Una, including risking her own life on a whim. Una was safe because she was powerful. Because she kept control. Because she never cracked. Qualities that fostered repression, that La'an had clung to and idolised and emulated for decades. That had now come to the end of their ability to help.
"I have to get up there."
"Then we'll make that happen. But you also need to be dressed."
She was wearing a two-piece bathing costume. Maia wasn't wrong. But…
"You're going to take a hot shower, you're going to get dressed, and you're going to drink something sweet. After that, you get to make decisions. Not before. Ok?"
"I have to…"
"No." Maia clasped her hands. "You have to look after yourself first. That's the only way this works. And you want it to work, right?"
"Yes." More than she ever remembered wanting anything.
"Then your sanity comes first. Because you can't save someone else from drowning when you're going down yourself."
Which was true, she knew that, only part of her sanity was hopelessly caught up in… "I miss her." She'd been gone ninety seconds, maybe less, and it was an uncontrollable ache she couldn't stem.
"That isn't real. That's just the fear talking. Take a breath, imagine her up there. If Chin-Riley has any sense she'll be getting her into dry clothes, making her sweet tea, giving her space to settle. She'll be waiting for you. Half an hour isn't going to make the difference here."
Of course she was right. It just didn't feel like it. It felt like going mad. "I don't do relationships."
Maia smiled sympathetically. "I think you might be doing one now."
She couldn't be. And she was. And none of it mattered, because what she wanted was to go home. She had to get up there, and she had to be sane first. "Do you have hot chocolate?"
"I have five kids. I have every flavour."
Flavours. La'an would call that an abomination. Chapel felt the echo of a smile appear. "Ok."
"Good. Let's get you back inside then."
The distance didn't matter, what mattered was that it was temporary. She just needed to remember how to breathe now. And somehow, suddenly, Chapel found that that was something she could do.
