The patient was terminal, that much was obvious. If Chapel hadn't been able to tell from the state of the charred and crumpled wreckage, Erica's face would have clued her in for sure. She let out a low moan, reaching to run her fingers along one of Eratosthenes' battered fins. One of the few that appeared still attached. Oleg looked devastated, hovering a few feet from the debris with his tricorder dangling forgotten at his side.

"You poor girl. Such a waste."

Chapel exchanged covert looks with Glenn across a singed curl of duranium plating. Shuttle nuts were weird. It was a wreck, yes, but it was a thing, and you replaced things, you didn't mourn them. Mourning was for the living. Still, these were their friends, better to keep that opinion quiet.

La'an wasn't bothering with any such niceties, because of course she wasn't. They'd dragged the wreckage up from the surface in a series of tractor beams. Not to prevent cultural contamination, that ship had definitely sailed, but because Starfleet wanted any data they could salvage from the crash. By the look of her though, La'an had had an additional agenda. "According to engineering it's a write off, but some of it will be salvageable for repairs to the mess hall."

"Salvage?" Erica gaped at her, clearly scandalised. "You don't carve up a ship like this, Noonien. She's given her life to the fleet. We need to bury her, with honours."

"I'm not authorising launching perfectly good bulkheads into a star, Ortegas. You might have noticed people don't like eating in cargo bays."

She had a point there. Whatever this mad fleet tradition was, Chapel was willing to bet most people would forego it if it meant dining in comfort on the journey home. There was only so much novelty to be squeezed out of waiting in echoing service lines. Ortegas seemed to be battling with the same conclusion.

"Maybe you could bury the rest?" Chapel suggested carefully.

Erica wavered, then appeared to resign herself to the inevitable, turning to place her palm reverently on the ruptured hull as Oleg stepped up beside her. "Forgive us. You served us well."

"It crashed on its first mission."

Glenn cleared his throat hastily as Chapel pinched La'an in the ribs. Or tried to, she always dodged.

"A little respect Noonien. She deserves a moment's silence."

"Fine." La'an stabilised beside Chapel impatiently. "And then you need to get changed."

Chapel frowned. "Why?" For dinner? In a cargo bay?

"Because I'm taking you out."

"Anyone here need clarification on the term 'silence'?" Erica frowned back at them before returning her attention to the wreck, but once the ceremony was over and La'an had left, "Wear something warm." she directed her inevitable grin at Chapel as they exited the shuttle bay. "Are you going to be claiming that's not a date?"

"It isn't." Dates required notice, for one thing. Being asked, and saying yes, not La'an's standard 'this is what we're doing right now'. Not that Chapel couldn't demur. It wouldn't upset her. But where would be the fun in that? She wanted to go, to find out what La'an had been plotting this time. It was always worth the ride.

"Yeah, that smile's telling a different story."

"Seriously, not a date." When would people stop… although, to be fair, the smile wasn't helping her case. "Look, it's not like that, ok?"

Erica considered her, leaning her elbows back against the turbolift rail. "You used to squirm when you said that. I'm calling this progress."

"I'm calling you way too interested."

Erica sighed in only partially feigned self-pity. "The love of my life is about to be shoring up the mess hall. Gotta live vicariously, you know?"

"Don't let the Enterprise hear you say that."

"We're cool." Erica patted the wall confidently. "We've never been exclusive."

Chapel shook her head. Maybe she wasn't one to judge exactly, considering, but man shuttle nuts were weird.

0 0 0

Maia had been right. Una had made tea. Poorly. Chapel could smell the stewed bitterness as soon as she stepped through the door. It looked like she'd got La'an into the shower too, a pair of fresh pyjamas, but no further. La'an's hair was still loose, still wet through, falling around her shoulders in dripping coils as she shivered, pressed into the far corner of the room with her knees gripped tight against her chest. The sight of it physically hurt, a sharp cold ache that had Chapel dropping her bags in the doorway, making forward without another thought.

Una's hand splayed out towards her, rattling the cups she was rinsing. "I don't think…"

But Chapel was already on her knees, finding black, vacant eyes that could barely focus, never mind meet hers. "Are you with me?"

La'an's nails tightened, already so deep they had to be leaving marks. Chapel covered her hands, applied steady pressure until they released. "It's ok. You're ok. All of this is awful, but none of it's bad. You're safe, and you're whole, and you have people who love you, who will look after you, as long as you need, as long as you want. It's ok. You get to let it hurt like hell, it doesn't change anything. It doesn't matter. You're perfect, just like this. All of this. Always."

Outwardly nothing seemed to be happening, but Chapel could feel La'an starting to surface, her frozen tension shimmering until her fingers twitched, gripping at Chapel's hand. She let the impulse draw her closer, just a whisper of air pretending to keep the distance. "It's ok. It's all going to pass. We just wait. We know how to wait."

"It's cold." La'an's voice was rough. Her head shook, sharp and tight, a chilling echo. "It doesn't work."

That was why she was freezing. She would have gone for the shower, would have sat in it until her lips turned blue, had probably needed to be dragged out of the icy water before hypothermia set in. It was why her hair was soaking, why the tea was stewed. She was waiting for a relief that wouldn't come, because this wasn't irrational terror. This was impossibly rational pain.

"It's not going to." Chapel squeezed shuddering hands as La'an loosened further. "But I can fix that. Do you trust me to fix that?"

The moment hung, barely breathing, and then liquid eyes were looking up at her and Chapel smiled, instant, unstoppable, a blossoming, infinite warmth of affection as the rudderless terror stared back. It should have been catching, freezing, but it had no effect. It was just memories. Just pain. And it wasn't Chapel's. Chapel was helping her make it whole. "It's ok. All of this is ok."

La'an's gaze dropped away again, unable to meet her, to meet Una hovering in the background. But none of it mattered. "You need to be warmer. I'm going to dry this," Chapel touched the hair back over her shoulder, "and we're going to drink tea, and we're going to sit here and let it happen. Wait for it to pass. It's impossible now, but that won't last. And I'm not going anywhere. We just wait. You're good at waiting."

La'an nodded wordlessly, tugged Chapel closer until their foreheads met, eyes pressing closed at the contact. She was so cold. And all she needed, really, was to have someone hold her, to convince her nervous system she wasn't alone. Tell the little kid that had lost everything that she could finally stop fighting, that she really could be safe, even if all of that was a lie. "I've got this, I promise. Everything's going to be fine."

"I want to go home."

"I know." Chapel hugged her tighter. "I'm going to make that better, ok? Some of that will go." Because she was home, she just had to remember, and after almost a year now Chapel knew so many tricks. "First you need to be warm. I'm going to get the hairdryer. It'll help. And then everything else comes later. You just let it happen."

La'an let her go, arms wrapping back around herself as Chapel pulled away. Behind her Una cleared her throat quietly. "I should go. But you know where I am, if you need me." She came and set La'an's communicator on the floor beside them. "It's programmed, like before. Just press and hold."

Chapel watched La'an tighten away from it, rigid even as the door hissed closed. She put the thing up on the counter. "She wants it to help."

La'an's head tipped back against the wall. "She wants…" her throat worked while she groped for words, shoved them out, "someone else."

That wasn't true, exactly. She just couldn't understand how to bridge the distance. "She loves you. She just doesn't know how." She'd spent twenty years waiting for La'an to come to her, and that was never going to work. Not when she felt like this. You added spoons to mugs that ran empty. Demanding them first was just cruel.

"Here. Drink the tea." The second pot Una had made was better. La'an took a few unsteady swallows as Chapel wrapped a blanket around her, set the dryer, sat and combed slow, gentle fingers through her hair, letting the warm air gradually melt her loose until the shivering settled, until her head dropped to her knees and her breathing evened as though she might finally unclench.

"Why aren't you running, Chapel?"

Because it would hurt to even try. Because even the thought of being anywhere else right now could make it somehow hard to breathe. Because she loved her, startling and solid with a weight that nothing was going to shift, that only seemed to increase as the days ticked past, the one constant truth in a universe that seemed to be endlessly spinning away. Because out of all the options in a boundless galaxy, this was where she wanted to be.

Because La'an would let her, if she did go. Trusted her, with everything. "Why aren't you?"

La'an unfolded, turning in one smooth motion to close her arms around Chapel's neck. "Stay. Please."

Chapel gathered her closer, her dense, volatile shape, the soft, warm silk of her hair. How could anyone ever let go of her? "Always." And she meant it. It was impossible. It should have been terrifying, but it wasn't. She meant it, and that was all there was.

0 0 0

The view was spectacular, a sweeping vista dropping away below them under occasional whisps of fluffy low clouds, green and brown and dun and grey the way Earth would be, only so much less populated, just breathtakingly unspoiled. There were villages down in the distance, near invisible spools of woodsmoke in the still air, but nothing else. No towers or wires, no vehicles cluttering the sky. Not even roads, really. It was why they had beamed up here where last time they had chosen the climb. Epheska wasn't the kind of place that offered hiking trails, and time was definitely too short for expeditionary mountaineering.

There were so many people here, and none of them had had healthcare for centuries. The medical team had been run off their feet. But Starfleet would be arriving soon, some time tomorrow, and then life could go back to normal. Whatever that was. Not that she cared right now, with a warm breeze tickling her senses and the sound of water clattering somewhere nearby and La'an shaking out a blanket over the short dense grass. She'd packed an actual picnic. Or someone had. Probably lieutenant Gulnaz, Chapel decided, watching La'an surface a container of Greek fried potatoes. The man never forgot a recipe. Never forgot an occasion. One day, if La'an ever became captain, Chapel imagined she'd try to poach him for her own ship. And he'd probably go, too. She'd become hands down his absolute favourite.

There were strawberries, and sparkling cider. Out on the horizon the sky was just beginning to tint pink. Chapel knelt on the edge of the blanket to pick up the genuine glass bottle, a total waste of cargo capacity in space.

"You know, some people would call this romantic."

"Shut up, Chapel." But La'an grinned, and then she caught her face and kissed her, thumbs soft against her cheeks, lingering and slow in a way that came as close to intent as she ever had, as close as she maybe ever would. With most people, by now… well, frankly, Chapel would have long ago counted their teeth. But La'an took intimacy and turned it into an art form, delicate and gentle and brutally honest in a way that made Chapel's soul sing without ever straying out beyond chaste. It was beautiful, and Chapel felt her soften as the moment blossomed, as happiness billowed out around her and then slowly faded, her eyes clouding as she faltered against the boundary she'd been contending with for months.

"It's ok. I know. I don't need you to say it." She had, for so long, but somehow it didn't matter anymore. Not when La'an showed her every day in so many small ways that Chapel had lost count. That no one else had ever taken the time to consider. She smiled, tracing the lines of her hair. "I love you." She pressed a kiss against her cheek, against her eyelids, her temple, "I love you, I love you I love you I love you…" trying to demystify the words, peppering her face with kisses until it was just a senseless jumble of noise and La'an was giggling away from her, twisting backwards to escape the pursuit.

"I know, stop, I know!"

Only she didn't pull away when Chapel let her go, instead wrapping tight arms around her shoulders, nose burrowing against her ear.

"Thank you, for… all of it, for…" She pressed closer, struggling to voice things Chapel didn't need to hear.

"I love you, and this is perfect. You are perfect."

La'an's grip tightened until it was almost painful. "You're the best thing. Anywhere."

And somehow, that meant more than any florid declaration ever could have. Ever had, and maybe ever would. Because this was love, pure and simple, and everything that came after this…

Well, it was going to have one hell of a time trying to compete.