She shouldn't have done it.
She knew she shouldn't have done it, but there had been something wrong, something beyond what had started on the Peregrine before those monsters had made their appearance. Spock had been jumpy, sure, on edge in a way that seemed uncharacteristic, but that wasn't a mystery, that was La'an, the traces she'd left in his mind. "Vulcans do not experience the 'heebie-jeebies'." The words had sounded like marbles in his mouth, entirely unconvincing in the days following the carnage that had occasioned their mind meld, his back pressed against the wall, scanning the corridor they had been reduced to eating in while refugees crowded the mess hall. He had looked just like La'an in that moment, and Chapel had known she must have left something behind. Mind melds weren't an exact science. They were risky, and Spock was young, and La'an had been terrified beyond her ability to feel. It had taken him weeks to shake it off. But this was different.
He never said it outright, but he'd been so lonely as a child, so lost trying to fit human emotions into Vulcan molds, perpetually struggling, perpetually less. He'd been taught to force himself into the world he lived in, rather than to believe that that world should adapt to his needs. Where was the logic in asking the impossible? Where was the ethics in being unkind? He'd been a child, they should have loved him, but instead...
Infinite diversity. And they thought they believed that. Fucking hypocrites.
She'd wanted to tell him it would be all right. That his feelings mattered, that he could afford to embrace them and still be him. Maybe even more him, finally; step out of who he was supposed to be and discover who he was. But she hadn't got that far, because she had been touching him, and he had been touching her, and it had made everything churn.
Chapel stood in her quarters, frozen, unable to settle, staring at her artefacts unseeing as emotions battled inside her like soup; hot and muddled, turbid and sharp, hers and not.
She shouldn't have done it, but how could she not? How was there a world in which she didn't…
The door hissed. She whirled to find La'an, to make for her in long strides and press her back against the closing metal by the waist, catch at her wrists as her hands came up, pinning them fast against the door.
"What…"
"Don't fight me." She'd never sounded like that in her life.
What the hell was she doing?
La'an had gone quiet, pliant under her hands, yielding as Chapel stood and breathed, fighting the rage, the hot, disembodied desire, the twisting fizzing everything inside her that made no sense, that shouldn't be there, that was somehow as tangible as the flood of relief she felt at this impossible woman who would let her do anything. Who could have her incapacitated in seconds but instead was just waiting, calm and steady, as if everything would be fine.
"I don't…" Don't what Chapel? Don't what?"
La'an shifted until she could lace their fingers together, gentle and steady and warm. "What's happened?"
"Nothing." She didn't know, but La'an's eyes changed in understanding, seeing her, the way she always did.
"Someone hurt you." La'an's voice was soft. She made it sound like a fact, nothing shameful, just something that had been done.
"I'm fine." Only she wasn't. He wasn't. "It was me. He didn't…"
"Spock?" It wasn't actually a question. Of course she knew, who else would it be? Chapel shook her head, meeting La'an's eyes to find them quiet still, softening as they travelled her face. "Come with me."
She was in no condition to go anywhere, but La'an was already pressing the door open. "I'm…"
"Trust me, this will help."
And of course it would. When had it not?
0 0 0
It felt like falling, the air roaring around her, thick and damp and cold, filling her ears, buffeting her skin, whipping her hair out above her in shuddering waves. The VR goggles kept her eyes from stinging, but the visuals were breathtaking, green fields and tiny trees, the world wheeling beneath her as she stretched her arms out and soared on nylon wings, plummeting towards the earth in a symphony of lift and speed and mass and life. It was beyond exhilarating, like nothing she had ever experienced before, wild and thrilling and glorious and new, a heady cocktail of adrenalin and endorphins that left her breathless and giddy, grinning like a lunatic as the security tech handed her down out of the wind tunnel and straight into La'an's waiting arms.
"I love you." She didn't care who heard, didn't care who saw as she kissed her. It didn't matter anyway, everyone already knew and at least this way someone was winning a bet. Maybe she could get in on the celebrations. She'd have to get Erica to tell her…
"I take it you enjoyed that."
"It might have been better than sex."
La'an shook her head, steadying her as she stepped out of the gossamer flight suit into the quiet of the observation room. Chapel caught her face, dipping to kiss her again, just because she could.
"I love you."
"Good." La'an touched the mad hair away from her face, lingering, gentle, her smile fading in a way that didn't quite track. "Because I'm about to tell you I'm going to leave."
It was like a dousing, sudden and shocking and cold. Chapel felt the chill flood through her, emotional whiplash sending her backwards. She stared at La'an's dark eyes, too close and too far away, finding purchase against the angled window frame. It wasn't as if she hadn't known this was coming, it had been inevitable from the moment they'd found the kid, but somehow she hadn't thought… "Wow. That was…"
"I know, but there really wasn't a good way to do it." La'an sighed. "I'm going to go see the captain later."
"Will you come back?"
"I don't know."
Chapel pressed her fingers hard against the glass. "That was where you were supposed to lie." Only she never would. Not to Chapel. Not like this.
"I'm sorry."
"No, don't…" She wouldn't ask her to change, or stay, or swear… "It's fine."
"Is it?"
"No." Not for a moment. Not for every peptide on every planet on every system in the galaxy. It never would be. "Really not fine."
La'an smiled at that, as if the threatening desperation was endearing rather than the giant red flag it should have been. "Let's go home."
No. God no. Where even was that anymore. "I need a drink."
She needed Erica. Because Erica wasn't mad, and everything else today felt like it was.
0 0 0
"Leaving?"
"Yup." Chapel threw the rest of her drink back and poured another with only slightly unsteady hands.
"As in the ship, or…?"
"She's going to find Oriana's family."
"Oh." Erica considered that for a second, refilling her own glass. "But then she'll be back, right?"
Chapel shrugged, staring down into the viscous liquid morosely.
"You don't think so?"
"She said she doesn't know."
"Starfleet can be tricky. She's not leaving you."
"Right." Only it felt like she was, and Erica clearly caught the inflection because she was leaning forward, dipping to catch Chapel's eye.
"She's not leaving you. Trust me, that one isn't going anywhere." She brandished the PADD that must have pinged only seconds before Chapel had made it to her door, because she'd still been holding the thing, wearing the widest, most triumphant grin until she'd clocked Chapel's face. "I have fifty-seven names here of people who bet money on it. You and her? Meant to be, or whatever." She linked her index fingers together clumsily. "It's been obvious for months."
These weren't the first drinks Erica had downed today, clearly. She must have hit the bar right after the wake. And of course people wanted a happy ending, they saw what they wanted to, especially today, but that didn't make them right, it just made them assholes, hinting and probing and pushing this thing towards something it wasn't, no matter how often Chapel insisted that it wasn't like that, that it never would be, stretching her belief paper thin right now that it had ever been anything at all.
"I need to go home."
"Christine." Erica touched her arm, stalling her as she started to stand with an intensity of expression the alcohol had only slightly blurred. "Don't screw this up, ok? Don't do the whole…" she waved her hand expressively, "Christine Chapel, no commitments thing. This one matters. Just… don't be you."
"Not helping." Somewhere deep inside, Chapel thought, trying to be charitable, this mattered to Erica more than she ever let on, and some day, when she managed to sort her own crap out long enough to focus, she would try to find out why. Just not today.
Today she had to work out who she needed to be.
0 0 0
La'an wasn't packing, exactly. Her bag was open by the bed, but she was stood staring down into a metal box of trinkets. Keepsakes, Chapel corrected, pressing her fingers down onto the table beside her. There was the clasp she'd worn at the pirate party, a ring that was too large for her hands, a polished cadet's badge, a letter with the Starfleet insignia. The little button that said Pugit Sound.
"He said I can come back, any time. Just a leave of absence."
"Ok."
"There's a station a few days away. I should be able to get transport, and then…" La'an trailed off, her eyes unfocussed as Chapel slid onto the table to face her. She didn't look up, but she reached for her hand, brushing her thigh as their fingers caught. "I'm sorry."
"No." She was so close. Closer than she might ever be again. Chapel couldn't just let her leave. Not like this. Not without… She reached up, running her thumb over La'an's temple in a way she knew would make her eyes blink closed. La'an leant into her palm, and Chapel pressed a kiss to her cheek, against the corner of her mouth, their noses brushing. She pressed La'an's hand against her chest, the zip of her uniform, running a slow thumb over the delicate skin of her wrist, feeling her breathe, the brush of her lashes, the beat of her pulse still even and warm. "Would you let me?"
La'an leant into her for a second, their breath mingling before she shifted away, only slightly, just far enough to smile a negative, to touch her fingers into Chapel's hair in a gesture that seemed so natural Chapel wondered whether she had to work to suppress the impulse in company. "I'd let you do anything."
Only this wasn't like that. It just wasn't. "That's why people stay."
"If that's true, it's because people are idiots." La'an said it gently, without the usual rancour. Her fingers drifted against Chapel's cheek. "Come to bed."
It was… Chapel couldn't even bring herself to make the joke, to smile as if she wasn't going to cry, but La'an leant in to meet her, infinitely gentle, noses coming together in a way that was somehow more intimate than anything Chapel had ever done on shore leave. "I promise, it'll help."
When had she ever been wrong about that? But there was a wash of trepidation sliding in beside her as the lights dimmed. Chapel didn't know how to do this, field this twisting, never-ending wanting and turn it into anything she could manage, or name, or even…
"Shh. Just breathe." La'an's fingers ghosted over her cheek, folding her into the bedclothes that were familiar and warm, that smelled of jasmine and comfort and home. She was so close like this, so sure, and Chapel watched her, following her calm, dark eyes as they tracked her fingers slowly over Chapel's skin, intentional, unhurried, tracing her eyebrows, her temple, from the rise of her cheek down the shape of her jaw, dipping under her chin to follow the sweep of her throat to the soft hollow at the centre, moving upwards over her collarbones, over her ear, thumb sweeping its ridges, the spot that held her tattoo, the warm spaces behind, and then up into her hairline, the nape of her neck, following her spine down into the collar of her nightshirt, splaying out between her shoulders, tickling up into her sleeves, careful against the delicate skin of her arms, the peaks of her elbows, the bones in her wrists, rounding each finger, thumb warm in her palms, and then skimming her waist, lifting the hem so she could follow her vertebrae like a delicate string of pearls, trace her ribs and the valleys between them until Chapel was curling into the shape of her, breathing into a ministration that was safe and whole and utterly freeing, not a prelude but a benediction, mapping her, printing into her skin how the very essence of her wasn't just loved but utterly, effortlessly cherished.
"I need you to stay. I need you to promise you're never going to leave, that you won't leave me, that you'll never…"
"I promise." La'an drew her closer, holding until the jag had started to pass, until the terror of honesty began to fade under the reality that she could be this and be loved, that La'an wouldn't pull away. "I chose you. I want you. I always will."
Chapel let herself breathe for a moment, melting into La'an's warmth, the impossible familiarity of her. She wasn't going to leave. The distance didn't matter. She wasn't going to leave. "I need you to promise you're coming back."
"Always. You're my home Chapel, where else would I go?"
"You might die."
"So might you. I'm leaving you on the ship of the bloody damned."
And wasn't that the truth of it. But she felt safe here anyway, because they had faced the impossible and won. Because people were miracles, and so many of hers were right here. "Just come back. I'll be here. I'll be fine."
"I know." La'an's lips pressed into her hair, a soft, warm bloom of breath. "I love you." It was barely a whisper, as if she felt the words might break, but they split the gaping void wide open, flooding her with a glittering energy that was like nothing and everything, relief and happiness and faith in every texture of existence, and Chapel realised she hadn't known you could laugh and cry all at once, that it would result in quite so much of a mess, but it didn't matter. None of it mattered.
Because she knew now what it felt like to be loved.
