Not all those who wander are lost

by Account5738525

Set post s01e09 and onwards. Chapel and La'an experience the events of the second Gorn encounter in a way that hopefully allows the episode to make a little more emotional sense, and then have to negotiate their long distance non-relationship afterwards. Let the drama roll. (Nominally a queer romance, mostly an advice column to start with, sorry about that)

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"All that is gold does not glitter,
Not all those who wander are lost;
The old that is strong does not wither,
Deep roots are not reached by the frost.

From the ashes a fire shall be woken,
A light from the shadows shall spring;
Renewed shall be blade that was broken,
The crownless again shall be king."

― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring

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Author's note:

I had a lot of trouble trying to write this story, or at least working out how to start writing it. I posted this plea as the first chapter, and the community very much came up trumps. So to anyone who helped me with the thinking, thank you so much. I don't think it would have happened without you. I'm going to leave this part up here so I can keep all the comments you spent so much time on.

You are all the best.

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Original posting:

I'm stuck, so I'm crowdsourcing sanity.

I'm trying to explain the events of episode 9 in a way that makes sense, and failing spectacularly. So If you have thoughts on this, do please come help :).

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For anyone new to this, I'm writing this endless Chapel / La'an between-the-scenes series that tries to follow canon. It's been going ok so far, (I took some liberties with episode 8), but now it's hit a logic wall.

Now...

We're going into episodes 9, 10 and the comic books set post season 1. And I know what I want to do with that, broadly, but on getting into the details I've found I'm stuck.

The problem is in episode 9 (all those who wander). The ship they go looking for had 99 crew, all of which are dead. And not just dead, but gruesomely dismembered dead, all around / over the ship. La'an and Chapel both explicitly remark on the horror of the scene, which they actively survey. Then two people get redshirted and Hemmer dies, and yet La'an has *that* scene at the end with Pike.

Now I know trek's general structure necessitates giving its characters superhuman levels of sanity in situations like this, on which I'm willing to suspend disbelief. But given La'an's history, given what just happened here, this tonally makes no sense, not just in my headcanon but in actual canon. Right? Or am I mad?

First, on the Hemmer thing, La'an apparently knows he's been infected by the venom, but didn't mention it before? How are we explaining that? How does that fit her character?

And I feel like she should be incandescent with herself, with M'Benga for preventing her from finding out about Buckley's infection from Oriana, because one answered question would have saved everyone's lives. The whole mission is an unmitigated disaster (3 dead for 1 saved) because of her failure as a security officer, and that seems to have no impact on her at all.

I know it's just shoddy tv, and I shouldn't be surprised when it's shoddy, but I don't know how to write this when none of it makes sense. Do I just rewrite it? Ignore it? Which parts?

Please, help me make some decisions here. Help me make it make sense. I just can't make any of it rhyme.

Also, thank you for still being along for this ride. I doubt I'd have been motivated to keep it up without you, and I'm having so much fun.

xxx