It had felt like charging a battery. Filling a reservoir. Drinking herself so full of the shape of her that she was never going to forget. And it had been terrifying, at first, to try it, mortifying watching herself become this grasping, desperate, clinging cipher. You don't have to be this, she'd repeated helplessly into the mirror, no one can stand this, it's madness, it's too much. But La'an hadn't recoiled in horror, had simply softened to draw her closer, soothing the rampant open need threatening to swamp her until the terror had slowly gone still. "I chose you. I want you. I promise, I'm coming back." It repeated like a mantra, until Chapel had known it was true.

They'd had three days, and La'an had used them to hand off her duties in a way that made space for Chapel everywhere. She'd done the exit paperwork with her feet up in the lab so Chapel could reach down and find her ankles while she worked, had scheduled handover meetings only while Chapel saw patients, had cut her hours short so they could spend them curled up on the couch together, La'an's fingers carding slowly through her hair until Chapel forgot where her own skin ended and La'an's began, stopped hearing the voice that said stop, or you'll drown her. No one was drowning. They were building a buffer large enough to last.

It hadn't taken La'an long to pack. She didn't own much and she was taking considerably less. Most of her possessions had gone into storage, but she'd handed Chapel the box of keepsakes, and when Chapel had clutched it like a talisman she'd given her the orb too, the hunters in their fabric bag like a lizard that had swallowed the world. Chapel had tried not to take it. "You need that." But La'an had taken her fingers, had curled it into her hand. "I don't. You do. Keep it for me." It had lain buried between her pillows ever since, nestled into the cloak. Most nights Chapel's room would shimmer with the combined light of them, because it helped to keep her grounded, bright evidence that her memories were real.

And then the moment had come to let her go, and they had stood together in the empty silence and Chapel had focussed on what it felt like to hold her, to feel her breathe, the silken tangle of her hair. "I love you." "Good. I really need you to." It was the first chink that had shown in her armour, the first time La'an had wavered at all, and Chapel had cinched her as tight as she could go, had pressed her lips into the soft, warm space behind her ear. "Always. Always, always, always." La'an had let her go then, had reached up to kiss her as if she meant it, hard and gentle, and she'd smiled as she stepped onto the pad and Chapel had known that she'd call soon, that they'd talk for hours, that it would be days until her comms lagged, weeks until they started failing, that she had an ocean of reserves now to remind her that the distance was just distance, that La'an wasn't going to disappear. That she loved her, really loved her, and that meant she would always come looking. Always.

Chief Kyle had let her work the transport, standing by her shoulder to make sure, giving her something to do with her hands, the illusion that she was making a choice. "Don't die, ok?" "I promise." And strangely, it was a promise Chapel could believe, because La'an was possibly the galaxy's foremost expert on not dying, there was no reason that streak should break now. She'd slid the switch, and La'an had gone, and then nothing.

It should have left her reeling. It should have hurt to breathe. But she didn't feel abandoned. The process had worked, filling her to the brim with a kind of settled, solid calm, the knowledge that this wasn't over, that all she had to do was wait. Erica had frowned at her put-together smile, her smoothly twisted hair when she'd turned up at her door that evening. "I thought we'd be throwing a pity party." And Chapel had grinned. "I'm fine." And she really had been. She just had to wait, and for once in her life that was something she knew she could do.

She hadn't noticed, at first, how completely Spock had pulled away from her. She'd been too wrapped up in La'an, too elated at her own lack of despair, but she'd started to feel his absence as the days wore on, the emptiness building until it became too obvious to ignore. Spock was there still, in the mess hall every evening, but he wasn't there. He wouldn't talk to her. Where she'd felt the thrill of his attention, the glow of his confidence, suddenly there was a vast expanse of nothing, cold and straining with politeness. There was something wrong, but he wouldn't confide in her, wouldn't even meet her, using any excuse to get away. "Just talk to him." La'an had told her quietly, braids fraying into the pillows. She didn't take them out anymore, ever, even to sleep. And Chapel had known she was right, but she couldn't. She didn't do honest. Not about this. La'an had smiled gently, had pressed her fingers into the screen so Chapel could meet them endless light-years away. "You're the best thing. Anywhere. That's always going to be true." And Chapel had tried not to cry, because she missed her, and there was nothing more that either of them could do.

It had been harder, once the calls stopped. But it had been manageable. And then they had taken Una, and the loneliness had really started to bite. Chapel had never liked her, probably never would. Was utterly certain Chin-Riley would never like her. But she'd been safe, familiar, a place to be when everything piled too high, when smiling became too hard, someone who could take the darkness inside her without constantly needing to flinch. They shared La'an, they'd developed an understanding, and then suddenly she'd been ripped away. Chapel knew she should have tried to send a message, that the excuse she'd made that La'an had long dropped off the radar was only half the truth. Hell, even the cruelty of worrying her when she could do nothing to help wasn't the reason her half-written letters went unsent. No, the real truth of it was that Chapel wasn't sure how to lie, to disguise the fact that she thought… that maybe… Una had been exhausted. The kind of end-of-your-tether mental weariness that given her lifetime of vigilance, the added, inescapable deadweight of dread that had been her constant for months now, that held no end point, no glimmer of relief… Pike had been incandescent, enraged enough to break all the rules, or nearly all of them. But Chapel had thought, privately… And La'an would have heard that, whatever she'd written. And it might not be true. So she'd kept quiet, and time had rolled on.

There had been a moment, on a mission, where the ship had detoured. An unauthorised event, the Illyrian home world swirling bright outside the windows, Pike dragging Spock back to the ship half dead, Pike half alive, some horrific body modification they had barely reversed. Spock hadn't wanted to stay in sickbay, even though he could barely stand, hadn't wanted to look at her let alone have her nurse him. She'd been the person on duty. She'd done her job. But the sharp-edged rejection had cut her, and there had been nowhere to go with that pain. She used to be so good at turning things inwards, at choosing an artefact and sitting and forcing things back and away, but then La'an had appeared, drawing everything out of her, and it had become harder to bury things, to accept that she lived in a mind full of traps. These days she expected… relief? Compassion? She didn't know. Whatever it was, it wasn't here. Or she hadn't known where to find it.

Erica and M'Benga, Nyota and Glenn, and Oleg and Maia and Charlie and Sam… a whole ship full of people who liked her, who were kind and decent and loyal and fun. They should have been able to keep her buoyant, but the emptiness had dragged at her until all she could look for was out. Not forever. Not really. Just a reprieve from the faces she'd expected to see, the things she'd expected to feel that weren't here anymore, that were growing so heavy they were pulling her under. You couldn't live in absence, not this pressing, and stay sane. She'd needed an outlet, something solid and new to keep her mind working, because really, when was the last time anyone had made use of her science?

There had been a brief lift of promise, a trickle of data, a tumbling trip to Vulcan to delay her decision, but it had come to nothing. Their illicit mission had foundered, whatever secrets Vulcan held were to be kept. It had left Pike sullen and angry, Spock more wary of her than before. He wouldn't tell her what had happened, but it wasn't going to help set Una free. They'd failed, and that brief flutter of hope had vanished. There had been nothing left for her to do here. Learning stitching on Vulcan had sounded complex, and practical, and honest and hard. It had sounded perfect. And then…

Part of her had been too dulled to believe it, too protectively numb to let her imagine they might find La'an waiting, that she could really be coming back. Because if she did hope, and it didn't happen… But La'an had been there, different through distance, through what she'd been doing, hardened back into watchfulness, but not painfully, this wasn't trauma. She'd made choices based on circumstance, she was in control, and reality was going to have to do the bending this time. Chapel had been happy to see her, but no more than that, because around them all the war was coming, and no one could take that, not ever again. So she'd done her job. And then more than her job. And she hadn't let herself think about it. At least she'd known how to fight this time, hadn't been left on the sidelines while others took the nasty green cocktail that let you punch and kick with broken bones while your ligaments tore with the impact. At least this time she wasn't the one left bringing the wreckage back to life.

Memento mori. La'an swore by it, drilled it into every cadet she'd ever trained. "You're mortal. Believe it or die." She didn't see the contradiction, why it never worked and never would. Chapel had known she would die, but she hadn't believed it. Had hoped even as her corneas froze and the darkness descended. There had always been hope, and then there was brightness and safety and pain, and a different darkness, heavy and muted, people moving around her, an exhausting fight towards consciousness thwarted over and over by the sting of a hypospray, empty and cold, until somehow there was a body beside her, solid and dense and warm and real, a shape she'd know anywhere, and the battle was suddenly harder to fight. She let go of it, and oblivion surrendered.

When she woke La'an was still there, sitting beside her the way M'Benga didn't let people, because the beds weren't designed for two bioscans at once. It messed with the readings. She watched Chapel's eyes blink and refocus, slow fingers warm on the back of her hand. She was real.

"Did we stop it?"

"We did."

"Are we criminals?"

La'an smiled in a way that said someone had told her, about Una. That she was choosing not to feel that right now. "We're not. Command only cares about results, apparently. If you're the Enterprise."

Chapel took her in, the unfamiliar clothing, the endlessly familiar frown. "I think I died."

"Ship of the bloody damned."

And then Chapel was dragging herself upright and La'an was folding her close as alarms went off and the world swam around them.

"You touch her you die."

There was the sound of protest, ringing and blurry as La'an's hand came to rest against the back of her head, holding her steady as Chapel's forehead found skin, as her fingers curled in through an unfamiliar collar, twisting into infinitely familiar hair.

"I mean it. I know how to read a monitor. She's fine."

She was dizzy, but it was headrush, waning sedatives. The spinning was already starting to wind down. "Just doing their job." She'd done the same, so often.

"Do it elsewhere."

The protest subsided, the alarms shut off. The telltale shift of the privacy screen engaging, then silence, just the two of them breathing and a dense, foggy quiet in her mind. La'an's fingertips found her scalp, the back of her neck, a gentle pressure that made everything settle. Made everything right. "I think I died." It should haunt her, but it didn't. It felt distant and unreal.

"You're here now. That's what counts. And when it hits you, then you talk about it. Don't worry until then. You're here. That's all you need to be."

She was here. Chapel breathed into the warmth of La'an's collar. She smelled different now. No jasmine, no smoked tea. "You can't let go."

"I'm not ever letting go."

And she didn't. Not when Chapel was discharged, not once they reached starbase, not when Chapel had visitors, an endless stream of well-wishers La'an timed with an iron glare the moment Chapel's sparkle began to fade. Not even when Pike brought round her uniform, reinstating her commission, and Chapel watched her face blank as they talked about Una. She was hiding something, that much was obvious. Well, so was Chapel. They both knew it, it wasn't changing anything. It didn't matter. They didn't talk about it, staying curled around each other, slowly refilling the reservoir that had been draining over the past endless months, I love you, I love you, I love you in all its countless tiny ways, building a fortress together, until they lay facing each other in the darkness, close and safe and warm and everything, and the thought surfaced the way it often did, a moment, and then passing. Only this time it stayed.

"I think I died."

La'an stroked the hair back from her face, fingers gentle over her cheek. "When you know you died, that's when it's real."

When she knew she'd died. Then it would happen.

And suddenly, between one breath and another, she was inconsolable, sobbing with the kind of terror she'd never felt in her life, and when she woke the next day it was over, as if it had never happened at all.