Liability
(Jurati/Elnor, Jurati/Maddox, ensemble)
"You are not coming with us," Elnor said.
The crew of La Sirena had just assembled on the bridge, preparing to transport down to Freecloud. Agnes, who was running slightly late (due to an acute case of meeting-my-ex self-consciousness about her hair and clothes), found her way suddenly blocked by a tall, frowning Romulan. She blinked up at him in dismay.
"Of course I am."
"The elf has a point," Rios chimed in. "A hideout for rogue synths is a dangerous place even by my standards. Sure you wouldn't rather stay here?"
Raffi snorted. Picard frowned. Seven of Nine raised her eyes to the ceiling, as if her patience with the inefficiency of individuals was wearing thin.
Elnor glared daggers at Rios for calling him an elf, but turned immediately back to Agnes, his eyes lingering on her freshly washed blond curls and the powder-blue jacket she was wearing.
"You are neither a fighter nor a diplomat," he said. "It will not be safe for you. Do you not agree, sir?" He glanced over his shoulder at Picard.
The old man shook his head. "Dr. Jurati is - " he began, but did not get to finish.
Agnes had had enough.
"I," she snapped, getting right into the bodyguard's personal space even though she had to crane her neck to maintain eye contact, "Am the Federation's leading expert on synthetic life, okay? If any rogue synths try to attack us, I can hack them before you draw that sword. Also, I know Bruce Maddox. If anyone can smoke him out, I can."
All she meant, honestly, was to make a logical argument about her importance to the mission. Remembering exactly how she knew Bruce, though, and the last time she had seen him (devastated by the synth attack on Mars, pleading for her to come with him, pulling her close for one last kiss) made her cheeks flush and her eyes water at the same time.
"Wait, when you say you know Maddox … " Raffi broke off when she saw Agnes blushing; her eyes bulged with almost comical disgust. "Ugh, Jesus, don't tell me you slept together. He's old enough to be your - "
"Raffi, please." Picard's voice was quiet, but firm, and for a wonder, Raffi actually subsided.
Agnes felt like one long scorch of embarrassment from head to foot. Elnor's reaction, however, was worse than Raffi's by several orders of magnitude.
His dark eyes widened; the frown line between his winged eyebrows smoothed itself out, his mouth softened. It was a look of pure compassion from her normally stoic shipmate, and it took her breath away.
"He left you?"
Even in the depths of her humiliation, Agnes could understand why the galankhai would react this way. He, too, knew how it felt to be left behind.
"He asked me to come with him and I said no," she confessed, feeling a weight off her mind as she spoke, "But most of him was already gone by then."
She thought of all the messages she had sent to Bruce that went unanswered, all the times she'd reach for him in bed and find him already up in his office, all the times she'd lied to her friends when she'd gone to meet him because he'd wanted to keep her a secret. He had left her every day, little by little. She wondered if that was easier or harder than Elnor's experience of being left abruptly.
Elnor reached out his hand, so gracefully it didn't occur to her to be startled, and tipped her chin up so that their eyes met once more.
"Then you must hold your head high when you see him again," he said. "Let him know how far you've come without him."
Agnes felt all the heat coursing through her coalesce into a bright ball of warmth inside her heart. It was one thing for Elnor to pity her, but this wasn't pity. This was respect.
"Thank you," she said. "I'll try."
Seven of Nine flicked her hair back impatiently and raised a metallic eyebrow. "Now that Dr. Jurati's emotions have been dealt with, is everyone ready to leave?"
Nods and murmurs circulated around the room.
"Energize," said Picard and Rios at the same time.
The last thing Agnes thought of before dematerializing was not the man she was about to search for, but the one standing right beside her.
/
Author's Note: Agnes' and Maddox's history together is detailed in Una McCormack's novel "Star Trek: Picard: The Last Best Hope". My reaction when I read that was basically the same as Raffi's.