Liar
(Elnor & Jurati)
Raised by the Qowat Milat, Elnor can almost always see when someone is lying.
"I'm okay," Dr. Jurati says when he asks her how she is.
She is not okay. Her eyes are red, the rest of her skin as pale as uncooked dough. She flinches at small noises, stares into thin air during Admiral Picard's strategy sessions, and tenses all over every time someone even mentions the recently deceased Dr. Maddox.
Before they found the roboticist, Elnor hadn't formed the best impression of his character. Picard remembered Maddox vividly as the man who had tried to dissect Data. He had also caused pain of a different sort to Dr. Jurati, his lover, first by keeping their relationship a secret and then by leaving her behind.
She is better off without you, Elnor would have said to Maddox.
All that means less than nothing, however, in the wake of his death. A life lived selfishly can still be changed for the better. A life cut short never can.
"It may seem pointless at a time like this," Elnor says, catching Dr. Jurati's sleeve as they file out of the holodeck. "But I'm here if you ever need to talk … or to be silent."
"Thank you," she says, with a trembling smile and flickering eyes. "I'll take you up on that sometime."
Elnor can already tell that she won't.
While he's good at spotting a lie, however, he's not so good at discerning the reason why.
/
Forgiveness
(Raffi, Elnor)
"Go away," said Raffi, in response to the chime of her cabin door bell.
"Hiding in your cabin won't accomplish anything," said Elnor.
Raffi's head shot up from her pillow like a turtle from its shell.
Various shipmates had already tried to coax her out: Jurati, timidly offering tea and cookies; Rios, offering booze and backtracking hurriedly when he remembered she was trying to quit; even Rios' EMH, materializing right inside the cabin, to which she'd responded by throwing a shoe through his photonic head. Only Picard had wisely left her alone … until now.
She staggered to the door and glared at Elnor. "Tell your boss that sending his bodyguard to fetch me is a whole new level of arrogance."
"He didn't send me," said Elnor. "I came. Did you find your son?"
"Yes … and he hates me."
"Why?"
No Of course he doesn't. No I'm sure you'll work it out. Damn, Absolute Candor burned sometimes, but in a refreshing way. Like a straight shot of that bourbon she'd refused.
"Because I wasn't there for him growing up." She raked her hands through her curly hair, which was a mess from lying on that pillow. "And I can't blame him … but can't he see I'm trying to fix that now? Can't he tell I'm trying to be better?"
"Forgiveness can't be earned, Ms. Musiker, only given. The only emotions you can control here are your own."
"What the hell's that supposed - "
She remembered just in time what Elnor's history with Picard had been. She bit her tongue and bowed her head. If anyone understood, it was this young man, who was hardly older than Gabe.
"I'll have to think about that," she muttered.
"I hope you do."
"C'mon, kid." She patted his leather-clad shoulder. "Let's go see if Rios left any replicator rations for the rest of us."