Despite the staggering weight of evidence to the contrary, it didn't actually take much to work out why Chapel avoided therapy the way most lifeforms avoided scalding. The answer was stultifyingly obvious: because it hurt. Allowing someone close enough to help by definition involved exposing vulnerability, and that was something Chapel fundamentally did not do. Experience had clearly taught her otherwise.

It wasn't entirely surprising then that having switched on her screen, located Rilac's number, she had stalled out, staring down at it as if it glowed white hot. When La'an emerged from her second shower of the evening she was still there, fingers pressed hard into the table. La'an pulled on a pair of pyjamas that had somehow never left Chapel's drawers. She suspected Chapel wore them, some nights. When La'an wasn't here.

"You just press the button. It connects or it doesn't."

"I just…" Chapel's fingers whitened further. "I don't know what to say."

"Then you don't say anything." That was the therapist's job, after all. Getting you to say things. Interpreting what you didn't. But then, that was the frightening part. Chapel didn't want her silences interpreted. "Come to bed."

Chapel's posture tightened. "I need to…"

"Come to bed first." She always did better somewhere warm. Somewhere quiet. "I'll make tea." La'an remembered how to make tea. Remembered how to be this person, who helped Chapel breathe. It was surprisingly easy. Chapel watched her slide the PADD away. La'an reached to press down over her fingers until they relaxed. It was an effective trick.

"You shouldn't be doing this. I should…"

She was going to beat herself up about this, endlessly. How she hadn't somehow read La'an's mind, weeks ago, when she'd only just recovered, when La'an hadn't even known what was wrong, had simply shut down every attempt at conversation. How she didn't possess the superhuman sanity required to deal with this resulting, cavernous disaster out of hand.

"I know how to make tea. Really. It's fine."

"It's not, you're…"

"Tired." It had been a ridiculously long day. Night. And she hadn't slept properly in months. There had been decades where that wouldn't even have registered. These days she felt the difference. It was maddening. And so many other things. "Come to bed. It'll help."

Chapel looked like she might protest, but then she headed for the shower and La'an turned to find the pot, exactly where she'd left it, the cups that needed to be rinsed. It was familiar. Soothing. The vapour smelled of home. La'an didn't let it catch in her throat, didn't dwell on the feeling, simply set the cups by the bedside, left the PADD on Chapel's pillow and lay to stare at the ceiling. It was mercifully blank.

It was strange, having Chapel crawl in beside her, watching her breathe into her tea. Empty in a way that didn't track, that swelled a turbulent mess of seething pressure, a growing, directionless, churning rage that wanted out, that wanted vengeance, everything broken, no matter the fallout, no matter who suffered. Out until all of it burned and shattered, writhing and screaming and tearing into the darkness because nothing came back from this, nothingdeserved to, and the only way it would ever be right was-

Run.

Chapel hit the call button, the world frozen as she waited for it to connect. Oblivion echoed around the silence. And then there was a roar of static, of signal feedback that somehow wasn't, blinding radiance dwindling into afterimage as the bright loud halo resolved into Rilac, swathed in some kind of industrial apron, pink hair spiking haphazardly over the top of a heavy, corroded hood. "Chapel!" The image flared then settled, offering an off kilter view of a workbench laden with gothic metalwork still glowing red with the heat of what could only be an ancient, fuelled blowtorch. The visor swung up clumsily to reveal gimlet eyes, piercing straight through the screen. "Proving a point I see. Knew you were interesting."

Chapel shifted in the bedclothes, propping the PADD carefully against her knees. "This is La'an."

Rilac nodded, taking her in for a second as if she were an idiosyncrasy, an aspect of Chapel's psyche to be analysed. "Good choice." Then the piercing gaze flicked back to Chapel, seemingly uncalculated. "Gotta tell you though, in the spirit of full disclosure, relationship counselling's really not my thing." Utterly deliberate.

Asshole.

"It's not… That's…"

Rilac's expression changed as Chapel faltered. Evidence. A hunch proved right. It was exactly that, and it wasn't. Definitely an asshole. Good. La'an rolled to fit her forehead into the curve of Chapel's hip, wrap an arm around her subtly tightening waist, and closed her eyes. This was definitely the kind of person Chapel needed to be talking to, and La'an didn't need to be part of the conversation. She just needed to be here, to anchor her. Remind her that whatever she admitted, she was whole.

Chapel's arm settled over her carefully. "I don't think it's about that." She managed after a beat.

"What is it about?"

She wouldn't be able to say. La'an wasn't even sure she could think it, whether it was something she consciously knew. There was a dense silence as Chapel tried to breathe around the problem, but everything was so fragile already, so close to the surface. Vulnerable. It was hard enough when she felt well. Rilac shifted in the background, removing the visor, shucking thick, protective gloves. Letting the silence stretch.

"You want to tell me what's happened?"

"I don't know." Chapel's arm tightened around La'an reflexively, elbow pressing into her plaits. La'an could practically hear Rilac's expression, the subtle way a practised deadpan affected speech. Evidence. Chapel always gave so much away.

"To you, Chapel. I'm treating you."

"I'm..." Chapel shook her head, touching at her face unsteadily as she began losing the familiar battle. La'an pressed closer, splayed her fingers over the warmth of her nightdress. I love you. Because of course she did, she just… everything… Chapel's fingers found her hair. "I need to be sane. Not just… Really sane."

"You know that's not a thing, right? No one is."

"Then I need to be as close as I can get."

"Why?"

"I need a reason?"

"You have a reason, you need to tell me what it is. Why now? To what end? What is it you're looking to achieve?"

"I just… I'm…" Rilac waited as Chapel's breathing began to strangle, fingers questing into La'an's hair, working their way in under her plaits, digging at the twists until her nails found scalp. Of course there was an answer. It just wasn't one she could voice. Not here.

"I'd add 'who for', but…" Rilac left that hanging, because it was obvious. La'an was right here. "This is why counselling should be a solitary endeavour."

It was cruel, but it wasn't meant to be. Rilac might be an asshole but it was reality, brutal and unbending and relentless, that was mercilessly turning the screw. Chapel had gone shuddery tight at the message, sobs beginning to pull through her fragile control. You need to do this alone. Only she couldn't, because no one had ever promised her she could. That had been La'an's job, the commitment she'd made so many months ago, and she was absolutely failing at it because all she had been able to see, since… all she was ever going to see again…

…hypoxic injury indicates an arrest period of 87 seconds following…

"Chapel. You're doing some actual damage there." Rilac's voice held an immediacy that punctured through the noise, snapping Chapel out of her burgeoning panic, bringing La'an back into the now to the sting of fingernails echoing across her scalp, the press of Chapel's palm attempting to soothe their sudden retreat.

"Sorry, I'm sorry, I didn't…"

"Take a breath. Remember where you are. Now, I don't know what's going on here, and frankly it isn't relevant. I can tell you a solid fact, which is that relationships are complicated because lives are complicated. You died. That's about as complicated as it gets. It doesn't change the part that's simple, which is that this is not someone who's leaving you. Definitely not right now, but I'd wager my reputation on not ever. Sometimes things get messy, that doesn't mean they're going to end. Relationships are work, even the good ones, and that work starts with yourself. So, are you working with me?"

"Yes."

"Good. You are not falling apart, you're unhappy. There's a difference. And I am absolutely qualified to tell you that this is not the point where those two overlap. Take a breath. Live with the chaos. It doesn't fit the fairytale, that doesn't mean it's wrong. Ok?"

It clearly wasn't. The fairytale meant everything.

"That's…"

"Scary as hell. Deal with it. Looks to me like you've found someone who knows."

Had she?

Chapel's grip was painful as La'an found her hand. She wanted to protest, that much was obvious. Find a way out of this that wouldn't involve feeling. But there was nothing to say, because there was nowhere to go.

"Call me tomorrow." Rilac said more quietly. "Get some sleep, give your subconscious some space. We'll set up a schedule, see how far we can get towards sane. But right now, you don't need fixing. You just need time."

It wasn't remotely true, objectively speaking. Chapel was a self-described bloody-minded lifelong, avoidant, tangled mess who believed that misery was a failing and that anyone who could love her must be fundamentally blind. But it was also true in a way that made La'an want to reach through the screen and drag Rilac out of subspace so they could prove it to her, once and for all. You aren't mad. You're the best thing, anywhere, and everyone who matters can see it. She pulled Chapel downwards as the screen went blank, tried not to react to the searing terror of having her closer, of having her here when she could be nowhere in an instant, would one day vanish into never the way she very nearly had.

Of course she had.

"I don't know how to do this. But we're going to do this."

Chapel's face was still wet. She wasn't even trying to wipe it dry. "You feel it and it passes, right? We just…"

Surrender.

La'an made herself face it, the here of her, the now of her, so fragile and so precious and so utterly alive, and tugged the elastic out of her hair until she could hurl it across the room, let Chapel's hands slide in around the nape of her neck, careful and frightened and gentle and warm, the achingly familiar shape of her softening in relief as twist after protective twist came free, as La'an let her loosen her defences all over again. And it didn't matter if it felt like it might strip her to the bone. They were going to walk through this fire.

And let it burn.

Author's note: Yes I am referencing Buffy's musical episode, and no, I'm not sorry.