...
Earth loomed large.
It had done so, in a purely metaphorical sense, all those days aboard Voyager. Now it did so from the McKinely Station view screens. While the Doctor considered it a beautiful planet from orbit, it was no more remarkable than the many he'd seen across the (now) two Quadrants he had lived in. He'd barely spared it a though in the year since the logistics of his personhood had been secured in Federation case law, and his position confirmed by Starfleet. He'd only visited once after, to help Haley put Lewis to rest at the Zimmerman estate in New Jersey. His adopted sister had chosen to remain there, to ease into her new found freedom, and he'd settled nicely on the station — where Earth became a mere backdrop to his daily life— to oversee the refit of the USS Venture.
His newest home.
The Galaxy class ship was a marvel, even when compared to the newer designs coming out of the Utopia Planitia drafting rooms and shipyards. It felt bygone, in a nostalgic way: a peacetime class that had helped win the war, now returning to its roots. The engineers he worked with to update the Venture's sickbays, laboratories, medical offices and convalesce rooms spoke about the ship as if it were alive. They cared for its battle hardened systems like physicians, all convinced it was due the benefits associated with the abundances of a peacetime Federation.
They whispered similar things about its new captain, who remained deeply involved in the refits from her offices in San Francisco. Pleased that the person who'd guided the USS Bellerophon, a mere Intrepid class, through all that the 7th Fleet and Dominion War had to throw at her, would now be manning one of the darlings of the 5th.
The Doctor enjoyed these organics and their love for the machines they imbued with personalities of their own. Through an extension of this quirk, they treated him well — often curious about his experiences and programming — but kinder in their probing that Torres ever had been.
As the Venture's CMO, he'd been granted completely independent control over the medical systems on the ship. This access and influence were only limited by what was physically possible, not by meddling from a captain he had yet to properly meet. More than that, he'd been given full control over his department's staffing and rotation, in line with longstanding Starfleet policy that allowed medical commanders their independence. This was a dream he'd long thought beyond his reach.
To know he'd been specifically requested for the position baffled him.
This recognition made the seven years aboard Voyager and the innumerably many more on Kelemane feel distant. Past perfect. Pages turned and chapters completed. Experience told him that it wouldn't be so simple. He was experiencing what amounted to a reprieve from the many small interactions with organics that wore him down. The Doctor knew he could mitigate that by staffing only those eager to work with him, but the Venture's crew compliment was nearly 1500. The civilians aboard topped out at 700. That left over two thousand people capable of making him feel alone.
Was it so terrible of him to expect and dread it? After all, it had only taken 130 to do so on Voyager.
Until then, he'd have people like Reg and Saren and Julia. People who used his chosen first name without hesitation and he theirs. All engineers, all eager to make Venture's medical facilities the best they could be. People who bounced ideas he could follow — and even those he couldn't — off of him. People who greeted him at the start of shift. People who asked him about his off-duty hours and shared stories of their own. People who referred to Haley as his sister, not just another Zimmerman hologram that managed to gain personhood. People who traded stories of war for those about the Delta Quadrant.
People who were friends.
It was a comfortable bubble he knew could pop. Soon. The Venture was cleared to depart on its primary mission in two weeks; its crew already making themselves at home at the station or in their newly assigned and furnished quarters. His own staff were trickling in one by one, as they caught transports from Vulcanis and Betazed and Bajor.
"T-t-the Captain is arriving today," Reg's stammering was like a well set clock, coming back when he was too nervous to slow down.
They'd be taking this social mess of a man with them when they departed. He'd be one of the handful of assistant commanders to the head of engineering (a man that Torres had once called an "all right" sort of person). A hold-over from the Venture's previous crew, who had served aboard the Bellerophon in the earliest day s of the Dominion War. A classmate of the once-Marquis engineer, back before she dropped out of the Academy to join a war that had yet to start.
The Doctor liked Reg, though. After Lewis, he had become one of the most knowledgeable of the Doctor's programming. Second now only to Torres because she'd had no other option but to be the first. Reg had had a choice. The Doctor's doctor, he called himself; eager to lend a hand whenever the Doctor wanted to untangle the knots that over five centuries of self-manipulation had created.
"She'll…she'll be…"
"Take it easy, Reg. She's our Captain, not a Gorgon."
The engineer shot him a baleful sort of look that the Doctor missed. They were busily completing the calibration of the medical replicators, which left little room to entertain the engineer's fretting.
But Reg played along and tried again, "She'll be meeting with the Senior Staff and their seconds. I'm not…I'm. Aeson, I'm not…"
"You'll be fine. Just don't speak," the Doctor emphasized the last word.
This earned a surprised laugh out of his friend, before he calmed enough to settle into their work.
That had been at the start of alpha shift. Now, at the tail end of delta shift, he was finishing the final inventory of the supply room on Deck 12. The space was nearly the size of the main medical bay on Voyager, and was conveniently location near his own office, which was why he was able to hear the doors to the primary sickbay (creatively called Sickbay One) open and the low, yet feminine voice that followed.
"Dr. Retz?"
She found him before he could call back, appearing in the door of the supply room as he tried to quickly input the final count of dermal regenerators.
"Apologies, Captain, I lost track of…"
"I thought I'd come to you," she waved off his apology, her expression a shade or two friendlier than neutral.
"Get in a tour of your ship before it departs?"
"Good guess," she humored him.
The Doctor didn't know how to feel about new people. Prior to Kelemane, he'd been exasperated by the petty politics of the organics and deeply wounded by every minor mistreatment he faced by the people who thought he wasn't a person. The strange little planet — and more importantly, the time he spent there — had smoothed the impulses and rough edges of the personality that Lewis had given him. He'd had to fit in with a species that didn't know him for what he was, and in doing so had become who he was, free of the expectations of those who thought so little of him.
Since then, he'd told himself that he wouldn't feel the need to make a good impression, that his work would speak for itself, but that was lie. Kathryn Janeway wasn't a legend, not the way that Benjamin Sisko had become in his disappearance and Dina Voyskunsky had become in her reappearance. Hers was just a name, one of the many to come out of a war barely intact, picked apart by critics and raised up by supporters. His knowledge of her intimidated him all the same: Voyskunksy he knew; Sisko he would never meet; Janeway?
She was petite (although not exactly short), slight, her auburn hair cropped and worn straight to her shoulders. There was a waif-like quality to her facial features, a hollowness around the cheeks and eyes that told him immediately all he needed to know about her diet. He'd see that threadbare physicality in a number of the 7th and 10th Fleet veterans, as if the horrors on Betazed and Cardassia had carved out the vitality of their life and replaced it with rote survival.
Her eyes though? Those were solid, a clever glint there — the second before a spark burst into flame.
The Doctor set an internal reminder to schedule her physical for sooner than he'd first intended.
Moments later, he clocked that he was staring and looked away.
"You've worked closely with the McKinley engineers during the refit. May I assume you've settled in?"
It was both a noncommittal conversation starter and probing.
"Ah, yes," his voice gave away some of his excitement, then, "They've finished everything but Sickbay Three on Deck 16."
Janeway continued to stand still, her hands clasped behind her back, looking at him but giving the impression she was taking stock of the supply room they stood in, "Are your quarters to your liking?"
Quarters.
When he'd accepted this posting, he hadn't even considered that he'd be assigned officer's quarters. A space outside of sickbay and his office that was his and his alone. The room assignments had come in the month prior, putting him between lieutenant Loraine's — the affable Bajoran senior security and tactical officer — and the the chief engineer's. It seemed almost too large a space, and left him at a loss on how to fill it.
What did it say about him that he'd designated the very idea of having ownership over an actual living space to a planet he'd been marooned on for centuries? There, he'd had apartments and homes and communities. Beds and bunks and cots. Why hadn't that expectation remained when he made it back to Voyager? After?
"Yes, Captain," and then, because he'd borrowed a little of Barclay's social ineptitude that day, he added, "I have nothing to compare them to, but they're certainly a better living space than my office."
Nothing in her expression changed, and he had no other evidence for it, but in that moment he though she might be digesting the full meaning of his words.
"Despite the alarmingly similar names, this isn't Voyager, Doctor."
"No. It isn't."
They spent the better part of the next hour discussing the basics of his requested changes to the spaces under his command. She'd reviewed each of his reports over the last year, and was never surprised by anything he showed her. He explained his choice of staff, the shift structure he'd chosen, preferences for away mission assignments, and felt at ease in the way she provided suggestions rather than criticism.
His new captain wasn't overly demonstrative or emotive, not in the way that Voyskunsky become as the years in the Delta Quadrant passed (as she grew more endeared to her mixed crew of Starfleet and Marquis), but Janeway was invested in this mission. Her first command post-war.
As they wrapped up in his office, he faltered.
"I want to thank you."
At her bemused quirk of a brow, he added, "For offering me this posting"
For giving me a chance.
As her expression changed to something soft and almost sad, he added, startlingly perceptive to the list of descriptors he would use to describe her. Why else would her brow furrow in such a way if she did not just realize she had been the only captain in Starfleet to offer him a place on their crew? Including the captain he'd grown into a fully fledged person under.
"I look forward to working with you," were her only other words before departing.
...
The weeks passed.
His staff arrived in trickles and then in one large flood. Apart from him, there were four physicians — Gioxi, Turan, Gibans, and Selka. Ten nurses were assigned across the five of them, three recovery therapists, and a number of technicians and medical researchers. Despite their numbers, the schedule was still tight, but overall everyone had appeared content with their shift and location assignments.
His reports, like all the other leads', would go to the executive officer. Regular senior staff debriefings were scheduled at the beginning of every alpha shift. Shift check-ins were implemented in each of the three sickbays to help with the continuity of care. The Doctor suspected that the frequency of each of these would increase during high intensity missions. It was remarkably similar to Voyager, yet just that much less lonely.
The day prior to departure, the Doctor allowed the others to convince him to come to the Lounge. The atmosphere there was lively, officers and crewmen mingling freely as they got to know one another or caught up after time apart. There were many young faces from a wide array of Federation species — another post-war normal. Training had been accelerated to keep up with the numbers needed to replace extensive casualties. Many of those replacements had been granted field promotions while others were pushed through command training in the intervening years. It left Starfleet feeling newer, younger, according to feeds.
Their faces may be young, but they weren't all fresh. A ubiquitous strain appeared between smiles and laughter. As if the war had knocked something in them all off key. As if they thought that if they just pretended a little longer, the happiness wouldn't feel so flat.
The table he settled at was already occupied by two of the day nurses assigned to his team, Merrythought and Drara, as well as his second, Gioxi. They made up a little pocket of what Starfleet claimed to offer: diversity. Human, Bolian, Betazoid, and Hologram. With the fine vertical ridges running parallel down his nose and his inhuman name, the Doctor himself appeared in every way to be a Kelemane. Not that anyone here would truly mistake him for one.
"Doc!" Drara's youthful face opened at seeing him, alcohol already darkening her cheeks with a indigo blush.
Merrythought was less enthusiastic with his greeting, but no less welcoming, "Grab a chair. The next round is on you."
"Is that even a beverage? It looks like custard," was the Doctor's only response. He was happy to oblige the demand. Replicators weren't rationed with credits here, not like on Voyager, and they didn't look to be drinking anything harder than synthehol.
"It tastes like honey," Drara offered, looking all the world like she couldn't understand why anyone could enjoy that.
Gioxi, or Vura as she'd requested to be called while off duty, was watching him with black eyes. Few species remained unreadable to her people. He was among them.
"Can you consume food and drink?" Her curious tone was light, innocent of anything that might be considered unkind.
"I can, but it's not pleasant," he gestured to his abdomen, "it just sits there until I deactivate. Then it turns into an undigested mix of chewed up food and liquid."
Merrythought hummed and moved in closer, his blue eyes lighting up, "That sounds like an excellent way to prank some green ensigns."
The Doctor laughed, "Noted."
Then, because he felt safe in doing so, he gave his small group a boyish smile, "I programmed myself to experience the equivalent of taste with holographic food."
It started as a means to blend in better with the Kelemanes without leaving a mess behind. After a time, it grown into his new normal.
"Lew—Dr, Zimmerman expanded the subroutines considerably to allow for interfacing. If the replicators know how to make it, the emitters can project it, and I can drink, chew, taste and swallow it. No mess."
Vura looked thoughtful, while Drara clapped her hands together once, "We're definitely putting that to work comparing drinks."
"I can't experience inebriation."
Merrythought gave him a toothy smile, "Ah, Doc, you're truly missing something special."
As the evening wore on and the Lounge filled up, the Captain entered with the chief engineer in tow. They were — no, she was — met with a raucous cheer. Janeway waved it off, a good-natured smile on her face, while Shaw affected a look of disgruntled reluctance to be there. At this point, the Doctor was willing to agree with the taciturn young man. Half of his alpha shift was three sheets to the wind, and his beta shift were doing their best to catch up. He, himself, was nursing a glass of holographic momot tea from the southern region of Beharest, Kelemane. It was acidic and fruity and reminded him of summer nights, keeping an eye on the drunk locals and mingling in happy fraternity.
Some things didn't change.
"That gonna leave a mess?"
Shaw had snuck up on him while he got lost in watching Drara explaining to Vura the finer points of an especially potent sounding finger food. The Doctor wasn't sure what had interested him more, the fact that the dish was best served after sitting for six days at room temperature or that Vura appeared eager to try it. Was he going to have to explain to this remarkably talented doctor that she was asking for some truly appalling gastrointestinal distress?
"If she eats it, yes."
Shaw rolled his eyes and gestured to the tea.
"Oh. No. It's as photonic as I am."
Captain Janeway forwent giving a speech, and was now going through a round of greetings as she tried to collect a drink. This left the Doctor with Liam Shaw, who had taken the chair that previously belonged to Merrythought. The engineer's arms were crossed, and his was face vaguely brooding. He and Shaw weren't exactly new to one another, since the Lieutenant Commander had made severals stop at McKinley during the Venture's refit. His curt demeanor and waspish suggestions had made Reg nearly faint in anxious fright. The Doctor liked him, and given the engineer had chosen to sit at his table, it appeared mutual enough.
"I'd tell you to get your staff under control, but engineering is playing drinking games on deck three."
Poor Reg.
"Is this how new missions always begin?"
"Yep," the p was popped, and while his tone sounded just on this side of snide, Shaw wasn't being unkind — just himself. "Hey. Are you really 600?"
Was it a rule that engineers had to be this blunt? Even Reg didn't beat around the bush when it came to what made the Doctor the Doctor.
"I'll pretend you're three drinks in and not take that personally."
"An excellent strategy to take when it comes to Mr. Shaw in general," the Captain appeared from around his left shoulder, setting a glass of red in front of the man in question. For herself, she was carrying a mug of steaming something. Coffee?
"Good to know, Captain. And yes, 600 Kelemane years. 580 Terran."
Shaw whistled, "Temporal shenanigans are the worst."
"They give me a headache," Janeway busied herself with her drink.
He'd watched — for centuries — as an entire world worshipped and hated and loved a starship he'd been born on. Watched and waited while the wars and suffering and growth took hold of the organics around him. At first, he'd expected to be rescued by the crew that had told him he'd only be there two days. Then he'd hoped. Then pleaded. Until finally, he'd decided to make it home on his own, not realizing what home was.
"Headache covers it," he deadpanned.
Janeway's resulting expression was wry, as if she knew that it in no way covered it. She followed the look up by taking a large pull from the mug in her hand, unperturbed by the plumes of steam it was still putting out, and standing, "I need to go welcome my first officer aboard."
"How'd you convince him to give up his own command?"
The smile she shot the engineer was the most open the Doctor had seen since meeting her, "He's an old friend."
Both men watched her leave.
Shaw took a drink of his wine, then slouched back into his seat, "Cool chat."
The Doctor, who was busy thinking of ways to figure out her preferred replicated coffee so he could program a healthy amount of vitamin D into it, raised his glass as someone in the corner started up a sea shanty to a round of cheers.
"Hey, Retz. You want to help me figure out how to aerosolize anti-tox?"
In that moment, he knew he and Shaw would become good friends.
...
Tuvok was the one, ultimately, to come see him.
The Doctor regarded the Vulcan favorably, but didn't feel close to him by any means. That didn't mean he didn't feel a strong sense of loyalty to the stoic man. In the beginning, there had only been Kes. She had been his first friend, and for the longest time, his only friend. Ocampan nativity had allowed her to side-step the narrow thinking that longer lived organic beings had when presented with synthetic life. Her championing of him had made little difference to Captain Voyskunsky, who thought of Kes as a child even when she no longer was. Tuvok had, against all existing certainty that Vulcans patronized every species they met, listened to her in the end. With Voyager's logical first officer willing to consider the possibility of his personhood, the Doctor had slowly gained privileges.
Then Kes had gone away, and there was only Tuvok. Then through him, Seven and Chakotay, until they'd convinced Voyskunsky that Voyager's biological neural gel packs and pathways had created the perfect conditions for a long-running, marginally self-aware program to become something more. Something like life.
And then he'd been marooned.
And then he'd had no one.
"Doctor," the Vulcan's measured tone greeted him nearly twenty days days into Venture's mission.
"Commander Tuvok, how can I help you?"
"Lieutenant Loraine and I have drafted a conditioning program for the security team. I would like you to review it."
A standard request.
"Very well. I can do that today."
"I have also come to report for my physical. My preference is for you to perform it, given your extensive knowledge of my medical history."
The Doctor set aside the report he was writing and stood to lead Tuvok out of his office, "Of course. Let's get you situated while I download your updated records. I assume you've completed your treatment."
He didn't say Pelori Syndrome out loud, knowing quite well the Vulcan preference for privacy.
"Indeed. Elieth was a suitable match."
The files completed their download nearly instantaneously, allowing the Doctor to parse through the short time since they'd seen one another, "Yes. I see everything is in order there. Today, I'll just want to update your primary vitals and get a new baseline for your psyonics. I trust you'll tell me if you've been experiencing anything out of the ordinary."
"No concerns, Doctor."
"Excellent," he let some of that old exuberance of his bed side manner show — there were things about him nothing could change.
"I was gratified to hear you were offered this posting," Tuvok filled the silence that fell over them as the Doctor worked. Since Drara was with Gioxi cataloging a shipment of vaccines they'd deliver to Bajor, while Merrythought was in Sickbay Two with Dr. Gibans. This left the two in peace.
"Captain Janeway is an old friend."
"I recall her saying the same about you just a few weeks ago."
"Indeed."
Tuvok remained silent as the Doctor verified all the tests were running in order.
"I have come for more than my physical. I must ask a favor of you, Doctor."
That caused him to pause. This was…rare.
"If you mean to start trying to mind meld with everyone again, I won't allow it."
The telltale signs of good humor crossed the other man's stoic features, "I will, as humans like to say, keep my hands to myself."
"That's usually used in an entirely different context, but I catch your meaning. You only need to ask, Commander. I'll do my best with whatever it is."
"It will not be an easy task."
The Doctor ended the scan and smiled, his vitals were impeccable, "Not with that attitude."
"I need you to convince the Captain to speak with counselor Hitimi about her own well-being. "
"Didn't you just say you're old friends? Why can't you do this?"
"Much has changed in the eight years we've been apart," that she has changed was left unsaid, "It is precisely because we are old friends. I do not think she will accept my concern as based entirely in logic."
"What are those concerns, precisely?"
The Vulcan took his time answering the question. If the Doctor were a betting man, he'd put everything on the possibility that this man had not intended to actually tell him what he was supposed to get the Captain to talk to Counselor Hitimi about.
What an odd interaction this was turning into. The Doctor didn't yet know the type of captain Kathryn Janeway was, beyond what he'd read on the subject. She'd certainly incited a fierce loyalty among the crew on Bellerophon. Many had followed her to the Venture when presented with the option, but that didn't tell him if she took kindly to her crew plotting behind her back, even if it was for her own well being. She might forgive Tuvok for it, given their purported friendship, but the Doctor didn't have that to fall back on.
He let Tuvok off the hook, but only just.
"Tell her that you've logged your concerns with me. Surely with your history and our history, she'll understand. Do that, and I'll speak with her if she expresses an interest. As it is now, I've seen nothing in her behavior that would suggest she's unfit for duty. You're in perfect health, by the way."
Tuvok accepted the dismal with a single nod.
As he neared the door, the Doctor stopped him.
"She survived a war, Tuvok. Many of our new crew members have. From what I've read, the 7th Fleet engaged in consistent combat campaigns through the duration of the conflict. She witnessed the aftermath of one attempted genocide, and one that was nearly successful. That changes a person."
The Vulcan considered his words, then lifted his chin in understanding, "As the Delta Quadrant changed me."
"Yes."
"As Kelemane changed you."
Yes.
Then, Tuvok was gone.
...
They lost Merrythought first.
The sound of the explosion as it rocked the small community center on Dreon VII was one of those memory files that the Doctor knew he'd never be able to delete. It would take up residence next to those from the the occupation of Beharest Ati. The one that came back to him with even the most minor of prompting, like sensory syncope, an echo in his program that easily took him back to another time and place.
The shouting came next. It said a lot of the generational trauma of the Bajoran that there was very little panic. Just action.
Victims and casualties were quickly pulled away from the epicenter of the blast, in case a secondary explosion was imminent. People there for their vaccinations were now patients and first responders, staunching their own bleeding or the bleeding of their peers, soothing the families of those who could not be found. Others were directing the crowd out of the way of Bajoran medics and the Venture crew.
The Doctor triaged quickly. Those in critical were beamed immediately aboard to Gioxi, Turan, and Gibans. The physicians would stabilize the victims, of this he was sure. The injured but stable were wheeled off to be treated by Nurse Tambell and Dreon's own doctors. Local nurses tended to the minor injuries where they were.
In all of this, the vaccines were still administered — as the coming illness was still worse than the violence that had shattered the atmosphere of peace.
An hour later, when the Doctor found Merrythought, Drara was kneeling beside his body, slowly packing up her kit. The Bolian was not crying, but her expressive features were pained nonetheless. The two had become easy friends in the last month.
The Doctor settled his hand on her shoulder.
"Aortic dissection," she whispered, tone tight, "I got to him too late."
Humans could come back from a lot these days, with modern medicine the way it was, but time would always be against them.
"Go back with him. Take your time with your goodbyes. Dr. Gioxi will appreciate your help in One when you're ready."
Drara sniffled once, schooled her expression, then nodded, "Yes, sir."
He watched them fade into the ephemeral shimmer of the transport, then tapped his combadage, "Dr. Retz to Dr. Gioxi."
"Yes?"
"Drara is returning with Merrythought."
"Great, I could use the support in One and Gibans is —"
"We lost Kevin," he interrupted her, voice soft, "Drara will see to him, then help you in One."
There was a brief moment of silence, while Vura digested the news. As a Betazed, she'd best be able to gauge Drara's state of mind. It was likely she could already sense the other woman's presence aboard the ship. Her grief.
"Understood. Do you have the support you need?"
"I do."
Lieutenant Loraine approached him as he signed off. Her expression, usually open and kind, was dark. There was soot in her short artificially grey hair, "Doctor, we've secured the area, and I've reported to the Captain."
"Do we know what happened?"
Whispers had already started. Cardassian reprisals? Breen expansion? The Bajoran were preparing for the worst, having been subject to it for decades already.
The way her voice grew cold when she answered filled him with unease. It was as if she, and by extension the Bajorans moving around in shock, had been irreparably betrayed by their own.
"Pah-wraith acolytes."
What he knew of Bajor and its people came secondhand from reports he had downloaded and committed to memory for this mission. The Pah-wraiths, eternal enemies of the Prophets, embraced by a faction Bajorans who'd felt abandoned by their gods. What they must now be capable of, now that they had been abandoned again.
"They've been targeting Bajoran colonies that accept aid from the Federation. A gap arouse in colonial defenses today," the security officer's features remained hard, "we've closed it."
The Doctor suspected the gap had been intentional.
"Casualties?"
"Twenty Bajoran dead, another one hundred injured. Kev-Ensign Merrythought was our only."
He nodded, taking that in. Thankful it had only been Kevin — angry it had been Kevin at all.
"The Captain wants us to continue the mission," Loraine advised.
Captain Janeway was right to. If the Moirta II Flu was as dangerous as Starfleet Medical expected (and he had a strong suspicion it would be worse) they couldn't let this attack disrupt their efforts.
"Take who you can and redirect the lines to the local school," the Doctor instructed, "Grab ten of the calmest civilians you can find and bring them to me for instruction."
He'd have to train them to administer the hyposprays, to make up for the local medical professionals who'd been injured or were helping with the victims.
"I can get you double that."
Good.
...
Sickbay One was quiet when he returned three stardays later. Drara and Gioxi were off duty, beta shift was winding down, and Dr. Gibans was on his discharge rounds across the ship's two other sickbays. This left the Doctor alone with the Vulcan nurse, Kivik. Dr. Turan, who was in Sickbay Three, had requisitioned the help of the other two nurses on duty. The rush and panic of the previous days were cleared away here, leaving a space clean and clear of patients.
Instead of going off duty, the Doctor sat in office and began downloading reports. He didn't have the wherewithal to read them, so chose to ingest the information all at once. Three additional deaths had been reported in his sickbays — those who'd survived the initial blast but succumbed to their injuries later. Fifty had already been discharged, nearly ten would be by the end of Gibans' shift. The rest had either been treated planetside or were undergoing physical therapy before the Venture departed and left them to Dreon VII's facilities.
Gioxi had performed Merrythought's autopsy in his absence, her notes concluding that Drara's initial call had been the correct one. The force of the explosion and the subsequent collision with a Bajoran had dissected his aorta. Kevin Merrythought had died seconds after the blast, before the hemorrhaging in his brain could claim him.
He'd had no chance.
Everything was collated into a report he sent of to the Captain and Tuvok. On paper, the success of the mission outweighed the losses they'd suffered, but personally, it felt like a failure. A mission of mercy — a target of convenience — lead to the deaths of otherwise healthy Bajorans and of a phenomenal nurse. A wonderful person by all accounts as well. One who the Doctor had liked, and who would have made friends with many on this ship —- who'd already made friends with many. Those aboard the Venture would be allowed to say their goodbyes, but a simple letter to his family — a father and two sisters — by a hologram no less, didn't feel like enough. No, it felt like an insult.
A short knock pulled him from his thoughts. A quick internal chronometer check told him he'd been lamenting over the letter for nearly an hour. It was already gamma shift.
Captain Janeway stood in the doorway, the ever present mug of coffee (now with added vitamins) in her hand. What did she do to keep it consistently steaming like that?
He stood, "Captain?"
She waved a hand at him, as if it tell him not to stand on her behalf, and took the chair opposite his desk.
"How can I help you?"
Please state the nature of the medical emergency.
Captain Janeway crossed one leg over the other and leaned to one side, observing him with her sharp gaze, "Tell me about Merrythought."
It clicked then. The downward dip of her chin and her coming here to see him so late. She wanted an explanation for the first fatality of her new crew.
The Doctor thought of how to begin, but faltered. Was it possible to explain a violent death? He'd never been able to on Voyager — certainly not on Kelemane. Not in any way that could make sense of it.
"He was working with the patients we'd marked as having a potential for reaction to the vaccine. The workspace was outside of the—"
The hand she raised caused him to stop. She said so much with her hands, this Captain. He imagined if he cataloged the movements she made, they'd convey just as much expression as her face.
"You misunderstand," the look that accompanied the words was distant, even wistful in this light, if not tired, "I want you to tell me about Merrythought. The person. Who was Kevin? What was he like?"
Never the most perceptive, the Doctor had to digest that request. This woman had captained a ship through a war. A war with an unimaginable death toll. He'd read the reports about the Bellerophon before agreeing to joining this mission: half of her initial crew gone in Tyra, another twenty in Chudala. Her medical team lost so many people that an ensign quickly rose the ranks to become her CMO. Captain Janeway was not new to death.
Was it that peacetime loss hit her harder?
"He had the most unimaginative puns," he started, then frowned, considering that that wasn't the first impression of the man he wanted to give. Yet, Captain Janeway's eyes had crinkled around the edges, so he continued, "but it was okay because Drara's sense of humor is uncomplicated, so he could count on always getting a laugh from her. I was hoping to introduce him to the concept of subtler turn of phrase, but that might have proven futile."
He took an unnecessary breath and gave her a partial smile, one that turned down slowly at the corners, "Last week, he finally managed to convince Gioxi and Gibans to participate in Sea Shanty Saturdays in the Lounge."
She chuckled, resting her chin against her free hand, "A hold-over from the Bellerophon."
"Really? I think it's delightful. Gibans was initially opposed to the shanty part, since he's more partial to drinking songs."
"Same difference," she took a drink of her coffee then, to allow him to continue.
"And Gioxi was opposed to the alliteration, since Saturdays are technically human. He promised them both ample amounts of Betazed liquor and now most of my staff is developing a drinking and singing problem. The latter I can support, provided they let me slip an opera in on occasion, but the former might be his greatest legacy."
"He was an excellent nurse, the kind I'd hoped for on Voyager. They're all excellent."
As he spoke, the Doctor understood that he was experiencing grief for the first time since it had happened, "But I think I'll miss the person more than the extra set of hands."
She nodded, knowingly, that faraway look back in her eyes, "Was he the first loss under your command?"
The question was honest and knowing. He could refuse to answer and she'd still understand that the answer was 'yes.'
"As a Starfleet officer," he admitted.
"Kelemane," it wasn't a question, she'd read his report after all.
He nodded, "It's difficult to talk about."
His own honesty surprised him. So few knew the toll the time on that planet took on him. The time. The wars, both internal and external. The personal loss. The inextricable shift in his sense of self.
Tuvok' s strange request from the previous week came to him then. The usually private Vulcan expressing concern for a friend who seemed diminished from the one he knew. Physically and mentally hollowed out from the hand she'd been dealt in a war that ravaged multiple worlds. Given the the Commander's hesitancy to go to her directly, the Doctor expected her to close herself off from the conversation now. She looked the sort who folded into herself. Voyskunsky had been that way, but would lash out with chilly rebuttal quickly after.
Captain Janeway didn't; instead of retreating, she affected a sort of thoughtful shrug and shifted in her seat, chin still on hand, face scrunched in consideration, "I told myself I was used to my crew dying."
It was a dark admission for sure, but she didn't let it hover in the air for long, "Grief doesn't scale, not in any way I've made sense of. Seventy-five million dead on Betazed, and for three days I refused to believe my XO was one of them. I made my peace with it. I thought I had at least."
He grew daring, "But Cardassia?"
"Then Cardassia," she took a slow sip of her coffee, brows still knitted together, "I'll let journalists and historians pontificate on the deeper meaning of my actions. To me, it's simple. You don't confront the work of the Jem'Hadar, walk around in its aftermath, and then sit idly by when it happens again."
Many had, though.
"And now Merrythought," she confessed, "I didn't have the pleasure of knowing him, but I am sorry he's gone."
He looked at her then like he would a patient, and allowed himself the opportunity to assess what he saw. Her uniform was immaculate, as to be expected. Her face, while marked with as much exhaustion as he'd originally expected, was made more obviously so due to the lack of makeup. She must have settled in for the evening, after her shift, before giving up on the idea of sleep to come find him, the senior officer who'd known Merrythought the best.
Grief doesn't scale.
Those words, had Tuvok managed to convince her to see Hitimi, the Haliian counselor?
When he'd once tried to dabble in the practice, he'd come across that saying in her species' texts on the subject. They were true, weren't they. If he thought of all the men and woman he watched die during the many wars on Kelemane, if he relived the hopelessness of being ineffective — unable to use the medicine he knew — to save them, those words certainly would apply. Grief didn't scale, not right at least. He'd carried some deaths longer than others. Jason's. Martzia's. Perpenta Village. Millions had died in the conflicts over the watchers in the sky. He'd personally seen thousands. Yet, he focused on so few. And above Jason, above Martzia — the children he chose —, above anyone on Kelemane, he found himself returning to his grief over the loss of Kes most often.
In all of that grief that didn't scale, would he have saved his enemies in those wars? When they needed it most, at great risk to himself? He'd never really been tested, so he couldn't say. Yet, his new captain had. Had been tested and, he thought, had passed that test. Others is in Starfleet didn't think so — many of the former Maquis he'd served with certainly didn't — but their opinion didn't matter much to him.
Would Merrythought have saved any of the Pah-wraith acolytes who killed him, if given the chance?
He'd earnestly accepted a position from a hologram who'd saved the life of a Borg drone, aboard a ship captained by the hero of Talahat.
"I was proud to have served with him," he said, honestly and freely.
Because the answer to the question was an easy yes. Merrythought would have.
Captain Janeway's smile was small and fleeting, but sincere.
Before she could take her leave, he gave an unnecessary sigh and showed her a practiced smile. He was never one to turn down an opportunity that so easily presented itself.
"Now that I have you,, why don't we see about doing that physical you've been avoiding. Hm?"
Her eyes narrowed, and he stood to lead her to the medical bay, he thought he heard her actually harrumph.
...
Like all life, the Doctor required a physician of his own.
While Reg had a much softer touch than Torres, he didn't have a bedside manner so much as a series of social quirks that made him both endearing and utterly infuriating, often both at the same time. As far as the combination could, it made him an interesting friend.
The Chief Engineer; however, he was all brusque delivery and short-fused wit.
"I want to crack your head open and see what's inside."
The violence of the figurative speech made Reg shuffle around the laboratory terminal awkwardly. He'd stutter for the next several minutes, for sure. There was no way around that.
The Doctor was made of sterner stuff, "My head is empty. Leave it alone."
"H-his…h-his program is v-very complex," Reg added helpfully(?).
"After six hundred years, I bet it looks like its been through a blender."
"S-simplis-stic but accurate."
He'd had to make modifications to himself often in the early years. At first, to fit in better to the undiscerning eye, then as the Kelemane's technology improved, to the very discerning eye. Any organizational structure that Lewis and Torres had implemented in the first years of his life had been swept away by his own amateur meddling. The ad hoc additions had created inefficiencies quickly, some of which he struggled with to this day. They'd also generated what Lewis had described as responses that were as organic as synthetic could get. The holo-engineer had been working tirelessly to parse the good from the bad when his condition took a turn for the worst. After, when Lewis had died, the Doctor hadn't been about to call on Torres.
Reg had been a good compromise.
Shaw, though, had the manic gleam in his eyes of someone who was thrilled at the prospect of studying one of the Federation's most complex engineering feats. That that engineering feat happened to be alive was just a bonus.
All of this clearly gave Reg heartburn. With a trembling voice, he managed an inexplicably authoritative tone, "You have read-only privileges," then, quickly, "Sir."
"For the best," Shaw took the news quite well, "I don't want to delete your sense of smell on my first day. You do have a sense of smell, yes?"
"Better than yours," long ago, he might have preened.
Today, he just played along with his usual smile.
That piqued the other man's interest, "Taste?"
"I have the ability to process taste, yes. To an extent. Organic matter isn't abstracted by my programming the way it is by organic brains. Cake tastes like the concept of cake, and so on. Holographic food is processed differently, so holographic cake just tastes like cake."
Reg and Shaw shared a curious glance, which made the Doctor feel self-conscious, "That is a new development."
"Dr. Zimmerman wanted him to stop consuming organic matter," Reg explained.
"That you eat anything is astonishing."
The Doctor shrugged, "When in Rome."
"For over five hundred years, then yeah, definitely do as the Romans do."
That piece of the Doctors history seemed to interest Shaw the most. That a hologram could come online for the first time in 2371 and still manage to be older than the formation of the Federation itself. Well, it was a piece of trivia a lot of people got stuck on. Shaw, unlike most, just wasn't self-conscious about his interest. In a way, that type of directness was refreshing.
"Something tells me this is just the tip of a very weird iceberg. What are you two working on now? I want to be able to tell the Captain I'm not letting one of my people scramble her CMO's brains. Figuratively speaking."
"I'm working through Dr. Zimmerman's research on the memory indexing and compression scaling problems. Holograms are limited by the systems they run through. A ship like Venture could reasonably sustain Aeson for decades. Eventually, he'd take up all of its available space. Mobile emitters are worse."
They certainly couldn't house 500 years worth of memory and adequately run his increasingly complex program. Without a solution, he'd had to compress memory files, then archive. Then, eventually, he'd been forced to start choosing which memories to delete. Even when he'd returned to Voyager, what had been compressed had not been so easily uncompressed. It was, long term, the most pressing concern he faced — the equivalence of organic aging. For someone who dreaded parting with any memory file — which he was — to face a future where centuries of his life would need to be stored externally or purged felt like a version of death.
Perhaps an unavoidable fate, but worth trying to all the same.
The Chief Engineer gave them a rare smile, "That sounds like my kind of impossible."
"Read-only privileges," Reg hastily reminded him.
It's funny, the Doctor thought, as the two engineers bickered over the subroutines that defined him, how quickly a place can start to feel like home.
1. USS Bellerophon: canonical Intrepid class ship. Its launch date isn't given in cannon; however, some rpgs place the date in 2369. I borrow that here; Janeway was given command of it at this time - leaving Voyager for another captain.
2. That captain was Dina Voyskunksy. She is character in the novelizations. She was the ex-partner of Cavit and died during the First Battle of Chin'toka on the USS Hood. In this universe, she lead the crew through the Delta Quadrant. Through the Doctor's POV, we'll understand the difference in the voyage.
3. One of those difference is that the Doctor went down to Kellemane sooner than in canon and was stuck there for centuries.
4. The Doctor's name is Aeson Retz in this story. Aeson comes from the novelization of the 18 minutes he was stuck on Kelemane in "Blink of an Eye'. Retz will be one of the many surnames he chose while on the planet. The name and how feels about it will be apart of the story.
5. I use the The Dominion War Sourcebook: The Fires of Armageddon to fill in the gaps of canon regarding the war.
6. Our mains all are slightly different than we remember them. The Doctor is about 600 years here, so it makes sense. I'll try to keep the core parts of him the same, although his need to be recognized for his worth is mellowed. Janeway got a vastly different kind of trauma from being in the war. Tuvok is largely the same, but missed his friend. We'll see a lot more differences in Seven, Torres, Tom and Chakotay when they make an appearance. I bash none of them, although the Doctor has VERY strong opinions on Torres.