Author's Note: Which was on the expanded prompts list, because that's how far we're stretching this concept. Also, this one absolutely got away from me. It's definitely becoming a trend.

Bob April isn't happy, but then Una isn't sure she's seen him happy in a decade. Satisfied, sometimes, at a stretch, when a mission goes miraculously to plan and the Enterprise doesn't return to spacedock in disgrace, or half a dozen pieces. Or understaffed, again. But he likes Chris, Una thinks, watching him glower at Marie like she hasn't just pulled off a miracle. With Chris he softens his punches, gives him the benefit, even when he shouldn't. With Marie… Perhaps he's blaming her for the boy scout having faltered. It's the only reason Una can conjure for him picking this moment to focus on her lack of discipline, her decisions on rationing, the state of the Centaur, the state of her crew, as if they haven't just survived the impossible. As if she hasn't brought all of them home. Marie Batel is a hero, she should be hailed that way. She deserves accolades.

Unfortunately, saying so would not sit well right now. Marie's too tight, too flattened, exhaustion bleeding in around the edges. She can't take that argument. So Una keeps quiet, tries to school her features neutral as Bob's eyes flick towards her. He's known her too long now not to notice how close she's sitting, how angry she's becoming. How, when he brings up Marie's decision to turn back before they absolutely had to, when he relieves her of her command, formally, in the kind of blow he could have saved until the handover, Una can't help but reach to rest a hand against her back, because she may well be giving herself away but it's already taking her everything not to remind him that none of them were expected to survive.

Una knows he sees it, another item to be added to his list of Marie Batel's errors in judgement, but he doesn't ask. Simply informs them of the meeting he's scheduled, where they're to elucidate their mission report, answer any questions the top brass still have.

"08:00."

"Tomorrow?" Marie asks, needing to clarify the unprecedented turnaround, the brutal scheduling even this almost war shouldn't justify.

"08:00." April repeats, avoiding Una's eyes as if that will vacate her objections. "I don't need to remind you of the urgency here, do I?"

"No sir, of course not." Marie says, and she sounds numb, diminished, this woman who's just pulled off a miracle, and it's all Una can do to stop herself wanting to wring her commanding officer's neck.

There's personnel to deal with, after. Will she be returning to the Enterprise, will she be available to advise command, is there anything to report concerning… Of course there is. For once in her life, there actually is. Only it's nebulous and fragile, and Una's damned if she's putting a label on it here, in this miserable office, on this nasty little form. Marie Batel is a person, not a complication. Not a breach of protocol, or a power imbalance, or an abuse of position or anything else. She's real, as real as anyone Una's ever known, and her absence is stark in the comfortable apartment she's shown to with her luggage waiting, because booking separate quarters had seemed easier three days ago than bringing up whether they would share, officially. Contemplating what it might mean if they did. Or if they didn't.

It's a mistake, Una realises, unpacking in the vastness of this soulless space, piling her PADDs onto the office terminal, giving up on them to order food, and when Marie turns up barely half an hour later, hovers in the doorway, says "Just checking it doesn't have a kitchen." as if she isn't sure she should be here, as if she thinks she might need the excuse, Una steps up to the panel and liberates one of her unprotesting hands and presses it home to reset the protocols of the damn place. Done. She's never been more sure of a decision in her life. "No kitchen." She says, turning back to the cooling unit, the rudimentary induction setup, the little sink. "There's an actual bed though." And Marie smiles in a way that crumbles instantly, faltering under the weight of the piecemeal façade.

"Sorry." She manages, trying to pull the thing back together, which is… she needs to stop apologising, and Una has a sudden impulse as to how that might be accomplished, only it fades before she can act. Now really isn't the time. It would be the definition of taking advantage. Something about the thought must communicate though, because Marie's expression quiets. "Sorry." She says again, soft and tired. "Looks like I'm going to be bad at this." Well, who can blame her? She's survived an impossible trauma, it's been an impossible year, and the last guy she dated concealed his mystical expiry date from her, morphing from perfect partner to commitment issues doesn't even begin to cover it overnight. Of course she's a mess. Una's hardly going to be better.

"I've ordered dinner." She says, because none of that matters. It arrives as if on cue, shakshuka, still steaming hot, and they sit at the kitchen counter and Marie douses the entire thing in tabasco without bothering to ask, without stopping to taste it first, and Una knows, right there, that this is the person she wants to spend the rest of her life with, because she's taken every corner of these echoing quarters and filled them up in an instant with home.

Marie covers her hand as she chokes on the moment, as her chest glows the contaminants away, pulls Una around her under the blankets, tight with exhaustion in this cavernous room. Laces their fingers together against her chest. "You can, if you want to. I won't break." Only she might, and that really couldn't ever be worth it. Marie needs every ounce of stability she can find right now, because she's lost, and empty; that one thing that can rattle the best of them - an officer without a mission, a captain without a crew. A person without a home. No, not that one. That one's never going to be true. Una curls her closer, presses the kiss into the warmth of the back of her neck instead, and it's enough to make her exhale, one shuddering breath as her grip tightens. Please don't leave me alone.

"I made the booking for decorum. Not because I didn't want you here."

"Your career…"

"Isn't my life." Even though it has been, forever. "This is."

Marie turns to study her, a ragged intensity in her eyes. "I won't break." It's as if she's saying it to convince herself as much as Una.

"If you do, I won't mind."

"I'm hardly…"

A catch, is the old fashioned word. But she's wrong. She's beautiful, and impossibly, effortlessly captivating, and all Una wants right now is more. Only she's wired for caution, and that doesn't feel entirely out of place. "You need some sleep." No one can be quite rational on what Marie's been getting, and tomorrow is another impossible day. Una strokes down her spine, slow and gentle in this ocean of a bed. "No big decisions." It's one of the things medical has advised them, over and over. Marie rolls into her, tucks her head under the hollow of Una's chin.

"That's just an excuse."

"But it's a good one." Because it's good advice, and right now both of them need it. Una hugs her close, presses a lingering kiss into her crown. I love you. She's already made her decision, she knows that. They just need a little more time.

Breakfast arrives just as Una's finished making coffee. Marie must hear the chime, it's not a sound you can miss, but she doesn't appear right away, the way she should, for oatmeal, this early in the morning. It's odd. And then it's not.

Over the course of a career in Starfleet, a childhood in hiding, an unspeakable, tortured interlude on the King, Una's seen every kind of panic attack going. This one's quiet. Unusually so. Understated in a way you might miss, if you didn't know her. Marie's movements slow as if the atmosphere has thickened slightly, everything just a little too deliberate as she comes around the counter. Her knuckles whiten around the tap, her fingers tremble around the glass she fills, and then nothing but shallow, measured breathing as her throat flutters unsteadily, as Una tracks the prickling of sweat across her brow. "Has this happened before?" Marie nods tightly in the silence. And of course it has. Practise makes perfect. "Do you need me to call medical?"

"No."

No, she knows what she's doing. They just have to wait. They sit on the floor against the cabinets, and Una strokes Marie's hair until she goes slowly slack over her knees, until her breathing eases into something more natural. Then she fishes her screen down from the counter and dials April. Gets him on the second try, still covered in shaving foam, very much not pleased to see her. "We need a day." She tells him levelly.

"Out of the question. I told you yesterday…"

"We need a day." Una repeats in her best command tone, the one that can even pull an admiral up short. "It's that or I call recovery assistance, and you know they'll give her a week."

"A week?"

"At least. I'm being generous. Stop thinking like a bureaucrat, Bob. You can have her functional or you can have her now. It's barely a year since our best nurse took an ice cream scoop to her chest. Any doctor would give her a month." It's crude perhaps, unnecessary, but it has the desired effect. Beside her Marie's shoulders begin to judder. April frowns.

"Where are you?"

"In the kitchen." Una says shortly, because he knows already. There's no need to confirm that he does. "We're taking the day, reschedule for tomorrow. Or read the report without us, it's all there."

"One day." April sighs. "I'll make it happen. Send captain Batel my regards."

Marie, Una thinks as he disconnects, if it's Chris it should be Marie. Beside her the woman in questions finally dissolves into the kind of laughter that leaves her hugging her stomach, blowing air up at the ceiling in fitful bursts. "Thank you. That was… Just… You don't get to do that again."

"You need some more sleep."

"Yes." Marie slumps into her, buries her damp face against Una's neck, fingers curling into her uniform in a way that makes Una pull her close. "I wasn't supposed to make it back." It doesn't feel over. She must be so impossibly tired of running, and this war feels like it's never going to end. It's barely even started.

I love you. "We're taking some time off, when we've done this. Just us, wherever you like." Una waits in the ensuing silence, letting Marie process that before she presses on. "Where do you want to go?"

"Home."

Una still has no idea where that is. "Can I come?"

Marie nods into her neck, her breath hitching, and Una takes her hand, and they just sit there, for too long, in the impossible quiet of a world without an engine moving it onwards, because right now they have nowhere else to go. And maybe, for once, that could be a good thing.

Una spends her day on a cushion beside the coffee table taking her own advice, binging some harmless, artless action comedy with a puzzle box settled in her lap. Marie starts off in the bedroom, and she's quiet for a while. It seems probable that she really does sleep. But by the start of the second movie she's come and curled up behind Una, a row of fingertips pressing into her spine, and she drifts while the action crescendos, "I can switch this off." "No, it's fine." for hours, until as the final instalment of the absurd pentalogy gets going, as Una's still utterly failing to decipher the intricate challenge she's almost sure was put here to baffle visiting diplomats, Marie gradually lightens, begins combing through her hair, slow and delicate and impossibly gentle. It's a lovely feeling, a kind of tickling, warming wellness that suffuses her body, makes it hard to focus on anything else. No wonder humans like this. "Will you let me take you out for dinner?" Marie asks her as her eyes close. And what answer is there but yes?

They end up somewhere small and cramped, the dimly lit windows drawing them in out of the vastness of outside. It's only just off campus, and before the menus have even been properly removed familiar faces show up in the doorway. "Captain!" Harrington grins widely only to be elbowed in the ribs by Norgay, an entirely one-sided discussion taking place as Marie waves them over, as extra menus are delivered. "You really don't have to…" Norgay starts, her eyes flitting pointedly between Marie and Una, but Marie's hugging Harrington, pulling out the chair beside her, and he's already telling her about the updated navigation relays, and she looks so happy to see him that Una feels the morning almost fade away. "Sorry." Norgay mutters, sinking into the chair beside Una. "He seriously has no clue." "It's fine, really." It's perfect, and it only gets better when Harrington pulls his communicator out to summon everyone else who's remained with the Centaur, when soon there are nine of them crammed into the tiny restaurant, still multiples larger than their recent mess hall, and Kavorkian is grousing about the invaders messing up his systems, and Mittal is saying excuse me what systems, and the whole thing devolves into the traditional, raucous, celebratory mess and Marie glows with a happiness Una hasn't seen perhaps ever. "This time next week, any of you who are still here, I'll book this table." "Book it for the month." Kavorkian tells her, hoovering falooda like a man who's been starved. "I'm staying till they launch her."

Marie pushes her hands deep into her pockets as they walk back through the blanketing darkness, stares down at the path, then tips her head up to the stars. "So, the Palace of Fine Arts…"

"We have a meeting at 08:00." Una counters.

"The sun rises at 06:34 tomorrow. We'll make it. And I've been asleep all day."

Una's going to have to source a picnic. There may never have been a better occasion.

They spread a quilt out under the stars. Drink tea against the chill of the morning. Gaze out at the San Francisco skyline, the thousand pinpricks of light across the bay, then up into the boundless galaxy, so close and yet so infinitely wide. Marie goes quiet as they lie there, so Una waits and lets the silence stretch. It might be the stars, the countless horrors they currently harbour, evolving, coming nearer every day. And that's probably part of it, because how could it not be. But it isn't everything.

"What did you put, on the form?"

"Nothing." Una takes her hand, stops her worrying at the weave on the blanket. "Where's home?"

"Brooklyn. Williamsburg, on second and Berry. You can see the Opera house out the front. It has a guest room. You don't have to come." She's going to do that every time, Una realises. Perhaps it isn't all about being captain. Perhaps it has a lot more to do with having been burned.

"I've never been to Brooklyn." She's seen New York the way she's seen most of Earth; briefly, and from above. "We won't be needing the guest room."

Marie breathes what might be a laugh. It sounds dangerously like she might cry. "I think… I'm going to need you to tell me that, all the time."

That's hardly going to be a problem. Una pushes up until she can brush a kiss against her cheek, catch her too bright eyes in the darkness as she turns, I love you, dip to actually kiss her, simple and soft and slow.

"Ok. That helps." Marie reaches to hold her there, to breathe into the moment. "That's…" Too much. So very clearly all too much. "I can take you to see Così fan tutte. It's dated. You'll like it." If she knows it's on that means she's looked it up, and if she's looked it up that means she's thinking about the future. It's only been twenty four hours. This woman is practically indestructible. Even if, right now, she's lost.

"I didn't tell them anything because nothing's happened. Nothing needs to happen. We've had four days. That's hardly enough time to change a light bulb."

"We've had five months, Chin-Riley."

"Those don't count." Una kisses her again, deeper but fleeting. Lets the smile it draws fill up her chest. "This counts. And it doesn't have to be anything yet. No big decisions, remember?"

"No."

She's decided too, Una can see it. There's no mystery to what's going to happen. But medical is right, there's no harm in allowing it to happen slowly, gradually, at a pace that will let them keep up. Provide time to expose the illusion. "I'm not going anywhere. We aren't in a rush."

Marie's fingers soften against her cheek "I'm not going to change my mind. Just so we're clear. When I told you this was forever, I meant it." It's such an impossible concept, somehow larger than the universe itself, but Marie frames her face, tucks her hair back gently. Smiles as if she doesn't need her to understand it. "You'll see." Is all she says as the sun comes up, and the world is suddenly bathed in colour.