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Originally posted December 2017-January 2018. Lightly revised in September 2023. Special thanks go to nia for her beta read of the original version.
Mind Over Matter
Chapter One
The cut on her lip had started throbbing again.
Katrina forced herself to take deep breaths and count each individual pulse of pain. Counting didn't make the cut hurt less, of course, but it let her focus on something other than just how much it hurt. She'd discovered this technique accidentally, while she was recovering from the incident on the Pretoria.
If she'd been in a safer place, she would have closed her eyes to focus her attention even more.
Of course, if she'd been in a safer place, she would have gotten the cut treated and wouldn't be in pain to begin with.
Mind over matter, she reminded herself. Human beings have a considerable capacity for self-deception. Given the right motivation, they can convince themselves that nearly anything is true.
Indeed, it was her job not just to know that, but to turn it into practical application, to use and abuse it on demand in response to Starfleet's ever-changing needs. Applying the knowledge to herself should be easy: psychologist, heal thyself.
She realized she'd lost count of the throbs. With a mental shrug, she simply started over. It wasn't like there was anything else to do. Klingons didn't believe in providing their prisoners with diversionary activities.
Actually, she recalled, the current trend in Intelligence's thinking was that Klingons didn't believe in providing their prisoners with anything. Any enemy soldier that wasn't killed outright was simply warehoused for a few days until they could be interrogated and then murdered for sport. Or food, if the grisly comments she'd overheard about Captain Georgiou's fate were true.
Only time would tell if she would end up corroborating or correcting that during her debriefing, although so far, mistreatment had been minimal and the questioning hadn't been particularly intense. The worst part was the hunger. Apparently, provisions were scarce, and almost none had found their way to her.
She'd already managed to convince herself she could easily survive on what they were giving her, and that the headaches from low blood sugar weren't real. Not that anyone ever minded going on a diet, anyway, and besides, adrenaline was also known to cause weight loss. The sharper angles of her joints weren't necessarily signs of starvation.
The sound of heavy footfalls in the corridor outside brought her back to her awareness, and she realized that despite her intent to the contrary, she had let her eyes fall closed while concentrating on counting throbs. It didn't matter. She'd been alone, so it hadn't been too dangerous, and by the time the door slid open, she had re-opened them and climbed to her feet.
"So we begin another day, Admiral Cornwell," said Kol. "With still no sign of the Discovery or anyone else from Starfleet. We've told them we have you. We've told them we mean to learn your secrets. Why have they not detailed a rescue party?" He leaned closer and grinned, although the expression was anything but pleasant. "Where is Captain Lorca?"
If theirs had been a love story, it would have started all the way back at the Academy. But their story wasn't like that. To begin with, Katrina hadn't gone to Starfleet Academy. She'd been thirty-two when she'd reported to Starfleet Training Command after applying for, and being granted, a direct commission.
There were certain skills Starfleet expected all its officers to have, regardless of specialty. One of them was the ability to pilot a sub-warp vessel, which meant she was assigned to flight training at STC. He was an interim instructor, working there temporarily following the decommissioning of his old ship. Officially, he would be deployed as soon as a new posting was identified. Unofficially, as she later learned, the situation was a bit more complicated.
It would prove to be an omen: nothing was ever simple when it came to Gabriel Lorca.
The newly promoted lieutenant commander evidently had little experience working with civilian-trained professionals. She lost track of the mathematics on the very first day of instruction, and stayed over with the intent of asking some clarification questions. His response was a scathing look. "I'm going off-duty now."
"Is there another time when you're available, then?"
"This isn't a university. I don't have office hours."
He was obviously baiting her, but she refused to rise to it, instead taking a sharp breath to steady herself. "Some tutorials you can recommend, then. I'm willing to study on my own time to keep up, Commander."
His eyes narrowed. "Why do you even need to? This isn't super high-level math. Just basic spherical trigonometry."
"I never took trigonometry," she answered.
"Is that so? Isn't advanced math required for med school?" He indicated the medical cross on her insignia. "Of course, I've never seen a doctor in a blue uniform before, which means you're something else, aren't you?"
"I'm a psychologist," she told him. "My doctoral thesis focused on human factors."
"Doctoral thesis?" he repeated, and his lip curled. "What would Starfleet want with a psychologist?"
"Performance improvement." She let her expression tell him exactly what she thought of his current performance. Negative reactions to psychology were so trite. "My field uses statistics, not trigonometry."
"Statistics." He snorted. "Well, I'll tell you what, Doctor. Statistics won't do you much good when you're out there under fire from an enemy ship and running low on fuel. If you plot the wrong course, you'll run dry and drift right into a phaser bolt."
"I know that." She had known all along that she'd pull flight instruction as part of her training. "That's why I'm asking for help to catch up. Are you going to be a resource for it, or should I go somewhere else?"
They were standing almost toe-to-toe at this point, which is why she saw the grudging respect as it dawned in his expression. He took a sharp breath, mirroring hers from earlier, and she told herself she wasn't going to notice just how blue his eyes were.
"I'm not the one you need to talk to," he said after a long, charged moment. "I can do the math, but explaining it is more difficult. Let me see if I can track down someone else who can help you out."
"You don't have to go out of your way," she told him. "Just point me in the right direction."
"Sweetheart, you're going to need to do a lot better than just 'the right direction' if you want to get through pilot training. Some parts of it you just have to feel your way through. You sure you're even cut out for Starfleet?"
Despite knowing it was exactly what he wanted, she raised her chin, challenging. "Yes, unless Starfleet isn't interested in becoming a galaxy-class military force."
"Military force? I thought you civilians focused on Starfleet's exploratory charter."
"I'm not a civilian. I've already been sworn in, and I grew up in an army family anyway." If she'd had a better rein on her temper, she'd have thought twice before revealing so many personal details in this conversation. They weren't relevant to the topic at hand.
He laughed again, but this time it wasn't unkind. "An army brat, are you? I wouldn't have imagined ground pounders even knew what doctorates were."
She sniffed. Everyone in her immediate family had a graduate degree of some type.
"Although it at least explains your accent," he continued, switching from Federation Standard to English. The slight drawl she'd noticed in his speech was stronger in their native language. "I'd caught that you're North American, but I couldn't quite place which part. That's because you're from all over, isn't it?"
She nodded.
"Well, it's nice to see someone else military whose eyes aren't stuck to the ground." When he smiled, she saw the beginnings of crinkles at the corners of his eyes. "My family really is civilian. They never quite understood Starfleet either."
"I understand Starfleet," she corrected him softly in Standard. Its use was required when on duty. "It's just the math I'm having trouble with."
He nodded and switched back himself. "Fair enough. Give me a day or two. In the meantime, I'll spot you the exact answers. Just make sure you show me the right concepts in your solutions. Will that work?"
"I don't need any special favors."
The smile disappeared. "I'm not giving you any. Once you're in tutoring I will expect exact answers." He paused. "And don't worry about owing me for helping you find the tutor, either. That's not a favor. This time."
"This time?"
For the briefest of moments, his eyes flickered down, perusing her. It was so quick that under most circumstances she would have assumed she was imagining things, but in this situation she knew better.
"Yeah," he said. "This time. Dismissed."
Nodding an acknowledgment, she turned to leave.
"Oh, and Doc? Good on you for showing some initiative. I can see why Starfleet wanted you, even if you are a head shrinker."
After that first encounter, he seemed to take a special interest in her progress, periodically stopping by her desk as the class worked on problems. "How you doin', Doc? The math making more sense now?"
At first, Katrina responded politely, and with genuine appreciation. "Yes, I'm fine. Thank you for finding and connecting me with Specialist Lipkowicz." By the fifth or sixth exchange, though, it had started to become irritating, and after the tenth she stayed after class again. "Commander, is there something in my work that makes you think I'm still having trouble?"
He raised his eyebrows, though at least he didn't try to insult her by asking what she was talking about. "Just trying to be a better instructor. Take an interest in my students and all that."
"I would buy that," she told him, "if you took an interest in any of the other students."
"What makes you think I haven't? Just because you haven't been around when it happened, doesn't mean it hasn't."
"This isn't a university," she quoted back at him. "You don't keep office hours, and besides, you don't have much use for statistics or psychology."
"I never said anything like that last."
"You never needed to. Your attitude said it for you. You'd like it if I failed, wouldn't you? Maybe you're just watching and waiting to see that happen."
He responded with a bark of laughter. "Don't flatter yourself. I'm evaluated on my pass rate. Besides, I can be a patient man. You're forgetting that the practical starts next week. I'm not going to have to watch and wait much past then, not with the kind of navigation solutions you've been coming up with."
Her pique and irritation slid into full-fledged anger and worry. "What's wrong with my navigation solutions? You haven't marked any of them down."
"Because they're correct. Technically. But they're uninspired. Half of 'em will never actually work out there in real space, except maybe under perfectly controlled conditions. Of course, that's your specialty, isn't it? Controlled conditions?"
The twinkle in his eye told her he was just trying to bait her again, but damn if it wasn't working. "What's the alternative? Just feeling my way through it? How exactly am I supposed to learn how to do anything without doing it under controlled conditions first?"
"Sometimes you just gotta throw caution to the wind," he answered. "You never know how you're going to handle the unexpected if always insist on keeping everything completely under control."
Just how, she wondered, had this conversation segued into an argument about control? "You might be surprised."
"Really? I'll look forward to that, then."
"What's that supposed to mean?"
"You haven't checked the roster to find out who's supervising your practical yet, have you?"
Actually, she hadn't even known that the instructors for the practicum could be different from those for the classroom portion. The question itself told her the rest of what she needed to know, though. "Couldn't I request someone else?"
"Not without having to go to the brass and explain why. You really want to do that? I'd be interested in hearing what you'll use as an excuse."
Katrina bit her lip. He was right, of course; instructor is an insufferable jackass wasn't sufficient cause to request a change in the duty roster. Especially when your performance during training directly affected the rank you would be placed into following completion of the course. She decided to go on the offensive again. "I'll take my chances. I might just have a better feel for things than you think."
"You think you do?" There was another of those lightning-fast perusals again. Despite her anger, she felt a jolt of something that might almost have been attraction. It disgusted her. How in the world was this possibly the right time for anything like that? Or the right person?
"Yes," she told him, and her tone was perhaps a bit harsher than it needed to be. "I just might."
"Well, maybe you do, sweetheart. We'll just have to see, won't we?"
She wasn't sure if the cause was her own self-disgust or his continued needling, but regardless, her temper completely snapped. "Damn it, Lorca, don't you know that calling women 'sweetheart' went out of style two centuries ago? I'd appreciate it if you would knock it off."
He shrugged, eyes still twinkling, and his lips quirked as if he might have almost smiled. None actually broke through, though. "All right then, Doctor Cornwell. Since you've made sure I know you have a doctorate in psychology with a focus on human factors."
"Just 'Cornwell' is fine."
Was that suppressed laughter in his tone? "If you insist."
"I do." Not waiting to be dismissed, she gathered her materials and stalked out of the classroom.
She was still vibrating with pent-up tension when she got back to her quarters, and she bounced around the shared room like an old-fashioned pinball. Needing to settle herself down, she changed into workout clothes and went outside to one of the exercise tracks. Despite the fact that San Francisco was having one of its typical cool, windy afternoons, she quickly found herself breathing hard and covered in sweat. Katrina forced herself to finish the circuit anyway.
To her even further disgust, the run had only assuaged her physical stress. She was still emotionally unsettled, perhaps because part of her recognized that much of her upset was her own fault. If she'd been mentally tougher, she wouldn't have allowed him to get so far under her skin in the first place.
Of course, she reflected, her irritation didn't have to be all bad, given that it made her determined to prove him wrong. She grinned to herself. Yes, she could use these feelings to her advantage after all. And once she came out at the top of the class following the practical portion, they'd see exactly which one of them had the control issues.
During the first week of the classroom portion, she'd noticed that Lorca's speech got faster when he was stressed. At the moment, it was the fastest she'd ever heard it. "Get us out of this spin now, Cornwell, before we hit something serious!"
"As opposed to hitting something not serious?" But even as she said it, Katrina was reaching inside herself for calm. At least he wasn't closing his hands over hers to guide her, the way he had the first few times out here. That had sent her system completely haywire, and those first couple of practical sessions hadn't ended particularly well.
She'd managed to push through, though, and now going through the emergency procedures was automatic. Her fingers danced over the console, reducing all thrusters to nominal. In gravity or atmosphere, drag might have been enough to stop their spin after that. But this was space, and Newton's First Law took precedence.
Closing her eyes, she felt for the direction of the spin. Determining the most significant discrepancy, she teased the opposite thrusters back up, just enough to counteract it. Repeating the process twice more, she brought the shuttlepod into a stationary position. They ended up upside-down and backward as oriented toward the rest of the training route, but they were stopped, and that was what was important.
"Okay," she said. "What happened?"
"You did a good job," he answered. "Only forty-seven seconds to get us stopped."
Surprised, she turned to face him. He motioned toward his console, where the display still plainly showed the override order.
"You put this thing into a spin on purpose?"
"Part of the training," he countered. "Look it up for yourself if you want, but do it after we finish. We're only a third of the way through the route."
"Are there any other surprises you haven't told me about?"
"They would be surprises if I had, would they? Time's a-wasting, Doc, and we're still on the clock. Fly."
She did, furious, although it was notable that he'd triggered the spin while they were on a relatively empty part of the course. There'd been little, if any, chance of a serious collision. He wasn't being reckless, then, which meant that the little hint he'd dropped bore remembering.
That decision proved right: he temporarily turned off the artificial gravity as they looped around an asteroid, forcing her to wrap her legs around a stanchion to keep from floating away from her console before she finished the turn. Then, as they were starting their final docking approach, he crashed the sensors, and she had to bring the pod in using visual reckoning.
When the all-clear came through, he brought the sensors back up so she could see the final duration and score. Despite his attempts at sabotage, she'd finished the test route well within tolerances, and with two minutes to spare on the time.
His tone was formal. "Congratulations, Doctor Cornwell. I'll append your flight certification to your file."
It took her a moment to process that. "That was the final evaluation? This was just supposed to be a practice run."
"Last surprise of the day. There's never any such thing as just practice when you're flying. You know that."
Still shaking from the fading adrenaline, she found herself beginning to sputter.
"Or," he drawled, "I suppose you could look at it as being in practice every single time you get behind the controls."
They'd been warned about this on the first day of STC: it was never safe to assume anything was a consequence-free simulation. Officer candidates needed to train the way they intended to serve, and that meant they were always being evaluated, at least to some extent. She'd forgotten about that, though, since it had never come back up until now.
Katrina finished the shutdown sequence and pushed to her feet. "Well, then, I'm sorry I disappointed you."
"Disappointed me?" He followed her to the rear of the shuttle pod, putting a hand over the door latch before she could open it. "I'm not disappointed. I'm proud of you. You passed the certification evaluation the first time through."
He'd started her flight training by needling her about the lack of math skills, hassled her through every step of the practical, and generally had done everything he could to throw her out of her comfort zone. He'd even implied he expected her to fail out completely. And now he was saying he was proud of her? "What the devil are you talking about?"
"I wanted you to pass on the first try."
"You wanted me…?"
"Yeah. Someone who's willing to admit weakness, and work extra to address it? That's the kind of person who makes the best of pilots. And that's exactly what you did when you asked for help and got extra tutoring on the math." He paused. "I told you then that that was confidence and initiative, Katrina. But I didn't want you to get so cocky you overestimated yourself."
It was the first time he'd ever used her given name. She hadn't even realized he knew it.
"But we get three tries to pass the final, don't we?" she asked. "Wouldn't it have taken me down a little more if I'd had to try twice? I didn't need to pass on the first run."
"No," he answered, and now his voice turned husky as he stepped away from the door and into her personal space. "But re-takes have to be done with a different instructor. Which meant I wouldn't have been able to do this at the end."
In the split second before his mouth covered hers, she thought he was being awfully cocky himself by assuming she would welcome the advance. But she thought about all the times she'd noticed his eyes, his hands. She thought about the way her nerves buzzed whenever he was near, so badly that she'd knocked him over the first time he'd actually touched her. She thought about the way his smile seemed to light up the room when she did a good job, and how that smile had the capacity to make a horribly difficult day seem like one of her best.
Damn him, but he was right. Their interactions had stopped being solely about flight instruction on that very first day.
Author's Notes:
(1) This back story for Gabriel Lorca directly conflicts with the novel Drastic Measures, but the original version of this story was actually posted shortly before the novel was released. While I considered a rewrite to bring things back in line, it would have completely changed the story, so in the end I decided to leave it as-is and mark it as an alternate universe story instead.
(2) I'm aware that several sources refer to Admiral Cornwell as a psychiatrist and not a psychologist. However, to my knowledge this hasn't ever been explicitly spoken on-screen, and the skill set and techniques we see are actually more in line with the latter. Many psychologists really do have doctorates and are properly addressed as "Doctor."
(3) The Original Series episode "Spectre of the Gun" clearly establishes that Federation Standard and English are different languages.