The chapel of the U.S.S. Cerritos was small and rarely used. It was so unused, in fact, that the lights were regularly kept off, or at least they were always dark whenever Shaxs visited, and tonight was no different. "Computer, lights at ten percent," he grunted as the door slid shut behind him, and a very dim yellowish illumination appeared along the walls, just enough to see by. The computer didn't beep, either, not for registering the command nor closing the door—a little modification he'd made personally. He might have felt bad about messing with the specs for a ship's common room, if he'd thought anyone but him ever came in here.

That most people in Starfleet weren't exactly… spiritual, was a well-known fact. The Vulcans were a rare exception, but somehow that always seemed to get overlooked—even by the Vulcans themselves. There was also the matter that most religiously-inclined officers tended to request assignment to the same ships as each other, where their spiritual needs could be more easily met as a community; Shaxs had chosen instead to get a random assignment, and landed on a ship with only two other Bajorans, neither of whom seemed to practice (or at least they'd never mentioned it to him). So the security chief was aware that he was an outlier here—and to tell the truth, he himself wasn't half as devout as a Bajoran rightly should be; he forgot his prayers more often than he said them, regularly neglected his penances during the Time of Cleansing and had a list of sins a mile high. Nevertheless, even his half-assed observance officially made him the most religious person on the ship, so he wasn't surprised to find that there was no one else in the chapel. If he'd had his way he wouldn't be here, either, considering it was 0200 hours. Delta shift, what an ungodsly time to be awake…

The compulsion that had jolted him out of a dead sleep ten minutes prior had been completely out of the blue, and as forceful as a phaser-canon's recoil: I should go to the chapel. Shaxs had stared up at the ceiling of his quarters for a moment, bewildered, before shaking his head and rolling over onto his side with a grumble. Go to the chapel? At that time of night? There had been no practical reason for it, and he'd dismissed it and closed his eyes again, much preferring sleeping to praying—but the feeling had persisted. In fact, it had gotten stronger. I should really go to the chapel. NOW.

There were stories in the Bajoran scriptures of holy men being awoken in the night and responding with, "speak, prophets, your scribe is listening!" Shaxs's own internal response had been a bit more impious—somewhere along the lines of, "it's the middle of the amoran night, I must be going crazy." Nevertheless he'd gotten up with a sigh, put on his bathrobe, put on his holster and combadge just for good measure, and had headed off down the hall, grumbling all the while.

Peering now around the empty room, wondering what the hell this was all about and seriously suspecting he'd made the whole thing up in his head, Shaxs went and opened the chapel's cabinet door with an annoyed mutter and surveyed the contents. The chapels of Starfleet ships were set up with the necessary requirements for most major Federation religions. On the topmost shelf there were the various holy texts—a spine reading The Teachings of Surak in muted gold glittered near the center—and handbooks for the different rites and rituals. On the shelves below were holy objects. On past occasions he'd looked over them with intrigue, wondering what they could be used for. Among the collection were several strings of different prayer beads (some with charms or tassles, some without), and carefully labeled sticks of sacred incense for many different faiths. On an upper shelf there were ceremonial instruments like bells and horns—some of them appeared to be made out of animal parts—while a pair of Andorian weapons (or were they tools of some sort?) sat in a transparent case near the back of the bottom shelf, beside several rolled-up prayer mats and folded garments. On the middle shelf, a Vulcan meditation lamp rested next to several types of candlesticks, including a gilded human candelabra featuring a six-pointed star, and beside these was a black case which, he'd discovered on a previous perusal, contained a set of gold dishes, some more candles, a purple ribbon and a human religious icon of a man undergoing what looked like a particularly unpleasant death.

And at the forefront, of course, as the ritual objects of chapel's most frequent user, were the two tall candles. Shaxs took them out and brought them to the front of the room, setting them on the block of gray stone protruding from the wall that served as the chapel's altar. There he lit them, had the computer turn off the lights again, and stepped back, sitting down and lifting his hands.

Then he closed his eyes and let the dark sweep in.

Silence filled the chapel like the pitch-blackness of the void of space, held back only by the two fragile lights flickering on the altar. The security chief was a thoroughly practical man, and contemplative prayer was not one of his strong suits. Nor did he have any particularly pressing needs to bring to the Prophets' attention (or, well—bring again to their attention). So he just sat there for several moments, listening. Waiting.

Nothing happened. The chapel was empty, so he felt it couldn't hurt to pray out loud. "You, uh– wanted to see me?" he prompted gruffly after a beat, eyes still closed.

Of course, he wasn't expecting an answer. For someone who had been brought back from the dead, Shaxs was not a man given to mystic experiences, and the singular time he'd been subjected to one he'd found it confusing and extremely frustrating. Anyway, even while he'd been… there, the Prophets had never spoken to him directly, so he was hardly anticipating a response now that he was back on the physical plane.

Which was why he was thoroughly surprised when he got one—in the form of a yelp and the sound of someone jumping. He looked back over his shoulder in surprise. Ensign Boimler lowered his anxiously-clenched hands, looking flustered. "Um, y-yes, Sir! Sorry, Sir."

"Uhh…" Shaxs looked around the chapel and then back again; he hadn't even heard the young man come in. What the–?

Thankfully—or unfortunately, depending on how you looked at it—the ensign apparently took his bewildered lack of response as an invitation to fill the silence. "I-I'm sorry to bother you while you were praying, Sir," he stammered, hurrying forward, "but the computer said you were in here and I really need to talk to you and I thought, since you were already awake, it couldn't hurt–" He quailed under the security guard's flat expression and shut up. "Sorry, sir. I shouldn't have interrupted you– I'll just go–"

Ensign Boimler turned to leave, and, thank the Prophets, something in the back of the lieutenant's mind metaphorically smacked him upside the head. This is why we're here, dumbass! "Oh," he said out loud, blinking, and then added: "Uh– hang on, I didn't mean–" The younger man turned back to look at him with painful hope, and he sighed. Looked like he wasn't getting back to sleep anytime soon. "What's bothering you, Ensign."

"Oh, um, yes sir. Thank you, sir." The ensign awkwardly came back and sat down. "Uh– well, um, I don't know if you heard," he began uneasily, "but– a couple of days ago I kind of…had a medical incident, I guess? A pretty bad one, actually…"

"You mean how you almost died punching sentient mountains in the holodeck?" Shaxs transalted with a guffaw. "Helluva way to go, kid, but save that spirit for the real world!"

"Wh– did Dr. T'Ana tell you that?! I thought there was patient-doctor confidentiality!"

"She didn't have to, this ship's a fishbowl. I bet even the delta shift's heard by now."

Ensign Boimler sighed. "Yeah, well… the thing is, I didn't almost die, I…actually. Y'know. Died." He gulped and then clarified quickly: "Like, just for a minute, or that's what Dr. T'Ana said anyway."

"Oh." The security guard found he didn't want to laugh anymore; he had a pretty good idea why the kid had come looking for him in particular. "Uh, listen, ensign–"

"I need to know what happened when you died," Ensign Boimler blurted out, and then cringed. "I'm sorry, I know you don't like talking about it, but I have to know and Rutherford won't tell me anything and he looked really freaked out when I asked–"

"Look, Ensign, I'll tell you what I told Mr. Rutheford: you don't want to know," Shaxs said bluntly. And frankly, he didn't wanna talk about it. While his experience on the other side had been cathartic on some levels, it had also involved facing a lot of painful things from his past—things he'd prefer not to discuss with a nervous purple-haired ensign at two in the morning.

"But I need to know," the younger man insisted. "Sir, when I was dead, I– I think I saw something. Something I…can't explain." Shaxs didn't ask what the "something" had been; contrary to what the ensign seemed to believe, there were some things that you just didn't intrude on, and what a man had seen when he went to meet his makers was one of them. "But it was… amazing," Ensign Boimler continued, his voice fading to hushed reverence. "It was exactly what I needed to hear in that moment, from exactly the right person."

Exactly what I needed to hear in that moment, from exactly the right person. Well, hell if he couldn't empathize with that experience; he could practically feel the hand of his father's pagh on his shoulder all over again. "So what's the problem?"

"The problem is, I-I don't know if what I saw was real! I mean when I first woke up it felt real, but now— I mean, what if that was just neurons and chemicals and whatever, giving me hallucinations! Trying to, I don't know, comfort myself before I died!"

"What if it wasn't?" Shaxs pointed out with a shrug.

"But what if it was?! Sir, I-I need to know, okay, it's really important that what I saw actually happened! Because I felt like I finally got an answer, an answer I really needed, and now I just don't know! And I can't talk about this to anyone else because they'll think I'm going crazy– Lieutenant, please tell me I'm not going crazy!"

A few years ago Shaxs would have thought the kid was probably talking a load of panicky nonsense (in his defense, Mr. Boimler often was). Now, he wasn't so sure. "Well did this 'answer' you got sound right?"

"Of course it sounded right! But it also sounded like something I'd say to let myself off the hook and I need to know, okay, I need to know for sure that I didn't just imagine all that to give myself an excuse and make me feel better!"

"Listen, ensign," Shaxs argued, turning more to face him, "there's no such thing as knowing 'for sure' in this stuff, not for you and not for me. That's why they call it faith."

"But you came back from the dead," Ensign Boimler insisted weakly. "You have to know."

"Maybe. Maybe I did. Maybe the Prophets brought me back like I think, or maybe it was someone else and they just put those memories in my head." No one had ever heard of the Prophets letting someone come back from death, after all, and most of his experiences on the black mountain had been as confusing as they were terrifying. "Maybe it was just some weird space science or strange energies; hell, maybe none of this is real," he continued, gesturing around to the chapel. "Maybe I'm making this all up in my mind right before I get blown up on that Pakled ship, or being held somewhere in a tank with a bunch of tubes in my brain, who's to say."

"I-I can promise you sir, this is real. I'm real."

"Ahah, but that's what a fake person would say," Shaxs said, pointing at him with just a hint of suspicion. The ensign blinked back at him, and he snorted. "You get my point. Nothing in life is certain, and the least certain thing is what happens after you die."

"Then what's the point of believing in your Prophets, in– in anything?"

He was staring into the Bajoran's eyes with desperation, and Shaxs found himself floundering. Why believe in anything? How did you even answer a question like that to someone who wasn't religious? And why had the Prophets decided to entrust him with a young man's fledgling spirituality, of all people? He felt like someone had put a freshly-hatched baby bird in his hands and told him not to crush it—damn it, he was a soldier, not a priest; he wasn't cut out for this!

You're the closest thing he's got to one, his own mind replied. Unfortunately, it was right. Damn the Federation, not thinking to put proper chaplains on all their ships…why believe in the Prophets, hn? Well, of course as a Bajoran you grew up with it, getting dragged off to the temple in uncomfortable clothes by your father and watching your mother light an endless array of candles. It was just part of life. But then again, children of all species are cynical little philosophers, wondering about everything and demanding proof, and he'd been no different. For most of his youth, social pressure and avoiding his parents' discipline had been his only reasons for believing in the Prophets at all... But there had been a moment, he remembered, a moment where he'd gone from being expected to believe, to wanting to believe. And it hadn't been all the evil in the world that had done it; evil could make you want to die to put an end to the horrors, but it couldn't make you want to live for something. No, it was the moments of unexpected decency and kindness that made you want to believe that no good act went to waste, even when it didn't succeed—that it all meant something, somehow.

Ensign Boimler was still watching him with the expression of a green young soldier trying to believe that his captain knew more than he did about the plan for taking the next block. Shaxs was no priest, he had no airtight philosophy to give him. Honest truth would have to do. "…I was nineteen years old, and on the run from the Cardassians," he began at last, gruffly and somewhat detached. Talking about his time in the resistance, outside of the glorious victories, was still difficult. "It was one of my first missions and it had all gone off the rails; I'd gotten separated from my cell and the government was hunting me down for information. Hadn't slept in three days, hadn't eaten in longer. I ended up collapsing in this back alley behind a shop."

The ensign shifted his position as if to show he was listening, and Shaxs thought back, trying to arrange the details correctly in his mind. It had been over thirty years, after all. "When I came to, I found myself in a bedroom with a woman praying beside me. Turns out the family that owned the shop had found me and brought me inside. Scared couple, gaggle of half-starved kids. They weren't happy with me for putting them in danger, I remember that—but they took me in anyway and hid me for a week until the police stopped looking for me. Fed me that whole time too, and let me tell ya, they had little enough to go around."

"But– sir, anyone could have done that. You don't have to be religious to be a good person."

"True enough," he nodded. "But plenty of folks in their position wouldn't have. Maybe they wouldn't have, if they hadn't felt the Prophets expected it of them." He shook his head. "That was the day I decided I wanted to believe there was something else to this life than mud and blood and might makin' right. There's got to be something more. There's no point in any of this–" He waved around to the ship in general, "–Starfleet and the Resistance and whatever else—hell, just being a decent person—if there's not."

"And…what I saw? Or think I saw?"

"Like I said, you're never gonna know if it really happened, not in this life anyhow," he said frankly. "But it sounds like you got an answer that will help you be a better man, right?" Mr. Boimler hesitantly nodded. "Then as I see it, it's your prerogative to follow that. It's not about being certain, Ensign. It's about…about living a way that, if there is something out there, you won't be ashamed to show it your face at the end of your days." He looked up at the candles burning on the altar. "About walking by the light, even if you can't always see where it's leading you."

The ensign sat quietly for a few moments, lost in thought, before he nodded. "I…think I understand, Sir. …Thank you." He stood up and Shaxs did the same, before adding apologetically, as if worried he'd given the wrong impression: "Um– I don't think this means I'm going to start worshiping the Prophets, though. Sorry…"

Agh, well. No point in pushing a man further than he could go in one day; he'd have to leave the rest in the hands of the Prophets. "Then just walk by the light where you see it, Ensign," the security chief said, setting his hand on the younger officer's shoulder. "Can't ask more of a man than that. And, uh– I'm always here, if you want to talk more."

"Thank you, sir. Have a good night, sir."

"And yourself, Ensign."

He waited until the young man had left, and then rolled his shoulders and yawned. "Mission accomplished, eh?" he grunted to the silence, and then: "Computer, what's the time?"

"The current time is 02:45 hours."

By the Prophets, it was nearly the start of alpha shift, he needed to get some sleep. The candle snuffer was in the cabinet; it would've been faster to just blow them out, but the thought of the talking-to his father would have given him if he'd ever learned his son had blown out the prayer candles was enough to make him start his way back up the aisle.

I should stay another minute, a voice whispered in the back of his mind, making him pause in his tracks. He brushed it off and took another step—and then stopped again, turning back. The candles burned on in the night, flickering in the soft breeze from the vents, but not going out.

Well—another minute wouldn't kill him. He sat down, closed his eyes and lifted his hands, as if to catch the two small lights and carry them with him.