A/N: I'm not sleepy and you all get another chapter because 41 was really short. Whoo! If you haven't read the April Fools' chapter, go back!
Elle found her target in the main Jefferies Tube junction, scowling at pipes. "Geordi, I have a question."
"Shoot." He passed her a pulse wrench. "Here, make yourself useful, take apart that section."
She took the pulse wrench. "So, my question... how's Lt. Barclay doing?"
La Forge stopped scanning. "Barclay? He's fine. Why? Oh no, is this an episode?"
Elle cleared her throat. "No. I don't think so. I don't know."
Geordi shot her a look. "Elle. If this involves the engineering department and one of my crew, I need to know."
Elle hemmed and hawed and scuffed her toe back and forth on the insulated deck plating. "It's not an episode, per se, but it is, er, character development of a type. Honestly I didn't like any of this episode and I don't think it's true because it imposes a twentieth-century bias on the episode and each of the characters carries a similar stigma, which, I don't really believe exists, or at least I hope not because that would be incredibly worrying-"
"You're talking about Barclay's anxiety issues?" La Forge asked.
"Erm, yes. Specifically maybe his holodeck programs?..."
La Forge folded his arms and faced her. "Why are you asking me and not Reg himself?"
Elle sighed. "I make him nervous."
"Elle, everyone makes him nervous. That's why he's on such a small team."
Elle blinked at him. "So you don't think he's just irritating and lazy?"
La Forge huffed a laugh. "Everyone can be irritating after a while on a ship, Elle, and no, he's an incredibly hard worker."
Elle nodded slowly. "So Wesley doesn't call him Lt. Broccoli?"
"No! Not only is that unprofessional but- Elle, what was this episode?"
"Uhhhh."
La Forge sighed. "Okay, look, put the wrench down, let's go talk to Deanna."
Elle trailed him to Counselor Troi's office. I shoulda just kept my mouth shut.
"What's going on?" Troi asked, glancing between the two of them. "Engineering difficulties?"
"Cultural confusion," La Forge said dryly.
Troi turned an open, patient gaze to Elle. "Elle?"
She grinned sheepishly. "I may have conflated an episode with real life people."
"Understandable," Troi assured her gently. "In what way?"
"Erm, Geordi don't get mad."
"I won't."
Elle recounted the episode where Barclay had been addicted to the holodeck. By the time she finished talking, both adults were smiling at her. "What?"
Troi reached over and patted Elle on the arm. "Your concern for your fellow crewmembers does you credit," she said. "But let's think about this logically. Would someone with the level of social anxiety you described be able to make it through Star Fleet Academy's mandatory psych tests?"
Elle grimaced. "No."
"No," Troi agreed. "They wouldn't even make it onto a ship in the first place, let alone a deep-space mission of this duration. And as you well know, self-isolating behavior is not ignored. We have ship's counselors and mental health check-ins with quarterly evals for a reason."
Elle knew that perfectly well. She had a flash of memory from one of Bones' lectures. "You might be a teenager but anybody who spends too much time in their quarters alone gets a nice little visit from me or Nurse Burke, so don't even think of holing up and brooding, all right? If you want to be alone or have quiet time that's why there's a whole mess of observation decks and lounges and what-not." "What's the ratio, like, three days out of seven for two consecutive weeks?" she asked absently.
Troi nodded.
"And besides, if anybody started acting out of the ordinary the whole ship'd know by the next day," Geordi added.
"You should know, your dates are hot topics," Elle snarked back. "S'not even gossip anymore."
Geordi, very maturely, made a face at her.
Elle laughed.
"See?" Troi asked, smiling.
Elle leaned back, equal parts amused and chagrined. "Yeah, I guess I was freaking out over nothing. I know you guys aren't from the twentieth century, but, you know, the whole divide between knowing and knowing." She rubbed the back of her neck. "In hindsight considering the amount of therapy I've had, I had nothing to worry about."
"Exactly," La Forge said. "Although now that you mention it, broccoli..."
"No," Troi said.
"Kidding, counselor."
Troi turned back to Elle. "Why did you go to Geordi and not directly to Reg? Usually you don't have a problem speaking to anyone."
Elle covered her face with her hands. "I make him nervous, and there's no good way to go up to someone and ask if they're writing fanfiction about their crewmates."
La Forge snorted. "I would pay literal money if you went up to someone and asked them that exact thing." He patted Elle on the arm. "Don't worry about it."
"No, but you see, he's important for later, so I know a lot of his future contributions, and he knows that," Elle said miserably. "I think he's cool, he's really dedicated, but every time I'm around he vanishes. He left Ten-Forward in the middle of a conversation with Guinan when I came up to the bar. Which, you know, doesn't help when you think the guy's got problems."
"Hm," La Forge said. "Sounds like you just volunteered to work on Barclay's team next time you volunteer in Engineering."
Troi nodded in agreement.
Elle gave a double thumbs-up. "I'm not opposed. I want to ask him his thoughts on long-range communications arrays."
"Sounds like a plan."
Elle stood up. "Thank you, Counselor."
"My door is always open," Troi assured her. "See you later?"
"Yup."
Elle and La Forge went their separate ways, and Elle put the thought of hollow pursuits out of her head, satisfied.
-/\-
"Captain's log, Stardate 43807.4. We are taking on a load of special tissue samples donated by the Mikulaks for shipment to Nahmi Four. The samples could prove vital to the containment of an outbreak of Correllium Fever on that world." Picard closed his log.
"Why are there so many plagues?" Elle asked, looking up from her borrowed copy of The Elegance of the Hedgehog.
"Because microscopic organisms make up ninety percent of all living matter in the universe," Picard replied promptly. "Tea?"
"Thank you." Elle sniffed at the ceramc mug. "This isn't Earl Grey."
"No, it's white lavender tea," Picard said. "Beverly had some the other day, I thought you might like to try it."
"Oh well if mom likes it," Elle teased.
He hesitated. "Do you?"
She blinked. The tea was good. "Do I what?"
"See Beverly as a mother figure?"
Elle grinned. "Well yeah, kind of. She replaced Bones as my primary scolding authority in charge of physical and mental health. And hugs."
He nodded slowly. "I see."
She smiled at him. "Don't worry though, you're still my favorite parental figure."
He gave her a small smile and sipped at his tea. "Besides Ambassador Spock, you mean."
"Besides Spock," she agreed. Elle let the comfortable silence envelop them.
-/\-
"Engineering to Elle."
She grimaced apologetically at Satel and tapped at her comm. "Elle here."
"Can you come to engineering immediately?" La Forge asked.
"On my way." Elle glanced at Satel. "Sorry."
"Duty calls," he said, inclining his head.
"Thank you, Satel's mom," Elle called on her way out the door. See? I can be non-formal in Vulcan.
When she got to Engineering, all the engineers clustered around the central console island looked up at her with equal expressions of confusion and distress. "Elle," Geordi said in relief. "Come here, help us figure this out." He pointed to a pile of things on the console.
A melted glass with no bottom. A pile of, was that dutronium?, that had been turned into an amorphous blob of slag. An antigrav repulsor part with chunks missing.
"We have a hungry Horta onboard?" Elle guessed weakly.
La Forge sighed. "No. I thought you said this was an episode."
She folded her arms defensively. "It is but I don't remember this part of it."
He gave her a look. "Really?"
"Okay, I had other things on my mind," Elle pointed out. She tapped at her forehead, Winnie the Pooh style. Think think think, think think think... She squinted, trying to see into her episodic catalogue. "Uhhhhh, something broke."
One of the engineers blanched. "Did the universe break?"
"No, no, something specific broke. Something on the ship."
La Forge looked at Barclay. "You did say, Reg, that the only thing that could cause these things would be an unshielded power source."
"I, I, I did say that yes, commander," Barclay stammered. "But there are four thousand power systems onboard the Enterprise, so, uh, we'd have to check them all."
"The captain needs us to get those samples to the planet," Wesley said. "We don't have time to check all four thousand systems."
"Let's narrow it down," Geordi said. "It has to be something that all four of these have in common."
"They don't have anything in common," Barclay said.
Elle smacked her forehead. "The samples! One of the, one of the bottles broke, right?"
Lt. Duffy, one of the senior engineers, pointed at her. "Yes, yes, one of the bottles containing samples was broken. But the samples were just plant matter, it wasn't anything that could cause a molecular breakdown on that level."
"What about something the canister was made of?" Barclay asked. "They don't have standard stasis units like we do."
They descended into technobabble. La Forge waved at Elle. "I think we've got it from here. Thank you."
She gave him a teasing salute. "Sir." She left.
Nothing horrible happened the rest of that day. Whatever it was, they figured it out.
-/\-
"Elle."
She looked up from her breakfast and smiled. "Lt. Barclay." She patted the seat across from her. "Tater tot?"
He accepted a tater tot from the bowl, and nodded jerkily. "You, uh, you were right. One of the canisters had some invidium, and whoever was in the cargo bay at that time was contaminating the systems they touched."
She popped another tater tot in her mouth. "How did you neutralize it?"
"We uh, flooded the affected systems with cryo gas, made the invidium inert."
Elle tried not to be too exuberant. "Awesome. You managed to get my ramblings into a solution for the Enterprise." She gave him a thumbs-up.
"Yes, uh, speaking of which..." he trailed off.
"Yes, it was your solution in the first place," Elle said. "So technically you saved the Enterprise, twice."
"Oh. Oh, that's, good." He nodded. "I, uh, thanks."
She pushed the basket of tater tots to the center of the table in a silent offering.
They ate quietly for a few moments. Guinan came over, deposited two chocolate milkshakes on the table, and glided away again.
They didn't work up to any form of intelligible communication, but they drank their milkshakes in companionable silence, and Barclay didn't look too jittery as he left for his shift.
Elle bussed her table and went up to the bar. "Thanks, Guinan."
Guinan inclined her head with a mysterious smile. "You're welcome."