Chapter 8: Something Reciprocally Compromising
"Good afternoon, Lieutenant."
Taurik blinked at the gray ceiling, first wondering why he was in Sickbay and then realized that this was not the Enterprise Sickbay. He recognized the shelf lighting arranged in apparently-aesthetic circles throughout the bay as being distinctly Nebula-class. He'd been in a Nebula-class starship before… He and Vorik had parted ways at the Academy: Taurik to the Nebula-class Hoshiko Maru with the eventual destination of the Enterprise, and Vorik to the Biscayne for his first eight-month assignment.
"Can you hear me?"
Taurik turned his attention back to the blue-clad medical officer. Lieutenant Commander. "Yes." He turned his eyes back to the ceiling. What had happened?
"Tell me your name and service number," he pressed.
"Taurik. Lieutenant JG. Serial number SE 549-607-1FS." He imagined that he could remember was a good thing. He could remember everything very clearly actually. "Lieutenant Commander?"
"Yes. You can call me Murray."
Taurik blinked, tried to assign the name to the face. Human. Brown hair. Brown eyes. "Lieutenant Commander Murray," he said, and ignored the amused look. "Has Lieutenant JG Sam… Lavelle." That was concerning… Sam was not his given name, but he couldn't recall the whole thing. From a vantage point in Vulcan, the two names were completely unrelated, and he'd only ever used it perhaps once. "Serial number SC 506-823-1IL," he added almost without thinking.
That was significantly less concerning, except that he wasn't sure how he knew that.
"Yes, he was found with you," Lieutenant Commander Murray said. "He's still in surgery."
"Surgery?"
"His right leg needs to be replaced, but his internal injuries were severe," Murray said, and lifted a PADD to his hand. Tapped into it. "I'm afraid you aren't on his notification form. I can't tell you much more information."
"Is he expected to recover?"
Murray shook his head, but said, "I don't know."
Pressing up to sit, Taurik focused on the far wall. Murray had shaken his head. Humans sometimes answered questions even when they said they couldn't.
He had to stop thinking. The universe was vast, and the only thing keeping it from being cruel was indifference. Indifference was, by definition, neither beneficent nor malicious. But indifference was also, by definition, not bound to logic. Trying to impose logic on himself was the same as trying to find meaning in an indifferent universe.
He knew he was searching for something that didn't exist, but he needed it to mean something.
It meant nothing.
Murray tried again. "Lieutenant, your lacerated liver was repaired, and you suffered a class two concussion, as well as assorted broken bones. The damage has been repaired, but you'll have to take it easy for the next week or so. You'll be fine. Alright?"
"Yes, sir."
"You'll disembark at Starbase 234 where you'll stay until you receive your next assignment. Also, your emergency medical proxy has requested you contact her as soon as you can. Would you like—?"
"Yes." He hadn't meant to interrupt, but he was at least reassured he didn't sound eager. He couldn't have, because he wasn't.
There was something wrong with his head, making him think things were happening at a pace that didn't align with reality. Somehow, he thought Murray had finished his question even though Taurik knew he hadn't heard the end.
He ignored Murray's look of concern and confusion. With a squint, he focused on the distant wall, realized it seemed fuzzy. "It seems my visual and periodic perception are… damaged." That wasn't the word he wanted, but he couldn't find that, either.
"We'll do another brain scan on you," Murray said. "The Vulcan brain is extremely complex."
"I wouldn't wish to keep her waiting."
"Okay. Yeah. Sometimes these cognitive wrinkles smooth themselves out. The scan can wait." Murray eyed him for a long moment before stepping away. "Stay there," he added, as if Taurik would consider doing anything else.
Willful ignorance was not the favored method of suppression, but at the moment Taurik had no other choice. His quarters had been destroyed. Vorik's photo was likely buried in rubble, along with everything else. His lamp was hand-made by a craftsman on Vulcan… and it was a matched set with Vorik's. Sam wasn't expected to recover.
That fear was unfounded.
So was the fear that Sam would go home and never return to Starfleet.
Taurik drew himself to sit straighter and concentrate on how he felt, physically. Surely much better than he had before. He wondered if it was the shrapnel he'd left in his side that contributed to his lacerated liver, but he couldn't find any evidence on his body he'd been injured at all. He wasn't even blind, as he thought he might be.
Murray returned with a communications PADD. Saalle was already waiting on the screen.
"I'll be over there," he said, and pointed to the far station by the wall, and left.
Taurik lifted the PADD to see Saalle. She was in her home, dressed in a deep blue tunic that contrasted her eyes so black she might have been confused for a Betazoid hybrid, and enhanced the dark beauty of her skin. But her mouth was drawn in what seemed to be tired distress. Her hair… her hair was long, twisted up behind her head and released like a fountain, and usually untidy. Today was no different.
"Peace, Taurik," she said when she saw him, the abbreviated greeting they'd used since they were impatient children.
"Long life," he said. He hadn't spoken to her in two weeks, but their relationship had never suffered from long periods of silence. She was, in many ways, his most trusted confidant and closest companion, even now. Even when he hadn't spoken to her in any meaningful way in eight months.
There were certain things he still could not tell her. Pride was at the very least a familial trait.
He couldn't tell her this. The roiling distress in his chest and the way his heart was running wildly out of control. The unconfirmed assurance that Sam was unlikely to make a full recovery, and the knowledge that the Enterprise had been destroyed…
They looked at one another for a long moment, until Saalle spoke again. "You are well?"
"My physical injuries have been repaired. I regret any disturbance I've caused."
She didn't seem too affected. "It was midnight when the message came."
Taurik paused to figure out what time it was on Vulcan. It was more complex than determining the amount of time between events: Vulcan's day was twenty-five hours long, and standard Starfleet extra-planetary day was twenty-six hours. It was five in the morning. That explained why she was inside. She was usually outside when they talked.
"I hope you haven't lost any sleep you needed."
Saalle shook her head. "I'm told your surgery went well. Your wounds and broken bones have been repaired."
He nodded. Before he knew what he thought the response might be, he was speaking again. "I believe… my meditation lamp was destroyed," he said softly, and she nodded in sympathy. "Which would be unfortunate. I'm unsure if the master who made it is still alive."
"May I obtain a new one for you?" she asked.
Taurik hadn't expected that, and found himself nodding despite the irrational sense of loss he felt in reference to the lamp.
"And Lieutenant Lavelle has been seriously injured."
"Federation medical personnel are very skilled," she said.
"They are."
"Will you return to Vulcan to recover?"
"No. My recovery will only take a week."
She disapproved of that answer. "Taurik, return to Vulcan," she said, her voice quiet and almost desperate. "Return to me. No one else need know you were here."
"Saalle—"
"Let me share your sorrow. It's been too long since I last saw you, and your reaction has been maladaptive."
"Please." Taurik lowered his tone to a whisper in the hopes no one else would hear what she was saying—in the hopes no one else would hear what he was now. "I have adapted."
She looked as if she didn't believe that statement, and he wondered for a moment if it was true. Since he'd said it, he decided he must have. And, indeed, he was no longer in pain from the sense of separation. This was how everyone lived, he assumed. He could live this way, too.
"I anticipate our typical visit next winter," he added, hopefully.
With a small and brief sigh, she nodded. "Very well. But I implore you to reconsider. Maintaining this distance is illogical under these—"
"No," Taurik snapped, keeping his voice low. "The pursuit of logic is merely a futile attempt to impose order on a chaotic universe. It's not reason, it's emotion." And even if it was reason—there was no reason that granted order to any of this.
"Taurik." Her objection was barely a breath and her eyes soft and questioning. "Reconsider."
He looked at her, seeing that he'd very well proven her correct with such an outburst. If she could have looked shocked, she might have. "It's not… I am in pain, suffering the effects of a concussion, and I haven't had a chance to—"
"I know," Saalle said quickly, cutting him off. "The fault is mine. I shouldn't have insisted. It was an emotional impulse." Though he knew she wouldn't lie, he couldn't help but think that she had. "The lack of your presence for so long has been noticeable, and the news of your injury and the Enterprise's destruction… has been distracting."
"I regret my absence, but…" But if he went to her, she would see. She would see that no amount of meditation would uproot these thoughts that lived with him now. That logic could not explain this loss.
Nothing could.
He didn't get to say anything else, as Murray approached demurely from the side. Taurik glanced at him once, then back to Saalle. "There's something else I must attend to. I will send you a message when I…" Now that he thought about it, he didn't know where he was living now. He didn't know where he was going. The Enterprise was destroyed. He hadn't quite integrated that, yet. "When I have been assigned quarters," he finished finally.
"Very well. Attend to your recovery. I anticipate our speaking again."
"As do I. Live long and prosper, Saalle."
"Peace and long life."
Taurik set down the communication PADD and turned his attention to Murray. "Yes?"
"I'm sorry, Lieutenant, I've got another message for you." Murray held a PADD out to him.
With a nod, Taurik took the PADD. The heading read Medical Notification - TT 992-001-3EN-2. He wasn't familiar with the serial number—it wasn't Sam's. He wasn't sure how he knew that. Besides, he clearly wasn't among those on Sam's medical notice form. He accepted the message and saw.
Gabriele Dixson. Why had she put him on her medical notice form?
The answer to that question was immaterial. Taurik looked up at Murray, who seemed to think the gesture was intended to be questioning. "She's suffered a class six head trauma," he explained, as if that helped.
"I see that," he said, and looked back at the line with the heading prognosis. Gabi was going to die. Possibly in hours, if she hadn't already. It was unclear due to the somewhat arbitrary distinctions between life and death in a brain still exhibiting its lower functions.
He averted his eyes from that tragedy to the rest of the form. Gabi's medical release forms displayed in chronological order. Her medical crisis proxy was listed as the Medical Advocacy Council instead of a family member or friend—essentially turned decisions for her care over to a panel of doctors. Taurik had listed Vorik until he was prompted to change it, and he chose Saalle to make medical decisions for him in case he was incapacitated. Taurik had been Vorik's… now he was no one's.
Under the section asking who should be notified in case of severe injury or death she had only listed Taurik. He didn't know why, and now he never would.
"Would you like to see her?"
Taurik didn't know what the purpose of that might be. Certainly not for his benefit or even hers. Still, he nodded dumbly and tried to sort out his thoughts. "May I?"
"She's just down the hall," Murray said with a half-hearted gesture toward the door. "As long as you're back here for your brain scan, no reason not to."
Murray showed him into the still, dark room. All the equipment had been folded back against the walls and under the table Gabi laid on. She wore a medical gown, but they had repaired the obvious damage. She was breathing, and she wasn't conscious. A small stimulator had been affixed to her temple.
Taurik looked at her from his step just inside the doorway, though Murray approached her side. He even took her hand in his. Of course, she didn't respond.
"How do you know her?"
"I'm… she reports—reported to me in Engineering. And we…" He shrugged helplessly, his eyes on the hand resting lightly in Murray's fingers. "We engage in recreational activities?" He wasn't sure why he was attempting to moderate the affect the news was going to have on him.
Taurik would be fine. He had learned to live with worse than this. He would manage, even as he felt a dozen new reasons for anger and resentment and sorrow climbing in through the shadows in the corners of the room and under the table and beds. Taurik had become accustomed to the casual judgement of death, and the fact that there was no logic to it. It was irrational.
It was meaningless.
"We're friends," he finished quietly.
"I'm sorry."
Taurik blinked.
"We repaired the damage to the best of our ability, but—you're aware she suffered a class six head trauma. Her indicators aren't improving…" He looked sadly in the direction of the door he'd just come through, or else he was simply exhausted. "We expect she'll… she has a few hours at best."
"You are artificially maintaining her autonomic functions?"
"Not quite… her heart is still beating on its own, but her brain wave patterns are just… fluttering on the edge of brain death. There's nothing we can do for her, so we're monitoring," Murray said. "She'll come back on her own, or not at all."
"I see," he said again, quietly, for lack of anything else to say. Monitoring… to watch her die, presumably.
Murray returned to Taurik's side long enough for him to wonder what he was doing.
"Condolences."
Con-dolor. Tushah nash-veh k'odu. To feel someone else's grief and pain. Taurik doubted that.
"Can I get you anything?"
An odd question. Was he offering a cup of tea as some sort of consolation? "No."
Sam was alive somewhere, but he couldn't be sure he would survive his injuries—or that he would continue his work in Starfleet even if he did. Gabi was going to die if she hadn't already—and even if she had survived, she would have been transferred to the Sadalbari. The Enterprise was destroyed. Vorik was dead. Nothing made sense.
"May I be alone?"
Murray looked somewhat surprised for a fraction of second before nodding, backing up toward the door. "Of course. I'll be just outside." The door shut the light out again.
Taurik took a breath. Something in his chest still hurt even though the damage had been repaired. He went to her bedside, watching her still eyelids and the steady rhythm of her diaphragm. He focused first on the whirring click of the stimulator, then the soft rumble of the air circulating through the ducts in the ceiling.
He searched his mind for answers, but couldn't find any. There was no logic in this.
The notion that she would simply move on with her life, leave the Enterprise, had always been bearable. It was, of course, not how he would prefer things to unfold. He had made a mistake in allowing himself and Vorik to be separated, but this situation was different. His relationship with Gabi, and with Sam, were less vital but nevertheless important.
Now, it seemed almost necessary to him that Gabi move on with her life even if that took her beyond his reach to participate. The knowledge that she wouldn't…
For just a moment, he let the sense of loss overtake him—just a moment.
Just a moment.
It was one of Counsellor Troi's suggestions. In other species, allowing oneself to feel emotions as completely as possible, even strong emotions, was one method of healthy processing—and could be, if correctly applied, not contrary to a Vulcan's health. Counsellor Troi had carefully suggested that if he chose to feel, that was, by definition, control.
He had to agree that was at least correct semantically.
He straightened, pulled himself back. Death was not something to be feared: it was the end of a journey. Things were born and death was inevitable.
But so was life.
"Gabi?"
She didn't respond. He didn't expect her to. She was currently considered alive only due to some arbitrary definitional line. Unless…? Unless.
He wasn't thinking clearly, but somehow he knew nothing could be clearer.
"I ordinarily would not presume upon your wishes for your life. If you would have wanted…" He leaned on the table beside her again, his knuckles pressing pale into the thin pad. "I would ask your consent if you could withhold it by something other than omission. If your journey truly is over, I apologize."
Best not to think about it. He'd already decided what he was going to do.
"But your death is unacceptable."
He sounded insane.
He pressed both thumbs to her chin, arranging his fingers across her cheekbones, under her eyes, and on her temples.
He suspected few Vulcans had melded with someone this close to death—not this way. It was usually initiated in the other direction, from the dying to the living in a gesture of giving. Sometimes the living were compelled to help, but such melds always held a posture of conveyance. Taurik usually held the katra was only the essence of memory, not what Humans would call a soul or spirit. His opinion wasn't uncommonly held, but it was in his family.
He wasn't sure anymore...
He stopped thinking about it almost as soon as he started.
Conversely, a mind meld on a patient at or near brain-death supposedly provided the recipient's mind a sort of anchor, a foundation upon which to rebuild. Less scientifically, and the reason he imagined it was so rare, the procedure was believed to fracture the katra of the Vulcan performing the meld, and even leave a part of it behind—and the loss of one's katra, even a piece of one, was to be avoided.
Whether soul or memory, his katra was of little significance to him. Hesitancy to break that which was already broken seemed irrational.
He closed his eyes and did not whisper the phrase he normally required to focus his thoughts and push past the mental screen of another's mind: Gabi put up no resistance at all.
He had no idea what to expect. Gabi's neural readings were faint to the point of non-existent, and this was only his second time melding with a non-Vulcan. Not even a faint color remained in the otherwise infinite expanse of nothing. Nothing but Gabi, lying on what might have been a floor if there had been any structure at all. Still and calm, as he could open his eyes and see her now. Not even time ticked as her mind made no move to acknowledge the intruder.
It was as if no one was here at all.
In his mind, he knelt, watching her perfect stillness from what seemed to be approximately two meters away. In truth, he wasn't sure what he'd planned to do—what he was supposed to do if his goal was to rebuild her mind. He felt the internally wracking sobs of the past months renew with the knowledge he was never going to see her again. Not in any way that mattered.
It was unlikely he would hear of ladybugs or nautiluses or maple leaves or osmotic eels again.
But, still, she was here. She was simply unresponsive. Not completely gone. He was unsure what his mind's eye would have created had she been truly, completely, dead—the fact that she still existed bodily in this mental space perhaps should be encouraging.
He imposed the awareness of his own senses, and focused on the measurable reality beyond this shared concept of it. He could hear the click of the monitor on Gabi's temple, and the faintest whirr of the machines, the thrum of the warp core. The air was cold, approximately seventeen degrees, and smelled faintly of blood. Her skin beneath his fingers was likewise warm and soft. Only seconds had passed since he first entered her mind, and he could see the readings of Gabi's wellbeing slipping across the display had increased but a fraction of a percent.
Very little progress was still progress. Success was all that mattered.
He let his thoughts fill her mind, thoughts of nothing in particular. He thought about Sam, the new leg being attached likely at this moment, the blood he'd receive to replace what he'd lost, and possibly new organs as well. Sam's next assignment. If he took one.
Taurik's next assignment, about which he could not even speculate, because it seemed likely that Gabi would die and Sam might never return due to the extent of his injury. Sam wanted to go home, and Taurik could even understand the desire. Taurik would be alone.
He'd never been alone in his life.
In the middle of everything were thoughts of his brother, because Taurik always thought about his brother. Even when he wasn't thinking about him, somehow. He speculated endlessly on the string of ships and interesting assignments Vorik would have taken with new challenges and engineering projects. How quickly he would rise through the ranks because Vorik was likeable—very few people had considered Vorik smug or selfish, even when they were not compared side-by-side. How much he would enjoy inevitable happiness with his mate and the kind and centered children they would raise. How he envied Vorik's peaceful nature… and how he wished anything at all had happened differently.
He restrained his thoughts to anything less volatile, anything more logical.
Stars flickered across the blank black space he'd painted over blue—the stars were yellow. Not golden, like Vorik's familiar color of mountainous sand dunes or golden gypsum, but bright. An Earth dandelion or narcissus, the color of legrandite sands or yellow canaries.
He could only imagine it was Gabi. There was no reason he should be seeing any color other than his own except that she was here, too. Gabi?
To his surprise, his mental image of Gabi lying on the immaterial floor shifted and opened her eyes.
Immediately, he went to her side and knelt there instead. Can you hear me?
She didn't answer. She only stared at the infinite void above her as the blooms of dandelions and daffodils—probably an invention of his own—sprang from the blue around her. As soon as he looked at them, they melted into the shifting expanse of the void.
Her eyes stayed on the darkness churning above them. She hadn't said anything, and he wondered if she could. If she was as much there as he hoped, or if this was just a shadow of his own mind playing tricks on him.
When he opened his eyes to see whether Gabi's sudden revival was his own invention or not, he could see the numbers measuring her wellbeing had not changed, though he had been with her mind for eleven seconds—an eternity with the emptiness.
He had to believe he was making a difference. She might still survive. Or else… or else, he was only pulling her back to say goodbye. He had never done this before, never met anyone who had. Now, the idea it was possible seemed like a myth or faith in something he'd never seen and couldn't understand.
He had given up on predicting anything. He had given up on trying to understand.
To his surprise, shards of memory sprouted, flashing a whole history he hadn't expected to ever see in front of him. Memories of places and people he had never seen before sifted to the surface.
One moment he sat perhaps six stories up on a black skyscraper observing a city below dotted with green lights. He could smell the combustion engines used in mining work, and the musty refuse from the sewer grates. The next, he saw Mars from a distant orbit: the spider web of settlements and the shining and silver Utopia Planetia. In wonder and interest he stepped on the Enterprise for the first time, and a moment later in horror and humiliation a man cornered him in an unfamiliar room on an unfamiliar bed. He recognized Gabi's sister Chloe stooping over a bloody floor, but then he was in Gabi's and Eliza's homey quarters.
These memories weren't his to see, nor his to understand. He tried to shut off his observation of the mind he was leading back to life, but… but he'd never done this before. It was very difficult to ignore the flood of memories, most of which he never would have conjured on his own. Memories of wretchedness and abuse in her childhood. Peace and interest in her career in Starfleet. Reminiscing about her sister was painful, and thinking about the future was cheerful.
Taurik backed away until he hit the wall between them.
Where are we?
Taurik looked up in the space between their minds to find Gabi sitting, her knees drawn up to her chest. The floor around her, for now there was a floor, was like a mat of scratched and translucent yellow, like a child's drawing of a star.
Your mind, Taurik answered. Or else this was just his mind. He didn't know how to be sure under these circumstances.
Gabi looked around. Didn't expect it to be this empty, did you? She smiled and looked at him.
Taurik supposed that was as good an indication as any that Gabi was really here. He wouldn't have joked. This is normal.
Good to know. Gabi turned her eyes around the blank space covered in blue again for a moment before looking at him. So what are you doing here?
Taurik pulled back his mind slightly to give her space while still lending structure. If Vorik were here, he'd say I was acting irrationally and illogically.
Sounds like fun.
Taurik wouldn't have said that, either. You're dying. The likelihood that my actions here will change that is slight.
Gabi clicked her tongue, shook her head. The odds are against you and the situation is grim.
You could say that.
That's okay. As long as you try, you can still make a difference. She looked around again. This is kind of cool, though. What's yours look like?
He hesitated to answer, wondering if showing her would be helpful. Aren't you concerned?
Not really. If I'm dying, then I guess I'm dying. Almost took that step myself before, but Chloe stopped me. Gabi shrugged, picking at her fingernails as if she hadn't said anything at all shocking.
In retrospect, he shouldn't have been shocked. Before now, he'd surmised that Gabi almost lost someone—her sister, he assumed—to some similar traumatic event. It was the only way he could explain her unusual reaction to his grief after Voyager's loss, her unrealistic concern that suicide had been an option he'd seriously considered…
But to her, it wasn't unrealistic. In actuality, she'd almost lost herself, and that wasn't what he'd expected. In actuality… he'd almost lost her. He hadn't expected that, either.
Life is… valuable.
Gabi smiled at him. Is that logical?
Of course, she would ask. It was an unquestionable premise, at least to him. He'd never cared to examine it before. In the sense that it is unique, perhaps? You are one of infinite combinations that has never occurred before and never will again. There will be things you will do that no one else could. You will see and understand things in a way no one else can. None of that made an individual life valuable, but he considered himself and his people explorers. To discover the universe of variety was valuable in itself—the existence of each individual was equally necessary, and the ability to observe it before it was gone—for, one day, everything would be gone—was in some ways a gift.
Time is a fire.
I guess. She was quiet for a while, perhaps pondering whether it was logical. Perhaps not. I would have lived my life never having been on a starship. Never having finished school. Never getting to know my best friend. She shook her head, as if that was regrettable.
He had to agree. Without her, his life may or may not have been much different, but it would have been much less.
If everything before was all there was, that would have sucked—but it wasn't. If I hadn't gotten so lost, hell… I might not have seen you when you were lost. I couldn't see everything coming made it mean something. This makes it mean something. She gestured between them, as if their relationship were some ribbon she could see that tied them together. It's probably illogical, but I don't care.
Taurik wasn't sure if he did, either. The universe was indifferent, and nothing meant anything.
Except this. She believed that this meant something, and somehow Taurik had begun believing in souls. It didn't make sense. It wasn't logical. But what was?
He was only sure she wouldn't have told him that had they been speaking aloud. He wasn't sure she understood what was happening or that he was, in a sense, here with her in her mind. She might have thought she was imagining him.
She looked around. Why is it blue?
Taurik looked around for a moment, scooped up some of the sand in his hands. I don't know. I don't think there is a reason.
I think there is. With that unsupported declaration, she kicked her feet back and leaned back on her hands to watch the blue nebula rotate over their heads.
Taurik wondered if proximity to death produced this type of tranquility normally, if as her brain had ceased to function it had ceased to fear or speculate. Or, just as likely, it was his own inducement to calm.
Return with me, he said.
Gabi shrugged, and stood. Okay.
Like a punch to the chest, he was back in Surgery C, taking a breath as if by reflex. The austere click of the stimulator hadn't changed, Gabi was still unconscious, and the readings indicators of her health and wellbeing on the wall were still a dangerous shade of red.
He was exhausted, physically and mentally, and he wasn't even sure he'd made a difference. He rested his elbows on the bed beside her arm, his forehead on his folded hands. He took several steadying breaths, and imagined his mind, the desert at midnight.
"That desert thing…" Gabi whispered.
He glanced up, straight at Gabi's blinking brown eyes. For a moment, he was relieved, delighted, and reassured. Then he was puzzled. "That desert thing?"
She searched his face, as though looking through a nebula to see what lay on the other side. She took a deep breath as though to speak, and he waited. Her indicators were still red. "You're in a sandstorm…?"
Somehow, even in this state, she was perceptive. "Are you well?"
She nodded. "I guess. I feel like I've been juggled between six different transporter buffers." She opened her mouth again, as if to speak, then closed it. Taurik decided to wait, and after a time she said, "Wait. You. You were here. You were… here." She lifted a hand and tapped her forehead with it. "Weren't you? That was you, you—" She cut herself off, sounding almost angry.
Taurik looked at Gabi's hand resting on her chest, and then found her dark brown eyes. "You were dying," he said, almost as if that explanation would be enough.
Now that he was backing away from that edge, he had to admit what he'd done seemed insane.
Maybe he had been for a while now and nobody had noticed or acknowledged it. He had met with Counsellor Troi twenty times, each time only with the promise that nothing at all would change… and nothing did.
Gabi seemed… unconcerned. Slightly surprised, but largely unconcerned. "Okay, so… so what happened?" she asked. "I have serious doubts this is the afterlife."
"I performed a mind meld to stabilize your neural patterns," Taurik said, and she looked confused. Almost angry, perhaps. "It takes a tremendous amount of concentration and mental energy, but… it does improve the recipient's brain function—even in one with extremely low brain function."
"So you… so you did." Gabi's eyes drifted around his head before landing on him once again. "What did you see?" Her tone had hardened into anger, and reasonably so. After all, he assumed he'd seen her darkest moments as well as her brightest ones. Things that shocked him. Things that never happened here. "Did you see…? What did you see?"
"More than I intended, I admit." And he'd heard more than she intended to say. "I would have obtained your permission if I could have. Death is only the end of a journey. It is not to be feared," Taurik said. "It was not my right to decide today was not the end of yours."
"Then what the hell were you thinking…?" She sounded indescribably hurt.
Taurik turned his eyes away, anywhere but directly at her. "That it was not the end of mine," he whispered. It would be absurd to lose control now.
She would be correct to never trust him again, and to report him for assault.
But, given the choice… he'd do it again. She hadn't fallen off the edge into whatever was on the other side of that abyss. He'd simply return to Vulcan, do whatever years of intensive training and healing was required to correct what could not be corrected, and then, perhaps… work on a science vessel, perhaps?
He would never lose control again.
"Wow." She sighed and turned her eyes away from him, up to the ceiling. With a sigh and a sniff, she pressed the beginnings of her tears away on her knuckles.
"Of course," he added, "I intend to turn myself over to security with the charge of assault."
"Don't do that." When he didn't respond for confusion, she added, "Don't go to security."
He paused for a moment. "But—"
"Look, this wouldn't be the first time someone… someone important to me found me in a compromising situation and brought be back." She gestured in his direction, helplessly and angrily. "I didn't think it'd ever be you, but I guess fair's fair."
"Fair?"
"I sure didn't give you a lot of choice in telling me about Vorik. I chased you across three decks and six sections to your room and made you let me in. And now…? Now you know. Everything, I guess." Gabi pressed back into her pillow and took a deep breath as she covered her eyes. She was crying.
Was he supposed to do something? It seemed wrong, under the circumstances, to touch her. He put a hand out, touched her shoulder, anyway. The outside, as far away from an intimate distance as he could manage while still offering some comfort.
Humans don't have telepathic bonds…
She didn't flinch. If anything, she turned toward him, still hiding her eyes.
"Nevertheless, I apologize…"
"I don't have anybody else," she said, and Taurik struggled to connect that. "It doesn't seem right to be mad at you for this, because… because I want to live. God, I want to live." She smiled a little, like she was surprised.
The relief at realizing she wasn't angry couldn't have been more apparent. She may have even been thankful. He was still unsure about the ethicality—never mind the logic—of his actions, and he imagined he might think about it for months after this…
"May I, then, make a suggestion?" he asked quietly.
She sniffed. "Go ahead?"
He hesitated. He wasn't sure how unorthodox this suggestion was. "I propose myself as your medical crisis proxy."
She searched him as if for an indication he was insincere. "What? You'd… really?"
He nodded, once. "I obviously cannot guarantee I would make the most logical decision." Given his bizarre behavior at this moment, he wasn't even sure he'd let her go even if it meant severe pain or debilitation: it was generally considered illogical to artificially lengthen life under such circumstances.
But after all, he did alright with a cavernous wound in his mind and a fractured soul…
"But I would waste no effort to… to bring you back."
She nodded, rubbing the tears from her eyes. Didn't say anything.
There was nothing else Taurik could think to say. He'd apologized, and to do so again seemed inappropriate. He imagined they'd talk about it again later. He knew he'd hurt her, but his intentions were only that she would live. He'd tried to explain himself, tried to condemn himself, and none of it made any difference.
None of it made any sense.
"I should go get a doctor."
She nodded, rubbing her hands on her shirt.
She stopped him with her voice before he reached the door. "Taurik?" He turned back to see her still looking at the ceiling. "You're important to me."
If anything, he thought that meant something. "And you to me."
#
"Lieutenant?"
Sam blinked first at the ceiling, then the red-robed surgeon standing over him. She looked concerned, her gloved hand on his shoulder. Someone somewhere been talking a long time about ruptured spleens and kidneys, broken ribs, a leg that was replaced on one side and a knee joint on the other. Contusions and blood loss and—
"Can you hear me?" She patted his shoulder as if trying to rouse him from sleep.
Sam wasn't sure he wasn't still sleeping. He wasn't sure they'd been talking to him. He took a deep breath, felt his lungs fill with bright and clean air, and closed his eyes.
Opened them again. The dark was too deep and full and… He didn't want to talk about any of that. Something terrible had happened to him or maybe to someone else. Not all of that could have happened to Sam. He would have died if all that had happened.
He should've died. Sam was sure it was a dream as much as he was sure it was real. He'd been sitting in a pool of his own blood, and everything hurt. He'd never hurt so bad. Every breath was like pushing past a mountain, and he couldn't find something he really needed. Something he couldn't leave without.
His leg.
He couldn't leave without his leg.
Sam lifted his head as much as he dared, looked down. He couldn't tell how much damage had been done to him, since he was all covered in a sheet. He realized with a pang of panic he still wasn't sure he wasn't dead. He didn't look hurt. He thought he was hurt, and he was going to die. Maybe he died. He didn't hurt anymore.
Sam took another breath, imagining what it might feel like to imagine breathing, and turned his eyes back to the surgeon.
"We've called your mother," she said. "Do you want to talk to her?"
Sam nodded, even though he wasn't sure what that meant. He should've paid attention more. The doctor helped him sit—or maybe she wasn't a doctor. Actually, Sam wasn't sure he'd always been talking to the same person. Whoever-she-was helped him lean back against the wall behind the biobed, adjusted the sheet covering him, and handed him a thick, gray communications PADD.
He thought that a communications PADD would be a weird thing to have in the afterlife. For that matter, so would sickbay.
"My baby." Mom's voice reached through the PADD to touch him right in the center of his sternum, pressing so hard he couldn't breathe. "How's my baby, Sam? Are you alright?"
He nodded, brushing his fingers down the screen on Mom's shoulder as tears slid down his face. Sam still wasn't sure he was alright. Wasn't sure all those things had really happened to him. And if they did happen, what if half of him had been replaced with something else? He had a new spleen and kidney, and neither of these knees were his.
The doctor who'd helped him stepped away beyond his ability to see clearly.
"Baby, I know," Mom whispered. "I know." Mom crossed her arms over her chest, hugging someone that wasn't there.
Because Sam was probably dead, right? And if not, he probably should have been.
"I know," she said again.
Sam sobbed and pressed his fingers to the screen again. "Mom?"
His throat ached and the word sounded ragged and torn, failing and frayed. He wasn't sure if that was his voice, but Mom just nodded like she somehow recognized it.
"Yeah, Sammy?"
Sam searched the background of the picture, the white walls of the dining room of her house on Hataria VI. There was a window looking out to the garden next to her out of frame, and down the hall Sam's bedroom now housed her sewing projects, his bed stacked high with quilts she'd made. His model starships that lined his desk as a boy were now hidden in a closet somewhere or under the bed.
"I want to come home, Mom." He pressed his palm to the screen so he couldn't see her tears.
"You can come home."
He didn't know how she knew that, then realized it was probably because he'd almost died. She would be notified about that. If something happened, and he wasn't able mentally or physically able to for whatever reason, she had to make decisions for him. Sam didn't have anybody else.
Sam hung his head and felt the air move in and out of his lungs, the tears drip off his nose. He still wasn't sure he was alive. Mom was just a picture, and he didn't know any of these people.
After a few minutes, Sam sniffed against his knuckles and pressed away his tears. She told him about her garden, blooming in the spring of Hataria VI's southern hemisphere. He just nodded. Dad was on the other side of the quadrant attending a conference—Mom was going to send him a message as soon as Sam decided it was time to rest. He wasn't sure when that would be. Mom sat with him in quiet for fifteen minutes.
Sam didn't say anything until the end. "Mom?"
"Yeah?"
"Can I call you tonight?"
"Of course you can."
Sam nodded and patted the screen even though he'd realized she couldn't see that. Mom blew him a kiss. The screen went black and Sam covered the emptiness with his hands. The last time it had been so dark he couldn't see, he could only feel.
And he felt… he felt terror.
Terror he could still feel even now that he was in a bright sickbay with surgeons just meters away. But it wasn't all terror, because there was someone else there in the darkness with him. That one had wiped away his tears and touched his mind and didn't care about what he saw.
The doctor from before, or maybe not, came to take the communications PADD away. She leaned over him, checking his vitals and nodding in approval. Sam didn't know if he could be dead and have vital signs like that.
"Lieutenant?" the doctor said.
"Sam," he said.
"Alright. Sam." She paused long enough for Sam to let flicker his gaze up to meet hers for half a second. He didn't know who she was. "You'll talk to the counsellor this evening, but you can go to your quarters now if you want to. You have a roommate assignment request. Would you like that?"
Sam nodded before thinking too much about it. He almost didn't care who the roommate was, even though he knew. If Sam was dead, then they both were. If he was alive, then maybe they were both alive, too.
He saw Taurik's name, remembered he never wanted to see him again, and accepted the request. Because right now there was no one he wanted to see more.
The doctor or nurse or something or someone helped him up to walk, but Sam couldn't walk without his leg. After several failed attempts to walk, they helped him into a chair and guided him three sections away to the room where he'd accepted assignment.
Taurik answered the door, first looking at the doctor or nurse or something, and then at Sam. He gave his familiar nod of greeting. "I'm pleased to see you're well."
Well, if Taurik thought that, then maybe he was. He couldn't say anything.
The chair was pushed in through the door, and he heard her talking again. Telling Taurik that Sam was physically okay—getting him in the company of someone he knew in a more familiar environment would help him.
Sam looked around. This wasn't a familiar environment, because the Enterprise had been destroyed.
Oh, my god, how had the Enterprise been destroyed?
That ship was the Federation's goddamn flagship. How was half of it in the woods on an uninhabited planet, and the other half a million glittering pieces in orbit? If the Enterprise could just be destroyed like that…?
Their quarters were filled with rubble and flooded with his blood. He wondered if that was where his leg was. Decided probably not. If it was still attached at all, the transporter would have grabbed it. Their quarters on the Enterprise was three rooms, anyway. The each had their own bedroom, and this room just had two bunks in cubbies in the wall. There were two wardrobes and windows.
They had windows. Sam found himself looking at the streaking stars, white and tailed like comets. In his years on the Enterprise, he'd never had windows. Why would they have windows now? That meant he was dreaming. Or maybe he was dead.
Really, he should have been.
"I see," Taurik said. Sam didn't know what he would have been responding to.
Sam heard someone else talking, but didn't know what they were saying.
"If he requires assistance to reach his bunk, I will provide it," he added.
Sam waited until the room was as quiet as he could hear, and Taurik was sitting on the couch a few feet away. Sam turned to see him, to see the picture hanging over his head behind the couch. This wasn't their quarters. Sam hated the picture, and Taurik didn't want decorations. He thought they were illogical, probably. Taurik was reading a PADD and drinking tea like he didn't care.
He should get up. He should go to bed. Sam wasn't sure how to get there except that he didn't want Taurik's help. The doctor said he should be able to walk. It wouldn't be normal. It would feel wrong and it would probably hurt, but he could do it.
Especially with this cane. He didn't realize he'd been given one until just now.
Sam took a deep breath, felt his lungs fill, and pressed up from the chair.
God, it hurt. It felt like the leg he had right now was the leg he'd had yesterday—or whenever that was. Whatever was down there was broken and splintered and crushed. Unusable and missing.
While he hadn't been watching, Taurik had risen from his seat at the couch and was standing in front of him.
"Do you require assistance?"
Sam didn't know how to answer that. There was so much he could have said, but he seemed unable to speak. His eyes blurred and he sucked in a breath. He didn't know what he was doing when he lifted a hand, pressed his fingers against Taurik's chest. He was cool to the touch. Because, maybe…
Was he dead?
Taurik seemed confused. "Sam?"
There was too much to say.
He was exhausted, but too afraid to sleep.
The lights were giving him a headache, but he couldn't bear to think of being in the dark.
He couldn't feel anything but pain and fear.
He'd never wanted to go home so badly.
Except he also felt angry and embarrassed and never wanted to see Taurik again, but what the hell? If Taurik knew, then he knew Sam thought about him that way for very good reason—because Taurik was an ass—but sometimes he didn't—because sometimes he wasn't.
Sam laid his palm against Taurik's chest, realizing he couldn't stand. He wasn't breathing, and he wasn't standing.
Maybe he hadn't survived, after all.
"Sam—"
He hadn't fallen yet, because someone caught him.
Sam blinked and found himself in a bunk. At least, in these quarters. Taurik was sitting on the floor his back against the cubby's wall, Sam's arm hanging off the edge to rest on his far shoulder. Still reading and still drinking tea.
"What happened?" Sam asked, his throat burnt with the fires of reentry.
Taurik turned back for a moment. "You do not remember? You seemed… conscious. Even if not necessarily lucid, though I was warned you may be in a type of dissociative state."
"What did I say?"
Taurik turned back to face the room. "You said nothing. You stumbled, nearly fell. I was able to catch you and help you to your bunk. You became distressed when I attempted to return to the couch."
Sam didn't know if he would be more or less embarrassed if he could remember that… "Sorry."
Taurik picked up his tea cup, then set it back down without taking a drink. "No apology is necessary."
Sam lifted his hand to touch the bottom of the bunk above him. He might have thought that Sam was lying, but Sam had no reason to think Taurik was lying when he said he knew. Taurik was a lot of things. Liar wasn't one of them.
"I would have died without you." Sam could still see the darkness and feel the terror, but at least he knew who was there.
Taurik seemed to consider that. "Eleven-point-eight percent of the Enterprise's crew and passengers have been reported dead, and all others have been found. The odds of your surviving the crash would have been adequate."
It didn't occur to Sam that could have easily happened. That Taurik thought about going home after his brother died, like Sam was thinking about going home now. "Without you tying off my femoral artery or making my head stop screaming with that stupid mind meld, I'd've bled out."
Taurik didn't answer, maybe because Sam was pretty sure he was right. "Speculation is illogical."
Sam thought about it, the Enterprise's current complement and the passengers they were taking from one place to another. "Twelve percent? That's almost two-hundred and sixty people."
"Two-hundred fifty-four people have died." Taurik slid back until his head rested on the corner of the bunk, slouching more than Sam knew he was capable of. "You are not among them. Neither are Gabi, Alyssa, or Andrew."
Sam mentally added himself to that number, even though he was reasonably sure now that wasn't true. Because If Taurik had gone back to Vulcan, Sam would have been in his quarters on deck fourteen… "How many of the people who were on deck fourteen died?"
Taurik didn't answer for a while. Finally, he lifted his PADD again. It hadn't occurred to Sam that he'd been looking at casualty reports. Maybe looking for people they knew. Now he was looking for statistics.
"Seventy-eight percent," he answered, his voice quiet.
"I had a one-in-five odds to survive if you weren't here."
Somehow, talking about the odds that he would have died was more convincing than his convoluted thoughts and weird, distant sense that he wasn't dead after all. This wasn't some hallucinatory dream he was making up in his last moments, either in surgery or on that dark ship.
Still, he reached out a hand, found Taurik's shoulder. "I don't hate you."
"One should never take any unexamined thought seriously." Taurik scrolled through the life-and-death reports. "Very few minds are free from idle thoughts—especially not a mind as untrained and unrestrained as yours."
That sounded like enough plausible deniability, but that wasn't what he was looking for. "Just making sure you know."
Taurik was quiet, and Sam wondered if he was about to lie. He knew Vulcans were pretty insistent about their inability to lie, but what the hell was suppressing emotions if not lying to themselves and everyone else? An irrational flare of anger rose up until Taurik doused it with his answer.
"I know," he said, finally. "The counsellor will expect you in two hours," Taurik said after a few seconds. "You should rest."
"Alright."
"Computer, lower—"
"Taurik?"
Taurik turned toward him. "Yes?"
Sam kept his eyes on the bottom of the bunk above him. The bunk's lights put a white glowing bar there, and the room was still bright. "Leave the light on."
#
Gabi hadn't had her own room since… well, ever, actually. If she really wanted to have her own living space, be comfortable all the time, and relatively safe, she'd have requested assignment on any one of the Federation's space stations littered over their eight-thousand square lightyears. Starbase 234 was huge, located just inside Federation space at the corner where Federation, Klingon, and Romulan space met. It was well-defended, had over seven-thousand room accommodations on the station, and was an important stop for starship refits.
Like for the Enterprise just about a month ago now. That turned out to be a waste of time and resources. But, really, who would have guessed that.
Gabi always thought she'd like having her own room, and maybe she would have. But not right now.
Not that she was exhibiting any post-traumatic stress responses. Because she wasn't.
She was just not sleeping. Eating made her feel sick. If she stopped pacing, she felt like the floor was shaking even though she knew that wasn't true. She'd had a headache for the last three days for no reason, and she could swear she heard Commander La Forge telling her to get up and help him fix the warp core whenever things had been too quiet for too long.
The warp core was not being fixed. That thing was so gone.
Her warp core on her lovely ship was gone. She was never getting assigned to another Galaxy-class. She had a whole month left with the Enterprise and some idiot stellar scientist and a band of Klingons with an inferiority complex had taken that.
Gabi turned a new corner in the arboretum, glancing up once at the transparent aluminum plates protecting her and the trees and flowers from space, and wandered into the aisle for tropical flora, these mostly Risian varieties. All the aisles were empty, and the place was completely silent except for the buzzing of insects and other night-time creatures that lived here in the simulated environment and day/night cycle.
She had never cared so little about trees and flowers, birds and bugs.
Not that she normally cared a lot. Right now, it just wasn't distracting. For the past few days, doctors poked and scanned her almost constantly, trying to figure out what, exactly, Taurik had done to her brain. The literature on this particular procedure was apparently sparse. Gabi didn't care, because all they needed to understand was that she was alive.
That she was going to the Sadalbari at all now felt like a miracle, and that she would be missing the Enterprise along with over a thousand people who had called that ship home was unbelievable.
"Dixson to Petty Officer Eliza Clarke."
The response came several seconds later. Maybe five. "Hm? Gabi?"
"Hi, Eliza."
"What's wrong? You okay?"
"Yeah," she said, even though that was probably, obviously not as true as she wanted it to be. "I'm just… I couldn't sleep."
"Gabi, I'm supposed to be on the Loveday in four hours." That explained why this place was so empty. It was two in the morning.
"Sorry." That meant this was probably the last time she was going to talk to her. At least, with any reality attached to it. Gabi had been around long enough to know that even if she reached out, they'd grow apart. They'd run out of time and fall in with other people. There just wasn't enough mutual effort here.
That was okay.
"Don't worry about it," Eliza said. "You said you couldn't sleep? Have you been to sickbay?"
"No."
"They might be able to help."
Gabi had no doubt they could. "I'm gonna miss you. Sorry for waking you."
Eliza sighed, and she could hear the guilt in her tone. "I'm gonna miss you, too. Best roommate."
Gabi snickered. "We fought all the time."
"Yeah, but we stuck it out. Neither of us ever got so ticked that we requested someone else." Gabi had to admit that was true. They weren't the best of friends, but still… "That counts for something," Eliza said.
"It does. Keep me updated on where you are every now and again. Maybe we can meet up. Exchange souvenir spoons or something."
"We'll always have Starbase 234."
Gabi smiled. "Sleep well."
"You try, too," Eliza said.
Gabi listened to the quiet in the arboretum for a few seconds after Eliza cut the line. She hoped she'd get back to sleep quickly. Gabi still had another three weeks before the Sadalbari would be here to pick her up, and begin a tour along the Klingon border. There were plenty of interesting things that way…
She had three weeks to catch up on sleep, with enforced medical leave for at least the next few days. She had enough required appointments with station doctors to make trying to work right now impractical, anyway.
Everyone was so curious and so damn insistent: she'd died, actually, by almost any definition. The only reason Taurik had been able to bring her back was because that line between life and death was a little fuzzier, and not nearly as steep, as most people seemed to think.
But she didn't want to talk about that. She didn't want to talk about anything, but it was too quiet and lonely here.
"Dixson to Lieutenant Taurik." She sighed and sat down under the palm tree.
"Yes?" He rarely whispered, but that made sense. Sam was probably sleeping.
That sounded so nice right now. Sleeping. "Did I wake you?" she whispered back, though for no reason. She knew he might have been sleeping at two in the morning, but she called anyway.
He wouldn't mind. She'd died, and he'd been there.
"No," he answered. "But Sam is. Are you alright?"
Of course, Sam was leaving tomorrow afternoon—actually, today afternoon. He'd want to be well-rested for his trip home.
Gabi leaned over on one hand, looking up at the perpetual night above her head. "Any chance I could sleep on your couch?"
"If you have no objections to sleeping with the lights on."
Gabi hadn't had the same kind of traumatic experience Sam had—she remembered running out of Engineering because of a warp core breach, then Taurik was hunched over beside her in the sickbay of a completely different ship. Somewhere in the middle, she remembered dreaming. Taurik was talking to her about life, the universe, and everything… but, still, it made sense to her to stay out of the dark.
"No objections at all."
"Then you may."
Gabi left the arboretum, heading directly to the room he and Sam shared—at least for the next twelve hours or so before Sam left. His dad was on the way to accompany him back home. She rang the door, and Taurik immediately answered.
He didn't say hello, or anything. He just stepped aside and let her in. She could see three PADDs on the table beside the computer. She couldn't guess what he was working on, and shouldn't start a conversation. Sam was curled up under a blanket in the cubby, facing the room.
It wasn't quite as lit as Taurik led her to believe. Sure, it was much brighter than if the lights had been off. She guessed them at maybe sixty-percent intensity, and set to a warmer spectrum than the typical simulation of Earth's daylight.
Gabi looked at the couch, decided it looked comfortable enough, and went to sit down.
"If you wish, you may use my bunk," he interrupted in a low whisper. "I haven't slept since we arrived." He gave Sam a brief glance before going back to the table as if Gabi wasn't supposed to answer.
She was just supposed to decide.
It seemed weird.
But she was exhausted.
"Okay," she whispered. "Thanks." She went to climb up into the top bunk—
Hadn't even touched the wall when Sam jerked into wakefulness, tossing some of his blankets to the side and almost sitting until he saw her. "Gabi. What the hell." He looked past Gabi to see Taurik spun in his chair, looking at him from the table.
"I couldn't sleep," she whispered.
"Oh." With a sigh, Sam laid back on his pillow. "Welcome to the club."
Gabi smiled and climbed up into the top bunk. She lifted the extremely-heavy blanket over her and turned to look out into the room. Taurik had gone back to his work that she still wondered about. She could hear Sam rustling with his blankets beneath.
Pretty sorry club they had here, but all things considered it was probably the best she'd ever been in.