Chapter Text
La'an entered the infirmary apprehensively. Most of the colonists had been moved to temporary quarters, but the overflow infirmary was still crowded with those not yet able to be moved. Most of the actual medical staff was finally asleep after working nonstop; crew from other departments with only basic medical training filled in at stations they barely knew how to use. Everyone was desperate to reach the starbase and hand things off.
Erica lay back on a biobed. She spotted La’an, rigid shoulders, stiff posture, hair pulled back with the air of someone who’d slept just long enough to regret waking up.
“La’an,” Erica said, raising a hand a few inches before letting it fall back to the blanket. “Come to check if I’m still in one piece or if I’ve melted into the mattress?”
La’an stopped at the foot of the bed. “You’re awake.”
“Against medical advice, but yeah. Hard to stay asleep right now.” La’an hesitated, then stepped closer.
“I’d sit up, but apparently if I do it too fast there’s a non-zero chance something inside me that’s supposed to be connected decides to un-connect, and then I start leaking again.” She said it like she was quoting a maintenance checklist. “Thrilling stuff.”
La’an frowned faintly. “That happened before?”
Erica shrugged one shoulder. “Nightmare. Got enthusiastic.” Then, dryly, “I’m told I’m very athletic in my sleep.”
That earned the smallest exhale. La’an glanced around, then back at her. “I should have come sooner.”
“You were busy not bleeding on everything,” Erica said. “You did let them treat you, right?” She nodded at the faintly healed marks on La’an's skin.
“As if Pike would have allowed me to be debriefed without it. Apparently it takes a few passes with the dermal regenerator to completely heal them.”
“Wait, are you saying my hand is not alone in looking terrible?”
“Maybe hold off on a mirror for the time being.” She looked down. “I wanted to… apologize.” The word seemed to fight its way out. “I froze when the Gorn appeared. You nearly died. If I had—”
“Don’t,” Erica said, not unkindly. “We’re both still here. No one got digested. Call it a win.”
La’an’s jaw tightened. “When you were flying us out and you started to collapse… there was so much blood. We thought...”
“Well, I’m not a fan of arterial leaking mid-flight either,” Erica said. “But you got me to the ship. If anyone saved anyone, that’d be you.”
La’an opened her mouth, shut it, then tried again.
“How did you even wake up?” Erica asked. Her tone hovered between disbelief and curiosity. “In those pods I had no sense of anything until you guys pulled me out. Just happily being digested away.” She wiggled the fingers on her uninjured hand.
“Sheer force of will?” She thought a beat. “Maybe I’ve spent so long thinking about being taken by the Gorn again that my subconscious pulled me out.”
She shrugged.
“And you,” La’an said quietly, “piloted a Gorn vessel.”
Erica made a dismissive noise. “You fly one alien ship, you’ve flown them all.” She settled more into the biobed. “Most of them boil down to the same basics: forward, stop, left, right. You just find the lever or pedal or weird glowing orb that does each one, hope it’s not a self-destruct, and pray it responds before you hit something. Some ships handle like shuttles, some like drunk warp sleds, but once you get a feel…”
Her voice drifted, the words starting to blur with effort.
A med tech appeared with a hypospray. “Lieutenant, time to rest.”
Erica sighed but didn’t argue. The hiss of the hypo was soft, and her blink slowed as the edges of the room blurred.
Before the tech could step away, Erica reached out and caught La’an’s wrist.
“Really,” she said, sleep slurring the edges of her words, “thank you. For getting us out.”
La’an didn’t pull back. Her voice stayed quiet. “What are friends for?”
Erica’s hand slipped away as the sedative pulled her under. La’an stood a moment longer, watching the steady rise and fall of her breathing, then stepped back into the muted chaos of the infirmary.
Three Weeks Later
They stood just off the empty mat space in the training room, the hum of the spacedock systems faint through the bulkheads. Erica flexed her fingers once, as if testing whether they still belonged to her.
“So,” she said, trying for casual and landing somewhere near honest instead, “I talked to the counselor. And… I think this’ll help work through the feelings.” She let out a short huff of a laugh. “You know. Terror. Mild desire to never be slowly dissolved in a digestion sac again.”
La’an’s expression softened by millimeters, which for her was practically sentimental. “It’s not irrational,” she said. “Trust me from experience.”
Erica nodded, eyes flicking to the mat. “I’ve clocked barely the minimum in hand-to-hand. I think when I envisioned being part of a landing party, I was imagining swooping in to save the day or meeting quirky aliens.”
“It’s been a while just focusing on this ship. The controls. How the whole helm system works. Trust me, I could take that thing apart and put it back together. I’ve done the required training. Enough to trip on my own feet, not enough not to panic when something with claws gets close. I don’t… I don’t want that to happen again. And with this,” she wiggled the fingers of her regenerated hand “I feel even more unprepared. It still doesn’t feel normal.” Her voice didn’t quite steady at the end. “I don’t feel courageous now.”
La’an let the silence rest just long enough to make it real, not awkward.
“Training helped, for me,” she said, completely serious. “Familiarity. Feeling stronger. Able to protect myself and others. Turning the unknown into muscle memory.”
Erica let out a breath that felt like it had been waiting weeks. “Yeah. That’s what I’m aiming for. I don’t want to flinch at shadows or freeze if something grabs me again.”
La’an took two steps toward the mat, then looked back. “Then we start where everyone starts. Not with fear, with footing.”
Erica followed, a tentative smirk edging in. “Just promise not to throw me hard enough to get me sent back to sickbay. M’Benga will kill us both. I believe his quote was, ‘tell La’an light sparring only, and I mean light sparring.’”
“No promises,” La’an deadpanned. Then, after a beat, quieter: “But I’ll make sure you walk out stronger than you walked in. And just so you know you had a ton of courage on one of the worst days ever. That’s when it really matters.”
“It may have mostly been the adrenaline,” Erica said, stepping into a stance beside her, tone lightly teasing.
La’an’s mouth twitched, not quite a smile. “You’ll find it again,” she replied, settling into her own stance.