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The temporal paradox of assistance is: help too soon may be unwelcome, while help too late may be unkind.
I tell myself this as I try to fall asleep, remind myself that Una is fully capable of handling her own emotions.
Then I kick off my blanket and give in to instinct, striding across my quarters and tapping for an audio-only connection. “Pike to Number One.”
“Number One here.” Her voice is weak, strained. I’d bet my barn that she’s made and deleted at least one personal log tonight.
“Quite a day.” My nightclothes rustle as I pace. I envision her sitting, though. Una gets determined, steady, slow when she wrestles with something on her mind. I get restless, try to out-think, out-run, or out-ride when I should find stillness the way she does. “I thought I’d check on you, see how you’re holding up.”
Through the comm, there’s a shaky breath.
Memories dance in front of me.
Una’s tongue darting out to lick habanero sauce from her lips. I’ve seen her do it a thousand times, but now can’t help but wonder if genetic augmentation prevents spicy food from stinging her mouth.
Una’s face, blurry, her features distorted by my fever from Kamaraazite flu. She’d kept a damp washcloth on my forehead during the day and her hand on my back at night, but shrugged off concern that I’d get her sick. Now I understand that her bio-engineered immune system wouldn’t have allowed the infection.
Una’s physical strength, a trait I’d noticed on duty before I noticed it during intimacy, long muscles never seeming to strain despite —
The future cuts in and I’m strangling in my own scream, trapped in the searing heat of radiation that will kill me, and I’ll wish she was there. Not in my place. By my side, strong and healthy, loving arms around me so I can die with some measure of peace, not like a rat in a glass cage. That part of the premonition had been confusing, but now I understand. In a decade, Una’s increased tolerance to radiation will be something I take for granted, though I can’t parse out how I could be willing to curse her with the pain of holding a dying man.
I blink. Una’s genetic augmentation is in my past and my future, as obvious as a gift-wrapped bicycle, and I need to do what I can to help her in the present.
“Una, do you want me to come over?”
Through the comm, there’s another shaky breath. “Yeah.”
My door barely has a chance to open and I’m in the corridor, a nod or wave in greeting as I walk past crewmembers on duty or up late.
I key in my code for her quarters — personal visitor, not captain’s override.
Her lights are dim, but they often are. She likes lamps, sconces, the gentleness of diffused illumination. Her viewports are shaded tonight, not open to starshine, the expansiveness of the galaxy blocked, leaving her in semi-darkness.
My eyes adjust and she’s sitting at the foot of her bed. She’s still in uniform, feet on the floor, glazed eyes turning toward me.
She’s not fully here.
God, I know that feeling. Not exactly what she might be going through, but that result of being forced out of time — her past lie, my future fate. Everything else can seem as if it’s happening through a haze.
The mattress dips as I sit next to her.
Her head finds my shoulder.
Our fingers entwine, a lifeline, I hope, for her to make her way back to the present as we breathe together, inhalations and exhalations falling into sync, her slower rhythm opening up my lungs, loosening my worry with the scent of clean and spicy that’s unmistakably Una.
Inhalation.
Exhalation.
There’s a slight squeeze to my hand.
I squeeze back.
“You’re staying tonight?”
“If you want me to.”
A tiny motion — a rub from her thumb — is affirmation as her hand leaves mine.
“I’ll, uh, change out of my uniform.”
Una’s steps toward her clothes rack look normal, but there’s something in the way her arms move … as if she’s trying to regain her balance after both losing and gaining some part of herself.
Which I suppose she has.
I settle into my side of the bed, try to keep my breaths in sync with hers even as she brushes her teeth.
She’s going to be okay. Not yet. Not tonight. Tonight isn’t for okay, isn’t for jokes or sex or even conversation beyond what she initiates. Tonight is for togetherness, for existing as a two-person shield against dangers … real … imagined … somewhere in between.
My breaths get even slower, sleep creeping closer.
“Chris,” Una’s nightclothes slide against mine, her head nestling into her spot on my chest, the weight of her the best kind of anchor, “what do the stars mean to you?”
There’s something more to her question … something she’s not ready to talk about, not yet, not so soon after decades of keeping the secret that lets her do the work that means so much to her.
“The stars mean exploration. Things yet to be discovered.” My arm curls around her, holds close the strength and softness that is Una. “What do the stars mean to you?”
“The stars mean Starfleet. People of different backgrounds working together toward a common goal.” Her words slur in exhaustion. “That’s why I did it. That’s why I lied. I had to get to the stars.”
“The stars are lucky to have you.” My lips rest on the top of her head, a drowsy kiss of gratitude — for her, for her stars, for her inhalations and exhalations that keep me still and secure. “Do you not want to see them tonight? Is that why your shades are closed?”
Una doesn’t explain, but she rolls over, taps the control panel on her nightstand, and the shades retract, replaced by a view of constellations and shimmers of space dust.
She blinks, appreciation for the cosmos lighting fatigue-dulled eyes, spilling across her cheekbones, glimmering in the curve of her lips.
It’s as if I’m witnessing a holy moment.
“Una, your stars.”
Her head joins mine on my pillow, dipping me toward her. “Our stars.”
Our stars.
My kiss this time is to her temple, a soft kiss on soft skin, and with breaths in sync and bodies at rest, floating in that filmy place between awake and asleep, Una and I look up at our stars, the past and the future fading away in the gentle promise of right now.