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Una starts sleeping on La’An’s couch almost immediately after Dr. Anaya releases the girl from sickbay, though “sleep” is a generous term for the kind of rest they’re getting. As an Illyrian, Una doesn’t need much; she can get by on two or three hours as opposed to most humans’ need for six to eight. But, as an Illyrian, she has to hide that lack of need—difficult to do when showing up for a shift looking well-rested after staying up half the night with Dr. Anaya and La’An.
To compensate, she asks Commander Nielson to assign her as La’An’s guardian until they’re able to find out if she has any surviving relatives. Nielson hesitates on the grounds that Una is too young, but relents when she proves to be the only person who can calm La’An out of a panic attack six times in five days.
Don’t think of me as an ensign with a twelve-year-old child, sir. Think of me as an older sister, Una says, standing in his office with head held high and hands tucked behind her back. That’s what I’m beginning to feel like.
It’s not true, exactly—Illyrian community-building is so different from humans and their emphasis on biological relations—but if there’s one thing Una’s learned from her people, it’s how to adapt to a situation in order to survive. She does feel some measure of affection toward La’An. That much is true. Is it sisterly? Maybe. Probably. She’ll require a few more years around humans before she can say for sure.
Her plan is for La’An to move in with her, but Dr. Anaya vetoes that pretty quickly. Part of her transition out of captivity is learning that she’s safe. Control helps her feel safe. She’ll feel more in control if she’s in her own space.
Una doubts La’An thinks of the MLK’s guest quarters as her own, but she definitely considers them a space to control. She sees it in the toiletries lined up in the cubby above the bathroom counter, the sheets tucked into the corners of the bed, the blanket smoothed on top each morning beneath pillows plump and plush.
You know you don’t have to do that, right? Una says one morning, watching La’An make the bed. You’re not a cadet at Starfleet Academy. No one’s going to get mad if you leave a shirt on the floor.
La’An just looks at her gravely and smooths a non-existent wrinkle. It’s easier to tell when someone’s been inside a clean room, she says. More order means more opportunities to make a mess. Mess means someone might be watching.
After that, Una makes it clear that all La’An has to do is ask her to leave and she’ll leave. Some nights La’An does. Most nights when Una heads for the door, the girl asks her to stay.
Lucky for Una, the MLK has great futons, the kind doctors and scientists across the fleet have spent years refining in order to prevent back pain when slept on for long periods of time. Though, again, Una is not really sleeping; she’s dozing, waking up every few hours to La’An’s screams.
“La’An,” she says softly after a particularly piercing set of screams jolts her upright. In the dark, she can hear La’An’s muffled sobs and wants to go to her, but remembers what Dr. Anaya said about control and holding space. “La’An. You’re in your quarters on the Federation starship Martin Luther King, Jr. My name is Una. Ensign Chin-Riley, remember? You’re safe.”
Minutes pass or maybe hours, and eventually, La’An’s breathing begins to calm. Una can tell she’s doing the grounding exercise Anaya gave her last week and begins to work through it herself in her head. By the time she gets to the last step, naming something she can taste—(remnants of fear like copper on her tongue)—the room is so quiet Una wonders if the girl fell back asleep. But then a hand touches hers and she flinches, inhales sharp enough to cough.
“I’m sorry,” La’An whispers. “I didn’t mean to scare you.”
Of course, Una realizes. She’s been hunted for months. Silence is the thing that saved her. “It’s okay. No harm done. Would you like to sit with me?”
No answer. Una relaxes her muscles and tunes in to her other senses, tries to divine La’An’s expression or body language despite the stifling dark.
“Computer,” La’An says at last, “increase illumination by fifteen percent.”
As soft glow hazes the room’s corners, casts the girl’s face in inscrutable shadow.
“You can have that end if you want,” Una says, shifting so she’s propped against the far left side. “We don’t have to touch.”
La’An reaches up and smooths her hair behind her ears with both hands flat against her skull, pulling tight. Una’s made this offer every night, and every time she’s gone back alone to her bed. “Do you mind if we touch?”
“Of course not.”
“Can I share your blanket? I’m cold.”
Una lifts the edge of the fluffy red blanket. La’An hesitates, then takes a deep breath and climbs in. She’s warm and birdlike, barely heavy enough to register as weight. Carefully, Una places her arm on the other side of La’An’s hip and shoulder, rests her palm on the futon so she’s not restricting her in any way. “Do you want to talk about your dream?”
La’An shudders. “No.”
“That’s okay. You don’t have to tell me anything you don’t want to share.”
A long silence, and then La’An wedges herself a little more firmly against Una’s side. “Dr. Anaya told you to say that, didn’t they?”
“Yes. But I would have said it anyway.”
“Why?”
“Because it’s true.” She pulls her arm a little closer, lays her hand on La’An’s thin wrist. The girl’s heart beats hummingbird fast against the sides of Una’s ribs. “Do you want to stay up or try to go back to bed?”
“Stay up.”
“Are you hungry?”
“No.”
“Thirsty?”
“No.”
“Want to watch something?”
“No.”
“Want me to shut up?”
“Yes. Please.”
Una chuckles and runs her fingers through La’An’s long hair, smiling a little when she relaxes and curves one arm around her waist.
There’s a long silence, and then La’An shifts. “Do you have any siblings?”
Una’s smile fades. She’s still parsing how to talk about families in a Federation context. There’s no set pattern for Illyrian family-making—just whatever works in any group’s given situation, be that planetside or underwater or deep in space. Una grew up with a group of nine other children—crèchemates, some of the reptilian-leaning species of the Federation might call them—and thirty-three caregiving adults, though once the children came of age, none were required to stay.
Among Illyrians, it’s normal never to speak to the ones you grew up with if you choose to leave. Most crèches, in fact, tend to scatter—some to other planets or colonies, others to the stars. But among humans, they have a word for familial separation—estranged.
“Una?”
She blinks. “Sorry. I got a little lost in my head.”
“Are you okay?”
“Yes.” She gives La’An a loose, one-armed hug. “I’d rather not talk about my family though.”
“Oh. Okay.”
It’s difficult to read La’An’s tone, but she looks and feels okay. Better than the last few nights at least.
“Can I braid your hair?”
“Of course.” Another grounding exercise, one Una came up with on her own. She sits cross-legged on the floor and hands La’An her brush, elastics wrapped around the handle. When the MLK found her adrift on that sacrificial “raft,” La’An had been filthy—tear-stained, covered in dirt, limbs bloodied and bruised. It had taken days to work the knots out of her hair, and the only thing that kept them from having to cut it off and start over were her braids. La’An had cried when Una untangled them, less from pain than from exhaustion and grief.
Manu did them for me, she said in that flat affect that weeks later Una’s only barely beginning to be able to read. He said he was going to teach me, but he never did.
Una closes her eyes as La’An begins their little ritual, brushing her hair until it crackles static-smooth. La’An’s hands are gentle as they find her part and follow it, tiny nails scraping a tingling line down to her nape.
“French braids tonight.”
“You sure? Last time you got a little frustrated.”
“Absolutely. I’ve been practicing.”
Una smiles at the authority in her voice. She caught La’An in front of the mirror several days ago frowning fiercely, tongue poked between her lips as she wrestled her hair into a lumpy approximation of a braid. She pretended not to see it, wanting to give La’An space to practice without being watched. She’s spent too much of her young life being watched. Even now on the MLK, all they do is watch. And watch. And wait.
When La’An ties off the first braid and makes a tiny satisfied noise, Una bites back a smile and lifts her hands to her head. “Excellent job, La’An. Pretty soon the whole ship will be coming to you for braids.”
She steals a look at the mirror and something flashes across the girl’s freckled face—anxiety or doubt or anger, Una can’t be sure. “I don’t think I’d like that.”
“Oh. Well okay, then I guess the whole ship will just have to admire my braids without getting any of their own. How does that sound?”
She turns and La’An bites her lip, then allows a tiny smile. “Yeah. I like that much better.” She relaxes, shoulders creeping down from around her ears. “It’s like—braids are our own thing, you know?”
Una settles back against the futon and grins at La’An’s reflection. “Hell yeah. Now are you gonna finish that second braid or is this all I get?”
La’An giggles, and it’s the most beautiful sound she’s heard in her life. “Sorry,” she says, trying to stifle her smile, then bursts into another round of giggles so forceful she keels over on the bed. “Oh man. Oh man oh man, I was just thinking about the look on Dr. Anaya’s face tomorrow if you walked into sickbay like that.”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Una says. “If I walk out into sickbay looking like this, you’re gonna be right beside me with even sillier hair.”
“Noooo.” La’An clutches her stomach, laughing so hard tears roll down her face. Una continues to describe exactly what she’ll make La’An’s hair look like until finally the kid forces herself upright and wipes her cheeks. “Nuh-uh, no way am I letting you do that. Give me that brush. I have a reputation to keep.”