Chapter Text
Prologue
Alone in her quarters, Una Chin-Riley sat on the edge of her bed amid a pile of rubble. It felt strange, to be sitting in her quarters, on her bed, the idea too prosaic, too ordinary in the wake of what had occurred.
But even Una had to admit, there was nothing else she could do. Nothing except get up, begin to clean her quarters, and go to bed.
But for some reason, doing that felt wrong. Like moving on.
Like forgetting.
Una couldn’t forget even if she wanted to, and Una did not want to forget.
So she sat, looked at the detritus and the broken knickknacks and imagined that it all looked very much like the inside of her chest: broken.
A high-pitched hiss had her looking up towards the ceiling. She gasped.
Floating below the square of exposed conduit and piping was a glowing sphere of yellow-orange light, dozens of thin tendrils writhing inside the mass.
Una hadn’t cried in the wake of the battle; she had been too devastated for tears. But as she stared up at that ball of light, overcome by the wave of affection and friendship radiating from it, she felt two tears make their way down her cheeks.
“Oh, Admiral. Why didn’t you tell me?”
The orb floated down until it was eye-level with Una, trilling softly. Slowly, one tendril reached out. Una lifted one hand and reached towards the light, let it wrap around her fingers and coil up her forearm.
At the orb’s warm touch, Una cried for joy. And for sorrow.
***
Chapter 1
More than ten hours after Discovery had sailed into a wormhole to an uncertain future, Captain Pike stumbled into his quarters—what was left of them.
His ship was in pieces, many of his crew dead or seriously injured, but the galaxy was safe, Control was gone, and the data it had wanted was so far into the future that nothing could take advantage of it now. He just hadn’t counted on the cost being so high.
Was it worth it?
He had to answer yes, and it forged another crack in his soul.
Weary to his marrow, Pike waded with heavy steps through the debris and the ruined pieces of his life littering the floor, not even stopping when he noticed the shattered crystal and rare scotch beneath his boots. The chairs had been overturned; the end tables tossed about the room. Chess pieces lay scattered, the board nowhere in sight.
He righted the nearest chair, collapsed into it.
Near the door, Enterprise lay on the floor in a sea of spilled whiskey, her mast shorn off, sails limp. More flotsam amid the mosaic of broken glass.
How fitting.
Everything he had was cracked or broken on the floor, antiques destroyed, liquor-logged books crumbled under the twisted skeleton of the bar cart. And yet, he couldn’t bring himself to care. He was beyond care, beyond feeling. That torpedo had blown a hole in his chest and now he was empty. Numb. He was as broken as his ship, and the missing piece wasn’t lying shattered on the floor but was gone forever.
Tired beyond measure and yet too exhausted to sleep, he propped his elbow on the armrest and leaned his head against his fist. It was then, the motion causing him to notice the low light reflecting off the glass, that he saw the bottle of brandy wedged beneath the overturned coffee table and the support strut. He leaned forward and yanked it free. Not in the mood for alcohol, he simply stood it up next to the chair leg. Something put to rights in the middle of the catastrophe surrounding him.
Slouching back in his chair, a sudden increase in the illumination drew his attention towards the ceiling.
“What the hell?” He was on his feet in an instant, tripping over the righted bottle and fallen hull fragments in an effort to put the chair between himself and the glowing ball of orange light hovering near the ceiling.
Adrenaline had his heart beating a little faster in his chest, uncertainty momentarily turning to fear as he watched the thing hover before him. Yellow-orange and pulsating with a halo of warm light, a hundred tendrils writhing like snakes at its center, Pike had never seen anything like it before.
His first thought was to call security, but the…sphere hovered between him and the door, and Pike didn’t think he could make it to the comm unit in the bedroom before it caught him. Nor did he want to turn his back on the thing to reach the unit in the kitchen.
And yet, the light made no moves to come closer. It just hovered there, glowing, as if it were waiting for something.
Adrenaline wore off, and Pike reconsidered the orb of light. Was it an alien entity? A non-corporeal life form?
It didn’t feel malicious, in fact when he focused on it, it felt like…
…like friendship…
…like hope for something more.
…like warm smiles and eyes that twinkled like stars.
…like soft touches and the heat of a single night of passion.
…like love.
It felt like…
…like…
Pike took an unconscious step towards it. “Kat?”
As if in answer, the orb glowed brighter, emitting a shrill hum. A single tendril of orange light reached towards him. Caution had Pike stepping away. The tendril abruptly pulled back with a sad little trilling sound, and the orb grew smaller, its glow dimming as it shrank away.
“No, wait!” Pike lurched forward, reaching out with one hand. He couldn’t say why, but he knew that if it left now, he would never see it again. And that warm feeling of friendship made him want to keep it here, even if just for a little longer.
The orb paused, hovering at half its original size, its glow faint and hazy. Tentatively, Pike took another step towards it, arm outstretched.
The orb hummed, seeming to vibrate as it grew to its previous size. That single tendril reached out again, and this time, Pike didn’t pull away but let it slowly reach towards his fingers.
When it touched him, Pike flinched and gasped in surprise, but he didn’t pull his hand back. The tendril was warm. And solid.
The orb didn’t make any further moves but simply rested its tendril against the tips of his fingers and pulsed, humming a high-pitched sound.
Pike was overcome with a sense of awe. It felt alive. It felt like her.
He wanted to pull it close, to wrap himself in it. He wanted to push the light inside his chest and plug the hole where his heart used to be.
He reached out a little further, turning his palm up in invitation. The little tendril snaked around his wrist as the orb came closer, hovering in the palm of his hand. Everywhere it touched him felt like love.
The sound Pike made was somewhere between a sob and a laugh.