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The sickbay was nearly empty when Erica entered. The ship was down to a skeleton staff given their unscheduled departure. They were nearing the Starbase. Nearly out of danger. Nearly able to pretend that their rescue mission hadn’t come within a breath of starting a war.
Christine looked tired under her blanket, sitting up reading something on her PADD, looking like she was fighting sleep.
“Hey,” Christine rasped as Erica approached, voice scratchy, tired.
“I just needed to see…” Erica paused, stepping closer as her voice faltered. “I needed to know you were okay.”
“Joseph says a day more of rest and then I should be good to go. Probably before we make it to the Starbase,” she explained with a reassuring smile, the kind she used during triage to steady someone else.
Erica looked down, uncharacteristically quiet, nervous. Unconsciously curing and uncurling her fingers. “I was the one that fired on the ship.”
“What?” Christine was confused, not knowing where the conversation was going.
“When we needed to destroy the ship, when we thought you were still on it. I was the one who fired,” Erica whispered. She couldn’t bring herself to look up.
There was a rustle of the blanket as Christine leaned over to grab Erica’s hand, “Erica. You did nothing wrong. Joseph and I knew the danger, we knew the ship needed to be destroyed.”
“Still…” she whispered, the admission coming out from a deep sense of loss she normally didn’t let anyone see. “I thought I killed you.” The admission nearly broke her to say. Loss was one thing, she knew loss. But to be the one responsible was a guilt she could not imagine a way past.
Christine squeezed her hand tighter. “Look at me.”
Erica looked up, barely meeting Christine's eyes.
“You prevented a war,” Christine stated softly, “I would have…I would give my life for that.”
Erica shook her head. “We prevented a war,” she correctly, quietly.
The silence between them settled, not empty but full of the weight of shared memories, the kind few on this ship really understood. Klingon battlefields. Evacuation scars. Names of those you lost that lived every day in your memories. Knowing what it meant to lose so much if the wrong decision was made at the wrong second.
Erica sat on the edge of the bed. “When that ship lit up on sensors, all I could think about was… all the times things went bad…back then. Back in the war. All the people I couldn’t save.”
Christine’s breath caught, but she didn’t look away. There was a side of the war to her, a side she shared with Joseph, that she had to live on that ship. She held it in. Some things you just couldn’t share. It was too hard to say them aloud. Instead she just replied, “Me too.”
“I don’t ever want to make that call again,” Erica admitted. “Even when it’s the right one.”
“That’s how you know you’re still you,” Christine murmured. “People like us… we’ve had to make too many calls like that. If it stops hurting? That’s when you worry.”
Erica swallowed. “I’m glad you made it home. Again.”
Christine squeezed her hand one more time, firm and certain. “We keep doing that. Coming home. That’s what matters.”
Erica finally let herself breathe.