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LATENT RE-IMAGE
It was late, very late, and she was drunk, so drunk. She was honest enough to admit both those things to herself. And to anyone else if she ran into…nope, she was all alone in the atrium, stumbling back to her quarters. She’d make it back fine. She was getting used to this; all those evenings since the Miyaz…the ill-fated incident where she’d screwed up. Ever since she’d made those colossal mistakes that had cost so many lives.
No, don’t dwell on it. Don’t go there. Focus on getting back to your quarters. Or to your office because it doesn’t matter. You’ve been sleeping on your chaise most nights anyway. You can make it there. Just one foot in front of the other, and now another…
The sound of her body crashing to the floor of the atrium after she tripped over a cleaning DoT hurt her ears more than her body. Fu…
“Nahla?” she dimly heard a voice above her that she couldn’t place.
“’M a’right,” she slurred. “Just a trip, tripped over the DoT…damn thing just came out of nowhere…”
“Nahla, let me help you up,” the voice sounded more familiar now.
“Dun need knee helppp. Damn DoTs ways’ getting underfoot, gotta tell Thok to kill ‘em all,” she could barely understand her own words. Damn that Saurian brandy! Or was it Cardassian kanar tonight?
“We can destroy them later,” the voice was gentle and patient, “but first we need to get you up off the floor, and see to your injuries.”
Hmm. That sounded good to her. She slurred her acceptance, and immediately felt strong hands on her upper arms slowly pulling her up. One of the arms then moved to her waist, supporting her against the warm body that belonged to the voice.
“Good job, Nahla,” she slurred to herself.
“Not bad at all,” the male voice concurred.
Wait. A man? Humanoid? Who?
“How about we go to my quarters first?” he continued. “I can treat your injuries, and maybe replicate a new uniform for you to replace your torn one. Then we can…”
No. Oh no. This was bad. This was…Kelrec’s voice. What a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad night!
“I understand I’m not your first choice of rescuer,” Kelrec’s voice sounded both concerned and amused, “but I promise to do a decent and discreet job of taking care of you until you can head back to your rooms.”
She realized she’d spoken her last thoughts out loud, and immediately felt contrite. If she weren’t so sloshed, she’d straighten up and apologize like a decent person. As it was, she could barely murmur the words “sorry” and “thanks”.
With the War College Chancellor’s right arm around her shoulders now, and his left hand gripping her own tightly, they arrived at his door. She barely registered his retinal scan to open it, and wasn’t quite sure how they’d made it down the stairs to his seating pit when she was nearly a deadweight. But oh, she was glad, so glad when she could finally flop onto a cushioned surface! It felt like heaven to rest her aching back and shoulders on a comfy piece of furniture.
She allowed her eyes to close. Just a few minutes of rest. She was so tired, had been so starved of sleep since the Miya…no, she wouldn’t go there.
By the wall where he was brewing her a cup of tea with his state-of-the-art tools, Kelrec watched her eyes screwing up tight like she was trying to block out a strong light. She was biting her lips like she was in pain, and from the rapid rise and fall of her chest, he imagined he could hear her shallow, harsh breathing.
“You look terrible,” the mocking words of that monster Nus Braka when he saw Nahla in the corridor that fatal time two weeks ago echoed in his head, and he drew a sharp breath of his own. He shook his head as if to clear his memory, and refocused on her face again.
What he saw now nearly brought tears to his eyes. He wasn’t an emotional person; had always despised unnecessary sentiment, but he hadn’t noticed the new, terrible changes in her appearance. Her cheeks had hollowed in, and the circles around her eyes looked not so much like bags as bruises. Her lips were chapped and swollen, and he could see a deep scratch under her chin which looked to be older than from tonight’s involuntary dalliance with the DoT and the atrium floor. She’d always been petite, but her shoulder bones stuck out of her top now like sharp sticks. He noticed a few stubbed toes on both her feet. In another era, he’d have taken revenge by pointing those out to her, and reminding her of the need to always wear boots. But now all he felt was a deep pity for the shattered being curled up like a fetus on his couch. That, and the raging guilt he felt for not noticing her decline earlier. He was aware of the pain in his stomach returning, the sharp cramps biting his abdomen again, but he ignored them. He deserved them, just as he deserved this self-recrimination for his neglect of her.
All he’d done was to avoid her. He’d told himself that it was his cadets who needed him the most, that their mental health and safety was paramount on his list of priorities after the loss of lives on and from the Miyazaki. To that end, he’d thrown himself into arranging for, and making sure those most closely affected by the losses were assigned to trauma counselors he’d personally vetted (and rejected some after a thorough screening). He’d made a long and tiring trip to Vulcan to speak to B’Avi’s family in person. He’d made arrangements for Tomov’s family to come to the Athena so he could tell them what happened, and to allow them to collect his personal belongings instead of having those packed and sent by unknown hands. He’d made it a point to invite Kyle and Dzolo to his quarters multiple times to speak with them, even though the emotional distress from the former’s tears had haunted him for many nights. Overruling Thok and other instructors’ objections, he’d allowed those cadets who had trouble focusing during class or physical practice sessions to skip them until they felt ready to return to normal life.
In short, he’d done…nothing. Things had changed forever for his cadets and all his efforts could’ve been in vain. Only time would reveal what the new normal would be for them. As for her…
The incessant pinging of the tea being ready roused his from his thoughts. He’d brewed it for longer, this special blend that was supposed to induce a sense of calm, and maybe grant a few hours of sleep for those who needed a respite from a never-ceasing chorus of thoughts.
The sound seemed to have roused Nahla as well; she raised her tousled head a few inches off the cushioning, and without opening her eyes demanded to know what he was up to.
Although he knew she couldn’t see him, his shoulders softened, and his lips curled up in a slight smile as he took the cup over to her. That sounded like the old Nahla, the imperious, impetuous one before Braka had wrecked their lives.
That tiny bit of hope, however, was shattered when he tried to get her to drink the tea. Nahla objected, almost yelled, when he explained its healing, soothing properties to her.
“Drink it yourself, then, Chancellor!” she almost spat at him. “I’ve drunk enough to knock myself out tonight!”
“Clearly not,” he murmured almost to himself.
“I heard that,” she jumped up from the couch, but nearly toppled back down before he caught her arm to steady her. “You always know what’s best for everyone, don’t you?”
“Nahla, no,” he was still trying to help her balance herself on the couch, but with surprising agility, she wrenched her arm out of his grip, and slapped his wrist with her other arm.
It took him back, just for a second, to the end of their first meeting, when she’d swatted him on his upper arm as she walked away after they’d concluded their discussion with Admiral Vance on whether or not to allow the students to attend the negotiations with Betazed. How annoyed he’d been by that gesture, by the whole meeting where he’d felt he’d failed at properly representing the War College’s view! And how frustrating it’d been to witness how she and her cadets, especially Caleb, had almost wrecked the success of those negotiations until she had, somehow, turned things around!
“It was a miracle,” he sighed, almost forgetting where was in the moment.
“What?” Nahla was still upright on the couch, although he could see that she had trouble focusing on him.
“I was recollecting the amazing coup you pulled off at the last minute with the Betazoids when you persuaded them to rejoin the Federation,” he smiled at her, and pushed the cup of tea out of her sight.
“Just the start of a string of other amazing things I did,” she snorted, “ending, of course, with the thousands of lives lost when I made some great decisions to help Nus Braka meet his goals.”
The sound of that monster’s name on her lips caused that pain in his insides to flare up again. As he’d done so many times before, he ignored it. He refused to take his eyes and attention off this woman who needed someone, him, so badly.
“You really had no other choice, Nahla,” he countered, his voice firm and gentle. “It wasn’t like we had better alternatives. We did the best we could at the time.”
Her harsh laugh echoed dramatically in the quietness of his chambers.
“Is that an instance of your biting wit, Commander?” she leaned close to him, and he almost flinched at the strong smell of liquor on her breath. “Or is it what you tell yourself to allow yourself to taste to the waters of Lethe?”
“I’m not quite sure what that is,” he kept his gaze steady and his voice low but firm. “But I never say what I don’t mean.”
She stared at him for a long time before closing her eyes and sighing. He watched her breath return to a somewhat normal cadence.
“You’re right,” she finally whispered. “But you’re wrong. It was all written before it happened. Before we, I, invited Braka. Before the Miyazaki’s experiment with the Singularity Drive. My son died…I killed him, but that was all going to happen anyway. Before the Burn. Before the Federation, and even the warp drive. We couldn’t have changed anything. Don’t you see?”
“I can confidently say I do not,” the words fell out of his mouth before he could stop himself, and he cursed himself for his lack of control.
She squealed with laughter, and clapped her hands like a child.
“Oh, Kelrec,” her voice was high and brittle, “the more things change…you stay the same!”
“Nahla,” he was alarmed by her manic tone, the hectic color in her cheeks, “please for God’s sake…”
“Ah, God!” she continued in the same high voice, “let’s talk about Him…Her, Them, shall we? Oh, the Gods I’ve spoken to…”
“Nahla, please,” he may as well have been pleading with a wall. “You musn’t…”
“You’re right, Commander!” she sounded as triumphant as a team of cadets who’d won the Calica Championships. “There was indeed nothing we could’ve done differently!”
“That’s not what I mea…,” but she interrupted him with her giddy laugh again.
“But it is!” she crowed, throwing her arms around him, “everything was determined billions of years ago! I couldn’t have saved my son! None of us couldn’t have saved any of the cadets or those on the station!”
“Admit it, Kelrec,” she was shaking him now, her arms clamped on his shoulders, “there is a logic to my logic. Everything was set in motion, eons ago…before…”
“Nahla,” he gently pried her hands off his shoulders, and brought them down to rest on his lap, “this is not about your logic. This is not about our destiny. It’s about you.”
“How?” she pulled her hands away and pouted.
“What’s most important at present, in this moment, is to make sense of the experience,” he slowly reached forward, one breath at a time, to cup her face in his hands.
“No,” she shrank back a little, but he didn’t let his hands drop, “no, I can’t. Don’t make me…I won’t let you…”
“No one will make you do anything you don’t want to,” his palms were still held out toward her.
“I don’t believe you,” she said, but he could detect a waver in her tone.
“My lovely Nahla,” he sighed, past caring what he sounded like, “how can I make you believe that for you to process, to really make sense of the tragedy we went through, you need to begin to forgive yourself?”
“You think I haven’t tried to process it?” her eyes spilled over with tears. “I keep going over it, thinking about causality. Causality and probability. An infinite number of possibilities appear the moment I close my eyes. I keep my lips clamped shut, try not to open my mouth to eat, can you believe it, because whenever I do, an impossible number of choices pour out of it, begging to be expressed…”
“How…?” he could barely speak the words.
“So I don’t eat or drink, except for aqua vitae…” she mimed holding up a bottle and uncorking it. “You won’t believe how much a carafe of good, strong liquor on a coffee table helps to…”
His mouth fell wide open in shock, and his throat turned dry as a bone as she continued rambling. Her health was worse than he’d imagined.
And it would take way longer than he dreamed of to restore it.
But in the midst of this terrible realization, there was still one thing he knew, he vowed, he could control.
He would never leave her side.
Two days later
It was late, very late when the door to his quarters chimed. He sighed and put down the book he was reading, popped a pill into his mouth, and muttered a “Come in”.
Cadet Master Lura Thok stepped in smartly and almost threw a salute. Kelrec, for all his worry and exhaustion, smiled to himself and considered telling her she should stand at ease before she sprained something.
But she wasn’t looking at him anymore. Her gaze had drifted to her left side, and down into the conversation pit where Nahla was alternately talking to herself, and counting something on her fingers. She didn’t glance at the two of them.
“Yes, Commander?” he softened his words at the look of worry that closely mirrored his own on Thok’s face, and she turned back to him.
“Chancellor, you’ve been here for 16 hours,” Thok’s voice was softer than he’d ever heard, “please let me relieve you so you can get some rest.”
“I’m alright, Lura,” he raised his voice a little. He was amused at the start of surprise she made as he used her first name.
A noise from the conversation pit drew their attention back to the disheveled Chancellor of Starfleet Academy who was now hammering sheets of paper filled with illegible scrawls into the cushioning with her fists and brightly colored pushpins she’d obtained from somewhere.
“But Sir,” he heard the plea in her voice, “I, we, are very fond of Chancellor Ake too. Won’t you let either Jett or I keep watch over her for some time?”
“I’ll be alright, Lura,” he stood up and clapped her on her back. “I need to do this.”
The Cadet Master sighed, made a slight bow, and left the room.
Kelrec didn’t make a move to pick up the book he was reading, but opened a pill box and tossed another antacid into this mouth. Then he walked down the steps into the conversation pit to join Nahla who was crumpling the papers into balls.
“Not happy with your work?” he crouched down beside her.
She grunted in disgust and flung one of the balls far away from her. The normally pristine floor was beginning to resemble a garbage can that had tipped over, covered as it was with discarded paper and plates of uneaten food. Cups of tea and coffee he tirelessly brewed for her sat there untouched and ignored. She’d refused to let any DoTs enter his quarters since he’d brought her here two nights ago.
“Too many pathways for my brain to follow,” she tugged savagely at her hair, a gesture he hadn’t noticed earlier.
“Then why not give it a rest?” he suggested, gently untangling her fingers from the frizzy, unwashed strands.
“I can’t stop,” she nodded robustly at the floor. “I need to find an answer, or I can’t live with the knowledge of what I’ve done.”
He felt a lump form in his throat at her words. For what seemed like the nth time in the past long hours, he forced himself to swallow, stay silent, and breathe sharply when the pain in his abdomen flared up again.
When he looked back at her, she was nursing a small cut on her little finger, bleeding from where a push pin had pricked it. He watched her fling the offending pin away, and prayed that she’d discarded the rest of them in a safer place.
He’d have used a dermal regenerator on the wound, but he’d learned during his “watch” that she no longer liked the idea of any medical intervention.
He walked back up the steps and brought his book down with him, keeping an eye on her at all times. She was scratching furiously at the cut under her chin, something else a regenerator could’ve healed in a second.
“Actually, I killed them all countless times,” she raised her head and stared into the mid-distance. “Remember what I said about causality and probability? Did I tell you about infinite reactions for every action? Or about…?”
He murmured a “hmm…” to her questions as she went on. Most times, that was a sufficient response to her seemingly infinite queries. He made a mental note to not reach for a third antacid until she’d stopped talking.
When he turned over the page of his book, the rustling noise must’ve suddenly registered with her, because in a second, she was by his side, squinting at the book’s title.
“How can you read at a time like this?” she demanded.
“It helps me think,” he replied calmly, closing it slowly.
“Ha! What do you need to think about? You have all the answers already!” she shrugged and turned away from him with a lightning-quick movement.
“Nobody does, my love,” he repeated the thought and the endearment with infinite patience.
“What’s it about?”
“It’s called the Bhagavad Gita,” he told her gently. “And it’s relevant to your, I mean, our situation.”
“The holy book of the Hindu faith,” she turned back and whispered, looking at it with some interest.
“And much more,” he smiled at her. “Advice dispensed to a soldier on a battlefield in the midst of a holy war. How to build resilience on the battleground, and in life, for one.”
For a moment, he thought he glimpsed the old Nahla again. The one with boundless curiosity and optimism in her eyes. She reached out her thin hand as if to take the book from him. Then just as suddenly her attention was gone, and she scurried away from him to the other corner of the room, muttering something about using PADDs instead of paper.
He returned to the Bhagavad Gita, reading on about the great warrior Arjuna describing the mind as restless, turbulent, obstinate, and stronger than the wind, making it nearly impossible to control. The God Krishna agrees but states that through constant practice and detachment, the mind can be subdued and trained, turning it from an enemy into a friend.
Soothed by the sage advice, at some point, the strain of the past few days began melting from his conscious mind. The next thing he knew, something was shaking him hard, nearly wrenching his shoulder from its socket.
“How could you sleep at a time like this?” Nahla demanded.
“I’m sorry,” he sat up immediately, “it’s been a long day. What were you saying?”
She glared at him. As if in response, the agonizing pain resurfaced deep in his gut, and before he could stop himself, his hand moved down to rub it. Damn.
He hoped she hadn’t noticed but glancing up, she saw her eyes widen a bit, then cloud over with concern.
“You were saying?” he asked again.
“Don’t change the subject, Zeeren,” she stared into his face. “You’re ill, aren’t you?”
“It’s nothing.”
“You’re in pain,” she whispered, reaching up to stroke his hair.
“Just some minor abdominal discomfort,” he winced again as the pain shot up in defiance of his lie.
“Since when…?”
“I’ll live, Nahla,” he smiled at her in what he hoped was a reassuring way, but he was also aware that he was gasping a little now.
“Sweating! You’re sweating more now than when you were heating up your room and the entire Pacific Ocean for the Alpherati to visit!”
“Nahla, that was…”
“Medical emergency! Calling the Doctor!” she shouted and got to her feet in a sudden movement. He scrambled to stand, using the couch as a support, his hand never leaving his stomach.
What did he expect? The Doctor, that damned EMH, materialized in the center of the room.
“Please state the nature of the…” he parroted.
“Doctor, Nahla, please” Kelrec reached out and placed a hand on her upper arm. “I’m a little busy right now, helping a friend.”
The Doctor looked like he’d heard the words of a ghost.
“What…what did you say?” he stammered, his hands flying to his throat.
“I said…,” Kelrec began, but was cut off by Nahla.
“Zeeren,” she reached out and gently stroked his neck, “please let the Doctor treat you. Please, you need to go to Sickbay right away.”
“But how can I leave you?” Kelrec wasn’t sure if his eyes were tearing up with the pain in his gut or the one in his heart.
“I’ll be alright, my love,” it was his turn to give a little start of surprise on hearing those words on her lips. “Go, please. I’ll be here in the morning, and…after.”
“Sure?” he desperately wanted to believe her.
“Yes. I don’t want to be responsible for any more suffering.”
Both of them ignored the Doctor who was now shaking his head in shock, muttering the words, “Impossible”, “Captain Janeway”, and “Déjà vu” to himself.
“Good night,” despite the pain spiraling upwards, Kelrec couldn’t resist leaning over and planting a kiss on her forehead, “and if you need anything…”
“I’ll call,” she reached up and cupped his cheek in her palm. He saw she’d retrieved her Starfleet combadge from somewhere in the mess around them, and was gently dusting it off on her uniform with her other hand.
As the Doctor and Zeeren beamed out of the room to Sickbay, Nahla walked over to the couch and picked up the book he had been reading.
The page that it fell open to was Chapter 2. She sat down, placed it on her lap, and read aloud Verse 47.
“You have a right to perform your prescribed duty, but you are not entitled to the fruits of action. Let the fruit of action be not thy motive, nor let thy attachment be to inaction.”
She bowed her head, closed her eyes as the wisdom from the words of the Gita flowed through her, and let the healing begin.
THE END