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Darem Reymi is emotionally unstable. He is troubled with mood swings, anxiety and a quick temper, all of which he has failed to control to an appropriate degree, although he has clearly made considerable effort in this area. He is compliant to an extent that would likely be a shortcoming in a military leader; he craves structure, routines and affirmation; yet in psychological testing he showed a paradoxical desire to rebel against the same structures that he uses as a crutch. In anyone else, his internal drive to excel would be an asset; in Darem, who tends towards personality extremes, it is merely unmanageable. It is likely that his past episodes of burnout will recur under the Academy regime, which has proven too stressful for stronger young men. Indeed, he is known to find stress overwhelming, at times; another paradox, given his multiple commendations for bravery during his year of service in the Khionian Reserve Forces. His willingness to sacrifice his safety and comfort for others would be laudable if these were not manifestations of self-destructive tendencies. Darem’s commitment to his future role as Jvera of the Khionian Realm is not in doubt. However, he has not yet managed to rid himself of these significant flaws, which are unbecoming regardless of whether he is applying to the Academy with diplomatic or service goals. We commend you for your work in keeping his medical history confidential, in light of his future marriage, but we cannot recommend him as fit to take up his place at Starfleet Academy. You are within your rights to seek a second opinion.
- Letter from the Khionian Military Medical Council in response to a request for a recommendation of fitness to serve in Starfleet.
He’s standing in an almost-empty hallway when the tsunami rolls in.
They’re just back from a training exercise. Nothing big — just a trip to Wolf 359 and back, with a quick stop on the first planet’s moon to check the shuttle’s condition and supplies. Darem was piloting; Sam was at ops. A War College cadet Darem barely remembered meeting before had the conn, but she was good at it. It was all going fine.
Until they hit the asteroid belt.
By the time they get back, it's almost past curfew. Darem ducks out before anyone can yell at him and call it debriefing. It’s quiet in the hallways. Most of the cadets will be in their rooms, at least the ones who aren’t on night training shifts. He starts towards his room.
Not his room. Not unless he wants Ocam to bother him about whether he’s okay, and seeing through any acceptable answer to that — and, fuck it, now Caleb’s inevitable snarky replies to the same question are running through his head. He turns around and starts floundering towards the mess hall — but that’s out, too. Genesis haunts the place late at night.
His legs aren’t taking him much further anyway. The hallway is blurry and his chest hurts and he really, really needs to focus on not having a complete breakdown like a coddled child in the middle of an Academy full of the galaxy’s brightest and best, and he’s sure as hell not counting himself in that description today.
He’s slumped on the floor against the wall with his head in his hands before he can even start railing at himself to remember who and where he is.
You think cadets who can’t handle the pressure get to graduate top of their Academy class? You think sniveling children get to be captains?
By the time Jett Reno finds him, he’s midway through practicing a battle breathing pattern. He’s working as hard as ever to make it look like practice, anyway. No one needs to know this is how he fends off a meltdown, when he can’t just shift into his aquatic form and swim away from whatever’s freaking him the hell out. (No one needs to know how much he fucking hates this, when he goes from capable to broken faster than transwarp.) Unless he wants to jump through the observatory window and join the whales in the bay — and the security holos tend to frown on that — he’s going to have to stay here and keep breathing. Reno can wait.
She sits down on the floor beside him. His jaw is tight, waiting for her to chew him out for not coming to the debrief, but it never comes. He doesn’t know if she’s letting him finish his lhyene pattern or just giving him some space. It’s more kindness than he can handle, either way. If she yelled at him, it would be a better distraction. Familiar.
Darem starts to say something. Nothing comes out.
He turns away, breathing raw and ragged again.
“Take your time,” Reno says quietly. “You already missed the debriefing. I’ve got nowhere to be.”
He nods. Closes his eyes. He’s fine. His goddamn feelings don’t control him. He does.
“I screwed up,” he finally gets out, hollow voice betraying all his secrets.
Beside him, Reno chuckles. Another shot of rage-fuelled rejection sensitivity bites through his gut. He winces. Till he risks a glance, and her face is still kind.
“A minor screw-up, kid.” She pats him on the shoulder. “You know how many cadets have dinged that exact shuttle over the past year? You barely dented it. You can apologise to the technicians, if you want, but they’re gonna be gleeful as a pile of tribbles when they get to pull out the programmable matter and play ‘who can make the most invisible join on the hull plating’ tomorrow. They’re not even gonna ask which horrible failure of a cadet was responsible.” She winks.
Darem has said all of three words, and she gives him all that back. Jett Reno is far too perceptive with her students. That, or she’s seen too many of his struggles up close this year. He doesn’t know which of those ideas he likes less.
His thoughts are finally starting to organise themselves into some kind of order, instead of short-circuiting his brain all at once. “We ended up in an asteroid field. I misjudged.”
“Yes, you did,” she agrees, in that no-nonsense tone she takes with her cadets. “Space is full of shit, kid. You’re gonna fly into some of it, especially while you’re still learning.” Sharp eyes narrow at him. “We’ll reschedule the debriefing for later. I don’t think the blow-by-blow of all the technical ways you screwed up is going to help now. And that’s not what’s really bothering you, is it?”
He blows out a shaky breath, though getting steadier. “I misjudged because I was freaking out.”
“Panic attack?”
“Not exactly. I get… overwhelmed.” It knots his gut up, hearing himself say it out loud.
Darem Reymi is emotionally unstable.
“Ah,” Reno says. Soft, like this is barely news to her. “You’re not the first nugget who’s ever lost their shit in their early flying days. I told you about the considerable numbers of shuttles I totalled, didn’t I?” When she pats his shoulder this time, she’s a little more careful about it.
The thought that she’s figuring him out is both a relief and shameful at once. “Yeah, but somehow you don’t strike me as someone who’d freak out about it, Commander.”
“On the outside? Excellently calibrated inertial dampeners. But everyone’s a mess in here.” She pats her chest and gives him a wry grin. “Sometimes more than you’d think.”
Whatever life lesson she’s trying to impart this time, he’s clearly just too broken to get it. Much like a shuttle some idiot just pounded through an asteroid field. “But you’re good in a crisis. I’m…”
Reno just waits for him to finish.
A shot of pain draws his gaze to his clenched fists. Nails digging into his palms. “Sometimes I don't know if I'm cut out for this, Commander.”
The sound she makes is half amused, half sad. “Reymi. If you’re not, we’re all doomed. Starting with me.” She returns his disbelieving look. “What, you think I joined Starfleet so I could be a shining example of an officer? That’s not the motivation you need to be looking for, hotshot. You could start by taking some of that pressure off yourself. Might help with the whole…” She gestures at him. The remains of his walls; the fallen rubble he’s sitting in.
Darem swallows the reply he wants to give that. As if there could ever be too much pressure on him. The part she didn’t quite say about herself is more interesting, anyway. “You’re a hero. You and the Discovery crew. You turned up out of the past like mythical creatures and helped save the Federation. The galaxy.”
He almost flinches at her coarse laugh, where he’s still prickly at the edges. Thin-scaled. Fragile. Short-fused, touchy little—
“Thanks for that. Make me sound like some ancient legend, why don't you? No, I went for a joyride on the ship that rescued me because I had nothing much to live for in the 23rd century, that’s all. Then I was just in the right place at the right time for the rest of it.”
Darem wants to call bullshit on that, if only in his head, but the commander doesn’t sound like she’s kidding.
She tilts her head at him, as if she's weighing something up. “You know much about the first Klingon-Federation war?”
“A bit.” The idea of a devastating war with the Klingons, one of whom lives down the hall and distracts him in bridge simulations on a regular basis, is distant. Ancient history.
“A bit will do. Before Discovery, I served on the—” Reno’s eyes are fixed on something very far away. Or very long ago. “Doesn’t matter. A ship the Klingons decimated. I kept the crew alive for nearly a year. What was left of them, anyway.”
The brutality is the first thing that’s shocked him out of his self-pity in half an hour. Even in a post-Burn universe, that’s too intense to begin to imagine. “Where were the medics?”
She gives him a flat look. ”We were a little short in the medical department. And the engineering department, and security, and command…” She spreads her hands. “Want me to keep listing departments, or have you done the math now?”
“Fuck,” Darem mutters. He hasn’t forgotten he’s in the presence of an officer. The story just seems to require it.
Reno nods her agreement. “And I didn’t do any of it because I wanted to be the best of the best. I joined Starfleet because my life had gone to hell. And then it got worse.” Her chuckle hurts.
At this point, Darem has almost forgotten he was having a meltdown. “Am I meant to be listening out for your patented wisdom here? You’re not helping me feel much better about my life choices, but I don’t think you’re trying to.”
“Nope.” She turns to smirk at him. “I’m at the Academy to tell it like it is, before all of you make the same mistakes.”
He doesn’t buy that one either. “So you really weren’t trying to be the best engineer in the fleet?”
She shrugs. “I am, so there was no trying there. Brace yourself for the wisdom, kid. I just did what needed to be done. That worked out okay for eleven people who, last I heard, were all still alive when I went off on my joyride through time.” She tilts her head pointedly at him. “But you can believe I did plenty of freaking out in between, before we got rescued.”
That forthright clarity about her strengths and weaknesses alike; the quiet confidence, that she is who she is. If Darem let himself, he could waste time wishing he was that way.
What needed to be done.
“I don’t know if I could do something like that.”
“What, save a few lives?” Reno gives him a disbelieving little chuckle. “Reymi, the day you turned up on this ship, you were masking harder than I’ve ever seen from anyone — shields all the way up — and clearly losing it. If only in here, huh?” Her wry smile doesn’t change as she taps her chest, but she’s not making fun of him. “And then you took a spacewalk out on the hull and saved us all. I heard you literally peeled off the mask. Sorry, not looking to squash your metaphor.”
His lips actually twitch at the last part. “Okay, but that was nothing,” he insists, before he wonders why he’s doing that. “It was—”
Reno raises her eyebrows. “—what needed to be done?”
For once, Darem doesn’t have a snarky comeback for that.
She pushes herself to her feet. Darem gets a glimpse of the effort it takes, even as he’s trying not to notice. Commander Reno may not talk much about the chronic illness that was half the reason she left Discovery and took up a teaching post, but she doesn’t hide it, either. Not inspiring, he corrects his shitty inner voice. Just doing what needs to be done.
Reno’s eyes linger on him, where he’s still sitting back against the wall. “You talk to the Academy counselors, don’t you, kid?”
He shrugs at the floor. “I haven't got the best history with mental health professionals.”
“Don’t care. Go talk about the freaking out. They’ll give you more of the good advice, less of the stories about dying fellow crewmembers.”
Darem would roll his eyes, if not for the officer thing. “Is that an order, Commander?”
”No, just a word to the wise. Listen to your much-elders and mostly-betters.” She pats his shoulder, one last time. “Oh, and Reymi?”
He’s almost glad she’s not giving him time to thank her. “Yes, Commander?”
“You think you’re not cut out to be an officer?” Her shoulders shake in a little laugh as she walks away. “I had to embellish parts of my resume to get into Starfleet. They wouldn’t have been keen on my book-smuggling era, for a start.”
Darem’s wide eyes follow her. “You lied on your resume?”
“Embellished!” she calls back, disappearing around the curve of the hallway.
He drops his head against the wall, laughing quietly.
A moment later, Reno’s head pokes back around the corner. “Parts!”
He sits there a little while longer, picking up the battle breathing pattern where he left off. There’s no rush.
His mind wanders to an asteroid field. A spacewalk on a hull. A calica pitch. A noisy table in an overcrowded mess hall. His father’s office. His wedding day.
Then he gets up and carries on towards the mess hall. Maybe he’ll see if his friends are still awake.