Chapter Text
The lighting in their Curiosity quarters had cycled to morning, warmer than the corridor, with that slight crispness the ship's recyclers gave the air, cleaner than DS9's, less lived-in. The hum underneath everything was the ship's, not the station's. Lower. Steadier.
Ezri stood in front of the mirror in her uniform jacket, mostly dressed, the collar of her undershirt slightly off-center. She wasn't looking at the collar. Her thumb was on her left pip, then her right, then her left again.
The pips were two days old. The promotion ceremony had been small. She had cried a little.
Behind her, Julian came out of the bedroom buttoning his own jacket (Lieutenant Commander, like hers, but his pips weren't new). He stopped when he saw her in the mirror. Then crossed to her without speaking and stood at her shoulder, watching her watch herself.
JULIAN: (smiling) You're going to do great.
She made a small sound that wasn't quite a laugh. Her thumb stayed on the pip.
EZRI: I'm not.
JULIAN: You are.
EZRI: Julian.
JULIAN: Ezri.
She turned from the mirror to look at him directly. He held the look without speaking.
EZRI: I feel like an ensign.
He waited.
EZRI: Like I just got out of the Academy and someone handed me pips and a seminar and said, here, train counselors, you'll be fine.
She turned back to the mirror. The pips were still there.
EZRI: I keep waiting for someone to walk into the seminar room and ask why a cadet is running it.
JULIAN: You're not a cadet.
EZRI: I know.
JULIAN: You're a lieutenant commander and the senior counselor on the most psychologically complicated post in Starfleet.
EZRI: I've been the senior counselor for maybe two years, Julian.
JULIAN: Experience on Deep Space Nine counts double.
She gave him a look in the mirror. He held it.
JULIAN: It does. Ask anyone who's worked here.
EZRI: That's not a metric.
JULIAN: It should be.
He didn't push.
Somewhere in the ship, a turbolift settled. The sound carried faintly through the deck.
EZRI: And then I feel like I'm three hundred and sixty years old and I should be standing in front of these counselors imparting deep wisdom.
EZRI: Audrid raised four children. Lela negotiated the second-stage Bel-Tarsis accords. Tobin published the lectures that the Academy still teaches in second-year theoretical. And I'm standing there with my notes. And my outline. And a gag gift Kira gave Jadzia at her lieutenant commander promotion that I almost packed by accident this morning because I'm clearly not coping.
JULIAN: Did you pack it?
EZRI: No.
JULIAN: Then you're coping.
She looked at him in the mirror. He met her eyes there, not turning his head.
EZRI: That's not actually an answer.
JULIAN: It's not. Sorry. I keep wanting to give you the answer. There isn't one. You're going to feel like an ensign and three hundred and sixty years old simultaneously for probably the entire week, and you're going to teach the seminar anyway, and at some point on day three someone is going to ask you a question you didn't prepare for and the answer is going to come from somewhere you weren't expecting and they'll write it down.
EZRI: You don't know that.
JULIAN: I do, actually.
EZRI: How.
JULIAN: Because I've watched you do it.
He paused.
JULIAN: Sorry. I wasn't going to say that part. I was going to stop at the answer-coming-from-somewhere thing. That was the better stopping point.
She laughed quietly. Her thumb finally left the pip.
JULIAN: Sorry.
EZRI: No. I needed the part you weren't going to say.
He let her have that. She went back to the mirror, this time actually looking at the collar, straightening it. The pips were where they were supposed to be.
EZRI: When Curzon was first asked to teach diplomacy, he turned it down. Twice. Said he wasn't ready. He was sixty-eight.
JULIAN: And?
EZRI: And he was right. He wasn't ready. He was very not ready. The first cohort he eventually taught, three of them filed grievances.
She smoothed the collar flat.
JULIAN: What did he do differently the second time?
EZRI: He started smaller. He picked one cadet and just talked to them. And that worked, so he did it with two. And by the time he taught the formal seminar, he wasn't teaching it from a syllabus. He was teaching it from having actually done the smaller thing first.
JULIAN: Hm.
EZRI: What?
JULIAN: Nothing. I was just thinking that's basically what Curiosity is.
She looked at him.
JULIAN: Pick the small thing that works. Then expand it. Then when you finally get to the formal version, you're not pretending. You're describing what you've actually been doing.
He paused.
JULIAN: I'm not trying to make this about my project.
EZRI: You're a little trying.
JULIAN: I'm a little trying.
She turned all the way around to face him. The collar was straight. The pips were on. The ship's hum continued underneath everything, indifferent.
EZRI: I don't have a small thing. I have a seminar. Starting in...
She glanced at the chrono.
EZRI: ...forty-three minutes.
JULIAN: So you'll find the small thing inside the seminar.
EZRI: That's not how it works.
JULIAN: It might be.
She looked at him for a long moment.
JULIAN: You're allowed to be unconvinced. I'm just... I'm telling you what I see. Which is that you're going to do this, and parts of it are going to be hard, and you're going to come home tonight and tell me about the parts that were hard, and I'm going to make you tea, and tomorrow you're going to do it again.
EZRI: That's a depressing pep talk.
JULIAN: It's a realistic pep talk.
EZRI: It's a Julian pep talk.
JULIAN: Yes.
She put her hand on his chest, briefly. Just contact. He covered her hand with his own without looking down at it.
EZRI: Forty-two minutes.
JULIAN: Tea?
EZRI: Please.
He went to the replicator. She turned back to the mirror one more time. The pips caught the light. She held her own gaze for a long beat.
Behind her, the replicator chimed.
JULIAN: Eighty-two degrees. Not eighty-five. Eighty-five is too hot for the chamomile blend, it pulls the bitterness out of the...
EZRI: Julian.
JULIAN: Right. Sorry.
She let her thumb find the pip one more time, and then let her hand drop.