the tidings from our fading sun made me wiser (star trek | deanna/laren, nerys)

[fiachairecht]

the tidings from our fading sun made me wiser. star trek (tng + ds9), deanna/laren, nerys. things settle after the war, but the shape of things to come isn't quite clear. 1.6k words, rated t. for the trek-rarepair-swap.

The war ends slower than it began. Deanna feels it at the edges of her mind: a loosening, like the entire quadrant is learning how to breathe again at once. She can't make it go away: all the shields ever created by every Betazoid who ever lived could never hide such a fundamental shift in the emotional landscape of so many millions of people. It's a good one, Deanna thinks, but it's tiring.

Reconstruction progresses slower still, one mind, one ship, one planet at a time and Deanna's mind is overflowing with pieces she never should have had to put back together. But she moves forward. Somewhere along the way she'd forgotten how to do anything else.

It's Beverly who finally convinces her she needs to take a break, over hot chocolate one night when Deanna had sunk so deep into her post-yoga meditation that it had taken her nearly half an hour to claw her way back from her carefully spun bunker of silence. Deanna, she says, and her concern would be warm if it weren't so suffocating. Promise me you'll take a break. Just a day or two, when we dock at Deep Space Nine.

She wants to say, No. Wants to say, I'm needed here. But things on the Enterprise are moving differently now, feelings settling into something whole and slow and relentless in a way that chills her even more than the tide of war had.

So instead she says, Okay. I promise. Rests her head on Beverly's shoulder as they watch the stars outside Ten Forward's windows slip further and further away and tries not to think too much about how much more welcoming those stars feel brushing against her shields than the tight cold humanity of recovery that she's been helping build feels when it reaches out for her as well.

*

Kira greets her at the airlock in a Starfleet uniform and smiles as if the captain's pips on her collar aren't sharp enough to pierce her skin. It isn't fair, Deanna thinks, that a uniform she fought for so hard should sit so uneasily on a woman who never wanted it.

"Welcome to Deep Space Nine, Commander," Kira says, and she is warm and genuine in a way that makes Deanna feel burned with its unexpectedness.

"Thank you," she says, and hesitates before adding, "Colonel". Deanna doesn't flinch at hearing her rank instead of her title, and Kira relaxes at hearing her Bajoran rank.

Kira shrugs. "The uniform's just politics, really. All we've done for them and Starfleet still doesn't like seeing mostly militia uniforms in Ops, even when they're supposed to be pulling out."

There's a space in Deanna's mouth that would once have been filled with an instinctive denial, but all that sits there now is the memory that Starfleet mourned Betazed's fall not for Betazed but for the important worlds that could fall next. Maybe the Bajorans were right all along.

As they walk towards the Promenade, however, all she says is, "You do it more honour than some others I've known." Even that feels hollow, though, because on this station she is breathing again, colours ebbing back into waves of emotion breaking gently on her shields, and this, she thinks, is what the rest of the galaxy must have felt when they heard the war was over.

Kira doesn't give her a response, doesn't, in fact, say anything at all until they're standing outside Quark's. "I hope you enjoy your stay here, Commander. And while you're here, there's ... someone you should see." She glances up to the neon sign above them and Deanna can't read what the lights write on her skin.

"Who?" Deanna asks, but Kira just smiles, small and secret.

"You'll know," she says, and Deanna watches as she leaves. Wonders what she thinks she knows.

*

Deep Space Nine was their first and last hope during the war, even during the endless nights when it rocked cold and sharp in the Cardassian hands that built it but never felt for it. In the silence of the after war that even reconstruction can't break it still feels like more of a beginning than anything new Deanna has been helping to build.

She returns to Quark's having done little more to get settled than drop her bag in her quarters and change her clothes. He serves her a drink and a warning about empaths cheating at dabo, and she smiles blankly at him until he scurries away.

Beginnings, she thinks as she turns to search for a table, this was ever the place for them, even if she can't yet make sense of the possibilities collecting at the back of her mind like a late-summer storm.

Until something draws her gaze to the far corner of the floor, to what passes for a private table, and one mind rises brighter, sharper above the rest and, oh, Kira was right, she does know.

Ro's profile hasn't changed, same inverted earring and same cloth headband, but the years sit easier on her. In the time since Deanna last saw her Starfleet lost an officer but Ro gained herself, and Deanna wonders, suddenly, at the wisdom of bringing back old memories.

"Counselor Troi," Ro says when she gets closer, and she speaks so softly that for a moment Deanna isn't sure whether she'd spoken aloud or if she's imagining things, giving voice to the nameless energies she's felt in the station's walls since coming aboard. But then Ro raises a hand to beckon her over, and there's nothing for Deanna to do but take the offered seat.

"Deanna," she says instead of a greeting, and something that might be a smile flickers around Ro's mouth at her directness. "I'm off duty, and you're not Starfleet anymore."

Ro inclines her head in acknowledgment. "Laren, then," she says after only the briefest hesitation, and this, too, is unexpected.

They drink in silence for a long while, long enough that Deanna thinks that maybe this is all that's needed, that this one gesture of repair can be enough for them, if not for anything else.

"I'm sorry about Betazed," Laren finally says. She doesn't meet Deanna's eyes but her hands are so close to Deanna's on the small table, close enough that Deanna can't help but think of a time when there was too little memory between them to hurt this much.

"I'm sorry it took me until then to understand," she replies. Once upon a time she had stood on the Enterprise's bridge and made a call that she never expected she would have had to make, and she had been lucky she was right. The longer the future takes to unfold, though, the less sure she is that she learned the right lessons.

Laren finally does meet her eyes, then, and she's skeptical. "Do you, really?" she asks. "You're still with them."

"They're my family." She's not sure, anymore that that's enough.

"Your crew's your family, maybe." Laren's laugh is bitter and subsides too quickly. "What are you doing here, anyway? It's a couple months too late for the big bad Enterprise to sweep in and save the day."

"I'm not here for Starfleet," Deanna says, and the words tumble out too quickly, like a justification, but the station hums in contentment anyway. She refocuses on Laren, wills herself to believe it's only her feelings she's picking up.

Laren quirks an eyebrow at her. "Running away doesn't seem like your style, though, I'll admit, this is as good a place as any for it. Might be the best chance any of us have to start over again for a while."

Her voice is low, her fingers are finding their way around Deanna's wrists and tightening just short of pain. Curiosity and arousal alike spiral through Deanna, twisting just enough to remind her that not all of their memories together hurt. Spreading across her mind almost thick enough to reinforce her shields.

"You feel it too?"

"Not like you." Laren shakes her head, and Deanna watches light spark from her earring like it wants to leap out and consume the parts of the station left standing. "But I know what the Federation's like when they think they've won."

And suddenly Deanna can't bear it anymore, and she slips her wrists from Laren's grip so she can get up and circle around the table and kiss her, sharp and sweet. Laren tastes like raspberries and synthehol as she kisses back, and when Deanna feels her smile against her mouth she thinks it might even be close to genuine.

"That wasn't as new as we'd like to pretend, was it," she asks, but it's not a question, not really, and Deanna just shakes her head.

*

"You could be different, you know," Laren says, after, tracing nonsense patterns on Deanna's bare back. "Starfleet isn't, but you could be."

Deanna laughs into her pillow. "Are you offering me a pardon?"

Laren's fingers still on her skin, and Deanna cranes her head as best she can to try to see her eyes. "No," Laren says, "not even if it were that simple."

She's right, Deanna knows it, can feel the way Laren's heart — and Kira's, and Quark's, and most of the rest of the Militia crew's and even some of the Starfleet officers' — beats in time with the electricity running through the station. They won't leave, they'll be protected from what's coming, or maybe they'll be the vanguard of it.

She tugs Laren down so they're lying face to face. "You know that's why I can't stay, then." When she reaches out with all her senses she can feel the station, can feel Bajor. She can't feel the Enterprise. She can almost feel Betazed.

Laren buries her face in Deanna's curls, rests her fingers against her lips. "Damn you for making me want that," she whispers.

Outside the wormhole opens, and Deanna doesn't respond.

Also on Ad Astra.