‘I’m sorry,’ said Thawn as she walked into Rhade’s quarters, even though the moment she said it, she realised she was sick of apologising. ‘I know you’ve been dragged back into my family even though you were out…’

‘It would have been premature for me to feel like I was “out” before our families said their piece,’ Rhade said delicately, watching her stride over to the wide breakfast table. ‘Would you like some tea?’

‘Please.’ Her gaze swept the rooms, the comfortable suites of a senior officer on a starbase as big as a town. ‘…I can see why you upgraded from Endeavour.’

‘Mm. I’m a bureaucrat here. It is tiresome, sometimes, and I think Commodore Rourke feels the same. The more Gateway is embedded as a hub of intense local politics, larger local operations, the more we are but a command post deep behind the lines. Several steps away from everything meaningful.’ The grumble carried him through his collection of two steaming mugs and jestral tea from the replicator, and he shook his head as he joined her at the tall table and stools by the holographic window. ‘But you didn’t come to listen to me complain about work.’

‘I should be willing to, though.’ Thawn took the tea and wrapped her fingers around the mug, drawing on its comforting warmth. ‘Should have been willing to.’

His frown deepened. ‘If you are feeling anything like guilt about us, Rosara…’

‘Of course I do. Of course I should. You and I weren’t right for each other, refused to talk about it, refused to acknowledge it to ourselves, and dragged ourselves through two years of living together and hurting ourselves and people around us. I can’t stand in judgement of anything you did, Adamant.’

‘I feel my offences are worse…’

Thawn drew a sharp breath. ‘I’m sorry about Dathan,’ she said in a rush. ‘It’s horrible. It’s horrible she lied. It’s horrible she lied and still saved us all, and then died. I can’t imagine what you’ve gone through. You must have felt so terribly, terribly guilty.’

He looked away, gaze clouded. ‘I should have known something was wrong.’

‘I mean guilty for wanting something you felt you couldn’t have, and it then turning out to be… poison? A lie? A half-truth? She did save us.’ Her heart sank. She hadn’t come here to discuss Dathan and her betrayal. And yet, that was so much part of everything. ‘I think you saved her so she could save us.’

Rhade’s hands came up to scrub his face. ‘You weren’t wrong to be so angry with me when you found out, though.’

‘Maybe not. But this is part of us not actually talking. Because I wasn’t just hurt about you. I was guilty.’ She sipped tea to delay her next words, feeling her heart thump in her chest. ‘Nate and I didn’t come out of nowhere. We weren’t… there wasn’t an affair… but we knew we had feelings for each other.’

When his expression fell, she saw as much guilt still there as hurt. ‘I didn’t ask because it’s not my business.’

‘We really should be each other’s business, Adamant. Even if we’re not getting married.’ She drummed her fingers on the edge of the mug. ‘We should have been each other’s business more.’

He eyed her, cautious. ‘We were right to separate, Rosara. You were right. I know your aunt is being terribly… pushy…’

‘I don’t have doubts. That’s not what this is about. At the very least…’ Thawn winced. ‘I don’t think you’d take me back now.’

‘No,’ said Rhade delicately, ‘because it wouldn’t be right for either of us.’

‘And I appreciate you falling on your sword, taking the blame for the arrangement dissolving.’

‘It’s the least I can do, and it’s hardly an inconvenience…’

‘It’s not, Adamant.’ She bit her lip. ‘We both know it could cost you a future in the Royal Guard. Isn’t that what you always wanted?’

‘Eventually.’ Rhade shifted his weight. ‘Once, perhaps. I’m not so sure now. After so long out here, I don’t know if I could settle for a life of ceremonial comfort before I’m ready to retire. I thought our people needed their traditions upheld and rebuilt after the war, and they do, but… not as badly as people need us out here.’

‘See?’ she said quietly. ‘That’s exactly the sort of change I should have already known about.’

He watched her for a moment, gaze flickering. Then he leaned forward. ‘I do not know if there is a way through your aunt without some sacrifice. Perhaps you were right to appease her in the short term by highlighting Lieutenant Beckett’s familial connections, but… even if he had agreed the other night, would he continue to agree? Would you want him to?’

‘I think he could have gotten us through these few days. Sent Anatras off happy. But you’re not wrong. It wouldn’t last forever.’

‘Especially as – forgive me if I am being forward – you and Lieutenant Beckett have only just begun a relationship.’

Her gaze dropped to the teacup. ‘You’re right,’ she said softly. ‘Anything could happen. It’s not like we’re about to get married. And then I’d be right back to square one with Anatras.’

Rhade sucked his teeth, apprehensive. ‘After Whixby… after all of this… I am not sure you could ever do enough to make her happy. We were married – then she wanted us wed in the Betazoid custom. Then she would want us to leave Starfleet, live a life of society on Betazed. It is almost as if that future we saw together was not your idyll, or even my idyll – but hers.’

Thawn swallowed, her throat tight. ‘No wonder it felt like a trap,’ she said with an apologetic smile.

‘I had not realised just how much you did not want that until you left me,’ Rhade said, equally apologetic.

‘I don’t think I did, either.’

‘I think it is an unavoidable truth that trying to please your aunt is impossible. Not without sacrificing yourself.’

Thawn sipped the tea as if delaying answering would delay thinking. But the words had to come out. ‘So I have to stand my ground. Regardless of the consequences.’

‘It will be difficult. She may be angry. But regardless of how she reacts, you are family. The disappointment will pass. It’s more important that you stand up for what you want and need.’ He gave a sad smile. ‘You know what that is, now.’

‘Do I?’

‘Have you spoken about this with Beckett?’

‘I… some. He was angry about me bringing his family – his father – into the situation. Which I should have anticipated, but I thought it would work. It was working.’ Thawn looked away at the projected window, jaw tightening. ‘I don’t know if I was unreasonable to ask it of him. It feels like a small thing for him to play along just for a little while, but was it too much?’

‘That sounds,’ said Rhade gently, ‘all the more like you should speak with him properly. Don’t make the same mistakes we did, Rosara.’

‘I’m not, I… How do you do it? Have done it? Proper relationships?’

‘I don’t understand.’

‘He gets so uncomfortable at the idea of my telepathy, like I’ll read his secrets, and I get it. But everyone’s been like that since I left for the Academy – since I stopped living on Betazed – and it’s…’ She tried to not wring her fingers together. ‘It’s hard to make these connections the way they do.’ As if the world wanted to prove her point, when she looked up at him, his expression was inscrutable to her. ‘What?’

‘You think it is from leaving Betazed and living among non-telepaths that has made it difficult for you to connect with others?’

‘I… of course. Don’t you find it hard?’

‘I find that non-telepaths are sometimes uncomfortable with the honesty we practice at home,’ mused Rhade. ‘But I have found courtesies and etiquette smooth this over. Rosara, you were never at home with that honesty. Even before the Academy.’

‘What?’

‘I know we were never close, but even if we spent time together when you were a teenager or younger, you… you were always closed off.’ His brow was furrowing. ‘I did not think you struggled with how to communicate with others, Rosara, because you did not know how to be honest with non-telepaths, or how to read them. I looked back after you left with Beckett, and I thought that until now, you had never been honest. Not about your feelings. Not even to yourself.’

She stared. For ten years now, she had made sense of her difficulties, her challenges in navigating the feelings of others, reading them, connecting with them, through the assumption that she was just particularly bad at a transition all Betazoids leaving their people had to go through. The idea it might be something more deep-rooted had never occurred to her. ‘What?’

He straightened, a little trapped, a little wrong-footed. ‘May I venture some thoughts? The last few months have granted me some… perspective.’

‘Please!’

‘You never wanted to be engaged to me.’ Rhade’s expression creased. ‘You were never asked.  Never given a chance to have an opinion on something so fundamental to your life. What happened, when you were younger, if you challenged it?’

‘I…’ She worked her jaw. ‘I was just assured I’d understand it as I got older.’

‘Assured that your apprehensions didn’t matter. Your feelings didn’t matter. That they were an inconvenience. That they’d go away.’ He winced. ‘Knowing of the Twelfth House, I am sure that I was not the only topic treated like that.’

‘Anatras – my parents – only ever wanted what was best for me.’ She’d been on the cusp of telling her aunt to go pound sand, but Rhade’s words stirred an iron defensiveness in her.

‘And best for the household.’ He leaned forward. ‘You know I understand this, Rosara. Duty to something bigger than you, to your family. But duty is reciprocal.’

She put the teacup down harder than she meant. ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

‘That just as you were expected to do what the family needed, the family owed you in kind. Owed you better than shackling you to me. Than telling you your emotions were inconvenient. Rosara, you nearly bound yourself to me regardless of your misery because you could not face what you wanted. It took an experience beyond the bounds of most normal understandings of telepathy for you to accept this wasn’t what you wanted. To accept what you did want.’

‘What I want is…’ Not as important. She thought she’d banished that feeling months ago, and yet it rose in her throat now, choking. She’d left Rhade, and then left him for Beckett, and part of her had maybe hoped all along that she could simply swap them, replace a son of a noble house for the son of an admiral, and Anatras would take the deal.

But this was more. This was the implication that she’d never been able to trust in what she wanted, felt.

‘If I didn’t know what I wanted, I wouldn’t be here,’ she said hotly at last. ‘And I can hardly tell my aunt to waltz into the Great Fire, Adamant. I wanted advice.’

‘You have it,’ he said with a wince. ‘Even if you dislike it.’

‘No, even if your idea is to blame my family.’ She shot to her feet. ‘This was a mistake. Not everything is so black and white as you see it.’

He gave a short, hollow laugh she’d never heard from him before. ‘I assure you, Rosara, that I understand the greys. Your family have -’

‘Perhaps it is time,’ she said, trying to swallow down anger, ‘that we accept your connection with my family has ended. Thank you for the tea, Adamant.’

His expression folded. ‘Rosara, I’m trying to help.’

‘You can’t help with something you don’t understand,’ she said simply, and walked out.

She knew it was harsh, and perhaps premature. But at the least, she was sure of one thing: he could hardly understand her feelings when she understood them so little herself.