Valance did not get back to sleep, returning to her quarters on Endeavour to do nothing more than glower out the window at the cavernous lower docking bay of Gateway. She’d pencilled in a meeting with Kharth later, and knew that she should either rest or begin to consider what to do with this enforced leave, but hadn’t the will to even consider an enforced break.

When the door chime sounded, she assumed, hoped, it was Kharth so they could get to work. But a glimpse at the wall display showed it was only 0800 hours, and with a scowl, she turned to the door. ‘Come in!’

It was Airex, looking a little worn and tired, out of uniform and in dusty, hard-wearing clothes with solid boots. ‘You haven’t slept,’ he observed.

‘Some. Aren’t you supposed to be on Alfheim?’

‘I was there.’ The refugee settlement was not in the same time-zone as the station, and Airex was likely feeling the transition. ‘Harrian contacted me.’

‘Harrian -’

‘He said you might need support.’

Valance’s jaw tightened. It hadn’t occurred to her that Harrian and Airex might have some friendliness after their time together when they’d been on Endeavour and she’d captained Pathfinder. ‘We’re abandoning Feserell. K’Var forces are threatening our defence of the Republic and we have to pull out. And Rourke’s ordered me to take leave. Proper leave.’

‘You should.’ Airex pulled off his dusty jacket and folded it neatly over the back of a chair. ‘We can’t be everywhere at once. Feserell -’

‘I don’t need the situation explaining to me again.’ Valance pinched the bridge of her nose. ‘I’m not a child. I don’t misunderstand, I disagree.’

‘So you think we should leave Faust under-manned trying to protect the Republic border?’

‘I think we should be doing everything possible to get Endeavour out there and give us options!’ She rounded on him, eyes flashing. ‘My vacation is not more important than people’s lives.’

Airex didn’t react, eyes on her rather cool. ‘Very well,’ he said at length. ‘Who gets compassionate leave if they need it? Lindgren, for killing people during Frontier Day? Or Thawn, for being psychically violated? Or Logan, for nearly being subsumed by the Borg Collective again?’

‘That’s not -’

‘Do we have the officers to relieve them? Or will we just subtly signal that they should man up and persevere until one of them makes a mistake that could get someone hurt or killed?’

‘I didn’t say that,’ said Valance between gritted teeth.

‘What if that person’s you?’ At her continued glower, Airex’s gaze softened. ‘Everyone has a breaking point, Karana.’

‘And I don’t know why everyone thinks I’m facing mine. Nothing’s happened.’

Airex stared at her for a moment. ‘Political developments in the Empire have seriously threatened your family. You’ve fought in one of the biggest military campaigns since the war. Your crew were assimilated by the Borg, your ship stranded halfway across the quadrant, and you’ve been catapulted into command of one of the premier starships of the fleet.’ He paused only a heartbeat before he added, softer, ‘And lost a serious relationship because of your career.’

Valance had been primed to argue until that last part. Now she turned away, back to the window, arms folded across her chest. ‘That’s absolutely beside the point.’

‘It’s not,’ Airex said, moving to join her. ‘Because when you’re stressed, you try to throw yourself into your work. Something you’ve not been able to persistently do for the last few weeks. A year ago, if you’d been forced into several days off work, you’d be checking your schedule against Isa’s.’

Her eyes dragged against the interior of the docking back beyond the window. Once, this had been an arboretum, built to give greenspace to the crew when the station had sat in orbit of an uninhabitable planet. Back then, the upper docking bay had been big enough for even the mightiest of Starfleet ships. But times had changed, and now Gateway’s guts had been ripped out to make way for new necessities.

‘My last interview with Rivera, she kept asking me who I’ve relied on, do rely on, in my life, in my work.’ She found her jaw tightening when she paused. ‘MacCallister’s gone. Things are different with Rourke. You’ve been…’ She hesitated, not wanting to attack him.

‘Not always here,’ Airex offered, saving her.

She gave an awkward nod. ‘And now Isa’s gone. When she left, she said she was… that she was done trying to fix me.’ Her shoulders hunched as her head bowed. ‘I spent so long getting by without people and told I should change that, should bring people in, and now all I have is this… this absence.’

He leaned against the windowsill beside her, voice dropping. ‘You miss her. That’s normal. But you don’t need fixing, Karana -’

‘I’d have said that a year ago, two years ago. But here I am, and it feels like I’m doing the same things I’ve always done, but…’ Something surged in her chest, the tart taste of grief in her throat, and she had to swallow down a wave of emotion before it could overwhelm her. Still her voice came out strained. ‘If I don’t need fixing, why is it like this? I wanted to be a captain my entire career. If I don’t need fixing, how can I be here and still feel so fucking lonely?’

She wasn’t sure what happened next. The world became a fuzzy mess, and some part of Valance wondered if that, too, was something Cortez would say was broken – that she couldn’t break down without a part of her leaving herself behind. That though she knew the tears fell, and she knew Airex stepped closer to pull her into a hug like he never had before, never needed to before, in so many ways it felt like it was happening to someone else.

Perhaps this was the breaking point, after all.