The voices swirling through Taes’s mind mimicked the sound of her voice masterfully, and yet she felt no sense of control over them. The thoughts came unbidden, like an infernal machine was generating them from deep inside her. Something of her but separate. Surfacing words like ‘debris’ and ‘finish’.

When sleep refused to protect her from the barrage of thoughts, she sought another environment. The parlour on the recreation deck offered Taes a different angle of warp-streaked stars than the view from her quarters.

Sometimes that was enough.

Seeking sensory overload, she sipped at a nimian pollen tea. The Rakosans had offered her a small stockpile to take with her back to the Alpha Quadrant. Curled into a hard-angled armchair, Taes sat with a PADD in her lap, but she hadn’t managed to absorb even a single word from the novel on its display.

And yet, she snapped up that PADD to the level of her eyes when Yuulik walked in. Similar to Taes, Yuulik was in a mismatch of uniform elements: the black tunic without the jacket, baggy teal shorts that matched her uniform’s science piping, and what looked like Klingon boots. Even from across the compartment, Taes could smell the pungent tefla Yuulik was sipping.

“Why did they do it?” Yuulik asked, still shuffling towards a sofa across from where Taes was sipping. Atypical for Yuulik, she was whispering, perhaps respecting the late hour or the dimmed overhead lighting.

For the most part, Taes kept her gaze on the PADD. Yuulik had managed to read one social cue, but not the other. Even Taes’s Deltan empathy couldn’t prepare her for whatever trap Yuulik was baiting with that philosophical question. So Taes shifted the focus back to Yuulik.

“Can’t sleep either?”

For neither the first time, nor the last, Yuulik ignored Taes’s very fair question.

“How could the Vaadwaur simply surrender?” Yuulik asked, shaking her head. “It’s not in their nature.” There was a measure of judgement in Yuulik’s tone, but Taes could imagine little of that emotion was for the Vaadwaur. Those elongated vowels came out when Yuulik was frustrated with herself for not immediately reaching a full understanding of the new alien cultures they studied.

Taes shrugged, looking over the top of her PADD. “For all the conjecture and folklore, we actually know very little about them.”

“Don’t do that. Don’t give up because it’s hard,” Yuulik chided her. She hunkered down on the sofa opposite Taes and slurped at the fishy drink. “We know enough. Their kind, they don’t give up. They should have fought us to the death. They can’t conceive of anything else.”

Putting aside her feeble ruse, Taes set the PADD down on an end table. She found Yuulik staring at her, staring right through her.

“Are there only two choices, Yuulik? Conviction and failure, and nothing in between?”

Yuulik’s head shifted like a scanner aligning. Her eyes dilated, black and bottomless. Taes sensed a rise in emotional temperature from her.

“It’s not only them,” she said. “You remember what I used to be.”

“Are you so changed now?” Taes asked, and regretted how patronising it came out.

“I was happy in my laboratory. No one was happier than me. You remember. My life was fulfilling. It was everything I wanted from Starfleet.” Both of Yuulik’s hands were wrapped around her mug, her fingers tightly intertwined. She didn’t fidget the whole time she spoke. Her boots remained firmly on the deck.

“You say that,” Taes said, more sharply now, “And you were always testing me, challenging me.”

“That’s how I showed my love and admiration, but it was never enough for you,” Yuulik said. Her voice quavered. She clutched the mug to her stomach. For once, she didn’t sound angry. She sounded scared.

“You kept asking for more. Said Starfleet was bleeding out its good officers, so I had to lead, not just publish,” Yuulik said. “I was listening.”

Standing by it all, Taes insisted, “That’s still true. I’m sure we’ve suffered even greater losses back home.”

“I don’t care about that,” Yuulik said, shaking her head from side to side. “But I do care about my department now. Nova used to look at me like I mattered. I even care about the stupid security boy. Taes, I don’t know how to stop it. You need to tell me how to make it stop.”

In as soothing a voice as she could perform, Taes said, “That’s not– that’s not how we experience life. You can only face it. We’re not automated personnel units.”

“You broke me!” Yuulik spat at Taes, rocking forward on the sofa. “You demanded I make room for people and connect. You threatened to transfer me if I didn’t obey you. I tried, I really tried, and now I’m the one bleeding out over people who don’t even like me.”

The emotional distance between them could be measured in light years. Taes gracelessly stumbled out of her chair, but the carpet offered a soft landing for her knees. She moved to kneel at Yuulik’s feet, and pressed a palm to Yuulik’s hand, even while Yuulik clutched the mug even tighter.

“I never wanted to break you,” Taes said, defending her choices, even as she wondered if Yuulik was right. “I offered you space. Space for you to grow. There’s no easy way to hold onto our authenticity while your duty demands so much of us. I fail at it over and over.”

Dropping her voice to a whisper, Yuulik hissed, “It hurts too much. Nova won’t talk to me. Nune thinks I’m baby-crazy. You need to tell me what to do. What do I do next?”

“That’s not for,” Taes started to say, but then she regretted it. She closed her eyes and took a deep breath. “You’re growing into someone I never expected. I don’t– I don’t know what’s next for you.”

“I hate that you made me care! Who’s going to pick up the pieces of me, huh? Who?”

Taes didn’t answer. She had hoped for a better road for Yuulik. She just held Yuulik’s hand, feeling the pulse of someone she had shaped too similarly to herself.