“You will survive and you will find purpose in the chaos. Moving on doesn’t mean letting go.”

Mary Vanhaute

“You’re not comfortable talking about it.”

A significant pause, and then.

“What makes you think I’m not comfortable talking about it?” she challenged.

He took a moment to look down and note the time displayed on his Padd, where her service – jacket information scrolled past next to her file image. A snapshot of a happier time perhaps?

Certainly, the woman in that shot carried herself as assertively as the Captain who was sat across from him, poised on the edge of his couch and obviously ill – at ease, but that younger version of her did not carry that tell-tale signifier of loss that his training eye was cultured to see.

Councilor Juran raised an eyebrow and responded neutrally.

“Well, we have been in session for over 40 minutes now and we seem to have covered just about every subject apart from the loss of your husband?”

There was a dangerous flare to her nostrils (quickly caught and subjugated, Juran noted with professional interest) as Captain Monique McDowell retorted defensively, and reflexively her hand went to fuss at the edges of her prodigious afro – hair.

“Maybe I’m not comfortable talking about it.” The dark – skinned woman issued a countering riposte and regarded the councilor levelly with a gaze of a woman who was used to being in command of the situation and not the one answering the questions.

She looked out of the viewport in a vain attempt to distract from the discourse and idly watched the rugged hull of a venerable old California – class drift sedately by, using its brawny – tractor beams to gently tease a long catenary of cargo pods along in train.

Juran sighed and set the Padd down on his lap, deciding to try a different tack.

“You do know that your return to active duty and command is contingent on your participation in this process and my final recommendation to the Task Force Commanding Officer?” The Councilor prompted the recalcitrant officer.

Monique turned her head and fixed Juran with a withering stare.

“I am keenly aware.” She stated flatly.

Ina Juran, a balding Bajoran in his middle ages (slowly running to fat, if he was being brutally honest with himself) smiled depreciatingly as he too sat forward in his chair to mirror the body – language of his current patient and level the playing field, if he could not set McDowell at ease.

“It’s a process Captain.” The Councilor opened his arms wide and let them drop into his lap. “I do my job. You tell me what you feel you want to, or what you can. I decide if you’re fit to lead a ship full of people out into the great unknown and life continues interesting. Shall we just cut to it?”

McDowell conceded this point, but not to the point of acquiescence – which also told Juran many things about the type of woman she was.

“Very well.” Monique allowed and sat further back on the consulting – couch, her hands folded in her lap – a small show of defensive paralanguage.

“What was he like?” Juran smiled openly.

Monique narrowed those deep – brown eyes of hers into guarded slits.

“What was who like?” She replied, but they both knew who they were discussing.

“Thaddeus, your husband.” Juran persisted gently. “What was he like?”

Monique frowned massively, her delicate brows arching to frame a line of disgruntlement.

“What does it matter. He’s dead.”

Councilor Juran nodded, his own nose wrinkling around the vertiginous folds around the bridge of his nose that were typical to his people.

“I think it matters a great deal and so do you.”

A long flat look. No response coming.

Juran did not rise nor respond to her provocation. Long years spent in the business of fixing broken – people had taught the Bajoran a sage lesson. To whit – people will open up to you in their own damn time, if they were going to open up at all.

With this in mind, he took a sip from his now – tepid cup of Jhala – tea and took back up the Padd from his lap and made a show of re-activating the device and scrolling absently through his case notes. After a time, it was she that broke the silence.

“He was exasperating, not unlike you.” McDowell observed archly and Juran (still looking down at the screen) nodded agreement.

“I get that a lot.”

Monique snorted with pensive amusement and rolled her eyes, continuing to assert.

“He was also a brilliant man, an expert in his chosen field of study.”

Juran put the pad down on his lap again and allowed innocently.

“Also, me.”

“No doubt.” Captain McDowell did a half – decent job at hiding her evident amusement beneath her masque of chagrin, but they both knew that the ice had been broken and her heart was not in it.

“Thaddeus.” Juran pointedly made sure that he used her late – husband’s name again. “He was a Xeno-archeologist, is that correct?”

Monique nodded, a faint smile of recollection creased her lips, despite the bitterness of the memory.

“I always said that he seemed to love those dusty relics more than he loved me sometimes.” She joked without much abundant humor.

“And what did he say about that?” Juran asked casually. The tea really was quite cold now, but the pretense of drinking it served to establish a common action that was overall re-assuring.

The smile on Monique’s face broadened now, effused by a genuine warmth from the memory recalled.

“He said that he’d love me until I came a ‘dusty relic’ too, so I should be glad that he was dedicating himself to perfecting his approach until that day came.” She laughed, despite herself and the Councilor deftly took that chink in her armor and drew his patient back round to the edge of the dark – precipice that yawed inside of her.

Juran smiled sympathetically.

“He sounds like he was quite a man.”

McDowell was brought up abruptly from her nostalgias and blinked, her voice betraying a quiver of emotion that she still fought to constrain, a sorrow that she was evidently most painfully aware of but unable or unwilling to give voice to.

The Bajoran wordlessly reached forward and offered her a tissue from the small, garishly – ornate box that sat upon his desk (truly awful, but a gift from his then  6 – year old daughter, so it retained pride of place), which McDowell waved away, hooking a single tear from the corner of her eye with a finely manicured fingernail.

“Yes, he was.” Monique nodded and looked up at the ceiling as she fought to retain her composure. Control was obviously important to her, but Juran generally held this to be typical of most Starfleet Captains and Commanders, so he did not read anything into this fact unduly.

“He held quite deeply to the notion that the keys to the future were waiting for all peoples to discover in the gifts from the past.” Monique reminisced, paraphrasing Thad and feeling the gnawing sense of his absence all the more keenly.

“And he was engaged in his studies when he was taken from you?” Juran prompted with the gently – leading question.

Monique bit her lip, her white teeth worrying the plum plumpness of her bottom lip and she nodded, her face unreadable at that moment.

“The Reliquary of Ost on Primar – Majoris-#7.” McDowell sighed, unable to repress that hated name now, the story beginning to break through her carefully – constructed levy of grief and denial – threatening to flood her being in a deluge of sorrow.

Juran frowned, reading his case notes.

“Yes, I can’t say that I am familiar with the name?”

Monique’s voice took on a distant aspect as she recounted the tale of that fateful place, upon the surface of a far – distant planet, where the terrible events that would unfold there had left her bereft of her light and love.

“An ancient set of ruins believed to have been the birthplace of the prima – lingua of the Primarion race.” Monique recounted her sad tale. “Thad was beyond excited. Not only was he going to get the chance to delve and quantify an artifact of great historical and cultural antiquity, but he was going to be able to do so in the company of a peer and one of his idols – Dr Jonas Hyland. Honestly he was as giddy as a schoolboy.”

Juran smiled, but that smile slipped from his face as Monique’s tone went from joyful to leaden as she added.

“That was the last time I saw him alive.”

She looked down and seemed to be surprised to see that her hands had knotted together, the tension showing white at the knuckles, incongruous on her dark – skin. Frowning at their unconscious tension, she unclasped her interlocked fingers and seemed to shake their betrayal loose as she continued.

“Consensus was that the Reliquary was a psionic repository of the entire remembered history of the Primarion race, they revered and deified this as a gift from their creator. It’s easy to see how such a concept was irresistible to my husband, but the reality proved otherwise and ultimately led to the death of his entire research party.”

“The Primarion Incident.” Councilor Juran checked his notes, although everyone in Fourth Fleet was at least passingly familiar with the particulars of that tragedy. First Contact with a being as mysterious and rarified as was encountered at the Reliquary was the kind of thing that got people’s attention.

Monique took a deep breath, as if drawing from some inner well of fortitude that she had set aside as a reserve to endure her tale of woe.

“Turns out their “God” was, in fact a long – dormant Crystalline Entity.” Monique recounted bitterly. “For eons it had slumbered beneath the desert sands and the Reliquary of Ost was raised above it. Over the millennia, it passed from all living knowledge and became myth, that was until the carrier signal from the Subspace Communications Relay that the USS Sacramento had emplaced in orbit was activated and the ‘beast’ awoke.”

“And everyone was killed as a result.” Juran commiserated vicariously with her.

A flash of anger again, as Captain McDowell’s head snapped up and she spat.

“Not quite everyone.”

Frowning, Juran consulted his case – notes and located the detail that Monique was alluding to.

“Apologies, there were two survivors from the Sacramento?”

Monique nodded.

“The rode the entity right up through the atmosphere to the edge of space.” McDowell frowned disdainfully. “A Vulcan and the daughter of Dr Hyland. Lieutenant Samantha Hyland. She became a Captain and they gave her her own ship would you believe? The USS Valley Forge.”

“You resent her for surviving when Thaddeus did not?” Juran hazarded, but Monique shook her head and when she spoke her voice just sounded tired.

“No. I actually met her once at a Command briefing. Frankly I couldn’t see what all the fuss about her was. She seemed like an utter bitch to me. But no, I don’t hate Sam – bloody – Hyland for surviving the destruction of the Reliquary, she lost her father in the same event, after all. No, I resent her for being closer to Thaddeus when he died. I was and will forever be far away, divorced from his last moments.”

The Councilor nodded understandingly and assured Monique.

“The pain you’re feeling is natural in the face of such a loss. That you can rationalize it is an encouraging sign.”

McDowell regarded the Bajoran flatly and challenged.

“It is? How so?”

Juran sat back in his seat and conjectured in a reasonable tone.

“It demonstrates that you have the capacity to move forward and free yourself from that pain. It’s what we call a breakthrough.”

Captain Monique McDowell regarded the Councilor levelly and retorted.

“See that’s where you and I differ, Doc.” She sat forward again and pierced Juran with a poignant glare.

“You see, you are of the school of thought that pain is something that can and should be transcended. To persevere despite of it and compartmentalize the experience until a return to a former state of affairs can be resumed.”

“Well, I ‘m not entirely sure that…” Juran blustered but Monique held up a slim brown hand and admonished.

“I’m not done.”

Respectfully Juran conceded and nodded for her to continue.

“My pain is all I have of him now. The sweet parts and the bitter. It’s been less than a year and already those memories of him begin to fade with each remembrance. The pain sharpens those memories, they remind me what I have lost, that it was real. There’s not a goddamned thing that you or anyone else in the Galaxy can do to dissuade me and make me give up that pain. Yes, it reminds me every minute of the day that he’s gone, just as it reminds me that I am alive.”

Juran said nothing. Sometimes that is the right thing to say.

“You want to know if that compromises my ability to lead people, to command a starship again?” Defiance was clear in her eyes, tempered and illuminated by her conviction and pain.

“Every time I sit in that chair, I am forced to make command decisions that may result in the deaths of anyone and everyone aboard ship. You may conclude that my pain makes me unfit for that privilege. I say that my pain reminds me every day of that responsibility and demands that I consider the lives of each and every one of them as I choose what path to take. Pain isn’t something that can be commodified just as it can’t be turned on and off like a switch, Councilor.”

Monique stood suddenly, drawing herself up. She didn’t look like a broken woman to Juran, anything but.

“Pain is there to teach you. Pain is there to remind you. Pain is there with you forever so you never forget the value of a single life, anymore than you do the multitude.”

Juran smiled serenely as he was lone audience to this magnificent defiance. He already knew that he would be signing her ‘fit for return to duty’, but he didn’t want to interrupt her when she was doing so well.

“Ground me if you want, Doc, that’s your own business but what is mine is mine to bear and that is what it means to be in command.”

“That is the Price of Pain.”