“I must admit that this is a first for me,” Centurion Irulan offered as he greeted her at the door. “Never before has one of your kind invited me to their living quarters.”

“A first for both of us,” Commander Castillo smiled disarmingly. “But please, come in.” He gestured for her to join him. “I know it’s not much, but it’s home.”

Irulan stepped through the door and looked around.

There was a softness and something quite personal about the space. Artwork hung on every wall, while trinkets and memorabilia sat atop every shelf and tabletop. His quarters were a place of memories, and a place to be lived in. They were not like the spaces her people now made for themselves. In their diaspora, they had abandoned beauty in favor of utility. The days of marbled water features and ornate colonnades were nothing more than distant memories of a world lost to fire. Now, her people just crammed themselves into small spaces aboard utilitarian cruisers or makeshift settlements, treating it all as temporary and ephemeral.

“It’s quite nice, Commander,” she noted. “Are all your crew accommodations like this?”

“The Juno is actually fairly cramped by modern standards,” Commander Castillo explained as he led her over to a table set for two. A warm lamp burned in the corner, and a savory aroma wafted out from beneath a cloche-covered platter that sat at its center. “But yes, senior officers aboard the Juno have suites like this, while the rest of the crew are assigned single occupancy studios.” He pulled back a chair so she could sit. “Why do you ask? Considering a move?”

“Not so much, Commander,” Irulan smiled awkwardly as she settled into the high-backed leather chair. She wondered though if there was more to his question, and so too whether she might actually have to entertain his offer if Sub-Commander Satrin was right about Colonel Nethak and his motives. “We could take a lesson from you, though. You travel the stars, not unlike my people, but unlike us, you make an effort to bring home with you.”

“My people have a phrase: home is where the heart is,” Castillo shared as he took his seat opposite her. “My heart is in the stars, so what other home would I have?”

“A curious notion, Commander,” Irulan tilted her head, considering the words. To her people, home had always been a place first, a world, an inheritance, a thing to lose. And then they’d lost it. The idea that one could carry it wherever they went, it felt both comforting and a little dangerous. “I like it though.”

“Well, that is the spirit of our arrangement, isn’t it?” Castillo said, referring to the secondment of the Decius within Polaris Squadron. “The exchange of ideas.” He lifted a crystal decanter off the side table behind him. The amber-orange liquid it contained within caught the lamplight. “A mild aperitif to start things off?”

“I suppose, Commander,” Irulan accepted, uncertain of what it was, but willing to try. That was what this was all about, after all. Or what it should have been.

“Oh, and we have another tradition too,” Castillo added as he gently poured the liqueur into her glass. “No ranks over dinner.” He smiled as he set the decanter back down. “I’m just John here.”

Across the table, her posture softened. “Alright, Just John.”

Was that humor? It made Castillo breathe a bit easier to see her loosen up, and it gave him hope he might get somewhere with her under starlight. He needed to. There was more at stake than just the meal. “We missed your presence in the lab today.”

“Unfortunately, I was otherwise indisposed,” Irulan replied as a shadow flitted across her face. But then it was gone as quickly as it had appeared. She lifted up the glass and studied it against the light. Light legs, a gentle viscosity, and a vibrant hue. Curious. She brought it to her mouth and allowed the smallest of sips to pass between her lips, not yet ready to trust fully. It was tangy, but interesting. “Was there any progress made while I was away?”

“Lieutenant Michaelson believes he has identified the phase-coincident conditions at the point of our crossover,” Castillo shared. “Unfortunately, we’re still a long way from being able to recreate those conditions for a return trip.”

“Yes, but it’s a start,” Irulan acknowledged as she took a deeper, more daring draw from the glass. “I’d like to give it a look…” The tanginess hit her harder this time, and she had to pause to let it settle. “This has got quite an attitude. What is it?”

“A citrus spirit from a little world in Gehdi’s Reach,” Castillo shared. “Picked it up a few years ago when we happened out that way. Quite worth the visit if you ever get the chance.”

“No one just happens to find themselves out that way,” Irulan noted. “It’s a month-long journey through a desolate star desert, and for what? A few primitives and a handful of barren rocks?” Once, a Romulan expedition made the trip. None had ever bothered again. “Our assessment was that the Reach lacked any meaningful strategic value to make it worth a return visit.”

“Yes, but the Gehdians have quite zesty libations,” Castillo chuckled as he raised his glass. “A quite rich musical tradition, too.”

She looked at him like she wasn’t following.

“Not every moment needs a purpose,” Castillo suggested as he leaned back and savored another sip. “It was out there, a place among the stars. What more reason did we need?”

She looked skeptical.

“But really, how is it any different than what we spent all of yesterday on?” Castillo suggested. “If this is only about finding a way home, why spend any time on what made this place as it is? If it’s only about the mission, shouldn’t Michaelson’s work be all that matters?”

“That was about developing a tactical understanding,” Irulan insisted.

“Was it now?” Castillo raised an eyebrow as he reached over and pulled back the cloche that covered the entrée platter, revealing a spread of jumbo Romulan mollusks set on a bed of saffron rice and topped with charred citrus and shaved fennel.

Irulan stared. It wasn’t just that he’d gone out of his way to pick something familiar, nor that he’d added his own twist to it. It was his prior comment too. “I suppose you have a point,” she admitted with a light smile as she looked back up.

“Don’t give me too much of that bright smile until you try it,” Castillo laughed as he offered a silver serving spoon. As she accepted and began to spoon a careful portion onto her plate, he leaned back in his chair and watched with quiet amusement. “Yesterday wasn’t just about the battlespace, you know.”

Irulan glanced up.

“It was about discerning the facets of this reality,” Castillo replied pointedly. “And what it has made of those shaped by it. You seemed as taken by that as anything.”

“Some have more reason to recognize what has been bent out of shape,” Irulan allowed, pausing as a hint of recognition passed across her face. 

“You speak from personal experience?” Castillo asked as he accepted the serving spoon back from her and helped himself to a generous portion of the mollusks.

“As the daughter of two senators, and the grandchild of a third, I am acutely aware of how quickly reality can reorder itself,” Irulan acknowledged, a hint of sadness in her voice. “And I have seen what becomes of those who are too rigid to bend.”

Sometimes, silence was the best response, and he let her sit with her words.

Eventually, she continued. “That our world would be consumed by fire, that was predestined. But how we responded, that was on us. We are a shadow of what we could be because too many cling to the dying remnants of what we had.”

“Like Colonel Nethak?” Castillo asked gently.

“Nethak… my parents and grandparents… all of the Free State, and more than not within the Republic, if we’re being honest,” Irulan sighed.

“But not you?” Castillo inferred.

“Commander… no, sorry… John,” Irulan said, letting him in a little further. “I walked away from everything that was meant to be mine, from my privilege and my parentage, in the hopes of seeing a brighter future for my people.” It had cost her nearly everything.

Castillo could see the weight on her as she spoke, and so his next question came gently. “What does that brighter future look like to you?”

“That, I don’t really know…” Irulan’s voice tapered off. With men like Nethak in command of the Republic Navy, and with people like her parents still trying to resurrect the past within the Free State, it was hard to see how ever they would reach the future she envisioned for them.

“And that is okay,” Castillo offered, seeing how the question hit her and easing back a bit. “It does not make the hope any less worth having.” His eyes dipped towards her plate. “I would consider it a personal failure of mine though if I went on not knowing what you thought of my mollusks.”

“Yes, the mollusks…” Irulan nodded, appreciating the reprieve. She picked up her fork and slipped it into one of the soft shells before bringing it to her mouth. The flavors were somehow familiar and foreign all at once. “Daring to try this with a Romulan.”

Castillo smiled faintly. “What can you learn if you never risk getting it wrong along the way?”

Irulan considered his words as she took another bite, slower this time. It had the oceanic richness she expected, but was brightened by the citrus and softened by the saffron in a way that made it feel less ceremonial and more alive. “Well, for the record, you have not gotten it wrong.” She lifted her fork again, catching one of the shaved fennel ribbons. “Though I suspect my mother would find fault with whatever this is.”

“Then I shall count it a success,” Castillo winked playfully.

She lowered her eyes to the plate and lifted another shell, studying it for a moment. “It is strange how easily something can remain recognizable while becoming something else entirely.”

“The mollusks?” Castillo asked pointedly. “Or reality?”

Her eyes met his. “Both.”

For a time, neither said a word, the only sounds the clink of cutlery against porcelain and the deep hum of the ship’s air recyclers as they ate their next couple bites in quiet contemplation.

But then Irulan set down her fork and reached again for her glass. “Ever since we crossed over, I’ve kept asking myself what could twist reality so completely, and yet leave it so recognizable.” She tipped back the orange spirit and let it linger a moment before swallowing. “It was Mars.”

Castillo’s brow furrowed. “Mars?”

“Yes,” Irulan nodded. “Mars was the hinge, not because Utopia burned, but because the Empire’s hand was exposed to your people by one of ours.” Her fingers tightened slightly around the stem of the glass. “That changed everything that followed.”

Castillo set down his fork and looked straight at her. “How do you know?”

“There are ways,” Irulan replied cryptically. “Let us leave it at that.” That she was even sharing as she was, Satrin might have skinned her for it, and Nethak certainly would’ve.

“Very well,” Castillo accepted, but also he hoped that, if she was opening up enough to share this, maybe there was a bit more she would give. “What else can you share?”

And there was. “The Federation did not simply recoil from the attack,” Irulan continued. “The hardliners who turned your Federation inward after Mars in our reality, here they turned their attention outward. They pressed for militarization, for a harder border, in preparation for conflict with an Empire they saw not as unstable, but as actively hostile.”

Castillo stroked his chin. If she was right, the outcome tracked all too easily. Through the nineties, he had watched the Federation turn into a creature he barely recognized. If it had been known the Romulans had been at fault, he could only imagine what might have happened.

“On our side, the effect was just as corrosive,” Irulan went on. “My people viewed the leak not as exposure, but betrayal. The Navy and the Tal Shiar answered as fearful institutions always do. They tightened their grip. They purged those not already with them. And as Starfleet built up its forces along the border, they answered in kind, ship for ship, and then fleet for fleet.”

“Until something finally cracked?” Castillo inferred. That was all too often what came next.

“Not at first,” Irulan explained. “The supernova came first.” Her voice hardened as she said it. This was the part that hurt the most, the suffering her people had endured as a result. “Where we come from, for all our failures, there was at least some attempt to save what could be saved. Here, there was not. They treated the impending supernova not as civil catastrophe, but strategic vulnerability, and the priority not people, but the continuity of government, of command, and of force.” She gave a bitter shake of her head. “Many more died, but the state survived.”

As he looked at her, Castillo could see her pain. “But not the state you’d have wished for?”

“Exactly the opposite,” Irulan replied flatly. “A state that endured not because it was wise, but because it chose power over its people. Hardliners consolidated power, the Tal Shiar emerged stronger, and by then, war was only a matter of time. In the mid-nineties, the shooting finally began, and now, it is what we see before us, an endless struggle without resolution, both sides wounded to the point neither can win, yet unwilling to do anything but keep fighting.”

Castillo considered her words. “So this is not just a harsher reflection of what might have been, but a reality where the worst versions of ourselves survived?”

“Yes, exactly,” she nodded. And she didn’t have the heart to admit the worst part, that she had come across the sordid fact that even the Irulan t’Liren of this reality had eventually come in line with them and become a soldier in this endless war.

Castillo was quiet for a moment, debating his next words with care. If he said what he wanted to say, and he was wrong, he’d have shown his hand. But if he didn’t, and he was right, he’d be leaving an opportunity on the table. “This is what troubles you so much about Colonel Nethak, isn’t it? Not merely that he might be tempted by this place, but that he might look at all of this and see it as vindication of a different path.”

Irulan’s expression tightened. She understood the delicacy of what now passed between them. “Men like Nethak tr’Sevrin mistake survival for virtue. To them, if a state survives, then whatever preserved it was justified.”

And then came the question he could no longer avoid. “Do the others on the Decius see it like you, or like him?”

Her eyes fell to the plate for a moment, to the half-finished mollusks between them. “Of that, I do not know,” she admitted quietly. “And that is the part that discomforts me the most.”