“Sit,” Shubri instructed, motioning with an arm to the gaunt-looking chair across the desk. A thin antimacassar lay over the sharp edge of its unforgiving and barely padded back, a delicate oblong of intertwined golden brocade that twinkled slightly in the dim glow of the stars at warp through the window.

Unfortunately, Tallard could only see the garish lace doilies that had once smothered every surface in her grandmother’s old house in it. They had always smelled faintly of sandalwood musk and mothballs. A scent that had inevitably turned her stomach well into her teens and, amongst many other things, had made her grandmother’s house a location of no small reluctance for the young woman. If the strip of fabric was meant to make the chair more comforting, it was failing spectacularly.

“I said, sit.” Shubri motioned once more to the chair and narrowed her eyes, making it clear she would not ask a third time.

Before she had time to consider just how alike her Captain’s voice had been to her late grandmothers, Tallard’s buttocks were already set into the uncomfortable cushion of the chair.

Late-night summons, uncomfortable chair, single-syllable greeting. Tallard had been in this situation before; she was definitely here for a disciplinary. The voice within her pounded against the inside of her forehead. This time she couldn’t think of anything she’d done worth admonishment.

“I was reading your service record.” Shubri glanced once between the screen and Tallard.

“If this is about what I said on-”

Shubri lifted a hand, a single knotted, branch-like finger upright putting the young woman on pause.

“I noticed that you did an apprenticeship with the Federation News Service?” Shubri tapped the top edge of her small console, where Tallard’s history was laid out in pale blue characters, like some horribly naked truth.

“I did…” Tallard began. It was true that in another life she had once wanted to be a journalist, notepad in her pocket and ink stains on her fingers. Like her father. But that path was a dozen years and a hundred worlds past. She hadn’t really thought about it since.

“Any particular reason?” Shubri was still focused on the screen, the slow crawl of blue text scrolling up the screen ominously.

“It was my father’s…” A sharp pang of something stuck in Tallard’s craw, blocking the words before they formed.

For the first time since she had entered the room, Tallard found Shubri’s attention turn to her fully. Bright, interrogating orbs of white in the dim light of the cabin, like full moons nestled in the deep pits of her eyes. She wanted an answer, possibly one she already knew.

Maybe this wasn’t the admonishment Tallard had been expecting.

“It wasn’t for me.” Tallard finally concluded. “I wanted to join Starfleet more.”

“Yet, you seem to have struggled with following orders?” Shubri scrolled the screen a little, revealing a series of notes. Each slender line of text felt like another brick being added to Tallard’s shoulder as it lolled innocently onto the screen, pressing her further into the uncomfortable chair.

She prayed it would swallow her whole, but the thin padding offered her no mercy. She was completely exposed, framed only by golden threads and a past she wasn’t sure how to explain.

“I…” Tallard paused. Any other time she would have summoned a defensive comment to leap from her lips, or plastered an insolent look on her face. But there was something in the Captain’s massive, predatory eyes, that disarmed all her usual devices.

“I’m not sure what you’re getting at,” Tallard’s brow furrowed in confusion.

“I’m not sure what you’re getting at, Captain,” Shubri quietly corrected.

The seat’s hard back seemed to tense beneath Tallard, forcing her to sit at a rigid right angle. The Captain’s eyes were on her again, fixed, unblinking, like a hound sniffing something out, looking for something in Tallard’s pocket, or beneath her skin.

“You got good reviews from your mentors? A Mr. Asrighan spoke exceedingly highly of you, and I quote, ‘an exceptionally clear sense of what is right and wrong’.” Shubri span the small computer screen around, revealing the image of a dour looking man. Gigantic black caterpillar eyebrows rested heavily above equally dark-rimmed eye sockets, the telltale signs of a journalist who had spent too many nights burning any of the candle ends he could find.

“Fael Asrighan hated me; we fought constantly.” Even the man’s image was enough to curl Tallard’s lip in distaste. She had no love for the pompous, self-assured man, though through time’s soft focus she had to admit he had taught more than one lesson.

To chase what she wanted.

To never take the first answer.

That no was only a starting point.

“Whilst you may have fought, he clearly thought you had something special.” Shubri’s stare eased, though never relented as the tangible wake of memory drifted between the women.  “Do you still speak to Mr. Asrighan?”

“No.” Tallard answered decisively, the full stop of her sentence landing on the deck with enough force that it could have dented the durasteel.

“Could you? If you wanted to?”

“I don’t have anything to say to him.”

Shubri’s face softened again, the sharp white of her eyes giving way to a light rose of lids that had been rubbed one too many times by frustrated hands. It could have been a trick of the light, but Tallard swore she saw a slender tear hanging at the corner of a crow’s foot.

“Would he appreciate an update on your career progression, your assignments… your missions?” Shubri asked with a sigh as she pushed her chair away from the desk and heaved herself into a standing position. “You weren’t on the best of terms, I understand, but might he want to be… kept informed?”

Tallard almost gasped as she realised the truth: the late-night summons, the dark cabin, the roundabout questions. This was a favour. Contact a man she had sworn never to speak to again, because he had a connection. Because he was useful.

Because he could do what they could not.

The voice inside Tallard’s skull was starting to stamp its feet again. Shubri could never know what she was asking Tallard to do, could she?

“The Enclave?” Tallard could feel her voice drop into something approaching dangerously close to conspiracy.

“Is no longer our concern, Lieutenant; our mission there is over.” Shubri lifted a small clay jug from the side table and poured a heavy-looking liquid into a glimmering crystal glass. “Starfleet will send someone to investigate…”

Shubri returned to the desk and slid the ornate glass across the table, the liquid barely moving as it came to a stop.

“I understand the relationship was fraught, but perhaps it’s time to make peace?” Shubri’s finger was still on the wall of the glass, her eyes were still on Tallard. But the predator had gone; all that was left was the woman.

Filled with an unspoken apology, filled with the uncomfortable need to ask a favour.

Tallard considered just leaving. Standing up from the uncomfortable chair and taking flight from the dim little room with this woman who wouldn’t, couldn’t say the words.

The voice inside Tallard fell silent. Shubri knew what she was asking; she knew the cost.

And despite herself, despite all her bluster and all her desire to refuse something that would only bring her pain. A tiny part of Tallard conceded that it might be worth it.

“If there is nothing else, Captain, I have duties to attend to,” Tallard whispered, desperate to escape the smug-looking man that still stared out from the screen.

“Of course…” Shubri nodded, withdrawing her hand and the glass back to her side of the table, suddenly frail and aged in the pale light.

Tallard only got a few steps away from the desk before Shubri’s voice croaked from the dark.

“Thank you, Lieutenant.”

The door hissed shut, leaving the room without an answer.