“Captain’s Log, supplemental:

 

“As Constellation nears the Dominion patrol lines that push furthest into Federation territory, I’ve plotted our course through the Ciater Nebula.  Composed of dilithium hydroxyls, magnesium and chromium, the nebula will obscure Constellation to all but the shortest-of-range sensors or eyes-on targeting.  By crossing through the nebula, we can nearly reach the old Federation border without drawing too much Dominion or Breen attention.

 

“In coordination with command, Fleet Captain Azras Dex of Saratoga Squadron will be serving as our forward scout into the nebula.  We’ve received word of Dominion patrols taking advantage of the nebula’s sensor-inhibiting effects to attack passing Starfleet vessels.  Saratoga Squadron is far better equipped to combat Dominion patrols and communicate the route of safest passage back to Constellation.

 

“Once Constellation and Saratoga Squadron part ways on our separate missions, I’ll be relying on the nimble navigation of this new Constitution III-class starship to take us through nebula’s thick debris formations, which may prove as treacherous as a Jem’Hadar battleship.”

By the time Lieutenant Leander Nune was cataloguing a seventh erotic statuette of a three-winged bird, he found reason to repeat his current mantra of choice:

“This is where I find myself.”  

All of his colleagues were assigned to scour through sensor logs in search of the origins of the invading Dominion Fleet.  Meanwhile, Nune, and Nune alone, had been assigned to catalogue a crate of pre-Great Awakening artifacts recovered from Argelius II.  He was instructed to make that his top priority.  The artifacts had been in the possession of a pessimistic science officer aboard Farpoint Station who didn’t particularly expect to survive the invasion.  He had entrusted a portion of the collection to his old mentor, Taes, in the hopes that Constellation being on the move would prove safe-keeping if Farpoint fell.

Somewhere around the time he had been cataloguing his third erotic bird statuette, Nune supposed Flavia had stopped trusting him when he had traded in his yellow-shouldered uniform for something in science teal.  That could be the only reason he had been side-lined.  As flattering as the uniform proved to be, Nune’s shift in career had been a shock to some.  Nune had led the engineering department aboard the USS Sarek, and so Flavia had expressed trepidation when he asked to serve the science department as a generalist science officer, leveraging his knowledge of cybernetics and warp physics.

Nune’s search for new meaning in his life, along with the mantra, had come from intensive counselling since the start of the year.  The Sarek’s mission to the Delta Quadrant had left him with vast depths of self-doubt when Nune’s exposure to blood dilithium had so thoroughly changed his personality.  He had succumbed to the subspace-telepathic influence much quicker than any of his telepathic peers and he had yet to reach an answer as to why that was.  He supposed it was uncomfortably fitting that he was reaching into the crate for an Argelian dagger when the door to the passageway opened and Lieutenant Yuulik stepped in.

Nune dropped the knife.

Yuulik had been the one he’d terrified and hurt the most in his blood dilithium haze and yet, time and again, she’d proven to be protective of him.  Nune supposed, from Yuulik’s perspective of every interaction having a winner and a loser, Yuulik saw a non-threatening softness inside Nune.  His mindful, live-for-the-moment approach was largely beneath her contempt.  Not even worth competing against.  That’s what gave him the comfort to greet Yuulik tartly.

“What did you do this time, Yuulik?” Nune taunted, tongue-in-cheek.  “How did you get banished to the misfit lab?”

Scoffing, Yuulik replied in a haughty timbre, “I don’t make mistakes.  I don’t play games where the Dominion is concerned.  I was following orders and then Flavia exiled me from the Dominion project.  Without explanation!  It’s baffling why she would push aside her most brilliant team member.  …And you.” –Yuulik squinted at Nune– “Why did she exile you?“

Nune shook his head glumly.  “Flavia didn’t say.  She just called me a spy.”

That stopped Yuulik, as she was closing the distance between them.  Her brow furrowed and she planted her hands on her hips.

“Actually, Flavia has a point,” Yuulik said.  “Are you coming for me and my job?  In all the hustle of transferring aboard Constellation, I never considered asking you…”

Far more placid in his bearing this time, Nune shook his head again.  He smiled at her warmly and he waved a hand, inviting Yuulik to the chair on the other side of the work table.

He said, “No, I want the opposite.  I want a life.  Leading an engine room is too much time locked in my head, planning strategies and contingencies.  I expect chief science officer would be much the same.  I want the end of my duty shift to be as much the start of my day as the end.”

“This hypothesis of life you speak of,” Yuulik said, as she begrudgingly sat in the proffered chair, “would that include at least three dinners in the Planetarium with that Romulan cosmologist, Laken?”

Nune leaned forward and he could feel an unconscious smile changing his whole face.  He smiled so hard it almost hurt.  He bit his lower lip before he answered Yuulik’s question.

“Have you ever met someone who seemed to be a reflection of yourself?” Nune asked.  “All of the constituent parts seem so similar, in moments you feel like extensions of the same person.  And yet a reflection is flipped; those similar parts are assembled in a completely divergent fashion.  Have you ever felt like that?  Like someone could be identical to you and utterly the opposite, all at the same time?”

Yuulik snorted softly.

“I can’t say that I have,” she answered, somewhat dismissively.

“Oh?” Nune asked.  He raised an eyebrow, taunting her again.  Although he’d been aboard the Sarek during the Brigadoon fiasco, Kellin Rayco had told him all the ways Yuulik had tried to sacrifice her own career and her life in aid of rescuing Nova.

That’s why Nune went on to ask, “What do you think of Nova coming back– joining our crew?”

“She’s an incredibly competent officer.  Taes is lucky to have her on the team,” Yuulik said in a formal timbre.  Nune’s Betazoid senses told him that she mostly believe exactly what she was saying.  She wasn’t holding too much back for herself.  Yuulik smirked and she leaned forward conspiratorially to tell him something else.

“I don’t like to speak ill of the departed,” Yuulik added, “but Annikafiore was a terribly literal thinker.  Nova doesn’t have that shortcoming.”

Scoffing out a laugh, Nune said, “Annikafiore isn’t dead.“

Yuulik was quick to come back with, “Is she currently assigned to a Neo-Constitution explorer?”

Nune shook his head in the negative.

“Then she might as well be dead,” Yuulik said.

“Then it’s a good thing Nova joined our ops team,” Nune said, both acknowledging Yuulik’s point and swinging back to his own conversational intention.  “How did it work out when Flavia had you work together?”

Yuulik slowly blinked at Nune.  “Speaking of Flavia, Flavia is… basically a Tal Shiar Commander, right?”

Wincing, Nune counter-proposed, “Being a citizen of the Romulan Free State doesn’t necessarily make one an officer of the Tal Shiar, does it?”

“Whatever they call themselves now,” Yuulik remarked, “the Romulans were not properly opposed to the Dominion, were they?  Not morally.  Not like us.”

“And yet,” Nune rejoined, “the joined us against the Dominion anyway.”

Yuulik narrowed her eyes at Nune.

“Is Flavia even really a scientist?”

Finally, Nune had to laugh at the level of paranoia flaring up from Yuulik.  All this because Yuulik had caught Flavia’s ire and been rebuked from the mission critical project.  

“Wouldn’t you have noticed by now?” Nune asked of her.  “You’ve worked with Flavia for months now.  Task Force Seventeen has invited Romulan Free State scientists across half of their starships!”

“Exactly!” Yuulik cried out in victory.  “Weren’t there Free State scientists aboard the USS Discovery in the Delta Quadrant when it exploded?”

That Nune didn’t laugh at.

“Um…” Nune said, and he cringed, struggling to follow Yuulik’s non sequitur, but he followed it all the same.

“…I think so?”

Yuulik nodded.  “Right.  Right?”