The AIP was once more secure. Sealed behind a containment field, it was further locked away even from sight within a new, Starfleet-issue case instead of the crate Thawn had brought from Synnef. Even though it could not so much as malevolently gleam, she still found her attention dragging towards it like it had a magnetic pull.

Blinking, her eyes snapped back to the middle of the science lab the SCE team had taken over as Cortez explained her findings.

‘We managed to decrypt about as much of what we extracted from the derelict as I think we’re gonna get,’ she said to Valance and Kharth. ‘I reckon the section of the Cube we were in was associated with some of the tertiary data processing systems – which for the Borg is like one of our science labs.’

Kharth brightened. ‘So we know what they’ve been studying?’

‘I said tertiary,’ Cortez said with a wince. ‘On the surface, all we’ve got is some indication they were assessing their astrometric data on the Midgard Sector and the vicinity – but it’s too corrupted to have any degree of confidence on how accurate their intelligence is on the region.’

‘That indicates that this region was their destination, at least,’ ventured Valance. ‘Rather than that we were on their way.’

‘We’re still talking about an area scores of light-years wide,’ Cortez said, still apologetic. ‘But.’

In the silence, Thawn fidgeted. Only after a moment did she realise eyes were on her, and she stood. ‘Sorry. I didn’t realise that was my cue.’ She cleared her throat. ‘Their analysis is quite broad. They appear to have focused on a variety of locations, and it’s not only worlds with populations or resources. It’s not even only worlds. We think they’re looking for something, and not necessarily a strategic target.’

‘And they were going to scour the Midgard Sector?’ Kharth wondered.

Thawn shook her head. ‘Their analysis of this data is days old, at least a week. I believe it was conducted well ahead of their departure from the Delta Quadrant. This was one stage of a search pattern, one I expect they’d narrowed down even before they left.’

‘But what it means,’ said Cortez, jumping back in, ‘is that we know this was a search party. And we don’t think it’s a strategic priority.’

Valance set her hands on her hips. ‘Is there a chance it was general reconnaissance? The Collective can’t have up-to-date intelligence on this region.’

‘Maybe,’ Cortez allowed, though clearly didn’t think it likely. Thawn was confident that a year ago, she would have been bold enough to outright tell Valance her guess was probably wrong. ‘But that would suggest they were coming here for a sector-by-sector sweep, or to find a key position from which to run long-range scans. What little we can tell of their analysis doesn’t support that.’

Kharth blew out her cheeks. ‘Guess we’ll have to see what secrets Rencaris has for us.’

‘It seems so,’ said Valance stiffly. She nodded to the technical team. ‘Good job. Keep working on more safety measures if we’re to use the AIP again.’

‘Step one is to not plug it into anything attached to anything else,’ Cortez sighed. ‘But we’re on it.’ The two command officers left, and the engineer at once slumped against the control panel, eyes shut. ‘Hell.’ Thawn was silent, not knowing what to say, not sure what Cortez was exactly bothered by and reluctant to press her or even reach out with her senses. At length, Cortez looked at her. ‘You need sleep.’

‘I – Commander? We’ve got to work on the AIP…’

‘And I want to go over all our records from the away mission, and we’re waiting on more reports from the likes of Daystrom about what they’ve done with anything similar. But you look exhausted, Thawn.’

She shifted her feet. ‘Apologies, Commander, but you’re tired, too.’

‘Sure. But I outrank you, so…’ Cortez shrugged, not bothering to back up her argument further. ‘It’s been a shitty day. Go cuddle your fella and feel better.’

Thawn didn’t know how to resist the order without engaging with that point, and she really didn’t want to engage with that point. She folded her arms across her chest. ‘Drop me a line if we hear from Daystrom.’

‘I’ll drop you a line when I damn well feel like it, Lieutenant.’ Despite the firm words, Cortez’s tone was airy, confident in her power to do as she pleased in this scenario. ‘But you’re no used to me exhausted. Go on. Get!’

Thus unceremoniously shooed, Thawn had no choice but to withdraw. Shipboard time was later than she’d realised, the corridors quiet, the decks filled with the gentle hum of the ship at warp as they headed deeper, spinward into the open territories of the Midgard Sector. Endeavour had not been so far out this way since the collapse of the Star Empire of Rator and Starfleet’s aid response to the Velorum factions, and never since. Not in the long year of the region’s collapse into a political and economic wilderness.

More mysteries lay out here than the Borg.

It was not a comforting thought to bring to the loneliness of her empty quarters. Thawn tried to restore some of her old routine, a pattern that might slow her racing thoughts ahead of sleep. But even with the dulcet notes of Baccharali and a rather gentle poetry collection she’d downloaded at some point on the expedition and not worked through, she was still curled up with a blanket and staring emptily into space when the door-chime went.

She jolted, her heart rate at once going a million miles an hour. Forcing herself to slow her breathing, she could not keep the snap from her voice as she called, ‘Come in!’

It was Beckett. Of course it was. He entered like she’d dropped caltrops on the deck, but the concern on his face was open. ‘Hey. You’re still up.’

‘You’d have woken me up if I weren’t,’ she pointed out, setting the PADD with her reading rather pointedly to one side. ‘You should be asleep.’

He hesitated. ‘I was waiting for you to clock off. We didn’t do lunch.’

‘Well, no.’ She stood. ‘It wasn’t really the sort of away mission you follow up with a sandwich in the Round Table.’

‘I didn’t think it was the sort of away mission you followed up by locking yourself away in your quarters in the evening.’ But she didn’t react to that, and Beckett’s hands dropped. ‘That was too close, Rosara.’

‘You think I don’t know that?’ Control had lasted only so long. But while her heart raced with the memory of shuddering shadows and looming drones, her voice came out with more frustration than fear. ‘I was the one in there!’

‘Hey.’ He softened and stepped forward, and for some reason his open concern, even as she was pushing him, made her want to lash out even harder. ‘I’m not saying you weren’t. You’ve had a close call. I wanted to check in on you.’

‘I’m alive. There’s still work to do in the morning. Is there anything more to say?’

He stared at her. ‘What’s this about?’

Thawn picked up the PADD and blanket, bustling like she was putting things away and she expected him to leave. ‘What’s what about?’

‘You nearly got killed today and I’m reaching out and you’re pushing me away.’ He advanced, stepping in her way as she turned from the armchair. ‘Today can only have been terrifying – I was terrified – but don’t shut me out so you don’t have to deal.’

‘I’m not refusing to deal.’ She heard the lie even as it escaped her lips, but it was not the deception that made her stop. It was the way the deception failed to encapsulate everything. Thawn tossed PADD and blanket on the sofa and faced him with a sigh. ‘Logan tried to warn me yesterday. About using the AIP. About how dangerous it could be. I didn’t listen.’

Beckett’s shoulders sank. ‘That wasn’t your choice alone. Valance, Kharth, Cortez – everyone was caught out by today.’

But she didn’t falter, meeting his gaze. ‘I didn’t listen,’ she pressed on, ‘because I was distracted by you. By what Valance wanted in the meeting with you, by what was going to happen next to you, whether you were going to be transferred somewhere else…’

His hands rose to her arms as his gaze softened, but she could see he didn’t understand. ‘I didn’t get transferred. I’m not going to get transferred. I’m right here.’

She stepped out of his grasp. ‘This is more important than us. This isn’t just the lives of our away team; this is the fact of the Midgard Sector – further, if the Borg are mobilising. I need my head in the game, and you’re a distraction.’

Thawn had expected him to get frustrated, angry, disappointed. But she hadn’t expected him to look as unsurprised as he did as his hands dropped. ‘Huh,’ said Beckett at length, straightening. ‘There it is.’

She frowned. ‘There what is?’

‘Honeymoon’s over, now we’re back to reality, and you’re realising you have to actually live with the implications of running away.’

‘What?’

He gave an exaggerated shrug. ‘That’s what this is about, isn’t it? The last month was us hiding away from the world and all the baggage that comes with it. But now we’ve got to face up to what the future looks like, and you’ve got cold feet again?’

‘I…’ Somehow, his pushing back gave clarity. Thawn’s jaw dropped. No, she thought. No, I’m just angry with myself for not taking Logan more seriously. Instead, as the cold fear of the dark derelict teeming with drones began to gleam with a flame of her own indignant anger, she said, ‘Is that what you think of me?’

‘Am I wrong?’

She took a sharp step forward. ‘Is that what you’ve thought of me for the last month? That it was just… what, a diversion? A break from reality I’d undo the moment it got sticky?’

He set his jaw in a way she knew meant he was decreasingly certain but was about to be stubborn. ‘Well? Isn’t it?’ he asked, voice going rough.

‘No! I just almost died today, you idiot!’

‘And I had to stand on the bridge and couldn’t do anything!’

Had he held his ground with his accusatory stubbornness, she might not have felt it. Might not have heard the gleam of pain and fear in his voice that echoed her own. It rippled through the thread between them that hummed with more than words, the connection she sensed but he couldn’t. Misused, it was an intrusion or a distraction. If she let it brush against her senses at the right moment, it was a tether for her.

But not for him. No, if she felt it, she, the Betazoid, had to do the work to remind him. Sometimes that took subtlety. Sometimes that took working through his feelings with words so she didn’t jump to the end, risk either misjudging what emotions she’d thought she’d sensed or denying him the chance to work through them himself.

Tonight, all she had to do was give in. Because giving in meant stepping forward and bursting into tears on him.

It was, in some ways, inadequate. It came with no admission of mistake nor any explanation of the fault lines in themselves and their relationship their words had exposed. But after a day of terror and error, it was a release and an invitation. And as he wrapped his arms around her, giving in, too, it proved that beneath the doubt, guilt, and fear, it was all either of them truly needed right then.