When the doors slid open, Taes could see Nelli hadn’t taken her advice.

Looking into Nelli’s quarters, the small compartment remained in its standard configuration.  There was no pictures on the bulkheads nor a single flower in a vase.  Nelli had even volunteered to stay in one of the quarters with no exterior viewport.  The space was barely recognisable as personal quarters, aside from the standard cabinetry set into the bulkheads and Nelli’s bed, which had been customized to be filled with soil rather than a mattress.

Nelli’s back was to the door.  Although Nelli had allowed Taes’s entrance, Nelli continued to fuss with something in a cabinet before closing the cabinet’s panel.

“May I come in?” Taes asked, already stepping over the threshold.

“I’m very tired,” Nelli said, pressing their vines against the cabinet.

Taes froze mid-step.  She took a breath, and then she took a step back.

“I wanted to thank you,” Taes said, “for saving Addae’s life.  I’ve already written too many condolence letters this year.”

“Thank you,” Nelli said, curling their vines inwards.  “Or you’re welcome.  Whichever it is.”

Taes huffed and said, “I heard about what happened in the med bay this morning.”

“Do you require an apology?” Nelli asked.

“No,” Taes said softly.  “I only require your truth.”

Moving towards Taes, Nelli said, “I do not apologize.”

“You don’t have to,” Taes said.  She used a reassuring intonation, even though she didn’t know if the universal translator could truly interpolate that meaning into her words.

Taes remarked, “I understood what it meant to you to learn more about the fungus and its abilities.  More than once, I’ve found myself over-identifying with a new lifeform and pinning all my hopes for deeper self-discovery on their–“

Nelli interjected, “You have induced the electromagnetic pulses?”

Taes cleared her throat.  Then: “I have.”

Nelli said, “It puzzles me.  Starfleet hates the Borg Collective, yet the inverse is also true.  We love our collective.  We say we are nothing like them, and yet extreme individualism is not rewarded in Starfleet.  So then, what’s the difference?”

“Ah, I don’t know if I would put it like that,” Taes said.  “We are a collective, but we don’t need an RNA exchange to bond us.  We form emotional integration by sharing experiences and confiding in one another verbally.  We built a moral trust.”

Nelli didn’t say anything more.  If they could have, Taes felt like Nelli would have blinked heavily at her.

“I should let you rest,” Taes said, and she retreated from Nelli’s quarters.

The doors closed, and it physically pained Nelli to experience a physical barrier between themselves and Taes’s presence.  Nelli needed Taes’s strength more than ever on this night.  As much as it stung to understand that Taes had been the one — Taes had chosen to steal the fungi’s ability to connect — Nelli was not without pragmatism.  They understood the ecosystem of a starship.  They understood Taes made choices for the all sometimes.  Nelli hadn’t pushed Taes away to hide their pain.  Rather, Nelli had emotionally manipulated Taes to hide something else.  

The something in the cabinet.

A vial, a single hypospray vial, filled with grey fungal matter.