Work Text:
January 2296
Chandra winces as her head shifts. She stares at Captain John Harriman sitting next to her sickbay bed. Leonard McCoy stares daggers at Harriman, as she keeps her head still.
Harriman notices her discomfort; he gets up and pours her some water, as she’d been reaching for the pitcher. He extends the straw and brings it to her lips. She sips gratefully, until she has her fill and her throat is no longer dry.
She notices that Doctor McCoy’s eyebrows are up in his hairline; she shoots him a look that hopefully tells him to stop hovering.
The pain on the right side of her head lessens into a dull ache under the heavy bandaging where the bat’leth had sliced through her skin and her skull before scoring her brain. McCoy had been one who had worked to repair the injury.
That pain is nothing compared to the crushing grief in her heart. Grief at the loss of one love, irretrievably, and another who might as well be dead, as he’d left for parts unknown while she had been unconscious.
She closes her eyes as she feels the slight tickle in her mind. She can’t identify the sensation, but there is some familiarity to it.
Chandra turns her eyes back to Harriman. His face is grave as he studies her, but with a great deal of sympathy in his eyes.
“So are you here to tell me that you’re going to court-martial me? For disobeying your order and going after the remnants of the 17th’s squadron, once I found out they were on Vostus?”
He says nothing for a moment. “There are those who think that I should,” he says quietly. He looks at her, directly into her eyes.
Meaning, your daddy, the admiral? she thinks, but doesn’t say. Although it couldn’t hurt her more than what he was possibly about to do.
“Then why did you listen to Agon and Theelia? Why did you come help us?”
He lets a slight smile come over his face. “Because they were so charming and persuasive?” he replies, the snark evident in his tone.
Chandra snorts. Her skull cries out. “Well, I’m glad that you did. Even with the backup from Intelligence and others, we probably weren’t getting out of there.”
He says nothing.
“So is your father coming after me?”
His eyes flash, but they calm just as fast. “He may be coming after me. Or trying to teach me a lesson. I’m being relieved pending an inquiry,” he says. “Plus I think he has set his sights on others involved.”
She closes her eyes. She probably knows who that will be. The Andorian engineer, Agon and Deltan navigator, Theelia, who had gotten married against the letter of a Starfleet oath.
He rises, checking his chronometer.
“I guess I need a lawyer?”
He grins. “I don’t know. Do you?” He drops two metallic objects on the table next to the water pitcher, then turns and exits.
Her eyes fall on two triple-barred pieces of metal, with one arrowhead at the end. She breathes out, a sob coming into her voice.
The insignia of a full captain, albeit one with less than three years’ seniority.
She stares at the door. McCoy walks over and looks at the insignia.
“Not what I thought I’d get from him,” she says.
“Oh, there’s more, Chan,” he says. “You’re going to be taking over the 17th. What’s more, Harriman went against his daddy. He’s recommended you for the Medal of Honor, Kaylin for the Starfleet Cross in Gold, and Siobhan for the Silver Palm with jewel.”
She continues to stare at the insignia. Finally she lifts her eyes and gazes at the now-dead roses someone had brought in for her.
Her eyes fall on the thorns, which seem to be the most prominent part left.
The tickle comes into her head again. Harriman’s not so bad, says a voice in her head.
The voice of T’Varilyn, as clear as day.
That’s right. You’re stuck with a part of me, babe. Just like Croft is.
She’d found the roses.