Chapter Text
Laira
At 13:00, Michael does not appear for lunch, as she expected. That means the spore drive meeting with the Ni'Var scientists is running over, potentially involving other scientists from all over the Federation, and there's a chance it'll take all day. Hopefully she'll eat there, but that means Laira's eating alone.
She's gotten so accustomed to having Michael at meals, seeing her multiple times a day, and it's funny - and ridiculous - how much she wants her to walk through the door.
Tilly stands in the doorway to her office instead at 13:07. "Hi! I mean, Hello Madam President, can I—"
"Come in, Lieutenant." Laira waves at the chair in front of her desk. "No one's here, you can drop the formalities."
Tilly laughs a little, and sits, shaking off her nerves. "Silly getting used to that, feel like I have to say ma'am constantly or I'm not being a good citizen."
Pausing to cover her face with her arm, Laira sneezes twice before she can retort. "You should try it on this side of the desk."
"Oh no thank you - I'd never - my mother was on the security council when I was growing up and that much power isn't something I'd ever want." Tilly rests her hands in her lap. "You're good at it though."
"Thank you." They sit in comfortable silence, waiting for Michael, while Laira works through her communiques. She sneezes three times, which makes Tilly start to smirk, but Tilly ressists making fun of her, and just smiles, which is a kindness Laira appreciates.
Regrettably, a message from Michael appears a moment later, apologizing that she can't make lunch. "Dammit."
Tilly mouths the word, as if pleased Laira can swear, and grins. "Oh?"
"Michael's stuck in the meeting with the Ni'Var scientists and Auriello."
"That big spore drive meeting?" Tilly waits for her to nod. "Michael said they had some promising ideas. One of the Romulans had a protype for a telepathic interface."
Laira allows herself to smile for an instant. It's good breakthrough, useful, they need it. She also wants Michael, which is needy and ridiculous, but she was looking forward to having lunch with her. Funny how little time it took to get attached and want Michael's as often as she can. "They do it's just—"
"Going through lunch."
"I'm sorry, Tilly. We'll have to reschedule" Laira looks down at her work, then back up, fully expecting Tilly to take her leave. She doesn't get to see Tilly's expression, because she has to sneeze, again, and again, and maybe she should just take the damn hypo that makes this stop—
Tilly does not get up to leave. "What are you doing?"
"Now? Trying to catch up on communiques."
"Which is not time sensitive, and you still have to eat."
Laira tilts her head, surprised. "With you?"
"I can promise you I am much more fun than eating alone at your desk. I'll even resist calling you ma'am and take you to the Academy cafeteria where no one will recognize you." Tilly picks up the little square of cloth Michael left neatly folded on her desk that morning. A handkerchief truly an ancient thing, but enhanced with programmable matter, and marked with her initials, it's almost a tolerable accessory.
Tilly points at the initials. "This is cute."
"That was Michael."
"Michael is smitten." There's something knowing in Tilly's smile.
Laira looks down, because meeting Tilly's eyes will give away more than she dares. "Michael likes gestures, it's not really anything."
"Oh she likes you," Tilly corrects.
Taking a breath, Laira avoids talking about how in love Michael is - or she is with her - by returning to the thought of them in the Academy cafeteria. "Should I be concerned that the cadets don't know the president by sight?"
Tilly chuckles. "Oh it's contextual, of course. There's no reason the President of the Federation would be in the Academy cafeteria, you must be someone else. Also you're very nondescript when you want to be."
"Is that a compliment?" Laira's not sure how to take that, but Tilly's smile suggests it is meant with love.
"You're gorgeous and intimidating enough they won't talk to you. Come, eat lunch with me. It'll be fun." Tilly waits, then leans in a little. "Also, if I'm allowed to say, you do look better. Much better than the last time I saw you."
"Thanks." Reaching for the pins that hold her hair in the coiled bun at the base of her neck, Laira lets that much of her hair down, and it tumbles heavy on her shoulders. She never wears her hair down in her capacity as president, so that should help. Standing slowly, cautious of the way foggy turns to dark if she gets up too quickly, Laira waits until she's steady, then opens her jacket.
"Totally undercover." Tilly waits by the door, then reaches for her commbadge. "Besides, we don't usually let non-Starfleet in. You should be honored."
"I am."
"You're not going to remind me that as Commander-in-Chief—"
"No, not, then I'd be less honored and that's less fun."
Tilly winks and taps her badge. "Let's go have fun."
====
Fun, apparently, is choosing one of the color coded replicators: brighter colors are have more spice, darker colors have less.
"We rotate," Tilly explains as they join the pale green line. "Most of the cadets who come to the Academy didn't have a full replicator where they grew up, or they haven't had one at all before. Too many choices was confusing, so each line only makes one thing, each replicator gets a color, Commander Lablav came up with an algorithm to pick colors based on what's in the meal, so no one has to think too much."
"Do you know what it is?" Laira asks, looking over the busy cafeteria while cadets and instructors line up, get their food and sit, talking and studying. The laughter is very different from the commissary where the flag officers and upper level diplomats eat.
"The algorithm?" Tilly shakes her head. "Shades of green mean Gamma Quadrant, so..." She shrugs. "It'll be good, whatever it is. I've been working on my star charts but that was a blur in my time so it's slow going. It's kind of fun not knowing. That green's very pale so, it'll be bland, if you are still careful about what you eat, for some reason."
"You can say it."
"Oh?" Tilly leads her right up to the replicator, taps a few controls to chose her utensils and what she wants to drink from a short list. "I didn't know we were saying it."
"I-" Laira looks away, studying the replicator, then back at Tilly. "I'm going to have to learn to say it."
"You don't have to. You can wait, let everyone tiptoe around it, tell them when she's here."
Laira makes a sound in the back of her throat. "There's an idea." Just wait, see how long it takes anyone to mention it at all.
Once Tilly has her tray, it's Laira's turn and she chooses the iced tea and allows the replicator pick her utensils. She doesn't know where on Earth a hibiscus is from, but it sounds interesting. Hopefully not too interesting.
"Admiral Vance took it well, right?"
"I think he was surprised, I wasn't in that meeting, but he's always loved children."
Tilly leads her to a table on the raised section, near the huge viewports that look out over the fleet. The other tables there have instructors in black and Starfleet officers in the red, blue and gold of standard uniforms. One or two look up and acknowledge Tilly, and no one pays any attention to her. That's so rare since the election that Laira almost feels slighted that there are no double takes.
"Well, that's one hurdle down. When do you have to tell the Senate?"
Sitting down next to Tilly instead of across from her, Laira takes a breath, wishing she could settle the twisting in her chest. She chews the inside of her lip, stopping herself before it hurts. "I don't know what the protocol is, or should be. Nothing similar has happened after the Burn, and things before the Burn were so different."
"But it did happen before?" Tilly unfolds her napkin, setting it in her lap. "It must have."
"Several times, I think."
"You think?" Tilly smiles over her plate. "Historical records didn't think it was worth mentioning?"
"No, I-" Laira pauses. Does she wish this was more dull? Somehow less noteworthy so no one cared what her personal life was like, and having a baby with Michael was simply a footnote? Would that make this easier? Is it important that they're doing this now, after the Burn and the DMA because everyone needs a chance to live in peace and prosperity, whatever it looks like for them?
She can't say these things yet, not to Tilly, not even to Michael. Her thoughts are half-formed and Laira never speaks before she's sure. She must answer Tilly's question. She bites her lip again, suddenly intrigued by her tea.
"I'm sure you're aware how much history has been lost, between when you and Discovery left and the Burn. The older records are harder to access, the way we store data has changed and we were so shorthanded before—"
"So many things we can't even open until we change the databases from isolinear rods to crystalline data cores, and somehow account for the forty-seven different kids of storage we used in between. Would be easier if the records were paper, those you can always open. Except they'd take up a whole planet or something." Tilly smiles, laughing a little. "Planet Library, has that ever been a thing?"
"No, I haven't herd of a library planet. Your sphere, the one that became part of Discovery's that's close—"
"And that turned our ship into a person, so, maybe not the best way to store data." Tilly stes down her fork, picks up her drink and meets Laira's eyes, her confidence is so calm that Laira wants to sink into it. "Still, maybe it helps that you're not the first person to have a baby in office?"
"Children are a lot." Laira toys with her rice rather than eating it. "Babies are more than a lot. How do I know I'm balancing it well? How do I—"
"Still be one of the most important people in the galaxy?"
"I'm not-" Laira's face starts to warm. She hates blushing.
Tilly gestures with her hand, pretending to gossip. "The leader who stopped the DMA, the reuniter of the Federation. You know, I hear you got both Earth and Ni'Var back into the Federation, that's historic, because you just have Andoria left and you'll have a full set."
"I didn't—"
"You could have done all of it pregnant, or as a mom, you're still you. Besides, even though my mother isn't an ideal role model, but she accomplished so many important things when I was little. Even finished some important security agreement with the Grazerites right before I was born. My grandmother said she had to talk fast for once because she was in labor."
"Remind me to avoid that."
"The treaty was sound, maybe save something you really need the boost for."
"Because I'll be able to plan it exactly."
"This is Michael's child too, she used to be Vulcan, I bet your kid is exactly on time and makes a hell of an entrance."
At some point in the future, between three and eight months from now, because Hugh can't give them anything more exactly than that.
"Are you starting the betting pool early?"
"Gotta get the right date." Tilly picks up her dessert, smirking. "Play my cards right and who knows what I could win."
Laira chuckles into her napkin and shakes her head. Taking a bite saves her from having to speak with she chews, ignoring her food. It's edible: vegetables, sauce and protein over rice, mildly savory, very lightly spiced. Almost too bland, and that's probably a good thing.
One of Tilly's cadets, a human woman with red hair, approaches with a polite nod to Laira, then ignores her entirely to ask Tilly a complicated question regarding shield harmonics. They discuss it for a moment, then she leaves, again without really acknowledging Laira as more than a lunch companion. It's perfectly polite, but Laira's so rarely just present without having to lead the conversation that she has to remind herself what to do.
She has to eat, smile, watch Tilly guide her cadets through their work: it's pleasant enough, warm in a way she can't always find going from one tense planetary leader to the next on comms.
"Sorry, their exam on shielding is this afternoon."
"It's all right. It's nice, actually."
"Thought it might be. My dad told me that my mom always had the best time at parties when no one knew who she was. When they were dating, she'd come with him to geology mixers and just be ordinary all night. As ordinary as she could be, of course. She was kind of like you that way."
"How so?" Laira braces for the comparison that must be coming.
"She was fucking gorgeous, yes, she was all put together and important and elegant, but whenever she had her hair down, some dress that wasn't perfect, when she'd laugh talking to my father? He kept these holos of when they were young, and they were so happy. I used to look at them and know why they got together."
"So I'm an unreachable bitch until my hair's down?"
Tilly's nose crinkles when she laughs, and she has to set her glass down to keep laughing because she's gone too far to drink. It takes her a moment to collect herself. "Michael did want to punch you in the head." After she says that, she's gone in laughter.
While they're both wiping tears from their eyes, Tilly explains how annoyed Michael was at the beginning, when she introduced her at the Academy, then when she came on board. Michael hadn't hid her feelings much, yet she had been polite. Diplomatic, even, though she'd hate admitting it.
Well, would have hated to say it, now she'd probably embellish the story with how much she wanted to punch Laira for being a politician.
Maybe just box a little.
They finish lunch, teasing each other and joking and by the time Laira sets down her tray in the recycler, she is aware why Tilly is Michael's best friend. There's something so easy about her. Laira so rarely has interactions that leave her so content.
In the lift back to her office, Laira sighs and lets herself rub her forehead where it aches between her eyes.
"How's your head?"
"Truthfully?"
"Yeah." Reaching across the lift, Tilly has her hand before Laira realizes they're even that close of friends. "You can tell me, I promise to only use it tease Michael later."
Laira hums her agreement, trying to find words. She can't say she has a headache, it's not painful, really, just fuzzy, like the signals of her brain are caught in a weak subspace buffer and scrambled like a bad holocomm. "It's foggy."
Tilly's thoughts run much faster, and her smile has such a warmth. "Have you ever seen the fog rise off the ocean in San Francisco, on Earth? When the water's warm, it's like it's steaming up into the air. It's beautiful."
"I haven't been." She must sound too wistful because Tilly squeezes her hand.
"Not during negotiations?"
Sighing again Laira looks directly ahead at the turbolift door. "They were busy."
"And you couldn't take a day off?"
Laira looks down at how the doors meet the deck. She should have, and found time to see her family. Made time, but she was so tired.
Tilly ponders for a moment. "I haven't been to Fereginar yet but I hear the fog there is intense."
Chuckling, Laira nods, immediately grateful for the reprieve. "It's like soup."
"Must be hell for your hair."
"It is." Laira squeezes her hand. "Better than Andoria."
"You haven't-"
"Oh no, we've been at war since-"
"Osyraa, right. I- Andoria was part of the Federation. My Federation, we visited." Tilly shakes her head. "I forget how old I am, sometimes "
Laira can't imagine having memories of a place almost a thousand years old. It must be such a strange experience.
Silence holds them as the lift hums. When it stops, Laira doesn't step forward. She holds Tilly's hand and they stand together, waiting.
Maybe it's better if she says it out loud. "I stayed on the ship, when we were in orbit of Earth. I went to the conference halls, the restaurants--"
Tilly waits, hand in hers, quiet and patient.
"My mother loved Earth. Her family's there, I have a great-grandmother, and I meant to see them."
"You're very busy."
"I made myself busy."
Tilly tugs her hand, just a little, so their eyes meet. "You've never talked to them."
"Earth was closed off." It wasn't her fault. Earth wouldn't even accept communiques. She's never spoken to her great grandmother; doesn't know her great-aunts and uncles, or the dozens of cousins she must have.
The lift opens when Laira takes a step, but this deck only contains her office and a conference room, and they're alone. It's still, almost too quiet.
Tilly starts to release her hand, but Laira keeps hers."I didn't know what to say."
"Now at least you can start with telling them that you're having Michael's baby." Tilly reaches out, adds her other hand on top of Laira's. "She's pretty famous."
"I know."
"A little celebrity can't hurt." Tilly winks, then tugs her close, hugging her tight. It's sudden, and welcome, and she melts into her. It's been a long time since she saw friends close enough to hug her. "They will love you, and of course they'll adore Michael. She's Captain fucking Burnham, she's a rock star."
Laira sighs into her shoulder, holding Tilly just as tightly. "Bring a rock star, and they have to like me?"
"Can't hurt your chances."
Michael's meeting with the Ni'Var scientists drags on through the afternoon, even through the evening. Admiral Vance deploys his most convincing argument that she come to dinner: sending his daughter to her office to invite her. It has yet to fail, because she's precocious and polite. Sinner with Vance's family is always sustaining, in ways more than the food. Last time she visited, Laira brought Michael, which sent the whole evening into stories of the 23rd century and Michael answering every question Adezie came up with about xenoanthropology. The two of them could have had their own dinner and talked the whole time, which made the whole evening amusing.
Dr. Hirai sent her Dr. Kovich's three dimension word puzzle from Earth after the got home, and she's been so busy she's only tried it a few times, but tonight, alone in their quarters, Laira's halfway through her third puzzle when Michael arrives home.
Michael kisses the back of her head, hands on her shoulders as she stares over at the puzzle. "Putting words in a grid wasn't enough for you?"
Laira reaches up, patting her hand. "I beat that one."
"So it gave you this horrible monstrosity?" Michael circles the sofa, removing her jacket as she walks. "That's a hyperbolic curve."
"No, hyperbolic is ten letters, I need twelve."
Chuckling, Michael settles in around her, pulling Laira into her arms. "Navigational is twelve."
"Did you crack it?"
Michael kisses her neck."One of the Romulan scientists has a prototype interface based on the 10C's complex hydrocarbons. The interface generates a hydrocarbon map of the universe and then uses electrical signals to send it to the mycelial network it."
"And the mycelial network can understand that?"
"Prototaxites stellaviatori seems to get it. Stamets, Reno, Auriello and one of the Romulan Scientists, Doctor Veddra think they're ready for a shuttle experiment. Detmer volunteered but this would all be open to presidential approval, of course."
"Of course."
"It looks promising. We were able to ask the mycelial network where we were and they replied."
"Replied?"
Michael nods into her shoulder. "Sent back electric signals. I think if we asked through a spore drive interface, it might work. We have to try."
Laira takes Michael's hands in hers, wrapping their fingers together. "And they will. Imagining a spore drive in every Starfleet ship, that changes things."
"Wouldn't it?" Michael nuzzles into her neck. I'm sorry I missed lunch."
"Tilly came anyway."
"I thought she might." Michael taps the back of her hand with her fingers. "She's incredible."
"She's not intimidated."
"No," Michael says, chuckling. "She really wouldn't be."
"I appreciate that."
"Good."
They talk about the Ni'Var scientists and endless meetings, about Tilly's cadets and how much everything would change if ever ship in the fleet had a spore drive.
When they're both half-asleep on the sofa together they untangle themselves and Michael offers her a hand up.
"How was today?"
"I missed you."
Michael reaches up, brushing her cheek. Her smile's soft. "I missed you too."
Laira kisses her cheek. "We had a calm day, our hitchhiker and I."
"You didn't take it."
Sighing zlaira shakes her head. "I didn't. Sneezed through all my meetings, lunch and dinner."
Michael holds her cheek. "You have turned green by now when you take it."
"I know." Turning into Michael's hand, Laira kisses her palm. "I know. I--"
"It's yours or tell, or not, I'm just glad it was a good day."
"My aide knows. She's Bajoran, she has to know. It's not subtle."
"That's okay." Michael takes both her hands and squeezes them, smiling so bright it turns into a laugh. "She's probably thrilled for you."
"Us."
"Us." Michael takes a step closer, and their foreheads touch. Touching her seems to make everything possible. "The whole damn galaxy is going to be thrilled."
Her face warms. Michael makes her blush like no one else, and she knows it.
"Our baby is not a state event."
"She's a beginning. Birth follows rebirth." Michael touches her belly, her hand resting against Laira's shirt. "Her galaxy's going to be the best it's ever been."
Hope burns, catching in her throat. Michael kisses her before she has to speak, and they melt into each other, losing themselves to the moment. Hope is so easy with her. Laira had to fight for it, search her soul to inspire others, and then this ancient ship arrives with her brilliant captain and hope wells inside her, unstoppable. Irresponsible, reckless - Starfleet Captain bullshit - but she loves it, and Michael and what they are together.
Maybe this can get Michael back on the bridge of a starship, perhaps there's some hopeful future where they're out there together.
Together is all she wants to think about tonight.