Chapter Text
The hand on Laira's shoulder shaking her awake is not Michael's. It's too gentle, almost tentative. Michael wouldn't be so careful. Yellow alert flashes above her, and Michael's voice carries over the shipwide comms. Something's wrong, Michael's on the bridge.
Protocol says—
Laira head swims when she lifts it, and her vision grays into tiny sparkles when she sits up, making it hard to focus on the face in front of her. She doesn't mean to moan, maybe she swallows it, then hands are on her shoulders. The alarm and the yellow lights should have woken her. Zora must have tried. She stirred when Michael left their bed, but Michael had kissed her and told her to sleep. That Laira remembers.
This doesn't make sense, and she's too tired to force her thoughts into order. Must be why Michael sent Tilly.
"There's an ion storm, nasty one." Tilly's hand finds her cheek, trying to help her focus. "You need to transport to the Iria so they can relay you to headquarters. Most of the crew's beaming out. You have just over two minutes before they're out of range and we power down so, let's find your shoes."
Tilly leaves her on the bed, searching the bedroom for Laira's shoes. Her boots are in the closet, but they'll take a moment to put on. She doesn't really have a moment- she should help - stand up- something. The room swirls around her while she misses what Tilly says. Tilly disappears for a moment, and hands her a glass of water.
"Drink." Tilly looks into the closet, looking through drawers until she finds a sweater. "You can put this on. I don't know if you've done it yet, but the emergency transport relay is unpleasant. You're going to have a hell of a headache, if you don't already." Tilly starts to hand her the sweater, and she's still talking but none of it is making sense. Like Liara's still asleep, or her translator is off.
The water's cold, and that helps a little, but swallowing reminds her stomach how annoyed it is. She winces, maybe even moans again, because Tilly's right in front of her. '"Are you ready for this?"
"I'm fine."
"Of course." Tilly pats the back of her hand. "This is totally your 'I'm fine' face, not your 'I'm going to say I'm fine and throw up on your boots' face."
"You know that one?"
"I do." Tilly guides Laira's hand through her sleeve, then reaches over to help with the other side of her sweater. "If we're using how many times you've thrown up in front of me as a metric, we're closer than all of my Academy roommates."
Laughing a little, Laira stares at her bare feet. "And I was worried we wouldn't get to know each other."
Tilly offers her hands, helping Laira up to her feet. The deck's steady, because Tilly is, so it must be her head that's spinning. "You married my best friend," Tilly reminds her, as if that explains everything they haven't said to each other.
Beam to headquarters. Easy. She can be sick when she gets there. The doctors are HQ aren't Hugh, but she trusts them. Leaving is protocol, she always follows protocol.
Yet, she hates the idea. Leaving Michael tugs at her, twisting her stomach worse than hormones. Stress, Hugh has said. Too much stress and her body tries to compensate with one set of hormones, then the next, until everything's elevated, and she can't sleep, can't eat, and Michael's on the bridge.
She's safe there. Michael has to be safe there. She knows that bringing herself home is the most important. (Her own safety is still not a priority to her, might never be.) Laira's hands are sweating, and she wipes her palms against her thighs. Just beam out. It's what she's supposed to do.
Tilly carefully attaches Laira's badge to her sweater. Laira reaches for it, forgetting about the boots she never put on and the flashing yellow lights around them. This is her duty.
Tilly stops her hand, holding it in hers for a moment. Her expression softens, and her blue eyes darken in concern. "You're too warm."
"I'm—."
"Don't say fine, because you're not fine."
"I will be." Laira squeezes Tilly's fingers. If the long-distance relay transport is as terrible as she's been warned, maybe she won't have to be conscious to worry much about Michael. The medical staff at HQ are wonderful, but they're not Hugh, and she feels like a child trying not to be sent away. "Headquarters—"
Tilly interrupts her. "Sorry, headquarters, this is Lieutenant Tilly, we're going to need to keep our relief pilot on board for sublight exercises. Lots of clutter in this system, raining cats and dogs."
"I'll pass that along," the voice from HQ says, only pausing a moment. Hopefully they picked up on the code. "Keep your feet dry."
"We always try."
Laira blinks at her, too surprised to insist she has to beam herself away. "How do you know that? The medical override-"
"Oh that style of code's older than Discovery. My mom was on the security council, wanted me to be in the Diplomatic Corp, I have a great memory. Some things didn't change much, or maybe they came around again." Tilly squeezes her fingers. Her eyes are so steady, so certain, just like Michael's. "Since you're staying on the ship, we have to get to engineering."
"Engineering?" She's not following, and taking a step makes her head spin all the more. She has to let Tilly lead because her feet don't know where she's going. Never did put on shoes.
Guiding her towards the door, Tilly wraps her arm around Laira's back, "The best radiation shielding on the ship is in engineering. Of course, it was designed to keep the radiation of the warp core in, not keep a nasty ion storm out, but it's the same thing, just coming from different directions. The amount of neutron radiation in a class eight ion storm isn't usually this high, and this is high enough to pretty much liquefy everything living on the ship."
They pause at the corner of the corridor when Laira bends. The back of her throat burns and her skin's too hot, even worse than her fever. Tilly rubs her back, and waits. Eventually Laira can nod at her, but she doesn't trust her throat enough to speak.
Yellow alert glows amber on the cool deck beneath their feet and the ship is silent other than the alarms. What remains of the skeleton crew must be on the bridge, or already in engineering. Tilly talks to her, keeping her tone calm and level. Laira knows class eight ion storms are the ones you fly in the other direction of, even go sectors out of your way if you need to, but Discovery isn't a cargo ship, and the supply depot they're protecting is essential to the surrounding sectors. A tiny fleet of ships without strong enough shields would be here too, hidden under Discovery's shields, like chicks in a storm.
Left, another left and they're in the turbolift. Laira shuts her eyes, rests her hand on the wall, and swallows, once, then again. It's not that far.
"If you throw up outside of engineering we're about to go through so much neutron radiation that it'll be turned to dust."
"That's…"
"Efficient?" Tilly teases, rubbing her shoulder. "Almost there."
"Wishing you sent me to HQ?"
Tilly pauses, waiting for Laira to meet her eyes. "That transport ride is fucking hell, and you need to be with Michael, and we've got you. We're good at this."
Laira smiles, weary and lightheaded, yet absolutely touched that she gets to be Discovery's minor little problem for a few hours.
A day.
However long this is.
"Tilly, great we need-" Reno pauses for a moment, noticing Laira when she turns. "See, you're not the only civilian to miss the transport," she teases Veddra, who raises her eyebrows.
Veddra leaves her console, pulling her sweater tighter over her pajamas. "I loathe transport relays, I'm not sure what your reason is, but I'm sure it's an excellent one." She offers her hand. "Welcome to engineering, Mrs. Burnham."
"Thank you."
Reno and Tilly have a soft conversation about radiation shielding and long distance transporters and perhaps even how green Laira must be. She can't hear any of it from where she's standing at the back of engineering. Remaining standing her hand on the console is a small victory that she's almost proud of.
"You all right?"
"No, yes, it's nothing anyone can help with."
Veddra nods her head, her messy curls bouncing a little. "I might be able to help a little, take the edge off. I'm a rubbish telepath on the best day, but…can't really make it worse, can I?"
"I doubt—" Laira stops, putting her hand to her mouth. Heat comes before vomiting, most of the time, and she usually doesn't sweat when she has a fever, but her hands are damp. Hugh said it might get worse, is this that? Is it something else?
"May I?"
Laira's nod is half-hearted, but Veddra moves quickly, touching the back of her neck.
"Vulcans do their mind-meld with the obvious connection points, face-to-face, all very logical and sensible, but the points back here are faster." Veddra's fingertips sink into Laira's hair run up her neck, and her nausea's gone, lifted like a veil's been removed.
Veddra winces, takes a breath, then another, and shivers. "I can't believe you were walking."
"You get used to it."
"I've never seen the point in silent suffering, this is brutal." Veddra drags herself up, swaying before she grabs the console.
"That was stupid," Reno says, steadying Veddra's back. "Kind, but stupid."
"That's what you find attractive about me, my lack of impulse control."
Teasing each other comes easily to them, and they argue - flirt - through several rounds of shield strengthening and power transfers and Laira's so caught up watching them she almost forgot about Tilly until she returns.
"Drink this while your head is half-Romulan."
"Probably more than half." Laira accepts the water, wrapping her hands around it. "I didn't realize how bad it was."
"Good reason not to transport." Tilly drapes a blanket around her shoulders, sliding an empty supply container across the deck towards her feet as they sit on the deck together. "When it wears off, we're not going to have power."
"Throw up in the bucket, got it."
"Michael will be down from the bridge in a few minutes. You'll feel better when she's here."
She's right, and it's both a foolish thing and a wonderful one. Michael's her gravity well at the center of the universe. (And they almost lost her).
Without gravity all the stars drift away, don't they? They lose each other.
Laira's eyes sting, and Veddra gulps in sync with her, meters away. This time Reno kneels in front of her, finding her eyes.
"You could try thinking about sex."
"Oh?"
"Diverts blood flow, confuses your nerves." Reno pats her arm. "Haven't thrown up during that yet, have you?"
"No, no, I haven't."
"Might be worth trying."
"Michael's on the bridge."
"And she's hot up there, isn't she? Captain in the big chair, doing her thing. Think about that." Reno pats her shoulder. "We're almost done, then we'll just be trapped in an ion storm, no problem."
Think about sex is a nice idea, and she tries. Michael's lips are the are the softest, warmest— Laira curls her fingers into her palms. Not even that is enough. The fluctuations in the gravity make her hair raise, then fall back to her neck. Some of it sticks, caught in the sweat beading on her skin.
Too much radiation for the gravity plating or are they using so much power to execute - whatever Michael's heroic plan is? Does it matter?
This space station, Medical Depot Eta Twelve, crucial to the planets around it - immobile - delicate. That thought comes with a series of equations, attributes, technical things that Laira doesn't understand, doesn't know. These are Veddra's thoughts. Unspoken, floating in her head as if it were on a holopad inside her mind. Laira's head has never been this organized, nor has she understood the power conversion necessary to empty the phaser banks into the shield emitters. She'd heard jokes about it once or twice, how phaser baanks are good for blowing up someone else or yourself, but Veddra's a technical genius, like Michael and Reno and Paul and she focuses on that. The string of thoughts required to divert power and seal conduits and the hundreds of little calculations Laira wouldn't even know how to begin.
She's shared a handful of mind melds before. Several times it's been useful to share her thoughts with T'Rina, but T'rina's an accomplished telpath. Her thoughts have Vulcan discipline. Veddra's thoughts play in her head like a holonovel. They're not hers, but are, and of course she knows how to tweak the EPS manifold.
Engineering falls together in their shared mind like a word puzzle. Miraculously, neither of them throw up.
The expected miracle is that Discovery does not explode, and they manage to extend their shields around the space station. It takes every megajoule of power on the ship, but they manage to continuously cycle the shields through the spore drive and even inside Veddra's head it seems advanced enough to be as magical as the 10-C.
Michael is the last one to arrive, after Joann, Keyla and the rest of her bridge crew. Laira can't even see her face from her corner of engineering, but her voice fills the room, and her presence calms it.
They've got this.
The conversations and the speed of hands across controls reaches a zenith, then it's quiet.
Incredibly quiet.
The lights fade, rather than snapping off. A new sound, something organic, unpredictable, like hail on the roof of her grandparents' home, whispers around them.
Michael's fingers touch her cheek, and nothing else matters in the universe. In that moment, she remembers calm - contentment. Michael's here, everything will be fine.
"Our shields are around the station, and all the ships too small to warp away. Neutron radiation destroys living things but it's harmless to most of Discovery. Here in engineering, we have the strongest radiation shielding, so the spores would be safe. No matter what Discovery goes through, no spores, and we can't fly."
"So the shielding is built in?"
"We use flerovium alloy. Neutrons just bounce off."
"And we can hear it - them- neutrons?"
Michael's smile is bright for a moment, but then it's replaced with her worried one. "We can hear the miniscule vibrations caused by the bouncing." Michael crouches down in front of her, then touches their foreheads together. "So yes, in a way. Kind of like micrometeors, but these won't get through. There's plenty of air, we have supplies—"
"And all the plants," Tilly adds, handing Michael a ration case.
Laira blinks, trying to follow Tilly's thought process as Veddra and Hugh arrive behind Michael. "Plants?"
Hugh crouches down, tricorder probe in hand. "Saru helped many crew members start their own gardens, and all of them are safe in secondary spore storage, so the neutrons can just pass through the rest of the ship." Tilting his head towards Tilly, he nods. "You were right."
"Usually am."
Michael opens the ration case but Hugh shakes his head.
"Veddra has her in a mind meld, that's keeping her more stable than she is."
"What?"
"I don't know if that's the proper Romulan term, but, look-" Hugh pauses, shifting the tricorder display towards Michael. "Their mental patterns are identical."
"Veddra didn't want me to—"
Across engineering, Veddra nearly demonstrates why they're locked together, stopping herself before she vomits onto the deck at her feet. Reno grabs her shoulder and they head towards Laira and Michael. Tilly crouches beside Hugh and in a moment they're all going to be around her.
Her mind must have swung too far towards Veddra's because Laira's not even nauseated any more and Reno's protective little smile does something to her chest it never has before.
"You were supposed to evacuate her," Michael reminds Tilly, and the softness is gone from her voice. "The president should be back at headquarters."
Laira could tell her that using the medical override Tilly did makes her not the president at the moment, handing it off to Jen, again, but that's not important.
"The transport relay is profoundly unpleasant, I helped test it," Tilly says.
Michael turns to face her and her tone is sharp, much harsher than usual. "Unpleasant and alive is better."
"We're not in that much danger."
Michael gestures at the dark engineering room. "We're counting on our radiation shielding to protect us from neutron radiation so deadly even all Linus' lichen collection is in the spore bay."
"We have excellent shielding, and a stellar engineering team, we're fine."
Taking Tilly's arm, Michael drags her away and they argue in the far corner of the room. Their voices are raised, and sharp, and Laira's never seen them argue like this.
"When I end the link, you're going to feel like hell." Veddra says with a very apologetic smile, "Assuming I feel what you do, or would—" she stops, covering her mouth. It takes her two breaths to speak again. "Good thing we're not going anywhere."
"The respite is appreciated."
Hugh nods to Veddra, who reaches for the back of Laira's neck. "I can't get a good read of your vitals, your neural signature is reading as Romulan."
"I didn't know that happened."
"Rubbish telepath, remember?" Veddra says, looking into Laira's eyes. For a moment, she's her and looking at herself and they gasp in unison, then it's over. The quiet, methodical part of her thoughts is gone, so is the quiet. She's too hot and too cold and her stomach's right in the back of her throat. Back to herself, with all that mess.
Hugh's tricorder beeps angrily, and even from the wrong side of the holo, Laira catches some of the yellow indicators drop into orange. The displeased shade of orange that usually makes Hugh make that face.
"You don't have to wait for this to get this bad."
"It wasn't—"
"Your cortisol levels are as high as your approval ratings."
She chuckles, shakes her head and then holds very, very still.
"You're asking your body to do a lot. something it's never done before, and you're putting it through more than you have."
"I've been in—"
"You haven't been in love, you haven't faced losing someone you love." Hugh leans in close, brushes the little sweaty wisps of hair back out of her eyes. "You nearly lost her and you haven't been all right since Penumbra."
Hands help her up onto her knees so it'll be easier to throw up, when she inevitably does. Tilly and Michael are still arguing and their voices rise above the rushing of the storm on the hull.
"Which one are you madder about, the president being on your ship or your wife?"
"They both shouldn't be here."
"Laira's not president right now. The medical override—"
"We are in the middle of an ion storm."
"And she still gets a choice."
"She's a civilian."
"She's your wife, and she loves you. She would have beamed off and been sick for days at HQ, waiting to hear that we were all right."
"It's not safe on Discovery."
"It's safe enough for us, why not her?"
"You know why not."
"You know you're not her captain, right?" Tilly's voice softens and she tugs Michael back. "Maybe it's not me you're mad at."
"I am still mad at you."
"You're also mad at her."
Tilly and Michael return to the little group surrounding Laira and Hugh. The rest of the bridge crew drifts over. Their family is here, all around them. Not that the argument was private, not in this small room.
Michael takes a very slow breath, then reaches for Laira's hand, wrapping her steady fingers around Laira's own damp ones. "I wish you weren't here."
"I don't want to be anywhere else."
"That's not—"
"You let Veddra stay."
Michael glances at Veddra, then back at Laira. "You know that's different. You have to keep the baby safe."
That's not fair of her to ask. "I don't want to you to leave us behind."
"I'm not trying to."
Laira coughs, fighting the stinging heat in the back of her throat. "You're not avoiding it."
"That's not--"
It's almost better that she throws up now, in front of Michael. She'll be able to argue with her better. Around her everyone's quiet, someone holds her hair, and hands steady her shoulders. She wipes her mouth on the back of her hand and stares at Michael. "You're never been careful enough with your own life, not before, not now."
"You're in a dangerous situation with our baby."
"Oh no, no, you don't get to tell me I have to keep her safe while you risk your life. I'm not doing this—" She doesn't get to finish her thought, because she can't even be livid without being a hormonal mess. Laira retches again, choking, then spitting. Hugh hands her a cup of water and she has to spit that out too. "I chose you, we chose to do this together, that means you stay."
"I'm not—"
"You almost died, and I had to watch. Do you know how few Starfleet captains we have? How singular you are in the universe? How much I love you? You can't go."
"I have to—"
"I could do this," Joann says, her voice soft and even. "You could have beamed out with Laira."
Michael shakes her head. "I'm the captain."
Touching the swell of her belly makes Michael wince. "You're also her mother, and if it's too dangerous for me, it's too dangerous for you. She should get both of us."
"She will. You have to trust me."
"I have trusted you. I've listened to everything you've asked of me. I've let you risk yourself to scosian fever and down on that planet and here, I was ready to beam off and Tilly stopped me."
That furrow in Michael's forehead depends. "She shouldn't have."
"Actually, you should have gone down and beamed off with your wife," Tilly corrects her. "If you wanted to be sure she was safe, you should have gone. I made a decision."
"The medically correct one," Hugh adds. "There's no way Laira should have been taking a transport relay. It's too much cellular stress."
"But we're stuck here," Michael looks at Laira and the crew as if they've all started sparkling like the mushrooms.
"And we're together," Hugh says. "There's very little medical at HQ could do that I can't do here with a medkit."
By that he means there's absolutely nothing he can do to even out her raging hormones, but Laira doesn't even care anymore. She's too angry to be nauseated.
"I let you chose to come to headquarters, and I encouraged you to go back to your ship. I've never asked you to stop being you. You're Michael Burnham, and I love that about you, but I can't lose you. I won't."
"You know we're capable of saving the galaxy," Joann says, touching Michael's shoulder. "We've done it. You led us, but we chose, and we'd chose that again. We can handle it when you need to be mom."
Laira tries to drink her water again, and this time it stays down. Maybe she has a moment. "I thought it was selfish to ask you to be with me when the whole galaxy needs you. I've spent my life putting everyone else first, and I kept doing it, but we're allowed to be a little selfish. Sometimes, it's okay to let someone else be the hero."
Blinking too quickly, Michael shakes her head. "You know how hard that is."
"I think that's why I didn't want to ask you." Moving Michael's hands to her belly, she smiles. Her tears sting, then run hot. "I need you to stay, with me, with her, because she's our person. You let me pull you into my heart, put you first, and I need that from you."
Michael takes a breath, looks at her crew, and then her too-bright eyes find Laira's. She kisses her forehead, then her cheek. "I'm sorry." Her voice catches, too high and tight in her throat. "I know what it's like to be left, and I thought if she had you, it would be okay."
"She gets us both." Laira holds her hands tight. "We have to make that happen."
"We can help," Hugh says. "We got you." All the faces around them agree. They can do it. They know how hard this is for Michael, how much she needs to put herself in harm's way for them, for everyone. She'll have to trust them to protect her.
"I love you both." Michael falls into her arms, holding her tight.
"Love us enough to stay safe," Laira whispers. That's the hardest part of all of this. Knowing how much they mean to each other, how much they're loved. They have their family, they'll help them through.