Ensign Sariel Rager

The details of what they're doing make Sariel's head ache. It's not that she hasn't got an understanding of the hard sciences -- she has to, her chosen profession being what it is, but hers is a world of angles and vectors, axes and degrees and intersecting planes. It's Sonya who's got the marginal interest in archeology, and Selar and Alyssa are the ones most likely to read hidden messages in DNA, mathematically represented or otherwise. Sariel could likely handle an encrypted message in a star chart if one appeared, but that's an almost entirely different situation from the one they're facing. Almost. And besides, all other knowledgeable sources notwithstanding, the mystery they've been set is Captain Picard's puzzle if it's anyone's.

Sariel doesn't ask about the minutia that have them leaping across distances on the heels of the literal unknown. For one, it's not her business; leave that to the senior officers. For a second, she already knows all she cares to. And for another--well. She's sure she wouldn't understand half of the answers she got. Again, that's Selar's line of work. She has enough to think about drawing near-invisible shipwide lines in the black as is, never mind she's not the one actively tracing them half the time. Hers is a world of speed and distance and named places - Ruah IV, Indri VIII, Loren III and by the time they break their third orbit, it almost feels like they're the pursued rather than the pursuing.

And in the end, that's very nearly what they are. Vilmor II makes a reality out of that feeling, if the world before it didn't.

Sariel learns just enough about what happens on the final found planet's surface; just enough - patterns and molecules and long-forgotten distant voices in projection - to give those haste-scorched trails left in the void a meaning. At least for her. Sariel doesn't know much about the particular type of molecular analysis the captain's been dealing with, never mind the sheer amount of pure archeology that's gone into the discovery they've made.

But origin myths and reasons and benevolent powers with a hand in the evolution of worlds... those she's familiar with. At least, familiar enough to leave her contented and then some at day's end. Common ground of the sort they've uncovered might not appeal to most when enemies are involved, but honestly?

Sariel doesn't mind.

Somebody say aleluia, aleluia.

Or maybe just merci.

The Enterprise leaves Deep space Nine a week after she arrives, with all crew accounted for and young Klingon passengers in crowds besides. Commander Data has a story to tell at mission's end, Lieutenant Worf doesn't, and Sariel's too junior to hear the details of either regardless of what's said. That doesn't bother her. It's none of her business what her superiors do in their off hours and anyhow, she has her own memories from their time at the edge of the world. As for those memories -- she's keeping them quiet, holding them close, treating a pair of giggly engineers and a red-headed outlaw just the same inside her head. Treasuring them.

They make the Remmler Array and Arkaria Base in good time. They've been preparing for the impending baryon sweep for half the journey, maybe more, and they're as ready as they can be. Sariel's as glad as the next junior officer that only the senior staff have a reception to attend when they arrive; those sorts of things are awkward when you're shy and from what she's heard Em Tyler say, commander Hutchinson has all of Sonya's talkative nature and none of her cheerful adaptability. She goes her own way once she's planetside, losing herself in the dispersing crowd as officers and civilians alike scatter to Arkaria's far corners.

Arkaria proper has forests, paths and trails marked by the footfalls of a hundred hundred horses and riders, but it's a lake beach rather than a woodland clearing that Sariel aims for. She's not alone; tourists and locals trickle in, trickle out, vanish and linger, and she's not terribly surprised when midway through the afternoon a friend settles cross-legged in the sand beside her. It's Selar.

The lake's water is clean, green-tinged and saltless and too cold for a tropical daughter to swim in. The sand is the brown of the inland, shaded with the colors of the surrounding soil. Selar is her matter-of-fact self, stark facts and plain speech; she's cool, frank, honest to a fault. Sariel doesn't mind - just the opposite, really. Selar's many things, but she's not loud, and her usual blunt truthfulness extends to calling Sariel friend. That's alright, and then some. It's mutual.

Green. The bindings are copper.

Of course, neither woman gets the details of what happened at the reception until later. Stories circulate back in fits and fragments; Sonya calls Em, who's worried about Geordi; she immediately calls Selar, and never mind that the Vulcan doctor's nowhere near Arkaria base itself and can't help. Sariel's right there when the lieutenant's communicator chimes, and--well. She hears.

In the end, it's disaster averted. Narrowly averted, but averted nonetheless. The fine details of the situation don't ever become entirely clear; an infiltration, a hostage situation - Sariel shudders at the phrase - and something about... Captain Picard, a barber and a saddle? Sariel, frankly, isn't in a hurry to ask what any of that last actually means.

The facts are plain as they break orbit. The captain is safe. Commander La Forge is fine. The rest of the senior staff are all accounted for.

Commander Hutchinson is not fine. Commander Hutchinson was dead on the floor.

Sariel didn't know him. That doesn't mean she doesn't still feel a twinge of guilt for disliking the idea of the man. She's not sure what she thinks of Arkaria in the end, pleasant afternoon by the lake aside. Part of her is, and she admits this freely to herself, rather glad to see the back of the place when the Enterprise leaves.

The door to the bar doesn't appear in her closet when she expects it to. Part of her is certain that it will; it has to turn up at some point or other, hasn't it? The rest of her is worried, because Will could be turning black and blue in Sherwood or Kate's New York, and Harding is god knows where having god knows what done to him, and Yrael can take care of himself and river and Valerie have homes but she misses all three of them anyway, and gene... She still doesn't know about Gene. and that makes her worry that much more. Her closet swishes open, closed, open, closed again, almost every day. and it's open, clothes, open, clothes, every time. but the door has to turn up sooner or later, so she waits. And two months and a handful of days go by.

Time passes slowly, quickly, steadily. Some days the chronometer fairly crawls, marking seconds that feel like hours; it's a good thing when Commander Riker praises her piloting skills after she executes a delicate maneuver, and when they're all sitting on Em's floor telling stories in the semi-darkness of dimmed lights, but it's agony when the ship rocks in time with a hologram's criminal plans. Some days it races, blurring hours into the space of a blink, minutes into heartbeats. Off hours. Watch. Sleep. Happily repeat.

Never mind the one dark day in a fortnight. Never mind how the clock all but stops then.

They're in orbit around the communications relay station on the Klingon border, closing investigations and counting down hours, when Lian makes lieutenant. They all celebrate together, first crowded around a table in Ten Forward and passing plates of multicultural dinner from person to person, then in Lian's quarters with a replicated bottle of wine. Sariel has one glass, feels giddy, and sticks to fruit juice for the rest of the night the better to avoid a headache the next day. It's Em who calls in the morning to say she's swearing off alcohol; Sariel giggles and empathizes, but knows that Tyler doesn't mean a word of what she grumbles down the comm line.

They've just left the border and are aiming for more friendly sectors of space when Sariel tries her closet door again. Her shift ended an hour before, and she's somewhere between mellow and pleasantly tired. Open, clothes, close. Open... huh. That's been a while in showing up.

Sariel's door reappears somewhere around seven in the morning, bar time. Her tears have dried by then; she's stopped shaking, stopped startling at small noises, gotten up and moved away from the fire. but her eyes are red-rimmed, and the sliding panel in the wall doesn't respond when she first raises a hand.

she nows it'll still be midnight on the enterprise when she gets back, knows that the seven--no, now six hours until day watch are going to be a few seconds shy of an eternity to live through. But she's at least got her feet under her again.

she'd been desperate to keep her composure at least in part. The side of her not ruled by intellect was certain that Will, or Captain Picard, or Gene or anyone else would never have lost it in the face of memories like hers. But now that she's clear-headed again, she realizes that even senior officers, even outlaws, even soldiers need to cry once in a while. Keeping emotions bottled up is just unhealthy, for a human.

and she's alright with her reaction, in hindsight. Breaking down is part of the healing process too, after all.

she finishes aBar-provided cup of tea and washes her face before she tries the door again. this time it swishes open as she nears and she hurries through, back into her quarters and ship's night. she spends the rest of that long, long night watch in ten Forward, surrounded by only a handful of people. She can live with it; a handful is far better than none at all, in her view. By the time the chronometercycles round to 07:00 hours she's exhausted, mentally drained, and when sleep finds her in her quarters it's dreamless. Blissfully so.

the next night's routine is much the same, albeit without the truly horrible patch. She finds Ten forward once her shift is over and stays there till the chronometer ticks round to day watch, glad of the light and the warmth and the scattered company even when a pensive-looking Counselor Troi passes through. If the empath notices that Sariel's more subdued than usual, she doesn't mention it.

There are rumors flying during that fourth day. rumors of Cardassia and weapons and another war, rumors that the peace talks Jellico is hosting are failing. Rumors that Captain Picard is dead. Sariel's not on the bridge when Commander riker is relieved of his post, but she hears about it quickly enough and it, too, rattles her sharply.

And she holds on, as best she can. Because it's all she can do.

The door hasn't turned up for her in two weeks.

Other doors have, obviously; Ten Forward, the bridge, turbolifts and corridor junctions and the old familiar set leading to her quarters, never mind her bathroom and closet and her friends' places. And sickbay. And Troi's office. But not that door.

That one's eluded her.

The fifteenth day is proving an unusual one; more than unusual. Try downright bizarre. Very few things trip Sariel's internal bizarre-o-meter, between the Starfleet training and the Federation's veritable patchwork of worlds and her own miniature United Nations of a group of friends, never mind the ruddy bar and the people she knows the best there. But this day has put trigger to hammer, no doubt about it.

Captain Picard is a child. Captain Picard is a tenor-voiced adolescent with a full head of hair, and beside him Ro Laren is sullen at half her size while a chirpy Keiko O'Brien looks a little like Sariel imagines Lian must have at eight years old. And Guinan... that one just bloody tops it all.

They've been working with extra care and real, spark-tangible desperation, with the captain and one of the pilots out of commission. The engineers are scrambling; Sonya and Emily Tyler and Geordi and all the rest, and Alyssa and Selar are running themselves ragged-nerved and blurry-eyed (though Selar would never admit to the former, certainly) working on a reversal, any reversal. Sariel herself stays on the bridge for what would have been Ro's early shift, pulling the second directly after her own gamma duty the better not to make anyone else scramble at the start of early watch. The starfield doesn't change, and doesn't change, and her sensors are dead silent and dark as minutes roll to hours and there's no news, no news. By the time the chronometer's clicked round to 15:00, she's long past the last of her mental midnight oil reserves and can only blink overtired, too-bright eyes up at Tess Allenby as her fellow ensign appears to relieve her for a wavering second, then two, before finally murmuring a genuine, exhausted thank you and making a wobble-legged exit through the turbolift doors.

She almost forgets to raise a hand to her door panel, and comes within an inch of plowing nose-first into unforgiving metal before catching herself, staggering with rebound, and flinging a sleep-clumsy arm up the better to be scanned at the palm. After that it's all she can do to lurch inside without hitting either side of the entrance, and she skips the lights entirely as she stumbles toward her bed and drops bonelessly onto it's foot.

On a normal day, there might be cinnamon incense to light. On a normal day there would certainly be tea, probably be vegetable soup or at the very least one variety of fruit or another, possibly be music played at low volume. But today has not been normal so far. Today has tripped wires and alarms unlike any other she's so far encountered, and it's all Sariel can do to unknot otherwise-neat laces and tug her boots off. They hit the floor, one after the other--thump, thump, but she's too drowsy and worried and sore in certain places from the half day and more of bridge duty to think coherently about picking them up. She breathes in lingering traces of cinnamon as she sinks back against her pillow and closes too-dry, dazzled eyes.

It isn't a minute before she breathes out salt air, fragrant tropical foliage and lavender and the scent of powdery, newly-disturbed white sand.

It isn't a minute before she's dreamed herself straight back to the island that raised her. And if there's the heavy trace of stronger-than-normal smoke laced in with what's familiar in the air - who's to say? She'll assume it's a bonfire. That's not unfamiliar either, after all. Never mind what's rustily present underneath it; bonfires happen all the time, at home. She's built them herself, and thrown coconut husks into their flames and leapt over their embers. This is home, and smoke is breathed in, breathed out. Cinnamon, lavender, strong tea "Sariel, come in out of the rain, Sariel--" mango and chutney and what has to be a bonfire.

Has to be.

Because this is home, seashells and calypso and 2369, with attitudes and views intact. Never mind that rust-tinged coppery scent twining with the smoke in the air.

Isn't it?