“Don’t get me wrong, I don’t want you to go. But I get why you need to.” Bale placed a hand on a nearby bulkhead to steady herself, causing its inbuilt console to light up in preparation for a command that never came. “Is there no chance of reconciliation?”

Sehgali took two steps back from around the corner where her momentum had carried her ahead of the blue-haired woman.

“Do you want the honest answer?” She sighed.

“Probably not.” Bale shuffled her weight back and forth between the balls of her feet as she flexed her hip.

“Then everything will be fine.”

The pair shared a knowing smile. Sehgali and Mellasitox had passed the point of no return in their relationship, and on such a small ship, they couldn’t avoid each other forever. Someone had to remove themselves from the situation, and Captain Harrison had offered a reasonable way out in the form of Sehgali’s transfer to the division team.

“It’ll all be fine,” Sehgali repeated unconvincingly.

Bale offered a disbelieving nod, and the pair continued their slow loop of the deck.

“Why are we doing loops of deck 4?”

“PT, I have to keep the hip moving, otherwise it’ll seize up.” Bale hissed through gritted teeth. “Thank’s Vaadwaur.”

“We have holodecks, you know, I’m pretty sure I’ve seen you there on poker night.” Sehgali gave her shoulder a slight push. “I’m happy to take some more chips off your hands if your pockets are too heavy.”

“The croupier is giving me bad hands, someone programmed him to constantly give me twos!” Bale cried in faux defence. “I blame Maksha.”

“I’m not sure Maksha even knows how to cheat.”

“He’s one hundred per cent counting cards.”

“Yeah, but I don’t think he’s doing it to cheat.” Sehgali leant her head before dropping her voice to a conspiratorial tone. “I think he just likes to count.”

Bale allowed a laugh to tumble from her lips as the pair rounded the next corner that indicated the tip of the ship’s longest short corridor before turning back aftwards.

“I’m going to miss you,” Bale whispered into the empty corridor.

“I’m not going to be that far away.” Sehgali pointed towards the port bulkhead where she knew the boxy shape of Typhon flew in formation. “About a thousand metres that way.”

“It’s not the same.” Bale whimpered sadly.

Sehgali slowed in her steps to a stop as Bale hobbled forward ahead of her. She sometimes forgot just how young the operations officer was, and how jaded her own views on the universe had become.

Bale stumbled forward as one leg was tardy in response, but caught herself on a tall silver structural member nearby. Sehgali fought the instinct to rush to her side, but her concern for the young woman couldn’t be kept completely internal.

“If it’s bothering you, you should go back to Malax.” Sehgali raised her eyebrows with a practised maternal look. She had long found being a surrogate mother to the crew in addition to leader an inescapable part of life in Starfleet. Despite the warnings of her superiors across the span of her career that she shouldn’t get too close, too attached, she had found the opposite was far more appealing.

The face of her betrayed lover, now captain, reared its head from the shadowy recess of her mind.

Being close worked for her. Usually.

“Malax says there’s nothing physical there,” Bale answered with a sigh, drawing Sehgali back to the moment and banishing Mellasitox’s wounded visage. “He was annoyingly smug when he said the surgeries went perfectly.”

Bale rubbed her hip again, pressing into the divot of her bones as she flexed her leg outward and inward in a fragile hokey-cokey. Malax was an excellent surgeon, but his bedside manner was subpar at best.

“It’s just pain in my head, apparently,” Bale muttered in frustration. “It’s not real pain.”

“And how does the ‘not real’ pain feel?” Sehgali frowned, mentally noting Malax’s apparent lack of aftercare for follow-up later.

“Like someone has taken a Bat’leth to my hip joint,” Bale confessed with a pained laugh, a wetness beginning to form in the corners of her eyes.

Sehgali took several urgent steps and swept the woman’s small form into her arms, lifting her weight slightly off the deck and into a mother bear’s embrace.

Bale let out an audible sigh of relief as her tiny weight was lifted up into Sehgali’s arms and the pressure on her hip reduced.

They stood like that for several blissful seconds. Both taking long, deep breaths of pain relief in both the hip and the heart.

“When do you leave?” Bale finally asked, her face still nuzzled in the XO’s shoulder.

“We’ll be arriving at the mission launch point in a week or so. Then I’ll go over to Typhon.”

“Too soon,” Bale announced quietly as she pressed herself into her surrogate sister’s warm embrace. “Too soon by far.”

“It helps no one to stretch it out any further.”

“I know, it’s only selfishness that would keep you here any longer.”

“It’s okay to be a little selfish.” Sehgali squeezed tighter. Every choice had a cost.

“It would be a shame if the warp core conked out before we got there.” Bale joked.

“You’d have to face Sima then, and I don’t think she likes me that much.”

They shared a deep laugh, their chuckles mixed with slowly flowing surprise tears that ran down their cheeks.

“I survived the Vaadwuar, I’m sure I can do Sima.” Bale laughed as she allowed the hug to end and took a step back against the wall, wiping her eyes dry on the cuff of her uniform.

Sehgali allowed her hand to linger on the young woman’s shoulder for just a moment, an unexpected sense of weary longing filling her heart. She had accepted Harrison’s offer of escaping Daedalus almost instantly, a solution that would, in theory, limit the suffering of all involved. Doing so in practice was becoming more difficult.

“You don’t think Sima will be the XO?” Bale asked with a sudden sense of worry. “She does have seniority.”

“No, I don’t think she’ll ever be separated from her engine room.” Sehgali smiled. “There’s already someone on the cards.”

“Is it a secret?” Bale offered a wry smile.

Sehgali took two steps towards the next corner of the corridor before offering an outstretched arm to continue their loop.

“Let’s just say you might want to get your PT done before the week is out. Commander Bahir has a bit of a reputation, you know.”

Sehgali set off down the corridor, her gigantic crown of messy brown hair bobbing slightly as she picked up the pace.

“Bahir?!” Bale shouted as she shuffled behind. “Bahir?!”