The heft of the bottle of water was comforting. The circumference was wider than a cup, forcing Captain Ayres to grip the bottle with controlled strength as he drank. He felt that if he squeezed just a little more, the glass would break, cutting him and spilling water over the floor of his temporary quarters on Starbase 72. He glanced out the internal window onto the vast inner docking space as he drank.

The door chimed. He tried to answer too quickly and coughed on some of the water, “Come”

Commander Parr walked in, holding a PADD and then smirking as Ayres involuntarily coughed again. He gestured with the bottle, “Let me get you a glass, if I’d expected company”

“Give me the bottle,” she walked toward him, dropping the PADD on the desk as she passed, “I’m not precious”

She drank a few mouthfuls, Ayres watching the movement of her neck, then she handed the bottle back to him, “I’ve brought the latest crew evaluations. There’s a lot of people suffering from Boreth and the Vaadwaur”

“I know,” the captain sighed, letting the weight of the bottle distract him again, “Sixty-four people. Of a crew of less than three hundred. The suffering will stay”

“Mike,” Parr’s informality had become a comfort to him since Boreth, in private, “keep the sadness. But keep the perspective. It was a hard-fought battle, it was a hard-won battle. Without what we did, none of the more than two hundred people would still be here”

Since Boreth, they always stood too close together. The captain and the executive officer, closer than they had ever been. During the constant battle with the Vaadwaur – first on the ship and then in the Klingon monastery – he had no time to think about their relationship. And since then, he had chosen not to think about it. Nor change the obvious emerging dynamic. It felt good. And the way they worked together had become highly-effective. The trust was complete, intimate.

Ayres nodded at the PADD on the desk, “So how bad, really? Talk to me about the senior staff”

“Doctor Vennock is physically exhausted, pushing herself still, but that remarkable woman is on the mend. Kincaid, I’m not so sure”

“He had the most exposure to the time crystals. And the battles. How long did he estimate in his counselling?”

“Years. They can’t work it out. His body is having some strange reactions to the memory of all that trauma that did and didn’t happen. And it doesn’t help that Vennock is close enough to notice. I’d say they should spend some time apart, but then I can’t say for sure that Kincaid’s mind could cope with being away from his wife right now,” she ran her hand around the back of her neck, pulling through the strands of hair, “it’s messy”

“Anything from command or the doctors here?” Ayres followed the line of Parr’s wrist as the sleeve of her uniform bunched with her gesture.

“The medical staff have been helpful but they’ve no experience of anything temporal so they’re talking like it’s phantom pain, from amputations. Which is surreal when he’s basically unharmed. They’re grasping,” Parr breathed in heavily, an unconscious expression of tiredness, and she was comforted by the familiar flavour of Ayres closeness.

He laughed, humour and exasperation, “We’re all grasping. I’ve answered, or tried to, so many questions following my report on Boreth and the impact of the crystals on our defence. We’re under a microscope that no-one can calibrate for any focus”

“Clever analogy”, she tapped the bottle he was still holding.

“I try. Got to keep up with you smarter types”, he walked past her, his chest brushing against her shoulder, and placed the bottle on the desk. He picked up the PADD, tapping it into life and reading a few more of the paragraphs, “T’Vaan has really come into her own”

“Crisis maketh the Vulcan”, Parr followed Ayres, leaning in close to look at the screen, “she pulled Ovindar and Elash through. The latter surprised me. She’s so much younger than Elash, I would have expected some resistance to her taking the lead but there was none. I guess she gave him the confidence to focus on keeping the ship together rather than have to take command while we were gone?”

“Vulcans should be much more predictable than these two. Maybe that’s the secret, it’s all internal logic to each of them, dressed up in a masquerade of universal rationality?”

Parr reached over, resting her arm on the arm Ayres was holding the PADD. She tapped a few more times then withdrew, “It’s the junior staff we’ll need to concentrate on. It’s not like we knew them much before the invasion. We’re a new crew,” Parr paused, sensing Ayres expression before he could correct her, “we were a new crew. Now we’re battle-hardened warriors with invisible scars”

The two officers looked at each other for longer than they needed to, Ayres broke the silence, “Let’s figure out duty assignments, grab the other PADD and we’ll get it finished tonight”