Directly after the Vaadwaur confrontation Ensign Jackson Smith hadn’t felt terrible. The mission was successful, and he had been a part of that success. He performed well, earned the respect of those he worked with and even received accolades from the first officer.

And then, when he was alone in his quarters, stepping out of the sonic shower, it hit him. Ensign Velix, hit by an exploding plasma conduit. His blue skin melted, singed and the tang of cobalt in the air. He could smell the sickening tang of charred flesh, he could hear Velix’s last panicked cry.

And Jackson had been close to Velix. Proximity close, he had only met him several hours prior. Not shoulder to shoulder close, but they were on opposite sides of the same corridor, following the chief of security. Both had been in the blast radius. It was just that Jackson was faster.

Whether he heard it faster or he moved faster or his reactions were simply a fraction better, it meant he was standing here with his flesh unburned and nicely intact while Velix was in the morgue.

Several days later and it still wasn’t out of his mind.  He had bottled it up, presenting a pleasant, if detached, façade to his new department members.  He smiled a lot – he had learned that smiling makes people think things were OK.

Things were not OK. 

But this was Jackson’s fresh start. He didn’t want to mar that. So as the Calistoga limped to dock at Caireann Station, Jackson mustered up the courage to sign up for a counseling session. With one of the station’s counselors – just for the added anonymity.

~*~

Counseling hadn’t always seemed like the least busy medical field, but the recent events – the invasion, the refugees, the battle – had changed all of that. Everyone wanted to talk, and Ensign Rowan Frels found that he no longer wanted to talk to anyone. 

But hey, this was what he had signed up for, and as much as he wanted to curl up into a ball and let people figure their problems out themselves, even if just for a day, he wasn’t the type to leave people hanging. 

And so, he was sitting in his office. Again. Waiting for the next person to tell him about how the Vaadwaur attack wasn’t a great thing to have happened.  Again.

Jackson entered, a twenty-somethingish human with pale skin, shaggy dark hair within regulations. Muscular in a ‘I train in security tactics’ sort of way and yet a soft expression and a haunted look in his eyes.  He smiled, but it looked like he might spook and run at any given moment.

“Hi.” Jackson started. Not a great start, but he figured he didn’t lose any points for that, either.

“Hi.” Rowan replied. “You’re my ten o’clock, I take it?”

“I’m Ensign Jackson Smith from the USS Calistoga.” He confirmed, not yet relaxing, but trying to look comfortable. Trying. Failing, but trying.

“Right.” Rowan nodded, noticing that he didn’t sound terribly enthusiastic to have the Ensign here, and taking a moment to center himself. My stress isn’t his problem, he told himself. 

“Take a seat – or don’t, I don’t mind.”, he said eventually, offering a somewhat tired smile. “What brings you here, Ensign? Not happy to talk to the Counselors aboard the Calistoga?”

Jackson shuffled from foot to foot for a while and then flopped into a seat with the weary casualness of a farm boy who had just come in after a full long day of hydroponics farming.

“I’m a new transfer, this was my first mission so… I mean it’s a new fresh start and everyone there is also in the same boat and…” 

Jackson trailed off not really sure where he was going with that. He was just throwing out reasons hoping that one would stick and make sense.

“Ah… yeah, I get that. Probably easier to come here.” Rowan confirmed, wondering if there was a chance he could book an appointment with one of their counselors. 

Nodding, the young security ensign sized up his counseling companion.  The thought in the back of his mind was that if this session was horrible, then he’d never have to see … who was this? See this person again while randomly wandering the halls of a small California class vessel.

“Um, is it unprofessional to ask your name?” Jackson gestured with one hand like he was offering an invitation.

“Rowan. Uh. Sorry. Ensign Frels.” Rowan sighed and rose from his chair, heading over to the sofa to join Jackson. Not opposite of him – that always felt weird – but on the other side of it. “Never been to a counseling session before?”

Shrugging the security officer eyed the counselor and offered a look of innocent confusion. “Nope, beyond the standard entrance exams at the academy I’ve never really voluntarily booked a counseling appointment. But also most of my first posting was pretty mundane. So this is all new to me.” 

Which was his way of telling the counselor to take the lead.

“Lot’s of new things are happening then.” Rowan mused. “Where were you before you transferred?” 

“Oh, I started on the USS Kaladar, it’s a New Orleans class vessel mostly doing courier and patrol duties on the outer colonies. It was all really boring until it wasn’t.” Jackson offered in a light, conversational tone.

“Same.” Rowan blurted before his cheeks flushed red. “I mean, I relate.” There was a bit of a pause “If you had to choose one word to describe the change, or one sentence maybe – what would it be?” 

“Overwhelming” Smith answered before he even thought about it. As his brain caught up with his mouth he lifted a hand as if moving it around would help get his words out of his brain, trying to justify an answer that didn’t require justification. “So many things happened so fast, the transfer, the blackout, the trip was so slow, then once onboard the Calistoga we got there so fast, the away mission, the attack, everything, everything everything…”

Jackson hadn’t realized yet that this might not be an isolated incident – he didn’t know if others had experienced the same thing he did. For the moment he felt like he was alone, which was one of the reasons he had eschewed a counselor on the Calistoga.

“Yeah…” Rowan said, shaking his head to clear his thoughts. “You mentioned an away mission?”

“I was on the away team. Seems nuts because I was the new guy.” Jackson paused for a moment, realizing that he academically understood he had more experience than most of his teammates by virtue of his former posting. “We went to an independent station to talk with the station commander about an alliance against the Vaadwaur. You know, pretty standard diplomacy. Should have been easy.”

Rowan tilted his head, mulling the statement over. Should have been easy could have been the base statement for every Starfleet mission, but the expectation that anything would be simple or go to plan when the Vaadwaur were set to invade was some sort of insanity. 

“Why is that?” he asked eventually. 

Jackson sucked in a deep breath, finding himself shrugging to try to give an acceptable gesture – or maybe an acceptable answer – before he even really thought it through. “What do you mean?”

“Why did you expect it to be easy? What I mean is… there are always moving parts, and you’re just one of them.” Rowan explained. He didn’t say it, but he had thought the same way about plenty of things – until he had come to the conclusion that it inadvertently came with a sense of personal failure when it wasn’t as easy as planned. 

“It’s diplomacy. I’ve done diplomacy escorts before, they’re usually pretty dull because everyone’s there to talk and security is more or less a formality.” the security officer ran a hand through his shaggy hair which caused it to stick straight up. “You know how it goes… 99 times it’s bog standard boring and then that one time it’s a mess.”

And this time it was a mess.