The market had been an… enlightening experience, Charlotte MacColgan would put it. Sort of. She’d at least managed to learn somewhat more about what was appropriate for a party, and tossed in her contribution to actually supplying it- even if it was mostly just gathering up whatever someone else told her to grab. It felt useful. Purposeful. Almost made her forget she wasn’t here on duty.

Almost. Up until they got back, and the smell of food hit her like a truck, and the junior captain was forcefully reminded that this was, indeed, a social event. Charlotte MacColgan is allergic to social events. So she’d dropped off her supplies, excused herself (“I need some air”, she said, like she hadn’t just been in an open-air market), and wandered back outside.

The smells and sounds of the cooking in the kitchen slowly faded, replaced slowly but steadily with the subdued fragrances of herbs Charlie couldn’t even begin to recall half of. The MacColgan farm was more livestock than produce, and even the herbs that they did have had been lost to memory, probably because she was too busy trying to sneak out and make a mad dash for Glasgow than anything approximating remembering plants. Still, it was isolated and quiet, the only sounds being the quiet whirring of knee servos and the tap of her cane-

-until she rounded a corner and almost walked face-first into someone else.

“Ach! Bloody Christ- sorry!” The junior captain almost leapt out of her skin in her backtracking, not expecting to find anyone else out here, and especially not close enough to almost bowl over.

“Watch out for the-” Harrison began before MacColgan’s thick booted heel landed on a cluster of delicate mint leaves.

“-mint,” she muttered with a sigh. The wave of fragrance was instantaneous as the wounded plant curled under the dark boot, a fresh scent that pulled at the nostrils through the heavy miasma of already pleasant smells.

Harrison waved a trowel in Charlie’s direction, its thin metallic head mottled and burnished with a decade of repeated use. In the metal’s faint shine, the soil of the Federation whispered earnestly, memories of a thousand plants, planted on a hundred worlds, infused into the dark tool.

As the older woman opened her mouth to issue a reprimand, the gears of Charlie’s legs whirred as she lifted the boot away from the crime scene. Her ears were uncomfortably filled with the strange mechanical tone, a sharp discordance against the buzz of insects, and Harrison found her mouth dry, the words choking in her throat. In the corner of her mind, an after-action report rippled in the garden’s light breeze and chiding the young captain for an accident at the hands of her new limbs seemed unfair.

“It doesn’t matter,” she said, waving the trowel into the air dismissively. “Come for a moment of peace?”

… that was Anyanka Harrison. The woman who’d chucked the saucer of a Sovereign-class into a Vaadwaur warship like the galaxy’s deadliest baseball pitch. Charlie had spent an awful lot of her time in the hospital, while not completely knocked out on anaesthetics, reading after-action reports, and Britannia‘s was the one that stood out to her the most, just because it sounded so incredibly ridiculous. Tossing half a starship into another- how many times did one hear a story like that?

Then again, how many people heard stories about utility cruisers fighting off astronomical odds for a foreign planet?

“… sorry ’bout the mint,” she murmured, after having only spent about ten seconds (she hoped) mildly awestruck and then equally mildly frightened. This woman was a Dominion War veteran, Starfleet for almost as long- maybe longer, actually- than she’d even been alive. Why was the dipshit who nearly got a California blown up end up in the same space as her, much less the same rank?

Right. She’d asked a question. Head in the game, MacColgan.

“Jus’ lookin’ fer some peace ‘n quiet,” she replied, sheepishly, taking a few awkward steps back. “Sorry. I’ll, ehrm… nae step on yer plants again.”

“I can’t promise you either, but I can promise you a break from the inane chattering about cauliflour.” Harrison raised one slender, perfectly manicured eyebrow. “I’m not much one for the idle chit chat either, though perhaps that’s why Varen summoned me across the quadrant. Some sort of teaching moment, no doubt. Ever willing to play teacher, that man.”

Harrison fell to her knees onto a small foam mat with an unsubtle effort; the few feet between the point of her upright knees and ninety degrees obviously a struggle for her aged joints. A quiet hiss escaped the veteran’s lips as MacColgan started forward, but was waved away with a potent flutter of the trowel.

“Don’t fuss, girl. It’s just a few light years in them, is all.” Harrison took a deep breath, dismissing the aching in her joints with a barely hidden wince. Through the pain that didn’t ebb as quickly as normal, she eyed the young officer who hovered nearby, appearing as nervous in her skin as any fresh-faced ensign.

“I should ask you for your doctor. Maybe I can get some new ones.”

A break from the foodies inside was probably about as much as Charlie could ask for. Instead of vanishing into the garden again, she took a few more steps back and simply hovered, an unspoken acceptance of the invitation. She almost leapt forward to help the older woman down, until Harrison waved her off, and she’d had enough experiences with her own crotchety mother to know when to simply let the older folks do what they’re doing.

The comment about her knees, though, brought a marked frown to her face, fingers tightening on the cane. Only for a moment- wiped away as soon as it’d come- but certainly not fleeting, repressed only with conscious effort. But she held back from letting any of the insecurities burning in her mind come to the surface, instead idly commenting, “Earth Spacedock’s got good doctors in spades, aye. Woul’nae be hard.”

“That first week of P.T. sucks, though, right? That moment in the early twilight when it aches to your heart, where it seems like the next step is too far, too much to ask.” Harrison asked, as nonchalantly as if she had asked about the colour of the nearby petals that bobbed lightly in the silent garden. Her gaze fell inward as a pair of secateurs hovered, jaws wrapped threateningly around a weary and wounded floral spine.

“When you think it might have been better not to have opened your eyes.” She whispered to the brown and twisted flowerhead, weeping lonely amongst the tall pink blooms.

Harrison snipped a withered bloom, the slender shining secateurs cutting through the stem with ease, trimming away the rot for a new bloom beneath. As she swept the fallen head into her small bucket, she offered Charlie a knowing smile.

“You made the right choice,” she said quietly. “When you decided to open your eyes the next morning.”

She was about to open her mouth and give something of an understated response… and then closed it again, as Harrison continued onwards. And then a silence settled, so quiet one could almost hear the thoughts whirring around in Charlie’s mind at warp nine. When she did speak, it was quiet, an almost reluctant admittance.

“… helps when y’got friends, I found,” she murmured, awkwardly and slowly sitting down next to the other captain. “Cannae very well think tae much ’bout yer circumstance when y’got yer XO comin’ in e’ery day with updates from the shipyard. Reminds ya. We won, we’re not dead, ‘n we’re bloody well gonna get up in the morn ‘n go take a peek at that shiny new frigate Command wants ya on.”

“Then we best keep you busy, Captain. That mint will need a new home and some attention.” Harrison tapped a pile of planting pots at her knee with the secateurs. “Can’t think of anywhere better than Melbourne.”

She planted the trowel into the dark dirt, its worn handle leaning towards the younger woman.

“And I promise, we don’t need to talk.”  She offered a reassuring smile, a motherly comfort seeping out from behind her stoic facade.

There was only the briefest moment of hesitation- a voice in the back of Charlie’s head, businesslike in muttering about how she should probably go find something productive to do if she’s not going to help in the kitchen. But all too quickly was it quashed.

Her hand grasped the trowel, the handle rough against her palm and fingers. Pushed it down, slowly, feeling for roots and shifting around the mint.

“… I suppose a li’l talking won’t be amiss,” she replied with a smidge of a smile, and got to work.