#also rhymes with the inner light what does it meeeeaaannn

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I’ve seen this TNG Sito Jaxa screenshot floating around after the Mariner revelation in Lower Decks saying stuff like, “ooh sucks for Mariner, Sito didn’t consider her a friend.”

I think they were still friends, but friendships are complex relationships. When something catastrophically bad happens (like the Nova Squadron incident), relationships inevitably change. We know Mariner isn’t the best at dealing with her emotions, and she probably didn’t know how to respond to and comfort her friend after the accident happened. She may well have avoided the interaction altogether, leading Sito to believe her friend had abandoned her and that they were no longer friends. That doesn’t necessarily change how Mariner feels, and she may also be carrying guilt about how she responded (or failed to) when her friend was going through it. She is, however, a fiercely loyal friend and could have been very present and comforting post-incident.

That said, there’s also the fact that part of the punishment was Sito repeating her senior year. If Mariner and Sito were in the same year and supposed to graduate together, Mariner would have been posted somewhere while Sito was still at the academy. She would have undeniably felt like a pariah, which would have stuck in her mind while speaking with Picard. Even if Mariner had kept in contact during that last year, she would have been balancing a new job in a new place with staying in touch. I’m sure most of us have had friends seemingly disappear under similar circumstances.

Humans tend to think in black and white terms (especially when things are bad), and Sito’s most prominent memory of the academy would have been feeling very isolated after the accident. Even a utopian future couldn’t completely mitigate feeling like an outcast after an incident that killed a classmate and lying about it.