#but una doubting her own reality after this mess of a mission is very important to me

[owedfavors]

EPISODE DIVERGENCE ; the cage. ** also known as: TALOS IV AND ITS AFTERMATH.

ON RECONCILING WITH STRANGE NEW WORLDS

for someone as intensely private as una, to have anyone in her head and amidst her thoughts is perhaps the most horrifying of possibilities. when it seems like the talosians are capable of this, her first thought ( even though she knows she should not think about it ) is that they are wrong: she is not human. that they will pull from her mind the fact that she is not human, that they will reveal it, and that this will finally be the end of her career.

they do not.

it takes her a while to figure it out, to realize that, for all they are in the heads of her fellow officers, both on the planet’s surface and on the ship, and for all they can alter her perception as thoroughly as they can captain pike’s or yeoman colt’s, they cannot get a clear read on her thoughts. something in her illyrian genetic make-up prevents it. they do not know she is illyrian, do not know that she cannot have children ( an unfortunately-relevant-to-this-ridiculous-episode part of my unwritten headcanons regarding the consequences of disguising herself as human ), and, upon the planet’s surface during their “escape,” cannot determine from her own thoughts whether she is bluffing when she sets her phaser to overload ( it is for this that the talosian looks at captain pike to ask whether it is a deception. ).

it is not until this final instance when they need a direct read on her that the talosians realize they cannot reach her thoughts. having the decision that these humans are poorly suited to captivity, they are content to release her back to the ship with the anomaly unexplained.

this does, consequently, also mean that the talosian keeper’s observation that includes my most utterly despised line from the entire episode does not come from una’s own thoughts, but from the general perceptions of others ( I will consider it acceptably plausible that colt or other members of the crew would believe her to have feelings for their captain ).

ON THE AFTERMATH

even though the talosians are unable to truly read her thoughts, and even though she is spared that violation of her privacy, talos iv leaves una immensely rattled. for a woman whose entire conception of the universe is built upon empirical fact, whose reality is bounded and defined by what she perceives, who stores no value in things like faith and spirituality and fate, to suddenly no longer be able to trust her own senses affects her immensely. upon the planet’s surface, she keeps her focus: she has a job to do, and until she has returned herself, colt, and the captain safely to enterprise, she does not have time to consider the implications.

when she does, however, the thoughts refuse to leave. they gnaw at her relentlessly. it’s akin to a paranoia, and for weeks she startles awake not knowing where she is, thinks she imagines she sees or hears things that she does not, and otherwise sits with the nagging thought of what if we never left? it is months before these effects fade, but she does not speak of them to anyone, considering it a wholly ridiculous premise and believing there to be no point in dragging anyone else into her own doubts. her rationality rejects it even as her subconscious refuses to let it go.