#so here have things once they return to enterprise after whatever happens on dorvien iv instead

[owedfavors]

⤷ ✧ @cptnpike said, ❝ if it were anyone else, i would never permit it. ❞

it is the most trivial of things to apologize for. no, that’s wrong. in present circumstances, and in present company, it is the most trivial of things. there are far, far greater things for which she owes him apologies than this, the way her lips had phrased a what ought to have been a suggestion or, at most, a request, as if it were an instruction, a command.

to her captain.

chris knows her. a decade of friendship, of partnership, leaves her secure in the knowledge that he will not hold it against her. that he would recognize her urgency for what it was, and not mistake it as insubordination, as breaking the chain of command.

still, while the apology might be unnecessary, while he brushes it off now with a lighthearted tone that to her ears sounds forced ( and she cannot tell if that is her own imagination, her own tension reflected onto him, or if she reads it right ), it is the easiest of all that has happened to address. she matches his effort at their usual levity with a smile, for all it lacks the usual spark, and the teasing words she might usually have offered by way of a return parry elude her grasp, retreating to the shadows in the corners of her mind.

the distance from where he sits behind his desk to where she stands, feels disproportionately immense. though she had met his gaze steadily thus far, hers falters now, eyes fixing instead upon her hands, folded upon the back of a chair prevent herself from gripping so tightly her knuckles turn white. for a moment, her lips purse and her teeth close upon the inside of her lip in a gesture she had schooled herself out of in childhood ( perhaps proximity renews memories, and with them, old habits ), before she manages, forcing herself to look up. ❛ and I am sorry for… ❜ she falters, suddenly unsure how to put it into words. for a decade of deception, for secrets harbored so close to her chest, for the one time, after hetemit ix, when she had truly lied. she has not forgotten.

❛ for the rest... ❜ as far as apologies go, it is paltry at best. then again, the number of people who have heard the words I am sorry from the lips of una evers could be counted upon her fingers. she does not apologize. not in so many words, at least. ❛ chris, I… ❜

for all her broken sentences, all her sudden lack of clarity in what to say ( usual precision robbed from her by the impossibility of this moment ), she has no fear of what this means for her career, only what it means for them. ❛ I couldn’t tell you. not after hetemit ix, not before… I… you couldn’t know. but I am sorry. ❜

no, that was wrong: she has one more fear: what it means for him.