Work Text:
Elnor doesn’t remember what happened in 2024, for the most part. He just knows that whatever it was, it was big and significant. Instinctively, he stays by Raffi for a few weeks after that. He’s used to wanting her nearby, and he knows that it’s even more important to her that he remain around, available. He gives her privacy with Seven but stays in the next room, keeping the distance that he’s used to keeping at the Academy.
Soji’s warned him that that makes him look like a teacher’s pet, but Elnor figures that if people are going to look at him and think he’s weird, he probably won’t help much of that by staying away from some of the few and first friends he made outside of the Qowat Milat.
He only has to stay around for a day or so. Raffi comes and tells him pretty quickly that she’s sorry (again) and that he should go back to Vashti if he wants. It’s most important that he makes his own path and does what he wants to do.
Elnor still feels bad. Raffi doesn’t want anyone to leave, and yet everyone is always leaving her. It’s a problem that Elnor wishes he knew how to fix.
Two nights after that , when he still hasn’t left, an exhausted-looking (yet somehow buzzing with energy?) Seven meets him for dinner alone and tells him to get his ass out of here. Raffi will be fine, and it’s time their whole group stopped treating each other as a stop-gap and started treating each other as a community, the kind that’ll hang around for each other even when they pursued things important to them individually.
Seven, as usual, is very convincing.
So Elnor says goodbye to Seven and Raffi, and heads to Vashti for now, because he knows he wants to do it, that it’s something he needs to do. Raffi cries but looks genuinely happy for him.
Seven doesn’t cry, but she holds Elnor tighter than she ever has, and Elnor wonders, as he often does, if Seven believes the good advice she always seems to be able to dispense to other people.
It’s not the goodbye Seven and Raffi build it up to be – they always seem to have a knack for the dramatics, and Raffi will join Elnor on Vashti the week after. But Elnor knows enough to know about storybook endings – they are symbolic, more than anything else. These characters ostensibly have a life that exists outside of what the audience sees.
So yes, in that sense, Elnor understands. He’s witnessing the end of an era.
Vashti feels good .
It never felt this way when Elnor lived there. The universal translator of course does its job, but there’s still comfort in speaking his language, living absolute candor and being totally and completely understood in word and in custom. No time spent having to explain himself more than he has to.
Elnor never felt acceptance or comfort on Vashti, so to speak, not the way that Zani spoke of the settlement and her community, but he certainly feels a sense of – maybe not happiness but familiarity now. He knows this place and understands how it works. He eats with the Qowat Milat and does not need to ask for his favorite dish. They already have it for him.
He never truly fit in with them, but he understood intrinsically how to live with them and they with him.
He has a night coffee – a rare treat and a sign that he is certainly worth Zani’s time – with her on her low yet breezy balcony.
It has been a while since he has been able to gaze upon the stars of Vashti. He used to do it every day. Then, for over a year, if he’d wanted to do it, he’d had to do it through a screen, in a holodeck. He watches the stars, visible through the gauzy fabric of Zani’s nighttime veil.
“It gladdens my heart to see you back here,” says Zani, “but I also fear it is because your venture outside means that you have not found your place.
Elnor updates her on everything, as much as he can remember – about Picard, about Raffi, about the Academy. The tension, of course, is that while the Qowat Milat will always be his home (if that was not clear to him and Zani before, it certainly is now), he does not belong here, belong among them.
It’s the kind of thing Elnor wishes he could tell Raffi, when she looks upon him with worry that would crease her face if her complexion were not so determined, so taut from battle and lives lived.
“A place of origin can be a grounding point,” says Elnor. “You taught me that.”
Zani takes that in, with warmth on her face that Elnor suspects he has never seen before. Raffi sometimes gazes upon him with the same warmth, and he does not quite understand it. “Do you know where you will go next?”
Elnor mentions the Fenris Rangers, then falters at the end. The cultural differences had made it difficult to serve in Starfleet. He’s a poor representation of the first Romulan, for example, because he does not act like any Romulan any cadet or instructor has ever met, except for Raffi.
Explaining oneself consumes time and energy. Elnor had had a taste of this growing up, a boy among an order of warrior women, most of them from a culture that acted completely opposite to the Way of Absolute Candor. He’d left the Academy on good terms, but it had not been comfortable there.
“I want to help,” he admits to Zani, thinking of Seven and Raffi and – with a pang, Rios. He hadn’t been able to say goodbye to him. “But I don’t know how.”
“Time spent trying to find out who you are isn’t time that’s wasted,” says Zani. “You’ve helped many. You had no control over the events that shaped your young life. It is difficult to exist within orders like the Qowat Milat and Starfleet without knowing who you are. If you wanted to take that time, you might help several more. But more importantly,” says Zani gently, refilling Elnor’s now empty cup, “you would help yourself.”
They’ll have plenty more late night discussions like this, out under the stars, especially when Raffi arrives. The point is that it culminates in this: when Elnor is ready to leave Vashti, he calls Soji who is out a roommate, and he asks if he can crash on her couch.
Soji is taking a break from being a diplomat.
She’s actually taking a break from doing a lot of things, like going out, cleaning, and regular showering.
Elnor looks all of these symptoms up in various databases and concludes that Soji either has the fatalistic and highly contagious Dhenihra Plague – which means they’re both likely to die – or she’s depressed.
Soji laughs when Elnor reports his findings, in a weird hollow way, like a ship’s engine that has not roared to life in a while and needs to regain its power back over time.
Unlike most of the people at the Academy, Soji’s laughter does not make Elnor consider his foreignness. It’s just a moment among friends.
Elnor is suddenly conscious that he thinks of her in those terms.
“Isn’t it fucked up,” asks Soji, “that we lose Rios and Agnes as the person we knew her, on some adventure that Q didn’t even send me on, and we’re all just supposed to move on?”
Elnor wonders if Seven had dispensed the same advice to Soji that she had to him. “Yes,” he answers immediately.
That seems to strike Soji with some surprise, but she recovers quickly. “What do you do when you’re depressed?”
“Drills,” answers Elnor, “with a sword.”
With some difficulty, Soji shifts on the couch. “Okay, maybe we’ll do that tomorrow.”
She doesn’t get off the couch the next day, or the day after that. The day after that , she takes a shower. Elnor cleans up the living room, with no other thought to the whole thing except that it’s something that needs to be done.
The day after that, she does one drill and then goes to bed (in her bedroom, in a proper bed). But eventually, they get to doing drills together.
And that’s nice, thinks Elnor, not to have to do this alone.
Soji goes on a lot of dates, Elnor notices. She’s gone every other night. Sometimes her dates leave in the morning while Elnor is having his breakfast. Sometimes they leave, looking slightly bewildered as they pass Elnor doing his sword drills in the space he and Soji have portioned for the activity in the living room.
When Elnor asks Soji if she times their exit to the time of his drills, Soji just laughs.
Elnor starts sending Soji his daily schedules, even though there’s very little variation in it, day to day.
It’s painful, but she helps him clear out Agnes’ things so that he can move his things in more thoroughly. Elnor doesn’t have a lot of possessions, but Elnor understands the symbolism of the whole thing.
At some point, they find Rios’ soccer ball in the corner. They think about it for a week and decide to keep it, in the living room, by the front door. They take it to play several times before it starts looking saggy, and then they recycle it back into the replicator and generate it into a newer-looking one. Different ball, same molecules.
It feels like a tribute. Their tribute. They never really talk about it with anyone, but they do develop a routine of biweekly games. Soji doesn’t care that the game barely makes sense to Elnor, and Elnor barely cares that she’s probably going super easy on him. They figure that’s just the way the other one is.
It’s comforting.
Soji never asks Elnor about it directly, and Elnor and Soji never really talk about it – that discussion is for later, when during a blessed period of time, they move in with Seven and Raffi in an apartment-type of situation that fills whatever the intersection is between all four of their ideas of family. It doesn’t last long before they all have to make moves for the future, but it’s nice while it lasts.
Elnor is learning to enjoy things more while they last, not because they might be gone but because one can only truly understand the pleasure of a moment while in that moment. The way he thinks about it after sits in a different category entirely.
There’s something there, in what Zani and Raffi have taught him, about living thoroughly and experiencing life .
One time though, Soji asks Elnor if he feels like he can’t bring anyone over because she’s always bringing her dates home.
“I don’t do that,” says Elnor.
“As in you don’t bring anyone over?”
“As in I don’t date,” says Elnor.
Soji makes a face that conveys understanding but little focus on his statement and returns to whatever she was doing before.
Elnor doesn’t know it yet, but it’s the beginning of a lifetime with Soji that transcends words.
It’s not that Elnor doesn’t understand how things like dating and romance and sex happen. Zani had told him about that as early as he could remember, and answered all of his questions about it – as well as his frustrations – when they’d come up. And she hadn’t been the only Qowat Milat who had. In this way, absolute candor was a blessing – there was very little room for ambiguity between them. He remembers the conversation now:
“How will I know?” Elnor asks.
Zani thinks about it for a moment. “You may not understand the feeling and the word to put to the feeling ,” she’d answered. “But you will understand a desire and the need to follow it. Spend some time contemplating that desire, urge, or compelling, and that will help you to understand. You can also speak with us.”
“What if I don’t know I’m feeling that because I never feel that?”
Zani shrugs. “Not everyone does. I, for example, don’t experience these feelings or compulsions as immediately as other people do. But I do feel romantically about others. All of it is normal. It is normal to never feel any of these things and still crave fellowship and community. We all need fellowship and community.”
“If I’m like that, like you, can I be a Qowat Milat too?”
It is not their way to hide such things, so Zani does not hide how much that question pains her. Elnor is about to apologize when she answers, ”The Way of Absolute Candor offers much wisdom even to those outside the Qowat Milat, but you do not fit the criteria for our order.”
It’s something Elnor has heard countless times, but he still feels the anger flash up in him over this rule. He understands these people. All he wants is to belong here, to belong somewhere .
“Our order does not limit the desire that one may or may not feel. All it asks is that the tasks of the order claim priority, within reason, while preserving the individual’s right and responsibility to make difficult decisions. But you will find your place,” Zani says. “We will help you.”
It had not been a satisfying conversation, and Elnor had walked away with it with rage lashing throughout his body. He’d taken it to sword drills, had continued for the rest of the afternoon. But Zani’s point had been to convey understanding, and that’s what she’d done.
Soji’s creators had sought to give Soji memories of a blood family and former lovers most prominently. She discovers quickly that her friendships are her best chance at agency, and she follows that opportunity.
Elnor bounces between Vashti and Earth, picking up the odd job here and there. Soji meets many people, friends of her father’s. They cycle through therapists, Federation policies, protests and tragedies. Raffi comes out of Starfleet and Seven goes in. Then Raffi’s back in Starfleet but never left. Zani takes Elnor on a cross-organizational mission and decides she likes him there. Soji joins sometimes too. Sometimes she hangs out with the Rangers, in particular one of Seven’s oldest friends there. Soji even flirts with the idea of joining Starfleet, since apparently that’s the choice that everyone who barely sneezes in Picard’s path has to contemplate these days.
But Elnor always finds his way back to Soji. It is odd, because in a way, Elnor grew up with several sisters, but he never got to choose any of them. He chooses Soji over and over in again in life. Choices become habits, and habits become a lifetime.
“You know,” says Soji to Elnor in passing one night, as they’re cleaning up after one of their eventful and extremely dramatic dinners (so just dinners – Soji and Elnor walk in eventful community circles) with some of the elders in their lives, “if we lived together for the rest of our lives, I would not mind that at all.”
Over time, Elnor like Seven has learned to adapt a little more to his everyday surroundings. He hides his enthusiasm at her statement. “I see no issue with this,” he says, though it was always coming to this. They have discussed at length how they’ll always have a room in the other one’s house, and ideally that house is the same house.
This is my home , he’d said to Seven, Raffi, Zani, and Worf – tonight’s dinner guests of honor (and a little bit of drama).
And he’d meant every word.