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Una awakens from a heavy doze, her head thicker than an old NX class starship’s honorium plated hull. She isn’t sure quit how long she has been out but the pleasantly fuzzy feeling permeating her limbs is much nicer than the fire that had been previously burning in her belly. How much did it take to put me under, she muses. Probably enough to put a Pyrithian Swamp Gobbler on its ass. Hope it didn’t leave anybody else without like it almost did without like it almost did with that plasma. I’m a tough girl, I can do without.
She lets her eyes roll to find Chris at her beside, head resting in his arms on the mattress. “Hey, don’t you have some captaining to be doing?”
He raises his head, chuckles. “How can I command a ship this big when my first officer is laid up here like some lazy bum?” He reaches out to brush a strand of dark hair out of her eyes. It is a shockingly inappropriate gesture banned by at least a dozen regulations and after the day they’ve had, the day they’ve all had, neither of them give one single good god damn. It’s not like Joseph or Christine will rat them out to Starfleet human resources, anyway. “How are you holding up?”
“Oh, I mean, I’m holding, I guess. It’s not as bad as that time the big guy with the horns head butted me and I couldn’t feel my hands for a week.”
“Yeah, that one was kinda scary. I thought I was gonna have to get a new helmsman and everything. Would have been super hard to explain to Bob why I broke his.”
She nodded. “I feel like you might have gotten demoted for that one.”
“How would that have looked for my career? I’d just made XO, just made LTC, and immediately let some huge, goofy tribal chieftain looking guy with antlers smash into someone in my landing party. What kinda idiot does that?”
“I mean, considering it happened, Chris, I’m gonna go ahead and say the YOU kinda idiot.” She pushes back her hair to reveal an angry scar that even twenty-third century dermal regeneration hasn’t fully healed. “What was it that I said when I first woke up in Sickbay? ‘What was the number of that…?’”
He laughs. “‘What was the number of that moose that hit me?’ And Phil said…”
“‘It was a right regular fuckarooni of a moose, that one,’.” They both collapse into helpless giggles so intense that Una is afraid that they’ll wake the other patients and break the archaic stitches that Christine has so carefully traced into her abdomen. When the fit of laughter subsides she grows serious again. “How is La’an doing?”
“She’s okay. She wasn’t good at first but she’s okay now. The omelet helped.”
“Omelet?”
“Yeah, three eggs and more cheese than I thought a person that small could actually, physically hold. I was kinda worried she’d just actually explode there for a minute.” He strokes his chin. “You know when I first met La’an, when you were captured by those little weirdos on Kiley, I didn’t know that I’d like her. She grows on you, though. She’s a good kid.”
Una beams like a mother who’s just heard her difficult but beloved daughter earn high praise. “Literally none better. I’d die for her. Not to be dramatic.”
“Not to be dramatic, Number One, but you almost did. Let’s, uh…” He coughs. “Let’s not make a habit of that, if we can. I’m not sure what I’d do without you.”
“Wither. Die. Get other people headbutted by big, goofy guys with antlers. How are you holding up?”
He nods. “With the kind of stoic bravery that Starfleet’s most decorated captain is known for. I’ve been leading my people with great courage, staring down death with grave determination and standing unafraid at the precipice of the unknown. Just fun stuff like that. Marie called and asked if you were okay.”
“That’s bullshit,” Joseph says from behind the divider where he is working on his chart. “Not the part about Marie calling–she was worried about you, Una, we all have been–but the whole stoic bravery thing. He’s been going to pieces. Doing his duty like the pillar of strength we know is but…” He laughs. “You’ve been cracking, man.”
With a shrug Chris says, “Yeah, but I’ve been cracking nobly and I’ve been looking really awesome in profile while I’ve been doing it.
He snorts. “You can’t turn it off, can you?”
“What’s that?”
“Making a joke out of any time you feel anything resembling a strong emotion. Either of you. Dr. Boyce and Admiral April both warned me about it, said that if one of you stopped making jokes for a minute–and to be really careful, that Una’s jokes were so dry that I could miss them if I wasn’t really, really listening–that I might as well get two funerary torpedoes ready because you were both as good as dead.”
“I mean I don’t think we’re quite that bad,” Una says.
“You make us sound sick or something. Like we’re deviant.”
Joseph holds up his hands in supplication. “I’m just reporting what the Admiral says. Look… I’ve got some wonderful Saurian brandy… how about when Commander Chin-Riley has mended we share it in the captain’s cabin and damn his poor judgment about… this one issue and literally no other thing in the rest of his forty year career.”
“You know something about that nurse of yours? Christine?” Una asks. “The one that told me I was gonna give birth out of my mouth or whatever it was?”
“Miss Chapel? I know that she’s one of the most able emergency nurse practitioners I’ve ever met.”
“Yeah, maybe… I think she’s also been a bad influence on you.”
He howls with laughter. “She probably has, yeah, but she’s been one for a long damn time. We were in the war together.”
Chris furrows his brow, tries to imagine the sunny young woman he’s seen flashing puppy dog eyes at Spock treating disruptor burns and bat’leth injuries. But when he tries to imagine Erica threading the needle between Klingon warships it’s just as hard. He shakes the thought from his head. The Klingon war wasn’t a long time ago but it needs to be. “I need to get up to the bridge before Ortegas burns the place down. I let her have the conn and she tends to get a little bit restless with matches.” He leans over, pushes Una’s hair back and presses a lingering kiss on her scar. “Sleep well, Number One, and get back up there on the bridge with me. I need you.” It is wildly against regulations but Joseph Jubilo M’Benga isn’t going to rat them out to Starfleet HR. Bob April could have told you he wasn’t that kind of a man. Or was he? They had already established that the Admiral was an awful judge of character, after all. M’Benga shook his head and went back to his rounds while Una drifted off to sleep and sweet dreams.