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“Are you enjoying your time on the Enterprise, Soji?”
Initially, Soji hadn’t been sold on the idea of therapy. Weren’t good therapists supposed to be the ones who had some kind of base knowledge of your situation? But no one was like Soji. There were two of her, and now she is alone. What was the point of therapy when she needed to constantly be briefing someone on the most basic parts of her?
But Raffi had recommended Te’elis, and after all that Raffi had done for Soji, Soji at least had to say that she tried whatever Raffi was selling her.
Te’elis had listened for a long time to Soji’s misgivings and then simply responded that she understood, but if Soji wanted to hear her out, some things were universal, like wanting to be heard and understood and validated.
“That’s actually all I have to offer you,” Te’elis had said . “No one’s going to fix you or help you grow but you. I don’t have those tools for you. What I can do is help you develop the ones you need, to listen to you so that you can get some perspective. But at the end of the day, it’s going to depend on you, your goals, and what you’re looking for. So the most important question I have for you, Soji, is what are you looking for?”
Soji had liked that Te’elis was a bit of an outsider of sorts, a Romulan who’d been assimilated when she was part of Ramdha’s crew. They had that similar history at least. Like Soji’s, Te’elis’ vocation had changed when she had been changed against her will. On the ship, she’d served as an engineer. Now, her calling was therapy. She’d made the switch when she’d realized how much help it had been to her. Serving on ships didn’t seem to work for her anymore, not the way that directly serving people like this did.
To help her listen to people with her xB physiology, she has implants and hearing aids in each ear. She wears her hair long and green, which Raffi suspects is a nod to both her xB and Romulan sides, though Raffi has never been able to prove it. Meanwhile, Te’elis keeps her left arm covered, because she is sensitive to the touch there, to the point of pain. She’d been one of the first xBs admitted into the counseling program, something that, from what Soji had gathered from Raffi, had not been easy at all.
“When Raffi suggested I come here and said that Seven thought it was a great idea, I mostly signed on because I don’t really know what else to do,” says Soji. “I feel like I’ve been looking for myself for years and haven’t found anything, so what’s something else to fill the time with?”
“Do you think it helps, serving with an xB crew?” asks Te’elis.
“Different kinds of different doesn’t always feel the same,” says Soji. She shrugs. “I’m not saying I’m closing myself off to the experience or anything, but I’m also not saying I’m going to see how it helps.”
“Your skillset is at least of some use here,” suggests Te’elis.
“If you were the only person in the world who could, I don’t know, use a replicator,” says Soji, “then maybe everyone would want you to use their replicators for them. That’s something you do for them. But what if I–just an example–wanted to sing. Like a musician was all I wanted to do with my life?”
“You can’t do both?”
“Not when so many people need me.”
“What about what you need?”
Soji sulks.
“A lot of people in Starfleet have this problem. They have the tools to help people, but they burn themselves out trying to help too many,” says Te’elis. “At some point, you have to do what you can but also understand that the reason why any of us are doing this is so that we can all have a better life.”
Soji doesn’t meet Te’elis’ eyes. “I’m not joining Starfleet. Why does everyone always think that’s the solution to everything? Even Seven–” She stops, and Te’elis examines her carefully to make sure that she’s finished speaking before she starts again.
“I never said you should. But maybe hanging out with them will give you some insight you didn’t have before.”
“I said I’ll do it. I don’t have to be happy about it.”
“Is any of it happy?” asks Te’elis. “Is it nice being around Elnor again?”
Even Soji’s commitment to her sulk can’t keep a smile from playing across her lips. “Okay, yeah, that part is fine.”
The door chirps to let Sidney know someone is out there, and she has never been so frustrated to hear such a routine noise.
“Enter,” she says, rolling her eyes, then immediately snapping to attention when the door reveals the intruder. “Captain.”
“As you were. La Forge, I came to check on you,” says Seven, pausing to search Sidney’s gaze before stepping foot into her quarters. On Sidney’s silence, she continues. “What, you’re the only one who can come see their fellow crew when they’re sulking?”
“You were confined to quarters when I came to see you.”
“Sure, but I was also sulking.”
“It’s nothing.”
“You stormed out of the mess hall during a diplomatic rehearsal,” says Seven. “Interesting definition you have of ‘nothing’.”
That’s what pisses Sidney off, she realizes, that an incident that would have for sure earned her an official reprimand from any other senior officer of any other crew now just gets her a therapizing check-in, because she’s been semi-assimilated, and everyone has to treat her with kid gloves now. She bites back her smart remark–Seven is still her captain, after all–and looks down at the floor.
“Don’t you usually send the commander for these kinds of feelings talks?”
“It’s not a feelings talk,” says Seven. “I mean, it could be, but that would take a long time. But we’re having a ceremony where we need everyone who is the best at their best, and the best is you. So just tell me what’s bothering you, so we can figure out a way around it.”
Sidney’s eyes don’t leave the floor, as she considers more evasion. She already knows it would be useless, because Seven has a way of getting to the heart of things, in a way that is hardly gentle but always firm and kind. “It’s not that important.”
“I will decide what makes my time worth spending. I have decided to spend it with you. So?” she prompts.
Like Sidney often does with Seven, she relents. Mostly because Seven knows better. But it’s also a little bit because relenting in front of Seven doesn’t cost what it does in front of other officers. Seven is, after all, the OG kind of xB. She’s had it rougher than anyone else on this ship.
Sidney just wishes she needed her a lot less than she seems to.
“I don’t like rice anymore,” says Sidney quietly.
Seven’s ocular implant shifts upward just a fraction. “La Forge?”
“What’s your favorite food, Captain?” asks Sidney. “Because mine is bariis iskukaris .”
“The rice with the spices,” says Seven. “Fragrant. Flavorful.”
“We used to replicate it growing up, but Mom and Dad always had us make it from scratch a little bit, to understand the relationship that materials used to have with the land. We’re Somalian, you know, on my dad’s side. That’s one of the main foods, and I don’t know if it’s because it’s the one that my dad knew how to make the best or if it’s because I genuinely liked it, but it was my favorite food.” She gestures to her head. “Ever since the, uh, assimilation, I can’t stand the taste of it. It’s too much.”
“And the diplomatic ceremony is about sharing bits of ourselves through our favorite foods,” Seven finishes, “as a way of showing that food transcends language, written and spoken.” She doesn’t try to find Sidney’s gaze, just continues to stand there at attention, even though she doesn’t have to as captain and Sidney long has relaxed and slumped into a chair. Yet when she speaks, Sidney finds herself compelled to look at her captain. “For what it’s worth, I thought you were doing well. I could not tell that you were distressed.”
“When you changed,” says Sidney, “it showed. I’m not saying you had it better, because you didn’t. But everyone knew. But when I talk to my dad, his friends…they think they’re talking to the same me, but I’m not. I’ve changed, and I don’t know what that means. All of the things that used to make me feel happy by myself at the end of the day are gone, and I–” She takes a deep breath. “I should be saving this for therapy.”
“We’re idiots.”
Hands behind her back, Raffi paces back and forth in front of Seven’s desk while Seven looks up at her, impassive.
“Of course food is asking too much. The assimilation process affects every single sense–sight, hearing, taste! But while it’s easy enough to accommodate for sight, hearing, and touch, we’ve always been a little bit lacking in what to do for smell and taste for humanoids.”
“Taste is not required for the ceremony,” Seven remarks. “People just have to talk about different kinds of food. It’s the other party that has to taste it. What we taste of their food is irrelevant.”
Raffi stops and looks at Seven sideways.
“In theory,” they say together.
Seven closes her eyes and shrugs. “Look, it’s a blind spot for both of us. We don’t think about taste as much as we think about the other senses, and I’ve never found food to be particularly pleasurable. Of course, I don’t really remember a time when I did. Also, the way we’ve been running, everyone on board is eating to live instead of living to eat.”
“Food is one of the things that brings us together,” says Raffi. “You can see it throughout history, across known species.” Her shoulders slump. “I’m tired. You really let me burn myself through, there.”
“You seemed passionate,” says Seven, drily. “I figured I’d let you have your peace. Also, you’re insightful when you’re on fire.”
“So all the time.”
“Precisely.”
They exchange a very warm, very layered glance, one that feels commonplace between them now as they’ve settled into this new normal of being captain and first officer first and everything else second (though they shoot for “not at all”). Raffi takes her usual spot on the edge of Seven’s desk. “Chances are high that she’s not the only one who feels this way.”
“Yup.” It’s not a surprise. Something like this comes up every few days. Neither Seven nor Raffi have rested much, even accounting for how Seven can get away with regenerating sometimes.
“I assume you have a plan?”
Seven shakes her head. “Not beyond knowing we won’t be the ones to get through to her. You?”
“An idea. Half an idea. And maybe the right person for the job.”
Seven rarely smiles, but she gets this look on her face sometimes of ease . That’s what crosses her face now. “I know I requested you for something.”
“Ha!”
“And Number One?”
Raffi smiles angelically. “Yes, Captain?”
“Do not call any member of my crew an idiot again, especially my first officer.”
Now they’re both smiling at each other. “Understood.”
“No.”
“Oh, come on.”
“I refuse.”
“You’re not in Starfleet. You can’t refuse me because I’m not giving you orders.”
“Yeah, so I don’t have to do anything you say.”
“Okay, but–”
“But what?”
“Have you considered that I’m super nice and may make you cake?”
As a special guest of the Enterprise, Soji has been given some of the guest quarters, which she immediately decorated to look like the quarters she’d held before. Greenery drapes from the ceiling, orchids blooming on each of them. “Raffi, you suck. Also you use the same arguments every time.”
“Why fix what’s not broken?” asks Raffi, fluttering her eyelashes impishly. “Come on, Soji. This is a diplomatic incident involving diplomatic stuff. And you did diplomatic stuff.”
“It also involves being first a species that didn’t really exist before this,” says Soji. “Another new kind of xB? I mean, come on.”
“That other kind of xB was debatable, and you’re only making my argument for me.”
Soji rolls her eyes. “Seven sent you here.”
“Give me some credit. It was my plan, but yes, I got her input.”
“And uh, how’s that going? The whole working-with-your-ex-because-circumstances-don’t-allow-a-relationship thing?”
“Don’t change the subject.”
“I’m going to get the answer from you on this trip sometime.”
Raffi grins brightly. “So you’re staying a long time then. Forever, some would say.”
“Wow, that hopeless between you two, huh?”
“It’s more like every day, we solve a crisis. Then three more pop up in its place. There’s no time to just sit down and be.”
“Seems like a theme on this ship.”
“It’s the Enterprise. So, yeah.”
“Since when does precedent mean anything to you, unless it means making an argument?”
“You’re still trying to change the subject.”
“Fine,” says Soji, “I’ll do it. But you owe me the tea.”
“I will never understand your obsession with 21st century queer Earth vernacular.”
“Now who’s changing the subject?”
Raffi sits down on the couch and holds out her arms. Soji rolls her eyes and then sits down next to her, allowing herself to be enveloped in Raffi’s warm and wiry grasp. “I missed you, honey.”
“I missed you too, queen.”
“This is Soji,” introduces Seven as she, Raffi, and Soji all file into Sidney’s quarters. “Thank you for agreeing to this dinner.”
Sidney blinks. “Shouldn’t you be having dinner with the Pardisoans?”
“Everyone knows what happened to your crew,” says Soji, when Seven and Raffi hesitate. “Everyone knows that the Borg have been here, and they understand that after that, anyone lucky enough to get away needs some space.”
“Why do they trust us at all if they know what happened?” asks Sidney, and Raffi and Soji just look at Seven, who is busy fiddling with the replicator.
“Because they know about her. And they know about Hugh,” says Raffi, “and what they became. Knowing it was possible for them made it possible for everyone else.”
“It’s hard to be the first,” says Soji. “Literally everything is stacked against you. But it doesn’t mean it’s impossible.”
“That’s not fair,” says Sidney.
“It’s not,” agrees Soji, and silence falls upon the room, except for the sounds of Seven’s implants hitting the side of the replicator as she adds a few settings to the ship.
Seven is as formidable an enemy as Raffi’s ever seen to someone on the wrong side of justice, but team presentations are not her forte, and Raffi is always going to find it a little endearing that she tries anyway.
“Strawberries,” begins Seven, gesturing one of the two bowls in front of her. “My favorite food as a child. Before I was assimilated. Part of my recovery was trying them again, and while they were not as distasteful as I found other kinds of food to be–most food, actually–I did not like them, not in the way that everyone was telling me that this person from my past had. Sometimes, when I would eat them, it would not be because of pleasure for myself but out of a nostalgia for that past that I never could seem to touch. To this day, I find them comforting, in a way, but I cannot say that they bring me any kind of sensory pleasure. The comfort is emotional, in a way. It took me a while to realize that even though I was performing that pleasure for other people, what was personal to me was also valid.”
Seven offers the bowl to the others, who each take a strawberry out of the bowl and eat it.
She gestures to the second bowl in front of her, a much more colorful one. “Orchids from the planet Coppelius. A place I did not know about previously and probably not one I would have gone to had I known what was on it. But there was a forced landing, and I–” She catches Soji’s gaze, then Raffi’s. “I am very glad I went there, because some of the most formative events of my life, good ones, occurred there.”
She gazes at the bowl, a hint of fondness.
“But we are not talking about that right now. We are simply talking about my favorite food, which are these. It’s normal for those with human physiology to eat plants, and while some species of orchids on the planets of Terran origins would have been poisonous to humans, these are not.” She picks one up and takes a bite. “We don’t always have control over the ways that the universe changes us. But we adapt, and maybe, somewhere, out there, is a food that speaks to who you are and what you are becoming. I don’t consider myself an expert on cuisine, but I know that much is true to me.”
She passes the bowl around to a room that is significantly more misty-eyed.
“When one is assimilated, the need for food ceases to exist. Getting used to it again was difficult for me. How does one develop a relationship with something that was modified and manipulated outside of their control? I still struggle with it, but I am trying. That, I have come to understand, is an important part of a living being’s experience.”
Raffi is the last to take from the bowl, and when she passes it to Seven, their hands linger on either side of it.
“Thank you for sharing, Commander,” says Raffi.
Seven nods. “Commander.”
Raffi turns to the room and gestures to the first bowl in front of her. “We’re Creole on my mother’s side. And a lot of other things, but New Orleans is what has stuck with the both of us, a place with a lot of different people from a lot of different places who were just trying to make their way and survive with their wits. They didn’t always play by the rules. The food became something else, something native to the land we were on, something partially of those who were stolen from their homeland, something partially of those who stole those from their homeland. Out of all of that, something unique and delicious emerged.”
Everyone peers into the bowl.
“A bagel?” asks Sidney.
“Ah, but see,” says Raffi, “on my father’s side, we’re from New York. A port city, just like New Orleans. Also a place where a lot of people came together and were just trying to survive by their fingernails. The food created there by the immigrant communities became a symbol of blue-collar spirit and dreams. The injustices as they were taken advantage of by those with more. The crimes committed while they were just trying to even the score. The food became something else, a symbol of the city that was a symbol of a nation, at one point in time. Something that stood distinct from the country that its creators had left, some by choice and some by circumstance. Food that changed to fit the community around it as much as it had become a reflection of the hands that made it.”
“But you lost your past,” says Sidney. “Something else came out of it.”
“Nothing is the same as it was at the dawn of civilization on any planet,” says Raffi. “On a certain level, we have to change or perish. Some of that change is because of positive reasons and some is of negative reasons. And we can try to hold onto the past, but we’re always going to reflect the other people around us. That’s part of being in a community. So when we look at our food and the way it has been changed, we have to ask ourselves why we are keeping it pure and for whom?”
“You don’t feel connected to Creole food?” asks Sidney. “I don’t see any here.”
“I do, and I know you know that because you’ve been to my red beans and rice Monday parties,” Raffi chides gently.
“I’m just trying to think up questions that other people may ask,” says Sidney. “Like, what if Soji has questions? I don’t know her very well.” She looks at Soji. “No offense.”
“None taken,” says Soji, a thoughtful look on her face. “Also, I think I like you.”
Sidney grins.
“I think it’s hard to sum myself up in two dishes,” says Raffi. She gestures to another bowl, a giant meatball covered in marinara sauce. “Italian immigrants came to New York and cities all over, fleeing corruption and famine. They hadn’t been able to afford meat or things with a lot of fat in them. Suddenly, they had access to all of those things, and so they created a cuisine full of meat, full of fat, and full of wine. Obviously, I’ve skipped the wine part.” She glances at Seven, whose lips turn up a little bit at how today, Raffi can joke a little bit about what she’s been through, a positive sign. “But when people tried to be purists about the cuisine, who got the most say? The people with privilege, who were able to stay in the country and never had to move and adapt? Or the just-as-Italian hands, less privileged, who were trying to find themselves and meet their needs in a completely new place?”
She passes around the bowl, and each person uses their utensils of choice to break off a piece of the giant meatball, then uses their hands to break off a piece of the bagel, dipping it into their topping combination of choice laid out in the middle of the table.
Finally, the group looks to Soji, who sits in front of two bowls that look mostly empty.
“My creator programmed me with my own favorite foods,” says Soji, “and for a long time, I hated that. I now know that he did that because he couldn’t taste food himself, and he wanted to give someone preferences, and I think I like eating, but I don’t like that I will never have the chance to like something that isn’t decided for me. Except.”
“Except,” repeats Seven, at the same time Raffi says, “Except.”
“You two are literally so annoying, especially when you do that,” says Soji, and Sidney’s eyes flick over to that interaction, possibly registering that her captain and first officer had a life before all of this, that Soji is part of that life, and that life existed in a place where it was totally okay to call Seven and Raffi “literally so annoying”.
“Except in theory my internal processing is limitless and created by a person who did have limitations,” says Soji. “So it’s very possible that I may just like–or even dislike–something that they didn’t know about. Something out there. Something that we just don’t know about yet.”
“In the whole known universe,” says Sidney. “That’s maybe more of a downer than you think it is.”
“I guess that’s the point of hope,” says Soji. “For it to exist, you kind of need to be in an environment that’s kind of a downer. Because only then can you look at the possibility of more.” Soji looks down at her bowls. “What I’m programmed to like, Filipinx-Japanese fusion. Tonkotsu ramen, except the meat is thinly-sliced Filipinx-style adobo , and gyodon that uses tapa as the beef.”
Seven blinks as she takes a bite. “Salty.”
“The food was created in a hot climate when a lot of people were manual laborers,” says Soji, “so they needed the electrolytes along with water to continue working in extremely hot and humid conditions. Today, everything is environmentally-controlled for us. But I had the replicator make it the historical way, so we could understand.”
Seven takes long sips of water, while Raffi pokes at the wasabi on the table and adds just a touch to her bowl.
“Also,” says Sidney, more to Seven and Raffi than anything else, “she totally sounded like Starfleet just now.”
Soji blows a raspberry, while Raffi sniggers. Seven simply raises an eyebrow.
Sidney takes her place in front of the seat table, standing. The other diplomats note her posture and begin to stand up as well, but Sidney holds out a hand, then thinks better of it, because she has no idea if that gesture means to them what it means to her.
“Please, stay seated,” she says. “I just want to make sure everyone can see me before we start eating.”
The diplomats stand anyway, and Sidney looks around and then nods, adapting. “Okay. So as we noted yesterday, I’m Lieutenant La Forge, and I’d like to welcome you back to our meal and exchange. I apologize for the way that I exited the room yesterday. It has been difficult with recent events to…operate. But in Starfleet, we always talk about opportunities to learn, and so instead of trying gloss over what happened yesterday or over-explain it, I think I’m just going to make it part of the ceremony, with my captain’s permission.”
She looks to the corner, where Seven stands tall and straight and out of the way. Seven nods. “Proceed, Lieutenant.”
“This is a ceremony about our favorite foods as a conduit for connection,” says Sidney, looking around the table. She gestures to a bowl in front of her. “This is bariis iskukaris , a rice mixed with many different kinds of spices. My family has history in this part of Earth called Somalia. The grain is light, and the spices in the rice are reflective of Somalia but also all of its trading partners, a long time ago.”
The lead diplomat leans over the rice and–maybe takes a sniff of it? It’s hard to tell. They don’t have nostrils. “Food is rarely simply a reflection of the one,” they say. “It often reflects many.”
“And it does!” says Sidney quickly. “They traded with different groups. Arab traders, South Asian traders, Southern Europeans…and out of it came something delicious. I think that’s why it hurt so much to lose my love of it with the assimilation. My senses changed, and all of that history–all of that reflection of not just where my family comes from but also a good portion of my homeworld–was gone.”
The diplomats look toward her now, and the room seems much more still than it was earlier.
“But maybe there’s something we can learn from that too. Food is not just a reflection of our wins. It’s also a reflection of our losses, our traumas, the things that have conquered our people out of injustice and unfairness. And it’s a wonder that sometimes, out of that, we can still find joy. Or that, the product of that painful process can be something that brings together people the events never touched,” she says. “As part of first contact, I want to be honest–and a little vulnerable–with you, for you to see the Federation for what it is, which is our wins and our losses, our joys and our traumas. That is is honorable to try to understand and reclaim our past, but when we shut ourselves off from it, we also shut ourselves off from the future, which isn’t exactly the point. And the point is that, um, time is bigger than us. Our past is something that cannot be conquered, just explored and lived. People on Earth, perpetrators of injustice, used to feel that way. Entitled to their past. But it was their idea of the past, something that existed without past context and current context.”
“So you have chosen a much more difficult way to live,” says the diplomat, “with no sensory tether to your past.”
“Something like that,” says Sidney. She holds out the bowl and the table begins to pass it around. “This is a part of my past, and that version of me is relevant. When I eat the food, I connect to hear, even though that’s not who I am anymore and not by choice. I put it forward to you as part of my story. And as for this–”
She holds out the other bowl in front of her, which is empty.
“One day, this will maybe hold my favorite food again. I don’t know if it exists yet. I don’t know if it exists somewhere out there in the explorable universe, but I do hope that one day I’ll be able to taste with pleasure again. Until then, I will engage with all of the other good parts of sensory living, again. My father was blind for a large portion of his life. He was able to process the world differently from other people, but there was something that separated him from others. But he never let that stop him from connecting with the world. And so, um, even though I don’t have a current answer to the question your ritual asks right now, I’m not going to let that stop me from connecting with you.”
Silence follows as the diplomats glance at each other around the table. Then, the person next to Sidney reaches out their hands.
“It’s empty,” says Sidney.
“This ritual is about bearing witness,” they reply. “So we will do that, with the truth you have shared with us.”
The empty bowl makes its way around the table, held in tentacled fingers which treat it with the utmost reverence, and Sidney’s eyes shine in the Enterprise’s lights.
Later, in the mess hall, Raffi watches Soji and Sidney speaking to Alandra on a PADD together at a distant table. They laugh particularly loudly at something that will have to remain a mystery.
Raffi makes to stand when Seven appears at her table, and Seven waves the gesture away.
“You already did that when I came in,” says Seven. “Come on.”
“I can’t get too comfortable,” says Raffi. “We’re still new to all of this. What happens when someone from another ship comes on board and wants to know why we’re all so relaxed with each other.”
“We tell them we’re the Enterprise and tell them to shove it,” offers Seven.
Raffi’s eyes sparkle. “You’re in a good mood today.”
Seven sits down. “Well, your plan was good,” says Seven. She nods at the table in the distance, where Sidney and Soji are still bent over the PADD. “They’re good for each other. Similar experiences but not completely the same. Who else to walk with each other into the unknown?”
“It was your idea to have Sidney do the presentation,” says Raffi.
“Well, I hate presentations,” says Seven, face unreadable. “You know that.”
Captains and first officers, no matter the ship or the crew, always have a rhythm with each other. Raffi had worried about that rhythm when she first took her post, because it meant things between her and Seven would have to change, but now, she can see that what they have is simply an evolution, a stop, along the road they’d been walking for a while.
These days, it seems they can say so much between them with just one look.
“So that was just you shirking responsibility,” says Raffi. “And not you being sentimental at all.”
Seven shrugs. “Anyway, I came over here to get your eyes on something.”
“Never a non-working moment.” Seven just slides the PADD over. “This is a plan for a party.”
“We can’t gather around food, maybe, but we can gather around something,” says Seven. “I think it’s time we worked a little less and focused a little bit more on morale.”
“I need to get Soji to stay on this ship more often.”
“Or longer,” says Seven. When Raffi meets her gaze, it sparkles, and not just because Seven’s implants are catching the light in a particularly lovely way. “It’ll be her choice, of course.”
“Of course,” says Raffi, but there’s a glint in both of their gazes.
“Anyway, more rest isn’t just limited to xB crew,” says Seven. “You need to take some time off too. Stop jumping on shift when you’re off-the-clock.”
“That’s very anti-Enterprise culture of you,” says Raffi.
“Well, we need to make the culture we want to see,” says Seven. “Crew should be trained up enough to not need one of us every single time something goes bump in the proverbial night.”
“Spoken like a true captain,” says Raffi. “So what about you?”
“What about me?”
“Time off? Something small with your first officer.”
“Have you eaten?” Seven asks.
Raffi looks pointedly down at her tea. She likes to take one before her meals and after her meals, something small to savor. This is one of the small things she does that is linked to her journey as a recovering addict. “I didn’t get the chance,” she says. “Someone came in here and interrupted me.”
“Well, when you finish that,” says Seven, “there’s dinner for us in my quarters if you want it.”
“You cooked and you didn’t even know if I was coming?”
“You say that like it can’t all be easily recycled back if you don’t want it,” says Seven.
“Of course I want it.”
The last statement comes out a little heavier than it should, and for a moment, there is silence between them, and all of the bustle of the mess hall falls into ambient noise, accentuating but otherwise irrelevant to this moment between them now.
Raffi likes it, this comfortable kind of yearning that exists between them. It prickles at her edges but otherwise feels very secure, like a slow and steady climb towards…something.
“You didn’t even ask what I made,” says Seven.
Raffi finishes her tea and stands. “I bet I can guess.”
“I bet not.”
“You’re predictable.”
“Am not.”
“And what day is it on Earth right now?”
“Which side?”
Raffi raises an eyebrow. “Because I think it’s Monday in New Orleans, and I think you made us red beans and rice.”
“Okay, fine, I am predictable, but only because you’re predictably sentimental.”
They reach the doors, and Raffi stops in mock chivalry. “After you, Captain.”
Seven rolls her eyes but steps through the door anyway. “Thank you, Number One.”