Better the Devil You Know ((O'Halloran/Curtis))

[Caroline Curtis 0]

“Deck 19,” Anna requested after stepping into the turbolift, barely noticing as the doors slid shut and it started moving. The last few days had been intense, both work-wise and emotionally. The time rifts had posed challenges that had not been easy to manage and had exacted a terrible toll on the Ithaca, both on her crew and the ship itself. The ship had been destroyed rather than risk sealing it into the rift and leaving it there, though its condition had precluded ever being used in service again, and her crew... It was difficult for her to understand how they’d even survived what they’d been through.

 

Stepping off the turbolift, she made a sharp right and followed the curve in the corridor until it brought her to the office of Caroline Curtis. She needed to find out about the prognosis for the Ithaca crew before the day got any older. With the rifts now sealed the health/security of the beings that resided within was secured as was this area of space. No other ship would become ensnared as the Ithaca had. Anna pressed the chime, hoping she wasn’t interrupting; they were well into beta shift now.

 

It took a moment for the sound of the chime to penetrate Caroline’s consciousness; she’d been sitting with her head on one hand in that half-place between dozing and waking for several minutes now. It had been a long day for the medical sciences, as every member of the rescued Ithaca crew had had to be physically examined and emotionally comforted as they adjusted to their new situation. Caroline had taken care to make at least fleeting contact with every one of the hundred and nineteen rescued officers, something which took not inconsiderable time and energy, and the idea of a nap without bothering to make her way back to her quarters was becoming increasingly appealing.

 

The ping at the door, however, brought her back to herself and she shook her head sharply, blinking rapidly to clear away a bit of a grainy feeling as she looked up. Ithaca or Reaent? she wondered absently. The sudden influx of unfamiliar (and in more than one case, unstable) new faces would be hard on her own crew as well as the newcomers; the next few days were undoubtedly going to be busy. “Come!”

 

Stepping forward as the door opened, Anna paused as she approached Caroline’s desk, noting immediately how exhausted the counselor looked. “Hey there,” she greeted her friend, “You look like you should be in bed.”

 

“I feel like I should be in bed,” Caroline agreed with a tired laugh, pleased to see the Chief Science Officer and gesturing her promptly into the chair across the desk. “But time, tide, and incident reports wait for no man, unfortunately. How are things on the bridge?”

 

Taking the indicated seat, Anna leaned back, a grin crossing her face at the amended quotation. “Things have settled down considerably with the sealing of the rifts and we’re now on our way to Starbase 2.” Her smile faded as she quietly added, “I’m sure you’ve already heard but the Ithaca was destroyed before the main rift was closed.”

 

Caroline nodded slowly. “I have. It’s been a popular subject of conversation, actually.” Unsurprising; these people had made their home aboard that ship for roughly half a century. “Little purpose to leaving it intact, though, I imagine.”

 

“If we couldn’t remove it from the rift, the consensus was that it should be destroyed before the rift was sealed.” Anna shrugged, adding, “When I was aboard with the away team, it was clear that it was decaying rapidly.” She hesitated for a moment before asking, “How are they doing, Caroline?”

 

Caroline folded her arms, leaning her elbows on the desk with a mildly troubled expression. “They’re a mixed bag,” she said after a considered silence in which she determined how much she could say and still retain confidentiality. “Some have held up better than others to the enforced stay aboard the Ithaca; those who maintained the heaviest responsibility load as their superiors aged seem to have suffered most greatly in their own stability. Some of them are too young to remember anything else and they seem to be doing better, the human mind being as adaptable as it is.”

 

Anna nodded, feeling the terrible frustration that stemmed from the inability to effect change. They’d managed to finally free some of the Ithaca’s crew from the hell they’d been trapped in but by the time they’d initially discovered the buoy left behind by the doomed ship, it had already been decades too late to really rescue them. “Their families left behind...this whole thing has happened over one week’s actual time as far as they are concerned. I can’t imagine what it will be like for them to go back, some of them so old...and the others that died during the endless journey..how will their families deal with it?”

 

Caroline smiled sadly. “As a mixed bag as well, probably. Everyone approaches loss differently, though there’s no way to make it easy.” She paused, then cocked her head in a half-shrug. “It’s a dim silver lining but at least we’ve provided some closure as to what happened; the families will know what became of them. It’s...harder the other way.”

 

“The other way?” Anna asked, hearing the hesitation in Caroline’s voice and wondering at it. “You mean when there’s no way to know what happened?”

 

Caroline nodded, realizing from the intent way Anna was watching her that her tone must have betrayed more than she’d meant it to. “Yes,” she said, reaching to the still-glowing computer screen at her elbow and switching it off. “Had we not come across her, the Ithaca might have been simply declared missing in action, and that sort of uncertainty...well, I wouldn’t wish it on anyone.”

 

“Yes, yes, I can see where that would be an even worse situation,” Anna agreed slowly, as she watched Caroline’s expression. The other woman’s tone had been such that Anna was convinced that she was speaking from personal experience. For a solid three seconds, she debated whether or not to ask about it. “It sounds like you have firsthand experience, Caro,” she said gently, leaving it up to Caroline whether she wished to expound on it or not.

 

Caroline chewed over that question herself for a moment and then shrugged again gently. “My fiance...” She paused, then began again, “I was engaged, about three years ago...to a man named Joseph Palmer; he was a security officer aboard Starbase 1123 when I was first posted there. He was later assigned to the Detroit on what was supposed to be simple border patrol.” She paused, finding with distant, almost analytical surprise that the subject was still painful to talk about even with the distance of time and other occupation that now separated from it. “I haven’t seen him since; the Detroit never, as far as anyone seems to know, put back into port, at a Starfleet facility or anywhere else.”

 

“Oh Caro, how terrible,” Anna breathed, unable to find words to offer up as any kind of solace in the face of such heartbreak. For a moment she imagined herself in the same situation, finding out that Will hadn’t made it back and was considered lost. It didn’t bear thinking about and she resolutely turned away from such a hopeless, pointless imagining. “I’m so sorry that...

 

...you’ve had no closure, that you’ve had to assume his death, that the thought sometimes crosses your mind that he may yet be still alive but suffering somewhere...

 

“...you’ve been through such hell,” she finished quietly.

 

Caroline smiled gently, seeing the earnest sorrow (and perhaps slight fear) with which Anna had received this particular bit of her past. “It’s alright,” she said, shaking her head slightly, reassuringly. “It’s been a good number of years now...I’ve had a chance to take it in...” More or less... “But you can understand why I’m glad that we’ll be able to provide real answers for those who knew the Ithaca crew.”

 

“Yes, I understand why this is better, of course, I do,” Anna agreed, still trying to grasp the enormity of Caroline’s loss. “What’s next for them?” she asked.

 

“I assume they’ll be transferred to the starbase for more dedicated treatment where necessary,” Caroline said, relaxing slightly, unconsciously, at the change of subject. “While I’m willing to do all I can for them, the sort of reacclimation they need to do isn’t something that our facilities are geared towards. Their families will be contacted. Some will return home, some...won’t.” She chuckled softly. “Who knows...some of the younger ones may rejoin Starfleet; I get the impression that the military discipline and structure was what held this group together, and it would be most familiar to them.”

 

“It’s often said that a ship’s crew forms its own family, but in this case that is literally what happened. It may be difficult for them to part from each other. Their own family situations have changed so radically by the abnormal passage of time that they may choose to stay together in some form,” Anna said, meeting Caroline’s gaze with obvious concern. “They wouldn’t be forced apart would they?”

 

Caroline shook her head. “Starfleet can control the placement of its officers; only a few of these people are actually officially enlisted or commissioned, and those who are have long since moved beyond retirement age. Once they leave the Fleet, where they go from there is up to them.” She paused, folding her arms in front of her, and added with quiet irony, “A foreign concept to some of them, I would imagine.”

 

“Hmm, indeed,” Anna answered, still wondering how any of them had managed to stay sane under the conditions they’d endured. “So...” she smiled, though it didn’t quite reach her eyes. “We’re at the tail end of another temporal adventure. Care to give odds on whether or not it’ll be our last one?”

 

Caroline grinned suddenly, remembering Anna’s long-suffering attitude towards the temporal anomalies which seemed a regular part of the Reaent’s work. “With you aboard?” she teased, shaking her head. “I’m not sure I’d take any bets on the subject.”