He knows I am alive

Posted on Thu Jul 16th, 2026 @ 12:21pm by Chief Medical Officer Maeliana Lehn & Chief Engineer Jeassaho Kea (Mirror)

Mission: Mirror Mirror
Location: Tears Of The Prophet
2564 words - 5.1 OF Standard Post Measure

Jeassaho hated the heat of the shower but it was the easiest was to get the blood off of her. She had not wanted to kill the security officer but it had been impossible when the man had squeezed her neck harder and harder. The dagger and the way security chief had found the man over her had been easy to explain it it had left her covered in blood.

It should not bother her as her slate was no where near clean but the argument had started as the man had been discovered as a Imperial spy and there to give her a message but she had heard the message and decide to out him. She liked the work she was doing, liked the way her days were and more importantly she liked the way Maeliana was in her life.

Currently, that involved a very nervous woman hovering outside the bathroom door locked in rigorous debate with herself over the necessity of intervening. There had been a time when Mae had been a puissant telepath and though the infrastructure and conditioning was still there, the nervous system had been shattered too many times for her to trust it anymore. There was no situation where she would ever be suitably prepared for Jeassaho to show up in the state she had, and though the other woman had reassured her that there was no imminent danger of bleeding out, it was difficult to believe something so visceral could be fixed by a simple shower. A closed door shouldn't have been an obstacle; she could sense her girlfriend perfectly fine, the problem came from Mae's absolute lack of trust in psionic evidence. There had been too many instances where it had been used as weaponised deceit.

And so she lingered, unable to sit, unable to wait and yet unwilling to trespass where she had been intentionally barred. Jeassaho's needs came first, it was the only state of play that Mae could cling to anymore, even if it was at the expense of her own equilibrium.

When the water turned clear, the woman stared down at it and finally felt herself coming back to herself. She staggered out of the shower and wrapped a towel around herself, and slid to the floor. She felt broken knowing that now Reuben knew she was alive and somehow survived Betzed's fall. She took a long moment to gather herself and pressed the door release. "I am okay." She called knowing that the woman would feel the lie but needed to try and offer some reassurance.

The compulsion to dash forward clashed immediately with the insecurity of hesitation, Mae was no longer particularly adept at gauging when tenacity was warranted. When it had been just her, or even as far back as before her entire world collapsed, stubborn strength had been enough of a trademark that it had practically defined the woman's purpose; a willfulness coupled with intelligence fierce enough to be formidable. She carried trace-elements of it these days but there were too many restraints, too many lessons learned, too much at stake to just keep butting her head against those who would have liked nothing more than to cut it clean off. She lingered, fretful, in the doorway and then quietly moved to kneel in front of her stricken girlfriend.

"Please talk to me. Jea, what's going on?"

Jeassaho looked up at the woman from where she was staring at his one of her many bruises from where the scuffle had happened. “That Romulan who has been flirting and being pushy about it despite us making it oh so obvious in the crew bar about us. He… he got me alone and gave me a message from him. He knows I am alive.” She whispered.

For everything that Mae had once been, and everything she still wished she could be, nothing robbed her of choice more than being confronted by Jeassaho's past. It was the very tautest of strings, a subject so fraught with overwhelming emotion that they'd really only managed to keep moving forward by silently agreeing never to talk about it. Everything that had happened was so intricately linked back to a life Jeassaho had once lived and it was impossible, really, to reconcile. Mae, who had been stung too many times, had built a fragile life for herself that hinged on one very explicit thing; Reuben Gregnol's total absence.

So it wasn't her choice to recoil, life had provoked that reaction. It was an inwards retreat, her body remained utterly frozen in place and when she did speak, it was from a place very far away.

"What do you mean?"

"Reuben has never had confirmation that I am alive. The Cardassians made sure that any hint of who I am is scrubbed from anything but someone, somewhere, had let Imperial Starfleet know. He sent an undercover agent to get a message to me, and I ratted the person out, and they... it was like I was at the academy for a moment, struggling to survive." Jeassaho whispered her own voice lost in something far away as she thought on the memory of her 3 years at the Academy, surviving among the Terrans.

Aside from her own emotional ineptitude, Mae genuinely found the matter difficult to understand. Much of that was her own fault, she had rendered the topic off-limits; if not explicitly then through her inability to process her developing feelings when they ran alongside the realisation that Jeassaho had once loved the man who had ruined Mae's entire life. A man responsible for the loss of her home, her family, her career. A man responsible for the subjugation of the remaining Betazoids, for turning them into cattle and fostering the series of events that had lead to the birth and subsequent loss of her daughter. To even meet Jeassaho half-way, to muster the strength to allow any sort of abiding connection, Mae had been forced to set a protective boundary around the ugliness that was incompatible truths. She loved Jeassaho, and she had once loved Reuben Gregnol. It left Mae with very complicated feelings about herself, to say nothing of what it made her feel about her girlfriend.

"I don't understand," she floundered honestly. "What does he want?"

“Me.” She shrugged quietly. She was a prize for either side of the war but at the moment she chose the Cardassians to stay with. They had saved her, gave her a life and most importantly brought Mae into her life. “But I won’t go. Why the man is lying dead in the morgue.” She sighed softly leaning her head back against the wall and tugged the towel around her a little more protectively.

If there was one thing that no longer seemed to matter, it was what either of them wanted. Not when it came to their personal circumstances, which involved Mae being used the manipulate Jeassaho into remaining loyal and cooperative. It muddied the water when it came to figuring out how much of their relationship relied on external pressure but at least it was predictable these days. As long as they didn't rock the boat, they were allowed to live together. It was the closest thing to freedom Mae believed in, and now...

She eyed the shaken features of her girlfriend, her own features etched with concern.

"How do we stop him from trying anyway?"

"The Cardassians are doing a security check through the ship now," Jeassaho said finally as she composed herself a little more and looked at the woman. "They are doing a personnel overhaul." She added as she looked at the bruises that were on her wrists from where the man had tried to hold her down.

It was clear from Mae's expression that her thought process was far too rapid for articulation. Eventually, her response landed with the same softness as her gaze as she finally emerged from within herself enough to engage a kind of survival mode that had proven time and time again to be her most abiding strength; compassion. Gently, she reached out and took Jeassaho's hand, turned it over so that she could get a better look at the damage to her skin and then adjusted her stance so she could tug them both to their feet. "Come on, let me take a look at this."

Normally it was Jeassaho who was picking up the pieces after something tossed them around but this time it was Maeliana and Jeassaho felt like she loved her even more for it. She allowed herself to be tugged to her feet, out of the bedroom and sat on the edge of the bed. She knew the blood was all gone which just left all the bruises as nothing had broken her skin.

Privilege was a double-edged sword in their life and Mae had a tendency to move cautiously with the expectation that the rules could change at any moment, because they usually did. That hadn't stopped her from amassing a functional collection of medical supplies that allowed her to treat any minor situation without it appearing on the official records. She collected them, moving quietly to first scan for damage and then calibrate the dermal regenerator for deep tissue repair.

"Do they know if the agent had time to transmit your location?" Slowly, as compartmentalisation set in, the doctor's mind was turning more in practical terms as it left her emotions flailing in the background to fend for themselves for now.

“No. The communication array is off line. It’s what I was investigating with him when he revealed it.” The woman sighed softly as the bruises on her wrist slowly started to fade. “He won’t be able to transmit anything ever again.” She looked dead ahead at the boiler suit on the floor cover in Terran blood.

Though circumstance had taught Mae to guard her emotions enough to control her facial expressions, her relief flared as a tentative ripple that failed to linger long. Good news was infrequent enough to be unlikely but at least this provide some hope of a better selection of options. "They may still choose to move you off-ship," she pointed out. Jeassaho was a valuable asset but also a significant security risk, much though Mae suspected at least a few of their superiors were itching for a good reason to antagonise Gregnol. Still, the universe was full of enough nasty surprises that Mae had a tendency to confront worst-case scenarios just so they couldn't catch her unawares.

“They do not have a chief engineer for this rust bucket if they do that,” The woman said quietly as she caught the woman’s wrist and stopped her movement for a moment. She turned her hand over and stopped the small machine. She took both the womans hands in her hands. “If I go. You come with me. I am not being separated from you,” she promised gently as she brushed her lips over the woman’s.

It was enough to crack Mae's composure, though the impact was noticeably less than the last time they'd faced separation beyond their control. Somewhere along the way, emotional calluses became less of a choice and more a natural consequence of ongoing threat. "I just don't want them to spring it on us again."

"They won't. They need me, and they really need you, without many doctors on board. It's not going to change. We are together." Jeassaho said against the woman's lips as she wrapped her arms around her properly and wrapped herself mentally around the woman. "I am sorry I scared you." She breathed pressing a kiss to her forehead.

"You know," Mae replied after the moment had passed, after she had allowed herself to sit within the fragility of vulnerable intimacy and seek solace from it before forcing herself to rally, "in some ways, this is a relief. It's always felt like it was only a matter of time, now at least we know."

"We do. I am so sorry that you have felt like there is a sword of Damocles over our heads." That was wrong of Jeassaho for never checking properly and looking to see if Mae was actually okay. "How can I make it up to you?" She whispered, lips still pressed against the woman's skin.

It was enough to budge Mae's anxiety just enough to cement a ferocious, stubborn sense of loyalty. "It's not your place to make anything up to anyone, Jea." A gentle hand, somehow still uncalloused after all this time, settled against the engineer's jawline as Mae brought her forehead to rest against her lover's. "You've lost more than most, you've been stronger than any of us for longer than any of us. I wish things could be different." Here, the blonde doctor's voice cracked. "But wishing isn't going to change things."

“I can be strong for as long as you need me to.” Jeassaho assured quietly. “It’s not but I wish to make today up to you if I can.” Jeassaho felt the burden of who she was pressing f out an on her heavily sometimes but with Mae she could put aside some of the burden sometimes and just be who she had been before Betazed had burned.

These moments of heroic idealism from Jeassaho always left Mae feeling guilty. She was far from the woman she'd once been but she was equally not the mess that the other Betazoid had painstakingly drawn out of herself and given fresh purpose to. Long before any of the destruction had occurred, Mae would have been the one leading the charge; she'd somehow found a similar determination during the liberation of those held captive beside her. Now, as their lives continued as one elongated bated breath, it was undeniably harder to hold on to stubborn hope. She sighed, managed a wane smile and shook her head in gentle protest.

"I think, today, you're allowed to be the broken one." Rallying slightly, the doctor moved back to run her gaze over the other woman's torso. "Are you in any pain?"

“Yeah…” She slowly stood up and chucked aside the towel. She looked down at the dark bruise that was spreading across her stomach. “He managed to kick me a few times before I gained the other hand.”

Empathy clouded by a mixture of fear and anger distorted Mae's expression for a split second before she sighed and gestured to the bed. "Lie down, I'll treat what I can and then I'll make us something to eat." That was the extent of her capacity, really, the length of her leash. It felt woefully inadequate but reaching beyond the incident to wrap her hands around the throats of those responsible was likely to happen, and probably wouldn't have improved much even if it did.

“Sounds like a perfect evening.” Jeassaho assured quietly as she grabbed up a pair of shorts and a bra and lay down. She knew it would be okay but she just did not know how to handle there and then that Reuben knew she was alive or that he cared enough to try and get her back. It was confusing but it highlighted just how much she felt for the kind woman wanting to heal her.