in the garden

Matchmaker: My muse attempting to hook yours up with someone.

Ere Dorotea has seen the face of fear. She saw it during the war, she saw it in Ellen’s eyes right before their wedding, and she sees it every day at the hospital.

But in all her years, Ere never saw truer fear than in Sara’s eyes on the day they met.

To backtrack- 2266. The twins were 5, and Ellen was aboard the Saratoga. Ere wasn’t strictly alone with them- Josie and Mars were just a call away and Emma absolutely doted on Elizabeth and Micah. Ere could handle it, but every once in a while it was a little too much. Thusly, on the third Saturday of the month she took the twins out to visit Gabe. Micah could run around in the fields and Lizah could plot with Latka or whatever that child did in her free time. It was a good arrangement, and one that let Ere catch up with an old friend.

Third Saturday of June, 2266. The house was dark and quiet as they entered, not entirely unusual given the early hour. In the shadows, Latka hissed at them, which Elizabeth took as an opportunity to go after her. Hash slinked over to Micah, who curled up on the couch to go back to sleep, and Ere started a pot of coffee in the meantime.

Watching the sunrise out the window, Ere poured herself a cup and prepped another. Lizah ran by, chased shortly by Latka, and Ere scooped her up on the counter. Fucking cat.

There’s another noise behind her, which Ere barely registered because Micah was doing his damndest to climb into an air vent. Nearly spilling her coffee in shock, she called after him.

“Micah Gabriel Dorotea, get down from there!”

She wiped up the spill, not turning around to face her company.

“Good to see you, sleepyhead. Mind getting Micah out of the vents? He’s over in the- …oh.”

She froze at the reflection in the mirror. It definitely wasn’t Gabe who’s emerged from upstairs. It wasn’t even a human who emerged from upstairs. Ere whirled around, no longer caring about spilling her coffee.

This is new.

Ere’s first thought, which she would have laughed about in better circumstances, was how pretty the lady was.- dark lavender skin and long hair that hung in front of her face the same way Ere’s refused to cooperate in the mornings. The two women faced each other in shock, not sure what to make of the other.

Neither of the twins gave them any regard. Lizah was scribbling a hostage note in blue crayon and Micah had gone back to nap. It was only Ere who looked at her.

Ere opened her mouth to say something, anything, and the moment breaks. The lady bolts out the door, slamming it behind her as she races away. Except for the spilled coffee burning Ere’s hand, it was like it never happened.

It was only when she looked down at her left hand that she realized what had just happened.

Ah, shit.

She replayed the moment over and over in her head. Ere had never been in that particular situation before, but if she’d wandered downstairs after sleeping with a guy and a married woman was making coffee in the kitchen with two five-year-olds, she’d be pretty freaked too.

Ere busied herself as she kept thinking about it, not even noticing Gabe wandering into the kitchen, also looking rather sleepy. When she registered his presence, she waved the kids out the door, who unquestioningly went outside to play. Still not looking at him, she poured herself another cup of coffee and tried to figure out how to address the situation.

“Y’know, if you wanted us to stop visiting, y’could have just asked.”

She turned around, annoyed, to which he looked up from the sink confusedly. He still doesn’t get it.

“Who was that, Gabe?”

His eyes darted to the spilled cup of coffee and the door.

“Did she-”

“Yep.”

“And-”

“Mhm.”

“Shit.”

“Shit indeed.”

---

[ Rev Cptn Ere Dorotea -> Cptn Gabriel Lorca ] I need a name.

[ Cptn Gabriel Lorca -> Rev Cptn Ere Dorotea ] And I need you to stop interfering with my personal life.

[ Rev Cptn Ere Dorotea -> Cptn Gabriel Lorca ] Have you even talked to her since?

[ Cptn Gabriel Lorca -> Rev Cptn Ere Dorotea ] If you must know, she’s not answering.

[ Rev Cptn Ere Dorotea -> Cptn Gabriel Lorca ] Exactly.

[ Cptn Gabriel Lorca -> Rev Cptn Ere Dorotea ] Exactly what?

[ Rev Cptn Ere Dorotea -> Cptn Gabriel Lorca ] Exactly why I should talk to her.

[ Cptn Gabriel Lorca -> Rev Cptn Ere Dorotea ] You’re not helping anything, Ere.

[ Rev Cptn Ere Dorotea -> Cptn Gabriel Lorca ] The only way she’s gonna believe a word out of your mouth is if I back you up.

[ Rev Cptn Ere Dorotea -> Cptn Gabriel Lorca ] Gabe?

Next, she called him.

“Seriously, I need a name. I can fix this.”

“It’s not yours to fix.”

“If I don’t, you’ll just go back to licking your wounds and drinking in the dark.”

“I’m not licking my wounds.”

“No response to the ‘drinking in the dark’ bit, I see. …I’m sorry, that was harsh.”

“Goodnight, Ere.”

Finally, she visited him again.

They ate dinner outside on the porch, both beating around the bush. She told him about Elizabeth’s latest hostage situation and the hospital, and he told her about the kids he worked with. Eventually they couldn’t avoid it anymore.

“Are you happy, Gabe?”

He turned to look over at her, the evening light making it harder to see his beard and the lines on his face, and suddenly she was back ten years ago. All the times they were planetside eating just like this, whether it was hiding from hostile forces in a cave while one of them bled out, or when she dragged him along to visit Mars and Josie on shore leave.

He sighed, defeated. “What kind of question is that?”

---

The next day, she knocked on Sara’s door. Dressed in her uniform, scarf tying up her hair, she looked just different enough to get her foot in the door.

The woman opened the door, and Ere simply blurted out “We need to talk.” To her credit, instead of slamming the door in Ere’s face she opened it wider.

She’s scared of her, Ere realized. Must have been stressed the whole week, Ere would’ve been too.

“Let me just preface this by saying that Gabe and I are in no way, shape, or form in a relationship. You’re not the first person to fall into this trap,” she aggrandized for Sara’s sake. “It’s a miracle we’re still friends, I stole his girlfriend and married her like ten years ago.”

That got a watery laugh out of the poor woman, who looked more upset by the minute. Ere didn’t enter, though. She leaned on the doorframe and spoke conspiratorially- Sara needed to know that she was on her side.

“Do you like him?”

Sara’s eyes widened and started to tear up, hiding her face and giving an almost imperceptible nod. That was all Ere needed to hear.

“Good, ‘cause he’s real sweet on you. He’s been acting like a kicked puppy all week, and I can’t deal with that kind of working environment.” She gave her a quick hug, and took her leave.

---

“Any chance we could reschedule to Sunday next week?”

“Sure, why?”

“Sara and I are-”

…

“What was that noise?!”

“Sorry, I just threw my phone across the room. Please, continue.”

“I hate you.”

“Love you too, Gabe.”

“Goodnight, Ere.”

Matchmaker: My muse attempting to hook yours up with someone.

Uncle Marcus was a lawyer. He worked for some big, scary, faceless corporation, paying off people who had been harmed by it. It was, by his own account, a terrible job, but it was enough to pay what little of J’s hospital bills they could afford. 

The whole family was helping. Aunt Josephine and Aunt Mars helped them move out to San Francisco after Mom got not-fired, so that they (read: Mom, while J was in the hospital) could live with the rest of the family. J knew his mom didn’t want him worrying about that kind of stuff, but it was hard not to.

---

One morning, years ago, J had been home from sick with a cold and had tuned the television to some evangelist channel. He’d gotten out of bed, wandered downstairs, and climbed into his mother’s lap.

“Rebba?”

“What’s up, darlin?”

“What’s a mir-a-cle?”

---

Years later, Mom was sitting in his room with Aunt Josephine doing endless paperwork. Ever since the exhibition had to close (since, y’know, there weren’t any paintings), she’d been finishing up the filing. It was all online, which made it even more surprising when a nurse wandered in and handed her some actual files. Three pieces of paper, which she flipped through and read twice over, her grin broadening, before handing them over to her sister.

“Oh. Oh!” Aunt Josephine exclaimed, pulling her into a hug. “This is amazing!”

“What’s going on?” J could never stand being out of the loop. “What’d it say?” He pushed himself upright in the bed, leaning forwards.

Josephine gave Ere a prolonged hug before releasing her and reaching for her phone.

“I’ll let you explain,” she said. “I’ve gotta call Mars and Marcus.”

Ere sat down on the edge of the bed, still smiling.

“The hospital has settled our bills,” she patted J’s hand. “Something about a new families’ fund. Either way, none of us have to worry about that anymore.”

Admittedly, it hadn’t been on J’s mind too much. With Mom’s new job and a new treatment the hospital was pushing, he’d had better and worse things to think about. But J knew it meant a lot to his family, so he smiled and nodded along.

“It’s a goddamn miracle!” Aunt Josephine crowed on her way out the door.

---

A few months later, the second miracle of the Dorotea family happened. The whole family was, for all their religiosity, very scientifically-minded. (“Faith healing my-” Aunt Josephine once said after an interdenominational conference, before noticing that J and Emma were in the room. “Well, if the Almighty wanted us to be healed by prayer, She wouldn’t have invented modern medicine!”) So John Anthony Dorotea became the second-longest term prayer listee of Grace Cathedral, but the family was quite committed to chemotherapy too.

The night that J experienced the Second Miracle, Uncle Marcus was on rotation to stay with him. Uncle Marcus was, in J’s mind, the best of the family chaperones who took turns spending the night with him. He was, in a word, “jovial,” the kind of guy who snuck J an extra slice of cake after dinner and told good jokes. As far as J was concerned, he was the best male role model a kid could have- or at least the best one readily available to J. His grandfather lived far away, Uncle Gabe was aloof as all getout and never around (though he had stopped by recently, having been in town to investigate the museum robbery), and the doctor that J had adored had to move when his husband got research funding in Australia, of all places.

Uncle Marcus settled in around 10, and J stayed up a bit later finishing an episode of a documentary he had to watch for class. Aunt Mars had him finishing a movie on New Kingdom Egypt (spoiler alert: Exodus didn’t happen), and it was long. He went to sleep around 11.

---

The first sign that something was wrong when he woke up was that the lights were on. All of them. Through barely-open eyes, he saw a few blurry figures moving around the room. Doctors? Couldn’t be. The clock across from him was- was it spinning?

J feigned sleep, turning over to get a better look at the people in his room. He could see one in a blue jacket and black pants, another in a white suit of some sort, and another in blue and bronze.

He only had a few seconds to observe them, though, before the one by the door spoke up.

“Hold on,” they said. J might have recognized her with some effort if he wasn’t so sleepy- she’d visited the hospital months ago. “Heart rate elevated, breathing irregular… Dorotea, he’s awake.”

Ah, shit.

He didn’t open his eyes, though. The opposite, really. He clung to the pillow and squeezed his eyes shut. If he could just go back to sleep…

There was a soft pressure of someone sitting on the bed, reaching out to him. J flinched involuntarily at the touch on his arm, when he heard a familiar voice.

“J, kiddo. It’s me. You can open your eyes.”

Slowly, he let go of the pillow and relaxed. When he opened his eyes, it confirmed what he saw. Uncle Marcus, looking… different… looking at him, concerned. He was wearing a blue jacket that J had never seen before, and a metallic badge on his chest. The clock was spinning. Weird shit.

To his left, another woman in white held some sort of device that she was pointing at him, focusing on its readouts. And beside the door, a woman in a darker shade of blue frowned at him and returned her attention to the doorway.

“It’s all good,” Uncle Marcus said. “These are my friends. They can help you.” He turned back to the woman in white.

“You can help him, right?”

“Probably,” she answered. “Not too late-stage, and the treatments for it are already in development. No need to bring in a Medical TDP.”

“Excellent,” Uncle Marcus said. “You’re gonna be just fine, J.”

In the moment, however, J was not fine.

“Wha- what’s going on?” He took a better look at the room, now that he was fully awake. The lights were bright white, instead of the usual mellow lights of a hospital room. And the uniforms the two women were wearing didn’t look like any military J had ever seen.

He wasn’t wrong that Uncle Marcus looked different, either. He was a bit taller, more slender, looked more like Mom. Hair was a little longer, and like the uniforms of the two women, the jacket style wasn’t anything J recognized.

“Who are you people?”

There was a half-second of silence before the woman at the door (did she have a gun?!) pulled something from her belt and spoke.

“Alright,” she pushed a capsule into it. “We’ve got what we needed, we’re done here.”

“You don’t have to-” the other woman reached out to stop her, but she held the device up to J’s neck and pushed a button. It stung, but there wasn’t much time to register that as he suddenly felt woozy.

“C’mon, you didn’t have to tranq him,” Uncle Marcus said, now far away. It was the last thing J heard before darkness fell.

---

When he woke up the next morning, J was sure it was just a dream. Uncle Marcus, in his usual jeans and a t-shirt, was asleep on the couch across from him. The lights were back to normal, the clock wasn’t spinning.

“Mornin’ J,” he said as he woke up. “What time is it? Eight? Alright, kiddo, I gotta head out. Your mom should be back around lunchtime, but you be good till then. Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do.”

Uncle Marcus had a habit of speaking entire passages at a time. J didn’t get a word in before Uncle Marcus kissed his forehead and headed out the door.

With nothing better to do, J flopped back down and thought about his maybe-dream. Well, it had to be a dream, right? A very lucid, memorable dream. This would require some thought.

He’d done a project on lucid dreams last year. Having never experienced one (possibly until now), he’d read a lot about them. One of the things he heard was that he shouldn’t have been able to read in the dream, and that clocks would constantly switch their time. All of those seemed likely.

He put the heavy thinking on hold to eat breakfast and finish the questions Aunt Mars had assigned for the documentary. After that, it was time for J’s favorite hospital activity- people-watching.

---

The best part about being in a hospital by far, J thought, was the absolute characters who passed his hallway every morning. While he could still walk, it was easier to hoist himself into a wheelchair, clip on his various and sundry monitors, and park himself by the doorway to have some fun.

Morning rush started slow, as the exhausted night shift headed out and the day shift took their place. Doctors trickled out of offices and off to make their rounds. The first one J recognized was “Michael Michael,” a new doctor who’d shown up mysteriously a few months back and refused to give a last name. He almost certainly didn’t like the nickname the nurses gave him, but he didn’t complain either.

“Is he gone?” Someone else stuck their head out of a formerly-empty hospital room. “Oh, good. Hello, Birdie.” Without looking at him, they wandered past J’s room, pausing to ruffle his hair, which made J very uncomfortable. The visitor looked down.

“You’re not Birdie.”

“Nope,” J confirmed.

After that, it was mostly patients that J vaguely knew. The blind man from Level 5, who’d been in a car accident with his friend last week. While he escaped unscathed, as a nurse had explained, the friend had died. He was taking it as well as could be expected. J said a polite hello.

Next on Hospital Hallway Bingo was that one guy who lurked down the hallway every Thursday. J avoided him.

It was almost noon by the time something else interesting happened. A doctor and a nurse stormed down the hallway and went straight into J’s room, ignoring him, and pausing by the doorway.

“Nate,” one of them said to nothing in particular, “We’re too late. They got him.”

Besides the weirdness, J was impressed by the doctor’s watch. Uncle Gabe had one, and really liked to talk about it. It was from the Marine Corps, he thought, but wasn’t sure.

“Were you in the Marines?” he asked the doctor. “Also, who are you looking for?”

The doctor and nurse’s attentions snapped to him.

“It’s a very distinctive watch,” he added when they didn’t say anything. “Hi. I’m J. Who were you looking for?”

---

Time went on, and it was lonely. J found himself missing Jiona, the girl who came to see her grandmother right down the hall, until she got discharged. Her dad and other grandmother knew Mom, as far as he could tell, and Jiona was nice and didn’t care that he couldn’t walk around most of the time. They played lots of cards.

Mom got a job teaching religion at the Cathedral School. J overheard her telling Josie that she didn’t much care for it, but work was work. What she did tell J, however, was that she was frequently mistaken for the bishop. The “Reverend Dorotea” who taught religion for high schoolers was different from the “Right Reverend Dorotea” next door, but it tended to befuddle parents.

The other thing of note was the new treatment plan, or whatever fancy words the doctors used. Apparently, some consultant visiting the hospital had heard about J and wanted to see if their fancy new surgical method would work on him (or children in general). More importantly, the consultant was out of town in the weeks leading up to the procedure, so J only heard her on the phone.

Then time moved on again, and suddenly it was time for the first surgery. The consultant was back in town, and she visited to walk through the procedure. Of course, J wasn’t paying much attention to what she said- there was something far more concerning.

It was the woman in white, from his dream. He’d nearly forgotten it with all the chaos, but it was her. Only now, this Doctor Pollard had a normal lab jacket instead of that weird uniform, and clocks weren’t spinning. It was all weird shit, but at least J knew he’d seen her somewhere before.

---

“Alright, kiddo- one, two, three… up!” Uncle Marcus, by his own admission, had none of the arm strength required to lift a twelve-year-old. Neither did anyone else in the family, ranging from Mom at 5′1, Aunt Josie at ‘substantially taller’ but with no upper body strength, Aunt Mars, also normally-sized but teasingly claiming to be “feeling her age” by 51, to much mockery from Emma. The only one who came anywhere close was that FBI agent, something-Landry. The one from the dream, except that Mom was hanging off the arm of the real one. She had tapped out, claiming to not want to intrude on a family moment.

Thanks to his stays in the hospital, J hadn’t been outside of it in ages. Emma sat next to him in the backseat as they watched the scenery go by.

“Grace-Cath is right over that hill,” she pointed out the window. “Oh- and that’s Temple, right there.”

The House (Emma had told him that it was a proper noun) was apparently the Bishop of California’s residence, and pretty much exactly what you’d expect an old-school bishop’s house to look like. Unfortunately, being San Francisco, there were a lot of stairs involved, which meant two priests, a rabbi, and a lawyer were carrying a 70-pound twelve-year-old up three flights of stairs.

“Here’s your room,” Mom said, once they’d finally reached the top floor. Excellent planning on everyone’s part, truly. “I’ll leave you to get settled in, but I’m right next door. Holler if you need me.”

The room was barren. Aunt Josie said they wanted to wait for him to decorate, since his last actual bedroom was from when he was six and Mom worked in Los Angeles. So he starts poking around- bathroom down the hall, window faces another house (he can barely see Emma’s flowerbox one floor below), and no sheets on the bed, so he looks in the closet.

No sheets, but two shoeboxes. One is old pictures of J, from before the diagnosis. A lanky little six-year-old. Emma’s in a few of them. Mom had a different haircut.

The other was a bit more odd. At first it seemed mundane- old hospital bills, scattered in a box. But the bottom is lined with cloth, and the box a little heavy. He tugged at the fabric, and found himself staring at a portrait.

Very shiny.

Very old.

Very stolen.

Name: Rabbi Rear Admiral Maria “Mars” Ericson

Born: 2206

Parents: David and Julia Ericson

Childhood: Mars was born into a nearly-broken family. Her parents, college sweethearts, had her in hopes of saving their failing marriage, which fell apart anyways when her mother died two months after Mars was born. Her father, a mid-level crewman posted at a deep-space station, left her in the care of her mother’s siblings and renewed his enlistment. Mars was raised in a large community of cousins and aunts and uncles, never really staying with one for more than two years at a time. For most of her childhood, she saw her father once every few years as well, mostly over comms or for a few hours in a midway shuttleport, until she turned sixteen and he remarried. Communication became few and further between, especially after David and his new wife Juliana had a child, named… Mary. By the time she had turned 21, Mars had ceased communication with her father.

Career: A talented engineer and a bit of a daredevil, Mars became a Starfleet shuttle pilot like her mother. This lasted for all of three years, and Mars returned to Earth to become a rabbi, studying at the Raleigh School of Jewish Studies and just barely missing a crossed path with her future wife, Josephine Dorotea, who was in town to be confirmed as a bishop by the Anglican General Convention. She graduated in 2236, and immediately rejoined Starfleet as a rabbi. She stayed on a starbase for the first five years of her career, to her dismay, until a corruption scandal recalled her to Earth to testify, where she met Josephine Dorotea, and she was reassigned to a science vessel.

She jumped from science vessel to science vessel for the next three years until being assigned to the USS Buran in 2244. She served there for twelve years until the war broke out and the Deputy Chief Chaplain was killed when his ship was lost. Due to her exemplary service record, Mars was recommended for the interim position, promoted to Captain, and recalled to Earth once again. When that year-long term was up, she was given the permanent position and the rank of Rear Admiral- right before the Buran was destroyed and nearly all hands were lost.

Family: She met her wife, Bishop Josephine Dorotea, at a fabric store while attending trials on Earth. They lost touch by accident (Mars lost Josie’s comm number) until they met again at a party at Grace Cathedral that some of the Buran’s officers were attending. Josie was rallying hard for the position of Bishop of the Northwest Americas, and had come from her current position in Northern Montana to charm a few members of the General Convention again. They married four years later, and had a daughter, Emma, two years after that.

It Sucks To Be Mars Ericson In:

Paris Report verse- dead.

E-R-E verse- morally compromised and her marriage is on the brink of imploding because of her actions.

“Dorotea to Bridge- um, what the fuck was that?” … “133 whats? And what do you mean we’re in an alternate universe?”

–

“Dorotea to Bridge- are we being fired on?” … “Oh! We’re throwing ourselves into a literal star in hopes that it’ll explode maybe. I’ll keep us in my prayers.”

–

our father in heaven hallowed be your name your kingdom come your will be done on earth as in heaven give us this day our daily bread and forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us save us from the time of trial and deliver us from evil for the kingdom, the power, and the glory are yours now and forever and with that in mind what the FUCK? okay, preface- i am very grateful for doctor culber’s safe return.  i don’t really know what the hell kind of afterlife he was stuck in but it’s nice to see him back now. however. what kind of bullshit are you playing here?  because stamets, of all people came into my your house SINGING. way to rub it in my face, jesus. now, i’m sure you’ve got a grand plan in fact that’s part of my life’s core beliefs but this is marcus-level testing my patience really??? that asshole takes a claw machine drop into heaven musses up my nice clean chapel and pulls out his very dear boyfriend yeah, but where’s mine? i know i did everything right and yet and i know it’s selfish of me to be complaining on such a joyous occasion and i understand that paul is trying very hard but jesus. (trying ain’t gonna cut it.) you couldn’t just bring ellen back too?  nobody tells me anything these days and i’m all alone here and people stopped giving me sad looks in the hallways and stopped saying sorry for my loss and i used to want that but what about me? i am here. and ellen will be with me even when she’s not blissfully alive on a biobed

…