i n c a n d e s c e n t

1)  this is a sideblog to @endsjustify / @owedfavors, so all follows come from one or both of those accounts.

2)  canon compliant with the events of seasons 1 & 2 of star trek: discovery. open to crossovers, aus, and other verses and trek timelines. 

3)  call me katya. 25+, she/her, prone to regularly forgetting about this blog.

plotted starter for @willbecaptain​

Elnor didn’t like waiting. He’d spent most of his life waiting. If he could have things his way, he’d never have to wait for anything again. But the people that Picard had come to this planet to talk to wouldn’t allow a Romulan into their buildings, so he stood outside, staring directly at the guards outside the door with his mouth a line of frustration. Waiting.

He’d been standing there for what felt like hours (but was, in reality, only about thirty minutes) when he heard a scuffle a few meters away. 

“What is that?” he asked the guards, but they wouldn’t answer him. He squinted in the direction of the sound. There was a girl–Human, maybe?–with bright red hair. She looked scared, like she was in trouble. “Are you going to do anything?” he asked them. Still no answer.

He took a deep breath. There wasn’t much he could do out here anyway, and Picard would understand. He left the guards behind and hurried toward the girl, calling ahead, “Do you need help?”

            It had been one thing after another. Tilly knew it had been a bad idea, had known since before she stepped foot off school grounds. At least she’d been largely in control of the situation until now. Even as a stow-away. There, the variables were limited, easily manipulated. Even if carelessness had betrayed her presence to one sufficiently sharp-minded, Tilly had never felt out of her element. Here, however, upon an alien planet that she was pretty sure wasn’t a member of the Federation, things had gone significantly downhill.

            The three individuals now barring her way, for instance, with menacing stances and expressions that Tilly could not for the life of her read. There wasn’t another human on the planet, and she was rapidly getting the impression that she wasn’t overly welcome here. Or, at the very least, far from trusted. When her explanations about what she was doing on their planet failed to satisfy, one had grabbed at her arm. Instinct driven by a few spottily-attended self defense classes ( her dad thought it a good idea, but her mom disagreed and had failed to enforce her attendance ) kicked in, but she would have been overmatched by one, much less three.

[ @willbecaptain​ || Tilly & Matt ]

Tiredly slumping against the wall, Matt rubbed his eyes. Why did his mycelial travel abilities always seem to accidentally trigger at the worst time? Needless to say, the last 2250s were not his ideal place to land, especially on the ship his fathers had served on, but here he was. Letting out a yawn, he closed his eyes for a moment. 30 years in the past, while being a long time from home and his own work, was better than further in the past he supposed. Working all day in the DASH lab to try and get home wasn’t helping, but he didn’t have a place to sleep, so he figured just falling asleep in any chair would do, he’d had worse during his time in medical school anyway. Unfortunately, no chair was to be seen so the wall was just as comfortable as anywhere else he supposed. 

            Against the wall, he nearly escaped Tilly’s notice when she entered the room, all but bounding down the steep stairs from the door to the main level. And when she did notice him — just out of the corner of her eye at first — she damn near jumped right out of her skin. A soft yelp escaped her lips, loud enough to almost certainly guarantee that she’d have woken  him. She turned the cry into a wry, slightly awkward laugh.    

Hugh just smiled patiently as she found her way to the end of a thought. He’d worked with a lot of different kinds of people at the treatment center; her nerves were hardly something he couldn’t handle.

“Listen,” he said, gently. “I opened this dog rescue twelve years ago. The only thing that’d ever make me turn someone away from helping out is if they didn’t like playing with the dogs. That’s what they really need–someone who’s willing to do all the work to keep them clean and healthy, sure. But they also need that person to love spending time with them. A lot of them have never had that before they came here.”

He leaned forward, playfully conspiratorial. “Do you want to meet some of them?”

          For a fleeting moment, she feared that smile. She was accustomed to the indulgent, condescending smiles of those who would pat themselves on the back for their patience with a socially inept young woman. But Tilly knew the difference, and knew it well, and in the absence of the dreaded condescension, she relaxed. He meant, actually earnestly meant, the reassuring words that followed. Tilly managed to mirror his smile with a weak, tentative one of her own.

@willbecaptain​ plotted starter

“The dogs you’re going to be working with are the ones with green or blue collars with green or blue doors on their pens. The green ones are the friendly, socialized dogs that are pretty much ready for adoption whenever we find a good fit for them. Blues are dogs who need a little help with socialization or have medical issues that we need to take care of before they’re ready to adopt out. Some of the blues have special diets. We keep a chart for that on their pens. They’re on this side of the facility,” he said, waving toward the left.

They were walking along the path that led down from the main office through the dog pens. “Any dog with a red collar in a pen with a red door–those have behavioral disorders that make them too dangerous for adoption for now… some of them for good. It’s just me and Soji who work with those dogs, so you don’t need to worry about that.”

He stops and turns toward her. “Thursdays and Saturdays are adoption days. Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, patients from the treatment center come out to help. Mostly with the blues, to help the dogs learn to socialize. I train the newbies, so anybody you’ll be interacting with will already know what they’re doing. It’s pretty simple. We have an app with the daily schedule, and you can check to see what needs to be done. And a lot of it’s just playing with dogs.”

          The color-coding delights in her in a way that’s maybe a teensy bit irrational. A small part of her mind points out as much to her, but it is little more than a distant voice that she stomps squarely upon as they walk. She’s beaming, excitement barely restrained, but first impressions are important, and she’s trying so very hard not to botch this one, like she’s botched pretty much every one before. The lead scientist in the lab where she’s currently working still gives her sidelong looks, and it’s been two months now. And as for her professors,  well... Thinking about that is enough to make her want to laugh — and then cry.

          Tilly has to bite down on her tongue to keep herself from interrupting, to allow him to finish. Then, finally, her self-control slips.    ❛ Oh, I can always get behind playing with dogs. ❜    A stupid, stupid thing to say, she tells herself, instantly flooded with regret.   ❛ Not that that’s the only reason I’m here, of course, ❜    she attempts to course-correct, wringing her hands.    ❛ I do just like to help, and Dad suggested I should do something besides studying and sitting in a lab all day, and… ❜    — and she’d already ditched all the activities her mom had insisted she participate in growing up, and so she’d had to find something that was all hers. Her idea, her choice.  She realized a moment too late that she was  rambling, and he wouldn’t care and really there went her good first impression.    

Stiffening up for a moment when Tilly first hugged him, Paul let himself relax after a moment. Blue eyes slipped closed and he just allowed himself to be hugged. It was nice, he supposed, to have some human interaction once in a while. His arms came up to wrap around her, holding her gently for a moment. “Thank you, Tilly,” he said softly, his voice barely loud enough for himself to hear, let alone anyone else. “I appreciate it.”

            She nearly withdrew at the tension she felt at the embrace, but before she could, it eased. He didn’t complain, did not push her away... Tilly let out a breath she had not realized she held. She’d been so certain... Lieutenant Stamets had never seemed the sort to tolerate displays of affection --- at least not from the cadet who had somehow weaseled her way into a position as an assistant to his research onboard Discovery. 

“Bugs?” Paul repeated, not questioning her so much as he was he’d heard her right, that she’d said the right thing, or that…anything. Anything to assure him there weren’t bugs in the walls of the ship. Now he crouched beside her to get a better look, eyebrows furrowing in consideration and confusion. He wanted to reach out, to touch the things, but figured that was likely the worst thing he could do at the moment, so for once decided to go with impulse control. 

At least, he wouldn’t touch it with his bare hands. 

“People say if you’re aware enough to question it, you likely aren’t,” he commented, though he didn’t know if her question of losing her mind was something she either wanted or expected an answer to. Then, “Maybe it is broken,” or maybe not. “Stay here,” he said, eyebrows still furrowed as he stood, thinking over the nonworking tricorder and moving to a nearby drawer, where he removed the insulated gloves he used for electrical work. Or that he was supposed to use for electrical work, as he had a habit of forgetting them and ending up in sickbay with one burn or another, much to Hugh’s dismay.

Putting them on, he returned to Tilly, crouching down again beside her. Then, slowly, he reached out to brush his hand against the moving mass.

            Tilly did not dare glance away even as he ordered her to remain and withdrew himself. She heard the movements of the drawer behind her, but she kept her gaze adamantly fixed upon the couplings and their guests. Only when his hand, now gloved, entered her field of vision did she realize what he intended.     ❛ Er... lieutenant? ❜  she began carefully, though it was too late.    ❛ Are you sure that’s a good idea… ❜  

Her eyes flickered around, brief to see if there was the chance of eavesdroppers. Not that this was an overall secret but until they could properly verify what they had actually found, the last thing she or Stamets needed were rumours to get out of control and get the wrong attention. Especially given their use of the drive.

“Stamets has been keen on using the drive as means to…scan more in-depth of the network. Nothing definitive; something like a sonar image at best but…he found an impact creator in a…familiar shape.” 

She had seen the image herself; the shape suggesting a lot and given that there were no doubts of another universe given their own experience of the Terran universe. A world similar to their own to produce a Discovery and similar technology. She didn’t expand on that yet, simply to allow Tilly to absorb the information first. She couldn’t allow herself to get hooked into a train of thought without a look at other options, although she had logic to back up the theory. 

            Tilly had expected something a little more exciting to justify the description of a ‘weird day.’ Then again, ‘weird’ was, all considered, a mild word. For anyone not accustomed to the usual weirdness of life onboard Discovery, Stamets’ findings probably would perfectly justify the word ‘weird,’ and anything weirder would necessitate stronger language.

            Tilly mulled Michael’s words over for a moment, analyzing, ensuring she understood. Only when she thought she’d inferred correctly did she dare ask for greater clarification. She  grimaces, loathing the words before they’d even left her mouth, as if by uttering them she condemned them to some horrible fate.    ❛ By ‘familiar shape,’ you mean ‘Discovery-shaped shape’, don’t you? ❜

“Don’t. Don’t apologize.” Blue eyes flicked up to hers and he smiled weakly, nothing that Tilly hadn’t already seen on display. He was tired, that much was visible to her, it was visible to anyone who could see the deep circles under his eyes, his pale skin doing no favors to hide it from anyone. 

“You didn’t do anything, Tilly. There’s nothing you can do now.” A simple hand wave of dismissal, he didn’t want to talk about Hugh, he didn’t want to hear any more sympathy, see any more looks or apologies. It was a silent plea, well, it was spoken but behind the words was a plea to not talk about it anymore. “Besides, you should be happy. You’re getting promoted, you get to go rub elbows with Starfleet’s finest in the CTP. I’m proud of you.”

            No, she didn’t do anything. No, there was nothing she could do now. Neither of those facts, especially that second, hated little fact, changed anything. But even she, oblivious Tilly who read body language and tone of voice about as well as she spoke French — and her mother always had choice words about her grasp of French and her atrocious pronunciation and constant grammatical errors — could tell that she needed to stop. He wanted her to stop, to drop the matter.

Tilly continued to talk though Hugh didn’t interrupt. He had heard that she was quite the talker and could easily slip into a rambling tangent, as she was doing. It made him smile softly. “Well, Cadet, we only have the medical file. It does cover births but only relevant information, such as time, measurements weight, and any medical procedures you may have needed at the time of birth or in gestation. I don’t make it my business to read that far back unless there’s a recent cause for concern…like suddenly finding out you’re a twin or something.” 

He didn’t need to and saw no reason to. His example though would be easiest to expand with; a twin was half the weight and size of a single newborn infant and would be reflected in the medical records as such. “I haven’t read anything but relevant information on medical needs you have, such as allergies.” He assured. 

            ❛ Right, no, of course not…. That would be a lot of information to keep track of for, like, an entire crew… ❜    Really, Tilly, you ought to have considered that before saying stupid things, she chided herself silently.

            She grimaced faintly about the mention of allergies. Her file was chock-full of those, and she hated the reminder of all the things she had to avoid. At least, life on a spaceship inherently removed her from the most mundane of those. Even if a flowering plant was to be kept aboard, the air filters would strip the culprits from the air before they could trigger a reaction in her. Small blessings. Not that there weren’t at least half a dozen other allergies to monitor.