But something in Gwyn had clearly changed. A few days prior, Gwyn had risked her life and her career to save Patel’s, and she had done it in the most flagrant manner possible: stealing a shuttle and disobeying direct orders from the admiral and Captain Chakotay to return to Voyager. The fact that Gwyn had also saved Commanders Paris and Torres must have bought her a little leniency.
But the part Patel couldn’t align with every other thing she knew of Aytar Gwyn was why. What on earth had moved Gwyn so about Patel’s fate that could have caused her to act as she did? Short of her parents—who didn’t count because they were her parents—no one Patel had ever known had seemed to care enough for her to cross a crowded room, let alone fly a shuttle into the atmosphere of a world that was in the process of tearing itself apart.
The act, itself, spoke of untold emotional depths present in Gwyn that Patel had never glimpsed. She doubted that any of the dozen crewmen with whom Gwyn had chosen to briefly share her bunk in the last year had seen it either, given that none of those relationships had lasted longer than a few days.
And whatever had driven Gwyn to that act still seemed to be running the show. The flushed, harried, almost desperate young woman who had rushed in unannounced upon their staff briefing was clearly not in control of her emotions. Normally, Gwyn wielded control, both at the helm of a starship and in her personal life, with the skill of a surgeon. Its absence was entirely out of character and, thus, cause for concern.
Patel had new orders. She was due to report to Demeter along with Seven to undertake an away mission back to the surface of DK-1116 with Commander Liam O’Donnell. But she couldn’t leave the ship again, especially on another mission that could easily claim her life, without knowing that Gwyn was okay.
The chime Patel had activated at Gwyn’s door received no response. Patel was stepping back from the door sensor when it finally slid open.
“Oh, hey, Devi,” Gwyn said.
Patel had secretly envied Gwyn’s easy confidence and ability to fit in by standing out for the better part of a year. But now, there was an air of anxiety clinging to her and a sense of distance even though they stood less than a meter from each other.
“Did you want to come in?” Gwyn asked.
“I do,” Patel replied, and immediately followed Gwyn into her cabin.
The lights were set low and a single candle burned on the table beside Gwyn’s bunk. The bed looked rumpled, as if the ensign had been lying on top of it.
“Did I wake you?” Patel asked.
“No, I was just…” But Gwyn didn’t finish that sentence. Instead she asked, “How are you feeling? You’re back on regular duty, right?”
“Yeah. I’m fine. Good. I’m sorry I haven’t had a chance yet to thank you for what you did,” Patel finished, flustered.
Gwyn crossed back to her bunk and sat down cross-legged on top of it. “Yeah, that was a thing, wasn’t it?”
“A thing? You saved my life, Aytar.”
“You were doing something incredibly stupid. Someone had to stop you, and everybody else was a little busy at the time.”
Gwyn shrugged, a move with which Patel was familiar. But the calculus could not have been that simple. “You could have lost your commission,” Patel said.
“Compared to you losing your life?”
“I didn’t want you to risk anything for me.”
“So, you’re not grateful?”
“No, I am, it’s just…”
Somehow their conversation wasn’t going at all as it had the fifty times Patel had rehearsed it in her head.
“Why did you do it?” Gwyn asked.
Returning to that moment in the cavern when she had placed her combadge on her tricorder and stepped away from the transport area was painful. Most of the time it could be kept at bay, a hazy, half-remembered dream where only certain moments were clear. But forcing it to the forefront of her consciousness now, and knowing what it had forced Gwyn to do, brought back the taste of iron in her mouth and the light-headed, almost out-of-body sensation Patel remembered vividly. Pushing past it she replied, “It’s not that I wanted to die. I had to make sure the data survived. If we left without the information we’d gathered, it would have made everything we went through meaningless. It would have been like it never happened. And what we found down there was important.”
Gwyn stared up at her as if she were speaking a foreign language in the absence of a universal translator. “Like I said, incredibly stupid.”
“I guess,” Patel finally admitted, “I wasn’t sure it really mattered if I survived. Who was going to miss me? It sounds dumb now, but at the time it all made perfect sense in my head.”
“That’s why we talk to each other, Devi. To test the stuff in our head and make sure it makes sense outside, too.”
“Well, thank you.”
“Don’t do it again,” Gwyn said.
“I won’t. At least, not on purpose.”
Gwyn tilted her head gently to the side, her brow furrowing. “Not quite the full-throated denial I was looking for there, Devi.”
“I’m going back to the surface with Seven and O’Donnell.”
Gwyn rose quickly. “What? Why?”
“Orders,” Patel said. “You remember those, right? Your superior officer tells you to do something and you don’t question it, you just do it.”
“You can’t. I mean, you shouldn’t. That’s just… what more does anyone need to know about this place? We have to get out of here and look for…” But Gwyn didn’t finish that sentence either. Instead, her gaze shifted almost involuntarily to the candle beside her bed.
This was as close to an opening as Patel was likely to get. “What’s wrong with you?” she asked, regretting the accusatory tone immediately. “How do you know they’re still alive?” she added more gently.
Gwyn lifted her chin to face her.
