We Notice
Posted on Mon Jul 13th, 2026 @ 7:42pm by Ensign Auren & Lieutenant Aelira Valan’thir
3,097 words; about a 15 minute read
Mission:
Crisis at Zeta-294
Location: Sickbay, USS Wolff
Timeline: MD002
Sickbay had been quiet for nearly twenty minutes, which Aelira had learned was usually when someone decided to test fate with both hands and no supervision.
The current offender was a young operations crewman sitting on the edge of a biobed with the deeply wounded dignity of someone who had tried to fix a jammed replicator by “encouraging” it with his fist. His knuckles were swollen, his pride was worse, and the replicator, according to his own reluctant admission, had won.
Aelira finished passing the osteo-regenerator over the last bruised joint, her expression composed except for the faint amusement sitting at the corner of her mouth. “There,” she said, switching the instrument off. “You’ll live. The replicator may need counselling.”
The crewman muttered something about it being a faulty panel. Aelira gave him a look that was far too kind to be accusing and far too knowing to be fooled.
“Next time,” she said, handing him a small anti-inflammatory patch, “try Engineering before hand-to-hand combat. They usually prefer to be involved before the appliance draws blood.”
He slid off the biobed with a sheepish nod and made his escape at speed, clearly hoping the story wouldn’t spread. Aelira let him go, then turned back to the tray to tidy the instruments away, still wearing the soft shadow of a smile.
The doors to Sickbay opened again before she had finished.
Aelira glanced up, one hand still resting on the tray, her attention shifting naturally toward the new arrival. “Please tell me you haven’t been fighting with the furniture as well.”
Something about that introduction immediately put a grin on the young man's face as he walked into Sickbay. He was dark of hair and eye, lean and with an ensign's pip on his collar but very little of an ensign's pep in his step. He moved with an almost lazy grace as looked back over his shoulder at the crewman he'd passed for just a moment, smile growing wider.
"Not recently. Though I make no promises if one of your biobeds looks at me funny, Doctor," he said, turning his focus on the woman who was the source of the mirth. There was a touch of a French accent to his words, but he also talked a little slowly, as if completely unhurried. "I'm Auren, just reporting aboard. Figured I would make it easy on you and not make you chase me down for the check-in. I'm quite fast, you know."
Aelira’s smile shifted before she quite meant it to.
Not because of the joke, though that helped, but because of the feeling that came with him. A familiar note beneath the surface. Old blood in a very young body. An echo from a people who were used to recognising one another in crowded rooms, across impossible distances, sometimes through nothing more than the way the air seemed to pause.
El Aurian.
And barely more than a spark, by their measure.
“Well,” she said, setting the last instrument down with a soft click, “at over five hundred, I stopped chasing people years ago. It’s bad for the dignity, and the knees begin to have opinions.”
Her eyes warmed as she looked him over, not clinically yet. Not entirely. There was doctor in the glance, yes, but something older and quieter too.
“Auren,” she repeated, letting the name settle properly. “Welcome aboard the Wolff.”
She gestured toward the nearest biobed, easy and inviting rather than commanding. “Since you’ve been thoughtful enough to present yourself voluntarily, I’ll try not to make the check-in too tragic.”
A faint curve touched her mouth.
His smile grew a little crooked and his eyes filled with curiosity. Five hundred? "Impressionnant!" It came out of the UT as 'impressive' though his lips formed the word different. "You move pretty spryly though for all of that." Probably not human, but he wasn't going to make too many assumptions. Not that he'd ever known a human that old, but who knew!
Auren felt something too, but lacked the experience or knowledge of what it was he was sensing. It was often like that for him, when his heritage gave him hints towards deeper insight, a vague sense that something went beyond his normal hearing, vision, and so on. He pondered the sensation as he sat down on the indicated biobed, silent for those few moments.
Familiarity? But he was sure he'd never met this woman in his life. It wasn't just that tattoos he could see that were quite unique and distinct. Her very presence seemed to stand out to him in a way that he was sure, somehow, if they were in a busy flightdeck together he'd still be able to pick her out in a crowd. He didn't seem at all bothered as the exam began, but kept dark eyes focused on the doctor, obviously deep in thought, trying to figure this out but hesitant to say anything in case he was just imagining it.
“Careful,” Aelira said, reaching for the medical tricorder with a look of solemn warning that didn’t quite survive the smile at her mouth. “Compliment my spryness too much and I’ll start expecting formal recognition from Starfleet Medical. Possibly a medal. Very small. Tasteful.”
She began the scan without fuss, letting the tricorder’s soft hum fill the space between them for a moment. Her gaze moved between the readings and Auren himself, and it did not take much to notice where his eyes had gone. The tattoos. Not staring, exactly. Trying to understand.
Aelira let him have a few seconds before she spoke.
“They’re Toan’ta,” she said, gently enough that it did not feel like correction. “My people, within our people.”
Her eyes flicked up to meet his, warm and steady.
“El Aurian, yes. But older-rooted. Less interested in machinery and temporal cleverness. More soil under the nails, more prayer in the breath, more listening to what the body and spirit already know before a console decides to agree with us.”
The corner of her mouth softened.
“That feeling you’re trying very politely not to mention?” she added, angling the tricorder slightly as the scan continued. “You’re not imagining it. We know each other’s echo, in a way. Some more clearly than others.”
She glanced back at the readout, giving him space by not looking too directly at whatever that stirred.
“At twenty-two, I wouldn’t expect it to make perfect sense yet. For us, that’s still young enough for the universe to be speaking in riddles and half-finished songs.” A beat, lighter. “Annoying of it, really. Very poor communication skills.”
The scan passed over his shoulder and chest, routine and careful.
“But it’s there. That little pull of recognition. Familiarity without memory.” Her voice stayed easy, almost conversational. “It just means some part of you heard me before the rest of you knew what to do with it.”
"I knew there was something..." His expression was a mixture, impressed, pleased, amazed, a little bit in awe. "There are so few of us, I hadn't thought-" He stopped and nodded though, returning. What she said might have seemed vague and unspecific to others perhaps, but Auren knew understood immediately. The universe did sing, existence itself was a constant presence offering up more wisdom, knowledge, and experience than any one being could ever hope to fully comprehend.
Sure, for his new and undeveloped senses, it was more often than not just out of reach, over the shoulder, as if he might turn and catch a glimpse out of the corner of his eye. But at that moment, it all made perfect sense, why he'd liked this woman right from the start.
"That's amazing. I think you probably knew most of that before you even scanned me, right? Someday, I want to be able to do that. My parents say it will take time, 'be patient', which okay sure." What it had stirred was his limited exposure to his own kind. While he was usually so patient, taking things in stride, calm and collected to the point he could drive some others to distraction or might get approval from a Vulcan, there were a few things that could really lock him in, focus him to the moment. Anything about his own people, lost, scattered, and wounded as they might be, drew him in, just like Aelira's presence had to his senses.
It might be inevitable that he had to ask it, and Aelira might already know the question was coming. He'd grown up hearing their stories by his mother, a historian of their people. As a member of a generation of El Aurians who didn't carry the scars and wounds of centuries past, but instead carried a void of being out of place here in the Alpha Quadrant, physically, emotionally, spiritually, he felt an intense need to know all he could. "Were you...on the Lakul or Robert Fox? Do you know my parents? Mirell and Talren."
Aelira’s expression softened at the question before she answered it.
There it was. The place beneath the easy humour. Not impatience, not exactly. Hunger, maybe. The kind that came from growing up with stories instead of streets, names instead of neighbours, a people scattered so widely that even recognition could feel like finding a candle still lit in a ruined house.
“The terrible thing about parents,” she said, still watching the scan for a moment, “is that sometimes they are right.”
Her mouth curved gently as she adjusted the tricorder. “It will take time. Not because you lack anything, Auren. Because what we are doesn’t arrive all at once. It unfolds. Usually when you’ve stopped trying to drag it into the light by its ankles.”
The scan gave a soft chirp. She glanced at it, then lowered the instrument.
“And yes,” she admitted, eyes returning to him. “I knew some of it before I scanned you. Not all. I’m a doctor, not a miracle with cheekbones.” A faint glimmer of humour. “But enough.”
Then the other question settled between them, and Aelira did not rush past it.
“No,” she said quietly. “I wasn’t on the Lakul or the Robert Fox.”
There was no drama in it. No heavy reach for grief. Just truth, carefully placed.
“The Toan’ta had been apart from the rest of our people for a very long time before the Fall. We lived in places most maps forgot how to find. Verdari sanctuaries, veiled settlements, old paths under older trees.” Her thumb rested lightly against the edge of the tricorder. “When El Auria was lost, we felt it. All of it. But we did not leave on the great ships.”
She looked down briefly, not away from him so much as inward.
“We left in smaller ways. Hidden craft. prayer-bound hulls. Songs older than warp fields. Enough science wrapped in enough superstition that neither side was willing to admit which part saved us.”
Aelira’s smile returned, faint but real.
“As for Mirell and Talren…” She let the names sit properly, giving them the respect they deserved. “I don’t know your father. Talren isn’t a name I can place with honesty.”
A small pause.
“But Mirell.” Her eyes narrowed slightly, searching memory rather than pretending certainty. “My mother spoke of a Mirell once. Not often. A historian, I think. Someone who kept stories with both hands. She said there were people among the wider El Aurian world who remembered properly, not just accurately. There’s a difference.”
She met his eyes again, warm and careful.
“I can’t promise it was your mother. There are too many years and too many names between then and now.” Her voice gentled. “But if she is the same Mirell, then my mother thought well of her. And my mother was not easily impressed.”
The lighter note returned, softening the edge of all that loss.
“Which means, naturally, that I may have to judge you by a very unfair standard.”
She set the tricorder aside and tilted her head.
“Fortunately for you, your baseline scan is good, your reflex responses are healthy, and you were wise enough to report to Sickbay before I had to hunt you through the ship. So far, you are surviving the family reputation.”
Auren knew that the first chance he got, he would ask him mom about the Toan’ta. And if she might have known Aelira's family; though his own parents were a bit younger, they had both been from the homeworld. The names of the lost transports, and those precious souls they'd lost to the Nexus too, didn't impact him much, just like the stories of the Borg and the exodus didn't.
"That sounds really stellar. I mean, the way your group lived. Maybe more in tune with things than what some powerful impulse engines and a handy phaser can pull off. If you ever want to share some stories about back then, I'd love to hear them."
Hear them, or listen. The eager young El Aurian was just stepping into his greater awareness of things, and stories could run deep, roots and branches that could go back through time and space and beyond.
He looked a little proud at the praise, felt plenty more proud, though didn't comment on it, trying to remain a touch humble at least on the outside. "I don't plan on disappointing you or anyone else, if I can manage it. Sometimes I get a little distracted though I'm going to try to avoid that if I wind up on the Bridge for a shift. You know, hearing things that aren't based in sound? That kind of stuff."
Aelira’s expression warmed at that.
“Stories, I can do,” she said. “Though I should warn you, Toan’ta stories tend to begin with someone walking into a forest for wisdom and end three hours later with everyone quietly reconsidering their life choices.”
The tricorder gave another soft pulse as she drew the scan down along his spine, then across his shoulders. Her attention stayed easy, but thorough.
“And yes,” she added, gentler now. “That kind of stuff.”
She did not make it sound strange. That mattered. Not a symptom. Not a defect. Not something to be filed away under unusual sensitivity and politely ignored.
“One of the hardest things for our people is learning where we end and everything else begins. Time, memory, emotion, instinct, the little tremors people leave behind them without knowing it.” She glanced up from the readout. “The universe is not quiet. Not really. Most species are lucky enough not to notice.”
A faint smile touched her mouth.
“We notice.”
The tricorder chirped, satisfied, and Aelira lowered it.
“Your scan is clear. Neural activity is strong, sensory pathways are active, no stress markers that worry me.” Her eyes flicked over him with doctorly approval. “You’re fit for duty.”
She set the tricorder aside, then leaned lightly against the edge of the neighbouring biobed, arms folding in a relaxed way.
“As for the rest… distraction is the wrong word for it. You’re not failing to pay attention. You’re paying attention to too much.” Her tone stayed calm, matter-of-fact. “That can be trained.”
A beat, softer.
“If you’d like, I can teach you some Toan’ta meditation. It’s simple and practical.”
Her smile softened into something a little wry.
“It’s mostly breath, stillness, and learning how to let the noise pass through without grabbing every thread that brushes your hand. Useful on a Bridge. Useful everywhere, really.”
She held his gaze for a moment, the humour easing into something older and steadier.
“You don’t have to become less open, Auren. Just less at the mercy of everything you hear.”
Auren liked that. Liked it a lot. 'You’re not failing to pay attention. You’re paying attention to too much.' Aelira might in fact be the first person he'd met in the Fleet who understood that, and him. "Thank you," he said with genuine gratitude. It meant a lot, to be seen. "And I'd like that, about the meditations I mean, and your stories."
He slid off the biobed and rolled his neck around his shoulders. "Easy enough checkup, I don't know why so many people have a problem with it." Then almost as an afterthought he said with a smile, "I'm sure we'll see plenty of each other though. I tend to get a lot of bruises, broken bones, that sort of thing."
She would learn. All his doctors eventually realized for all Auren's laid-back seeming nature, he was a foolhardy daredevil off the clock. Riding a surfboard along a ship's unpredictable ion wake, or worse, a powerful solar wind, climbing up sheer cliffs or jumping off them, were a couple of favorite pastimes. He was thinking of picking up orbital skydiving soon too.
"See you around, Doctor?" there was something far, far too innocent about his grin right then.
Aelira watched him slide from the biobed, and the innocence in that grin did absolutely nothing to reassure her.
“The people who dislike check-ups usually fall into two groups,” she said, collecting the tricorder. “Patients who don’t like doctors, and doctors who’ve met too many hypochondriacs.”
Her gaze lingered on him for a beat, narrowing just slightly.
“And I had better not see plenty of you in here. Bruises happen. Broken bones should not become a hobby.”
She set the tricorder back into its cradle with a quiet click.
“If they do, I’ll suspend your holodeck access until you learn to appreciate having an intact skeleton.”
The threat was delivered with such calm sincerity that it was difficult to tell how much of it was humour. The warmth in her eyes gave away enough.
“But yes,” she added, offering him a small smile. “You’ll see me around. We’ll find time for the meditation. And the stories.”
Aelira tilted her head towards the doors.
“Go on, Ensign. You’re cleared for duty.”
Then, as he began to leave, she called after him with quiet suspicion.
“And Auren?”
She waited until he looked back.
“Whatever you’re already thinking about doing, reconsider it.”
The grin only grew wider as he waved and walked out the door.
Lieutenant Aelira Valan'thir
Chief Medical Officer
Ensign Auren
Flight Control Officer
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