After picking up the captain’s breakfast and compiling the morning reports for her meeting, Rand returned to their quarters and sat down at the computer. She wanted to get as much work done as possible. She finally felt like she was making a dent in the back log. She was making her way through reports and inquiries from the month that Roman had been in sickbay after he’d been attacked. There was so much back log. It wasn’t a lot of effort to take those reports and compress them and send them off to command. Some inquiries were simply a matter of attached extra documents that had been forgotten or double checking numbers.

Finally Rand came across an unusual request, because it didn’t happen often and not the type of request, for a witness account report to be resubmitted. Rand pulled it up…it was for one Ensign Kovan ch’Sirhc concerning his eye witness of the attack on Cmdr Roman Alden. Rand had to sit there a moment before that sank in. Kovan had not been in the lab when the machine malfunctioned. Then she opened it and read it to see what was wrong with it.

What was wrong was it wasn’t detailed enough. Not for command to use as evidence in a trial. Kovan had been rather flippant. It was not detailed enough for her. As she read, ice seeped into her body and she felt the need to be sick. She rushed into the bathroom. Long minutes passed before she returned to the computer, dutifully like a robot, transferred the report to her PaDD. Roman had been shot, twice, by the assassin. Kovan knew....RANDY knew. No one told her....Rand pulled up the other incident reports and ship’s logs. Scanning them, Rand’s hands began to shake, her ears roaring painfully and the edges of her vision went black, then red, and then black again. Roman had been treated for the wounds several times a day, he’d....he’d had an infection and been given medication. He…he’d been in sickbay alone. Irrationally all she could think of was she’d promised to go with him whenever he had to be in sickbay…and she wasn’t. She hadn’t been there…she’d been confined to sickbay at the time, she could have been. She had no work, no duty shifts, nothing to stop her from being there....

She picked up her PaDD, straightened her uniform and took a bracing breath before heading to engineering to find Kovan. Randy was coming down the corridor. “Hey Rand!”

“Rach gu ifrinn, Randall!”

“Whoa! What’s going on?”

Rand glared at him. “Nothing. I have work to do.” She turned her PaDD around, “Like getting Kovan’s report on Cmdr Alden being shot fixed and ready for trial.”

Rand appeared in engineering and was pointed the way to where Kovan was working. She stood there quietly a moment while he finished what he was doing. Her face carefully blank trying to decide if she was hurt or mad.

Rand

Kovan knew the moment Rand stepped into engineering and heard her approach. He quickly finished his work on a broken power coupling then documented his repairs on an engineering PaDD. What was strange, he thought as he typed the last line of his report, was that Rand didn’t greet him. It was unusual that she would approach him and say nothing at all. Curious, he turned to face her, only to hesitate. Something was wrong. Rand had a strange look upon her face that turned his stomach cold. “What can I do for you, Rand?” Kovan said, trying for casual.

Kovan

There was no persona to fall back on. She couldn’t remember them. There was no part of her, real or fake to call upon and make herself not care. There was only duty and what she was supposed to do. It was the only way she was useful to anyone apparently, duty. It’s all she had, and she would serve. That’s what she signed up for. The three people that mattered the most to her had lied to her. She pulled the disk from the storage compartment of her PaDD and held it out to him. She worked hard to keep her voice very calm and professional. She worded her statements carefully. She wanted…she needed Kovan to know she was aware of the lie of omission. “A report you filed as an eye witness to the 2nd assassination attempt on Cmdr Alden was returned for being insufficient. They need a detailed account of the events to use as testimony to prosecute. Or you can opt to appear in person. Please return it as soon as possible.”

Rand

Oh no. Please, Kovan mentally begged, please anything but this. Curse this meager mortal existance. Kovan never wanted to lie to Rand. He fought against the commander’s decision to keep the truth from Rand. Kovan knew he could never lie to her face. Could not keep her from the truth. This outcome was ineveitable after all. Only a matter of time before the lie came to light and someone got hurt.

“Rand. . .” Kovan frowned at the tools still in his hands. An apology lingered on his tongue but Kovan never learned how to say those words. Instead he said, “I wanted to tell you.” But wasn’t that far more pathetic of statement. What did it matter now? Kovan tried again, “Alden argued that it was in your best interest. He didn’t want to cause you undue stress. . . I shouldn’t have listened.”

He wanted to tell her, but still he didn’t. Kovan, who never cared one iota what others wanted or thought of him, went along with Roman and Randy (and Randy was in on it or he would have told her). Was it really Kovan’s fault? Doing what Randy and Roman thought was best for her? Did any of the blame belong to Kovan? Rand didn’t know, but she was still hurt. Best interest, undo stress Rand only nodded but it was a sad robotic gesture.

The data chip felt heavy when he took it. “I’ll. . . I’ll get this back to you.” Kovan said, “As soon as possible.”

Kovan

Again she nodded. From anyone else her words may have been taken as sarcastic, but from Rand they only conveyed hurt and sadness. “Well, perhaps I am too useless to sit beside his sick bed. I am good at protocol and regulation. If you need help with it…let me know. I am not letting this mahoun go free on a technicality.”

Rand

Hurting others. Kovan’s done it a hundred times. He’s screwed people over in many ways. Left them to handle the consequences or whatever fallout he wiggled himself free off. Here he was, causing more hurt but it wasn’t the same. There is no hurt he’s ever inflicted that caused him to feel so conflicted. Nothing to make him feel so guilty and wretched. Kovan nodded, moving on autopilot. He turned away from Rand and left to find his shift supervisor. Kovan worked so much overtime his request to leave his shift early was immediately granted.

Kovan retreated to his bare room and sat down at his desk. If it weren’t for his art and writing PaDDs one would think this room was out of a Starfleet show room shown to hopeful recruits of what their future provisions would look like. Kovan gave his whole report of the events that transpired that day. Not a single detail was left out, including his goading of the commander to get the man’s focus off the doctors attempting to administer care. All in all it took less than an hour for Kovan to speak his account and save it to the data chip.

The hardest part, was finding the courage to face Rand again. Kovan didn’t know how to deal with the feelings churning within him. Rand was the only tolerable person aboard this tin can and he betrayed her. Oh, he could pin all the blame on Randy and Roman as it was their idea but he knew it was pointless. It was about time Kovan manned up and took responsibility for his actions for once.

He left his room, data chip in hand and tracked Rand down. When he found her his mouth felt as dry as sand, “Here’s my account of events, as requested.”

Kovan

“Thank you,” Rand took the disk, feeling jittery and with a gnawing in her gut. Rand wasn’t sure they were friends, but only because she had so few. And that was her fault because being around other people made her so anxious and nervous it was hard to get to know people. She liked to think that they were friends, if only a little. Friends or not though she’d been very rude to him earlier. Friend or not, it wasn’t his place to make sure she knew important things relevant to her life. That was Roman and Randy. And Randy’s job to make sure she was brought up to date as she resumed her duties. They hadn’t. That wasn’t on Kovan.

“Kovan,” her stomach churned and she could feel her heart begin to race as she worried about what she should say and how he might react. But she had to apologize. “I…I’m sorry, about earlier. My behavior was dismal and being surprised and upset is no reason for me to take it out on you. I’m very sorry.”

Rand

Kovan hated apologies. Hated receiving them, giving them, listening to others whine or bauble about their feelings. He never liked any aspect of the act and it made deeply uncomfortable to hear Rand apologize when he didn’t deserve it. “Don’t. . . You don’t have to say that.” For a man whose specialty and art was language, words were strangely illusive when it came to vocalizing his own feelings. “You didn’t say nothing that was the truth and I was right [fatherless child]. You’re the one that’s been hurt by all this and you have a right to be mad. Tepid Hell, I’d be just as angry in your place.”

Kovan

Rand wanted to rant and rave she was so angry, but Kovan was about as sociable as she was. And she was sure no one wanted to listen anyway. She wasn’t sure what else to say. “It is what it is, I guess. Thank you for…this.” She held up the data disk.

“I…um…I haven’t forgotten about our tutoring sessions…” She had because of the concussiin. but she had seen them on her calendar. “I…I tried reviewing, but…I’m…” Rand let out a long sigh. “I can’t remember a lot of it.”

Rand

“We could pick them again once you’re feeling better.” Kovan said, “In the mean time you could review your notes, you’ve taken plenty. I’ll think up something extra challenging for when you’re feeling up to it.” He added, going for light and casual. Though the attempt came off as a bit bland. A hallmark of just how old and outdated his sense of humor has become. Humans have a saying about that, he recalled. If you don’t use it, you lose it. “It’s not like we’re all going to die tomorrow. You have time to rest and recover.”

Kovan

Rand paused at that comment. Not going to die tomorrow? That’s not how she felt lately. She expected to die in a random accident from a spatial anomaly or in a fight with a hostile species or some kind of weird alien illness. Not an assassin from her home planet that didn’t even know her. Tried to blow her up. Her understanding was that if Morgan hadn’t been with her, to throw her out of the way she would have died rather than been blown up. It didn’t do to think about it too much. “I…don’t have my notes.” She had a few but the notebook she’d been using…”It was destroyed when my office blew up.”

Rand

“Oh. . .right. . . Crap.” Kovan ran his hand down his face. “I can write down the basics and we can do a refresher lesson when you’re feeling up to it.” Nothing wrong with reviewing the basics and if it gave Rand something to focus on that wasn’t her concussion, assassins, or the harsh betrayal of trust from those closest too her then all the better. Kovan didn’t want to be the person that made Rand feel like crap. She’s dealing with enough of that on her own. “You got a knack of the language, you’ll be speaking it again in no time.” God. When did he become so upbeat and hopeful? It was disgusting and disquieting. Like he’s wearing some else’s skin.

Kovan