And to Dust We Shall Return.

code cerulean

Nim rounded the corner. It was the same corner she had passed five times in the last hour, and she hadn't seen a single person near sickbay. Not one.
It was ridiculous. Normally there would be a whole line of people wanting cold cures or hangover remedies, or whatever pointless placebo they were prescribing that week. But today, everyone on the ship appeared to be positively radiant with good health.
It was very annoying. 

Nim had contemplated faking an illness, but she had already exhausted the list of minor injuries in the medical journal, and the nurses were definitely getting suspicious. No. All she could do was keep walking, and wait.

At approximately 10.35 her patience was rewarded. By a rat.
It was running along the edge of the corridor, its little feet skittering on the metal floor with a sense of purpose that didn't feel quite right for a creature that spent its life eating other people’s garbage. 

Nim crouched low and watched as the rat approached a bend in the corridor, and stopped to look around. Its little nose whiffling in the warm air. 
Having Convinced itself that it was indeed alone, the rat made an odd, heaving motion, and in flurry of displaced particles, uncompressed itself. 
Mass cannot be destroyed, only converted, to energy, or in the case of certain sentient clouds of atoms, other kinds of mass. 
So For a thing the size of a rat, to become a thing the size of a person takes quite a lot of complicated shuffling around. The theory of which not even Clementine fully understood. 
The practice of it however, looks very strange indeed. 

'Clementine."

'C-commander?!' Clementine spun around, her eyes wide in shock.

Nim glared at her suspiciously. 
 'What the heck are you doing wandering about? Shouldn’t you be in sickbay?'

Clementine looked as though she were about to collapse a second time. 
'Well… yes I should. But it gets a bit much in there you see.'

Nim took a step forward. 'What do you mean? A bit much?' 

 'Let’s just say not all doctors I've been treated by have been as...gentle as yours.'

'Ah.'

'I just wanted a change of scene. That’s all.’ She wrung her hands together. ‘I'm very sorry if I broke any regulations.' 

Nim frowned. 'There are guards outside sickbay for a reason you know.'

Clementine put a hand to her mouth. 'They...were there for me?!'

Nim sighed. 'Well what did you think they were doing, guarding the morgue?'

Clementine’s face fell. "Oh. I hope I haven't caused too much trouble.'

Nim pinched the bridge of her nose. 'You really are something you know that.' 

'Scientifically speaking, everything is something.'

'Scientifically speaking you are too many things by half.' 

Clementine opened her mouth to speak, but seeing the look in Nim’s eye quickly shut it again.

'Look, since you haven't done anything wrong yet...Just...get back to bed. And don't do it again without permission understand?'

Clementine’s smiled an awkward little smile. 'Thank you! I won't.' And she walked, on impossibly light feet, through the sickbay door. Leaving Nim a moment to ponder.

...

It was late, and the mess hall was nearly empty. Save for a few stragglers. There was a Boolien in the corner, whispering sweet nothings in the ear of an Appolite.  A gaggle of officers laughing raucously, as they toasted the ends of their shifts with too many drinks, and here and there the odd cadet, bent low over their tablets as they tried in vain to learn the ships operation protocols by rote. Nim watched them all, with the practiced eye of one who had made a career out of knowing other people's business.   She had seen the Boolien here most nights with a different partner on their arm. The drunken officers were usually harmless, but she had heard in backroom gossip that one of them had recently been demoted by another, and that, plus the lowered inhibitions caused by alcohol, was good grounds for a fight to start. And as for the cadets, well, there was no sentence left for any crime in the known galaxy that could match the torture of a student who hadn’t studied for a test. She could guess even those without gods, would be praying tonight.

'Mind if I join you?'

Nim looked up from the stack of reports she was pretending to read. To find the captain standing by her table, coffee mug in hand.

'Guess not.'

The captain smiled gratefully and settled down in the chair opposite.

'Tough day huh?' Asked Nim, noting how strong the coffee smelled, and how tired her eyes were.

The captain gave her an enquiring look. 'How did you know?'

She pointed to the cup. 'You only drink that... bean juice when you're stressed.'

'I'll have you know coffee is a form of self-medication.' 

'It would have to be.' Nim wrinkled her nose. 
'Only medication would taste that bad.'

'Hmm you've got me there.' As if to prove a point, the captain took a very large sip.  'But yes it has been a tough day, now you mention it. The Gnar delegates weren’t exactly happy about having a shapeshifter on board.' 

'Pfft! Tell me about it. I had to take a couple of his officers to sickbay this morning. When they saw it in there it all kicked off.'

‘Yes. I heard about that.'

'You should have seen it.' Nim shook her head in disbelief. 'I do not get paid enough for this.'

'Maybe when this is over I can get you a raise. How does another 20 percent sound?'

Nim gave a hollow laugh, ‘oh yeah, 20 percent extra nothing on top of nothing...very helpful.'
She leaned back in her chair and sighed. ‘You know that thing is way too dangerous to keep on the ship. '

The captain surveyed her over the top of her cup.
'She hasn't done anything wrong. Not legally anyway. We can’t afford to intervene.'

'Who cares about legality’ Nim replied in irritation, ‘when it can hurl a half ton brute like a sack of sand peas.'

The captain pressed her fingers together.
 'We can hardly blame her for acting out of self-defense.'
 
'Would you be saying that if it'd killed him?' Nim scoffed. 

'We all have the potential to do bad things commander.'

'Maybe' muttered Nim, with all the simmering anguish of a pan of milk left on a hot stove. 
'But we both know some have more potential than others.' 

The captain, like the hapless cocoa drinker who has just remembered, said milk. Took a sharp breath in. And waited for the inevitable.
'I'm only trying to make sure that your past isn't...making you jump to conclusions’

'Jumping t-JUMPING TO?!! Captain with these legs, I can’t jump a fence. Never mind a metaphor!' Nim slammed her palms onto the table top.
'Now if you don’t think it isn't the slightest bit suspicious that it just happened to turn up in the middle of the epic bender you call the Gnar peace talks that’s your prerogative.  But I’m not going to stop doing my job just because some clod of soot came to us with a sad backstory.'
 She sank back into her seat, feeling breathless and empty. 
The captain had known her for a very long time. She had been the one to fish her, kicking and biting, out of the wreckage all those years ago. It had been the captain too, who had written her letter of recommendation for the patrol.  
She was, Nim realized, probably the closest thing to a mother she had left.
And that only made the fact that she didn't believe her hurt all the more

The captain’s face softened. 'I do understand Nim.' She said, and for a moment, Nim could see an echo of something familiar in her expression. 'I wouldn’t expect anything less.'

Nim sat there for a moment, trying in vain to think of some witty put down she could use in response, only to be saved by the beeping of her comm.

'Commander!' exclaimed a youthful voice, 'could you come to deck twelve? We’ve got a bit of an uhhh....’ There was the sound of muffled whispering. 'What was it, code red?'
 
Another voice, muttered faintly. 'No that’s for warp core breach, I think its code amber.'

'No,' said the first voice 'that's for when we run out of instant soup.  Maybe cerulean?'

 'That’s for catastrophic engine failure Clancy you big nonce. At least I think it is.'

'Ugh never mind just...Err...commander just...get down here.'