Work Text:
Kasidy slides to the wall behind her cot, and presses her back against it.
To be honest, she thought that the prison would be different. Her brother, riddled with anxiety, had told her to call if anything is amiss. The moment he heard about the trial, he got on a transport to be close to the detention center, just in case she needed him. Secretly flattered, she told him not to worry… It was a Federation prison, not a Cardassian labour camp.
And it was fine. The food was fine, too. Only that…
She swore, earlier, when she was eating lunch in the cafeteria, sitting next to her Xindi cellmate, the wall furthest away from her had changed, twisted and fluttered. The offensively cheery yellow wall had blinked out of sight, replaced by a different one, grey steel finish and old-fashioned green-tinted light. The tiles leading up to it turned into well-worn linoleum…
“Is there a holographic overlay on these walls?” Kasidy had asked.
The Xindi released the fork from his pincers with a clack. “What?”
“That wall,” Kasidy said, but by the time her cellmate turned around, the blink happened again, and it was gone.
He had sworn he had no idea what Kasidy was talking about, but something about the look in his many-sectioned eyes made her disbelieve him. She dropped the subject.
Kasidy leans forward on her hands. Curfew was near, but the Xindi was still hogging their bathroom. What for, she had no idea, as she was pretty sure he groomed himself with his tarsi…
The blink happens again. The wall in front of her ripples and flutters. Kasidy stands up and clicks her tongue three times in the (approximate) sound of her cellmate’s name. “It’s happening again!”
A door solidifies in front of her. It looks like that previous wall, steel and beaten up. Kasidy stands up, entranced, and touches her hand to it. It seems real.
She clicks again, louder. The door starts to ripple again…
Without much thought, Kasidy opens the door and jumps to the other side.
A hallway stretches in front of her. It feels sterile and cold. Kasidy takes a step forward and the echo makes her flinch – is she allowed to be there? – loud enough to make her turn…
Behind her back, there is a solid wall.
Of course this would happen to her. Kasidy Yates… Meets a nice man on a starbase and ends up dating the Emissary of Bajor. Wants to help deliver medicine to a struggling colony and ends up helping a terrorist plot to steal aid from Cardassia. Joins a softball league and ends up hooking up with a Medusan… Goes to prison and finds the entrance to Wonderland.
She’s still not sure if she’s supposed to be here, but she walks forward. She can always apologize later.
The corridor turns into another one, leading to another room. There’s no windows here. Kasidy hears the soft hum of a forcefield, and follows it to the end of the hallway.
It’s a high-security cell. Kasidy feels the strength of the forcefield buzzing on her skin as she approaches it. Seated on the floor, there is a young woman.
Her eyes are closed and her curly hair is cropped short. Her slim hands are joined together in her lap. She’s meditating, Kasidy guesses, or deep in thought. She’s wearing a yellow jumpsuit, buttoned neatly up to the top. Kasidy looks around. Is she… all alone in here?
The woman on the floor opens her eyes. Her face stays still, but something under her features (big, dark eyes, spaced wide apart, elegant lips) makes Kasidy flinch.
“Have you come to take me away again?” the woman asks. “Another placement?”
Kasidy looks at herself, at her issued jumpsuit, different color than the woman’s. “No, I’m… not a guard. My name is Kasidy.”
The woman just looks at her. “Should you be in here?”
“Probably not,” Kasidy shrugs. “The door was open.”
Sitting primly like that, the woman reminds Kasidy of a Vulcan. “You should probably leave then.”
Kasidy doesn’t leave. She looks at the size of the cell, and at the cameras pointed at the woman’s bed. At the bathroom that is a toilet bowl and not much else. “Are you… always in here?”
The woman follows Kasidy with her eyes. “Where else?”
“Somewhere bigger. This… you don’t even have a chair,” Kasidy frowns. She was going to call her brother, after all.
The woman stands up. “Don’t you know who I am?” she asks coldly.
Kasidy raises her eyebrows. “No. Sorry.”
“Michael Burnham,” says the woman.
It’s clear that this is supposed to mean something. “I’m sorry,” Kasidy shrugs. “I haven’t heard of you.”
It’s Michael’s turn to raise her eyebrow. “The first mutineer in Starfleet?”
Kasidy looks into Michael’s bitter eyes. She’s pretty sure Starfleet had some mutinies before, and she hasn’t heard of this name ever discussed… but then again, she doesn’t really keep up. “Sorry, I’m not Starfleet,” she shrugs again.
For the first time, the eyes seem warmer. Or at least, confused. “Why are you here, then?”
Kasidy wonders how forthcoming she should be. She lands on honesty. “Some terrorism cooperation,” she says. “Theft and conspiracy. Six months.”
Michael tilts her head, like she wonders if Kasidy is joking.
“The Maquis?” Kasidy supplies. “The Cardassian industrial replicators?” Michael must not get news in here. “Listen,” Kasidy tells her. “I don’t care who you are, but I’m going to file a complaint. This cell is far too small.”
“No,” Michael protests. “Don’t. It won’t help.”
“You don’t know if you don’t let me try.”
“Besides…” Michael stops.
“What?” Kasidy leans forward. “You’re not about to say that you deserve it?”
Michael blinks. “You don’t even know what I did,” she says. “How is this even possible? What group did you aid, again?”
“The Maquis.”
Michael shakes her head. “Well, I mutineed against my captain, because I wanted to save her life, and then I still couldn’t protect her. And I broke my own rules of refusing violence because I wanted to protect us from bloodshed, but I only caused more of it. So yes, I’ll forgive people for not exactly wanting me to have a luxurious suite. I'm sorry if that’s not how the Maquis do it.”
“Alright,” Kasidy says, and decides to tell her brother anyway.
For a moment, they’re quiet. The blue sheen of the forcefield reflects in Michael’s eyes. Kasidy finds herself wondering what their true color is.
“Were you meditating?” she asks, after a while.
Michael nods. “Grounding,” she says. “You… focus only on the moment inside you, and your immediate surroundings.”
Kasidy looks around. There’s still nobody in here. Crossing her legs, she sits down on the floor, and joins her hands together like Michael did. Then, she closes her eyes. This close, she can feel the forcefield move her eyelashes around.
She tries to focus on the linoleum she’s sitting on and the seams of her clothes, but the presence of the woman in front of her makes it unable to focus. She wonders if she read the explanation correctly. As an invitation.
“I’m sorry,” Michael says suddenly. “I was cold. I just didn't want you to get in trouble because of me.”
Kasidy opens her eyes. Michael looks regretful. Kasidy looks at her tightly buttoned jumpsuit and feels her own regret, coming back more intensely than before. She thinks of her crewmates, who she left at the Maquis colony. She told herself she was taking responsibility. But her first officer won’t be able to come back to Bolius, not without submitting himself to trial first. She tells herself he knew what he was doing.
“You weren't that cold. I can handle myself,” she tells Michael. “...And I messed up too, you know. I just don’t see the point in dwelling on it. You just… Try harder next time.” She realizes that she might have misspoken. Michael has little opportunities to try anything in that shoebox. “I only meant… Torturing yourself is not going to change anything.”
She told the same thing to Benjamin, many times, and she’s not sure if it ever resonated at all. She wasn’t even sure if they were still even friends, after what happened. At least Michael looks thoughtful over it.
“And you can… just do that?” she asks. “Just stop thinking?”
“Not always,” Kasidy admits. But that's not going to help Michael feel better, is it? Concrete solutions. “Well, sometimes… I try to imagine something that I want to think about, instead. Like a memory. Something I want to come back to.”
“Like what?” Michael asks.
Kasidy stretches her legs out in front of herself. “Like… The day I went to try out for the baseball league. I always wanted to play, but I was never good enough. I made my mother train me every day after school. She was really tired of me by then. But I just couldn’t hit that ball,” she laughs. “You know, sometimes I would do it, and everyone would cheer, but then, the next time would be even worse. But I went to the try outs… The coach was this amazing woman, Ms. Jefferson. All the kids were lined up, and she’d pitch them the ball. I was sweating like crazy… You’d think it was an entrance exam for a university.” Kasidy smiles. She remembers the burn of the two suns, one on her left, the other on her right, and the stinging of the purple nettle field on her calves. She remembers the Ms. Jefferson’s scaled face under her curly hair. “Finally, it was my turn. I grabbed my bat and lined up. She threw the first ball… I was wearing these yellow-tinted sunglasses. Got hit right into the nose.”
So quietly that Kasidy could have missed it, Michael inhales through her nose.
“But that was just the first ball. My mother was right across the field, and I looked at her. The second ball,” Kasidy smiles at the memory. “I hit. But just as she got ready to pitch the third one… I saw a girl across the field.”
She looks at Michael, who's listening intently now.
“Not only that,” Kasidy makes a dramatic pause. “She was the most beautiful girl in the world. You would not believe it… She was wearing cherry-shaped earrings. Her braids had cherry-shaped beads at the ends. Her backback…”
“Was cherry-shaped.”
“Obviously. And I stared off at her… When I looked back at the coach, she had already pitched! But, believe it or not… The ball bounced off right off my bat. I got it.” Kasidy remembers running back to her mother, throwing her hands up in triumph. “And to add to that… When the coach was giving me the practice schedule, the girl came up to me. She asked me if I could teach her how to bat like that.”
Michael is smiling slightly now.
“I was, of course, totally unqualified for the position,” Kasidy continues. “But I got a date out of it. We spent that summer together. Eventually, she moved away… But that summer. I won’t forget it. And I got better and better at baseball. Soon enough I was the coach’s assistant.”
Michael cocks her head at Kasidy. “That’s... lovely.”
Kasidy needs to be careful, now. “Do you have anything like that? Something you could think about?”
Michael sits down, as well. It’s not her earlier meditation stance, she crosses her legs. For a moment, Kasidy thinks she’s not going to speak.
“I grew up on Vulcan,” she starts. “There are these animals on Vulcan… They’re called sehlats.”
“I think I saw one. They’re these…”
“Big teddy bears? Yes. Every child wants one… And my brother and I weren’t exceptions. For some reason, our father never let us have one. I don’t know why. Maybe he thought the house was messy enough?”
She says the word “messy” with a sad look in her eyes. Kasidy guesses there is a story there. She doesn’t ask.
“But one day… We were coming back from school. Dragging our little PE kits behind, taking the long way. Suddenly, we hear this pitiful squeak… There isn’t any rain on Vulcan, but when it happens, it sweeps everything out. So the sewer system is extensive. And the noise was coming from one of these sewers. So my brother and I went to investigate…” Michael smiles wryly. “It was this little sehlat kit, sopping wet. Must have gotten separated from its mother and fallen in. So of course, we lift the gate… The sehlat was squeaking like crazy. At first, we tried to reach it. But it kept on dodging my hand. So of course, we decide to go in… First my brother, then me. I caught the kit – it was small enough to fit in my hand. So we go to come back up… And the moment my brother steps onto the ladder rung, it breaks off.”
Kasidy gasps. “Oh no.” She imagines little Michael, kind eyes and mischievous smile, like her own brother’s.
“Oh yes,” Michael nods. “And so did the next one. So we can’t get out. But as I said, these sewers were extensive. And there was a gate like that under our house. So we decided to get to it – a kilometer walk, or so we thought. Except of course, it’s a sewer, not a tourist path…”
Michael closes her eyes and breathes in, as if she were smelling the damp, algae-covered walls. “The first path we took, the sewer was too clogged to get through. We tried to dig through it. No success. The other path seemed fine. That is, until the sehlat started squeaking again, and we saw two eyes lit up in the dark. We weren’t the only thing in that corridor. We got out of there as fast as we walked in… This whole time, our mother was waiting for us to get home. Finally… The third path actually got us to where we meant to go – the basement of our house. It was a big property. The basement was hooked into the sewer system, and that ladder was better maintained.”
Michael’s little smile shows up again. “I will never forget the look on our father’s face, when – and he had already begun a call out to gather a search party for us – when we walked into the living room, dirty like little chimneysweeps, my brother holding that little sehlat.” Her smile turns wistful. “He smiled. And then gave us the worst, most logical dressing-down of our lives… but he also let us keep the sehlat.”
Kasidy smiles, and it must remind Michael of her own, because she collects her face again.
“You must have been a wonderful kid," Kasidy says.
“Thank you for teaching me your technique,” Michael says, primly again. “It’s not exactly Vulcan meditation, but… It’s been a while since I got to talk to someone.”
“Of course,” Kasidy whispers.
A sound, like a door opening, sounds off in the distance, and Michael jumps up. “You should go now,” she says.
Kasidy nods. “Listen,” she says, as she dusts herself off. “I’ll… Come back to you, okay?” And I’ll change things, she wants to add, but she doesn’t. She doesn’t want to scare Michael off, and somehow she knows that what she got to see – that careful smile, that sparkle of interest in her big eyes – is something she would like to see again.
“...I’d like that,” Michael says.
The forcefield buzzes between them. For a moment, Kasidy feels trapped. “I… I wish I could touch you,” she says. She extends her hand towards Michael, as if to show her she meant a handshake. But she looks at Michael’s lips.
Silently, Michael lifts her hand too. She holds it to Kasidy’s, the wall between them distorting both their faces.
The steps get closer. Kasidy throws one last glance Michael’s way and takes off running. She tells herself she hasn’t done anything wrong, but the little fearful tilt of Michael’s head makes her heart jump. Like two kids in a sewer, she thinks, as she takes long strides. If only that door would appear…
It does. The tell-tale blinking ripple beckons Kasidy. The normal light feels odd, now that she got used to the fluorescent lighting of this room. In one move, she slides forward, opens the door and slams it behind herself. Her fingertips tingle where she touched the shifting, changing matter.
The cell looks just like she left it. Dazed, Kasidy sits down at her cot and watches the door dematerialize, leaving solid wall in its place.
As soon as the rippling ends, her cellmate opens the door and climbs out. Shaking his wings off, he walks to the ceiling above Kasidy, and sits there, looking at her with interest.
“I just went through a door that isn't there, and met a woman,” Kasidy says. “She seemed to be in a lot of trouble.”
“Human woman?” The Xindi asks.
“Yes. Michael Burnham. Short hair. Dark skin, like me?”
“Impossible,” her cellmate judges, and walks onto the patch of the ceiling above his own cot. “There’s only one other Human here, and he is a man. But a lot of other species. Ever noticed that? See, that’s how I know you were a real pain in their neck. They actually arrested you.”
Kasidy doesn’t take the bait. “Very funny. I clearly saw her.”
“Maybe you were hallucinating,” he suggests helpfully. “Happens sometimes. Just don’t tell the counselors, okay? They’ll drug you blind.”
“I know what I saw,” Kasidy shrugs and puts her down at the pillow, even flatter than the one at DS9.
“Maybe… If you saw a moving wall again, it would be better to just ignore it,” the Xindi’s pincers twitch nervously. “You might… not like what you hallucinate.”
Kasidy lifts her head. “You’re hiding something,” she notices. “You know more about this than you let on.”
“Maybe,” he drags his tarsus above his many-eyed face. “Maybe I just don’t want you to go crazy in here.”
Curiouser and curiouser. Kasidy closes her eyes. Somehow, she knows she’s going to see Michael Burnham again. And maybe, perhaps, get her out.