Farah had checked the roster three times before he risked the arboretum, and he was still listening for footsteps when he found the bench.
It sat half-screened by a stand of Betazoid lace-ferns, and he let his shoulders finally come down from around his ears.
Gamma shift.
The corridor hush.
No one to read, no one reading him.
Just the slow drip of the irrigation system and the scent of soil that had never touched a planet.
He pressed his palms flat to his knees and worked his breathing down until the cold weight eased.
“Ensign Farah?”
He turned.
Counselor Deanna Troi stood three meters away, a padd in one hand and something careful in her expression.
She wore off-duty civilian clothes deep blue, simple and her dark eyes were steady on his face.
“Counselor,” Farah said.
He stood.
“I’m sorry.
I checked the schedule.
I didn’t mean to intrude.”
“You’re not intruding.” She set the padd on the bench opposite his and folded her hands.
“I come here when I need quiet.
It seems you do too.”
The overlay stayed dark.
No panel resolved.
She was Unread, the way she’d always been a still room where everyone else was noise.
“Yes, ma’am,” Farah said.
Troi smiled, faint and warm.
“You don’t have to call me ma’am when we’re off-shift and alone with the ferns, Ensign.
Counselor is fine.
Or Deanna, if you’re comfortable.”
He wasn’t.
She was a senior officer and an empath and the one person aboard he could not afford to be wrong about because he had no gift to tell him how.
“Counselor,” Farah said.
She nodded, as if she’d expected it.
Gestured to his bench.
“May I?”
“Of course.”
Troi sat, leaving a careful meter of space between them.
For a moment neither spoke.
The irrigation drip counted time.
“You carry it very well,” Troi said quietly.
Something in him went very still.
“Carry what, Counselor?”
“Whatever it is you’re carrying.” She didn’t look at him.
Her gaze stayed on the ferns, gentle and immovable.
“That’s not a compliment.
People who carry things that well are usually the ones who never learned they were allowed to set them down.”
He had no answer that wouldn’t be a lie or a confession.
So he said nothing.
Troi let the silence sit.
Then: “I feel everyone on this ship, Ensign.
It’s like a room full of people all talking at once.
Always.
Farah’s pulse spiked.
He kept his hands flat on his knees.
“You’re the quiet,” Troi said.
She turned to look at him, and her expression was puzzled, curious, kind.
“I don’t know what to do with the quiet.”
“I’m sorry,” Farah said.
The words came automatic, wrong.
“I don’t mean to I’m not trying to block you.”
“I know.” Troi’s voice was soft.
“That’s what makes it strange.
You’re not hiding.
You’re just… still.
Like a room I can’t walk into.”
The comparison landed exactly where he couldn’t defend it.
A locked room.
The wound he’d never named to anyone, the steer he couldn’t let himself use, the foreign gift he wore like a second skin all of it sealed behind the mediator’s careful quiet, and she could feel the door.
“Ensign Farah!”
They both turned.
Sub-Lieutenant Elen Kaine stood at the arboretum entrance, bright-eyed and smiling, a data-slate tucked under one arm.
She wore the crisp gray of a junior diplomatic liaison, new enough that the uniform still looked like she was surprised to be in it.
“I’m sorry,” Kaine said, glancing between them.
“I didn’t mean to interrupt.
I can come back”
“It’s all right,” Troi said.
She shifted on the bench, making space.
“Please, join us.”
Kaine hesitated, then crossed to them with the careful energy of someone still learning how much room she was allowed to take up.
She nodded to Troi respectful, a little awed then turned to Farah.
“I’ve been looking for you,” Kaine said.
“I wanted to say thank you.”
Farah’s throat went dry.
“For what, Sub-Lieutenant?”
“For the question.” Kaine’s smile was open, unguarded.
“On the freighter.
The one about what we were afraid the Federation would ask us to stop being.
Commander Shendar told me later it wasn’t in the briefing script.
That it came from you.”
Farah felt Troi’s attention sharpen beside him, a warmth at the edge of his sight.
“It was just a question,” Farah said.
“It was the question,” Kaine said.
She sat on the far end of Troi’s bench, leaning forward.
“The commander was stuck.
We all were.
And you asked the thing no one else thought to ask, and it opened the room.
We got the safe passage because of it.”
“The commander is the one who made it work,” Farah said quietly.
“I just it seemed like the kind of thing people need to hear.”
Kaine shook her head, still smiling.
“You’re too modest.
Everyone on the freighter delegation knows your name now.
The ensign who listened.” She glanced at Troi.
“He’s good at that, Counselor.
Really good.”
“I’m beginning to see that.”
The overlay flickered, faint and cool at the edge of his sight.
New pressure: 0.12.
Farah made himself breathe.
Kaine’s gratitude was real, uncomplicated, dangerous.
She’d branded him in front of a senior officer as the source of an improbable outcome, and she had no idea what she’d done.
“I’m glad it helped,” Farah said.
He kept his voice level, warm.
“How are you settling in aboard?”
Kaine lit up.
The conversation turned her new posting, the strangeness of a starship after a freighter’s close quarters, the little rituals she was learning.
Farah asked the questions that opened her, let her talk, and felt Troi watching him do it.
After ten minutes Kaine stood, apologized again for interrupting, and left with a smile that said she’d found a friend.
The arboretum settled back into green silence.
“You do that very naturally,” Troi said.
Farah turned to her.
“Do what?”
“Make space for people.
Ask the question that lets them feel heard.” Troi tilted her head, studying him.
“It’s a gift.
The kind that costs more than people realize.”
He wanted to deflect.
Wanted to say something modest and true-shaped that would slide her attention past him.
But the Unread stillness of her the fact that he had no gift to tell him what answer she wanted made the deflection stick in his throat.
So he said the truth instead.
Quieter than he meant to.
“Sometimes it’s easier to listen than to be heard.”
Troi’s expression softened.
For a moment she didn’t speak.
Then she stood, collecting her padd, and looked down at him with something in her eyes he couldn’t name because he couldn’t Read and didn’t know how to ask.
“If you ever want to talk, Ensign,” Troi said, “my door is open.
Not because you have to.
Because I think you might be the kind of person who’s spent a long time making sure no one ever has to carry you.”
She left before he could answer.
Farah sat among the ferns for a long time after she was gone, hands pressed flat to his knees, warmer and more exposed than when he’d arrived.
The one honest relationship available to him was the one most likely to undo him.
He worked his breathing down and let the irrigation drip count time.
He had wanted, badly, to tell her something true.
He let himself know that much, and no more.
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