She’d spent seven days on the ship. Seven days as the chief engineer. Seven days with a warp core that ran cleaner than it had in months. Seven days with a crew she was still getting used to. And, yes, seven days with Captain Cormus — whom she'd admitted to liking over cold tea in the captain’s mess. She hadn't lied about that. Still didn't lie about it. But that was also not the problem.

The problem was that she'd come to this place to rebuild something — and she knew from hard-won experience what happened when you allowed the personal to overshadow the professional before the foundation was even stable. And she had no intention of allowing that to happen again. For three years after, she'd worked to put herself back together again. She wasn't going to allow that to happen again.

She stood outside Zedd's quarters and knocked before she could run the probabilities any further.

He answered almost immediately and the door slid open revealing him in plain dark shirt, cargo pants, and a relaxed demeanor that changed when he picked up on something in her expression that indicated this was not a social visit.

"Come in," he said.

She entered and sat down in the chair across from the desk. He sat on the edge of the desk and regarded her for a few moments. One of the things about him she'd cataloged early — and continued to catalog — was that he did not fill silences with noise. Instead, he simply allowed them to exist as they existed.

"I need to say something and I want to say it clearly," she began. "I believe you deserve clarity, and I'm not great at letting things hang when I know what I really think."

"Alright," he replied.

"I like you," she stated flatly. "That is real. I don't plan on taking that away or pretending it doesn't exist." Her eyes remained locked on his. "And I want to maintain a professional relationship between us."

His expression did not fall apart into emotion and did not perform some form of composure either. He merely processed it in the direct manner he usually approached everything.

"Alright," he said once again — and this time the word had a slightly heavier weight to it; not heavy, but cautious — the caution of someone ensuring they fully understood what was being said before responding.

"I've been on this ship for seven days," she explained. "I came here to establish my engineering career after something that required me a long time to get over. I want to do excellent work. I want to be someone this crew can count on entirely and without any complications." She paused for a moment, looking at her hands. "I cannot be both the engineer and whatever else is developing between us right now. I have attempted that route before, and I understand how it ends — and I have no interest in jeopardizing what I’m creating here by allowing something to develop quicker than I can trust."

There was a pause of a few seconds. "You’re not saying it isn’t there," he observed.

"Not exactly," she said. "I’m saying it’s not something I can act upon right now…or possibly for a considerable amount of time.” She turned toward him. “This is the truth.”

He nodded slowly — not the nod of someone who’d been deflected or placated, but the nod of someone who’d received something genuine and was processing it. "I appreciate your candor," he said. "Truly.”

“I know you do,” Mei-Lin said. “That’s precisely why I chose to express myself so directly instead of simply backing away and relying on him to realize nothing unusual had occurred.”

A slight movement appeared in his expression that was near enough to a smile, yet not quite one. “I would have realized,” he said.

“Yeah,” Mei-Lin said.

Both sat in silence for a few moments longer, with only the steady hum of the ship — with its newly operational warp core — providing background noise.

“This doesn’t affect my approach to my job,” she declared. “I remain your engineer. I continue to be 100% committed to this ship, this crew...and none of that has an 'off' switch.”

"I know that too," he replied.

She rose from the chair, and he followed suit. The small space of his quarters had taken on a quality of neither comfort nor discomfort — but rather an unvarnished, honest atmosphere — with two people having expressed sincere thoughts to each other, and then standing in the wake of that expression with their professional relationship intact, and an acknowledged personal development lingering between them that both parties comprehended would likely remain dormant for now.

"Thanks," she said, which was not something she had intended to say and conveyed multiple meanings at once.