Scars Under the Uniform [TNG; Picard; PG]

[invoking_urania]

Title: Scars Under the Uniform
Fandom: Star Trek: The Next Generation/Deep Space Nine
Rating: PG
Genre: Vignette
Words: 493
Notes/Warnings: Missing scene-fic from DS9's pilot, Emissary. Done for the theme 'Mine are sinning hands' for 31days_exchange for tablyn24.
Summary: Benjamin Sisko left Jean-Luc Picard with a message for Starfleet and scars torn open.
Disclaimer: Star Trek copyright Gene Roddenberry/Paramount Pictures, and this derivative work was created without permission

Jean-Luc's first meeting with Commander Benjamin Sisko could have gone better. He had skimmed Sisko's service record, mostly in the interest in proving to himself that Starfleet had picked the best person to work with Bajor. He owed that to the Bajoran crew he had, and those Bajorans he had met. Not that Starfleet Command wouldn't have assigned Sisko over Jean-Luc's objections.

He'd known about the Saratoga -- even if he didn't have the names of the thirty-nine ships lost at Wolf 359 etched into his brain with the precision and indelibility of a laser scalpel, Sisko had several commendations listed, detailing his efforts in evacuating the crew. He'd expected awkwardness, the feeling that the room had sprung a slow leak and that the presence of those ghosts and the shadow of Locutus had pushed out all the oxygen, and neither he nor the other person would speak its name. It wouldn't be the first time -- Starfleet wasn't so big that he could avoid those who had lost someone there. Not without leaving the fleet.

That. He'd considered it, but it would mean losing something else to the Borg and he was damned if he was going to surrender what he had left to them.

Sisko had named it, and Jean-Luc had felt the man's anger and blame, and couldn't say if was blame at Locutus for the destruction of the Saratoga, or blame at the uniform Jean-Luc wore, the fleet it represented, that had placed the Sisko family into the hands of hostile space.

But, Wolf 359 and the Borg Cube that had made it to Sol System had shown nowhere was safe. For that matter, Bajor itself was its own testament to the hostility of the universe; the Bajorans hadn't had to go out into the universe for misfortune to come to them.

He weighed the PADD in his hands, the start of his missive to Starfleet about Sisko, the request to keep the search for a suitable commander open. Something was nagging him and he wondered what it was, besides his maudlin thoughts of the past.

It was this, he thought. Sisko had accepted the assignment, and brought his son all the way from Mars for it. Some of it could have been naivety -- there was a world of difference between a starbase in proper running order and the old, looted, refining station the Cardassians had left. Picard wondered if it was the same thing that had brought him back to the Enterprise, even after he had realized how affected he had been and how slow to heal it would be. Something had sent Benjamin Sisko into Starfleet, and whatever that something was, it was still there.

The letter would wait until the Enterprise had to report in. It need not be rushed. And, perhaps, it would not be needed.