Lieutenant Cassia Cavendish [Lalor]

Personal History

Early Life

Cassia Cavendish was born on 5 April 2367, the second-youngest of five children and the second daughter of Joseph and Mira Cavendish.

Growing up in a large family did not necessarily mean growing up in a close one. Cassia's older siblings had already established their places within the family by the time she was old enough to become aware of such things, while her younger sister followed behind her. Cassia found herself occupying an awkward middle ground and was frequently left to her own devices.

Her parents were not overtly cruel, but neither were they particularly attentive to Cassia. As long as she was not causing serious trouble and her school results remained acceptable, they generally allowed her to manage herself. The freedom suited Cassia's independent nature, although as a child she occasionally found minor trouble simply because there was rarely anyone paying close enough attention to stop her.

As she grew older, Cassia became increasingly self-contained.

By high school she had largely withdrawn into her own world. Rather than seeking attention through misbehaviour, she began pouring her energy into academics and ice skating. She achieved excellent grades, but neither her parents nor her teachers showed much interest beyond what was expected of her.

Cassia responded by working harder.

Competitive Skating

Ice skating became one of the most important parts of Cassia's adolescence.

She proved exceptionally talented and eventually became an award-winning competitive skater. Her training schedule was demanding even by competitive standards: approximately three hours before school and another three hours afterwards.

The discipline required suited Cassia. On the ice, success or failure depended upon something she could understand. Hours of practice produced results. A mistake could be analysed and corrected. Improvement could be measured.

Her family rarely attended her competitions. Major school award ceremonies might persuade them to appear, but even significant achievements generally earned little more than polite acknowledgement.

Rather than abandoning skating, Cassia continued.

The pattern would repeat throughout much of her early life: when recognition failed to come, she did not stop trying. She simply learned to achieve for herself.

Education

Academically, Cassia was exceptionally capable.

She worked hard throughout high school and eventually graduated as valedictorian. Her academic record was strong enough that institutions such as Oxford or Yale were realistic options for her future.

Cassia chose neither.

By then several of her siblings had pursued Starfleet careers, and Cassia decided to follow them into Starfleet Academy. Whether part of her decision came from wanting to prove that she could equal — or surpass — what her older siblings had accomplished was something Cassia rarely discussed.

Whatever her reasons, once she entered the Academy she committed herself completely.

Starfleet Academy

Cassia's Academy years were characteristically quiet.

She made relatively few close friends and concentrated primarily upon her studies. Rather than following the normal Academy workload, Cassia effectively doubled hers, allowing her to complete the programme in only three years.

Flight Control quickly emerged as her strongest field.

Cassia combined strong technical knowledge with excellent coordination, concentration and spatial awareness. Her years as a competitive skater had already taught her how to anticipate movement, maintain precise physical control and continue functioning after making a mistake rather than becoming overwhelmed by it.

During her pilot examinations she achieved a score of 98 percent, later earning her Pilot Wings.

Cassia graduated in 2387, placing within the top two percent of her class.

Her older sister Mia graduated during the same year, finishing within the top five percent. Cassia's final scores exceeded Mia's.

The Cavendish family attended the graduation ceremony. As with many of Cassia's earlier achievements, however, their response was restrained. There was polite applause, but little indication that graduating near the top of Starfleet Academy after completing the programme a year early was considered anything extraordinary.

By then Cassia was accustomed to it.

She had entered the Academy largely self-reliant.

She left it even more so.

USS Excalibur — 2387–2390

Following graduation, Ensign Cassia Cavendish received her first assignment aboard the USS Excalibur as a Flight Control Officer.

Professionally, she performed well. Personally, she remained difficult for many of her crewmates to read.

Cassia had never been particularly demonstrative, and years of relying primarily upon herself had reinforced that reserve. She developed a reputation for being cold and businesslike, particularly among officers who knew she was half Betazoid and therefore expected her to be more openly emotional.

Shipboard counsellors noticed the same tendency and expressed concern about how little emotion Cassia appeared willing to display.

Cassia herself saw considerably less of a problem.

She did her job, she did it well, and she had little interest in manufacturing emotional openness simply because other people expected it from someone with Betazoid ancestry.

Her performance aboard the Excalibur eventually earned her promotion to Lieutenant Junior Grade.

By 2390, Cassia had established herself as a talented young Flight Control officer with a promising Starfleet career ahead of her.

She transferred to the USS Jean Luc that year.

It should have been another step forward.

Instead, the Jean Luc would become the dividing line in Cassia's life — the point after which almost everything she understood about herself, Starfleet and survival would change.

USS Jean Luc — 2390

In 2390, Lieutenant Junior Grade Cassia Cavendish transferred from the USS Excalibur to the USS Jean Luc, continuing her career as a Flight Control Officer.

The assignment would prove devastatingly short-lived.

The Jean Luc encountered a Breen battle fleet and became involved in a violent engagement. The ship suffered catastrophic casualties. Many of the senior Flight Control officers were killed, leaving Cassia serving from the battle bridge as the situation deteriorated around her.

The Captain was killed and much of the senior staff was either dead or incapacitated. With the Jean Luc badly damaged and options rapidly disappearing, the surviving Executive Officer ordered Cassia to set a collision course for the lead Breen vessel.

Cassia obeyed.

The Jean Luc never completed the manoeuvre.

Before the collision could occur, the surviving members of the crew were transported from their ship by the Breen. The Breen subsequently accused the Starfleet crew of having launched an unprovoked attack.

Cassia and the other survivors disappeared into Breen captivity.

Breen Captivity — 2390–2392

The surviving crew of the Jean Luc were transported to a remote L-class prison world.

It was a brutal environment dominated by ice, snow and freezing temperatures. There were no proper accommodations awaiting the prisoners. Shelter was limited, supplies were inadequate and survival quickly became more important than Starfleet procedure.

There were 258 survivors when the group arrived.

Sixteen died during the first night.

More followed.

The prisoners eventually took refuge in caves, attempting to protect themselves from the elements while surviving on the limited food and water supplied by their captors.

Normal shipboard structures quickly began to lose their relevance. The Jean Luc was gone. Rank mattered considerably less when every day revolved around finding food, staying warm and keeping the person beside you alive.

Despite her relatively junior Starfleet rank, Cassia emerged as one of the group's leaders.

The surviving Executive Officer selected her to act as his second-in-command among the prisoners. It placed a tremendous responsibility upon a young Flight Control officer who had never expected to find herself responsible for the survival of hundreds of people.

Cassia accepted it.

For the next two years, she helped keep the Jean Luc survivors together.

Survival

Captivity required Cassia to develop skills that no Starfleet classroom could adequately have taught her.

Food was scarce and what the Breen supplied was barely sufficient. Obtaining and distributing supplies could itself become dangerous. Cassia climbed frozen cliffs to retrieve food and, rather than repeatedly subjecting others to the same hazardous climb, improvised a winch that allowed supplies to be moved more safely.

She learned to assess risks differently. Equipment was repaired or repurposed rather than discarded. Calories mattered. Warmth mattered. Every resource had value.

The distinction between officer and crewman became increasingly irrelevant.

They were simply survivors.

Cassia nevertheless remained one of the people others looked towards when decisions needed to be made. Whatever fear or exhaustion she felt had to coexist with the knowledge that other people depended upon her continuing to function.

There were moments when survival seemed almost impossible.

Cassia continued anyway.

Eric Morris

In 2391, the number of survivors briefly increased rather than decreased.

A child, Eric Morris, was born among the prisoners.

His mother died following his birth.

The arrival of a baby created yet another challenge for people who were already struggling to feed themselves, but Eric became part of the community the survivors were desperately attempting to preserve.

The Jean Luc survivors had arrived as 258 Starfleet officers and crew.

Over time, they became something different: a group held together by necessity, shared suffering and the determination to ensure that as many of them as possible eventually went home.

Cassia helped carry that responsibility for two years.

Rescue — May 2392

Rescue finally came in May 2392 when the USS Keller located the prisoners.

Of the original 258 survivors who had reached the prison world, only 211 remained.

Their ordeal was over, but recovery was only beginning.

Cassia and the other survivors were severely malnourished. Prolonged starvation had resulted in extensive loss of body weight and muscle mass. Their digestive systems had adapted to receiving so little food that many could initially tolerate only fluids.

Simply feeding the survivors normally could not undo two years of deprivation.

Cassia required extensive medical care before she could begin returning to anything resembling her former physical condition.

The psychological consequences were considerably harder to measure.

For two years she had lived in an environment where people died around her, food could never be taken for granted, freezing to death was an everyday possibility and responsibility for other people's survival had become part of her existence.

Before the Jean Luc, Cassia had loved snow.

She had spent countless hours on ice because it was one of the places where she felt most comfortable.

The Breen prison world changed that relationship permanently.

It did not take ice skating away from her, but snow and cold would never again mean quite what they once had.

The Survivor Who Came Home

Cassia survived the Breen.

That did not mean the woman rescued by the Keller was identical to the young officer who had boarded the Jean Luc two years earlier.

She was physically weakened, severely underweight and psychologically guarded. Her already independent nature had hardened into an instinct to deal with problems herself. Being surprised or approached without warning became deeply uncomfortable. Nightmares followed her long after she left the prison world.

Most significantly, Cassia had learned exactly how much she could endure.

That knowledge was not always reassuring.

Nevertheless, 211 members of the Jean Luc crew came home.

Cassia was one of them.

And despite everything the Breen had taken from her, she would eventually choose to return to Starfleet.

Recovery on Earth — 2392–2393

Following her rescue by the USS Keller, Cassia spent weeks receiving intensive medical treatment.

Two years of starvation had taken an enormous physical toll. She had lost considerable weight and muscle mass, and her digestive system could not immediately tolerate normal food. Recovery therefore had to be gradual, beginning with fluids and carefully increasing her intake as her body adjusted.

Returning to Earth brought another uncomfortable discovery.

During the two years Cassia had been missing, her previous accommodation had been rented to someone else. Her possessions had been placed into storage after her biological family informed Starfleet that they had little interest in what happened to them.

For someone who had just spent two years fighting to return home, it was a stark reminder that "home" did not necessarily mean family.

Cassia eventually purchased a house in Napa Valley. One feature was particularly important to her: it was within walking distance of an ice rink.

Despite everything that had happened on the frozen Breen prison world, Cassia was not prepared to surrender skating to those memories.

Returning to Starfleet

Cassia's recovery involved more than rebuilding her physical strength.

She underwent extensive debriefings concerning the destruction of the Jean Luc, the Breen and the two years its survivors had spent in captivity. She also completed the necessary refresher training before Starfleet considered her ready to return to active duty.

Psychological recovery proved less straightforward.

Cassia remained reluctant to discuss much of what had happened during captivity. Nightmares persisted, as did her fear of the Breen and discomfort when people approached her unexpectedly.

Her instinct was often to cope through activity rather than conversation.

She nevertheless wanted to return to duty.

Starfleet eventually offered her several possible assignments.

Cassia chose the USS Ragnarok.

Part of the attraction was distance.

The Jean Luc survivors shared something few other people could completely understand, but being surrounded by people who had experienced the same nightmare also meant being constantly surrounded by reminders of it. Cassia wanted the opportunity to discover who she was outside the prison world.

In 2393, Lieutenant Cassia Cavendish joined the Ragnarok as its Chief Flight Controller.

USS Ragnarok — 2393–2396

Professionally, the Ragnarok represented an important step forward.

Cassia had gone from a Lieutenant Junior Grade Flight Control Officer aboard the Jean Luc to a department head. Her abilities as a pilot had survived captivity even if her confidence in other areas of her life had been badly shaken.

Physically, however, recovery remained incomplete.

Cassia continued struggling to regain the weight and muscle she had lost during captivity and remained on a carefully controlled diet intended to restore both.

She also continued living with nightmares.

Sometimes, when sleep became impossible, Cassia ran. Physical exertion gave her something immediate to concentrate upon and allowed her to exhaust some of the restless energy left behind by dreams she would rather forget.

It was aboard the Ragnarok that another part of Cassia's life unexpectedly began to change.

Nicholas Reece

Cassia first met Nicholas Reece aboard the Ragnarok in considerably less than graceful circumstances.

Nicholas had recently arrived aboard as the ship's new Chief Strategic Operations Officer when the two literally collided in a corridor.

It was hardly the beginning of an epic romance.

It nevertheless became one.

Cassia and Nicholas gradually became close, and friendship developed into a serious relationship. For Cassia, allowing someone that close was significant. She had spent most of her life learning not to depend too heavily upon other people, and the Breen years had only strengthened that instinct.

Nicholas became one of the exceptions.

Their relationship lasted for nearly three years.

For perhaps the first time in Cassia's adult life, she began to imagine a future in which she did not necessarily have to face everything alone.

Then Nicholas disappeared.

Separation

Nicholas left the Ragnarok abruptly.

For Cassia, there was no proper goodbye and no opportunity to understand what was happening. What remained was a note and a rose.

Then silence.

Cassia did not know the complete circumstances surrounding his departure. From her perspective, someone she had finally allowed herself to trust had simply left.

The experience reinforced some of Cassia's oldest instincts: people could disappear, relationships could end without warning, and relying upon someone else meant giving them the ability to hurt you.

Whatever feelings remained between them, Cassia had little choice but to continue without him.

Leave of Absence — 2396–2397

By 2396, it had been four years since Cassia's rescue from Breen captivity.

She still had not completely regained the weight she had lost.

Eventually, continuing to push through the problem was no longer enough.

Cassia took a leave of absence from Starfleet, spending approximately a year under the care of Starfleet Medical and Counselling.

For someone as independent as Cassia, stepping away from active service was not an easy decision. Her career had been one of the constants she could control, and accepting that she needed more time to recover meant acknowledging limits she had spent years trying to overcome.

It was nevertheless necessary.

The leave gave Cassia an opportunity to concentrate upon her physical health and the psychological consequences of experiences she had carried largely by herself since 2392.

By late 2397, Cassia was ready to return to Starfleet.

This time, however, she would not return simply as a pilot.

Her years of operational experience, combat flying, command responsibility and survival had given her something valuable to offer officers who were only beginning their own careers.

Lieutenant Cassia Cavendish accepted an assignment aboard the USS Elysium as an Academy Instructor on the Flight Track.

She could not have known when she accepted the posting that Elysium would bring Nicholas Reece back into her life.

Nor could she have known that something she believed had been lost forever was waiting to be found.

USS Elysium — 2397

In late 2397, Lieutenant Cassia Cavendish returned to active Starfleet service aboard the USS Elysium, accepting a position as an Academy Instructor on the Flight Track.

The assignment represented a change in direction for her career. Cassia was no longer responsible for flying a starship through every watch. Instead, she was responsible for helping prepare the officers who someday would.

She brought considerable practical experience to the role. Cassia had flown operational starships, experienced ship-to-ship combat, served as a department head, survived the destruction of a vessel and spent two years making decisions in circumstances where the normal rules of Starfleet service had ceased to apply.

She could teach cadets how a flight console worked.

More importantly, she understood what happened when everything around that console stopped working.

Elysium was supposed to be a new beginning.

It also brought Cassia face-to-face with a part of her past she had never completely resolved.

Nicholas Returns

Nicholas Reece was aboard Elysium.

Their reunion did not erase what had happened between them.

Cassia had spent years believing that Nicholas had simply walked out of her life. Nicholas, meanwhile, carried experiences and circumstances of his own that Cassia had not understood when he disappeared from the Ragnarok.

There was still love between them.

There was also hurt.

Rebuilding their relationship therefore required more than simply acknowledging that they still cared for one another. Both had changed during the years apart, and Cassia was no longer prepared to pretend that Nicholas's disappearance had not affected her.

Eventually, however, she allowed him back into her life.

Nicholas moved into Cassia's quarters aboard Elysium as the two began rebuilding their relationship and attempting to create a future together rather than continually living inside what had happened to them in the past.

For Cassia, that decision represented an enormous act of trust.

The Child They Believed Lost

Their reunion also forced Cassia and Nicholas to confront one of the most painful events in their shared history.

During the events involving the Thaih'ea, Cassia had been pregnant.

That pregnancy had been taken from her.

For years, Cassia and Nicholas believed their unborn child had been lost. There was no daughter to mourn in the conventional sense, no grave to visit and no life together from which memories could be drawn. There was simply an absence where a future had once existed.

It became another trauma they carried into their renewed relationship.

Neither of them knew the truth.

Their child had survived.

Rebuilding

Cassia and Nicholas began living together aboard Elysium, attempting to rebuild something that had once seemed permanently broken.

Their relationship was not a return to exactly what they had shared aboard the Ragnarok. Too much had happened to both of them for that.

Instead, they began creating something new.

For Cassia in particular, this meant allowing herself to rely upon another person again. Her instinct after the Breen, her family's rejection and Nicholas's earlier disappearance had repeatedly been to retreat into self-sufficiency. Reconciliation required her to resist that instinct.

Nicholas became part of her everyday life once more.

So did his family.

Cassia had long maintained that family was something a person could choose. Her growing connection with the Reece family gave that belief considerably more substance.

For the first time in years, Cassia was no longer merely constructing a life around her career and her ability to survive independently.

She was beginning to build a home.

Circinus

That fragile sense of stability was tested when the USS Elysium was catastrophically displaced into the Circinus Galaxy.

Cassia and Nicholas were asleep in their quarters when disaster struck.

They were thrown from bed as the ship suffered catastrophic damage and power failed around them.

Cassia's first reaction carried the weight of everything that had happened before:

Not again.

She immediately shifted into survival mode.

Among the items Cassia kept readily available in their quarters were environmental suits. She described keeping them there as a bad habit.

Nicholas disagreed.

Given Cassia's history, being prepared for the possibility that a starship might suddenly cease being a safe environment was hardly irrational.

The suits became immediately useful.

Once again, Cassia found herself aboard a crippled starship, far from home and facing a situation for which nobody aboard could have been adequately prepared.

There was, however, one enormous difference.

This time, she was not alone.

Season 6 — Survival

The Ice World

Following Elysium's catastrophic displacement into the Circinus Galaxy, the surviving crew were forced to abandon much of the crippled ship and establish a temporary settlement on the frozen world below.

For Cassia, the environment carried an additional significance.

She had survived an ice world before.

The Breen prison world had been a place of starvation, exposure and death, where Cassia had spent two years helping keep the survivors of the USS Jean Luc alive. Now she once again found herself surrounded by ice and snow, living in temporary shelter and watching a stranded Starfleet crew struggle to survive.

The similarity was not lost on her.

When Nicholas quietly asked how she was coping, Cassia gave him a characteristically understated answer:

“Keeping busy. And it's better than the last time I was on an ice world...”

She did exactly that.

Cassia kept busy.

Rather than withdrawing from the situation, she involved herself in the work required to keep Elysium's survivors functioning. When opportunities arose to return temporarily to the damaged ship and assist with the restoration effort, Cassia volunteered. Getting aboard Elysium gave her a break from the frozen environment, but it also allowed her to contribute directly towards getting everyone off the planet.

Camp Life

Cassia and Nicholas shared a section of the survivors' temporary accommodation and settled into the strange routine of living on the ice.

Their circumstances were grim, but their relationship gave Cassia something she had not possessed during Breen captivity: someone beside her who understood when she needed support without requiring her to explain every feeling.

Nicholas did not pretend that the situation was easy.

Neither did Cassia.

They simply continued.

Cassia also became increasingly connected to Nicholas's family. Liam, Samaire and Skylah were part of their immediate circle, and Cassia and Nicholas checked on them, brought them food and treated their welfare as part of their own responsibilities.

Listening to Nicholas recount stories of growing up with Kyle, Liam and Alexandria also highlighted the enormous difference between their childhoods. Nicholas remembered siblings who defended one another almost instinctively. Cassia had no equivalent memories of her own family, but she enjoyed hearing his.

The Reeces were becoming the kind of family Cassia had always believed could be chosen.

Experience of Survival

As conditions dragged on, Cassia recognised changes among the survivors that were painfully familiar.

Morale deteriorated.

People became exhausted, frightened and angry. Smiles and laughter became increasingly rare as the strain of their circumstances accumulated.

Cassia understood.

When she and Nicholas entered the canteen and found the atmosphere filled with sullen expressions and little sign of optimism, Cassia recognised that reaction for what it was.

“It happens. And it's normal.”

She had seen people pushed to their limits before.

She had been one of them.

Cassia therefore possessed a perspective few aboard Elysium could share. She knew that survival was not simply a matter of finding enough food or maintaining shelter. People under prolonged pressure could become angry, irrational or hopeless. Discipline and community could begin to fracture.

She also knew that surviving those feelings was possible.

Scouting the Frozen World

Cassia did not restrict herself to the relative safety of the camp.

She participated in scouting expeditions across the frozen landscape, travelling by snowmobile with Nicholas and other members of the crew.

Cassia helped prepare the expedition's route, uploading their planned path into the snowmobiles and checking the vehicles before departure. Once underway, she remained alert to environmental hazards, including the presence of ice wyrms, and reminded the group to remain close together.

There is a certain irony in Cassia becoming one of the people confidently leading others across an ice world.

The environment that had once been the setting for one of the worst periods of her life had not lost its ability to affect her. But neither did it control her.

She could still function.

She could still lead.

She could still laugh.

During one expedition Nicholas jokingly proposed naming a newly discovered glowing element “Cassianite” after her because it supposedly shared her beauty.

Cassia's response was considerably less romantic:

“Save it Romeo.”

Then she went back to collecting samples.

It was a small moment, but an important one.

Cassia was living on another frozen world, yet this experience was not simply becoming a repetition of the Breen prison.

This time there was affection.

There was humour.

There was family.

And there was genuine hope that they would leave.

Ten Months and Fourteen Days

The survivors remained on the frozen world for ten months and fourteen days.

During that time Elysium was gradually made habitable again. The warp core was restored, power and life-support capacity improved and damaged sections were repaired sufficiently for the surviving crew to return.

The cost was enormous.

By the time the settlement was abandoned, 851 members of Elysium's original complement had died. The temporary home that had sheltered the survivors was formally remembered as Camp Derani, and a memorial bearing the names of the dead was erected at the cave entrance.

Cassia left the ice world with the rest of the survivors.

It would be easy to describe the experience as history repeating itself.

For Cassia, it was something more complicated.

The Breen prison world had taught her how to survive when almost everything had been taken away from her. Circinus demonstrated how much had changed since then.

She was still capable of surviving.

But this time she had Nicholas beside her. She had people she considered family. She had work worth doing and a damaged starship that represented the possibility of going home.

The ice still carried memories.

It no longer owned them.

Season 6 — Memory Lane

The Child in Stasis

During the events later known as Memory Lane, the crew of the USS Elysium recovered several children who had been held in stasis by the Thaih'ea.

Among them was a nearly one-year-old Human/Betazoid infant.

Medical examination revealed that the child's genetic profile matched two members of Elysium's crew.

Cassia Cavendish and Nicholas Reece.

Cassia and Nicholas were summoned to Medical without initially understanding why.

When Doctor Sthilg explained that the infant was biologically theirs, Cassia struggled to process what she was hearing. The child should not have existed — at least not according to everything Cassia had believed for years.

Then the truth began to fall into place.

The Thaih'ea had not simply ended Cassia's pregnancy.

They had taken it.

Cassia realised that the pregnancy she and Nicholas had believed lost had instead been removed, brought to term and the resulting child kept in stasis.

The revelation hit her with overwhelming force.

For years, Cassia had mourned a child she believed she would never meet.

Now that child was lying in front of her.

A Daughter

Cassia's first response was disbelief.

The situation felt impossible enough that she questioned whether she might be dreaming. Shock quickly gave way to tears as the reality of what had happened finally became unavoidable.

She and Nicholas had a daughter.

Not an abstract possibility.

Not simply the memory of a pregnancy.

A living child.

The discovery brought enormous joy, but it was inseparable from anger and grief. Cassia and Nicholas had been robbed of the pregnancy, the birth and nearly the first year of their daughter's life.

There would be no recovering those moments.

What they could do was decide what happened next.

Bryleigh Emma-Rose Reece

Cassia and Nicholas named their daughter:

Bryleigh Emma-Rose Reece.

Her date of birth was established as 3 February 2397.

By the time she was reunited with her parents, Bryleigh was approaching her first birthday.

Cassia and Nicholas were suddenly confronted with the practical reality of parenthood.

Neither had prepared for the arrival of an almost one-year-old child. Their quarters had not been arranged for a baby. They did not have the clothing, equipment or supplies normally accumulated during a pregnancy and infancy.

They had gone into Medical as a couple.

They emerged as parents.

Standing outside Sickbay with Bryleigh, both were acutely aware that their lives had changed in the space of a conversation.

Family

The wider Reece family quickly became part of that transition.

Kyle Reece arrived while Cassia and Nicholas were still trying to understand their new reality, immediately becoming part of Bryleigh's extended family.

The difference between Cassia's childhood and what was forming around Bryleigh was difficult to miss.

Cassia had grown up surrounded by relatives while often feeling largely unnoticed.

Bryleigh entered her parents' lives surrounded by people determined to make room for her.

For Cassia, that mattered enormously.

A New Home

Cassia and Nicholas moved into family quarters so that Bryleigh could have a home suited to their new circumstances.

From that point forward, decisions that had previously involved only the two of them suddenly had a third consideration.

Bryleigh.

Cassia had spent much of her adult life learning how to survive catastrophe, captivity and loss.

Parenthood presented a different challenge entirely.

She embraced it.

Nicholas's Proposal

The discovery of Bryleigh also changed Cassia and Nicholas's relationship.

They had already spent considerable time rebuilding after their separation and reunion. Now the child they had once believed lost was part of their lives again.

Nicholas asked Cassia to marry him.

Cassia accepted.

Their engagement was therefore not simply a return to the relationship they had once shared aboard the Ragnarok.

It was a decision to build something permanent from everything they had survived together.

By the end of Memory Lane, Cassia was no longer merely Nicholas Reece's partner.

She was his fiancée.

And together, they were Bryleigh's parents.

Motherhood

Motherhood rapidly became one of the most important parts of Cassia's life.

The circumstances of Bryleigh's arrival inevitably made her protective. Cassia had already lost her daughter once — or at least believed she had — and discovering that Bryleigh had instead spent the earliest part of her life in Thaih'ea custody made that protectiveness considerably stronger.

Cassia was nevertheless determined that Bryleigh would not spend her childhood defined by what had happened to her.

The months they had lost could not be restored.

Cassia could control what came afterwards.

She intended Bryleigh's life to be filled with affection, security, encouragement and the certainty that her parents wanted her.

In many ways, Cassia was determined to give her daughter exactly what she herself had so often lacked growing up.

Season 6 — Eden's Reach

Learning to Be a Mother

The discovery of Bryleigh changed Cassia's life almost overnight.

There had been no months of preparation, no gradual adjustment during pregnancy and none of the usual progression through the first year of a child's life. Cassia and Nicholas had suddenly become parents to a daughter who was already approaching her first birthday.

They adapted.

Cassia threw herself into motherhood with the same determination she had once applied to skating, flying and survival. The difference was that this was not something she approached as another duty to master.

Bryleigh became the centre of her world.

Cassia was acutely aware that she and Nicholas had missed months of their daughter's life through no choice of their own. She could not change that, and she refused to allow guilt over those lost months to consume the years they still had ahead of them.

Bryleigh would know she was loved.

That was something Cassia could control.

A Different Childhood

Cassia's own upbringing inevitably influenced the mother she wanted to become.

She knew what it was like to achieve something remarkable and look towards the people who should have been proud of her only to receive polite acknowledgement. She knew what it was like to grow up in a large family and nevertheless feel as though she largely had to manage by herself.

Bryleigh would not experience that if Cassia could help it.

Cassia wanted her daughter to have a childhood filled with affection, encouragement and memories of parents who were actually present.

After everything the Thaih'ea had already taken from them, Cassia was particularly determined that Bryleigh's future would be joyful rather than defined by the circumstances surrounding her birth.

That determination brought out Cassia's protective side considerably.

Nicholas was no less protective.

Together, they quickly developed the instincts of parents who had already lost their child once and had absolutely no intention of allowing it to happen again.

Bryleigh's First Birthday

Bryleigh's first birthday fell on 3 February.

The family marked it with a small celebration.

For Cassia, the occasion carried considerably more meaning than a conventional first birthday. She and Nicholas had not been present for Bryleigh's birth. They had missed her first months and many of the milestones that should have belonged to them as a family.

Her first birthday was something they could be there for.

Cassia made certain it was remembered.

Samaire helped take numerous holophotographs during the celebration, preserving moments Cassia was determined would never be lost to them again.

For someone whose life contained so many memories associated with survival and loss, Cassia was beginning to accumulate a very different collection.

Family memories.

Academy Instructor and Mother

Motherhood did not mean abandoning Cassia's career.

She continued teaching the Flight Control track for Elysium's Academy personnel, adapting her working life around Bryleigh rather than treating the two parts of her life as incompatible.

At times, that meant Bryleigh accompanied her.

The infant could be found secured in a baby carrier while Cassia worked or happily occupying a playpen in her mother's office while Cassia taught.

It created an unusual Academy environment, but Cassia was entirely comfortable with it.

She could be an instructor and a mother.

She did not have to choose.

Cassia's teaching continued to draw upon years of operational experience. She was not simply teaching cadets which controls to press. Her own career had demonstrated how quickly routine Flight Control operations could become combat flying, emergency navigation or survival.

Circinus had only reinforced that lesson.

The Bond Between Mother and Daughter

Cassia's Betazoid heritage also gave her an unusual connection with Bryleigh.

At Bryleigh's young age, this did not amount to anything resembling a telepathic conversation. Cassia could, however, sense some of her daughter's basic emotional states — whether Bryleigh was happy, upset or hungry.

There were indications that Bryleigh might possess stronger telepathic potential than expected from her Human and Betazoid ancestry.

Cassia and Nicholas wondered whether the Thaih'ea might somehow have influenced that development.

There was no confirmation that they had.

For Cassia, speculation about what Bryleigh might eventually be capable of mattered considerably less than the child herself.

Whatever abilities Bryleigh developed, she was their daughter first.

Looking Towards the Future

For perhaps the first time in a very long time, Cassia was able to think about the future without the thought immediately being framed by survival.

She and Nicholas even discussed the possibility of eventually having more children.

It was not an immediate plan. Their conversation placed that possibility several years into the future. Both wanted the opportunity to enjoy the time they had with Bryleigh and experience the stages of her childhood they had fought so unexpectedly to regain.

For now, Bryleigh was enough.

Eden's Reach

Eden's Reach offered the family something precious: time together away from immediate catastrophe.

Cassia and Nicholas spent time on the beach with Bryleigh, enjoying the sort of ordinary family experience that had once seemed impossible.

There were no Breen prison caves.

No crippled starship.

No frozen survivor camp.

No Thaih'ea laboratory.

Just Cassia, Nicholas and their daughter.

For Cassia, that ordinary life was extraordinary.

She had spent years proving that she could survive almost anything.

Now she was discovering that surviving was not the same thing as living.

With Nicholas and Bryleigh, Cassia finally had something she had spent much of her life without.

A family that felt like home.

Season 6 — Conglomerate

The Galatonian Attack

Elysium's time in the Circinus Galaxy continued to demonstrate that surviving one crisis offered no guarantee that another would not follow.

When the Galatonians attacked Elysium, breaching pods punched through the ship's hull on multiple decks and released cybernetically enhanced creatures referred to as Hounds.

Cassia was on Deck 8 at the time.

She had been reviewing training material with Operations officers Sapphire Morgan and Samaire MacBride-Reece. The three women were preparing to get coffee when the alarms sounded and the ship shook beneath them.

For a moment, Cassia froze.

Sapphire grabbed her arm and pulled her towards the nearest weapons point.

Cassia accepted a phaser rifle, but her hands were shaking.

When Sapphire checked on her, Cassia forced out the words:

“I am fine.”

She was not entirely fine.

She was frightened.

But Cassia had learned a long time ago that fear did not prevent someone from functioning.

Samaire confirmed that the nursery and school had been locked down and protected.

For Cassia, now the mother of a young daughter, that information mattered enormously.

The children were safe.

The people standing between the attackers and those children now had a job to do.

Cassia steadied herself, raised her rifle and looked towards the approaching Hounds.

“Ladies, let us clean house.”

Then she opened fire.

Fighting on Deck 8

Cassia, Samaire and Sapphire engaged the Hounds as they advanced through the corridor.

Their initial phaser fire brought one creature down, but the survivors possessed forward-facing personal shields capable of stopping direct attacks.

One of the creatures fired a projectile towards the group.

It missed Cassia's head by only centimetres.

The explosion left her temporarily stunned and bleeding from her left ear, but she remained conscious and in the fight.

Lieutenant Joshua Young arrived from a side corridor and discovered something crucial: attacks from the flank could bypass the Hounds' forward shields.

The group now had a way to fight back.

Their respite was brief.

A Galatonian handler threw an explosive device towards them, forcing Samaire to grab Cassia and push her towards a nearby Jefferies tube.

The four officers escaped into the tube moments before the device detonated.

They were not safe for long.

The Jefferies Tubes

A Hound tracked the officers to their hiding place.

It tore into the Jefferies tube hatch with its heated cybernetic claws.

Samaire was closest.

One of those claws caught her left leg, opening a severe laceration nearly a foot long. The intense heat of the weapon cauterised the injury almost immediately.

Samaire screamed.

Cassia reacted.

She raised her rifle and fired directly into the creature's open mouth, bypassing its protective shielding and driving the blast through the soft tissue and into its brain.

The Hound went down.

Cassia immediately ordered Sapphire and Joshua to get Samaire moving towards Medical.

There was no hesitation now.

Someone she cared about was hurt.

Cassia concentrated on getting her out.

Another Explosion

Their escape through the Jefferies tubes was interrupted by another Galatonian explosive.

The device fell down the ladder shaft beneath them and detonated.

Sapphire was thrown into the bulkhead and fell down the ladder, landing unconscious on the platform below.

Cassia had only moments to react.

She threw herself over Joshua and the already badly injured Samaire.

The concussion wave struck them.

Cassia lost consciousness.

When she came around, her first reaction was pain.

Her second was to check whether Joshua was all right.

Then she went back to work.

Cassia helped recover Sapphire, pulling the unconscious officer by the arms while Joshua carried the barely responsive Samaire.

Together they made their way to Medical.

Injuries

Cassia had not escaped the attack unharmed.

The near impact from the Galatonian projectile had damaged her hearing, and the subsequent explosion in the Jefferies tube had left her with a concussion.

Medical examination identified a ruptured tympanic membrane, accompanied by vertigo, nausea and temporarily impaired hearing.

Even while being treated, Cassia's attention repeatedly returned to Samaire and Sapphire.

She wanted to know whether they were alive.

They were.

Cassia was ordered to remain under observation while the damaged membrane was regenerated and her equilibrium recovered.

Several hours later, she woke to find the world still sounding strangely muffled.

Her first question was again about the other women.

Both were stable.

Only then did Cassia begin to relax.

Survival Together

Cassia, Samaire and Sapphire remained together in Medical during their recovery.

They had all been injured differently, but they had survived the same attack.

Cassia's hearing gradually returned.

Sapphire recovered from her concussion and shoulder injuries.

Samaire began regenerating the extensive damage to her leg.

Their conversation eventually returned to humour — the dark, exhausted humour of people relieved to discover that everyone beside them was still breathing.

When Samaire quietly observed that they had made it, Cassia agreed.

But she also admitted something significant:

“I don't think I'll ever forget those things.”

There was no reason she should.

Cassia had survived another experience capable of leaving memories behind.

The difference was that this time those memories were not hers alone.

What Conglomerate Shows About Cassia

The Galatonian attack demonstrated something important about the woman Cassia had become.

She was frightened.

Her hands shook.

She briefly froze when the alarms began.

None of those reactions made her incapable.

Once the immediate shock passed, years of experience asserted themselves. Cassia fought, recognised changing tactical circumstances, protected injured crewmates and continued moving despite her own injuries.

Most significantly, when the second explosion came, Cassia did not protect herself.

She covered Samaire and Joshua with her own body.

That instinct says considerably more about Cassia than describing her simply as courageous ever could.

The young woman who once learned that she could depend only upon herself had become someone willing to place herself between danger and the people she considered family.