Demanding Choice / Anya's Ultimatum
Plot Beats
The narrative micro-steps within this event
Salia confronts Anya with a sharp demand for companionship, her agitation collapsing the polite distance between ward and guardian as she demands, "Why won't you let me have a friend?"
The door SWISHES shut, sealing the space; Anya immediately asserts authority, framing her actions as duty to protect and reframing Salia's plea as dangerous rather than innocent.
Anya escalates from admonition to accusation, warning that those 'not your kind'—specifically the man Salia knows—will confuse her and pull her from duty; Salia snaps back, insisting the choice of seeing Wesley belongs to her alone.
Who Was There
Characters present in this moment
Controlled and stern with rising anger; underneath, anxious and paternalistic concern drives her inflexibility.
Anya shuts the door behind them, frames her resistance as duty, escalates into a direct threat to deliver Salia to Daled Four, then briefly lowers her tone to invoke destiny and soothe the girl.
- • Prevent Salia from being influenced or led away by outsiders.
- • Enforce the obligation/duty that binds Salia, preserving her role and responsibilities.
- • Outsiders are inherently dangerous to Salia's role and safety.
- • It is the protector's duty and right to constrain Salia for her own and society's good.
Not present physically; carries an implied judgemental and uncompromising authority in the exchange.
Referenced by Anya as the punitive custodial endpoint to which Salia can be delivered; acts as an implied instrument of removal and enforcement rather than an active speaker.
- • Serve as the destination for custodial enforcement should Salia be removed.
- • Preserve social/political order by receiving those deemed noncompliant.
- • Removal/exile to Daled Four is an appropriate response to breaches of duty.
- • Ordinary attachments must sometimes be sacrificed for political stability.
Openly frustrated and longing for intimacy; defiant on the surface while inwardly confused and uncertain about her obligations.
Salia confronts her protector, speaks defiantly and emotionally, insists on deciding whether to see Wesley, and ends the exchange uncertain about her fate and destiny.
- • Assert personal autonomy to choose her social relationships.
- • Maintain contact with Wesley and resist enforced separation.
- • I have the right to decide who I see and to form friendships.
- • Wesley (or the outsider) is not a threat and contact should not be restricted solely by duty.
Not onstage; characterized as misleading and tempting by others rather than shown with an internal state.
Absent physically but invoked by Anya as a corrupting presence—'he's confusing you'—functioning as the emotional object of Salia's desire and Anya's fear.
- • Implied goal: to form a relationship with Salia and pull her toward normal personal attachments.
- • Implied oppositional effect: to challenge or undermine the protector's control.
- • Salia should be free to make personal choices (as implied by being described as 'confusing' her).
- • Personal connection can supersede imposed duty (as perceived by Salia, inferred).
Objects Involved
Significant items in this scene
The door swishes shut behind Salia and Anya, physically converting a public corridor conflict into a private confrontation. It functions as the moment of containment that forces an intimate showdown and signals the removal of external witnesses or aid.
Location Details
Places and their significance in this event
The planet Daled Four is invoked as the remote, punitive destination Anya will use to enforce duty. It functions narratively as an offstage instrument of exile and institutional control, giving real weight to Anya's threat and clarifying the stakes of Salia's defiance.
Salia's assigned quarters serve as the private stage for the argument: a space designed for refuge and ceremony that here becomes claustrophobic and politicized. The location concentrates the emotional stakes by taking the diplomatic public into intimate quarters, where duty and desire are forced to confront each other.
Narrative Connections
How this event relates to others in the story
"Picard's orders to confine Anya and restrict transformations set the emotional and physical conditions that drive Salia to confront Anya in her quarters about friendship and agency."
"Picard's orders to confine Anya and restrict transformations set the emotional and physical conditions that drive Salia to confront Anya in her quarters about friendship and agency."
"Picard's orders to confine Anya and restrict transformations set the emotional and physical conditions that drive Salia to confront Anya in her quarters about friendship and agency."
Key Dialogue
"SALIA: "Why won't you let me have a friend?""
"SALIA: "Whether I see Wesley is for me to decide!""
"ANYA: "It is not! I raised you, I protected you... and I intend to deliver you to Daled Four!""