Chapter Text
It was easy enough to find her when Lorca came to this universe. Michael Burnham's infamy appears to be a universal constant. But it took a few months more to engineer the right circumstances to intercept her prison transport in a way that wouldn’t be too obvious.
Lorca wants to be there in the shuttle bay to see that first moment when she steps out into Discovery. He wants to see her face again. But there's no reason for Discovery's captain to be lurking in the shuttle bay--a place he goes only to board shuttles--when a prison transport is unloaded.
Landry tells him that the fight is coming before it starts; he tells her to bring Michael Burnham once she's won but before she kills someone, and watches the security footage of the fight as it happens. She doesn't move until the attack comes. She fights brutally but economically, knocking out each opponent as quickly as possible, no flourishes. He wonders if she would have killed her fellow convict if Landry hadn't intervened; the Michael he knew would have broken the man's neck without hesitation, even with Landry pointing a phase pistol at her.
The doors hiss open. He waits a moment to see if she'll speak and then says, "No matter how deep in space you are, you always feel like you can see home, don't you think?" What a lie. She's silent, and he adds, "Maybe it's just me."
She still doesn't speak, and he wants her to say something, so he tries, "Forgive the lighting, or lack thereof. A recent battle injury. There's nothing they can do if I want to keep my own eyes, and...I do. I have to suffer light change slowly. I like to think it makes me mysterious." He laughs softly at that and turns to see her. "No?"
It only takes a moment to see that the person in front of him, wearing Michael Burnham's face, is not the Michael he knows. His Michael was--unrestrained, splashy, trailing destruction, flush with the confidence of being the Emperor's daughter. His Michael feared nothing, cared about little, enjoyed inflicting pain even by Terran standards. Of course, his Michael is also dead. This Michael is tight, precise. He'd read that she was raised by Vulcans and he believes it; she wears that eerie Vulcan façade better than some of the Vulcans he's met. She wears the Starfleet prison jumpsuit like an officer's uniform.
It's surreal to say "Captain Gabriel Lorca," to introduce himself to this person wearing a face he knows so well. "Welcome to Discovery." And she still lets the silence hang there. His Michael was never silent. "Come in, don't be shy," he says, and beckons her toward the fortune cookies, eats one and offers her the bowl. She still says nothing and how he wants her to respond, wants her to say anything. "It was the family business a century ago." For this Lorca, maybe. His own family was an unbroken line of Terran captains. "That was before the future came and hunger and need and want disappeared. 'Course, they're making a comeback now, thanks to you."
She still doesn't respond. Of course she's heard that accusation before, but any normal person would have said something, would have shown some flicker of emotion. His Michael would have been proud, or would have punched him in the face if she’d thought it was an insult to be told she’d started a war.
“Michael Burnham. The Michael Burnham, on my ship.” Every time he pauses, he wants her to interject. “When I saw your name on the shuttle manifest, I reread your file, pulled up your court-martial transcripts, and…you’re something.” She hadn’t denied the mutiny at the court-martial, hadn’t tried to explain it.
“Captain, what am I doing on this ship?” There, at last, something.
“I guess you might have to ask that storm out there.” He glances at the window.
“I received no warning that I’d be transferred to another prison facility, which is customary. And my shuttle changed course halfway through the journey.”
“Maybe the universe hates waste.” Another attempt to be enigmatic, to draw her out. It doesn’t work.
“Sir?”
“The question is, what am I going to do with you?” Lorca can think of too many answers to that question even as he asks it. She holds his eyes until he looks away. “If I put you in the brig, someone’s going to die, and I don’t have the time for that kind of distraction.” He wonders how long it would take her to kill the other three; the Michael he knew would have started the fight, but he doesn’t think this one would. He walks around the desk and approaches her; as soon as he’s close enough to touch her, she takes two measured steps back, and he leans back against the desk instead of following. But he can’t stop himself from staring at her, trying to see the Michael he knew somewhere inside. After another long moment, he says, “You have training in high-level quantum physics, don’t you?” He glances away. “My engineers tell me it’s going to take three days to clear the lightning bugs out of the prison shuttle. I have something on deck that requires every trained mind available. You’re going to help us out.”
“No,” she says.
Lorca leans closer again. “Excuse me?”
“No thank you.” She holds his eyes again. “Respectfully, I owe a debt for my crime, and it’d be best…I’d prefer to serve my time without getting involved.”
He can’t help but laugh at that. “You think I care what your preferences are? Until your vessel’s repaired, you’ll be assigned to quarters and put to work,” and what a thought, that he can order her to do anything—to do something, that is. “I’m not a chauffeur, there’s no free rides on my ship.” Even if she won’t react, he feels his own emotion rising—anger, mostly, that he has wasted all this time and effort just to get this Michael-shaped shell. Burnham. He wanted her, the Michael that he knew, the Michael who would have laughed at the idea that he thought he was in charge. “You were once a Starfleet officer. I will use you, or anything else I can, to achieve my mission.”
“And what mission is that, sir?”
“To win the war, of course. Send everyone home. Safe and happy.” Send himself home, at least. Lorca wants her to speak, to argue, to come around the desk and shove him against it, dig her fingers into his uniform and the skin beneath, but she does nothing. His mouth twists and he tells her, “Dismissed.”
She turns and walks out the doors and he stares after her. He’d wanted Michael Burnham, the mutineer—who’d turned on her captain to start a war the way his own Michael had turned on her emperor—but either that’s been beaten out of her (and they don’t use agonizers in Starfleet prison, just long years of grim hard labor) or it was never really there to begin with. Saru says she’s dangerous. But in another universe, Michael ate Kelpiens for dinner, so he’s not about to trust Saru’s opinion.
And yet. The first night, Burnham steals a breath sample from her roommate to access the spores. He supposes she doesn’t have much to lose—life imprisonment is Starfleet’s worst punishment, no quick death in this universe—but when he sees that she’s done it, he lets himself hope a little.
When they lose the Glenn, he orders Stamets and Landry to board it. Stamets argues with him and he can feel Burnham watching him, feels that shiver that he remembers. He doesn’t let himself look at her until he tells Stamets, “Pick a team. Take Burnham with you.” He turns away.
“Sir!” Stamets says, and sometimes he wants to hurt that man. “It’s one thing to make her a data cruncher in my lab. But to integrate her into this project at such a deep level?”
He wishes that in this universe, he could instill fear with more than harsh words. But he turns and says, “I understand that you lost a friend today, but this is not a democracy. You understand?” He knows she’s watching, listening, assessing.
“Yes, sir.” Stamets hates him fairly frequently, he knows.
“Number One, you sailed with Burnham aboard the Shenzhou, What is your assessment of her abilities?” He looks from Stamets to Saru without letting his eyes stop on Michael--on Burnham.
Saru looks at her and then back at him. He keeps his own eyes on Saru. “Her mutiny aside, she is…the smartest Starfleet officer I have ever known.”
“Huh.” He can’t look at her. Instead he digs at Stamets, says, “And he knows you,” and walks away. She’s still watching him.
She survives the Glenn and the monster onboard. Walks into his office with maybe a hint of swagger and Lorca says, “Well, there she is.” And maybe it is her, just a little.
“Captain.”
“Michael Burnham, I would like to extend an official invitation to you to join the Discovery and be a member of our crew.”
“Sir, I’ve been court-martialed and convicted…” she starts.
“Don’t worry about Starfleet.” Never worry about Starfleet. “They gave me discretion to fight this war however I saw fit.” What a miraculous thing that had been, letting him persuade them to hand over an experimental ship to a disgraced captain. He waits for her to say yes, to claw at any chance she can get—
“I’m afraid I can’t take you up on your offer.”
Lorca can’t believe it. “Are you hell-bent on self-persecution?”
“That’s not it. Not all of it, anyway.”
“Why wouldn’t you stay?”
“Let me answer your question with a question. Why do you want me to stay?” And there, he sees Michael there, feels the jab and loves it. “I’m not here by accident,” she says, and finally, finally, she walks toward him. “I think you brought me here. I think you’ve been testing me,” and there’s an accusation in her tone.
“And why would I do that?” Of course he has, though he’d almost given up hope of her noticing. But he feigns confusion, just to provoke her.
“You’re developing some kind of experimental technology. Some kind of spore-based biological weapon.”
“Oh?” She used to take him apart when she spoke to him, break him down into pieces and then watch him try to reassemble them and he glories in hearing it now, even a pale imitation.
“The kind of weapon that is explicitly forbidden by the Geneva Protocols of 1928 and 2155.” He wants to laugh at that. Only in this universe would Michael Burnham care about the legality of a biological weapon. His Michael had never been a scientist, but she’d ordered scientists to create those weapons. “And you need someone to help you.” She’s so sure that she’s right and it’s thrilling to watch. “Enter me. A mutineer. Who intended to wage unsanctioned war on the Klingons. A trained officer who’s been banished from Starfleet and someone who would presumably do anything to get out of their life sentence in prison, including illicit weapons tests, like whatever went wrong on the Glenn.” She’s defiant, certain, so confident that she’s caught him out. Arrogance is one of the few emotions that Vulcans have never been able to hide.
“Enter you, indeed.”
“I’m not who you think I am,” she says, and it sounds like a warning from the universe. Maybe one that he should have expected. “Before I was a mutineer, I was a first officer in Starfleet.” She lifts her chin and stands straighter, proud. “I’ll never bear that rank or any other again. But it is who I am, and who I will always be. It is by the principles of the United Federation of Planets that I live. And by them I will most certainly die.” It’s bizarre to hear those words coming from a mouth he knows, to see the conviction in eyes that used to laugh at him.
But he says, “I know who you are, Michael Burnham. I know exactly who you are.” He lets out a breath. “I know you love being right. But I suspect that you hate being wrong even more. So let me stop you going down a path you’ll regret.” She lifts her chin at that, at the challenge in it.
Lorca takes her to Engineering, tells her to walk into the spore chamber, and tells her about the wonder they’re building. She’s suspicious, but she lets him talk about winning the war, watches the spores with a touch of wonder until he says, “Imagine the possibilities.”
He turns it off, walks to her, and stands in the doorway of the spore chamber. Burnham walks to him, still wary, as he says, “I did choose you, but not for the reasons you think.”
Their fingertips touch when she finally yields and takes the fortune cookie from his fingers, the first time they’ve touched for months. Lorca can’t tell if she feels it, but he holds on a little too long, just to prolong the contact. Her fingertips are hot—his Michael had always run hot too, even in the cold of space. Sometimes when she put her hands on him, he’d imagined that she would leave a handprint burned onto his skin, even wanted it. The Michael that he’d known was never still and rarely silent; here and now, Burnham watches him, fixes him with her appraising dark eyes and…waits. He doesn’t know what she’s waiting for—him to say something else? Offer more reasons for her to join him? Touch her again and find out how deep the differences go? What would she do if he did? The moment stretches on, as though she’s daring him to do something, until finally he has to say “Dismissed” and watch her walk out of the lab, every step measured and even. He wants her badly in that moment, surprisingly—her, not the Michael that he knew. He wants to make her laugh or yell or cry, wants to pull at the threads holding her together until she tears through them and he sees the woman who would mutiny to start a war.
Landry comes to him later to assure him that she’s gotten the monster on board. He likes her in this universe as he did in his own universe: blunt, loyal, not too concerned with conventional morality. Lorca had trusted her there, probably more than he’d trusted Michael. Her only real flaw is her dislike of Burnham, but that can be remedied. It’s not as though he can tell her that Burnham is the key to getting home. And maybe he’ll take Landry with them, if his Landry isn’t alive anymore. With a little persuading, she could fit in well enough. She tells him, “Anything, anytime, Captain,” and he hears the offer there, an hour’s pleasant distraction—but a distraction nonetheless, and he can’t afford those. So he tells her, “Dismissed,” and turns to the containment chamber, presses a hand against the containment field as the monster flings its body at him. He’s always been fascinated by dangerous things.