Chapter Text
The days pass and they inch forward. Specialist Chrian tells him that hitting anomalies at warp five is damaging the warp drive, and he orders their speed dropped to warp four. If they’re attacked, he wants the drive to be able to give him warp five. They strike so irregularly that he has to begin ordering regular six-hour stops to ensure that crew can sleep without being flung out of their beds. He tries to time the stops to coincide with systems that contain planets to scan them. Sometimes he allows away teams to fly down and take samples, though he never goes again himself. Burnham goes often, and he has to remind her to sleep. She’s scrupulously polite to him, even as he hears her voice full of excitement talking to other people when he walks past the research labs.
Lorca removes Tyler as chief of security even as he insists that he’s all right and orders him to see a doctor regularly. Lorca promotes an Andorian in his place, Elan, and finds that he enjoys her brash attitude, including her lengthy complaints about the scientists on every away mission. He likes Andorians.
After two painfully slow weeks of travel, Lorca goes down to the brig to see the Klingon—L’Rell, she’s called—and brings Saru and Burnham along. Tyler he leaves safely in quarters, knocked out with whatever the doctors gave him to stop his nightmares. In front of the cell, he turns to Saru and Burnham and asks, “As my first officer, and as our resident xenoanthropologist, what do you advise we do with this prisoner?” L’Rell can hear them, but she can’t speak through the containment field.
Saru looks confused at the question. “Sir? She is a prisoner of war. Protocol dictates that we return to Federation space and then, when the war is over, return her to her people.”
“Burnham?” he asks.
“I agree with Mr. Saru,” she says. “Federation law is clear.” She looks hard at him and he feels it like a gut punch. “You didn’t ask us down here for a legal lesson.”
Lorca turns away from her and stares through the containment field. “And what…purpose…does she serve us here?”
“Captain, I don’t believe that’s part of the consideration,” Saru protests.
Burnham can read him. She’s too able to read him. “She can provide information about the Klingons,” she says slowly.
“The war is over, or it will be soon.” He lets his fingers just brush the comforting shape of the phaser at his waist. “Go on.” She’s silent. “Because as far as I can tell, we’re feeding and sheltering a creature that tortured me, that tortured one of my crew for months”—and there, L’Rell reacts to that—“and has killed dozens of souls, if not hundreds, during the war.” He tilts his head and speaks directly to the Klingon. “And Lieutenant Tyler would be better for it.” The Klingon starts forward at Tyler’s name, stops only an inch from the containment field. She doesn’t try to speak.
Saru’s threat ganglia are fluttering madly. “Sir, are you suggesting that we—”
“It would be clean,” Lorca says. “Quick. Better than anything the Klingons gave our people.”
“Federation law forbids the execution of prisoners of war,” Burnham says. Her voice is measured, a stark contrast to Saru’s increasingly strident tones.
“We’re not in Federation space.” He wants to do it, badly. Every instinct in him rebels at keeping her here. Tyler should do it himself, but he can’t, and he’ll recover when she’s gone. “Explain the logic of keeping her, Burnham.” He doesn’t look away from L’Rell.
“The logic is in adhering to the law.” Burnham stays very still as she speaks. He wonders if she can tell how very close he is to shooting the Klingon. “Federation law removes personal feelings from the treatment of prisoners of war. There is no room for moral considerations in any particular case.”
“Very Vulcan of you,” Lorca says. He walks closer to the containment field and consciously opens the hand that has begun to close around the phaser grip. He forces himself to cross his arms to reduce the temptation.
Burnham tells him, “I believe it was humans who put that in. The Federation knew that captains would struggle with exactly this dilemma and lifted that burden from their shoulders.” She’s still speaking very carefully, as though the wrong inflection or the slightest movement will make him draw and fire. “And, logically, an enemy today may be an ally in the future. Mercy leaves more opportunities.”
Lorca takes a step back from the containment field. He pulls out his phaser and, even as Saru shouts in protest, fires twice. The containment field absorbs each blast, flashing green around the impact point. L’Rell never moves.
He lowers the phaser. “Don’t worry, Mr. Saru. Phaser fire won’t penetrate a containment field.” Lorca feels some of the tension relax out of his shoulders. It felt good to shoot, even if he knew it wouldn’t hit her. “Let me know if she ever does do anything useful.” He turns and leaves the brig.
He walks down the hallway, turns a corner, and leans back against the wall. Burnham must have followed him, because he hears her say, “What was the purpose of that display, Captain?”
Lorca laughs. “That display?”
“It was obvious that you wanted to kill her. It was equally obvious that you weren’t going to.” She’s giving him more credit than she should. “Was your intent to frighten the prisoner?”
“No.”
“Was it for some kind of emotional gratification?” Burnham pronounces the words like they’re something distasteful.
“Have you ever wanted to kill someone, Burnham? I don’t mean destroying a ship in battle. I mean knowing that you wanted to end the life of a particular individual.” She doesn’t answer. “Then you wouldn’t understand.”
“T’Kuvma,” she says softly, unwilling to admit it. “I wanted to kill T’Kuvma.”
“And you did kill him.”
“Yes.” She sounds almost ashamed. “If I hadn’t given in to that, we could have prevented the war.” Burnham stares at the wall next to his head. She won’t meet his eyes.
Lorca scoffs at that. “You knew the war was coming before the Klingons attacked,” he reminds her. “They wanted the war. Taking T’Kuvma alive wouldn’t have changed that. You know that.”
“It could have helped.” Her voice is stronger now. “And if the algorithm alone doesn’t win the war for the Federation, bringing L’Rell back could give us a starting point for negotiations. It could even build a relationship between the Federation and the Klingon Empire when the war is over.”
“The Federation is anathema to Klingons. You should know that by now.” Strange to think he had something in common with the Klingons—but more and more it seems like the Terran Empire isn’t much different, in the ways that mattered. “Burnham,” he says, “I thought I’d been clear. As far as I’m concerned, the only thing you did wrong at the Battle of the Binaries was fail to see your mutiny through.” Too late, he realizes what’s implicit in that—that she should have done whatever was necessary to subdue her captain sufficiently.
Burnham stares directly at him. How she clings to that truth, that she started the war, that she was wrong to try to defy her captain. It must have kept her warm through those months in prison, her certainty that she deserved what she was suffering. “Captain,” she says, and can’t seem to finish it.
“I know who you are, Michael Burnham.” He didn’t, the first time he said it, but he thinks he’s right this time. “You would never let me do something that you thought was wrong.”
She doesn’t deny it, Burnham the mutineer. Oh, she won't knock him unconscious and take control of the ship—she’s learned that lesson—but she'll do what she always does, talk him through step-by-step until she’s cornered him with logic, checkmate in three, and then, if he still doesn’t yield, she'll look at him with her steady dark eyes and say, “Unless this is about me,” and he will. “No,” she says finally. “I would not.”
Lorca wants her very badly in that moment, to touch her, to tell her—but she steps back, turns, and starts to walk away. “Burnham,” he says, and she stops. “Don’t let Tyler come down here again.”
Burnham doesn’t turn back to him or ask him how he knows. “Yes, Captain,” she says, and keeps walking.
* * *
That same duty shift, Cadet Tilly calls him down to engineering to update him on the status of the spore drive, and of the smoke creature living in the mycelium cultivation bay. When he arrives, she says, “Sir, I don’t know if this is good or bad, but we do have some changes.”
They’ve taken Stamets into the bayitself. He stands a few feet inside—standing of his own volition is progress, since the last time Lorca saw him, he was strapped into a chair. There are sensors placed all over his body—temples, carotid, wrists, tops of his bare feet—and Culber is watching him closely a few feet away, looking back and forth from his partner to a PADD. The smoke is flowing in ribbons around Stamets, curling around his outstretched arms, his waist, his ankles, and when he moves his hands, it follows. It’s still glowing very faintly, but Lorca can see Stamets’ skin light up whenever the smoke skims across it.
Burnham and Tilly are standing further back; Tilly has set up some kind of makeshift station and is scrolling through data as Burnham holds a tricorder.
“Report,” Lorca says softly.
“The spores in the spore drive room seemed to be helping a little,” Tilly tells him, “so I thought that bringing Lieutenant Stamets into the cultivation bay might make a difference. As soon as we brought him in, this happened.” She gestures at the smoke. “It came over and sort of covered him like a blanket, and all of a sudden he walked forward on his own. His vital signs and brain function have been improving rapidly ever since.”
Stamets turns to face them at the sound of her voice and his eyes are clear for the first time since the jump. “Hi, Captain,” he says, and smiles beatifically. “Isn’t it beautiful?” Bright light blooms across his cheek.
“It is, Lieutenant Stamets.” Lorca feels almost fond of him. “We still don’t know what that thing is?”
Burnham speaks for the first time. “No. It registers very minimally on our scans and only based on its energy output. There’s no indication that it’s an organic life-form.” If she’s rattled by their earlier conversation, she doesn’t show it.
“Amazing.” He wants to walk over and touch it, but he can’t risk disrupting whatever it’s doing to Stamets. “Good work, both of you.” He watches Stamets for a little longer and then realizes something, touches the corner of his eye very lightly.
Burnham sees it. “Sir?”
“That light, where it touches Lieutenant Stamets. It should hurt my eyes. It doesn’t.”
She walks over to him with the tricorder and says, “Look at me. Keep your eyes open.” She reaches over and, with the barest pressure, touches his chin to tilt his head down. Lorca stares at her, mesmerized as she slowly scans his eyes. He remembers letting her hold his eyes open on the bridge for his eyedrops and can’t believe he allowed it. The pinprick of green light from the tricorder does hurt his eyes, but he keeps them open and fixed on her face. When she’s done, she looks up from the tricorder and their gazes lock. He hears the tiniest inhalation and then she says, “Close your eyes.”
He does.
“I’m going to touch you now,” she warns, and even knowing it’s coming, he can’t help a flinch when her hand touches his temple. She must be scanning his eyes, but he can’t tell how time is passing, can only feel the heat of her fingers and smell oil from the spore drive and sweat beneath it and Starfleet-issue soap. It feels endless, until she finally says, “You can open your eyes now,” and takes her hand away.
Lorca opens his eyes very slowly against the light of the room. Burnham has stepped back, away, and is looking at the results of the tricorder scan. “Well?”
She sends the results to Tilly’s station. “We have a massive amount of data to examine regarding the creature’s impact on both Lieutenant Stamets and the mycelium spores themselves,” she says. “I’ll ask Dr. Culber to look at these results and incorporate them into his report.”
He can almost hear the “Dismissed” in her voice—but it’s not surprising, she was Georgiou’s Number One, she would have been able to dismiss anyone but Georgiou herself. “All right. I want regular reports on Lieutenant Stamets’ condition as well.” He doesn’t know what he’ll do, when or if Stamets fully recovers. They should jump back, as quickly as possible. He doesn’t like flying half-blind out here, stumbling from anomaly to anomaly, patching the ship back together each time. Saru is working on an algorithm to predict the appearance of anomalies and allow them to navigate around them, but there’s no guarantee that it will work. Even with the regular stops, most of the crew is exhausted, sleeping poorly, jumpy.
But. They’re free of Starfleet, out here. He’s free. Some of the crew—Burnham, but others too—enjoy exploring, even weary from the war. He wonders how she’ll feel when they finally find an inhabited system. And Culber would try to kill him if he ordered Stamets to jump again. Lorca doesn’t want to have to kill Culber, and he probably would if Culber tried to kill him. Federation souls are sacrosanct here. Burnham would see deeper than he wants her to.
Stamets can’t jump right now. He doesn’t have to decide yet.