Chapter Text
The combined brainpower of Saru and Stamets results in an algorithm that reduces their crashes into space anomalies to roughly once every twenty-four hours, which means that they don’t need to drift in space for eight hours every day just so that crew members can sleep uninterrupted. Still, Lorca keeps to that pattern, more or less, whenever there’s a Class M planet or something else that someone—Burnham—can persuade him sounds interesting enough for a survey team.
He keeps eating in the mess hall. People don’t fall silent when he enters anymore, though Elan is the only one willing to share a table with him for a full meal. He suspects Stamets might, if he ever came to the mess hall. Saru certainly won’t.
Case in point: “Gabe,” Elan says as she drops her tray on his table in the mess hall and then sits down. This is a bad start to the conversation. “I want Chandavarkar transferred to my security team.”
“Don’t call me that in public.” Her antennae wave suggestively and Lorca grimaces. “I gave him those shifts with you as discipline, not as an interview.”
“I had him test all the practice drones to make sure they could reach the correct level of difficulty. He was very good.” From Elan, that’s a lot of praise.
“He belongs to science division. He’s a biologist.”
“You have plenty of biologists! I already don’t have enough security personnel, and you took Tyler away.”
“Tyler will be back.” Lorca has been telling himself this for weeks now. Tyler seems to have stabilized, at least, but he doesn’t really believe that Tyler is ready to carry a phaser again, let alone be trusted with protecting other people’s lives.
Elan waves a dismissive hand, pokes at her food, and frowns. “Your synthesizers are weak. Somehow all our Andorian food comes out tasting terrible.”
“File a complaint with Starfleet, say they need more Andorians on the calibration teams.” Lorca considers. “I can give you one of the food synthesizers to have some engineers tinker with, if you want.” Since he’s stopped using his own most of the time, they do have a spare.
Elan stares at him. “You’ve had too many head injuries,” she says. “It’s affecting your judgment. But I’ll take advantage of it when I can, so give me Chandavarkar too.” She pushes her plate away and focuses on her katheka. Lorca doesn’t think she needs it.
“Has he told you he wants to transfer?”
“I’m seriously worried about you.” Elan holds up three fingers. “How many?”
“I’ll talk to him,” Lorca says. “He wasn’t supposed to enjoy it.” He wonders if he’s growing into this universe’s Gabriel Lorca, now that he’s given up—at least for now—trying to return to his own universe. This universe’s Gabriel was sleeping with an admiral—would he have worried at all about fraternizing with a subordinate?
“Captain to the bridge,” the comm announces.
“I’ll talk to him,” Lorca repeats, and picks up his tray. “Give Chrian the synthesizer, see what she wants to do with it.”
“She’s a warp technician,” Elan protests.
* * *
“What do we have, Mr. Saru?” He walks to the front of the bridge, where a large sandy planet occupies the viewscreen.
“Sir, it’s the first world we've come across inhabited by…what I suppose you would call people, since we’ve arrived in this part of the galaxy.”
“Warp-capable?” It looks like a dust bowl, but there are cracked circles across its surface that appear almost intentional.
“No, sir,” Burnham tells him from her station. “Bipedal, humanoid in appearance.” She brings up an image of the planet’s inhabitants, swathed in robes and head wraps; a closer view shows that they look very human, so much so that he can’t see where they differ. No cranial ridges, no skin patterning, no extra appendages. “I won’t know more unless we’re able to get closer.”
“Specialist Burnham!” Saru is aghast. “Are you suggesting that we go to the surface of this planet and make contact with a pre-warp society? The Prime Directive forbids it!”
“Not exactly.” Lorca has read enough about Starfleet’s rules to know that. “We just can’t interfere in their development. There’s nothing that forbids going down and taking a look.”
“Sir, the risk—”
“Mr. Saru, in that case I’ll leave you the conn while we go down,” he says. “Specialist Burnham, Lieutenant Elan, prepare a team.” He closes his eyes for a moment and then tells Elan, “Bring Ensign Chandavarkar.” He hears her very soft crow of delight. “I want clothing that lets us blend in. I don’t plan to have contact with the inhabitants, but we don’t want to confuse them if we do.”
Burnham looks a little stunned. “I’ll prepare the shuttle, sir.”
The team of nine scientists, two security personnel counting Ensign Chandavarkar, and himself fit into the shuttle, but it isn’t comfortable with all of their accumulated gear too. They’re all wearing robes over their uniforms, just in case they do encounter the inhabitants, and some of the scientists are floundering a little in all the extra material. One of them, another xenoanthropologist according to Burnham, has tripped twice. There’s not much room for tripping. They’re still scared of him enough to not fall in his lap. T’Lac is graceful and certain in the disguise, but they wear robes on Vulcan. Next to her, Ensign Chandavarkar keeps one hand on his phaser at all times, as though he can’t quite believe he’s been given it to carry outside a practice room
“That would be a good landing site,” Burnham tells Elan, and she points to a clear, flat area on one edge of the patterned circle, which turned out to be a massive series of slot canyons. “At least two kilometers from the nearest settlement, and it looks like there’s enough cover to hide the shuttle.” They’ve turned off all of the shuttle’s outer lights as they descend. It’s still dark on the planet’s surface, which disguises their descent.
On the ground, they split up. T’lac and four other scientists begin setting up their sensors and collecting their soil samples, guarded by Elan and her new protégé. Lorca, Burnham, and three science specialists that Lorca doesn’t recognize proceed slowly toward the settlement, watchful for any of the planet’s humanoid inhabitants.
“Does this one remind you of home, Burnham?” Fine sand is already beginning to work its way into Lorca’s boots. One of the scientists lags behind; the sand shifts under their feet and slows their progress further than he’d like.
“Vulcan is much warmer, Captain.” She says it like it’s an old argument between them, and he likes her tone. “Due in part to the number of volcanoes.”
Another scientist snorts a laugh behind them. Lorca ignores him. When she’d told them it was a desert planet, he’d imagined that it would be hot, but it’s chilly enough that the warmth of the robes over his uniform is pleasant. “Other than that.”
“Not of Vulcan.” She’s silent for a moment. “The canyons—they remind me of the ones I played in as a child. They can be like mazes. I’ve never seen slot canyons as large as the ones we saw from orbit, though.”
They haven’t gone much further when Lorca hears a war cry and a spear nearly clips his arm. He grabs it from the ground and turns to see a group of ten people, riding some kind of giant lizards and wielding spears, bearing directly down on them. He reaches for his phaser and Burnham catches his hand, hisses “No! We can’t use phasers!” Lorca curses and hefts the spear, throws it and wings one of the lizards.
“Take cover, call Discovery, ask for immediate transport!” he yells to the three scientists. “Burnham and I will lead them away!” He looks to Burnham and they start to run—he glances behind them to make sure that the attack party is following them rather than the scientists and is gratified to see that the whole party—minus the lizard that he hurt and its rider—is in pursuit. “Burnham,” he says as they run, “if you don’t come up with a plan, I’m shooting them, directive be damned.”
“Into the canyons.” Burnham is panting. “Too big for the lizards, they’ll have to be on foot. We should be able to lose them there, give the team enough time to transport back, and if not, you can fire your phaser all you want.”
He has a moment of misgiving—the walls of the rock formation are steep and smooth and it’s hard to see more than twenty feet into it—but another spear flies past him and he says “Fine, go,” and scoops up the spear. If he can’t use his phaser he’ll damn well have another weapon.
They sprint into the canyon and he can hear their pursuers shouting, their voices echoing off the rock. They take turn after turn until Burnham nods at him and they split behind separate walls for an ambush.
Nine against two would be bad odds if the two weren’t him and Burnham. She fights like he saw her on that first day, brutal economy of motion, and they fall before her and it’s glorious. She’s trying not to kill them and so he tries too, uses the spear as a club and his own fists, has to force himself not to break necks as he does. It’s over in a few minutes. The four that are still conscious hoist their fallen comrades—they must be stronger than humans to do so, he notes dispassionately—and flee. He looks at Burnham, unbloodied, and imagines that he can see steam rising off her.
“Here,” she says, and hands him a water canteen. “I didn’t know you could fight like that.”
Lorca gulps it down. “Tyler and I broke out of Klingon prison,” he points out.
“Yes.” He passes her the canteen and she drinks. “I assumed that…”
“That Tyler did it all? What’s the logic to that?” He wipes the sweat off his face with his robe, grimaces, and discards the robe.
“You’re the captain of a science ship.”
“Georgiou could fight, couldn’t she?”
Burnham is still catching her breath. “She came on away missions with us frequently.”
“I went on that first…Minshara mission, Burnham.”
“We detected no large life-forms on the planet.” In other words, it was safe. “I apologize. My assumption was faulty.”
His knuckles are bloody and there’s grit in his mouth and adrenaline still singing through his body. He hasn’t felt this good in a long time. He grins. “Don’t be deceived. Tyler fought well, but I dragged him out of there.”
“I believe you, sir.” After they’ve both caught their breaths and passed the water canteen back and forth, Burnham examines their surroundings. They’re deep in the slot canyon; its curving walls rise red-gold high above them, almost claustrophobically so. The sun looks to be an hour or so from dipping behind the canyon wall.
“We ran too deep. This planet has a very short window of daylight in this season, and we won’t be able to find our way out in the dark.” She points to a cave partway up the canyon wall, accessible by a steep climb. “We should climb to there while we still have light. We’ll have a better sense of where we are, and it’s very dangerous to spend the night on the ground in a canyon like this. If it storms, the flood would kill us quickly.”
“Better than slowly, I suppose.” She never finds his jokes funny. “Radio Elan, and Discovery. See if they can help us out.”
The adrenaline is ebbing, and the climb to the cave drains whatever energy he had left out of him. Burnham is up several minutes before he makes it. He kneels on the flat rock of the cave floor, catching his breath again, while Burnham investigates to see how far back the cave goes. “There’s water here, sir!” Even spoken quietly, her voice echoes.
He edges back into the passageway where she’s found water. “Test it, make sure it’s drinkable. Any luck with Discovery or Lieutenant Elan?”
“Nothing.” She scoops up a cup of water, scans it with the tricorder, and then hands it to him. “It’s safe to drink.”
Lorca accepts the cup and drains it while she pulls another out of her pack. It’s cramped and dim, the light almost gone as the sun disappears, and it’s rapidly growing very cold. “You said it gets cold at night here. How cold, exactly?”
“In the lowlands, around forty degrees. Up here—our scans suggested high twenties.”
Not ideal. “All right, let’s set up camp.” She nods, absorbed in whatever the tricorder is telling her. “Burnham.”
She looks up, startled from her readings, and says, “Yes, sir. You should look at this.” She passes him the tricorder and unpacks the emergency shelter supplies.
Lorca scrolls through the readings while she lays out the tent and drives its stakes into the cave floor. “This canyon wasn’t formed naturally?”
“No, it has the hallmarks of weapons fire, not erosion. It appears that a massive energy weapon created all of the canyon.”
“What for?” He passes the tricorder back to her and pulls out two meals. “Chicken and dumplings or chicken parmesan?”
“Why did we only bring chicken options?” Burnham scrutinizes the packages. “Chicken and dumplings.” She gazes out over the canyon, almost completely dark now. The only lights are their own camp light and a stunning array of stars. “It’s possible that it wasn’t created by a weapon at all. This could be some kind of art, or a religious site.”
“Someone fired a massive but extremely precise energy weapon for as long as it would take to create all of this, and didn’t vaporize the place? It can’t have been these people.”
“No.” Burnham shivers. “No, we have yet to encounter any species or civilization capable of doing this, in this part of the galaxy or our own.” She shivers again and he realizes that she’s cold.
“Here,” he says, and motions for her to come sit next to him.
Burnham does, though she protests, “Your body heat isn’t going to help very much.” Something deep in his stomach clenches at that. He puts one arm around her and pulls her close against him as she eats her chicken and dumpling meal. When she’s finished, she extricates herself just enough to pass him the chicken parmesan; he eats it one-handed without tasting it. Every part of him is keenly aware of Burnham next to him, of the smell of old rock, of the encroaching chill and the cold bright stars above them.
Burnham adjusts slightly in the half-circle of his arm and says, “I haven’t slept under the stars in years.” He makes a noise of general encouragement to keep talking. "On Vulcan, there’s a…trial, for youth. You have to survive in the desert for ten days.” She falls silent.
“You did it?”
He feels her nod. “I was too old when I did. A Vulcan would have performed it at the age of ten. My mother wouldn’t let me go until I was fourteen.” She sounds almost sad, and she shifts a little. “That’s the last time. I didn’t have a tent then, of course.”
“Of course.” In this moment, he could tell her about the Terran trials for youth, the things he did when he was ten, when he was fourteen. She might listen to them as the practices of an alien culture, disinterested, absorb the facts without forming an opinion about him. But the Gabriel Lorca of this universe has probably never killed a human, or a Vulcan, or an Andorian. He’s probably never killed anyone outside of wartime. So he stays quiet.
He would sit there forever, but she says “We should sleep, we’ll need to climb down and hike in the morning,” and crawls into their shelter. It's is very small for two people. She hadn’t set up the other shelter in his pack, and he allows himself to see something in that choice. She’s also combined the sleeping bags into a single large one to fit both of them. “Burnham,” he starts.
“It will be a cold night. It’s more efficient to share body heat.” She strips off her uniform and folds it neatly in the corner. Then, down to her shirt and underwear, she slides into the sleeping bag. “And skin-to-skin contact is the most effective for that.”
Lorca swears he can hear a laugh in her voice. Good. He closes his eyes for a moment, opens them again, unzips his own uniform top and discards it and his shirt, and then slides into the sleeping bag too. From there, he turns off the camp light. In the darkness, he says, “Burnham. You’re not being very consistent.” She radiates heat.
“Sorry. Sir.” She moves closer, pulls his arm around her, turns onto her side so that her back presses close against his bare chest. Automatically, he conforms to the shape of her body, hips flush, knees tucked under hers. If he weren’t exhausted, something very different would be happening.
Maybe it’s the closeness or the heat or the dark or the isolation, but he finds himself saying into Burnham’s ear, “We had a trial for youth, where I grew up. We didn’t sleep under the stars.” If she’s looked up Gabriel Lorca, she’ll know this isn’t true of him. Gabriel Lorca probably went camping with his father every summer. They probably caught fish.
She makes a sleepy noise of encouragement.
“It was a…radical sect. Violently xenophobic.” He feels her tense a little and he regrets starting down this path, but it’s too late. She must know what he’s going to say next. “Each of us had to kill someone.” And there’s the full-body flinch he expected.
“You did.” Burnham doesn’t ask who he killed, what the circumstances were.
“I’m here.”
Burnham is silent, still, for so long that he starts to wonder if she’s fallen asleep somehow. “The Emperor’s daughter?”
Lorca jerks hard at that and rolls away from her. “No,” he says, almost violently. “No.” He breathes in sharply and tries to let it out slowly, does it again. He regrets ever having told her anything about Michael. “It was my fault that she died, but I didn’t kill her, not like that.” He stares up at the blackness inside the shelter. Burnham never would have stayed in his own universe.
“Who was she?”
“Burnham,” he says, “you get to keep your own secrets and I have mine.”
“I don’t have any secrets left.” There’s a rustle of fabric as Burnham moves. “Michael Burnham the mutineer, the orphan, the failed Vulcan. Michael who’s never been in love—that’s the secret I gave Stamets, when he needed to prove to me that time was looping.”
“Fine,” he says. How can he describe Michael Burnham’s doppelganger to her? “The Emperor adopted her.”
“Your emperor?”
“Yes. M—she was—beautiful. Driven. Wickedly funny, when she wanted to be. Confident and reckless. People loved her.”
“You loved her.” This time it isn’t a question.
Lorca has never admitted it aloud. Michael would have appreciated it, but it would have been one more tool to her. It takes him a long time to say “Yes,” and the word grates in his throat. “But she wasn’t…kind. She wasn’t like you.” He doesn’t know how to say it without making them sound like monsters in this galaxy. “M—she would have let the tardigrade die without a second thought.”
“To save you?” She doesn’t ask about that second slip either.
“She would have gotten every bit of use out of it and then discarded it.” That was Michael’s attitude toward many things. “People were…tools to her. She wasn’t a scientist like you. She was a warrior. She would have let me kill L’Rell, or she would have done it herself.” It’s strange to remember how he felt about her, now. “She wanted to be the Emperor.”
“Did she love you?”
Lorca wonders if she knows how cruel the question is. He rolls onto his side to face away from Burnham. It’s much colder there. “Yes.” It tastes like a lie. “What do you want from me, Burnham? It was a long time ago.” It feels like years, not months.
“I apologize,” she says. He hears another rustle and then she tells him, “I’m going to touch you.”
He closes his eyes and rolls onto his back. Slowly, she strokes her palm across his chest and stops over his heart, which has been pounding since she asked if he’d killed Michael. Her hand is searing. She slides it lower, leaves a trial of fire, until her hand is below his waistband, ghosting over him, teasing, and he’s already hard, choking out “Burnham—Michael—” She moves her hand and tugs at the waist of his pants and he lifts his hips to help her shove them down just far enough—and then she rolls, swings her leg, straddles him, and for a moment in the darkness he thinks he can see her eyes glint. He reaches for her hips, down to her thighs, pulls her underwear to the side and slips two fingers in deep. Burnham gasps in a breath and clenches around him, rides his fingers and his thumb—he hears cloth rip and then she readjusts, lifts off his fingers and leans forward to kiss him, all tongue, and then she slides down onto him slowly and they both groan. “Fuck,” he breathes, reaches one hand down to help her and pushes the other under her shirt. It doesn’t take long for either of them—she comes first, gasping, and then he does, helplessly, thrusting up hard as she’s still shuddering.
After a long moment, she leans down to kiss him sloppily and then rolls off with a satisfied noise. “Burnham,” he says, and his voice rumbles in his throat. He’s not sure what to say next.
“Go to sleep. We’ll have a long hike out when it’s light.”
He reaches over in the dark and strokes his hand along her side. “Don’t wake me up by touching me,” he warns her. “I don’t react well.”