Chapter Text
It’s been six weeks since they jumped here. In the ready room, Saru tells them that the navigational sensors now suggest that they’re another six weeks away from known space traveling at warp five. Specialist Chrian starts shaking her head before Lorca turns to her. “No,” she says. “The anomaly we hit two days ago nearly blew out the whole warp drive, and that was at warp four. Unless you want your grandchildren arriving home on impulse power, we’re not going any faster. The only time we can make up is if we stop going on these little planetary excursions.”
“Out of the question.” Lorca says it with a force that surprises him.
“It’s the only thing keeping some of the crew from…extreme difficulty,” Burnham says. “That last planet was a good idea.” It had been a planet with a wide sandy beach and a gentle ocean, and they’d lingered there for almost forty-eight hours, taking readings to make sure it was safe and then rotating the crew through for shore leave. He’d stayed on the ship, but almost everyone else took a turn going. Tilly, his unofficial morale advisor, was the one to suggest it, and she reported to him that it was successful in improving mood. From the next few meals he’d eaten in the mess hall, he agreed.
“I’m not telling you how to keep morale up, I’m just telling you how fast the warp drive can sustain and you can do whatever you want with that information.” Chrian tends to be in a bad mood anytime she’s away from the warp drive. She even sleeps in Engineering, he’s learned.
“Lieutenant Elan?” Lorca asks.
“No change to security,” she reports. “The phasers and torpedoes remain fully functional. We have yet to detect any warp signatures, including any warp-capable civilizations. We’ve only come across two planets inhabited by…people, which we’ve designated P3X-524 and P3X-709.”
“Yes, I remember how P3X-524 went.” Viscerally. Heat runs through him and he doesn’t let himself look at Burnham. It’s been harder to maintain equilibrium since she saved Elan. His head is full of her. “Anything else?” Elan shakes her head.
“Specialist Burnham?”
“We have several projects underway,” she says. “I’ve sent reports to your PADDs. The…thumpers retrieved from P3X-524 have reproduced. There are eight pups. Multiple crew members have asked permission to adopt one.” Lorca winces at the idea of that. “The original specimens are in good condition.”
“Tell me these aren’t going to be tribbles all over again.” Lorca knows better than to ask if they’re edible, given how the crew is reacting.
“No, Captain. Several scientists have been assigned to make sure that doesn’t happen.” He thinks he sees the tiniest hint of a smile, just at the corner of her mouth, but he might be wishing it into existence. “Ensign T’Lac continues to lead an analysis of the specimens retrieved on her last mission. She reports no significant findings yet.” Elan tenses just slightly but locks down whatever she’s feeling. “And Lieutenant Stamets continues his work on the symbiosis between the mycelium and the smoke creature that appeared on the ship when we struck one of our first anomalies.”
“What about the anomalies? Do we know anything more about why they appear?”
Saru cuts in. “Captain, the algorithm that Lieutenant Stamets and I created—”
“I know it predicts them, Mr. Saru. That’s not what I’m asking. Burnham.” She looks up from the PADD. “In the Delphic Expanse, the anomalies appeared as part of some kind of…galactic terraforming, didn’t they?”
“That’s true.” Burnham sets the PADD down and looks from Lorca to Elan to Saru to Chrian. “We have yet to encounter anything that would suggest we’re in a similar situation.”
“We’re hitting anomalies left and right.”
“Yes,” Burnham says. “But there are no other indicators. We have repeatedly encountered anomalies that produce temporary failures in our gravitic technology. The anomalies in the Expanse were much more varied. One…turned a ship of Klingons inside out.” At their blank expressions, she clarifies, “Each of the Klingons had been…anatomically inverted. But was still alive.” She watches the collective shudder run through the group. “They didn’t stay alive long outside of the Expanse. As I said, there were areas in which the laws of physics did not apply. The Expanse contained numerous highly-advanced sentient species possessing warp-capable starships, including many that were well beyond the capabilities of Starfleet. And, most significantly, the Enterprise encountered the technology actually generating the anomalies—the galactic terraforming, as you put it—routinely while in the Expanse.”
“Maybe they learned to be more subtle. Picked a part of the galaxy that wasn’t so crowded.”
She raises an eyebrow. “We will continue to watch for indicators beyond the anomalies we have already encountered, Captain.”
“All right,” he says. “Keep me posted. Dismissed. Lieutenant Elan, a moment.”
Elan stays behind. After the first rush of gratitude, she’s been cagey over the last week. More like an ordinary officer, less like the person he chose. “Captain?”
He almost wishes she would go back to calling him Gabe, offensive as it was. “How’s Tyler settling in, Elan?”
Her antennae twitch. “He’s still settling. I’m being gentle with him.”
“I’m sure you are,” Lorca says. “But I don’t want him guarding the brig. Or anywhere near it.”
Elan frowns at that. “I’ve never assigned him to guard the brig, Captain.”
“He was guarding it while you were inside.”
That wound is still fresh. “As you may recall, I wasn’t handing out duty assignments then.” She’s uncharacteristically silent for a moment. “He didn’t come back on duty until after I’d been declared emotionally uncompromised.” That’s not good. Lorca stands up, paces from the chairs where they sit to his desk and then back. “Should I remove him from duty now?”
Lorca walks back to his desk again. He has a headache. “No,” he says finally. Everything is too delicate. “We were lucky to find that beach planet so soon…after. It distracted everyone. I don’t want to make anything more unsettled than it already is by taking him off duty again. Just—don’t let him go down to the brig again. And I don’t want him anywhere near that Klingon.”
“Burnham still won’t let you get rid of it?” There’s the tiniest teasing note in Elan’s voice.
Lorca wants to reciprocate, but the topic of Burnham is too…tender. Elan must know that they were sleeping together, and she must have gathered that they aren’t anymore, and he doesn’t want to talk about why that is. He’d deluded himself, briefly, into thinking that maybe he could trust Elan with his secret. She’s Starfleet, but she’s Andorian, and she doesn’t have the same blind faith in the truth and justice of the Federation that Burnham does. She might not care.
Captain of the Buran, who blew up his ship?
No. There’s no room to risk it. Burnham is already one person too many. “Federation law continues to prohibit it,” he says, and it comes out sounding like he’s scolding her.
Elan looks like he’s slapped her. “Of course, Captain. May I return to the bridge?”
“Elan,” he starts, and then stops. “Yes, dismissed.” She leaves and he finds himself angry at her again.
* * *
In the mess hall, Lorca sits at his defensible table with his back to the wall and…he's not brooding. He eats. He contemplates. He watches Burnham and Tyler walk in, Tyler all smiles and dimples—if not for his lurking at the brig, Lorca would think he really was all right—and sit together. He likes to think that he does this inconspicuously. He sees Tilly carrying her tray, catches her glance, and beckons her over with two fingers.
“Hi, sir!” She sits down at his table, which wasn’t exactly what he’d intended. “How are you doing?” She still has a sunburn from the beach.
Lorca sighs internally and says “Fine.” He can see why it is that Burnham, unfathomable, turns to Tilly for moral support, even as he’s given up trying to find any hint of Captain Killy. “I take it the crew’s morale remains improved?”
“Everyone really wants a thumper.” She takes a spoonful of frozen yogurt, considers it. “But—yes, things are all right.”
“Tyler?” Lorca keeps his voice low.
Tilly tries to swallow back her words, but ends up saying, “He’s pretty much glued to Michael when he’s not on duty.”
“Thank you, Cadet. That’s not what I was asking.” Not the answer he would have wanted, either. “I mean his—fitness. For duty. I don’t want to push him too hard.”
Tilly puts down her spoonful of frozen yogurt without eating it. “I’m not really qualified to say.”
“In command, Cadet, you need to be able to assess the strengths and weaknesses of everyone around you, as quickly as possible.” It’s not lost on him that his command lessons to Tilly are generally in service of getting something from her. Another good lesson he should teach her. “I’m asking you as a cadet on the command track, not as…his friend.”
She grimaces. “It’s hard to tell. He seems fine, but you know how Michael seems fine and sometimes isn’t? I don’t know if that’s true of him too.”
“Is something wrong with Burnham?” He asks it and then realizes he has no legitimate reason for doing so. Tilly is unlikely to be willing to reveal anything about her friend.
Tilly frowns deeper. “That was a general comparison. Not a comment on Michael.” She stands and picks up her tray. “I should get back to Engineering, Lieutenant Stamets needs my help with a simulation.”
“I want to know if anything changes. With crew morale,” he clarifies. “Dismissed.” For the second time that day, Lorca watches a person hurry to escape his presence. It’s almost like the old days.
* * *
Lorca calls Burnham to the ready room, out of some masochistic desire to have her remind him of his failings, or because she’s the only one he can tell about the Terran universe. Maybe he wants a third person to run from him. He turns the lights up to full, now that they don’t bother him. He wonders if this universe is gradually rewriting his body, if his scars will start to disappear too.
“Captain,” she says when she walks in, and he gestures to the chair across from him. He’s not sure the chairs were a good idea anymore, but his officers have gotten used to them.
“Burnham.” He watches her sit down, so rigid that the chair could vanish and she’d still be sitting in the same position. “You heard Lieutenant Elan. At Lieutenant Riley’s wake.”
“I did.”
This is weakness. He thought he had Elan to protect him, but he doesn’t, not really. Burnham may hate him, but he trusts her. Of course he trusts her. “She expressed—well. You heard her.”
“I did,” Burnham says again.
“I don’t know how I got off the Buran.” Lorca admits it quietly. “I blew it up. But I don’t know how I got onto that shuttle.” He smiles without humor. “I like to think that the crew loved Captain Gabriel Lorca so much that they hit him over the head and dumped him into an escape pod so that he wouldn’t have to die with them.”
“That’s some kind of love,” Burnham says. It’s jarring to hear her sound so human.
“I remember fighting Klingons that were boarding. I’d never fought a Klingon hand-to-hand before. I don’t know if I’d ever breathed the same air as one.”
“I had never met a Klingon until the Battle of the Binary Stars. I killed the first Klingon I ever met.” Burnham looks sorry about it. He’s not.
“Everything was on fire.” Lorca says it slowly. He can almost feel the heat again whenever he remembers it. “There were hull breaches on every deck. Half the ship had lost atmosphere. Sickbay was gone. There was a lot of screaming. A lot of bodies inside and out.” He stares out toward the stars. “I don’t know when I went from my Buran to the USS Buran. I didn’t know I had until I saw the Klingons.” Burnham doesn’t say anything, just watches his face. “Most of the security team was already dead when I—got there. We fought our way to the bridge, and I know I ordered whoever was there to arm the self-destruct and whoever was left in Engineering to overload the warp core.” He closes his eyes. “And ordered a collision course with the Klingon destroyer.” Lorca opens his eyes again, back to the stars. “They told me afterward that our explosion destroyed it too. I don’t know how many of the crew were still alive when the Buran went. There were a lot of bodies down.” The words drag out of his throat.
“Would you have done it if you’d still been on your own ship? If it had been your crew?” Burnham’s voice doesn’t betray whatever she’s thinking.
He turns his answer over in his mouth before he says it. “Yes. Before I let the Emperor take my people? Yes.” The words are bitter on his tongue. “I can’t imagine that any of them survived her laying waste to my ship. If they did, they’re insane by now.” Burnham makes a slight noise and he says, “They would have been tortured for days or months, constantly. Killed only when they’d broken.” Lorca grips the arm of his chair very tightly. “No one thinks I did the wrong thing by destroying my ship, Burnham.” That’s been made very clear to him. “The only thing they think I did wrong was not die with it.”
“Do you?” She asks him all the worst questions, the ones he doesn’t want to think about, let alone answer.
“Well. I don’t want to be dead.” His body feels very heavy, but he shrugs and lies, “I don’t spend a lot of time thinking about whether the things I’ve done are wrong.”
Burnham lets him have the lie. “Elan was distraught when she said it. That doesn’t mean she feels that way.”
“She’s Andorian. She says what she feels.” That’s what stings the most, he realizes. He’d thought Elan had no hidden depths to fear, that he could trust whatever he saw on the surface.
“When I was younger,” Burnham begins, and visibly struggles to continue. “After the learning center was bombed by renegade Vulcans. Logic dictated that I leave my parents and my…brother. Spock was already a target for being half-human. My presence put them all at risk.” Her mouth has been wavering a little, and she firms it before continuing. “Spock tried to stop me. He said he would come with me. He was young and it was too dangerous for him.”
“How old were you?” He doesn’t want her to stop, but he finds himself asking.
Burnham shakes her head like it doesn’t matter. “Ten. Spock was six. I had to stop him from coming. I said…cruel things to him. Effective things. I chose the things that I knew would hurt him the most, and I told him that they were true.” Her face is a little bleak. She draws in a deep breath, focuses her eyes on him. “Lieutenant Elan was in pain. Your attempt to comfort her was—dangerous. She reacted as I did to Spock.”
Lorca’s voice catches when he tries to speak, then rasps as he says, “Burnham.”
“I damaged my relationship with Spock, perhaps irreparably, by my actions. I’m sorry that that happened. Lieutenant Elan almost certainly feels the same way.” She shifts the slightest bit in her chair. “Is that all, Captain?”
No, he wants to say. Stay here and tell me who you are. “Yes. Thank you.”
* * *
Lorca waits for Elan to go to the mess hall and then follows her there. She sits at a different table than usual and he walks over to her. “Captain,” she says, and she looks mystified. “Do you need something?”
“Dinner.” Lorca gestures with his tray. “And sarcastic conversation.” He attempts a smile.
Elan squints at him, and her antennae wave back and forth a little. She pushes out a chair with her boot and Lorca takes it, even though it puts his back to the room at large. She can see that he doesn’t like it. “Don’t worry,” she tells him. “I’ll watch for threats.” Then she looks at his tray. “That looks disgusting.”
“It’s a nutrient beverage. It’s efficient. Yours doesn’t look much better.”
“Impararay Redbat and hari? You don’t know how long it took to make the synthesizer get it right.” She breaks off what looks like a wing and offers it to him.
“No,” he says. She shrugs and takes a large, crunchy bite.
Lorca takes the nutrient beverage off his tray and subtly angles the tray up, like a mirror. It’s not polished enough to show him a clear reflection, but he can at least see the fuzzy shapes behind him.
Elan heaves an exaggerated sigh and scoots her chair over so he can sit with his back to the wall. “Paranoid,” she says.
Lorca slides his chair around to sit next to her, bringing his beverage. The smell of the redbat is unfortunate. “Cautious.” He’s accepted that in this universe, it’s unlikely that any of the crew will try to kill him. Except Elan, of course. But his body knows something different, that an attack can come at any moment, that he shouldn’t stay at rest in a vulnerable position.
The downside of moving is that now he can see the table where Burnham, Tyler, Tilly, Chandavarkar, and T’Lac sit, arguing cheerfully about something, and Elan can see him seeing that table. Burnham catches his eye and nods almost imperceptibly, then goes back to the argument. He likes to think that he doesn’t give anything away, but he sees Elan’s antennae swaying gently from the corner of his eye. “My Vulcan is ignoring me,” she says gloomily, very quietly.
“Maybe she’s just being Vulcan. You know how they are.” The nutrient beverage isn’t very good, when he thinks about it. Usually he doesn’t pay attention to the taste. He watches Elan tear off a piece of hari and use it to mop up redbat juices. “Maybe it’s the smell of the redbat.”
Elan doesn’t quite roll her eyes. “I doubt it."
"Vulcans have a very good sense of smell.” He learned this from their species profile in the Federation database. Captain Gabriel Lorca would know that, he thinks.
“Shut up, Gabe,” she says, and it feels almost all right.