Chapter Text
The calm lasts only a few days, until Tyler breaks. Tilly comms Lorca, yelling, “He’s going to kill Michael!” and Lorca calls security, then transports himself, to find that Tilly has already saved Burnham.
Tyler’s body is flung over one of the beds. The room is destroyed, the chairs bent and broken, photo frames and knick-knacks and a PADD smashed on the floor. Security is already there, securing Tyler. Burnham is slowly getting to her knees; she stares at his body as she presses a hand to her throat and gasps for breath, blood on her face and her knuckles. And Tilly, Tilly is still crouched in the corner of the room, with a phaser steady in her hands. Lorca decides to promote her.
“What happened?” Security removes Tyler. He’s so much dead weight as they heave him up, cuff him, and half-carry, half-drag him away, but he’s breathing. Lorca catches a glimpse of his face and he looks much older than he did when they first met in that Klingon cell.
“He…” Burnham seems to realize that there are people in the room and tries to stand straight. She’s still gasping in each breath and she can’t put any weight on her right leg. “He started talking about L’Rell, saying he had to listen to her.” Her voice rasps. “He said it was beyond brainwashing, that they had turned a Klingon into a human. That he didn’t think he was Ash Tyler.” She shudders for a moment and then says, “He said there was someone else inside him, and that he’d tried to be human for me”—voice cracking—“and then he changed.” Tilly crosses the room, puts a hand on Burnham’s shoulder. “He said I’d killed his lord, T’Kuvma, and he couldn’t kill me on the bridge that day but that he would kill me now.” Burnham rubs her neck. “We fought.”
“I heard Klingon.” Tilly sounds almost surprised at herself. “And I ran inside. I shot him. I had to shoot him three times before he fell.” She looks at the phaser in her hand, but she doesn’t put it down.
“Get Burnham to sickbay,” Lorca says. “Cadet—good work.” He looks around and adds, “Someone get down to the brig and tell me when Tyler wakes up.” Burnham puts an arm over Tilly’s shoulders and limps to the door. He moves out of the way, but Burnham assumes that he’s offering to help and leans on his arm too; he and Tilly walk her slowly, excruciatingly to the turbolift. Lorca could carry her himself, but he’s certain that she wouldn’t want it. He could transport them all, but he thinks that she wants the time to compose herself, lock down whatever emotions are threatening to spill out. No one speaks, not even Tilly.
Dr. Culber points them immediately to a bio-bed. He takes Lorca’s place and helps Burnham up, helps her shift until she’s lying down and he can start scanning her. Then he looks from Burnham to Tilly to Lorca and says, “It would be better if you came back after I’ve had a chance to treat her.” Lorca would ignore him, but Burnham’s gaze has become almost vacant, like she’s stepped outside of herself. Tilly grabs him by the elbow and actually tries to drag him out of sickbay; finally, he decides to let her do it.
Outside of sickbay, Tilly starts to hyperventilate and Lorca has to say, “Cadet.”
Automatically, she snaps to attention. “Sir.” She takes a deep breath. “Did I kill him?”
“No,” Lorca says. He misjudged Tyler badly and he’ll kill Tyler himself, whatever Starfleet law says, but Tilly won’t be responsible. He closes his eyes, rubs his temples. The persistent headache is worse now. “Let me know when Culber is done.”
He walks back to his ready room slowly. He brought Tyler on board, trusted him entirely, on the mistaken belief that Tyler would slot into the empty place that Landry used to fill. He’d done it quickly, confident in his own evaluation of the situation, and he remembers with some bitterness Cornwell questioning that decision. He’d known Tyler had nearly broken before, and he’d told Elan to put him back onto the security team anyway, then left him on for some misguided concerns over…morale. In the ready room, he says, “Computer, access security recordings.”
“Protected,” the computer replies.
“Captain’s override,” he tells it. The computer records security footage in individual quarters only when it detects a substantial physical altercation. It’s gotten better at discerning the appropriate times. “Play most recent recording.”
“Protected,” the computer says. “Confirm override.”
“Override, Lorca,” he tells it. The recording begins to play, and the light of it burns his eyes for the first time in weeks.
It starts mid-fight. Tyler charges at Burnham, grabs her by her neck before she can react and throws her against the table. She fights back, the same brutal, efficient strikes that he saw the first day in the mess hall, but he’s much stronger. Burnham catches him off-guard, slams his head against the wall once, twice, before he throws her off and she falls into the bedframe. She throws a metal picture frame at his face, scrambles up as Tilly runs in with a phaser already out in front of her. Burnham kicks him once, tries again; on the second kick, Tyler grabs her by the ankle and twists, throwing her down, and that’s when Tilly shoots him twice. He falls and Tilly shoots him again. The recording ends.
Lorca tries to take a deep breath. “You know how to fight like a Klingon,” he remembers telling Tyler. No wonder. How blind, how stupidly overconfident, not to see it, to believe that every moment of desperation on Tyler’s face was to revenge himself on the Klingons, to think that Tyler’s intense focus on Burnham was love and nothing more insidious.
When Culber comms him and says, “You can speak to her now,” Lorca forces himself to walk slowly through the hall to sickbay. Tilly is standing next to Burnham’s bed, her back turned to him. When he walks in, she turns, says “Sir,” and ducks away to a safe distance.
But for the fact that Burnham is lying in a bed with one leg stuck in some kind of treatment chamber, she would look completely normal—flat, even. The way she looked when they first met, like a statue of a human, eyes as Vulcan as any he’s ever met. Like Sarek, when he was lying in this bed. The way she’s looked most of the time since she guessed his secret. Her hands are arrayed neatly, carefully, one on each leg. She meets his eyes with nothing behind her own. “Captain,” she says. Culber hasn’t fixed the rasp in her voice. Not a muscle moves.
Lorca takes Tilly’s place beside her bed. He can’t keep from standing pressed against the bed, as close as he can get, but he keeps his arms crossed. “Michael.” He catches himself. “Burnham. Are you all right?”
“I saw Sarek,” she says. “Through the katra.” She doesn’t comment on his slip. “He was…concerned.”
“So am I.”
Burnham’s expression doesn’t change. “Dr. Culber repaired the damage,” she says. “My leg is still healing, but it shouldn’t take long.”
“And your voice?”
If he hadn’t spent so much time watching her, he wouldn’t have seen the tiny flinch. “He suggested that I wait until my body has recovered more to deal with my vocal cords.” She moves her hands from her thighs to lie at her sides. “In a day or so.”
He can’t help it—he uncrosses his arms and reaches the scant inches to grip her hand. “I’m sorry,” he says.
Burnham’s hand flexes, and then she wraps her fingers around his own. She doesn’t say anything, just squeezes so tightly that it hurts. After a long moment, she releases his hand and says, “Dr. Culber said that I should rest.”
“Of course.” He wants to stay. She doesn’t want him to. As he’s leaving sickbay, Lorca beckons Tilly over. “I’m promoting you to lieutenant, effective immediately,” he says.
Her eyes widen, but she maintains her composure. “Thank you, sir,” she says, and runs her fingers gently over her cadet badge. She doesn’t point out that she should be an ensign first, a fact of which he is well aware.
“Dismissed,” he says. “Computer, site to site transport, sickbay to brig.”
He re-materializes just inside the brig. Ensign Chandavarkar is stationed immediately outside Tyler’s cell. Tyler is still unconscious. Two cells down, the containment field on the Klingon’s cell remains completely opaque.
“He hasn’t woken up yet, sir,” Chandavarkar tells him unnecessarily. “I’ll alert you as soon as he does.”
Lorca is wearing three knives. He doesn’t remember when he put them on. “Lower the containment field.”
Chandavarkar braces himself. “I can’t do that, sir.”
It takes Lorca a minute to process, intent as he is on Tyler. “Ensign?”
“I was ordered not to lower the containment field without at least three other security personnel on hand. Due to the danger.”
“You were never under his command.” Chandavarkar is the only person transferred into security since Lorca removed Tyler as chief. He wonders if that was intentional on Elan’s part.
“No, sir.”
“I put you on security. And now I’m ordering you to lower the field.” Lorca knows how to kill Tyler, no matter what he is, or what he was. A carotid artery; a femoral artery too, if necessary. He’s going to do it, and he’s going to watch Tyler bleed out until he knows that the man is dead, and then he’ll deal with whatever consequences come from that. “I can handle him.”
“Captain!” Elan enters, a little too quickly. Chandavarkar must have alerted her somehow, or Tilly did it when he transported. “I’ll let you know when Tyler is awake.” She slows her steps, edging between him and the containment field.
Lorca keeps his eyes on Tyler. “Why.”
“That’s what you asked me to do.”
“He almost killed her.” Phaser at the small of his back, knives up his sleeves.
Elan keeps her distance, but she’s still moving into his field of vision, blocking his view of Tyler. “Gabe,” she says. “You don’t want to do this.”
“I do.” He can incapacitate her. He can get around Chandavarkar. They can’t stop him once he gets into the cell.
“We need him to wake up. We need information from him.” She’s standing just in the way. “I’ll tell you when he’s awake.” There’ll be more security personnel then. He won’t be able to get to Tyler. “Killing him would violate Federation law.”
“I don’t care,” Lorca says. He never swore an oath to defend and uphold Federation law like the rest of them did, never really believed in it. He can hear what Elan is really saying. Burnham believes in Federation law above all else. He loves Burnham. He wants to kill Tyler.
“She won’t forgive you,” Elan says.
“I don’t care,” he repeats. “Are you going to snap my neck to stop me, Lieutenant?”
She and Chandavarkar are suddenly both aiming phasers at him—how did he let that happen?—as Elan says, “You’re not acting rationally.”
“Then no one can hold me responsible for what I do.” He throws it back at her. It’ll be harder to get into the cell now. He’ll probably have to kill one of them. He doesn’t want to do that.
“Gabe,” she says. “Are you really going to make the kid shoot you to stop you from murdering a prisoner?”
The anger he feels is almost incapacitating. He’d killed the overzealous lieutenant who’d decided to put a bomb in Michael’s shuttle. Didn’t even take the time to torture him, the way that a good detached Terran would have. It had been blind rage and grief and a terrifying loss of control, and no one would ever have tried to stop him.
But Burnham would, if she were here. He turns away from the cell. He tries to breathe normally. It doesn’t work. “You should get me out of here,” he says.
Elan holsters her phaser and approaches him from the side. “Come on, Captain.” She moves slowly so he can see her and puts a very light hand on his back. She says nothing about the shape of the phaser tucked there.
She takes him to the mycelium cultivation bay. Maybe it’s the most calming place she can think of. He hasn’t been here for a long time, not since the smoke creature first healed Stamets and he realized that his vision was changing. Not since they stopped jumping. It’s always been beautiful, lush, even humid. He catches glimpses of the glowing smoke winding its way through the fungus, blooming brighter when it touches them, like they’re showering it with sparkling raindrops. The noise in the bay is like thousands of tiny bells. “Stay here,” Elan says. “Until I come to get you.” She beckons Stamets over and says, “Don’t let him leave. Not to sickbay, not to the brig, not anywhere.” Then she walks away.
Stamets regards him uneasily. “…Captain.”
Lorca stares out into the bay, keeping Stamets in the corner of his eye. “You know.”
“Yes.” He doesn’t blame Stamets for not wanting him there.
“I tried to kill him,” Lorca says. The mycelium seem to absorb the sound, soften it. “I would have, if I’d gotten into the cell.” He can’t seem to stop saying it.
“We all know you have a…flexible attitude toward Federation law, Captain.” Stamets touches his own arm lightly where the spore drive interface sits. “It’s not always a bad thing.” He hurries to add, “But it’s probably good you didn’t kill him.”
Lorca is silent for a long time, trying to find what Stamets finds here, let his consciousness…relax. It’s not something that he does naturally. He’s always on guard, or at least aware. He stays awake to the point of exhaustion and beyond, to be able to fall asleep. The thought of—disconnecting from himself is anathema. He wonders, momentarily, if the Gabriel Lorca born in this universe was like him in that way. He steps out on the path through the mycelium, spores drifting and eddying around him as he disturbs them. The smoke creature flows toward him and twines around his ankles, his waist, his shoulders, absorbing the spores and flaring bright as they fall.
“Captain.” He hears Elan calling. He turns and walks back to the door. “You can come with me now,” she says.
His face itches slightly and he draws his hand across it and comes away with a dusting of spores. “How long has it been?” More than it feels like, he suspects.
Elan confirms it. “Four hours. I never thought Stamets would be able to keep you here that long.”
“You thought he would attack me to escape?” Stamets sounds faintly outraged. He’s in the spore chamber, tweaking something.
“I’m sure the lieutenant had confidence in both of to behave as we normally would,” Lorca tells him. “I appreciate the tour.” He follows Elan out of Engineering.
She doesn’t say anything at first. He doesn’t know where she’s taking him. Finally, she stops and says, “We’re in a delicate situation.”
“What do you mean?”
“Saru and Dr. Pollard are in the brig with Tyler now. He’s…sometimes he’s Tyler and sometimes he yells in Klingon. His brainwave patterns are incomprehensible. Saru…has spoken to the Klingon prisoner L’Rell.”
“You should have gotten me sooner,” Lorca says. “As soon as he woke up.”
Elan just leads him to the brig. Dr. Pollard is outside Tyler’s cell, examining scans. Lorca hears screaming from inside Tyler’s cell, sometimes in his own voice, begging, and sometimes in a deeper, stranger voice in Klingon. He throws himself at the containment field over and over; sometimes he stumbles back for a moment, gasping for breath, and then he flings himself back at it again.
“Why isn’t he sedated?” Lorca still wants to kill him, but he can contain it in front of these people.
“We’ve been pumping sedatives into the cell,” Dr. Pollard tells him. “They barely have an effect. His brain scans look like those of two different people.”
“They are,” Saru says. “L’Rell told me that much. They made a sleeper agent. The—original Ash Tyler was captured. They somehow grafted his consciousness, his mind, his DNA, onto a Klingon. They surgically altered the Klingon to match Tyler’s body.” Even he can’t hide his horror at the idea. “He is both Ash Tyler and Voq, the Klingon they altered. He was not awakened to Voq until he spoke with L’Rell most recently.”
Lorca can see where Tyler—Voq—whoever he is has tried to claw his own chest open. His ordinary human fingers can’t do it. “So we put him down.” The horrified silence that follows is disturbed only by Tyler’s muffled screams and the impacts of his body. That wasn’t the right answer.
“Captain,” Saru says, voice delicate. “I have another idea. L’Rell has refused to help. But it is clear that she cares very much for this man. If we place him into her cell and she experiences his condition firsthand, her opinion may…change.”
“Or she might kill him,” Elan says. She doesn’t offer an opinion as to whether that would be a good thing.
“This is beyond what we know how to treat.” Dr. Pollard gestures to the scans. “She may be the only one who can help.”
“Do it.” Lorca hopes she kills Tyler.
Elan turns the containment field of L’Rell’s cell clear and unmutes it from both sides. “Ready, sir.”
“L’Rell,” Saru says. “You are the only person who may be able to help him.” As she begins to refuse, Elan transports Tyler into the Klingon’s cell.
Tyler staggers forward in L’Rell’s arms and collapses, seizing. She cradles him, stroking his head and murmuring gently in Klingon as he shudders. When it ends, he’s still for a moment, and then tries to struggle away from her, moaning. Lorca remembers him saying that he was L’Rell’s…favorite, the look in his eyes when he’d said it. How much of that was Tyler, unwilling, and how much was Voq? L’Rell looks up from Tyler, and Lorca sees…grief? in her eyes. He remembers the way she tortured him, the agony of the light, the brutality. That’s all gone now. Tyler subsides, at least for the moment, and she strokes his hair again. “I will help him,” she says at last. “But it must be my hands.”
They transport the necessary equipment from sickbay to the brig. Burnham must still be in sickbay, or they would be doing this there. Lorca would rather be in there with her than watching this last-ditch attempt to save the man who tried to kill her, but she doesn’t need him there—doesn’t want him there—and he would question a captain who didn’t participate in something like this. Elan and Chandavarkar stand with their phasers pointed. L’Rell slides her fingers into the device controls, holds her hands above his head, and begins to do…something. Tyler’s brain illuminates red on the scanner screen, points flaring brighter as L’Rell touches them, and he moans and fights his restraints and cries out in Klingon, in English, what sounds like a prayer. When L’Rell finishes, she wails, a terrifying noise of grief like nothing he’s ever heard. Tyler falls limp, unconscious, and L’Rell says, “It is done.”
“We need to get him to sickbay,” Dr. Pollard says. “We can’t monitor him adequately down here. And I don’t think it would be a good idea for him to regain consciousness…close to L’Rell. If he regains consciousness.”
“Is Burnham still in sickbay?”
“She is. She should be discharged in the next few hours.”
“He stays here until she’s discharged.” Lorca looks sharply at Elan to forestall any objection.
“Captain—” Dr. Pollard protests.
“I don’t want him waking up next to the person he tried to kill. That’s final. When she’s out of sickbay, move him there.” If he had his way, Tyler would stay in the brig. He could have his way. He could keep Tyler here. But he knows that would be vengeance, not logic.
Lorca goes to sickbay before Burnham is released. He tells himself that he wants to be certain she’s well away from sickbay before they beam Tyler in, but it isn’t. He just wants to be sure she’s well, full stop. She’s sitting up on the bed when he gets there, leg freed from the regenerator, and Culber hands her a case of hypos. “One every day before you sleep,” he says. “For a week. That took a lot out of your body.” He looks up and sees Lorca, says, “Captain, how can I help you?”
“Just checking on Specialist Burnham. I’d like to talk to her once you’ve released her.”
“You’re free to go,” Culber tells her.
Burnham nods once, sharply, and steps down from the bed. She steps forward gingerly at first, then puts her full weight on her leg. “Sir?”
“Walk with me.” They step into the hallway and he leads them toward quarters. He assumes she should sleep next.
There’s the slightest hitch in her gait, like she doesn’t quite trust that her leg has been repaired. After walking quietly for a moment, Burnham says, “I can give a statement, sir.”
“No,” he tells her, without thinking, and then amends it. “That’s not necessary, Burnham. Tilly gave a statement. We have everything we need. You should rest. Quarters,” he tells the turbolift.
She doesn’t say anything, and they ride the turbolift in silence. Everything Lorca can think to say just comes back around to Tyler. When they step off, Burnham hesitates. She’s rigid. “Captain.” Lorca waits, and she says, “I’m…feeling a lot of emotions related to sleeping in my quarters. Is there an alternate location where I could rest?”
Of course. It hadn’t even occurred to him. “I’m on gamma shift soon,” he says. “You can sleep in my quarters, if you’d be comfortable.” Undoubtedly there are other open rooms, probably even with beds, but it’s his first thought.
“That…would be all right.” He steps in the direction of his quarters and Burnham says, “I know the way. Captain.”
“Yes,” he says. “But I’d like to make sure you get there anyway.” When they arrive, she goes directly to the couch. “You can sleep in the bed, if you want,” he says. “I won’t be in it.”
“No.” Burnham sits on the couch. “I’m fine, sir.”
Lorca stands helplessly in the doorway for a minute. She’s obviously waiting for him to leave before she’ll lie down. “Comm me if you need anything,” he says finally, and goes back to the bridge.
* * *
Lorca told Burnham that he’d be on gamma shift, which isn’t really true except inasmuch as he’s the captain and can be on the bridge whether or not someone else is designated to sit in the chair. Prefers to be. He’s been awake for a while now, actually. It’s always a bad sign when he can’t remember exactly the last time he slept. But he doesn’t think Burnham would have agreed to sleep in his quarters if he’d been there, and he wanted to know where she was, wanted to know she was somewhere that she felt—safe? Does she feel safe there?
The point remains. He didn’t realize how exhausted he was until he promised her that he would be on duty the next shift. He sits in the chair and tries not to yawn, which would be an appalling loss of control. Watching the stars fly by at warp is hypnotic. “Owosekun,” he says. “How’s the ship?”
She humors him. “Shields at one hundred percent, sir. Full hull integrity.” What a strange thing to hear after all these months at war. No one bothers to say when the shields are at one hundred percent, only when they start dropping.
“Detmer?”
“Full maneuverability, sir.”
“Anything out there on scanners?”
“No, sir,” Rhys says.
“Detmer, find the nearest planet, or asteroid, or comet, or anything, and drop us out of warp.”
“Sir?”
He’s come to enjoy the look that she and Owosekun share whenever he does something out of the ordinary. “Some of the scientists must want to do something outside the labs. Pick something good for them.” Detmer and Owosekun think he’s lost his mind, but they comply. Rhys, who’s still appropriately afraid of him, doesn’t object. Detmer finds a comet and, once the geologists get excited, he lets a team go. He needs something to distract him from the idea of Tyler lying unconscious in sickbay.
Lorca makes it through the end of gamma shift. The geologists are back with their samples. The security officer has finished complaining about the geologists. They’re back at warp. “Airiam,” he says, “You have the conn,” and goes to his quarters to sleep.
He enters quietly. Burnham is asleep on the couch, the lights low. A part of him wants to pick her up, carry her to the bed, and let her sleep there while he sleeps on the couch. But he knows Burnham well enough to know that she wouldn’t want that. Lorca settles for laying a blanket over her, very lightly, and walks back into the bedroom. He closes the bathroom door to minimize the noise, then strips off his clothes and showers, lets the water run over his face until he realizes he’s starting to fall asleep. Finds sleep pants, trudges to bed, and collapses.
It's been a long time since he dreamed. His mind is uncomplicated. Tyler stands in sickbay with Burnham. Tyler kills Burnham. Lorca breaks his chest open barehanded and pulls out his heart. Tyler dies.
Tyler lies in bed in sickbay. Burnham bends down to kiss him. Tyler kills Burnham. Lorca kills Tyler again. He doesn’t like how this dream is going.
Burnham lies in bed in sickbay. Lorca bends down to kiss her. Tyler kills him. He wakes up gasping. He likes it better when he doesn’t dream.
The computer tells him it’s been four hours since he lay down. He gets up to check on Burnham, just in case. When he leaves his bedroom, he finds that the lights are on in the living space—he winces reflexively, then remembers it doesn’t hurt—but Burnham is still curled up on the couch. She’s reading a paper book, and she looks up when he enters. “I just wanted to make sure you were…all right,” he says. His voice is still rough from sleep.
“Yes,” she says. “I woke up and felt more like reading than sleeping.”
“All right,” he repeats. He wonders where she got the book. He wants to stay out here with her, but she looks at him and he’s acutely aware that he’s shirtless—not that it should matter, they’ve seen each other naked, but it still feels different. “What are you reading?” She holds up the book so he can see it. “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland,” he says. It doesn’t hold meaning for him.
“It’s a children’s book. My mother—Amanda, she used to read it to me and Spock. When I came to live with them. And I read from it to Spock a few times.”
“Oh.” Before she said whatever she’d said to Spock to drive him away. “We didn’t have children’s books.”
Burnham curls up a little more on the couch, until there’s space enough for him to sit. “Do you want to hear it?”
He’s sitting on the couch before he can exactly register what’s happening. “I may fall asleep,” he tells her. He’s not entirely sure that he’s not dreaming now.
She raises an eyebrow. “I won’t be offended.” She lets her bare feet rest against his thigh and begins to read. “Once more she found herself in the long hall, and close to the little glass table. ‘Now, I’ll manage better this time,’ she said to herself, and began by taking the little golden key, and unlocking the door that led into the garden.”
Lorca feels himself beginning to sag against the couch. Her feet are warm against his leg and her voice is still raspy and he loves her.
“Then she went to work nibbling at the mushroom (she had kept a piece of it in her pocket) till she was about a foot high: then she walked down the little passage: and then—she found herself at last in the beautiful garden, among the bright flower-beds and the cool fountains.”
Lorca falls asleep. He doesn’t dream.