Chapter Text
All of Alpha shift is struggling that morning. Elan’s introduction of bloodwine hit even the heavy drinkers hard, and the ones who didn’t partake still have to sit there and listen to the soft moans of their compatriots.
His entire range of focus has narrowed to one point—Burnham’s presence at the science station to his left. He finds it in himself to nod politely when she walks in precisely on time, and if she’s surprised she doesn’t show it, only nods back. Then Lorca realizes that this could be it, the entire future of his interactions with Burnham, polite nods and the occasional report, and it’s so bleak that he gets up and walks to the front of the bridge, where he stands between Detmer and Owosekun’s stations and stares out at the sky. It’s easier to resist the temptation to look at Burnham—to look for any signs of what happened last night—if his back is to her.
Detmer smiles encouragingly at him and says, “Good morning, Captain,” and he wonders if she’s just that nice in this universe or if he…got her in the breakup somehow.
“How does it look out there, Detmer? Anything on the horizon?”
“We’re up to warp six,” she tells him, gesturing out the front windows. “Saru promised he’d let us know if there’s anything along our course that’s more interesting than your average…space.”
“Don’t get jaded about space,” he says. “You may be flying us through a lot of it on our way home.”
“Of course, sir.” Detmer isn’t cowed. “Still, maybe we’ll run into a planet or two—not literally, obviously.” To his right, Owosekun snickers. “Starting to give up hope on warp-capable civilizations, at this point, but I’d take another beach.”
“You should order her to wear sunburn prevention this time,” Owosekun says, “sir.” They haven’t been afraid of him for a long time, but he wonders if he did something last night that’s made him particularly approachable—or pitiable. “Shields and hull integrity at 100%,” she adds, in case he was expecting her to do her job.
“Maintain present course and speed.” The words come mechanically. The pull to turn around is too strong to resist now and he yields. When he looks at her, Burnham meets his eyes squarely, the slightest hint of puzzlement showing in one eyebrow. It’s as though she can’t understand why he’s staring at her, what possible reason he could have for it.
He veers from his path back to the chair. “I’ll be in my ready room if needed. Detmer, you have the conn.” Then he can’t stop himself from saying “Specialist Burnham, a word.”
Burnham follows him without comment into the ready room. She stands silently at attention as he tries to find where to start. “Do you know who Isaac is?” He wanted to be more appropriate about it, but the words escape him.
“A specialist in Engineering,” she says. “What is the purpose of your question?”
“You know he’s me. The other me.”
“The version of you that belongs in this universe?”
“Not the version that belongs on Discovery,” he snaps before he can stop himself. Then—“Yes. The Lorca from this universe.”
“I am aware,” Burnham says. She’s perfectly still but for the quizzical tilt to her head, like she doesn’t understand the strange human emotions he’s having.
“Burnham, he’s—you should be careful. I don’t think he’s that different from me,” he admits, and it’s a terrible thought. “Apparently I’m the same in every universe.” His throat burns.
“Identity is the result of a combination of life experiences and biological circumstances. Logically, a person who experienced a similar combination in each universe would have a very similar identity and pattern of behavior.” There’s the tiniest hint of something in her eyes, just for a second. “I thought that was your purpose in locating me.” Before he can respond, she says, “I accept your warning. My experience of each of you suggests…that you are not the same.”
His throat closes before he can ask her what exactly that experience is. They stand in silence until he manages to choke out, “Dismissed.”
* * * * *
At dinner, Elan tries to steer him into a different seat than usual until he snaps, “I don’t care how much I trust them, I’m not sitting with my back to the entire mess hall,” and sits in his usual seat, where he is treated to twenty minutes of Burnham and Isaac eating together, heads bent close so they can talk without anyone else hearing.
“Stop watching them,” Elan hisses, and then stabs his arm with a fork when he ignores her. “You’re being the worst version of yourself, the way you’re acting.”
That hurts more than the fork, especially because it’s true. Before, he’d tried not to pressure her, tried not to punish her for his own messy feelings. Now, all he’s done is apologize and loom and mope and try to tell her that Isaac is dangerous, all in service of—if he’s honest—persuading her to come back to him. It isn’t who he wants to be. For all his lapses with Michael, he can’t go back to the Lorca that enjoyed being Terran. He doesn’t want his crew to be afraid of him. He doesn’t want to start drunken fights or punish people or take his misery out on the people around him, as satisfying as it might seem in his own mind.
“No,” he says, and looks down at his plate. “No, I killed the worst version of myself.” Elan twitches and he quickly adds, “Figuratively!” He looks around the mess hall, everywhere but at Burnham and Isaac. Tilly and Chandavarkar are watching them with identical expressions of concern. Maybe he isn’t the only one who thinks Isaac is dangerous. “But I don’t like him. He accepted everything too easily.”
“I’m watching him,” Elan assures him. She says it softly, so casually that anyone overhearing might think it was a joke, but he knows it isn’t. It’s comforting.
* * * * *
It’s been two weeks now. He’s the good captain again, truly. He’s on the bridge for Alpha and Beta and sometimes into Gamma, depending on whether there’s somewhere else to be. He eats in the mess hall at his usual table with Elan and tries not to focus on whether Burnham is eating with Isaac or with Tilly.
Tyler gets onto the turbolift with him one day and Lorca says, “Seems like you’re doing all right.”
“Still human, anyway.” But Tyler flashes a smile, the genuine one with dimples that Lorca used to hate when it was directed at Burnham. “I am, sir. Thank you for asking.” They ride the turbolift in silence the rest of the way, and Lorca feels strangely proud of himself.
Rhys, of all people, approaches him in the mess hall and says, “Sir, we’ve been discussing the…morale events, and thought it might be a good idea to try something new.”
“Something without alcohol?” Elan sounds vaguely amused. “How would that help morale?”
“We thought—something to help people burn off energy.” Lorca wonders who this ‘we’ is. “A tournament.”
“What kind of tournament? Poker?” That’s not the kind of energy people need to burn off.
Rhys shifts slightly under Lorca’s gaze. “Boxing, sir. Federation-rules boxing.”
“And you’d like permission to beat each other up? As long as everyone is healthy enough to fire a phaser by the time they’re on shift, punch away.”
“Well, Captain, we were wondering if you’d like to take part.” Rhys seems so determined for Lorca to be part of the ship’s social life too. Maybe Lorca wasn’t appreciative enough of his movie choice.
Lorca meets Elan’s eyes and then surveys the rest of the mess hall. “If I’d like to knock out one of the sorry souls under my command?”
“There’ll be weight classes, of course, sir.” Rhys says something else, but as Lorca looks around the mess hall, he sees Burnham walk in with Isaac, sees Isaac pull her chair out for her, a ridiculous thing to do.
“All right,” he says. Elan makes a horrified noise and kicks him under the table. He doesn’t react. “Go ahead and put me down, Lieutenant.”
* * * * *
A week later, everyone but Gamma shift is packed into one of the cargo bays, which Rhys and some of his cadet hangers-on have converted into a makeshift auditorium. They’ve also replicated large photos of each of the combatants from their Starfleet files and hung them on the walls—even Isaac, whose Starfleet file didn’t exist until a few weeks ago. There’s a thrum of excitement beneath everything, crew chattering to one another, passing snacks and wagering whatever they can think of.
Lorca and Isaac are the first fight. He supposes it makes sense to have them as the opener, two big men who’ll probably beat the hell out of each other, give everyone an exciting knock-out instead of anything too technical. They stand on opposite sides of the ring—built somehow, Lorca doesn’t want to know where the parts were stolen from. Rhys has replicated silky boxing robes for all the competitors to wear over their shorts until the fight. When Lorca and Isaac take off the robes and put on their gloves, the entire room goes silent.
Lorca knows what he looks like—solid chest, broad shoulders, things that anyone around him can see from their very tight uniforms. Isaac has the same body structure, of course, but slimmer, every muscle just a little softer, and he carries himself more loosely. The obvious base similarities between them aren’t why the crowd is silent. Lorca knows why: the scars. Long ragged lines across his shoulders and back, knots and starbursts of scar tissue, patches where the skin was simply cut away. A history of violence and suffering writ large on his body.
Isaac doesn’t look like that. His skin is clean, unbroken, save for a few moles that used to exist on Lorca’s back too. When Lorca meets his eyes, a little of Isaac’s cockiness has vanished, and he feels some grim satisfaction at that. He adjusts the gloves on his hands and scans the crowd until he finds Burnham. She’s watching them both. If he didn’t know better, he’d think her eyes were almost hungry as her eyes roam over his body—his, not Isaac’s, he tells himself, though he can’t be certain.
He faces off with Isaac in the ring. Elan, chosen as ringmaster because no one could beat her, stands between them and says, “All right, make it a clean fight.” They tap gloves hard and begin.
It’s not a clean fight and neither of them want it to be. Later, Lorca can only remember the adrenaline of it, the way the blood tasted when Isaac split his lip, the choked-off noise of pain Isaac made when Lorca headbutted him after Isaac got him in a chokehold and whispered, “Word is you like this,” the satisfaction of punching him down to the ground, and then the delight of getting behind Isaac and digging one elbow into the pressure point that knocks him out. His ears are roaring and he realizes he’s set one foot against Isaac’s neck. He can’t do that here. He’s a Starfleet captain now.
The crowd fell silent when he put his foot on Isaac’s neck, but when he steps back they scream in approval and Elan hurriedly declares him the winner. He finds Burnham in the crowd again and this time she’s watching him, her eyes hot. There’s blood or sweat or both dripping down his face, his nose is probably broken and maybe a couple fingers and his eye is swelling shut, everything hurts, and all he can think in this moment is how much he wants Burnham, wants her to come down to ringside while Culber patches him back together.
She doesn’t leave the stands, but neither does she look away from him as he climbs down from the ring, as Culber pulls off his gloves and scans him with the tricorder and says things that Lorca can’t hear because every bit of his attention is focused on Burnham, on her dark eyes and the way she’s turned entirely toward him. Culber must get impatient because he physically turns Lorca’s head to look at him and says, “I’m pulling you from the fight list.” Normally, Lorca would argue as Culber says something more about another concussion, but he can’t now, can’t think of anything but Burnham.
Sitting there in his seat, watching the fights continue, he imagines it. He’ll walk out into the hallway, still bloody and tender even where Culber has healed him. Burnham will follow him and say “Gabriel” and her voice won’t be flat, it’ll be full of the hunger he thinks he saw when he was in the ring—but when she reaches out to touch him, her hands will be gentle, so gentle on his skin. “That was too dangerous,” she’ll tell him, and tilt his head down just enough to kiss him very softly.
“What about Isaac?” he’ll ask, because he’s stupid.
“Why would I want the replacement when I can have the original?” She’ll stroke his cheek with one hand, kiss the tip of his nose, and the words spark a warning in his mind, enough to bring him back—
—to himself, in his seat, as Chandavarkar fells Rhys with his first punch.