Chapter Text
The last time the Enterprise visited Haruus, it was to offer aid and negotiate peace in the middle of a civil war. That was eleven months ago, when Donovan still encountered the open wound of Riker's absence in every crew member he spoke to. Now, returning to the planet, the Enterprise's only goal was to deliver supplies. Captain Picard would assess the politics through careful personal conferences with the leaders of each faction; away teams, led by Donovan and Riker, would serve both as supply delivery and reconnaissance.
"They don't trust easily," Donovan said.
Riker stared out at the battlefield, his eyes straining against the sun. "I wouldn't, either," he said. His hands rested loosely on his hips, his shoulders relaxed. This easy posture, this pleasant half-smile, wasn’t Donovan’s style – on planets like Haruus, he preferred to make himself small, play the idiot outsider if necessary, keep out of the locals’ line of sight. It had served him well on Haruus eleven months ago, but…
A gaggle of local children raced past Riker, each of them bent at the waist. They were barefoot – better to feel any hard protuberances in the earth – and wore the dingy sackcloth bags of scavengers on their backs. One of them paused, examining the dirt beneath his feet until he found the hidden piece of metal that had poked him.
He didn’t seem to notice how close he was to Riker as he dug it up. In fact, when he lost his balance, Riker casually supported him, one hand on the boy’s shoulder, and the boy didn’t so much as glance Riker’s way.
“What is it?” he asked, holding up his prize. Sunlight glinted off the metal in-between pieces of soft earth caked onto the sides. Donovan opened his mouth to answer–
–but Riker beat him to it.
“It’s an antique firearm,” Riker said, his voice friendly. “But it looks like it’s been broken. Here…”
The kids gathered around, watching as Riker took the piece of shrapnel and traced the blast marks with his finger.
“This is where it connected to the barrel,” he said. “It must have locked up and exploded on whoever was holding it. See this starburst?”
The kids bowed their heads, vying for a closer look.
“That’s where it disconnected and warped from the heat,” Riker said. He brushed the clods of earth from its sides and handed it back to the boy who’d found it.
“Which side?” the boy asked.
“Probably top-sider,” Riker said. He pointed to a seal stamped into the metal, hardly visible anymore, and missing large segments of its body. “Looks like an Old Republic seal to me,” he said. He turned to Donovan, whose nervous system jolted at suddenly being thrust into the limelight, and said, “Right?”
“Right,” said Donovan uneasily. He offered the kids a pale smile, but they weren’t interested in him. He’d been relegated to Foreign Stiff-Shirt status, he realized with a shock. He’d never played that role before – never had another member of the away team step up and make relations like Riker had. Like Donovan normally had to. To him it was something he had to work at; to Riker, it came naturally. He watched the boy shove his piece of shrapnel into his dirty pack and race off, and then he circled Riker, studying him with new eyes.
“How did you know that?” he asked.
It took a second, but a slow smile spread across Riker’s face. “You write very thorough reports, Commander,” he said, eyes sparkling. He gestured over his shoulder, to the two xeno-toxicologists he’d assigned to his away team. “You must have known I’d read them. Otherwise how would I know to assign Cotner and Moore?”
“I’d go straight to Captain Picard if I thought you hadn’t read them,” Donovan said. It was standard practice to read the previous mission’s reports before beaming down. But reading them was one thing – identifying an antique firearm blasted apart by a malfunction? That was another thing entirely, and he knew it wasn’t that Riker had an eidetic memory. He side-eyed Riker. “You must have read the reports very closely,” he said.
“Sure,” said Riker easily – like it didn’t matter. But there was a hard glint in his eyes. Not competitiveness, Donovan thought. Not a warning, exactly. But a promise.
That glint said, gently but firmly, I was first officer for a reason. And underneath:
I will be first officer again.
“I’m going to sleep for a week,” Moore said as they left the transporter room eight days later.
“I already booked leave,” Cotner agreed. Donovan was too weary to speak, but Riker clapped O’Brien on the shoulder, both of them breaking into laughter, and then bounded out to join his team.
“Enjoy it while it lasts,” he said to Cotner with a twinkle in his eye. “Just so you know, booking leave doesn’t exempt you from my jazz routine.”
“You’re playing?” asked Donovan, shocked into breaking his silence. His voice came out mild, no hint of the surprise he felt.
“Sure,” said Riker. He made eye contact with Cotner and Moore, eyebrows raised. “And I’ll see you both there, right?”
“You couldn’t catch me dead at a jazz performance,” said Cotner, his voice almost drowned out by Moore’s laughter.
“Couldn’t catch me dead, sir!” Riker hollered as the two xeno-toxicologists veered from the group. They were still laughing – and Riker still grinning – when Donovan slowed to a halt. Camaraderie forged over time. The crew embraced Riker as if he had never been gone. He looked down at his hands, slender fingertips scarred by chemical burns. And then he glanced at Riker’s trousers, stained from hem to waistband by the same noxious gas. All of it was a leftover from the war, nothing they hadn’t expected – but enough to throw the whole away team off-kilter. Moore and Cotner, who had been with Donovan last time around, were still shaky from adrenaline. Their humor was born from nerves more than anything. But Riker, who had never been to Haruus before, had weathered the toxic fumes like a professional. Quick-thinking, in-control – he’d fastened Lyra’s gas mask for her when her fingers got doused in chemical slick. Compassionate, confident – he’d handled the children, the locals, with a deft hand, and Moore had had to crush the kids’ enthusiasm when he told them, “No, you can’t beam back up with Commander Riker.”
Donovan, he suspected, would not be first officer for long. He was now a short-timer. He sneaked a glance at Riker, who was still staring down the hall after Moore and Cotner. The away team was long gone, the hallway empty, and Riker’s eyes were distant now.
“You should go to sickbay, Donovan,” he said suddenly, without turning. “Have Dr. Crusher see to those chemical burns.”
Donovan flexed his fingers, the skin peeling. “My report–”
“My report,” said Riker softly.
Donovan studied his face, what little he could see of it. His shoulders tightened. He gave a nod.
“Your report, Commander,” he said.
He eased past Riker, not to the ready room but to sickbay, and he felt very much like an ensign whose kind commanding officer had dismissed him early. It should have felt wrong, coming from someone he’d first seen detoxing on a dirty bed in an abandoned farmhouse, naked and scarred. But as he headed to sickbay, Donovan searched his head for the mental notes he usually kept on every mission, orderly and neat.
They weren’t there. Some part of him, from the moment he and Riker beamed down, had known it wouldn’t be him recording today’s log. He had subconsciously begun the hand-off.
He glanced down the hallway one last time at Riker, his eyebrows furrowed, but Riker was gone.
The nightmares were different that night.
Riker and Donovan were alone on Terras IV, every step kicking up clouds of chalkdust from the mushrooms growing underneath their feet. Riker took point. From behind, Donovan could see the glitter of sweat in his hair, the flex of muscle under his Starfleet tunic as he shifted his arm – up, swipe – the blade of his machete slicing mushrooms down at their root, carving a path. Donovan’s heart jumped into his throat at the flash of silver, the wet suck of fungal flesh against steel.
Bajoran steel, he realized. Treated with mineral water from Bajor Prime for that unique Damascan flare. He watched as Riker’s broad hand tightened on the handle, as that too-familiar blade swung down and cut a mushroom cap in half.
They were filled with acid, he remembered, and now the lump in his throat was pounding, drowning out all noise. He knew how this memory went. He could picture the pores swelling open, the orange globules of acid rising from within.
He opened his mouth to warn Riker, but no sound came out. Riker’s arm swung down again, and this time Donovan could see the orange veins of acid glowing underneath the mushroom’s skin, but he still couldn’t stop it from happening. The flesh burst open. Acid danced over the blade, all the way up to Riker’s exposed hand.
“Ah–” Riker cried. He jerked his arm back without letting go of the sword. A braided ornament dangled from the handle, war bells tinkling as the blade went wild and crashed into another cluster of mushrooms. The thick white skin parted; acid bubbled out; chalkdust rose in the air.
And as Riker screamed – as the acid ate his flesh down to raw muscle and exposed bone – Donovan ran. He tried to run. He willed his legs to move, but he was frozen in place. His body had turned to stone, as Riker was writhing before him. Fear consumed him, as he abandoned everything but self-preservation, and finally his legs broke free...
He jerked awake with a reflexive kick, the blankets swallowing his legs. Half of him still thought he was running; the blankets were knee-high mushrooms catching on his trousers, slowing him down. He scrubbed his face with one hand and tossed the blankets back. The stench of fear and anxiety hung in the air.
He needed to dress. Get out of here. Fresh air. Fractured commands filtered through the pulse of adrenaline in Donovan’s brain, his own mind on autopilot as it ordered him to stand, move, calm down. He pulled yesterday’s uniform over skin still drying from sweat, knowing the itch would prickle beneath the fabric; knowing, too, that if he stayed for a shower, he might vomit. Getting out of the darkness of his own quarters, around other people, always helped. He needed a diversion.
The doors hissed open and Donovan emerged, faltering, into the light. He steadied his breathing – imagined that the air was cooler, crisper, here. It hurt his nostrils just to take a breath. With a careful nod to the first crewman he passed, Donovan headed down to Deck 3. Beneath the fog in his skull, there was still a working brain. Deck 3 had no living quarters, just science departments. Office space. No beta shift, nobody in the halls. And there was a rec room he could use to catch his breath and calm his mind, until–
There was someone in the rec room.
A vertical screen almost obscured Donovan’s view. It was transparent, the outdated type that the Enterprise’s schoolteachers had lugged with them from previous postings. Right now, it was set to a starmap, glittering and almost opaque, but Donovan could make out the face on the other side. Riker’s eyes glittered with constellations until he poked his head around the screen.
“I didn’t know I needed an escort to use the rec room,” he said. To Donovan, it almost sounded like a shout. He was relieved that he did not flinch.
Donovan blinked. The fog dissipated in a shock. Suddenly he was too aware of his body, of the sweat drying on his skin and the scant blond hair sticking up on his scalp. His rumpled uniform, the bags beneath his eyes – as if reading his mind, Riker looked Donovan up and down. The defensive hunch in his shoulders melted before Donovan fully noticed it was there.
“You look like hell warmed over,” Riker said, his voice changing subtly. He pushed the map away and revealed the rec room’s chairs, all of them gathered behind Riker, out of sight. As if to stop anyone from entering and sitting down. He gestured for Donovan to join him, though, and as they sat, Donovan took in Riker’s uniform – un rumpled – and his still mostly-combed hair.
He hadn’t even tried to sleep yet, Donovan realized. They mimicked each other’s posture naturally, hands clasped on knees, each of them bent over to study the starmap. Green dots glowed at seemingly random intervals, not attached to any starbases or planets that Donovan knew of.
“Warbird sightings,” said Riker softly. Light from the screen played over his face and softened the shadows there. Donovan studied him, half his mind replaying the nightmare – the acid – the scream.
Fake, he thought – it was just a dream, a nightmare – and the knot in his chest loosened a little. The reality wasn’t much better: Riker on the hospital bed, his clothes stripped away, Kyle staring at his scars. But it helped to remember. He turned back to the map and scrubbed a hand through his hair.
“Years ago,” he said, and he hunched his shoulders at the sound of his own voice, “when I was stationed on Bajor Prime, I met group of men who had been tortured by the Cardassians.”
Riker’s expression relaxed, his eyes hooded now, his jaw no longer clenched. He stared at the starmap almost dreamily, as if he hadn’t heard.
“I wasn’t part of the rehabilitation team,” Donovan said. “But I saw them in the mess hall sometimes. No scars – not with our technology – but…”
“Once you saw them,” said Riker, his voice rusty, “you knew who they were.”
Donovan dipped his head, picking at the scab on his knuckle. He’d gotten it on Haruus, and once Beverly confirmed it wasn’t infected by the toxic air, he’d opted to let it heal naturally. Now his fingers found and worried at it against his will.
“It’s not always true, you know,” said Riker, his eyes distant. “You’ve met survivors of Cardassian torture here. Did you know that on sight?”
Ensign Ro, most likely, just by virtue of her race. And Captain Picard, he knew, had been captured once.
“Not by sight,” conceded Donovan. He hesitated, squinting up at the twinkling green lights. Romulan warbirds, Riker said. “I heard the Tal Shiar is similar,” Donovan said, forcing himself to say it. “Maybe even worse.”
Riker’s face was pinched. He glanced sideways at Donovan – a quick glance, Donovan thought at first, but then Riker didn’t look away, and Donovan was forced to face him. They studied each other, sitting in the shadow of the starmap, where every flex of facial muscle could be an expression, or could just be a trick of the light.
“I’ve had experience with the Tal Shiar,” said Riker softly. “But it’s not them I’m looking for.”
Donovan’s stomach dropped. Slowly, Riker turned to face the map, his face drawn tight.
“So far as I know, all the men who tortured me are dead,” he said, quiet and toneless. “You know, I couldn’t sleep tonight, either?”
Donovan held his breath.
“It’s too damn cold here,” Riker said. “That’s why.” His features softened, a look of almost longing creeping over his skin. “I’m used to warmth. To Arbat.” A slight smile tugged at his lips. “She always ran hot,” he said confidentially, leaning toward Donovan like he meant to bump their shoulders together. He caught himself halfway through and stood with a sigh.
He laid his palm against the screen. The starmap warped, black skies turning maroon from contact with Riker’s skin. His body heat. He stared at the green dots like he could touch them, gather them into his palm, pry them apart.
“It’s Commander Arbat I’m looking for,” he said.