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writesandramblings · 6 years ago

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The Captain’s Secret - p.101

“The Memory of Your Heart”

A/N: There is a scene referenced in this chapter that took place in episode 15 and was not included in this fanfic. Just want to make sure the non-show watchers know they didn't miss anything I wrote; the scene didn't really fit in this story except as a moment of reminiscence. If you rewatch this scene with a mind towards the context it's presented here, though, it really is pretty unnerving.

I'm at the big Star Trek convention in Vegas if anyone wants to drop me a line.

Also, hey, did you catch that the titular captain is Saru? Yep. Planned that one from day one. He ended up with a different secret than originally intended because Lorca lived, but it was Saru all along.

Full Chapter List Part 1 - Objects in Motion << 100 - The Captain’s Secret 102 - Only Then Am I Free >>

The lobby of the opera house was stunning. Swirl-patterned windows rose three and a half stories tall with terraced levels of curving wood and white walls that caught the reflected light of the moonscape outside. Blue and purple plants native to Vorasa system cascaded down like a waterfall of life from the top level, weaving down towards the garden on the first level with bursts of orange and green flowers.

"This is incredible," breathed Tilly, barely able to catch her breath at the sight of it.

Next to her, Stamets was more concerned with the tickets. He smacked his hand twice on the side of the holoticket and the seat numbers fritzed into view along with live directions to reach them. "There we go."

"Couldn't you just live here? If there were beds, I mean, and..." She trailed off, uncertain what else living in a space this immense would require.

"It is stunning," admitted Stamets. There was a time when he might have come here and found the architecture preferable to the music. Now he felt capable of appreciating both.

"Wow," said Tilly, head tilted up towards the ceiling, her feet following the movement of her eyes across a series of rippling metal ribbons arranged along the ceiling. There was a soft impact as she backed into another guest, almost tripping over the trailing hem of a gown. The Bolian she had collided with turned to look at her with wide-eyed surprise. "I'm sorry! I'm so sorry, I wasn't looking—"

The Bolian smiled at Tilly. "It's fine," the woman assured her, sweeping the shimmery, peacock purple fabric of her floor-length gown to the side. "Your first time?"

"Yes," Tilly nodded, excitement overcoming her fluster.

"Enjoy your visit," said the Bolian kindly and resumed her conversation with her companion.

Stamets watched the exchange with a smile of his own. "Making new friends everywhere we go," he gently teased. "Shall we find our seats?" They followed the instructions on the ticket to the middle terrace level and the far left of the auditorium. The theatre itself was shallow but tall—as tall as the lobby—with multiple levels of seating stacked almost on top of one another so every seat had a view of the stage, with the preference being for the audience to be above the performers but a stone's throw back, rather than deep and far away as most theatres on Earth. Elegant scalloping behind the stage directed the sound from the base up towards the top. At the moment, the sound consisted of a gentle, whispering murmur of patrons seeking seats and the orchestra members taking their places, punctuated by notes of instrument tuning,

"We're so high up," said Tilly, feeling slightly queasy. It was impossible not to feel a momentary sense of acrophobia. The theatre was the polar opposite of Discovery's low, modest ceilings and the scalloped back wall of the room created the illusory sensation of leaning over the stage below in a mild optical illusion.

"At least we're not on the front row," said Stamets, because merely standing at the front row of any section was enough to create the sensation of teetering at the edge of a cliff. Species prone to inner ear imbalances like humans were advised to avoid those seats entirely.

They took their seats, Stamets smart in his tuxedo and Tilly looking the picture of elegance in a long black dress and attached capelet. Her red curls were pulled back into a ponytail big enough to be a halo. Stamets listened to the whisper in the air and for a moment it felt like he might hear Culber if he listened closely enough. "Thank you for doing this with me."

"I'm honored you invited me," said Tilly, consulting her program.

The conductor arrived to brief fanfare. As the lights dimmed and the stage came to life, a triumph of horns and flutes played their spirited invitation to the world of Puccini's La Bohème and were joined almost immediately by the voices of the performers.

The notes floated upwards through the air. The movements of the singers were balletic when viewed from above, carefully choreographed to suit the swirling aesthetics of classical Kasseelian culture, and Tilly was soon lost in the music even if she did not understand the exact words.

Stamets was lost in the music, too, but he could barely see the performers through the watery field of his eyes and soon closed them, imagining he was in another time and place with a different companion. He settled back against the plush velvety material of the seat and heard partly the music and partly the memory of Culber, his mind's eye picturing the doctor's smile and the brush of stubble across his jaw. The opera house was forgotten in favor of the soft blue lights of their shared quarters late at night. Moonlight settings they had called it, and the singing became a backdrop to a far more beautiful moment.

Stamets’ eyes only opened when the version of Culber in his mind said, "Come on, we're missing the show."

At intermission, they refreshed themselves with a pair of drinks as Tilly fretted about the wisdom of drinking at all. Taking a bathroom break while the performance was ongoing seemed a terrible social faux pas.

"You're overthinking," Stamets told her.

"You know what? I am!" She downed her drink in one go. "Whew!"

Tilly turned, looking across the crowd to see what else people did during opera intermissions besides imbibe alcohol and saw something on the far side of the terrace that made her face light up with recognition. "Is that..."

Stamets turned in the direction she was looking. Even across such a large room, it was hard to mistake the form of a lului as anything else and impossible to deny the familiar shade of grey-blue epithelial tendrils beneath the gossamer strands of the lului's semitransparent shawl. She was stretched up to the height of a human with the support of a cocktail table. Beside her stood a humanoid in a full environmental suit leaning with one arm on the table and the other on his hip, an angled black cape hiding the slight offense of the environmental suit's vulgarity against the sea of well-dressed operagoers.

"I think it is! Lalana!"

"Don't—" But it was too late. Tilly was already waving her arms to get Lalana's attention and the lului, with her massive eyes that took in whole vistas at a glance, had seen them first. Stamets felt his heart drop.

Approaching the table, Tilly was startled to find she recognized the alien's style of environmental mask. She had seen one exactly like it once before. "Hello Sylvia and Paul!" said Lalana. There were three empty drink tumblers on the table, though how many had gone to Lalana and how many her companion was unclear. (The answer, of course, was that none of the alcohol had gone to Lalana.)

"Fancy meeting you here," was Tilly's cheerful reply. "Who's your friend?"

"This is Omen. May I introduce Paul Stamets and Sylvia Tilly. They were with me during my time on Discovery."

"Pleasure," said Omen, his voice a low metallic timbre that seemed to hint at a darkly wry tone.

Stamets considered the masked figure. The height and build checked out. "I think we've met once before," he ventured. "You were with Lalana when she came to visit my research station the first time. Before Discovery."

There was no audible reply, but the masked figure tilted his head to the side and Stamets could well imagine the dry and disapproving frown.

"Was that where you got the idea?" asked Tilly. Lalana's head twisted in a manner indicating confusion. Tilly gestured to her own head to supply some visual context to supplement her verbal deficiency. "The—Memory Alpha."

"Why, yes," said Lalana. "Omen's species was the source of the design." She began clicking her tongue in a private joke. Lorca figured it out after a moment and shook his head with annoyance at the lameness of essentially saying the design was a human one.

The coincidence was too much. Stamets shot Lorca a sidelong glare. "What brings you here?"

"I am very much a fan of live music, especially singing," Lalana answered. "Gabriel and I used to attend concerts when we would visit Risa."

"Lorca liked opera?" said Stamets, incredulous.

"You're telling me people enjoy this caterwauling?" shot back Lorca, absolutely confirming his identity to Stamets.

"People with good taste," Stamets retorted, though Culber's love of opera had not been something they shared while the doctor was alive. It was only now that Culber was dead and the sound of opera brought him back to life in Stamets' mind that the engineer found he could appreciate the genre fully. "I wouldn't think this would be of interest to... someone like you."

"Likewise," was the response from under the mask. Tilly reacted with momentary surprise at hearing the word, which she associated with O'Malley.

Lalana was untroubled by the tenseness between Lorca and Stamets and said, "I am enjoying it very much!"

"Me, too!" bubbled Tilly, launching into an excited discussion of the specifics with Lalana that lasted until the lights flashed to signal the end of intermission, another one of those Earth customs that had successfully migrated across the Federation as an easily understandable universal cue.

Lalana's presence Stamets could almost understand, but he seriously wondered what Lorca had been doing there. Thankfully, when he and Tilly returned the following year for what soon became an annual pilgrimage, Lorca and Lalana were both blissfully absent.

2259.

They had unleashed a monster into the galaxy. Philippa Georgiou, every bit the bloodthirsty, murderous, opportunistic tyrant she had always been, spent the first few months learning the ins and outs of the universe she had landed in, playing along with the charade requested of her by Starfleet, and when she was satisfied she had enough of an understanding of her circumstances and her enemies, she left a trail of corpses in her wake that sent a ripple of fear across the whole of the Federation.

For the first few weeks after the initial refugee camp massacre, no one suspected it was her. It was not until the massacre repeated in another system, on another planet, that the rumors began to swirl across subspace of a great Starfleet captain gone inevitably insane after a full year of Klingon prison.

Then the rumors shifted subtly, the fringes of the story changing as a new version emerged. Georgiou was not insane, they said, but rather, the sanest person in the universe. She had seen the truth of what was required in the wake of the Klingon conflict and hers was not a way of madness but of strength: a galactic necessity if they were to prevent the Klingons from reorganizing against them in the future.

The Federation, these rumors further claimed, was being taken advantage of by the Klingons and various non-member states. The aid being offered to others was not being returned with anything of value and non-citizen refugees were illegally flocking to Federation worlds, straining resources already depleted by the recent war and taking what rightfully belonged to the Federation's full, legal citizens.

Georgiou was like a virus, her actions and ideas a contaminant, but this time, her contamination had spread far beyond Cornwell, Sarek, and the other wartime leaders who had approved her hydro bomb proposal in the waning days of the war.

Some flocked to this bold legend, exactly as Georgiou knew they would, because they saw the recent Klingon conflict as a sign of things to come and they longed for the authoritarian strength of someone who would crack down on the Federation's enemies in every way possible.

Others retaliated to this evolution of the narrative by doubling down on the claims of insanity. There could be no other explanation for a mental break so total, so complete, and so bloodthirsty.

A further subset of the population saw this new version of Georgiou as proof of the dangers posed by humans and their viral genetic instability and wondered if perhaps the solution to the problem was something else entirely.

Then there were those who knew the truth of who and what Georgiou truly was.

"You must track her down," ordered Admiral Sherak. "You are the only crew who understands what we are dealing with."

"Yes, admiral," Saru agreed, but after three weeks they were no closer to stopping Georgiou and the death toll had risen to seventy-two. Saru and Burnham were forced to confront the fact their knowledge of this universe's original Philippa Georgiou was not translating into an understanding of the Terran emperor.

In the ready room, Burnham standing across the table from him and a fresh cup of salted tea between them, Saru decided it was time to consider a more drastic measure. "Perhaps it takes a Terran to track a Terran," he mused.

Petrellovitz's little behavioral experiment—approved by Sarek at the time of its proposal—had lasted only seven months on Discovery. In the end, it was not Petrellovitz's lack of morals and systematic disregard for experimental safeties that had doomed the venture, it was Michael Burnham's enduring tendency to regard herself as knowing better than everyone around her and correlating habit of inserting herself into every aspect of ship missions and operations under the auspices of this assertion.

Put another way, Petrellovitz could not get along with this universe's Michael Burnham, and Burnham equally did not get along with her. Petrellovitz was used to a version of Burnham that relied on her for science, not one that tried to tell her how to run her own projects. The two were constantly at odds with one another in a way that went far beyond the rivalry Burnham and Saru had been locked into back on the Shenzhou.

They might have continued in this battle of wills indefinitely but Burnham and Petrellovitz were both too clever for that and had come to the mutual conclusion they simply needed to be on different ships. That, thought Saru, was an exemplary conclusion to the experiment that reflected well on both of them. Petrellovitz had since transferred to the USS Lemaître, where she was now a chief science officer.

"I mean, I can help you, but you should ask Omen," Petrellovitz told them over the holocomm. "Keeping tabs on the emperor was never really my thing." Her thing had been the opposite, avoiding the emperor at all costs.

That was what Saru had been afraid of. It seemed there was no way around it in the end. "I assume you can still contact them?"

Petrellovitz hummed and bounced slightly. Being in this universe had revealed an irreverent edge to her personality that had never been able to fully manifest in the mirror universe. "I can. Mac likes to hear from his sister every now and again. In return, I'd like the full, unredacted mission report from your recent jaunt on Nirros V and detailed scans of the next five magnetars you encounter. I'll send my specifications."

"I agree to your terms." Nirros V was more a curiosity than anything else. The incident was not classified, but several personnel details had been purged to protect the privacy of those involved, piquing Petrellovitz's interest. Saru knew she would keep the salient details to herself. She might even reply to him with some insights into how the crystalline entity had caused the polarity instability in the transporter stream.

"What do you think this means for our old experiment?" Petrellovitz wondered aloud.

"It means all Terrans are different," said Burnham, "same as all humans." Petrellovitz smiled at Burnham and terminated the call.

"Send Petra a copy of our Nirros V report as soon as possible," ordered Saru, but Burnham could not leave until she had asked one more question.

"Who or what is Omen?"

"That information is highly sensitive. There is still a chance they will not respond to our request. If they do not, then there is no need for me to tell you."

Four hours later they had coordinates for a rendezvous and Saru was forced to reveal the truth. The look of horror on Burnham's face made clear she interpreted this as a betrayal. "I saw his body."

"What you saw was Einar Larsson. A gruesome ruse on Lalana's part, assisted by Mr. Groves."

Burnham shook her head, still reeling from the shock. "The Lorca I knew would never have been able to lie low this long." In her ideation of Lorca, he was a self-aggrandizing, egotistical manipulator who had thrust himself to the forefront of the Federation's war with the sole intent of using that mythos to schism and conquer the Federation once the Terran Empire was under his sway. At least, that was what she had to believe to justify the way she had watched Georgiou stab him through the chest. Sometimes she still saw his face in her dreams, his eyes twisted with pleading desperation as he reached towards her.

"Perhaps you did not know him as well as you thought," suggested Saru.

"How could they keep this from me?"

Saru sighed in almost human fashion. "I know it has always been a great difficulty for you to 'put yourself in another's shoes,' but I implore you, attempt to do so now. There was no benefit to telling you this. A decision was made by persons higher-ranking than either of us that Lorca's existence must be kept secret. It was my duty to abide by it."

"You know how he was—is obsessed with me."

"I am your captain," said Saru, but warmly, in a tone that felt like a knowing smile, because theirs was now a long friendship centered around mutual respect. "Captains must be able to keep secrets. I have not held many, so I hope you will forgive me for the one. If I thought he posed any threat to you I would have told you regardless. If you do not wish to be present when he is, there is no need for you to see him."

"No," said Burnham, "I'm the first officer on this ship and I'm the reason Georgiou is here in the first place. This mission is more my responsibility than anyone's."

She was worried, though, what seeing him would do to them both.

They waited at the rendezvous point for hours. Even Saru began to doubt if anyone was coming. Then a small, V-shaped cruiser devoid of any identifying marks and with a disabled transponder dropped out of warp almost on top of them and requested to dock. Saru and Burnham waited at the airlock.

None of the three figures on the other side of the airlock were entirely familiar. There was a pale, yolky yellow lului with a splash of darker yellow on its chest and red on its hands, tail, and head. Beside it stood a humanoid in a black and grey environment suit and rebreather helmet with silver latches. A tall grey alien with long, raven-black hair and red eye slits dressed in a navy-blue gown brought up the rear of the group—a Misellian.

"Greetings, Captain Saru," said the lului. "I am Lolalen, and these are my companions Omen and Aeree."

"Changed my mind," remarked the helmeted alien beside the lului in a metallic voice, turning on his heel.

"Captain!" said Burnham. The helmeted figure paused mid-stride. There was a chance that word had not been for him, but Burnham could imagine he wanted it to be.

"Perhaps we should convene in the conference room to discuss the specifics," suggested Saru.

Once the doors were closed and the official record disabled, all pretext was dropped. Lalana shifted back to her usual blue-grey and Lorca hesitantly removed his helmet. There were streaks of silver peppered throughout his hair and the years had crinkled some new lines onto his face, but the eyes were the same.

He did not hold Burnham's gaze. Half a second after their eyes met he looked away, focusing instead on the polished sheen of the conference table, the objects on the side of the room farthest away from Burnham, and finally the stars outside the window as he went and stood there with his back to the assembly. When he spoke, he addressed and responded only to Saru and his crewmates, treating Burnham as if she were some sort of void in the room.

Burnham did not take her eyes off him. She could not understand his behavior.

"We don't need your help," Lorca declared. "We can get her on our own."

"Then why haven't you gone after her before now?" challenged Burnham. "I thought you hated the emperor."

Lorca's fingers twitched behind his back. Burnham could just make out the enduring frown of his reflection. "Why indeed," he sighed to no one in particular, as if her question had come drifting in through the window on some cosmic wind.

"Because there could not be any question as to who had killed her," said Lalana. "We will help you, but only if you leave us out of all reports, official and otherwise, and take all credit for stopping her."

Burnham was confused. "You don't want people to know it was you."

Truth be told, he had always been a self-aggrandizing, egotistical manipulator, and he still was, but he had been forced to temper this against the realities of living on the fringe.

"It would be counter to our role in the universe," said Lalana.

"I was addressing Lorca."

At last he spoke to her, but his eyes remained locked on the stars outside. "Then you're shit out of luck, Burnham, 'cause there is no Lorca. But if you want to put a line in there about the great and mighty Captain Omen, you be my guest."

"Omen," said Burnham. "As in a portent of fate. You haven't changed at all."

Lorca snorted so hard he got saliva in his nose. Burnham was entirely missing the trick to the name. He turned away from the window, keeping his back to Burnham, and addressed the Misellian sitting at the conference table. "Ree! You handle the specs." He grabbed his helmet from the table and stormed out.

"Let him go," Lalana advised Saru and Burnham. "He did not want to come."

Burnham looked at Lalana with pity for how little the lului knew about anything. "That may be what he wants all of us to believe, but that does not make it true. The Gabriel Lorca I remember was obsessed with me."

"Oh, Michael Burnham, it was not that he was obsessed with you, it was that he loved someone who had your face. And when you have lost someone you love, it is such a comfort to still be able to see their face."

The problem, Lorca informed them all once he had calmed down, was that they were trying to track Georgiou down. "You don't track Georgiou, you draw her out to you."

They knew roughly what region of space she was in. From there, it was a simple matter to falsify a set of refugee transfer records, disguise the stealth cruiser as a transport, and fabricate a distress signal for a fake engine emergency.

"Can't be subtle about it. She doesn't go for subtle. Whatever you put in that message, you gotta clobber her over the head with it."

"If it's too obvious, she'll see through it," said Burnham.

"Trust me," said Lorca to Saru. He was still pointedly avoiding looking at Burnham.

While the real refugees hitched a ride on Discovery to somewhere more welcoming than this region of space, Burnham and three of Discovery's security officers boarded the cruiser.

"Welcome aboard the Hayliel," said Lalana.

The ship was dark both inside and out. Its interior felt like being in a hole deep underground rather than the infinite reaches of space and the passages that made up the ship's veins were so narrow Burnham and her entourage could only walk in a single file. It was claustrophobic, dimly lit, and eerily quiet. It felt very Terran.

They arrived in the cargo bay and encountered a fourth crewmember: a young human woman who smirked up at them as she expertly cleaned and reassembled a rifle weapon. "The great Michael Burnham," said the woman, identifying herself as "Simi the Starkiller."

The security officers were permitted to wander the ship freely because, as Lalana said, "Anywhere that you are not allowed, you will not be able to enter." It was an opportunity to familiarize themselves with the layout of the ship and prepare for the coming trap.

Lorca was on the bridge, sitting in the captain's chair and gnawing on his finger in agitation. Burnham took up a position just off to his right, almost but not quite in his eyeline, and kept watch on him from the corner of her eye. He remained clearly displeased by her presence even if he was refusing to actively acknowledge her.

He was not the only one to take issue with the mission. "I am under no obligation to help with missions I do not agree with," said Aeree from what appeared to be an operations station. "That's not the deal. Give me the shuttle. I can still make the rendezvous with Jochrat and complete our objective."

Most humans would not have recognized what Lorca and Aeree were discussing, but Burnham had grown up on Vulcan and knew a Romulan name when she heard one. Exactly what had Lorca and his friends been up to?

"I'm amending the deal," said Lorca. "You want Mac to find out what you did to that cat? No? Well then, you're staying here."

Aeree said in a tone so cloyingly sweet it felt like it was dripping sugary ichor, "You cannot hold that over my head forever, Omen."

"You don't eat a man's cat!" Was that anger or exasperation in Lorca's voice? Burnham could not decide which.

"Even I know that, and I once ate a man," clicked Lalana from the helm controls.

Aeree hissed softly. "Very well, but you are warned," she said nebulously. Burnham was reminded of Lorca's time commanding Discovery. Then, as now, he had created a highly contentious ship environment. She failed to realize that this was a game to them all, and that it had been a game back on Discovery, too, with the sole difference that all the participants on the Hayliel knew they were playing. In time, Lorca would do something that Aeree could hold over his head and the balance of power would be restored between them and perhaps even tip in the Misellian's favor.

They waited. And waited. Lorca's agitation grew to a boiling point and Burnham felt it necessary to point out that the reason the ploy had not worked was likely him. "Our message was too obvious," she announced. "She realized it was a trap."

Lorca jumped up from the captain's chair and stormed out of the room.

"Why did you do that," Aeree hissed at Burnham. "Do you think Omen does not see that possibility?"

"It needed to be said," said Burnham.

Aeree's reply was unequivocally firm. "If everyone in a room knows something, it does not need to be said. You only say things when you think people need to know them and do not already. Do you think we were born yesterday, little Earth child, or that there is any thought in your head that has not already filtered through ours? What are you in the face of a thousand years of experience?"

"Ree, that's enough." Lorca had turned around almost immediately after leaving the bridge and heard most of the exchange from the entryway. "Burnham, with me."

The cruiser was not very big and there were few places to go. Burnham put a hand to the phaser on her hip as she trailed Lorca. She couldn't tell Lorca's mood completely from his back, but his voice was grimly resigned. "Sorry 'bout that. Aeree's a little protective. I'd say she's harmless, but... Her bark is entirely less than her bite."

"If you try anything, I will defend myself," Burnham warned.

Lorca did not respond. Their destination turned out to be a tiny mess hall, surprisingly bright compared to the rest of the ship, with white walls and silver fixtures. A silver table with bench seating took up most of the space. Lorca hit a switch just inside the door and the lights dimmed halfway, shifting the room from glaring white to a more neutral warm cream color he found tolerable. He slid past the table and plucked two cups from a storage cupboard. "When my Michael got tense, it was usually because she was getting peckish."

Burnham watched Lorca's shoulders as he poured coffee into the cups and rummaged for something to serve with it, settling on some sweet rolls. "I'm not your Michael."

"Ree's not wrong. When everyone knows something, sometimes it doesn't need to be said." He pushed one of the coffee cups towards her and sat down at the table.

At last they were sitting across from each other and it became clear the reason he had been avoiding her so thoroughly. He gazed at her with a mixture of melancholy, longing, and relief. A faint smile touched his lips.

This time, Burnham looked away. He sniffed in mildly derisive amusement at her discomfort. "So this is what it's come to. You hate me that much."

When their eyes met again, hers were steady and cold. "I barely think about you. You're nothing but a bad memory that I put behind me a long time ago."

He frowned in annoyance, a frown she remembered from seeing it many times on Discovery, and Burnham was glad; she knew hearing she never thought about him would hurt more than suggesting she possessed any emotion towards him at all. "After everything I did for you," he said, shaking his head. "Without me, you'd still be languishing in Federation prison. Your adopted dad'd be dead in the Yridia nebula, and you wouldn't be back in Starfleet serving as first officer on that ship. A ship I gave you. You ungrateful..." He grabbed his roll and bit off a large chunk, chewing on it angrily.

Burnham was shocked. "You expect me to thank you?" she realized.

He washed the roll down with a swig of coffee and sniped at her, "That'd be a start."

"After everything you did." Burnham shook her head.

"Because of it," he countered.

"You lied. To me, to Starfleet, to everyone."

"What was I supposed to do? You think if I'd waltzed up and said, 'I'm not from this universe,' they'd've given me a ship? I'd have been poked and prodded like a goddamn specimen. I only did what I had to do to get a command."

"You were using us to get back to your universe."

"As if!" He rolled his eyes. It had been the plan, and then it wasn't the plan, and then it was again. The plan had therefore existed in a state of Schrodinger-like uncertainty, both true and untrue, until events had forced it to become a last-ditch desperate effort to retain control of his own destiny. That was all he had ever wanted, really. Control for himself to make up for a life where he'd had none. "I just wanted to keep my goddamn ship." He sighed. "Maybe win that war for you. The right way."

"By bringing the Terran Empire here to 'save' us just so you could turn around and crush us beneath your heel and become emperor of two universes."

"Now that," said Lorca, "sounds like something the other you would've come up with. Maybe I could've managed it. Imagine, the might of two universes united, the possibilities." That was one way things could have played out and he would have been entirely satisfied to make it so. There was no denying it was a solution he had considered. "But if I had..."

If he had gone through with that course of action, he would have lost her. The only thing he had left of Michael. In the end, he'd lost her anyway, but at least it was not because he had intentionally set them down a path towards that inevitability.

"Then what was your plan?"

"Well, now you'll never know, will you."

Had he been feeling more generous, he might have told her his secret. There had never been one plan, there had always been twenty. His brilliance was in coming up with plan after plan so that in the moment, he could make the most of whatever fate had presented him in a way that seemed intentioned. He made the plans and fate chose among them.

Burnham glared at him as she sipped her coffee. Despite his denials, she felt she knew the truth. He was a liar and had always been.

Another sigh. "I didn't bring you in here for this. When I first became this universe's Gabriel Lorca, someone gave me a gift. A story. Funnily enough, a story was the gift I gave my Michael. It's time I gave you one, too."

A lie, she thought to herself, but the story he told felt true.

"I've got a scar on my back. From an agonizer, handheld. Spot where it is, can't quite reach it myself. Which is exactly what the person who put it there intended. She liked to put scars in that spot so her victims would have to debase themselves by asking for help to get rid of 'em. I even did a few times. I hated that scar so much. Every time I got rid of it, she'd put it right back. The last time she put it on my back was just before I came here. Now, I coulda had someone in this universe remove it the minute I arrived because no one here knows what the scar is or what it means, but I didn't. You know why?"

Burnham waited, sensing he did not require her to ask the question.

"She had the same scar on her back. My Michael. I swore I'd keep it until I took down the person who gave it to us both. So thank you, Burnham. It looks like now I finally get that chance."

Knowing that Georgiou was in the habit of marking people on their backs like chattel was disturbing but Burnham held herself firm and said coldly, "That doesn't excuse what you did. Georgiou told me how you groomed the other me."

Lorca's stare was uncharacteristically surprised. "Did she? That's funny. You ever think Pippa mighta been describing herself?"

Until this moment, Burnham never had, because she couldn't possibly imagine the original Captain Georgiou doing anything like that.

Then she remembered a moment before she, Georgiou, Tilly, and Tyler had beamed down to Qo'noS to deliver what turned out to be a hydro bomb. How Georgiou had lit up at the sight of Tilly, stroked her hair, called her "Killy" in a way that sounded like a personal pet name. A knot of revulsion formed in Burnham's stomach. "No. You tricked the other me."

"You don't give the other you enough credit. I couldn't make that girl do anything she didn't wanna do. You have that in common. And she... she always knew she had me wrapped around her little finger." Lorca smiled, his eyes faraway as he recalled his Michael. He had committed a cardinal sin where the other universe was concerned, just not the sin Burnham thought he had. Sins were defined a little differently for Terrans. "She was the one wanted to be emperor. I was just happy to help."

Burnham instantly saw the flaw in the logic he was offering. "She was the emperor's heir. She didn't need your help."

"You think she was Pippa's one and only? Georgiou was fickle and vindictive. Still is, thanks to you. Michael and I lasted longer than most. Didn't mean we were safe. So we took a gamble. Together." He closed his eyes. "I still see her sometimes. My Michael."

If only Burnham had stayed with him in the other universe and taken up the mantle of emperor. He wished he could have seen some version of Michael on that throne. His end goal had always been to remove Georgiou and replace her with someone who would not debase him, threaten his life constantly, and take away the things he loved. Someone who would allow him the autonomy to fly freely across the expanse of the stars. Michael had exceeded his expectation in every regard.

Aeree's voice came over the comms. "Omen, we detect them."

Lorca's eyes snapped open and he smirked confidently. "Time to put on a show."

At the show's conclusion, Georgiou was flat on her back in the middle of the Hayliel's cargo bay, pinned mostly beneath a cargo crate, with Lorca's boot on her wrist and a Romulan disruptor pistol aimed at her head. Burnham stared at this reversal of fortune with panic. "No!"

"King of the misfits," Georgiou said venomously, reviving an old nickname of Lorca's. In their universe, that was what he had been: leader of the aberrations who pursued things other than power. People like Matthew Kerrigan, Jackson Benford, and Emellia Petrellovitz. There were plenty around him who were there for power, but enough that weren't to earn them revulsion.

"Emperor of nothing," he responded.

"Do it," Georgiou hissed.

Burnham walked slowly towards Lorca, her hands outstretched in a plea, her own phaser set to stun. "There's no reason for us to kill her."

"She had her chance," said Lorca. "You really wanna give her another one, Michael?"

"Yes." A chance to go to Federation prison, but a chance nonetheless.

"You didn't give me a chance."

Burnham stopped. There were always signs, of course. Pahvo, the Yridia nebula, Corvan, his attempts to rescue, protect, and help her. Moments that to Burnham were obfuscated by his darkness, his cruelty, his contempt for the people around him, and his apparent obsession with her.

She raised her phaser into the air in a sign of peace. "I'm giving it to you now."

He holstered his disruptor and stepped away. At last, long last, Burnham could see who he was.

At the end of it all, Burnham made an offer she did not expect to make. "I cannot offer you what you had with your Michael, but... If you wish to communicate..."

"No. You've been talking to Lalana." He turned towards her, years of sadness reflected in his eyes. "You know what the worst thing in the universe is? Watching the face of someone you love turn against you. I look at you and I see..." His voice began to break. "You standin' there, staring at me... I just wanted one more moment with her. One last moment. I gave you back the stars and you wouldn't even give me that!"

She could see that moment, too. A terrified face, staring at her with shocked betrayal, falling to the floor with a wound worse than the physical hole in his chest.

"I don't want to see you. I don't wanna be near you. I wish I'd never—" But he couldn't finish that sentence because it wasn't true. "I wish things had been different. But I want you to know, I forgive you."

Burnham stared at him, confused.

"For thinking the worst of me."

2260.

"We are not far from Risa," said Lalana. "We should visit Sollis and Caxus. They have been asking to see you." As with Stamets and Tilly and that seemingly calculated encounter on the Kasseelian moon, Lorca was abiding by the strict rules set out by Starfleet. He scrupulously avoided contacting anyone from his time on Discovery or the other Lorca's life.

Lalana had made no such agreement. When O'Malley mentioned where Tilly and Stamets were headed, Lalana brought Lorca to give him the chance to antagonize Stamets one last time as a small consolation gift. Also because, as much as Lorca loved pushing Stamets' buttons, he still liked Stamets in his own way.

The thought of visiting Risa made Lorca uncomfortable. Out of all the people who had known the other Lorca, he had not managed to trick any of them for very long, and by all accounts, Sollis and Caxus knew the other Lorca very, very well. He pointed this out.

"Do not worry," said Lalana. "It is you they wish to meet. I knew they could keep a secret and so I told them who you were."

"That wasn't your secret to tell," Lorca chided.

"Wasn't it?"

In the end, they could not go to Risa because it was too much a risk. Sollis and Caxus came to them, beaming aboard the Hayliel after very carefully confirming Lalana was standing far enough away that there was no danger of materializing where she was standing. Lorca shielded his eyes from the blinding white light of the transport. Since they were not headed down to the planet, he had seen no reason to spray his eyes that morning and now he was being rewarded with a wincing pain for his sulking laziness.

"Sollis and Caxus, it is so wonderful to have you on my ship at last. May I introduce Gabriel Lorca?"

Lorca lowered his hand and squinted at their guests, unsure what to make of them as his eyes adjusted.

He froze with his arm hovering in the air. It was her. Impossibly, unbelievably, and miraculously her, and because Risians lived much longer than humans, she looked much the same as she had back then. Those unmistakable emerald-green eyes, the cascade of wavy honey-brown hair, sun-kissed skin and a smile that made you want to drop everything and run to wherever she was.

These details had been entirely diminished in the version of her he had once known, but here they were presented in full radiance, and she was even more stunning.

"You're Sollis?" he asked.

Sollis smiled. "Like the word 'solace' in your language, meaning comfort."

Lorca had never known her name. In his universe, it was likely she had never had one. Many slaves were never given names or were taken from their parents at such young ages they never knew them. If he could have chosen a name for her, though, it would have been exactly that. Solace was what she had been, the other version of her, for that brief moment until Georgiou took her away and created a wound that lasted until he found new purpose in Michael. Now, here she was again, entirely restored. He could scarcely breathe at the sight of her.

Sollis could tell there was something more to this than a mere first meeting. She could see the pain and shock and sensed it was connected to her. There was a lopsidedly helpless yet hopeful smile on Lorca's face, a wish he could not speak, and a despair just beneath it.

She decided to do something about it. She approached, arms raised, and hugged him. "It's a pleasure to meet you," she said.

He wrapped his arms around her after a moment, returning the hug more tightly than he should have. Her hair smelled faintly of flowers and the sea. Destiny, he decided. It was destiny. "I've missed your face," he said softly in a whisper only she could hear.

She smiled and closed her eyes, because even if this was not her friend Gabriel Lorca, there was no denying she felt the same. "I missed yours."

Standing to the side, Lalana and Caxus watched this display of desperate familiarity without judgment. Caxus touched a finger to his lips in a pensive motion Lalana recognized all too well. "This Gabriel is a little more of a one partner person," she advised.

"That's disappointing," said Caxus mildly.

"Nn. He is a very good Gabriel Lorca, but he will never be our Hayliel, not entirely."

Caxus reached over and twined his fingers around Lalana's tail. "There was only one Hayliel Lorla."

Watching Lorca and Sollis with unblinking eyes, Lalana pressed her hands together thoughtfully. She was reminded for a moment of Mischkelovitz's sacrifice—a sacrifice intended to save some other version of Gabriel Lorca in what Mischkelovitz believed was the original timeline. If Mischkelovitz was right, then maybe there were two Gabriel Lorcas in the world she had gone to, and maybe one of them was Hayliel.

Except John Allan had gone back in time to the Triton and put Hayliel in Lalana's path. That probably meant in the original timeline, Lorca and Lalana had never met and shared the things they shared here. If so, there was only one Hayliel Lorla, and he was gone.

How happy she was to have ever known him. How much she wished to see him again. All she had left was his reflection from the other universe.

Part 102

#Star Trek Discovery #Star Trek #Discovery #Paul Stamets #Sylvia Tilly #Kasseelian opera #Mirror Gabriel Lorca #Michael Burnham #Captain Saru #Saru

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