Disclaimer: Star Trek (plus all its intellectual property) is owned by Paramount. No infringement intended.
Beta'd by VesperRegina, to whom all due thanks!
"Computer, begin recording."
He sat at his desk, looking at the monitor. The cursor winked at him mockingly. You don't know what to say, do you?
For crying out loud. How difficult could it be? He owed her something. Months of total silence were hardly the hallmark of an affectionate brother. And despite everything, he'd done his best to be that. Until the day he...
Until the day you ran, and just left her to it, sneered the cursor.
He rested his elbows on the desk top and joined his hands. Almost without realizing it he bit one knuckle until the pain registered in his brain, by which time his teeth were through the skin.
It wouldn't have been so bad for her, he pleaded to the invisible judge, jury and executioner who sat in eternal condemnation of his cowardice. That was the readiest of all the lame excuses he'd trotted out time after time, quieting his conscience with it every time it burned and ached with the guilt of a deserter. She was just the afterthought. The failed replacement for the runt. And in the bitterest irony of all, she'd been the bonny bouncing baby that his father wanted and had been cheated of on the arrival of his firstborn. Her sin was not her size, nor her abundant health. She was the wrong sex.
They'd both been made fully aware of their failings.
He could comfort himself – a little – with the fact that she'd always been far more resilient than he. She'd cared far less that she was a disappointment. She'd made her own life and lived it, and if ever she'd lain awake loathing herself for not living up to expectations, no one but she had ever known of it. On reflection, it was unlikely. She'd been born with the tough shell that it had taken him years to acquire. She'd known of his plans almost from the outset and, far from trying to stop him, had been his ardent co-conspirator, even to the point of using her small savings to pay his fare to London when he applied to attend University there; his own meagre hoarded wealth would have to keep him until he could find some way of earning enough to support himself while he studied, for he knew that their parents would give him nothing. It had been a sour joke between them that he'd pay her back out of his retirement collection when he left Starfleet as the admiral their father had always wanted in the family.
But her situation would still have been bad enough. He knew that his father had cherished hope right until that last day that he might change his mind, might shrug off the traitorous dream of leaving his homeland and abandoning his family traditions of service in the Royal Navy, and might face down the arrant cowardice that left him a shaking wreck at the prospect of death by drowning. That he might – even if he could never aspire to anything that might reflect any outstanding lustre on the family name, and Stuart Reed had never had any illusions about his son's prospects on that – at least do enough to avoid bringing shame on it. That he might not end up a disgrace to his ancestors as well as an object of disgust to his father.
After all, as far as Stuart Reed was concerned, it didn't much matter what coffin his runt ended up in, as long as a White Ensign flag fluttered above the deck where it rested. Faithfully on every Trafalgar Day the snowy Royal Navy ensign with its red cross and Union flag in the first quarter was run up the flagpole in the Reed front garden, while the children solemnly stood to attention. Only once had a young and foolhardy Malcolm failed to render it the appropriate reverence. On every occasion after that he'd stood so straight and motionless he could have passed for the flagpole. The welts on his back had taken weeks to heal fully.
He ran a hand across his face, and didn't realise it left a smear of blood across the bridge of his nose.
Pity knew where Maddie had got her strength from. She hadn't inherited it from their mother. Perhaps at one time Mary Reed had possessed a personality, but if so it hadn't survived marriage. He'd learned very early on not to look to her for more than vague and unreliable affection. Certainly not for protection. Any sympathy she might have felt for her offspring had rarely inspired her to even covert rebellion on their behalf against the household tyrant.
And they wondered why he never wrote home...
He sat staring silently at the waiting cursor. Maddie, I'm so sorry. Sorry for leaving you in hell. Sorry for all the rows there must have been afterwards. Sorry for what you got for speaking up for me that last night, when I told him what I was going to do. Sorry I hadn't the guts to do what he expected of me. Sorry I ran out on you like the coward he always called me. Sorry I'm a ... disgrace ...
"Computer, end recording. Erase and end programme."
The End.
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