A/N – This is just a short reflection piece exploring what led Trance to change from the person she was in the beginning of the show to the person she became through the alternate timeline, coming back in Ouroborous. I, at least, felt a bit betrayed at first by the presence of this "new" Trance (as did Harper) and was glad when she softened up through the series becoming more like the Trance we originally knew and loved by season 5. But I wanted to look at things through the "new" Trance's point of view – what had she gone through? How did she feel coming back?
The Other Side of Ouroboros
Reflections
The end was near. A grim silence had settled between them, leaving them to the weight of their own thoughts. There was a shift in the tension they
normally lived with – they both knew they couldn't keep running much longer. But Trance knew in a way Beka could not – their time was up. She rarely
looked to the future anymore – it had become too dark; there had been nothing much there worth seeing. For many years she had constrained herself
to living in the present. The past…the past was simply too painful to look back on. The people, the friendships, the love that had magnified her purpose
lay buried in her failures. But whether she would look or no, fate would not be denied and she could feel its dark and inescapable fist closing around
them. She thought she could see the last threads of possible futures slipping through its tightening grasp – her final failure. As if in valediction, she
closed her eyes and sifted through the long deserted memories she had once treasured but which had been obscured by loss - the teasing and jokes
with Harper, Rev Bem's patience and wisdom, the goodness hiding behind Tyr's pretenses, Rommie's unflagging support and competence, the home
that Andromeda had given them all, even the long dead designation of being Beka's "lucky charm"… but most painful of all were the memories of Dylan -
the light she saw in him, the way he could inspire all of them, make them believe in the impossible - that good really would triumph over evil because
they could make that happen. All turned to ashes.
.
Their downfall had begun with Harper's death – triggering a chain reaction of loss and change she had been powerless to stop. It should never have
happened – it was, of course, a possible future, the majority of possible futures always included at least one of their deaths. But that's what she'd
been there for – to subtly guide the crew, thread them through the eye of the right future the way Beka led them through the slipstream – always
bringing them safely to where they needed to be. But Harper's tesseract machine had failed. He had hung on for a while longer as Trance feverishly but
futilely attacked her bonsai. In the end Tyr had kept his promise. Dylan had taken it personally and had been furious with himself, but Beka had been
utterly devastated – Trance had seen the invisible walls slowly come back up, her trust beginning to erode. Rommie, who had sometimes seemed to
take her engineer for granted as an annoying necessity, seemed bewildered and distracted. The fact of the matter was that none of them could do
what Harper had done, the Andromeda suffered without his expert attentions and that had left them…vulnerable.
.
However, it was Trance's reaction which had been the most startling, and in the end the most dangerous. As her sorrow over Harper leeched the joy
from her heart and fear began to overcome her faith, her color began to drain away. Yes, she was maturing, but not in a natural or expected way. She
guessed it was simply because it wasn't fun being purple anymore. But the most damaging consequence was that Trance had begun to lose her
confidence. She had been so shocked, so blind-sided by her failure, her inability to undo this and find a better future that she began to second guess
herself. She hesitated even more to share what she knew, or thought she knew. With each small problem or mistake that came up afterwards, her faith
in herself and in her abilities evaporated.
.
It had been Tyr's death on Shintaido that had jolted her back to action. Her doubt and self-confusion had kept her silent and she knew that he had died
because of it. The risk of death, (while he oft seemed to believe his own to be impossible), was something Tyr was always prepared for, and at the last,
would accept with grace as long as he had first battled it ferociously down to the last twitch of his fibers. The fact that he had died in vain, serving no
greater purpose and that because of Trance's own cowardice, she knew he never would have forgiven. She was horrified by how she had dishonored
him in this and vowed not to stand back any longer but to take the future into her own hands. No longer would she strive to guide others in how they
shaped the future with her cryptic hints, her subtle suggestions, her lucky guesses – what had to be done she would now do herself. She stepped
rawly into her own power – power the others had only seen glimpses of and wondered at. It was in this decision that her trust that the universe would
unfold as it should died a quiet death, alone and unnoticed.
.
Despite everything, it had seemed for a while that they might still succeed in the end. Dylan was, after all, a powerful force in the Universe, a light that
could not easily be snuffed out. The Commonwealth was reforming, and delegates from all of the new member worlds had come to the Andromeda
Ascendant to officially ratify the Charter. Trance had begun to think that perhaps "exerting her will on the Universe" as Tyr would have put it, was
something she should have done long ago when another Universe opened up out of nowhere as if to say, "Oh no, you don't." As the massive alien fleet
swarmed through the dimensional tunnel, the representatives scattered like stardust and the first breath of a new life was snatched away, the
Commonwealth a dream stillborn. As she and Beka had executed their last ditch attempt to seal the breach between universes, they had instead,
sealed their fate as the resulting explosion ripped the Andromeda to pieces. Dylan's death had been the death of hope, the death of a myriad of
possible futures in which good and light and truth triumphed. Without him, their options for achieving that end had become severely limited. Still, neither
she nor Beka were the type to give in, even with the jackboot of fate crushing their windpipes. They had done the only thing they could do – what
Dylan would have wanted them to do – they carried on. They survived. They even had a plan, of sorts, eventually. One small, last hope to bring an end
to the Magog world ship, even if the dream of bringing justice, peace and civilization through the Commonwealth had passed beyond their grasp. But
every attempt they made to find and obtain what was needed went wrong. They simply were not meant for the task – without Dylan, they lacked the
key to open the right path. Every where they turned they met with increasing resistance, violence and luck so impossibly bad it was hard not to take it
personally.
.
As time went by, it seemed they had nothing to show for their efforts but the piece after piece of Beka which lay buried in the wake of their misfortunes.
In a way Trance had felt buried too, by the crushing press of her defeat – not only in letting her friends down, letting the Universe down, but letting the
Divine down. She had failed not only to keep them on the right track but to keep them alive, to keep him alive and with that she had failed to fulfill her
mission, the very purpose the Divine had brought her into being for. As options and possible futures had evaporated from existence with each wrong
turn, further negating her purpose, she had begun to fight only to exist one more day, to survive in the moment only – neither looking backward nor
forward. Well, for a little more than that, she thought now, glancing at her grim-visaged, red-haired friend. She existed to keep Beka alive, what was
left of her, in their futile search for the Engine. The one friend who had been too tough, too canny to fall even as the others paid the price for Trance's
naïve mistakes. Yes, Beka was the one thing she had left to fight for, even if it was just this one last day.