Disclaimer: I do not own the characters depicted in Star Trek: Enterprise, and I'm not making any money off this story.

Rating: PG

Spoilers: Season 3 general.

Archive: If you want, but please ask first.

A/N: This started as random writing while I was avoiding working on my thesis last year. I thought I probably should finish it. Hopefully, this is the last of my season 3 angst, but as I'm half-way through watching season 3, probably not. Thanks as always to my betas G.Eliot and Sailorcoruscant.

Heroes and Villains

I watch and I listen.

I see and hear the crew falling apart.

It's expected; they are living on a knife's edge, move too far one way and Earth will be sliced apart, too far the other and Man's soul is destroyed.

Man has enjoyed a time of inner peace, with no discord in the harmony of life.

This is ending.

The decimation of the soul has already begun.

I don't mean how they treat outsiders, but how they treat each other.

I see once-inseparable friends asking distantly after the other in muted voices that had once been raised in hilarity. The best and the brightest that Earth had to offer, tarnished with time and wear.

Oh, it was expected that some would fall along the way. That the strain would become too much. But they didn't expect it to happen to all. Not the way it has.

And I wonder, what price will they pay to save their world?

It has been said before that the needs of the many outweighs the needs of the few. How can that be true? It is the few that make up the many.

Their people look to them as heroes, as idols of what humans can be.

What will they think if they ever find out?

Will they be able to justify what has been done?

How far will they go next time to defend their world?

What is the difference between heroes and villains?