"Good job, Lieutenant. I'll take it from here."
Scott nods, white faced, white lipped, and turns to leave. Young can't tell if that's anger or fear. Same thing really, in this case. Apparently he had to club Rush #2 over the head and physically drag him away from the chair, with the ship falling into the sun around them and Rush #1 arguing with him all the way back. Arguing that he should be allowed to fry his other self's brains out, because it was his life, his decision, his desire.
They're lucky any of them made it back, let alone all.
Without too much hesitancy, Scott closes the door behind him, leaves the three of them alone. Young's happy about that, glad that Scott at least is starting to trust him again.
His Rush, Rush #1...
He pauses that thought to consider it better. Considered chronologically, his Rush is probably Rush #2, younger by 12 hours than his scarred counterpart. If Young has this right, they are all version #2 except for the Rush who is sitting shivering in the corner of his sofa like a bird in an Arctic breeze, and the Telford who has made it to Earth. His Telford is the one Scott found dead, steaming, with his internal organs cooked, on the floor of alternate Destiny.
Things they don't tell you about time travel – how you'll feel when your old friend gets duplicated and then one of the pair gets killed. Young doesn't know if he should be half angry or wholly confused, but there's something quiet in him that says one David is plenty, and he's going with that.
His Rush... Fuck it. Rush glares at him, chin up, knives in his eyes and a kind of restless, prickly energy about him that might be fear but looks more like shame. "We knew you wouldn't believe us when we said it was an accident. And given my previous experiences of your regime it didn't seem unreasonable to expect a death sentence. Why not help myself to choose my own?"
Rush of course wouldn't trust Young as far as he could throw him. Would literally rather kill himself than try.
"No, I get that," he says and moves away from his desk. He doesn't want to look official. Like most conversations with Rush, this is outside all the structures and the safeguards they've tried to bring with them from Earth. He doesn't know if that's comforting or not, but that's just how it is.
Looking away from Rush's accusations, he concentrates on the man who came off Destiny's shuttle, an emotional wreck shattered by the deaths of the crew. The man whose depths of broken mourning have opened Young's eyes to the fact that he does care after all. The guy he's decided to call Nick.
"You thought you deserved to die, so you wanted to do it by hooking yourself up to Destiny. Maybe you'd never know who built the universe, but you'd know so much else. At least for a second. I get it. The thought of death can be..." Like a thirst. Like a constant low level physical pain that you can ignore when you've got something to work on. But at night... at night when everything else is quiet it crawls out of the cracks and becomes the whole world. "A comfort."
"Oh please," Rush makes a disgusted hand gesture, brushing aside morbidity and weakness. He didn't live through it, he isn't broken open, he hasn't seen what Nick has seen inside himself. Or if he has he wants to keep it hidden. "Let's just get the thrashing over with and move on. I presume that's why you sent Scott away, yes? If it's not death you intend for him then I imagine it's a punishment beating. Just leave his hands intact, he'll need them if I'm to put him to work."
Nick goes sharp as a blade of glass, leaves off hugging his knees and puts his feet on the floor. "Well, thank you for that. Nice of you to put the idea in his head. And if you think I'm working for you you've got another think coming. I was here first."
"And look how much good you did," Rush leans forward and hisses it in his own face. It's fascinating to watch, but Nick has been through bereavement and abandonment, some kind of altercation with Telford that lead to Telford's death, and a subsequent suicide attempt. He's unravelling like he did in the dark, and Young can't watch that a second time without intervening earlier.
"Rush-"
"You let them die. All of them. You let your Destiny die. You don't get to come here and take mine."
"Rush!"
Both of them fix him with the same indignant glare. Maybe he's not supposed to interrupt their weird external internal monologues, but although it's informative to know that Rush is as merciless to himself as he is to the rest of them, it's not helping.
"You actually see what happened with David?" he asks, hoping to derail this for a different time.
Rush sobers at once, shakes his head. Then he does that thing he did just before he asked Young to stay behind with him, that kind of internal brace and drop, like he's pushing himself off a high dive board. It's what Rush looks like when he's trying to be honest.
"But you of all people should know that..."
Young nods because he's had this thought too. "If there was a fight, it wouldn't have been you that started it."
That's not strictly true. Rush's MO is to start it with words, to needle and taunt until his opponent loses it and hits him. This proves Rush is the better man. He retains the moral high ground, and he gains the upper hand of the martyr. It's a game of nerve in which Rush is the aggressor, but technically, technically it would have been David who struck first, David who escalated it from shouting match to something deadlier.
Young closes his eyes and bows his face into his hands for a moment. He sighs in the dark of his cupped palms.
"He shoved me," says Nick, unexpectedly. His restless fingers have been prying up the band-aid over the burn on his cheek, making it bleed. Young's spoken to TJ about that. She says it will scar on its own. There's no need to put a couple of stitches in to hold it closed and incidentally mark him for life. She'd looked displeased that he'd raised the subject, but somebody had to.
"Telford accused me of ruining the dial home – as though I could possibly have wanted any of this – he shoved me and I shoved back." Nick is looking away, looking delicate, and that's just wrong, because Nicholas Rush in any time line should never look anything less than dangerous.
"There was a live cable. I know you won't believe me, but I didn't mean..."
Rush heads for the door with an eyeroll and a little inhalation of breath that says he's disgusted to share DNA with anyone so weak. Young meets him there because even though he thinks Nick is the softer touch right now, Rush is his. This has got to be weird enough for Rush without playing second best to himself.
Rush gestures him to step into the corridor, closes Young's own door behind him. Ever since they made their gentlemen's agreement on the deserted spaceship, Rush has had these flashes of treating Young as if they're confidantes, and it would be touching, delightful even, if half the time he wasn't positive he was going to disappoint.
"You should have let him die," Rush says, earnestly, with the innocent certainty he tends to use when suggesting Young should murder someone.
Young's kneejerk reaction of horror over this has been steadily wearing thin for over a year now. He can't remember how it felt when it used to take his breath away. "You kidding? I'd have thought you'd be glad. Finally you have someone on board who's on your own level. Someone you can trust."
Face angled towards the bulkhead, Rush breathes out a snort of amusement. His gaze accuses Young of unbelievable naivety or worse. "Right. Yes, it's lovely. I'm truly going to enjoy fighting with him for control of my team, for access to his data, for possession of my own quarters and my own name. While all the time you're thinking how nice it is to have a spare. Because now you have one that can be left behind. Doubtless, you'll keep us competing for which one it should be."
Young knows better, but he can't help it. He wants to say something along the lines of I made a promise to myself I would never abandon you again, and besides, I'm kind of getting to like you, but that's not the sort of thing he could ever force into words. It comes out as an elbow clasp that makes Rush startle and recoil.
"If he wants to live he has the right to live."
Rush shakes his head, but oddly does not tear his arm out of Young's grip. "He doesn't even belong in this universe."
"But he's here."
"Yes, and if you had left it up to both of us we would have corrected that for you by now."
Rush always looks hungry, hungry and belligerent, like there's never enough to go round and if he doesn't fight for it he'll be left to starve. That's not such an unreasonable assumption on this ship where they're one meal ahead of crisis on a good day. It's like he thinks there's barely enough room on Destiny for one Rush, and he's going to have to make sure it goes to him.
If Nick has the same attitude – which, lets face it, he probably does – this is a massive fuck-up in waiting. But what the hell does Rush expect him to do about it? He's not going to tell either of them they need to die.
"We'll just have to learn to get along with him." He shrugs, pretending that it's going to be that easy, while he remembers what one Rush is capable of when it comes to suborning the crew and taking over the ship and running life-threatening experiments on the science staff. Two of them, using the ship as a battleground? Lying to him about what each of them is up to so as to score points off each other? Yeah, that's going to be great.
This is exactly the kind of thing that made him think that one Rush was too many.
He smiles and gives Rush's elbow a reassuring squeeze, because he's glad he changed his mind about that. "We'll work something out," he says. "It'll be fine."
"Oh, I'm so reassured." But Rush returns the smile with something lop-sided and sickle-sharp. There's a fleeting moment of fellow-feeling between them before Rush dismisses him with a handwave and walks off. Then Young opens his door and goes in to have the whole conversation over again with Nick.