Title: Madness
Category: TV Shows » StarTrek: Enterprise
Author: volley
Language: English, Rating: Rated: K+
Genre: General/Angst
Published: 03-04-07, Updated: 03-04-07
Chapters: 1, Words: 5,262
Chapter 1: Chapter 1
Grateful thanks to my beta reader, Roaring Mice.
The screaming, the feral growling, stopped a bit too abruptly.
Trip felt his heart miss a beat and pushed off the sickbay wall, against which he'd been leaning with his arms tightly crossed over his chest.
As horrible as it had been to see T'Pol, the impassable T'Pol, struggling and shrieking like a madwoman, this sudden silence was possibly even worse, for it left the door open to a doubt he would rather not acknowledge. He was only willing to consider one option: that Phlox had put the Vulcan Officer under.
There were muffled voices; then Archer reappeared. His face, marred by deep scratches on his left cheek, was the mask of a man who had lost his peace for good.
"Phlox says she'll be fine," he said hoarsely.
Trip closed his eyes briefly, relief washing over him. When he reopened them he meant to ask Archer what the hell had happened on the Seleya, but a medic had already come to steer the Captain towards a biobed, wanting to tend to his cuts.
Another medic was treating a troubled-looking Corporal Hawkins for his shoulder wound. Phlox was with T'Pol, behind the privacy curtain that surrounded her bed.
And Malcolm?
Trip's heart missed another beat. After the two shuttlepods had docked, he had followed Archer carrying an unconscious T'Pol to sickbay. He'd been in a daze, so magnetised by the sight that everything else had blurred into the background. Now he suddenly realised that he couldn't remember seeing Malcolm return to the ship.
"Where is Malcolm, Capt'n?" he asked in a shaky voice. "Is he ok?"
Archer hissed and flinched away from the young medic, who murmured, "Sorry, Sir."
"Capt'n?" Trip repeated tightly.
Archer glanced at the Engineer. "He's fine," he murmured. "He must be in decon."
Releasing the breath he'd been holding, Trip started to walk to the door that led to the chamber.
"Tell him to get some rest," Archer added numbly. "God knows he deserves it."
The access panel to the decontamination room was open, and Trip looked through it. Malcolm was slumped on a bench, with his eyes open but clearly unseeing, lost in his thoughts.
Trip took in the sight and smirked. The man's stillness and sagging posture were nothing to go by: he knew that after a difficult mission Lieutenant Malcolm Reed would be wound tight for a long time. He put his hand on the door handle and let himself in.
At the sound, Malcolm immediately raised his gaze, jerking to a straighter position, silently questioning Trip with eyes that, for once, said rather too much.
"Capt'n says T'Pol's gonna be okay," Trip reassured him, and watched the other man try to blink away the sudden emotion from his face.
"Thank God," Malcolm murmured, passing a hand over his drawn features as he leaned back again. "Hawkins?" he asked after a beat.
Trip allowed himself a faint smile. "Bein' stitched up, but he'll be okay too." He paused. "Capt'n told me to tell ya to get some rest. That you deserved it."
Malcolm let out a soft, sarcastic-sounding huff; then leaned forward and grabbed the bench tightly with both hands, his tension-filled body still unable to let go.
Sitting down opposite from him, Trip checked his friend over, taking in all those little signs that spoke of a restless soul. "How 'bout you, you okay?" he asked quietly, hoping to catch his friend's eyes.
Malcolm, however, kept them averted. "Okay," he replied just as quietly.
Hmm, Trip thought. That's something, Mr. "Fine".
Okay was already closer to the truth, but still not good enough. Malcolm had a way of keeping things inside that was totally unhealthy. But Trip had his own ways to get past the man's barricades.
"The Capt'n is bein' treated for the scratches on his face," he said, glancing at his friend. "Looks real beat."
Malcolm's eyebrows shot up briefly, and that was his only reaction. Wincing inwardly, Trip went on to ask, "So, what did you find on that ship, Lieutenant?" He was more than a bit surprised when his use of rank did not get the expected result. It went, in fact, virtually unnoticed.
"Madness," Malcolm replied so low that Trip strained to hear him, still looking away.
Trip forcefully chased away the image of T'Pol screaming at the top of her lungs which that single, hair-raising word had evoked. "Phlox says the Vulcans' synaptic pathways had been damaged," he said.
"Quite right."
Another terse reply, another low murmur spoken to a corner of the room.
"Apparently it was the Trellium D."
That did earn him a fleeting but intense glance.
"Trellium D?" Malcolm said pensively. "They were coating their ship with it…" Leaning with his elbows on his knees, he latched his hands behind his neck and let out a slow breath.
"That Vulcan ship was falling to pieces," he began, now speaking to the floor. "Minimum life support. Dark and seemingly deserted, although we had detected biosigns. We separated. I went with Hawkins, and the Captain remained with T'Pol. After a few minutes Captain Archer paged me, warning there was something wrong with the Vulcans, they had become violent."
"Violent?"
Straightening up, Malcolm finally met Trip's gaze long enough, and his eyes were deeply unsettled.
"It's not as if I've never dealt with violent people," he said tautly. "But…" He stood and began to pace the small room.
"But what?" Trip nudged him gently.
Malcolm stopped and swivelled to face him. "Those Vulcans… there was something about them that was…" He shook his head and resumed pacing.
Trip waited patiently. It was unlike Malcolm not to be able to find the right words.
"…Surreal," Malcolm eventually concluded. "Their features… they were unnatural; they were like zombies, something… out of a horror movie."
Suddenly his words picked up pace, as did his steps. "They wouldn't say a bloody word, wouldn't utter a sound - none of the screaming that T'Pol did. In the silence of that dead ship they kept coming at us, with their grotesque faces and hollow eyes, their gaunt bodies and jerking movements, determined to kill us." He shook his head again, opening his arms in a gesture of disbelief. "Us, their supposed rescuers! In the semidarkness it was… It was surreal," he repeated, with a mirthless huff.
Trip realised that through Malcolm's account he had gradually clenched his jaw, and consciously relaxed his facial muscles. "Hell…" he commented in a whisper.
He watched his friend drop rigidly on the bench and return into his secluded inner world, and pondered what he had been told. No wonder the away party had that look about them. He had thought it was tiredness, or concern for T'Pol, but the mission had been a haunting one, in more than one way. And to think he had considered his stunt with Mayweather on that asteroid a nerve-racking experience…
"What happened next?" he asked at length, eager, now, to know more.
Malcolm shot him a stormy look. "We ran into trouble right away," he replied grimly. "Hawkins and I were attacked. The more Vulcans we'd stun the more seemed to come at us. Hawkins got injured and…" His hand went to his throat. "The Captain and T'Pol joined us not a moment too soon."
When Malcolm's hand came away, Trip noticed an angry bruise on his friend's neck, barely visible under his slightly unbuttoned black shirt. "You oughtta let Phlox take a look at that," he told him, jerking his chin. Not that he held much hope of it.
Malcolm, indeed, blew out a frustrated breath. "It's nothing." he said roughly, passing a hand through his uncharacteristically dishevelled hair. "All I want is to be allowed out of here."
He looked in dire need of a shower and a few hours' of solid sleep, and Trip decided to relent.
"Ok. But tomorrow morning, before hiding away in your beloved Armoury, you're taking a detour to sickbay. That clear, Lieutenant?" He smiled to take the sting out of his words, but Malcolm didn't seem to notice.
"I said I'm fine," he spat out.
Ah, so the trademark Reed word had finally made its appearance.
The man grabbed the edge of the bench tightly again, casting Trip a fiery glance. "I'd worry a bit less about me and a bit more about what we're facing here."
"I'm plenty worried about our mission to save Earth," Trip replied deadpan. "I don't need you to tell me who or what to worry about." He kept his tone calm but firm.
"Sorry, I'm sorry," Malcolm mumbled, looking confused. Pressing two fingers on his eyes, he stuttered, "I… all that adrenaline… I'm a bit on edge."
You don' t say, Trip thought; but he chose to drop the issue of how 'fine' or not 'fine' Malcolm might be, instead going on to ask, in a carefully controlled voice, "What happened next?" He wanted to keep him talking; make him get things off his chest.
"The real fun began," Malcolm said hoarsely. "Those Vulcans slammed down the bulkheads and sealed them, cutting us off from our shuttlepod. Hawkins was bleeding freely, and T'Pol looked to be growing distinctly troubled. I could see the Captain getting seriously concerned about her."
"What did you do?" Trip gently prodded him again.
"We managed to fight off another attack and climb to sickbay, two decks higher, where I dressed Hawkins's wound."
Malcolm had his eyes fixed on his hands, yet Trip was sure he was seeing something else.
"We found the ship's Chief Engineer there, in restraints, a man T'Pol had served with. She tried to question him, but all she got as an answer was…" Blinking out of his abstraction, Malcolm looked up in confusion. "Some vicious growling…"
Trip nodded silently, another flash of the wildness he had witnessed not long before crossing his mind. "Sounds like a real nightmare of a mission," he said.
"What's taking Phlox so long?" Malcolm ranted, jumping to his feet again. He leaned on outstretched arms against the access panel that communicated with sickbay, and peered through it.
He was still a bundle of nerves, and Trip found himself wondering what else had happened on the Seleya.
"The Doc must be busy treatin' T'Pol," he tried to soothe. "Be patient. If he doesn't come by in a few minutes, I'll go look for him."
Still leaning against the panel, his head hanging down low between his shoulders, Malcolm murmured, "If we had blown up with that ship it would have been entirely my fault, Trip."
Trip rolled his eyes. Trust Malcolm to come up with the theory that their scrape with death was entirely his fault. Well, if that was what weighed on the man's conscience, it was nothing new. Anything going awry was always Malcolm's fault.
"Come on, Malcolm," he patiently began. But Malcolm pushed off the wall and turned, seeking his gaze, and Trip's next words died in his throat. Was it possible that the man had meant something more specific than the usual 'I'm the Chief of Security; I'm supposed to keep us safe'? "What the hell do you mean?" he croaked out.
"We managed to get to an auxiliary control room, on the engineering deck. T'Pol wanted to re-rout power through the auxiliary grid, to open those bulkheads so we could get to our shuttlepod." Malcolm paused, and Trip saw him struggle to continue. "But I made an idiotic mistake," he finally said. "She gave me some circuits to realign and I got the sequence wrong."
That was definitely very unlike the focused and precise man Trip knew Malcolm to be. "You were under pressure," he said, wanting to explain the mistake to himself, as much as to his friend.
"I'm supposed to be at my best under pressure," Malcolm replied with a sarcastic huff. "I'm bloody trained to keep cool and use my brains under pressure," he went on more irritably. "And here I go, getting a simple sequence wrong and endangering the lives of my Captain and…"
When he faltered, Trip jumped in. "You got out in the end," he said firmly. "That's the important thing."
"That's when T'Pol lost it for good," Malcolm continued tightly, oblivious to Trip's words. "We could all see she was having a hell of a time keeping her emotions in control, and then I make that stupid mistake and she… just lost it."
Stock still, Malcolm pinned Trip with challenging eyes. He was seeking a reaction of some sort, in fact Trip felt sure the man would be quite happy to be told he'd been a real jerk. Uh-oh: he wasn't going to do that. Ah, heck! How many times had they had this conversation?
"Dammit, Malcolm, you're human. Fallible. Get it into your head once and for all."
Malcolm let out another huff, one that held a good deal of self-contempt. "You want to hear just how human and fallible I was on that bloody ship?" He swallowed hard. "T'Pol turned against me in anger, shoving me brutally away and tossing the circuits after me; then she turned against the Captain. She was convinced we had sabotaged her work. I suggested there might be another way to get the bulkheads open, by causing an overload in the power grid."
"But that would-"
"Yes," Malcolm interrupted impatiently, "That would cause a reactor breach, but we were running out of options." He tightened his lips, before going on, his voice a lot darker, "T'Pol got even more suspicious; she accused the Captain of wanting to kill all the Vulcans on board because of his mistrust of them, on account of his father. Before I knew it, she had him at gunpoint, and her pistol was set to kill."
"What?" The exclamation was out before Trip could hold it back.
"Is that fallible enough for you? God," Malcolm murmured, shaking his head. "She could have… She wasn't herself, Trip. A slight pressure on the trigger and..."
Trip tried to picture the scene in his mind. A wrecked ship in semidarkness filled with zombies coming after you; a mad T'Pol threatening Archer; Hawkins injured; no way to get back to your pod… Forcing himself to move, he slowly got to his feet and approached his friend. "What did you do?" he asked.
Malcolm fell back against the wall, the very image of weariness and dejection. "Nothing," he huffed out. "There was nothing I could do. I had her in my line of fire, but the Captain was trying to talk her out of her madness, I knew he didn't want me to shoot. And I was reluctant anyway. We were in deep enough trouble as it was, without a dead weight to carry." He paused. "I remember thinking, 'What now? How are you going to get your Captain out of this, Lieutenant?'"
"But you obviously did in the end," Trip suggested.
Malcolm lowered his head. "It wasn't my doing. Suddenly there was banging. Some of those madmen were trying to get to us again. T'Pol got distracted and the Captain was able to take her by surprise and disarm her." He heaved a deep breath before continuing, "The Vulcans tried to poison us through the vent shafts, but I managed to overload the power grid, just before they broke into the room; we escaped through an access tube and made a run for our pod." He shrugged. "In the end the Captain did have to stun T'Pol."
Trip bit his lip, grimacing. "I had no idea it was as bad as that."
"The rest of our little adventure was quite a bit of fun too," Malcolm added in a dull voice, "if you consider fun crossing a gap several metres deep balancing on a narrow beam, while shooting insane Vulcans bent on taking it out from under your feet." Looking up he muttered, "Thanks for giving us a hand with the docking clamp, by the way. It would've been slightly annoying to blow up with that ship after making it to our shuttlepod in time."
"In the nick of time", Trip said softly, feeling a shiver down his spine at the memory of how close that had been. Damn me, wrecking Shuttlepod Two in that asteroid field, he silently cursed. A minute later and…
"Lieutenant," a voice suddenly said, getting their attention.
They turned to see Phlox on the other side of the access panel.
"I apologise for taking this long, I wanted to make sure T'Pol was stable," the Denobulan said.
"I understand, Doctor," Malcolm replied, pushing off the wall. "How is she?"
"I've sedated her. She's resting. Fortunately she wasn't on that ship long enough to suffer permanent damage."
Malcolm nodded silently.
"Everything checks out all right with you, Mr. Reed," Phlox added. "You may leave the decon chamber. Any injuries?"
"None," Malcolm replied, zipping up his uniform to the top and shooting Trip a fleeting glance.
The warning in his grey eyes probably wasn't lost on the conscientious Doctor, for Phlox seemed to be studying his most challenging patient for a long moment. Or perhaps he had become naturally suspicious of Malcolm's self-assessments when it came to his health.
"Am I to trust you, Lieutenant?" Phlox asked meaningfully, no hint of his usual cheerfulness in his voice.
Malcolm's mouth tightened. "I'm fine, Doctor."
Trip bit his lip.
"All right then," Phlox finally conceded. "Anyway, you know where to find me, should you need to."
They strode along the corridor as if they were being chased, without looking at each other. Trip couldn't shrug off a feeling of failure. The man beside him was still charged with such tension that it was almost a physical presence between them; he didn't know what he could do to help him, but he hated the idea of leaving his friend alone in this kind of mood.
"It was a hell of an experience," he muttered, to break the wall of silence that had fallen between them. He cast a quick glance to his side. "Are you gonna be okay?"
Malcolm darted back an unreadable look. "You know I will," he replied quietly.
"I don't mean in a week, Malcolm."
There was a long pause. Malcolm was taking long strides and it wasn't easy to keep up with him and hold a conversation at the same time.
"What do you want me to say?" Malcolm finally replied, clearly restraining his tone. "That I'm happy we're all back in one piece and I've put everything behind me?" He let out a soft snort. "Unfortunately it doesn't work that way. Not for me. I'm the one on this ship who…" He cut himself off. "Ah, forget it."
Trip caught him by the arm, stopping them both. After making sure nobody was around, he turned Malcolm to face him. "I want to know you're gonna be able to get some proper rest," he said with quiet determination. "Or I'm afraid I'll have to drag you back to sickbay, where Phlox can give you something to help you sleep. And take a look at that bruise."
They stared stubbornly into each other's eyes for a moment, Trip silently cursing his inability to wear down Malcolm's steely gaze. It didn't happen often any more, but at the moment the man was doing a good job of keeping him at arm's length.
"That's just what I need," Malcolm fumed, averting his gaze in irritation, "Phlox on my back for something as trivial as a bruise." He tilted his head, fixing a spot on the floor with narrowed eyes. "If I happen to lose a few hours of sleep because I'm wound up a little tightly, you needn't worry: I won't die. You, of all people, should know that," he said, voice dripping sarcasm.
Jerking away from Trip's grip, he resumed walking – hurrying, running away.
Trip smirked. People who live in glass houses… He went after him, counting to ten. Yeah, he wasn't exactly in a position to lecture on missed sleep; and getting mad certainly wasn't going to help – or perhaps it would? Suddenly, they were in front of Malcolm's quarters, and he followed his friend in, not really caring whether he was welcome: he wouldn't let him hole up and wallow in whatever self-destructive feeling he felt appropriate for the occasion.
Indeed he wasn't – welcome. Malcolm turned to face him squarely, arms crossed tightly over his chest. "Look, Commander," he said firmly. "I appreciate your concern. I really do. But I happen to be craving for a little time to myself. So if you don't mind…"
Trip hesitated. "You sure you want me to go?" he finally asked, ignoring Malcolm's strategic use of rank and those cold grey eyes that would have sent anyone else packing in a second.
Malcolm stared at him unwaveringly for a moment longer; but eventually the icy edge melted away from his gaze. He hung his head, and Trip allowed himself a small smile only because the other man could not see it.
Turning about, Malcolm went inside the room, and Trip decided he had been granted permission to stay. He followed him and the door swished closed.
"Do you think we can actually do it?" Malcolm asked, his back to Trip, arms wrapped tightly around himself. "That the eighty-three… eighty-two of us will be able to save Earth?"
Doubt rang clear in his voice. Perhaps Trip should be grateful that the staunch Lieutenant was allowing him to see past his famous barriers, let him catch a glimpse of his more vulnerable self; but instead Malcolm's uncertainty only made him angry. The Xindi had murdered seven million people; they had to succeed, stop them, and avenge all those deaths. His sister's death. He clenched his jaw.
"Not that I ever had any illusion that it would be easy, but the kind of things we are coming up against…" Malcolm continued, a note of despair entering his voice. "Those Reptilians, when they boarded Enterprise… our weapons were useless against them. Those bloody anomalies… and now this, a whole ship of Vulcans turned insane. And who's to say we won't be next…"
"We must succeed," Trip said tautly.
Malcolm swiveled to face him. "I know, Trip, but any little thing that goes wrong…" A pained grimace twisted his features. "When we were on that ship, after we'd been forced to overload the systems; when we were running against time and trying to get the hell out of there... I found myself thinking that because of an idiotic blunder humanity might be doomed to extinction. With Archer and T'Pol dead, how many chances would there be for our mission to succeed? Earth would be destroyed. And all because of something as stupid as a misaligned sequence."
Trip put his hands on his hips. "Will you stop blaming yourself? What good is it gonna do?"
"Bloody hell, Trip, forget about me!" Malcolm cried out in frustration. "Don't you see what I'm saying? We – all of us – can't afford the slightest mistake! It's frightening."
Sure, it was frightening to think that their species' only chance of survival depended on their ability to perform at nothing less than a hundred percent. But…
"It's a great motivator," Trip willed the optimist in him to say.
Malcolm smirked unhappily, and Trip blew out a frustrated breath. "Look, all we can do, really and truly, is try our best. As, I might add, you, Lieutenant, did on that ship."
"My best!" Malcolm snorted.
"You did more than get that sequence wrong, Malcolm," Trip countered. "You found a way to save the day, worked around your error, came up with a back-up plan." He raised his eyebrows. "One that involved a bit of pyrotechnics, but in the end you all got back in one piece. And that, as far as I'm concerned, is what's going to give us the edge: our stubborn resolve, our desperate need to succeed, no matter what the odds."
Silence met his words.
Trip raised an eloquent brow. "So… no pacing your quarters all night long, beating yourself up?"
"Pacing?" Malcolm passed an exhausted hand over his eyes. "You must be joking," he said hoarsely. "The moment my head touches the pillow I will be gone."
Trip sighed inwardly in relief; this is all he had wanted to hear. "It's enough one of us can't sleep properly," he muttered. The glare Malcolm shot him was definitely reproving. "Look, I wish I could do something' about it," he said in self-defence.
As they walked to the door, Malcolm shot him a glance. "Thanks for putting up with me," he said. "Not many people would have."
Trip's eyebrows danced. "I like a good challenge."
Malcolm grimaced. "Indeed, I provide ample opportunities," he commented bleakly. Before Trip could say anything, he added, with a sudden change of mood, "I'll give it all I've got, Trip, I promise. For the seven million. For humanity."
"That's the Malcolm Reed I like, the one I know I rely on," Trip replied gratefully.
Averting his grey eyes yet once more, Malcolm said, as if to himself, "Yeah. He might get lost in the labyrinth of his complexities, but he tends to come back, eventually."
Walking down the corridor to his own quarters, Trip suddenly became aware of just how tired he himself was. It wasn't as if he'd had a particularly relaxing day either. He winced: well, what day had been even remotely relaxing, since they'd learnt of the attack on Earth?
Still, it was one more day into their mission; one more day at the end of which he could lie down in his own bed. He might lie awake, unable to sleep, for hours perhaps, but it would be knowing that all the people he cared about, at least on this itinerant home of his – this ship – were still alive. Alive and home.
THE END