Author: greatunironic
Rating: PG
Disclaimer: I don't own anyone you recognize.
Feedback: Yes, please.
Summary: "He wore a really nice cologne." In the future, two people discuss Captain Charles Tucker and his first officer.
A.R.S.: A good friend of mine gave me the idea for this story. She told me to write something using these two sentences: 'He wore a really nice cologne' and 'Hardship purified them'. Well, I hope she likes it. Also, some of this story was inspired by this quote from King Richard II (III, ii): "For God's sake, let us sit upon the ground / And tell sad stories of the death of kings! How some have been deposed, some slain in war/ Some haunted by the ghosts they have deposed."
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Two ensigns walk quietly through the halls of Starfleet. They look solemn. They're staring at the pictures that decorate the walls there: there are holograms of the Enterprise, the first Warp 5 ship, and her crew. Captain Archer's face is the most predominant. Of all the sad and formal pictures that sit there, one, at the very end, stands out.
Two men are in it. One is tall and blond with a ski-slope nose. The other is shorter, with dark brown hair and a Hellenistic nose. The smaller one is being carried in the arms of the blonde one and doesn't look happy about it, but there is a spark in his eye that betrays the look on his face. The taller one is laughing.
"They really cared about each other, didn't they?" says one of the ensigns.
The other one nods. "Captain Tucker and Commander Reed meant more to each other than they would have ever admitted."
"Is it true that Commander Reed was adopted by Captain Tucker's family?" the first asks, after a little while. The second one smiles.
"Where'd you hear that, Jane?" he asks.
"Oh, around," she says, blushing a bit. "You know how rumors fly around here. I just thought..."
"That since I had served under them, I would know if it was true or not?" he says, finishing her question. She nods. He turns away from the picture and gestures to a bench across from it. They sit. "I suppose there's some truth to every story told about them. Even about the one where Captain Tucker had to undergo a ritual to join a tribe and had to rescue Commander Reed from above the active volcano. Or the one where Commander Reed had to land a shuttlepod blind."
Jane looks at him, astonished. "Did that actually happen, Pete?"
"Actually, yes," he says with a small smile. "I remember the conversation the Commander had with the Captain after that one. 'How'd yew land it safely?' asked Tucker. 'Well, sir, I used the Jesus Christ method,' responded Reed. 'Ah, yes, in ancient times, many pilots used to say that Jesus Christ was their co-pilot,' said Tucker. 'That's not what I meant,' disagreed Reed—here's the good part—. 'I just pointed the nose of the shuttle down and when Ensign Jacobs yelled 'Jesus Christ!' I knew it was time to level off and land.'"
"You were there?" asks Jane.
"Yep," says Pete. "And as for your earlier question, yes I do believe at one point, the Tucker family was going to adopt Commander Reed. I think they actually had the papers too. But then..." He trails off and looks toward the picture again.
They sit in silence again for a while, just staring at the picture of Captain Tucker, the second captain of the starship Enterprise, and Commander Reed, his first officer. After a bit, Pete says, "I bet I can tell you something you've never known about them." At Jane's nod, he continues.
"Captain Tucker was a lot smarter than most gave him credit for. He had this great sense of humour that was only rivaled by Commander Reed, too. God, did those to tell some jokes," he says, smiling at the memory. "Sometimes, they were really dirty. I remember one..." He pauses. "That probably shouldn't be told in mixed company."
Jane frowns. Pete shakes his head. "It's that bad, Jane. Captain Tucker had a really dirty mind. Sometimes, someone would say something and he would just start giggling. Reed would always give him these really weird looks, like he knew what Tucker was thinking and that Tucker should definitely not say it aloud. If anything could be taken the wrong way in Captain Tucker's company, it would be. He wore a really nice cologne." Jane looks at him, confused by this change of pace. "You could always tell it was him from this cologne. It wasn't overpowering, or strong, just kind of...there, like an extension of Tucker himself."
Pete stops and looks at the holo again. "Commander Reed... He just had this kind of air about him, like he was always sure that everything was the right thing. He was the calm center of the storm in battles. He was really kind to everyone, despite the stories of him being a hard ass. You could talk to him, you know? He would just listen to whatever you had to say. I think he had a degree in psychology, or something. After battles...if he saw someone hurting, he would tell them to go to his quarters later and that they'd talk about it."
Jane looks at Pete. "I thought it was Captain Tucker they was the moral, emotional one."
"They both were," says Pete, now speaking with a kind of one minded fervor. "And they were both so strong. Things had happened to them. Things that no one else had ever gone through. But it never broke them. I used to think of them as a refiner's fire. Things that would happen to other men that would break them only made them stronger, sharper. Hardship purified them."
He stops, a bit of his energy spent. He looks around and takes a breath to calm himself down before speaking again. "They were like brothers. Brothers in arms. Everything that had happened to one of them happened to the other. It was like they were each one half of a whole. If one hurt, so did the other. I think the hardest thing Captain Tucker ever had to do was let Commander Reed go."
Jane bites her lip. She had heard the stories of the death of Commander Reed. How Tucker had held Reed in his arms as Reed died on the bridge with a beam that had come loose from the fire fight embedded in his stomach. How Tucker had cried as Reed begged him to let him go. How Tucker finally did let Reed go. And how Tucker was never the same again.
Pete gets up and starts to walk away. Jane gets up and follows him. They walk out of Starfleet and into the streets of San Francisco. It's June and has been nearly a year since the death of Commander Reed. They walk down the sidewalk, nodding to the people they pass. Eventually, their walk takes them to a grave yard. They go into it. There's only one other person there. He's a man of maybe forty-five, with slightly graying hair. He's laying flowers on a grave. Jane makes to go to him, but Pete holds her back.
The man turns away from the grave and walks away. As she watches Charles Tucker leave Malcolm Reed's grave, Jane sees that he's a broken man. That he's no longer the man he was in his days of captaining ships. She knows that Pete is right.
Letting Reed go was the hardest thing Tucker had ever had to do.
Because hardship may have purified them, but a man can only take so much.
End