This is one of the many scenes that I would have liked to see played out in the show...
Grateful thanks to my beta reader RoaringMice.
Trip blew out a deep breath. He'd been trying without much success to accept the fact that they had made it, that they were back – in the right place and age. We are home. We are home… Was it possible that in the end the mantra would register and the numbness would leave room to relief?
Yeah, relief was all he could hope for – eventually, when feeling returned. Certainly not joy. Deep as he dug, he could find no joy in this homecoming. Not with the swathe across Florida and his heart. Not with the dead. Not with their ethics gone down the drain. Not with the broken bonds. Not with their ship, their beautiful ship in pieces. Not after the pit of despair, the exhaustion, the nightmares.
Nah, joy was a long way away.
Trip blinked at his face in the mirror. There was a bruise or two on it, compliment of those alien Nazi bastards, but they weren't what caught his eye. What caught his eye were his eyes, hollow and lacklustre, from which even the colour seemed to have washed out.
He blinked one more time. Maybe it would turn a page of the photo album and he could see another picture. When it didn't happen, he turned away from his sorry self, switched off the light in the small bathroom and paused one moment on the threshold of the door leading into his quarters. He was showered and clean, and...
And as he looked around his quarters, the mantra changed into What now?
For now that it was all finished, now that they were docked at Jupiter Station with no crazy shifts to work, indeed with no duties to attend to and time on their hands... he felt the loss of something; felt at a loss. Surely he couldn't be missing the hell, could he?
Shaking his head at the absurd notion, he let his momentum take him inside the room just as the door bell chimed.
Malcolm. Must be. Come to share the moment.
Trip's eyes ran to the door, and he started towards it without hurry, racking his brain for something to say, an excuse to make Malcolm go away. Malcolm was a friend, but tonight he wasn't in the mood. He might not know what to do with himself, but he knew he wasn't in the mood for company. Or even good company for anyone.
"Thanks, but no thanks," he said, even as the door swished open. A friend would understand.
Except this wasn't that friend, and Trip stood transfixed by a pair of green eyes, creased at the sides under the pull of a tense smile.
"Captain," he said, finding his voice after a second or two of stunned silence.
The skin on Archer's face pulled even more tightly, causing more wrinkles to appear. When had Jon become an old man?
"Is it okay if I come in?" he asked.
His careful tone of voice made Trip consider the words. Okay. He tried to remember the last time Jon had come to his quarters – or he had been to Jon's, for that matter. Okay? He wasn't sure. It might have been that time after the mutiny, when he'd been eaten up by guilt. Ironically, it had been a little oasis in the desert of their incomprehension.
Okay. Was it okay for Jon to come in? Now that he thought of it, the question was worded just right. Not the more neutral May I come in? or a casual Care for some company? but Is it okay. In those three words there was the estrangement of months.
"I think we should talk," Jon added, his already improbable smile fossilising into an awkward smirk.
"Talk," Trip repeated mechanically. The reel of the past year started rewinding at speed, flashing images before his unseeing eyes. "I can come back another time," he heard Jon say, and only then did he realise how hostile he must be appearing, when he was actually merely dumbstruck.
With a shake of the head and a quick, "It's okay," Trip stepped aside, letting Archer in.
Okay. As he watched Jon walk into his room with measured steps, stopping to look at his football helmet with focused interest – as if he had never seen it before – Trip had to remind himself things were okay, and this was his Captain in flesh and bones. He could hardly be blamed for a bit of confusion, with all the weird things that had happened lately… Archer blowing up. Enterprise getting back to the wrong Earth. Alien Nazis – or was it Nazi aliens? – in New York City. Archer resurrecting…
And now, Jon showing up at his quarters, wanting to talk. The way the man had been acting around him ever since entering the Expanse, this was just about as weird as being in a Shuttlepod being fired upon by ancient P-51s – which had been plenty weird, as far as he was concerned.
"I'm glad you didn't shoot me, down there," the Captain said hoarsely, finally turning to him.
Trip blinked out of his thoughts. "I thought you were Silik," he huffed out.
When he had seen Archer, his dead friend Jon, standing right before him, seemingly alive and well, his heart had missed a beat. But then anger had taken over, because that wasn't Jon. How the hell could he have been? Jon had been blown to kingdom come, putting their already agonising friendship out of its misery. Malcolm had told him. The Captain didn't make it, Trip.And Malcolm could be trusted to know about explosions. No, that couldn't be Jon; that was Silik, that bastard. And Trip was going to blow him to kingdom come, never mind that in the process he'd have to shoot at someone who looked like his friend. His former friend, anyway, for the man. was. dead.
"You're lucky the real Silik was there, sprawled on the floor," Trip felt the need to spell out, "or I would have pulled the trigger."
Archer's eyebrows met over a mirthless smile. "Without any qualms?"
It was the hint of disappointment in his voice that did it. As if shooting what he had believed to be an impostor would have made him – Trip – guilty of betraying their friendship, of all things! The bitterness of months overflowed.
"No, I wouldn't have found any joy in shooting someone who looked like you," he said in a voice that was much too cold, a voice that once would never have belonged in a conversation between them. The dam had broken, and he blurted out, "I still considered you a friend, despite-."
That's when he caught himself, before he said things he'd probably regret. As it was, the concept was clear enough for Archer to pick it up and give it the finishing touches.
"Despite all that I did to ruin our friendship," the man concluded dryly, with a direct look.
Typical Jon, Trip thought. Never one to beat around the bush when he had to confront someone, be it an enemy or… this bitter friend. Well, if this, as it seemed, was the time to put all the cards on the table, so be it. Scraping the wound clean would be painful, but it was the first step towards healing. Maybe their friendship was not beyond saving and they could try and reboot it, just as they were going to reboot their mission of exploration, once this break was done.
"What do you expect me to say?" Trip replied, finding his voice and his self-assurance again. "It's no secret that you and I haven't been the same around each other in the last year. And I wasn't the one who turned the cold shoulder."
Trip opened his mouth to continue, but too many thoughts crowded in his mind. There was so much to say and yet so little, really, and suddenly he didn't know where to start. So he closed it again. Let Jon speak. That's what he had come here for, hadn't he? Out of habit Trip walked to his porthole, leaning a shoulder against the bulkhead. How many times, unable to sleep, had he spent time watching the soothing stars streaming by? He couldn't rely on them to keep his demons at bay, now that they were in dry dock, but Jupiter Station was still a more impersonal sight than Jon's face, between the lines of which he was afraid to read.
"I haven't come to apologise."
Trip turned his head, surprised by the sudden tone of quiet resolve in Jon's voice as much as by his words. Archer was still standing in the same spot as if riveted to the floor, all his attention focused on Trip.
"I know I haven't been much of a friend to you," he went on. "I don't like it and I wish things could have been different. But there was something more important than you and me at stake, and my duty came first."
Trip frowned. "I never wanted you to put our friendship before your duty," he snapped, feeling a weight form in his gut. "I'd never ask that of anyone. But we'd managed to be friends and fellow officers, before-"
"Trip," Jon cut him off, his green eyes closing for what was more than a mere blink.
He took a tentative step forward, looking like someone who is re-learning movements he hasn't practised in a long while, and Trip's heart fluttered. Suddenly, after he had wished it for so long, he didn't know if he was ready to breach the gap that had formed between them.
"After the probe, after the death of your sister... you needed someone to lean on," Jon said. "And that person could not be me."
His expression was unguarded, his body language open and direct. This was different from what Trip had learned to live with in the past year, from the darkness and the indifference, but it still wasn't the real thing. He felt mesmerized, unable to shift his gaze away. Maybe the real thing would never be back. Maybe this was the real thing, now.
"The survival of our species was in the balance," Archer went on in a level voice. "From one day to the next I had to learn new… skills, if you like. Keep my head and make decisions in circumstances from which I'd have recoiled. Walk a fine line." His eyes grew intense. "I couldn't let your emotions throw me off balance. I had to keep my distance." Face muscles tightening, he quietly concluded, "Not only from you, for that matter."
Trip turned all the way to face the man he had helped to "steal" a Starfleet test-flight ship in a stunt that had almost ruined their careers but sealed their friendship. "Well, this might come to you as a big surprise, but I had guessed as much on my own already," he said, his sarcasm doing a poor job of hiding the hurt of so many months. He shook his head. "I didn't expect you to dedicate any of your important time to me or share my probably misguided thirst for revenge. All I ever really wanted was a little understanding. Like when Degra came on board. Hell, you made me feel like I was the heartless bastard."
Of all the painful memories, that one tore something inside him every time. Looking into the face the murderer of six million nine-hundred-ninety-nine people plus that one who, no matter how much he'd try to deny it, did count more than all the rest, had tested Trip as a man and as an officer. But what had hurt even more had been Archer extending a hand in friendship to the man while hissing at him, Trip, his alleged best friend.
Jon's lips tightened, before he quietly said, "I'm sorry."
"I thought you said you weren't going to apologise," Trip scoffed.
"I'm not." The green eyes still refused to shift away. "Many of the things I did were unpleasant and painful, but ultimately got the right results."
This was still all too controlled, all too distant, all too unlike the old heart-on-the-sleeve Archer, and Trip could not find in it the bond they had shared. Once again his benumbed silence was taken for what it wasn't: incomprehension.
"You were filled with anger, with hatred," Jon went on in that annoyingly restrained voice, saying things Trip knew all too well. "If I had let my heart bleed for you, maybe now we wouldn't be here to talk about it."
Did the man even hear himself?
"You know," Trip said frostily, "The real problem is it seems to me your heart is still not bleeding."
Archer winced as if he'd been stabbed. "Is that what you think?" he croaked out. A moment later, he broke his immobility and started towards the door.
A retreat? Trip clenched his jaw. "What's the matter?" he spat out, taking a step to intercept him, "Afraid to face a few ugly truths?"
That grimace had been the first sign of Archer's emotional involvement, the first sign that maybe the Expanse and its burden of anomalies, even personal anomalies, could indeed be put behind them. And Jon was walking out just because something had been said that hurt him, for a change? No, Trip wouldn't let him chicken out; most definitely not now that the man was finally showing that he still had a heart that could be wounded. They were going to make a clean breast of things, and when Archer finally did walk out of his quarters they'd either be friends again or foes.
They stood maybe a metre apart, eye to eye.
"Better believe I am. There's a lot of ugliness I'd rather just forget," Jon finally replied in that cutting way that seemed to have become his own. But then, under his breath he added, "If only I could."
Welcome to the club.
"Well, I'm afraid that's not good enough, Captain," Trip countered. "You've come to talk, so let's talk."
They looked at each other for one moment longer, both set in stone, and it was Jon who crumbled first. "Got a drink?" he asked, eyebrows lifting.
A glint of other times had flashed across his face, in his voice. It was so unexpected and such a stark contrast to that other Archer that Trip almost thought he'd imagined it.
"I've managed to save a bottle from Malcolm's clutches," he said, adjusting his tone to the truce that seemed to be in the making. "For a special occasion." He let his eyes soften. "I'd say this is special enough."
And so it was that a few minutes later Jon was losing himself in the amber liquid that was swirling in his glass. Trip sipped his without hurry, leaning back in his chair, legs stretched out in front, studying him. They all had their demons, he thought with a pang of conscience. Maybe it was time to let go of the resentment.
"You know," he said, voice thick, "this is how it all started, between us: drinking in the Mess hall, that night, en route towards Hell. Me, telling you not to tiptoe around, you telling me we'd do what we had to. That was the last time we acted like friends, Capt'n. Maybe I came on too strong," he tagged, almost to himself.
That sort of affectionate nickname he'd given Archer in better days had slipped out unconsciously, but Jon responded to it.
"I'm sorry," he repeated, his gaze getting wistful, his heart more in the words this time. "I'd never want you hurting, Trip."
He turned the glass in his hands, lost in some damnable memory, by the look on his face.
"When you had that-"
He cut himself off and looked up abruptly, and Trip knew instinctively which damnable memory was haunting the man. "That accident?" Trip wondered, meeting the troubled green eyes. "When I was in a coma?" Suddenly Sim's ghost was standing right between them.
"If people think I've become callous, if I've lost some of my humanity," Jon muttered, his gaze dropping back to his glass, "it's the price I've had to pay to save Earth. They'll have to live with it."
Which of course meant you'll have to live with it, Trip knew.
Jon downed his drink and reached for the bottle for a refill. Trip's mouth had gone dry, but no amount of whisky could help fix that for him. Because when it came to Sim he didn't buy that crap, the "save Earth" excuse. Or perhaps he didn't want to buy it, and the thought he was alive because of some Frankenstein-like patchwork always made his blood run cold.
"Did you do it to save the mission, or to save me?" he forced out, heart in his throat, feeling he had to look down a precipice that attracted him much as he wanted to run away from it. Archer flinched. He shouldn't have asked. Maybe some things were better left to sleep the drugged slumber of a hushed conscience. Or were they? If they wanted to pick up their friendship, they had to discuss Sim. Nothing firm could ever be built on the quicksand of an unspoken truth.
"To carry out our mission I needed the best Engineer in the fleet," was the quiet answer, delivered without meeting Trip's eyes. "I did it to save Earth."
Trip raked a frustrated hand through his hair. That's what Jon wanted people to believe, what he had probably conditioned himself to believe. But what the hell kept the man from admitting, in the privacy of this room, between the two of them, I also wanted my friend back?
"Is that so," he said flatly.
A long moment of silence went by.
"What kind of a monster could ever create a human being to harvest pieces so that he can save his best friend," Jon eventually breathed out, "for personal gain?"
The question didn't really want a reply, being as good as a confession, but Trip had one ready.
"A monster with a heart that bleeds, as opposed to one with only a high purpose."
"Still a monster, by your own admission," Archer huffed out. He took in a deep breath. "Yes," he said hoarsely, looking up from his glass. "I also did it to save my friend." The creases at his eyes reappeared, as these narrowed painfully. "I couldn't let you go. Not after Phlox had told me there was a way to save you. Not with all that had gone on – or rather not gone on – between us. I told myself the mission needed Charles Tucker, the Chief Engineer, but that was only a half truth."
Now that the entire truth was out in the open, Trip didn't know what to say. Suddenly it was kind of frightening to realise their friendship had meant so much. If Sim had indeed been created to save him, not the Chief Engineer, the import of that decision went beyond what he had ever imagined. To save a friend, Jon might well have undermined a friendship, if they didn't succeed in exorcising Sim's ghost.
"Truth for truth?" Trip breathed out tautly, "I'm not sure how I feel about it."
Jon pulled his mouth in a lopsided smirk. "You're the one wanted to know," he said, giving Trip a look that said, Couldn't you have left it well enough alone? He put the glass on the desk and pushed it away, muttering, "Damn the alcohol and its effects on one's tongue."
Trip watched the yellow liquor slosh around in the glass then gradually settle down. Were their troubled hearts ever going to settle down? He longed for the calm after the storm. They were home, he reminded himself. But the Expanse had a way of following them.
"I'm not going to apologise," Jon repeated yet again. "Not for that Osaarian I tortured, not for stranding those Illyrians without a warp core, not for ordering Malcolm to obliterate that station in cold blood." He captured Trip's eyes. "And not for Sim."
Why did he keep on with that broken record? No apologies? Trip was seeing a different story altogether. He was seeing a man who desperately needed to believe he had done nothing wrong. A man who needed absolution. He wasn't ready to give it to him, though. Not yet.
"How did Sim die?" he asked in a steely voice.
He wondered if Jon would tell him, if he would tell him the truth. After he'd woken up from the coma and found an exact, albeit lifeless copy of himself on board, Trip had learned a few basic things from Malcolm and Phlox, but no one seemed very keen on discussing the subject. And that – at the time – included himself, to be honest. As for Jon, he'd been conspicuously absent.
Archer passed a hand over his face.
"Phlox told me he didn't survive surgery," Trip prompted, when silence stretched.
"Phlox told me he would be okay," Jon said in a voice that held a good measure of pained anger. "Phlox told me the transplant would not affect him. Phlox told me his lifespan would be fifteen days."
The weight in Trip's gut got heavier with every word. He steadied himself for the question that begged asking. "And instead?"
"And instead," Jon growled, "it turned out Sim would not survive surgery. And that some scientist claimed they had found an enzyme that stopped the simbiots' rapid ageing."
Trip blinked, his brain baulking at the logical conclusion. But two and two still only made four. He straightened in his seat. "You mean to tell me that if it wasn't for me, Sim would be alive and well now?"
"No," Jon said in a choked cry. He shook his head, eyes scrunched closed. "I don't know." He reached for the glass he'd pushed away just moments before and took a mouthful of liquor.
"What do you mean you don't know?" Trip hissed relentlessly. "Did you create a life and then order its execution? Who the hell did you think you were, God?"
"How did it look from the outside?" Jon punched back, following a train of thought that made Trip frown in confusion. "Did it look black and white? Did you see a self-assured captain? A confident bastard making life and death decisions without a single second thought? Was that the impression I gave?" He gave a mirthless laugh. "Well, then I was a good actor, because let me tell you: it wasn't black and white at all. It was as grey and foggy as a November day. And very lonely."
The words skimmed over Trip's mind, for only one thing was relevant to him at the moment. "Did you kill Sim to save me?" he asked again in no uncertain terms, and held his breath.
Jon's face twitched, but he looked up, green eyes courageously locking with Trip's, as he confessed, "I was desperate. I threatened him. And believe me, I don't know what I'd have done if he hadn't gone willingly. But Phlox was certain there was almost no chance the enzyme would work. Sim would only survive a few days longer and you would be dead as well. What was the point?" His eyes grew pained. "Sim was your clone, had not only your memories but also your generous nature. He sacrificed himself to save you." Closing his eyes, he concluded, "I had saved you but, believe me, didn't feel good about it. Every time I looked at you…"
His voice cracked, and a pregnant silence fell.
Trip's thoughts went to that man in the torpedo case, whom he felt he knew, even though he didn't. He was as numb now, as he'd been then. It was a lot to take in, but he didn't regret looking all the way down that precipice. Sim's sacrifice had been an act of loyalty towards his Captain and proof that he knew how strong the friendship between Jon and Trip had been. Wasn't it their duty to patch things up, if only not to make that sacrifice futile?
"Trip…"
Trip refocused on a different face, one where the familiar traits were no longer locked in that rigid cast. Jon was struggling to be his old self. But who, of the Enterprise crew, wasn't? His own thirst for revenge didn't make him such a better person. He had gone into the Expanse wanting to obliterate every Xindi from the face of the universe, innocent or not. Wasn't that something to be just as ashamed of?
"That captain wasn't worthy of your friendship," Jon said quietly, as if contradicting his thoughts. "You were better off with me keeping my distance. But now…" His eyes narrowed. "Do you think you can…"
"Forgive you?" Trip suggested. They still needed to go over that obstacle, because despite Jon's I'm not going to apologise that's what he had come here for, hadn't he? The man's mouth curved into a bittersweet smile. Jon was no idiot.
"Can you forgive me?" he spelled out.
Trip heaved a deep breath. He reached for the bottle and filled their glasses again, taking his time. "You know, Capt'n," he finally said, "I'm starting to realise we all have things to be forgiven about."
And just like that, for the first time in ages, a ghost of their old bond was back.
"I would like us to be friends again," Jon simply said, in that endearing way of his Trip had missed so much.
Trip looked up. "We aren't gonna be the same friends," he warned. "We aren't the same people." They had to face this truth as well, as they had the rest.
"It will be bumpy," Jon agreed, hope clear in his gaze.
There was one last truth Trip had to put on the table. One that had been hidden in the deepest corner of his heart. One that had been difficult to accept. One that Jon definitely needed to hear from him.
He cleared his throat. "All those morally questionable decisions you made out there, Capt'n… they were what helped us succeed. You may never be the man you were before, but it was necessary. It's something that it's difficult to acknowledge, but that deep down I've always been convinced of."
Jon nodded a silent thank you.
Trip reached for his glass and pushed the other one towards Archer. "Last time we did this, it was to advocate the destruction of a species. Not something to be proud of." He let his mouth curve up. "I think we can do better." Raising his glass, he toasted, "To life and forgiveness?"
With deliberate slowness, Jon picked up his glass.
They clicked, and it was no light gesture. The road was still long, but Trip felt sure, as their glasses met, that they were breaching a lot more than the physical gap which separated them.
THE END
Looking forward to your comments