I don't own anything Andromeda.
Set in S 3, right after The Lone and Level Sands.
A Touch of Freedom
Ever since the mediation between Doge Miskich and the Than, their encounter with Leydon Bryce-Hawkins and the complicated plans that had almost gone awry to retrieve the Hegemon's Heart, he had kept a particular dislike for Pierpoint Drift. It had been one of the first times that he had to recur to de facto criminal methods, one of the first times that he had to ask of his crew to employ skills and experiences from their previous life, the one he wanted to take them and the rest of the universe away from. That they had also nearly lost Beka to that charming rogue didn't make the drift any dearer to him either, but that was a thought he refused to think to the end.
Still: even without it he had ever since found plenty of reasons to avoid the damned place and wished he had done so this time, too. But he had – against better knowledge and against all instinct – given in to Harper's forceful argument that the parts they needed were nowhere else to be found cheaper than there, had accepted Beka volunteering to accompany him with an eagerness she seemed to have been missing lately, cursing the New Restored Systems Commonwealth's constant shortage of money and supplies and personnel; and had, at the last moment, added himself to the supply run, to 'keep an eye on things' as he had put it.
An eye on what things? What was supposed to happen? They had come in, found the parts, found out – to Dylan's immense satisfaction – that Mr Bryce-Hawkins no longer graced the place with his overwhelming presence, taken a day leave to relax a bit... And then Harper went into a bar brawl that left him with a black eye, unconscious and with two broken ribs. Right. That was supposed to happen: Harper running into trouble, forcing them to stay put and keep him company instead of roaming about the busy streets and recreation centres of the drift. That Dylan coming along had not prevented this from happening was an irony not lost on the captain of the Andromeda.
What it had done however, was earning him Beka's wrath, when they had returned to the Maru after he had managed to get Harper out of the fight. The minute he came in limping, with Harper hanging from his shoulder like freshly hunted game, she had shot him a disapproving look, hurried them both to the crew's quarters, patched Harper up, fussed about his own leg, that some lucky Nietz had managed to slice up and had ever since sequestered both of them to their respective bunks. She had filled both of them up with nanobots and chicken broth that most certainly contained not only chicken, but also – in spite of Dylan's refusal to take in any painkillers – something else that knocked both of them off for hours.
When he came to sometime later, she had explained to him that she wanted Harper to have a as long as possible rest, that if he didn't want to be sedated, he should next time take better care of himself – and then Beka delivered yet another one of her "Why are you men so stupid, reckless and aggressive?"-lectures. It didn't do him much good to point out that it had been Harper, not him to start the fight, that he had tried to prevent it, that they were just the two of them against eight others, of which at least two were Nietzscheans, that...
"Yeah, yeah, you're lions, I know," Beka had cut him short, " well, tell you what, tough guy: if you go on like this, you'll end up maybe a hero, but most certainly dead."
Eventually she had calmed down, fed him some more broth, and then offered the same lecture to Harper a bit later, once the Earther had been awake. Their rendezvous with the Andromeda was still more than 18 hours away, and so they stayed put, playing cards, reading and telling each other old stories. That is, Beka and Harper were telling old stories of their adventures together before the Andromeda, and slowly, almost imperceptibly Dylan began to feel excluded, left out and alone. He still laughed when he was supposed to, nodded his approval or grunted in marvel at all the right places, even threw in interested questions, but the emptiness and the hollow, undefinable longing that had been growing in him ever since his recent encounter with Captain Metis began to literally tear at him from the inside, while he was sitting there, listening to Beka's reminiscing over the restaurants, dancing halls, opera houses, casinos, theatres and shopping malls of Latira, Harper's memories of the white beaches and perfect waves on Trident, seeing their both' gleaming eyes while recalling their barefoot walks through the ruins of the ancient cities of Actan.
They kept at it for hours, until he felt that sitting through just one more minute of tales would make him suicidal. In a rush, he jumped to his feet, mumbled some lame explanation and ran out in a hurry.
"Dylan, wait!" Beka had shouted running after him, but he refused to listen.
"Beka, I'm sorry! I'll be back shortly. I... I just need to get out a bit. Slight case of cabin fever..." he had excused himself smiling.
"But..." A look into his eyes made her reconsider. "Okay, but don't be too long. I'll stay with Harper."
His leg was again good enough for him to keep going for hours through the busy, lively streets of the drift. He walked around blindly, from time to time blinking into some light brighter than others, smelling the scents of many people, many cultures, many different, coloured lives, scents that were so different from the Andromeda's or the Maru's clean, fresh... and narrow flavour. A thought, that had kept bugging him ever since the Bellerophon, was slowly driving him crazy:
What, if this walk here could turn into a starting-over? What if he just disappeared? Why didn't he simply walk away for good?... For good...
He stopped his stride, suddenly realising that he had all he needed with him: papers with an incognito ID, some creditchips and even a little bit of cash.
Maybe there was a flight, some spaceship taking off tonight... He could grab a grav-cab and head for the space-port... The longing in him became almost unbearable. Once, just once to simply act on a crazy impulse, break out of the corset his life had always imposed on him. To walk away and lose himself, and never to look back...
He was staring blindly into the window of some candy-shop.
"Hey, Mister, can I help you?"
The voice of the shop-keeper pulled him back to reality. he cleared his throat.
"Yes, some... some of this stuff there, please," he said, motioning over to some sweets. He paid, and took the small package and retraced his way back towards the Maru's docking berth, with each step feeling the scents of the wide, open spaces fading, making place for the clean, filtered, narrow atmosphere of air-conditioned ships.
"There you are..." Beka greeted him when he stepped through the entrance of the Maru. "Anything wrong?"
"No," Dylan answered quietly. "What could there possibly be wrong?"
She nodded, but her eyes never left his face.
"Harper is asleep. I kept you something for dinner."
Seating himself at the bar, he nodded.
"Thanks. I brought some candy."
"Wow!" Her face lit up and she grabbed the package away from him, peering curiously into the bag and stuffing some chocolate in her mouth.
"Sthach's gwate..." she mumbled, smiling happily at him.
He laughed and began to wolf his dinner down, only then realising how hungry he was. For a while they just kept at it in silence, but then he had to lift his head and found her staring at him.
"You all right?"
"Fine," he said. "I'm fine."
Beka sighed and stretched her hand out, gently placing it on his forearm.
"I'm glad you're back," she told him.
His eyes widened.
"What? How..." Dylan swallowed harshly. "I don't know what you mean," he then said, sounding a bit stubborn.
She shrugged.
"I'm not sure I know what I mean either. But when you went away..." Her hand began to rub his skin lightly. A lopsided, somewhat embarrassed smile appeared in a corner of her mouth. "I'm just being stupid, but for I moment I thought: 'What if he never comes back?'"
He put his spoon down and looked at her in that typical, a little scared way of his he always displayed whenever matters between them seemed to reach a personal level. He would have preferred to just deny it all, but she had struck too close to home for him to do so.
"Listening to Harper and you..." he began, hesitating. He stopped and shook his head. "I know you've had it rough, the two of you. And that I've had it better. But this... this... freedom you must have enjoyed then..." The gentle rubbing on his arm stopped, and Beka took his hand into a firm, warm grip. Dylan smiled awkwardly. "I think I just got envious for a second. And I no longer knew what right I have to ask of you to stay with me... I mean, captain Metis..."
"Ah, him..." she said knowingly. "So he got to you, too," she added somewhat vaguely, only to then shrug upon seeing his inquiringly raised eyebrows. "Rommie..." she explained.
"Girls' night?" Dylan asked.
Beka nodded, her warm smile slowly turning into one of her cheeky trade-mark grins. Gripping his hand stronger she stood up, trying to drag him along. Smiling back, he complied and followed her to the small space behind the crew's quarters that Trance, Rommie and Beka had transformed into their own little hide-out. She closed the doors and shoved him lightly into a hammock.
"So," she said finally in an encouraging tone, "this Metis and Harper and me..."
He looked down at his tightly clasped hands and sighed.
"It's stupid, I just... I suddenly realised that even before the Fall... I've never been to Latira, I never saw the waves on Trident, I... never walked through ancient ruins wearing a pair of faded, torn pants..."
"It's not as fancy as it sounds, believe me..."
"I know. And still: I've never been really free... And once, just once I'd like to simply be crazy and escape all restraints."
Lifting his head he once more found her looking at him in a tender, almost touched manner.
"I love it more now than I used to love it then," she then told him quietly. "But I know what you mean – and that you promised Rommie that one day you and her will take off together to the farthest star. Do you think we can join you?"
"Would you really like to?"
"Go on an odyssey? Are you joking? I wouldn't miss it for the world! So..." she threw him a flexi with star-maps, then came to join him in his hammock, comfortably snuggling close to him, "where to first? This here is Priscl' and there..."