Warning: (Story is unbeta'd) Dark themes, telepathy; possibility of sequel --- eventually, maybe…. possibly never? Don't know. If people want a sequel I may write one. This story is AU, H/C, Angst, and Drama.
Rating: ADULT/Mature
Pairing: Tu/R can be taken as slash or friendship.
Commentary and suggestions are welcome
Trip's POV
Captured. Malcolm was captured by the baddies. I couldn't sleep knowing my best friend was out there somewhere in a cage being tortured or possibly killed even, by now. I shuddered this war had already taken a lot from me. I didn't know what I was going to do without Malcolm. Though he was a tempestuous man he was also my compass. I had thought john was my compass for a long time but then I met Malcolm and he did things…. things that could touch me deep and irritate me to, but I probably did a lot more irritating in return then he had deserved.
Malcolm's abrasive manner can rub raw anyone's nerves, he doesn't mean to do it. Its just his personality; stoic, foul tempered, irritable, sweet, kind, compassionate, broody, and moody. And right this minute my Malcolm could be dead or dying or being tortured.
Oh god.
I bit back on a sob.
Three months of endless searching and all we'd found so far were the three bodies of his armed trained men. Men who had died in agony and in helplessness.
What was Malcolm going through? I wondered. What was this going to do to him and if we found him would he be dead or alive? Would it be a mercy if we found him dead? Mercy for him, mercy for us? What would be left of him if we found him alive?
My mind was dark with these images I couldn't get out of my head. The sort of things I used to think about my poor baby sister. Was her last hours on earth good ones, last minutes painful terrifying ones, or did it strike and she was dead without feeling or knowing it? I hoped my baby's sister's death was quick. I pray to god every night that it was quick. I pray for Malcolm too.
My heart begged him to be alive but I hoped he was dead. The kinds of thing Phlox spoke of what had befallen those men, I shudder and try not to puke.
I'd seen things in my years in star fleet, bad things, terrible things, and really amazing and wonderful things. But what had happened to those guys, well it made an anti-matter discharge look like a mercy. Anti-matter, that's painful it twists you up and turns your innards to goo. Those men were part crispy crittered and part severed into pieces, like some horror movie, some slasher film, all pieces of bodies and nothing to'm then that.
Oh god Mal. Oh god!
"Commander Tucker, report, Trip are you awake?"
"Yeah Capt'n, What's up?"
"I think we found him Trip. The place where they sent him. There's barely any life signs. The place is pretty barren but there's a huge complex, a prison. We're taking the MACOS in and we're going to investigate."
"I'll be there."
"Good. You've got ten minutes."
"Thank you John."
"Let's just hope we find him." said Archer. (alive)
It was an ugly place with no windows anywhere that any of us could see. It was all concrete walls, concrete domes with ventilation shafts that were hardly large enough for a rabbit to climb through. Steele doors and force fields. It was a death camp. No one could live let alone survive in a place like this for long.
We searched and found the place dead. Everyone was dead, but we heard something, keening and human, something broken and sobbing and human. I felt something stroke across my mind felt a presence dangerous and frightening and not exactly sane. It touched me and made me tremble.
I felt the pain, his pain his fear, his terror, felt his sadness and his despair. I knew it was him. Him touching me, but how? How was this possible? I wasn't a telepath or an empath or an alien with those kind of abilities and I was pretty sure Malcolm wasn't either, yet I knew it was him.
I knew it was him.
I knew it with a certainly that was bone deep, soul deep.
"Malcolm." I whisper.
I run into his cell, his tiny blood painted cell. His body curled up hugging against the wall, his blood, old and new, his blood everywhere, his blood on the walls, running down his cheeks, blood on his skin. He'd been hurt over and over again and this time he was bleeding out.
"Trip." His voice a whisper of sound, the faintest brush of a breeze on a warm still day. If I strained I could hear him. He whispers my name like a chant, like salvation and I fall to my knees and I reach out to him. What did they do to him?
He flinches away from me and rocks harder on his heels, eyes unfocussed clinging to the solid cold mass of concrete at his back, he turns to rub his cheek harder into the wall, his whole body is hugging the wall. His back is torn and I realize he's naked, they didn't even give him clothes to hide in, to keep his dignity in tact.
I hated them. I wanted to hunt them down and kill them. How dare they touch Malcolm with cruelty and torture and pain. Malcolm was terribly shy it had taken him over a year to warm up to anyone on board enterprise. What was this going to mean for all of us? Would he ever get over the shame he must be feeling? But I knew there was more then that going on. My friend hid a vulnerable heart behind cold walls and these people had taken that away, had ripped him open and shattered his mind.
I hated them more then I hated the Xindi for killing my sister.
Malcolm took a shuddering breath and sighed out my name again and this time his eyes focused on mine and he smiled. He reached out to me, mind and hand, and I took his hand and I tugged him into my arms. I wanted to hold him and keep him safe. Blood slicked he was hard to hold onto but I managed. His body trembled, He was cold. I took off my shirt and held him to my body hoping to heat him, keep him from dying from fading back into the hell his mind was submerged in.
"I killed them." he hissed. "It took me so long." He whispered through chattering teethe. "I'm so cold Trip, f-f-free-zing."
"I know Mal. I'm here, I'm here now Mal, we're going home to Enterprise. The doc's going to fix you right up. You're going to get through this; do you hear me, Mal? Do ya?
"Of course I do, Commander. I always hear you. Always hear you loud and clear. I know you. I know you." he whispered with such intensity that I knew that he was telling me more then that. Mal always understood me even when I couldn't say it out loud, he always knew things. He always knows. He's a security officer. Its his job to know.
"Stay with me Mal. Don't you fucking die on me, not now not ever." I hiss and I'm mortified to find that tears are crawling down my cheeks and that I'm sobbing into his filthy long hair.
Hair that's matted with blood, his blood. There's so much blood how can there be so much blood in one human body? It boggled my mind.
How many times did they make him bleed?
How many times did they hurt him and make him scream?
How long did it take for them to reach his limits and get to him so deep that he might never recover?
The Malcolm I knew was gone, destroyed, body and mind, but what of his soul and his heart? I just hoped with our medicines and our doctors and technologies we could save him, make him recover make him come back to me as he was. But even if he never recovered I wasn't going to let him be alone. I was never going to leave his side not ever.
"P-p-promise?" asked Mal, looking me deep in the eyes, I choked I knew he was reading my thoughts I was afraid of that but then I steeled myself and I answered out loud.
"Yeah, Mal, I mean it. Forever. I promise."
Mal curled up in my lap burrowed his face against my chest and I felt him slip into sleep. His mind touching my mind with a last desperate touch as if wanting to make sure that this was, that I was, real.
I wasn't letting Malcolm go. I was going to carry him out of there and there wasn't a man or woman on this away team or on Enterprise that was going to get me to relinquish Malcolm. I would carry him to the shuttle. I would carry him through this life even if it killed the both us. John tried to get me to see reason tried to get me to let Malcolm out of my arms and onto the gurney that would get him to sickbay.
Malcolm woke up and had started screaming, I joined him as his mind assaulted my mind with his memories, his pain and his terror. I couldn't do as John asked. I'd made a promise. I wasn't going to let Mal go, not ever.
Phlox had to sedate the both of us.
Hayes' POV
Major Hayes was concerned.
Malcolm Reed wasn't the same man he had grown to respect and admire even somewhat love in the two years of service together. His eyes showed a man shattered and broken, there was little sanity in them. Sometimes it seemed that he was lucid or dreaming while awake. He would smile and chuckle for no apparent reason or fall into a state of fear and deep paranoia. Hayes had felt Reed touch his mind had felt Reed almost reach out to kill him with it.
"Trip's here, Trip says no. I know you Hayes. I know you." Then he would beam a smile that was as insane as his storm blue eyes that glowed a twisted light. "I'm safe. I'm on board Enterprise." he would murmur.
Then he walked away humming. Commander Tucker met him half way down the hall excusing Hayes from the watch. Malcolm Reed clung to Trip and cried on his shoulder.
"Its all right Mal. I'm not leaving you." He murmured softly gently into the weeping officer's hair. "But I do have to go to engineering, would you like to come along and watch me tinker?"
Malcolm Reed didn't say anything out loud he just sobbed harder and clung tighter to the chief engineer. Tucker smiled at whatever Malcolm had said in his mind. "Silly man, come on to engineering, we'll have some fun you'n me." Then to Hayes, "We're going."
Hayes almost objected but to be honest with himself he really didn't think he could watch over Reed any longer. "Yes, Sir."
That moment when his CO had reached for his mind, had reached out to kill him with it, had frightened him. Hayes was afraid of Reed for more reasons then just career suicide now. Reed could reach out telepathically and kill a man with his mind.
Reed had always been a dangerous man but now he was unpredictably insanely dangerous. Like God he could reach out and pluck the string of your life and snuff it like the flame of a candle, all with a single thought. Reed's emotions were all over the place. He was like the ocean one minute friendly and gentle the next a dangerous current a thundering wave, a killer. And no one knew a thing to do for him.
Phlox had explained that though Reed would probably never be the same there was a chance with therapy and time for healing that Reed could eventually gain his sanity back. As for the Telepathy thing, that was something he would need a fellow telepath to help him with. Which was why they were seeking out a race called the Betazoids.
They were mind healers as well as a society of spiritual telepathic free spirited people who Dr Phlox felt Enterprise's crew could get along well with. Let them co-mingle with a friendly group of aliens for once and help us all to relax from the traumas of the Xindi war and the other hostile encounters they'd had over the years with other alien races.
Hayes hoped things would start going Enterprise' way. The crew needed a miracle. Hell, Trip and Malcolm needed the miracle more then the rest of them put together.
( End / TBC? )