My Mind to Your Mind
By Zuzu Petal
AN: First I want to say that this new one-shot is not associated with my earlier one-shots, 'Heavy is the Head' and 'May it Be'. Those I would consider AU's. And I would like to thank everyone who has reviewed both of those shorts as well as the followers on Tumblr! I would also consider any one-shots coming up (unless specifically mentioned in an author's note) will be AU's or will be considered "missing scenes" from previous or upcoming episodes of Star Trek: Discovery.
Thank you for your time and enjoy!
X
The mission had been a complete and utter failure in every sense of the word. Michael already had a difficult time knowing what Captain Lorca was thinking and then he decided to join her on an away mission. The two had been stranded, she had been mildly injured. He had gotten them to safety.
But the planet had been unstable to begin with. They had only planned a brief mission, he seemed eager at least to be off the ship which was strange for a man who seemed so reluctant to give it up.
Two hours, that's how long Michael had estimated they would have on the planet before solid ground became unstable.
They had been down there nearly sixteen. They were not able to rest as the planet's tectonic plates began to shift, causing massive quakes. There was also transporter interference which Michael had believed there would be. Saru was in charge of immediately solving this problem as soon as the Captain and Burnham left.
But losing communications was not predicted. Michael had believed that though the planet was in an energetic state of flux, Discovery was powerful enough to transmit through the storms that were beginning to form. She had been wrong.
In the end, in the last perilous minutes before Michael and Captain Lorca were to meet their doom, Saru rescued them.
However by that point the Captain had already suffered a terrible head injury. Seeing him lying on the ground, crouching beside him, she couldn't help but be taken back to that terrible day at the Binary Stars.
It wasn't Captain Lorca's body that lay before her, prone and dead. It was Captain Georgiou, blood pooling and oozing out of an sore, open wound.
"No, no, no, no," Michael had said rapidly, fearfully... shamefully. She had killed them both.
"Burnham, are you there?" Saru's voice came through her communicator like it had seven months ago.
It's happening again, I've killed her again. I've killed him! She thought madly.
"Burnham, are you there?" Saru repeated more forcefully.
"The Captain-" she stopped herself, imagining Saru's face. He had sworn to protect Captain Lorca in the way Michael had failed to protect Philippa. She couldn't face him now, not even his voice.
"Michael," Saru's voice came through more softly but urgently.
The planet shook terribly.
"We've locked onto your signals, prepare to beam out."
The next thing Michael knew both she and captain were in the transporter room.
They transported him, he's alive! She thought. Sweeping away all other thought and fear she checked the captain's head wound.
"Computer, site to site transport to sickbay." They disappeared once again.
Now Michael watched as Dr. Culbar rushed to save their captain.
Saru stood near but far away from her. She still couldn't face him. His disappointment would be the most damaging of all.
Monitors beeped and blared, Dr. Culbar spoke hurriedly to his aids and nurses. Captain Lorca didn't look alive but the computers said otherwise. His uniform painted red as well as his forehead.
"Come on, Captain, I need you to fight." Dr. Culbar said passionately. Another monitor began to blare loudly like a siren and Hugh cursed loudly, demanding to know where a medical instrument was he had already asked for several times. "You're tougher than this, Cap."
Michael clenched her jaw and held back tears. She felt weak and helpless. This was almost worse than Philippa. She had managed to get him back alive but he might as well be dead.
"Shit, we're losing him," Hugh muttered despite himself, despite his urge to keep calm. But Michael understood his frustration, his panic, he had never lost a captain before.
Knowing there was only one thing she thought might work she approached the bed, Hugh moving out of the way as well as the nurses.
"Burnham, what are you doing?" Saru demanded.
Michael ignored him and reached out her hands and touched Captain Lorca's face with her fingertips, strategically placed at the pressure points they were needed in.
Closing her eyes she prayed to all that she believed in that this would work.
"My mind to your mind," she began in a shaken, soft voice. "My thoughts... to your thoughts."
Michael felt the pull of strain immediately. He was lost, his mind was wandering... he was dreaming. Peaceful thoughts of a ranch, a little boy, a woman he called mother. The sun was blinding, almost as blinding as Vulcan.
"Captain!" Michael called to the little boy who stopped and turned, standing now in between herself and the woman waving to him on a porch. "Come back with me."
The little boy frowned and began running towards the woman.
"No, you have to come back." She tried to tell him, she tried to go after him but something held her back. She looked down at her arm to see a hand and attached to it was Captain Lorca.
"Let him go." He told her gently. He turned his head skyward and basked in the glow of the sun.
"That isn't you." Michael realized and he nodded. "You have to come back with me."
Gabriel looked back to her and sighed.
"Kicking around in my mind's eye, very inappropriate." He chided playfully and began walking towards the barn of the ranch, Michael following him.
"We don't have this kind of time, Captain." Michael pleaded with him. He whistled as he entered the barn and she followed, the boy laughing and the woman singing. The sounds seemed to follow them as if they were in the same room.
Michael found Lorca sitting on a bale of hay, whittling something with a knife.
"How long do you think we've been here?" Lorca asked her, not looking up.
She stood in front of him, tense and wanting to leave. He was right, entering his mind without permission was an invasion of privacy and the longer she lingered the more uncomfortable she became.
"Time is irrelevant." Michael answered.
"I seem to recall you just saying we don't have much of it." He pointed out, for some reason she still couldn't see what he was carving into the piece of wood though she stood right in front of him. It was the only thing out of focus.
He doesn't want me to see it then, she realized.
"You're right," he spoke, "it's not for you to see. Huh, I can hear you too. No secrets now, eh Michael?"
Sitting beside him she gripped his forearm and he paused his whittling to look at her. His eyes were sad though he smiled out of the corner of his mouth.
"Please, Captain, I can't lose you." Michael said, trying to appeal to his reason.
"Why? Because it would make you look worse?"
Michael sighed and shook her head.
"No, because I need you."
A look passed over Lorca's face, he swallowed back tears and he touched her hand on his arm.
"No you don't." He told her knowingly.
"You don't know that!" She yelled, her voice cutting through the laughter and singing that haunted them in his mind.
"There's that spark." He commented before returning to his whittling.
"You're dying. Do you understand that? You can't stay here. It'll be gone within seconds."
"Seconds to them not us." He said with a shrug.
"Why won't you come back? Every one of your instincts should be fighting this." Michael said unbelievingly.
"Could you leave the ones you loved?" He asked her. "Could you leave your son behind after the cancer that killed your wife broke you? And then just to add insult to injury just when you think you're recovering you're forced to kill your whole crew. And you end up not just broken, you end up being nothing."
Michael now understood his crux. It wasn't just the ghosts of the Buran that followed him night and day. He lost his wife, he abandoned his son.
"Could you leave the one place that made you happy?"
"Before my parents were killed I was happy. But I've made new memories, found new happiness. No one promises happiness or people will last forever." She told him urgently.
Lorca stood and nodded, seemingly agreeing with her.
"Then why are you trying so hard to get me to stay?"
"Because you're not finished yet."
"I decide when I'm finished, Burnham, not you." He said sternly.
Lorca began to walk away from her again. But she knew how to get to him.
"Coward."
Lorca came to a grinding halt within seconds.
Back in sickbay Dr. Culbar was shocked to see a spike of brain activity coming from the emotional hemisphere of his brain.
"What's happening?" Saru asked, observing from the edge of the medical bed, Michael still attached to the captain with her fingertips.
Hugh shook his head.
"Whatever is going on in there, she better hurry."
Back inside Lorca's mind he slowly turned to face Michael Burnham.
"What did you say to me?" He asked calmly, though the level of threat in his voice remained.
"I called you a coward. Taking the easy way out when I'm trying to save your life. You'd rather wallow in your own misery than fight to live. You're right, maybe I don't need you."
Advancing on her quickly with clenched teeth he grabbed her by the front of her uniform and yanked her towards him.
"You ungrateful bitch," he snarled at her. "I pulled you out of the fucking furnace and gave you a second shot. I faced serious repercussions for sending you on your little rescue mission to save your dear old dad and this is how you repay me?" He suddenly flung her and she rolled to the ground.
Michael felt the bruise but she rose back to her feet.
"You'd rather spend your last dying moments speculating what you could've done differently instead of trying to make things right in the here and now. You can't save her, Captain. Trust me, I know what it's like to be possessed by what you could've done differently." Michael told him and he came at her again, gripping her wrists in his hands roughly.
"You're just a kid," he told her cruelly. "A smartass little girl in a sea full of sharks and you're bleeding out. Don't ever presume to think we're anything alike."
Michael chuckled sadly and her voice softened.
"Isn't that why you chose me, Captain? Because we are alike. I see that now. But you can't save her, even here. She's gone. You can't take a phasor to the cancer that killed your wife and you can't repair what you broke with your son. But you can live, Captain. You can live."
Lorca's resolve seemed to be crumbling, but so was his mind. The barn rapidly disappeared and they were floating in nothingness, drifting apart.
"Captain, come back with me!" She pleaded again.
"The Klingons have a saying," he said and she urged herself towards him, reaching out. "Perhaps today is a good day to die."
"No!"
"He's coming back." Hugh said, astonished and relieved.
Michael gasped and fell back into Saru's arms, he held her gently and directed her to a medical bed.
"It's alright, Burnham, you're alright." He assured her and he lifted her into his long arms and laid her out.
"Captain..." Michael whispered, reaching out to him. Her vision was beginning to fade, focus seemed nearly impossible. The strength of the meld taking it's toll on her body.
But as she began to fade into black, she saw the captain's eyes open, they searched the room until they found her and then she saw nothing.
X
Twenty four hours later, Michael had already been released from sickbay but the captain was still healing. She took the time to finally work up the nerve to see him. Tilly and Ash were good motivators in that regard.
Captain Lorca was sitting up in his bed, reading a tablet when she entered sickbay. He immediately took notice of her. Standing in the doorway like a girl about to be read the riot act she held her arms behind her back.
Lorca sighed and threw down the pad, before patting the side of the bed. Michael found it in her to make her feet move again and she sat down.
"You have some boundary issues we need to discuss," he said breaking the ice.
Michael cracked a smile and felt him take her hand in his.
"Captain, I hope you know, whatever I saw... I'll take it to my grave." She assured him.
"Michael, I do love melodrama but really you need to cut back a little."
"I mean it, Captain, what I saw was private and for your eyes only. But I hope you understand why I did what I did.
"A Vulcan Mind Meld. Huh, never thought I'd have that experience," he said thoughtfully.
"You're being very cavalier, Captain." Michael pointed out. Lorca shrugged.
"I'm still trying to wrap my head around it, honestly. You've seen one of my greatest failures and yet I don't feel judged."
Michael gripped his hand tighter.
"You have seen mine. Perhaps not in the same way but you didn't judge me either."
"So... we're even is what you're saying?" He teased.
"I think we simply have a better understanding of one another."
Lorca smiled and released her hand, the warmth of his palm leaving her and she found herself missing the contact.
"Can I ask a question?" She asked him and he nodded. "Of all proverbs to quote before your death you chose a Klingon one, why?"
Lorca thought for a moment, he looked around sickbay to make sure no one was within earshot.
"Because despite my utter and profound hatred, they are some of the best poetic bastards in the galaxy." He admitted and Michael smiled. "Even if we are adversaries, I admire their warrior's spirit. A soldier must if he is to truly understand his enemy."
"Well said, Captain. And I want you to know, it wouldn't be just me who would need you here. It's all of us." Michael told him firmly.
"Oh I think Lt. Stamets wouldn't shed a tear." He said and she shook her head.
"On the contrary. Who do you think sent the yellow roses?" She said with a raise of an eyebrow.
The two shared a laugh before Michael returned to her duties. She was grateful he lived on and that in the last milliseconds he had chosen to come back with her. It had been a harrowing experience. And an eye opening one as well. For now Michael Burnham faced a new quandary all together.
She believed her feelings for her captain went deeper than she had realized. She had shared in his mind's eye, she had seen the real demons behind the facade. She had felt the true pain that preyed on him night and day.
Michael had relished in his touch. She felt herself wanting to know more, to see more. Perhaps this was why mind melds had been so demonized for centuries on Vulcan. Only in recent decades had the practice become more accepted but there was still an ancient taboo associated with those who performed it.
Little did she know, Captain Lorca was now facing a similar difficulty. When he had pointed out she was invading his privacy he was putting on a front; he knew had it been anyone else he would have felt violated. But with Michael he felt like he exposed a vulnerable part of himself he wouldn't have otherwise.
Michael had forced him to face a part of his past he had been denying audience to for far too long. His failure and his shame. His own personal disappointment in himself.
And he had been glad it had been she who had seen it and brought him back. He owed her his life.
X
Standing outside of her captain's quarters was not how Michael had expected her night to go. There was a birthday party going on for a cadet, everyone was there. Everyone, she had noticed, except the captain. She doubted her presence would be missed, despite Tilly and Ash saying otherwise.
Pressing the call button she waited.
The door slid open with a hiss seconds later.
"Michael, everything alright?" Lorca asked stepping closer but not out into the hall.
"You weren't at the party." She pointed out and he nodded.
"Not really my scene I'm afraid. Not yours either, apparently."
They stood there like that for a few moments before he asked if she would like to come in. Against her logic she did. There was no time for logic now, there was only room for the emotions she needed to understand.
Captain Lorca's quarters were half spartan half modern man. There were no picture frames or medals, no art, no hints at hobbies. She deduced he kept all that made him who he was in his mind or in his laboratory where he "honed" his craft.
"May I speak freely, Captain?" She asked him after he offered her something to drink, opting only for water. She needed no liquid courage, she only needed to soothe her suddenly dry throat.
Lorca leaned against a desk and nodded.
"By all means. I think in private we're passed formalities." He said.
"I came to a realization after the meld," she began. "That perhaps I need you here more than I realized."
"In what way?" He prodded, wanting her to spill the beans once and for all. They had been dancing around each other since she got here. Subtle hints here and there, the subtext, the reading between very thin lines. Excuses for private audiences with one another.
Then the final nail in the coffin, "I didn't do it for him". Gabriel had meant it then as he was willing to admit his feelings now, whatever they were. All he knew was that she had seen a part of himself no one knew about. Oh, they knew his wife died... but they didn't know the whole story.
There weren't many people, let alone women in his life, he would have willingly sailed into a nebula for. If it hadn't of been for the mycelium he wouldn't have hesitated to push Discovery right into the heart of the beast, if it meant she would see Sarek again.
Because Gabriel knew how much it would mean to her to see her adoptive father again and he knew exactly how devastated she would be if she had lost him. Gabriel wasn't about to let that happen.
Sure, he needed her focused but that had been a terribly veiled excuse. He hadn't meant to say he did it for her, it slipped out in a moment of weakness. The grateful expression on her face, the way she began to trust him. It had been too much for him and he had wanted her to know that that was a small gesture in the grand scheme of things. He wanted her to know that he was willing to do anything, if it meant she was happy.
"I... I have developed, against my knowledge, feelings for you, Captain Lorca." She finally admitted. He felt a relief wash over him and then a guilt. He hadn't been trying to coerce her into reciprocation and he hoped she wasn't feeling this way simply out of gratitude.
Of course it was better than longing for her without her knowledge... or was it? He had been observing the way Lt. Tyler and Michael interacted. He had meant his threat to Lt. Tyler as strongly as he had meant his word to Michael after they returned.
If Lt. Tyler had come back with an injured Michael, or worse a dead Michael, his wrath would have shocked the Klingons.
Gabriel's threat was double-edged: come back with her unharmed and everything will be fine, but he was also playing an age old, primal game. He was marking his territory. They might have been becoming friends and brothers in arms in a raging war, but Gabriel was the alpha on his ship. He had set his sights on Michael even if he never planned on acting on his feelings.
The dawning realization he had seen on Lt. Tyler's face gave him everything he needed. The younger man was both disappointed and surprised. And when Gabriel didn't delve further he left Lt. Tyler wondering, was this an ongoing affair or was Lorca simply being protective? His tactic had worked, he had confused Tyler enough to at least get him to back off.
Again, it was an age old strategy, dating back to the dawn of men.
"And against your better judgement you're telling me now." Gabriel stated simply, Michael nodded.
"Nearly losing you opened my eyes and I regret I did not see it sooner. I feel like I owe you an apology though I'm not sure what for." Michael confessed.
Gabriel approached her and took her now empty water glass from her, placing it on the coffee table behind her; as he leaned across her body, his shoulder passed her arm and she shuddered.
"I wish you would say something." Michael said, frustration in her voice.
"I'm not really a romantic, Michael," Gabriel admitted. "In a time of war romance takes a back seat to everything else."
Michael nodded, seeming to understand his meaning.
"Well, in that case, I seem to have humiliated myself enough. Goodnight, Captain." Michael turned to leave but he caught her hand in his.
"I didn't say I didn't feel the same way." He told her strongly, looking into her eyes.
Gabriel was expecting her to say something but instead she pressed her mouth against his. He was surprised but admired her skill. He knew the day she stopped surprising him would be a dark day indeed.
Not missing a beat, Gabriel swept her up in his arms. He forced down the memory of the last time he was with a woman in his quarters. But this was different. He wasn't letting himself ignore that, but he couldn't think about it now. Not when the object of his desire and queer affection was wrapping her legs around his waist and kissing him like she was a starved woman.
Bringing her to his bed he slowly laid her down, unzipping her jacket and tossing it to the side.
Gabriel paused for a moment, he could tell she was experienced, no shy virgin, but he was older. He had been around the block and had his fair share of affairs.
"This will change things," he warned her. "Are you ready for that?"
"I'm readier than I thought I would be." She promised him, stroking a hand over his face before bringing his mouth back to hers.
There were no words of love whispered, from there on out it was only two people abandoning all other things for each other. He nurtured her and sheltered her, she compromised herself for him. He would die for her, he knew, in those moments of bliss. Never had he felt the compulsion to take a woman so strongly before, not even in his youth. Not since his wife...
Clasping his hands in hers, their fingers intertwining in a web of flesh and limbs, he refused to take his eyes off of her. They took and gave each other in body what they already had in mind.
A bittersweet cocktail of completion followed as they held each other, as they came apart in one another.
They lay exposed to the air and he covered them in a blanket.
"You... can stay if you'd like." He offered.
Michael fell asleep shortly after that, and Gabriel put his phasor in the night table drawer. He knew with her beside him he wouldn't need it.
AN: I hope you enjoyed, reviews are appreciated but not mandatory lol