Disclaimer: Andromeda is, unfortunately, not mine, and belongs to people much richer than I. However, tho i can't claim ownership of the characters, the story IS mine

A/N: this takes place in season 4, more or less right after TWTAAH. It's about Trance, but from Harper's POV, and I'm very sorry, but there's spoilers for nearly every episode where either of the two had any significant parts. Please, please, R&R, I'd really appreciate it! I'd like to know your thoughts on the story (and the title, cuz I'm not sure where i stand on that) This is my first Andromeda fanfic, I hope you enjoy! (Also, for those of you who remember IHNAT, I changed Flux's character a little bit, I hope it's all right). OK. Enough babble. On with the story!

Gemini's Gamble

Mission Log for: Seamus Zelazny Harper

Rank: The Absolute Genius and Incredibly Handsome Technician on Andromeda Ascendant

Date: 9.17.10088

Dylan, you better appreciate the fact that I can write this mission log in the state that I'm in. After that unpleasant ordeal we went through, the gorgeous temple that is Harper needs as much recovery time as possible. So let's just make it clear that I was not happy with your order for everyone's mission log as soon as they were conscious enough to write it. But being the great guy I am, I won't hold any grudges and just hop straight into the story.

But first, one more quick thing you should know; since this has so much to do with Trance, a lot of the things I put in here about her were only with her express permission, and 'cause of that, there's a few things she told me to leave out. Sorry to say it, but though you're my captain, I don't betray friends. Especially the cute ones. And not because they're cute, either. Well, all right, partly because they're cute. But mostly because the cuter they are the more dangerous they are. Case in point: Trance Gemini.

I think the whole thing started with a conversation I had with Trance in a little side- deck last... Thursday was it? Two days after more bounty hunters came after us for (as usual, now) that star map thingie we used to travel to a new dimension, and we kicked their sorry little Kalderan behinds straight into the next galaxy. Rommie had taken a beating, and a nice guy like me just couldn't stand to see a lovely lady in pain.

The fact that the lovely lady was a temperamental warship had nothing to do with it.

So there I was, readjusting her grav-density capacitator, and I couldn't find my nanowelder. I find many things (mostly female) very attractive, but there are only three things in this universe that I find truly beautiful. The Andromeda AI (the ship made hot, by yours truly), freedom from Nietzschean slavers, and my handy dandy nanowelder. Seriously, an engineer isn't an engineer without one.

Naturally, I was very put out when I had no clue where it went off too. I'm nowhere near the neat freak that Tyr was when he was still on this ship, but I can keep track of my tools fairly well.

I said one or two words I learned growing up on the streets of Boston that I probably shouldn't put in this mission log.

"Was this what you were looking for?" Trance asked from right beside me nearly giving everyone's favorite technician a heart attack.

Her bronze-tinged face gave in to a small smirk that still seemed almost-but-not-quite familiar. Back when she was still purple, Trance was my closest friend. She'd help me find my lost tools, consoled me when a hot babe failed to realize the glory that was Harper, and even sung Vedran drinking songs with me when we went out gambling. (Now, Dylan, it's not what you think. I just couldn't give up the great chance she gave me in all those casinos. You would not believe the luck this girl had. Ok, maybe it is what you think.)

But I digress. What I was getting around to saying was, when Trance was purple, she was cool, fun, a great friend. But then she traded places with an older version of herself when the little time machine I was making with Hohne went a bit awry, and now the bronzy version of Trance was a lot different. She was more... mature. She was still fun every now and then, but…You wouldn't be hearing any drinking songs out of this Trance anytime soon. And she knew stuff, too. A lot more stuff than the vague notions she used to get when she was purple. It's still hard throwing someone completely different into the position of new best friend. And I'll admit, I was angry at her. Sure, she saved my life over Hohne's when she first came from the future, but I still wasn't sure if that was the best idea. Mostly I felt like she stole my best friend and replaced her with someone not nearly as fun. There are times where I wondered if I had over-stressed a point. I mean, it was two years ago. It's just… hard to get used to.

"Oh, uh, hey, Trance. Thanks," I said gruffly.

Trance tilted her head and frowned. Not the cute, bewildered frown the old Trance would have had, but that old, wise, knowing frown that gave me the full-blown case of the heeby-jeebies.

She closed her eyes and sighed. "Harper? Is something wrong? Something you'd like to share?"

Of all the things that could have stayed the same when Trance changed, it just had to be the fact that she could read me like a flexi.

"Not a thing," I said, annoyed that my extended vocabulary wasn't helping very much here. "Everything is right in the world of Harper. Besides, you're my little Golden Goddess! There's nothing to tell you for you to go worry your pretty little head about."

The corner of her lip quirked a tiny little bit and for a second -- just an impossibly small second -- she almost seemed as if... But then the quirk was gone, the walls were back up, and she was back to being Trance the Warrior Woman (or whatever she is), emotionless defender of he galaxy.

"Would it have been something you would have told your Purple Princess, though?" she asked, so quietly I almost missed it.

Whatever words I would've said died in my mouth. Instead I was brilliant enough to blurt out, "It's not like that, Trance! I've really got nothing against you, I swear! It's…well… it's still hard to get used to the idea of the grown up you, all serious, and prophet-like, and... and not purple."

Trance looked down. I think she knew quite a lot of the reason I had trouble relating to her now had to do with her new look. Don't get me wrong, I'm not the kind of guy who discriminates against different-looking peoples, but one little fold in time/space and suddenly having a good friend look that different takes a bit of getting used to. And it wasn't just that she looked different, how she looked made her act different, too. You just can't be sweet and naïve while wearing battle armor. Just ask Tyr.

I took a peek at her out of the corner at my eye and saw her studying me. The heeby-jeebies I had before kindly stood down while new ones took over and showed 'em how heeby-jeebying was done. I guess she came to some kind of decision, 'cause the edge kind of came off her walls, and she kind of stared off at some wiring.

"My people," she said, "have different stages in life. When we're young, we're purple, and we can do…things. We can see possibilities, and do… other stuff. There is potential for more, but it's rarely needed. What we can do when we're young is usually enough. But if we need to, we can change. We grow up, and become able to… do more. It's… not fun. It, well, hurts. We only grow up when we need to. And I needed to. Things were…bad. Very bad. Everything was going wrong, and I couldn't do anything because I was too young, so I decided to grow up." She tightly closed her eyes. "You can't grow up without…changing. I mean, of course you change, but the process makes you… change, change."

I put down my nanowelder. Something told me that this was the most Trance had ever told me-- or anyone else, I'm guessing-- about her or her people. I wasn't quite sure how I felt about that. I mean, I was honored, and kind of touched that she was willing to tell me this, but that nasty worm of guilt started gnawing at my recently-freed-of-parasites intestines, making sure I wouldn't forget that while Trance was going out of her way to let me know some of her most guarded secrets, I was still partly shutting her out.

"I think I might have stayed as optimistic and as... happy as I was before," she continued. "But in the future where I came from, I made a lot of mistakes. Things went…very wrong. I want to make sure they don't happen again." I nearly couldn't handle the look on her face. It was so…sad.

I didn't really want to push it. Contrary to popular belief, I do have some tact. But I really wanted to know. Not really knowing what to do, I picked up my nanowelder and started working on wires again.

"What went wrong?" I asked, trying to sound encouraging. It looked like Trance had a lot of baggage to deal with and I was the first person she had a chance to talk to.

She looked right into my eyes, and I got this weird creepy sensation of someone studying even single deep dark recess of my soul. But at the same time, I felt like I could trust those eyes too. Like I said, weird.

"I won't tell you all of it," she said. "You just don't need to know right now. But there were many fights, many battles we lost. Almost the whole crew died, Harper. You did, and Tyr, and Hohne, and…" she drifted off, then found her voice and started talking again

"Everything started going... wrong. I kept trying to make the right decisions, but they never worked. I kept making mistakes. And the Abyss started winning."

All right, at this point, I wasn't just getting those tell-scary-stories-in-the-dark goosebump shivers up and down my spine. I was seriously freaked out. Trance mentioned when she first came, it was only her and half-human, half-mechanical Beka that was left, but jeez, let me tell ya, things like that don't hit home 'till someone tells you exactly how ugly things really got.

I let the silence stretched out forever. I had seen more than enough death to know that when you believe right down to your core that it's your fault, petty condolences don't even come close to making it better. And Trance blamed herself. It was written all over her face. I knew her well enough that, no matter what form she was in, there was no way she would sacrifice anything less than one hundred percent before admitting defeat. I tried to convince her that, that she did the very best she could and it wasn't her fault things didn't work out so great.

"You don't understand," she said, as I worked on a particularly nasty patch of screwed up wiring. "Right before you folded time, Beka was going to give up. She was...tired. She didn't want to fight Dylan's fight anymore. She said..." Trance paused, and almost let her voice die. "She said she didn't want to live with any more dreams of how Dylan had died."

Shocked, I let the nanowelder slip, slicing a thin red line across my finger and snapping three or four semi-vital wires. But I couldn't help it. The idea of Dylan dying was as foreign as the idea of lil' ol' wonderful me dying. Hunt was the heart of this whole new Commonwealth. If he died, well, we were as good as lost.

The very depressing mood was getting to both of us. Trance worked up a half-smile and said earnestly, "But this time I promise it'll be different. I'm not too young to fix things, and I can do things now that can...help."

"Oh yeah," I said, sucking on my sliced-- and now stinging-- finger. "And will we, the apparently unenlightened, yet heart-breakingly handsome pawns in your cosmic plans ever see any part of this phenomenal plethora of paranormal talents?"

Trance quirked her lips ever-so-slightly in an almost-grin and reached up and took my bleeding finger in her hand and held her other slightly above it. Suddenly, I swear it was out of nowhere, little golden sparkle things started floating around my hand and just like that the cut was gone. It didn't heal, or at least I didn't feel it heal, it was just as if it never existed.

"I suppose," she said, her grin now a mysterious smile.

Enter mystical chiming music here.

Wide-eyed I opened my mouth and demanded, "Trance, how the he--!"

"Where has that spike-haired dwarf crawled to?" growled a voice that I can only describe as "angry Nietzschean". Sticking my head out of the side-deck me and Trance were sitting in, I gave a perky wave to the source of the growl.

Said Nietzschean was standing there wearing nothing but a towel around his waist. His bladed arms were crossed across a soaking wet chest and under a mop of hair covered in soap bubbles were a pair of very unhappy eyes.

"Hiya, Rhade," I greeted him. "What's up? Something eating ya? You look like a wet hen."

Well, I thought it was funny.

"Harper," he growled. (What is it with Nietzscheans and growling? Tyr did it too. I think it's a prerequisite at the school of Oscar the Nietzschean Grouch)

"Would you mind telling me why, in your repairs of the ship, did you decide it would be a good idea to cut off the water supply to the Officer's Quarters?"

Hmm, so that's what those three or four wires I snapped before were for.

"Hey, hey," I said, flashing my Harper patented smile # 34 (I'm-too-cute-please-don't-kill-me) "It was only a minor inconvenience. I'll have it fixed in no time."

"You'd better," he-- you guessed it; growled again--, shifting his arms so that his arm blades glinted. "If you don't, I just might--"

"ALL PERSONEL REPORT TO COMMAND DECK IMMEDIATELY. " The ever-so-charming and life-saving voice of Andromeda's AI sounded over the intercoms. Rhade glared at me, promising a slow, very painful death, and stomped off towards his quarters to put something more decent on.

"Hey, Trance," I asked the bronze babe beside me. "With all your new-found powers, do you have anything to cure grouchy Nietzscheans from acting like they have a plutonium rod stuck up their ----"

"Come on Harper!" She demanded, grabbing my arm and dragging me to Command.