Title: Today's Memory
Author: Joules Mer
Rating: R
Pairing: T/R
Feedback: julia_ocean_child@yahoo.co.uk
Disclaimer: Enterprise is the property of Paramount. No profit was made, no copyright infringement is intended.
Spoilers: The Expanse, The Xindi, Rajiin.
Archive: Yes to EntSTCommunity, Tim Ruben and BLTS. Everyone else contact me for permission.
A/N: This was written after "What a Linguist Hears" and is the companion piece to that fic. "What a Linguist Hears" is strongly recommended reading, but can be done without if you really can't handle deathfics. No Ent crewmen die in this fic.
Thanks Mareel and tmz for reviewing "What a Linguist Hears."
-Kahlil Gibran
"Standard orbit, Travis." The words were a mere whisper, but they resounded throughout the silent bridge.
"Aye Sir." Travis manipulated his console and Enterprise began to orbit the planet, affording the crowded bridge a clearer view of what lay below.
"Sonuvabitch." The word came with an exhale of breath. The speaker unaware that anything had left his lips. The Starfleet officers were frozen, transfixed by the image before them. The viewscreen showed a terrible panorama that no one could turn away from. Finally, the captain broke the silence.
"Trip, T'Pol, Malcolm. You're with me. Let's go suit up." The man sounded incredibly tired.
A man once said that one death is a tragedy, a million a statistic. That man was never forced to stand on the bones of the dead. I step forward and feel them crunch underfoot. For the first time in my life I am grateful for the cumbersome, detached feeling of an EV suit. I can almost believe this surreal scene is a nightmare. Almost.
I look up and see my lover standing some distance ahead of me. Although, ex-lover might be a better term. We haven't been together since the Xindi attacked Earth. I walk up beside him, trying to ignore the crunching beneath my feet. He's standing stock still, staring down at the ground before him. I look down to see what has caught his attention. One skeleton among the millions of skeletons and exoskeletons that litter the planet's surface. This one is smaller than the ones around it. This one was a child. He glances up quickly, confirming that it's me before he looks down again. He stands still for a moment before he gently reaches out and takes my hand. Holding it clumsily through the gloves of our EV suits. Reaching out to me for the first time in countless weeks.
We stand like that for a while before the sound of his voice through the speaker in my suit startles me. "Ya know Malcolm, what they were told about the future was right." He turns to face me and unshed tears make his eyes glimmer. "Humanity resulted in the end of their civilization."
My voice catches in my throat as I finish his thought. "And we didn't even do anything."
We stand and stare at our surroundings. The buildings and stalls of the marketplace appear untouched. The only testament to the destruction are the Xindi remains that litter the ground. It seems they made some kind of biological agent. As near as we can tell it escaped containment, decimating their entire population within days. When the Xindi build a weapon they don't do anything in half measures. An airborne, waterborne necrotizing pathogen. Their flesh would have virtually melted off of their bones.
No one speaks as we sit in decon. The warmth and blue light are a tremendous relief after the planet. Malcolm and Jon are both slumped against a wall. T'Pol is perched on the bench. She appears to be practising some form of meditation. The cycle winds down and the white lights come on. T'Pol stands and strides out of the chamber. Jon hauls himself to his feet. He bids me goodnight before he too is gone. Malcolm... Malcolm just sits there with his eyes closed. He looks absolutely gorgeous, so sleepy and relaxed. I swallow convulsively as I realize that I've lost more than a sister. Perhaps I should try to do something about that.
"Malcolm?" I didn't want to startle him, but he snaps out of whatever daydream he was in fairly abruptly. When he looks up I can see that his features are haggard, a look that must be mirrored on my own face. "We're done." He nods and climbs to his feet, following me out of the chamber and into the dressing room. We leave our EV suits for someone else to look after.
I must have watched Malcolm for longer than I thought as Jon and T'Pol have already left. Malcolm looks around the empty room in confusion. "The captain?"
I remember the face of my old friend. "Jon's gone to bed. He was so focused for so long. Now that that's gone he's just collapsed." I pause and confess, "You looked so relaxed I didn't disturb you right away. Malcolm nods and flashes me one of his old half smiles. I realize that it's been a long time since I last saw one. We dress in companionable silence, like we have a hundred times before. My eyes are once again drawn to his body, but this time I'm horrified by what I see. Scars. New scars. Scars I didn't really know he'd received.
A long, thin line runs down the side of his neck and over his collarbone. That must be where he got slashed while defending me. I got into a brawl in a spaceport bar that we visited while looking for information. He twists sideways and I see a large mark on the top of his shoulder. I remember hearing that he'd been grazed by a shot while helping Hoshi get back to the shuttlepod when a mission went sour. The rest I'm ashamed to admit I can't even place, and that both saddens and frightens me. I used to know his body so well.
We finish dressing and head across E deck towards our quarters. We reach Malcolm's first. He keys in his code and then turns and scrutinizes me for a moment. I look back at him. I don't know what I want to say or do, I just know that after that away mission I don't want to be alone. He silently steps aside, the invitation clear. I square my shoulders and step through the open doorway.
It's just like I remember it. I take a seat at his desk, just like I always used to, and am surprised to find a padd of mine sitting off to one side. It's the report that I was working on when Jon summoned us to the situation room to tell us of the attack on Earth.
I am suddenly hit with a flashback to the planet. I reach up and place my fingers against my closed eyelids, pressing until flashes of light obscure the vision. I slowly blink my eyes open and take a deep breath. "Malcolm. What did we come here to do?"
He looks up sharply at me, yet I can see that like Jon he is harbouring a bone deep exhaustion. "We came to stop the Xindi from destroying Earth." I know that. That's what they told us at the briefings, that's what they told all of Earth. "How were we going to do that?"
Malcolm licks his lips. A gesture so quintessentially Malcolm that it makes my heart ache even more. "There was a contingency plan." He's hiding behind the persona of the detached armour officer. I suddenly realize that he didn't consider the likely outcome of our mission either. He lowers his eyes and looks at the blank floor as he speaks. "We would have launched a series of small satellites into their atmosphere. At a given signal they would have simultaneously activated and..." He trails off, reality is asserting itself and it is too much to bear.
"Malcolm. What would it have been like?" I pause and try to phrase my question better, "What would have been left?"
He doesn't look up. "Less than what we saw today." His words hit me like a punch to the gut and I actually double over in the chair.
"You mean we'd have..." I trail off as he nods. I feel physically ill. I wanted revenge. I wanted to hunt down the bastards that murdered my sister. I wanted the Xindi to suffer like I felt they deserved. I thought I knew what I wanted.
"Oh Malcolm." My voice wavers and I don't sound anything like myself. "Oh Malcolm. I wanted that ta happen. I wanted that ta happen ta them. I hated them Malcolm." Suddenly he's off of his bunk and kneeling in front of me. His hand carefully reaches up to caress my face.
"Shhhhhh, love. It's all over."
"I hated them, Malcolm. I hated them for so long, and then I got here." I feel the tears start. Tears for the unknown Xindi child, tears for Lizzie, tears for Malcolm, and tears for myself. "And they were all dead. Billions of them Malcolm, all dead. That Xindi was just a child. It didn't hate me."
"You didn't do anything, love. They did that to themselves."
"But I wanted to, Malcolm. We had those satellites all ready to..."
"But we didn't." His voice is firm as he cuts me off. "We're not them, Trip."
My voice is nearly a whisper, "But we almost were." He looses it at that and tears begin to run down his face. I slide out of the chair and we kneel on the floor of his quarters. Embracing each other as we weep.
They destroyed themselves trying to destroy us, and we almost destroyed ourselves trying to destroy them.
-Aristophanes