Author's Notes:

Disclaimer/story notes in Chapter One.

This is the first of several extrapolated "missing scene" epistolary chapters, imagining possible unsent correspondence in the wake of the events detailed in "Home", and earlier chapters in this story. Major spoilers for "Home"; spoilers for "Damage".

Rated T for language, for sexual suggestiveness, and alcohol and drug abuse.

Takin' a Swan Dive

It took three tries, and three misses, before Trip was able to get the idea that he was way too drunk to be messing with the damned PADD. Which probably meant he was also way the hell too drunk to be sitting in the crotch of a mangrove tree, in the middle of what was left of the Everglades after Degra's pilot had done his duty.

"Nother alien, nother wound...think I woulda learned," he muttered, then reached for the cooler he'd hung on a conveniently angled and broken limb. Maybe he was already way too drunk for that to be anything like a good idea – but he didn't give a damn, not now. Maybe he'd never be sober again.

It was good to be numb. Cept that, even numb, he could still feel the pain. He was gouged like the Glades, like Florida, like Earth -

Like his soul.

Why the hell did he feel this way? Damned alien woman hadn't given him any reason at all to feel that way. Hell, she'd come right out and said that she was conductin' an "exploration of human sexuality." Shoulda taken her serious, never let her back into his quarters or his pants, or, if he did, shoulda used her the way she had him. Never shoulda fallen in love with her – and never ever ever shoulda done what he did with her after she went and married that damned Koss fella.

She said she did that for her mother – but was that really the truth of it? Or had she just gotten her Vulcan jollies with an inferior but gullible human specimen, and now she could have her once every seven years, never needin' to deal with any of his emotions – and she didn't have any of her own.

No, that wasn't right. There was the trellium, racing through her, makin' her into something that she wouldn't have been, if she wasn't with them, if she'd gone the hell home before the Expanse like she shoulda. Instead, she got addicted -

Is it fair to blame her for that?

"The hell with fair!" It was a raw scream. "Ain't none of this fair!" Dim memory of Mom reminding him that "ain't" isn't a word, but he didn't care about that now. It was a little stab back at her – not Mom, but the woman who wouldn't even know what "ain't" meant. He screamed the word out across the swamp, joining his voice to the sound of night birds, frogs, and the ever-present buzz of mosquitoes that probably wouldn't like her green blood -

The PADD slipped from his hand, and his clumsy grab missed, nearly propelling him after it as it bounced off branches, then splashed into the dark shallow water.

"Took a swan dive, didja?" He cackled. He'd held onto the bottle of tequila, anyway, and, once he got his laughter under control, he took as deep a swig as he could hold – more than he could hold, really, because most of it came back up only a few minutes later. He replaced it more slowly, this time, sipping and brooding as he stared down at that water.

Gators in that water. Bacteria. Copperheads, maybe.

What would it feel like, to be in a gator's jaws as he started his death roll? To get an infected cut that spread, and did him in? A copperhead's fangs sunk into him, pump' virile poisons into his blood – like trellium in hers?

Trip stared down into the water, thinking that, instead of poisonin' himself in slow motion, maybe he ought to be takin' a swan dive of his own.