XXVI
For the next few days Gabe recouporates in his quarters and remains off duty. He would take a walk or a stroll or whatever else he was allowed to do as long as it wasn't working. He wants to return to work but Dr. Gayle insists he take at least three days to rest. He hates resting.
He's a man of action, he must do something.
And when he sleeps, the dream or wherever he had gone to before he almost died, lingers with him like a rash. He keeps telling himself it wasn't real. There was no possible way a single being or entity could have that much power literally at their fingertips. Gabe didn't think he really met God. But he did meet someone, even if he didn't want to believe it.
The creature, Q, told him it was all a test, that he had heard of him and wanted to meet him. Why? What purpose could it have served someone who was already, as it seemed, essentially all powerful?
When it's finally time to see Michael alone again Discovery is in safe waters. The homefront isn't too far away now. She plans to come to his quarters and he's nervous. He chalks it up to the fact that it was his near death experience, that what he told Q was right. That nearly dying a second time doesn't feel like the first.
Because this time he had more to lose; it wasn't a crew or a ship. It was her. And he hates himself for not measuring the weight of the crew he lost with the same care and devotion he did with potentially losing Michael.
In that cell in... elsewhere, he hadn't mourned his crew or resented himself for having not done enough because at the time he hadn't known their fate. After being rescued he processed it and realized that it was entirely out of his hands, but he still felt guilty that he lived while they died. And he still didn't entirely know why... perhaps, again, that was the universe intervening.
When Michael comes to his quarters she embraces him quickly, her face already wet with tears of relief that he still breathes for her.
"I told you I'd come back." He says, rubbing a healing hand over her back.
Michael leans away slightly, gripping his face in her hands tightly.
"Don't ever do something like that again." She warns him, and the look in her eye could have turned Medusa to stone. He nods and she kisses him, her arms around his neck and he returns it. Her hands seek to undress him but he stops her.
"Wait," he whispers against her mouth. "There's something I want to tell you."
She wavers on her feet, intoxicated by being so near to him when it had felt like years since she last seen him. He sits them on the bed, holding her hand.
"When I was in that mine something happened to me," he begins, knowing Michael was the only person he could reveal his experience to. "I went somewhere. I thought I was dead but someone else was there too. He said I wasn't dead. He showed me things, Michael, that... even when I tell myself it was all just my brain trying to cope with the fact that I was indeed dying, I know it was all true."
Michael listens as he tells her of the being named Q. Of the images he showed him. He was able to prove it was real when he told her of her first night on the Charon. How he had seen his counterpart and herself interact. That's when it became real to Michael and to Gabe even more when she confirmed that wasn't an illusion but real.
"Why would this Q test you?" Michael asks, when his story is done.
Gabe shrugs.
"I don't know. I get the impression this being gets off on toying with people less powerful than them. But it was extremely convincing. And why save me of all people?" He says, looking off into nothing.
"Whatever the reason," Michael says, bringing his attention back to her. "I can't help but thank him for it."
Gabe cups her chin and he gazes at her lovingly. It was still funny to him, they still hadn't known each other that long. None of this made even the least bit of sense. And yet it did all at once. Nothing had ever felt more true to him than being with her.
"There's something else," he says and sighs as if it's hard for him to articulate. "When I thought I was about to die I... I think I knew how he felt."
He feels Michael's hand tighten in his own.
"I know what I was thinking of in those harrowing moments," he says gently. "All I wanted was you. I had no fear, no regret, no shame. None of that mattered. I just wanted to be with you. I know I'm not the same man he was, but we both love and loved you beyond what is definable. It's funny, it took me nearly dying to understand him."
Michael feels relief as he speaks, she knew the two men would have never seen eye to eye in life. And hearing that Gabe somehow found something relatable in his counterpart almost gave her a strange kind of validation. She was sure he didn't judge her for loving, what everyone would consider, a bad man. But his heart wasn't entirely black. There had been great love in him, even if his execution of it wasn't entirely moral.
The strange beauty of it all was that neither men had ever wanted her to change. They had both felt inferior that they may not be able to change for her. But both men, despite the stark differences that lay between them, had loved this Michael Burnham regardless of whether or not they should or shouldn't.
And she had loved both men: one she had wished to help better, to show him that he could be more than the sum of his parts, that he was capable of good and mercy. And the other she yearned to heal, to help see beyond what had been done to him. Michael had never been resentful towards Gabe for the anger and bitterness he held towards his counterpart. It was, in her eyes, a justifiable rage.
"I want to marry you." Michael says, a smile playing her lips. He chuckles.
"You kind of already said you would." He reminds her, running his hands up the length her legs; not to seduce her but simply because he wanted to keep reminding himself that she was here and he was on the ship and the ground wasn't disappearing beneath his feet.
"No. Right now." At that his brow raises considerably.
"Michael-"
"I can't wait. I know none of this sounds like me but... to hell with it." She's smiling like he's never seen before, her eyes are glassy but she's not crying yet, she's never felt more sure of herself.
She was right, it didn't sound like her. Even during the short time he had known her Gabe would have never described Michael as spontaneous. She was a woman with plans A,B all the way through to Z.
And, damn, he liked this side of her.
Holding the back of her thighs in his hands, he smiles.
"Alright, Miss. Burnham, you've twisted my arm." He tells her and he knows this is all completely mad. But he won't regret it. He's seen first hand, if his dream were real, that this isn't a mistake. That he's never seen something so blatantly written in the stars before. He knows he's not crazy and neither is she. The universe just had the strangest timing and a queer sense of humor.
"The only person on the ship who could marry us is the Captain. We'd have to come clean." He says, remembering he had told the captain he broke off his relationship with Michael.
Clearing her throat a little awkwardly she answers,
"Not exactly clean." Gabe frowns.
And Saru's reaction is honestly what she had been anticipating.
"Are you two insane?" The Kelpian asks, rising from behind his desk as if in haste.
Michael and Gabe stand before him, he reaches out automatically to take her hand.
"Captain, as you are aware I am not prone to acts of pleading," Gabe begins. "But... please." His voice softens on the last word. Saru tilts his head, almost in sympathy.
"Commander Lorca," Saru says coming around the side of his desk. "I've already withheld your personal relationship with Specialist Burnham from Starfleet command once before, I did what you asked of me and hid her pregnancy as well-"
"You did what?" Michael turns, looking at him, not releasing his hand.
"I... I'm sorry." Is his only defense. But Michael isn't angry. On the contrary. He and Saru both took a risk.
"If the captain marries us there's no reason to keep up with the lie... Well, except that you're not as far along as they think." Gabe says and Saru claps his hands together to get their attention.
"Excuse me, I still have a say in this." Saru says, groaning and tugging on his uniform jacket.
Michael and Gabe wait. Even if Saru said no Michael wouldn't care, she would still call him her husband. He was everything the moniker defined to her; he protected her, loved her, was devoted to her and in her eyes was her equal. Somehow this Gabe was becoming a queer hybrid of himself and elements she had first become attracted to in her Gabriel.
"Can I ask something?" Michael asks Saru, her captain and her friend. He nods. "Why would you say no?"
Saru sighs slowly and nods.
"Honestly, I cannot think of a reason to say no." Saru admits. "Very well. When shall this elopement take place?"
Michael is glowing in Gabe's eyes when the Kelpian says yes.
"Right now." She tells him, she tugs Gabe closer and he willingly puts an arm around her.
"Do you desire to have witnesses?" Saru asks and Gabe thinks she'll say no but instead she informs them both that there are two people who should be there.
And that's how Tilly and Stamets were called away for an important matter that was to take place in the captain's ready room. It was all very hush-hush.
When Tilly and Stamets arrive they're not concerned with why Michael or Gabe are there. Until they see them holding hands. A little convincing was required when it came to the choice of witnesses. Tilly's concern was that Michael was on the rebound, which Gabe took offense to but he kept it to himself.
Stamets was only concerned that Michael might be jumping into something too soon. He cited his own experience being married, "no bed of roses", was how he described it. Until he saw how much the two people in front of him loved each other, Paul knew that look. When he agreed Tilly soon followed.
Saru found in the Starfleet database the curriculum when a captain performs a wedding. He made it shorter and added some of his own Kelpian flare to it.
Michael wouldn't have had it any other way. There was no dress, no ring, no flowers or even her parents to take part in the celebration. But this was how they were, it how was they did things. It was simple and uncomplicated. Quite the opposite of their whole journey to find each other.
For Gabe, his heart was pounding the whole time. The way it did before he had to speak publicly or before a fight or every time he's about to kiss Michael. He doesn't care about big or small weddings. He does wish he had picked out a ring or something to give her as a gift.
When it does come time for a ring to be presented he feels awkward, Cadet Tilly eyeing him closely.
"We don't need one." Michael cuts in and she smiles softly at him.
Saru moves on and eventually they kiss and their elopement is complete. They return to his quarters and he replicates her the Vulcan soup she loves so much. Afterward, he helps her change into her pajamas. He showers and returns to the bed, she had forced herself to stay awake for him.
Gabe lies down beside her under the covers, spoons her and breathes in her scent.
"We didn't decide," he mentions. "Are you Mrs. Lorca or am I Mr. Burnham?" He feels her laugh, sleepily.
"I'll be Mrs. Lorca if you'll be Mr. Burnham, just to us though." She says, snuggling into the warmth of his body, she feels him reacting in a natural way.
"I didn't know being married to you could make so horny." He jokes, kissing the side of her neck.
"Do you think you'll love me forever?" She asks him, her voice low and she turns in his arms to look at him.
"Forever." He promises.
"It's a long time." She tells him as if he didn't know. He shrugs.
"Forever." He simply repeats.