Title: Remembering
Disclaimer: I own
nothing and I am getting no money
Summery: Beka thinks about things past and Flash
Spoilers: Heavy for the episode with Dylan's Birthday and
Beka on Flash (I really don't know show titles)
Her memory
came back in flashes. She remembered
her outburst about Tyr, piloting Andromeda crazed and out of control. She
remembered strangling Harper. She
remembered looking up from Harper's lap at Dylan as he saved his ship. Eventually, she began remembering the other
things the Flash had made her do.
It was a slow process, so it took
about 3 days before she had realized what she had done. Harper had come by to commend her and found
her using. He'd tried to convince her
to stop, tell her that it was dangerous and stupid. What had she done? Well,
she prayed on his deepest fear. She'd
threatened to send him back to the "trash heap" where she'd found him. Without the drug-induced haze she could see
the horror behind his eyes. That, after
all this time together she would just throw him back to the snarling dogs he'd
spent so long beating back.
She couldn't believe she had done that to him. She'd never let him wind up back on that
little spaceport where she'd found him.
She could still remember the first time he'd come aboard the Maru.
Gods, he was thin. If Tyr thought he's scrawny now he should
have seen him that first day. Beka had
been there and it was a memory burned in her mind. The kid had already found his way off Earth and had joined her
crew from a space station with a reputation so bad she never would have stopped
there if it hadn't been an emergency.
He'd fixed the engines and she'd offered him a job.
He'd been 21 then, not that you
would have known by looking at him. She
would've been shocked if he weighed 110 lbs and guessed his age at 17. His hair jutted out wildly in every
direction and he had fresh stitches above his eyebrow. Above his hollow cheeks were eyes that actually
managed to sparkle; it was surreal to see sparkling eyes in a beaten body.
He came aboard and pretty much fit
into life on the Maru. It was just the
two of them so his quirks weren't much of a bother. Dylan's second hand information that sometimes Harper had
nightmares would never compare to the things she'd seen.
She remembered his first meal on
the Maru. It had been some bizarre neon
yellow stew. He ate like someone was
going to pull it away from him at any moment.
It probably happened to him.
But, it wasn't going to happen anymore.
"Slow down, you'll choke," she'd warned
"Sorry boss" he mumbled without
lessening his pace. She had never seen
anyone eat so fast. He just kept
shoveling and gulping. The fact Beka
thought it tasted like grass and sawdust apparently meant little to the hungry
boy.
She'd passed the engine room and
seen Harper in the far corner of the room.
He was asleep, but it was not a peaceful sleep. Beka knew he was having the nightmares
again. In fact, this wasn't an unusual
scene. Harper was from Earth, a planet terrorized by the Magog, Neitzchiens,
plagues, and half a dozen other things most people never wanted to experience,
it was no wonder sometimes he couldn't sleep. Harper was whimpering slightly
and his eyes were squeezed shut. She'd
learned to keep walking; there was nothing she could do. They weren't dreams of boogey men or
monsters that weren't real, these were things that really happened to him.
She wasn't the ice queen though,
more times than she would ever admit to him, she gone in and sat. She held his hand or patted his head until
he drifted back to untroubled slumber.
She remembered all these times and
now she remembered telling him she would send him back there. Time had past and Harper's nightmares were
farther between. He ate at a normal,
human pace, and he wouldn't be blown over by a strong wind. His sparkle wasn't surreal and he was pretty
happy with his life on Andromeda as far as she knew. And she had told him that if he tried to save her from destroying
herself that she was going to send him back to that misery. The Flash had made her completely forget
their friendship.
Harper ratted her out when push
came to shove and the glare she'd given him sent him running from the room
afterwards. Now clearheaded, she could
see what she had done to him. Put him
in that awkward spot and ponder his biggest fear. He cared enough to admit to Dylan she was, as he so eloquently
put it, "Flash fried and freeze dried".
She'd known his fear and the Flash made her exploit it. She's lied to Trance and shot Rev too. She'd actually come pretty close to getting
them all killed. She was off Flash now,
maybe she would always want it, crave it.
But, she also knew she didn't need it.
She didn't want to hurt anyone else, like her father had hurt her,
because of Flash. She would remember
what had happened, what she had done.
Not that they had almost made it to Tarn Vedra, but that she had hurt
her family here on Andromeda.
