Title: In Sickness and In Health
Author/pseudonym: NemKess
Fandom: Andromeda
Pairing: Dylan Hunt/Seamus Harper, Tyr Anasanzi/Beka Valentine
Rating: PG
Status: new, complete
Archive: Yes to CKoS, anywhere else is fine too as long as you let me know.
E-mail address for feedback:: nemsmuses@msn.com
Series/Sequel: no
Other websites:
Disclaimers: Dylan and Harper belong to me? I could only wish. Nope, not mine.
Notes: optional

Summary: What's wrong with Dylan? The truth is worse than the crew could ever have imagined.

Warnings: slash but no sex (a little implied hetero sex, but that's it). This is a 4 parter.. this is the first 2...
Spoilers: some for various episodes in the first two seasons.

~*~*~part 1

"I am concerned about our esteemed Captain."

Beka Valentine lifted her head off it's muscular pillow and looked up at her bedmate in surprise. For Tyr to show genuine concern was unusual enough. For him to do so while in bed was downright scary. On the other hand, she understood. She too had some worries about Dylan.

"He has become increasingly self-destructive of late and it seems as if his opinions and goals change daily. I've also observed that the ship itself watches him closely and with her own concern."

Beka nodded and rested her head back on his chest. "I know. Something's wrong. I just don't know what."

"Could the boy find out while inside the system?"

Despite the gravity of the conversation, the blonde woman couldn't help but grin at that. Tyr's almost paternal interest in Harper never failed to amuse her. There were a lot of things about Tyr that amused her these days. Like how he always wanted to cuddle after sex. Who would have ever imagined big bad Tyr Anasanzi, last Alpha of the Kodiak Pride, as a cuddler?

Forcibly bringing her mind back on topic, she shrugged. "He might. But I don't recommend calling him 'boy' when you ask him to."

She heard the smile in his voice. "Who says I'm going to be the one to ask him?"

"Well, it's your idea. You should get the proper credit for it."

Sudden movement erupted beneath her and she found herself looking up into the dark brown eyes. She'd never admit it in a million years, but one of the things that had first attracted Beka to her crewmate- besides his well made body and general good looks- had been the deviousness and forcefulness that was so much a part of the Nieztschean. As attractive as she found Dylan Hunt physically, his personality was all wrong for her.

Then Tyr leaned down to kiss her and erased the captain from her mind for the rest of the night.

~*~*~

"Let me see if I got this straight. You want me to hack into Dylan's medical files and find out if he and Rommie are hiding something from us? So that, what? You can try and steal his ship from him again?" Seamus Harper leaned back against the Maru's bulkhead and glared at his two crewmates. This was just the sort of thing Tyr would do, but he'd really expected better of Beka.

"Look.. Seamus..." Uh oh. Beka only called him Seamus when she really wanted something from him and was gonna pull out all the stops to get it. He'd learned early on in their association that it was better to just give up about this point. Still, he decided to listen to what she had to say. "Tyr and I are just worried about him."

He shot an incredulous look at their resident Nieztschean. Tyr didn't worry about people unless it somehow affected him, that's just the way his species was.

Apparently, the bigger man could tell where his thoughts had taken him because the dark brown eyes rolled in exasperation. "Think about it, boy. If Dylan has become mentally ill then it endangers all of us."

"Tyr's right, Harper. Think about it. Look at how different he is now from how he was when we first pulled him out of the singularity."

"Yeah, but Beka we've all changed since then. You gotta admit, we've been through a lot in the last two years and it's been even worse for him." Despite the near constant fighting and the seriously rocky road, he liked living on the Andromeda and thought they'd all gained a lot when Dylan had recruited them. The captain, on the other hand, had lost everything- not once, but twice- and was now struggling to rebuild the Commonwealth with just his one ship and it's tiny crew. In Harper's mind, that had to be pretty damned traumatic.

"Exactly. And look at his behavior, especially since we ran into the Magog worldship. He's like a yo-yo, Seamus. One day it's all 'Let's rebuild the Commonwealth' the next it's 'Let's take a three-week cruise'.. One minute he's all for saving Earth, the next it's not important." Trust Beka to know exactly what to say to remind Harper that he was still a little upset with Hunt's behavior himself.

"And he has become increasingly self-destructive with no thought for how it effects the rest of us. He has called missiles down on his own position. Even before that, coming to rescue us after ordering the acting captain to fire a Nova bomb at the worldship."

"Or the thing with the Inari."

Harper waved his hands in the air, gesturing for them to shut up when it looked like they were going to continue. "I get it, I get it. Okay, so there could be something wrong." He sighed and rubbed his hair as he felt a headache coming on. The idea that Dylan was sick wasn't one he was comfortable with, but he had to admit that he could see their point. Dylan's behavior in the last two years had become increasingly erratic, to the point that you just never could tell which way he was going to jump with some things. It did bear looking into. "I'll do it, but if I get in trouble, I'm sending him after you two."

"Of course, Seamus." Beka smiled happily at him, having gotten her way. "I knew we could count on you."

He watched the pair leave the Maru and banged his head softly against the bulkhead. It wouldn't be hard, hacking into the records and even if Rommie did catch him, well.. she'd been acting much nicer to him in the last few months. She wouldn't be too upset and probably wouldn't tell Dylan.

Why then, did he have such a bad feeling about this?

~*~*~

"Dylan, Harper is trying to access your medical files."

The Captain of the Andromeda Ascendant sighed and closed the file he was working on. "Do you know why?"

"No sir, but he, Beka, and Tyr had a private meeting onboard the Maru less than an hour ago. Should I eject him from the system?"

Dylan shut his eyes and rubbed strong hands over his face. "No, Rommie. We've been expecting this for a while now. They were bound to notice eventually."

He sat there for a moment longer, thinking over his options.

"He's just discovered that they've been removed." The holograms eyes were glazed as she watched the inner activity. After a second, her gaze snapped to focus once more. "He's on his way here for answers."

Straightening his uniform, the High Guard officer offered his ship's AI. a weary smile. "Well, we might as well tell them all at once. Open a ship wide comm. link." At her nod, he addressed his ragtag crew. "All hands, meet me on the bridge. Hunt out."

"Are you sure about this Dylan?"

"No, but they deserve to know what's going on."

The hologram didn't look particularly convinced, but remained silent, just watching as her captain left the room.

~*~*~

"Well? Did you find anything?"

Harper shook his head at Beka's whispered inquiry as the pair hurried towards the bridge. "Nothing. His files have been wiped clean."

"How is that possible?"

"I don't know, Beka. They were there back when we first joined the Andromeda cuz I saw them. But now they're not."

The hushed conversation came to a halt once they reached their destination. Tyr and Dylan were already there. The Nieztschean was leaning back against a bulkhead studying their captain. Dylan stood in front of the view screen, his back to them. He was flanked on one side by the hologram and on the other by the avatar. Both looked concerned.

It did nothing to ease the growing sense of anxiety that had plagued Harper since his search of the system had found only empty spaces where medical files had once been.

There was no doubt about it now. Something was definitely wrong with Dylan.

Trance glided in behind them and he had to forcibly prevent a shudder. He still hadn't gotten used to the new and not-so-improved golden Trance. Days like this, he really missed his old perky purple friend.

"Well. We're all waiting with baited breath."

Trust Tyr to start off with sarcasm.

Rommie murmured something to Dylan that Seamus couldn't hear and the captain nodded before turning to face them all.

"Thank you, Tyr." An expression of placidness had settled over the big man's strong features. "It's been brought to my attention that you all were concerned enough about me to send Harper in to sneak around Rommie's files, where he found absolutely nothing. If you want to know something, you might try asking first. I might just surprise you and answer. Then there wouldn't be any need for all this cloak and dagger business." Whatever illness Dylan might have had, it wasn't in evidence at the moment. The man before them was one hundred percent pure Captain Dylan Hunt.

"Very well," It would take someone who knew Tyr very well to hear the very real concern under the insolent tone. "What exactly is wrong with you?"

Hunt turned back around to face the screen again. "I don't suppose any of you know anything about the various diseases and viruses native to Tarn Vedra?"

"No offense, Dylan, but I don't think anybody knows much of anything about Tarn Vedra anymore." Harper wanted to elbow his friend for reminding Dylan of what had to be a painful subject, but stopped when he realized that the bigger man was nodding.

"And that, my friends, is the real problem."

Rommie took over. An image that he recognized as a DNA strand flashed on the screen. "This is a DNA strand that contains the genetic mutation that causes Yoweri Syndrome which most often occurred in the victim's brain. About three hundred and fifty years ago, one in every thousand infants born on Tarn Vedra, Vedran or otherwise, carried the mutation in their genes. Out of those, one in every thousand was born with an acute case of it. The disease possessed five stages. The first was at a genetic level and usually could only be detected through DNA or genetic testing. The second stage had more physical symptoms- fluctuating adrenaline levels, nausea and insomnia, small memory lapses. Mostly just annoyances, nothing life threatening."

On the screen, the DNA strand was rotating and mutating steadily with the holograms words.

"Stages three and four were not fatal in and of themselves, but the symptoms often caused death anyway. Severe mood swings where the patient would go from nearly insanely cheerful to suicidaly depressed in a matter of moments, a sort of splintering of the personality that often left the patient confused and missing hours, even days from their memories, occasional bouts of paralysis, and severe pain in the form of migraines and muscle inflammation, occasionally there was internal hemorrhaging . The final stage was fatal, though most patients committed assisted suicide rather than deal with the pain and loss of control."

The avatar broke in. "In an average case, the first stage lasts from birth until the patient is between the ages of ten and fifteen. The second usually another ten years after that. The third and fourth stages were often difficult to separate, but between them they usually progressed rapidly for between eight and twelve years depending on the individual. I have no record of anyone living long enough through the fifth stage for the disease itself to be fatal. Most committed assisted suicide, a few went insane and were killed. Life expectancy for anyone born with Yoweri Syndrome was between thirty-five and forty-five years. In an acute case, the progression of the disease was greatly accelerated. Life expectancy dropped to twenty years of age."

"And of course, despite my mother's genetic manipulations, I was born one of the unlucky of the unlucky."

"You were born with an acute case of this... whachamacallit, Yoweri Syndrome?" Harper needed clarification because even without the three hundred some odd years in the singularity, he knew Dylan was over twenty.

Nodding, Dylan smiled. "Yes. However, I did get lucky in that both of my parents were devoted researchers, my mother in genetics and my father in medicine. Since I was more or less a genetic experiment, I was tested regularly from birth and they found the mutation while I was still a toddler. They pooled their resources and went to work on a cure. We went through two failed medicines that accelerated it even worse, one that did nothing at all, a couple of therapies using radiation, and a handful of other things that had various harmful side effects before they finally found something that reversed the effects of the disease and forced it into a sort of remission. I was fifteen and well into the fourth stage by that point, but it worked and I was able to live a relatively normal life."

"Wait a minute. Are you saying your parents used you as a guinea pig?" Beka's incredulous question was echoed in everyone's expression.

The young Earth-born human had been in that position a few times when he hadn't been quick enough to escape Nieztschean scouting parties, but he couldn't even imagine his own parents doing those things to him. Dylan on the other hand, just shrugged his shoulders, seeming to accept it as the natural order of things.

"Who else were they going to use? I was the one they wanted to save and I didn't have the kind of time it would take for the more prolonged official testing to be done."

"If they cured you, why are you getting sick now?" Tyr's harsh voice was practically right in his ear and Harper started slightly, turning to glare at the big man who'd come up beside him and Beka.

Dylan just shrugged. "Bad Karma?"

That caused a frown to form on the faces of all three Rommie's as the Motherboard came alive to join the conversation. "Actually, there were a number of contributing factors. First, the singularity itself. Though not high enough to be fatal, we were exposed to significant levels of radiation for over three hundred years. We have also been exposed a number of times since. Hiding in the corona of a sun, the children's station, and again in the Nova bomb explosion aboard the Magog worldship. The general stress the entire crew has been exposed to, the near death in the battle against the Magog, the time travel back to the battle of Witchhead. It has all added up."

"How bad is it, Dylan?" While there was concern in the new Trance's voice, there was none of the warmth that had been in the old one.

"Right now I seem to be hovering somewhere between the third and fourth stages."

Harper knew he looked silly, with his mouth hanging open in shock like it was, but he couldn't do anything about it. That meant... Jeez, that meant very bad things for all of them. "I thought you said it would take twenty years!"

"Well, it seems to be even more accelerated than before. Rommie estimates another six months to a year before the disease reaches the final stage. I suppose I should have told you all earlier, but I wasn't dealing with it all that well myself and I didn't want to add the burden to anyone else."

"But we could've been helping you and Rommie work on a cure Dylan." Harper winced at Beka's angry tone and was glad it was directed at someone besides him.

The intended victim seemed oblivious to it as he shrugged. "We're not working on a cure."

"What? Why not?"

Dylan's gaze was both weary and angry at the same time. "Because there's no point in it, and we can't afford to waste the time or the resources."

"So you're just giving up?" He wasn't able to keep the accusing note out of his tone. Dammit, no one had let him give up when his gut had been full of nasty little hitchhikers! How dare Dylan give up?

"No, Mr. Harper, I'm being realistic." In an instant, the captain's tone had gone from resigned to furious. "Three hundred years ago it took both of my parents twelve years to synthesize a cure- and that's with the resources of every medical institution in the million system Commonwealth. I don't have that kind of time and I'm not going to waste what little I do have on a useless endeavor. There is a Magog world ship out there and all the innocent people living in it's path matter a hell of a lot more than me." His gaze softened and he ran a hand over his face. "I'm sorry, Harper. I didn't mean to snap at you."

"S'okay. I get it. I just don't like it."

There was no humor in the answering chuckle. "Neither do I, Mr. Harper. Neither do I."

~*~*~

In the week following Dylan's revelations, even Rommie was forced to admit that it was easier for the captain. Though he was more obviously tired and in pain, his face had lost a great deal of the strain it had carried for so long.

She hadn't realized just what it was costing him to hide his condition.

An added bonus was that she finally had allies in the battle for Dylan's life. Despite his orders to the contrary, she'd searched every data bank and information disc they came into contact with, looking for any hint on how to reproduce the cure that the Dr.'s Hunt had found. She knew there had only been two places where she could have definitely found what they needed- the Renewed Valor from their trip back in time and Terazed. Neither of them had realized he was sick again until weeks after Beka had brought them back from the Battle of Witchhead. And Rommie would never tell Harper that the machine he'd built to save his own life had somehow managed to delete the files she'd gotten from Terazed in it's little space/time folding act.

When they'd left the High Guard planet, Commander Rhade and the council had asked that the co-ordinates of their slipstream portal be erased from her memory banks and Dylan, still swinging wildly from betrayed anger to empathy, had agreed.

She still had a partial in her databank and had originally hoped it could be used as a baseline. Both she and Dylan had been sure it would give them a good starting point. In the end, Dylan had nixed the whole idea of a cure when they found that one of the key herbals listed was extinct.

Contrary to what he'd told Harper, Dylan had given up.

Rommie knew it was just another sign of the depression that overcame him more often than not. Knowing it was a side effect of the disease didn't make it any easier for her to see.

Dylan Hunt hadn't always been a perfect captain, but he was a damn sight better than anyone else who'd stood on her bridge claiming the title. She respected him and cared for him more than she cared for anyone else.

To borrow one of Harper's colorful Terran phrases, it'd be a cold day in hell before she let him die without a fight.

~*~*~part 2

Dylan stood on the Ops deck, watching the stars float by.

Leaning on the railing, he wondered at the irony of a fate that would save him from The Fall, Rhade, and a black hole only to kill him with a disease he'd thought beaten during his adolescence.

Fate or God, or whoever made these decisions had a very twisted sense of humor.

"You okay, boss?"

Only years of training kept Dylan from jumping out of his skin at Harper's voice and the soft touch to his elbow. It was happening a lot more lately, people getting the drop on him. Usually it annoyed and angered him, but he didn't mind it from the ship's quirky engineer.

Harper had nearly been torn apart by Magog spawn, the only death Dylan could think of that he wanted even less than the one in store for him. The younger man had borne it a hell of a lot better than he himself was. And despite a handful of suicide attempts that Rommie had told him about, Harper had fought hard and hadn't given up even when it looked hopeless.

But then, Harper was a great deal stronger than Dylan had ever been.

Those born to this universe, this time, they had to be strong. The High Guard officer knew he couldn't have survived all the things his crew had been through before he'd met them.

"Boss?"

He looked down to see Harper gazing up at him with concern plain in his eyes. "I'm fine, Harper. You?"

"Err.. Yeah, I'm okay. You know we're just all worried about you, right?" There'd been a number of arguments between himself and his ragtag crew over the past week since they'd found out. All of them had sided with Rommie on the whole cure issue. He was touched that they cared so much, but they really didn't know what they were asking of him. The Vedran born man remembered his original bout with stage four. He'd very nearly entered the critical stage when his parents had finally found the cure.

He'd rather shoot himself out an airlock than go through that again. But it wouldn't do for Harper to know that.

Smiling, Dylan dropped one hand down to clasp the smaller one that was still on his elbow. "I know. It's one of the reasons I kept it to myself for so long. To save you all the worry." The smile slipped from his face and he turned his attention back to the stars. "I didn't mean to get angry with you for it."

"S'okay. I understand." There was warm amusement in Harper's voice. And more companionship than Dylan had heard since the fiasco with Earth. He'd never understood what had possessed him when he'd left Earth to fend for itself and gone along with that... well, he had to be honest with himself at least.. that bitch Elsbett. Harper was family. Elsbett didn't deserve near the consideration and loyalty that the man beside him did.

And Dylan had let him down.

He could still remember the reproach in those mercurial eyes. He could have blamed his condition, but that sounded too much like an excuse even to him. No way it would have fooled Harper.

"Boss?"

"Sorry, I was just thinking about things."

"You wanna talk about it?"

He didn't, not really, but Dylan supposed he needed to. There were so many things that needed to be said, not just to Harper, but to the entire crew. So many things he needed to say and do. And so very little time to do it.

"Okay, Dylan, you're scaring me now."

"Huh?" He looked up to see Harper gazing at him with naked concern in his face.

One work calloused hand came up to rest on his forehead as the engineer frowned. "That's the third time in the last couple of minutes that you've drifted off. Should you go see Rommie?"

The captain smiled faintly. "No, I'm fine. Really. I just have a lot on my mind. I was thinking about all the things I still have to do and say and how little time is left."

The uneasy look on Harper's face warmed Dylan. It was nice to know that he hadn't completely ruined whatever friendship they'd managed to build over the last two years. Speaking of which, "I'm sorry, Harper."

"Huh? What're you sorry for?"

"Earth." He missed the warmth almost immediately as Seamus removed his hands and edged away slightly. It wasn't that he wanted to remind the younger man of something that was obviously still painful, it was just one of those things that needed to be said, something he should have said months ago. "Harper, I know an apology can never undo the damage I caused, but it's all I have to offer you."

Dylan watched Harper's profile carefully, searching for any sign of.... well, he wasn't sure really. Forgiveness, maybe. The warmth and companionship.

For a long moment, Harper was the one who seemed to lose himself in the empty space floating by. Then, quite suddenly, the younger man seemed to deflate. His shoulders slumped and his head drooped. Even the blonde spikes seemed to lose their will to stay upright.

Before he could get too alarmed at the abrupt change, Seamus sighed and turned to give him a weak smile. "I always wondered."

Huh? Dylan was wondering if he'd spaced out again and missed part of the conversation.

Apparently, Harper saw that confusion because the smile gained a little strength. "If it had bothered you at all. Or if you'd just put it down to acceptable losses on an unimportant little rock in the middle of an unimportant sector of space."

Wincing, Dylan raised one hand uncertainly. Slowly, making sure Harper could move if he felt uncomfortable, he sat his hand on the slumped shoulder beside him and squeezed gently before releasing him again. "I can't say it's on my mind every day, Harper, but yes, I do think about it. And yes, it does bother me. Looking back, I can see a million things I could have- hell- should have done. It's one of the big things I really wish I could go back and change."

"It helps, you being sorry about it." Suddenly the short blonde bumped his shoulder and grinned, but Dylan could see the vulnerability underneath it. "Means you care."

He returned the smile. "Of course I care, Harper. We may not always see eye to eye, but... you all have become my family."

They stood in silence as Dylan tried to decide how much soul baring he and Harper could handle in one night. There were so many things that needed to be said- not just to his engineer but to all of them-, decisions he'd made for the crew's future without discussing it with them, and he wasn't sure how it'd go over.

Eventually, his mind began to wander and he couldn't remember exactly what it was that he'd been agonizing over. With a shrug and a smile, he decided it mustn't have been very important. And if it was, then it'd come to him later.

Instead of worrying about it, he turned his attention to his companion who'd launched into a humorous spiel about bizarre family customs on Earth.

Listening to Harper always beat brooding.

~*~*~

"How is he, Harper?"

Seamus shrugged as he stared out at the same stars that had held Dylan's attention for so long.

The captain had been called off somewhere to do something by Rommie and he'd stayed behind to think about their conversation.

"Harper?"

With an effort, he dragged his mind back to the present and his annoyed friend. He glanced at Beka briefly before looking away again. "I don't know what to tell you, Beka. He seemed mostly normal to me." There was no way he was going to tell anyone about the spacing out.

In the last few days, it had been happening more frequently. He and Dylan would be in the middle of a conversation and all of a sudden, he'd look up to see the older man staring blankly past him, seemingly lost in whatever thoughts were swirling around in his brain. Now that he knew what it was, Harper could actually point out several other occasions prior to their finding out about the disease when the same thing had happened.

Lately though, he hadn't managed to have a single conversation where Dylan hadn't spaced out. And when he came out of it, half the time he wouldn't even remember what they'd been talking about.

Seamus was worried.

With the AI's permission, he'd taken a closer look at the files that Rommie did have on the disease and was very uncomfortable with what he'd found out.

Dylan was taking medication to ease the symptoms, but it was taking increasingly high dosages to have any effects. And without the meds, Rommie didn't think Dylan would even be able to make it all the way through a complete day without collapsing.

The captain was deep into the third stage. It was only a matter of time before his condition worsened and Hunt had left very specific orders for his ship's AI when that time came. He had no intention of going through stage four.

Rommie was bound to follow her captain's orders no matter how much she disagreed with them.

The rest of the crew wasn't.

And Harper had no intention of sitting back and watching Dylan Hunt commit suicide.

The man was a grade A pain in the ass most of the times, but he'd done what he could to make the universe a better place to live.

Dylan was right, they were a family.

Seamus Zelazany Harper had already lost too much family.

He wasn't going to lost Dylan too.

~*~*~

"Dylan?" Rommie watched her captain as he stood on the bridge, staring at the pilot's chair as if he'd never seen it.

"Huh?" he winced and rubbed his head before turning to give her his full attention. "Yes Rommie?"

"Are you all right?"

"Of course. Am I the only one on duty at the moment?" Not being human she couldn't be certain, but to her, he sounded curious rather than upset. As if he honestly didn't know whether or not there was supposed to be anyone else on the bridge.

Just adding it to one more thing to worry about, she used her internal sensors to sweep the ship for the rest of the crew. "Beka and Harper are in Hydroponics, Trance is in medical, and Tyr is doing a manual weapons check."

"Oh. Okay." He was silent as he gingerly lowered himself into the seat and fiddled with the handle grips. "Rommie?"

"Yes, Dylan?"

"Do you think the rest of the crew will be mad about my will?"

His tone was still curious and she'd only seen that particular expression on the faces of children long before the fall of the Commonwealth and the Purple Trance. "I'm sure they'll wonder, but I doubt they'll be upset. Dylan, have you taken your medication today?"

Dylan cocked his head to one side, his expression never changing.

If she'd been human she would have groaned. But she wasn't, so Hologram Rommie asked Trance to bring up the hypo spray and Android Rommie just moved to swat the captain's hands where he was playing with the controls.

He seemed almost to pout before turning guileless eyes up at her and trying to look hurt.

She couldn't help the slight twitch of her lips as she forced back a grin.

Although it was disturbing to see evidence of the occasional regression caused by the disease, it was also, as Beka would say, so darn cute.

The golden gilded Trance chose that moment to glide onto the bridge. "Here you are, Rommie. Do you need anything else?" Her gaze shifted over to where Dylan was looking back at her with an almost wide eyed wonder.

"No thank you, Trance." She pressed the hypo against Dylan's neck before he had a chance to move. "There you are, Dylan."

He pouted a second before his eyes glazed slightly. The effects were obvious in minutes as he raised his hand to rub his neck with a grimace. "Thank you, Rommie."

"Thank me by not forgetting next time."

This time his pout was all adult and Trance chuckled at him before turning to leave. "I'll be in the infirmary if you need anything else."

Rommie rolled her eyes and turned her attention back to the self-diagnosis she'd been performing before Dylan had distracted her.

~*~*~

Dylan lay in bed thinking about nothing in particular.

Rommie's last admonishment still ringing in his ears, he'd already taken his medication and Beka and Tyr were splitting bridge duty today. So, he had nothing in particular that needed to be thought of.

Which was why he was still lying in bed, in his pajamas several hours after he'd woken up.

"Rommie?"

"Yes Dylan?" The disembodied voice floated over the comm. systems.

"Isn't there anything for me to do?" He didn't mean to sound sulky, he was just bored out of his skull. There was silence for a long minute but just as he was about to repeat the question, the voice was back.

"Harper says you're welcome to come down to Machine Shop 9 and help him with some repairs."

With a grin, he was up and moving. Over the last couple of weeks, Harper had loosened right up around him and was damn good company. Beka and Tyr made him feel uncomfortable and Trance... well, he couldn't honestly say he'd ever been comfortable around this new Trance.

Harper was the only one who seemed normal. It probably helped that with the quirky engineer, he wasn't expected to keep up his end of the conversation. Harper could talk enough for three or four people and always seemed content just to know someone was listening.

"Dylan?"

He stopped suddenly in the open doorway. Hologram Rommie was there, staring at him. "Yes Rommie?"

She nodded her head towards him. "Don't you think you should dress first?"

Looking down he grinned sheepishly at his silky pajamas. "Thanks Rommie." Laughing softly at himself, he turned back and threw on some clothes.

Then he was off again.

~*~*~

Trance rubbed her eyes as she sat down the flexi-file she'd been reading.

As her purple counterpart had only months before, she'd been working non-stop with Rommie to find a cure for a seemingly incurable illness.

Well, that wasn't quite true. Somewhere in the universe, there was a cure.

It just wasn't anywhere they could get their hands on it.

She scowled at the wall.

In the grand scheme of things Dylan and the Andromeda crew were far too important to die so soon. It was the main reason she'd traded places with the other Trance. To undo the horrific future that would come about without them. Her people might like to play games with the mortals that populated the universe, but very few were actually out to cause harm. Like any other race, they had their share of sadists but luckily, they were few and far between.

The universe needed the Andromeda and the crew needed Dylan. For all that he did tend to hang a 'Kick Me' sign on their backs inviting various pieces of scum to attack them, he also was usually able to come up with something to save their collective rear ends. Or failing that, he was typically- present condition excluded- a damned lucky man.

They'd never have gotten through half the stuff that had been heaped on them in the last two years without him. Of course, they'd probably never have gotten into most the messes on their own, but still.

The fact remained that Dylan Hunt was a man who could and would shape the universe into his own vision. If he lived long enough to do so.

Closing her eyes, she mentally reviewed all the possibilities she could think of, trying to find the one that would give them all a happy ending.

She didn't want to have to do the whole going back in time bit again. It had been difficult enough to regain what trust they had for her now. She didn't like her chances of getting any trust at all next time.

Finding a cure was still the best bet.

So what options were there?

Dylan had mentioned that it had taken years of research and experimentation for his parents to save him. Rommie had confirmed that one of the things needed was either extinct or could only be found on Tarn Vedra or Terazed.

Going back to Terazed wouldn't be impossible, but it might be difficult. And she'd already tried without success to find Tarn Vedra before, in the early days of being part of Dylan's crew.

There was the possibility of another, different cure, but finding it could take years.

That was time that Dylan didn't have.

Maybe they were thinking in the wrong directions. Trying to think of a medical cure had almost used up all of Harper's time before he'd taken matters into his own hands and come up with a different approach and saving himself.

Could there be something like that out there that could work for Dylan?

Or perhaps the Engine of Creation? Restore the Commonwealth and cure Dylan Hunt in three simple steps.

She chuckled at her own oddball humor. She'd lost a lot of it over the years she and Beka had survived after the rest of the crew had died. Obviously the time spent back in Harper's company was affecting her more than she'd thought.

There were other ancient artifacts that had been known to perform miracles in their time. It shouldn't be too hard to track them down.

The real challenge would be in getting Dylan to try them. His stance on the whole thing was really quite vexing and she had no idea how to change his mind.

Regardless, Trance knew she had to figure it out and figure it out quickly.

The more time that passed, the closer Dylan was to his self-appointed end and the further they were from that one bright perfect future that hovered on the horizon, just out of her line of sight.

She had no intention of letting the universe be plunged back into the dark future she'd left.

She would get it right this time.

She had to.