Disclaimer and stuff: Unless something drastic has happened, Tribune still owns Andromeda.
Thank you all so much for the reviews, every time I think I've done something wrong you convince me otherwise and I'm guessing you liked the last chapter!(Agus Sorcha, go raibh maith agat agus tá athas orm le a....thuairisci?!) Anyway, here is chapter six:
"Everyone see things differently. That's why they are called points of view, because from where you're standing things look different. While you grow up your point of view is always changing but it happens so slowly that you won't realise when exactly the tree in your garden stops looking as tall as Jack's beanstalk and becomes just another tree. In the same way you barely realise when you start viewing someone as a friend instead of just someone you recognise. It's when you find yourself reaching the top of that tree and looking down, or laughing and joking with that friend, that you realise things have changed and you don't even remember it happening."
***
She was singing to her plants. It helped both her and them, she liked to sing and they liked to listen. Plants were so easy to please. Enough water, food, the right soil and temperature, space and they grew and flowered like they were supposed to. But people were different. They have the right nutrients, environment, space and company and still they didn't thrive like plants.
Why? Because unlike most plants, they have emotions, memories and personalities and these were things that were very difficult to balance. Everything else could be perfectly suited to them but sometimes the problem was inside themselves.
He had come. She'd been so relieved when he'd arrived because she knew somehow things would be better. But she wasn't so sure now. Something had changed and she realised that it was him. She now had a problem that she knew no-one could fix. Things could still turn out okay but the good futures were becoming less and less. The paths were narrowing and that was never a good sign.
He was who they needed though, and he was here. So all she needed to do was to help him. She would help him to be part of this crew. It was the only thing she knew she could do but it wouldn't be easy. She wasn't exactly sure what kind of a past he'd come from but only that it wasn't a good one.
Of course even though she had very good insight, she didn't realise how much of an understatement that was.
***
Beka had rang the door chime and when no-one opened the door, she walked in. No sign of him. She headed towards the bedroom and shouted through the door.
"Captain Hunt sent me to bring you to the mess. If you want something to eat, get a move on!"
Inside the room, Harper, who'd been woken by the door chime, was standing up sleepy and confused. He had gotten used to sleeping on the hard deckplates of the Maru so he was surprised to wake up on the carpeted floor. When he heard the woman shout in to him he got even more confused.
They were going to feed him before he did any work? They were lucky to get fed at all on the Nietzchean ship or in the camps. Well, he would never give up a chance for food, even though he was a bit suspicious of the motives of these people. He walked quickly out the door coming face to face with a blond woman. He quickly looked down, noticing as he did that she had a gun very nearly in her hand. She frowned at him, though he couldn't see it and walked out the door expecting him to follow, which he did.
He stayed a few feet behind her, following her to the mess, until she stopped and yelled for him to catch up with her. He jogged up to her, expecting the worst for having lagged behind. But she just walked on telling him to keep up with her.
She wasn't happy. She had her ship back and now she wanted to leave. But both Trance and Rev were against leaving straight away. She guessed they liked it here. She knew she shouldn't have been taking it out on Hunt's new 'engineer' but she felt she had a right to be angry at him anyway, he was working with the ones who had murdered Dale.
They reached the door to the mess and she gestured for him to go ahead in. He hesitated, like he wasn't really sure that he wanted to go in there. His gaze flicked quickly to her and then back to the floor. She really didn't think that the deck plates were that interesting. She was about to say so when she remembered that Captain Hunt was waiting for them and so were the rest of the crew.
"You can't wait out here all day, the food isn't going to grow legs and walk out to you so if you want to eat you'll have to go in." At her words he walked in and she followed. He walked in a few metres before he froze. He'd taken a quick, barely noticeable look round the room and what he'd seen had shocked him.
There were a number of people in the room. The first was Captain Hunt, still in uniform and as tall as a Greek god, and the Nietzchean that had brought him to his cell, the one who'd he'd thought was going to kill him. But there were two other people he hadn't met before, the first was female and purple and the second... Harper had to check twice before he was sure that he was in a room with a Magog. Yep, fur, claws, teeth.
He tried to stay calm but he was now in his own personal version of hell, in a room with a Magog and a Nietzchean. And with Captain Valentine standing behind him, there was no escape.
It took only seconds for his mind to register this before he thought of something. 'They're going to feed me to the Magog! Oh, hell I have to get out of here.' He was already panicking before the door had shut. He heard it swish close behind him and he spun round.
Valentine was standing in front of him. She looked confused and then gestured him to a chair and she walked over and sat down. He didn't move. He was too busy keeping track of the Magog sitting at one of the tables. He was talking to the purple thing, but both of them kept looking at him.
"Hey." Captain Valentine's voice brought his attention back to this side of the room.
"Well, are you going to eat or not?" Harper felt sick without even thinking about food. Just the sight of a Magog was enough to make him lose his appetite, his sanity, his reason.
Captain Hunt stood up. He had noticed the hesitation in the young man and assumed he was just a bit uncertain about the situation. He called the rest of the crew over to the table he was sitting at and gestured Harper over. To Harper's disgust and very near despair, the purple thing and the Magog got up and began to walk towards where he was standing.
It was then he remembered the door. There was no-one near the door. He could run for it but where could he run? He was on a ship! Of course you had to remember that his mind was not working with reason but with fear, or he might have been more calm about the whole situation. Captain Hunt was talking again.
"I just wanted to call you all together to introduce you to our engineer, Mr. Harper." As the Magog and the purple thing came closer he decided to take action. Seizing his chance he grabbed a knife from a tray by the wall. He wasn't what he was going to do with the knife but he wasn't going to let that Magog near him.
The rest of the crew were too focused on what Captain Hunt was saying that they didn't notice he now had knife in his hand. The purple thing was walking toward him. She smiled, held out her hand and introduced herself.
"Hi, I'm Trance." She looked down noticing the knife in his hand and looked back up. She reached for his arm and Harper yanked it back out of reach, taking a step back towards the wall. Too late he realised that getting the knife had cut him off from the door.
He was considering running for it when the purple girl spoke again.
"You don't need to be scared we're really nice people." She watched him intently, trying to understand what was wrong. His eyes kept flicking back to Rev. He whispered something. Trance only understood one word but it was enough. Magog.
She smiled again. The crew had realised something was going on but Trance had gestured for them to wait.
"That's just Rev Bem. He is a Magog yes, but he's a Wayist. He's a good Magog."
Harper's views on 'good' Magog were like he's views on 'nice' Nietzcheans. There weren't any, they were all scary monsters. And Harper knew all about monsters.
"Do you want him to leave?" The purple girl, Trance, wasn't smiling now, she looked concerned. Harper was too scared to understand what the rest of the people in the room were saying so he didn't bother listening to Trance as she spoke to them. He just kept his eyes focused on the Magog, watching for any movement.
"He's just scared of Rev because he's a Magog. I tried telling him he was a Wayist but he didn't seem to understand." She looked apologetically at Rev. He nodded.
"I will leave and let you calm him down. He is not the first nor will he be the last to be afraid of me." He turned and left.
Harper slid down to the floor his back against the wall. He was drained, exhausted. He hadn't ate in a long time, he hadn't slept much and he'd used up all his energy through adrenaline. He closed his eyes and let himself drift into the darkness.
Trance knelt down beside him. "He's unconscious."
Dylan was standing next to her, looking both confused and concerned.
"Take him to the med-bay and keep him there for the moment. I wonder why he had such a strong reaction to seeing Rev Bem?"
Tyr, who had kept to the sidelines during this incident voiced his opinion.
"It would seem he has had some experience with Magog before."
Dylan nodded. "But so have I and I don't react like that whenever I see a Magog."
Tyr was not ready to concede his point though and continued. "You however, were a highguard officer well able to defend yourself, I doubt he was in the same position."
Beka said nothing. She was staring down at the limp form Trance was tending to. She'd seen the fear in his eyes and something was starting to click. The staring at the floor, the walking behind her, the generally nervous behaviour.
She could have kicked herself. She'd seen kids like these before, they'd been through hell most of their life and they always seemed to get the worst of it. She couldn't believe she hadn't seen it before now. The Nietzcheans were probably slavers and that meant this Harper guy was a slave.
Tyr and Dylan were helping Trance move him onto a stretcher to take him to the Med-bay. Dylan looked worried and perplexed, like he'd taken on too much and wasn't sure just what to do. She understood exactly how he felt.
And Harper, he was having nightmares. Magog, Nietzcheans, everything he'd ever dreamed was under his blanket. But for the first time since the death of his parents he was rescued from these monsters, not by his parents like he used to be, but by a purple goddess who kept telling him that everything would be okay. And he believed her.
Trance was sitting by his beside whispering to the young man on the bed. Telling him how everything was going to be good now and he was among friends. She was just waiting now, for him to wake up, for things to go right or wrong and to understand what it was really all about, this universe with it's cruelty and kindness. That it could do something so horrible to someone like this.
***
A/N: Oh, poor Harper! Well, what did you think? I haven't really planned how long this story is going to be but there isn't signs of it ending just yet, as for Harper's sleeping habits, we'll get back to them next chapter.
