Disclaimer: I still don't own a lot of these characters... and wouldn't know what to do with them if I did.

Chapter 6: Light and Shadows pt 3

Make it go away, or make it better

Isn't that what love's supposed to do

Make it go away, or make it better

'Cause I would do either one for you…

--- Holly Cole

"Trip. Wake up!"

He screamed, his body stiff and shaking. He couldn't see, couldn't breathe, couldn't move. Couldn't think. Just screamed because there was nothing else for the horror, for what he couldn't remember.

"Trip. Shhh. It's okay… it's just a nightmare…" Jonathan sat beside him, holding him close. "It's over now… It's okay… it's going to be okay… Nothing's going to hurt you…"

Slowly the scream faded to a series of whimpers. Cold sweat drenched Trip's body; he could smell his own fear. Slowly Jonathan began to rock him, stroking his hair and face. Soothing.

"Do you want to talk about it?"

Trip shook his head but didn't pull away. The last thing he wanted was to be alone and unprotected. "I can't remember it, anyway. I can never remember it." He cried, burying his head in Jonathan's side. "I just know I'm scared. So scared."

"I know." Jonathan continued to rock him; the motion comforting. Trip wrapped his own arms around Jonathan, clinging to something stable, solid. He felt so helpless, so small.

Jonathan kissed the top of Trip's head, petted his hair. "It's all okay. No one's going to hurt you now."

Was that it? Was that the fear? I don't know. I just don't know. What memory could be bad enough for Trip to want to bury it, though? I remember my brother trying to kill me, I remember wanting to kill myself. I remember the crazies, I remember cutting myself to pieces, so, what could possibly be so horrible that I would have to repress it? He could feel his heart slowing, his breathing evening out. "I'm sorry." The words came out muffled, his face still pressed into Jonathan's uniform.

"Don't be. Hey." Jonathan lifted Trip's chin and looked down into his eyes. "You've got nothing to be sorry for. You had a bad dream. That's all." He smiled and wiped away a latecoming tear. "It's not the first time."

How could he know that? Trip didn't tell anyone about his nightmares, only a handful of people knew: those who'd spent the night, and heard the screams. Usually he woke alone, sharing his fear only with the darkness. "Charles?"

Jonathan nodded. "He has them too, every now and then. It takes me hours to get him back to sleep. Like you, he says he can't remember them. Just that it starts out as another dream, a good dream…"

Like me.

"…then something happens and he can't remember the rest." Jonathan released Trip's chin; Trip let his head fall against Jonathan's shoulder. "There's a name he mentioned once… a Danny…"

Trip snorted. "Don't give me that. I know what happened with Danny Malone, at least for me. I remember it just fine."

"Charles won't tell me. He just said it was bad."

"Bad enough." Trip closed his eyes, taking comfort in the darkness. "Bad enough that I set myself on fire."

[ "Hey, punk." It could only be Danny, big, ugly Danny, who thought that Trip was a small sized punching bag, the perfect practice target. "Come on, I want to show you something."

"No thanks." Last encounter, Danny'd pushed him down the stairs. He thought he'd solved it by making Danny think that he – Trip – was crazy, but now…

"I wasn't asking, punk." Danny grabbed him, threw him towards the boy's washroom.

Run. He didn't get far, only a couple of steps before the bigger boy grabbed him again.

"Not so fast, punk. I've got a problem here, and you're gonna fix it."

Uh-uh. He wasn't the only small kid in school, and he'd heard a lot of the rumours. Danny Malone traded in pain and humiliation, nothing less. So far, only being friends with Toby had saved Trip the worst of it. Toby had threatened to cut pieces off, and Danny believed her. But…

"Girlfriend ain't here today, is she, punk? It's just you and me for all the fun. I've been waiting to get you, punk. She couldn't stay around forever."

"So you're afraid of a girl." Okay, Toby wasn't a regular girl; Trip would be the first to testify to that. Instead he tried to channel some of her personality, make it his. Intimidate Danny right back.

"I don't do girls, punk. That's all." Danny hauled him inside, his grip painfully tight. " 'Specially not crazy, ugly ones like that."

Trip squirmed, trying to get a shot in. It's one thing to hurt me;, it's another to insult my friend. Unfortunately Danny held him at arm's length, too far away to do anything.

Two boys looked up from their conversation by the sink, saw who it was and stopped.

"Beat it."

They bolted, glad not to be today's victim. They'd never remember anything, not even that they'd been there. No one's going to help me. He caught sight of himself in the mirror, terrified eyes staring back at him. Eyes that changed as he watched, hardening. Going from the eyes of someone who'd do anything to not have this happen -- to the eyes of someone willing to do absolutely anything.

The vision disappeared as Danny shoved him to his knees, then spun him around on the cold tile until Trip's eyes were level with Danny's crotch. "Now, punk, here's how it's going to go. You do everything I say, and you don't get hurt… much. You don't, and I'm going to enjoy myself, that much more. Do you understand?" Danny had so much faith in his power that he didn't expect disobedience, didn't see Trip's hand sliding into his jeans' pocket.

"Yeah, I understand." Not a scared kid's voice. An adult's voice, cold and cynical. "But it ain't gonna happen." A single word dominated his mind. Gambit.

"What do you mean 'ain't gonna happen', punk? It's gonna happen 'cause I say so." Danny smacked Trip's head, hard. "What ya gonna do about it?"

"This." In a single motion Trip pulled the lighter out and ignited it. Held the flame to the pulled out tail of his shirt until it caught.

"Holy fuck." Danny let him go, backed away then fled. He expected violence back, or capitulation but couldn't understand self-sacrifice.

Trip fell against the floor, rolling back and forth on the tile until the pain stopped spreading. He felt bits of his skin pulling away to stick on the floor, creating an unholy mess. It smelled oddly like a barbecue in here, like someone had thrown pork steaks on the grill. He stood up, not believing what he saw.

The entire upper left side of his torso was blackened and bleeding. It felt cold, not hot. The side of his shirt was gone. The fire hadn't moved too quickly though, somehow it left his face and hair unsinged. He heard yelling and running footsteps, then nothing more as he passed out. ]

"He never bothered me after that. In fact, he pretty much stopped picking on kids altogether. Didn't want to run the risk of getting another crazy one, I guess."

"I guess." Jonathan craned his neck to look at Trip, who hadn't moved. "Why in the hell…"

"Do you know what a gambit is?" Trip hadn't fully understood then, only figured it out later. Looking back, it was a brilliant move. Almost Toby worthy.

"You mean like in chess? Sacrificing a pawn to obtain a better position?"

"Uh-huh. I was the pawn. Or rather my skin was. If I'd have gone along with him, I'd have just been setting myself up for more. If I'd fought, same thing. I figured he'd run, quick, and I'd have time to put it out."

"You could have set him on fire."

Trip sighed. "And then he would've come looking for revenge. And I'd get it even worse. By doing it to myself… He realised how far I was willing to go. What I was willing to sacrifice to escape him. And it was more than he was willing to demand. Not only that, but if I could do that to myself, then what might I do to him?"

"What happened to you? Surely they didn't just let you go…"

"I got three days suspension for playing with fire. The principal said I was lucky to avoid an arson charge. I never told them what really happened." Never told Toby either, though she'd always suspected something. Every time after that when he'd visit, he'd catch her hiding the matches.

Jonathan hugged him tighter. "You are crazy -- you know that? You are crazier-scary than anyone I could ever imagine, and I can't think of anyone else I'd rather have saving us."

"Thanks." Trip disentangled himself and stood up. Better to pretend he remembered nothing of his dreams; better to pretend he wasn't a lucid dreamer. He envied Charles now: having someone there to hold him when the night turned ugly. And from everything Trip had heard, the man didn't deserve it. What did you do to get my stability -- the comfort I've always wanted? And you treat it like it's shit -- like it's worth nothing. You have no idea what you're throwing away. You're just a selfish little bastard. People called him a playboy; they didn't see that he wanted domesticity, that it was the women who kept leaving him. He'd about given up, despite what he'd told Malcolm in Shuttle Pod One.

No Charles Tucker IV, barring a miracle. He could never figure out what he did wrong: why no one wanted to be with him for very long. Maybe it was because the Trip Tucker of reality wasn't the Trip Tucker of the image. Maybe, when they found out he was a bundle of conflicts behind those good looks and bright smile, maybe that was when they decided the bargain was a bad buy.

Then it's a bad deal all round. You've got enough misery without buying yourself more.

He headed over to where Kaci sat with her head bowed over a panel, working. "Your turn." He gestured towards the corner, then looked at her work to see where to take over. "You might want to replace the pillow though."

She shook her head, pushed him out of the way. I don't need to.

"Kaci…" He didn't want to order her to sleep, couldn't blame her if she felt uncomfortable in his presence now.

She laid a hand on his arm, shook her head. No. Instead, she tapped a couple of keys on another panel. "…why you look so sad, the tears aren't in your eyes, come on and come to me now…"

"…don't be ashamed to cry, let me see you through, because I've seen the dark side too.." her musical voice blended perfectly with the singer's. "… when the night falls on you, you don't know what to do, nothing you confess…"

"…I'll stand by you…" he joined her on the chorus, ignoring Jonathan's startled glance. He knew Jonathan couldn't hear the third member of their trio, and felt sorry for the other man. Toby's soprano wasn't something to be missed. He didn't sing all that often, didn't trust his voice to hold some of the notes. He realised that it was also probably the first time Jonathan had heard anything from Kaci, remembering his own adjustment period.

So what if they're someone else's words. All oaths were when it came to that -- all formal ones anyway. He needed the promise here; needed to give it and receive it. We're in this together. We get out together.

They finished to a strained round of applause. "Just when I think I've got you figured out…"

"Never." Trip grabbed the thermos he'd brought down from the mess hall and poured himself a cup of coffee. "I don't even have me figured out, so you, buddy, don't stand a chance." He took a sip -- let it warm him. "So how close are we now to checking out the computer? What are our interfaces like?"

"Physically, they're ready to go." Jonathan told him, "But we haven't been willing to risk setting off your security program. It seems to have scrambled everything."

She wouldn't. Of course she would. He booted up the system, and saw that it had indeed been scrambled. Not only that but he had a nasty feeling… "We better hope I can figure out that code."

Jonathan's eyes widened. "You mean it's different?"

"Uh huh. Not only that, but everything's encrypted. Rotating clear text. You can't brute-force it, even if we had the time." Technically a rotating clear text code could be broken, but only if the computer doing the code breaking entered the right sequence at the right time. RCT meant that you couldn't just try every code until one worked…A computer only knew it had the right code when the scramble dissolved into something recognisable. But if it always changed…

Like Ruby's little game. Yeah, he'd fallen for that one, all right. Even when Gina had pointed out that little logical flaw: if no one but Ruby knew the right names, all she had to do if someone guessed them was to change the names. He'd still hung around, though, hoping that – this time – it would be different.

Yeah, right. Like it ever would be. Sometimes he felt like he could be the last man on the planet and his current whoever would find someone else to be interested in.

Worse, even if they could use brute force on this puppy, they still had the problem of the computer knowing it had cracked it. Computers broke code by trying a combination, checking the result, then trying another if the first didn't work. They'd talked about it one night -- over coffee and biscotti --pure theory at the time.

[ "How many transactions can your modern computer do per second, Charles?" That quirk of hers, he couldn't get her to call him anything else.

"I don't know," he answered, "Billions. Trillions."

She nodded. "Per second. How long is ten seconds? Could you wait ten seconds?"

"Easy." He sat and counted them off silently. "It's not that long."

"Ah, but to a computer? Tens of trillions of potential transactions not happening? And when searching for a 4096 bit key? Can you afford a ten second wait after each trial?"

"Holy shit." ]

The implications had staggered him, still did. Even if the delay secret got out… no one could crack the code anyway, not in time for it to be useful. 3.64 times ten to the 13019th power. That's how many possible combinations existed – more than the human mind could comprehend. Running at full speed it would take long enough to crack the code but if they had to institute a ten second delay between each try…It's an uncrackable code. Throw in a rotating cleartext and the impossible became… I doubt even Daniels' people could break it.

Well, there had to be a way of getting into the computer, of letting this monster program know he wanted to shut it down. "Have you tried anything?" He prayed they hadn't. He had no idea what Gina had built in as a failsafe.

"No. We thought you were the best to figure it out." Jonathan leaned in over Trip's shoulder. "Where did you get this thing, anyway?"

"From a friend. I'm beta-testing it for her." Not that there was any likelihood of it appearing on the market any time soon. He reached for the console, and caught a flicker of movement in the reflection.

"Hey." He picked up a spanner from the desk and spun around. This time, at least the guy was different, and dressed in something that more closely resembled clothes rather than a something from a plastic blower with hiccups.

"Mr. Tucker?" The man didn't move, but a smile brightened his dark features. He wore a red and black tunic over a black turtleneck and black uniform style pants. And in his hand…

No. Trip mouthed the word in his mind, seeing and refusing to believe. A small rectangle held reverently between the fingers, a protective casing over a plastic card. This was worse than a Temporal Agent. "Go away."