TITLE: The Unintended
DISCLAIMER: I own nowt from Andromeda, I'm just borrowing
NOTES: Sorry for the tardy update, here's two chapters to make up. The end draws ever near...

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX What Has Gone Before
"So terrible to forget, so painful to remember."
Aryana Tibet
CY 3489

The calm had finally descended after the storm, but life had by no stretch of the imagination gone back to normal. Andromeda had been watching the aftermath of the ordeal. With all her strength as a warship, she was powerless to help her suffering crew. Things were quiet, almost mournful, even though Beka had managed to talk Harper out of killing himself. No-one knew quite how to deal with the situation - the situation being as far-fetched as it was.

Two more days had passed since Harper had awoken, but time seemed to be at a standstill of late. Those who did sleep did so at erratic times and for differing lengths. Harper hadn't slept at all, or spoken much for that matter. No-one blamed him. He had been in med-deck mostly while Trance checked him over. There was little that she could do. When he wasn't in med-deck he had been making light repairs on Andromeda's still healing systems. He also spent some time in the machine shop working on various projects, though Rommie and the others could tell he had lost heart for his work.

Most of Harper's time was spent alone, though as a precaution anything he could use to hurt himself had been taken away - for the time being - and Andomeda had been constantly monitoring him. Occasionally one of the crew would stop by and check on how he was doing. The conversations, if you could call them that, were short and mainly consisted of Dylan of whoever the other party was, trying to get Harper to open up and talk about how he was feeling. But this had proved difficult even before the recent events took place.

Rommie was with him now, in machine shop seven. He was working on the AI doctor. He had named her Anabel but had already started calling her Ana. Harper had discovered that she was quite sophisticated and actually already had the capacity to learn and develop, but over years of neglect and mistreatment most of her mind had been cut off and only her basic knowledge remained.

"Ana, what do you think of me?" Harper asked her after mending some more pathways.

"Human, male, thirty to forty years of - "

"Alright, stop," Harper interrupted. She obviously still needed some work.

The doors to the machine shop slid open and Harper glanced up to see Dylan entering. "How are things going?" he asked, his best attempt at chirpiness falling short.

Harper knew the general question was really meant to be 'how are you doing' but he didn't particularly want to answer that. "Ana's coming along. Still needs work," he replied.
"Uh-huh," Dylan nodded slightly and there was a short awkward silence. "Trance thinks she might have a way to get the inhibitor out," he said, suddenly remembering his excuse to see Harper.

"Good. I'll go see her when I've finished here."

Another awkward silence fell.

"Are you going to keep this up?"

"Keep what up?" Harper asked, not bothering to look up from his work.

"It's been two days," Dylan told him. "You're going to have to tell someone about what happened sooner or later."

Harper felt his agitation rising. Why couldn't they just leave him to deal with it on his own? "It's over, what does it matter?"

"Aside from the fact the Commonwealth are demanding a situation report, and the fact I need to know what information to give them and what not to give them? How about the fact that not talking about something is not doing you any favours. You can't just keep whatever happened bottled up, it won't turn out well."

Harper jumped from the table, suddenly awash with anger. "You really wanna know?" he snapped. "Well what do you want to hear first, Dylan? Huh? The agony I was in when they activated this thing?" he spat, gesturing to the inhibitor. "The way the Nietzscheans treated me? What it was like being taken over by something that was going to kill me?"

"I didn't mean..." Dylan tried to calm him but Harper wasn't finished.

"Or maybe you'd like to know how I killed half an entire crew just by thinking about it?"

Another silence descended but this time there was enough tension to fill it. Dylan searched for the right thing to say. "The Dovien-Genghis pride are ruthless sadists. They were the bad guys. Besides, everyone knows you weren't yourself when you were on that ship."

"No, that's just it!" he snapped, hitting his fist on the table. "You all think I was out of my mind but I wasn't. I knew what I was doing, I wanted them all to die. To suffer as much as I..." he stopped, not wanting to bring his tortured past into it. "I killed them and I liked it. And I don't regret what I did."

Dylan was taken aback. "Harper, you don't mean that."

"Yes, I do, and that's the problem, right? What kind of a person doesn't even care?"

"Of course you care. Or you wouldn't be asking that question."
Harper wished he could believe him.

Andromeda interrupted the tense moment. "Captain, I'm receiving a distress call. It went out on all frequencies, audio only."

"I'm on my way," Dylan said, then turned his attention back to Harper. "See Trance. She can tell you more about the procedure for removing the inhibitor." With that he left Harper alone once again.

"He was only trying to help, Harper," Andromeda told him.

Harper looked at the closed door. "I know."

End of Chapter Twenty-Six