wolfling: For me, this is the ultimate Malcolm song.
Disclaimer: I do not own Turin Brakes, the song Stone Thrown or Star Trek. Unfortunately.
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Malcolm was sitting at the edge of the lake, knees brought up in front of himself, elbows resting gently upon them.
He looked reflective and pondering, but at the same time, he had an odd sort of depressed-happiness about him. A strange mix of emotions to have, and a difficult one to describe.
Trip stood on the sparsely grass coated earth. He'd never been to Dartmoor; he'd never really seen the cold English countryside which Malcolm had so eloquently described, but there was something predominantly…Malcolm-ish about the landscape of the planet.
Possibly because, like Malcolm, Trip knew next to nothing about it.
He edged the subject carefully "Malcolm? You okay?"
Silence.
"I suppose," was the only response.
A cold wind blew in a forcefully gentle way past them. Trip, being used to much warmer climes, flinched away from it, but Malcolm, who had braved this sort of weather before, welcomed it as a gust from home.
"I just suppose that this place…this place is a lot like Dartmoor."
"You've said."
Another brief silence came between the two men, the shadowy streak of wind curled and wound around them, caressing their skin with numbness, almost as if alive.
"Did you ever live there?"
"Hiked."
"Oh," there was a pause. For Trip, it lasted forever.
"I heard about-about the…are you feeling okay about it?"
Malcolm pursed his lips and looked down, away from the dark water in front of him.
"Yeah," he said quietly.
There was another silence, another gentle wind blew, and settled as the Lieutenant began to sing softly, with sigh.
"I'm the stone, you've just thrown, into the ocean, how many stones have you thrown?"
Trip was just slightly shocked by the singing; he'd never figured Malcolm as the singing type. For some reason he'd always furiously objected to Shuttle-pod sing-alongs.
"Turin brown, I'm going down for the very first time.
Now where's the truth in this?
I dared to dream, but you were more violent than the worst hurricane"
Yet here he was, the sometimes ferocious and often cold leader of the Enterprise Armoury. Singing.
Trip listened intently, bewitched by some magical source of emotion which had just erupted somewhere from within the man, as if it had been capped over by accumulated ice of years in Starfleet training and service, and had finally broken through the restraints, at the meagre sight of a place, a place so far away and yet so akin to a home which he had loved.
"Oh, take me sailing again…
Oh, take me sailing again…"
Malcolm's voice began to quiver and shake. His voice was angry and emotive, he pronounced everyone consonant violently, with passion, with anger, with feeling. Everything, everything from the past three weeks loaded into one verse of a song, a song which Trip
"You're taking aim, your fiery flame infects the freedom fighter,
Your love was just a fucking game," he pounded the ground with his feet, dust rose and was blown away by another harsher gust of wind, cold and biting, feeling Malcolm's emotion and running with it, spreading it through the air and hitting Trip with full force.
Trip, although he didn't know the words, descended next to his friend, and joined in, stumbling the lyrics slightly, but affixing himself to the tune, allowing Malcolm to keep going strong knowing that there was someone beside him. Someone willing to listen. To give him time.
"So love me like my brother should, keep me safe from harm,
Like nobody could, Yeah.
I see the sorrow, it don't look so good…" Finally, shaking slightly, he looked at the older man, with sadness, and then turned away again.
"Oh take me sailing again
Oh take me sailing again"
"But here in the ocean currents drag me deeper down,
But I'm the stone that can't be drowned," catching the drift of it, they both sung out, loud, into the grey sky, into the biting wind, deep down, out of their very hearts and souls.
In an odd way, Trip understood the song. Though he'd never heard it before, nor of who had sung it in the first place, he got what it was talking about. And in a way, he got what Malcolm was talking about too.
Malcolm looked sideways at him and grinned. And without saying anything, he thanked him.
For Trip, the smile was enough.
Oh take me sailing again
Oh take me sailing again
I'm the stone you've just thrown into the ocean
How many stones have you thrown?
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wolfling: It was hard fitting all of the song in, which has led to weird parts in the fic. Sorry bout those, but in order to serve the song justice, I had to fit it all in somehow.
The song is Stone Thrown, it's by Turin Brakes, and has always put an image of Malcolm, sitting with a guitar, in a dark blue hooded top singing with Trip to an ex-girlfriend who is sitting at the bar. Somehow, it came out as being about Dartmoor. How odd.