All human things are subject to decay,

And when fate summons, monarchs must obey.

— John Dryden, Mac Flecknoe

SUBJECTS TO DECAY

by glenarvon

Chapter 1: Too Tired to Sleep

Tyler woke up in protracted starts and stops, his sluggish brain taking stock of his surroundings without properly prioritising. He was hopelessly tangled in sheets that weren't his own. He was lying on something that didn't feel remotely soft enough to be his bed. He had not been murdered even though he had allowed himself to fall asleep in a place he now couldn't identify. The delicate scent of fresh coffee filled the air, his brain eagerly clamouring for it while his stomach turned slightly.

His smarts were at least able to tell him to continue to feign sleep, even as he realised his body had started to shift within the tangle of silky sheets. He wondered if just keeping his eyes closed amounted to the same thing as successfully pretending to still be asleep.

He still hadn't been murdered and he oddly didn't feel like it was going to happen, either. So with some leisure, he chased his fuzzy memories back step by step to help figure out where he was.

Last night… ah, dinner with the captain. Dinner with the captain, courtesy of delicacies and alcohol they had raided from a luxury liner just recently.

He caught himself groaning and the faint vibration set off an ache inside his skull. He opened his eyes, then squinted them tightly against the brightness of the streaking stars outside the window. He let himself fall back into the nest of sheets.

It turned out he was lying on the floor next to Lorca's bed, caught in his blankets, but he still couldn't remember how he'd ended up down there.

He groaned again as he struggled into a sitting position. The headache lessened somewhat once he got his head upright, which he counted as a win. Even his eyes were adjusting to the brightness, though he already knew it wasn't going to reach a comfortable level.

For reasons that only Culber was suited to even speculate on, Lorca liked exposing himself to too bright lights, even though his damaged right eye was worse off than the average terran. Indeed, Tyler spotted him on the récamier, facing the window, legs extended along the couch, cradling a large pot in his hands.

Tyler groaned again as he felt his head dropping back on the mattress behind him. "Uh…?" he said and supposed that was as eloquent as he was going to get.

Lorca turned his head and raised an eyebrow. He looked perfectly fresh-faced, clean-shaven and dressed, ready for his shift on the bridge. Too fresh-faced, in fact, after a night of drinking, unless one knew — as pretty much everyone did — that Culber had useful little pins for practically every problem in existence, including hangovers and lack of sleep.

Tyler hoped Lorca was going to share from his stash and save Tyler the trip to sickbay.

"Good morning," Lorca said and Tyler wasn't sure if there was any mockery there or not.

"Morning," Tyler replied with the barest scrape of politeness. "We… uh… we didn't fuck, did we?"

Lorca's expression didn't change, except his eyebrow climbed slightly higher.

"No," he said and passed a pointed look over Tyler's sleeping arrangements, as if that alone should've answered the question.

Tyler took in a deep breath, "Damn," he said and reviewed the situation again. While he could come up with a scenario that left him on the floor, blankets and all, he wasn't quite sure why he should've put his clothes back on and they had the clingy, dishevelled feeling of having slept in them.

"We got drunk," Lorca finally supplied, taking pity on Tyler's conflicted feelings — or at least his headache. "You wanted to show me what your Academy lecturer did once and then you passed out. I spent the night on the couch."

Despite himself, Tyler sniggered, "Ah, Miss Mori… yeah, that's a good one."

Explained the sheets, too. The woman had managed to strangle herself during a demonstration in the lecture hall. There had been some choice words for the class afterwards, who had been found cheering instead of helping. Eventually, it was determined that the incident was Mori's own fault and it had been irresponsible of her to expect help from her class without instructing them to render it beforehand.

The stars outside snapped back into pinpoints and Lorca took his gaze away from Tyler to watch the endlessness of space.

"Welcome to Yemuro," he said. "Let's hope our IFF code is still…"

The ship went to yellow alert and Lorca took a sip from his cup.

"…active," he finished dryly.

Yemuro was an M-Class planet. Its atmosphere was only partially breathable for humans, which forced the colonial cities to dig deep underground to save on maintenance of atmospheric domes. Yemuro was a mining planet, supplying not only dilithium but a number of other precious metals to the empire, which made the effort worthwhile, albeit unglamorous. To the empire, Yemuro was just an industrial shithole, full of alien workers, indentured terrans and their slave-drivers.

"Captain to bridge, report," Lorca ordered, still comfortably seated with no indication he was going to get up.

"Our IFF signal was rejected by the automated buoys. Starfleet is sending a patrol boat to identify us. We've been ordered to hold position."

Unfortunately, the Defiant remained the only ship of her class and specification, meaning that even a cursory scan would reveal who and what they were. Starfleet had rolled out a similar class of ships but the differences would still be obvious. They had bullshitted their way through checkpoints a few times but that only worked on the very fringes of terran-controlled space, where they could just as easily have blasted their way through. The military forces around Yemuro had too much firepower to take head-on and they had no interest in letting the wider empire know where they were operating.

"Let's not," Lorca said. "Cloak and go to warp, get us out of their sensor range."

"Aye, sir. Chief Bell will complain about warping with active cloak."

"She knows where to find me, she complains often enough," Lorca said unimpressed. "I'll be up to relieve you in half an hour. Lorca out."

Miranda Bell had taken to the position as chief engineer like a fish to water, even though she had only been trained as a mechanic and had janitorial duties on the Buran, as well as the prime purveyor of some damn fine moonshine. She was also, much to Lorca's constant chagrin, excessively pedantic about the precise wording of the manual. Tyler supposed it was the result of having little hands-on experience with starship engines or starships in general. Nevertheless, they had her to thank for even having a functional cloak. The original cloaking system had suffered damage to the point where Bell and the other engineers were reduced to shrugging and scratching their heads. It had taken stolen cardiassian intel and an experimental engine from a romulan resistance cell to patch things up. Neither group had been particularly keen to share their invention with a human pirate but Tyler was only glad they weren't cosying up to more alien splinter groups. Lorca had alarmingly few reservations when it came to dealing with aliens.

The lights dimmed as the cloak sucked up all available power and the engine's protesting hiss shuddered through the entire ship as the Defiant went back to warp.

Tyler struggled free from the blanket and tucked uselessly at his clothes, trying to get them into order somewhat, so he didn't look completely wasted for the walk back to his quarters.

With his mind slowly clearing a few more things clicked idly through his thoughts. With the exception of Ferasini, Lorca kept his hands off his senior staff. Lorca wanted his private affairs and his command to be as separate as he could make them without actually depriving himself of anything. While it was a large ship, it had a small crew, assembled by circumstance as much as necessity and it was a balance easy to upset by any aberrant behaviour. Lorca only tolerated such from himself, not members of his crew. All things considered, after two attempts at his life, Lorca was far more likely to let his chief of security sleep on his floor than his lover in his bed. Tyler doubted someone would be allowed to be both these things.

"Can I get one of Culber's pins?" he asked as he took a few careful steps forward to test his balance. He felt wobbly on his feet but thought he was doing a good job at not showing it. Lorca dissected and dismissed his acting with just a quick glance.

Lorca said, "I don't keep them around."

Spoken as if this was the very first time Tyler had been in his quarters, or anywhere where Lorca stayed. Lorca kept them in the right top drawer of his dresser. He kept them in the bottom left drawer in his ready room. He had them in a cabinet in the bathroom. He liked the ability to turn his mind on or off as the situation demanded it. Who didn't? The only reason for Lorca to lie about it would be if he had lost control of his habits.

Tyler clenched his teeth hard to keep the words on his tongue instead of saying them aloud. He did a bad job of it, though, because he caught himself sighing and then muttered, "Damn."

His tone earned him a sharper look from the captain, clearly warning him off from pursuing that argument even in the privacy of his own mind.

The thin slash of annoyance didn't leave Lorca's face as he regarded Tyler and Tyler decided to pick himself up completely and leave on his own, before he got thrown out. Lorca's mean streak might be less murderous than that of imperial captains but that didn't mean Tyler was willing to provoke it.

"I'll be going then, sir," Tyler said, carefully formal even if it seemed out of place.

Lorca only gave him a nod and dismissed him from his attention, turning back to face the window and the view, sipping his coffee. Out from under Lorca's perceptive gaze, Tyler breathed a little easier but he was aware that his reflection would still be visible in the window and he knew better than letting his expression get away from him. He set his steps carefully, not quite trusting his sense of balance to hold its own if he moved too quickly.

"We're still good for sparring this afternoon?" Tyler asked, almost at the door.

Lorca glanced at him with the quick flash of a genuine smile. It was something Tyler still struggled to get used to, Lorca's willingness to forgive minor infractions instead of holding on to petty grudges.

"'course we are," Lorca said. "Now get yourself some proper pick-me-up."

He aimed his chin at the space outside. "It's not going to be a quiet shift today."

Tyler resisted the urge to salute. Lorca would take and accept the gesture but Tyler knew him well enough by now to know he didn't like them.

"Sir," Tyler said and stepped into the sensor field of the door, letting himself out.

In retrospect, he was going to consider himself lucky that the door had already closed behind him, because it saved him from the humiliation of stumbling blindly backwards and dropping right back on Lorca's floor.

In the dimly lit corridor, a tall, dark shape lurked just across the door, setting off all sorts of instinctual warning bells before his aching brain managed to catch up with events and let him make sense of it.

Irsa stood silently, tall and too slim, utterly alien, threatening in ways Tyler found hard to put into words and was unwilling to even try. Part of him still didn't understand how these sorts of creatures even existed, how it was possible for them to talk and act and think when they weren't human at all. It was absurd and puzzling, like coming home and finding your dog wanted to argue philosophy with you.

"Oh shit," Tyler muttered. "Didn't see you there."

He wasn't sure why he felt the need to explain his reaction, even to cover for a blunder and save face. "I thought the captain had dismissed you for the night."

There had been some incidents early on, when the crew were settling in and getting their bearings and the first chance to think clearly and at leisure. As Irsa's owner, Culber had got into several heated arguments over what he considered property damage and what Lorca deemed unacceptable bullying. Eventually, Lorca's response had been to give Irsa a rank and position on the ship, making her his personal yeoman. But the truth of her position looked much more like Lorca's personal bodyguard. At least it made sense, after a fashion. Irsa was one of the few who had absolutely nothing to gain by turning against Lorca and everything to lose if she did. And even if she wanted to, there was no one she could turn to, no one to contact in the depth of imperial space who would take her seriously.

The crews' response to her promotion, which rendered her untouchable unless they wanted to poke Lorca the wrong way, was to treat her as completely invisible.

Irsa took too long to answer, her face shifted but Tyler had no clue how to read in a visage like that. The custom combat armour fit her like a second skin, sleek and black, making her look serpentine and ready to strike. It didn't seem to matter that she still behaved the same she always had, the quiet and demure manner, keeping herself unobtrusively out of the spotlight.

"I've returned early," Irsa explained, as willingly subservient as she had ever been. "The captain's shift starts soon."

Lorca had insisted she be given proper training and Tyler still remembered the initial shock when he realised how naturally strong she was, even before the training regime taught her how to use her strength.

She was silent for another moment, turning her head slightly to regard him better. She said, "I'm sorry if I startled you, sir."

Tyler allowed the scowl to slide on his face, just wide enough to show he had canines and she did not. If anyone needed to feel anxious, it should be her.

"It's nothing," he said.

He squared his shoulders and told himself he was just hungover and tired and his muscles hadn't recovered so well from sleeping on the floor. Marching down the corridor, leaving her out of his sight with what felt like reluctance, he made his way to sickbay to ask Culber for some helpful pins.

A little over half an hour later, Tyler sat on Lorca's left side in the conference room. There had been enough time to catch his bearings with the aid of a pin, a quick shower and a pot of replicated coffee. However, at the back of his head, there was still the gritty, raw feeling telling him he wasn't quite at the top of his game yet.

Ferasini sat on Lorca's other side, arms crossed over her chest and leaned away from the captain, creating a wider gap between them as they avoided looking directly at each other.

The rest of Lorca's command staff were grouped around the table. Chief Bell and one of her engineers named Kriger, Ops officer Alibali holding herself stiff and unnatural with the numerous implants and prosthetics that made her more machine than human. Irsa was also there, standing off to a corner and Tyler pretended not to think about her.

They were currently parked in the sensor shadow of a large asteroid, outside the search range of Yemuro's patrol ships but close enough they could make the trip back easily. Chief Bell had been concerned about the state of the dilithium crystals for some time but Tyler wondered whether it was really necessary to dim the lights, although his eyes were glad for the reprieve.

Next to him, Lorca was staring past Chief Bell's shoulder while she delivered an accusatory status report, scowling silently at the light panel, which flickered ever so slightly.

"Just to be clear," Bell was saying. "Hitting warp cloaked has put some massive strain on the dilithium and, in case you've forgotten, they are already nearly depleted."

She paused and looked around the table, self-satisfied in her delivery while Lorca stayed silent. Tyler could practically feel the frustration coming off the captain in waves. No one, certainly not Lorca, had quite expected just how tedious it would be to keep a ship the size and complexity of the Defiant running without any kind of support structure behind them. If something broke, they needed to scavenge it from somewhere and while in the depths of space there were plenty of easy targets to steal from, some components and materials were difficult to find or were only tenuously compatible with the Defiant's other systems. The replicator could not compensate for all of it, especially when it came to raw materials and the drain on their energy sources was just another problem that had no real solution.

When the silence kept on stretching towards general discomfort, Lorca said, "Options?"

"Not do something stupid like cloaking and warping at the same time when we're running on scraps already," Bell said.

"Thank you, chief. I'll keep that in mind," Lorca said without much inflexion. Tyler knew better than to snigger.

"How long can we stay right here?" Ferasini asked.

Lorca arched a brow and said nothing, which Bell took as permission to keep going.

"Pretty much indefinitely," she said. "In fact, at some point, we won't be able to get out of the asteroid's gravity anymore."

Visibly unperturbed by the answer, Ferasini said, "If we launch a shuttle, it could make the trip to Yemuro and back in about two weeks."

"Same difference," Tyler said. "No IFF."

"There are passenger and shipping lines running to and from Yemuro," Ferasini said. "We could hitch a ride alongside one of them."

"Tricky," Tyler answered. "But maybe doable. Needs good setup and preparation, though."

Lorca cleared his throat. "I prefer a more self-reliant solution."

"Well…" Bell said slowly, fixing a reproachful look at Lorca. He met her gaze and watched her wither.

A small measure of animation returned to Lorca, a puzzled frown crossed his face as if he hadn't meant to cow her into silence with just a look. He took the weight of his gaze off her and said, "Go on."

"Sir, do we really need to get down to Yemuro?" Bell asked. "We could just disable a freighter and take what we need from there."

Lorca lifted his gaze and made eye contact with Alibali, not quite unexpectedly so. Several weeks ago, they had received a coded message but Lorca had not deigned to share the contents with anyone, even Tyler, though it made sense he had had Alibali decode it.

"No," Lorca said. "I need to go planet-side."

It took a long moment for that to sink in and, quietly, Tyler said, "You, sir?"

Lorca slanted a faint smirk Tyler's way and said, "Exactly."

"That's a fantastic idea," Ferasini said. "If you want to be arrested immediately. And we can all watch your execution on a forced, empire-wide broadcast."

The humour didn't leave Lorca's face, caustic as it was. "Is that a vote of confidence, doctor?"

"It's pointing out the obvious," she said. "Why does it have to be you?"

Lorca let the amusement drain from his face, becoming serious again, tension in all the lines of his body. With carefully measured calm, he said, "We need to pick up someone."

He looked at directly at Ferasini for the first time since they had entered the room and immediately, something sizzled between them, unbidden on both sides. "And yes, I'll do it."

"Who?" she demanded, voicing a question everyone — except Alibali, who might already know — was asking themselves.

"Too early," Lorca said and shook his head.

All of them, from Culber to Tyler to Alibali, even Ferasini, they all thought of themselves as Lorca's confidante. He had carefully set them up like that, from the casually shared meals he invited Tyler to his workout regime with Culber. Alibali was the only one who was privy to that decoded message when everyone else had been cut out of it. A round of chess in the captain's ready room with Kodos and a shot of moonshine with Bell. They all thought of themselves as Lorca's most trusted ally, the one person he would turn to in a moment of crisis — or weakness. Perhaps he even took Irsa into his confidence in some way, she was always close to him, sometimes the only one who was and his habitual treatment of her as an equal made the thought much less absurd. Most of the crew simply assumed the captain had a weird fetish. Tyler knew better.

It occurred to Tyler, now, looking from one of them to the other, that the only one who knew everything at all was Lorca himself. The only one on the ship irreplaceable was himself, because he had spent many painstaking hours in the mainframe, tailoring the very core of their computer to himself alone.

Lorca looked away from her, back at Bell, though his gaze passed over Kriger with a thoughtful expression. Tyler had wondered at the wisdom of promoting Bell so far above her station, wondering if Lorca's decision wasn't based on entirely the wrong woman's achievements, the one he'd known in his own universe. Kriger was a real engineer, better qualified than Bell in many ways.

"So, mission parameters," Lorca said. "Mr Kodos and I need to go down to the planet. Make that happen. How?"

By the looks of him, this was the first time Kodos had heard he was going to be part of the operation. He looked up at Lorca, eyes a little wider than normal, frown buried deep into his features. He wasn't a bad choice, all things considered, better versed in the workings of the empire's administration and civil organisation than any of them — and certainly better than Lorca. Kodos had taken on the role of diplomat more than once in their travels for this very reason. Bartering for refined dilithium on the black market wasn't a far shot off his normal duties. He didn't seem too happy to be the one leaving the ship, however.

Bell hesitated. "If we warp in, cloaked, and release a shuttle you could probably beam down from there before planetary defence has figured out what's going on. I'm not sure we'll have enough time to pick up the shuttle again, though."

Tyler really didn't like the sound of that, "They pick up the shuttle, they'll know what ship it came from. They'll put everything into lockdown and go through the whole planet with a fine-toothed comb. Don't underestimate the empire's efficiency."

"I don't," Lorca said lightly.

Lorca had even admitted to it, once, friendly and relaxed, a glass of romulan ale in his hand, heated to shimmer purple between them. Compartmentalised trust, Lorca had called it, with no small measure of sarcasm, mostly directed at himself. Another morsel of confidence for Tyler to bask in, almost an insult now that he got to think about it.

"Sir," Alibali said. "Yemuro employs DNA sniffers to maintain order on the surface. They are meant to ensure the alien population stays within their designated areas but they will pick up on you and raise an alarm. While they are only located at the exits and entries of quarters, they will be difficult to avoid completely."

"Criminals use a method called 'scrubbing'," Tyler said, himself not quite sure why he found himself in support of Lorca's plan somehow. "It damages the DNA over the body's surface, so the sniffers can't read it."

"Can we do this?" Lorca asked.

"I have no idea how it's done," Tyler shrugged. "Doctor Culber should know."

He paused to watch Lorca's profile against the dimming and brightening glow of the light panel, tried to read in the part of his face he could see.

Shrugging, Ferasini said, "Computer, get Doctor Culber on the line."

"Culber here." His face hovered in holographic light above the centre of the table, frowning.

"DNA scrubbing," Lorca cut in before Ferasini had a chance to say anything else. Their gazes were locked, though and it seemed to be taking effort for either of them to break the contact. "Can we do it?"

"I can reprogram the decon chamber," Culber said. His frown deepened as he stared at Lorca. "You'll have to sit in it for about an hour, and you'll not look so pretty when it's done. It should be reversible but I promise nothing."

"Set it up, I'll be down shortly."

Lorca ended the connection so quickly, Culber's affirmative was cut short.

The light of the hologram faded and Lorca looked from one to the other in silence. It was always an impressive display, watching him as he gave his gaze weight, so the people on the receiving end had no choice but to feel and acknowledge his power. Lorca rarely dealt in hidden threats, because the message was always plain.

Tyler angled his head back against the pressure and looked back at Lorca calmly, perfectly willing to do as ordered, knowing he had the standing permission to voice his misgivings and be heard. Whether Lorca then dismissed everything Tyler had said was an entirely different issue.

Lorca said, "Bell, calculate a route for us, get the Defiant in and out of the Yemuro system, drop a shuttle and pick it back up. Alibali can help with running the simulations if you need them. I want to know what strain it'll put on the dilithium but we'll have more than enough once it's over, so it's not the priority."

Bell nodded, face now serious, "Yes sir."

"Mr Kodos," Lorca said with a tiny delay as he shifted his gaze from Bell to him. "I know I didn't give you a lot of advance warning on this but I'm sure you'll manage. The message we've received contained contact details for a dilithium broker, who runs an illegal side business, that part will be forwarded to you. Prepare for Yemuro however you see fit. Don't forget the costumes."

Kodos nodded, managed a slight smile at the mention of costumes, "Yemuro isn't known for its fashionable attire, I'm afraid."

"Just make us blend in."

"I'll be ready by the time the scrubbing is finished."

Lorca arched a brow, "I'm sure you will, Mr Kodos."

"I'll handle your weapons and armour," Tyler said before Lorca had a chance to address him. "Yemuro is industrial, lots of rough types on the ground, you wanna blend in? You're armed."

And no one was going to stab his captain in the back on Tyler's watch, even if he was light-years away.

"What if we have to use them?" Lorca asked.

"Sir," Tyler said. "You're expected to use them. Security won't interfere in private scuffles. Just don't let it escalate into a drawn-out firefight in a public area."

"I'll do my best," Lorca said, amused.

Privately, Tyler found he was a little disappointed he wouldn't be there to witness it. Though, hot on the heels of that thought, he remembered just how exposed Lorca would be on Yemuro. Kodos was smart but he wasn't much use in a fight so Lorca wouldn't have any kind of backup if things went south.

"Captain," Tyler said slowly. "I request to join you on the ground."

Lorca tilted his head to the side, the curl of a smile at the corners of his mouth, though it didn't quite make it. The incessant flickering of the light panel caught Lorca's eyes, casting them into a sharper blue.

"Commander," Lorca said mildly. "Someone has to have the bridge. Someone has to make sure Mr Kodos, our passenger, myself and the dilithium are being picked up later."

Putting the emphasis on the dilithium, like Lorca suspected anyone but Tyler was at risk at abandoning him. They needed that dilithium but they also needed Lorca's leadership and Tyler was far from the alone in that understanding. Lorca wasn't ready to accept the truth of it, too enamoured with his own paranoia. In many ways, he was just another alien who thought he understood terran culture better than he actually did.

"I'll prepare an extraction plan," Tyler said. "And a backup one."

"While we're on Yemuro dealing on the black market, we'll just pick up passage with a smuggler and signal for you as soon as we're outside Yemuro's sensor range," Lorca said.

"I've been thinking along that line, too," Tyler nodded. "But I want to have something prepared in case you do not make it off Yemuro."

Silently, Lorca arched a questioning brow but didn't put voice to his surprise.

Ferasini chuckled low in her throat, giving Tyler a disdainful look. "We can't rescue anyone from Yemuro," she said. "It'd be suicide."

Tyler leaned back to regard her, giving back the same venom she was offering. "We've got through those before. We're just that good."

"That's a little boy fantasy."

"Who gives a damn?" Tyler said. "As long as it works."

Lorca shifted, gave both them a short look and even Ferasini accepted her role in the ship's hierarchy well enough to back down and leave the argument for later, or at least out of Lorca's earshot.

Lorca spread his hands out slightly, looking from one to the other. "Everyone's got their job," he said. "Let's get it done."

The dismissal rippled through them, prompting everyone into motion. He always left the conference room last, making sure there were no whispers happening without him, breaking them into pieces before they had a chance. As they trailed out and Lorca got to his feet, letting Tyler walk past him to the door, the commander said, "One security officer. Take at least one."

Lorca merely smiled. "More people means more exposure."

"More firepower."

"More liabilities."

"Just one," Tyler insisted. "Kodos isn't a fighter."

"Commander," Lorca said. "Do I really need to pull rank?"

As they spoke, Tyler had preceded Lorca through the door and noticed the shift in the captain's attention even before he registered Ferasini standing back against the wall opposite.

"No, of course not," Tyler said, straightened his back.

"Thought so," Lorca said, his voice quiet and his attention entirely on Ferasini.

Tyler bottled up the surge of anger at Lorca's dismissal and at his refusal to be reasonable. Also a little at whatever it was that had Lorca and Ferasini locked in a constant war, mostly it was cold, only to suddenly flare into blazing heat.

Tyler saluted, turned and left them there.

With Tyler's steps retreating along the bent of the corridor, Lorca tilted his head just slightly, never taking his gaze off Balayna but addressed his yeoman.

"Irsa, I know you've skipped breakfast again, head to the mess and grab a bite."

He had learned it was so much easier to simply tell her what he expected her to do. Dressing it up as a suggestion almost always confused her and giving her a choice led to her deciding on whatever she thought he wanted to hear.

"Yes, sir," she said quietly. Her hooves made dull thuds as she followed the corridor in the same direction Tyler had left, leaving Lorca and Balayna alone. Whatever resolve had carried him through the past weeks revealed itself to be as brittle as it had ever been.

He crossed the corridor and settled a hand into the wall next to her head, capturing her between the bulkhead and the wall and himself. She tilted her head back to look at him, the shadow of scorn across her face, close enough to see the faintest line cut across her face from an injury she had no chance to treat properly, because his mere existence had upset her entire life.

"Why haven't you killed me yet?" he asked.

He was so close, her scent filled his nostrils — how did they have the same shampoo? All the variables that had to fall just the right way, how was that possible? And why would the universe even bother? — too close to stop the avalanche of memories and, inevitable these days, the upsetting realisation that he might not even remember the right woman.

She opened her arms and raised them, a crease twitched in between her eyebrows, a moment of indecision or internal debate over her actions, passed too swiftly to leave any lasting impact. There were moments when all he could do was to stop himself from touching her. Sometimes she didn't or wouldn't or couldn't stop herself, either. She settled her hands at his neck and dug her nails into his skin, fingers climbing up into his hair.

"Would you like me to try?" she asked in the cooing tone of an actual lover with the hissing of a hunter underneath. Relenting under the hard pull of her hands, he leaned in over her, teased a kiss and didn't deliver on it because it always riled her up so thoroughly.

He scrapped a breathless chuckle from his throat, fixed her eyes and shoved her trousers down to her knees. Unlike him, she wore normal clothes with minimal protection, easily dislodged in this unbroken fever. Now he suffered through his own paranoia when she struggled to palm him free of his trousers with just one hand. He hissed sharply at the rush once she did, cool air on heated skin and he held himself still for a moment, just enjoying the empty simplicity of the sensation.

Warily, she drew back, shifted her grip on his neck so her fingers held on to his spine like a handle, nails pricking as deep as she could. Her reaction amused him, if only because the only one he would torture by teasing her now would be himself. Perhaps it was a relief to know that even though she got under his skin, she still couldn't read his mind.

"The last one who tried," he said, matching her tone, the tangled mess of promise and threat, suffocating all his good intentions. "I…" he ran out of breath to finish the sentence.

Eagerly, she slung her knee around his hip, trapped uncomfortably by her trousers pooling and pulling down her legs. He gripped her thigh and hoisted her up, so starved for her he didn't need any guiding hand, only the grip of her shoulder and her leg, sheathing himself to the hilt.

The shock of contact, the sheer sudden bliss of it wrenched a strangled gasp from his throat, drowning out her pleased hiss. Her fingers flexed on his neck involuntarily while her other hand scrabbled for a better hold down his back, clawing past the waistband of his trousers to bury her nails into his flesh, looking for a hook by which to control his rhythm.

"I snapped his neck," he hissed breathlessly at her, the pretence of regaining control when it had already run away from him completely.

His hard thrusts dragged up her up the wall and she hung heavy against him as she lost touch with the ground, wringing a sound from him be barely recognised as coming from his own voice.

He wanted to kiss her, suck her tongue in his mouth, eat her whole, but instead he held his head back from her, against the iron grip she had on his neck, to focus on her face. This close, the fine line across it was clearly visible and he wanted to commit it to memory, burn it into all his senses.

He honestly had no idea which sick aspect of all of this turned her on so much, but right then, he couldn't have cared less, or second-guess how she wasn't the only one. He was too rough and too fast, dragging sounds from here that weren't purely pleasure, but her grip on him was unyielding, holding him in place, urging him on. The thought of slowing down, of stopping, whisked through his mind meaninglessly.

She was using the wall behind her to roll her hips into him, a contest for control which didn't matter because they were going at the same pace, still fitting together so perfectly even if she was entirely the wrong woman.

The fine red line in her face was all he could focus on, though his mind was empty, skull scrapped raw while his body felt like he was burning up from the outside in. Almost too soon, the hard pulse of mounting gratification took his breath, replaced his voice with a broken series of moans. He lost his rhythm, just chasing the sensation, barely noticed her anymore except for that red line in her face. She tried to steal a kiss as he shook.

"Don't… ah," she whimpered, sounding lost and desperate and he buried a hand between their quaking bodies, blindly fingering for her reaction until she hissed and shivered through her orgasm.

In the residual downward rush of his slowly abating arousal, for just a few moments, he felt calm enough to see the absurd humour in his situation and almost forget himself enough to try and share it with her. He couldn't fathom doing this — any of the things he'd done in this universe, if he thought things through — in this very corridor or any other if they were all still where they belonged. Yet, here he answered to no authority, faced no consequences for such inappropriate behaviour. Even if some crew-member happened to wander by, their reactions would vary only from indifferent to amused, perhaps even a sense of vindication of finding their captain to behave as a captain should.

Balayna slowly and deliberately removed her nails from his skin, smoothed her fingertips over the welts she had made and slipped her hands up to cup his face, snatched a kiss from his parted lips before he had a chance to deny her. The gentle touch startled him and he knew he gave it away, still locked together so tightly.

"You won't kill me," she said.

He knew the rules of this universe by now, knew that everything was a show of power one way or another. He could bend and subvert these rules a million different ways, but eventually, he would find himself abide by them or drown. So he arched his head out of her grip and looked down at her, shifted his body against her just that little bit harder, making sure she felt only him, and the solid wall behind her.

"Try me."

Alone in the narrow confines of a bathroom not much later, Lorca cleaned himself up and ran a dermal regenerator over the scratches she had left.

Unbidden but not unexpectedly, he thought of the things he should have said to her. When this crisis is over we really need to sit down and talk this through. There had to be some sort of accord they could reach, some way for them to co-exist without slashing at each other. He had thought of promoting her. She had limited experience in space but it held true for a large portion of his crew and all of them were picking things up smoothly enough. She was incredibly smart, any version of her, there was no doubt she'd excel in no time. Having another one able to take the captain's chair competently would be invaluable in the battles to come.

He hadn't. Somehow the words just never came. It was just so much easier to antagonise each other, trapping each other in a vicious cycle in which suffering and satisfaction might just be exactly the same thing.

The faint ache from the scratches faded and he leaned his head into the wall, closed his eyes for a second and breathed. It smelled like a starship toilet, dry and dusty, air filtration somehow never quite able to make the narrow space comfortable. Just like home, really.

There were so many things he never could do or say here. He missed being able to trust his staff beyond the mere surface of their expertise and the necessities of their own survival. He wanted to kick back and talk to Culber like a real friend, because he suspected that's what they already were. He hated having to keep Tyler at arm's length, starving him for affection and acknowledgement, giving him just enough to keep him coming back for more instead of seeking it elsewhere. He wanted to have that difficult conversation with Leighton about their differing experience on Tarsus during the famine. Sometimes, he even wished he could talk to Kodos — this Kodos, who was not a mass murderer, amazingly enough — to hear his thoughts, not just surmise them from the moves he made on a chessboard.

He picked himself up, squared his shoulders against the barrage of thoughts and desires weighting him down. He straightened his civilian clothes like they were an actual uniform and left the bathroom.

End of Chapter 1: Too Tired to Sleep

Reference: "Yemuro" is a star system/planet in the game Escape Velocity by Ambrosia Software.

Author's Note: I'm back to making myself miserable and making a public spectable of it. I'm sorry.

Something I want to say about season 2: After getting rid of Cornwell, all the'yve got to do is ditch Georgiou and I may consider watching it again.

Just kidding, I hate Discovery.