TITLE: Any Good

AUTHOR: hannahthewriter

DISCLAIMER: I do not own Andromeda or any of the characters in it. Unfortunately

ARCHIVE: Ask first

RATING: PG-13

SETTING/SEASON: S2, After 'All Too Human'

SPOILERS: Yes. If you don't yet know and don't want to know what Trance is, don't read

PAIRING(S): Trance/Harper

SUMMARY: An act of desperation and love has terrible consequences

A/N: May at some point get interrupted by my exams.

Chapter 1

"Admirer as I think I am
Of stars that do not give a damn,
I cannot, now I see them, say
I missed one terribly all day."

'Trashed.'

Beka studied the inside of her ship with disgust. It had looked bad from the outside but she'd had no idea just how far the damage had gone. Water dripped from everything, trickling down the walls and somehow hanging in the air as well. On top of this, the entire ship was dead, and a lot of the parts could not just be fixed – they had to be replaced. A few things had thankfully been spared; her music collection had been in a watertight storage compartment, as had most of her other belongings. But just about everything else was a mess.

'On the bright side, at least Tyr, Rev and Harper are still alive,' Dylan said optimistically.

'Not for long,' Beka growled. 'When I get my hands on them they'll wish they'd drowned. This is the last time I let someone else fly my ship.'

'OK, OK, you can kill them all if you like, but how about letting them redeem themselves a little first by helping to get the parts. And you'll need Harper to fix it up. And Tyr to remind Harper to carry on fixing it up every time he wanders off to do something else.'

Dylan knew (hoped) that Beka was only joking, however angry she might seem. The look on her face when he had told her they would have to leave them had told him that, probably for the first time, Beka cared more about the people on the Maru than she cared for the ship itself. And none of them had emerged unscathed. Rev had stayed in his quarters since they'd got back, shivering and weak. Even for a Magog the journey to the surface had been hard. Tyr and Harper were still on the Med. deck. Trance had managed to bring Harper out of his coma, but Tyr was still in a fairly bad shape and, despite his protests, had not been allowed to leave his bed.

'OK, so where's the nearest drift where we can pick up parts?' Beka asked with a heavy sigh.

'Actually, from what Andromeda's told me, it would make more sense to pick up parts from Sessharim. That's a nearby planet. The people are mostly pacifists and there's very little conflict anywhere on the planet.'

Beka groaned. 'Since when is going to a planet a good idea? Whenever we go to planet we get into trouble.'

'Whenever we go anywhere we get into trouble,' Dylan reminded her. 'And you can have command of the Andromeda while we go to pick up spare parts.'

'We? Who's we?'

'Well I think we'll leave Tyr here. He's not fully recovered yet, and Tyr and pacifists don't mix. But I think Trance would get on well with them, maybe even get us a good price on those parts. And Harper will know what parts to get and he'll be able to tell how good they are.'

He watched her carefully to judge her reaction. She was still looking around at her wreck of a ship. She reached out and gently touched a console. It fizzed, sparked and went completely dead. The blonde captain glared at it.

'OK,' she said at last, and Dylan breathed a silent sigh of relief. In truth he was terrified of Beka in a bad mood. 'How will you get to the surface? You can't exactly take the Maru.' As if you to prove it the ship shifted and groaned like an old woman with arthritis.

'We'll each take a slipfighter.'

'A slipfighter!'

Well, someone's feeling better, Dylan thought wearily as the blonde engineer ran around the small craft, practically drooling. Harper had never flown a slipfighter before. Correction, Harper had never been allowed to fly a slipfighter before. But he swore he would know how to fly one, since the controls were pretty basic.

'Harper … Harper, you're making me dizzy.' Dylan grabbed his engineer by the scruff of the neck, forcing him to stop. 'Now remember, we're just taking these down to the surface and then back here. No racing it, no trying to do tricks, no modifying it so it will go faster. Basically, don't do anything that you would usually do.'

Harper saluted. 'Yes, Mom,' he said solemnly. Then he ran off again, but this time towards the interior hangar doors. Dylan watched him go, a little more concerned than he had been before.

Outside in the corridor, Harper ran straight into Trance, who was running in the opposite direction. Ran into her literally. The two of the ended up tangled in a heap on the floor.

'Geez, Trance, you call yourself a psychic? Shouldn't you have known I was going to be there?' he complained.

'I don't call myself a psychic,' the purple girl protested as she picked herself up.

'Good job too, otherwise I'd sue you for false advertising.' Then he remembered why he had been running in the first place. He grabbed her arms excitedly. 'Trance! Dylan's letting me go down to that planet! In a slipfighter!'

Trance grinned. 'Yes, isn't it exciting? He's letting me fly one too!'

'Dylan's giving you a slipfighter too? Does he just not like those things?'

'Who cares? We're getting slipfighters!'

The two of them hugged and started jumping around and laughing like small children. Dylan stepped out of the hangar deck and watched them warily.

'Oh boy, here come those second thoughts,' he groaned. This was followed by apologies and objections from Trance and Harper, who ran after him, promising to be careful, to not do anything stupid, and in general be the best slipfighter pilots in the galaxy, nay, the universe.

'Besides,' Harper whined. 'If you leave me here it'll mean me being left alone with Beka and Tyr and they both hate me right now so I think it's only right that I give them a little space.' He suddenly winced. Maybe from the thought of what the two of them could do to him, most probably because of the larvae.

'Harper,' Trance said gently. 'Your medicine-'

'I've taken it,' he said a little too quickly.

'When?'

He paused. 'Yesterday. Yeah, I know, three times a day, it's just that last time I-'

'Last time you overdosed,' Trance scolded him. 'And underdosing can be just as dangerous.' She folded her arms and looked at him pointedly until he gave in and inhaled the leukoprene.

Trance buckled herself into her slipfighter and grabbed onto the controls, excited and impatient despite herself. 'Can we go yet?' she pestered.

'Opening hangar doors,' Andromeda said, and for a second she almost sounded amused.

The three slipfighters exited the Andromeda. Harper broke his promise to Dylan immediately by performing a not-very-elegant corkscrew and then spiralling up and away from the other two before doing a 180 degree turn and rejoining them.

'Harper!' Dylan yelled furiously over the comms.

'I know, I know, careful!' the engineer replied in a bored voice. 'C'mon, Dylan, when am I going to get this opportunity again?'

'Never if you carry on like that!'

'I'm doing fine. And this baby flies beautifully, thanks mostly to my own technical genius. You there, Trance?'

'I'm reading you, over,' she replied giddily.

'Race you to the surface?'

'Harper, I said no!' Dylan yelled furiously.

The engineer grumbled but obeyed. Dylan watched the other two slipfighters as they headed for Sessharim. Each of the crewmembers had a different piloting style. Tyr had a tendency to fly straight, without trying anything showy, more like a bulldozer than anything else. Beka was … well, Beka was the best pilot in the universe. She was very bold, often flying at reckless speeds, but she was always in total control. Harper was very bold too, but boldness was rashness in Harper's hands, since he did not have Beka's skill. Trance's slipfighter fluttered in space like a butterfly, sometimes darting forward and then slowing right down as if she were uncertain. Dylan couldn't help but feel that this was all a show – Trance was never uncertain. He had never seen Rev fly, but he felt that the Magog would probably fly similarly to the way that Dylan himself flew – brave but careful and cautious.

They grew close to the planet's atmosphere and Harper forgot Dylan's orders and sped up, laughing insanely as he made his slipfighter turn over and over in mid-air.

'Harper, behave! I'm transmitting the co-ordinates for the landing site now.' Dylan waited for a reply. The reply did not come. 'Harper? Trance, can you reach him?'

'No, Dylan. I think he maybe turned his comms off.'

'Idiot!' Dylan yelled, exasperated. 'He's going too fast! He can't enter to atmosphere at that speed; the turbulence will rip him apart!' He could only watch helplessly as Harper sped on, oblivious to the danger.