Epilogue: Crushed Rivers and Unachievable Distances
Six months later…
This night's lover was sprawled on the other side of the bed, limbs tangled in the sheets, back exposed in willing vulnerability towards Lorca.
Lorca traced the lines of the bare back with his gaze and stopped himself from reaching out, touching the valley of the spine and tease his way down. The mark of the agoniser was present, off-centre, unlike his own, an old, faint outline just about visible in the beginning brightening of a simulated morning. If he meant to touch idly like that, he would have to be ready for the burst of instinctual violence. Every so often, it quite had its appeal.
Terrans, he had found, considered it part of their duty to proposition their superiors, regardless of personal attraction or preference. They were available to him. It made him feel guilty every time, like he was exploiting them, no better than their terran commanders would. For once, though, it was easy to relegate the nagging sense of contrition to the back of his mind. All he had to do was face up to the fact that his private life had been a mess long before he'd been dropped in an environment which not only tolerated but encouraged such behaviour. It hadn't bothered him then, no reason to start now.
The only real issue he encountered was making it clear that sleeping with him would not award anyone any special privileges, there was not going to be any opportunity for advancement through his bed.
Letting them stay with him afterwards had quickly become a rare occurrence, not after the first attempt to slit his throat after he'd drifted off. His anger had flared almost entirely at himself, for letting his guard down when he knew better. He did trust this one, and perhaps it was just another indulgence, something else he should feel guilty about and didn't.
With the exception of a select few, Lorca didn't much like his crew. Too loud and aggressive, too stand-offish, eager to brag and one-up each other. They were all bullies of one kind or another. He knew he would never mould them into a single unit, more than the number of its part. The first time he had realised it, he had felt a wave of homesickness crash over him. He still felt it whittle away at his perseverance, unwilling to fully subside, but it was just another vexing fact in what had become his existence. One he had chosen to embrace when he had chosen to fight and survive.
Counter to his every expectation, the moment he offered them an outside enemy to focus on, they came together without any cracks between, their constant in-fighting forgotten and he their unchallenged leader.
Turning his attention fully to the PADD he allowed the cold grasp of reality to slide across his naked skin, even in the comfort of his own bed and inside the shell of a ship all his own.
Information and knowledge in the Terran Empire, he had learned, were uncertain things. Official channels, while widely available without risk of exposing himself, had a habit of reporting events through the lens of convenience, saving face for the ones in charge, propaganda to keep the Empire from collapsing in on itself.
Other channels, agents and spies and the broadcasts of counter-movements, they all offered their own versions of events, leaving Lorca to distil the actual truth from a sea of half-lies. Moreau had kept her promises, as far as he was able to determine, providing invaluable clues to how the news was best interpreted.
The first rumours had come through weeks before, whispers of the return of Michael Burnham, reclaiming her ship like a vengeful goddess. It couldn't be true, that woman would never return, her gutted corpse had burned to cinders alongside his ship and his crew, which left only one other alternative. This was the Michael Burnham from his universe, somehow crossed over to impersonate her counterpart. Lorca had found her and brought her back, just as he'd said he would. After months spent in that other Lorca's universe, he couldn't quite summon the same white-hot fury directed at that man. Walk a mile in another's shoes and all that. Didn't mean he wouldn't gladly disembowel him, too, but it was as idle a fantasy as any.
The rumours remained conspicuously silent on one or another Gabriel Lorca and his whereabouts.
Even now, just reading it, Lorca felt the urge to get up, go to the bridge and set a course. Rendezvous with the Shenzhou, attack her and take Burnham just so he could talk to her. Even now. Even though he knew he was looking weeks into the past. He had been half a galaxy away and by the time Moreau was able to send a message, his chance had already come and gone. He didn't even get to find out if this woman would've helped him at all. For all he knew, she had been just a puppet dancing on a string.
Eventually, the full scope of events crashed over him with the same tidal wave that flooded through the empire. The Emperor had been deposed, her palace ship extinguished with everyone on board, leaving no trace but some unknown radiation neither official nor unofficial sources managed to precisely identify. The entire area of space had been declared off-limits to all private or military vessels.
Not that there was any coherent effort to enforce any one policy. In the absence of an obvious heir, the Terran Empire was left to deal with a massive power vacuum and everyone, it seemed, felt destined to write their own name into the annals of history as Emperor Georgiou's successor. The only one absent, with an echoing silence across the entirety of the empire, was Gabriel Lorca himself.
Lorca scrolled through the intel he'd been amassing on the terrans and their military movements and capabilities, their policies and power structures, collected with the zeal of an outsider, who had every reason to devour each tiny morsel.
He barely needed to check the distances involved, however. If he'd kicked the Defiant into warp 8 at the first hint of a rumour, he would've arrived only to crash into a field of debris. They might have been just in time to see the fires, though, and part of him regretted missing the chance. He should go back there anyway, sneak past the patrols and sensor buoys. Someone had crossed over from his universe, perhaps they were still there and he could hitch a ride. And even if not, perhaps there was some precious data to gather on the site anyway.
He lowered the PADD and dropped his head back to the pillow at his neck, watched the wash of stars go by outside. They were few and far between, precious, cold lights far away in the endless darkness of empty space.
Below the windows, the slow glow of the cabin's light began to brighten and he watched it simulate a gentle sunrise. He narrowed his eyes, observing detachedly the different perception in his right and left eye.
Culber still hadn't grown tired of reminding him of his mistake. He had delayed the surgery for too long. His eye was repairable only by a specialist now, but until he could abduct one and steal the necessary equipment, he was stuck with one eye that suffered light change slower than the other.
The increasing brightness burrowed through his nerves and into his head, leaving him feeling raw and defenceless, urging him to turn away or close his eyes. The irony, once again, wasn't lost on him. Did it make him worse off than the terrans? Or did he still have half an advantage over them? Half of a better man, perhaps?
It was the best he could do, he supposed. In a way, it was amusing to think of making that argument in front of a Federation hearing. In his mind, he could play it out, the two contradicting stories he could tell them. How he had tried, how he had done his best and fought tooth and nail against every compromise. How he suffered these horrors he could not prevent. How would they ever see through his lies? They would only ever have his word for it, after all.
He liked to think, however, that he would tell them the truth. He would own up to his mistakes all the way down to every petty, little cruelty he had committed not out of necessity but convenience — and sometimes even just because, just because there was no one to stop him and no one who would hold him accountable after the fact. He would confess his crimes, in horrifying and unabridged detail. He could hold out his hands and let them know they should be dripping with blood.
If they ever got to pass judgement on him, he would never serve on a starship again, much less in a captain's chair. Strangely enough, it just made him want to go home more, where better people than he were in charge, able and willing to make things right.
He slid from the bed, squinted his eye shut for the additional time it took to adjust as he came closer to the light sources. He walked to the window, leaned on outstretched arms on the sill, close enough he felt the cold emanating from the other side. He wished his reflection looked like a stranger to him. This other Lorca, who might or might not have died in the conflagration that took down the Charon. But it was just his face — his face, too, inevitable — every time, same it had ever been. A little older and worn, perhaps, but for all that, the ugly truth remained hidden away on the inside.
The mark around his eye had healed without leaving a trace and even the faint line down his chest had almost vanished. Only the agoniser on his back had left a scar he was never going to lose, buried too deep for some reason, marking him forever. Better this way, he thought, if he ever got to go home, it would serve as a reminder that none of this had ever been just a nightmare.
"Captain?" voice rough from sleep, accompanied by the soft whisper of sheets.
He glanced over his shoulder at the bed. Gabriel, he thought, considered offering it, just for the pleasure of hearing someone say it back to him. But then, it would just be one of these privileges he couldn't hand out. He said nothing.
"Are you coming back here or do you want me to leave?"
Lorca turned around and took a step towards the bed, just about catching his reflection's expression break into a raptorial smile, decision already made, rendering his remorseful musings completely meaningless when he was just going to transgress again.
As he turned, the streaking stars outside suddenly condensed into sparkling diamonds. They had dropped out of warp.
Almost instantly, the call from the bridge came through, Kodos' voice invading his quarters and disturbing the gloomy tranquility of his mind.
"Captain, we've caught up with the ISS Maikong, should we engage?"
Lorca thought about it. They'd been chasing a small, terran patrol ship, an easy target without the firepower or the crew complement to put up a fight. It had been their usual modus operandi. They'd take the ship and completely strip it for parts and sell what was left to a black market junkyard in some tenuously pacified part of the galaxy. He hoped there was no surrender this time. It was so much easier justify killing them when they were fighting back. It was also much easier than having to let his crew play.
"Go to yellow alert," Lorca ordered, tracing his gaze over the spread out limbs of this night's lover. "Jam their comms, don't engage."
He strode back to the bed when the glare of the yellow alert breached the early morning serenity of his quarters. The shrill alarm took care of the rest. Lorca chuckled darkly at the annoyed groan coming from the bed, but he minded neither the light nor the noise. It added a sense of urgency, an edge and a force as he closed his hand around a hard-boned wrist and pin the arm to the bed, pulling himself up above the bed, only to lean back down for a hard kiss.
"I'll be a few minutes," Lorca added into the open mouth under him. "Or a few more. Lorca out."
If he kept a tally, it would be another strike. Being late to the bridge in a combat situation, just so he could fuck a member of his crew — better make that two strikes. It barely seemed to matter, though, when he had already committed crimes far more severe. Abandonment of prisoners, refusing to aid a civilian colony in need, numerous acts of piracy ever since he'd got the Defiant back... how long would his imaginary Federation hearing take until it turned into a court martial?
The Defiant shook when the Maikong opened fire, just a shiver glancing off their shields without doing any damage. The flare of it crept up the lower edge of the windows, blood-coloured in the cold, only to be extinguished again.
Home, he thought as he sunk his teeth into the side of an exposed throat and chuckled darkly at the low moan it earned him and the eager scrambling of clawed hands down his back, begging him to embrace the blatant ferocity of it, turn it into rapture against the skin of this morning's lover.
He needed to go home, away from all this and its beguiling, corrupting influence. But deep in the hollow feeling inside his bones he knew he was never going to. There were ways, of course, countless in the depth of the galaxy, but they were out of his reach, unknown to science in his lifetime, unachievable distances away and even his stolen, sophisticated spaceship could not take him there.
Early on, he had replicated a bowl of fortune cookies. A moment of nostalgia when he had stumbled across a recipe and a collection of messages in the historical database. Alone in his quarters, when he had been feeling nostalgic and heard himself think too loudly, he had broken the first cookie and crumpled it all over the window sill.
You could never live in the Utopia you dream of.
Since then, the cookies sat untouched in their bowl.
End of The Immoral Game
Reference: "There is a whole world of crushed rivers and unachievable distances." — Federico García Lorca
Author's Note: Have I ever told you how I've never actually watched the last two episodes of season one? And how I've never even watched episode thirteen all the way through? No? Well, now I did. I think it sums up the chances of me watching season two quite nicely.
Thank you all for reading and thank you doubly for leaving feedback. Makes my day every time.
Last revised on 03/February/2019