Chapter 64
I believe that everything happens for a reason
We're not just tossed by the wind or left in the hands of fate
But sometimes life sends a storm that's unexpected
And we're forced to face our deepest pain
When I feel the heartache begin to pull me under
I dig my heels in deep and I fight to keep my ground
Still at times the hurt inside grows stronger
And there's nothing I can do but let it out
Just let me cry
I know it's hard to see
But the pain I feel
Isn't going away today
Just let me cry
Till every tear has fallen
Don't ask when and don't ask why
Just let me cry
- Hillary Weeks
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The Andromeda Ascendant loomed large outside the forward window of the Miss Kitty's bridge, sleek and smooth and majestic in her field of stars. Dylan stood silent as he watched her draw closer, preparing to accept them into her second hanger, his thoughts and emotions jumbled.
Oh how he'd missed this sight, the feeling of coming home to his ship, watching her approach. He'd almost forgotten how beautiful – how powerful – she was.
And yet, it was different this time. He was different. He'd lived and suffered a lifetime in eleven months, changed in ways that he wasn't even completely sure of himself. He'd dreamed about this moment all that time, but now that it was happening, he couldn't even process how he felt.
There was his ship, his life, waiting for him to take it back. But could he? Could he just slip back into the role of Captain Hunt after eleven months as an unwanted slave?
The freighter cleared the hanger doors and Patch slowed her to a stop just as Rommie stepped up beside him on the bridge.
"Welcome home, Captain," she said softly, her emotions only thinly veiled behind professionalism. "Shall I alert the crew to your return?"
Dylan wrenched his eyes and thoughts away from the window as he processed her words. Alert the crew? What, no. Not yet. He wasn't ready for that! Besides, some little niggle of instinct, long suppressed during months of captivity but never completely buried, tickled at the back of his mind, urging him to use caution, to not play his cards too soon. He might need them later, for reasons he didn't exactly know at the moment.
"No," he said firmly. "Not yet. Can we just keep this rescue unofficial for a while longer? I don't exactly feel much like a captain," he added ruefully, glancing down at the filthy rags he called clothes.
Rommie nodded. "Of course. I'll inform Beka of your decision and that she's still in command. And I'll make sure the way to med-deck is cleared."
"I don't need to go to med –" he started to protest, but it died in his throat as he watched her beautiful face take on that don't-mess-with-a-warshipgleam. "Okay," he conceded. "Thank you."
"Dylan, may I…um…permission to…" The avatar broke off, looking embarrassed.
"Permission to what?" he asked.
She didn't answer. Just reached out and hugged him – tightly. She held on for almost a full minute before stepping back and clearing her throat awkwardly. "I'm glad you're back," she whispered, then turned and left the bridge.
Dylan watched her go, his heart a little warmer. He really had come home.
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"No."
"Harper, you're in no condition to be doing this! I need you to come over to the med-bed and let me start examining you!"
"I said no, Trance." His voice was quiet but firm. He was planted shakily, Trance between him and his destination. He knew it wouldn't take more than a gentle nudge from her to just tilt him over and thwart his plan, but he didn't care. He was standing his ground on this.
"Harper, I can ord –"
"What?" he interrupted. "Order me to do what you want? Tell me I have no choice? Like a slave?"
He actually heard her intake of breath and knew his words had hit their mark.
"Trance, please," he said wearily, reaching out his right hand to grab the counter he knew was close by for balance. "I can't tell you how much I need to do this, wash the last year off my skin. As much as I would normally love one of your sponge baths, they just won't cut it right now and I am not waiting another minute longer. A little soap and hot water isn't gonna make any of my crappy problems any worse."
She sighed, and Harper thought she sounded very sad. In fact, she hadn't sounded anything but sad since the moment she'd met them in the hanger bay. He hoped that sad, pitying tone he was getting from all his friends wouldn't last forever.
"Okay," she conceded. She stepped up to him and he felt her take his good hand from the counter and place something in it. "Use this. It will kill the lice."
"Thanks," he said, clutching the bottle. She walked him to the door of the med-deck's head and then thankfully left him alone.
It was awkward and ungraceful, but he managed to find the shower stall without running into anything. Less than a minute later the rags he'd been wearing for what felt like decades were lying in a pile on the deck outside it and amazingly warm water was hitting him all over. He closed his eyes and leaned against the wall for support, just letting it wash over him, barely aware of the tears that fell from his eyes and mixed with it.
He stood there for minutes, hours, years – letting the water cleanse him, draining away the filth, dirt, and stench of the camp. It stung the still healing wounds on his back, wrists, ankles and feet, but he didn't care. It was still heaven.
If only a little water could really wash everything away, though – fix it all, turn back the clock. There wasn't enough water in the entire universe to actually take away the stink of slavery. Sadly, Harper knew with every fiber of his being that the stains of slavery went much deeper than that, and never really washed away. Nothing could ever give him back the last year of his life, his sense of self-worth and pride, or bring back the light.
Eventually, when all his tears were spent and his body mostly numb from the hot, pounding water, he lifted his head and pushed back from the wall. He used Trance's bottle of special goo, applying it liberally to his whole body before rinsing, and then shut off the stream.
Shaking now, what little energy he'd regained in the last few days of limited medical care and rest exhausted, he managed to exit the shower stall and find the small bench he remembered sat just outside it. His searching fingers connected with something fluffy and warm – a towel. With a sigh of relief, he wrapped it around his trembling body and sank down onto the bench.
Ten minutes later he emerged from the little room, dressed in the soft medical scrubs that had been left for him in place of his rags and holding tightly to the walls to stay upright. Someone was instantly at his side.
"Are you ready now, Harper?" It was Trance.
"Yeah. Thank you. I'm all yours," he answered, allowing her to lead him slowly to the examining room.
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Dylan hated being fussed over. He liked to think he was big and strong and tough and didn't need it. Yet, try as he might, he couldn't get out of it this time. Which was why he was currently sitting shirtless on one of Andromeda's medical beds, being poked and prodded by both Rommie and Trance. At least Beka had finally disappeared, called off to the duties of command. Dylan was almost jealous.
"Are you sure, Dylan?" Rommie asked once again, a distressed look on her face as she scanned his bare skin, cataloguing the many healing scars that now marred what had once been smooth flesh. Both she and Trance had been deeply upset by the lash marks he now bore. They expected them on Harper, but for some reason, both women had been shocked to see them on him. And that slight inequality of expectations grated on him in a way it never would have a year ago, a subtle acceptance of the unfair way the universe worked.
"Can you remove Harper's?" he asked softly, glancing over to the side of their private room where an exhausted but clean Harper now slept, curled in fetal position on his own bed. A third bed just beyond held an also sleeping Twig.
"No," Trance answered for the android, shaking her head sadly. "The scans reveal the tissue damage is too extensive and deep. It would require months of surgeries, each one an added assault to his already compromised immune system, and even then the scars couldn't be erased completely. It's simply not worth the risk."
"That's what I thought. So no, I'm not leaving Harper as the only one with physical reminders of the last year in hell," he said firmly.
They stopped bugging him about it after that.
Trance spread a nanosalve over his abused wrists and then bandaged them carefully, admonishing him not to get them wet for at least twenty-four hours so the healing could be completed. That was fine with him – like Harper and Twig, he's already had his long-dreamed-of shower.
Then the injections began.
Ones to help rebuild bone density and muscle, to counter the loss of tooth enamel. Apparently, the Niet's standard diet for their slaves was lacking in twelve out of twelve of the recommended nutritional standards.
There were antibiotics against anything and everything, just to be safe. When Andromeda had scanned Harper and determined the cough he was suffering from came as a symptom of an acute case of Tuberculosis, slight panic had ensued. That disease was one of the ones she'd vaccinated the Maru's crew against the day they signed on; Harper should have been immune. An hour of frantic searching had revealed that, despite being vaccinated, the strain had mutated, and coupled with the engineer's lousy immune system was proving deadly. Rommie and Trance had synthesized a different treatment and administered it, unsure if it would work. For now, Harper appeared to be resting quietly and his coughs were lessened, but no one quite dared breathe a sigh of relief yet.
The whole thing meant Trance wasn't leaving anything else up to chance. When it was Dylan's turn to get looked after, she pumped him chuck full of antibiotics to treat anything she felt he might've even been slightly exposed to, and a few that he probably hadn't been at all.
"Dylan, there are…well, the same foreign proteins and markers in your blood now that Harper has always had," the golden girl said, trying to be diplomatic as she continued with her assessment and scans.
His mind was pulled back to that night on Sommer's Drift almost a year ago and Harper's pained admission about the meaning behind the symbols on the doorway. He'd actually forgotten about that conversation, but he answered Trance now with a small nod. "I know. We were injected with a bunch of junk before being turned loose into the camp. Harper warned me what might be included."
"I can't remove them," Trance replied gently.
"Will they harm me?" he asked.
"No. Just…um...set you apart." She winced at her own words.
"Well you know me, Trance. I always did like to stand out," he teased, trying to bring some ease back to the increasingly awkward conversation. She smiled lightly and then moved on to whatever she felt needed fixing about him next.
Embarrassed and feeling very much like a semi-naked pincushion, Dylan let his thoughts drift. The topic his mind wandered to was beyond predictable – Harper and Twig.
He glanced back over at his friends, sadness filling him.
Twig had been given the diagnosis of extreme malnutrition, stunted growth and slight developmental delay, and damage to the valves in his heart. The twelve-year-old – Rommie had officially calculated his age – had the weight and stature of a child much younger. He would require the same treatments as Dylan for the effects of malnutrition, though for a much longer time, and a lot of love and support to overcome the emotional scars of his past. Trance was confident the damage to his heart could be fixed, but she didn't want to try until he was significantly stronger. Until then, she would closely regulate it through a combination of drugs and technology.
Still, it made Dylan's soul a little lighter, knowing the boy would be okay.
Too bad the same couldn't be said for both his companions.
For Harper, the road to recovery was going to be vastly different. Just like him, the malnutrition, lost strength and energy, and open sores could be treated fairly easily. Some good meds, a lot of rest, and a little physical therapy and he'd be all right. His mangled back, finally free of infection, would heal into more scars to be hidden away beneath his clothes. And now that he was safely in Trance and Rommie's capable hands, even the Tuberculosis could be dealt with, though it might take a little time.
If only Harper's list of injuries stopped there. Dylan found himself fighting back strong emotion again as he remembered a few hours earlier when Trance had delivered the blows as gently as she could. Dylan had sat silently beside the kid, there in that place of honor by Harper's own request, listening as his worst fears were confirmed.
His left hand was damaged beyond what Trance was confident trying to fix on her own with Andromeda's limited medical equipment, as was the mangled, destroyed mess that was his dataport. She believed, given the right surgeon, the hand could be repaired with relatively small health risks to a point Harper would be able to use it again. The dataport was iffier. It had been a calculated choice for the Earther to have it installed in the first place, replacing it might be beyond what was medically sound, and again was something Trance was not willing to attempt herself. If it really wasn't replaceable, Dylan knew Harper might just give up, especially given the last prognosis.
His sight was destroyed, the blindness permanent. Multiple scans revealed that Felix's lasers had not simply damaged the eyes themselves, but completely burned out the entire optic nerve. It couldn't be reconstructed because there was nothing left to reconstruct.
Trance, Rommie, even Beka had urged him not to lose hope. The Andromeda was only one corner of a very large universe, and no one was going to stop until they'd explored every option. But for the time being, he was still stuck in the dark, still blind. Dylan could see how much those words killed his friend, brought back the despair that being rescued had pushed aside for a little while.
As he stared at Harper now, curled into a tight ball as he slept as if trying to protect himself from reality, Dylan knew they still had a long way to go before life became anything close to normal again.
"Dylan? Dylan, you with us?"
"Captain?"
Dylan finally realized both Rommie and Trance were calling him, trying to bring his attention out of his lost thoughts and back to the present.
"Yes, what?" he asked distractedly.
"Trance is done with her work now and you can redress," Rommie said, obviously repeating something she'd already told him.
"Thanks," he muttered tiredly, slipping the clean shirt back over his head. After everything that had happened in the last few hours – heck the last few days – he felt ready to sleep for a week.
"You can rest here, or in your own quarters if you like. I can monitor you from either place, so the choice is yours."
His own quarters? His rooms, with his own stuff, and the long forgotten idea of privacy? It was almost a foreign concept and another dream he hadn't been sure would ever come true again.
Then he glanced once more at the sleeping forms of his young friends, small and vulnerable in the clinical room. They'd spent a year looking out for each other, watching and supporting night and day, through experiences no one else on the ship could even begin to fathom.
"I think I'll stay here tonight," he said quietly.
Rommie nodded and Trance smiled, bustling off to quickly return with a thick stack of blankets. She tucked several around both Harper and Twig, then handed him the remaining ones.
"Goodnight, Dylan," she said, her smile still tinged with deep sadness. "I knew you'd make it home."
Author's Note:
I'll try to keep this brief, but there's a lot to say.
First of all, no, this story is not dead. It almost was as real life overwhelmed me and distance from the show and characters made me feel I could no longer write it. But I still wanted to finish this, so badly. The problem was, the story had changed so much from the original outline over time, I no longer knew how it was supposed to be resolved. So, after a lot of painful fretting, I took it back to the drawing board. I re-watched all the seasons and took notes. And I deconstructed the Andromeda universe in my head, then reassembled everything in a way that made sense for my story. In the process, I found my plot again.
So yes, this is going to dive off in a fairly AU manner now that we have all the characters back together, safe if not entirely sound. But, it was unrealistic of me to expect that after so much time and so many changes it wouldn't. I just hope some of you will enjoy coming along for the final ride.
Secondly, I once posted a notice at the end of a scene in part 4 that at some point an alternate ending of this story would go up. Well, I've decided it's time. If you are at all interested in an alternate ending that also happens to be a crossover with the Firefly 'verse, feel free to check out my story The Strongest Souls.
Lastly, this chapter wouldn't be going up without the support and friendship of a few people who continue to believe in my writing even when I have serious doubts. Kevin, Lizzie, Smuffly, Holly, Tanya…this chapter is for you.
P.S. If you're still reading this, I'd love you to death if you'd let me know with a quick review. Thanks!