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writesandramblings · 6 years

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The Captain’s Secret - p.100

“The Captain’s Secret”

A/N: Concludes episode 15, "Will You Take My Hand?" Any resemblance to a certain deleted scene you might have seen on Youtube... that's not coincidental, it's that the show writers essentially reached the same conclusion I did. I just did not write fast enough to get my version posted before theirs. I realize no one has any reason to believe me on this count, but it's true!

Two more chapters and then we're done. Also, this is farewell to O'Malley and Groves, but say hello to a familiar face you probably didn't expect to hear from again.

Full Chapter List Part 1 - Objects in Motion << 99 - Sigh No More 101 - The Memory of Your Heart >>

Locked away in the bowels of Discovery, Lorca could only guess at the details of Discovery's present mission. He was aware when the spore drive engaged, jumping them to a location that made the ship creak under pressure, and aware when they jumped again, but entirely ignorant as to what happened in-between.

Lalana, however, was watching and listening to the bridge, so she heard when Burnham contacted Discovery from the surface of Qo'noS to inform them that what they thought was a mapping mission to locate military vulnerabilities was in fact an attempt to detonate a hydro bomb in an active volcano chain and cause an explosion that would render the whole of the planet uninhabitable. Worse, the bomb was already too far within the planet's crust to extract.

It was, to Saru and the rest of the bridge crew, an unthinkable atrocity. "Is this how Starfleet wins the war?" Burnham demanded of Cornwell. "Genocide?"

Cornwell was gone from Discovery now, back at Starfleet's current temporary command, far from the front lines where her tendency to freeze on the bridge would not undermine the efficacy of an active starship. Lalana listened as Cornwell responded to Burnham's criticisms by defending the decision as a necessary atrocity. "We do not have the luxury of principles!"

Saru rose from the captain's chair. "We are Starfleet," he said. Around him, Detmer, Owosekun, Bryce, and the rest of the bridge crew rose in support of their acting captain. They had been to another universe where humans committed these kinds of atrocities and they were determined to prove that they were different from the Terrans in every way that counted.

"What is it you're suggesting?" asked Cornwell, registering shame as she realized her proposal to destroy Qo'noS was more of a threat to Starfleet than the Klingon incursion. The Klingons could only physically destroy the institutions of the Federation. Cornwell's plan threatened to destroy the Federation's soul.

There was no reversing the course of the bomb, but they could give control of it to someone who could use the bomb's presence as a bargaining chip against the many disparate Klingon houses.

L'Rell was surprised when they returned her clothes to her and released her from the brig—even more surprised when they handed her the detonator controlling the bomb and told her what it was. "Klingons respond to strength. Use the fate of Qo'noS to bend them to your will," instructed Burnham. "Preserve your civilization rather than watching it be destroyed."

L'Rell had once followed T'Kuvma, a visionary who believed in a united Klingon Empire, all houses working together under a single banner of strength. She still believed in that ideal. Now she possessed a tool that would enable her to see this vision made manifest. L'Rell wondered what part her scarred friend from the brig had played in orchestrating this moment. From where she stood, her freedom seemed to be the culmination of Petrellovitz's promise, and more.

She stood before the assembled houses, revealed that she held the power to destroy Qo'noS in the palm of her hand, and the war ended not with the destruction of a planet, but with something almost approaching diplomacy.

"Prepare for transport" was the only warning given. Light shimmered around Lorca and Groves and they rematerialized in a proper guest room with windows and real seating. After what had been a long and exhausting night, the beam-out genuinely felt like escaping from a hole.

Saru was waiting for them. "Apologies for not releasing you sooner, a great deal has transpired. The war is over." This was a slight oversimplification. There were still Klingon stragglers, a few houses resistant to the idea of giving up on so glorious a victory even when their planet's fate depended on it, but the larger part of the Klingon forces had withdrawn.

"How?" asked Lorca. He watched Groves turn greenish at hearing how Cornwell had ordered the annihilation of Qo'noS. It was, Lorca silently thought, a tactically sound plan, as much as it reeked of Georgiou. Still. Some part of him was relieved it had not panned out exactly as intended. Discovery's crew—his crew��had held fast at the crucial moment. He hoped that rankled Georgiou. "Where is she now?"

"She has been released, as per her agreement with Starfleet."

It seemed unthinkable. Georgiou was being allowed to go free and impersonate herself in this universe. "And my agreement?" said Lorca.

"Arrangements are being made. I am not privy to the details."

Sighing, Lorca shook his head in disbelief. Cornwell had essentially taken everything he wanted and given it to Georgiou, right down to winning the war and being the great hero everyone would remember until the end of time.

"Now what?" asked Groves.

They were at Tri-Rho Nautica, the last remaining active Federation shipyard. It had become a crucial Starfleet installation, its repair facilities the only thing keeping the remaining one-third of the fleet operational, and more resources had been committed to its defense than almost anywhere else.

Now, the engineers at the shipyard were preparing to dismantle Discovery's spore drive and revert Lab 26 to its original design specifications.

"Whoa," said Groves to that. "Hold on. Does Mac know about this?"

Saru was reluctant to answer the question, but he did. "Colonel O'Malley is presently unavailable."

"Well, one of us has to be there!" Groves exclaimed. "Can I—can I be excused?"

Cornwell had ordered Groves and Lorca confined to Groves' room, but Cornwell was gone and word had come that no charges were being sought against Groves. "You may."

"'Unavailable?'" Lorca asked pointedly when Groves was gone. In the back of his mind, he was still mulling over the decommission of the spore drive. That had been his last and best chance of getting back home.

"I..." Saru pressed his fingers together. It was difficult to admit that he wanted to consult a man who had turned out to be a fake Starfleet captain, but for almost a year, Saru's captain was what Lorca had been. "I wish to ask you something. I am aware that you are close with Colonel O'Malley. I believe I may have made an error in telling him something..."

Lorca listened quietly. It helped a bit, having someone else's problems to focus on. When Saru was done, Lorca said, "You made the right call."

"He is... devastated. I did not realize it until recently, but Emellia was his sister."

"He never told you?" said Lorca, surprised.

Saru turned away, slightly annoyed. "I take it then that he did tell you." It had been Groves, actually, at that abortion of a dinner, but Lorca only nodded. Saru remained looking away from Lorca and brought his hands together. The situation clearly disturbed him. "I had thought the colonel and I were friends. It appears I was mistaken."

Lorca's tongue clicked lightly. "I wouldn't take it personally. He didn't like people knowing."

"Cadet Tilly was aware."

That sounded entirely bizarre to Lorca, but then, everything connected to Lab 26 tended to be. "I don't know what to say, Saru."

"I wish he had trusted me," said Saru.

"Sometimes... Sometimes it's not about the person you're lying to. By not telling you, he made it so there was one place he didn't have to be her brother. My guess is he was lying to himself."

Saru realized that statement applied just as much to Lorca as it did O'Malley. It was an entirely unintentional self-description, but it put into context many of Lorca's actions during his time commanding Discovery. "I am sorry."

"Sorry?" echoed Lorca, eyebrow raising and face twisting into a demand for something less nebulous than three generalized words.

"That you did not trust me with your secret."

Lorca considered that. "I would've," he said in a way that sounded like a promise. Out of everyone on the ship, Saru impressed him the most. The Kelpien had risen to the challenge of serving as first officer with bravery, intelligence, and compassion.

Saru's fingers gracefully pressed together one after the next. "Perhaps. We will never know."

Disappointment filtered across Lorca's face at the truth of it. He might have told Saru eventually, but more likely he was still lying to his former first officer and himself. He had always been too afraid of the consequences of telling anyone. Fear was the great constant in the Terran Empire and despite all the months in the Federation, he had yet to find a way to escape the emotion. Maybe in time he would have found the strength to tell the truth, or maybe he would have pushed aside the universe of his origin and hidden in the life belonging to the other Lorca forever. Instead, here they were in this moment, and neither thing was true.

"You look like death," was Lorca's greeting.

"Thanks," said O'Malley bitterly, despondent as he stared at some imagined point on the floor.

In all honesty, they both did at this point. Lorca was haggard from not getting enough sleep and O'Malley from getting entirely too much of it in sickbay—and both had received enough bad news in the past twenty-four hours to thoroughly remove whatever vestige of hope they had remaining.

At least Lorca was being permitted to keep the guest quarters for the moment, and Saru had been amenable to stocking it with a few necessities like clean clothes and bourbon. "Drink?"

O'Malley did not answer. Lorca poured out two drinks anyway and offered O'Malley one. O'Malley reached over, took the whole bottle, and went and sat in an armchair. With a faint shrug, Lorca tipped the first cup into the second and sat down on the couch opposite.

"You have some questions, I imagine."

O'Malley didn't drink from the bottle. He hugged it to his chest, one hand firmly gripping the neck. "No one could tell me what happened. Implant... overload?"

"Sort of," said Lorca, taking a deep breath. For the second time he found himself trying to explain Mischkelovitz's actions and falling far short. O'Malley stared off into space as he listened. Lorca concluded with, "I told her not to."

"Told her?" said O'Malley, voice soft and small. "You told her not to do it. You just... told her." His head shook back and forth. A tear rolled down his cheek and plinked quietly onto the bottle. He finally looked over at Lorca with a look of pained accusation. "You should have stopped her!"

"I tried," lied Lorca, because while he had attempted to talk Mischkelovitz out of it, some part of him had not wanted to stop her and he had failed to do the one thing he knew would have worked: woken O'Malley up.

O'Malley curled around the bottle. The inanimate object was probably more affectionate than his new fake sister Petrellovitz would be in the long run.

The explanation was not the main reason Lorca had summoned O'Malley. Mischkelovitz had died and Lorca felt obliged to fulfill her request. "She asked me to tell you something. A message. 'Just as much.'"

Closing his eyes, O'Malley exhaled until he could exhale no more. Words emerged in a soft, high-pitched trickle. "I never said it, did I. It seemed... I didn't hear it growing up and the first time I did say it was to a girl I had a crush on and she ran for the hills. Fair enough, I was a scrawny, spotty thing, it was entirely unrequited, and as you've pointed out, I don't look much better nowadays. But after that, it seemed... impossible to say, and when she said it to me, I couldn't say it back. I started saying 'just as much' and it became our thing. That way I never had to say it. I just said those stupid words instead."

O'Malley drank from the bottle at last, taking a hefty swig. Lorca sipped at his own drink. There was an additional fact in there that O'Malley kept to himself. Lorca had said "just as much" when they first met. A casual three-word utterance that had amused O'Malley with its accidental relevance and set off a cascade of events that Lorca would have ascribed to fate.

"How did I go twenty years without ever telling my sister I loved her?"

"Mac," said Lorca, shaking his head and actually smiling in amusement. For all the hours of entertainment Mischkelovitz had given him on the lab security monitors, he decided to fix at least one thing for her and her brother. "You told her you loved her every day and she heard you. It's not the words you say. It's the words you mean. That's what she wanted to tell you."

The words were an effective consolation to O'Malley. He drank again, just a small taste this time, and asked, "How are you holding up?"

Lorca lifted his cup as if toasting and said proudly, "One piece, thanks." It wasn't really an answer because the last thing Lorca wanted to do right now was think about his own problems, which seemed insurmountable. He would rather enjoy the distraction of O'Malley's. "So, tell me. Anton?"

There was only one person that question could have come from. "Please tell me you're not willingly making yourself messenger of John's torture."

"Depends. I told you my story. Seems you left a few things out of yours."

"I'm going to kill John."

Lorca snorted. "No, you're not."

"But I should."

"No argument here."

O'Malley sighed and gave Lorca what he wanted, as always. "James Narvic was the face of QORYA and the impetus for its creation. Anton Nguyen was... You could call him the shadow master of the whole thing. He was handsome, charismatic, suave, deadly smart, and slippery. Could sell a man his own shoes. Little bit like you. Entirely and exactly like you. D'you know, if I saw him now, I'd still..." O'Malley sighed deeply at whatever unmentionable intent had just popped into his head. "Well, what can I say? I suppose I have a type. Tall, dark, and jackass."

Lorca imagined Groves was having a good laugh right now and grimaced. At the end of the day, even O'Malley only apparently had feelings for Lorca because he was reminded of someone else, and worse, this pretty much destroyed the tiny sliver of hope Lorca had been holding out regarding the significance of O'Malley's marital status. "I'm not gay."

"I know. Why on earth would I want something I can actually have. It's not like I'd ever leave..." O'Malley froze. He fumbled with the bottle and attached it to his mouth and left it there with the impression he had no intention of removing it. The level of bourbon in the bottle visibly dropped by a quarter. Lorca reached over and pulled the bottle away. "Oh, come on! Give it back!"

"Drink yourself to death on someone else's bottle," said Lorca.

"How many months do you suppose it took them to declare us legally dead? Two? Four? I bet Aeree didn't even wait that long."

"At least you get to go back to being alive. I don't even get that," growled Lorca, betraying for a moment the extent of his lurking fury.

O'Malley's head tilted back. The alcohol was already hitting his bloodstream and he was not paying attention to Lorca. "He was the one named them Mischka. Anton. He used to call them little mice, and in his grandmother's tongue, 'mischka' means mice. D'you know, he got out first? Cracked a deal for early release. And I was glad! I helped him get it!"

"Since when are you such a lightweight," Lorca grumbled. While a quarter of a bottle was a lot of bourbon to imbibe in one go, O'Malley had never demonstrated such an embarrassingly quick and low tolerance before. Unbeknownst to Lorca, the last time O'Malley had eaten was in another universe, and then his meal had consisted of a fortune cookie. He was operating on several days of IV fluids at this point.

"When I met you, it was like, here we go again. I knew you from the first minute... Have you ever seen something so clearly you know what's about to happen and you're powerless to avert it?"

Powerless was not something Lorca typically felt. Fear, yes, but something within him always told him he had the power to change things and shape his own destiny. Even now when people were telling him he had to be dead to history and he felt like this was the end of everything, that inner drive remained, suggesting there was some way to wriggle out of this to a fate less awful. It was the only thing keeping him going. "Nope."

"Do you know my favorite part of it all? The way you compartmentalized us, controlled who had what information at what times. It was brilliant! I know. Turns out I don't mind being compartmentalized. I'm not that claustrophobic. It's nice to have a little something to myself now and again."

Lorca decided to call Saru. Forget distraction, forget whatever Mischkelovitz thought Lorca was going to do to "fix" O'Malley, this was an abject mess he had no interest in dealing with. "Computer, contact—"

The door chimed. Lorca allowed entry, expecting this would clear the problem up entirely, because only Groves and Saru knew Lorca was in here and both of them were capable of taking O'Malley off his hands.

The woman who walked in was entirely unfamiliar to Lorca. He had never seen her before in either universe. She was medium-height, in her sixties, with a short shock of latte-white hair and a strong jaw. Her uniform indicated she was a vice admiral, but Lorca had studied the command structure of Starfleet down to the level of its captains as part of his subterfuge and had not encountered her anywhere in it.

O'Malley turned to see what Lorca was looking at and jumped unsteadily to his feet. "General Myers!"

No wonder he didn't recognize her, Lorca realized. This was O'Malley's mentor. She wasn't proper Starfleet, she existed somewhere in the unpublicized command structure of Internal Security.

Lieutenant General Janet Myers looked at her protégé and judged him to be drunk. "Really, Mac? It's fourteen hundred hours." She had a twang that came from somewhere deeper in the American countryside than Lorca's did.

O'Malley wavered. He looked very much like he was going to fall over and Lorca tensed, expecting O'Malley to get a well-deserved dressing-down.

Contrary to expectation, Myers dropped all pretense of formality and asked with genuine concern, "Are you okay?" O'Malley managed about two seconds before he shook his head and began crying. Myers embraced him and O'Malley blubbered something unintelligible into her shoulder. "You and your monsters."

They remained like that for a good minute, Lorca standing off to the side like an afterthought. Myers finally patted O'Malley on the back and released him, turning her attention towards Lorca. "Well," she said with something approaching wry amusement. "How are we going to spin doctor this?"

"How about in a way that gets me back my ship," said Lorca, crossing his arms to mirror the cross expression on his face.

Myers smiled faintly as she shook her head. "He's ballsy, just like you said. Here's how this works. Tit for tat. If you're straight with me, I'll be straight with you. I can get you a command, but it's not gonna be what you think. As far as regular Starfleet goes, you are dead, and from what Johnny tells me, you need to stay dead or history is gonna come knocking and she is a harsher mistress than I."

There was a lot of information to parse in that. Lorca immediately gleaned that Myers was the origin of O'Malley's little fair trade shtick and that she had come prepared to offer him something that might be commensurate with what Starfleet had given Georgiou, albeit with some additional strings attached.

"I'm listening," said Lorca, deciding he liked Myers. She was quick on the draw.

"Black ops. You're a little old for a commando, but you're good with tactics. There are places the Federation wants to influence that we don't exactly have jurisdiction. Complete disavowal of your actions. New cover identity. No allowances made for contacting anyone from your old life. That won't be a problem, will it?"

Lorca started to smile. "What old life?"

O'Malley was stricken. Myers caught the look, frowned at her underling, and said, "You know the rules, Mac. No more pets."

"But—"

"I already let you have the one."

This was not the answer O'Malley wanted. He started crying again, partly because he knew his wife had abandoned him for dead months ago in this universe, partly because he was upset at the fact this was more upsetting to him right now than losing Mischkelovitz, and entirely because the alcohol had completely overtaken the IV fluids. "Then I quit! I'm done! I don't want to do this anymore."

Unphased, Myers flipped open her communicator. "Myers to Quelron. Ree, stop sniffing around the cargo bay and get in here already. Your husband is losing his shit."

The crying stopped. "Aeree?" But Myers had already closed her communicator.

"You can thank me later."

Thanks were not going to be the next thing to come out of O'Malley's mouth. His shoulders gave an involuntary jerk and he dashed to the bathroom to throw up. Lorca chuckled. This was kind of great. He tilted his head towards Myers and said, "Level with me. The reason you took Mac on, guilt? Pity?"

Myers squinted as they watched O'Malley's back through the open door. "Why would you say that?"

"The man's got no useful skills and he's a drunk, emotional wreck."

The twinkle in Myers' eye was entirely knowing. "Is that what you think? He's got the only skill that matters in our line of work. He can put himself in someone else's shoes and completely see things their way. He's taken the side of every criminal he's ever sat down with. Gives us everything we need. Without that, well, you'd be up shit creek without a paddle, wouldn't you, 'captain?'"

Lorca's lip twitched.

Myers smirked. "Course, I don't think he's coming back from this one. It was only a matter of time before he snapped and threw the baby out with the bathwater." She was remarkably frank as she essentially deconstructed O'Malley in discussion with a man she barely knew. (She knew more than Lorca realized. O'Malley was not the only person who reported to her about Lorca, and the other operative had already submitted an informative initial report.) "This is something else, though. You seem to have broken him fairly thoroughly."

"Admiral Cornwell took a few whacks first," said Lorca. His own drawl was growing more pronounced in response to Myers'. "She had him trying to serve two masters. That never ends well."

"Geez. That woman is too emotional. They both are. You know what happens when you put two people that emotional in a room together?" A beat. "If you're lucky, they run out of oxygen." She laughed quietly at her own joke.

Maybe Lorca would never have told Saru the truth, but he suddenly had the impression that if he had met Myers sooner, he would have told her because she was entirely, disarmingly appealing. He suspected this was a calculated gimmick on her part. Probably everyone felt this way when they met her. O'Malley was a fumbling, meandering mess in comparison; Myers was the master he was trying to emulate and not quite managing to.

"You're not Terran, are you? 'Cause you'd fit right in where I come from," said Lorca, meaning it as a vague disparagement.

"Thank you," said Myers, who found that idea about as disparaging as a bowl of home-cooked grits.

Lorca wondered who, where, and what Myers was in the Terran Empire and why he had never met or heard of her. Perhaps she was that rare individual whose Terran counterpart was not as formidable as this version of her. Perhaps she'd simply died before his time. Lifespans were a little shorter for Terrans on average.

They watched O'Malley move from the toilet to the sink and rinse out his mouth. Myers took a turn asking a question. "I've been wondering something myself. How'd you know that Mischkelovitz'd be the one to pull off your little plan?"

"I had one in my universe," said Lorca. The way Myers phrased it, Lorca guessed she did not know his version was the one currently on the ship.

"Only one? They're much better as a pair."

Lorca frowned thoughtfully as he recalled Emellia Mischkelovitz's desperate and likely doomed desire to unite with herself in another universe. "I think they'd agree with you, general."

O'Malley emerged from the bathroom looking slightly less worse for wear as the door chimed again. The alien who entered was grey-skinned, a full head taller than Lorca, slim and graceful, with red slits for eyes. The silken white gown she wore shifted as she moved, fabric seeming almost to float on the air. There was a statuesque beauty to her.

O'Malley was elated to see his wife, but before he could manifest this elation into some form of happy embrace, Aeree sniffed at the air and her eye slits widened almost into orbs. Her head swiveled towards Lorca. "Why do you smell like my husband!" When her mouth opened, it revealed sharklike rows of frilled teeth. The sense of ethereal beauty from five seconds earlier was completely lost.

News of the transfusion did little to quell Aeree's anger. "If you ever take my husband's blood again, I will drink every drop you contain. And you, if you ever give your blood without my permission..." This admonishment continued out into the hall. Lorca and Myers did not see the conclusion of it, which would have revealed to them both it was not a true admonishment at all.

"She's a real peach," said Lorca.

"Peach pit, more like. But she's useful. Formidable species, Misellians. I'd stay on her good side if I were you."

Lorca heard the implication in there and raised an eyebrow. "Now why would I have to do that, general?"

"Senior operative assigned to you requested my best, and Aeree is as good as they come."

"Your best person is married to O'Malley? Come on, now."

"It's an incestuous little department I run," admitted Myers, though the truth was a little more nuanced than her words belied.

Lorca snorted, enjoying the pun. "As for this senior operative... It's not a command if there's oversight. I don't need someone looking over my shoulder." As far as he was concerned, Cornwell and Terral's attempts to do just that had been part of the problem the first time around.

"Don't think of it as oversight. Think of it as backup. At least till you've learned the ropes."

"You can't call a spade an onion with me."

"And you can't have a command without some conditions. I'm not trying to put a fox in a dress here. It's a pretty reasonable request for you to work with someone we trust. So what's it gonna be?"

The engineers were already at work when Groves arrived in the lab, crating up every loose item and carting out furniture. Petrellovitz was nowhere in sight. "Who's in charge?" Groves demanded.

"I am," said a gracefully athletic woman with thin lips and faded blonde hair pulled into a bun. Her uniform identified her as a commander.

"Great. Commander..." Groves extended a hand.

"Billingsley," she supplied. She did not extend a hand in return. Instead, she glared at him with barely-restrained bitter disapproval. "Are you the one responsible for this mess?"

"No, but I am the one who's gonna help you clean it up," he grinned. She rolled her eyes at that. There was something in her glare that intrigued Groves. "I'm John, but you can call me Rove. My friends do."

Her eyes narrowed. "Are we friends?"

She was extremely defensive. Delightfully so. "No, but maybe I can take you to dinner and fix that?"

Billingsley scoffed at him and directed her underlings to fill the crates so they could begin the real work in the walls. Only once the piles of engineering detritus were gone did they begin to remove panels and the full scope of the task came into focus. The modifications requiring reversion were not restricted to Mischkelovitz's secret null time spore project. There were also the many cubbyholes she had specified in her schematics, the double-door security lock, the reinforced plating to prevent anyone from transporting into the lab and accidentally displacing Lalana, and Lalana's room itself. The engineering crew worked from the back of the lab to the front, meaning Lalana's area was the first part to go.

They did not finish the work the first day, nor did they seem to appreciate the man hanging around watching and waiting on them to finish. "Is there somewhere else you'd rather be?" asked Billingsley the following morning.

"And miss seeing your smiling face?" replied Groves. Billingsley growled and looked away, but every time she glanced over at Groves, she saw him smiling at her unreservedly.

When the engineers removed the section of wall behind Mischkelovitz's desk, her hidden sleeping alcove finally revealed itself. This was what Groves had been waiting for.

The clutter inside matched the former clutter of the lab at large. The difference was that the items in the secret room had no engineering use; they were everyday objects, a random collection of things that, at a glance, had no reason for being in there.

The largest of the collected objects was an old red guitar. Groves practically shoved the engineers out of the way to retrieve it. "She did have it!" he exclaimed, retreating with his prize. "I knew it."

"What the hell is this?" asked Billingsley, peering at the blankets and assembled objects lining the compartment.

"It's a pattern." Groves felt a momentary pang of despair. Each item represented someone of importance to Mischkelovitz. There was a set of nesting dolls belonging to Milosz's mother Agnieszka, an old leather suitcase belonging to O'Malley, a threadbare stuffed bear that had once been Milosz's, and a lock of Faiza's hair. This was Mischkelovitz's way of keeping the people she loved with her when they could not fit through the door to her hiding place. There was even a bowl Saru had eaten blueberries from and a glass tumbler O'Malley would have recognized as belonging to a set in Lorca's original quarters. "Box it up and make sure none of it gets damaged."

"I'm sorry, your rank is?" said Billingsley, glaring daggers.

"Grand Vizier," declared Groves, settling down in his chair on the other side of the room and tuning the guitar.

"You should know I have no sense of humor."

"Oh? Who told you that?"

Billingsley sniffed disdainfully and looked away. "Your friend Gabriel Lorca."

"I hate that guy!" exclaimed Groves, with such earnest emphasis it was clearly the truth. "He's wrong, by the way. I can tell you're laughing right now."

Billingsley looked at Groves again, her face seemingly impassive, her lips a thin line, but then the laughter wasn't on her lips. It was in her eyes. It had always been there, even back in 2247. Lorca had missed it entirely. Groves could see it just fine.

Groves strummed the guitar experimentally and continued tuning. Billingsley ignored him initially, but then he plucked a few notes of a tune, testing the sound, and began to play.

"Pale, pubescent beasts roam through the streets and coffee shops..."

"Do you mind? We're working," scowled Billingsley after the end of the first verse.

"Just a little accompaniment to pass the time," replied Groves, playing in an extra set of bars to keep the tune going uninterrupted. She would have interrupted during the intro if she really wanted him to stop. He resumed, "Young uniform minds in uniform lines..."

The first song ended. Groves began another. "Katherine kiss me, slippy little lips will split me, split me where your eye won't hit me..."

Billingsley pretended to ignore him. She seemed as cold and unflinching as ever to most of the people around her, but Groves could see the laugh, the smile, the pretend. When the work was finished, she sent the rest of the team away and remained behind. "Dinner," she said, spitting the word sharply at him. "One condition."

"Name it."

"Let's see your teeth."

That, Groves decided, was the most delightfully strange request imaginable and he couldn't wait to find out why she'd made it. He bared his teeth for inspection. They seemed to pass muster. Billingsley sniffed in approval and almost smiled.

"So what do I call you?" asked Groves. "Commander seems a little formal."

"Sarah," she said. They set a time and place and she left just as a lightly hungover O'Malley arrived to collect the box with Mischkelovitz's belongings.

"I'm gonna marry that woman," declared Groves, staring at the door with a delighted grin.

"Then she has my sympathy," said O'Malley, wondering how Groves could even think of such a thing while he was holding a box of everything they still had left of their sister.

The answer, of course, was that sometimes when you met someone for the first time, you just knew that you were willing to give them everything you had. Maybe because they were an alien from an unknown species asking for your help, or because they possessed a unique fearlessness even while hiding under a table, or there was a laugh hidden in their eyes only you could find, or simply because they happened to say your three favorite words. Regardless of the reason, it was the closest thing to fate there was.

At last Lalana turned up. She was so late coming he had begun to wonder if she was coming at all. "Apologies for not being here sooner, I have been very busy making arrangements."

"That's fine," said Lorca. He would have minded, but between Myers' proposal and the sobering particulars of his current situation, there had been plenty to occupy his thoughts.

He was presently sitting on the couch with his feet up, Larsson's book in hand. Groves had dropped it off as some sort of peace offering. At first, the run-on sentences had been kind of annoying, but Larsson's literary voice was moderately amusing and the Uanar-Barosic Wars were an unknown conflict in Lorca's universe, so the content in the book was all new to him. Lorca tilted the cover towards Lalana so she could see he was honoring her dead friend with his choice of reading material. "I've been keeping busy. Sorry about Larsson."

"No, you are not," said Lalana. She crossed over to Lorca in three and a half strides, stepping easily across his legs and flopping onto the couch beside him. "But that is all right. I am glad you found him in the end."

"His book anyway."

"That is the best part of him." She knew that better than anyone. "Discovery will be leaving soon, so it is also time for us to go."

"Us," said Lorca in clear judgment of the unilateral decision-making her words suggested.

"Yes. Unless you wish to live in this room for the rest of your life. I do know how much you love Discovery, so perhaps Saru would let you." She pressed her tongue to the roof of her mouth, essentially biting back laughter.

"A gilded cage is still a cage." No amount of love for the ship was going to make confinement to a single room aboard it palatable. Besides, there were things on this ship Lorca was desperate to get away from. He'd come to that conclusion after a considerable amount of thought, abandoned as he had been by everyone for most of the past day.

Lalana's tail swept through the air in a whimsical circle. "Then let us fly out together."

Lorca clucked his tongue, which from him was an admonishment, not a laugh. "It's kind of you to offer, but I got some stuff brewing of my own."

"Oh? Do tell!"

He took a deep breath. "They offered me a command. Nothing fancy, few officers and a ship. Guess someone out there realized what an asset I've been for Starfleet, past nine months notwithstanding."

"But of course they do. Had we never left this universe, you would have eventually won them the war, provided Discovery remained under your command."

"Let's not relive that again," said Lorca with a grimace. The what ifs were a rabbit hole he needed to avoid for his own sanity.

"Apologies. What do you know of your new command?"

"It's an off-the-books operation, cloak and dagger. Head off into the reaches and do things the Federation wants done without anyone connecting it to them." Honestly, that was the worst part of it. Lorca knew this universe wasn't perfect, but the wide-eyed idealism here was something he admired, and this black ops business spat in the face of it.

Lalana saw a flicker of disdain. "You are not happy about this?"

"It's not very Starfleet, is it? And there's the fact it'll mean putting aside going after Georgiou, at least for now."

"Now that she is the hero of the war, I do not think you can kill Georgiou without being revealed."

"Doesn't mean I shouldn't try."

"That is exactly what it means, Gabriel."

This topic was another angry dead-end for them both. Lorca was dangerously close to snapping at Lalana even though they both knew she was neither the crux nor the cause of the problem, it was the ridiculous threat of somehow collapsing reality. That vanished holodisc was starting to make even Lorca think there was something to it. He'd been in the room the whole time and could not figure out where the disc had gone. Vanished from time was as good an explanation as any.

Lalana shifted to a different tangent. "Have you met your crew yet?"

"One of 'em, apparently, is Mac's wife. I met her. She's... hard to forget, I'll say that." (Cornwell had met Aeree once, too, and would have described her the same way.) "There's also some 'senior operative' who's supposed to oversee me. We'll see how long that lasts."

"I would expect it to last a long time. Assuming, that is, that you accept the offer. Otherwise I suppose I shall have to find something else for us to do."

He heard the plural again and began to smile. Since returning to this universe, there had been very few moments containing any sort of genuine humor. O'Malley vomiting was the closest he had come to laughing at anything. "Arrangements." He snorted and shook his head. "You..." He started laughing. "You little minx!"

Lalana's tongue clicked rapidly and her hands spun. "I am sorry, I could not resist! That was what Hayliel and I would call an effective joke."

Her security clearance, her intelligence work, her friends in high places and enduring loyalty to his face. He should have seen it coming. "How am I gonna get rid of you?"

The laughter was written on every cell of his face. Lalana saw the stars returned to his eyes. "Why, Gabriel Lorca, would you even try to?"

His laughter finally faded into a sigh. "If I’d met you in my universe, I would've killed you."

"Then it is good we met in mine."

Then another sigh, raspy and melancholy. "I don't know if I can do this. I don't fancy being some dusty footnote in history."

"Simply because you must remain hidden does not mean you cannot make a mark on history. You simply cannot make it as yourself."

"Then who am I supposed to make it as? Captain Nemo?" He did not need her to answer because the moment the name left his lips he realized the truth of it. That was exactly what he was supposed to do. That was what Nemo had done, too, in taking the name. "All right. I'm in."

Lalana watched the spreading satisfaction on his features and quietly spun her hands. He had seen a path he could run and she was ready to run it with him. "Excellent. The ship is still a few hours out. Are you enjoying Einar's book?"

"There are a lot of run-on sentences."

"Yes, that is how Einar wrote. Will you read it to me?"

"Sure." He found his place and began. "In the second quarter of the fall season three scouts of the Seventh Durallan Legion were engaged in locating a rumored source of tritanium in the Karser Sector when they came across sixteen Barosic cruisers hiding in the debris field of the Battle of Kallam-Horical who were in the process of refurbishing derelict Uanar ships with the intent to execute..."

Hearing the words spoken aloud, Lalana recalled the truth she had learned from the first Lorca. Words really did hold the power to keep the people you loved alive. Right now, they were both of them alive, Hayliel and Larsson, thanks to the survival of another universe's Lorca.

Lalana left Discovery first, but because she had to travel by shuttlecraft, she would arrive at the new ship after everyone else did. Lorca used the opportunity to review some personnel files Myers had sent, as well as a list of potential missions they might dive into at a moment's notice. Officially, Lalana had final say for all of it, but Lorca had a feeling she would go along with whatever he wanted up to and eventually including hunting down Georgiou when the time was right.

Aeree's skillset was a little terrifying. Essentially she was a bloodhound who could shoot a phaser but would rather slice things open. "I can taste fear on the air," she informed him. "As well as lust and sickness and kindness. Do you know what I taste on you?"

"Your husband's blood?" offered Lorca dryly. She hissed through her many teeth at him.

"Impotence!"

He tilted his head and fixed her with a look. "Yep. More sex, less consequences. Don't foist your lack of children on me. I made that choice for myself. You got anything else?"

They were going to get along horribly. Even bringing O'Malley into the room to try and mediate failed to produce any promising common ground. They would have a few more days to try because O'Malley was going to hitch a ride and make up for time he had missed with his wife, but Lorca was ready to write the whole thing off after ten minutes.

The only positive was that the occasion seemed to merit some social lubricant, so at least they were standing around with drinks. Then it turned out Aeree preferred to drink her alcohol through her husband, and since O'Malley had finally eaten a few square meals, he was not drunkenly falling over himself for Lorca's amusement.

It also turned out O'Malley had decided he was done with space for the foreseeable future. "It was Melly who loved starships. She hated staying still. Maybe I'll finally get that cat."

Lorca was a little disappointed as he stared at the smear of bourbon remaining in his glass. While he had no official use for O'Malley, unofficially, he was going to miss the comic relief. He sighed and asked Aeree, "But you like starships?"

"No," she said. "They're means to an end."

In the middle of this ill-fated search for commonality, Groves wandered in with news to share and no one else to share it with. "I asked her to marry me!" he announced, pouring himself a drink.

O'Malley was horrified. "That engineering woman? You've known her for twelve hours!"

"No, I've been dating her for twelve hours, I've known her for two days."

"Groves, get out of here," said Lorca, but not only did Groves not leave, he launched into an enthusiastic ramble on the finer points of his new love, "Rah." She sounded like a real piece of work, whoever she was. "And this woman agreed to marry you?"

"No, but I'll keep asking."

"John, that's ridiculous, you can't stay here. You're coming home with me." O'Malley had by this point realized the abandon with which Groves was throwing himself at some unknown woman was probably a coping method to deal with Mischkelovitz being gone. (Lorca had realized the same and reached that conclusion within four minutes rather than the twelve hours it had taken O'Malley.)

"I'm not going with you," said Groves, returning to his usual veneer of casual boredom. "I've got work to do here."

Lorca could see the rising panic on O'Malley's face and knew it had nothing to do with present circumstances and everything to do with the way Groves had responded to family deaths in the past. "Really? Starfleet's gonna keep you on?"

Something came over Groves. He straightened, looked at them all with determination, and said, "Someone needs to hold Cornwell and the rest accountable. I know I said I wasn't ethical, but she seriously considered destroying an entire planet. More than that, it was the Klingons' homeworld. What kind of person even considers that? Someone who shouldn't be in command in Starfleet, that's for sure."

O'Malley shifted his weight, glancing at Lorca. He knew Lorca had done something of similar evil on a much smaller scale aboard the Charon when he deployed Georgiou and Stamets' weaponized spores.

If O'Malley had been smarter, he would have seen the trouble Lorca saw in Groves' future. Anything Groves did regarding the hydro bomb on Qo'noS was going to potentially undermine the tentative new peace. Groves was about to poke one of the biggest bears in the galaxy.

Lorca put a hand on O'Malley's shoulder in some sort of reassurance and said, "Sounds like you finally have a purpose, Mr. Groves."

Groves scrunched up his face in distaste. "Took a while, but I guess I got there in the end. Sort of thanks to you? There's some cosmic irony in that the person who showed me what Starfleet was wasn't even Starfleet himself. Guess it's true what Mac says. You really do give everyone exactly what they need."

Lorca's eyebrows shot up and he tilted his head, looking down at O'Malley. "Suppose you had to choose between me and Anton..."

"Oh my god, I'm going to kill you," intoned O'Malley flatly.

Lorca laughed and yanked O'Malley's shoulder, half-staggering the smaller man a step, then slid an arm around O'Malley's neck. "There's no one I'd rather have do the deed."

O'Malley's face split into a smile and he chuckled happily, flushing red. "I hate you!" he laughed, shaking his head.

And with a glint in his eye, Lorca said, "Just as much."

Weirdly, this was the moment Aeree decided she liked Lorca.

The last person Lorca spoke to on Discovery was also the first person he had welcomed into its crew. The change between now and then was immense. Gone were the deference and trepidation that had marked their first meeting a year earlier. In their place stood a truly formidable commander. Lorca smiled with subtle pride. "Well, captain, guess this is goodbye."

Saru's head tilted in respectful disagreement. "I have not been promoted. I am merely acting captain until our new commanding officer is appointed."

"Captain Saru," insisted Lorca. "I'm leaving Discovery in your hands. Far as I'm concerned, there's no one better for the job."

Saru considered that. Just like Lorca before him, he was a captain with a secret. He could have resented Lorca for it. Instead he felt sympathy. The position of holding a secret was not an easy one. "Your confidence means a great deal to me."

There was a glimmer in Lorca's eyes. Not full tears, but enough to show how much those words meant to him and how much he was going to miss this ship and its crew. "Thank you for everything, Mr. Saru."

And for the last time Lorca would ever hear it, Saru replied, "You are welcome, Captain Lorca."

Part 101

#Star Trek Discovery #fanfiction #fanfic #Star Trek #Gabriel Lorca #Saru #Commander Saru #Discovery #USS Discovery #Will You Take My Hand?

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