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No More, No Less

Author - Setcheti | Genre - Angst | Main Story | N | Rating - PG-13
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No More, No Less

by Setcheti

a short tag for Similitude

Genre: Angst
Rating: PG-13

Disclaimer: Paramount owns them. They don’t deserve them, but they own them just the same, more’s the pity.

Author’s Note: I couldn’t help but notice at the end of the episode that Trip was standing alone – no one was even looking at him, no one was standing less than a foot away from him. This story is dark. And depressing. I don’t usually write this way and I’m not too happy with myself for doing it now. If you read this and feel like writing more of it, resolving it, please do.

*******

Chapter One – No More, No Less

It had been two weeks.

Captain Archer strode down the corridor toward the shuttlebay, his boots clanging angrily on the deck plating. Phlox had called him in a panic, told him where Trip was and what the doctor thought he was doing. Archer hadn’t needed to ask why Phlox hadn’t gone after the engineer himself, or hadn’t sent T’Pol; it was the same reason he himself didn’t want to. But he was the captain, all the really nasty jobs landed on him by default.

Like telling little boys they were born to die. Or telling a grown man you’re willing to kill him.

And now stopping a man from killing himself. Damn Trip, anyway. If they didn’t have to have him to finish the mission…he stopped himself before that thought went any further and summoned up more anger to keep it down. How dare he, that selfish bastard! Throw away what so much had been sacrificed to give him just because he was having a pity party. So most of the crew were still uncomfortable around him, so what? He was alive. So conversations in the mess hall stopped whenever Trip entered, and no one wanted sit with him or talk to him, big deal! They had a mission to complete, this wasn’t a pleasure cruise – and no one seemed to have any problem taking orders from Trip on duty, which was the most important thing. And if the captain, first officer and ship’s chief medical officer were still having trouble being around him and couldn’t look him in the eye…

Archer stopped before he’d dug in too deep for anger to help him out of it. Tucker owed Sim and Phlox and T’Pol and Archer himself – and hell, Earth too! It was the mission that had saved the ungrateful son of a bitch, and Archer damn well wasn’t going to let him forget it. If he wanted to kill himself, he could just wait for the mission to be over and do it then…

That one stopped him dead in his tracks, but only for a moment and then he pounded back on his way determinedly. He had a suicide to stop, a mission to save – Earth to save. He was the captain, this was his job. He was going to tear Trip Tucker a new asshole and then kick him back to work.

Or at least, that’s what he was going to do if he could force himself to face the man at all. He hadn’t yet, and it had been two weeks.

But he had to, he was the captain and the mission was his responsibility, Earth was his responsibility. Billions and billions of lives were in his hands, Archer told himself as he entered the shuttlebay. For their sakes, he had to do this.

Trip was leaning in the open hatch of the nearest shuttlepod, and Archer shuddered; the similarity was too close, too soon. The only difference was the phase pistol resting in the younger man’s hands. That and that alone made him take the next step forward and open his mouth. He had to open it more than once before anything came out. “Trip!”

The younger man didn’t look at him. “Hard to remember which name to use, or just hard to say it because it’s mine?”

Archer ignored that. It was both, of course, but he wasn’t here to deal with the real problem; he just wanted to resolve the problem he’d been sent down here for so he could get away. “I can’t believe you’d throw away his sacrifice like this…” he began.

“Not plannin’ on it,” Trip interrupted softly, turning the gun over in his fingers gently, almost reverently. “You saved me to save the mission, I have every intention of finishin’ the mission. He said I owe him one and that’s what’s owed – no more, no less. You don’t have to worry, Captain, I know you need me to get the job done.”

If the words hadn’t chilled Archer, the matter-of-fact tone they were spoken in would have. The touch of ice wasn’t enough to extinguish the guilt and anger burning inside of him, though. “Then what are you doing in here with a gun, you mind telling me that?”

“Thinkin’.” Trip looked up from the gun to the walkway overhead and then back down to the deck plating. “Rememberin’.” He stood abruptly and walked right up to Archer, who took a step back in spite of himself, but Trip didn’t try to touch him; instead, he simply held out the pistol. He didn’t blink when Archer took it, didn’t change expression at all when the other man avoided meeting his eyes, just detoured around him and kept walking to the door.

Archer looked from pistol to walkway to deck…and suddenly, sickeningly, understood as a vision of the toy ship crashing to the deck popped into his head, a memory of a small yet painfully familiar voice being sorry for the mishap echoed in his ears. “Remembering…how much?” he asked without turning around.

“All of it.” Trip paused in the act of opening the door, and looked over his shoulder; had anyone been watching, the pain in his face would have been unbearable. But Archer wasn’t watching, and the engineer’s voice was even, giving nothing of his torment away. “None of you can stand to be around me now and it’s okay, I understand. Know how you feel, even. Don’t beat yourself up over it.”

The door hissed open, then closed, but Archer still didn’t move. He didn’t move for a long time. No more, no less… His own swiftly buried thoughts from out in the corridor resurfaced, ripping into his anger-fueled denial and leaving it in bleeding, useless tatters that could no longer shield him from his thoughts, his actions…from what he’d let himself become. There were no tears, no cries, no curses – he had nothing to give, only cold, hollow emptiness. Oh god, what he’d become…


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