TITLE: The Shadows of Things That May Be
AUTHOR: Michael J. Gallagher ( mikejoe@odyssey.net )
SPOILERS: "Ouroborus"
SYNOPSIS: Trance's future self remembers how her time on the *Andromeda* ended in her timeline
DISCLAIMER: GRA is owned by Tribune; I am not making any money, so please don't sue me. (And yes, this is the *second* idea RHW's magnum opus shoe horned out of my head!)
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Harper woke up screaming, half sitting up in the hospital bed, eyes wide.
"Harper!" With a few quick footsteps, Rommie had crossed to his bedside as the lights came up. She squeezed his shoulder. "It's ok, Harper," the beautiful android with glistening blue hair said. "It was just a dream. You're safe."
He stopped screaming and looked at her. "Rommie?" he said, panting.
"Yes. It's me."
"Wha .... what are you doing here?"
"I came down to look in on you."
"Thanks." Harper reached up, putting his hand around her wrist.
"No trouble. Just let me know if you need anything."
Harper looked at her, puzzled. That was the second time today she'd said something like that.
"Are you feeling all right?" Harper asked.
"Of course," Rommie said. "Why do you ask?"
"You're bein' nice to me, Rommie."
"Oh, didn't you know? It's in the ship's bylaws that cute-but-annoying engineers will -- "
Rommie broke off at another set of footsteps. Trance .... the same face but gold skin, purple dreadlocks, and a new attitude ... stopped a meter short of Harper's hospital bed, taking the scene in with a .... Rommie couldn't read the look on the woman's face.
"Is everything ok?" Rommie asked, letting go of Harper's shoulder; he let her hand flop away.
"What?" Trance said, startled. "Oh, everything's fine. I've just had to relearn your layout is all, Rommie; I thought I had another hundred meters to go." She picked up a medical scanner from a nearby table and began fussing over Harper. "But last I knew, I was still this ship's medic. So, I've got a job to do right now."
"So ... you don't need anything?" Rommie asked.
"Nope." Trance switched off the scanner. "And all Harper here needs is a rest." She leaned over and gave Harper a kiss on the cheek, then looked down at him with another long, unreadable look.
Then she spun on her heel and left the room.
Rommie frowned.
********************
Trance only needed a little prompting from Rommie to find her way to the *Maru's* hangar -- it really had been a long time -- but once there, she immediately found her little cubbyhole and the shoe box filled with .... *stuff* .... hidden behind an access panel near the floor.
She sat on her old bunk -- now that she thought about it, had she ever got around to fixing that squeak? -- and fished through the box until she found what she was looking for: the group photo Dylan had insisted on having taken after they'd come aboard. Trance smiled at the memory; getting everyone to line up like that had been an exercise in trying to organize chaos, but they had done it.
It had been *fun.*
It had seemed so simple then: Ride around with Dylan on the *Andromeda,* until fifty worlds had signed his charter and the Systems Commonwealth could be declared reborn.
Trance should have remembered nothing was simple. But not even the Magog World Ship and Harper's infestation (which "her" Harper, the man she remembered from her timeline, had survived, too) had been enough of a wake-up call. She'd still gone along with the fun, happily playing soldier ....
..... until she'd been captured ....
.... until she'd been strapped to that cold metal table; how she'd screamed and screamed and screamed .....
.... until that voice had pounded in her head, driving her: '[Kill them! Kill them! *Kill them all!*'....
.... until -- most of the others had died, one-by-one, quickly, brutally ....
.... until cradling Harper's corpse in her arms had brought her back to herself, or at least turned her from that voice, as she rocked on her heels, screaming and crying all at once. Beka, severely wounded and lying against a nearby bulkhead, had said things; Trance couldn't remember what they were ....
.... until, flying away in the *Maru* with Beka -- stable but needing to be .... fixed -- she'd looked up at the monitor just in time to see the *Andromeda Ascendant* explode ....
"It won't happen like that," Trance muttered, a tear shooting down her cheek. "I'll make it different, somehow; I'll make it r -- "
"Trance?" Rommie's voice sounded outside the cubbyhole.
Trance quickly put down the shoe box and wiped the tear from her cheek. "Here, Rommie," she said, popping out into the passageway. "Is there a problem?"
"I was going to ask you the same question."
"What do you mean?"
"Trance .... about that incident in Medical .... I love Harper very much, but he and I are still just friends. I don't want you to think that -- "
"No, it's not that, Rommie." Trance smiled. "I just haven't seen him in a long time. Don't worry about it."
"You're sure?"
"Positive." Trance pushed past Rommie and through *Maru's* airlock, hurrying down the steps and across the hangar floor, all the while hoping she was concealing her emotions.
She had to make it right this time.
She *had* to.
THE END
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