Time And Tide
Title: Time And Tide
Author: Dan Usmar aka usmarox
Fandom: Andromeda
Rating: R for general unpleasantness - no sex; implied violence
Disclaimer: I don't own Drom, so the characters are someone else's
Summary: What happens when a good thing goes bad?
Pairings: Harper/Trance
I drink to our ruined house, to the dolour of my life, to our loneliness together; and to you I raise my glass, to lying lips that have betrayed us, to dead-cold, pitiless eyes, and to the hard realities: that life is brutal and coarse, that God in fact has not saved us.
Anna Akhmatova, "The Last Toast"
"Beka……help me. Please. I've got no-one left to go to. I hope I'll see you soon."
With that, the message ended. Beka ran it again, sure she had missed something, but it was all the same as the first time. Why Trance needed her help was a mystery, almost as though she had been afraid to say it out loud. Hell, for old time's sake, she thought, looking at the originating address and setting a course for Obidos.
The Andromeda's crew had departed gracefully, for the most part. With the Restored Commonwealth a reality, there was little more that they alone could accomplish. Andromeda was still a High Guard ship of the line, of course, but Dylan had exchanged her command for the office of the High Guard Chief of Staff. Tyr, of course, had long since left to raise his son, and groom him for the Progenitor's Return. Rommie had trouble deciding whether to stay with her ship-self, or to go and have a life of her own. In the end, with Dylan's help, she had taken a technical job somewhere in the High Guard hierarchy. Beka had returned to her pre-Andromeda existence of running parts from drift to drift. Not that she had to, but remarkably enough she had discovered that she missed it. Which left Harper and Trance.
They had been married for some years now, even before they left the Andromeda, and insofar as anyone knew, they had gone to set up house together. Harper had scored a job as the chief technician in an orbital dockyard, and Trance……was just being Trance. Maybe she tells fortunes for a living, thought Beka with a smile. She punched in a brief message to let Trance know she was on her way - she didn't mind the restoration of the Commonwealth's courier network at all - and engaged slipstream.
She emerged in the outer reaches of the Obidos system. In many respects, it was as close to average as any star system in the galaxy, a handful of planets orbiting a warm, yellow sun. The one naturally habitable world, Obidos III, was a blue-green gem. She suspected Harper had chosen it for it's resemblance to Old Earth. A distant, barely visible, sparkling above it indicated the massive scaffolds of the shipyard. In it's heyday, Obidos had been a High Guard dockyard, the entire planet sustained to one degree or another by military contracts. Now it made a healthy living from the production of bulk freighters and the other huge, unwieldy craft that were the backbone of interstellar commerce. The automated traffic control satellites that were part of the Commonwealth's legacy slotted her into the stream of traffic headed for the planet's surface, and she engaged her autopilot and settled down to wait.
---
The capital city of Obidos was entirely consistent with its wealth. A metropolis of shining chrome and polished glass, the airways thronged at every level with every kind of 'speeder and groundcar. The streets and the inhabitants were clean, well-fed and, by all accounts one of the Fall's few success stories. So she seemed a little surprised when Trance's address led out of the towering centre and into a grubbier, more down-market section of town. As it was, the address wasn't for her home, but for a worker's cantina, a characterless dining room decorated in white paint and beige plastic. It had been a long time since Beka had seen a nicotine addict, but there were ashtrays on the tables all the same. It's only concession to those who passed it's doors were the colour prints of the various spacecraft the planet had produced in its time arrayed upon it's walls. Amid the grease-stained coveralls, Beka could make out a vaguely familiar face, sat alone at a side table. Beka approached cautiously, trying to convince herself of its identity.
"Trance?"
"Beka." She looked up. It was Trance, but not the Trance Beka remembered. Although the differences were small, in context they were a greater shock than future Trance had been when she first appeared. She was thinner, her features more tightly drawn. Her shoulders had a listless sag, making her body seem even narrower, and her pale amber skin had lost its glow. The light in her eyes that had so animated her expression was gone, replaced with a leaden dullness that, in Humans, Beka associated with the dead. And the ivory smoothness of her face was flawed now, worry lines creeping in around her eyes and her forehead.
"Beka……I'm glad you could come." Her voice, too, had changed, Beka noted. Sprightly energy had been replaced by resignation, almost defeat.
Beka smiled. "I'm here now. It's been a while, hasn't it?"
Trance nodded. "Five years. A lot has changed, Beka, not all of it for the better."
Beka gave Trance another sweep with her eyes before replying. "It has, hasn't it. Trance, what do you need?"
Trance's eyes returned to the tabletop. "It's Harper."
---
Their wedding had been as grandiose an affair as Dylan and Beka could manage. Hydroponics had been raided, over Trance's protests that the plants were happy where they were, for flowers, Rommie had spent hours in the mind of an autochef, persuading it to do things that it's manufacturers had never even contemplated, and Dylan had tried his hardest to teach Harper how to make a speech. As it was it had passed off without a hitch, until Dylan had gotten to the line "….and in most cultures it is now considered traditional to kiss the bride." At which point Trance had started giggling uncontrollably. Other than that, their big day had been an unmitigated success. Even Harper's old friends on Earth had clubbed together to send one of their own.
They had been quite happy on Andromeda, once one got past the fact that they shared a room now. But, of course, when the time had come, they had gone their separate way together with the rest of the crew.
---
"He was so excited, Beka. It was his first proper job, and he'd gotten it all by himself. He didn't even tell me about it until it was certain. But he was so proud, after all he'd been through he finally had the chance to make a home. Our home."
---
"Well, this is it, hon. Obidos III." Trance looked out of the window at the pretty, M-class planet below. From the amount of green, it looked like a very pleasant world; certainly one with enough foliage to keep her busy. Harper nudged her with an elbow.
"See that?" He indicated the latticework of girders floating at the Lagrange point, the gravitational null between Obidos III and its closest moon. "That's my new office," he added with a smile. As they passed close abroad, it was possible to make out the incomplete starship hull caged within.
Trance reflected on the planet below, voicing her feelings with a single, quiet, word. "Home."
---
"And it was home. Now I just live here," she said sadly.
"What happened, Trance? Where did it go wrong?"
"It started to go wrong," she replied, "shortly after we arrived."
---
"Harper?" called Trance, as the front door opened.
"You called, my exalted love machine?"
"I have some……news."
Harper looked surprised. "Good, bad, expensive?"
Trance grinned. "A bit of all three."
Harper gave her a mock grimace and growled. "Well, what is it?"
"I'm pregnant."
The look on Harper's face was priceless. It was nearly a minute before he summoned the breath to speak again. He even blinked in slow motion.
"You're sure?" he asked quietly.
Trance nodded enthusiastically.
"Trance……I love ya. Now come here!" he shouted, chasing her into the bedroom, the pair of them laughing on their way.
---
"And it should have ended there, really. But it didn't."
Beka was taken aback. "What do you mean, it should have ended there? I thought - "
Trance cut her off. "I mean, if everything had gone to plan, Harper and I would be parents right now. As it is, things got a little……more complicated.
---
When Harper finally got into her hospital room, he was ill-prepared for the sight of Trance. She lay flat on the bed, staring at the ceiling. Tears streaked her face, and her eyes were puffy and red from too much crying. There were few things in the universe that Harper genuinely hated, and the sight of his wife crying was one of them.
"I came as soon as I could," he offered. Trance didn't even turn her head toward him.
"What happened, Trance?" Harper asked quietly.
She shut her eyes, as though bracing herself. "I miscarried." Even those two words were too much, choked off as she began to weep again.
"Trance……no……" Harper bent his face over the bed to touch hers, and their tears ran together.
---
"If it had been a boy, we wanted to call him Brendan. I guess the Divine was busy elsewhere at the time." Trance was remarkably under control, Beka thought, for one relating the loss of a child.
"It took us a couple of years to get over it. It was horrible, being in the house alone. It was different before; it was supposed to be empty when Harper wasn't there. But…when I came home, it was missing something…as though it had been there the whole time but had left while I was away. He was good to me, Beka. don't get me wrong, when I needed him, he was there. I think - I know - it upset him more than he let on, but he was so busy being strong for me he didn't let it show. Maybe he should have. I wonder……" She shook her head. "No matter. In any event, we decided to try again." The cast of her eyes told Beka everything.
"But…" Beka prompted.
"But the same thing happened again." Trance sighed. "This time it nearly killed me. The strain…apparently I was at Death's door for a week. And when I came round…the doctor…he said we were biologically incompatible, that we could never have children together. Harper was furious. Not at me, just……at the world in general. We both wanted children, Beka, both of us, but I think Harper wanted them even more than me. He was so upset when he found out." She looked utterly dejected, as though the failure was entirely hers.
---
Trance looked at the clock. Harper should've been home by now, even with the rush jobs and overtime that accompanied an impending launch. She sighed. He was working too hard, too long, too often. She suspected it had less to do with work, and more with the home he came back to. Even he thought it too empty now.
Finally, four hours late, the door clicked open. Trance had been on her way to bed; it wasn't unknown for him to stay in the work gang barracks in orbit when he was busy. She glided back into the lounge to greet him. She in turn was greeted by the smell of Neubayernische Weißbräu.
"Hiya, babe," he said, his words slurred and his smile too fixed.
"Harper……Harper, you said you were working late." Trance frowned. She had long ago decided that if she could go back and change one moment in time, this would be it.
"I was. Then I went for a few beers with the crew. Can I go to bed now, Mrs. Harper?" he added, acidly.
Trance was shocked. She was aware he had a less pleasant side. He had had just never directed it at her before. He pushed past her before she could make any more complaint. Trance trailed after him, her face a mask of disbelief and doubt.
---
"So he started drinking," asked Beka.
Trance nodded. "Lots," she added, quietly.
Beka thought back to her own childhood, how her father's "one-off, rocket, I'll be fine" experiment with Flash had turned into the all-consuming addiction that had eventually killed him. Even with the benefit of that experience, though, she still had trouble with the idea of Harper the alcoholic.
"He's not an alcoholic," Trance said, as though reading her thoughts. "He's a drunkard. An alcoholic drinks because it is his life. A drunkard drinks because of his life."
Harper salving his aching soul with booze, thought Beka. It still struck her as strange. Oh sure, they'd been on post-mission benders together, but they had been celebratory. Harper's idea of stress relief was locking himself in a maintenance duct so he could tweak fire-control in peace. Work was his answer to everything......had been his answer to everything. There must be more to it than even Trance was telling.
Beka sat back in her chair. "So why didn't you confront him about it? Trance, when you talk, people listen to you. Damned if I can work out why, they just do. And he's you husband. Surely you tried to do something."
She sighed again, a remarkably expressive gesture. "I did. Right before he lost his job."
Beka sat up, eyes wide open. "He…lost….his job?"
Trance simply nodded.
Beka raised an eyebrow. "Well, I can see why that didn't go down too well. Why? There's no shortage of business for starship engineers, especially ones as good as Harper. And the docks in orbit look as though they're doing a roaring trade. What happened?"
Trance's expression was a mixture of sadness and pity. "Incompetence."
"Harper? INCOMPETENT? Short guy, spiky hair, really bad sense of humour, that Harper?"
---
The constant background din of rivet guns and welding sets was always more intense near a job's finish. Coupled with the constant low thrumming of the portable fusion packs, it conspired to make any kind of conversation difficult. Harper ran his hand down his unshaven chin and checked his watch. The time made him yawn. He reached for the mug by his elbow, missed, and knocked it to the floor. He needed a drink.
He was approached by one of his foremen, wielding a flexi and a worried expression.
"Boss, this compartment is three weeks overdue, and the owners aren't going to give us any more slack. They want it done by the end of the week, or they drag it out of orbit and get the job done somewhere else."
Harper bowed his head, trying to find the energy to scream. It wasn't there. Instead, he settled for a quiet, level angry.
"The guys are working twenty-six hour days and eight day weeks. We can't go any faster. Do they want it finished? Yes, no? Fine. Fuck them. Where's the worksheet?"
The foreman handed his flexi to Harper, who eyed it sceptically. Then he began to make notations, slowly at first, but gathering pace, as though he had suddenly found the resolve to defy the management.
He handed it back. "if they want it by the end of the week, we'll have to give 'em three days work. Anything I've scratched, don't do. Funnel all the spares and the casuals to the bits we've got left…MY version of the bits we've got left, and ignore the rest."
The foreman's experienced eye scanned the list of changes. Most of them were…well, irrelevant. But this one, and this here…
"Boss, you've chopped the ES backup redundancies. And the secondary battery…Seamus, this isn't prudence, this is lunacy. Half the backup systems on this ship are going to be missing." His expression was doubtful.
Harper jabbed a finger toward his head. "Does this look like the face of concern?" he shouted, as he stormed off in search of a refill.
---
Trance ran a hand down her face. "As it was, it wasn't too serious. The hull breach was in an empty cargo bay. But if it had been a passenger ship…"
Beka nodded slowly. She understood now. Harper had become a liability to the firm, and they had taken great delight in being able to find such a suitable sacrificial lamb. The insurance firm must have been happy.
"They told him he was lucky he wasn't charged with criminal negligence. He does odd bits of mechanic work now, freelancing at the starport. When the drink money gets low he encrews for someone for a week or so." That last sentence was the first time Beka had heard anything even resembling a dislike for what Harper - seemed - to have become.
"So he's at home more often? Surely that's a good thing. It must have been a bit easier. You know, less stress, shorter days……" Beka trailed off as she saw Trance shaking her head.
"No, Beka. What it gave him was more drinking time." She looked away sharply for a moment, and then began to roll up her sleeve. Beka's eyes narrowed.
"Trance……are those…?"
"Bruises, Beka. Yes." It was amazing, thought Beka. All that she had been through, and still she bore him no malice?
Beka stood so fast her chair nearly fell over. "Where is he? Well, WHERE IS HE!? Because when I find him, I'm going to break his skinny little monkey neck, pull off his head, and throw it out of the airlock." She looked around, challenging every stare with an equally cool one of her own.
Trance rose, slowly. There was still a grace to her movements that time had not diminished, one of the few things Beka recognised as characteristically Trance.
"Come and see him."
---
They returned to the city's central precincts. She led Beka into one of the many tall, shining buildings, and into an elevator. She pressed the relevant button, and they began their ascent, she turned to talk to Beka, the first time since leaving the cantina.
"I should warn you. He won't recognise you, and……and I don't think you'll recognise him, either."
Beka frowned. "Trance. What's going on?"
But by now she had reverted to stony silence again. The doors slid open, and she stepped out without a word. Beka followed behind, taking in her surroundings. As Trance stopped outside a side door, Beka finally put all the pieces together. Harsh lighting, double-jointed doors, white uniforms…there were very few places like that, and fewer still that made sense. Beka took a breath as the door opened, and her suspicions were confirmed.
"He's asleep at the moment. Don't wake him up."
Beka leaned over the bed. Trance was right, she didn't recognise him. His trim frame had run to fat, and the quiff he had so assiduously cultivated was gone, replaced by an expanding forehead. And he was canary-yellow with jaundice.
"Non-viral hepatitis with complications. Its his immune system. The doctor says three weeks….maybe four. Even if he hadn't drunk so hard, it'd still only be even money." Trance moved to wipe a tear from her face, then retired from the bedside.
"Trance…why did you call me?"
"You're the only one left, Beka. Dylan is so busy conquering the universe he didn't even reply, Tyr is playing kingmaker somewhere in Nietzschean space, and Rommie is working on something so highly classified she has to forget what it is before she goes home each night." Now there was resentment in her voice. "You're all he's got, Beka. We're all he's got; his whole family. I just……I suppose I just wanted to know someone still cared."
Beka looked at the balding, middle-aged man on the hospital bed, trying to reconcile him with the cocky young engineer she had waved off at the drift. No matter how hard she tried, she couldn't do it. She shook her head, as though to dismiss some invisible insect, and rested the bridge of her nose between thumb and forefinger.
"I managed to reach his friends on Earth……they say he has a plot there, if he…I…want it. Would he want that?"
Beka looked up. "He never said?"
"We never had the chance. We were arguing when he just…collapsed." Trance looked down and sniffed. "I wish I'd seen it, Beka. I wish I'd looked."
Beka nodded. "I think he'll appreciate it…I really do," she added quietly.
"Good." She looked around the room. It was devoid of the usual hospital room paraphernalia - baskets of fruit, get-well cards, flowers. Beka could see now why she had been summoned. The few deathbeds which she had ever attended were crammed with grieving relatives - well, in her community, normally spacers that shared the same runs, watering holes, and vices, but the principle held - but here there was nothing. Just her, and Trance, and the life-support.
"Beka, I tried so hard……why? Why us?"
She couldn't think of anything to say. There were no words for the day you were hit by the universe's dice, and Gods knew the pair of them had been hit often enough.
"I tried to apologise to him, Beka, so many times, but it never….never seemed to come out right." Trance swallowed, and tried valiantly to blink away the welling tears.
"It never does, Trance. It never does."
---
The rain drummed sullenly on the coffin, and turned the grave site into mud. The small crowd barely numbered double figures, although it had been explained to them that many that wanted to attend couldn't show their faces in daylight. Trance tossed her handful of dirt atop the steel lid, and walked off, leaving the other mourners to do the same. Beka followed her at a respectful distance. Presently Trance stopped, looking at the fields outside the Nietzschean protected zone. Then she crouched, and began to claw at the dirt with her hands. Beka watched silently as Trance produced a plant, burying it's roots in the wet soil, and covering them over again. She stood up, her work concluded. Beka wandered over to join her.
Trance's head was bowed, the tears indistinguishable from the rain that ran off her damp hair. Beka followed her gaze downwards.
The bonsai tree was already dripping, the water running off its stunted branches in streams.
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