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Demons of Perfection - a Triptych
1.
Silently, glowing jaSepp spore rose around May, a swarming attack landing on an unsuspecting Tilly. Startled, she cried out sharply at the burning stings, dropping her laser rifle to grab at her neck and doubling over into Michael's supporting grasp.
Diversion successful, May snatched up the rifle, leaping on and off the bed as she charged towards the other side of the room. Distance from the two women would be good, but she needed that unobstructed sight on her target.
"No! Please, don't do this!" the not-Tilly woman pleaded, reaching out in a desperate gesture May considered totally ineffective.
Scowling, she shifted her grip on the weapon, finger on the trigger. The shouting, as bad as the monster's howls, irritated her, adding to her anger and the need to kill the monster. Anything to bring peace back to her world.
"Hey!" Tilly's voice broke through the other woman's shouting. "Hey, May, put it down."
"I told you, it's killing us!" Now even Tilly was against her?
Expression hardening with determination, May's focus on her target becomes absolute. She would free the jaSepp from the monster, no matter how Tilly pleaded. Her friend had promised to help. Promised! And now that promise was broken. She laughed at how the monster cowered and wept and tried to hide. Its whimpers and sobs meant nothing to her. How dare it feign suffering when it was the one slaughtering her kind?
The man who dared shelter the monster straightened from his protective crouch even as the monster continued to cling. Turning towards her with arm raised and fingers splayed, he made a futile attempt to present a larger shield against her weapon.
May didn't care.
Her weapon's fiery beam caught the man high in the chest, topping him back into the monster.
She watched, satisfied, as the monster cried out in wordless shock, stunned at her action. She smiled as it scrambled back, feet pushing and sliding against the floor until it was pressed against the divider, staring numbly at the unmoving body of its protector, at the deep wound cratering the still chest.
Ignoring the screaming women, May claimed her vengeance, standing proudly, illuminated by the growing cloud of spores. Now, the monster belonged to the jaSepp.
~ ~ ~
Horrified at May's action, Tilly stumbled back, crying out as Hugh wailed in anguish. She could only watch as his tenuous beginnings of hope fled, torn away in a single brutal action. Whatever had kept him fighting for existence in this beautiful, mysterious hell had died with Paul, the last of his sanity cracking.
Hugh gasped for breath, a sobbing inhale two, three times, before he left his useless shelter, hesitantly crawling to Paul's side. His shaking hand, two fingers extended, rested on the side of Paul's neck. A desperate act from a once skilled physician. A futile act from a grieving partner.
Vision blurring with her tears, Tilly saw an eerie calm settle over Hugh. His breath calmed, face going blank, so incredibly unlike the terrified, weeping man they had found just minutes ago. His dark, amber eyes briefly met hers - though she knew he didn't really see her - before returning to Paul, laying so still on the floor. Another moment, then Hugh pushed against the wall, unsteadily getting to his feet.
Tilly wanted to run forward, to cry out, plead, anything to stop him. But she was held, as she knew Michael was, paralyzed by the scene playing out before her.
His eyes still - always - on Paul, Hugh shed the stained and tattered remnants of what had once been pristine medical whites. Brushing against bared arms, he shed the clinging pieces of his yeel bark armor. Only now his eyes lifted to May and he stepped into the swarm of waiting jaSepp.
2.
"Come on..." Eyes pinned to the cocoon, Paul nervously shifted his weight from side to side, shaking his head as he willed the chrysalis to open, willed it to give him his miracle. "Come on, come on."
The seconds passed, time slowed in his impatience. Finally, the first faint wisps of blue mist rose. The wisps grew, gradually thickening into a wave, curling up from the top of the pulsing cocoon and rolling down as it split and expanded down the midline. The brown mass collapsed, crumbing with a wet gurgle, oozing through the deck's grating.
Tilly's sob of "Oh, god!" was lost in the sudden roaring in Paul's ears. He fell to his hands and knees, strength gone as an unending numbness consumed him, becoming his world.
The cocoon was empty.
3.
*Please, let this work! Not much time for the ship... Hurry...oh, hurry. *
Michael anxiously watched Paul, weight shifting for balance as they tried to keep their feet with Discovery's shudders. He was trying coax a reluctant Hugh, reaching out with loving eyes, a soft, encouraging smile and an outstretched hand. She couldn't see Hugh's face - his back was to her - but she could see his posture softening, just a little, at Paul's confident "I'm right here." Elbow still tight against his body, still defensive, Hugh cautiously reached out, taking Paul's hand and allowing himself to be pulled forward.
She saw Paul's blue eyes go wide in shocked disbelief, smile fading into horror as he looked down at his now empty hand, the barrier impenetrable to Hugh. A faint sob, barely a breath of sound caught in in the throat of one man - or both - tore at her.
"I can't, Paul. I can't go with you." Hugh pulled back, his voice broken and desolate.
Paul was shaking his head, the hyper movement signaling his distress, refusing to believe what his eyes were telling him. What Hugh was telling him.
'Burnham, it's now or never!' Pike's insistent voice broke the tableau.
"Please, sir!" They were close, so close. "Please! Just another minute!"
"Now, Commander. That's an order. I will not risk the ship, the rest of its crew, any longer."
Discovery rocked hard as if in emphasis, the wounded ship sinking further into the mycelial network.
Michael felt herself falling back on her training, detaching emotionally from the tragedy playing out before her. Grabbing Tilly's arm in a forceful grip, she shoved her friend - too shocked to resist - into the spore cube and they fell back into their own reality.
"We're clear Captain!"
A breath and the ship lurched, beginning its retreat.
Michael turned, looking back at Hugh, her vision blurring as her tears fell at his agonized sorrow, his resigned acceptance as the salvation that had been so, so close fell away. Knowing his fate and with his own tears falling, Hugh stepped back, increasing the distance between them
"NO! HUGH!"
From the corner of her eye, Michael saw Paul lunge towards the spore chamber, matching Hugh's retreat with his own movement forward. The ship rocked again, the tug between the realities now reversing in earnest. In fits and starts, the mycelial network began to recede.
"You have to let me go."
Paul's howl was anguished. "I can't lose you twice! I won't."
Before Michael could react, Paul was diving through the barrier, feet tripping over the cube's far doorway.
~ ~ ~
"Paul, no!" Hugh caught the stumbling man, even as he tried to push him back to safety. "If you stay, it will be twice as deadly for the network. You have to go back!"
Grabbing Hugh's arms, Paul redirected the intended momentum into a pull closer and they collided. He wrapped his own arms around Hugh, holding tight and refusing to be budged.
"It's okay," he soothed, ducking just a little to look into the eyes that had captivated him over so many years. "It'll be okay." His gaze shifted towards the barrier, its surface turbulent waves of movement. "I won't leave you again."
Hugh's eyes followed to where Paul was looking, horrified to see how far the shimmering wall had shifted, to see it no longer bisected the spore cube. They were both now trapped in the network.
"Paul... why...?"
Paul calmed Hugh's protests before they could be voiced, hands cradling the familiar lines and curves of neck and jaw, thumbs caressing over the unkempt beard and the dust of yeel bark. "There is another way," he whispered fiercely, willing his life's partner to understand. "We'll be together and the network will be safe."
The barrier lurched closer. Yet Paul didn't retreat, didn't try moving them towards safety.
"We'll be together," Paul repeated.
And Hugh understood. Looking deeply into the beloved blue eyes, not letting anything else intrude, he smiled wistfully, grieving for what could have been. "I love you."
"I love you, dear doctor," was Paul's murmured response before he captured Hugh's lips in a searing kiss, celebrating what they shared.
Together.
~ ~ ~
Maintaining her hold on Tilly wasn't easy, the younger woman squirming and struggling, tearing at Michael's restraining grip as she tried to reach Paul, tried to keep him from crossing back to the mycelial plain. Her hold became aggressive, betraying her own fear as she saw Paul embrace Hugh, saw them both look at the approaching barrier before returning their gaze to each other.
"Tilly, don't look... Please, don't look."
Burying her hand in the red curls, she pressed Tilly's face against her neck, holding the sobbing woman tight. "They're together," Her voice breaking as Paul and Hugh kissed, she knew she was trying to convince herself as much as Tilly. "Remember that, Tilly. As they wanted... as they needed, they're together."
Only Michael bore witness to how tightly the two men clung to each other, leaving no space between them. Only Michael saw the barrier flowing over them, saw the raw transition between realities warp and deform their bodies. Anguished and her strength fleeing, she fell to her knees, taking Tilly with her.
Lost in her grief, she didn't notice Captain Pike's arrival a few minutes later, had no care for the medical team right behind him. She didn't feel the calm as Discovery was freed from the mycelial network. Her arms were still around the sobbing Tilly, her eyes still locked on what had two bodies, now fused into one.
~ end