Title: If Needs Be

Author: Hey, that's me! cressidablue

Fandom: Andromeda

Pairing: Harper/

Rating: R for language (yes, I mean it!)and implied slash

Archive: Hardly worth the effort, but if you really wanna...

Disclaimer: Don't own 'em, didn't create 'em, making no money off 'em, putting them away when I'm done playing, OK?

**************Did I mention the bad language?*****************


If Needs Be
by cressidablue

How the fuck did this happen?

It wasn't supposed to be like this - the two of us sitting here with only the Maru's odd little noises to break the silence. Guess that's OK, cause I sure as shit don't know what he expects me to say. Wants me to say...

"Thanks for saving my ass?"

Probably. He's still arrogant enough to demand it. Right now I just don't care. Right now I can't feel a damn thing, and I'm absolutely fucking positive that being numb is good - no, it's the *best* thing - for me. It's Trance's perfect possible future...Seamus Harper gets to feel nothing at all. God, I wish it was true...

*

I've been watching his hands as he tries to absorb it, to make sense of the unfathomable. Harper is an unusually tactile person whether he recognizes it or not. I have often thought he might have made an excellent musician had Fate been less capricious with him. Now he is utterly silent, the expressive hands as still as his voice. I would think him a ghost were it not for the shining trail of tears that has been steadily trickling for the last hour. Harper lives, I have no doubt of it, for the dead feel no pain.

There is little I can do for him now. The others are gone. Andromeda floats across the Denari Nebula in a mass of charged particles, her once beautiful hull reduced to a few shining clouds.
It was the last thing we - he - saw before escaping our attackers, and much as I would wish otherwise I cannot raise the dead.

For now I can only put distance between us and the carnage. I have seen no sign of pursuit as of yet. Perhaps they will not even come after us...they were so utterly focused on the destruction of Andromeda. It would appear that such single-mindedness is a mixed blessing. I cannot regret our survival but I will mourn for his loss.

He would have stayed to fight - pointlessly, as it turns out - despite Beka's pleas and Dylan's orders. It is not in him to turn away from those he loves. I must believe that I am still among those few. This is my last hope, the truth to which I cling.

*

"What the freakin' hell were you thinking?"

That'd be a good place to start except he never explains, not to me. He'd do it for Dylan though, sometimes. Mostly 'cause he was afraid of getting kicked off...or more likely of getting kicked off before he could take control of Rommie.

Rommie..
Beka..Dylan..
Trance...

All right, here's a question for you, Tyr -

"What do I do now that every other person I love has been blown to hell?"

*.

Until today I had never touched him in anger. This was a line we did not cross until our last few minutes on the ship when he was so determined to throw his life away. He would undoubtedly have fought to the end without hesitation or fear. I robbed him of the decision, however, in that moment when I struck him down with my bare hand.

He has not looked at or spoken to me since just before we entered slipstream. There must be a way to bring him back across the void...I would welcome his anger. Anger means pain - and pain means life.

END PART 1
TBC