Nothing Is Ever Free

*** En route from Colchester to the Summer's Gift ***

Joshua sat quietly in the hard seat of the cockpit near Nika, the silence only broken by the sounds of their breathing and the occasional beep of an instrument. He wasn't sure how long they had been sitting there... how long it had been since they had left Rick behind. He couldn't feel anything right now. Was it grief? Or was it the lingering lack of humanity that came from playing the role of a Blue Hands agent? He hadn't borrowed Zelle, but even that short period of time left him feeling distant and emotionless. Maybe it was a good thing not to have emotions right now.

He looked over at Nika, focused on flying the small sleek ship. He wasn't even sure she had looked at him since he had told her to take off. He hoped she understood.

Time held no real meaning once they were in pulse in the Black. Heading set for the rendezvous point, all Nika had to do was let the ship go. Which of course meant that she had time to think. Time she didn't want. The tears that coursed silently down her face through the whole evacuation had finally dried, leaving her eyes gritty and the skin of her face tight. Her throat felt as if a basketball were lodged in it. Her heart ached with hurt.... and doubt. With her head leaned back on the headrest of the seat, her blue eyes held a faraway look as she stared out the viewscreen of the shuttle into the emptiness of the Black. She could feel the occasional glances Joshua threw her way. She could feel the silence of Rina and Arden at the back of the shuttle weighing on her as well.

Finally, quietly, Nika spoke. "You made the right decision, Joshua." She didn't know if he was worrying about it, but it seemed like it needed to be said.

"Yes." He said it calmly and quietly. Of all the things he doubted right now, that decision was not one of them. Rick had known what he was doing and had made a choice. In a time when the crew had been making very few of their own choices, he wasn't going to invalidate Rick's choice by doubting it. As he thought about Rick walking away with Zelle, he could feel a lump in his throat and a weight on his shoulders. He was starting to feel again. Remember, hurting means living. It means being real.

He looked over at Nika and he could almost see her sadness hanging on her, weighing her down. He had been so angry with her. She had basically told him that she didn't trust him. Or his abilities.

I'd trust him more than I'd trust you reading her! Her voice echoed in his mind just as it had echoed in the cavernous data vault. But that anger wasn't there anymore. Maybe it would surprise him and come back. But for now, it had been banished by his duty to keep the crew safe and by his grief, now creeping up on him. And keeping that anger wouldn't do anyone any good.

"He knew, Nika. *She* knew and *he* knew and he chose that path. I'm sorry that I couldn't tell you."

"I should have known too," she admitted wearily. "I should have known when she refused the glove when I tried to hand it back. There was no way they were going to run the gauntlet of soldiers without it. But I didn't want to believe they were actually going to sacrifice themselves."

Nika paused and looked at him. "Did she tell you? Or did she let you read it from her?" Her tone was matter-of-fact as she asked. "You've never been able to read her well before, but... I imagine she had to drop those shields or whatever the mental equivalent of letting you into her head is so that you could take on her mannerisms."

Her eyes turned back to the Black, grief lacing her words. "I don't know if I could have made the choice to let them go. I don't..." She choked a moment. "I don't know if destroying the information was worth their lives, Joshua." Doubts about the mission, about the importance of it when weighed against her people's -- against Rick's life -- they all swirled through her head, creating a maelstrom of ugliness in her thoughts.

Joshua leaned forward in his chair and looked at Nika even as she looked away, his tone as matter-of-fact as her question. "I read it from her with her mind open to me. And then I asked her directly." As he answered her, the scene on the catwalk played out in his mind.

"Not planning on coming back?" Joshua looks Zelle straight in the eyes.
She shakes her head. "The bomb timer isn't working. We'll have to set it off up close."
"Does he know that?"
She nods. "I told him earlier."
Looking for confirmation, he asked, "And he's okay with this?"
She nods again and Joshua stares at her for a moment, the coldness of becoming what she used to be already setting in. "Okay."
She looks at him and says, "Your friends are going..."
He cuts her off firmly. "I'm not going to tell them."

He sat back again and put his face in his hands for a minute. When he spoke again, his voice was muffled and low. "I don't know, Nika. All I know is that Rick thought it was worth it or he wouldn't have made that choice." His hands moved up to press against his eyes in a desperate attempt to hold in the massive headache he felt coming on. "You trusted Rick before. Don't stop trusting him now."

His body language told her that he was starting to hurt -- though whether it was emotional of physical or both she couldn't tell. Truth be told, she could feel the pain of being laser burned starting to seep into her own conscious awareness now that they were away from the adrenaline-fueled escape. But the shot Arden had given her would carry her a while longer. She studied him while he wasn't looking and when she finally spoke, her words were gentle and her tone dead certain. "The mission was important enough to put off our escape attempt to try to put the information out -- we all accepted that when we made the choice to go for the transmission tower. Getting the rest of the crew out required someone to stay behind, and Zelle couldn't have done it alone. Rick going.... made sense. Not because of his emotional ties but because I trusted that if she was doing the right things, they'd watch each other's backs all the way out. And if she was screwing with us, he'd have killed her."

She paused for a moment and murmured softly, "And I trusted you to get us out. I trusted you to do what you've been trained to do your whole life -- to play the role that we needed you to play and to play it well enough to fool them all." Nika's smile barely quirked the corners of her lips and it held bitterness and pain as she looked toward him once more. "Handing over command of the mission to you wasn't simply a matter of necessity, Joshua. Before you came here, I would have simply brazened it out.... and I'd have gotten us killed too."

She sure talked a good talk, didn't she? Heh... what was it Shyla said? You're never sure of yourself -- you just have to fake it real good. For Joshua's sake, Nika blocked everything out to fake it for him. Her own doubts were for the privacy of her quarters, her tears for another time. As always.

"Turn your seat around," she said suddenly, shifting the topic. "This is your first real flying lesson, kiddo. Because I need a backup pilot, and I need you to actually know -- not just have taken the skill by watching me, but to really know it in your own head -- how to fly."

Quietly, Joshua sat there taking in everything she said. And she talked about trusting him, the thought hit him like a hammer and he tilted his head up and out of his hands in surprise. He trusted them. He let Rick go because he trusted him to know what was best. And because the crew trusted him to get them out, he gave his trust to them. Was it really that simple? Maybe it was. Time to show Nika that trust.

He turned his seat around and faced the console. The mass of instruments was certainly intimidating but it wasn't beyond him. He nodded at Nika, working hard to ignore the growing headache.. "I'm ready, Nika." As he paused, he put some weight behind the next word. He wanted her to understand that if she trusted him to do his job, he trusted her to truly fill the role that she had taken on herself.

"Captain." And he waited for her to teach him what he needed to know.

Go back to Timeline, Season Three
Go back to TIMELINE