FIC: Catharsis (Andromeda)

[fandomfrom3]

[mood| pissed off]
[music| ]

TITLE: Catharsis
RATING: PG. Language. Alcohol. Talk about sex. Angst.
DISCLAIMER: Don't I just wish? Gene Roddenberry's Andromeda and all related characters and plots belong to Robert Hewitt Wolfe, Tribune, Majel Roddenberry, and a bunch of other people besides, none of whom are me. Various music by the Pogues, Flogging Molly, and Dropkick Murphys, who are also not me.
ARCHIVE: Just ask, I'd love to give permission, but I like to know where my babies are spending the night.
SUMMARY: Catharsis: Any cleansing or release, as of pent-up emotions. In the aftermath of "Bunker Hill", Harper and Rommie bond.
SPOILERS: Anything up through "Ouroboros" is fair game. There are direct references to "To Loose The Fateful Lightning", "Into The Labyrinth", "All Too Human", and, of course, "Bunker Hill".
AUTHOR'S NOTES: Starts shortly after "Bunker Hill" and ends at the beginning of "Ouroboros". "Bunker Hill" left a lot of unanswered questions. I did my best to answer them.
My first multi-part fic. The parts are short, but there are several of them! Eleven as of right now. Myna is pressing me to add more.
As always, much love and thanks to my beta, Myna/Allie/niki blue/rah rah replica/etc.
Please read and review.

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Holo-Andromeda appeared on the Command Deck. "Captain."

Dylan Hunt looked over at the manifestation of his ship's AI. Dealing with Elsbett and the Sabra-Jaguar in their war with the Drago-Kazov had left him feeling tired. Wiped out. He did not need another crisis, not now. "What is it?"

"It's Harper."

"What about him?"

"His vital signs are all accelerated. Heart rate, respiration—privacy mode is engaged, so I can't tell any more—"

Dylan's gut clenched instinctually. "Do you think it's the larvae?"

"No," a voice said behind him.

He turned and saw Rommie standing there, arms folded behind her back, an unusually pensive expression on her face. She must have come in while he was talking to Holo-Andromeda. "What?"

"No, I don't think it's the Magog," she elaborated. "He's...he's probably just upset about what happened on Earth. I could...talk to him for you. If you'd like."

Dylan paused, thinking that over. What the hell. It would mean he could avoid facing the quietly miserable engineer for a while longer. "Permission granted, Rommie."

She inclined her head slightly. "Thank you, sir." That said, she turned militarily on her heel and walked off the deck.

He watched her go and wondered if he was imagining the note of sarcasm in her voice.

 

Seamus Harper might have enacted privacy mode, but the music coming from his quarters was loud enough to be heard down the corridor. Rommie grimaced and adjusted her audio sensors until the noise was at a tolerable level.

She reached his quarters and knocked, emotionally preparing herself for what she might see. He might be grieving, for Earth in general or for Brendan Lahey in particular, and she couldn't blame him for that. He might be furious and she couldn't blame him for that either, they'd messed up and his planet was paying the price.

She was not prepared for the doors to open on him clearly drunk, a bottle of beer in his hand and a too-wide grin on his face, old Earth music pounding at maximum volume through the room.

She had one response for it, though.

"Harper, what the hell?"

 

Harper was too cushioned in his alcohol haze to take offense at Rommie's accusing tone.

"Hey, Rom doll," he said, proud that he was barely slurring at all. "Want a drink? I raided your stores, I got beer, whiskey, Scotch, I got some tequila somewhere...Whatever you want, if it's alcoholic I pro'bly got it here..."

"Harper, you're drunk," she said with an overly patient tone.

"Yes, I am," he admitted. "But—but I'm not so think as you drunk I am, Rommie." He laughed.

She ignored that, but her face softened a bit. "Harper, can I come in? I'd like to talk to you."

"Captain Terrific send you?" He didn't wait for her to confirm or deny. "Sure, come in. But ya gotta drink. That's the only rule. Nobody comes in to not drink. Gotta drink. I'll get you a beer. Still wanna come in?"

Seemingly underwhelmed by his steady stream of words, she said, "Yes," stepped inside, and accepted the bottle he shoved into her hand.

Suddenly uncomfortable with facing her, Harper spun around and started digging through the pile of junk on his bed, singing along with the pounding music. "And it's lend me ten pounds, I'll buy you a drink, and mother wake me early in the morning..."

"Harper, what's going on?"

He turned back, his hand closing instinctually over the tin whistle Brendan had returned to him. When they were kids they had loved those damned whistles. Probably the closest thing they had to 'toys'. Then his parents...

And now here it was again, and it felt bizarrely familiar cradled in his palm.

Rommie was staring at him expectantly.

Right. She'd asked a question. "Uhm, what?"

She repeated it patiently.

"I'n't it obvious? I'm getting drunk, singing, and I'll even dance if you dance with me, baby." He leered at her half-heartedly. She didn't smile back, so he started rooting around for something else to drink.

"What is this?" she asked. "Your way of dealing with grief? Drink until you can't remember why you're grieving?"

"No!" He paused, then admitted, "Well, yes. Yes and no. Not the way you think." He was already getting a headache trying to think of how to explain it.

 

Rommie moved over to sit gingerly on the edge of Harper's bed. Everything stank of alcohol. "Then what 'way' is it?"

He appeared to be thinking it over, then sighed. "You won't understand."

"Try me."

He pointed at the bottle in her hand. "Are you gonna drink that or do I hafta kick you out?"

She grudgingly took a sip. It tasted disgusting. "What 'way' is it, Harper?"

"Uhm." He drummed his fingers restlessly on the bottle of beer in his hand, in perfect time to the song now blaring. Finally he said, "Rom doll, Boston funereal rites can be summed up in one phrase."

Leave it to Harper to refer to funereal rites when his blood alcohol level was well over the legal limit anywhere in three galaxies. "What phrase is that?"

"Sex, drugs, and rock 'n' roll." He jerked a thumb towards the speakers currently blasting out Flogging Molly's 'If I Ever Leave This World Alive'. "I got the rock 'n' roll." Then he held up his beer bottle and tugged at the inhaler hanging from around his neck. "I got the drugs." Then he leered at her again. "All I need is the sex, so ya wanna help me mourn?"

"Harper." She said it sharper than she'd intended and his face fell. She silently cursed herself; she knew he hadn't been serious, so why was she being so harsh with him? She tried to soften her voice. "Harper, what are you talking about?"

"Boston wake," he mumbled. "Celebrate, don't regret. Throw a party so they go out not with a whimper but a bang..."

Rommie understood, or thought she did. "This is your version of a funeral for Brendan, isn't it?"

He turned away, wouldn't look at her, took a long draught from his beer. "Part of it. Biggest part. Maybe eighty percent of it is Brendan's wake."

"And the other twenty percent?"

"So when in doubt just call my name," Harper sang softly along with the music, "Just before you go insane, if I ever leave this world, hey I may never leave this world, but if I ever leave this world alive..."

"Harper! What's the other twenty percent?"

"The other twenty percent is my wake. You want some whiskey?"

 

Harper found a mostly-full bottle of whiskey and handed it to Rommie. She stared at him.

"What the hell do you mean, this is your wake?"

He snorted. "Rom doll, no 'fense, but I know this damn crew. And you guys will not throw me a wake when I die. You will throw me a funeral, a spacer funeral, where you all stand around and cry and talk about how much you miss me and lie through your teeth about what a great guy I was."

"What—"

"And there's nothing wrong with that," he hurried on before she could finish talking. "Except I'm not a spacer, I'm a Bostonian, and I want a Boston wake so I'm throwing one for myself—"

"You're not going to die anytime soon," she said stubbornly. "We'll find a cure for the larvae—"

"Oh, wake up, Andromeda!" His alcohol-soaked temper snapped and he threw his beer bottle at the wall. It shattered with a lovely CRASH! He glared at Rommie and said, "We're not gonna find a damn cure. Trance and Rev aren't even trying to find a medical cure anymore. Trance is rushing off to away mission after away mission and when I told her I was going to start looking for scientific help she asked me when we would start. Rev has barely been onboard the ship since my infestation! The only hope for me right now is that damned tesseract technology from the dimension-shifting succubus babe, and hell, I'm getting nowhere on that! I don't understand it and I can't get any farther on it than I have already!"

Rommie looked down at the bottle of whiskey in her hand, and then took a drink from it. "I'm sorry, Harper."

He laughed mirthlessly. "Don't be, it's, uh, it's kind of fitting, actually."

"How so?"

"Last two members of the family, Brendan and Seamus. Brendan dies a hero's death, which fits 'cause he was always the idealistic hero of the family. Seamus dies a coward's death which fits 'cause he's always been the family coward..."

"You're not a coward!"

He sank down to sit on the floor and stared at his hands instead of having to look at her. "I ran away, Rommie. Again. I ran away again. Brendan was right. I am a coward."

 

If Rommie had blood, it would be running cold. "I made you leave," she pointed out. She'd had to threaten him, actually, telling him that if he wouldn't come willing she would break his legs and drag him to the Maru, because she would not lose another member of her crew.

"Doesn't matter. I left. I screwed up. Brendan died because I screwed up. Millions of people are dying because I screwed up."

"Harper—"

He interrupted, scrambling back to his feet, talking too fast. "Hey, what the hell kind of wake is this, anyway, babe?"

She closed her eyes briefly. "Harper—"

"Going nowhere with my life," he bellowed along with the pounding music, "Careening toward an early death, a streetwise man, on the corner every night...So brace for impact, brace for impact, brace for impact, why don't you brace the end is coming, no time for running..."

"Harper!"

He grabbed her hand, tugged her to her feet, and started dancing with her, still yelling lyrics. "Dealing drugs to little kids, a streetwise man, selling death and making cash, pulling scams and moving bids, a streetwise man, society has called my bluff tonight...So brace for impact, brace for impact, brace for impact, why don't you brace the end is coming, no time for running...The end is coming, no time for running NOW!"

"HARPER!" Rommie shouted, grabbed him by the shoulders, and held him still.

He scowled at her. "What?"

"You weren't the one to screw up. That was Dylan."

Harper laughed, sounding on the edge of hysteria. "That's mighty funny coming from you, Rom doll—"

"Just because he's my captain doesn't mean I can't see him as he is, and in this case he messed up badly. He put the Revolution on an impossible timetable and then discovered he couldn't make it—"

"Yeah, and about that, did he hafta send Tyr? Was he trying to insult the Revolution?"

Rommie had to smile at that. "I have to admit the thought crossed my mind as well." It hadn't been Dylan's brightest move ever, sending a Nietzschean to deliver news to a group of Nietzschean slaves engaged in a war against the entire species.

Harper didn't smile though. He pulled away from her, sat down on the bed, and buried his face in his hands. Finally he said, "I hate him, Rommie."

"Dylan?" she said softly.

"He runs off to help anybody and everybody whether they want it or not, hell, whether they need it or not. We needed it, we wanted it, and we were willing to help him in exchange which is more than most...recipients of his generosity are willing to do." Harper's bitterness and sarcasm were almost tangible.

Rommie winced. "He screwed up, Harper, but—"

"But Earth isn't strategically valuable. We're never going back there, Rommie, you realize that? Dylan's never going to spare a second of his attention for the slave planets again. Hell, he probably thinks of us like he thought of GS9 whatever—bunch of dirty uncivilized uneducated homicidal kids who maybe one day will be 'mature' enough to join his Commonwealth, but damned if he's going to help us get there."

"He doesn't think that!"

"You sure?"

She closed her eyes.

 

Harper felt bad for hurting Rommie's feelings—he knew how sensitive she was about Dylan—but he had to make her see.

"Earth doesn't matter," he mimicked the captain in question, "Unless we make it matter. Jeez, why didn't I figure him out right then? Like the Terrans never considered revolting until Captain Fantastic and his pretty little starship—sorry, Rom doll—came along and suggested it?"

"That's not what he meant—"

"I saw the look in his eyes," he said softly, probably barely audible under the pounding rock but he knew her enhanced senses would catch it. "It's the same damn look spacers always have when they talk about us. Like they're thinking 'Why don't those stupid little mudfoots get up off their lazy asses and fight their own battles instead of asking for help all the time?'"

"He doesn't think that!"

Her voice sounded too shrill. He knew that tone; he'd programmed it into her so he'd know when he was getting to her. "I've seen that look a thousand times, Rommie! I've seen it in the eyes of every spacer who refused to give a guilder to a half-dead six-year-old begging on the streets. I've seen it in the eyes of every spacer who hung around and watched while one of my friends got beaten to death for stealing food from the dumpsters. And I saw it in Dylan's eyes when he sent us back there. 'If you want freedom for Earth, Harper, you're gonna have to fight for it,'" he mimicked bitterly and took another swig from his bottle.

Rommie was silent. For a long moment, the only sound in the room was the Pogues singing 'Down In The Ground Where The Dead Men Go'.

At last he broke the silence. "It's not that we won't fight for our freedom, Rommie, you should know that, you saw us out there fighting and dying—"

"I saw."

"But we got nothin'. We're fighting a war with nothing but rocks and bottles and...and Shrillers and Molotov cocktails, and the other side has nuclear warheads and guns and warships. Our troops are a bunch of sick, starved kids, and they're strong and healthy and genetically engineered to kick our asses. We can't do it our own, we would if we could, but we need help."

"I know."

"And nobody's going to help us." He drew comfort from his beer. "We're going to die still slaves."

Rommie clearly had no answer to that.

He forced a laugh. "This has to be the most depressing wake I've ever been to, and trust me, I've been to a lot."

"Fine," she said softly. "Is there anything I can do to help make it less depressing?"

He was surprised by the offer but tried not to show it. Well, she had been getting a lot more individual lately, growing separate from her core AI, becoming warmer towards people in general and the crew in particular. He considered the question. "I dunno. I think if we just stop talking about everything that's wrong and start having a real party that'll make it better."

"Deal." She stood up, took his hand, and pulled him to his feet. "Let's dance."

 

As Rommie danced with Harper, she thought about what he'd said and about how to cheer him up.

He was, in all probability, right. Dylan would never return to help free Earth. Why, she wasn't certain, but she knew that the captain had given up on Terra.

Harper would never be the same as he was before, she knew that too. He would recover, but he wouldn't be the same. And he would only get the chance to recover if they found a cure, and that was looking less likely every moment.

She wanted so badly to earn one genuine smile out of him tonight. Not the bitter smirks he'd been flashing since she'd entered, not the fake and too-big grins he used when he wanted people to think he was okay—a real smile.

'Drunken Lullabies' ended and they drew apart. Harper started searching for more alcohol.

"What's a real Boston wake like?" Rommie asked. "Any difference?"

"Uhm." He stopped and thought about it. "We'd be, uh...we'd hide out in a subway tunnel or something. There'd be a lot more than two people present—We didn't have such a great selection of music, but we had some, and we had more moonshine than whiskey. At least two people would have sex, usually more. There would be minor drug use, like industrial solvents because that's really all we could afford. We wouldn't talk much, but we'd dance, and we'd party, and at least one person would do something crazy and stupid because it seemed like a good idea when they were drunk. Hey, have you ever noticed that things that seem like a good idea when you're drunk and at a party turn out not to be such a great idea when you've left the party and sobered up?"

She had to smile. "Not firsthand, but yes, I've observed that that's often true."

"Still, lots of fun."

She considered this new information. Then decided to do something she'd been considering for a while, anyway. "Something crazy and stupid, huh?"

"Yep."

She shook her head, activating the nanobots in her hair. Harper had used a strand of Beka Valentine's hair in building her, and one of the side benefits to that was the color nanobots. "How's this?"

Harper immediately burst out laughing, a sound she delighted in. He hadn't laughed, really laughed, since the Magog worldship. "Rom doll, that is perfect," he hooted. "That is...just...perfect."

"You like?" she asked, pleased.

"Yeah, now you got this pixie...anime...Old Earth punk sort of thing going on. Very sexy. I approve."

"Pixie anime Old Earth punk," she repeated, amused. "Thanks, I guess."

"Sorry, it's just...not everyday that I'm confronted by a warship with electric blue hair." He cracked up again.

She shrugged, not bothered by his amusement. "I've been wanting to make a change in my appearance...sort of discern between me and my core AI. Particularly since what happened on Mobius."

"Makes sense." He took a drink from a bottle of Scotch, looked at her, and started laughing again. Then suddenly sobered up and said, "Hey, you wanna dance again? This is a song we always played at wakes. Another wake, another time, a premature goodbye," he sang along, "I've watched you grow and I've seen you pass, I always knew it wouldn't last..."

Rommie arched an eyebrow, but stood up and joined him.

"Together now we mourn the loss and remember all the fun, we'll drink the beer and hangout where death took another son, so all for one and one for all do we ever wonder why, though reasons clear, this friend so dear was taken before his time..."

She hesitantly joined in singing, drawing on her databanks for the lyrics and the melody.

"So may this round be on the corpse of a dead man, with a toast that tells of a love you never shared, so as we dance on the grave of the misbehaved, raise your glass and sing the praise of a fallen soul...Many bow their heads for this man they knew so well, with solemn thoughts they drink and drug for a resurrection, (Facing death you fear no danger), while Mothers shed their tears through a veil of desperation, these fiends of vicious breed raise holy hell..."

Harper spun her around, belting out lyrics, and she couldn't stop grinning as she reflected that, morbid as this tradition sounded, this was probably the happiest she'd seen him since the Magog worldship.

"So may this round be on the corpse of a dead man, with a toast that tells of a love you never shared, so as we dance on the grave of the misbehaved, raise your glass and sing the praise of a fallen soul...How many times can fate be chanced, the dice be rolled, is their no path of least resistance for the bold, (Never sought and rarely taken), shocked and dismayed at how it stole his life, when this fateful course of action takes its toll...So may this round be on the corpse of a dead man, with a toast that tells of a love you never shared, so as we dance on the grave of the misbehaved, raise your glass and sing the praise of a fallen soul...So may this round be on the corpse of a dead man, with a toast that tells of a love you never shared, so as we dance on the grave of the misbehaved, raise your glass and sing the praise of a fallen soul..."

 

Harper smiled to himself, watching Rommie dance with all the enthusiasm and grace of any Bostonian woman. If he couldn't die at home, this was damned sure close enough.

"Now let's all gather round in our costume suits and ties, telling now this soul was a source of inspiration, (Love him now, he lives no longer), but you never tell the tales of the times you turned your back, on this friend who never found the righteous path...So may this round be on the corpse of a dead man, with a toast that tells of a love you never shared, so as we dance on the grave of the misbehaved, raise your glass and sing the praise of a fallen soul..."

As the last strains of the song faded out, replaced by the Pogues' "The Body Of An American", Harper collapsed melodramatically on the floor. Rommie snickered down at him. "What's the matter? Worn out already?"

"Laugh it up, doll, just remember that I'm the one with the death sentence."

Her smile disappeared. "Listen, Harper—"

He groaned aloud. "Look, if you're going to get morose every time I bring up death, I'll throw you out now. This is a wake. The point is to laugh about death."

"Fine, I won't 'get morose'. But if you want me to laugh about your death...I'm sorry, Harper. I can't do that."

"Yeah, yeah, yeah." He cleared his throat awkwardly. "Listen, back in Boston, I had this friend. This girlfriend, actually...anyway, she used to say that before she died, she'd slaughter a Dragan honor guard to see her to hell in style."

"And...?"

"And when I die," he said, "I want you to get the sons of bitches for me."

Her face was the picture of innocence. "I can do that, but which sons of bitches would you like me to 'get'?"

"Magog. Nietzscheans. Spacer slave traders. I don't care. Just get them."

Her voice was soft, barely audible over the Pogues. "It's a deal."

"Good. Now let's try to remember that this is a party?" He made himself grin at her.

"You have any more whiskey?"

He found an intact bottle and passed it to her. "So one more promise, Andromeda, and then we'll party without any thought towards tomorrow."

"What promise is that?"

"Before you die, you make sure that Earth is free."

She closed her eyes for a long moment. Then: "I promise," she said before taking a long drink from the whiskey bottle.

"Then let's party."

 

When Andromeda broke through privacy mode the next morning to summon Harper for duty, she discovered what looked like the remains of a war zone.

Harper was sprawled on the floor among empty and half-full and broken bottles, peaceably passed out. Rommie was just sitting up on the bed, her expression making it clear what she thought of hangovers.

The android scowled down at the unconscious engineer. "Damnit, Harper, why did you have to program me to be hung over?"

"Presumably," Andromeda said, her face flickering onto the console screen, "So that you would remember not to get drunk next time."

"Ha ha."

"What is going on with your hair?"

Rommie ignored that and said, "I'll make sure Harper makes his shift."

Andromeda's stern visage softened a bit. "Is he all right now?"

"Better. Getting there." Rommie hesitated, then said definitively, "He will be."

 

Later that day, Beka sought out Harper and found him attempting work on the tesseract machine.

"You look pretty good for a guy who drank himself to unconsciousness," she greeted him.

He flashed her a grin. "One of Trance's miracle analgesics. Does wonders for a hangover."

She took a seat next to him. "From what I hear—"

"Ship's gossip?"

The good captain ignored that. "—you and Rommie had yourselves a wild night."

He smirked thinly. "You shouldn't always believe what you hear."

"Harper, she has blue hair."

He had to laugh.

"Was that your doing?"

"No comment."

Beka opened her mouth to press him for answers, but before she could say anything Holo-Andromeda flickered in before them. "Harper, Beka."

"What is it, Andromeda?" Beka asked wearily.

"Your presence is requested on Command Deck. We've just received a message from Rev Bem, and I think the entire crew should hear it."

Harper shrugged, flashed an oddly false grin at the two of them. "Come on, Boss, I'll walk ya to Command."

END