Malcolm and Hoshi: The Missing Scenes

Borderland

When your best buddy’s as happy as mine is, you’re supposed to be happy too, right?

Right.

And he’s happy.  As happy as I’ve ever seen him.  Sometimes I catch the little look that flashes between him and Hoshi across the Bridge, and I almost expect the air to start sparklin’.

Well, I know that’s kinda fanciful. I’m not big on poetry really; that’s more his line.  His la-di-dah English education probably had loads of that stuff: Tennyson, Byron, Keats, Blake ... the sort of guys who probably went to the same sort of English public school he did.  Bet they even had the same annoyin’ accent too.  Spoke out of the tops of their noses, probably because they were usin’ the rest to look down on the rest of us poor mortals.

Not that Malcolm does that.  Oh, to start with I think he had a few issues, but that’s just Malcolm, and even then I knew that if it came down to a brawl he was the man I’d pick to have watchin’ my back for me.  But hell, he was so unhappy.  Wound up tighter’n a watch spring in one of those antiques they sell for fortunes back on Earth.

And that’s what I’ve always hated the worst about the memories of that time in Shuttlepod 1 when we thought the rest of the crew were history.  Those goddamn letters he dictated.  The sheer desperation to feel like he’d meant somethin’ to somebody.  If he’d stripped his uniform off and walked round the shuttle butt-naked I’d have seen less of him.  And I was havin’ enough problems of my own without listenin’ to Malcolm Reed’s bared soul bleedin’ into the shuttle logs ....

Weird, how things change when you don’t even feel the ground shiftin’ under your feet.  Back then I was the happy one, with everything to look forward to.  Okay, when I got that letter from Natalie it wasn’t good for a while, but I got over it.

But things went wrong, so wrong, and I can’t point to any one place where I could’a done differently and made everything okay.  I know.  You’re gonna say ‘The Cogenitor’, and well, I’ve had loads of time to think about what I did, but I’m not sure I was as wrong as Jon made out.  I saw somethin’ that made me mad, somethin’ that was just a rank injustice, what was I supposed to do?  Just turn round and say hey, it’s just the way they are, it doesn’t matter?  ‘Cause it always matters.  Maybe I should’ve thought harder, maybe I should’ve seen the way things were bound to pan out.  But even then I’m not sure I could’ve just said nothin’, left things to take their course.  Not after seein’ the way she ... the way she came to life, like a plant bein’ taken out of a dark cupboard an’ watered an’ put on a sunny windowsill.  I had to try.  I’m just sorry she was the one who ended up payin’ the price for it.

The thing with Sim.  Want the truth?  I’m still tryin’ to get my head around that.  Sometimes I think I remember things, and I don’t know whose memories they are, and it just freaks me out ‘cause there’s no-one I can talk to about it.  I tried once, with Phlox, but he got so damned upset himself I didn’t go again.  But then again, he was Sim’s father in every way but the biological one, and then at the end he had to kill him to save me.  I can only guess what that did to him, however hard Jon was leanin’ on him – and the Expanse killed Jonathan Archer, at least the Jonathan Archer who used to be my best pal.  I guess all the others had their own problems with it too, I asked Malcolm about it once but he shut up like a clam and said he wasn’t qualified.  Seems to me it freaked him out pretty badly too.

And it’s all messed up with T’Pol.  Who told me herself Sim kissed her, right in her cabin where she used to give me neuropressure.  Jealous of myself.  Right.  Like that’s goin’ to help me get things sorted.  Though when she dropped her robe, I stopped bein’ jealous, because for one glorious night I actually thought she’d finally admitted she felt the same for me as I did for her. 

But let’s not get carried away here.  I’m a lab rat.  Someone she chose for her little ‘experiment into human sexuality.’  An’ as if that weren’t enough, I’m the hopeless jerk she takes home to meet her Momma and then tells she’s goin’ to marry someone else, right there in front of him.  Jeez.  Charles Tucker III, you sure picked a winner this time.  An’ the worst thing is, I’d still die for a single smile from her.  Except that now she’s a married woman, someone else’s married woman, and if you ask me that Koss is an oily, self-satisfied sonofabitch, and if he doesn’t treat her right so help me God I’ll hitch a damned ride to Vulcan if I have to and beat his face through the back of his goddamned head.

So there we are.  How things turn around.  Just like one of those see-saws kids play on in the park: Malcolm up, me down.  And I swear, I’m tryin’ my best not to envy him, because if anyone deserves it he does.  But it’s so hard, when there’s not enough to stop me thinkin’ these thoughts that go round and round in my head, and she’s there and it’s worse than if she wasn’t because I can’t lay a finger on her now.  Even the neuropressure’s out the window, however much I might need it.  Because that’s not the sort of thing you do with another man’s wife.  No matter how wonderful it was.  Especially because of how wonderful it was.

Sometimes I get the feeling he wants us to talk.  He’s not a talker, Malcolm, and right now he’s got enough on his plate with having Soong on the ship takin’ us God-knows-where after those Augments he created all those years ago.  Arik Soong is a modern-day Houdini, and the responsibility for keepin’ him shackled all belongs to Malcolm and his team.  I don’t envy him that.  It’s about the only thing I don’t, these days.  But still, sometimes I think he tries to work himself up to some kind of heart-to-heart thing with me when he can find the time; though I always make some kind of excuse and walk away.  He means well, if that’s what he’s after, but I wouldn’t be able to handle it.  I’m still ashamed when I think of how I bawled him out for tryin’ to help after Lizzie died.  No wonder he’s reduced to droppin’ these worried, awkward little hints about bein’ there if I want a chat about anything.  But he can hint away – for both our sakes, I’ll just go on ignorin’ them. I’d probably just end up punchin’ him, just because he’s so goddamned lucky and I’m not.

Yeah, how the world turns.  Never known anything like it.  And the only thing I’m certain of is that it’s only goin’ to get harder and harder, carryin’ on like nothin’s changed and nothin’s wrong, and the woman I love didn’t go and marry someone else right in front of me.

Well.  I’m copin’ with it for now.

But how long will it last?

You tell me.