No Going Back
part of the Hiatus series, a ST: Enterprise/M7 OW crossover
by Setcheti
Disclaimer: Don’t own Enterprise or the boys from Four Corners, although most of them seem to be happy where they landed.
Author’s Note: When I wrote the third Hiatus story, carrying things over into the Enterprise universe, I never even took into account that one person in particular had everything to lose and nothing much to gain by the switch. I felt like an absolute monster when it finally did occur to me, so all apologies to Ezra for that.
Lieutenant Ezra Standish sat on his bed, in his quarters, and stared out the window at the stars. From time to time he shifted and winced. He’d successfully won the right to stay in his quarters instead of in Sickbay, and he’d successfully managed to convince his captain that he was perfectly fine to do paperwork from the terminal in said quarters as Dr. Sanchez absolutely would not allow him to return to duty until his physical therapy was over.
He shifted and winced again, scowling at the stars that were so innocently twinkling back at him. Somewhere out there, hidden among those pretty twinkles – his mind was happy to provide the exact coordinates for him – was the minefield that had started this whole mess. A floating web of little bombs like ticks in the tall grass, just waiting for someone to pass by so that they could latch on. But unlike ticks, then they would explode.
All except for one. The one he’d tried to disarm or at least detach from the Enterprise’s already damaged outer hull, a task which had landed him in Sickbay with a large hole in his leg and long weeks of physical therapy in his future. The mine hadn’t blown up the ship, though, had in fact thanks to his efforts detonated well off her starboard side and too far away to cause very much more damage, something Commander Wilmington and Captain Larabee had been very pleased about. Although they had been much less pleased with regards to the way he had gone about getting the mine detached in the first place, resulting in a shouting match in the transporter bay which had only ended because Ezra had passed out and so had been unable to continue shouting back at them. Or at least, Ezra thought he had passed out; it was entirely possible that Dr. Sanchez had given him some sort of soporific drug while he had been distracted by the argument he had been so nicely and loudly upholding his end of. Not that he remembered exactly what he’d been saying, but the other two men had looked quite taken aback by it, whatever it had been, which told him that whatever it had been had very nearly won him the argument before the doctor had interfered.
Damn Sanchez anyway. The man had no sense of timing at all.
Someone knocked on the door, and Ezra leaned over and tapped a button on his terminal before responding. “Come in, Commander!”
The door slid open, and the chief engineer stepped in. “Hacked into the security vid system, did we?”
“Ages ago,” Ezra replied, rolling his eyes. “It wouldn’t be seemly for the ship’s armory officer and head of security to be surprised outside his own bedroom door.” He cocked his head. “What can I do for you, Mr. Wilmington?”
The taller man scowled at him. “Friends use first names, Ez.”
In spite of himself, Ezra winced – and not from the pain in his leg. “It wouldn’t be proper of me to call you by your first name until I was certain you were not here on ship’s business, Buck.”
“Fair enough.” Buck ignored the empty desk chair and sat down on the side of the narrow bed, handing over a sealed container. “Brought ya somethin’ from Chef.”
Ezra smiled and took the container, setting it aside on the desk. “Thank you. I shall convey my thanks to him the next time I see him.”
Buck shook his head. “He said I was to stay here and watch you eat it.” When Ezra started to protest, he added, “Or else he’ll tell Josiah and Nate how many meals I’ve skipped this week while I was tryin’ to keep the ship from fallin’ apart.”
“Ah, blackmail. I understand.” Ezra retrieved the container and opened it; the rich scents of vanilla, rum and exotic spice wafted out. “Oh my.”
“That’s his mamma’s own recipe for rum cake.” Buck handed over a titanium fork. “Eat up.”
Ezra sighed – he really wasn’t hungry – but he poked the cake with the fork a few times and then moved some to his mouth. His eyes widened, and he was quicker to take the next bite although slower to chew it – it was too good not to savor. The cake was still gone in a remarkably short period of time, though, and the armory officer set the now-empty container aside and slumped down a little more with a sigh. “That was amazin’.”
Buck nodded. “Chef’s damn good at what he does. Oh, and he told me to do somethin’ else while I was here, after you’d had your cake.” A raised eyebrow invited him to continue. “He told me to ask you why you gave up.”
The other man snorted. “Dr. Sanchez and Captain Larabee have already gone over that subject with me multiple times, and I will give you the same answer they received: I made a logical decision based upon the situation as I saw it and the information available to me at that time. Feel free to pass that along verbatim to anyone who asks. I will not apologize for tryin’ to save this ship and everyone on her, thank you very much.”
Buck rolled his eyes. “I know that,” was his exasperated response. “And so does Chef, apparently, because that was what I told him and he was real specific that that wasn’t what he was talkin’ about. So I’ll ask it again and be more specific: Why’d you give up six months ago, Ez?”
Ezra’s eyes widened…and then he looked away. “I did not…ah just accepted the reality of the situation,” he said. “It had been over a year, Buck. I knew we weren’t goin’ back.”
“Bull,” the engineer said flatly. He scooted closer. “I’d noticed somethin’ around that time too, but I’m ashamed to say that I just let it go. And then Chef told me what he thought and I realized he was right, and I shouldn’t have let it go – I made a mistake there and I’m sorry.”
Ezra shook his head. “This has been a big adjustment for all of us...”
“Yeah, but you’re the only one who lost out on the deal. You lost your family, your wife.”
The words were gently spoken but they still fell like an axe, and Ezra flinched again. “It’s not like she’s dead. Mah Juliet is perfectly fine, and…” he sighed, “and she’s happy.”
“And you know this how?” Buck raised an eyebrow. “Because tellin’ yourself pretty stories ain’t your way, so someone else had to have told you, someone you’d believe. Wasn’t that Daniels, was it? ‘Cause I don’t trust that sneaky bastard.”
“No, it was not Mr. Daniels – ah wouldn’t trust him any more than you would.” Ezra was silent for a long moment, and then he shook his head. “It was Jesse.”
Buck started…and then he nodded, accepting that. If anyone from their own time and place could have come up with a way to contact a man out of time and on a starship, it would be Jesse McLaughlin. “Yeah, okay, I could see that happenin’. And he contacted you how, and told you what?”
An elegant hand waved toward the terminal on the narrow desk. “He called me, just like anyone would– anyone here, anyway. He told me…” His breath hitched slightly in his chest, and Buck saw one of his hands clench into a fist. “He told me he hadn’t wanted me to go on worryin’ about Juliet, not once he knew we weren’t goin’ to be comin’ back. He said mah counterpart is good to her, even loves her, and…and they were expectin’ their first child.”
This time it was Buck who flinched. “So she didn’t remember.”
“Jesse said that she did at first, most likely because she herself was already temporally displaced as well, but that her immunity to the effect lasted for less than a day.” He looked at his hands. “He also said to let you know that as soon as our counterparts had fully settled in, JD turned over his position as sheriff to Captain Archer and went to Texas to join the Rangers. He is apparently doin’ quite well there.”
“Good to know.” Buck had been worried at first when he’d realized that JD hadn’t come with them, so he was happy to hear that the young man he’d thought of as a little brother had done all right without him. He sort of wanted to ask why Ezra hadn’t shared that news earlier – like six months earlier – but he was pretty sure he knew why. Grief was a private thing. Buck was still more than a little pissed at himself for not thinking of it and getting involved earlier, though. “I’m sorry I didn’t notice you weren’t as all right as you wanted everyone to think you were, Ez. I know some of it’s the job, security is tough that way. I’ve read through Trip Tucker’s personal logs. He counted Malcolm as one of his friends, but he said the man didn’t make friends too easy and between that and the professional distance he needed to keep between himself and the crew he was pretty lonely a lot of the time.”
“He was. Now he’s not.”
“Nope, now he’s not.” Buck took a chance and reached out to cover the tightly clenched fist with his own larger hand; he was reassured by the fact that his friend didn’t shake him off. “But now you are, ‘cause you took his place.”
“Well, there’s nothin’ to be done about that.”
“Nope, there ain’t.” Buck squeezed the hand he was holding. “But that don’t mean you don’t wish there was, Ez. And that don’t mean that sometimes you don’t just want it to all stop.”
Ezra’s jaw set. “Ah am not suicidal,” he snapped.
“Nope. Just sad.” Buck let go, gave the hand a pat and stood up. “I would be too, if I’d just lost my wife – six months ain’t a very long time to mourn a woman like that.”
The fist clenched even tighter under his hand. “It’s not like she’s dead.”
Buck shook his head. “She is…to you. Might be better if you thought about it like that instead of tryin’ to convince yourself that you’re all right with things because you know she was safe and happy.”
Ezra’s head snapped up, suspicion in his green eyes. “Was?”
Buck shrugged. “It’s the twenty-second century, Ez – we came from 1871. We’d have all been dust in our graves by now, if we hadn’t got switched out. Those boys who were here before us, Trip and Malcolm and Captain Archer, they’re all long gone. Personally, I think that’s why we couldn’t switch back once we were here.”
The other man just stared at him…and then he nodded, slowly, and Buck saw his fist unclench. “You know, ah do believe you’re right. Ah…ah hadn’t thought of it that way.”
“I’d imagine you were tryin’ not to think of it too much at all. Can’t blame you there,” Buck opened the door and stepped through it. “Feel better, Lieutenant. Oh, and you didn’t hear it from me that Starfleet’s givin’ you a commendation for riskin’ your life to save the ship and everyone on her from that mine. Captain only bitched so much at you because he don’t want you or anyone else to get the idea that he wants you to take risks like that.”
“Ih realize he has to maintain discipline in the ranks.” Ezra nodded again. “Thank you, Commander. Ah appreciate…everything.”
“Anytime.” And with a cheery wave, Buck let the door close. Ezra stared at the door, then back out at the stars…and then he swung his legs off the side of the bed and sat up, wincing. He called up his personal messages, found the one he wanted, and after only the barest second of hesitation, deleted it. “They’re all dead,” he said to himself. “But ah’m glad she died happy…and him as well.”