Waking Up
a short tag
for Minefield
by Setcheti
Disclaimer: Paramount owns
them. They don’t deserve them, but they
own them just the same, more’s the pity.
Author’s Note: This little
bunny actually didn’t bite me because of the episode it’s a tag for, it clamped
onto my ankle while I was watching one of Charlie’s wonderful music vids. Many thanks to
Malcolm swam up out of the depths of anesthesia and surfaced to find
himself propped on his right side and very comfortably padded all around. He was so well cushioned, as a matter of
fact, that he could hardly move at all.
Not that he had any inclination to move at the moment; his body felt
pleasantly heavy, as though he’d just woken from a very good sleep. Which he lazily supposed that he had, as he
didn’t recall there being any cushions around before…
Movement in front of him registered, and he lifted his eyes without
moving his head to see his captain peering at him intently. Archer’s face broke into a smile, and Malcolm
smiled back automatically albeit drowsily.
“Cap-tain,” he murmured by way of greeting.
“Hello to you too, Lieutenant,” Archer replied. “It’s good to see you awake again,
finally. Do you remember what happened?”
Malcolm frowned slightly, thinking.
“Weren’t any cushions before.”
“No, that there weren’t,” the captain agreed, a touch of amusement in
his voice. “Do you remember why?”
Okay, that question was harder and the armory officer’s frown deepened
as he puzzled it out. An idea came to
him. “They would have floated away?”
“Now we’re getting somewhere.”
Archer looked away from him, behind him.
“Doctor, he’s waking up. Is he
supposed to be this out of it?”
“Oh yes,” said a new voice. Dr.
Phlox, Malcolm identified, the voice stirring a vague recollection of capable
hands poking something cold that hissed into the side of his neck and making
the pain go away. Hmm, pain, there had
been quite a bit of that in the place with no cushions, hadn’t there? The doctor was still talking. “Between the painkillers, the muscle
relaxants and the remnants of the anesthesia he’s going to be ‘out of it’, as
you put it, for some time to come. I’ll
start backing down his medication tomorrow, though.”
Medication? Ah, the stuff
that made the pain in his leg go away, good stuff that. Except that if he was lying down it must be
coming into him through an attachment of some sort, and Malcolm hated to have
things attached to him. He frowned again
and focused on his very comfortable body, and sure enough detected an
attachment on his left arm; the frown became a dismayed scowl when he realized
there was also another attachment someplace else. That was not a place to attach anything, nobody wanted something attached down there…
He didn’t realize he’d murmured the complaint aloud until he heard
Archer chuckle. “No, nobody wants
something attached down there, Malcolm.
But since you can’t get up right now I think you’ll be a lot more
comfortable if we leave it where it is, all right?”
Malcolm thought about that, couldn’t make sense of it and so decided
just to agree. Archer was his captain,
after all. “I suppose,” he sighed. He realized his eyes had somehow gotten
closed again and opened them back up, blinking.
Seeing Archer’s face looking down at him brought forward another blurred
trickle of memory. “Mine? There was a mine.”
Archer nodded. “There was a
whole minefield, and one of them stuck itself to the ship and didn’t want to
come off – it pinned you to the hull along the way, do you remember that?”
“Hmm…” More thinking, and
decidedly difficult it was but he managed it.
“Oh yes, remember that,” Malcolm finally said, closing his eyes again to
recover himself after all the thinking. “Nasty thing. Had to save
“Now that’s what we need to talk about,” Archer said. “Lieutenant, do you remember what you tried
to do to save the ship? Do you remember pulling a hose off your
helmet?”
“Of course.” Malcolm
started to open his eyes back up and then decided they were too heavy from all
the thinking to bother about that way again at the moment. “That’s a silly question,” he accused scoldingly.
There was a pause, and then his captain’s voice said with just a touch
of sarcasm, “Well I don’t think it is, I think it’s
pretty important so let’s just stick with it for a minute, all right? So why don’t you tell me why you tried to
kill yourself out there on the hull?”
Malcolm snorted softly. “Silly,”
he accused again. “Didn’t want to kill
myself, had to save
“I know all about the mine,” Archer interrupted him, his tone sharper
now. “I was there, remember? And for a man who didn’t want to kill himself
you made a damned good job of trying, Lieutenant, and I want to make sure it never happens again.”
A warm hand settled on the side of Malcolm’s face, patting gently but
insistently. “Open up your eyes and look
at me, Lieutenant Reed, that’s an order.”
Oh dear, an order. It took him a
few tries, but finally with a lot of effort Malcolm managed to get his heavy
eyelids to cooperate; he was rather surprised to see his captain’s face very
much closer to his than it had been before.
“Yes sir.”
The warm hand stopped patting and settled into stillness. “Lieutenant Malcolm Reed,” Archer said, very
firmly. “You are not to ever again
attempt to commit suicide for the good of this ship or anyone on her, do I make
myself clear? I understand why you
thought you should this time; the doctor has told me that you were in shock and
not entirely thinking clearly so I’m not going to punish you for what you tried
to do out there yesterday, but I want your word that you won’t ever do that
again, ever.”
Malcolm just stared at him, a muzzy feeling of panic welling up in his
chest and inexplicably rising into his eyes at the look on his captain’s
face. Archer was angry…at him? Yes, that was it. The muzzy feeling rose some more and made his
eyes feel too full, near to overflowing; he didn’t want his captain angry at
him, could he make it stop? Archer
wanted him to give his word, would that make it stop? Malcolm hoped it would. “Promise?” he ventured nervously. “I p-promise?”
He breathed a sigh of relief when the anger vanished, but he wasn’t
sure the look that replaced it was any improvement. “Oh God, I didn’t mean to…” Archer now sounded upset and his hand moved to
wipe at something wet on Malcolm’s face, his touch making the wetness change from
warm to cool. “I didn’t mean to upset
you,” Archer all but whispered. “I
should have waited…but you scared me so bad out there, I think you took ten
years off my life. Don’t cry, it’s okay.”
Cry? Malcolm didn’t cry, he never
cried, but he dismissed his captain’s mistake as unimportant at the moment in
light of more pressing considerations.
“Not angry with me anymore, Captain?”
“No,” Archer answered quickly.
“No, I’m not angry with you any more, you don’t
need to worry about that.” The captain
himself looked worried, though. “Are you
comfortable, do you want anything?” Malcolm
thought about it and blinked up at Archer hopefully; the captain apparently
read his mind, because he laughed and patted Malcolm’s cheek again before
withdrawing his hand. “Nice try, you
must be taking begging lessons from Trip and Porthos
– but the ‘attachment’ stays on, sorry. Anything else?”
Malcolm thought about it for a minute, but that made his eyelids heavy
again so he shook his head against the cushion that was supporting it so
nicely. “Perhaps
later, sir.”
“Later it is, then,” Archer agreed pleasantly. He stood up and stretched, then leaned back
down close to Malcolm’s ear and murmured, “I’ll come back tomorrow with
pineapple, okay? Pineapple ice cream, how does that sound?”
Pineapple always sounded good, Malcolm thought, but it was one thought too many and it over-weighted his eyelids so that they slid closed with finality. He licked his lips, though, and vaguely heard Archer chuckle before the cushions closed in on him and made him far to comfortable to even consider thinking any more. His captain wasn’t angry with him now, and although they still had that crying mistake to clear up Malcolm was certain they could do that another time – after the ice cream, he would make certain to get the ice cream first before informing Archer he’d been wrong. And with that he drifted back down below the surface of consciousness again, a small, devious smile tugging at the corner of his mouth.