He betrayed me. The man I trusted with all of my heart and soul ripped them from me with the calm precision of butcher ripping apart a piece of meat, and all in order to save himself. Then he left me to go on without him.

A detached sense of betrayal is all I can bring myself to feel as I stumble into my cabin. The lack of motion is making me queasy. If I could keep moving, like I have for the last God-knows-how-many hours, I could keep the abyss at bay, the overwhelming numbness, the darkness that I have starred at so many times since the Xindi attack on Earth, lifted to untold heights by his absence. He's allowed it to step into that gaping hole in my soul he left when he decided to go.

I would have liked to take the Doctor's offer of a sedative, a meager compensation for the order to stop moving and sleep. It would have been good to find another dreamless drug-induced slumber, to remind me of my precious coma, but I need to stay alert in case my crew needs me.

I can't even drown my sorrows in a bottle of Kentucky bourbon; he's robbed me of the privilege to play the part of the drunken survivor as much as the part of Romeo. They might need me on the bridge or in Engineering any minute now, after all. It wouldn't due to have a drunken and desperate Commander, no matter how much I deserve it. No, he's taken away my right to grieve for him. Not when there's so much to be done.

No one else on this ship knows. And that's another burden he's left for me. I'm the only one who knows the real reason he chose to abandon us all. He was deteriorating, weakening, cracking under the pressure. We could all see it, but no one had the courage to do anything about it. I might have, if I wasn't so entrenched in a siege with own personal demons. I was too busy crying out for him to come save me that I didn't hear his own calls for help.

I was gradually getting there though. T'Pol's neuropressure sessions and Malcolm's steadfast dedication to our friendship were helping where he couldn't. I was just beginning to dig myself out of my own pit of despair when it happened. When he betrayed me for the first time. No, he betrayed us both, because it was both of our undoings. He created Sim. We might have pulled out of this if it weren't for Sim.

Jon knew my position on "extraordinary means" he knew goddamn well I didn't want to be a vegetable living on life support the rest of my life or living with half my brain and him growing old wiping drool from the corner of my mouth, but is this any better? To put another death on my head, he's incapacitated me as much as if he had left me vegetative. As if I didn't have enough to deal with after Lizzie, and the cogenitor, he added Sim to the ghosts that haunt me, without my consent.

I thought Jonny loved me enough to let go. That he, of all people, would realize that there's only so much that one man can take, only so many ghosts before they start to weigh him down until he sinks straight through the floor into his own personal hell. I said no "extraordinary means" when I signed Jon as my executor, the closest we could ever come to formalizing a relationship that not even Starfleet knew about. Tell me how sacrificing someone else's life is not fucking "extraordinary means."

I don't remember being in a coma, it would beyond the bounds of even this malevolent universe to do that to me. I do know how waking up felt. It felt as though I was being dragged from infinite peace. I know it was the best sleep I'd had in a long long time. I know I resisted more than I have ever resisted waking up, that opening my eyes was one of the most painful things I've ever had to do, and that it was the first time I ever remember hating Jon, even if it was only for an instant as his form was the first to punch itself through the fog of pleasant dreams. I suppose I could hate him now, for leaving me like this, but he's taken even that away from me, along with all other ability to feel.

I supposed I should have confronted him about it afterwards. It was the first betrayal. If I had know that that wasn't rock bottom, I would have done something to make sure it didn't happen again. The signs that it would were all there, if I could have dragged myself out of this new pain of living to notice. I remember the conversation now, in hindsight.

It was the day Phlox released me from sickbay, a bandage on my head and a little unsteady on my feet. He left Jon with instructions to make sure I rested and a couple hypos worth of his happy juice. That was the first time I'd ever seen Jon disobey a direct order from his CMO, because I didn't get any rest, even though I wanted it.

It was the first time we had been able to make love in maybe a month, and Jon did all of the work. His touches were so delicate, reverent even. He found every part of my body and worshiped it as though he were feeling it for the first time. Part of me wanted to see the old Jon, passionate and tender and still amazed that he managed to get together with pretty-much-straight Trip Tucker, but there was a sadness in his shinning eyes that betrayed him. I thought he was so attentive because almost losing me had made him realize how valuable I was, a kind of rebirth for both me and our relationship, but now I know that even if that was partially the case, it was as much a lengthy goodbye as a reintroduction. He was memorizing how I felt so that he could take part of me with him to the afterlife. I think my near death showed Jon that we really didn't have that much time left.

When it was over and I just wanted to close my eyes to this new searingly heavy world, Jon had held me in his arms and told me, "Trip, I didn't realize . . . I don't think I could live without you. I've never been that scared before in my life, and you know I've been faced with a lot of scary things. It felt like an almost physical pain, seeing you lying there unmoving. I swear, my heart stopped beating. I'm going to be an old man soon, but you're still so young and full of life. You can't die before me. You have to promise me Trip; you have to promise that you won't die. I couldn't live in a world where you're gone."

Of course, I couldn't promise him, we were far beyond the days of impossible promises and suicide pacts. Hell, our lives were never even ours to promise. The only thing I could only say was, "I love you, Jonny."

"I love you too, Trip, but I'm serious. I couldn't live without you. You are not allowed to die first." I was too tired, too world weary to respond, to tell him that no matter what happened we needed to keep going because there were always things higher than our love. Apparently he was much more serious than the post-traumatic desperation I took it for. I underestimated the lengths to which Jon was willing to go to stop me from dying before him, the selfish bastard. Did he ever stop to consider the kind of burden he was going to be laying on me? As if it would be any better for me because I had known from the beginning that he was ten years older, that when we were old men, I might have to watch him die? Yeah, maybe at when I turned 100 and he turned 110 I would be at peace with it, but not when he's barely over 40! That's 70 years wasted, seventy years that were mine as much as his, that he decided to pay down so that he wouldn't have to watch me die.

And I should have died. Anything would be better than this life of constant suffering, where the blows keep coming, not even waiting for me to get back on my feet. I guess Jon had similar thoughts when he chose to pilot that mission. No, my time had come, and Jon ripped me back from the precipice of eternal peace.

I read Jon's so-called report; it was more like a justification. He said that Earth needed Enterprise and Enterprise needed me, and for Earth, Sim had to die. I'm sorry, Jonny, but that excuse doesn't work anymore. Sim was a human being, hell, Sim wasn't me, but he was just like me. Jon wouldn't have killed me for Earth. He wouldn't kill Travis either, that's why he went himself, even though Earth needed him to live more than either of us.

No, the thing Jon didn't put in his report was that he needed me. He needed me, even if all that was left of our relationship was a shadow, because somewhere deep down he still hoped that I would be able to save him from himself. Well, I didn't. I let him fold and then I let him dump the wake of his debt to life firmly in my lap. But Sim had to die before all that.

Jon might have even benefited if Sim had turned out like me. Sim was more of the old me, the one before Lizzie died. Sure, Sim ended up with my memories, but he also knew what life was like on Enterprise before he knew of Lizzie's death. He remembered her, but it was like a dream to him, she never existed as part of his reality. In a way she was as irreconcilable with it as my relationship with Jon was irreconcilable with the detached father figure Jon played in his childhood. No, Jon would have had a less na•ve but less distraught man in his life, one not lacking in the technical skill to save Enterprise (at least according to both T'Pol and Malcolm). Hell, I'm not even sure if I would have come up with a similar solution. Sim spent his entire existence thinking about that problem, of course he would have thought of it differently, even with all of my memories. And Jon might have let Sim live, might even have let Sim save him, except Sim was different from me in one immensely important way: he never fell in love with Jon. Sim was as naturally inclined to be straight as I am, and he didn't look beyond that to fall for Jon's dedicated romanticism one rainy San Francisco December.

I know is sounds almost ludicrous, but even are spending nearly a third of my life in a homosexual relationship, I'm still not even sure if I'm bi or not. I've never actively checked out a man either before or after my relationship with Jon. It's not that I love him in spite of his gender, it more as though our love transcends everything physical all together. Not that some of the physical stuff isn't really goddamn fun. It's just that when I'm with Jon, or was with Jon, I guess, it's that I'm with the person I love, not with a man.

Apparently I'm even immune to the charms of Malcolm Reed, which I once heard Jon extol quite extensively in a fit of drunken but casual jealousy. I would have been angry that he didn't trust me, but I just couldn't stop laughing at the idea of Malcolm and I together. Even huddled together in that freezing shuttlepod it never once occurred to me. I dutifully asked Jon if I was the one that needed to see Malcolm as a threat. He only laughed and said that Malcolm was too young for him, and that opened up a whole different can of worms (I'm only a few years older, though I liked to think I didn't look it). Luckily for him, Jon was too shit-faced be getting any that night anyway.

I wouldn't lie and say that T'Pol might not have been more of a threat. I could never control my body's attraction to her. But I think that any remotely heterosexual male with eyes would have the same problem. I know Jon did. We laughed off our mutual attraction towards her with a lengthy discussion of what exactly a relationship with a Vulcan would entail, and wondered if it would include threesomes. Ironically, my body won't even respond to that now. Or perhaps it does, and just like everything else, I can't feel it.

Like I said before, Sim wasn't me. As they say, hindsight is always 20/20, and Sim was blessed, or perhaps cursed, by it. He saw Jon as he is now long before he found my memories of he and I together. And he saw T'Pol too. Then, objectively, knowing everything about how they are now as well as how they used to be, he chose differently. I know that there's no way I could know what reality would have been like if I met T'Pol when I was young, before I met Jon. Would I have fallen in love with her then too? Granted, we never would have been forced into the circumstances that have lead us to grow close, which allowed, or perhaps forced, her to show me the part of her that I do love.

But that's where Sim and I differ. I love T'Pol as a friend. But still, when she told me about their little flirtation, I couldn't help but wonder. Sim chose T'Pol. Perhaps if I wasn't so entrenched in my bias, so afraid to change from the world that I've know for nearly a decade, if I could find some objectivity and see Jon for who he has become not the man I fell in love with so many years ago, maybe I would choose differently.

Some people call me impulsive, Jon included, but as much as I love exploration, I really am a sucker for the comforts of home. I would gladly spend a couple of days on an alien vessel getting to know their engines, and eating their food (as long as it's not essence of the male), but I like to come home to a hot shower and a slice of pecan pie. As much as it pains me, maybe my relationship with Jon turned into that somewhere along the way. We've grown so much together than we can no longer exist apart. Despite the hardships, I've consigned myself to this path. I'm simply incapable of change, of loving anyone else, so I've got to hang on to the love I have, or had, because it was the only thing keeping me human. Jon was my last chance at redemption and now he's gone.

It hasn't been easy recently. Since we got on Enterprise we had to tone down our relationship, tone it down to the point that I would consider myself lucky if we spent a couple nights together a month (by together, I mean in the biblical sense). We did the friend thing more, because it hurt less that way, I guess. And that was hard, but not nearly as hard as it's been since the Expanse.

All those sleepless nights when I wished Jon would be there to hold me through the nightmares . . . what I wouldn't give to wake up one morning in his arms, rather than having to interrupt what little natural sleep I can get to sneak back to my quarters before the early morning rush. And now, I'll never even have that simple pleasure ever again.

Still, I can't bring myself to cry. I can't break down now. Jon knew this when he gave me the order. He planned it that way, because there's only one thing that could come between us now, when our souls so inextricably intermingled. It's called duty. When we first got together nearly ten years ago, we swore that rank would never get between us and we would never get in the way of duty. I look back on those sweet promises made in blissful post-coital haste, and laugh. How badly have we broken them? Hell, Jon's done everything he promised me would never happen. Rank is the final driving wedge between us, but Jon doesn't have to experience it. He doesn't have to deal with the fact that he ordered me to let the love of my life die and to continue on without acknowledging it, or the fact that he ignored his duty and mine in so doing.

I told him he couldn't go, that he wasn't allowed, but he only heard his lover and his best friend, begging him not to leave him. He didn't hear the officer who would have been his second in command telling him all of the reasons why the ship needed her captain. And now, as I can feel his absence as palpably a gapping hole in this ship as the hum of the engines or that missing nacelle, I know that the supposedly unfeeling officer in me was right. So I guess Jon has joined the ranks of ghosts that haunt me.

Unlike the others though, he's left me with more than just survivor's guilt. He's left me with duty. He bequeathed the same crushing burden to make those tough decisions, with the fate of an entire planet riding on your shoulders, only multiplied a thousand times in the passing. He's left me with a crew disenheartened by the fact that their leader, the one who they trusted to see them through this as much as I did, has given up on them, seduced by the peace of a hero's death. He's left me to repair the one part of the ship I can't fix: it's soul. But most of all, he's left me with his memory: the memory of how much I loved him.

It's ironic how the very thing that came between us is the only tool I have to keep fighting the war he deserted. Duty is the only thing I have left now. It that gives me the will to take in that next brave breathe. It keeps me from dissolving into a puddle of tears, or just plain dissolving, flying out the nearest airlock to join a field of space dust as unfeeling and lost as this walking corpse. I've got nothing; I am nothing.

Jon didn't even leave me the luxury of stepping out like he did. Hell, even T'Pol has abandoned me to her own rampant emotionalism. The two people out here that I most trust have left me with the lives of an entire crew in my hands, when I'm a hairsbreadth away from cracking and have been teetering on the edge for months now. And to think, leaving Earth's orbit, I was the one the shrinks were talking about, the loose cannon that had everyone creeping around me on tiptoe, as if I were a tripwire laying wait. Universes ago I might have laughed at that pun. And now, I'm the one that everyone puts their trust in to finish this mission.

Surely they can all see the hopelessness in my every movement. I feel transparent, a ghost. They must be able to see in the shadows under my dull eyes that I believe that we won't get through this alive, that maybe I don't want us to. Only because Jon has closed that door. If I can't go on, Jon's doomed them to fail with me.

They've lost Jon, they couldn't stand to lose me too. Besides, I'm not about to dump this all in Malcolm's lap, the way Jon dumped it on mine. At least I can bring myself to care enough not to do that to my friend. Or perhaps it is just another kind of martyrdom. I'm stuck in this limbo, with half my soul already amputated by the Gods of suicidal heroism, I might as well keep this great burden from falling onto Malcolm while I'm here. That's the least I can do.

Suddenly the door chimes, though I can't even give it the courtesy of jumping in surprise. I realize that I haven't even turned to lights on. I've just been staring out at the stars all this time. My voice comes out a raspy whisper as I ask whomever it is to come in. My natural inclination would be to hole myself up with my desperate thoughts and wallow until I can find some meaning in all this, but this visit could be important.

In fact, I can tell by the taunt but graceful form that seems to rush toward me in the blink of an eye that it is. My new second in command here to update me on the state of repairs, no doubt. When he just stands before me, features in shadow, I bring myself to question him with a sigh, "Yes, Lieutenant." My voice sounds as though it's a million light years away. I barely recognize those sterile tones.

His voice is no more than a whisper, "Oh, Trip," he says, and launches himself into my arms with the stealth and swiftness of a large cat. At first I stiffen, strengthening the walls of duty and trying to push the Lieutenant away. Starfleet never assigned me the duty of grieving. They never told my perfunctory armory officer to come in here and break down my shielding. They don't even know that I would have a reason to mourn the loss of my heart.

But from the way Malcolm's gripping me now, not letting me push him away, he must have known. As much as I tried to protect him and his career if what we were doing ever got out and they found that he knew, I guess I couldn't hide from such an observant security officer and such a good friend. Even after I played up all my encounters with those alien women, even went out on the prowl with him, he knew. I allow myself to feel a sliver of affection and awe that Malcolm would care enough to break down his tough-as-nails exterior to come and comfort me now when our professionalism is dearer than ever.

And that little crack, that slight glint of emotion, quickly widens to a great fissure in the numbing ice that has kept me on my feet and functional since he left us. Before I know it, the last line of resistance has fallen, and the emotions are surging forth with the force of a tidal wave and I'm clinging to Malcolm desperately, my lifejacket in this overwhelming tempest, staining and wrinkling his already soot covered uniform with tears and anguish.

"My God, he left me." I manage to sob between heaving gasps, "I loved him and he left me. He's not coming back, Mal."

Malcolm just lets me cry and rubs comforting circles on my back, whispering soothing words in my ear, "I know, Trip. But we're going to pull through. We're going to make sure that his sacrifice hasn't been in vain."

And I know it's not fair. I shouldn't put the burden of my worries on Malcolm, but he's shown me a lifeline, and I can't help but take it and pull. I might take him under with me, but Malcolm's too strong for that. He's the strongest man I know. Funny, I used to think that about Jon. Now, wrapped in his arms, I know that Mal's stronger than us all, and that, with him by my side, I'm so much stronger than I am alone. Perhaps that's the mistake that Jonny made, he refused to share his burden. "I don't think we can."

"We can Trip. This is crew is the most dedicated, the best, and they've got a great man to lead them."

"I'm not a great man, Mal."

"We'll follow you to the end of the universe, Trip. We can feel your pain and we'll do anything to help you. You just have to give tus a sliver of hope. Coming from a man who's lost his sister and his lover, a glimmer of hope can light the whole world." He pushes me back so he can look at me. His eyes are so stern, unyielding, but infinitely caring. "You have to believe we can do this, Trip."

Somehow, looking into his eyes, I believe. Not because of logic or reason, but because I believe in Malcolm. He must see something of my belief in my face because he gives me one of his rare half smiles. And, suddenly, I know why Jon used to say that Malcolm was beautiful.

His crystal clear eyes reflect the starlight as honestly as the embodiment of justice itself. His hair is sweaty and tangled, but fine and delicate, empty looking without fingers running through it, the lock falling in front of his eyes beckoning me to brush it away. And that smile, talk about the light of hope. I feel as though this room is suddenly alight, not that harsh glare that has accompanied me ever since I opened my eyes from that coma, but the dull romanticism of the moonlight that we miss out here between the stars.

He's so strong, offering me hope, offering to hold me so I don't collapse under the strain of carrying this burden. He's fierce and stalwart, but gentile and caring. I can see the offer in his eyes, he's calling me back to the land of the living with the strength of the heartbeat that's so close I can almost feel it in my own chest, reviving the heart that stopped beating the second Jon chose to leave me for the sweet siren of martyrdom. And there's something else there too. Love? Devotion? Loyalty? I look at him and know what he said was true: he'd follow me to the end of the universe.

It's all there in those honest eyes, the ones that I'm seeing now as if for the first time. I am almost ashamed that I never saw it before. My pain is reflected there, because he feels it every bit as much as I do, he absorbs it and envelops it in his strength, because my heart is his heart as well. How long has he loved me? And how long has he been forced to hide it, even as Jon betrayed all we had bit by bit?

I know that this is wrong. I know that I'm confused and hurt and betrayed. I know I'm just jumping to the next arms that will hold me, if only because I need so badly to be held. But, God, I need this! Don't I deserve someone to hold me at last? So I lean forward and feel the soft caress of Malcolm's lips on mine, a temporary respite from all of the burdens that Jon has left to me.

It turns from comforting and tender to hungry and desperate in an instant. Before I know it, one of us has pushed us back onto my bed and we are tearing at each other's clothes. I need to feel his flesh, his warm breath on my cheek, his lips crushing and biting bruises into my skin, his hot need in my hands. I just need to feel something. I need to know that I'm alive. Jon took my ability to feel down to the planet with him, and I need to get it back. I've been empty for so long and for this brief second I need to know what it is like to be full again.

I need to forget what he's done to me, if only for a few minutes I need to forget the hopelessness of our situation. This is not a betrayal of his memory; this is what it takes to live in the world he has abandoned me in. This is survival.