I can feel my eyelids drooping, weighed down by the gravity of post-coital bliss, but there's that thing that keeps the propped open, like thousands of time before. Duty can always save me from much needed sleep.

Duty. The one word burned into my brain from my youth, the thing that comes before life and love and happiness. It's strange: I might not have joined the Royal Navy like the long line of Reed men before me, but that doesn't mean I escaped the one cornerstone of my strict upbringing.

Duty, the only thing that can still haunt me when I'm wrapped comfortably in a loving embrace. I wonder: am I here out of duty, or out of love? Sometimes it's hard to tell the two apart. Perhaps all of those things they tell you as a child to make you more socially adept -whatever that's supposed to mean- have made me confound the two. Love is what you feel for your family. But duty is what I feel for mine.

So, am I here out of duty? Trying to hold this ship's chief engineer together so he can hold the ship together, that might not be in the Starfleet handbook, but it's necessary to save Earth, so I suppose it's a duty. Captain Archer is gone, and Lord knows what's happened to T'Pol. And, me? I'm damn good at my job, I know, but I've been trained to follow my superiors and protect them; I'm no leader, at least not now. No, Trip is our last hope. He's got it in him to pull us through this. He just needs me to do what I've been trained to do: protect him, give him counsel, and perhaps save him.

I'd give my life for him, and for this crew. And I've slowly been sacrificing my body in small offerings of bruises and strains. If I'd give my life for this ship, what's submitting myself to small wounds of pleasure as much as they scar my spirit? And as for Trip, I've already given him my heart, my mind, and my soul. All things considered, my body is a small sacrifice.

But that's what makes me wonder. Is this really duty? As much as I've tried to deny it, lying here in his arms I know I can't. I'm in love with Trip. I have been for the longest time. I don't really know when or how it happened. Perhaps when he was ready to jump out that airlock to save my life, perhaps when I saw him ripped away from me by that slimy telepathic creature, or maybe during one of those many moments when he graced me with his wide honest smile, or when he made some incidental joke while crawling around trying to fix the phase cannons. But does it really matter when it happened? It's been a reality I've been living with for a long time now, a reality as steadfast -if never quite as important- as my duty to this crew.

At first I thought I could never hope that he would return my affections, because Trip makes sure he plays the role of 'heterosexual male' seamlessly. He's always made sure he exaggerates his appreciation of the female form, even going out of his way to chase skirts with me. He's even snogged more than his fair share of alien women. But it's all a very clever cover. I've no doubt that Charles Tucker III likes women. He flirts with them enough, and knows how to, but he's definitely not as straight as he seems.

The first hint of it I got was on that shuttlepod, when I was doing my best to emphasize my sexuality. He called me morbid, but I couldn't have been morbid. If I really thought there was no chance we would live I wouldn't have bothered to keep up the façade. I would have confessed how attracted to him I was, how I wanted his body the second I first shook hands with him and he accidentally smeared me with engine grease and offered to let me wipe it off on the already stain covered uniform hiding the taunt musculature I could feel underneath. Or perhaps I would have told him how the more I knew of him -even though he annoyed me more than . . . well more than just about anyone- the more the attraction grew and deepened.

I wanted to write letters to every girl I had ever remotely known. Trip didn't want to write any letters to ex-girlfriends or current ones. He played it off as diehard optimism, but now I know it was because he thought he'd already lost the one person he would write that kind of letter to. Jonathan Archer was aboard Enterprise. It's funny, Trip's reaction to the death of his lover hasn't really changed. He throws himself wholeheartedly into the cause of those that have survived, but he has that same dead expression in his eyes, even when he's trying to stay angry or in control.

The only difference now is that he doesn't believe that we'll survive. His optimism has gone out the airlock with his naivety. I might congratulate myself on how much I've changed, on how I've become the optimistic one, but that would be a lie. I don't know if we'll survive, but I've got to make myself believe that we will. I need to pour my heart and soul into that lie, because even when hope's dead, I've still got duty. And duty dictates that I believe, so Trip believes, and, by proxy, the crew believes. That belief will keep us all going, doing our duties until the last ember of hope is extinguished.

Still, I wonder if what I'm doing now is selfish. Am I abusing a broken man? Using him when he's two distraught and confused to know any better? I'm tempted to say that I am, that I'm forcing him to feed the illusion that he might love me, if only because in my own darkest moments without hope I need to feel something more than the steady pressure of duty. But I know that's not true, even as I know the illusion that this is anything more to him than simple stress-relief is crumbling. I've never been good at lying to myself, which is ironic, considering how good I am at lying to others.

I've been lying to Trip so bloody well that it took my utmost moment of weakness, overcome with compassion and too tired to hold up the walls for just a split-second, for him to even notice how much I love him. I saw the realization in those haunted blue eyes as clear as a mountain lake on a bright day. He saw my love and immediately took advantage of it. Who could blame him? He's lost a lover, a best friend, and a captain all in one go, and had the burden of carrying on placed soundly on his shoulders.

I suppose someone overly prone to moral wrangling, like the late Captain Archer, before the Expanse killed him (in more ways than one), might accuse Trip of taking advantage of me. Perhaps I'm love-blinded and can find no wrong in the object of my affection, but I doubt such a thing could ever happen to a duty-bound Reed. No, Trip and I are using each other. It's not right, but they've got that saying, 'all's fair in love and war,' for a reason.

I turn to watch him sleep, enjoying these last quiet moments together, when I can sublimate my inner knowledge that this is just a dream long enough to soak up this simple comfort. His eyelids flutter and his breath falls in tight fidgeting moans as I pull away from him. Even in sleep he can't seem to find peace, his face scrunched into an almost-grimace, hair spiking in all directions as much from our love-making (if you could call it that) as his fitful sleep. I can almost see the ghosts surrounding him, pulling at his hair and prodding him to avoid their bone-chilling caress in unconscious twitches.

At least he'll sleep. I sigh. No sleep for his loyal supporter. Someone's got to hold this ship together, after all. I slip from the warmth of his embrace, back into the icy world where my own ghosts can haunt me, the world that holds neither dreams nor love.

I kiss him indulgently on the forehead, wishing for just a moment that this tender display of affection would be one of daily routine. A tiny part of me, the same part that refused to let me spill my guts before him on that shuttlepod, hopes that one day when all this is over, that might be a reality. Our brief moment of passion was more intense than anything I have ever felt, and somewhere beneath all that need there must have been at least the tiniest seeds of something more. But what does it matter now? We have eternities to cross before we can even allow ourselves the luxury of digging for those small nuggets of possibility.

As I run my fingers through his unruly blond hair for perhaps the last time, he mumbles, "God Jonny, I knew you'd come back for me." He reaches for me, but I pull away in shock, each beat of my heart a new pain in my chest. The skeptical part of me always knew that I was just as substitute, what Phlox might call a 'coping mechanism.' Still, that doesn't mean it hurts any less to hear him confirm it.

He whimpers as I rush out of his cabin, telling myself that duty calls, when I know I'm just running from the further destruction of my tenuously constructed illusions.

I hold my weapon steadily in front of me as the pod opens, expecting the worst and wondering why T'Pol decided to bring what could easily be a Xindi deathtrap onboard before sensors were repaired enough to get a more detailed scan. She truly has lost her Vulcan logic, or at least the part of it that dictates caution.

I can't contain my shock, or my relief that T'Pol's lack of caution may not cost us after all. Captain Archer is lying there, motionless and a little worse for the wear, but alive, as far as my scans can tell. I am unsure whether or not he's Sleeping Beauty or a Trojan horse.

T'Pol runs additional scans and assures me that it seems to be the real deal. I am surprised when she reaches out and lifts the captain easily over her shoulder, gripping him tight enough to bruise, as though desperate to believe he's still alive. No, I must be more tired than I thought; Vulcans do not experience desperation. T'Pol orders me to contract Commander Tucker and tell him to examine the pod, before disappearing in the direction of sickbay.

I sigh and make my way back to the other sleeping beauty, knowing that he would want to hear word of his lover's return as soon as possible. He's had nearly four hours of sleep anyway. I wish the internal comm system were operational, it would leave me with less pointless walking to do, and thus less time alone with my thoughts.

The captain's been mysteriously returned to us. This should be cause for celebration, right? Lieutenant Reed rejoices, seeing his captain still alive, along with the hope that we might survive this after all, but the shy and infinitely more selfish Malcolm Reed knows that he's just lost any chance of the love of his life reciprocating his feelings. Oh, who am I bloody kidding? As much as duty and love divide me, I'm still one person. As much as I'd like to believe it isn't so, the officer and the man bleed together in a grey area. And anything involving Trip Tucker definitely falls into the grey area.

So what do I feel? I feel angry. But I can only be so angry at the captain. I can be mad at him for abandoning Trip, but I regardless of what Trip might feel, it was a command decision, not a personal one. And even if I feel that decision was a grave error, he still is the captain, and I can't hate him if I want this mission to succeed.

I can't hate Trip, because he's doing his best with the circumstances he's given. Besides, I love him. For once, that's got to be enough.

I suppose I could hate God, but that would make this far too much of a Greek tragedy for my liking. Despite my taste in literature, cursing the fates is far too abstract for my practical armory officer's mind, so I'll have to fixate on something more concrete.

I hate the Xindi. I hate them for killing seven million of my people. I hate them for taking Trip's sister away from him. I hate them for militarizing the innocent Captain Archer I used to beg to pay more attention to security (because Archer has always been all or nothing at all). I hate them for attacking this ship and harming those who I've started to think of as family - again I'm somewhere between love and duty. I hate them for laying all the responsibility on me when this undeclared war rips apart everyone a care about and leaves me to pick up the pieces. But most of all, I hate them for giving me a taste of heaven and then ripping it away from me the very next second, even though they have nothing to do with the fact that Trip loves Archer.

But at least they gave us our captain back. Duty dictates I smile, but I can't seem to bring myself to.