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His hands are cold around his neck, clammy and damp with nerves. For a moment, Hugh thinks he can take those hands in his own and ease them away, hold them tight and tell him, tell this frightened, vulnerable, misused man that - you are not you, but you are safe.
The nanoseconds drag into hours, days, weeks, and he is trapped in the knowledge that this breath will be his last, that these cold hands around his neck will break the life out of him. Time slips through his fingers, and he cannot turn to look once more at his love, his love with the eyes that had once been so unfathomably dark, but are now so distressingly lifeless, milky pale and vacant. He will never know if his love will be freed from his nightmare wanderings through his forests and his castles. He will never know how his love will find his body, will never know what shape his mourning will take, will never be able to comfort him and guide him to the other side of his grief as he has done so many times before. Hugh thinks, with a sense of tragedy that burns his heart to cinders, that all the lovely futures he had ever imagined with him will be extinguished, snuffed out by the very same hands that now curl around his neck. He hopes that, in this inescapable death future, Paul will find some joy without him.
His hands twist, and Hugh can feel the snapping and crunching of bone beneath his skin, shards of his spine piercing the tender inner flesh of his throat. And he wants to cry out for help, make one last pitiful attempt to be heard, to let Lieutenant Tyler know that he only ever wanted to help him. He had found evidence, stark and undeniable, of his mutilation, the violent grafting of one psyche onto another, and his first instinct was to grieve for him - for them both. The human and the Klingon had lost their vital identities, their very souls forcibly diluted and confused and made to war with one another so long as their mutual body lived and breathed. He had seen it in Tyler’s eyes, the pure and vulnerable terror, heard his yearning for the pain to stop in every crack of his voice. And the Klingon - Hugh cannot even name them, for they are nothing but a biological, psychological remnant forced into a barely-there half-life, forced to live in flesh that is not their own. To walk forever in such eternal purgatory, to be both and neither all at once, is a fate Hugh would not wish on his worst enemy.
But Hugh is not the type to cultivate enemies. He had called Tyler to the sickbay because he wanted to help him, to reach out and let him know that he would not have to fight his battle alone. He had called Tyler to tell him that he did not have to be alright, that he was not losing his mind, that Hugh was willing to go to the ends of the earth to help him because imagining that pain, that torturous, mind-bending pain, had moved him beyond compare.
He should be thinking of Paul as he falls - his love, his life, the man who keeps his heart beating. But instead he gives his final thoughts to Ash Tyler, and how sorry he is that he could not help him sooner.
***
Shadow and hell and his hands, his hands, he can still feel his hands, violent caress, stilled heart, spores in the skin and hated hatred burning undead flesh that cannot be cooled by love, it is absent, there is pain, cannot scream, throat torn, twisted, broken, snapped, by the man who needed help and who could not let his rage subside, even as he runs he can still feel his hands, he is home but not home, he is wilting in the forest as he always said he would with his milky pale eyes and his spores, he wilts but he will not die but he is dead he was killed, murdered, slaughtered when he only wanted to help, and now the rage is contagious for he feels it too, burning and boiling, he is forgetting his love, forgetting his kindness, shadow and hell and he is forgetting that he was ever in love at all, for he breathed his last in the cool, clammy hands of hatred, he never wanted to inherit the rage but he has, it has grafted itself onto his purgatory mind, hated hatred, hated hatred, it is a very strong word and he cries it out through broken throat and chokes on the spores his love had always treasured, and now a step enters his domain and he is frightened to be seen because he is no longer kind, no longer human, but some strange hating creature who has been caught so long in this death world but he is here, he is here, his eyes are dark again, his arms are warm again, to bring him home, home where nothing will be the same for there were hands around his throat that squeezed the hatred into him, hatred that was never meant to be there, forced into the head of an unwilling soldier and passed onto the poor corpse who only ever wanted to help him but he is here, the gentle touch of love will bring him home, he has stepped into the forest and found him wailing, and he will bring him home but home is a place where hate cannot thrive, and he knows as he crosses the gap from death to life that all he has left to him is hate hate hate hate hate hate hate hate hate hate hate hate hate hate hate hate hate hate hate hate hate hate hate hate hate hate hate hate hate-
Who is the mother of all hatred?
***
Sickbay is bright, and Hugh knows he should feel safe there. Doctor Pollard lingers always in his eyeline, and occasionally she’ll steal a glance at him because she cannot quite believe that he has been brought back from the dead. Paul is at his bedside holding his hand, Paul who has not left his side for a single second since he emerged from the network, totally new and totally alive. He should feel safe, and yet he does not. Fear would be the logical alternative - if one does not feel safe, what is left but terror? Yet even that is lost to him.
When he first emerged from the cocoon, for a handful of blissful seconds he could remember absolutely nothing. He had never anticipated that such total blankness could feel so wonderful, so soothing, and he had kept his eyes closed and drowned in that empty euphoria, thinking nothing, feeling nothing, being nothing. Stillness. Stillness, and the cool air against his bare skin. He liked it.
Then came the memories, and all the stillness shattered.
It was as if a bomb had gone off right next to his ears, his nerves set all alight by a raging inferno of bodily experiences, his entire life flashing through him in an unforgiving onslaught. All at once he felt every heartbreak, every joy, every scraped knee, every broken bone, every night he’d spent cramming for his Starfleet medical exam, every brush of Paul’s lips against his own, every funeral he had ever been to, every argument he had ever been in, every joke he had laughed at, every glass of wine he had ever drunk, every word of praise from his parents - and the hands around his neck, the snap of his spine, the blood bubbling up from his throat.
It is quiet now. He has been in sickbay for hours, waking and sleeping, sleeping and dreaming. There is a strange blur coating all his senses, as if his new body is trying to protect him after the onslaught of life had ravaged him. It feels as if there is a layer of wool between his hand and Paul’s, and he knows Paul is talking but it sounds like his voice is drifting through from another room. Hugh lets his gaze wander, and he tries to anchor himself to something real - anything that is distinct, anything that is clear, will do just fine. He tries very hard to find that concrete something. If Paul expects him to respond to anything he is saying, he will be sorely disappointed.
In the corner sits an empty bed. Hugh stares at it. Ash Tyler had sat there once, awaiting the truth of his madness, frenetic and anxious. Hugh had stood next to it once, carrying with him that truth - the truth that Tyler killed him for. Killed him. Murdered him. He wonders if he is the only person in the universe who knows what it is like to be murdered, who can close their eyes and concentrate and hear the snapping of their own neck. Yes, he is alone in that knowledge, doomed to bear it for the rest of his days, however long those days may be. He does not want to be alone. He has never liked being alone. Paul used to call him a ‘people person’. Yet he had spent his endless death time all by himself, the loneliest ghost in the network, terrified because bitterness had coated his every thought, because Tyler’s frightened hatred had taken root in his own soul - and hatred was so easy to breed in hell.
It is difficult to break a neck by brute force alone. Hugh supposes that Tyler’s heightened Klingon strength made it possible, but still he wonders if the feat could be achieved by unaugmented human hands. His free hand wanders upwards, and he rests it against his neck, the skin smooth and unblemished beneath his fingertips. He hovers for a while, and he tries to imagine what Tyler was thinking when he first laid his hands on his neck. Did he think that the truth of his split psyche would die with the doctor who diagnosed it? Was he so numb that only the stimulation of bone crunching beneath his hands would stir him? Had Hugh done something beyond the diagnosis to anger him? Had his death always been part of some grand plan? But for all his questions, Hugh knows exactly why Tyler murdered him - there was no reason at all. It was a simple, mindless act of violence, nothing more and nothing less. The idea that his own death could be so senseless, so purposeless, ignites that hatred flame within him, and he presses his fingers harder against his throat. Even the slightest pressure from his fingertips sends him back there, back to the empty sickbay, alone with Ash Tyler who he hates. But he does not stop pressing. He cannot stop. Even though he wants to, he cannot stop.
“Hey, hey.” Paul’s voice comes through clearly for the first time since his rebirth. He curls his hand around Hugh’s and pulls it away from his throat, holding it gently. “Careful. You’ll hurt yourself.”
Hugh wonders if that’s the point.
Paul follows Hugh’s eyeline, sees it resting on the bed in the corner, and he carefully cups his hand against Hugh’s cheek to pull his gaze away. Hugh has treated trauma patients before, and usually they would flinch or cry out should they experience anything remotely similar to the source of their pain. When Paul laid his hands in the vicinity of Hugh’s head, he should have responded in the exact same way. He can feel the tension of that touch electrifying him, can feel a cry bubbling up in his throat, but he does not push Paul away because he reignited an old terror. Paul’s touch is a tender, loving thing, too good and too unburdened to risk corruption through contact with the numb vessel of hatred he calls his lover. Hugh knows that, in his new life, the only path for him is violence, vengeance, isolation, and Paul is too good to walk that path with him. He belongs to a long ago world, where the version of Hugh that lived and breathed was good and loving and kind, and had never known the feeling of hands around his neck, had yet to spend an eternity in mycelial purgatory, voiceless with pain as his every dead cell grew withered and bitter. No, Paul cannot participate in his new life, and so he pushes him away.
“I’m sorry.” Assuming he has conjured up unpleasant memories through his touch, Paul stammers out his apology and holds his hands tight against himself. “That was stupid, I wasn’t thinking-”
“It’s fine.”
Paul startles. It is the first time Hugh has spoken to him since his rebirth, and he spent his words on a lie.
***
As days pass, Hugh finds life harder to bear than death ever had been.
Pollard - Tracy, he used to call her, but he needs to earn that right again - has cleared him to leave sickbay, to progress with his life, to step out onto his new horizon. But whether he is in a hospital bed or in his own with Paul, Hugh feels no difference. Feeling is a privilege he has lost access to - aside from the hate, the ever-present hate, which clings to his heart like black mould.
Hate is all he can give, all he can take. It is why he eventually moves to separate quarters, cutting himself off from Paul because sinking into his love reminds him too much of his old goodness. Hugh grieves for himself when he is alone, and he wonders why that good and kind old self had to go, and why his replacement is such a withered, incapable thing. He spends hours at a time staring at the ceiling, only stirring when Pollard calls him and reminds him that he does, in fact, need to eat. But everything that touches his tongue curdles and rots, and he spends his nights curled up and pained because his new body is too undeveloped to handle taste, texture, or the bliss of a well-prepared meal.
He cannot eat. Cannot love. Cannot reconnect with old friends, or with his family on earth. Sleep is fleeting. But he can remember - Ash Tyler, and his hands around his neck.
He has seen Tyler in the rare moments when he ventures from his quarters, and he knows Tyler has seen him too because their eyes have locked, and Hugh has recognised the fear in them. Fear. Why should he be frightened? Tyler has had the privilege of life. He has been granted the grace to move beyond the violence of his split self, to temper his hatred into something manageable, a domesticated creature that will not overwhelm him anymore. Hugh envies him. He has been granted nothing but resentment.
When he sees him in the mess hall, Hugh’s first instinct is to pull him from his chair, knock him down, throttle him, beat him to a pulp because he killed that poor man he used to be. He almost does it. His old self deserves vengeance - but it is his old self that holds him back. His old self, who sees Tyler across the mess hall, who remembers his abject terror all those nights ago in sickbay, holds him back. He had only wanted to help.
Still, he crosses the room and sits in the dining chair opposite Tyler’s. His body twitches with a yearning for violence, but all he can do is stare, holding Tyler in his gaze for longer than is comfortable for either of them. Tyler may be trapped in his gaze, but only because Hugh is caught in a trap of his own. Dead kindness, reborn violence. He does not know which to choose.
Hugh is aware that every eye in the room is watching them - even Paul, who he has not spoken to in weeks. He supposes they expect a show, a brawl, but he will not give it to them. His gentle dead self will not let him.
Tyler shifts uncomfortably in his seat, his Adam’s apple bobbing as he swallows. He keeps his hands tight in his lap - perhaps his palms are sweating. He tries to meet Hugh’s eyes, but over and over again he falters, and Hugh catches him glancing out into their audience in search of help. Nobody will give it. Their confrontation is inevitable, and nobody would dare interrupt it. They want their show. His suffering is their entertainment, and so too is Tyler’s discomfort. For the first time, Hugh realises that he might have something in common with his murderer.
Tyler breaks the stalemate with a voice cracked with guilt.
“I’m sorry.”
It comes like a slap in the face, stinging and razor sharp, white hot against his cheek. Tyler’s pitiful apology ignites his hatred brighter than before, and Hugh cannot comprehend what on earth would possess him to think that “I’m sorry” would ever be enough to fix the damage he has done. Tyler’s hand has forced him into this pitiful excuse for a new life, twisted all his old joy into something foul and bitter and putrid, made Hugh into a man who cannot love or be loved in return, who spends his endless hours staring at the ceiling screaming in silence, who has not slept in days, who is so unbearably lonely. And he is sorry. Sorry. Hugh’s hands twitch, and for a split second he wonders - if it were my hands around your neck, Ash Tyler, how sorry would I be?
Suffer as I do, Ash Tyler.
Weep as I do, Ash Tyler.
Hate as I do, Ash Tyler.
I only wanted to help you, Ash Tyler.
“Doctor Culber,” Tyler says, a little more confident now, his voice a little less fractured. “What do you want from me?”
Now is the time to respond. Tyler has given him the opportunity to tell him how he wants him to repent - his fate lies in Hugh’s hands. The man who sits before him is at his beck and call, dark eyes shining with desperation. The ghost of his old self tells him that he is earnest in his penitence, that he truly would do anything to make amends because he had never intended to kill him. He had only wanted the help that Hugh had been so willing to give. But hatred tells him otherwise, and that is what courses through his blood as he tightens his fist to carve scars in his palms, breathing deeply because he does not trust himself to be calm, and because there is an unbearable tightness in his chest.
Murmurs flow around the room - what will the dead man do next, they wonder.
Tyler leans a little further across the table, lowering his voice to a conspiratorial whisper. “I think we should-”
Hugh raises his open palm and brings it to Tyler’s cheek - but he stops before he can brand the flesh with a sharp, fast beating. Tyler does not flinch, but he keeps his eyes trained on Hugh’s hand where it hovers near his face, breathing slowly, purposefully so. All around is silent, and Hugh focuses on his outstretched hand as it trembles in the air. Violence has never been in his nature. He is a doctor for pity’s sake. So he withdraws his hand with a vague sense of horror and rises from the table, turning and fleeing and refusing to look back, for there are spores floating at the edge of his vision as black mould sprouts from his heart.
Hugh spends that night in breathless agony, desperate to know why he cannot satisfy either side of himself - the peaceful dead side and the hating living side will not cooperate, and his poor psyche is the battlefield on which they wage their war. It hurts his head. He misses Paul.
***
Hugh’s door chimes.
He does not stir at first. He can barely comprehend the dried tear tracks clinging to his cheeks, nor the softness of the sofa beneath him - processing the sound of a chiming door is far beyond him. After a little while, the chime sounds again, and this time he looks up, sluggish, slow. He has started to consider that there really is no place for him in the living world anymore, that Paul made a mistake bringing him back from the network. That bright and barren place might be the only world where Hugh could ever belong, for he in all his misery had at least been an inseparable part of it. The misery had manifested there, and so he belonged there - perhaps he had been lonely, perhaps he had spent every dead second waiting for his promised relief, but at least he had known who he was. The spectre that hung over him now, the ghost of his previous life, had been but a memory in the network, and Hugh had not been obligated to live up to his high standard, nor had he worried about disappointing him.
He disappointed him today when he raised his hand against Tyler.
Another chime. It rings five more times before Hugh finally musters the strength to lift himself from the sofa. Whoever is out there, ringing that bell, is certainly persistent. Perhaps Paul is waiting for him on the other side, determined to press down on that chime as many times as it takes to entice his love from exile. He never liked to give up on anything, so persistent that he’d work himself near to death on a weekly basis. Hugh would always worry when he returned to their quarters pale and drawn, wasting away under Lorca’s belligerent orders or his own damn determination. But, just as his fear was a constant, so too was his love, and he would replicate Paul’s favourite flavour of tea and try to make him laugh and hold him close until he finally - finally, for the love of god finally - went to sleep.
He could not think of a single time Paul had ever had to do the same for him. Their relationship had always been a little one-sided in that respect - but Hugh had never minded, not really. Now, all Hugh wants is for Paul to replicate him a glass of horchata, tell him some ridiculously bad joke that he can’t help but laugh at, and hold him safely close until he drifts off to sleep. But, unless it is indeed Paul who waits on the other side of that door, the time for that comfort has long since passed, and it is better that way. Hugh knows it is better that way. But still his heart aches, and he can feel it breaking - it shatters, unleashing all those rotting spores of hatred to decay in his blood, diseasing him, but forcing him to live with it.
He does not want to live with it. Paul should have known better than to bring him back. Still, he opens the door.
Ash Tyler awaits him on the other side, his hand hovering over the doorbell. Hugh stares at him. He has no rage left, only desperation, only a painful, acute desire to sink back into the network and bury himself as deeply as he possibly can. He can still feel the hatred that grew within him in his death state, but in life, he is too tired to embody it anymore, too heavy with bone deep exhaustion that will never lift even if he slept for the rest of his life. So he stares at Tyler, knowing with confidence that there is no one else he would rather see.
“Please,” he says, his broken voice barely above a whisper. “Do it again.”
***
The hands that once killed him now lift a glass of water to his lips, and there is a tenderness there that feels foreign to him now. But he cannot deny that this kindness is precisely what he needs. The water slips pleasantly down his throat, cool and cleansing, washing away the rasp of his disused voice. Silence takes charge for a while, and all that matters to him is the glass of water and the hand resting at the back of his head, holding him up so that he might drink.
Tyler has spoken very little, but Hugh does not think he needs to speak. Not yet. He will tell Tyler when it is time to break the silence, and he seems to understand that without needing to be instructed. For now, he needs the silence to figure out why, although his murderer sits behind him, he feels so calm. Perhaps his realisation - that a second death could be his only release - pushed him over the threshold into total, immovable numbness. Whether he will ever come back from this blank state is a mystery to him. In all likelihood, he is the only person who will ever know this particular numbness - and who will ever desire death in the full knowledge of what lies beyond.
Tyler lowers the glass from his lips and sets it down on the side table next to the sofa. It clinks against the surface, and the water left within settles, mirror still, inside it. Hugh watches the motion, but it makes him dizzy.
He closes his eyes, breathes. Like the water, he settles.
“Why are you here?”
Tyler glances at him, hesitates a little. “I figured you deserved some answers.”
“I’d like that.”
Hugh waits for the promise.
“You were right when you said I wasn’t me.” Tyler is solemn now. “And it wasn’t me who killed you.”
He takes hold of one of Tyler’s hands, and they are calloused and scarred, a miniature tapestry of his life. “These are your hands, aren’t they?”
“Sometimes I don’t know whose hands they are.”
“Why?”
Hesitation, again.
“There was a Lieutenant Tyler, once. He liked to fish, and he loved his family, and he wanted to be a captain one day. But he’s been dead for a very long time.” His gaze drops, and his pain resonates in Hugh’s chest like a drumbeat. “The Klingons killed him to preserve one of their own. That’s what-”
“That’s what I found.” Hugh remembers seeing the scans, the masses of scar tissue, the shaved bones, the psychological mutilation in duplicate. “I felt so awful for you when I found it - but I was glad too.”
Tyler frowns. “Glad?”
“Because it meant you weren’t mad. Because it might have been something I could fix. You were suffering, and if I could just figure out how to reverse it - I could make it stop.”
“I’m sorry I never gave you the chance.”
“Me too.”
Hugh does not let go of Tyler’s hand, and Tyler does not pull it away.
“Tell me about the Klingon?”
For a moment, Tyler closes his eyes. He breathes deeply. “His name was Voq. He was supposed to be T’Kuvma’s torchbearer, but he was exiled after his death.” He pauses. “There was a woman. She loved him. Her name was L’Rell.”
“She’s gone too?”
There is a great sorrow in the air, grief as Hugh has never known it. “She has to be.”
So, not dead, simply repressed. Hugh begins to understand.
At length, Tyler continues. “They wanted to avenge their messiah, and they knew that Michael, the one who killed him, was on board Discovery . And I don’t know - I don’t know why they couldn’t have just boarded the ship and killed her.” His voice cracks, and Hugh feels a cracking inside him too. “I don’t know why they had to kill Lieutenant Tyler to do it. I don’t know why L’Rell would butcher the man she loved like that. I don’t know why they created me. Because the only thing that came from it was you, and your pain, and I didn’t want to hurt you. I promise - I never wanted to hurt you.”
The Ash Tyler that sits with him now, who’s trembling hand Hugh holds in his own, is the product of hatred. Of a lust for revenge. Of desperation to honour a fallen messiah. He too only exists to resent.
“You told me how I was created,” Tyler continues, frail in voice. “And I couldn’t handle that. Voq couldn’t handle that. So he told me to kill you. I think he couldn’t stand the shame of what he’d become.”
There is a scar running down the edge of Tyler’s index finger, long and thin. “You speak about him as if he’s not there anymore.”
“L’Rell operated on me again, took him out,” Tyler explains. “I’ve only got his memories now. And…” He falters, for he has encountered some part of Voq’s legacy that he must hold deep and safe and secret in his heart. “I know none of this could ever excuse what I’ve put you through. But I thought you should know.”
Hugh blinks, and he is tired - very tired. Opening his mouth to speak feels Herculean, for he has not sustained such an extended conversation in a very long time, and his efforts tonight have exhausted him. He leaves the space open for Tyler instead, giving him permission to do all the talking he needs to. He cannot explain it, but there is something soothing about knowing the truth, even if it does not take the shape of the bright and clear answers he once hoped for. The purpose of his death still eludes him.
“I won’t do what you asked me to do,” Tyler says eventually, a little firmer now. There is a conviction in his voice that Hugh finds both reassuring and immensely disappointing. “I won’t kill you again. I don’t know what’s going on in your head to make you want that, but I won’t do it.”
Tyler pauses for a moment, thinking.
“It’s my fault that you feel that way, isn’t it? If I’d never killed you, you wouldn’t be in this position.”
“I guess not.” Each word is a struggle, but they come out softly.
Tyler closes his hand tightly around Hugh’s - and it becomes more than a weapon before his eyes. The exerted pressure might have frightened him once, but it is a brutal hand no longer. He might even dare to say - dare to say that it is loving.
“Then I’ll keep you safe.” Hugh’s eyes widen a little. “There’s nothing I can do to take back what I - what Voq - did to you, and I don’t expect you to forgive me. But I’ll never hurt you again, and I’ll never let anyone else hurt you either. I owe you that much.”
His second death will not come, then. In time, he will know whether to love or hate Ash Tyler for keeping it from him.
***
Dreams, as is the death state, are incomprehensible. Tonight, Hugh begins to understand.
He is lying on the operating table, held by dirty shackles wrapped tight around his wrists, ankles, because they to not want him to move, because they want to keep him in the death stillness, dead before dying, dying before death, and the mother of all hatred looms ever nearer with resentment beating in her doubled hearts and a vengeance obsessed mind clutched tight in her hands, and when the soldier screams at the sight of her she does not listen, for he is only a vessel, and she will BREAK THE BONE RESHAPE THE CARTILAGE SCREAM AND WEEP CARVE THE MUSCLES FRAGMENT THE MIND SCREAM AND WEEP STITCH THE BODIES ALL TOGETHER LET THE BLOOD RUN WARM AND FREE AND CRY CRY CRY FOR THE GLORY OF HER LOVE, and she does it because she loves him, her messiah, her torchbearer, and this human vessel means nothing to her beyond what it can hold, yes, she loves him, and she shows him her love when the transference is complete, but although he carries within him two minds, two souls, two hearts, all he knows is hatred, hated hatred, hated hatred, she has given him so much and taken everything in tandem, but there is hatred to cling to and an old life to mourn and isn’t this all so familiar?
One and the same, one and the same, one on an operating table, one on the sickbay floor, both killed and resurrected against nature, their hate brought them together and will bind them in understanding, these unwilling vessels of hatred know each other better than they know themselves, and perhaps the soldier only killed the healer because he wanted someone to understand, to share in his hatred, to know what it is to walk in endless half-life purgatory, to know what lies in the shadow of hell and live to breathe in heaven, perhaps he was only lonely, perhaps he was only scared, and he thinks of all the love that has characterised his life, all the love he had lost, given over to the spores, and he knows now that he can be strong enough to reclaim it because the hands around his neck were trembling with fear, because he knows what it is to be a vessel of hatred, a creature of resentment, part of the legacy of vengeance born from the love of a woman, her messiah, and her torchbearer, and violence feels like the only choice in that wretched state, but it it not, they are both of them stronger than that, he understands, he understands, he understands, there is light on the horizon and he understands, the soldier has committed to love and care and protection in defiance of his vengeful destiny, and because the soldier never did kill the woman who murdered his messiah, then he too can find the love in the deep dark eyes again because he is made of hatred, but he is not beholden to it.
Neither of them are, and never will be again.
***
Hundreds of years pass in the interim.
Hugh almost finds it amusing - after emerging from the shadow of hell, he had resolved to live for as long as fate would allow. Fate, it seemed, had an excellent sense of humour, because it extended his life not just to the limits of his body’s capability, but beyond the very boundaries of human mortality itself. Hugh resolved to live, and he has done so now for nine hundred years. He, and the entirety of Discovery’ s crew, have lived the longest lives known to man.
Paul lies next to him, fast asleep. It is the middle of the day, but Hugh will not deny him the rest he so desperately needs after his accidental wounding. It was a strange way to reunite - Paul bleeding out on a biobed, Hugh inducing him into a coma - but now that the fear of potential loss has passed, Hugh knows he would not have had it any other way. It would be just like Paul to need his help, a need he would no doubt deny were he in more of a lucid state. And it would be just like Hugh to give that help, willingly and lovingly, without complaint, because he loves him. Paul is well on his way to recovery now, and Hugh looks forward to the day when he wakes, and is well, and becomes his curmudgeonly old self again. He smiles a little, passes his fingers through Paul’s pale hair. He forgot how nice it feels to have something to look forward to.
Satisfied that Paul will not stir, he rises from the bed and wanders to the window. There are still stars in the thirty-second century. Hugh is no great astronomer, but he does wonder if these are the same stars he gazed out at nine hundred years ago. He can already tell what a ridiculous idea that is, and Paul would no doubt tease him for it, but he entertains it for a while. It is a nice thought, a warm thought. A thought that makes the future feel a little less lonely.
Who is looking at those same stars in the twenty-third century?
Hugh likes to think that it might be Ash Tyler. He has yet to search for any traces of him in history, and he isn’t sure if he ever will. Tyler did not follow them to the future, so his death - his true death - must have come for him long ago. Hugh hopes he lived a long life, a full life, that he had carried on defying the hatred that was so deeply entrenched in his soul, just as Hugh intends to now. He smiles a little to himself. The universe must be playing some cosmic joke on him, for he genuinely hopes that the man who murdered him found a little bit of happiness in the end. He wishes it because he knows he cannot resent Tyler anymore. Down that path lies only the madness of hateful, vengeful grief, and he cannot return there. He will never return there.
He lowers his head, closes his eyes, whispers-
“I forgive you.”
And he hopes, even through the boundaries of space and time, that Tyler can hear him.