Chapter Text
Tilly ducks down, one of those vivid yellow disruptor blasts slicing through the air just over her head. “Why is this happening?”
“Cultural misunderstanding?” Michael checks her cover, grabbing her phaser. “Some kind of robbery?”
“We’re in a museum.”
“Those get robbed.”
“Who would steal artifacts? They belong to everyone!”
Disruptor blasts strike the stone behind them, which rains down sand on their heads.
“Apparently that is not what they believe in.”
Michael looks to Tilly, holding her phaser, indicating with her eyes. “Four firing positions, multiple attackers. You cover me, I’ll aim right.”
“Right, I mean, I’ll cover, I’ll cover.”
Michael trusts her to have her back, even as Tilly apologizes for not getting the firing lingo right. She’ll get there. Being shot at is never a good time to think.
She lets out her breath, steadies herself. Finds that place of stillness. Weirdly the sand in her hair makes it easier to concentrate. It’s just like home. Stand up quickly, take the shot, duck back down, let Tilly take out anyone who reacts to her, repeat, follow the blasts. Shoot high, make them duck. Shoot just to the left, let them think she missed.She picks them off, one position, then another. They might get out of this.
Then a disruptor blast slams into the stone by her feet and Michael grabs Tilly, tugging her out of the way. Someone’s in the ceiling, their cover is shot. The giant vase they’re behind now will only take one hit to shatter.
She got cocky.
They’re about to die.
She clears her mind, takes her phaser, if she stands, takes the hits, Tilly might be able to get back to the shuttle.
“When I say run, you run to the shuttle and you don’t look back.”
Tilly’s eyes are wide and white. She gets it. “No, Michael, no, we—“
Disruptors sing agony around her, hot and white-yellow. There’s another sound, something deeper, less of a whine. Not Starfleet, but not their attackers. Whoever they are, they are a very good shot. One firing position, then another goes down. Quiet. Smoke wreaths them and Michael taps Tilly, encouraging her to crawl to the left, get behind one of the more substantial sarcophagi.
“Who’s out there?”
“I have no idea, but they’re good.” Really good. Good enough that— No, it wouldn’t be her. She’s on the other side of the galaxy, hooking up with Andorians or trading for Romulan ale or standing over the body of the gleaming white scaled alien who had just been shooting at them.
“You should be careful, Number One. Lenarians value cultural objects for as much as they can sell them for.”
“Philippa,” Michael murmurs.
“The Emperor?” Tilly says, narrowly avoiding a squeak. “Here?”
“I was in the neighborhood.” Philippa stalks down the stairs, twin Nausicaan blasters in hand. “Looks like I should have warned you to stay out of trouble, not the other way around.”
“Thank you.” Michael drops her phaser.
Tilly looks like she’s almost ready to salute again but she smiles instead. “Thanks, really, I didn’t want to find out what it feels like to get shot.”
“It hurts,” Philippa says, tilting her head in amusement. “Sometimes a great deal.”
“Yeah, going to try and skip that.”
“You should,” Michael adds, not taking her eyes away from the emperor, who looks like her captain, who once was her mother. Of course this is complicated. “Should I ask what you’re doing here or do I really not want to know?”
“Just trading. It seems my skills from home are rather useful here, in the dark corners of your ever so bright universe.” Philippa squints a little even now that the shooting has stopped. All the lights here must be too bright, and a firefight must give her a hell of a headache. Not that she’ll say anything. “I can find things no one else can.”
Michael leaves it at that, though Tilly wants to ask (but doesn’t, thankfully).
“Don’t suppose you’ve seen any artifacts with this spatial resonance?” Tilly holds up her tricorder. “We think they might be Gritriskuu and we’re collecting them for the Vulcans.”
“Running errands now?”
“Exploring, being diplomatic, all the good Starfleet things.”
Philippa smiles at that, her eyes dark like a predator. “Now that your war is over.”
“Frees us up,” Tilly answers, unperturbed. “Really, it’s a lot more fun and much less deadly than this was, most of the time.”
“Deadly seems like something you’d like to avoid.”
“We would—“ Michael would say more, but one of the creatures, five limbed with glistening white scales, stands behind Philippa, leveling its weapon.
“Down!” She yells, but Philippa moves faster, she whirls, impossibly quick and fires, the bolts cross each other in the air, singeing it crisp. It reeks of ozone.
Tilly didn’t move, Michael lunges for her, but then she’s down, tackled by black leather.
Burnt leather, and that copper stink.
“Tilly?”
“I’m all right, I’m all right. She got me.”
“Philippa?”
“It’s a graze.” Her voice is level, even, betraying none of how much it has to fucking hurt.
“Let me see.”
“Michael, it’s fine.”
“You got shot?” Tilly says, her eyes brighter than they were when she was being shot at and huge in her face. “You got shot for me?”
“Don’t take it personally.”
“Thank you.”
“It’s nothing.”
“Let me see, Philippa.”
She holds her hand over her left side, covering the burn in her coat. The blood must be slow, seeping, but Michael can smell it. “It’s a flesh wound.”
“Come back to the shuttle, we can patch you up.”
“It’s fine.”
“We have a much better medkit than whatever you’ve stolen,” Michael insists. “I promise.”
“Please,” Tilly adds, and she gets to her feet, offering her hand to help Philippa up. “It’s the least we can do.”
Another eye roll. “Fine.” She stands easily, back perfectly straight, but she keeps her hand on the wound. It hurts.
Michael flips open her communicator, but it’s silent.
Tilly tries hers and shakes her head. “Must have been tetryon disruptors, those always wreak havoc on communicators. Nasty stuff.” She looks at Philippa again, studying her. “We should take one.”
“We should take all of them,” Philippa corrects. “If Starfleet doesn’t want them, I can trade them.”
Collecting all the weapons gives Michael a chance to study the heads of their attackers. Their single eyes are silvery, almost reflective. Perhaps they use some kind of infrared? What did they want? Michael and Tilly's mission was purely scientific. Gritriskuu artifacts are interesting to a xeno anthropologist but not worth anything that she knows of. It's been awhile since she tracked the open markets. Clutching the disruptors in her hands, she follows Tilly and Philippa towards the shuttle. Tilly hasn't moved from Phiippa's side, and even now she follows her like an honor guard.
The air still stinks of blood.
Michael leaves the disruptors in a pile on the floor of the shuttle and heads for the medkit. Tilly leaves them to it, picking up one of the weapons and turning it over in her hands.
"Too bad your leather's not disruptor proof."
"I liked this jacket."
"Sorry." Michael takes out the laser scalpel and tilts her head towards the bench. "It might be easiest if you lie down."
"It's a flesh wound, Michael I've had far worse."
"And I'm not a doctor, so, if you don't want to lose a rib or something, lie down."
Phiippa smiles a little, but the sharpness of her breath when she sits, then lies down tugs at Michael. Even another eyeroll can't hide that it hurts. Slicing open her jacket and the leather beneath with the scalpel, Michael studies the wound. The deep black is the char she expects, but there's blood seeping from the center, smeared on Philippa's stomach down towards her hip.
"You're bleeding, that's odd for a disruptor." She touches Philippa's skin near the edge of the wound, oddly enough remembering her Philippa talk her through repairing a phaser wound the first time one of their team was hurt. Clear the dead tissue, assess the potential muscle, nerve or organ damage. A dermal regenerator can handle the basics, but they'll need to take it easy. Nerves need to traced, checked.
"They're tetryon-based," Tilly says behind her head. Something clicks and Tilly fires the weapon out of the shuttle, back towards the stones they landed on. "We need to get her to a starbase or a starship, preferably at least a Constitution-class."
"What?"
"I'm not going to a starbase--" Philippa sits up, but that cracks her composure.
She winces. Former Emperor Philippa Georgiou who never shows pain, has her hand pressed to the disruptor burn, and blood seeps red around her fingers.
"Lie back down."
"Just fix it, and I'll be on my way." She starts to stand, ignoring the pain. Michael reaches up but it's Tilly who stops her.
She stares down the Emperor who has frightened her so much as if she's speaking as a captain. "Tetryon-based disruptors have a degenerative effect on living tissue, it'll bleed, and keep bleeding, the muscle tissue around the wound will degrade, the nerves will die, we have to get you to a very advanced sickbay as soon as possible or this will kill you."
"It's a flesh wound.'
"You know weapons," Tilly insists, putting another hand on the Emperor's shoulder. "You know more about weapons that anyone I know and that scares me a little. A lot. You know what this is."
Philippa stares at Tilly, then looks at Michael, meeting her eyes for a moment before she has to look away. She blinks, too many times. "In my world, this means death. I would rather Michael did not watch me die again."
"A starbase can cure you! They remove the damaged tissue and regenerate the rest using cryotechniques and a vacuum chamber because the tetryon decay is oxygen-activated.. The Vosoxi technique was developed on Betazed three years ago in response to the proliferation of tetryon-based weapons," Tilly says, turning to Michael for help. "Dr. Culber told me about the paper he was reading. A starbase could do this."
"You'd rather slink away and die, really, Philippa?"
Sitting up makes it bleed quicker, and copper fills the air, heavy and harsh, mixed with the reek of burnt flesh.
"I'm finding a starbase," Tilly says, leaving them to argue. She shuts the shuttle hatch, and Philippa can't get up with Michael right in front of her.
Philippa can't even look at her.
"You're going to be all right."
"Of course you'd say that."
"Lie back down, let me try and stop the bleeding."
"Why?" Philippa shuts her eyes. Is it the light? Does she not want to look? "I'm just going to bleed through."
"If I bandage it, you might bleed out a little slower. We're a long way from Discovery and I don't know how far from a starbase."
"And not jumping through space with your mushrooms."
Michael swallows the retort that she will beg Stamets and Saru personally if she needs to. Philippa is going to live. Putting aside the dermal regenerator, she grabs the bandages, and eases Philippa's hand off the wound. Putting pressure on it makes her hiss.
"How can it burn if my nerves are dying?"
"Technically they're being undone, the myelin sheaths are being stripped away, it's really very painful, and designed to be so to make you more compliant in an interrogation." Tilly stops her explanation, and her wince visceral is more than any of Philippa's. "Sorry."
"Starbase, Tilly, what's the closest starbase?"
"Nineteen, Starbase Nineteen is only ninety-three minutes away if we push the shuttle to maximum warp, we could probably make it in less if I took power from the shields and other non-essential systems, provided we didn't get attacked or--"
"Do it."
"Yes, Commander, sir, Michael."
Philippa smiles, now playful, with her blood dripping onto the deck. "I see discipline is important to you."
"I didn't have a rank until after the war, she's allowed to forget."
"I see." Philippa somehow retains her smile, and it's better than hissing in pain or trying not to cry, so Michael tries to hold onto that, not to think about the heat of Philippa's blood soaking through the bandages. "Who's your captain now?"
"Not important."
"Starfleet secrets?" Philippa smiles again, but her forehead furrows. If they disruptor blast gets through the abdominal wall, starts eating at her liver, her intestines, the surgery will be much more complicated, and nothing in the galaxy hurts like a belly wound. She can't even cauterize this. The edges visible outside the bandage aren't black anymore, but red, seeping, oozing. Michael press down hard, kneeling on the deck.
"This one feels temporary as wll," Michael admits. "I don't know if it's because I'm a little nervous that something will again go wrong, or if I resent that I haven't moved up to the captaincy, or Saru--"
"The tough Kelpien?"
She still has her terrible sense of humor.
"I almost thought it would be him."
Philippa nods at that, her gaze lingering on Michael's face. "Not you."
"Oh no, I haven't earned that back."
"Yet," Tilly reminds her from the helm. "You'll be captain."
"Thanks Tilly."
Philippa smiles again, eyes closing. Maternal, proud, like Amanda and Sarek but deeply ruthless underneath. Michael should just kill her way to the top, not wait to be recognized and promoted on merit. Earning it means something different in this universe.
“Stay with me.”
“Michael?” Tilly touches her shoulder, drawing her attention. “I’ve locked in the autopilot, and I’ve got our journey down to eighty-one minutes, maybe eighty-two.”
“That’s great, Tilly. Thank you.”
“We need to give her electrolytes, fluids, we’ve got some water in the rations, I could mix them with electrolytes, make it isotonic, try and keep her blood pressure up. If only we had a replicator. Maybe we can...”
“Okay, Tilly, that’s good.”
Tilly squeezes her shoulder. “You’re not listening, but that’s all right. I’ll work on it. I like puzzles. Maybe there’s a way to use the dermal regenerator to polarize her tissue and try and to slow the cellular degradation caused by the tetryon disruptor.”
“I thought you liked science, Michael,” Philippa says, her voice deeper, raspier than it was. Her eyes open, but she looks past Michael, past Tilly. How much of her blood soaks the bench beneath her? How much is in the carpet beneath Michael’s knees?
“It’s hard to think right now.”
“Under pressure is the best time to think.”
“Now you sound like her.”
“I read her journals.” Philippa swallows, and Tilly gently places a hypo on her neck. It hisses, and Tilly stars fusses with something else. “She thought so much of you. With good reason, of course. I think she’d be proud of you, regaining you commission, stopping the war. I know I am.”
“You’d be more proud if I had destroyed Qo’Nos.”
“Yes, that would have been better for your Federation, safer, but you chose the hard way.”
Tilly makes one of those faces and Michael smiles at her. Her presence is a gift.
“We do that.”
“It seems to have made your galaxy no less dangerous.”
“The Vosoxi technique was invented on Betazed, probably by a doctor you, and the other me, subjugated.”
“So I should be grateful, the weaker species you’ve kept alive will save my life?”
“I’ll be grateful,” Michael says, taking the next bandage from Tilly and pressing it down. Philippa’s going pale, her lips aren’t pink anymore, and they’re still an hour away. “I’ll be grateful for you.”
Philippa lifts her hand, touching Michael’s arm without any warmth in her fingers. “I won’t die on you.”
“I’d appreciate that.”
“Michael—“ Tilly warns, staring at the tricorder. It beeps mournfully, echoing Philippa’s thready heartbeat. “We need to do something.”
“You’ll come up with something. Sodium lactate solution, isotonic. You thought you could scavenge from our rations.”
“Right, I can do that. Emergency rations have electrolyte packets, if I dissolve them in the right solution, it should be right.”
Philippa squeezes Michael’s arm, drawing her attention. Michael has to lean down to hear her, “Tell her, she’ll hardly be able to make it worse.”
“What did she say?”
“You can’t make it worse.”
Tilly laughs that uncomfortable, desperate little laugh that makes Michael just want to hug her and promise it’ll be fine.
“Right, well, with that vote of confidence...” she trails off, then forces herself to smile. “You know, she’s going to be okay, starbases have great medical bays. I know it’s hard though, because she looks just like your captain and...”
“Thanks.”
“And I’m here, okay? I’m right over here.”
Philippa’s grip tightens on her arm again, drawing her down so she can speak. When her Philippa died, it was quick, the light went out of her eyes and she was gone. If this takes her, it’ll be slow and hot, while she bleeds out in Michael’s hands. Her heart’s still beating, and she has breath, hold onto those thoughts. Tilly’s working on something, they might be able to get her to stabilize.
“Of course, we don’t have an IV infuser, so I’ll have to use the hypo.”
“But you can do that.”
“I’ve made two liters of sodium lactate solution, which should help tie her over. It’s not two liters of plasma, but it’s something. Two liters of fluid, milliliters at a time, no problem. That’s what autopilots for.”
Tilly works like a metronome is driving her. Fill the hypo, press it into the veins in Philippa’s arm, in her neck. The little hisses ground Michael in reality, falling in sync with Philippa’s thready heartbeat, and way her breathe seems to be slower, harder. Her lips are pale, more gray than pink, and her eyes haven’t been open for the last half hour. Michael can’t read the tricorder and her knees and shoulders are numb. She holds blood-soaked bandages in place with wooden fingers. Beneath the fabric, Philippa’s flesh melts away, breaking up cell by cell, and there’s nothing she can do.
The shuttle leaps through space, pulling them along. Tilly runs out of fluid eventually, and there’s nothing else to mix up. It’s probably all seeping into the carpet, soaking the bench with the rest of Philippa's blood. Maybe it would have been more logical to let her go. Save her from slow, agonizing, death.
Tears slip silently from Philippa’s closed eyes, and at some point her hand found Michael’s wrist and she holds her. There’s still strength there, and Michael clings to that with all of her heart. She’s still here.
“I hated first aid training at the academy,” Michael says, needing something to fill the silence.
“You did? It’s so logical, why would you hate it?” Tilly reaches for the tricorder and taps it, moving it further from Michael’s view. “She’s fine, I just, didn’t want it to beep at you and freak you out. She’s fine, we’re almost there.”
“Following the steps made sense to me, treating people, that’s easy, but I never got the emotional part of it. How do you sit there, trying to keep someone alive? What do you tell them if it looks bad, if they might not make it. Other there, they end people. One quick move with a knife, and no one bleeds out slowly.”
“Over there is not what we want to be like. Sure, this is fucking terrifying, and I don’t know if I’ll ever stop smelling blood, and I still don’t know what to do because I like to fix things and I can’t fix things. I can’t make her stop bleeding and that should be me, really, because I was the one who was going to get shot and then she got shot instead.”
“It’s all right.”
“You keep saying that.”
“Because it is going to be all right.”
“That’s the captain in you, you know that?” Tilly sits back, smiling a little. It’s such a shift that Michael almost wants to smile back.
“The captain?”
“You want me to be okay. To know that it’s all right. You’re losing your captain, your mother, and you want me to be okay.”
Philippa’s hand squeezes and Michael jumps. “You told her I was your mother?”
“You are my mother.” Maybe there’s no point in burying it, softening it with other worlds and realities. She’s lost one mother, and gained Amanda. No harm will come from having another.
“ Her mother.” Her Michael, she's willing to let the Michael in front of her go, not to fight.
“And mine,” Michael leans close, making sure Philippa can hear her. “You came to save me, you saved Tilly, you didn’t have to, but I know. I know how you feel. You’re not my captain, not my Philippa, but you’re my mother. Let’s just go with that.”
She couldn’t save her own mother; Michael listened to her die. She had to leave Philippa, had to watch her body go slack and still. This one, she can keep alive. She will. After an eternity they're in comm range and drop out of warp.
Michael picks Philippa up, holding her against her chest with stiff arms. She aches from not moving, from pressing down, but she’s adrenaline makes her fearless. Unstoppable.
“Medical emergency,” Tilly informs the hail as they make contact with the starbase. “Medical emergency, requesting immediate transport to the infirmary, lock on to Commander Burnham's signature.”
Tractor beams catch the shuttle, and transporters grab them, pulling them into the yellow light.
“Stay with me,” she whispers. It's the second time she's held her and tried to save her life. This time Phiilppa can't even complain that she hasn't been allowed to die with honor, or die alone.
She has a place here, Michael doesn't know what it is yet, but it's starts with her. "Mother, you stay with me."