Title: Stardust Baby

Title: Stardust Baby

Category: Pre-Slash, Angst T/H

Author: L0C

Feedback: Much sought after!

Archive: Drop me a line.

Summary: A song-fic based on "Andromeda" by Zuckerbaby. Harper is almost lost.

Warning/Spoilers: None.

Disclaimer: Roddenberry’s creation. I don’t know who owns it now. I haven’t seen as many episodes of ‘Andromeda’ as I’d like, so please excuse any glaring errors. The Guim are my creation, it is a Scottish word meaning ‘conspiracy’.

Rating: PG-15

Stardust Baby

You paint your body if you dare fall

All the colours of the sky

Tyr wondered, why brunette?

What an odd, odd thought to be having at a time like this.

In the midst of klaxons, ringing bells and flashing lights, would his mind choose to suddenly diverge off the beaten track to ponder why Rommie had brown hair?

Any other time it might be an acceptable train of thought. Tyr might have even encountered those thoughts somewhere along the line. Given Harper’s personality, why would he create Andromeda’s avatar as a brunette, as opposed to a bubble blonde, perhaps a feisty red head?

What an odd, odd thought.

Blinded by bubble gum

I never asked you why

Being Nietzschean, and having an inborn resistance to vulnerability in any form, it was sort of understandable. There was an emotional detachment Tyr had either developed or was born with, one that cut his deeper self off from anything that might hurt him. Hurt led to vulnerability, which would reduce his chances for survival. If you don’t let anyone in, you can’t get hurt.

So it was this survival mechanism that made him ponder the possibilities of the colours of Rommie’s hair, and made him realise that all the times before he had the chance to ask Harper why, he never did. It was this survival mechanism that allowed him to not have to think about the implications of Rommie standing in front of him, telling him Harper was dying.

If this is heaven we'll be all right

If we're in hell it's way past midnight

See, if Tyr had been forced to dwell upon the implications of what Rommie was telling him, it would hurt him. And he would be vulnerable. And we couldn’t have that.

Of course he processed the information. The Andromeda had been making tentative treaty agreements with the Guim, a secretive, industrial people who inhabited a highly populated, rainy planet. Part of the agreement was an exchange of information, including their technology and the records of the other planets in the fledgling Commonwealth. Harper had taken the Maru and gone to rendezvous with the Guim ambassador, but it was an ambush.

Now Harper was stuck aboard the abandoned ship, in fire and smoke, slowly dying.

And Tyr would rather not think of that. As he went through the motions, as Beka guided the Andromeda to the damaged Maru, he thought about anything else but what Rommie had told him.

It's a mistake now Andromeda

It's much too late now Andromeda

Deep down he couldn’t believe that Harper was dying. Death was just something that a man in Tyr’s situation just didn’t think of, for they spent so much of their time avoiding it. Rommie was wrong. He would board the Maru and Harper would be fine and that’s all there was to it.

But there was a nagging part of him, elsewhere in his heart, or brain, that told him otherwise. That science said Harper was dying, and science wasn’t one to be messed with.

This warring of beliefs fought deep in the fray of Tyr led him to another obscure string of thought. Like why he even cared if Harper lived or died. Of course, he cared the way any other crewmember did, and would mourn the loss of a good engineer, and a young life, of course. But he shouldn’t care as much as he did, he shouldn’t feel the sickening, lurching feeling below his chest and above his stomach. He did, however. And he would like to believe he didn’t know why.

Of course, there was a perfectly logical explanation for the sickening feeling below his chest and above his stomach. A perfectly human explanation.

An explanation Tyr would rather not think of right now.

Can't see through this cloud of euphoria

It's a mistake now Andromeda

Don't choke on the stardust baby

Now Tyr wasn’t the kind of person to shrink away from danger. He did what was necessary to ensure survival, but he was no coward. But whenever Harper was around, his defences would go up in the form of bad humour and insults, to protect himself from letting Harper in, becoming any bit vulnerable.

These thoughts raced through his head at twelve million miles a minute as the Andromeda crept towards the Maru at maddeningly slow paces. And in this small space of time, Tyr came to the truth.

The truth was, though he was loath to admit it, he loved Harper.

Trouble with the neighbourhood

You could say I've lost my taste

Of course he was loath to admit it. It just wasn’t done. There were so many qualities about Harper that were unlovable.

Firstly, he was a lowly human, a scrawny one at that. He had a twisted little sense of humour and an equally twisted mind, and spent so much of his time on pointless little endeavours that did nothing to ensure his survival or the survival of the whole. So many pointless little endeavours in the name of ‘fun’, whatever goal that held. He was weak. Sickly. For a Nietszchean to have feeling for a human of such status was contemptible, Tyr’s status would plummet considerably in the eyes of his pride, had he travelled with them.

But the truth, and truth is not one to be messed with, was that he loved Seamus Harper. Pride be damned.

Tattooed and genuine

No, the real thing's not a waste

Before now, long before he even knew he had feelings for the young engineer, others had suspicions he did. Had the idea been presented to him, he would have laughed it off, even been disgusted. A waste of precious time, he would say it was, to speculate such a thing. It would never happen.

Long ago, before he knew he had feelings for the young engineer, he had overheard Harper and Trance discussing him, and the way he teased and bothered Harper, his derogatory use of the word ‘boy’, his short temper, and so forth.

"I think it’s cute," Trance had said, gaily. "I think he’s got a crush on you."

Tyr hadn’t stuck around to hear Harper’s response.

If this is heaven we'll be all right

If we're in hell it's way past midnight

But that was then and this is now, Tyr thought as he suited up and prepared for his spacewalk across to the Maru.

One can survive thirty seconds in deep space without protection. Granted, this is with one’s eyes and mouth wrenched shut, and no moisture leaking from any of one’s pores. If any of these conditions are not met, one dies an excruciatingly painful death of asphyxiation, not to mention being torn from the inside out, one’s eyeballs shrivelling up and exploding, one’s lungs being crushed into oblivion.

Tyr took great care to avoid death in such a manner, indeed, to avoid death in any manner. What good was all that meticulous knowledge if Harper were to die anyway?

For if Harper were to die, Tyr would die. No matter what the circumstances.

It's a mistake now Andromeda

It's much too late now Andromeda

Can't see through this cloud of euphoria

It's a mistake now Andromeda

Don't choke on the stardust baby

It’s also cold in deep space. Too cold to sustain any real life, which is why only burning balls of matter and anti-matter could provide the environment to spawn any life forms.

Ironic, Tyr thought as he floated through the abyss and into the damaged portal of the Maru, how heat and fire is the source of all our powers. Yet heat and fire can kill as easily as it creates.

The Maru now was, inside, one such raging inferno, almost completely absent of air and oxygen. The logical side of Tyr pointed out that if Harper hadn’t died in the short battle before, he was definitely dead now. The logical side of Tyr told him to leave and turn back before he himself turned up dead.

Shut up, the other side of Tyr told the logical one. You’ve never loved anything in your life.

He found Harper in the bridge of the Maru, floating listlessly and not sucked out the gaping hole elsewhere in the ship, like everything else, thanks to the heavy punk chain at his wrist caught up on a broken banister. A few centimetres closer and the banister would have slit his wrist.

Tyr worked with a robotic efficiency, anchoring himself against the raging nothingness of space that threatened to consume them both, and dressed the boy up in the suit he had carried with him across the gap of space between the two ships. He tried to coax Harper into breathing, once in the safety of the suit, but he said nothing. He said nothing of his love, his feeling, it would be a mistake. Because if he shared the burden he had been carrying around on his chest, Harper would either die or it would not be returned. And Tyr would be hurt. And vulnerable. And we can’t have that.

It's a mistake now Andromeda

Can't see past this cloud of euphoria

Tyr gathered up the boy in his arms and unanchored himself from where he had wedged a foot in between the crooked bars of the captain’s seat. He floated back out the hole, towards the Andromeda, and refused to let himself weep.

It had been a mistake for him to make the spacewalk, to have to hold his dying beloved in his arms now, just like it had been a mistake to make deals with the Guim in the first place. Mistakes can be fatal. And now Tyr would die of the most pathetic affliction of all. He would die of a broken heart.

He was aroused from his silent reverie at the sound of broken, shattered breathing over the comm in his suit. He looked down and saw Harper, barely conscious, struggling to breathe, inside his own suit.

"Tyr…I…" The boy choked and spat up some blood, which floated sickeningly inside his helmet. "I thought you would have left me."

Tyr brought up his own suited hand to hold the young genius’, as he kicked their way back to the open, waiting airlock of the Andromeda. "I wouldn’t leave you." He sighed, and made what he was prepared to accept as the biggest mistake of his life. "I love you."

Seamus Harper sighed and gripped the offered hand a little closer. "Thank you," He whispered before his eyes closed again in delirious confusion. "I was wondering when you’d say it."

It's no mistake now Andromeda

Don't choke on the stardust, baby

End.