in the garden

It isn’t that he’s trying to defend his Hugh’s humanity, because he’s never thought that about him. He’s never thought that about anyone here, least of all the one he was closest to. He only knows that when it is doubted by this person before him, it is meant condescendingly, looking down at him. He would not let this imposter come into his place and insult his–his Hugh. He defends it only because he knows that his Hugh is being insulted. That is something he won’t accept. 

“Of course he did.” He says it as the fact it is, almost confused as to why it isn’t understood. “We aren’t given things here. He had to take it. So he did.” He’d had his handicaps, and he still managed to be here the same as everyone else. He was important here. He was needed here. He had been. He had been important. And now he’s gone. He’d been so strong, had fought for everything in his life, and he’d still died. He was still taken from him. So he takes a shot, because he doesn’t like the way he’s being spoken to. “He did better than you would have.” 

“We’re the same person,” he fires back, voice smooth (so smooth). “If we had been switched at birth, I would be your Hugh right now.”

He hadn’t meant to imply Hugh had forgotten about them. Not for a moment. He knows he had been thinking about them, knows he had thought about Paul. He isn’t saying that Hugh picked Su’kal over him, either. He isn’t asking that he put Paul before himself, or before every single choice he makes. He just wants to be selfish as well, this once. He wants to keep Hugh to himself, lock him in this room and never let him go. 

He sighs. He feels like he isn’t getting his own point across, feels like he’s making demands of Hugh that he isn’t intending to make. “You can leave if you need to,” he says softly, pressing a kiss to Hugh’s neck, comforted by the life he can feel beating through it. “Just come back to me if you do.”

“It’s not-” he shakes his head, only lightly, and is glad he doesn’t move any harsher lest he whack the side of Paul’s face or send tears flying. They’re starting to make themselves known in his eyes. He, too, feels a failure of his own communication, and blames the guilt simmering under the surface.

“I didn’t-” he sighs. “When I decided to stay on the ship to prevent the Burn, we didn’t have the radiation meds. We didn’t know if we would make it back.”

He glares, though it isn’t really directed at Hugh so much as it is the world at large. He’s frustrated, and he feels like a trapped animal. He is a trapped animal. He doesn’t even have access to his hands, and Hugh’s standing above him, an accepted part of their world. 

(No, no that’s not true. He’s not here because he’s accepted, he’s here because everyone else is here to afraid to come close to him, and that is a something that brings him pleasure.) 

But he does know this place. He knows how it works, knows what the people are like. He knows how to get what he wants from them. He assumes he does, anyway. Surely there has to be something to come out of all this study, this practice, something more than just the fact that this is where they’re forced to be, because Paul has no intention of bending to them. He knows that this is not their home, but that doesn’t mean he won’t continue to be who he was there. He likes who he was there.

“Does that knowledge include how to get me out of here? Or are you just going to stand there?”

He glares right back, but that expression has a moment of confusion followed by a shot of increasing intensity. Catching a glimpse in the reflection of a shiny surface, he realized that he was only copying the other Culber’s look of disapproval that always seemed disgustingly soft. He wants a real, Terran glare.

“You didn’t think I was real, just a few seconds ago,” he says. “I can give you a little more freedom, but that will have limits.”

The doctor’s response is not one he expects. Hugh has always been selfless, has always put other people before himself. If asked to describe his partner, that would have been something included on the list. To hear now that he wants to be selfish…it isn’t concerning, because he’s seen just as well what putting others first has done to him, but it’s…saddening. It makes him sad to see what he’s been beaten down to. 

His fingers moves through Hugh’s hair slowly, a gentle repetitive movement to use to focus what he feels. “I’m not asking you to turn your back on people, but we need you here.” We, plural, even spreading to the entirety of Discovery itself, but meaning Adira, Gray, and himself as well. More than that, of course, he means I. Paul needs him there. He’s tried surviving without him, and he can survive, won’t go so far as to say he can’t, but…he, too, wonders. Wonders how he would fare if made to go through losing Hugh again. The lonely nights, the too-big bed. The absence of the thing that meant most to him. Maybe it wouldn’t kill him, but he wonders if he would be able to recover. The truth is, he really doesn’t know. 

He feels a gripping, painful regret at his actions from not so long ago. Had he forgotten this family when he stayed behind on the dilithium planet? He had certainly done the same math and come up with a different solution. That pain, though, gets locked away in a small corner of his mind to be dealt with some other time. There’s a hand in his hair, lightly tugging at his scalp in rythmic movements that soothe those on

What are we supposed to do? Again that makes him laugh, less hysterical than before, but not quite the chuckle of an easy-minded. “What are we supposed to do?” he repeats, tugging again at the restraints. “How am I supposed to know? I want to kill them. I want them to suffer in that hell the same way I did. But they won’t. They already have me trapped.” Again his voice is raised, “Too high and mighty to face me themselves!” Back to Hugh, “Even if I did, which I do really want to, they’d save each other. Or they’d send someone else. We could kill the whole crew, but that would be so messy. And I’m really not ready to be killed again quite yet. So what are we supposed to do?” His shoulders raise in an exaggerated shrug–at least as much as they can, with his arms unable to move freely, “I don’t know. Don’t you have a plan? What were you doing while you were waiting for me?”

While he was waiting? He hadn’t exactly been sitting around with ample time for plotting. There’s a twinge of frustration, but he pushes it down with all of the relief that he still feels, just to have his scientist back.

“I learned about this universe,” he does admit. “When I wasn’t working with the other you, to get you back, I followed Culber around. Learned about their medical practices. The ship. Their way of life.”

He moves one of his hands, prying it from where it rests beneath the doctor to rest gently against the side of his head, fingertips gently running through the fine hairs that grow above his ear. After a moment, it rises further to bury his fingers in his curls. It is a comforting feeling, one he hopes will do the same for Hugh. 

He doesn’t like hearing mention of Michael, of Hugh being left alone to die, but he’ll have to hear about it if he wants to hear what happened, and he does. He wants to hear what happened to his partner. He needs to, for both of them. “You helped him,” Paul said softly, “You risked yourself to help him.” This isn’t said unkindly, but gently, even admiringly. “You’re a good person.” Now he smiles, just some. “But sometimes I wish you were a little less selfless.” 

Paul is smiling- he can feel it against his jaw, a lovely feeling in isolation. He can’t quite bring himself to grin, though, no matter how weak. He feels too mournful about the entire situation. The hand in his hair, the man he loves chest-to-chest with him on their bed, it could all be taken away in an instant. He needs to preserve it. (If for no other reason, he worries sometimes, than that Paul might not survive losing him another time.)

“I know,” he agrees, voice barely above a whisper and too solemn to be bragging about his goodness. “-And I want to try.”

He is not used to feeling, and in this moment he feels so strongly that he imagines something inside of him will burst. The medicine that was injected into him helped, but these are his own feelings, his own vengeance and bloodlust and, as Hugh begins to strong his hair, something softer. Good and bad swirls inside of him in a way that he would hate even if his mind was fully intact. 

He exhales one more breath of laughter, and he shakes his head. He wants blood just the same, but right now, in this moment, he can see how…futile the idea is. In their world, if someone hurt you, you killed them, you taught them why you were never to be hurt again, and he itches to do the same now, but he knows enough about this place that he knows there are consequences. “Do you think we’ll kill them?” he asks, voice low like Hugh’s but nowhere near comforting. “Make them scream? They’ll throw us in a box and forget about us. Again. They’ll never pay. I won’t be thrown away again.” They don’t care about them. They left him for a thousand years and never thought about him. He wants to make them scream, wants to make them bleed, but they won’t care. They think they’re above him. He could kill all of them, and no one would care.

The shift is confusing, and that confusion shows on his face- the furrowed brow returns.

Paul isn’t wrong, to be sure. It’s a fact that Hugh had considered, and probably to this day uses it to justify his docile behavior. Whenever he behaved himself, listened patiently to the other Culber’s instruction, that was all a calculated means to an end. Sure enough, he had been rewarded by the return of his Paul. Can he be unleashed now? Not if he wants to stay by his scientist’s side.

Despite his efforts to the contrary, Paul shows genuine surprise at this Hugh’s revelation. He takes a step closer, as if to observe him, as though by peering at his neck he could gain an image of his vocal chords. First he is surprised, and then, once the doctor before him continues, comes the irritation, almost amused. Treated for it. Of course he was. That certainly explains how this one’s voice got to be so light, so smooth. Because he was treated for it. Because someone took care of him. Which wasn’t to say that the Io Culber of this universe had been neglectful, but that there are more important things than speech therapy here. This Hugh did not get this flaw trained out of him, instead he was taught how to survive in this world with it. 

He huffs a short breath. “He didn’t need to be treated. He was fine the way he was. He didn’t need to talk.” He’s certain this Hugh pities his, pities the fact that he was broken, and Paul won’t accept that. He had ended up at the Emperor’s side the same as Paul had. “Maybe you would be a burden in your own world,” he begins, because now he wants to hurt him, “so that your parents and teachers wouldn’t have been able to tolerate you, but he wasn’t.”

Hugh Culber has always been so deeply entrenched in the righteousness of his world and beliefs. He thinks, frankly, that it is better than this universe. This Paul seems to then have stumbled on a weak spot for him, through challenging the idea of his visitor’s superiority.

(He notes, of course, the defensiveness that this Paul holds of his Hugh’s humanity. He wouldn’t have expected that out of a Terran, but then again, this day has been full of surprises. It certainly gives him newfound cause to believe the depth of their bond.)

He doesn’t know what this new expression on his doctor’s face means, but he doesn’t have the time to consider it before the answer comes. And what an answer it is. Of course, time blurred in that place to the point that he would have taken any answer as truth, that it could have been a day since that bitch Landry held a phaser to his back and killed him, and at the same time is surprised that the answer is anything short of an eternity. A millennium, though. That’s cold, even for him. 

He doesn’t lash out. Not yet. Instead what he does is laugh. At first it is only a laugh, as inappropriate as it is, but it quickly gains volume, gains a shine behind his eyes that is both detached and fully, sharply aware. He laughs, and he begins again to tug at the restraints that hold him. He knows what he wants to do, and it is to earn his millennium with blood. Mirth, twisted as it is, transforms to anger, though still he maintains control over himself–a control he uses to yell towards the people that are certainly listening in, certainly just behind the door. Specifically, he yells to the doctor that resembles his own, “Bastard!” He pulls at his wrists, arches his back. There’s an edge to his voice that  “You knew I was there!” Eyes focus on the Hugh before him. “He knew. I saw him. And he,” louder, now, aimed towards the possibly entirely absent victim of his rage, “left me!”

When Paul laughs, he almost sees behind it- not only the way that the restraints are already being tugged at again, but the cruelty behind the sound.

Quietly, something gets colder in his heart. Not that a terran would ever willingly express it, but he held something akin to gratitude for his rescuers, even if they were “cruel” to him by excluding him from anything but awkward friendship before his Paul was rescued. They had brought his scientist back, and he thought that must be worth something. Now that shifts again.

“Yes,” he answers quickly, feeling good in the certainty of the answer. They know him there, know of him, anyway. He feels something loosen in him the further they get from the Academy, some weight lifting from his shoulders. Even on a good day, he is not a social man, and even when it was Hugh that was coming to this with him, he wasn’t looking forward to it. He himself exists in a place that is too human to be Vulcan (despite his best efforts), and too Vulcan to be human, which leaves him unable to understand either species. He appreciates their logic, but even he must admit that at the base of his work is, as Hugh once put it, a beating heart. He doesn’t want to care about…anything, but his work is formed around the admiration he has for life. He doesn’t show it, though, doesn’t like to dwell on feelings, and so those things leave him unable to understand colleague human or Vulcan alike. It would be isolating, if he didn’t have Hugh, but so long as he does, the doctor is all he truly needs. 

He doesn’t like small talk, doesn’t ever understand the need to fill silence, but this silence is heavy, settling around him uncomfortably. Perhaps it’s guilt, perhaps it’s worry, but whatever it is that taints it, he doesn’t like it. “One day,” he says, voice softer than usual, “when he’s feeling better…I’m sure he’ll want to make this night up to you.” We’ll have you over, because I would like to make this night up to you. 

Ere Dorotea, in spite of a soft voice and soft edges, is a sharp person. She catches the implication that “when Hugh is better” is still a long time in the future, and that this is probably not a one-off incident. Equally, though, she notes how much stress the scientist seems to be under, and knows that she probably shouldn’t bring the subject up just for the sake of her own curiosity.

He doesn’t like talking about him. He doesn’t want to talk about him, but he understands, in his way, the fact that they have to. He needs to tell him about the doctor he lost, because he needs to be able to protect himself. People here cling on to whatever weakness they can get their claws into, and they use it to tear people apart. He won’t let this one be hurt the way he’d–allowed his to. Maybe not directly, but he knows that if he had done a proper job, he wouldn’t have died. But surely there isn’t time to worry about that right now. Or ever, if he could have his way. 

“No,” he confirms, preferring that this one believes he never spoke over the truth, that he did speak, but only for Paul. Only when they were alone. He keeps this to himself because he knows how this one would react, knows that he would praise it as something soft, and because…it feels like a violation of the moments they spent together to share it. They were theirs, and this person, even if he is Hugh Culber himself, does not get to touch them. “Clearly not a trait you shared.”

“I didn’t, once.” All his heart slips through the cracks, and against all better judgement he really does (if only briefly) assume that this Paul is speaking with all genuineness. “I was treated for it very young. By... I was probably speaking normally by elementary school.”

He understands, of course, the other Paul. He knows the other Paul. He’s been inside of his mind, as poorly as that ended up going. And he thought he knew the network well enough to know what it was capable of, but it seems that the connection it has between life and death is one that goes both ways. It saved him in death, and now it’s restored him in life. And not only did it restore him…how fascinating. 

He feels, in his medicated state–as much as he hates it–that his mind feels more like his own. He feels it working, feels it turning over these facts, feels himself wondering, “I remember him,” he says softly, uncertainly. “Hugh. “ His eyebrows furrow, and his tongue darts to wet his lips as he thinks, as he digs through memories that are already fading. “I saw him.” Then consideration turns to a frown. “How long has he been here?” How long was I left? The thought sends a spike of upset through his growing calm. The self-righteous crew of Discovery, leaving him to rot while only saving their own. In his own world, he could only ever depend on Hugh, his Hugh, and it seems that the same can be said for this one. Which doesn’t surprise him, of course. At least in his world, they are clear about their selfishness, and don’t hide it behind symbols of togetherness. At the end of the day, they are not better. 

From his position with both hands lightly resting on filled-out shoulders, he can feel a slight uptick in heartrate. It’s understandable, given the circumstances, but it’s an effect that he seeks to counteract through the force of his mere presence. He wants to soothe Paul- brace him, even, for what he’s about to say. His hands move gently, never losing contact with the scientist.

“They brought him back within a year,” he says. “But then they time-traveled a thousand years ahead, which is when they found me. So you were in there for... a millennium, in our time.”

He looks him over, not so much admiring as judging, comparing this weak copy to the doctor he knew. The similarities really are remarkable, Not that he’s really surprised about that, but there’s a difference between knowing something and seeing it clear before you. But he doesn’t allow himself to become lost in that, because there is still a job to be done. And even if there wasn’t, it’s best never to let oneself drift too far here. 

He doesn’t like the question, of course he doesn’t, but he knows it must be answered. He would rather keep the memory of his Hugh close to his chest, but even for the walk from point A to B, there’s a way he’ll have to act. “He didn’t speak. And he scowled more than you do.” A pause. “Of course, he’s dead now, but that doesn’t really matter here. Just because you’re told someone’s been killed doesn’t mean they have been.”

The confirmation of his death aches- not so much for him, because he’s been there and done that, but it aches for Paul. He recognizes the scowl as an attempt to distance. He’s sure that there’s something else, something much weaker and sadder, lurking below the surface.

One other thing does pique his curiosity, though:

Yes, yes he remembers. He thinks he does, anyway. Remembers through the pain and confusion. A party in uniforms with lights on the shoulders, led by Hugh. He remembers…himself. Dirty and unkempt, and he notices for the first time that he no longer feels the presence of facial hair, and that the hair on his head feels…lighter. They must have cleaned him while he was unconscious. (Which isn’t true, but he doesn’t know that he’d come back from the network naked and as smooth-faced as he was on the day he died, and perhaps that’s for the best.) He remembers his own rage, he remembers fighting them. He remembers Hugh trying to comfort him until something was pressed to his neck. Then…then he was here. and people were over him, people he didn’t know, and he remembers lashing out. All of this comes in flashes, unclear ones at that, but slowly he pieces it together. 

“How?” He’s calmed some, blue eyes steady on the brown ones that are as close to home as he’s ever gotten. “I don’t understand. People don’t come back.”

They’ve settled- calmed, just a little, and he feels healed by even a few seconds of peace together. This frustration is one that he knows from his scientist, and has loved. It’s not the volatility of psychosis. It’s the demanding questions, a glint of brilliance on those blue eyes. He promised himself that he would never take that for granted again.

His eyes close as Hugh’s hands frame his head, squeezing tight in nothing short of anguish. His mind surges, turning wildly in a way that he cannot control, but whatever it is that’s been injected into his veins has combined with the fact that he’s worn himself down and leaves him tired. Exhausted. And, of course, this touch, whether it truly is Hugh or not, feels right. He wants to believe this is real. It feels real, realer than anything he’s experienced in…in a long time. Still he tugs, though, just once, He only wants to be free. 

When his eyes open, they look into Hugh’s, searching, pleading. He’s touching him, and he isn’t hurting him. Maybe that means he’s only a hallucination. Or maybe this means this is real. “Where are we?” he asks, voice still strained but no longer quite so frantic. “How am I here? I was–” his eyebrows furrow deeply “–I was dead. Am I? Are you?” A pause. “Are you real?”

“I saved you,” he says, voice brimming with more emotion than he may have ever expressed in his life up to this point. Behind it is months of hard work- pleading with their “hosts” to save the scientists, and then pulling him out of the network. He considers it the height of his life. He once thought that the crowning accomplishment of his existence would have something to do with his own scientific career, not saving some pitiful, frantic shadow of a human.

He wonders, briefly, what he should do with the clothes that now litter his floor, but decides that he can take care of them later. People don’t really come here, and if they did, people that work with him tend to avoid getting into trouble with him. And really, the majority of people wouldn’t know what they were, anyway. He thinks he has more to worry about in walking around with a dead man than in leaving his clothes on his floor. That is going to be a problem. 

So maybe, on second thought, it would be best not to leave any more evidence than he has to. 

Changing his mind, he gathers the discarded clothes, enjoying the moment of closeness it allows him. He wants to touch him, but he holds off on that. His people are so hesitant. He takes the pile and puts it into a disposal, and feels better as it is atomized. Yes, that was the better choice. Then he turns back to Hugh, looking at him almost nonchalantly, “I said I would. You don’t have to believe me, but my answer hasn’t changed.” 

He watches, almost sort of paralyzed, as his clothes are picked up and placed in the disposal. That’s to say- this Paul picks them up, nearly kneeling at Hugh’s feet to do it, and then willingly turns his back to Hugh. He could attack if he wanted to. He thinks that it wouldn’t be beneath him.

Instead, he’s accepting

“Okay,” he agrees. “So how do I blend in? How did your Hugh behave?”

Psychosis? The idea is offered and immediately rejected. He is not psychotic. He isn’t hallucinating–he’s remembering. He has every right to act the way he is, and this man, this person, this thing, why should he trust it? Why does he have any reason to believe this is real? That this is anything but the same thing it’s been since–how long has it been? How long was he there? Is he still there? He doesn’t know. It doesn’t look like it, but how long has it been since he’s been able to trust his own perception? 

And more than all of that, if he is indeed no longer in that place, how? He remembers dying, the pain that lasted only a second but burned hotter than anything he’d ever experienced as every cell in his body was disintegrated. He remembers…something, but it’s fuzzy. Everything after death became fuzzy. Perhaps he is still there, perhaps this is the same hell. Perhaps the jahSepp got bored and wanted to try something new. 

“I’m not–” he shakes his head, still tugging at the bonds that hold him. Why are they restraining him? He knows he tried to hurt them, but why shouldn’t he when he’s being crowded by people he doesn’t know in a strange place? When he’s being poked and prodded and touched and moved? And why is Hugh at the head of it all? Why is he helping them? Why is he letting them do this to him? For a moment, only a moment, he looks afraid. “Why? Why are you doing this?”

Paul keeps breaking his heart. He knows there’s no way to really explain this to the scientist- even if for no other reason than the way that his throat will close up halfway through a second sentence.

“Because this will heal you,” he tries to say instead. Even though this is Paul, his eyes and hands are moving to check the restraints. He makes sure that they’re secure, and he betrays his scientist in that way.