Ten Forward Social Lounge

The Nietzscheans are gone, all of them. No Tyr, no Telemachus, no Gaheris.

Dylan's not sure what to think of that, and he hasn't been since it happened. It's complicated, in the way so many things are complicated. Now there's only Trance and Harper left. Trance and Harper out of what had once been almost his whole crew.

Some days, he misses them more than others. But he misses that world, the world Tyr and Telemachus were from, right alongside the world Gaheris had destroyed.

Because Gaheris is on his mind, Dylan's left his quarters and spent some time with one of the replicators, going through its commands until he managed to make it produce a Go board and pieces. He's set the board up on one of the tables in Ten Forward, near the windows, with the stones in a container set to one side.

He's created the board, but he's not actually playing yet. He has one of the black stones held between his fingers, and he's turning it over and over. It's a way he has of helping him think.

Soon enough, he'll set it on the board. Perhaps.

Dylan's been spending less time in the lounge lately, less time in the places where he's forced to be around others. He's been practicing in the gym, shooting hoops and trying not to remember doing just that with Gaheris on the Andromeda, finessing his combat technique in the martial arts training area, working himself to exhaustion more often than not.

He's been avoiding his crew, too.

Still, he has to eat, and he's not in the mood to talk to Lucie, so he's come to the lounge and taken a table that lets him stare at the stars as they pass, though he feels little of the wonder traveling faster than light without Slipstream first made him feel. He's toying with the remnants of a meal, though it's clear he hasn't eaten much.

Beka, if she were here, would call it brooding.

Gaheris Rhade is here.

His best friend. The man he'd trusted with everything he cared for: his ship, his crew, his life. His fiancée. His friendship. Gaheris had been the one man he'd trusted above anyone else, and Gaheris had betrayed that trust. Because of Gaheris, Dylan lost Sara, lost his crew, lost his home and the whole world he'd ever known, his friends, his family, everything but Andromeda, and it was only by a near-impossible chance of science that he had his ship and his life.

Gaheris had tried to kill him, and his sabotage had nearly fed Andromeda to the black hole. And Gaheris is here, acting like none of it ever happened.

Starfleet would tell him not to interfere with the timeline, not to let Gaheris know what had happened, that he knew the plans for betrayal and the destruction of everything Dylan believed in that his two-faced supposed friend had fostered for so long.

Dylan couldn't do it. He couldn't face the man who'd haunted his memories and his nightmares, his flashbacks and his fears, and pretend they were still the best of friends. So Dylan had pulled a weapon on his best friend and driven him away.

He wants to believe he doesn't regret it. He doesn't miss Gaheris. He doesn't long for any contact with the world he'd thought was gone forever.

It's not as easy to believe as it should be.

[ OTA but particularly to his crew and those with whom he has substantial CR ]

He's not sleeping well.

He tells himself it's the narrow, unfamiliar bed, the room that's too small, too sparse after years in the captain's quarters on the Andromeda Ascendant. Or maybe just the way the Enterprise haunts him with its subtle and not-so-subtle wrongness in comparison to everything he's used to. Even being unsettled from being trapped on the planet, from how close poor planning had come to killing him.

Not the nightmares. Not the presence of Telemachus Rhade disturbing feelings he'd thought he'd buried long ago. Not the sense of futile helplessness to be stuck here, now, with no cause, no purpose. Not the aching sense of missing everything he'd known and loved, not just once over, but twice.

He misses Andromeda like a physical pain. Whatever the rules might say, since the two of them came out of the black hole, she's been all he's had, all that gave him meaning, purpose, the tangible connection to the world he's trying to rebuild. More than that, she's been his adviser, his closest friend, his partner in a way nobody who hasn't experienced it can understand.

He misses her like he misses Sara, the High Guard, the world he used to take for granted. He's been barely coping with those losses since he found himself 303 years in his own future, with nothing left of the world he'd known but the Andromeda.

Now even she's gone, and in those moments when he can't sleep, even Dylan has to wonder if that's just one loss too many.

Tonight, rather than let himself be alone with those thoughts, he's in the bar, in his High Guard turtleneck, still wearing his insignia as a futile reminder that he's still a captain. Even here.

He's been drinking rather a lot, but one of the things about being a Heavy Worlder is that it takes a hell of a lot to get drunk, between the huge muscle mass and the accelerated metabolism.

That's not stopping him trying if the glass of spirits he's got in front of him is any indication.