(no subject)
Title: “Regeneration” (2/2)
Fandoms: Star Trek: Voyager/Sherlock
Characters: Lestrade, Chakotay, Janeway, crew
Pairings: (past) John/Lestrade
Rating: PG-13
Disclaimer: I own nothing.
Word Count: c. 6,500 total
Warnings: Language, angst
Summary: When Voyager rescues another human from the Borg, they find themselves with a man who is not only out of place, but also out of time.
Part 1
Chakotay, after profuse apologies that Lestrade waved away, ended up assigning a security detail to accompany him to sickbay.
“Captain’s orders,” Chakotay said regretfully. “Look, I don’t think you’re a danger -”
“But you don’t know that,” Lestrade pointed out, “and neither do I, actually.”
The mere thought of that made him feel ill, and he swallowed hard. He had already committed numerous atrocities against his will, all of them thanks to that blasted Borg technology. Who was to say he wouldn’t do it again, even if he didn’t mean to?
Chakotay looked uneasy, but finally nodded. He left Lestrade in the hands of the Doctor, and told the security team that they were to escort Lestrade to his new quarters as soon as the exam was over.
“Deck three, section twelve,” he told them. “I’ll go make sure it’s been set up properly. And then I really should get back to the bridge. Inspector -”
“Greg.” Lestrade put out his hand, and Chakotay shook it. “Thank you.”
Chakotay nodded, and was gone.
The exam itself was relatively painless, and Lestrade spent most of it trying to make sense of the Doctor. He’d been told the man was a hologram--which was a very realistic and sophisticated computer program, he gathered--but he couldn’t quite wrap his head around it.
“You seem real,” he said as the Doctor touched his hand, examining the implants left behind. His flesh was warm.
“I am real,” the Doctor retorted, and reached for a medical scanner. He kept up a running commentary as he examined Lestrade, usually pointing out Lestrade’s obvious lapses when it came to looking after his physical health.
“I did spend three hundred years as a machine,” Lestrade pointed out.
“Yes, well, that’s no excuse for half-clogging your arteries in the fifty-two years prior to your assimilation, Mr. Lestrade. What did you eat on a day-to-day basis? No, on second thought, don’t tell me - I don’t want to know.”
The Doctor’s snide remarks reminded Lestrade sharply of Sherlock, and he had to bite back a smile.
“How’s the heart?” Lestrade asked later as the Doctor ran his scanner over his chest for the third time, frowning. He cocked an eyebrow at Lestrade.
“Have you been running laps on deck twelve in the past hour?”
“Er... no.”
“Then it’s not that good. And would you look at the state of these lungs! Don’t tell me - on top of everything else, you were a smoker. All of you twenty-first century humans were.”
“Have you run into many twenty-first century humans out here?” Lestrade asked dryly, and that remark earned him another half an hour of pointless scanning.
For all his biting remarks, though, the Doctor was gentle when it came to his patients, and that was all John. Lestrade felt something twist in his chest as he was reminded of his long-dead friends, and had to look away from the Doctor’s face.
“Are you feeling all right?” the Doctor asked in mild concern, staring at the device he was holding. “Your heart rate just went up.”
“I’m fine. Just remembered something unpleasant,” Lestrade muttered.
He was finally dismissed from sickbay a few minutes later and led to his new quarters.
“You boys aren't going to stand out here all night?" Lestrade asked, pausing on the threshold and looking at the two security officers who had escorted him. They exchanged a glance, and then looked back at him. He sighed. “Right, yeah, should have known. Well... goodnight.”
The rooms that he would now call home were sparsely furnished. There was a sofa tucked up against one long wall in the main living area, just under the windows, and a lamp stood next to it. A small kitchenette was off to Lestrade’s left, and on the opposite side of the room was a door that he surmised led to the bedroom. Everything was a blend of greys, blues, and blacks, and he felt tired just looking at it all.
The only bit of color came from the dining area, and it took Lestrade a few seconds to notice the sole object that looked as though it hadn’t come with the quarters. He walked over and picked up a small frame that someone had left sitting out on the table. He turned it over, and something caught in his chest.
John.
He was dressed in his uniform, cheeks flushed, hair in disarray from hours spent on the dance floor. A gold band glinted on his hand. Their wedding day.
A small note was pinned to the frame. Press the blue button for the next picture, it read, and so Lestrade did. A new picture took the place of the first one, this time of David.
His boy was sitting on John’s lap and laughing, his blue eyes alight and his blond curls framing his tiny face. He was perhaps three or four, but Lestrade couldn’t remember the context of the picture. He couldn’t recall when the next two had been taken, either, but they were also of David. The fourth one was of Sherlock, bent over a microscope while David sat next to him at the table.
A sharp stab of pain twisted in Lestrade’s gut, and he sank to his knees, flipping through the myriad photographs, only able to remember about when half of them were taken. He didn’t recognize a lot of the faces, either, though they stirred an impression in him--usually affection; sometimes sorrow.
And David grew up before his eyes, surpassing ages five, six, and seven. Lestrade himself disappeared entirely from the pictures halfway through David’s eighth year, and John aged close to a decade in only a matter of months that year.
“I’m sorry,” he whispered, touching John’s worn face, wishing he could brush away the sorrow. “I’m sorry. I’m here. I’m alive. I was always alive.”
I didn’t mean to leave you.
David grew from a little boy to a lanky teen and then to a young man. John aged handsomely, and from what Lestrade could tell, Sherlock never completely left their lives. He disappeared from the photographs first, though, and Lestrade couldn’t bear to ask the computer what had happened to him. John followed, years after seeing his grandchildren--their grandchildren--born.
After that, there was only David. David, with the wife Lestrade never met. David, with the grandchildren Lestrade would have loved to know. David, the boy who just the other day had been sitting on the sofa with his parents, watching television and chatting about his day at school.
David, who had been dead and gone for three hundred years.
The album eventually cycled back around to the first picture; to their beginning. Lestrade stared at John, and the lines of laughter that were etched into his face. He stared at it until he could see it no longer; until the picture blurred and the colors ran together and the dam that had been building in his chest finally gave way.
Lestrade buried his face in his hands, and wept.
----
At first, Chakotay thought that Astrometrics was empty.
But the screen that covered the far wall had been left on, and Seven was never that careless with the equipment. A series of images were flashing across the screen, each one lingering for a few moments before being replaced by another.
They were all of Earth, and Chakotay knew then that his suspicions had been correct.
“You’re a difficult man to track down,” he said as he stepped fully into the room. The door hissed shut behind him. He crossed over to the raised platform and found Lestrade seated on the floor just behind the console, gazing at the images of Earth that covered the massive screen.
“I didn’t realise anyone was looking for me,” Lestrade said, his voice as lacking in inflection now as it had been during their initial meeting three days ago.
Chakotay joined him on the floor and set his burden between them. Lestrade glanced at it and raised an eyebrow.
“I could be mistaken,” he said, bemused, “but I believe I read that alcohol was strictly against regulation on these ships.”
“The perks of being a first officer,” Chakotay said with a smirk. He poured them both a glass of the ale. “I’m sorry I haven’t been by lately. It’s been a bit chaotic. Have things been all right?”
Their most immediate concern, after removing the implants and making sure Lestrade’s condition was stable, had been figuring out how best to integrate him into the ship. Tom had been the one to suggest placing him in Astrometrics with Seven, as Lestrade appeared to have a genuine interest in astronomy and would probably also benefit from spending some time with a fellow ex-drone. Chakotay had been apprehensive about the whole thing, in all honesty. Patience was hardly Seven’s best quality.
To his surprise, though, Lestrade gave a small but genuine smile.
“She’s an interesting one, Seven,” he said, his voice almost fond. “Brilliant woman, and damn if she knows it, too. Reminds me of someone I used to know.”
Another image of Earth appeared on the screen, this time a view of the northern hemisphere. The date stamp in the lower corner said May, 2012. Chakotay sipped from his drink. In the periphery of his vision, Lestrade’s sober face was bathed in the soft green light from the screen.
“Reminds me of how damned useless I am, actually,” he added quietly. “I don’t belong here. This place, this time... it’s not my own. Everything I’m good at is three hundred years out of date.”
He took a bitter swallow of his drink.
“I miss my boy,” he said finally. “I miss John. Every day I remember them more and more... and every day takes me further away from them.”
Chakotay didn’t know what to say to that, and couldn’t think of anything that Lestrade would want to hear. He reached for the bottle instead, and topped off both their glasses.
The next picture was London as seen from space at night. Thousands of pinpricks of light clustered in the center of the screen, and grew sparse as they fanned out and eventually disappeared into the black of the countryside.
“But joy cometh in the morning,” Lestrade murmured, his voice distant. His eyes, when Chakotay glanced at him, were overbright and golden as he stared at the image.
“What was that?”
Lestrade blinked, coming back to himself.
“It’s Scripture,” he said finally. “Weeping may endure for a night, but joy cometh in the morning.”
“That’s lovely.”
“Mm.” Lestrade took another sip from his glass. “I don’t suppose that exists anymore, either. Religion.”
“It does,” Chakotay told him. “In many different forms. Humans still keep their different gods, but there are others as well. The Klingons worship Kahless; the Bajorans worship the Prophets. The Ocampa believe the Caretaker is divine.”
“Strange new world.” Lestrade drank from his glass for a moment, watching the screen. “I never really believed. I don’t think there’s a divine reason why all this happened to me. I think I was a damned idiot to go down into that tunnel alone, but no deity engineered it. It wasn’t fate, it was just bad timing.” He drew a deep breath through his nose. “But there are some things that I have to believe are truths. I have to, or I’d never be able to get out of bed every day.”
Lestrade held his drink aloft, silently toasting the images of a long-gone Earth. When he spoke again, his words were a quiet affirmation.
“Joy cometh in the morning.”
Fandoms: Star Trek: Voyager/Sherlock
Characters: Lestrade, Chakotay, Janeway, crew
Pairings: (past) John/Lestrade
Rating: PG-13
Disclaimer: I own nothing.
Word Count: c. 6,500 total
Warnings: Language, angst
Summary: When Voyager rescues another human from the Borg, they find themselves with a man who is not only out of place, but also out of time.
Part 1
Chakotay, after profuse apologies that Lestrade waved away, ended up assigning a security detail to accompany him to sickbay.
“Captain’s orders,” Chakotay said regretfully. “Look, I don’t think you’re a danger -”
“But you don’t know that,” Lestrade pointed out, “and neither do I, actually.”
The mere thought of that made him feel ill, and he swallowed hard. He had already committed numerous atrocities against his will, all of them thanks to that blasted Borg technology. Who was to say he wouldn’t do it again, even if he didn’t mean to?
Chakotay looked uneasy, but finally nodded. He left Lestrade in the hands of the Doctor, and told the security team that they were to escort Lestrade to his new quarters as soon as the exam was over.
“Deck three, section twelve,” he told them. “I’ll go make sure it’s been set up properly. And then I really should get back to the bridge. Inspector -”
“Greg.” Lestrade put out his hand, and Chakotay shook it. “Thank you.”
Chakotay nodded, and was gone.
The exam itself was relatively painless, and Lestrade spent most of it trying to make sense of the Doctor. He’d been told the man was a hologram--which was a very realistic and sophisticated computer program, he gathered--but he couldn’t quite wrap his head around it.
“You seem real,” he said as the Doctor touched his hand, examining the implants left behind. His flesh was warm.
“I am real,” the Doctor retorted, and reached for a medical scanner. He kept up a running commentary as he examined Lestrade, usually pointing out Lestrade’s obvious lapses when it came to looking after his physical health.
“I did spend three hundred years as a machine,” Lestrade pointed out.
“Yes, well, that’s no excuse for half-clogging your arteries in the fifty-two years prior to your assimilation, Mr. Lestrade. What did you eat on a day-to-day basis? No, on second thought, don’t tell me - I don’t want to know.”
The Doctor’s snide remarks reminded Lestrade sharply of Sherlock, and he had to bite back a smile.
“How’s the heart?” Lestrade asked later as the Doctor ran his scanner over his chest for the third time, frowning. He cocked an eyebrow at Lestrade.
“Have you been running laps on deck twelve in the past hour?”
“Er... no.”
“Then it’s not that good. And would you look at the state of these lungs! Don’t tell me - on top of everything else, you were a smoker. All of you twenty-first century humans were.”
“Have you run into many twenty-first century humans out here?” Lestrade asked dryly, and that remark earned him another half an hour of pointless scanning.
For all his biting remarks, though, the Doctor was gentle when it came to his patients, and that was all John. Lestrade felt something twist in his chest as he was reminded of his long-dead friends, and had to look away from the Doctor’s face.
“Are you feeling all right?” the Doctor asked in mild concern, staring at the device he was holding. “Your heart rate just went up.”
“I’m fine. Just remembered something unpleasant,” Lestrade muttered.
He was finally dismissed from sickbay a few minutes later and led to his new quarters.
“You boys aren't going to stand out here all night?" Lestrade asked, pausing on the threshold and looking at the two security officers who had escorted him. They exchanged a glance, and then looked back at him. He sighed. “Right, yeah, should have known. Well... goodnight.”
The rooms that he would now call home were sparsely furnished. There was a sofa tucked up against one long wall in the main living area, just under the windows, and a lamp stood next to it. A small kitchenette was off to Lestrade’s left, and on the opposite side of the room was a door that he surmised led to the bedroom. Everything was a blend of greys, blues, and blacks, and he felt tired just looking at it all.
The only bit of color came from the dining area, and it took Lestrade a few seconds to notice the sole object that looked as though it hadn’t come with the quarters. He walked over and picked up a small frame that someone had left sitting out on the table. He turned it over, and something caught in his chest.
John.
He was dressed in his uniform, cheeks flushed, hair in disarray from hours spent on the dance floor. A gold band glinted on his hand. Their wedding day.
A small note was pinned to the frame. Press the blue button for the next picture, it read, and so Lestrade did. A new picture took the place of the first one, this time of David.
His boy was sitting on John’s lap and laughing, his blue eyes alight and his blond curls framing his tiny face. He was perhaps three or four, but Lestrade couldn’t remember the context of the picture. He couldn’t recall when the next two had been taken, either, but they were also of David. The fourth one was of Sherlock, bent over a microscope while David sat next to him at the table.
A sharp stab of pain twisted in Lestrade’s gut, and he sank to his knees, flipping through the myriad photographs, only able to remember about when half of them were taken. He didn’t recognize a lot of the faces, either, though they stirred an impression in him--usually affection; sometimes sorrow.
And David grew up before his eyes, surpassing ages five, six, and seven. Lestrade himself disappeared entirely from the pictures halfway through David’s eighth year, and John aged close to a decade in only a matter of months that year.
“I’m sorry,” he whispered, touching John’s worn face, wishing he could brush away the sorrow. “I’m sorry. I’m here. I’m alive. I was always alive.”
I didn’t mean to leave you.
David grew from a little boy to a lanky teen and then to a young man. John aged handsomely, and from what Lestrade could tell, Sherlock never completely left their lives. He disappeared from the photographs first, though, and Lestrade couldn’t bear to ask the computer what had happened to him. John followed, years after seeing his grandchildren--their grandchildren--born.
After that, there was only David. David, with the wife Lestrade never met. David, with the grandchildren Lestrade would have loved to know. David, the boy who just the other day had been sitting on the sofa with his parents, watching television and chatting about his day at school.
David, who had been dead and gone for three hundred years.
The album eventually cycled back around to the first picture; to their beginning. Lestrade stared at John, and the lines of laughter that were etched into his face. He stared at it until he could see it no longer; until the picture blurred and the colors ran together and the dam that had been building in his chest finally gave way.
Lestrade buried his face in his hands, and wept.
----
At first, Chakotay thought that Astrometrics was empty.
But the screen that covered the far wall had been left on, and Seven was never that careless with the equipment. A series of images were flashing across the screen, each one lingering for a few moments before being replaced by another.
They were all of Earth, and Chakotay knew then that his suspicions had been correct.
“You’re a difficult man to track down,” he said as he stepped fully into the room. The door hissed shut behind him. He crossed over to the raised platform and found Lestrade seated on the floor just behind the console, gazing at the images of Earth that covered the massive screen.
“I didn’t realise anyone was looking for me,” Lestrade said, his voice as lacking in inflection now as it had been during their initial meeting three days ago.
Chakotay joined him on the floor and set his burden between them. Lestrade glanced at it and raised an eyebrow.
“I could be mistaken,” he said, bemused, “but I believe I read that alcohol was strictly against regulation on these ships.”
“The perks of being a first officer,” Chakotay said with a smirk. He poured them both a glass of the ale. “I’m sorry I haven’t been by lately. It’s been a bit chaotic. Have things been all right?”
Their most immediate concern, after removing the implants and making sure Lestrade’s condition was stable, had been figuring out how best to integrate him into the ship. Tom had been the one to suggest placing him in Astrometrics with Seven, as Lestrade appeared to have a genuine interest in astronomy and would probably also benefit from spending some time with a fellow ex-drone. Chakotay had been apprehensive about the whole thing, in all honesty. Patience was hardly Seven’s best quality.
To his surprise, though, Lestrade gave a small but genuine smile.
“She’s an interesting one, Seven,” he said, his voice almost fond. “Brilliant woman, and damn if she knows it, too. Reminds me of someone I used to know.”
Another image of Earth appeared on the screen, this time a view of the northern hemisphere. The date stamp in the lower corner said May, 2012. Chakotay sipped from his drink. In the periphery of his vision, Lestrade’s sober face was bathed in the soft green light from the screen.
“Reminds me of how damned useless I am, actually,” he added quietly. “I don’t belong here. This place, this time... it’s not my own. Everything I’m good at is three hundred years out of date.”
He took a bitter swallow of his drink.
“I miss my boy,” he said finally. “I miss John. Every day I remember them more and more... and every day takes me further away from them.”
Chakotay didn’t know what to say to that, and couldn’t think of anything that Lestrade would want to hear. He reached for the bottle instead, and topped off both their glasses.
The next picture was London as seen from space at night. Thousands of pinpricks of light clustered in the center of the screen, and grew sparse as they fanned out and eventually disappeared into the black of the countryside.
“But joy cometh in the morning,” Lestrade murmured, his voice distant. His eyes, when Chakotay glanced at him, were overbright and golden as he stared at the image.
“What was that?”
Lestrade blinked, coming back to himself.
“It’s Scripture,” he said finally. “Weeping may endure for a night, but joy cometh in the morning.”
“That’s lovely.”
“Mm.” Lestrade took another sip from his glass. “I don’t suppose that exists anymore, either. Religion.”
“It does,” Chakotay told him. “In many different forms. Humans still keep their different gods, but there are others as well. The Klingons worship Kahless; the Bajorans worship the Prophets. The Ocampa believe the Caretaker is divine.”
“Strange new world.” Lestrade drank from his glass for a moment, watching the screen. “I never really believed. I don’t think there’s a divine reason why all this happened to me. I think I was a damned idiot to go down into that tunnel alone, but no deity engineered it. It wasn’t fate, it was just bad timing.” He drew a deep breath through his nose. “But there are some things that I have to believe are truths. I have to, or I’d never be able to get out of bed every day.”
Lestrade held his drink aloft, silently toasting the images of a long-gone Earth. When he spoke again, his words were a quiet affirmation.
“Joy cometh in the morning.”