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Without his beard, he looks younger. Sweet, still, but as if some of his burden has been shaved off in the year since she last saw him. The gray sky above them doesn’t seem to dull him at all. Of course, there’s all the greenery around them -- trees and bushes and grass, so much of it. Issaquah is as lush as the most habitable planets she’s seen, more so than San Francisco, and certainly much more so than any mycelial garden. This is a real garden, like the ones up and down this winding street of human residences. Ash is raking leaves, focused on the task but not, she thinks, ill at ease. Michael breathes in, out, in. Focus.
”Ash,” she says, her voice even and calm. She is more than a little proud of that.
He looks up, and his face brightens. She savors seeing his mouth curve into a smile, sudden and warm, like her name that he says right then. He takes a few steps toward her, slowing only when he has almost reached her. His eyes are asking permission for something she has thought about often. She nods at him and holds out her arms. “Hey,” he whispers, enveloping her in a hug. She has to blink. The fabric of his sweater hs scratchy, almost animal-like, but it’s good, grounding. Underneath she can smell him, Ash, through the damp leaves.
”It’s so good to see you,” he says; maybe he too has thought about this moment. “Are you okay?”
Michael laughs, surprised by her own reaction. Only Ash would ask this, Ash who went through an ordeal no other human has gone through. Of course, she could say the same about herself (though she was much better equipped for it). “Yes,” she says, “I’m okay. You?”
He nods, and while some of his brightness fades, it’s not gone. There is no panic lurking deep in the brown of his eyes, not even fear. “I’ve been--” he stops, looks her in the eye, and continues, “making progress.”
”That’s good,” she says, like a fool. It is; it is also an inane thing to answer. But there are so many roads to follow in this conversation, all unknown. She had only mapped the beginning of this journey. Thankfully, Ash speaks again.
”Do you...want to come in?” he asks, and makes a gesture to the house behind him. “Have some tea?” Tea. Michael knows what he speaks of; she remembers having had it during one of the stints into the City during the Academy. Lovejoy’s, she recalls: the name of the tea room.
”I would love to,” she says.
::
Michael looks down at her cup and watches the swirls of cow’s milk in the dark-brown beverage. Of course this is not her own, nor the high-tea kind of tea. The camellia sinensis she knows and drinks is green or faintly rust-colored, drank pure. But many of Earth’s people have traditionally enjoyed tea in a fermented form using boiled water and adding sugar and dairy milk to soften the tannins. Even cream, she remembers. This is a small enough amount that she will be fine. She takes a sip, and the flavors explode on her tongue: tea that is strong and milky, yes, but also -- “Spicy!”
He laughs. The fine lines at the corners of his eyes crinkle, and Michael finds herself smiling in turn. “Yeah, it’s my mom’s recipe. Cardamom, cinnamon. Just simple tea bags, though. Nothing fancy.” He drinks his own tea with gusto, she notices. Not everything has to be fancy. In fact, nothing really has to be. She can understand the value of things that simply are what they are to you as a sentient being. When he looks up from his cup, she has guessed what’s coming: “How are the others? Saru, Tilly..?”
He almost could have asked Tilly herself; she was this close to joining Michael. But ultimately her tracked course training took precedence. Michael was proud of her -- still is. “Tilly is great. Saru is still captain of the Discovery -- only no longer interim.” She looks outside the window, the fine mist of rain against the panes, considers Saru. “He’s grown into his role.” Sometimes it helps to have a counter-example. It also helps to have a crew that is willing to challenge what their base programming or brain patterns would have them do. Tilly was right.
”Always knew he would,” Ash says softly. He takes a bite of his cookie. Biscuits, he had called them earlier when offering one to her. “I think that’s what all have to do, right? Grow and learn. As best we can.” He shrugs, but it’s not a helpless motion. “And actually, I’ve been lucky. I have support, now. Ayesha has to listen to quite a bit, though.” A smile from, perhaps a little rueful.
Michael knows it’s ridiculous. She has no hold on this man; she released herself, but also him a long time ago. And it is not how human society is meant to work. Still, she feels a pang at the mention of the name. “I’m glad you found her,” she says, banning herself from going deeper. But she would still like to know.
Ash doesn’t disappoint her. He never did in the small things, only the big ones. “She’s my therapist. Dr. Mohyuddin, technically. I’m not the only ex-soldier, and not the only ex-Starfleet patient.” He gives Michael a long look. “Dr. Culber put in some recommendations for Earth therapists with the proper clearance. As you can imagine, there were few. I couldn’t have done it without him, and he did it even knowing what my body had done to him, in the previous -- well, previously.” He doesn’t break eye contact. “Like I said, I was lucky.”
She wonders if it’s true. It certainly seems healthy to think so. Even Stamets had been...not friendly, really, but less unfriendly in the end, before Ash was honorably discharged. Stamets's hands were clenched very tightly around Culber’s when he waved Ash off the gangway of the Discovery. “I’m glad you think so,” she nods. “And that you feel so. I’ve been reasonably fortunate myself.”
He winces a little at that. “They shouldn’t ever have let her have any kind of command, though.” He doesn’t wince for himself; he is reacting on Michael’s behalf. And Ash is right. The only reason Michael is not known as the only twice-mutineer of Starfleet is the strangeness that Paul Stamets had made possible with the spore drive, jumping through time yet again. In her own mind, and her crew and friends’ minds, she did mutiny twice. And aren’t those the minds that matter most?
”What happened, happened.” It sounds trite to her own ears, Michael realizes. “At least we did it together.” Tilly and Michael had analyzed the past somewhat too frequently, but that conclusion was the one that always held true. “I didn’t feel helpless with all of us who stood up.” She watches, again, the spread of a smile on his face. She realizes that she doesn’t want to leave. The place is a good enough place. She doesn’t want to leave Ash.
”We did,” he says, and his smile turns wry. “Ayesha swears she doesn’t even need doctor-patient confidence oaths. She can never tell her wife.” He raises his eyebrows, but it’s almost -- playful?
”Because no one would believe it,” Michael says, and adds another truth: “Sometimes I find it hard to believe, myself.” Waking up every morning has ceased to be a discovery for Michael, but her dreams are still convoluted, blood and black alerts; races through corridors and screams in Klingon. “I said I was okay earlier. I am, mostly. But I still have nightmares, Ash.”
”Of course.” He leans forward, consciously or unconsciously. “It would be weird if you didn’t.” He bites his lip until it’s shiny. “How long are you here? And if it’s more than this hour -- we could visit Seattle. If you are not tired of it, that is, from your time at the Academy.”
Michael never came up to the state of Washington in her day. She was too busy studying, although she remembers postcards from her friends who laughed and piled into shimmering high-speed rail wagons going North. “I am on leave. A vacation, Saru suggested.” They both have to smile at that. “It would be great to see Seattle and spend,” her throat is dry, “a few days with you, if all goes well. No promises. I have rented a breakfast-and-bed not far from here.”
Ash exhales, softly. “That sounds wonderful. Really wonderful.” His eyes glisten. “Okay, fair warning, getting a bit emotional here.” Michael blinks away a tear or two herself and only nods, more vigorously than intended.
::
And it is. It is not normal and not easy, maybe. But it's all right throughout the evening, sitting across from each other on well-worn sofas with quilted blankets. And it is all right the next day, when she stands in the brisk wind next to Ash and looks up at the monument built in the place of what they used to call the Space Needle.
Their hands are almost, if not quite, touching.