“Hey, Tir.”

“Captain.”

“How are you feeling about…all this?”  Ambrose Harris had been shifted into a sitting chair with various treatments to help with the growing pain he was experiencing as life was slowly draining from him.  He had made the decision to be able to say goodbye to those onboard that he had served with.  He felt strongly about it.  Captains Dread and Halsey had accepted his wishes, noting their protests.  Tir had been his operations officer from the start on the Mackenzie.

“It’s…surreal, sir.”  Tir’s voice was barely a whisper, lost in the sterile white of the medical bay. In the depths of his consciousness, he had other words for the situation, but he knew Harris had always been a stickler about language.  “It’s helpful to sit here with you…and process through it.”

Ambrose agreed – it was why he had asked for it.  The way he had died had left an unusual wound in the crew, one that had bound them together on the Olympic, then the Daedalus, and now here on the Douglas.  They spoke for another hour as Tir caught his former CO up.

“Greer…good to see you still in engineering.”  He smiled as his former assistant chief stepped into the room, her eyes unusually teary.

“Sir.” She accepted the offered seat. “This is weird.”  Greer Moore sat forward, her eyes never leaving those of her former CO. “You didn’t need to do this, Captain.”  She wasn’t sure if it was the right decision—for either of them. Grief was such a powerful force, and mourning was a process best followed along its meandering path.

Harris chuckled, wincing at the residual pain creeping past the injections, “Weird is a good word, Greer.  I was dead, and then I was alive…and I’m dying all over again.  It’s been weird since I woke up here.”  He turned his attention to her, “Congratulations on making Chief.  Proud of you.”

She wiped an errant tear, “Thank you, captain.  It’s been hard without you…and now without Okada…I’m not sure about the future anymore.”  There was a lot to think about, and she had been wrestling with it since the loss of her former Chief Engineer on the Mackenzie.  “You’re probably going to tell me to stay the course and keep on keeping on.”

Ambrose let a silence rest between them.  He’d been in her position before, and the decision she was in the middle of didn’t come easy, fast, or simple.  It was a personal decision that spoke to a deeper identity of both the person and the officer.   He didn’t want to push her either way.  Whatever her destiny or fate was – he wasn’t in charge of directing her on the path.  “Do you love what you do, Greer?”

She frowned at the question.  She had been expecting some kind of sage advice.  “I…maybe?”

He tried a different direction, “You served with me on the Mack, you followed your friends to the Oly…then to the Dad, then here.  I’ll ask it again – do you love what you do, Greer?”

Greer thought over his words, her heart and mind connecting the dots towards the point he was alluding to.  It was her turn to chuckle, “You can be right sometimes, captain.  I do love what I do.  It’s…just not easy sometimes.”

Harris looked at her knowingly. “It’s never easy every day. That’s the part I loved. Sometimes, it was simple, and sometimes, it was complex. Being out here in space…you either love or hate it.”

She filled in the empty space he had left for her, “And…I love it.  Thank you, captain.”

“You and I…have had some adventures.”  Elizabeth McKee sat in the chair, staring at a face she had long thought dead and gone.  Her voice was strong even as her heartbeat rattled around in her chest.

Ambrose replied, “We have, McKee.  You came back to Starfleet….and followed in my footsteps with engineering.  You think of climbing the ladder to Chief?”  His eyes exuded pride.

A shrug was her first answer.  As she sat, she contemplated a deeper answer.  She hadn’t thought about it; she’d just followed her first instinct.  “I used to think I’d never be back here. Being back here…it’s like life restarted for me.  Like…I’m finally alive.”  She stopped herself, “That was…sorry.”

He chuckled in response, “I think the wording is, ‘present company excepted,’ Greer.  That feeling you’re talking about – it’s your purpose and your place.”  He thought back to his career and path.  How he had found those things in each of the postings he’d landed.  “Some of us find it right away, and it never leaves us.  Others…it’s elusive.  It’s frustrating.”

She nodded, “It’s like you’re searching for something, and you can never find it until you do, and then it’s just…the universe is back in order.”  She felt a smile tug at her lips. “I have you to thank and blame for that, Ambrose.” She put her hand out, and he accepted it. They held the embrace and shared their last words with each other.

“I don’t know what to say.”  Presley Atega stood just inside the room, staring at her feet.  She hadn’t moved since she’d stepped in, her voice wavering between nervous and fearful.

Harris gently intoned, “Well, you don’t have to say anything.  You can just sit.”  He pointed out the chair.  She eyed it and inched towards it, her eyes flitting between the seat and her former CO.  She sat, letting out the breath she’d been holding.

“You’re dying…again.”  She kept her eyes on the floor, her emotions crawling up her throat and into her eyes.  He had interviewed her aboard the Edinburgh.  She had followed him until his death had taken her to the Olympic and beyond.

“Yes.”  They were silent until he said, “This isn’t easy for you.”

She lashed out, “No shit.”  Her eyes widened, and she recoiled at her own words, horrified, “I’m..so…captain, I shouldn’t have…”

Ambrose gently admonished her, “Don’t apologize to the dying, Presley.”

Atega finally put her eyes on her captain.  “I wish you hadn’t died.  Death…sucks.”  Her parents had died when she was young.  Her grandmother raised her and led her to study language and eventually Starfleet.  She had died after her graduation – the illness had been long and arduous.  Hospitals were her least favorite places.

“I know.  I wish this was different.  I’m glad you decided to stay in Starfleet, Presley.”

She smiled at his kind words and, at his prompting, shared her story since his death and of the things she’d been studying and working on.  He asked questions, complimented her on her successes, and found good encouraging words when she confessed to her worries and fears.  She left the room, her heart lighter and yet still weighed with the reality of loss.

“You look…good.”  William Prentice sat beside his girlfriend, Sadie Fowler, as they faced their former CO.

Harris laughed, “Modern medicine is a great thing.”  He turned to Fowler and said, “I’m glad you both stuck around…and stuck together.”

Fowler swallowed the tightness in her throat.  Seeing him up and talking was hard – she had seen him comatose.  He was alive.  Captain Ambrose Harris was alive.  For now.  That was the hard part – the parting of the ways.  “I can’t imagine where I’d rather be, captain.  Losing you was…hard.”

Prentice agreed with a sad nod, “You hired me…those days on the Erigone…I thought you were going to send me packing.”

“Showing up out of uniform on your first day was not a great first impression.”  Harris pointed out, “And yet, you bounced back.  That hotshot pilot with a hard edge…you figured out who you were.  Will, you’ve come a long way in a year and a half.”  He turned to Fowler, “And you – Dread gave me the rundown.”

Sadie’s face reddened, “I…well, yes.”

He pushed back on her, “Be proud of your work, Fowler.  Nothing in there to be ashamed of…and even with the things you didn’t quite hit the mark with…you learned.”

She may have been embarrassed on the outside, but her heart and soul were comforted by his words.  She was her worst critic, and hearing his voice telling her what her true value was – mattered to her more than anything.  She managed a “Thank you, sir.”

“You didn’t have to do this.” Captain Wren Walton was on the screen, and she had a mystified and awed look on her face.

Harris shrugged, “I think I did.  You have my thanks for what you did with the Mack.  It couldn’t have been easy.”  He leaned back in the chair.  “You did the right thing.”

“I heard and read so much about you…it’s different getting to see you in person on a screen, captain.”  She stared at him, “The crew that remained…they’re some of the best in the fleet.  They reflect you more than I care to admit.”

“They’ve probably already got pieces of your command style reflecting – you just haven’t seen it yet, Captain Walton.”

“Maybe.  You sure about your decision?”

“They were right – subtlety is not your game.”   He chuckled and thought about his answer.  “I’ve been talking to my old crew here on the Douglas…and I second guess myself with each conversation.  I could wait for some miracle cure to get me back in the chair again.”  He searched the room with his eyes, wondering if he was going to talk himself out of his second death.  It loomed gently before him, a reality he had initially vowed not to fight.

Walton mused, “But are you the waiting type?  And…is it really what you want?  I’ve read the report on what would be needed to keep you alive…it’s not pretty.”

Ambrose let her words sink in.  He chewed on them as his mind circled her reasoning.  The common theme that kept coming back was what he wanted – how what he had wanted before his death.  What, in the here and now, was his desire?  “Captain Dread said ‘there are no guarantees’ as to if it would keep me alive.  Complications have a nasty habit of being discovered when it comes to DNA manipulation.  We still don’t know what she used to bring me back.  My death was a certainty at the hands of the Devore Imperium.  They guaranteed it, in their way.”  He felt his logic swinging wildly in an orderly direction.  Harris muttered, “Who am I to argue with that?”

Walton let his words hang in the air.  She wished there was a better answer.  She wished for a lot of things.  In the end, it was his decision what happened next.  “I respect the decision, Captain Harris.”

A sly smile appeared, “It’s Ambrose, Captain Walton.  In the end, I’m just Ambrose Harris.”

She blinked and felt her emotions responding to these last words they were sharing.  “Well, then Ambrose…it’s just Wren.  I wish you the best in these last hours.  Thank you for the time you had with us.  Your people are better for it.”

“Thank you, Wren.  Take care of our people.”

The hours were waning as the clock ticked by.  Ambrose lay in his bed as the pain medicines had moved from injections to IVs.  Jordan Reid sat at the bedside while Halsey monitored from outside – making adjustments as time took its toll on the body of Ambrose Harris.  There were no words left to speak.  Harris had spoken with the former Mackenzie crew, who now called the Dragonfly home.  There had been tears, as there always would be.  But there had been closure for him and the crew.  Ambrose hoped it would serve them well.  His head lay to the side, staring at the face of his love.  They had said their last words an hour ago as his condition continued to deteriorate.  His vision was already blurry, and his breathing became haggard.

Ambrose felt her grip on his hand tighten as he could hear various beeps and alarms around him.  The world was starting to spin, and despite the pain medicine, it started to hurt more and more.  He didn’t ask for more.  He leaned into the dull and then the sharp pains that echoed over his body.  There was nothing left to do.  The world around him faded to black until he felt the coldness sweep through his consciousness. The colors bled through his vision from red to orange, yellow to white to black, and then to…nothing.  

The world around him faded back into focus, and he turned to his right.  His father, smiling gently.

“Welcome back, son.”