In a blink, Captain Lewis had died, again. He had returned, only to be taken, again. And this time, it was their fault. Commander Eidran knew what he had done, but he had not deserved this. Lewis had deserved another chance at life, but that had been taken from him. Captain Kioshi had shot him dead without a moment of hesitation or remorse. It was chilling, and Commander Eidran couldn’t help but wonder who any of these people truly were.

It had been a long trip back from Kyban. Ensign Rel had been a ball of tears, her love taken from here a second time, this time right before her eyes. Chief Shafir, meanwhile, had spoken only a handful of words across the multi-day voyage home, and they’d heard not a thing from Frank Negrescu, Lewis’ old friend who’d vanished in the midst of the melee.

At last, the runabout Meridian had made it back to Archanis Station, and while Commander Eidran wanted to be there for his friends, he couldn’t. He split from Rel and Shafir as soon as they settled on the deck. He was mad, mad at himself and mad at it all. They could have had their captain back. He should have anticipated that Kioshi would have been watching them. But everything had gone to shit. All because of him. He had sealed Lewis’ fate.

Commander Eidran stepped through the threshold into his temporary quarters on Archanis Station, ready to be alone. But someone was already there.

“Welcome home, cutey,” Captain Lee smiled warmly from a reclined position on the bed. It’d been more than a month since she’d seen her boyfriend, having taken the Ingenuity across the multiverse with the rest of Polaris Squadron. She was ready to snuggle, and she was ready to play, but then she saw the broken, forlorn expression on his face, and hers fell instantly. “Ekko, what’s wrong?”

“I… I… I don’t even know where to begin,” Commander Eidran stammered, making his way not to the bed, but to the chair by his desk. He wasn’t ready to be close to anyone, not even her. “I… we… we saw Lewis. He… some version of him… while you all crossed over, a version of Lewis from some other universe came here.”

“Wait, are you serious?!” Captain Lee’s mouth dropped. When they had lost Lewis, it had hurt for them all, but it’d been something more for her, guilt almost, since he had died seeing to it that the Ingenuity got away from the Vaadwaur. If he was back… “Where is he now?”

“He’s dead,” Commander Eidran said as he cast his eyes to the floor. “Again.”

“Wait… what?” Captain Lee tried to catch up. “He was here, but now he’s dead?” It was a lot to take in. “How? What happened?”

“You know the intel chief here on Archanis?” Commander Eidran asked bitterly.

“I don’t know him, but I know of him,” Captain Lee replied. She had seen him on the feed a few times during sector-wide briefings, but he seldom spoke. Not that it was too surprising. She had, after all, spent years of her life standing beside Captain Lewis, and she knew the type. “Captain Kioshi, right?”

“Yes,” Commander Eidran nodded grimly. “The one and only.”

“What about him?” Captain Lee asked warily.

“He shot Lewis dead,” Commander Eidran replied flatly.

A pindrop could have been heard in the silence that followed, but eventually, Captain Lee spoke again. “Starfleet officers don’t just shoot other Starfleet officers.”

“Well, he was actually trying to kill the other guy… Negrescu…” Commander Eidran went on. “But he didn’t even bat an eye when he put Lewis in the dirt.”

Captain Lee could see the anger coming off the Betazoid. “Who’s Negrescu?”

“Frank Negrescu… an old spook from the before-times… some friend of Lewis’…” Commander Eidran stuttered. “They had linked up… and we went to find them… and then Kioshi found us… and now everyone’s gone or dead.”

“I’m not following,” Captain Lee admitted.

“Let me step back a bit,” Commander Eidran offered, acknowledging he had done a lousy job explaining. “When you went off to find the Juno and Decius, we were assigned to provide security on Ydris for a quiet meeting between the Federation and the Klingon Empire.”

“Yes, I remember that,” Captain Lee nodded. It was the last thing she knew about what he’d been up to, right up until she’d arrived back at Archanis to find the Procyon parked out front but her boyfriend gone. She’d checked the logs to see he’d taken Ensign Rel and Chief Shafir off on a short trip to Kyban and hadn’t thought anything of it beyond that. “What happened after that?”

“While we were on Ydris, one of the attendees, a Klingon la’, was murdered,” Commander Eidran explained. “An almost impossible shot from well outside our perimeter. We tracked the shooter to Archanis, but arrived only after he’d struck again. The second time, he killed a young strategic operations officer.”

“And the AU Lewis showed up to help?” Captain Lee inferred.

“No,” Commander Eidran shook his head. “The AU Lewis was the killer.”

For the second time in as many minutes, there was silence. Captain Lewis was an edgy guy, the sort who would do whatever it took for what he knew was right, but he didn’t just go around killing random Starfleet officers or people they were meeting with.

“The Lewis that crossed over was a decade older than the one we lost,” Commander Eidran continued. “In his universe, we all, him included, survived the journey home, but in the decade that followed, he saw things that changed him. He watched the Klingon Empire become the worst version of himself, and the galaxy go to war… he watched, too, many of us go to the grave… the wars, supposedly, that will come to pass, and our deaths…”

“Our deaths?” Captain Lee interrupted, clarifying the specifics.

“Yes, you and me both,” Commander Eidran nodded grimly. “Or so he said… and when he found himself here, back at the beginning, he set out to change it, to stop the future he had seen.”

Captain Lee stroked her chin. “I think I’m following… those he came to kill, it was to prevent the future as he’d seen it?” That sounded a lot like the Lewis she had known, the one who had made sure they got home, no matter what.

But Commander Eidran looked unsettled. “Me and Elyssia and Shafir… or at least me and Elyssia, because who knows about Shafir… we went to Kyban to stop him.”

“To stop him?” Captain Lee raised an eyebrow. It almost sounded like this Lewis was trying to give them the gift of a better future.

“Because it’s wrong, Cora,” Commander Eidran replied, almost surprised he had to say it. “You can’t kill people for crimes they might commit, and, in spirit at least, a violation of the Temporal Prime Directive.”

Captain Lee hadn’t had the time to reason over it as he had, but now she understood, and as usual, her boyfriend was demonstrating once more why she loved him so much, true to his convictions even when his role model reappeared from the dead. “Did you guys get to him?”

“We did,” Commander Eidran nodded. “And I think he was coming around…” But then a shift in his face, to anger. “Not that Kioshi gave us the opportunity to find out. Shot him dead, and tried to kill the other guy, Negrescu, too.”

“That’s murder, Ekko,” Captain Lee noted. “Are you going to report it?”

“Why bother?” Commander Eidran asked exasperatedly. “Even if they don’t brush it all under the table, the word of me, an ensign, and a chief petty officer won’t go far against a decorated captain and his entourage… especially without proof when the dead guy died a year ago.”

Captain Lee saw the problem there. “What about telling Reyes? She’d believe you, at least.”

“Yeah, I was thinking about that…” Commander Eidran nodded. He trusted her, and he had to think by now that she trusted him. Plus, even if she didn’t, she trusted Shafir, and Shafir was there too. But before he could say anything further, an item at his desk caught his eye. It was a PADD, and he hadn’t left it here. “Did you leave this on my desk?”

“No, why?” Captain Lee asked.

“Oh, I don’t know,” Commander Eidran said as he reached down and picked it up.

Immediately, the PADD went to a lock screen, but then, as it picked up his facial signature, it unlocked itself, six words emblazoned across its center:

The responsibility is yours now, kid.

The words faded, and then before his eyes, a list materialized. Half way down the first page, there were two names he recognized:

la’ Otoc, son of Goragh, IKS Tog’roth

Lieutenant Commander Javier Santos, Archanis Station

Above and below, there were more names, dozens of them, going on for page after page.

Captain Lee noted the shift. “What is it, Ekko?”

“It’s… it’s his list,” Commander Eidran replied, the gravity sinking in as he stared at the PADD in his hand. This list carried the names, Starfleet and otherwise, that Captain Lewis had identified as responsible for a sordid future that might or might not be their own.

“You mean Lewis’ list?” Captain Lee inquired. “The one he was working through?”

“That list indeed,” Commander Eidran nodded grimly, uncertain what to do about it. On one hand, he knew what Captain Lewis was doing was wrong, but on the other, what if he was right about some of them? This list was a map of what could go wrong.

Captain Lee seemed to sense his inner conflict. “What’re you going to do about it?”

“I’m not going to kill them, if that’s what you mean!” Commander Eidran snapped defensively, as if accused, but then he remembered himself and looked up at her. “I’m sorry, Cora, that wasn’t fair to you. I… I guess I just wasn’t ready for this.”

But she didn’t look the least bit offended. She just met his eyes with empathy. She understood. “I didn’t say that.” She rose from the bed and walked over to him, setting her hand on his chest. “I know your heart, Ekko. And so did he.”

“I will not let this make me a monster,” Commander Eidran assured her as he tapped the display off, almost afraid to even let her steal a glance at it. He would not make this her responsibility too. “I cannot ignore it, but I will find a way to protect our future that does not judge others for what they have not yet done.”