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The day Saru saved his people, confronted the Ba’ul, and saw death and the Red Angel at once, he found Michael sitting with her back against the door to his quarters, legs crossed, looking vaguely lost.She clambered gracefully to her feet as soon as she saw him, which he noted was not as soon as Saru had come to expect, given Michael’s near-annoyingly high level of perception. “How are you feeling?” she demanded gently, reaching out to briefly touch his wrist.“Tired,” he admitted. Really, he was exhausted. He swallowed roughly, considering the longing he had felt just five minutes ago of being alone at last. “Would you like to come inside?”Michael nodded mechanically, hovering at his back while he keyed in the code to open his door.Saru walked over to his bed, wavering into a dignified sort of heap, trying to listen as Michael began to talk logistically about his responsibilities. “I can help,” she was saying. “Just tell me what happened, and I’ll take care of your logs.”Wearily, Saru acquiesced, and they worked quietly into the evening. After Saru had finished his part, Michael moved to his desk, continuing to work as he dozed off.When he awoke, it was in the middle of ship’s night, and Michael was slumped over the desk, cheek pressed against her PADD, fingers twitching uneasily, as if she were having a nightmare. Other than the subtle ticking motion of her fingers, she was completely still, completely silent, and Saru took a moment to feel his grief for everything Michael had labored through, alone, without help and even with antagonism (especially from him). Michael Burnham had changed since the Shenzhou, and Saru never felt quite satisfied with any words he attempted to use to describe the shift.He gathered himself, stood, and made his way over to the desk. He considered attempting to make Michael more comfortable in her current spot, but instead decided on laying a gentle hand between her shoulder blades. He intended a soft shake to rouse her, but as soon as he’d touched her, Michael jerked awake, tipping back in the desk chair violently. Saru caught the back of the chair before it could truly begin to fall, and Michael gasped, curling her arms around her midsection, eyes wide.She stared up at Saru, and in the blink of an eye, her expression flattened into blankness, eyes going dull. “I apologize, Commander. I did not intend to impose on you so long.” Her voice was rough.Saru searched her face for any trace of that flash of emotional volatility. He found none—only the familiar blankness he’d come to associate with Michael’s existence on the Discovery. How had he not seen before that it was just a new mask?“You are not okay,” Saru declared, tone alarmed.Michael slowly unwound her arms from herself and dropped her shoulders, planting her feet on the ground. “I am perfectly alright.” She stood up, the picture of professionalism, even in her undershirt with creases on her cheek from sleeping on her PADD. “I’ll take my leave of you now.”She moved to go, and Saru let her pass for fear of making her feel caged. “Michael,” he murmured gently, and she stopped, shoulders drawing tight again. “Do not feel the need to remove yourself. I want to…” He wasn’t sure how to finish that sentence. How could he put a name to everything this woman had done for him? How could he ever offer something reciprocal without it feeling like a cheap imitation at best? “Please,” he finally said, lamely.Michael tucked her chin into her chest, and Saru saw her fingers twitch spasmodically, the only other motion of her body. “You must feel so tired, Saru. I should go. You need—you need to sleep.” Her voice cracked, uncharacteristically, and Saru instinctually moved to stand before her, to see her face. Michael turned her head further away, but he could see the cracks in the mask, the tightness at the edge of her mouth.“Oh, Michael,” he whispered, more to himself than to her, “How did we let it get this bad?”He stepped forward, folding her into a snug embrace. She was so small, so human. Her breath hitched. Her body convulsed into one single, silent sob, and Saru felt himself begin to cry at the movement.Michael pulled back to look up at his face. “I’m sorry,” she said.“You are my sister. Please do not feel the need to censor yourself around me. I want to make things easier for you, not more difficult.”Michael looked aghast. “Saru, this is not about me,” she whispered, voice surprisingly harsh. “You almost died. Your whole world was almost destroyed. Don’t—don’t distract from—”“I’m okay, Michael. Truly.”Michael was shaking her head, voice going so, so small, “You nearly died. You nearly died.”Saru went still. He was silent for a long moment before he said, “I should not have asked you to kill me. That—that was unfair.”“Don’t,” Michael said lowly. She scowled off to the right. “That’s not what this is about.”“Then, what? Help me understand.”Michael clammed up, and for a moment, Saru thought he’d truly lost her to the demons in her head, but then she said, “I would have failed you anyway. I keep failing you.”Saru felt bewildered. “You do no such thing.”Michael said nothing.Sighing, Saru led her to his moss-covered sofa. He turned to face her as Michael stared at the cushions with unique interest. “Do not measure your worth by what you cannot do for those you love,” he said, reaching for her hand. Her fingers twitched in his grasp. “Michael, measure your worth by the depth of your love. You love the people around you so fiercely and so selflessly that sometimes I fear you will lose yourself to it. You are…” He shook his head in wonder. “You could never fail me, or anyone else you love, by being imperfect. Never.”Michael slowly pitched forward, digging her forehead into Saru’s shoulder, likely so that she did not have to look at him. “I suppose I am tired as well.” Her voice was thick and muffled.Saru touched the back of her neck, trying to provide comfort. “Please stay here. We can watch that documentary you were talking about last week.”“Okay,” Michael said, like a defeat.They fell asleep, slumped into each other’s sides, ten minutes into the holovid.
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Michael sat down heavily in what Sarek noted was her preferred chair. He tried to look dispassionate as Michael slowly made eye contact, unable to hide the fear written into the lines of her body.“You must leave immediately, my daughter.” He did not mean for his voice to come out so soft. He clenched his jaw. He must remain objective now, more than ever. “We cannot delay.”“Sarek, I—” Michael cut herself off, looking away. She ran flat hands down her thighs, an old nervous habit that she’d never even noticed enough to try to shake. “Father.” Now she looked back at him, and her gaze made Sarek feel exposed, as if all the layers of decorum and objectivity were nothing more than affectation. “I will not feed him to the wolves.”“They are not wolves. They are human,” Sarek muttered, leaning into pedantry.Michael rolled her eyes, and Sarek felt a small burst of warmth at the familiar gesture. She was still his daughter. She was still Michael. “You know very well what I mean.”Sarek acknowledged this with a slight tilt of the head, letting out a slow gust of breath. “I suggest the present course of action because it will benefit you, Michael. We cannot afford another—”“—failure,” Michael finished, hands balled into fists now. “I know.”“Your duty comes first. My duty comes first.”“There is logic in circumventing orders,” Michael whispered after a pause. “If I learned anything from the war, I learned when to obey and when to disobey. I think I may know better than anyone.” Sarek felt his own hands, hidden under his desk, clench into their own fists at the reminder of Michael’s imprisonment. “Please trust me.”“I trust you,” Sarek answered automatically, even as he reminded himself that he could not trust anyone implicitly on everything—that would be the height of illogic. And yet, he found himself leaning forward and saying, “You will make the right decision.”It was half prayer that Michael would just, for once, make his life flow rationally. It was also half acknowledgment that he could never make the judgments that she could.Michael exhaled shakily, and he knew she understood him. She seemed to collapse inward somewhat, and she addressed her knees when she said, “Thank you.”“Michael,” Sarek said, and he internally recoiled at the palpable warmth in his tone. “You must know that I will always try my best to understand you.” To be on your side, was the unheard sentiment, and Michael looked up sharply.“Thank you,” she said again, voice thick. Her limbs were so stiff, joints locked like a maximum-security prison.Sarek grounded himself and sent a burst of his faith in her across their familial bond, and Michael gasped, hand flying to cover her mouth.He stood, making his way to kneel beside her chair. She stared at the far window, eyes shining.“’Well,’” Sarek began, voice low, “’now that we have seen each other, said the Unicorn, if you’ll believe in me, I’ll believe in you. Is that a bargain?’”He allowed himself the concession of the barest hint of a smile.Michael, voice rough, managed a wobbly, “’Yes, if you like.’”
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He was running before he had the rationality to tell himself to stop, and once he started running, he was in a dead sprint for the transporter room that nothing—not logic, not emotion, not a single intervening law of the universe—could stop.“Michael,” he said, skidding to a clumsy stop at the foot of the transporter pad. Michael was swaying dangerously forward, one arm wrapped around her torso, the other hanging limply at her side. “Michael,” he said again, too frantic to truly hear the crack in his voice.Michael glanced up at him, eyes glassy and confused. “Where—” She frowned. Her voice was thick with tears. “What are you—why—” and then she sagged forward, and Spock barely thought before lunging to catch her so that she wouldn’t hit the ground.“Are you—” he began but cut himself off, watching in horror as Michael turned her pinched face away from him, trying to hide the abject misery written in her features. He knew the answer to the question he’d begun to ask. Michael was not okay. She was hurt, her friend was dead, and their previous conversation hung about the ship like a particularly sadistic ghost.He hardly had the presence of mind to even acknowledge Nhan, breathing harshly as she watched them from a few feet away with her judging, damning eyes.“Spock, please don’t,” Michael whispered, voice choked, but he didn’t know what she didn’t want him to do.The med team swarmed into the room all at once, and Spock found himself carefully lifting Michael off the transporter pad and laying her gently on the ready stretcher. Michael’s gaze only flickered towards him once before she was out of sight, and her expression wrenched all the insides out of him.Spock slowly sank to sit down on the floor. He put his head in his hands. He did not move for a long time. “She’ll be okay,” Doctor Pollard said in a whisper. Spock hovered professionally at the edge of sick bay, eyes glued to Michael, sleeping for now. “Her hand was a mess, but we were able to restructure the bones to the best of our ability. She’ll probably have less motor control, but it won’t be debilitating. She also broke a few ribs and has a minor concussion. We’re keeping her under supervision until we’re sure she’ll be okay. You have nothing to worry about.” Her eyes were sympathetic, and Spock turned his back on her and the sickbay.“My interest is purely professional. Michael’s aid in researching the red angel is instrumental to the future of the galaxy. Please inform me when she is capable of performing her duties.”“Al-riiiight,” Doctor Pollard muttered under her breath as he retreated down the hall. “I don’t know what you did or said to her, but you should be ashamed of yourself,” Commander Saru said, voice colder than Spock had ever heard.He straightened from his workstation, eyes narrowed. “Do not presume to understand matters to which you have no connection.”“I have plenty connection,” he said, raising his chin. “You may not want Michael to be your sister, and that is none of my concern, but Michael is like a sister to me, and that means that when you hurt her, you hurt me as well.” He took a single step closer, and Spock aggressively smothered the illogical urge to flinch back. “So, let me make something perfectly clear, Lieutenant.” He lowered his voice. “Do not hurt her again.”When Saru left, Spock allowed himself a moment to sag forward, tapping his forehead against the wall. His chest ached. “Lieutenant Spock,” Michael said, voice rough, back ramrod straight, hands clasped out of sight, eyes focused just to the left of his head. “I apologize for the delay. I am prepared to assist now.”Internally, Spock floundered. Michael had been many things to him throughout their lives. She’d been loving and teasing and cruel and unfair and devoted beyond rationality, but she had never been cold. Even her distances were filled with unbearable warmth, and that was what made them so unjust in their isolation. Now, though, Spock felt like the air between them should fill with freezing, obscuring fog. He did not understand how to deal with Michael like this. He had never considered the idea that Michael would manage to be so… impersonal.Although he’d said they were not family, he’d never questioned the assumption that Michael would always be in his life, somehow, whether physically or as a shadow. He swallowed roughly, feeling the chasm open between them.And they were children again, and Michael had said the exactly most destructive words possible, and Spock had shut down. Here, now, Michael stared forward with the same forced coldness that Spock had struggled to establish all those years ago, and wasn’t this supposed to be what he wanted? For Michael to feel the same way he had?Except it wasn’t right. None of this felt right.“Michael,” Spock began, voice sounding hollow and defeated to his own ears.“Ariam seemed to believe that this entire situation had something to do with me, so I believe we need to consider the possibility that the red angel has a special interest in both of us,” she said quickly, the picture of professionalism. “I assume you’ve already realized that the artificial life possessing Ariam likely has the same source as the beings that will destroy all sentient life.”“Yes,” Spock said after a pause, mouth dry. He didn’t know what to say. He didn’t know what to say.“We can start from there.” She stepped forward and called up her own screen of research. She still hadn’t looked at him. He watched numbly as a muscle in her jaw jumped. She typed with her right hand only, keeping her left pinned behind her back. Spock wondered how badly it was damaged.“Michael,” he said again, helplessly. She paused in typing but did not otherwise react, frozen with her head bowed to the table. “I must apologize for my behavior over the past week.”She finally looked at him, the gesture sharp. Her eyes were dangerous, alight with pain and fury and a sharp, sharp hurt that would cut them both if unleashed. “Don’t,” she said, tone low.“I am sorry, Michael.” He looked away, down at the floor, avoiding her damning gaze. “I have been needlessly cruel to us both, and I regret… many of the things that I have said.”Michael’s expression was unreadable, entirely closed off in a way that Spock had never been able to replicate. She said nothing.“I want to fix it,” he said, sounding horrifically childish.Michael slowly placed both of her hands flat on the table before her, and Spock saw the stiff way that her fingers moved on her left hand. She breathed deeply but still did not respond.A little bit desperate, Spock inhaled sharply and said, “You are my sister, and I love you. I do not wish to inflict any more damage beyond what I have already done. I was too foolish, too childish to see what you had discovered decades ago.”“Why are you saying this?” Michael demanded softly, voice layered with something miserable that made Spock feel like physically wilting.“I am trying to make amends. I am trying to be better. I am trying to help you.”Michael shook her head, wordless, and didn’t stop. “No,” she whispered. “You can’t—”“Michael, you are not okay,” Spock cut in, rounding the table between them to place a hand on her shoulder, internally praying for her to face him. She did not. “Let me apologize for my part in making you so…” he trailed off, at a loss for the proper term.“Sad?” Michael finished, sounding small.“A mildly adequate label for a complex emotional state,” Spock acknowledged, feeling relieved when he saw the tiny upward twitch of Michael’s lips.“Okay,” Michael said after an eternity, turning to him. “Okay. I’m sorry.”She looked so human in that moment, and Spock, for the first time, noticed how much taller he was compared to her. It felt wrong. Michael had been larger than life from the day they’d met. Without thinking, he reached for her, grabbing her in an instinctive hug. Michael crumpled into the embrace, and he realized they were both shaking.Spock knocked his temple against Michael’s, an old gesture they’d practiced as children to glean surface emotions from one another. Spock projected his relief, his fear, his love for his sister, and in turn felt Michael’s devastation, her grief, and a frail clawing hope that suffocated them both.It was a start.