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What are you really bargaining with?
I think you know.
In exchange for my crew, I offer you me.
Let them leave safely and I'm yours.
Like you said, my future is here.
But know this: I'm offering you my mind, nothing more.
When all was said and done, Michael often found her mind drifting back to that fateful day.
Despite herself, despite reason.
Phillipa - no, the other Georgiou - said the other Lorca had groomed the other Burnham. Ugly words, with ugly, ugly connotations. The moment Michael heard those words, her every thought connected to Lorca was tainted. An ugly, spreading, indelible ink. It was difficult to be rational after that.
But the Lorca she thought she knew had never shown any sign of that. He must have had utmost self control. On the USS Discovery, they had never touched. Always a professional distance, often a desk between them.
In the other universe, their world was inverted in more ways than one. Her, a captain. Him, a fugitive. With the role reversal, she also had to adapt to survive.
In those darkest moments, his hand on hers was human warmth and comfort. A reassuring touch. In his darkest moments, even when his control was fraying from the pain, he found the strength to comfort her. That couldn’t be just a mask.
Later, when his deception was laid bare, she wouldn’t fire at him with her phaser, but she would cut him with her words. If only you asked, I would have helped. You chose wrong, she wanted to say. She wouldn’t kill him, but she wouldn’t comfort a dying man, wouldn’t grant him what he would have done - what he had done when she was at her lowest. And when the other Georgiou put him beyond her reach, she’d be frozen and mute.
But in the cold light of day, a whole universe away from that day, Michael allowed herself to think of, and grieve for, the Lorca she had known. The more she examined the facts, the more she doubted the other Georgiou’s version of events.
Lorca had plucked her from despair, given her a purpose, and had believed in her when she had lost faith in herself. Those early days on the USS Discovery, he had been the only force standing between her and hopelessness. If it weren’t for that, she couldn’t have found her feet, and found the support of Tilly, and Stamets, and Saru. She wouldn’t be where she is now.
In the end, Lorca hadn’t fought her. He knew Michael had chosen the other Georgiou, and he hadn’t retaliated. He only wanted to talk to her.
If only. If only she could have heard him out, despite the scale of his betrayal. She owed him that much, at least.
Those words she said to Lorca - “I’m offering you my mind, nothing more.” They had no purpose. She never intended to stay to see it through. Why had she said them? To convincingly play the role of an incorruptible Burnham, for his benefit? Or for hers? To articulate what she wanted desperately to be true - that all that she felt could be rationalised. That all that she felt could be contained, and channeled. That she could use his emotions against him, and turn her back on her own.
That her complex, burgeoning emotions couldn’t be in light of what Georgiou had said. She would resist destiny. She would resist him. Even if those words she said - “my mind, nothing more” - were, and had become, purely hypothetical.
The first time they had met, in his ready room with the window filled with stars, her curiosity had been piqued. She had felt an affinity with him. As Vulcans are wont to do, she noted her mental turmoil, this ineffable urge to reach out to this stranger, and overcorrected in her reactions. It was fine, her attraction to this random captain. It was fine because she would be off his starship and heading back to prison in a few short days.
Then the plot thickened. A temporary position became a permanent place on the Discovery. The trust he placed in her was a tangible weight on her shoulders. And she kept herself in check. Redirected and sublimated her emotions. Found someone else she could relate to. And it was all fine. Lorca certainly didn’t reciprocate. Perhaps that was the only thing that kept her from acting on it, or testing the waters. She had convinced herself he didn’t want a complication like that. It was fine. Vulcans were very good at poker. She could be the consummate professional.
Through the looking-glass, she had to hold Lorca’s neck, grip his hair, all to maintain believability as the triumphant captain returning with her prize in tow. Now she can see that what she’d thought was pure adrenaline was more complex than that. Every touch between them had been electric, and her skin sang from it. She looks down at her palms, flexes her fingers, hoping to trigger the sense memory of his hair between her fingers, her touch more of a caress than strictly believable.
The truth is, this time, she doesn’t know which captain she should have betrayed. The one she chose, she fears only lives on in her heart. The other Georgiou is not, and will never be, a replacement for the one she lost. Michael fears she has paid many times over for that original sin, a sin that launched a thousand starships into battle.
Those words she had wanted to lash out at Lorca with, perhaps she can now only direct at herself: You chose wrong.