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Disclaimer: Andromeda is the creation of Gene Roddenberry and Tribune Entertainment. It is not mine, nor are the characters who appear here or are mentioned.
"Stubborn like Shrapnel"
Harper absorbed the blow from the wooden quarterstaff on his own weapon, the force from driving him back a good five to ten paces back.
If he had not known by now that the other man was taking it easy on him, he might be offended.
At first, Harper had thought that he would get in a few rounds, make Dylan happy that he had found a productive coping mechanism for his bouts of sullenness over dealing with what had happened with his failure to save the Perseid scientist who had died only a few weeks ago.
Under any other circumstances, Harper would have told Dylan off and told him to take his concerns where the sun did not shine, and that he did not need to worry because Seamus Zelazny Harper could take care of himself just fine, thank you very much.
He had been even before taken aboard the Beka’s crew on the Eureka Maru.
Dylan meant well, but he did not know everything, no matter how much he thought he did.
Beka had backed him up. But then she had left with Dylan for a diplomatic mission, probably another attempt for Dylan to negotiate another world into helping rebuild Dylan Hunt’s vision of rebuilding the Commonwealth.
Was that why Harper felt so out-of-sorts and angry and down? So, here he was, sparring with his backup choice. Tyr.
They had been at this for some time, perhaps for a good hour or two if his internal chronometer was correct.
Harper was breathing hard and took a moment to not only gain his composure but also to reach up and wipe away the glistening sheen of sweat off his forehead. “Whoa, man!” he puffed out.
The huge, very smug Nietzschean sparring partner stood rooted to the ground like the big solid oak trees that Harper remembered from Old Earth.
“Do you require a moment?” he asked, his bass voice rumbling in his barrel chest.
“Just, just, a sec.” What did you weigh these things with titanium alloy?"
Harper let the staff dangle loosely in the grip of his right hand, and his shoulder rose and fell as he took in deep breaths of much-need ship-board oxygen.
“No, just steel. Is that really the question here?” Tyr asked, the look in his dark, deep-set eyes impenetrable at first, but Harper, once he could breathe normally once more, realized was a twinkle of amusement.
Tyr would have preferred to be stabbed repeatedly with a blunt knife rather than admit it out loud to anyone.
If he was being honest with himself, which he often was; the motley crew aboard the Andromeda Ascendant had grown on him, and that was something that had never factored into his plans for not just the immediate future and beyond.
This went beyond their mere usefulness, beyond a promise of mutually beneficial needs and circumstances. Tyr rarely allowed himself to speculate too much, but he was ‘fond’ of the small engineer. going even so far as to refer to him as the “Little Professor.”
Why this should be so, Tyr did not know nor did he care to probe too deep into it; it simply was akin to fire and water and air.
At the moment, if Harper wanted to spar, he was more than willing to give it his all. He just was not as sure if Harper was taking these sparring matches as seriously as he was.
“We may resume whenever you have sufficiently recovered. Treat your weapon with a little more respect. It is not a hunk of meat.”
“Haha!: hilarious. So very, funny, Tyr.” Harper was feeling better and considered again why he was doing this.
One late night when he and Beka were alone and Beka had been in one of her rare maudlin moods and allowed her self-imposed walls to slip, had confessed that she had both loved and hated that smoldering twinkle in Tyr’s eyes.
Beka had likened it to seeing the ying and the yang of the big, muscular Nietzschean’s nature, both the angel on one’s shoulder and a devil inside.
Harper had pressed for more information because he wanted to know. A more insatiable curiosity could not just leave it at that; Beka had dodged the question, and he had agreed to let it drop.
Now Harper wished he had pressed. Tyr had layers, and those layers had layers. Harper wanted very much to peel those layers back, one by one. He just did not know if he would ever have the nerve.
“Once more, and this time do not lean so far forward.”
“Why?”
Tyr replied. “Because I caught you with your feet crossed in front of you. In an actual fight, you would have gone down like a felled tree.”
We have been over this, and over this. You must learn to treat your weapon as an extension of your arm. And for another stop dangling your weapon from your dominant hand as if it was a hunting trophy.”
It was a very rare sight, seeing Tyr flustered, or at a loss for words.
A part of Harper wanted to milk it for all it was worth; yet another part wanted to capture it for posterity.
Only, say, two, three years ago, he might have even used as blackmail evidence. That was then; this was now. He was a better person, and he wanted to keep on being a better person. “Blah, blah, got it.”
“You are incorrigible.”
“And you are one tough bastard. Harper grinned. We’re even.”
“I grant you, that we have made a modicum of progress, however, if you are ever going to get better more training is paramount.”
“Is that your really sweet way of saying that ‘that beat on Harper session is over for today?”
“Affirmative.”
“Good thing I’m stubborn like shrapnel.”