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They’d failed. Again.
He had failed. Failed to convince Burnham to help him. Failed to stop the gormagander from being beamed onboard. Failed to stop Mudd from blowing up Discovery.
Again.
And again.
And again.
The explosion tears away at the ship, rocketing through the plating of the landing bay first. The rest of it is swallowed up within seconds. The orange of it paints a stark contrast against Discovery’s slate gray plating.
Paul can feel the heat on his face already. The searing hot that obliterates his body along with everyone else and the rest of Discovery.
That momentary flash of agony. So raw and to such an extent he had never felt before.
Until he has.
He has felt it so many times. Too many to bother assigning a number to.
A brief moment of agony before time resets and he’s back to standing in the corridor just outside his and Hugh’s room.
He can feel that searing agony again. It claws at his body, starting with his hands.
They stopped Mudd, conned the con man. Discovery shouldn’t have been blown up again. It was supposed to be over. It was over.
So why does it feel like the ship is exploding around him?
Time resets again. Once more, his body feels like it’s been yo-yo’d back through time, which it had been, actually.
Paul finds himself staring at the shiny floor of the empty corridor. His sight’s always the first sense to reset.
He’s not standing this time. That’s odd. He’s slumped against the bulkhead. Touch is always the next one.
Time reset so he shouldn’t have moved at all, instead he should have simply bounced back to his earlier position. Where he had been thirty-four minutes ago, which was standing in this corridor.
Paul’s hearing filters back in slowly. It should have already been back to normal, he thinks absently.
It sounds like someone’s talking. Their voice is distorted and muted.
His palms are wet.
Why are his palms wet? How are they wet?
“—au. Pa— Paul!”
The astromychologist blinks. The corridor isn’t as empty as he’d thought. There’s a mostly-white blob to his right.
It slowly focuses into a person.
Hugh.
Who’s looking at him with that mix of concern and worry that makes Paul want to simultaneously kiss and hate him for.
Why is Hugh worried?
And why is he still on the floor?
“Hugh?” he questions. “What — What happened?”
His husband’s face cracks into a relieved smile.
“That’s what I would like to know,”
He frowns.
What?
And then panic tears through him.
The gormagander! Mudd! The explosion! They hadn’t succeeded — he has to stop it. He’s got to. He can’t relive these thirty-four minutes again.
“It’s over, we stopped Mudd and the Discovery’s safe. We’ve rejoined the time stream so you don’t have to relieve that half an hour ever again,” Hugh says and Paul realises that he must have said all of that out loud.
“How can you be sure?”
“Because Mudd’s gone with Stella and her father, they’re off the ship,” Hugh tells him. “And it’s 1428 hours on 2137.3, we’ve moved past 2137.2,” he adds.
Paul pushes himself to his feet. So he’s no longer sprawled out awkwardly against where the bulkhead meets the floor.
That could be right. He had watched Mudd dematerialise in the transporter...
But what if he still has the information on the spore drive on him and is selling it to the Klingons right at this moment?
What if whatever explosive Mudd planned to use this time around hasn’t been cleared properly and would still go off?
What if Mudd hadn’t left Discovery and had just been transported somewhere else on the ship (as unlikely as it was), ready to continue this maddening ordeal.
How could they be sure unless Paul checked it himself.
Panic grips his lungs, an icy band squeezes. Then he’s standing again. Heading off towards…somewhere. Anywhere on the ship to start a search.
“Paul!” Hugh calls after him and tries to grab his shoulder. He shrugs him off. “Did you hear me?” the doctor questions, succeeding at stopping him this time. “It’s over. Security’s done a sweep of the entire ship, Mudd’s not hiding somewhere onboard and all the explosives are gone,” he says. “There is no more time loop,”
The panic crashes to a halt as Paul’s brain tries to wrap itself around the concept.
“You’re sure?” he asks. He has to be sure that Hugh isn’t just saying that to placate him and there really are no more loops.
“Positive.”
Hugh says that and nothing more. He doesn’t tell him to get up. Half an hour passes without an explosion or reset. They are both still here. As is the Discovery. And Mudd is not.