Work Text:
Trust -- foreign to those aboard the Liberator. The commodity belonged to a world with no Federation, a world of fairy tales peopled with children.
Kerr Avon espoused the theory like a loved one and despite the whines of his shipmates, he had observed, and approved, their trustlessness.
Thus, the strange feeling in his breast as he came to know more of Del Tarrant was the more unnerving.
Long aware of his own fondness for a slim, masculine figure, that side of things was neither unexpected nor unwelcome. But the softer feelings -- friendship, kinship, the weight of a need behind his eyes -- that sent him to Orac to work on one of the darker secrets of the Liberator, a diversion for his mind if nothing else.
It was not, he told himself, anything specific to Tarrant that caused these feelings. Young, impulsive Dayna stirred him also -- she who could be relied on to speak her mind and to speak the truth. A measure of trust, there, although her youth and impetuosity made her unreliable.
Almost as well trust Vila -- his actions, after all, could be predicted with great certainty in any set of circumstances. An eye to the main chance and self-preservation -- two driving forces providing clear behaviours, every time.
Cally was more of a mystery -- driven by softer needs, a belief in helping others, not to mention Avon's distrust of her thought processes and receptiveness. Least predictable of all and therefore least trusted.
But none of that solved the mystery of the magnetism of Del Tarrant. Liar, conman, thief, killer -- Tarrant was all of those things, and Avon respected him for it. He was sharp, clever enough to give Avon himself a challenge and perhaps that was part of it. It had been long years since Avon had needed to outthink a (human) opponent, let alone joined intellectual forces with an ally.
Despite his forbidding front, Avon knew it was in his power to attract, to lead, to inspire trust. And thus to fall, fail those who followed, to disappoint. Better, far better, to never exercise his power at all -- to hold at bay, instead. To force allegiance with a ship, a computer, with threats, and watch his own back.
Except, of course, that despite their professed opinion of him, he was yet their leader. Supposedly via force and coercion, yet truly because they followed him.
Even Tarrant, with his amused, supercilious eyebrow and argumentative stance. Challenge he might, yet follow he did, and Avon would never let on how easy it would be to bow down to one of those posturing challenges. Step back and say, run with it, my friend.
Words he had rarely said -- words he had yet even more rarely meant.
Avon was not expendable, no, but then, neither was Tarrant. Avon had never yet left a man behind (despite numerous threats to the contrary), and it was important, vital, that the rest of his shipmates not discover, nor even suspect, that now an imperative existed.
He and Tarrant -- a pair of a sort. Dayna too -- a daughter, perhaps, she of the bright courage and burning purpose. She would not be told, and Avon respected that, along with her weapon prowess. He might yet lament her youth and impulsivity but found lately in his heart an unknown emotion that he had considered naming fondness, or perhaps indulgence.
On other days, he named it insanity, and turned to his computers instead. But Orac, bitter and worthy opponent though he (it) remained, yet never raised in his breast the warmth, the need, of Avon's new shipmates.
Adversarial always, he and Tarrant.
"I come not at your behest, Tarrant!"
"Nor yet at my request, Avon, even though it is for the good of us all!"
Thus they spoke, yet Avon had waited a bare half hour before seeking Tarrant upon the bridge. And below on the planet, Tarrant had turned back, endangered himself and the others too, to blow the hatch and ensure Avon could follow. He did not wait, but Avon did not expect him to -- would have been mistrustful if he did.
It was not in Avon to regret, nor yet to pine over what-if's, although it had crossed his mind a time or two that in a universe with no Federation, he and Tarrant, with resources to command, could have been a formidable partnership indeed. Computers, real estate, journalism… really, there were no limits, whichever side of the law they had chosen.
After all, even deep in space, outlawed and broke, they had achieved no little success.
It was a pointless flight of fancy, nonetheless, and Avon had no time for that. Not when there were routes to plan, crew members to spar with, Orac to frustrate him beyond measure.
And Tarrant's hare-brained schemes to shoot down in flames. Run with it, my friend. How nearly he'd spoken! How astounded they would all be, not least Tarrant.
The challenge now -- a world beyond this hand to mouth existence, vagabonds of the universe, somewhere, perhaps, a place of rest. If only an end could come, but Kerr Avon, brilliant man that he was, considered it unlikely. Their quest -- Quixotic, certainly, stupid, probably -- held only bitterness and defeat, long-term.
The legacy of one Roj Blake, idealist, a man of the heart, a believer.
It would be the death of them all, but the devil was in it that Avon saw no way out. To walk away -- so easy, perhaps, too easy, but where? Wanted by the Federation, an escaped prisoner, an outlaw -- he could hide, certainly, but what life was that?
And as for the others -- they would follow him to battle, yet not to peace. Avon knew it, even as he knew the peaceful road, the quiet life, was not his. It never had been -- if he had made a choice, he had been too young to recognise it. He merely was, and his life rolled out, variegated and intricate, as inevitable as Orac's programming, or Vila's thievery.
"For God's sake, Tarrant, if you are so fond of this precious plan, run with it! And I pray only that we all live to see the result!"