Title: Memory and Promises
Author: Mareel
Author's email: Mareel@earthlink.net
Author's URL: http://www.geocities.com/bdebpr
10/16/03
Archer's Enterprise
Archive: Permission to archive granted to EntSTCommunity, Archer's Enterprise, Reed's Armory, Others welcome, please let me know.
Fandom: Star Trek Enterprise
Category: Slash (m/m)
Rating: G
Status: Complete
Pairing: Archer/Reed
Series: Refuge
Previous: Respite
Next: The Hawks of Morning
Number in series: 4
Spoilers: General season three (non-specific)
Summary: Jon and Malcolm recollect the vows they made to one another before this mission.
Disclaimer: They all still belong to Paramount. But most days I care more about what happens to them.
Author's Notes: Set at some time during the mission to the Delphic Expanse, after Xindi and Anomaly. I think of it as taking place after the events of Respite. Written in honor and support of marriage between any loving partners, regardless of gender or any other irrelevancies. My thanks to Mara for her lobbying for fic that would annoy the hell out of the creators of [so-called] "Marriage Protection Week."
Memory: Jonathan
Sunset on a rocky beach at high tide. Seven hundred miles felt like lightyears from Starfleet. Just the two of us. No family, no friends to share this moment. It was for us, something we needed to do.
To the kind strangers who witnessed our vows, we were just Jon and Malcolm. Just two men in love, committing to a future together. Not a captain and his armoury officer pledging to one another that whatever future there was for us at all would be ours together.
We wondered if this were really the time. It is perhaps our only time.
***
Promises: Malcolm
One stolen day walking the rocky shore together, hand in hand, splashed by sea-spray. Smiling, touching, forgetting for one day that the world had changed. Our mission, our lives had changed.
Hands joined, eyes full, two voices soft but strong, pledging life and love to one another. The words were ours, their spirit timeless as the sea before us—to cherish, respect, shelter, defend.
One night together in solitude and comfort, engraving those vows onto our hearts, knowing their strength would be tested. I little guessed how much, how soon, how hard that testing would be.
But the centre holds.