Title: Gift of Comfort
Fandom: Star Trek Enterprise
Rating: G
Length: 250
Content notes: AU based on the episode "E2"
Author notes: This takes place 57 years after Enterprise was shifted 117 years into the past during their mission in the Delphic Expanse (Season 3 episode "E2"). They had to become a generational ship to survive until they could rendezvous with the current Enterprise and try to prevent the destruction of Earth. It also refers to events of "Damage". There is a long-established Archer/Reed relationship, and this is Malcolm's voice.
Summary: “Comfort was allowed to come to them rare, welcome, unsought: a gift like joy.” – Ursula K. LeGuin

__________________________________________________
Jonathan has been trying to compose a message to himself – to the Jonathan Archer who will encounter our Enterprise sixty years from now. It hasn't been easy, even for one as fluent with words as I know him to be. How can his letter encompass everything we've done here, everything we've learned... all the times we've despaired, all the times we've smiled and laughed and loved?

He doesn't want to read it to me in its entirety. But he occasionally shares passages. Some warm my heart - others come near to breaking it. Like this part he wrote tonight.

"I'm still haunted by some of what I had to do in the Expanse before being time-shifted. As I'm sure you are, since you've done the same things, made the same hard decisions.

"Some nights I can't close my eyes without seeing that Illyrian captain – the one whose warp core we took from his ship by force. He asks me again and again, 'Why are you doing this?' I told him then that I had no choice. Now I've had a lot of years to think about it. Maybe I did. And maybe I chose wrong."

That was fifty-seven years ago today. I've long forgiven him, but I don't know if he'll ever forgive himself. I only hope the Jonathan who receives this message will share it with his Malcolm. And will let him help ease the pain when it becomes unbearable.

As I'm about to try to do tonight. Again.
__________________________________________________