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"Cry Havoc"
By MissAnnThropic
Rating: NC-17
Disclaimer: None of its mine. I’m just a sad little fangirl that spends her days writing fanfic and watching taped episodes of my favorite shows. :(
Description: The evolution of Trip and T’Pol’s relationship following the events in ‘Harbinger’.
Epilogue
"Are you ready, Uncle Jon?"
Admiral Jonathan Archer, retired, looked up from his packing at T'Lara standing within his guest quarters on the NX Columbia.
"I'm just about ready to go," he answered as he zipped up his duffel bag of clothes. Through the view port in his living quarters he could see the reddish-orange globe of planet Vulcan looming large with the promise of its oppressive heat. 'Hell of a vacation spot,' Archer thought wryly. On his bed, next to the luggage, lay a black and tan beagle with only the barest of white tips on his nose, paws, and tail. He was the most unassuming, laid-back beagle Jonathan had ever owned, and he'd been through a lot of them, but Archer was beginning to think this mellower, calmer dog suited him at his age.
Archer absently reached out a hand and pet the dog as he asked, "You sure your parents won't mind me bringing him?"
Humor glistened in T'Lara's eyes, pure Tucker mirth, and she said, "You know Dad won't, and you know Mom will. You know how she feels about canines, but she'd used to you bringing dogs to the house."
Archer chuckled. "That's true. After all this time it would probably seem odd to everyone if I didn't show up with a dog." Archer dropped his hand from the beagle's head and shouldered his duffel bag. "Come on, Dumas," he called the dog to his side and the hound obediently jumped off the bed.
Archer turned to face T'Lara and asked, "Is your brother waiting for us?"
T'Lara nodded. "He's with the shuttle pod."
"Well, then, let's not keep him waiting any longer."
Archer followed the young woman through the corridors of the ship, Dumas a constant presence at Archer's left side. The crew of the Columbia moved past and as they did so offered greetings and wished Archer a pleasant trip.
As they neared the shuttle bay T'Lara looked over at Archer. "I forgot to congratulate you on your retirement, Uncle Jon."
Archer smiled in a boyish fashion that age had not managed to train out of him. "That's why I'm here, isn't it? I never got to see enough of all of you while I was in Starfleet. Just look at you," Archer gestured toward T'Lara, "I take my eyes off you for a few minutes it seems and you're all grown up."
T'Lara cocked her head in a gesture so reminiscent of Trip that Archer grinned and shook his head.
As promised, T'Lara's brother was standing beside an open shuttle pod waiting for them, hands folded patiently behind his back.
"Hello, Uncle Jon. Do you require assistance with your bag?"
Archer, dismissive, waved off the offer. "No, that's all right, I've got it. I'm not so old I can't handle a bag of laundry."
"As you wish. You look well."
"So do you, Keh'rak." Archer paused and eyed the young man closely. "Doesn't bother you when I call you that, does it?"
"No," he said with a small tone of confusion for the question, one eyebrow rising slightly.
"Didn't know if you'd outgrown it."
"I permit only a small number of individuals to address me as 'Keh'rak'. You, however, are one of them."
Archer smiled at the young man. "I'm honored, but if you'd rather I call you 'Charles'..."
Charles shook his head. "From you I prefer 'Keh'rak'."
"'Keh'rak' it is, then. Good. Just as well, I'd probably have called you that anyway by mistake. Hard habit to break when I've called you 'Keh'rak' since you were a baby."
T'Lara lifted the beagle into the shuttle pod and turned to the two men. "This is a conversation you could have in transit, you know."
Archer chuckled and nodded. "Logical as always, T'Lara. Let's get going, then. I'm looking forward to seeing your parents; it's been far too long." Archer climbed into the shuttle and tossed his bag in the back while Charles and T'Lara moved toward the cockpit. When he'd stowed his stuff and settled his dog for the short ride down to the planet Archer headed back toward the cockpit where T'Lara and Charles were sitting at the controls.
Archer sat down in a chair just back of the pilot's seat and quietly considered the two before him. What he'd told T'Lara in quarters was true. It seemed like yesterday that T'Lara was ten years old and Charles six. Now, at twenty-three and nineteen, both were well past being children. They were currently focused on their task with an intensity and totality Archer knew they'd learned from their mother. Not that their father couldn't get single-minded, but his episodes of intense concentration did little to rival the capacity their mother had for it.
Archer watched Trip and T'Pol's children and, as was so prone to men his age, he reminisced, this time specifically on the lives of two of his closest friends.
After years consulting the best geneticists, Trip and T'Pol had resigned to the fact they would not be physically capable of having children together. They had accepted the fact with the grace of two who'd always known that might be the case. Doctor Phlox had taken the conclusion almost as a personal failure. He'd been working with Trip and T'Pol in his spare time, usually via long-range communication and correspondence, trying to perfect a method to successfully combine human and Vulcan genomes but had eventually had to tell the couple he couldn't make it happen. He'd confided to Archer once, in despair, that he thought if he'd had more time to devote to the project he might have found a way. As it was, his work, first through Starfleet then through the Denobulan medical association when he went back to his people, had demanded too much of his attention to commit to such a detailed, involved endeavor as producing a viable human/Vulcan hybrid zygote. The only consolation he'd allowed himself was to donate all of his research and studies on the matter to both the Vulcan and Earth medical databases, hoping someone else might take it upon themselves to figure the problem out. If not, the knowledge was there, the starting point for someone else someday to figure it out, even if (as it was becoming sadly apparent) it wouldn't benefit Trip and T'Pol.
When actually having their own children together was deemed to be impossible Trip and T'Pol had considered other options. Their first alternative choice led to T'Lara Li Tucker.
T'Lara was human and Trip truly was her father. T'Pol, genetically, was just not her mother. Archer had very little knowledge of the specific events that transpired for T'Lara to be born. No one outside the family did. A human woman on Earth had been the ova donor and surrogate for the couple's first child. Understandably, as someone who'd decided to help the sometimes famous, sometimes infamous human/Vulcan pair, T'Lara's birth-mother had asked for the strictest confidentiality as a condition of her participation. Archer didn't even know the woman's name or on which continent she lived, if she even actually lived on-planet (everyone merely assumed she did). She had consented to be the genetic mother of the baby, to carry it, then handed T'Lara over to Trip when she was three hours old. The only thing anyone knew about the biological mother was that she was of mixed Jewish and Middle-Eastern descent. That much was divulged maybe because that ancestry showed in T'Lara. She had medium brown hair, honey-colored eyes, a distinctively arid habitat shaped facial-bone structure, and a healthy ability to tan. Almost everything else, however, was pure Trip. Her mouth, her smile, her height, her tendency toward leanness and athleticism, her intelligence, her sense of humor, and her sense of adventure reminded Archer strongly of his former chief engineer. Of course, her rearing had its impact. She was stronger than most humans just for growing up on Vulcan with its thinner atmosphere and heavier gravity and being conditioned by it. Her endurance on Vulcan was passable, but on Earth practically phenomenal. She had even been fit enough to undergo some kind of Vulcan environmental survival trial called the kahs-wan, a purportedly grueling and demanding ordeal... done to children, no less. Archer remembered Trip had been opposed to the idea of T'Lara doing it, but the girl had passed and was proud for her accomplishment.
Four years after T'Lara was born, Charles Solak Tucker IV joined the family. Charles, as opposed to his sister, was full-blooded Vulcan. Trip was not his father, however T'Pol was his real mother. Also, in contrast to the process undergone with T'Lara, Charles's biological father was a colleague at the Vulcan Science Academy whom T'Pol knew and worked closely with in the Earth/human relations research division. Skon had donated his genetic material for in vitro and T'Pol had given birth to Charles, or 'Keh'rak' to his family and his parents' human friends (Vulcan for 'fourth'). Skon kept in contact regularly with the family and knew Charles fairly well, but he was a friend of the family and nothing more. It was made very clear before the fertilization procedure even began their initial harvests that Trip would be the boy's father and Skon had generously agreed to the terms.
In a remarkable show of genetic chance (or maybe a better word would have been 'luck'), Charles and T'Lara looked like they could conceivably have the same parents. Charles took after T'Pol far more strongly than he took after his genetic father, Skon. His hair was brown rather than black, and his eyes more hazel/golden brown than the deep brown of most Vulcans. Skon, like the vast majority of Vulcans, had black hair and dark brown eyes. T'Pol's genetic contributions to Charles were far more prominent, the son phenotypically so like his mother, with her Vulcan coloration and features which, apparently, were considerably rare in Vulcans. It made the children look surprisingly alike, save for the obvious differences in brows and ears. Charles had a disposition and personality very similar to T'Pol's, but Archer wasn't sure how much of that was simply genetically 'Vulcan'. Archer did like to think that Charles was what T'Pol could be if she relaxed her Vulcan control just a little, because Charles was Vulcan but not uber-Vulcan. He had the touch of human rearing in him, his learned behaviors that he picked up from having Trip as a father.
Archer had watched the two grow up, via pictures, comms, visits, and letters. He was 'Uncle Jon', and after Trip's parents died the person willed to take the children if something ever happened to Trip and T'Pol. Both children had been raised in Trip and T'Pol's home on Vulcan, a home Trip and T'Pol had made together well before either child had been born. To human observers, the children were reared with the strict Vulcan controls on behavior and rigid concepts of social proprieties, but ask any Vulcan and they would say the Tucker children were practically allowed to run amok. It was probably the inevitable clash of trying to raise children between two vastly different cultures, but Archer always thought Trip and T'Pol had done remarkably well. Despite the uniqueness of their situation, each child was well-adjusted and happy.
Archer looked between the mature T'Lara and Charles and smiled gently to himself as he thought 'they're really starting to turn into the people they're going to be'.
In the last few years, mostly through long-distance means, Archer had watched each Tucker child begin to realize their individual potential, to become 'people' not so much as children. They'd turned into adults, fully possessed of their own ethics and values. It was like witnessing a slow awakening, watching all the effort Trip and T'Pol had put into their kids culminate in the T'Lara and Charles currently sitting in front of Archer. Trip and T'Pol had raised both to understand human and Vulcan culture equally and when the children were old enough they were allowed to dictate their own cultural balance.
Not surprisingly, Charles had found his path in life more aligned with the Vulcan practices and tenets of mental discipline and logic. His heritage, it seemed, naturally predisposed him. Even still, Charles was not immune to his human father's influence throughout his life. Archer had seen Charles smile a few times, twice he'd heard the Vulcan as a young boy laugh, and Archer could think of no other Vulcan that would submit to a nickname, after the 'Trip' fashion, such as 'Keh'rak' or consent to call others by such incongruous names (i.e. 'Uncle Jon').
T'Lara, initially, seemed to have chosen much as her younger brother had. On first meeting her, T'Lara always came off to other humans as extremely reserved with something of a flat affect behavior pattern. Anyone who truly knew her, however, knew better. While it was true enough that T'Lara had adopted some of the Vulcan mannerisms characteristic of the people of her (as far as she was concerned) 'home world', it was far from the scope of who T'Lara was. Underneath a well-maintained surface was a sharp-witted, funny woman with a streak in her that prodded her to go on a whim, to trust her gut and to do things just for the thrill of doing them, to hell with their logic or illogic. She had too much of Trip Tucker in her to ever really be Vulcan, naturalized or not. Though, it was easy to understand how people on the whole could see her as the human Vulcan. She was undeniably aloof around strangers and didn't like to be touched by people she didn't know well. To family and friends, however, to people like Uncle Jon, she was merely a spitfire with good self-control.
"Uncle Jon?" T'Lara's voice broke into his ruminations for the second time in an hour. Archer shook his head and playfully recriminated himself. 'It was time you got out of Starfleet, Jonathan, you're getting far too preoccupied with wool-gathering.' He looked toward T'Lara and Charles and saw the Vulcan landscape barely three hundred meters down skimming past them.
"Almost there?" he asked, more or less rhetorically. He'd been to Trip and T'Pol's home often enough to recognize when they were in the area. One thing Vulcans could be counted on to do, find a pattern that worked and stick with it, whether that be architecture, landscaping, or travel pathways.
T'Lara nodded.
Soon enough the shuttle was slowing down and they were dropping slowly closer and closer to the ground as their destination neared.
The shuttle finally came to a gentle stop resting on the private landing pad next to the Tucker house outside the city proper of ShiKahr. T'Lara and Charles wordlessly set about shutting down the craft's systems. T'Lara finished first and rose from her seat, momentarily placing her hand on her brother's shoulder as she turned to Archer and fleetingly smiled at him. "Saw Mom and Dad through the view port waiting for us."
Archer couldn't help but smile, too.
T'Lara went to the shuttle hatch and popped it open while Archer went to the back and gathered his bag and his dog. Even before he reached the shuttle pod door he felt the heat hit him like a wall. The thin air took only two breaths to make his body feel years older. Dumas, apparently noticing the same things, looked up a little accusingly at Archer.
T'Lara and Charles preceded Archer out of the shuttle and the ex-admiral dropped down to the ground after them, immediately swaying when he felt like he'd dropped down ten feet instead of one. How Trip, the guy who didn't like hot weather, could live for years upon years on a place like Vulcan perplexed Archer to no end. Dumas audibly grunted when he jumped down from the shuttle and there was a definite glare in the dog's expression when he looked at his master again. Archer thought that he'd never had a more cranky, moody beagle, either. Dumas was only two and already had the disposition of a ten-year-old dog.
Archer tried to dismiss the planet's effects ('tried' being the operative word) and looked up toward the house. Standing together at a side door to the quaint, traditional Vulcan abode were Trip and T'Pol. Archer smiled and waved. Trip waved back while T'Pol stood placidly in wait.
Archer started the twenty foot hike to the house following T'Lara and Charles. He was winded and tired by the time he reached his friends, but sight of them eased his discomfort.
"Trip, T'Pol, good to see you two again." Archer dropped his bag at his feet and took a moment to consider both his friends. Both were older, though T'Pol looked barely so. Her skin was not as smooth and firm, the corners of her eyes no longer unmarred by lines, but she unquestionably, from a human perspective, seemed to have defied the years. She'd let her hair grow. It was partially pinned up, the rest falling behind her shoulders in a sun-highlighted brown cascade. Archer came to the conclusion T'Pol looked better with long hair, almost fairy-tale like with her pointed ears making her look like an elf princess or an alluring forest sprite. She was in a cream-colored robe of simple design; it had in fact been years since Archer had seen her in a catsuit like she used to wear... probably not since she'd become pregnant with Charles, though she'd admirably and inarguably regained her pre-pregnancy figure. 'Surely Vulcan logic and self-discipline would demand nothing less,' Archer thought to himself with a chuckle.
Trip, at her side, had not escaped the passage of time, either. Although, he looked incredibly good for a man his age. The planet that had honed his daughter into a powerhouse for human physical endurance and strength had done wonders to keep Trip in shape. Physically, he might well be stronger and faster than he'd been when he was chief engineer aboard Enterprise. Over their years together, T'Pol had also broken Trip of several unhealthy human habits. His diet was better, as was his overall lifestyle. Archer thought back to that conversation they'd had what seemed ages ago about Trip 'dying young' on T'Pol, and as the years passed and Trip stayed so healthy Archer kept thinking T'Pol would not be a widow quite so young after all. When the unforgiving planet Vulcan grew too harsh for Trip's body to withstand it was entirely likely they could move to Earth and, given the gravity and atmosphere differences, give Trip another seven or eight years. As it was, only the wrinkles on his face (fewer than Archer's, the ex-admiral noted with some jealousy) and the gray in his hair marked an aging man in Trip. Trip was also wearing a robe, this one red and tan. After so many years with T'Pol, Archer had grown accustomed to seeing Trip in Vulcan clothes (when at first it had been almost comical).
"It's good to see you, too, Jon."
"Welcome, Admiral," T'Pol said.
Archer looked T'Pol with a playful smirk and said, "I'm not an admiral anymore, T'Pol, in fact I'm not an anything, so what are you going to call me now?"
T'Pol took a moment to honestly consider this then answered plainly, "Jonathan Archer."
"The whole thing?" Archer asked.
T'Pol nodded.
Archer rolled his eyes in good-natured humor. "If that's the closest I'm ever going to get to you calling me 'Jon' then I guess I'll take it."
T'Pol said nothing but a glint in her eye told Archer she was smiling on the inside. Trip cast an amused glance at T'Pol. Archer had gotten used to the way Trip seemed to 'know' T'Pol's inner thoughts and moods, too. He never truly understood it, but he had come to the conclusion that, outside of a Vulcan mental bond, he never would.
"We were just about to start dinner," T'Pol stated then gestured toward the ex-admiral's bag on the ground. "Can I carry that for you?"
Archer was worn out by the short walk from the shuttle (suitably to have his pride cowed) and consented to handing his bag over. T'Pol easily slipped the strap over her shoulder then looked up at Trip. "Perhaps you would like some time alone with Jonathan Archer."
Trip smiled in gratitude. "We'll be right in," he said, then he lifted his hand and offered two fingers. T'Pol met his touch with her own, she looked into his eyes a solid three seconds, then she lowered her hand and turned to her children. "Come inside, T'Lara, Charles." Both children obediently accompanied their mother into the house.
Soon Archer and Trip were alone.
"Congratulations on your retirement," Trip said, breaking the silence between them.
"Thanks. To tell you the truth, it still hasn't quite set in. Part of me expects to go back to work when I get home."
Trip smiled. "I know the feelin'. Before I got that civilian engine research contract from Starfleet I kept wakin' up every mornin' thinkin' I had to go back to work on the Enterprise warp core. I don't know what'll happen when they expect me to actually retire."
Archer knew well Trip's 'need to do' attitude and could well imagine how badly retirement would go over. Then again, he hadn't thought Trip leaving Starfleet would be so easy for his friend, either. Archer suspected he wasn't giving T'Pol enough credit.
The two men strolled toward the side of the house, conveniently angling for shade. "The kids look great," Archer said when they were settled against the side of the house. Archer gratefully and shamelessly leaned against the building, letting the house take a lot of his weight.
Trip nodded and leaned against the wall, unconsciously mirroring Archer. "T'Lara's considerin' Starfleet."
Archer's eyebrows rose. "Really?"
Trip nodded again.
Archer had to work through the surprise at the news first before he could speak. "Well, they'd be lucky to have her. They should count themselves lucky as hell to get either of your kids. Just to reassure you, I'm not here on a recruitment jag."
Trip snorted. "I didn't think ya were. If Starfleet had sent ya for that you'd have come right out and said so. Besides, I'd trust ya to look out for her best interests as much as I would trust myself."
"But not as much as T'Pol?" Archer teased.
Trip smirked. "I trust T'Pol more than anyone, includin' myself, just because her Vulcan mind sees things I always miss."
"I can believe that. Are you and T'Pol okay with T'Lara going into Starfleet?"
Trip shrugged. "If that's what she wants to do."
"Keh'rak still looking into extraterrestrial ecological survey work?"
"Yep. That boy sets his mind on somethin' and it's like tryin' ta turn the tide to change his mind. Gets it from his mother."
"I don't think you're free of blame on that one, Trip. Something tells me if you weren't just as dog-with-a-bone you wouldn't have ended up here with T'Pol."
Trip smirked and under the Vulcan sun it was hard to tell, but he may have slightly blushed. "Well... ya might be right about that."
Dumas laid down in the shaded sand with an long-suffering huff. The sound drew Trip's attention.
"Don't think your new dog cares much for Vulcan," Trip noted with amusement.
"I don't blame him. I love you, T'Pol, and the kids like family, Trip, but I don't know how much more I can stand coming here. I'm getting too old for this kind of physical abuse, and I'm just standing here!"
"My first year was the hardest," Trip commiserated with a nod, "like wakin' up every mornin' in an endurance trial. I'm sure T'Pol would agree to some visits to Earth, though. Tell ya the truth, I'd like to get back there more. Since my mom and dad died we haven't had a whole lot of reason to go back."
"Well I'll gladly be your reason because many more of these visits is going to turn me into a four-foot old man."
Trip laughed. "You really are gettin' long in the tooth, Jon. You never had a bad word to say about going to an alien planet before."
"I'm retired, I'm allowed to be cranky."
Trip chuckled.
The two stood a moment making small talk when suddenly Dumas went through the arduous task to lift his head and look at something in the distance. Both humans looked as well and saw a Vulcan walking in their direction. As he drew closer Archer was able to make out that he was a Vulcan male, somewhat younger than Charles.
Trip pushed off the wall and moved to face the approaching visitor. When the Vulcan was within conversing distance Trip lifted his hand and executed the traditional Vulcan salute. Years of practice had made him quite adept at the gesture.
The Vulcan boy stopped, returned the hand-sign, then spoke in Vulcan to Trip. Trip spoke back, also in Vulcan, and after a brief conversation the boy parted his fingers again in farewell and turned and left.
Archer looked at Trip in silent question.
Trip shrugged it off. "Just T'Pol's apprentice at the academy, wanted ta know if he was free to come back tomorrow to meet you."
Archer blinked then felt obligated to point out the obvious. "He was right here, why didn't you just go ahead and introduce us?"
"Ah, some Vulcan procedure between apprentices and teachers. T'Pol's trainin' him to be an ambassador to Earth so his first interactions with humans are supposed to be supervised so he doesn't incite a galactic incident or somethin'."
"As though he could rile me enough to get me offended on behalf of the entire planet Earth," Archer said with a smile.
"Yeah, I know, but T'Pol's a stickler for the rules when it comes to her students and I try not ta undermine her work at the academy."
"I'm still shocked you learned to speak Vulcan."
"I'm shocked when anyone understands me. I can't imagine what Vulcan with a southern accent sounds like to them. T'Lara and Keh'rak speak it a hell of a lot better than I do. Hell, bein' raised on Vulcan they probably speak it better than they do English." Trip paused to consider his own remark. "Strange to think of my kids' 'native language' bein' Vulcan."
"Yep, Starfleet would definitely love to get their hands on T'Lara."
"Just don't tell them she was my 'unofficial research assistant' on the last warp engine modification work I did for them or that she knows the work almost as well as I do or they'll kidnap her in the night."
Archer laughed. "They'd have to send some MACOs to wrestle her down first, and my money's on T'Lara."
"If they tempted her with adventure she might just go without a fight." Trip looked up thoughtfully at the sky. "Let's head inside."
Archer, with a grumpy, paw-dragging Dumas at his heels, followed Trip into the house. Trip and T'Pol's home was a tasteful mix of human and Vulcan decor, a blend of Vulcan subtlety and naturalism and human esthetics and modernism that allowed each culture to compliment the other. Archer had always liked Trip and T'Pol's house, even if the planet of choice had never thrilled his joints and lungs. It seemed to scream testament that humans and Vulcans could merge without erupting into chaos or disorder.
Archer could smell plomeek soup cooking and even Dumas rose from his doldrums to sniff the air. The kitchen was open to the living room and Archer could see T'Pol at the food processor alcove. T'Lara was helping her mother with the meal while Charles was setting the table for five. Everyone noticed Trip and Archer's entrance and in tandem looked toward the new arrivals.
Trip strolled toward the kitchen and said, "T'Pol, Sarek just stopped by. I told him it would be okay for him to come back tomorrow. Is it?"
T'Pol nodded. "That's 'okay'. The meal will not be ready for several minutes. If you would like to take your things to the guest room, Jonathan Archer..." T'Pol suggested in an open-ended manner and looked pointedly in the direction of the couch.
Archer picked up his bag off the floor near the living room couch and headed toward the guest room. He knew the way well after so long a close friend of the family. Dumas stayed behind in the living room, unwilling to move from the spot he'd appropriated until he was ordered to do so. Archer thought that he might be kinder to his dog to leave it at home with someone else the next time he had to come to Vulcan. All of his dogs had disliked the gravity and thin air on Vulcan, but Dumas seemed particularly put upon and uncomfortable.
The guest room had hardly changed since the last time Archer had stayed in it, if at all. The bedding was clean and prepared in anticipation of his arrival. It was also a great deal thicker and more padded than the kind of beds Vulcan homes typically had. It was silent testament to the fact that Trip and T'Pol had more human guests than Vulcan that stayed overnight. He smiled to see there was even a small pad on the floor in one corner for Dumas. Archer dropped his things on the floor at the foot of the bed and made the internal resolution to sort through his things later.
On Archer's way back toward the kitchen he ambled around the living room while dinner cooked, nostalgic. One human custom that had made its way into the Tucker household was pictures on the mantel. Well, the first tradition that had made its way into the house was a mantel, then pictures found their way on to that mantel. Currently four of them were placed atop the fireplace-less mantel.
Archer stopped to look over the pictures on display. The first one made him smile. He had an identical copy of it at home. It was a party on Earth celebrating Archer's promotion to admiral ten years ago. Trip and T'Pol had brought the kids to San Francisco for the celebration and it had been the first time in a very long while that a good number of the remaining Enterprise crewmen were together in the same place. The picture had been taken at a local restaurant. The original plan, courtesy of Starfleet, had been for them to dine at a much fancier, more up-scale restaurant, but the entire group had snuck away to a down-to-earth favorite spot of many of the crew, one definitely not black-tie. In the picture they were all gathered around a large table in the back room. Archer was in the middle, his newly earned admiral's pips on his collar. Trip and T'Pol were beside him on his right, each standing behind one of the children, all four of them in human civilian clothing. Trip was standing behind a nine-year-old Charles, his hands on the boy's shoulders. T'Pol stood behind thirteen-year-old T'Lara. Trip was all smiles, but the other three in the family were straight-faced and serious. One had to know the individuals and study the picture closely to detect the small signs of good cheer on their faces and in their eyes. Commander (though by now 'Captain') Reed was on Archer's left. Reed seemed to be the only one that didn't think the dinner party was going to ditch the formal dinner and go somewhere else, so he was the only one in a suit and tie. Commander Mayweather was lifting a drink to the camera and grinning, his fiancee (another boomer) on his elbow. Commander Taylor, formerly the Enterprise chief engineer following Commander Tucker's resignation, was there with her husband, one of the original MACOs from the Enterprise mission against the Xindi, and their three sons, Richard, Lance, and Aran. Richard, their oldest, was in Starfleet and had been something of an unofficial 'project' for Archer for years. Crammed into the periphery and in the background of the photograph were several other former Enterprise crewmen, everyone in high spirits. Many people had moved on to other projects by then, a good number were no longer in Starfleet, and regrettably some had died, but a lot of people from Archer's first command came out of the woodwork to celebrate his promotion and he'd been touched. Archer couldn't think back on that day without smiling.
The next picture made Archer smile no less, both fondly and in amusement. It was a picture of T'Pol holding a newborn Charles. She was dressed in a beige robe, Charles swaddled in a tan blanket. When Charles had been born it was the first time Archer had ever seen a baby Vulcan. The sharp brows and pointed ears gave a look of intense thought and concentration to the baby face. The attentive and pensive look on infant Charles's face matched, in magnitude, the unpleasant almost-scowl on T'Pol's as she looked up at the camera. Archer figured either birth was just as difficult for Vulcan women as it was for human women or T'Pol didn't like having her picture taken in general and Archer had yet to figure out which was the case in that well-known photograph.
The third picture was of T'Lara sitting in the garden at mid-morning. Her toddler-size Vulcan robes were fanning out around her as she twisted her body to look up at the camera and give an open-mouthed grin. Her up-turned eyes were alight with childish joy at the world, her hands clutched around a stuffed sehlat Trip's mother had had special made by a toy dealer.
The last image was one of Trip and T'Pol, both in brown and red robes, probably going to some kind of gathering at the Science Academy. It was not posed; T'Lara had probably been the one to catch them by surprise with the camera. Trip and T'Pol were standing slightly off-center from facing forward to look at each other, their hands touching in the two-finger embrace Archer had seen a thousand times since those early days of Trip and T'Pol's relationship on board Enterprise. They were looking into each other's eyes in that fleeting, intense moment they always stole when they touched thus. It was an intimate picture of the couple, and Archer always wondered that T'Pol allowed it to be on display in public view. She had come such a long way from the Vulcan woman who'd stepped aboard his ship years ago.
"Uncle Jon."
Archer turned at his name and saw T'Lara facing him a few paces away. "Dinner is ready," the young woman said.
"I'll be right there, T'Lara," Archer answered.
T'Lara nodded and headed back to the kitchen and dining area. Archer hung back a moment and watched the domestic scene unfold.
T'Pol carried the pot of plomeek soup to the table where Charles passed her bowls to be filled and handed back to him. Those bowls he passed off to T'Lara when she arrived at his side, and T'Lara proceeded to place the food in the various set places around the table. They were talking but their voices were hushed, another common trait in Vulcan homes. Owing to Vulcans' acute hearing, Vulcans tended to speak softly and unrushed among their own. It meant Archer, only a room away, could not hear them, but he could watch.
T'Lara continued to pass out the dinner bowls while carrying on a quiet conversation with Charles. Charles said something and T'Lara just barely smiled with her mouth while her eyes smiled a whole lot more. In response Charles looked over at his older sister and one corner of his mouth ticked fractionally upward in the clear signs of a near-smile. The two young adults stood side by side, sharing in some private amusement, for all the world seeming to not know nor care that they were in no true sense brother and sister. The way they had been raised and taught they were as much brother and sister as any two children born of the same mother and father. They in fact got along better than many blood-siblings. Their blood wasn't even the same color but that didn't matter.
T'Pol was no longer attending to the soup and instead was bent over the table cutting slices of bread for each place setting. Trip came up beside her and bent down to whisper in her ear. His hand came to rest gently against her back as he did so. T'Pol did nothing to discourage his closeness or his casual touch. Whatever he'd said to her it earned him a patented, but gentle and affectionate, look from T'Pol. Trip smiled, almost impishly, and straightened. Almost reluctantly, his hand fell from the small of her back.
Trip turned to look at Charles closest to him and gestured toward the kitchen as he spoke again, briefly reaching up and touching his son's arm as he did so. Charles nodded and moved to get the item Trip had apparently asked him to fetch.
T'Lara sidled in closer to her mother and father and took the plate of five sections of sliced bread from T'Pol to distribute the pieces around the table. She threw a look up at her father before she moved away, said something short, and Trip rolled his eyes and looked down at T'Pol. T'Pol looked utterly unapologetic and it only made Trip shake his head and begin to smile again.
Archer, from his place of observation, smiled too. Those first days aboard Enterprise he could never have expected this future for his second and third in command. The way they'd fought and bickered constantly he would have sooner suspected one would assault and critically injure the other before believing they would ever think of sleeping together. Seeing them now, though, watching Trip and T'Pol together year after year in the marriage that was not a marriage, watching them bring two children theirs but not theirs into the galaxy and raise them to be such fine and upstanding adults regardless of which planet you asked, he could not imagine a better ending for his two friends. He never thought he'd end up being 'Uncle Jon' to a Vulcan and a human set of siblings but he wouldn't change it for anything.
Journeying to far away stars to seek out new life and new civilizations was well and good, but the real mission of Starfleet and humanity was to create things like this. Unions so strong that a member of one species would choose a member of another as a life-long companion. To makes families of interstellar neighbors, that was the true measuring stick of Starfleet's objectives and their comparative success. Through bonds such as that which united Trip and T'Pol was their imperative, to create a close-knit, strongly interwoven federation of species.
Archer could think of no better example of that mission and its goal than the scene he watched now, a human man and the Vulcan woman he was eternally bound to, truly the woman he loved transcendent of species, surrounded by the human and Vulcan children whom they had reared to accept both cultures of their parents with open minds and therein by virtue of that upbringing to accept cultures beyond their own. Children who knew they had a home on more than one planet, breaking down the barriers of loyalty and devotion to a single home world. It was the first step, the first generation toward a galaxy where it would be just 'us' instead of 'us' and 'them'.
Archer had no idea how many generations it would take for the lessons born here in this unpretentious Vulcan home to take hold on a grand scale. It may not be the next generation or even the one after that, but it would happen... it had already started. A human named 'T'Lara' and a Vulcan named 'Charles Tucker IV' said it all.
Archer chastised himself for getting existential and philosophical. 'Barely retired and you're letting it get to your head, you old man,' he thought to himself and shook off the strange mood that had enveloped him.
Trip and T'Pol would think nothing of the impact they would make on future generations or on the nature of humanity's (and Vulcan's) view of other species. They knew only the love they shared, the home they'd made, and the children they'd raised. And that made them happy by either species's standards.
It was more than enough and everything Archer could have hoped for for his friends. They deserved it and more.
Archer, at peace and at that moment incredibly grateful to be considered an auxiliary member of this eclectic household, moved to join the Tucker family for dinner.
END
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