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"Reflecting to You"
By MissAnnThropic
Rating: PG-13
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: A different ending to In a Mirror Darkly, Part I, results in the Mirror Universe T'Pol ending up on our universe's Enterprise when the relationship between Trip and T'Pol is at a breaking point. (later becomes a cross-over with ST:TOS, Spoilers: The Tholian Web)
Author's Note: Let this be said up front... I have always HATED the Daniels character on Enterprise and groaned every time he showed up.
Chapter 20
Gary Seven acted the consummate guest while Archer called for security to come to the conference room. He was sat with untroubled aplomb at the center table, hands folded on his lap. He reached up once to readjust his tie like a businessman at the office. Otherwise, he was content to watch and wait with a superior air. If he was at all concerned, he didn't show any sign of it.
Archer was pretty damn sure he was sincerely confident.
Mu'Pol was a different story altogether. Her intent, baleful stare never left Enterprise's latest visitor. She looked fit to attack the man if he made a move she didn't like. Worried she felt endangered (given Gary Seven's vague stated intent), Archer told Mu'Pol she could go back to her quarters if she preferred. That earned him a hard glare and curt, "I will know what this human wants of me."
Archer didn't want to do anything until he had a couple of phase pistols trained on the intruder, so it was down to waiting.
Porthos took up position between Archer and Gary Seven, his hackles making him look bristly. Gary glanced down at the beagle and smirked, not unkindly. "If you think you don't like me, little friend, you should be grateful I didn't bring Isis."
Porthos sneezed and leveled a 'don't dare touch my human' look at the man a hundred times his size.
Gary chuckled dryly to himself and resumed waiting.
Archer restlessly paced the back wall of the conference room, a wary eye on the strange man. The wait seemed interminable, but realistically it could not be more than a minute before the conference room door opened and Malcolm and one of his junior security officers came in with phase pistols in hand.
Malcolm saw the reason for their required presence at once and didn't have to be told to aim his weapon at Gary. Only when the man was locked in Malcolm's sights did the Englishman spare a questioning glance in the captain's direction. "Captain?"
Archer turned to Gary Seven. "All right... let's have it from the beginning."
Gary Seven found that amusing... and he smiled. "The beginning... in my line of work, Captain, that question would take the rest of your life for me to answer."
Archer stalked closer, peevish. "Fine. Let's try it a different way. Who are you?"
"I told you, my name is Gary Seven." At that Gary stopped and stared blankly back at Archer. Archer narrowed his eyes at the stranger aboard his ship. His taciturn demeanor wasn't winning him any favors with Malcolm, either. The security officer was fidgeting... all but his weapon, which remained steady on Gary.
Archer seethed. "I guess I'm going to have to make myself a little clearer to you. I want an explanation for why you're here for Mu'Pol."
Gary looked bored and more than a little perturbed that he had to answer any questions at all. He gave the impression of a man who didn't answer questions. "Mu'Pol, is it?"
Malcolm stepped forward, "Sir, let me escort this gentleman to the brig." Malcolm's voice was unmistakably eager.
Gary sighed and settled back in his chair. "There won't be any need for that, Mister Reed. Besides, it wouldn't do you any good." He cast a thoughtful look at Mu'Pol then turned his full attention to Archer. "As I told you, my name is Gary Seven. I am a class one supervisor for a temporal agency that monitors the currents and folds of time."
Archer exchanged a quick look with Malcolm, whose flicker of recognition (and confusion) confirmed to the captain that he'd caught it, too.
"Temporal agent?" he parroted.
"Yes," Gary replied coolly.
Archer began to pace. "We've run into your kind before. We usually deal with someone named Daniels."
Gary made a face as though beset by sudden indigestion. "Oh, that douche bag."
Archer's eyebrows rose. "You know him?"
"We work for the same agency... different departments. I'm usually assigned to an earlier period in history, but Daniels' ineptitude has necessitated someone take over his assignments until a proper replacement can be found. That is where any similarity between he and I ends. I would never have the likes of him in my division."
The look on Archer's face must have spoken to his confusion, because Gary clarified with disdain, "Even in our time, Captain, some human vices have yet to be eradicated... including nepotism."
"You're from the future," Archer stated.
"Clearly."
"And you said you're here for Mu'Pol," Archer stopped near where she was sitting. "Why?"
Before Gary could answer, the door to the conference room opened. Malcolm and his security crewman both startled, though only the latter turned his weapon away from Gary Seven to train his phase pistol on the person coming through the door.
Trip saw the phase pistol aimed at him and jerked to a stop halfway through the doorway. He held his hands out way from his sides and frowned, part defensive and part baffled. "What the..." he looked around the room at the occupants. His eyes landed on Gary and stalled.
"Trip?" Archer asked.
Trip looked toward the captain, confusion clouding his expression. "I was just looking for Mu'Pol; I ran into Chef and he told me she came in here, and I..." Trip looked down at Mu'Pol and the strange visitor. "What's going on?"
Archer opened his mouth to tell Trip to go back to his quarters, but he paused when he glanced back at Mu'Pol. She was watching Trip. Archer may have been mistaken, but he could almost swear she looked more comfortable now that the chief engineer was present.
"Have a seat, Trip," Archer said instead. "Our unplanned guest here is apparently a temporal agent, and he was just about to tell us what he wants with Mu'Pol."
Trip scowled even as he moved toward the conference table. "Temporal agent? Like Daniels?"
"You will find me far more proficient at what I do while causing far less collateral damage."
Trip sat down next to Mu'Pol and exchanged a brief glance with her.
Archer moved closer to his friend and latest science crewman. "What do you want with Mu'Pol?" he repeated firmly.
"In her derivation, a massacre is under way that was not supposed to happen."
"In her 'derivation'? Is that her universe?"
"Her 'universe' is technically the same as yours and the same as mine, but as you understand it, yes. The universe is singular, but there are numerous dimensions that splinter it into millions of permutations dependent upon the fissures created by choices and events that attain a certain level of historical significance."
Archer frowned.
Gary sighed. "I'll try to keep it simple."
Archer glowered.
"Let me begin by asking what you know about the Tholians," Gary said.
"We know they're the reason Mu'Pol is here. We found her in a piece of debris that was of Tholian origin."
"They were the justification for my last mission in my universe," Mu'Pol added.
Gary nodded. "A thousand years in the past for me and six hundred years in the future for you, a tentative alliance with the Tholians results in the acquisition of certain technologies that ultimately make our temporal operations possible. For that reasons, the Tholians are permitted a certain... lawlessness in time.
"A treaty between the Federation of Tholia in 2698 granted us dominion over several thousand derivations, in varying degrees of permissible alteration or cultivation as we saw fit. There's no need to go into the formulas, they'd be beyond you and waste my time. What is bearing on the present situation is that the Tholians violated the treaty when they captured a Constitution class Federation starship and inserted it into 'Mu'Pol's derivation at this period of time."
"The Defiant," Mu'Pol said.
Gary nodded. "The historical significance factor of that one act caused a cataclysmic change in the history of that derivation... the moment Commander Archer captured the vessel."
Archer's spine stiffened.
"How?" Trip was the one to ask.
"In her derivation, a starship a century more technologically advanced than any other ship in possession of any of the key players in this period of history is causing massive damage in this quadrant of the galaxy. The Terran Empire is on a rampage, to put it crudely."
"If the Tholians were the ones who broke the rules that caused this disaster, why don't you ask them to fix it?"
"Would that we could, Captain, but the treaty leaves us to clean up any messes they make."
"Doesn't sound like a very fair treaty," Trip commented.
Gary shrugged. "You couldn't begin to comprehend the intricacies of the Federation/Tholian treaty and its thousands of amendments. Remember that without them our temporal operations could not have existed. With both sides capable of tampering with history, we are very careful to maintain good relations. The results otherwise are... well, you couldn't fathom the apocalyptic potential of 'bad blood' between Tholians and the Federation's temporal agency."
"So you do nothing when they cause utter disaster in one of your derivations?" Archer countered.
"The degree to which we can object to Tholian interference against treaty provisions is wholly dependent upon the amount of historical accountability we have for the derivation in question."
"So you just don't care enough, is that it?"
Gary gave Archer a stony stare for a moment. "Essentially, yes. Depending on the derivation, we're not allowed to care beyond our accountability level permits."
Trip's voice was tight. "So you just let humans enslave Vulcans, slaughter entire species like the Xindi... you could do something about it, but you just don't?"
"It's not our place to cultivate that derivation beyond our granted power to do so." Gary gave Trip a condescending look. "You shouldn't judge things you can't understand, Commander Tucker. Our regard for Mu'Pol's derivation may seem callous, but we are upholding a treaty that has given us the freedom to save thousands of other derivations by performing acts with much farther-reaching consequences. Just as we did for this derivation."
"Daniels," Archer said.
Gary almost sneered. "Bumbling idiot though he was, he was inserted into this period of history repeatedly to keep this thread of history on a proper course. Those derivations in which we hold high accountability we take very seriously and monitor with great, great care. We want to care about all of them, Commander Tucker, but that is simply impossible. We preserve with great ferocity those that we can."
"Your treaty and company policy are all very interesting," Mu'Pol said cuttingly, "but what does that have to do with me?"
Gary smirked crookedly, "Quite right... that is neither when nor when."
Trip and Archer frowned, but neither could speak before Gary continued. "The Tholians were not given rights under the treaty to insert the Defiant into Mu'Pol's derivation. It caused illegal cascades in the timeline. At this period in history, the foundation of a rebellion against the Terran Empire is in danger of being wiped out."
"Rebellion?" Archer asked.
Gary looked to Mu'Pol. "She knows what I'm talking about."
When both Trip and Archer looked at her, Mu'Pol said, "There are certain nonhumans that resent the oppression of the Terran Empire and wish to do something to combat it."
"That rebellion is supposed to succeed. But the incursion of the Defiant into the timeline threatens to destroy the beginnings of that rebellion and leave the derivation to crumble in the fist of the Terran Empire." Gary leaned forward. "I'm here to return Mu'Pol to her derivation."
Archer looked askance at Mu'Pol. "Why?" he asked Gary. "What good is that going to do?"
"Mu'Pol is a fundamental figure in the uniting of the various rebel factions into a collective rebellion that eventually will defeat the Empire. She wasn't supposed to become such a prominent individual in the rebellion for another fifty years, but circumstances have forced us to accelerate events if we want to see the rebellion survive another fifty years.
"Mu'Pol was never supposed to come to this derivation, Captain. It was a mistake, caused by the Tholians and their disregard for the provisions of the treaty. I am here to correct that mistake... and, in doing so, aide in the correction of yet another mistake."
Archer didn't care for what he was hearing one bit. "If she wasn't supposed to come here in the first place, why wait until now to come and get her? She's been on board for weeks."
"Had it been anywhere or anywhen else, I would have. However, the recent temporal knots in this part of space of this derivation's timeline due to the recent spatial alteration spheres made pinpointing this location and moment in time difficult. There are still residual time and space disturbances that made tracking Mu'Pol's arrival difficult."
Archer finally relented to taking a seat at the head of the table, Gary on his left with Mu'Pol and Trip on his right. "If you're from the future, you have technology far more advanced than we could compete with. Our encounters with Daniels prove that much."
"That's right."
"Then why are you bothering with any of this? Why didn't you just take her? I know you have the ability."
Mu'Pol tensed but waited patiently for the answer.
"Because of you, Captain." Gary almost smiled, as though in grudging respect. "Keeping the details sparse, in the course of your survey of the Delphic Expanse you will encounter an envoy of a species called the Bolians. They are in the middle of a cultural crisis on their homeworld and contact with Enterprise and her crew will be a turning point in their history... a positive one.
"Our profile of you led us to the conclusion that, had Mu'Pol simply 'disappeared', you would have altered course, and history, to search for her. Your past actions with Klaang suggested you would be just as persistent trying to locate Mu'Pol... and in doing so, would miss the window in which you were to meet the Bolian envoy."
Archer conceded that he would have done just that with a slow nod.
"Why don't you just go back and stop the Defiant from being taken to her universe in the first place?" Archer suggested. "Seems that would render all of this moot."
"It's difficult to explain in a way that you would understand. We're limited in the number of regressions we can make in a single causality thread. I can only effect a change past the point of the temporal incursion's primary fluctuation."
"Why?" Archer asked.
"The Cascading Uncertainty Paradox."
"The what?"
Gary looked put out by Archer's obtuseness. "It's a protective provision in the Time Travel Treaty. One cannot 'hopscotch' through time on a particular casualty thread more than twice or the outcome becomes far too unpredictable. The example taught to school children is that if one were to regress multiple times in a single causality thread man could never exist."
Archer stared blankly, causing Gary to grow terse. "You could, theoretically, go back in time so many times, following the trail of a single causality thread to its source, that you ended up preventing man's primitive ancestors from coming down from the trees which results in the Earth being ruled by the intelligent descendents of gazelles."
Archer blinked.
Gary gave up. "That's the simplest way to explain it to someone of your time, Captain. It is a law of time travel that means I can't simply go back and stop the initial stone from falling in the lake just to still the resulting ripples. It is a dangerous step to reason that from there, why not go back and stop the birth of the one who would throw the stone? And then, why not eradicate the entire bloodline of the mother would who give birth to the one who would throw the stone. You begin to see the quandary of the Cascading Uncertainty Paradox and surely you can imagine the untapped potential for complete disaster."
"It seems to me Daniels did that sort of thing often."
Gary's jaw clenched. "Daniels was an incompetent moron and he nearly brought disaster to this timeline more times than any of us can stomach to count. There were many executives in the agency that lost their jobs, and some their lives, for his behavior. It's a pity there wasn't harsher punishment for the foul-up job he was allowed to do for so long."
Archer had nothing to say to that.
"So you're here to take Mu'Pol back where she came from to become some kind of rebel leader?" Trip asked.
"I didn't say she had to lead it, I said she had to unite its presently fractured pockets of fighters."
Malcolm added his voice to the meeting for the first time. "Does she survive?"
Everyone looked over at Malcolm, Mu'Pol with obvious surprise on her face at the tactical officer's question. Malcolm looked disquieted.
"Malcolm?" Archer pressed.
Malcolm said uneasily, "Every rebellion has martyrs, sir... I get the sense that Mister Seven doesn't intend to take Mu'Pol back for her to survive the war."
All eyes returned to Gary Seven.
Gary was studying Malcolm shrewdly. "You're very astute, Lieutenant Reed. More than I expected you to be, actually. I'm impressed."
"She dies?" Trip asked sickly.
Gary turned a penetrating look on Mu'Pol. "Yes, she does."
Mu'Pol's reaction was perfectly Vulcan. She did nothing more than lift a single eyebrow.
Trip flushed angrily. "Then you're not taking her."
"Commander Tucker..." Gary began, as though speaking to a petulant child.
"No. You can't expect us to let you take her to a war zone where she's going to die a martyr."
"You would change an entire derivation's fate?" Gary asked soberly.
"I would change hers."
Archer jumped in before Trip got out of hand. "Mister Seven, I can appreciate your dilemma in a way, but you have to understand mine. Mu'Pol is a guest aboard my ship and entitled to my protection. Furthermore, I can't in good conscience allow you to take her against her will."
"She doesn't want to go," Trip snapped.
Gary rapped the tabletop with his fingers, growing irritated. "If she doesn't return, the seeds of the rebellion will be decimated before it has a chance to fight back and millions will die. Millions of Andorians and Orions and Vulcans." Gary looked directly at Mu'Pol. "Can you live with that?"
Mu'Pol's expression was unreadable as she sat in stolid silence at the question.
"I can't," Trip insisted. "You might as well put a phase pistol to her head and pull the trigger. If her role is to sound the bugle and die for the cause, why don't you find someone else in her universe to do it? Why does it have to be her?"
Gary countered with calm reproach, "You demonize me for sacrificing Mu'Pol but you'd have me do the same to a stranger?"
"Like you said," Trip spat bitterly, "just how much should I move myself to care? You obviously don't."
"Trip," Archer said lowly, outwardly stern but in honesty deeply concerned about Trip's behavior. The last time he'd seen Trip so cold and uncaring about the lives of others was right after the Xindi attack.
The engineer sat back with a furious scowl.
Archer turned back to Gary. "If you took her, could you help her? Find a way for her to play her role in history without dying an untimely death?"
"I'm not authorized to meddle that extensively in that derivation."
Archer looked at Mu'Pol as she sat stiffly, listening to everything. "If you know my profile," Archer began evenly as he turned his attention back to Gary, "then you should know I can't surrender Mu'Pol over to you, knowing you are going to take her into a war where she'll be killed. I can't sentence her to death."
Gary gave Archer a very serious look. "Captain... you're still of the mistaken opinion that I'm here to ask your permission."
Trip began to move. To do what, Archer couldn't say, but Mu'Pol's words stilled him like a deathblow. "Mister Seven... in the end, the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few. Or the one."
Gary nodded. "Well said."
Trip disagreed. "No! Mu'Pol, you can't go."
Mu'Pol looked at him and her look was... almost compassionate. "My people are dying, Trip. I have no choice."
"Of course you have a choice. You could make a life here. You could go home to Vulcan. I know you don't want to go back to that hell, I know you don't."
Mu'Pol dropped her gaze. "What I want is irrelevant."
"Of course it's relevant! It's very relevant! It's your life we're talking about!"
Archer was aggrieved at the thought of Mu'Pol laying down her life, but it was her decision to make. At the moment, he was more worried about Trip. Trip saw the T'Pol in Mu'Pol. He'd grown attached to her in his own, tangled way. What would knowingly letting her leave to die do to him? How much more trauma could the man take? He was already on the edge because of Elizabeth's death and his estrangement from T'Pol. Archer didn't know for certain if Trip could handle Mu'Pol's martyrdom.
"Mister Seven," he began plaintively. "If Mu'Pol consents to go, then there's nothing I can do to stand in your way. She has to do what she thinks is right, and I'll respect whatever she deems that to be. But there must be something you can do. You said you're authorized to correct mistakes in the timeline made by the Tholians. According to you, Mu'Pol wasn't supposed to die for another half a century. Her history is already changed because of what's happened... what difference would it make to change that again? Why is an earlier death preferable to a long life, since the original time of her death has already been changed? There has to be some way to help her. If her presence is enough to spark the rebellion into forming a real fighting army, imagine what her contribution might be if she lived? It could go a long way toward fixing the damage that has already been done by the future ship's presence in her universe."
Gary pondered that. "You make an interesting point." The temporal agent halted his private ruminations to suddenly pin Archer with a pointed look. "And if I take her with me, Captain, what will you do?"
The question felt like progress, because Archer already knew the answer to that question. He had been turning it over in his head for minutes now. "I would try to find the Tholians and see if they were willing to help."
Gary grumbled, "I thought you would say that. And what of the Bolians?"
"I have nothing to go on here but your word, Mister Seven. You've told me we'll be important to the future of Bolian society, but I know Mu'Pol's universe is dangerous and that you mean to dump her there without any help. It's not an easy choice, but given the facts available to me, it's the only one I can make."
"If I told you the Tholians wouldn't help you?"
"Again, I'd have only your word to trust, and what reason do I have to blindly trust you?"
"Our profile on you was off," Gary observed. "I hadn't expected you to be quite so... pig-headed."
"I'll take that as a compliment."
Gary shook his head. "It wasn't a compliment. You've put me in a very precarious position. You are endangering your timeline if you do this. But... I see I won't easily dissuade you from pursuing this folly. I will need to contact my superiors and discuss this with them."
"Take all the time you need," Archer returned, slightly tongue-in-cheek.
Gary caught the double meaning, did a double take, then he uttered a single dry chuckle. "I'll be in touch, Captain." With that he stood, reached casually into his pocket (ignoring Malcolm's threatening gesture with the phase pistol), and in seconds Gary Seven disappeared.
Archer felt like dropping his head to the table in exhaustion. Instead, he looked to his security team. "You're both dismissed."
"I don't like him just popping in and out like that, sir," Malcolm said testily.
"Neither do I. I didn't like Daniels jerking me back and forth in time, either, but we couldn't do much about that and I don't think we can stop this Gary Seven, either."
Malcolm wilted. "No, sir. I suppose not." Archer could tell from the Englishman's tone that he took that impotence to prevent the intruder as a personal failure. Archer saw little use in trying to talk Malcolm into believing otherwise; Malcolm clung tenaciously to negative perceptions, which was probably part of what made him a good tactical officer.
Malcolm and his security crewman left the conference room, at which point Archer turned his attention to Mu'Pol. "You okay?"
Mu'Pol didn't answer right away. She looked up at Archer, met his eyes a moment, then she said, "I was growing accustomed to the notion that I would remain in this universe. I will need time to readjust to the fact that I am going back."
"Maybe, maybe not," Trip leaned closer, almost venturing forth a hand to touch Mu'Pol but pulling up short just shy.
Mu'Pol turned her head to look sharply at Trip. He was appealing to her, reasoning with her, with his eyes and facial expression imploring her to see things the way he did. It would have softened T'Pol, but Mu'Pol seemed to take umbrage. "During the mind-meld, I saw into pieces of your mind. You think of me as a child." Her accusation was so unexpected that Archer mentally reeled as he tried to follow.
Trip didn't seem to have trouble following. He just looked impassively at Mu'Pol. "No, I don't."
Mu'Pol stared pointedly at him.
Trip's exterior cracked and he hedged softly, "I think you're what Elizabeth might have been. Past the anger. I think she could have been a lot like you."
Archer didn't see it himself, but that Trip did made Archer sad.
"I'm not your daughter," Mu'Pol said bluntly.
"I know."
She frowned, puzzled. "Then why are you so worried about what happens to me?"
A silence descended on the table, and Archer got the distinct feeling that they had both forgotten he was even in the room. Trip's eyes filled with sadness, with the ache of his soul, and he answered thickly, "Maybe I'm just tired of everyone dying." With a weary, empty smile, Trip stood and left the room.
Mu'Pol watched him go, clearly given pause by Trip's response. When she finally turned back to the table, her eyes fell on Archer. She canted her head curiously at him.
"What?" Archer asked.
"I can't figure out why you want to help me."
Archer offered a small smile. "I told you I'd pleasantly surprise you."
Mu'Pol seemed to mull that over with great attention. Finally, she stood. "If you will excuse me, Captain... this could be my last night aboard your ship, and if so it will be the last night of peaceful sleep I will get. I intend to take full advantage of that."
Archer stood to leave the conference room with her. "Don't give up hope yet; we may yet find a way to help you."
"I haven't been here long enough yet to learn how to hope."
"Well, then let us do it for you. We're full of hope, always are."
Mu'Pol looked sidelong at him. "Captain... I truly wish the humans in my universe were like the humans here."
"Me too." If they were, he wouldn't be filled with dread at the idea of her going back home.
Back to Chapter 19
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