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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)
Chapter 21
An entire day passed without any word from the mysterious Gary Seven.
The morning following the temporal agent's unannounced visit aboard Enterprise, Captain Archer held a senior staff meeting to fill in his high-ranking officers on the latest twist in the ship's mission. After that, it was only a matter of time before the news was common knowledge throughout the ship. Archer had given no indication during the debriefing that the information was confidential, and without a ban on gossip the nature of a small crew asserted itself. By dinnertime, everyone was casting Mu'Pol apologetic looks.
Not that T'Pol cared. As she lit her meditation candle and hunted for her (as-of-late) elusive center, she found an emotional part of herself eager to see the other woman gone.
'That is an illogical, emotional reaction,' she berated herself.
But still, it was true. T'Pol had never felt comfortable with her double around, that was true enough, but after Mu'Pol developed a fixation on Trip...
'Fixation' is an excessive and unwarranted word,' her rational mind told herself.
Perhaps excessive, but it could not be denied that Mu'Pol was often found in Trip's company. She seemed somehow inclined to be near him. And Trip did nothing to spurn her companionship.
'Nor is he bound to do so,' T'Pol thought with a scowl of concentration, 'he is free to choose his companions.'
The candle's tiny flame danced mockingly at her, and her primitive inner voice countered, 'any companion but her; he is my mate. He should not consort with another female.'
'They are not romantically involved,' T'Pol tried to reason with herself.
'She was in his mind.'
That one fact ground all of T'Pol's inner denials to a screeching halt.
Mu'Pol had gone into Trip's mind. T'Pol had encountered the consciousness of her double in the whiteness of her shared oneness with her bondmate. She was there, in the place where T'Pol and Trip bridged physical barriers and met in spirit and in thought. Even now, a day after the intrusion, T'Pol felt the twinge of that invasion like a gangrenous section of flesh.
T'Pol would not be sorry to see Mu'Pol go. Her presence had caused discomfort in T'Pol's already stressed bond to Trip. Additional stress was the last thing either she or Trip needed. From the state in which she found Trip after his 'meld' with Mu'Pol, the alternate T'Pol was causing him distress, as well. Surely it would be better for all if Mu'Pol were gone.
The wrongness of Mu'Pol's intrusion on the bond last night was secondary to what T'Pol was feeling now, and she was certain it had to be Mu'Pol's fault.
T'Pol couldn't properly sense Trip. A couple of hours after she had left Trip in Mu'Pol's temporary quarters, after their uneasy confrontation had left her troubled and unfocused, Trip's presence in T'Pol's mind... turned utterly gray. She could still feel his presence, she knew he was alive, but the sense of his presence was different. Bland. Flat. Emotionless. It was as though Trip had slipped into a coma; she could still know he was there but could not reach him.
The tiger had also disappeared with the vibrant personality of Trip. T'Pol had spent a night free of the threat of being ripped to mental shreds, but somehow it had not given her peace.
All day long, the void in her thoughts where kaleidoscope color should have been was a distraction as unsettling as the tiger's indefatigable fury had ever been.
The vacant emptiness was not just in T'Pol's thoughts. When she saw Trip throughout the day, the blank nothingness was also in his eyes.
He was, actually, rather Vulcan-like in his detachment from his feelings. Once, T'Pol might have applauded that accomplishment and found it a refreshing change in the eccentric human. When she first met Trip, she could have thought of nothing better for the chief engineer than to attain that Vulcan-like aplomb. Now it felt a great deal like Trip had died and left a breathing, moving husk behind.
T'Pol stared at her candle and called out, against her will, in her mind for Trip. She called hesitantly and ever so softly, but she called just the same. Echoing nothing answered her. His presence existed but would not respond. It was a solitude that cut like a sword through her katra.
'This is what it will be like when the bond has been severed,' T'Pol noted with chagrin. She would have to learn to exist in this wasteland in her mind.
She experienced frustration enough to do a human proud. How illogical was it to long for the torment of a monster bent on tearing her apart if only to have it fill the void? T'Pol felt as though she ran toward it and away, in turn, in a maddening dance with insanity.
Perhaps a Vulcan and a human could never truly be together. She would always be striving for calm reason and Trip would always be wild.
'No amount of logic can speak louder than your heart,' that annoying inner voice chimed in, this time with a voice that sounded amazingly like Captain Archer.
T'Pol sat back from her candle, feeling perturbed and allowing it in the solitude of her own quarters. She was anxious to return to Vulcan; she was growing more convinced by the day that she had been around humans too long. Never before had her internal debates been quite so... literal.
T'Pol regarded her small candle with weary dejection. Meditation would not avail her tonight, as it had been of minimal use for months. She leaned forward to blow out the fire when her door chime sounded.
T'Pol glanced up and wondered. Could it be Trip? Before the deadening of his soul within her, she would know by instinct if it was he who stood outside her door. Now she didn't trust the bond to know. Without Trip's increased level of arousal to signal through the bond that he was nearing her, she couldn't say if it was him outside her door.
"Come in," she called out. Part of her hoped it was Trip.
She stiffened instead when a lithe Vulcan form filled her doorway, backlit by the corridor lighting.
T'Pol sat back rigidly, muscles taut and voice tense, despite her conscious effort to appear nonplused. "Why have you come to my quarters?"
"May I enter?"
T'Pol really considered denying the request. She didn't want Mu'Pol here. But that was petulant and human of her to even entertain saying. Instead, T'Pol nodded assent and blew a quick puff of air to finally extinguish her candle. A thin curl of white smoke trailed a swirling ribbon toward the ceiling as Mu'Pol stepped inside the other woman's quarters. The door shut behind her and left Enterprise's two Vulcans alone together for the first time since Mu'Pol's arrival.
T'Pol stood and faced her double. Mu'Pol wore the red catsuit-style uniform given to her by the quartermaster while T'Pol wore her blue pajama set that Trip liked so much. Was their garb telling of their dissimilarities, T'Pol wondered. Did it speak volumes about each woman who appeared so physically identical? Mu'Pol still favored the colors of Vulcan; T'Pol dressed in the hues of water, a rare enough commodity on her home planet but two-thirds of the Earth's planet surface.
Rather than ruminate further on that notion, T'Pol picked up her candle and put it away. "What reason do you have to visit me at this hour?" she asked edgily.
Mu'Pol locked a penetrating, discomfiting stare on T'Pol. When T'Pol squared her shoulders and braced to take the scrutiny, Mu'Pol gave in and spoke bluntly. "You don't like me."
"I have no complaints about the quality of your work on my science team nor cause to view you unfavorably for your professional conduct aboard Enterprise."
"I said nothing about my work, I know that is exemplary; you don't like me."
T'Pol couldn't outright admit that it was true, no matter how accurate Mu'Pol's observation was. "That would be a very emotional reaction on my part, were it true."
"It is and you don't." Mu'Pol frowned. "I didn't come here and blame you for that; your dislike is mutual."
T'Pol blinked. It was unexpected for a Vulcan to admit such a thing so boldly. To 'dislike' anyone was an emotional admission. Even of this Vulcan, T'Pol would have predicted more... tact. A very human and sarcastic quip slipped off her tongue before she could stop herself. "I'm sorry you feel that way."
Mu'Pol, for a half-second, smirked.
That only 'ruffled her feathers' further, as Trip would have said. T'Pol tensed. "Is that all you wished to say to me?"
Mu'Pol was moving through T'Pol's living area, looking around and in no great hurry to answer. T'Pol clenched her jaw. "I would like to retire for the night. If you've seen to your reason for coming here..."
Mu'Pol turned sharply to face T'Pol. "I'm here for Trip."
That set off a fire in T'Pol's chest and put a cold knot in her stomach all at once. Her spine went rigid and every muscle went tight. Her mind, at the mention of him, called out for his to no avail.
"What business do you have to concern yourself in the affairs of Commander Tucker?" T'Pol asked peevishly.
"These could be my last days aboard Enterprise, and before I leave I am due a kindness to Trip that he showed me.
"I understand mercy is not a foreign concept in this universe. Though you may have no inclination of your own volition to afford him what I ask, nevertheless I am here to demand that you show Trip mercy."
Something cold and dark, something a great deal like dread, seeped into T'Pol. "What mercy?"
Mu'Pol lifted an eyebrow. "You are going to destroy him. I cannot allow that to happen. Not without having made some effort to prevent it."
T'Pol longed to call security to drag the presumptuous woman to the brig. "You understand nothing."
"I know you are bonded to Trip. I know you mean to sever the bond. I know that he will not survive it if you do."
"And how would you know that?"
Mu'Pol cocked her head ever so slightly. "Because your human talks. And I listened."
T'Pol did not want to believe a word Mu'Pol said, but her analytical mind reared its head. Mu'Pol had been spending a great deal of time with Trip. Given the right coaxing, Trip could talk, even to near-strangers, about personal matters. If pricked right, his heart could bleed through words. She had seen him through enough of his sister's death to know that much. She could not dismiss out of hand the chance Mu'Pol's words held a grain of truth.
"Trip was the one who requested our bond be severed," T'Pol confessed reluctantly.
"He is going to undertake the ritual only to free you. He does not wish to break the matebond." Mu'Pol gave T'Pol a disapproving, appraising look. "Though I cannot see the logic in his devotion to you.
"The Vulcans in this universe are as perplexing and irrational as the humans. Perhaps I may have come to admire a Vulcan's freedom and willingness here to take a human mate, but there is nothing admirable in the way the Vulcans in this universe view the matebond."
"The nature of the matebond is as it was in the days of Surak," T'Pol countered defensively.
"If so, then it is you who has strayed hopelessly from the path."
That hit dangerously close to home and T'Pol, rattled, looked away. "Trip has asked for this; I am only giving him what he wants."
"But he doesn't want to sever the bond."
T'Pol sighed. How to make this newcomer understand? "He is a man of deep convictions and tenacious devotion to social contracts. He feels an obligation to stay with me due to... recent events." T'Pol swallowed at the thought of their recently deceased daughter. "He believes he should remain loyal to me, though his affection for me has changed."
"Trip loves you."
T'Pol looked quickly at Mu'Pol.
Mu'Pol almost sneered. "For reasons absolutely beyond my comprehension, he loves you."
"He told you that?"
"He did."
"Humans... can use some words very freely. Theirs is an emotionally laden language."
Mu'Pol shook her head. "He told me in his mind. When I melded with him, loudest of all his thoughts was his longing for you." Mu'Pol's look turned disdainful. "Though I would not expect you to hear him. You have blocked him." The last was an accusation. In her hard stare was the scornful message 'I shouldn't have to tell you any of this about your own mate.' In that, Mu'Pol would be right. But this was not a typical matebond in so many ways. Those extenuating circumstances had led T'Pol to take the desperate action for which Mu'Pol stood judging her now... blocking the bond.
It had been the only recourse open to T'Pol at the time, but now it seemed a very difficult choice to defend. Especially with Trip's emotions mute now, it was harder to truly grasp the terror in his feelings that had done all they could to flood through the bond and drown her.
"I... I found his emotions too... distressful," T'Pol confessed meekly.
Mu'Pol didn't snap back a nasty remark at that, as T'Pol had been expecting. Instead she turned and looked around T'Pol's quarters further. She caught sight of the photograph of Elizabeth on T'Pol's shelf. She froze and stared. T'Pol was uncomfortable with the strange woman studying her lost daughter's image so intently.
A silence stretched between them, awkward and tense. In an almost off-hand tone, Mu'Pol said, "Trip sees me as a likeness of his daughter."
"Our daughter," T'Pol corrected on reflex. Though certain about little else, she knew in her heart and soul she was Elizabeth's mother. She would be until the day she died.
Mu'Pol looked at T'Pol thoughtfully. T'Pol studied Mu'Pol with an eye toward trying to see what Trip did. Elizabeth, in this hostile woman? Maybe. She showed more emotion than T'Pol did, and the physical resemblance was obvious.
But Elizabeth had Trip's bright blue eyes. She had his gentleness, his quick humor, his passion... or would have had she lived to develop them. The parental bond had told T'Pol a great deal about her departed daughter's soul and of the woman she would have been.
When Mu'Pol spoke again, her voice was almost gentle. "I understand the death of the child has been traumatic for Trip." She stared a moment at T'Pol. "Perhaps I can accept it was devastating for you, as well."
"Were my grief not as great as his," T'Pol said, "I would not have needed to block the bond."
Mu'Pol cocked her head slightly. "Were it not for your fear of his emotions, would you seek to sever the bond?"
At this point, there seemed little point in hedging. "I would not."
Mu'Pol seemed almost exasperated by her answer. "Then go to him now. Figure something out for both your sakes. There is no logic in submitting to a procedure that will kill you both."
T'Pol narrowed her eyes with sudden certainty. "You are responsible for his silence in my mind."
Mu'Pol merely nodded.
"What did you do to him?"
"After the temporal agent departed, he came to me for help. He was afraid to sleep. Afraid of the manifest beast I had taught him to create in his mind. He feared he, or you, would not survive the night mentally intact. I entered his mind and forcibly suppressed his emotions."
T'Pol remembered the tiger of Trip's emotions, helpless under the Vulcan woman's paralyzing touch. "You crippled him."
"I did nothing he did not ask me to do," Mu'Pol returned.
T'Pol fumed inwardly. "Humans are not Vulcans... they cannot live without their emotions."
"He won't die."
She didn't understand! "Humans define life as more than a beating heart and functional brain. Without his emotions to shape his life, you have taken his family and friends from him." She believed Trip could go on without her, humans were resilient, but without his mother, his father, Jonathan Archer...?
"Perhaps he won't laugh or cry or love, but now he can survive the severing of the bond between you and him. That is more than you were offering him."
T'Pol felt rage inside. "You had no right to do that to him."
"Then go to him and undo it," Mu'Pol countered.
T'Pol fell silent.
"You're afraid," Mu'Pol noted.
T'Pol retreated half a step. She thought of her cell inside herself, the deep stone hole where she hid from the monster without. "I... yes."
"He is, too. But if you went to him, he would take you in a heartbeat."
T'Pol looked away in shame. "He feels more than I can withstand. I am Vulcan."
"He feels no more than you do. No more than Vulcans thousands of years ago did. He is like the fire of Vulcan's past. You are Vulcan's present. That does not mean the flame of our past is not still in you."
"Vulcans strive their entire lives to suppress those primitive drives."
"And yet our infants cry and rage and they know joy and sorrow in their purest forms. They must be taught to deny them. If you love Trip as ancient Vulcans loved, you could rekindle those emotions and meet him with matched passion."
Pit a tiger and a le'matya against one another? "We would tear each other apart."
"Or you would learn. You have ways to bring your intense emotions to heel. Trip is human; he knows from birth how to survive unchecked emotion that we cannot fathom possible of being tamed."
"His would destroy me."
"Maybe."
T'Pol nearly scowled. "You have never been bonded to a human. Have you ever known a human and a Vulcan who were?"
"No."
"Then how do you presume to say what would result should we throw aside all safeguards against each other?"
Mu'Pol conceded lightly, "I don't know. I do know Trip has only two choices right now. He can live the rest of his life emotionally dead, or he can die on the ceremonial altar during the severing procedure. Only you can give him another option."
If only it were that simple. "It would be of no use. Even if I tried, his emotions would drive me mad. In the end. Our bond would end when I lost my sanity."
"There is another possibility."
T'Pol lifted an eyebrow.
"You could trust him."
T'Pol did not understand, and it must have shown on her face.
"You are the sun in a starless universe to him," Mu'Pol said. "Perhaps you would find that even a human could master the wildest of his emotions. Perhaps Trip could tame the tiger to protect you."
"Or his emotions would destroy me."
"Or that." Her vocal inflections suggested that one was just like the other to her.
T'Pol found herself back at the beginning, afraid to let Trip go and terrified to be with him.
Mu'Pol moved toward the door to leave. "It seems to me you must decide how important Trip is to you. Running, by way of severing the bond, is not the way to save him. If that was ever truly your intention. So what will you do?" Without waiting for an answer, Mu'Pol opened the door and left.
T'Pol found herself sitting on her bed without having even been aware of moving toward it. Her thoughts were a jumble. Mu'Pol had taken what seemed like the right decision and made it just as wrong as any other. Doubt and desperation, which she had thought to have lain to rest with a very logical decision, were back with a vengeance.
'What do I do now?' she thought in anguish.
T'Pol's eyes, almost of their own accord, moved to the photograph of Elizabeth. The babe had no words of counsel, no breath to distract, no flesh to hold, but T'Pol could not have said how long the child held her attention as she sat in her quarters in the middle of the night.
In the end, her daughter decided her. Before her resolve could leave her, T'Pol put on a robe, tied the belt tightly around her waist, and left her quarters.
*****
Trip surfaced from a dreamless sleep in what he could only imagine rising from the dead would feel like. At first, he couldn't say why he'd awakened. He wasn't jarred to consciousness by a nightmare; Mu'Pol had seen to it that that would not happen.
He had gone to her yesterday, desperate for any scrap of control over his feelings she might afford him. Her solution had been to shut him down cold, like Trip might a malfunctioning engine. She had melded with him and shackled the tiger in heavy, thick chains. When she did, Trip simply stopped feeling. Anything.
It turned the world around him dull and flat, leeched it of color (without actually affecting his vision), but after so long victim to his emotions, it was a relief to no longer feel the pain and sadness. It was the first deep sleep he'd managed in months without the help of Phlox's drugs. It wasn't a refreshing, invigorating sleep like dream sleep was, but it was uninterrupted hours of being dead to the world.
But now he woke up dead to it and wondered why.
He had his answer when the door chime sounded a second time.
Trip looked over at his chronometer. 2334 hours. An odd hour for a visit.
Trip rose from bed clad only in boxer shorts and went to answer his door.
When it opened, he found himself looking out at T'Pol.
That was unexpected. For one, she was coming to his quarters late at night. Secondly, she was wearing only pajamas and a robe. She had come through the corridors of the ship inappropriately dressed and barefoot. That was very atypical of T'Pol to do.
She was also looking at him imploringly, though he didn't know what she wanted of him with that look. He blinked blankly at her. He noted that this was the first time he'd faced her in a long time without feeling a sharp twist of something within him.
T'Pol's eyes broke from his a moment to sweep down his body, taking in the state of his undress. Ever so faintly, she flushed. Another time, that would have sparked arousal in him. Now, it was more like being given the look-over by Phlox.
T'Pol returned her gaze to his and... frowned. A Vulcan actually frowning. Interesting. Trip had almost come to expect it of Mu'Pol, but this was the wrong version of T'Pol for that troubled, frustrated expression.
Then her look turned undeniably frightened.
Trip lifted his eyebrows in silent question.
"Trip... may I speak with you?" T'Pol almost whispered, her vocal inflections betraying definite trepidation. It was almost tremulous.
"Okay." He stepped aside to let her in. Almost as an afterthought, he turned on the lights.
She moved past him into his quarters and her scent wafted past him. He didn't steal a deep inhale, didn't smile secretly to himself, didn't feel it quicken in his blood. No feeling awoke in response to her presence. Was this how Vulcans went through life? It was fascinating in a bland sort of way.
T'Pol moved restively around his quarters like a caged animal. She had come to talk, but she seemed unable to begin. She worried her robe belt knot with her hands for want of anything else to occupy them.
Trip cocked his head.
T'Pol paused, looked at him, and after a minute staring into his eyes she shivered.
"You cold?"
T'Pol shook her head stiffly. "No."
He doubted that. She was barely dressed and his quarters were not set to Vulcan comfort levels (though they were hotter than he used to keep them). "If you are, I can turn up the heat for you." He was used to trying to make her more comfortable.
T'Pol shook her head again, resolute and more than a little stubborn. "I'm not cold."
Trip backed off, let it go, and stood waiting for her to get to the reason for coming.
T'Pol returned to studying him, searching his eyes for something. Trip didn't know what; it seemed he never had. Rather than make futile attempts to know her motives as he had a thousand times in the past, Trip just stood impassive and waited, the entire time looking blankly at her.
T'Pol shuddered again.
Trip picked up his blanket off his bed and held it out to her. "Here."
T'Pol's eyes blazed, she crossed her arms over her chest, and she refused to take the proffered blanket.
There seemed no reason to be obstinate. "I can see you shaking," Trip pointed out.
"I'm not shaking because of the temperature."
"Okay... then why?"
T'Pol looked aghast that he need ask. "Because... there's nothing in your eyes, Trip. It is as though you are taken by a disease of the katra."
So he was Trip again, was he? Trip shrugged and dropped the blanket back on his bed. "Mu'Pol did something to stop me from feeling."
"At what cost?" T'Pol whispered.
Had they traded places, he wondered. He watched her battle her emotions while he stood with untouched calm and rational thinking.
"I thought it was what had to be done."
"And are you content with that? Are you ready to remain like this?"
She seemed inordinately concerned about him doing so. Trip leaned back against his upright cabinet and crossed his arms. "Hadn't really thought long-term. Haven't in a while, actually." That hardly seemed like a reason to come all the way to his quarters at this hour, though. "What are you doing here, T'Pol?"
T'Pol shrank away from him and averted her eyes. When had she seemed to become so small? Her physical dimensions were unchanged, but before she used to look stronger than her stature reflected. She had been more powerful than her muscle and bone. Not now. Now she was as small as her small frame.
"Mu'Pol came to my quarters a short while ago," T'Pol replied shakily. "She had something important to discuss with me."
"Okay." He waited for more. Why did she need to tell him about a visit from Enterprise's guest? Especially since T'Pol had gone to great lengths thus far to have little to nothing to do with Mu'Pol.
T'Pol looked at him. "It concerns you."
Trip watched T'Pol expressionlessly.
T'Pol looked so frail and frightened. Trip knew, if he could feel, he would be overcome with the desire to protect her. Seeing her vulnerable made him want to shield her. To wrap her safe in his arms and sooth her and make it right, whatever it was that had upset her. His chest would ache for her unhappiness and his body would sing to be in contact with hers. His skin would tingle to touch her. His heart would beat faster, his lungs would need more air, his blood would rush in his ears.
The body certainly had a peculiar way of responding to outside stimuli.
T'Pol was staring at him, Trip realized. He came back to attending to her, awaiting her next words.
Instead, T'Pol grimaced.
"What is it?" he asked.
T'Pol backed up another step from him. "Perhaps it was a mistake to come here."
Trip dropped his arms to his sides. "You woke me up just to run off again?"
The flatness to his voice made her jolt. "Would I really be speaking to you?" T'Pol asked defensively. "I can't see you in your eyes."
Trip frowned. "It's still me."
"Not in your eyes," she insisted in something bordering on distress.
"Well, now you know what it's been like for me to look at you since Elizabeth died."
T'Pol winced as though physically struck.
"Look," Trip took a step closer to her, stopping when he saw her tense as though to sidle away. "Why don't you just say what you came to say?"
For a moment T'Pol fidgeted, always edging away from him. She shifted over toward his bunk and sat down on his bed. Trip moved to stand opposite her, propping his weight on the edge of his work desk.
T'Pol folded her hands tightly in her lap and looked up warily at him. "Very well. Perhaps... perhaps it will be easier this way." T'Pol took a fortifying breath and said in measured words, "Mu'Pol came to my quarters tonight and told me that you still love me."
Trip couldn't feel his emotions, but he could remember them well enough to know Mu'Pol had told T'Pol the truth. "And?"
T'Pol's face was taut. "Is it true?"
"Yes."
T'Pol stared wide-eyed at him.
"You're surprised?" he asked.
T'Pol stammered. "I suppose I am. You... you asked to have the bond severed."
"That doesn't mean I ever stopped loving you."
T'Pol's lips pinched. "I don't understand."
Trip braced the heels of his hands on either side of his body on the desk edge. "You mean why I asked to sever the bond?"
T'Pol nodded stiltedly.
Trip sighed. "I was hurting you. My feelings about Elizabeth dying... they were hurting you. I don't want to hurt you, T'Pol. I never want to hurt you. I hope you can believe that. I didn't know how else to stop hurting you than to get out of your head."
"Do you no longer wish to be my mate?"
"I want to stop hurting you."
"But do you no longer wish to be my mate? This is important, Trip. Forget for the moment what you want for me. I'm asking about what you want. Do you want me?"
Trip paused and considered her a long moment. He almost wished this was a conversation they could have had when he could feel. He could imagine how intense he would feel for her right now. Instead, it was empty question and answer, interrogatory and response. But he could still answer truthfully.
"I haven't wanted anyone but you for a long time. I can't imagine I ever will."
T'Pol stared intently at her tightly twisted fingers, expression tight and distressed. She looked almost crestfallen, though how his answer elicited that response he couldn't fathom.
When she finally spoke again, her voice was timid. "Do you know... are you aware of the consequences of undergoing the severing of a matebond if one does not truly wish to end it?"
"I didn't at the time, but since then I've been told as much what could happen."
"And your intention is the same?"
Trip moved to sit on the bed beside her. T'Pol went rigid and retreated inward. Trip ignored that and studied her thoughtfully. Had she looked so terrified before? Had his own feelings blinded him to just how close to the edge of her Vulcan control she teetered? "The most important thing in the world to me is you. If taking that risk is the only way I can ease your suffering..." Trip looked around his darkened quarters. "And I'm not sure... I don't know for certain, but I just get the feeling that I can't get any better with things the way they are now. With you bound to me and denying me. It feels like I'm going to be broken until something changes. This is a make or break deal, T'Pol... I guess it always has been. I'm just ready to make or break... I'm tired of the middle ground."
Trip startled when he felt. Only slightly, but he could feel her in his mind, hunting for his emotions and brushing against the fettered tiger. She was reaching out to him through the bond, seeking him. Trip sat back and looked at her, surprised.
T'Pol was searching his eyes again, and now he guessed it was for that tiger behind the blue.
"T'Pol?"
She moved as though to touch him, stopped, then clasped her hands together again. "She was right."
"Who?"
"Mu'Pol."
"Oh... right about what?"
T'Pol stared at her lap. "She told me your attachment to me was unshaken. I thought she was mistaken..."
"I could have told you if you had just asked me," Trip said with a hint of sorrow.
"I was afraid of you," T'Pol confessed in a small voice.
"Yeah, I know."
"Your feelings were more than I could handle. They may still be. I could go mad if I rejuvenate my bond to you."
"Then don't. I told you, T'Pol, I don't want to hurt you. I couldn't bear the thought. We'll sever the bond and you can go."
"Even if that is not what you truly wish?"
Trip smirked. "Well, my mom used to say if you truly love something, set it free."
T'Pol seemed to deflate in fatigue. "Unfortunately, severing the bond would not spare me pain as you think it will."
"Why not?"
"The risk is equally great to both bondmates when neither one wishes an end to the bond."
Trip blinked. "You mean... you don't want to stop being mates?"
T'Pol shook her head.
Trip was really surprised to hear that. And confused. "I was sure you would. I mean... you can't stand to touch my mind. Why wouldn't you want to sever it?"
T'Pol hesitantly met his eyes. "I am scared to death of you, and yet I cannot imagine my life without you."
Trip gaped a moment. Then he threw up his hands. "Ah hell, T'Pol. So now what do we do?"
"You could remain as you are now. Unfeeling. Unemotional."
"Inhuman."
T'Pol was gazing speculatively at him.
Trip rubbed the back of his neck with one hand. "I... it's a respite now, but live the rest of my life like this? No. I mean, you're right. I'm me, but I'm not. Years of this and I could forget who I am... and I wouldn't even care."
"Then we could... bond again."
Trip turned his eyes to her. He knew that if he could, he'd feel hope.
T'Pol was quick to amend, "Not all at once. Not right away. I don't think... I don't believe I could handle the onslaught of all your feelings. It would be like before... overwhelming. They would undo me. But you do not overwhelm me now as you are. Perhaps we can regulate the reintroduction of your feelings. Release the restraints by increments. We may be able to slowly integrate your emotions back into the bond."
"Has that ever been done before?"
"No... but I am willing to try. It may not work. I am not as adept or skilled at manipulating the mind-meld as Mu'Pol... it is likely I will not have the knowledge to do what we intend to try." T'Pol paled. "In the end, we may have no recourse but to let loose your emotions and... hope for the best."
And risk tearing her mind apart.
"Is there anything I can do? I don't want to be a hapless time bomb in your head waiting to go off."
T'Pol gave it some thought. "You said Mu'Pol was teaching you techniques for how to tame your emotions?"
Trip nodded.
"You could continue doing as she instructed, practicing the techniques. Perhaps it will allot you a measure of control when we move our minds to one again."
"You don't sound very sure."
T'Pol looked dejected. "I do not know how far it is possible for humans to control their emotions. It may honestly be beyond your ability. You are, after all, not Vulcan."
"Well, I'm sure as hell going to try. I won't hurt you T'Pol. I won't... please trust me."
T'Pol's eyes moved quickly to him at that, though he couldn't really imagine why those words had any particular impact.
It didn't matter, he supposed. All that mattered was that they were going to try to fix their broken relationship.
T'Pol's eyes glimmered, for just a moment amid the sea of fear, faintly with hope.
"It's late," she broke the protracted silence with care. "I should go."
"Okay."
But she didn't move to leave. She sat on his bed, face a play of uncertainty.
"T'Pol?"
T'Pol clenched her hands into tight fists. "Trip, I... would you permit me one weakness?"
"A universe of them... what do you want?"
T'Pol glanced fleetingly at him, then at the rumpled bed. "I... I have missed the touch of you."
She didn't have to say anything else. Trip nodded, stood, and went to turn off the lights. When he came back, T'Pol had demurely let her robe puddle on his floor and stood waiting next to his bunk in her blue pajamas.
Trip straightened out the blanket, crawled underneath, then rolled to face T'Pol and held up the blanket in invitation.
T'Pol slipped inside with him and curled up against him. At first lightly, then she was practically burrowing against his body. Trip dropped him arm to drape over her side. He could feel her heart against her lower ribs hammering wildly. Her body was vibrating nervously like a struck tuning fork. She was terrified. Trip had always felt her grief. In fact, it had been suffocating. Holding her shaking body, he'd never realized before just how scared she'd been, too.
Trip held her close. T'Pol tensed, she clung to him almost desperately, and then she slowly began to relax. Her breath left in a wavering rush... like a breath held in for months. Again he felt her gentle prodding in his mind, the exploratory ventures to find his emotions, but her courage left her and she slipped out again having barely felt him.
But she snuggled comfortably against him in bed just the same.
"I wish I could feel this," he whispered. He could well imagine how he would be drunk with joy to be wrapped in her. His body would be on fire to be pressed full length against hers like this. His desire would be a force of nature. Now he felt only the tactile touch of her skin, the tickling of her hair against his check, the shifting of her body as she hunted for the most comfortable position. It was lifeless compared to the nuclear reaction it should have been.
"Soon... you will," T'Pol promised, though still her voice held fear.
Trip pressed his lips to her forehead. "Whatever time you need. I can wait for you. Everything's going to be all right." Whether she believed that, he did.
He felt her fingers curl possessively around his bare back, pressing into his skin and hugging him to her.
Trip closed his eyes and went back to sleep with T'Pol in his arms.
Back to Chapter 20
Continue to Chapter 22
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