"Carbon Creek" By Alelou Rating: G Disclaimer: All things Star Trek belongs to CBS/Paramount. Genre: Adventure, Missing Scenes, Angst, Trip/T'Pol Description: Missing scenes from Season Two. Author's Note: Wanted to see if the last one was just a fluke or I could really work with Season Two. Apparently, it's not impossible. Unfortunately, now I really have to slow down and get my other work done. Thank you so much, reviewers. You make it worthwhile! T'Pol was not entirely sure why she had decided to tell her second foremother's story to Captain Archer and Commander Tucker. Perhaps it was something about Tucker's skeptical, "if it's a good one" -- as if he didn't believe she was capable of it. She enjoyed telling it far more than she had anticipated, so much so that she failed to notice she was including more details than she probably should have. Realization came when she noticed Tucker's eyes widen in disbelief, and was confirmed soon after, when he interrupted her. "Wait a minute, now. Are you saying Mestral and Maggie MADE OUT? A Vulcan and a Human, kissing in the front seat of a car?" T'Pol gave him her coolest glance. "I have noticed that Humans often bestow kisses quite casually in greeting or parting." Tucker grinned broadly. "Yeah, Humans do -- but Vulcans? Vulcans don't kiss at all. Or do they?" She saw no need to dignify that with an answer, especially since she wasn't entirely sure of the answer. Certainly she had never witnessed such behavior in public, and Vulcans did not speculate about what was done in private. "It is likely that Mestral was taken by surprise." Trip was still grinning. "But he didn't jump out of the car and run for his life. So we've not only got first contact decades before we thought, we've got a Human and a Vulcan kissing in a car." He turned to Archer. "You know, that just makes my whole night." Archer said, "I wouldn't get too excited. A goodnight kiss hardly counts as making out." Then he grinned too. "Much as we might like it to." Tucker laughed, then leaned back towards her. Lowering his voice conspiratorially, he said, "Does this mean that whole only mating every seven years thing is a load of crap, too?" She was not going to be provoked into talking about something so private. "Do you prefer to engage in puerile speculation about Vulcan mating habits or to hear the rest of the story?" "I guess the story," Trip said. He leaned back in his chair with arms folded and grinned again. "Especially the parts about Maggie and Mestral." "I did not realize that you were such a fan of romance, Commander," T'Pol said. "If that is what you are expecting, I fear you will be disappointed." x x x After she had left the captain's mess, she had heard Commander Tucker trotting after her in the corridor to catch up. "That really was quite a story," he said, a little breathlessly, as they walked together to the turbolift. She said nothing. What was there to say? The doors slid open and he followed her in. He stared at the door and said, "Of course, it would have been a lot more satisfying if he'd admitted he was staying for Maggie." This was perhaps as good a time as any to clarify a few matters for Commander Tucker. "That would have been highly implausible. Vulcans believe that romance is a poor foundation for successful relationships. Also, their relative life spans would have made it a most unsuitable match. Maggie was presumably approaching middle age. Mestral had not married yet, so we can assume he was quite young. He would have expected to outlive her by at least a century." "Oh." Tucker looked a little disconcerted. "Still, if two people love each other…" The doors slid open to B deck. "Vulcans believe that lasting marital affection grows out of shared experiences and mutual respect. Your own scientists have long documented that romantic infatuation derived from physical attraction seldom lasts. No doubt this explains the relative impermanence of Human relationships." Tucker frowned. "They're not all impermanent." They arrived at her door. "No," T'Pol said. "However, there can be no argument that, statistically speaking, Humans experience a great many more failed relationships than Vulcans do. I believe you have experienced this phenomenon yourself." She thumbed her door control, anxious to leave the engineer to his own reflections. She had begun to suspect that he took an interest in her that was more than professional, although she was not certain it went beyond that friendship Humans seemed to find so necessary in the workings of their daily lives. For her own part, she had become conscious of having more of an attachment to him than she did to anyone else on the ship. This was unlikely to be a good thing, even if it was perhaps to be expected, given that Tucker knew more about her and also seemed to be a great deal more interested in her than the others were. Therefore this little dose of Vulcan reality might be salutary for both of them. But Tucker was not to be dismissed so easily. "But, T'Pol, don't you see that you've done exactly the same thing Mestral did? You spurned the man chosen for you in order to stay here, with us … the smelly Humans." He grinned. She put her hand in the door to prevent it from closing. She wasn't going to give him the last word on this. "It is not the same at all, Commander. Once he made his decision, Mestral had no way to return home. I can depart whenever I wish. Obviously, my second foremother ultimately did go back to Vulcan in fulfillment of her duty. If she hadn't, I wouldn't exist." "But you told me you may never marry now. So where does that leave you, if you want any great grandchildren to tell your stories to?" Where indeed? "I believe it leaves me retiring to my quarters for rest and meditation," she said firmly, conscious that her voice was also betraying some degree of testiness. He looked solemnly at her, and she felt that unfortunate, impractical sensation of attachment flare up between them, so strong that it almost felt like a measurable physical phenomenon -- which was ridiculous and impossible. For a moment, crazily, she wondered if he was thinking about leaning forward and kissing her, though of course he did no such thing. She must be much more intoxicated than she had thought. He smiled, though it didn't reach his eyes. "Well, good night, then." He turned to leave, and she let the door slide shut. x x x Later that night, after some much-needed meditation, she stared down at T'Mir's old purse. It was not logical to carry this family heirloom about with her, but she supposed that in some hard-to-define way it spoke to her own desire to explore … and helped her realize that she was not alone among her people in possessing it. She smoothed her fingers over the texture of the bag. Mestral had indeed told her second foremother that his decision had nothing to do with Maggie, but T'Pol had decided not to share with Tucker and Archer that T'Mir had not believed him in the slightest. "He was quite irrationally smitten with her -- with all of them, the whole of Humanity," the old woman had said, her knotted, ancient hands clasped tightly together as if the situation could still provoke tension in her all these years later. "I am sure he came to regret his rash decision. His slow aging would have forced him to remain itinerant for the rest of his life. He must have kept his word and escaped notice, since we can find no record of him. Neither, however, can we find any trace of his studies. So his life's work disappeared into nothing; he ultimately made no contribution to the knowledge of his own people. His life was wasted." "He saved those miners," young T'Pol had pointed out. "And he kept you from starving." "Yes. Of course, he risked contaminating the natural development of an entire sentient species in order to do it." "But you helped him." "I did," the old lady had said softly. "I was younger then. With more experience, I might have chosen otherwise. Not that he would have listened to me. He was quite stubborn." "On the whole he strikes me as rather admirable," T'Pol had said. T'Mir had cocked her wizened head at her. "Think carefully about what you admire in others, child. It can lead you to places you never intended." T'Pol wrapped the purse back up and put it back in its place in her quarters on a Human starship. Yes, that was undoubtedly true. Next installment: Minefield.

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