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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’.
Chapter 23
The day before the formal banquet dawned bright in San Francisco. The fog over the bay caught the rising sun's slanted rays and created a red-orange haze across the water. Starfleet Academy was ghostly in its absolute stillness with no cadets hurrying across campus to class. For all its look of having been abandoned, the residence halls were quickly filling to capacity. All the Enterprise and Ares crewmen were lodged in the various rooms, and family members were steadily arriving via private and undisclosed Starfleet transport.
Starfleet Academy was only as cheerful and jubilant a place during a graduation week. Hugs and kisses and smiles were happening throughout the hallways with little warning and no restraint. Even the two ships' crews were mingling on much more amicable terms than previously. Everyone was in good spirits, everyone was home.
Charles Tucker II and his wife, Kathleen, made their way through the quickly growing crowded corridors, following their escort, a young ensign from the Ares who had volunteered to shuttle them along with his own brother and mother who had lived in Florida as well.
"This place sure is rowdy," Charles commented lightly and pulled Kathleen closer to her when a young woman accidentally bumped into her and apologized.
The Ares crewman smiled back at him. "You should have seen it last night, sir."
Charles chuckled, recalling some of his college days, and this atmosphere certainly gave the feel of a college frat house. Granted, with much more class, decorum, and tradition than one, but a very similar rambunctious glee all the same.
Finally they reached a door where the ensign guide stopped and pressed the summons button. After only a couple of seconds waiting the door slid open and Trip looked out at them from within. He was barefoot, dressed in civilian clothes.
"Delivery for you, Commander," the ensign teased, the engineer's parents behind his left shoulder.
Trip smiled. "Thank you, Ensign, I'll take 'em from here. Come on in, Mom, Dad." Trip ushered them inside, nodded once more at the departing ensign, then closed the door and effectively drowned out the noise in the hall.
Kathleen immediately had her son in a hug and Trip was taken off guard at the strength of her embrace. "You all right, Mom?" he asked as he uncertainly returned the hug. He tried to throw a questioning look over his mother's shoulder in his father's direction.
Kathleen choked on a noise, sounding suspiciously close to tears. "No more Xindi... I'm great, Trip. I'm just so glad it's all over, that you're all right."
Trip closed his arms tighter around her gently and said in a low voice, "I am, Mom. I'm okay."
Kathleen's arms tightened convulsively around her son, then with great effort she loosened her grip and stepped back. She touched her son's face and smiled with eyes that glistened with tears.
Trip smiled back at her then without a word turned his head toward the back of the room. Everyone's eyes followed. In the dorm room's bathroom entrance stood T'Pol, her hands clasped behind her back. She watched them silently, patiently waiting.
Charles was the first to speak. "Nice ta see ya again, T'Pol."
T'Pol dipped her head in a respectful bow.
"T'Pol," Kathleen greeted congenially as she reluctantly took her hands off her son and addressed the Vulcan woman.
"It is well to see you again, Doctor, Professor."
Charles looked toward his son with a teasing smirk. "She ever gonna drop that 'professor' and 'doctor' nonsense?"
"Probably not," Trip answered with a chuckle.
"Then how'd ya get her ta call ya 'Trip'?"
Trip and T'Pol, at the kind-hearted taunt, exchanged an unspoken look. "Umm," Trip fumbled, then looked toward the living area of the spartan quarters. "You two want ta sit down? There's somethin' we should probably discuss."
Kathleen and Charles, perplexed at the turn of mood, went to the couch while Trip perched on the edge of the coffee table not far in front of said couch facing his parents. T'Pol cast an uncertain look at the furniture assuredly not designed to function as a weight-bearing perch then sat down alongside Trip.
Trip glanced once more at T'Pol when she was seated at his side. She returned his look, Vulcan expression unreadable to most, but Trip could see support and affection in her gaze. It helped bolster his confidence as he turned back to his parents.
"Mom, Dad... there's somethin' ya oughta know, and you should hear it from us before the media catches wind and you get surprised by it." Trip rubbed his hands together nervously. Kathleen and Charles looked at one another in confusion and concern. Kathleen spared a quick glance in T'Pol's direction.
Trip started speaking again. "I guess ya figured out T'Pol and I are... involved."
"We suspected," Kathleen confirmed softly and took her husband's hand in her own.
"Well, it's a little more than that. Ya see, we did this bondin' thing. Basically what it means, from Vulcan to human terms... T'Pol is my wife."
Neither elder Tucker said a word at first. Eyes cut of their own accord to T'Pol sitting passively at Trip's side. T'Pol did not flinch under the scrutiny, outwardly seeming unflappable.
"I just wanted to tell ya before you found out some other way," Trip said carefully, trying to gauge his parents' response.
Both Kathleen and Charles looked at one another in silent conference. It was finally Charles who spoke. "This is... a surprise."
"When...?" Kathleen tried to ask.
Trip answered her half-formed query. "We bonded soon after we left Florida, but we've been together longer than that."
Kathleen looked between her son and the Vulcan woman. She could tell Trip was anxious. Apparently T'Pol noticed his agitation, as well. She looked toward him quietly, reached out and discretely touched his arm with her fingers, and immediately he looked over at her. And he seemed to transform. The nervousness and worry reserved for his parents faded as he looked at T'Pol, and he seemed... content, placated.
Kathleen squeezed her husband's hand and ventured, "Trip?"
Trip looked away from T'Pol and in his mother's direction.
"Are you happy?"
Trip began to smile despite himself. "Yeah, I am."
Kathleen nodded once, glanced at T'Pol, then said in measured words, "Then we're happy for you."
Trip blinked, paused. "You're... okay with this?" He sat back and almost reached over for T'Pol beside him. He looked almost stunned. For a Vulcan of unwavering stoicism, T'Pol seemed a little startled, as well.
Kathleen found herself smiling. "We just want you to be happy, Trip. If being with T'Pol will make you happy, then that's what we want for you."
T'Pol looked between the three humans. She seemed unable to believe her elf-like ears. "You would condone your son having a Vulcan mate?"
"If that's what he wants," Charles said with conviction.
T'Pol looked downward, speechless at first. "I did not suspect you would accept our bonding so readily."
Trip, this time, took the initiative to touch her, and as had happened before, but this time in mirror image, T'Pol seemed to take something from the contact. Her eyes closed, a tightness to her face melted away, and she looked up at him.
Trip turned away from T'Pol to consider both of his parents earnestly. "I can't tell you how much this means to me... to us, to have your blessin'."
"You should never have doubted we'd accept whatever choice you made," Kathleen said.
"T'Pol?" Charles said gently.
The Vulcan looked toward Trip's father at her name.
Charles smiled. "Welcome to the family."
T'Pol seemed lost for what to do a moment, a breath's span of utter stillness, then she dipped her head again. "I thank thee."
Charles looked playfully over at Trip and quipped, "Can we get her ta stop calling us 'professor' and 'doctor' NOW?"
The three humans laughed out loud and a comfortable, at ease Vulcan sat quietly in the midst of their mirth.
*****
The Tucker family soon joined the crowd in the communal areas to socialize. Trip and T'Pol talked amiably with fellow crewmen and met family members of said crew mates of which they had only heard before. They readily introduced Charles and Kathleen to their fellow Enterprise crew members. For all the happiness and joviality there was, an undercurrent of sadness and remorse filled the air. Clusters of people were constantly about those family members of lost crew mates. Phlox, of a species naturally prone to massive social gatherings, was in his element meandering between clumps of people. He stopped to be introduced to Charles and Kathleen. He greeted Trip's parents with open friendliness, looked once in silent curiosity between Trip and T'Pol, then excused himself to fall in with other groups.
Kathleen was beginning to feel stifled and dizzy with all the names and faces she'd been fed. Surely she'd met every single person within the entire academy walls by now.
Trip and Charles found themselves standing in a circle with Malcolm, Archer, and Mayweather. The men were retelling one of their adventures, one of the safer tales before the Xindi ever showed up, and Kathleen sidled up alongside a silently standing T'Pol.
"Care to walk outside with me?" she asked softly.
Thanks to her Vulcan hearing T'Pol caught every whispered word. She looked down at Kathleen, once at Trip in his male bonding session, then back at Kathleen and nodded assent. T'Pol, while never a Starfleet cadet, had been in the building of Starfleet Academy before and thus took the lead cutting a path through the throng of people toward a door to the outside.
The silence once outdoors, compared to the continuous din of the halls, was almost deafening in its peacefulness.
Kathleen took a deep breath of California air. "That's better."
"Are you well?"
"Oh, yes, I'm fine. People can just get overwhelming at times." She looked quickly over at T'Pol and amended, "Well, humans in large groups can, anyway."
T'Pol began to walk across the grass at a comfortable pace, Kathleen at her side, as she replied, "Many species are tasking in large numbers. Vulcans included."
Kathleen smiled. "Well, it's nice to know we're not the only ones who get sick of ourselves."
The two walked easily, in companionable silence, toward the water fountain in the center of the Starfleet Academy quad area. Few people were outdoors, the officials presiding over the banquet and lodging had advised against prolonged outdoor excursions on the chance someone would be seen and recognized, but no one approached Kathleen or T'Pol as they dallied. Both knew it was T'Pol's presence that assured them peace. Few people had the nerve to approach and order around a Vulcan, the commanding air about them that they had intimidating the hardiest of souls.
The open air and space was a relief.
"You do not approve," T'Pol suddenly said, and Kathleen had to look in surprise over at her Vulcan companion. T'Pol was walking with eyes forward, hands folded behind her back, but there was obviously a tense air of waiting about her.
"No..." Kathleen spoke, then shook her head, "I mean, I don't disapprove."
T'Pol mused aloud, "Which is not the same as approval."
Kathleen sighed and stopped walking. T'Pol stopped and turned to face Kathleen. Kathleen indulged herself in really looking closely at her son's 'wife'. T'Pol seemed to realize she was being examined and was not affronted. She stood rigid, returned Kathleen's unwavering stare, and let Trip's mother assess her.
'She's pretty,' Kathleen noticed first. She had always seen 'Vulcan' first, before all else. When Kathleen actually took the time to look, however, she saw a woman... regardless of her species. T'Pol had a bone structure that was to human senses exotic, but not unseemly or grotesquely alien. Her eyes were dark, but there was color when the light hit them. Soft brown and honey-gold. Pointed ears that would appear incongruous to humans, but when paired with the angular brows somehow complementary. Her mouth seemed otherworldly for always being set in a line, but maybe if her lips moved to smile it would reveal a beautiful smile at that. Her figure was familiar enough, maybe not as curved or soft as a human's, but this was a woman from an unforgiving desert planet. She was made to live in a place few humans could adequately imagine. A desert lioness of untold grace and beauty. Kathleen really saw, in that moment, part of that thing which Trip saw in T'Pol.
Kathleen returned her eyes to T'Pol's, gods the woman was tall, then remembered they'd been in the middle of a conversation.
"What I said to Trip is true. I only want him to be happy, be that with a human woman or with you. For what it's worth, I can tell that you do make him happy."
Something about T'Pol's erect posture softened and Kathleen wondered at the subtle shifting of this desert woman.
Kathleen looked away in guilt and shame. "I admit when I first realized you and Trip were together I was... less than pleased, but it had nothing to do with you or the relationship in and of itself. I was worried for Trip... I still am. And, now, I'm worried for you."
T'Pol moved her head questioningly.
Kathleen continued. "I don't know how other humans will react to it, or other Vulcans for that matter, and I don't want to see either of you suffer for your affection toward one another."
T'Pol nodded in sage understanding. "We are aware we may face prejudice for our pairing, and we have prepared for that."
"Good." Kathleen sighed. "I hate, in this day and age, that we even have to think it would be an issue, but right now... humans and Vulcans aren't on the best of terms and I don't want to see either of you get the backlash of that just because you two saw past the stupidity of petty quarreling."
T'Pol began them walking once more toward the fountain of rising and cascading water.
"I don't disapprove of you, T'Pol," Kathleen reiterated. "I disapprove of everyone else for the way they'll judge both of you." Kathleen risked the cultural impropriety to reach out and touch T'Pol's arm. "You will always be welcome in our home."
T'Pol attended to the feelings transmitting through their touch and knew it was the truth. Kathleen dropped her hand and the two women reached a bench before the fountain and wordlessly sat down.
After a moment in shared silence, T'Pol said bluntly, "You should be prepared to accept that Trip and I may never be able to have children."
Kathleen frowned. "It's impossible for humans and Vulcans?"
"It has never been investigated thoroughly, but initial assessments have contraindicated compatibility between human and Vulcan genomes. Perhaps a genetic specialist could successfully combine the two DNA codes, but there remains a significant chance it could never result in a viable embryo."
Kathleen thought quietly to herself a long moment before replying. "I can learn to live without grandchildren. Losing one of your children..." Kathleen faltered and had to stop momentarily. "Well, it puts things into a new perspective. I still have Trip... if I never have grandchildren from him then that's okay." Kathleen looked over at T'Pol, troubled.
"I'd ask to know your thoughts, Professor," T'Pol said to the thoughtful expression on Trip's mother's face.
"I just... I am a little worried about Trip's mental and emotional well-being. Long-term, I mean. Trip is a very... sensitive person. He feels, and his feelings are strong... will that person, the person he is inside, be lost after ten, twenty, thirty years with a Vulcan wife?" Kathleen paused. "I'm sorry, but you asked what I was thinking."
"I did. I appreciate your candor, and you need not be concerned. It is a common misconception that Vulcans have no emotions. We possess them, we merely suppress them." T'Pol looked briefly away. "It is a very personal matter, not spoken of among Vulcans and never with off-worlders, but we are very emotional... and passionate... with our bondmates. Trip has already seen this side of me." 'And he embraced it,' the unspoken sentiment hung between them.
Kathleen felt relief like a physical release. "Thank you for telling me that. I just hated to wonder if he needed to be bracing himself for heartache."
T'Pol went conspicuously silent, then said soberly, "It is I who will most likely have cause to 'prepare myself for grief'."
Kathleen questioned the Vulcan with a look.
"I can well expect to live one hundred twenty more Terran years."
"Oh..." Kathleen murmured in muted horror. She hadn't thought of that. Now that she tried, she couldn't imagine it. What if she had married Charles knowing his life-expectancy would be half her own? The thought almost brought her to tears, because it would mean she'd probably have lost him long ago.
"You knew that and 'bonded' with Trip anyway? Aren't you..." Kathleen stopped, then recalled what T'Pol had said earlier about Vulcan emotions and plunged ahead, "aren't you scared?"
T'Pol's lips thinned slightly, her eyebrows pulled closer together over her eyes, but her voice was strong and steady. "I am willing to suffer his loss if only to cherish the years before he is gone."
Kathleen watched T'Pol in open awe. Her son could have done no better. Underneath her Vulcan mask, T'Pol was an incredible being, a true essence Kathleen was only beginning to comprehend.
"I know this won't be easy for either of you, T'Pol, but I approve. Of your marriage and of you."
T'Pol lowered her head in grateful deference. "Doctor Tucker feels as you do?"
Kathleen smiled. "Charles? He liked you from the start. Whatever it is about you, T'Pol, seems the Tucker men don't stand a chance against it."
*****
It was drawing into late evening when Trip really began to notice it. Looks. Almost everyone who planned to be in attendance for the banquet tomorrow afternoon had arrived. The halls of Starfleet Academy were packed full of starship crewmen from both ships and their families. With so many people congregated it became difficult not to notice the looks.
People were looking at Trip and T'Pol with disapproving, speculative looks. Through the course of the day nearly everyone had noticed the sole Vulcan in their midst. No doubt everyone wondered why T'Pol remained among the humans when she could have returned to the consulate and her own kind. Her presence was highly suspect... certainly conspicuous. People put together easily enough that T'Pol was almost constantly with Commander Tucker and his parents. Enterprise crewmen were non-judgmental, if anything amenable to the Vulcan's choice of company and conversed freely with her, and some of the Enterprise crewmen were able to temper the attitudes of their family members through soft appeal and gentle reason, but that was not the case with the Ares and her crew's families. It left a lot of people to glance with unhappy eyes toward the couple. To them, the suspected closeness between the human commander and Vulcan sub-commander was inappropriate and almost obscene.
Trip frowned when he started to notice the looks thrown their way. He tried to gauge from her behavior if T'Pol noticed it, too, but the Vulcan was too good a play of neutrality and Trip deemed it best not to venture touching her in public just to know her thoughts. Seemed they were under the microscope enough as it was.
T'Pol returned to the Tucker trio from speaking with Captain Archer. "I'm going to return to quarters," she informed them. "I require time for meditation."
"All right," Trip said. "I'll be along in a few." He had to fight the urge to lift his hand to touch her fingers with his, as they had grown so accustomed to doing aboard Enterprise. Under the circumstances, however, it might be ill-advised. Eyes were still upon them, critical. T'Pol seemed to know this, agree with it, and her substitute parting gesture to her mate was a gentle expression that quite possibly only he or another Vulcan could have discerned.
T'Pol looked between Trip's parents. "Doctor, Professor." With a polite cant of her head she walked through the crowd away from them. Of their own accord Trip's eyes followed her. It would have been a pleasurable action had he not noticed the looks many people cast after her in her wake.
Charles leaned in toward his son. "Does this make her T'Pol Tucker now?"
Despite his wary mood concerning the other humans around them, Trip laughed. "I don't know," he said honestly between chuckles. He was looking forward to mentioning his dad's question to T'Pol, though. She'd probably make a face, spur those expressive eyebrows into action.
"Does have a ring to it," Kathleen teased her son. "Speaking of which, are you two going to get wedding bands?" Despite the air of levity to Kathleen's words, she was speaking duly low enough not to be overheard. It was a bitter taste in their merriment.
Trip couldn't help but notice the sincere acceptance toward T'Pol and the surprise 'marriage' that had overcome his mother shortly after he'd seen T'Pol and Kathleen return from having vanished together. He would definitely have to ask about that.
"You two are havin' way too much fun with this," Trip chastised them facetiously. Trip grew serious as he pitched his voice lower, looked to his mother because she was closer and the harder sell, and said, "Thank you."
Kathleen touched her son's arm and smiled. "Stop thanking us for letting you be happy. She's a fine woman, Trip. You did well to choose her."
Trip eyed his mother, detected the outright honesty of her words, and he narrowed his eyes but didn't ask what had so radically solidified her mind in regards to the sub-commander. He wondered if he should even presume to question it. From the looks he'd observed from the Ares crew and members of both crews' families, his parents and his comrades aboard Enterprise might be the only source of acceptance to such a union in such uncertain times between humans and Vulcans that he could hope to get.
*****
T'Pol was standing with her back to the room's door when Trip came in. She had excused herself nearly two hours ago, meditated, then prepared herself for bed. At the moment Trip slipped back into the dorm room they shared, T'Pol was pulling her formal gown for tomorrow's banquet from her travel bag and hanging it up to unwrinkle overnight.
"Hey," Trip said needlessly when he'd closed the door. T'Pol turned to face him. She wore a customary robe over her pajamas that topped her bare feet.
"Just took Mom and Dad to their room."
T'Pol lifted her eyebrows curiously at him. She sensed no contrivance through their bond, so what he'd done he'd done unknowingly.
Trip prepared for bed and T'Pol went to one of the twin-size beds. There were two in the small dorm room, and both were equally small. It would be more logical for each to take one. She knew Trip would not desire such an arrangement. During the day they were permitted physical contact so sparingly, nighttime their only prolonged time for intimacy, and she could not begrudge him wishing to fully experience their mental bond, as Trip could only accomplish through direct physical contact. With a Vulcan mate tactile touch would not be required, but this was a concession to her human mate she did not mind.
Trip came back from the bathroom in boxers and a T-shirt. T'Pol watched him turn off the lights and walk to the bed as she removed her robe. The thread of tension she sensed from him was her first clue, but she was certain something was amiss at Trip's silence since he'd arrived.
Trip went straight to the bed beside which T'Pol stood, slipped under the covers, and T'Pol acquiesced to squeezing in beside him, despite the crowdedness and illogic of it. His skin against her as his arm settled around her was a comfort, despite the disquiet about him.
'What's wrong?' she thought, and thanks to their touch he heard her.
'They were looking at you. Everyone. They were all looking at you like you were just some Vulcan. Some dirty, god damn Vulcan. People didn't like you on sight. They didn't like seeing you with me.' Trip's arm tightened around her, his breath brushed against her shoulder in an angry huff, and T'Pol closed her eyes to listen with her mind and heart.
'I noticed,' she said softly.
'How dare they? How dare they judge you. Judge us. They have no right.' He was angry. Very angry. Angry enough to alienate many of his own kind, and T'Pol would not be the one responsible for that. Her hand found his arm and she traced her fingertips along his forearm, brushing over fine hair and sensitive skin as she marked the seconds.
'We knew we would face this. We will face their prejudice without shame. Cast out fear.'
'Not fear I'm feeling,' he thought hotly, and T'Pol knew he was right. His body thrummed with fury. For a moment she thought he would hit critical mass and explode into a human tirade. She braced in uncertainty for it, held in his arms all the while, waited, but very slowly Trip calmed down.
T'Pol eased at his returning calm and reason. His white-hot center of emotional volatility, his sheer humanness, was still new ground for her. His feelings could still tangle her into knots. She would need time inside his mind, as his bondmate, to fully grasp the inner katra that was Trip Tucker. A few things, however, remained after the human storm. His love for her was there, his joy at her side a constant, his peace despite the chaos awaiting them unmarred by popular opinion. It was enough for her and she simmered in his embrace.
"What did you and my mom talk about today that turned her into your biggest fan?" he asked aloud in a surprisingly quiet, gentle voice after a moment of silent reflection.
T'Pol looked over her shoulder at him. "I presumed that title fell to you." Her vocal inflections were duly playful, and were they not Trip could feel her wry amusement flitter across the nonexistent boundaries between their minds. Vulcan sense of humor, a well-kept secret so few humans even suspected.
Trip smiled in the semi-darkness. "Always, but that goes without sayin', doesn't it?"
T'Pol conceded his point graciously. Their verbal sparring had always been a great source of intellectual and, yes, emotional stimulation for her. "She challenged my worthiness to be your mate."
Trip's eyebrows rose. "Guess ya passed."
"If it was a 'test', then it would appear so." T'Pol shifted in his hold to lay on her back so as to better face him. Trip propped himself up on his elbow, one arm still draped around her, and he studied her features in the shadows as she collected her thoughts. He sensed a heaviness to her ruminations and waited patiently.
"I was... unprepared for the speed with which your family has accepted me as your mate."
Trip smiled gently, moved his hand up her body to trace the outline of one of her ears. She sensed he'd been surprised, too, but not as shocked as she'd been. A part of him had always suspected his parents would approve of the cross-species marriage between their son and a Vulcan. It was an illuminating aspect of humanity that T'Pol had not anticipated. She grieved that she could not offer Trip the same certainty.
Trip frowned softly at her change in mood and cant his head fractionally.
T'Pol licked her lips subconsciously. Only around Trip did she allow such an untrained beast as her subconscious to assert itself. "My family will not be as receptive of you or this bond."
Trip's hand stilled and came to rest against her collar bone. "Ya sure?"
T'Pol nodded. "Perhaps they will not object to you personally or to my bonding to a human in and of itself, but mine is not a stable relationship with Vulcan. I regret you will not experience the welcome your parents have afforded me."
Trip's thumb began to caress a gentle beat against her skin and T'Pol felt his curiosity ignite. She felt obligated, as his wife, to explain all she could.
"My mother will be forced to sever association with me."
Trip's thumb stopped and his emotions stirred like a pit of disturbed rattlesnakes. "Disown you? Just because of me?"
"No. Not only you. I will not lie; you are a factor, but not the deciding one. I have brought disgrace to my standing and my name with Vulcan High Command for my actions. My unsanctioned resignation from Vulcan High Command, my unorthodox cancellation of a betrothed marriage, my willing participation in a war with the Xindi deemed not mine, my behavior since joining the Enterprise which has been viewed as unseemly to Vulcan codes of conduct. For these things my mother cannot accept me. The only way to maintain her position and status in Vulcan society will be to cut me from her life. I understand this, I knew it would be her only recourse; it is necessary to preserve her way of life."
"I'm sorry." His voice ached and his mind and heart grieved.
T'Pol touched her fingers to his lips. "It is not your doing. I have done this with foreknowledge of the consequences. It truly is not you, Trip. Were it not for my affronts to the High Command it is likely this union would not be scorned on my home world. Perhaps not preferred, but ours is a culture that welcomes diversity in its infinite combinations. There is a small degree of freedom allotted to Vulcan citizens, however. I have surpassed any acceptable number of slights by any standard and the damage is done." T'Pol moved her fingertips against his still lips. "I do not grieve."
"Yes you do," Trip said sadly. "A little you do, and I don't blame you. I'll feel a little guilty for it, too, even though you're tryin' to make sure I don't. But it's okay."
"Yes, it is."
Mutual silence descended between them, compliment to their identical reconciliation to the facts in their hearts and minds.
Trip dropped back to the bed and pulled T'Pol closer against him. Their thoughts were one as they moved into sleep. 'No regret, no shame.'
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