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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 3
"Would you mind telling me about these dreams you are so intent upon suppressing?" Phlox asked Trip as the two entered sickbay moments after leaving the mess hall. The only occupants of sickbay were Phlox's menagerie of animals in their assorted cages, which greeted Phlox with hopeful chirrups and trills.
Trip trailed after the doctor and sighed in fatigued resignation. He'd known the moment he asked the doctor for help he'd be in for an interrogation about the reason for his request, which was precisely why he'd avoided going to the ship's doctor thus far. But after a month of almost nightly torment, he was at the end of his proverbial rope. He just wanted peace, a respite from the sadness and pain. But still… to put that to words was a taxing prospect and Trip had been running on auxiliary power for so long.
At Trip's silence, Phlox turned to the commander and frowned in concern. "Is it nightmares, like what happened with your sister?"
Trip sat on a biobed and looked down at his hands in his lap as he muttered haltingly, "Sometimes."
Phlox moved closer and silently encouraged Trip to go on.
Trip rubbed at his eyes with one hand and said haggardly, "I see her, Doc; in my mind, I see Elizabeth. It's not like normal dreams, these are different; in these she's so vivid. I feel her and hear her, hell, I even smell her." Trip turned desperate eyes on the doctor. "It's like she never died, and it makes waking up to find her not there… hurt." Trip's head drooped at the admission, as though it had cost him greatly to say it aloud.
Phlox patted Trip on the shoulder kindly. "It's all right, Commander, I know how hard it has been for you to lose your daughter. Your distress is completely understandable." While Phlox discreetly picked up a medscanner, he asked, "Are dreams this vivid unusual for you? Have they happened before?"
Trip tensed and Phlox was alert at once.
The commander was noticeably discomfited by the question. His eyes roamed the room, as though seeking an escape from the question, then he hesitantly looked at Phlox. "I've… experienced something like it before… but not while I was sleeping.
"You know about T'Pol and me… about us being bonded."
It wasn't a question. Phlox nodded. After the incident with the Orions, the psychic bond between Trip and T'Pol was something of a guarded secret among the two commanders, Doctor Phlox, and Captain Archer.
"The way I see Elizabeth is like how I used to see T'Pol when we ended up in each other's heads. Somewhere between flesh and blood and just an image out of a dream."
Something in the commander's words and manner gave Phlox pause. "Used to? Did something happen on Vulcan? Did you and Commander T'Pol… have the bond severed?" Phlox had never considered the two grieving parents would choose such a course of action at such a raw emotional time, but they had been on Vulcan where the proper telephysicians could have performed the delicate procedure. Would T'Pol have sought seclusion to such an extreme degree, and at Commander Tucker's emotional expense?
Trip looked up at that, puzzled and heartsick. "Severed? No…" He looked confused first, then withdrawn, then utterly lost. "We didn't…" Trip crossed his arms over his chest in a self-protective posture. "I knew less than nothing about Vulcan bonds when T'Pol said we had one. I thought she had to be wrong, because how could we? I'm human. Even when T'Pol was picking up stray thoughts out of my head I had my doubts that it was real. I don't anymore. I know it's real now, because I can feel…" Trip stopped abruptly, took a deep, shaky breath, and stated painfully, "She's shutting me out."
Trip had continued to doubt the bond he supposedly shared with T'Pol until the first night after Elizabeth's death. Trip had fallen into an exhausted sleep after crying himself to bone-tired and soul-weary unconsciousness. He'd had a nightmare that Paxton still had Elizabeth, that he was still testing her. Paxton wanted to see what color she would bleed, red or green, and cut her with a scalpel, again and again, and the baby wailed and screamed and alternately bled crimson and emerald. Trip heard a second scream tear through his mind and knew on an unconscious level that it was T'Pol's cry at the imagery of Trip's nightmare. Trip had bolted awake, sweaty with his heart racing and stomach roiling. He dashed to his bathroom and threw up, and as he lay curled on the floor next to the toilet he felt something warm and soothing go cold and dead inside his mind.
He believed in the bond then, because he felt it when it stopped working the way it was meant to.
He knew intuitively, instinctively, that T'Pol was blocking him out of her mind. He knew she was doing it purely out of self-defense. He hadn't anticipated how hollow and empty he'd feel without her whisper of a presence in his thoughts. For months he'd cursed it as a bane and nuisance, but as he felt it vanish he mourned it leaving him alone with himself. But he couldn't blame her… he'd never felt her as terrified and grief-stricken as she'd been inside the horror of his nightmare. He couldn't train his brain not to dream such things, he didn't have a Vulcan's control, and he couldn't expect T'Pol to subject herself to that. He'd escape it, too, if he could. Since that night, that paralyzing nightmare, he had felt only the lifeless pit inside him where something living and reassuring should have been. Even as he was reeling from Elizabeth's death, T'Pol was lost to him.
Phlox ran the medscanner over Trip without making comment, pointedly silent for a long moment after Trip's difficult confession, as though doing everything he could to refrain from making judgments about either of Elizabeth's bereft parents. "Have you experienced any symptoms as a result of having the bond blocked?"
Trip refocused on the doctor examining him. His brow furrowed. "Maybe…"
Phlox paused to await further answer.
Trip lackadaisically gave a half shrug. "I feel… dead inside… but is that because of T'Pol or Elizabeth?"
"They are most certainly compounding each other." The doctor stopped and measured his next words carefully. "You may want to consider bringing this up with Commander T'Pol. She may not have realized how her actions would affect you. I can sedate you to help you sleep, but nothing I can do as far as treatment is concerned can alleviate the discomfort of a blocked mate bond."
Trip smirked humorlessly. "T'Pol and I have kind of been avoiding each other."
Phlox frowned. "I don't understand… I saw you two eating breakfast together just moments ago."
"Yeah, I know," Trip mumbled and said nothing more.
Phlox puzzled over that but decided it wasn't the most imperative detail at the moment. Of the foremost concerns on his mind were the readings from his scanner that betrayed just how little Trip was sleeping. "I suppose that answers the question I was going to ask about when was the last time you two had a neuropressure session," Phlox mused. "In the past it has proven to be a very effective method for treating your insomnia and it may be something you should consider resuming."
Trip snorted. He and T'Pol hadn't had a session since before Elizabeth. "She won't touch me," Trip said weakly, pained by the very admission. He couldn't blame her for that, either. Vulcans were touch-telepaths, he knew that, and lately he was a twisted knot of pain, sadness, regret, anger… everything T'Pol was feeling, too. When Trip had gone to T'Pol's quarters after Elizabeth's death, when he'd tried to reach out to her, he'd been heartened when she took his hand… his hope turned sour quickly. T'Pol endured it as long as she could, but all too quickly she pulled her hand away and moved across the room from him, desperate to put some physical distance between them. Through his tears, Trip could see in her panicked eyes what had happened… when they'd touched he'd inadvertently added all of his grief and agony to hers through mere contact. She'd been consumed by the full brunt of two parents' loss of a child, and it had been too much. Since then, she'd gone to great lengths to avoid touching him.
Trip pressed his lips tightly together. It was another instance of the difference between human grieving and Vulcan grieving. T'Pol was isolating herself, physically and emotionally, when Trip ached to make contact, to reach out, physically and emotionally. He needed to connect when she needed to break away.
Phlox put down his medscanner and perched on the biobed next to Trip. "Commander… I wish you had come to me sooner. If I'd suspected you were this unwell, I would have insisted on it."
"I'm doing all right."
"You're not all right, Commander," Phlox insisted gently. "You have all the symptoms of acute clinical depression."
Trip shot a look at the doctor. "Can you blame me? Damnit, Doc, I just came back from burying my baby girl."
"I didn't say I blame you, no one would, but I think perhaps you need a little more time to come to terms with this loss than ten days' bereavement leave. You clearly need more time to heal. I could talk to the captain and get you a leave of duty-"
"No!" Trip yelped and hopped off the biobed as though scalded. Phlox blinked, bewildered.
Trip paced anxiously a moment before turning to Phlox and pleading, "Look, I know I've got a long way to go before I'm okay. I've gone through this before, with my sister, so I'm not exactly a novice to losing a loved one. I know I'm not there yet, but I need to work. I have to have something to take my mind off how…" Trip stopped and took a breath. When he looked again at Phlox, he was far more rational. "Please, Doc… I can't just sit around in my quarters thinking about how miserable I am. That will be so much worse. I'll be okay, eventually… like last time."
An array of emotions crossed the doctor's face while he weighed Trip's appeal. At first, he looked as though he wanted to point out that this wasn't like last time, because last time he'd had T'Pol to help him get through the ordeal. Trip held his breath, hoping Phlox wouldn't say it, because he wouldn't have a way to counter it. When Phlox accepted that circumstances precluded a repeat of those events that had seen Trip through his sister's death, he sagged in defeat when he came to the conclusion that, given the facts, Trip was right. He needed to work, he needed to have purpose.
"Very well, Commander."
Trip sighed. "Thank you, Doctor."
Phlox stood and favored Trip with a smile. "Come by this afternoon before bedtime and I'll give you something to help you sleep."
Trip managed a broken smile of relief. "Great."
As Trip moved toward the sickbay doors, Phlox called out, "And eat, Mister Tucker… you're ten pounds lighter than the last time I examined you."
"I'll try."
"And…" Phlox added and moved toward the engineer. "Please, if you need anything, don't hesitate to come to me. Be it for a medical check-up or a friendly ear to listen. I'd like to do what I can to help."
Trip nodded sincerely. "I'll keep that in mind. You've been great, Phlox, really…" he turned to leave again then froze and looked back at Phlox somberly when another thought struck him. "I… never told you how much I appreciate everything you did for Elizabeth."
Phlox swallowed a lump of emotion in his throat. "I only wish I could have done more."
Trip nodded meekly. "Yeah… yeah, me too," he said lowly, and with a downtrodden look left sickbay to start his shift in engineering.
*****
Captain Jonathan Archer strode on to the bridge of the Enterprise nearly an hour before the alpha shift started, and he was not the least bit surprised to find half of his bridge crew already at their stations. He had the great fortune to work with people who loved what they did, and it showed in their attitude. Malcolm Reed was at the tactical station working rather attentively on something; no doubt a project of his own devising that had the potential to increase the ship's defensive or offensive capabilities. Malcolm was one with a talent for keeping himself occupied, and he took enormous pride in the ship he served aboard. He considered devising new ways to protect Enterprise leisure and pleasure. Archer could not count how many mornings he had entered the bridge to find Malcolm just as he was now, diligent and focused. It seemed no matter what hour Archer showed up, chances were that he'd find the tactical officer had beat him to the bridge; the Englishman was most definitely a morning person.
Ensigns Travis Mayweather and Hoshi Sato had yet to arrive for duty, although their habit of arriving just when they were due was a recent development. During the crisis with the Xindi, Travis and Hoshi were as dogged and intense about their job and their mission as the rigid Malcolm Reed. They came on duty early and stayed late without needing to be asked. They gave their all and then some, just as everyone on Enterprise had. Since the Xindi disaster was averted and Earth was saved, since Enterprise was redeployed to resume her mission of peaceful exploration, Travis and Hoshi adopted the pattern of showing up, together, only minutes before the alpha shift began. Archer had his suspicions, but his crew had gone above and beyond for him, and if no one's performance or work suffered because of any 'personal recreational activities' he'd maintain a strict policy of don't ask, don't tell.
The thought of his crew's personal lives drew Archer's gaze inexorably toward his science officer at her station to his left. T'Pol was silently consulting her consoles, and if Archer hadn't gone through the fires of hell and back with the Vulcan woman he might have misread her demeanor for typical Vulcan detachment. But he knew T'Pol better than to be fooled by her Vulcan veneer. If she were human, Archer would have said she was depressed, and he wondered if maybe the same psychological profile didn't fit T'Pol as well, human or not. His first officer had been unusually reclusive lately, ever since the incident with Terra Prime. He imagined the Starfleet admiralty would be stunned to learn that a Vulcan was capable of 'withdrawing', given their natural reserve to begin with, but Archer knew beyond any shadow of a doubt that T'Pol was doing just that. He hadn't spoken with her much since her return from Vulcan where she and Trip buried their daughter. He knew the child's death had been hard on his two closest friends. Archer had hoped that, eventually, when the grief was not so sharp, that they might come to him, confide in him, let him help even if it was only to offer his sincerest condolences. So far, neither Trip nor T'Pol had approached him.
Archer was worried by that, especially so in Trip's case. He could understand a Vulcan being more reluctant to openly handle an emotional wound, but Trip was Archer's friend of almost ten years and it was obvious that he was hurting. Archer had expected Trip would come sulking to Archer's cabin one evening, get unaccountably drunk with him, and that Trip would finally start to vent some of his anguish to him while Porthos looked on ready to jump in and offer a tongue-licking of comfort for whoever seemed to need it most. That had not happened. Trip had been remarkably like T'Pol in the sense that he was holing up and keeping to himself. Amid his worry, it was hard for Archer not to feel a little personally hurt by that.
He hoped that Trip and T'Pol were helping each other through this terrible time, hoped that at least they weren't each suffering alone, but the fact of the matter was that Archer couldn't know that was the case. His own down-time on Earth while Enterprise was being refit and giving the crew leave (officially… her unofficial reason for hanging around Sol was to wait for her first officer and chief engineer to return from bereavement leave) had given the captain time for some soul-searching, and with the loss of Elizabeth T'Les Tucker so raw and fresh on his mind he did a lot of thinking about Trip and T'Pol. He'd lost himself while hunting the Xindi. He wasn't the same person he'd been before the Xindi attack on Earth, and the truth was neither was Trip the same person. That truth became apparent when tragedy struck without the need to rush off immediately afterward and save the world. Archer had the time to pay attention to the fallout, and it was troubling. He discovered that, in many ways, he didn't know Trip anymore. As a chief engineer and crewman he knew the man inside and out, but outside of their working relationship he found a chasm had formed.
And he realized how he had overlooked and dismissed what had been parading in front of him just beneath the radar ever since the Xindi attack on Florida. He understood how grievously he had misjudged Trip of late when a personal crisis (when the doomed existence of baby Elizabeth) arose, and Archer's first unbidden thought was 'T'Pol will take care of him'. Archer had been floored by what that understanding meant. Trip had disconnected and reattached, like a power coupling switched out in engineering. Where once Trip had turned to Jon, he later found his solace, comfort, and companionship in T'Pol. Archer knew he could only blame himself for that; he'd been inaccessible when Trip needed a friend more than ever. T'Pol had been the one to ease him through his sister's death while Archer was obsessively focused on stopping the Xindi.
Remarkably, it was a woman from an emotionally repressed culture who healed Trip's heart.
And somehow, in the process, he lost his heart to her.
Archer knew there was much and more about the 'relationship' between his two friends that he didn't know, no doubt complications heaped upon complications beyond what he could imagine, but it didn't take a sociologist to see that they were profoundly attached to one another when it was said and done. At the end of the day, if either needed a safe place to go it would be to one another's quarters.
A petty, tiny part of Archer was jealous of the connection Trip was able to forge with T'Pol. Archer had worked very, very hard for T'Pol's respect and trust, and there was a time when he would have welcomed the idea of something more… intimate between them. But Archer never got past the barrier of friendship with the Vulcan commander. T'Pol would follow him anywhere, but she wouldn't love him. Not the way she was able to love Trip.
No doubt T'Pol would have some choice objections if she knew Archer's thoughts, but the simple fact was that Trip would not have turned her world inside and out and upside down if it wasn't because she loved him. Just as Trip's world stopping and revolving at the mercy of T'Pol's attitude toward him was proof undeniable that Trip loved her, all arguments to the contrary aside. Humans had a way of parsing emotional matters down that way.
But finding their daughter only to lose her days later seemed to have crippled the connection Trip and T'Pol had formed and thrown everything they built into disarray. Archer might not know his friends as well as he used to, but he could still tell they weren't handling Elizabeth's death well. He'd seen how madly in love they had fallen with their daughter in the short time she'd been with them. When he saw the three of them huddled together in sickbay, T'Pol cradling Elizabeth in her arms while Trip sat beside her, their bodies touching as they admired their baby as only doting parents could, Archer could see the life that might have been, when it might have been Lorian instead of Elizabeth.
Archer thought he was seeing the formation of a truly unique family that would endure through anything because they had each other. Trip and T'Pol's affection for one another was a fondness forged in fire, born in the middle of the Xindi hunt and the stressors of the Expanse, and there was no doubt watching them tend their child that they felt no less like Elizabeth's mother and father for her subversive creation by a terrorist agency. Archer saw them and the great potential for happiness waiting in the wings like a star about to go supernova, and he wished them well.
Then it was all ripped away when Elizabeth died, leaving Trip and T'Pol in pieces.
At Archer's protracted stillness standing near the turbolift doors as he let his thoughts wander, T'Pol glanced up briefly at him to see if anything was amiss with the ship's captain.
Archer hoped the damage wasn't irreparable, but looking at T'Pol and seeing the absolute vacancy in her eyes made him afraid.
Archer gave T'Pol a small smile and nod then proceeded to his chair in the center of the bridge. Malcolm pulled himself away from his project to acknowledge Archer's arrival. Archer nodded. "Morning, Malcolm."
"Good morning, sir."
"No trouble, I hope?" he asked lightly as he indicated Malcolm's work. He knew the answer from Malcolm's relaxed demeanor, but it seemed it was all too infrequently he could ask without bracing for bad news and he wanted to indulge.
"Oh, no, sir." He checked his chronometer and smiled faintly. "0630 and all's well. I was just catching up on a few training scenarios I'd thought up last night."
Archer smirked. "Good, carry on. How's our course and speed, Ensign?" Archer directed the last comment to the beta shift helmsman on duty until Travis arrived.
"Holding steady at warp three point one, sir. Not a sign of trouble all night."
It was music to the captain's ears. "Sounds good." He turned to take his seat and almost the moment he was comfortable a crewman brought him a PADD with the data collected over ship's night from the sensors. Archer took it in at his leisure. Anything urgent would have been flagged as such first and foremost, and no such notices for immediate attention were flashing on the data display. As it was, he eased into the day with catching up on the ship's progress and readings while he'd been sleeping.
They were making their way back to the area of space that had so recently been the Expanse but which had reverted to normal space after Trip and Enterprise destroyed the network of spheres created by the transdimensional beings. The Expanse had been a dangerous, unpredictable region of space for so long due to the transdimensional beings' interference, so dangerous that even the Vulcans had abandoned efforts to study within it. The truth of the matter was, there was a lot about that sector of space that was unknown because it was not worth the risk to life and equipment to venture inside. If it hadn't been for the Xindi threat, Enterprise would have left it alone, too, for once willfully following the Vulcans' lead.
But everything had changed with the destruction of the spheres. The region of space once too perilous for travel was no more treacherous than any other now, and it opened up a great wealth of little-explored phenomena. Enterprise had done precious little exploring while inside the boundaries of the Expanse, they'd had a far more important mission to complete and couldn't bother with sight-seeing. Now, however, that mission was over and there was time to look around. Archer's innate explorer's nature took hold, and he wanted to know what they'd overlooked the first time when they couldn't spare the time to investigate. Also, there was the question of how the Expanse's presence for so long had affected planets, systems, and stars long-term. What damage would heal itself, and what was permanent because of the spatial anomalies? Those were questions even the Vulcans were interested in learning the answers to, but given the horrific fate of the Seleya, the newly reformed Vulcan High Command (under new administration, of course), had offered an enormous show of faith in humanity by allowing them to assess the remaining danger.
Admiral Gardner had likened it to being the canary in the mines and was less than impressed by the Vulcan 'gesture'. In fact, he'd been hard-pressed to maintain his diplomatic smile and agreeable disposition when Administrator T'Pau informed him of Vulcan's decision. But Archer, more familiar with Vulcan psychology after serving with one for four years, knew just how highly the Vulcan gesture elevated Earth. They were demonstrating trust in human-kind. In the past, the Vulcans would not have believed Enterprise and her crew capable of the simplest asteroid study, much less assessing the danger posed by a previously deadly region of space. Vulcan High Command was putting faith in Enterprise; they had not launched any of their own ships into the region of space previously composing the Expanse to investigate the hazard to Vulcans (to which the Expanse had proved especially deadly). They were letting humanity do this on their own, and were depending on the results of man-kind's findings to inform them as to whether it was safe for Vulcans to venture into the former Expanse.
In a round-about way, Vulcans were putting their lives in humanity's hands. Four years ago that would never have happened, and Archer recognized that for what it was. He intended to make a full assessment of the threat posed to Vulcan physiology (for the sake of safe-guarding his own Vulcan officer simultaneously), and reporting their findings to the Vulcan High Command in such detail that even Soval would be pleased with the result. Maybe it would be the first of many times when Vulcan didn't just look upon humanity like an ill-mannered puppy, but like an equal and ally.
Archer noticed the passage of time only when Travis and Hoshi hurried onto the bridge almost exactly at 0700. They relieved their beta shift counterparts and took their places, but not without casting one another a rather… veiled look. Archer made it a point not to notice.
The bridge fell back into efficient silence while Archer moved on to personnel reports (visits to sickbay that hadn't been requested kept under strict doctor/patient confidentiality, complaints to quartermaster, the latest information from some of Phlox's many and never-ending studies, reports from chef about anyone eating either too little or too much that might signal trouble, etc.), the most of which Archer skimmed.
From the science station an indicator beeped quietly for attention.
Commander T'Pol slid her chair over to the politely calling sensor station and the Vulcan turned her dark eyes toward the incoming data. T'Pol considered the information, paused, then moved to another station to confirm the readings of the first.
T'Pol lifted her head. "Captain."
In his center chair, Jonathan Archer looked up from his PADD, turned to his first officer, and waited for her report.
T'Pol, with a quick glance toward the forward viewer, relayed, "The sensors are detecting a metallic body bearing two-one-eight."
Archer, too, turned to the forward viewer, though there was no sign of the object in question, only the expanse of speeding starlight.
"A ship?" he asked, setting down the PADD on his armrest and looking once again to his science officer. Where once his voice would have conveyed excitement at the potential for meeting a new space-faring species, now it was laced with an undercurrent of wariness and tension. Not all surprises were good, and not all first contacts were a positive encounter for mankind. The Enterprise's many encounters with unfriendly alien species since leaving spacedock had proven that fact time and again. Still, there was the hope it would be a peaceful species interested in making a new interstellar friend. The hope was what kept humanity coming back after the blows it had suffered, and that was epitomized in Captain Jonathan Archer.
T'Pol turned to her readings and studied them more closely. "Highly unlikely, it is too small, perhaps an escape pod of some sort."
Archer turned to Hoshi and rose from his seat, suddenly too energized to sit still. "Can you raise them?"
Hoshi's hands moved delicately over the communication's console and she paused a beat then shook her head. "I'm not getting anything."
Again, Archer turned to T'Pol. "Do you have any idea what species?"
T'Pol looked as consternated and duly fascinated as the Vulcan ever did, though not as intrigued or interested as she had in the past. Privately, Archer hoped a puzzle would help her focus her mind on something besides her late daughter. "I do not recognize the metallurgic signature of the hull," T'Pol answered as she turned her eyes up to the captain.
Archer nodded and made a quick decision. "Ensign Mayweather, drop to impulse and alter our heading. Let's see what it is. If it is an escape pod someone could need help."
"Aye, sir," the young man said and moved to follow his captain's orders.
Archer settled back in his seat to await their destination, but his mind was anything but relaxed. If there was someone on that pod, it would be the first contact with a new alien that the crew had made since leaving the Terra Prime mess behind in Sol. He couldn't help but feel like this first action since resuming their mission could be the baseline for the encounters to come.
He hoped it was a good one.
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