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"Reflecting to You"
By MissAnnThropic
Rating: PG-13
Disclaimer: None of its mine. I’m just a sad little fangirl that spends her days writing fanfic and watching taped episodes of my favorite shows. :(
Description: A different ending to In a Mirror Darkly, Part I, results in the Mirror Universe T'Pol ending up on our universe's Enterprise when the relationship between Trip and T'Pol is at a breaking point. (later becomes a cross-over with ST:TOS, Spoilers: The Tholian Web)
Author's Note: Kind of a shortie this time, but to prevent the next chapter from breaking in a weird place this one had to be a little fella.
Chapter 4
Standing in the launch bay, Trip Tucker crossed his arms and eyed the hunk of machinery they had brought on board. His fellow engineers and some of Malcolm's security officers were prowling the perimeter but as yet no one had approached the thing.
The doors to the launch bay opened and Trip turned to look over his shoulder and saw Archer and T'Pol enter.
"Trip?" Archer asked as they neared the engineer. T'Pol was aiming a hand-held tricorder at the hunk of metal and studiously watching the reporting information scroll across the small screen. Archer came to a stop on Trip's left and T'Pol wordlessly crossed behind the two men to take up a position on Trip's right less than a pace away from the chief engineer. If Trip shifted on his feet he'd bump into her. Trip glanced down at her as she continued to attend exclusively to her triocorder then he turned to address the captain.
"If this is an escape pod then it's one of the shoddiest pieces of work I've ever seen. I'm betting that's not what it is."
Archer looked at the hunk of metal and had to agree. It was certainly manufactured, but there were no windows, no discernible thrusters, and it wasn't even shaped like it was meant to fly. Scorch marks and twisted metal spoke to its damaged condition, whatever it actually was.
"If not an escape pod then what is it?"
Trip shook his head and shrugged, "You got me. Once we get the okay from T'Pol I'll have my people pull it apart, but right now I couldn't even guess."
"Really?" Archer asked and looked toward his friend with a teasing, boyish glint in his eye.
Trip almost smiled. "All right, my guess is that it's slag, debris from something, but from what– that's what I couldn't say, not until I get a chance to look at it."
T'Pol's tricorder gave an urgent beep that drew everyone's attention as the science officer studied the data with mild surprise and looked up at the captain and chief engineer. "A biosign."
Trip and Archer blinked in astonishment. From the state of the object sitting on the launch bay deck, they'd both come to the conclusion it wasn't occupied. "There's something alive in there?" Archer asked, his voice losing all its playfulness.
T'Pol nodded and looked directly at Archer. "It's Vulcan."
"What the hell?" Trip mumbled to himself, and at once he was moving. He motioned hurriedly for two of his junior engineers as he strode toward the object parked in their launch bay. "Get the cutters! There's someone in there."
The junior engineers scurried to obey.
"Trip!" Archer called out to his friend who was already hurrying toward the chunk of metal.
Trip turned impatiently on his heel to face Archer and both men looked expectantly at T'Pol. She gave a nod that there were no discernible dangers according to her readings, and Trip was rushing toward the metal block in the next second.
*****
Her first conscious thoughts were that death was not what she had expected it to be. She did not expect death to smell of flash-fires and burned conduits and alien stench. Nor did she expect it to feel cold against her skin. She did not think death would be digging into her back or making her head throb. She also did not expect her thoughts to be quite so mortal in the thereafter. She had believed her katra would fade slowly away, thoughts unfocused and ethereal... certainly not this.
There should not have been sounds in death, either. The hollow banging of metal on metal and the whining of tools were not other-worldly or transcendental.
It took that long for her to think that, perhaps, by some burst of illogic, she was not dead.
T'Pol, having reached that remarkable conclusion, tried to discern that if not in death then where was she.
Her body certainly existed, for the moment that she considered it might still be hers it cried to her in pain. Her back and shoulder were flaring sharply and her head was pounding, making the blood sing in her ears in time with her rapid heartbeat.
She breathed in through her nose and the smells were three-fold apparent and pungent. Her eyelids fluttered and finally she realized that the blackness was not her unconsciousness but the void that was the inside of the cell.
She strained and could hear voices, faint and muffled through the metal layers, but voices all the same. Speaking Empire-standard, the English of her Earth crew. Understanding took hold of her. She closed her eyes and did not welcome that she still lived. She had accepted that in her death she would be freed of slavery. She had embraced it with as much relief as a Vulcan could confess to feel. Now she had only sharp pains and injuries to show for her sacrifice, and still she was property of the Empire.
She was too hurt and wearied to try and become even slightly angry at that. It simply was, and there was no logic in bemoaning its truth or the reality of her situation. She was Vulcan, it was her lot in life.
The banging grew louder and the voices clearer and suddenly a shaft of light peeled into the black cell. It raced down the wall and over T'Pol and through her eyelids. Her retinas flinched at the change in light and her third eyelids slid over her corneas, even though her primary eyelids remained closed.
There was a rush of fresh air, and even if it reeked of human flesh it was better than burned wires and Tholian exoskeletons and she inhaled. The hit of cooled Earth-ship air only awakened the pain in her body anew and she grimaced, against her best efforts, and immediately she tried to call upon mental techniques to block some of the pain.
"We're in!" a human voice called above her, and T'Pol resigned herself to living and tried to open her eyes. Her eyelids barely cracked open and the hazy, filtered light through her nictitating membranes glowed faint green. She blinked, looked up faintly, and her vision adjusted to the light. Her third eyelids pulled back and threw the world into sharper edges and brighter colors.
A human silhouette hovered in the hole above her. The silence that had assailed them all seemed uneasy, but T'Pol was too weak and tired to care.
"Commander," the voice, this time hesitant and uncertain, and T'Pol strained her eyes upward.
The figure shuffled some of his tools then dropped out of sight only to be replaced by another humanoid shadow. This one, too, paused in the opening and T'Pol wondered at their reticence to have her shuffled off to sickbay to be rid of her. They would not appreciate the trouble she had already been to them.
T'Pol realized her eyes had drifted shut again when she was startled awake from a disjointed slip toward unconsciousness by a loud bang nearby. Her eyes jerked open reflexively and she strained to see the human that had jumped into the cell with her.
Male by his build, she could see the dark blue of his Empire uniform as the light from above cut into the black shadows of the Tholian cell. He walked unevenly on the wall that served as a ground, a flashlight in his hand gliding over her body as it lay sprawled and bleeding.
Her vision faded in and out and when it refocused the human was within a foot of her, kneeling down beside her, and the light from above bathed half his face. The light glowed gold through blonde hair and curved sharply over his nose and lips... lips turned down in a confused frown. Crescents of pale blue as the light partially illuminated his eyes, and T'Pol blinked again when it all came together to form a face she recognized too well.
Tucker.
T'Pol opened her mouth but nothing came out, not the cry of despair deep within her, not the curse of injustice, not the fear of the engineer's unkind temper if she had failed in her task, only a weak squeak that she would not wish to own as her own voice.
Tucker's blue eyes consumed her and she let unconsciousness take her. It was a far better place and a good nothingness to hide in before she had to live again.
Back to Chapter 3
Continue to Chapter 5
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