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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 7
Trip was floating in the syrupy thick sleep of the sedated. His thoughts languished, blessedly too torpid and muffled to form dreams… or nightmares. He knew only the heaviness of a twilight sleep. Void and vacant but for the chirruping in the distance. A chirrup that grew louder and nearer.
With sluggish effort, Trip opened his eyes to his darkened quarters aboard Enterprise. He blinked and tried to focus, though this morning it was harder than others. He struggled to put together why he had surfaced from that black nothingness, in so many ways the perfect negative mirror image of the whiteness he used to share with T'Pol, when the chirrup resounded again, clear and very close. His door chime.
Trip tried to look toward his door without moving any muscles, but eventually resigned himself to answering the summons.
Trip rolled out of bed on autopilot and shuffled to the door. He turned on the lights, commanded open the door, and didn't know what to think when he found Hoshi Sato standing on his proverbial doorstep. But then, most of that was probably the sedative.
Hoshi looked up at him expectantly, perhaps a little nervously, but the longer he just stood there and stared down at her the more her expression turned to one of concern. "Commander? Are you okay?" A crinkle of a frown appeared between her arched eyebrows. Arched and curved, Trip noted, not angular. He'd never noticed eyebrows all that much before. Humans had such curvy bodies, from the tips of their ears to the soles of their feet.
Trip tried to shake the lingering stupor of the drugs from his head. "Sure, m'alright… Hoshi?" He meant to ask 'what brings you here?' or 'something I can do for you?' but the utterance of her name was as much as he managed.
Hoshi, however, got the message. "Could I come in for moment? It won't take long."
Trip stood stupidly a minute until her request sank in, then he stepped back to let her inside.
Hoshi followed him inside his quarters quietly while Trip turned to plop down on his bed. "Sorry, the mess," he said with a feeble hand gesture at the scattered clothes on his floor and the pads littering his desk.
Hoshi offered a small smile. "Don't worry about it, sir. Trust me, I've seen worse."
Trip nodded and rubbed at his eyes, feeling the drug-induced sleep slowly but surely leaving his brain.
"Commander?"
Trip could detect the concern in Hoshi's voice. He looked up and she was frowning at him.
"Sorry… taking me a minute to wake up here." He offered a wan smile. "Something you needed?"
Hoshi nodded, paused, and moved to sit on the bed beside him. Trip blinked and looked askance at her for such a personal intrusion. She didn't sit close enough to touch, but that she sat down beside him on his bed at all caught his attention. But then, she was a friend so why should it matter if she didn't ask to sit on his bed with him before she did? It wasn't a breach in protocol or behavior… not unless they were Vulcans.
Trip frowned and scrubbed at his hair with one hand. When had he slipped into thinking in Vulcan terms? Was he losing his mind? At times, he wondered.
"I have something for you," Hoshi said, and she slid a flat rectangular object from her uniform breast pocket. She passed it to him with a gentle smile.
Trip took it and looked at the picture of his daughter, his little Elizabeth, and the deck plating seemed to lurch beneath him. He choked on the air and his heart slammed against his ribcage in wild distress. His thoughts spun out of control, hurtling toward an explosion.
For a brief second, his vision flashed to white. He thought it must surely mean he was about to pass out.
But he didn't.
When he blinked and cleared his head, he was staring at the image again, his emotional center still precarious but not on the verge of core meltdown.
The image of baby Elizabeth was like so many in his dreams, the dreams that were so real to him that he woke up in grief to feel his arms empty. His throat tightened and his vision began to swim as tears filled his eyes.
"She was so beautiful," he whispered, not even aware he was speaking aloud.
Hoshi intoned gently from his side, "Yes, she was."
Trip nodded concurrence to his own statement. His beautiful baby girl, with those adorable Vulcan ears and the Tucker baby blues. It wasn't fair that he wouldn't see her turn into a beautiful young woman. It wasn't fair he would be denied the right to chase away her many suitors, be they human or Vulcan.
Trip licked his lips and tested his voice by clearing it. When it worked, he croaked, "Thank you, Hoshi."
"You're welcome," she said softly, and when Trip looked up to face her she leaned in and put her arms lightly around his neck. He stiffened for a fraction of a second, then Trip closed his eyes and let Hoshi comfort him, surprised to discover how sharply he had needed someone to just hug him.
He only wished it was someone else doing it.
When Hoshi drew away only seconds after putting her arms around his neck, she smiled sadly. Trip wiped at his eyes and sniffled.
"Are you okay?" Hoshi asked after giving Trip some time to compose himself. "When you weren't in the mess hall with T'Pol this morning I was worried you might be sick."
Trip felt jarred. "T'Pol?" He looked at the chronometer. It was late… later than he'd slept in for a long time. 'T'Pol was waiting for me,' he thought immediately, 'I was supposed to be there and I wasn't'. It was illogical and nonsensical, but it was his knee-jerk response to finding he'd missed his morning ritual of non-communicative breakfast with T'Pol.
Hoshi obviously knew to expect to find Trip with T'Pol.
"Was T'Pol…" he began, then he trailed off. Was she what? He didn't even know.
Hoshi frowned. "She looked lonely to me."
"You gave her a picture of Elizabeth, too?" he asked hoarsely.
Hoshi nodded.
Trip brushed his thumb over the glass encasing his daughter's likeness. "She must have appreciated that."
"I think she did."
Trip knew it, though he couldn't say how. He wasn't in her thoughts anymore, not that he'd ever really managed to learn how to extract meaning from the things he'd begun to sense from her through their bond, but still he knew it. Maybe he just knew T'Pol in a human way, enough to know she would treasure the photograph… just as much as he would.
"You okay?" Hoshi ventured.
Trip glanced at her.
"I know you and I aren't exactly as close of friends as you and Captain Archer are, but, if you need to talk to someone…"
Trip couldn't help a sardonic laugh. He had more people willing to 'talk' to him than he knew what to do with.
Hoshi gave him a worried look at his misplaced laughter.
"I'm fine. I should get ready for my shift, though."
Hoshi seemed to consider him doubtfully a moment, then she smiled, stood, and turned to leave.
"Hoshi." Trip rose from his bunk.
Hoshi stopped at the door and turned back to look at him.
"Thank you. This picture means a lot to me."
Hoshi nodded, smiled, and left Trip alone.
Trip stood in his quarters a moment staring down at the picture in his hand. His daughter's image seared into his memory with renewed fire, but even with the added pain Trip was glad to have something tangible of his child to hold onto. He liked being able to look at her, even if only in a photograph.
After a long time lost in her timeless face, he turned to the shelf space above his bunk, removed the picture of himself scuba diving off the Great Barrier Reef from the picture stand, and set in its place the angelic image of his daughter.
He dressed mechanically, in silence, and left his quarters shortly after Hoshi's departure. He headed directly toward engineering. Despite the doctor's orders to be more diligent about his food consumption, he had no stomach for breakfast today, and he'd already missed T'Pol. She would be on the bridge by now, and seeing her was the only reason he could fathom wanting to go to the mess hall.
Half of his primary team was already on duty when he arrived in engineering, and he gave a few of them a cursory nod of greeting on his way to his desk. Last night he had been in the middle of an analysis of the alloy constituting the bulk of the strange 'escape pod's' hull before leaving for dinner with the captain. He found it had been left untouched by the beta shift team; several teams working on the study of the strange space debris had their own set of readings from which to study so there was no need to disturb Trip's material.
Trip picked up his work where he'd left off, bringing up the main engineering server to check it against any break-throughs or discoveries that may have been made during the night shift. He doubted he'd find anything too astounding; if there had been any real insight gleaned by one of his teams they would have descended upon him with the details the moment he entered engineering. After consulting the computer, he found his instincts correct when it seemed minimal progress had been made on learning the origin of the mysterious vessel that had brought the 'T'Pol' in sickbay aboard Enterprise. Trip did a department check to see if anything required his attention, and when that cleared he turned his focus to the puzzle that sat in the launch bay.
He'd been working quietly and unbothered for about an hour when he suddenly felt like he was being watched. He looked up and froze when he saw T'Pol standing a few paces away, watching him.
The rest of engineering seemed to fade away into a low-key background noise as he fixed his eyes on her.
He didn't know what to say, and judging from her continued silence she didn't either. He just stared at her as she stood mutely before him. She didn't look like she had a reason for coming, not from the way her shoulders lacked their usually officious set and her eyes did not fire with purpose. T'Pol on a mission had a look of almost frightening seriousness about her that was completely absent in her now. Plus she didn't have a PADD in her hand that might contain a report he needed to see or figures he needed to use. He didn't know what made her come to his domain aboard the ship.
For whatever reason she had found her way to engineering, he couldn't deny a sense of relief to see her. A knot of disquiet and anxiety that had been present from the moment Hoshi woke him up uncoiled inside him at the sight of her. He'd been concerned about her, about how she had handled receiving the picture of Elizabeth. It had been an unanticipated (but, in the end, appreciated) blow to him… he worried it had been just as bad for her at first. But he hadn't tracked her down to see if she was okay, no more than he'd brought himself to harangue the truth out of Hoshi about how T'Pol took the gift. He just let himself wonder and worry without doing anything about it.
Now T'Pol was right in front of him, and she looked no more devastated than she had since they lost their daughter. Trip was glad for that; he didn't want to see her hurting any more.
He could tell the moment T'Pol began to feel unbearably awkward standing there staring at him across the distance between them. Her eyes moved away from his and she shifted her position, preparing to leave. Whatever she came for or came to do she had decided to abandon in favor of retreat.
"Got a minute, Commander?" Trip blurted out.
T'Pol froze in her step and eyed his warily. She looked flighty, she looked like she wanted nothing more than to be elsewhere, but she stood there. She didn't run.
Trip felt like a free-base cliff diver on the edge of a great canyon as he waited for her answer. She'd turn and walk away or she wouldn't, and he was hanging on that moment when she decided which. He'd deliberately called her 'Commander' instead of 'T'Pol'. If it could be business-like… that had always been an acceptable and doable fall-back position for them, but never had the divide been this raw or great. He didn't know if she would go along with it this time, but he had to try. Just then, he couldn't watch her walk away again.
"Do you need assistance?" she finally asked.
Trip swallowed thickly. "I'm not having any luck with these tests on that 'ship' in the launch bay. Maybe a new perspective would do a world of good."
T'Pol looked torn, like a green-broke horse warring between the choice to bolt or extend its nose toward a human's outstretched hand. Trip waited, his breath held, his figurative hand outstretched, incapable of predicting which way she'd go.
T'Pol finally took a step in Trip's direction.
"What were the results of the metallurgic analyses you performed yesterday?" she asked in a stilted tone.
Trip let out his breath in a quiet rush. He picked up his PADD containing his work on that very problem and held it out to her. "At this point, nothing that makes sense. At least, not to me. I keep getting the sense I've seen this profile before, but every comparison I've run against the information in our database comes up empty. I gotta be missing something."
T'Pol took the PADD he offered, careful not to make physical contact with him in the process. She moved toward him, then her eyes flickered and her spine straightened marginally. She paused uneasily a few inches shy of him. Her body language screamed hesitance to get too close. Trip took a step away from her to afford her space. He wasn't going to push his luck. This was the longest conversation they'd had in days, and he wasn't going to take it for granted.
If they couldn't get their personal relationship in order, maybe they could still salvage a professional, working relationship. It was something, and Trip would take what time and companionship with T'Pol that he could.
For all the anguish and grief her self-protective rejection had caused him, he'd missed her.
*****
Archer had no sooner stepped through the doors of sickbay when he drew up short at Phlox's disembodied voice.
"Ah, crewman number eleven…"
Archer looked around, seeking the doctor (and an explanation) when the Denobulan came around the corner of his improvised office area and realized who had entered sickbay. "Oh, Captain. I'm sorry, I thought you were, oh, nevermind. What can I do for you?"
Archer gave the doctor a queer look at the string of senseless musings Phlox had rattled off the instant Archer arrived and he stepped toward Phlox. "Who did you think I was?"
Phlox cast a bemused smile at Archer. "It seems the news of our mysterious guest has spiked human curiosity aboard Enterprise beyond the ability to bear. I've had ten crewmen trickle in here with trivial complaints to 'get a peek', I believe is the correct colloquialism. I had to draw the privacy curtain to keep the crew from gawking. Not that she notices, but still, there is still the right to privacy."
Archer smirked and glanced toward the curtained off area of sickbay. "Well, you may as well bring the count up to eleven… I stopped by to see how she's doing."
"Her condition has improved, though she is still unconscious and has stayed that way since you left her in my care last night. At this point, I expect she'll make a full recovery. To have reached this point without any sign of complications greatly improves her chances. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if she came to any moment."
Archer nodded thoughtfully and moved toward the curtained bed. "Then maybe we can finally get some answers about who she is."
Archer heard Phlox following close behind him, and mindful of the doctor's protective nature he was careful to draw back the curtain quietly when he looked in on their guest.
He knew what to expect, but even still it was jarring to see someone so perfectly identical to T'Pol lying before him when he knew it was, in fact, not T'Pol. Or at least, not the T'Pol who served as his first officer; the question remained on whether or not she may be some T'Pol produced of circumstances they couldn't even begin to suspect. After everything Archer had seen in the last four years, he wouldn't discount any theory out of hand, no matter how crazy.
But for the moment, her health was what interested him.
He wasn't a doctor, but even he could see that the woman's condition was greatly improved. Her skin was no longer ghostly pale from blood loss; color had bronzed her cheeks and put a flush back in her previously deathly-white lips. Her bruises were darker, too, but he would swear that even they looked better than they had yesterday morning.
Phlox shifted just within his peripheral vision, and Archer could take a hint from his medical officer. He replaced the curtain gently and turned to Phlox. "Have your tests turned up anything on explaining exactly who or what she is?"
Phlox led Archer away from the resting woman's bed and back toward the informal office area. As they put some distance between themselves and the patient, Phlox began to speak. "Nothing that I haven't already told you, Captain. All of my tests have confirmed that she is T'Pol."
"You're sure? Not a mimetic clone or shape-shifter or…" Archer trailed when Phlox shook his head.
"If she is some imposter, she is the most cleverly disguised spy I have ever seen. I ran every conceivable test on her genetic structure that I know, and in every imaginable way their results are identical to the results I would have found had the same tests been run on our own Commander T'Pol."
Archer wasn't sure if he liked that answer or not. If she wasn't confirmed Suliban or one of any other known enemies, then she could easily be of no threat to the ship. But if there wasn't an easy 'Suliban imposter' answer to the riddle, it only meant the truth was bound to be a show-stopper of a tale.
Archer had mixed feelings these days about unexpected turns of events.
"We haven't seen any sign of a rescue party," Archer mused aloud, "no one seems to be looking for her, whoever she is."
Phlox shrugged. "Considering the state of that deplorable wreck in the launch bay, I wouldn't be surprised if no one expected anyone to have survived inside it."
"Trip said it surprised him that she survived," Archer said. At that moment he frowned and looked more intently at the doctor. "Doctor… I wanted to talk to you about Trip."
"What about him?"
Archer cast a glance in the direction of the unconscious Vulcan woman. There was no sign of waking, but even still he stepped in closer to the doctor to lower his voice. "I'm worried about him."
Phlox dropped his gaze uncomfortably to the floor.
"He came to the captain's mess last night for dinner and he didn't look good." Archer paused before adding (guiltily), "I know he's been here to see you. I wanted your opinion… how is he?"
"He's been through a very traumatic event, Captain. The loss of a child…" Phlox grimaced, "I can't imagine a human loss more acute than that. All of the human cultures I have studied, no matter how disparate from one another, agree that there is nothing more tragic than a parent outliving their child. Come to think on it, the cultures of most other species I have studied agree in that respect."
Archer began to nod, stopped, and fiercely debated speaking his mind. A thought had been nagging at him since Trip and T'Pol came back from Vulcan so obviously distraught, and though he hated himself for even entertaining the idea, it wouldn't leave him alone. It sounded too callus, even within own thoughts, but if anyone could take it in the objective and honest context it was intended, it would be a nonhuman doctor.
Archer pursed his lips and tried to word it well. "Trip and T'Pol only knew Elizabeth a few days," he whispered. "She died literally right after they met her." Archer paced past Phlox uneasily, stopped, then turned to him again. "I don't want to sound cold or uncaring but… only a couple of days. How attached could they have gotten to her?"
Phlox remained perfectly still and stared at Archer. If there was any sign of movement, it was the glint of disappointment in Phlox's eyes… or perhaps they were merely mirroring exactly what Archer expected to see. He knew how wretched he felt for asking such a question, but he couldn't help himself from wondering.
"It just doesn't seem right that they should hurt so much for the death of someone they just met," he reasoned lowly.
Phlox didn't move for a minute, long enough to make Archer begin to regret mentioning it, then finally the doctor spoke. "Between tests and analyses last night on our newest visitor I was doing some research on that very topic."
"And?" Archer asked hopefully.
Phlox found a stool nearby and perched on the edge. "Exactly how familiar are you with the concept of Vulcan mental bonds?"
"Outside of the one Trip and T'Pol have, not at all, and I have to admit that one still has me sort of stumped."
"That's not all that surprising; it's a very private matter in Vulcan culture considering the individuals that are capable of forming bonds. As you are aware, mates can bond telepathically, which is the case with Commander Tucker and Commander T'Pol."
Archer shifted restlessly. He still had a strange balk reaction to the notion of Trip and T'Pol being 'mates'. They weren't geese, they were sentient beings, and 'mate' seemed like such a base, primal concept. But they couldn't very well be called husband and wife, either, which left Archer in a quandary on exactly how to classify them as a couple (even 'couple' didn't fit).
Phlox gestured at his computer console behind him, effectively recapturing Archer's attention. "Another common bond in Vulcan culture is the parental bond a Vulcan parent shares with its offspring. I've read about it and even studied it a little in the medical exchange program; I once watched a Vulcan mother guide her pre-language child through a pain reducing meditation technique using the bond.
"Since Vulcans are touch-telepaths, I had always believed that prolonged physical contact was required to create this parental bond. Considering how much natal care a Vulcan infant needs, a parent would not even have to make an effort to create the bond, it would form naturally through routine interaction with their young." Phlox frowned somberly. "It turns out I was wrong about that."
"How do you mean?"
Phlox sighed. "It turns out Vulcan genetics contain hypersensitive coding for synaptic pathway patterns. Think of a mapping of the brain's neural impulses as a fingerprint, unique and distinctive to the individual, but in this case they can be clustered in families. You could distinguish family members in a crowd of Vulcans just from their brainwave patterns."
"And how do Trip and T'Pol factor into this biology lesson?"
"To make a human analogy, Vulcan parents never take the wrong baby home from the hospital. Do you know why?"
Archer guessed he was about to learn.
"A Vulcan infant is 'coded' to its parents' minds, as a genetic product of their union it is 'programmed' to hone in on their distinct mental structures. They are ravenous to make telepathic contact with their protectors and caretakers. It was a powerful survival tool in Vulcan's violent ancient history, and if you think about it it's an ingenious evolutionary development.
"A Vulcan child's ability to telepathically connect with its parents is a potency of psi ability that decreases as the child ages, when it can use language to communicate its needs and when the pathways of the brain begin to strengthen in some areas and atrophy in others." Phlox looked at Archer a moment before he said, "The moment Enterprise returned to Earth, Commander Tucker and Commander T'Pol's daughter sensed their nearness and nature dictated that she reach out to them."
Archer found himself a stool and sank down on it silently. He was beginning to understand the doctor's meaning.
Phlox continued unabated. "Well before they 'met', T'Pol had formed a bond with Elizabeth. That connection would only have intensified exponentially when mother and child were able to physically touch."
Archer didn't know he could feel worse for his friends until Phlox's proclamation. "That explains T'Pol…"
"It explains Commander Tucker, as well," Phlox said matter-of-factly.
Archer cant his head questioningly. "But Trip's human."
"More or less… depending on your take on human neurophysiology."
"You lost me."
"It is biological, irrefutable fact that Commander Tucker's brain has been altered by being bonded to a Vulcan. Technically speaking, in certain respects, his brain is more Vulcan than human."
Archer's eyes widened.
"Don't misunderstand, he's very much still the same Commander Charles Tucker you've known for years, his identity is unchanged, but in segments of the human brain that usually show no neural activity, his is functional. There have been many scientists on your world who are convinced of the human potential for psychic abilities merely for want of a cooperative mental wiring system. The foundation is there; in Commander Tucker's case, the wires are carrying a live current now.
"I must confess to some personal speculation on my part at this point, but I am almost positive that through his telepathic bond with Commander T'Pol, Commander Tucker was able to similarly bond to his daughter before he even knew she existed. That is completely outside the normal bonding behaviors Commander Tucker exhibited when he was united with his child."
Archer's chest ached for the implications it heaped on his friends. "It sounds like those bonds are more trouble than they're worth."
Phlox gave a dry chuckle. "The circumstances surrounding a bond are rarely as rife with complications as Commander Tucker and Commander T'Pol's have been. Medically and culturally speaking, they are actually quite beautiful."
"Is there anything we can do for Trip or T'Pol? Any way to reverse the bond to Elizabeth that's causing all this anguish?"
Phlox looked troubled by the idea. "Even if there was something that could do what you're asking, I don't think it would be ethically sound to do it, and I sincerely doubt either Commander Tucker or Commander T'Pol would consent."
If it made them feel better, Archer couldn't fathom either one turning down the chance.
The doctor explained, "The pain they feel now at her loss is a result of the love they had for her as her mother and father… to strip away that pain and its source would, in effect, take their daughter from them all over again. They'd have to start over grieving her loss in an entirely different way."
Archer sagged in defeat.
Phlox stood and placed a hand on Archer's shoulder. "I'm sorry, Captain, but the best we can do is let them accept the death of their daughter on their own terms, in their own time. No medicine can go through the grieving process for you."
It had the bitter ring of truth and Archer gave a sad smile to the doctor. "You're right… it's just not fair."
Phlox smiled. "On that I am in complete agreement with you, Captain."
Archer stood and nodded his thanks to the doctor. "Keep me informed if there's any change with our guest."
"Of course… good day, Captain."
Archer left sickbay feeling even worse than when he'd gone in.
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