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They’re in the cafeteria – Hoshi’s squinting at some alien language someone had sent her, and Malcolm’s going over the scores from the crew’s last training session – when Trip slams a hand down on the table. No hello, no preamble.
“I think I’m stuck in a timeloop.”
“Jesus, fuck,” Hoshi mumbles, more from the jump scare than the statement.
“A timeloop. Hoshi.”
Malcolm sets his padd down on the table. “A ‘we’re all gonna die’ timeloop or a ‘you need to grow as a person’ timeloop?”
Trip finally sits down instead of leaning over the two of them. “What?”
They both look at him expectantly.
“I don’t know. I mean, nobody’s dying, so…”
Malcolm nods to himself. “Grow as a person then.”
Trip eyes him. “Where are you even getting that from?” he asks at the same time Hoshi says,
“I think you read too many books.”
“Sci-fi authors had some points!” he defends himself. “They got some bits right.”
Trip raises his eyebrows. “Like?”
“I don’t know,” Malcolm answers, waving a hand vaguely in the air between them. “Time is a circle? Choices echo across dimensions?”
“Choices.” Trip echoes. “Like stupid choices?”
There’s a pause. Hoshi blinks at him slowly.
“Hey, uh, what have you been doing in the timeloop?”
“Nothing.”
Malcolm sighs and rubs at his eyes. “So definitely a ‘grow as a person’ loop.”
Trip slumps in his seat. “God, I hope not.”
There’s a pause. Malcolm considers the situation: a timeloop isn’t something they’ve encountered before, but it’s not that far out considering everything else that has happened.
“Hmm,” He says, thinking aloud, “how are we presenting to everyone else if the ship is stuck in a timeloop?”
“It’s not the ship, it’s just me.”
Hoshi picks up on his train of thought. “Well, if everything keeps resetting, then it’s the whole ship, right? I mean it’s around you.”
“Oh.” He pauses for a moment. “I guess that’s true, especially since people come back to life and stuff.”
That earns him a look from both of them.
Malcolm leans back, hands steepled. “How do you know that? You said no one was dying.”
Trip’s mouth opens. Closes. Opens again. “Uh.”
He glances between them. “Well. You know. Theoretically.”
“Trip,” Hoshi says slowly, “did you kill someone?”
“Not intentionally!”
There’s a beat.
“Oh my god,” Hoshi says, sitting back.
“It was an accident! Or possibly self-defence? I don’t know it got real weird for a few loops, or maybe I had a psychotic break. There were aliens, or I though they were. Anyway, I got stabbed, but I woke up again. So everything’s fine now.”
Malcolm gives him a long, unimpressed look. “Trip, if you start a sentence with ‘I got stabbed’ and end it with ‘everything’s fine,’ I’m going to assume the opposite.”
“Everything’s fine.” He repeats, weakly.
Malcolm eyes him. Doesn’t ask about the potential psychotic break, but he does catalogue the way Trip looks: deep bags under his eyes, a tension in his shoulders that hadn’t been there the day before – or what he knew as the day before.
“Show me.”
“What?”
“Where you got stabbed.”
“We’re in the mess.”
“And it’s basically abandoned, come on.”
Trip grumbles something under his breath, but he does undo the zip on his jumpsuit and lift up the undershirt to show them both a scar, just under his ribcage.
“Was that there before?”
“Um. No?”
Malcolm rubs at the bridge of his nose. “You’re not sure?”
“It’s been a lotta loops.”
He sighs. “OK.”
Trip rights his clothes.
“Have you spoken to T’Pol?” Hoshi asks.
Trip sits up straight, something wild in his eyes for a moment. “What? Why would I speak to T’Pol?"
“Well, this is sort of her area, isn’t it? Weird science stuff?”
He deflates again. “Oh. Right. T’Pol.”
Malcolm exchanges yet another glance with Hoshi.
“What have you been doing in the timeloops?” He repeats the question asked earlier, firmer this time, not allowing Trip to verbally wiggle his way out.
“Uh,” Trip stammers for a moment, “well, you know the first few, I was just doing my job…”
Hoshi rolls her eyes. “And after you realised it was a timeloop?”
“Just… stuff.”
Hoshi raises an eyebrow. “Stuff like what?”
Trip opens his mouth, closes it again. “You know. Tried different breakfast orders. Punched a guy in the mess once.”
Malcolm has questions about that, but doesn’t get a chance to voice them.
“Tried to teach myself the cello – did you know Danvers has one on board? Failed at that. Uh, jumped out an airlock… with a suit, I mean. Once. Just to see.”
There’s a beat of silence.
“Jesus,” Hoshi mutters again, setting her padd down properly this time.
Malcolm leans forward, his voice lower, more serious. “Trip, how many loops has it been?”
Trip stares past both of them for a moment, jaw working. “I stopped counting around seventy.”
“Seventy?” Hoshi echoes. “Trip!”
“I said I stopped counting! It’s probably been more.”
He lets that hang for a moment, the weight of it finally registering.
“Fuck.” Malcolm mumbles, leaning back again. “Are you… I mean…”
Trip shrugs. “I mean. I tried some… exploring, you know.”
“Exploring.”
“Like, personal growth stuff. Internal exploration. That sort of thing.”
There’s a pause.
Malcolm narrows his eyes. “Did any of this… exploration involve T’Pol?”
Trip stiffens visibly.
Hoshi’s eyebrows shoot up. “Oh my god.”
“No!” Trip says quickly. Too quickly. “I mean… She figured it out in loop 23. Said I wasn’t taking it seriously. That I needed to reflect or something. And then she meditated at me for an hour.”
“She meditated at you?” Hoshi says.
“She just… stared. And then told me to try again.”
Hoshi looks like she’s trying very hard not to laugh.
“And I went back in the next loop to try again, but it, uh…” He trails off, his face doing something complicated.
The two of them exchange a glance, the laughter gone from Hoshi’s face.
“Trip. Did you seduce T’Pol in a loop where she wouldn’t remember it?”
He recoils instantly. “What? No! What the hell, do you think…? That’s… I mean… She initiated it!”
There’s a beat of dead silence.
His eyes go wide. “Shit.”
Malcolm sits back with a low whistle.
“Oh my god,” Hoshi says again, this time sounding both scandalized and deeply entertained. “You did.”
Trip drops his head into his hands. “I hate both of you.”
Malcolm smirks. “Did she call it an experiment?”
“Shut up, Malcolm.”
The way he seems to be attempting to bury his head into the table is enough for Malcolm to take pity on him. “Okay. Let’s assume this isn’t just some elaborate stress-induced hallucination…”
“It’s not!”
“… then there’s got to be a reason it’s just you, right? So either you touched something you shouldn’t have…”
“Not recently,” Trip mumbles.
“…or, something wants you to solve… something.”
“I am trying to solve it!”
“Trip,” Hoshi says, crossing her arms. “Be honest. Have you spent more loops trying to get out of it, or more loops just… messing around?”
Trip deflates again, and this time it’s more like a balloon losing air than someone who’s annoyed. “I was lonely,” he says quietly. “You ever know no one’s gonna remember anything you say? It gets... weird.”
That sobers them both.
“Well,” Malcolm says after a moment. “You’ve got us now. Might as well use the loop to do something productive. Like figure out how to bring other people in.”
“You think that’s possible?”
Hoshi nods. “Memory's a function of perception. If we can anchor something, uh, maybe in the comms system? If we get Phlox on board we might be able to do something neuro- linguistically…” She trails off, deep in thought.
Trip perks up. “That thing you did with the Romulan code?”
“Exactly.”
Malcolm glances at his padd, thoughtful. “I’ve got an idea too. Something with the ship’s internal sensors. We might be able to leave a kind of breadcrumb.”
Trip finally smiles, small but real. “So we’re doing this.”
“We’re doing this,” Hoshi confirms. Then she grins. “Unless you loop out before we get anywhere.”
Trip’s smile falters. “Yeah. That keeps happening. Sometimes mid-sentence.”
“Charming,” Malcolm mutters, standing and gathering his padd. “Well, let’s get moving before you blink out like a faulty transporter.”
Hoshi’s already typing on hers. “We’ll need Phlox. I don’t want to try anything neural without him.”
“Good luck explaining this without sounding insane,” Trip warns, rising after them.
Hoshi snorts. “Please. This is Enterprise. We’ve been possessed by space fog.”
Malcolm stops suddenly, looking over his shoulder. “Wait, what’s the reset point? When does it start?”
Trip grimaces. “Wake up in my quarters. Alarm goes off at oh-six-hundred. Tired, hungry, same dream. Sometimes I wake up already saying something weird, which is fun.”
“And how long does the loop run?” Hoshi asks. She’s still typing, filing away notes for later.
“It varies.” He admits. “On average, eight hours, maybe ten? The more I try and mess with stuff, the more unpredictable it gets.”
“That’s useful,” Malcolm says. “Also horrifying.”
They reach the turbolift. Trip hesitates before stepping in.
“I looped in the lift once,” he says quietly. “Didn’t make it to breakfast. Just… back to bed. Over and over.”
The doors slide open. Hoshi and Malcolm exchange a look before stepping inside with him.
“Well,” she says, softer now, “you made it to breakfast this time.”
Trip glances at her. “Guess that counts as progress.”
*
Phlox is halfway through feeding his small menagerie when the three of them enter. And Trip would never admit it, but there’s something comforting about sickbay; the soft sounds of animals and the man in the middle of it all, unphased by everything they throw his way.
“Good morning,” he greets them, without looking up, “is someone injured or are you here to tell me something improbable?”
Trip stops mid-stride, even as the other two continue in.
“How’d you know that?”
“Because this is Enterprise,” Phlox replies serenely, wiping his hands. “Also, Ensign Mayweather came in an hour ago swearing you’d walked through the corridor twice, and you didn’t acknowledge him either time. So. A theory?”
“I’m stuck in a timeloop.”
Phlox smiles like he’s just been told his favorite dessert is back on the menu. “Fascinating.”
Malcolm and Hoshi hop up onto one of the beds.
“Yeah.” Trip mumbles, knocking Malcolm’s leg until he shifts over enough for him to join them, “that’s one word for it.”
“Do you have any physical anomalies?” Phlox asks, already pulling out a scanner. “Unusual fatigue, memory loss, temporal scarring?”
“Got stabbed once,” Trip offers. “There’s a scar. It stayed.”
Phlox freezes, eyes bright. “A persistent injury across loops? Excellent. May I see?”
Trip groans. “Why does everyone keep asking to see the stab wound?”
“Because it proves your reality,” Hoshi says, then turns to Phlox. “Can you do anything or see if there’s something else being carried across the loops? Neural tags? Synaptic signatures?”
“Ah! Possibly.” Phlox’s hands are already moving. “We could attempt a micro-resonant frequency trace. If we embed something in the hippocampus, perhaps a stable echo pattern…”
Trip’s face falls. “That sounds like brain surgery.”
“Oh, nothing invasive,” Phlox says cheerfully. “At least, not yet.”
Malcolm claps a hand on Trip’s shoulder. “Think of it as personal growth.”
“Shut up, Malcolm.”
Phlox waves Trip over. “Hop up, Commander. If we can anchor your memory, perhaps we can extend the loop’s boundaries. Or identify the moment of interference.”
“We could put you in an MRI machine at the moment it loops.” Hoshi suggests, still tapping away at her padd.
“Wouldn’t the MRI machine just reset as well?” Malcolm points out. “We’d get no data.”
“Oh. Right.” She scrunches her nose up. “Well, it was a thought.”
Trip sighs and hops off the bed, trudging toward Phlox like a man heading to his own execution.
“You’re not going to drill into my skull or anything, right?”
“Certainly not without anesthesia,” Phlox says brightly, then gestures for him to sit.
Trip gives him a long-suffering look.
Phlox begins scanning him with the handheld device, his expression slowly shifting from curious to intrigued to quietly serious.
“Hmm.”
Trip winces. “That’s not the sound I want to hear.”
Phlox doesn’t answer right away. He turns to a console and begins pulling up neural readouts, murmuring to himself.
Hoshi hops off the bed and walks over to join him. “What are you seeing?”
Phlox tilts the monitor toward her. “This,” he says, pointing, “is a minor but persistent anomaly in the hippocampal formation. It shouldn’t be here. Not unless he’s been exposed to some kind of temporal fluctuation field. Or maybe an advanced neural feedback loop. Possibly both.”
“Is it dangerous?” Malcolm asks.
“Not unless he gets stuck like this forever,” Phlox replies with too much enthusiasm.
Trip groans and drops his head into his hands. “Great.”
“But,” Phlox continues, “it is traceable. Which means we might be able to piggyback a signal into the loop.”
Trip lifts his head. “Wait, like… send a message to myself?”
“Exactly! Something simple. A mental anchor. Perhaps an auditory cue, a specific phrase.”
Malcolm straightens. “Like a code word?”
Hoshi snaps her fingers. “Or a piece of music. Something the brain latches onto.”
Trip looks between them, cautiously hopeful. “You think that’ll work?”
Phlox smiles. “It might not fix the loop, but it could stabilize your awareness. Give you a few extra minutes before the reset kicks in.”
“I’ll take it,” Trip mutters. “God, I’ll take anything.”
Phlox begins prepping the next scan. “I’ll need to create a neurochemical marker to pair with the cue. Something distinct. Have you noticed any repeated sensations or memories that seem to trigger a reset?”
Trip hesitates. “Uh.”
All three of them turn to him.
He looks away. “...T’Pol.”
Another silence.
“Of course it’s T’Pol,” Malcolm mutters under his breath.
Trip glares at him. “Not like that. It’s just… whenever I’m done talking to her—”
“Talking.” Hoshi repeats, with audible air quotes, sending her and Malcolm into a quiet fit of giggles. Trip is too far away to hit them so he settles for a deeper glare.
“Whenever I’m done talking to her, it resets, right after. It’s happened five or six times now.”
Phlox nods, unbothered. “Emotional stimuli can be powerful anchors. It makes sense.”
Trip crosses his arms. “It’s not emotional.”
There’s another round of giggling from the two officers on the bed.
“I swear to god, you two.”
Trip mutters something incoherent and looks like he regrets everything.
Phlox pats his shoulder. “Let’s focus on the brain, shall we?”
A slim neural sensor is attached to his temple, the wires then hooked up to a small machine that Phlox wheels over. Trip reaches up to prod at the sticky patch and immediately gets his hand slapped away.
“Try to relax, Commander.”
He resists the urge to glare – reminds himself that Phlox is in charge of all of his medical issues – and shifts uncomfortably. “That’s a lot harder than you’re trying to make it sound.”
Phlox smiles in response. “I just need to tune the stimulus. The idea is to introduce a non-invasive echo trace…”
Malcolm slides closer, leaning over Trip’s shoulder to peer at the device. “What kind of stimulus?”
“Electrical,” Phlox says. “Very mild.”
Trip rolls his eyes. “Of course it’s a shock. Of course.”
He shifts again, mumbling under his breath about invasive and cruel medical procedures. Malcolm pats his arm in mock sympathy – he’s smirking when Trip glances up – his hand resting briefly on Trip’s wrist.
Before he can take his hand back, the scanner wines, all the lights above them flicker and Trip just has enough time to see Hoshi glance up in surprise…
…and suddenly he’s back in bed.
The alarm that has been bothering him for seventy plus cycles blares in his ear and he slaps at it half-hearted. The room looks exactly the same when he sits up, and his head is pounding a rhythm he doesn’t recognise.
“God damn it.”
He shrugs on his uniform – taking note of the scar that had been pointed out to him – and exits, heading back towards the mess to re-explain the situation to Malcolm and Hoshi.
Except, when he stumbles over the step out of his room, Malcolm is already stood there. Squinting.
Trip pulls up short.
Malcolm is staring at him with a very un-Malcolm expression – something like disbelief, rapidly evolving into tightly coiled panic.
“Uh, Malcolm?”
Malcolm squints harder. “Trip. What… what day is it?”
“Oh hell.”
Malcolm steps forward, unheeding of the crewmen that are being forced to dodge around him. “Trip. What…” he raises his hands to press them to his forehead. “You said you were in a loop. You said you’d been stabbed. There was a scar. You told Phlox. I touched your wrist…”
“Oh, good.” He replies, feeling suddenly optimistic about the situation, “you remember.”
The grim nod he gets in response suggests that Malcolm is not feeling the same optimism. “We pulled me in.”
The weight of that realisation hangs in the silence between them.
Malcolm exhales hard. “I remember everything.”
“Well,” Trip claps him on the shoulder, trying not to seem too relieved, “congrats. You’re in the club now.”
Malcolm doesn’t smile. “How do I make it stop?”
“Yep. That’s the million-dollar question.”
Malcolm looks like he’s still computing the full implications. “You mean to tell me I’m stuck in this with you now?”
Trip shrugs. “Unless it was a fluke. Might’ve been the scan. Or the shock. Or the physical contact.”
They both pause.
Then Malcolm narrows his eyes. “If it’s contact, then you’ve been grabbing people’s arms this whole time, haven’t you?”
The weight of T’Pol’s name hangs between them for a moment.
“I mean, I also grabbed Hoshi at one point in the last loop,” he offers weakly, “and she’s not also…”
Malcolm cuts him off with a sharp breath. “Of course. Of course it’s me who gets stuck with you.”
The grin he gets in response is notably sheepish. “You know, we’ve looped together for thirty seconds and you’re already on the edge of losing it.”
“I am losing it.” He replies. “This is going to be a nightmare.”
“Yeah, yeah, come on. We’ve got things to test and I think we need to visit T’Pol.”
Malcolm reluctantly falls into step beside him. “And I need to be there for that… because?”
“You’re in the loop too.”
“We have already established that.”
Trip shrugs. “Maybe you’re necessary.”
“Hey,”
They both look up to see Travis heading toward them.
“Oh, good.” Malcolm grabs his arm and drags him along with them. “You can come too.”
“Sure, yeah, where are we going?”
“See T’Pol.” Trip informs him. “Oh, hey, you don’t feel like you’ve lived this day before, do you?”
“Uh. No?”
“Ok. Mal and I are stuck in a timeloop, so.”
“You’re stuck in a timeloop,” Malcolm corrects, “and you dragged me in on the last reset.”
Travis glances between them. “And… why are we going to see T’Pol?”
“Because apparently, I keep looping out every time I talk to her. She’s probably connected somehow.”
Travis snickers slightly. “OK. Sure.”
“I hate all three of you.”
“Hoshi’s not even here.”
“I don’t care. I hate her as well.”
He gets another round of laughter from the two junior officers in response.
“And I hate this loop.”
The science wing is empty when they round the corner, only the difference in flooring signifying any change, and that’s not unusual considering how early it is. Still, T’Pol is already at the central console in her lab, scanning through data with her usual calm precision.
She doesn’t look up. “I was not expecting visitors this early.”
Trip shrugs, despite the fact that she cannot see him. “What is early, really?”
That does make her look up. She stares at Trip for a beat, then shifts her gaze to Malcolm and Travis.
“Was there something you needed?”
Trip takes a cautious step closer. “Listen, I know how this sounds, but—”
“You have been experiencing repeated subjective time loops, originating sometime between 0600 and approximately 1600 hours,” she says calmly.
Trip blinks. “...Yeah.”
Next to them, Travis shifts. “Just me, huh?”
He’s ignored.
“How the hell do you know that?”
“I did not,” she replies. “Until just now.”
Trip frowns. “But you just said—”
“I have inferred that data from your behaviour over the past… iterations.”
Trip and Malcolm exchange a glance.
“Wait,” Trip says slowly. “You remember?”
“I do not recall specific events. But I have experienced a growing sense of... dissonance. As though decisions I have not yet made are already exerting influence on my present state.”
Malcolm mutters, “That’s deeply comforting.”
T’Pol ignores him. She finally gives Trip her full attention. “I believe our proximity during your previous visits may be relevant.”
“Uh huh.”
He sounds strangled enough that Malcolm bothers to whack him between his shoulder blades, a move that is heavily not appreciated.
Trip rubs the back of his neck. “Right. About that. I may have, uh... shown up here a few times.”
Malcolm coughs. “Understatement of the year.”
T’Pol tilts her head. “And how did those encounters typically end?”
Trip shifts. “Honestly? Usually with you telling me I was wasting your time.”
“I see.”
“And once you meditated at me.”
She pauses to think about that one. “I believe I was attempting to centre your perception.”
“I don’t think it worked.”
Malcolm pokes him in the arm. “And the other thing. The, uh, initiation…”
Trip stamps on his foot, hard enough that he cuts off partway through the sentence to make a pained groan.
T’Pol does not react. “I recall that.”
“Initiation?” Travis repeats, in the background.
“Wait, wait.” Trip brings both his hands up to his face in a misguided attempt to cover up the way he has flushed red. “You, uh, you remember that?”
“I remember... the aftermath,” she says. “Impressions. Not full sequences. I believe the more emotionally charged the interaction, the more likely fragments are retained on a subconscious level.”
“Oh,” Travis offers in the background, “so, the universe is powered by, like, awkwardness?”
Malcolm turns to laugh slightly at the phrasing, but they’re ignored by the other two.
“Well, maybe if you remember it as well, we could get Phlox to hook you up with those sensors too.”
T’Pol considers. “Did you get any useful information from those?”
“We, uh, we haven’t been back to sickbay yet.”
“I see.”
“Hey,” Travis interjects, ignoring Trip’s mumbled threat that ‘this better be useful,’ “if multiple people are remembering, maybe we could use that as some sort of anchor. Or a control variable in an experiment.”
T’Pol visibly considers this. “A reasonable suggestion, Ensign.”
“Thank you, ma’am.”
“It would, however, require controlled repetition.”
Trip’s eyes widen. “You want me to loop on purpose?”
She meets his gaze. “Do you wish to solve this problem or not?”
“Yeah, Jesus, OK.”
Malcolm pats his shoulder. “Hope you have fun.”
“Are you kidding? You’re coming with me.”
T’Pol turns back to her console. “If we are to make use of the loop, we must synchronize our actions and isolate environmental constants. I suggest beginning with a 0600 meeting. Bring Ensign Sato as well.”
Trip nods. “Got it.”
T’Pol pauses. “And Commander?”
“Yeah?”
Her gaze is steady. “Do not attempt to recreate… the loop we mentioned earlier.”
Travis raises an innocent eyebrow. “Hey, what happened in that loop?”
“Shut up.”
T’Pol glances back over her shoulder, as though she’s expecting them to have already left. “You have approximately seven hours remaining. I suggest you use them wisely.”
Trip sighs. “Right. Great. Timeloop team meeting at dawn. Fantastic.”
“We don’t have to do what she says.” Malcolm points out, once they’re in the corridor. “You could go back to trying to figure this out on your own.”
“No. No, I… we should do what she says. I think this is… I think she’s important.”
“It could be that.” Malcolm agrees. “Or it could just be that you’re in love with her.”
Trip glares at him. “Are we doing breakfast or what?”
But the words set off something in his mind, a careful replay of everything that has happened, and he sits in silence for the rest of the loop. Thinking.
*
The alarm buzzes again. More times than he remembers counting, and he wake with a groan, the previous loop rattling in his mind.
When he sits up, he scrubs a hand down his face like he has almost every other time. But there’s no frustration this time, no panic, just a slowly dawning realisation that he’s known for a while what he needs to do.
He gets up. Dresses slowly. Doesn’t even curse when he stubs his toe.
T’Pol is already there, of course. The room is quiet, dim with pre-shift lighting. She doesn’t look up.
“I assumed you’d return.”
Trip enters without fanfare. His voice is softer than usual. “Yeah. I think I figured it out.”
She turns to face him fully, leans back on the console. “Oh?”
Instead of responding immediately he crosses the room, perches next to her so he doesn’t have to look her in the eye, and feels her turn to look at him.
“Yeah. This whole thing… I thought maybe it was about solving a puzzle. Or maybe it was science based, I mean Malcolm even asked if I’d touched something recently, but I haven’t.”
She listens, quietly, doesn’t say anything.
“And… maybe it wasn’t. I mean, Mal said something last loop, and I think he… it was something I was too afraid to admit to myself.”
She still doesn’t say anything, and he turns to look, just to make sure she’s still there.
He takes a breath, steps closer. “It’s… we work well together, right?”
“I would say so, yes.”
“Right. And… we got close, doing the neuropressure, right?”
“Yes.”
“Right. So, um. I think… or, well, I guess I know, that I kind of fell in love with you. During everything.”
She’s very still. He can’t even feel her breath on his face, like she’s holding it for fear of spoiling the moment, and that more than anything gives him the courage to push on.
“The… in the loop where we… yeah. Well, I didn’t mean for it to happen, I wouldn't… not when I thought you couldn’t remember, but… I did come back, trying to talk to you again. Over and over. Because I missed you. Even when you didn’t know me.”
T’Pol swallows. He watches the line of her throat bob as she does, and feels his body sway towards her without his input. She catches his shoulders with strong, warm hands.
“I have always known you.”
He laughs, a wet sound, from the tears that are forming in his eyes. “Yeah, I guess you have.”
“You believe this admission will break the loop.”
He shrugs. “Maybe. It was worth a shot, if nothing else.”
“And if it doesn’t?” Her voice doesn’t shake, but this close he can see something in her eyes – something scared.
“Then… I guess I’ll come back and tell you again. Maybe it’ll be easier the second time.”
“Tell me again now.”
He breaths out, presses their foreheads together and feels her hands come up to cup his face. “I love you. I’m in love with you.”
Her thumbs brush away the tears that have slipped free. “I think I have been waiting for you to say that.”
“Well, that’s something.”
T’Pol’s expression softens almost imperceptibly. “If this is the final loop, what comes next?”
“I don’t know,” he says honestly. “But I figure we’ll find out together.”
She leans up, just briefly, to press their lips together. “Perhaps, we could start with breakfast?”
“Oh?” A grin breaks out across his face. “Are you asking me on a date?”
She doesn’t answer, but her hands linger on his face as she steps back, and when she turns, she waits just half a second longer than necessary before walking toward the door.
Trip follows, still smiling.
They find Malcolm, Hoshi, and Travis at a table – Malcolm clearly in the middle of a wildly unhelpful explanation, judging by Travis’s expression.
T’Pol brushes her hand briefly against Trip’s arm. “Coffee?”
“Yeah. I’ll go wrangle the children.”
Trip approaches the table. Malcolm narrows his eyes. “What happened? You look… different.”
Trip drops into a chair. “Tried a new approach. Might’ve worked.”
“Oh?”
He rubs the back of his neck. “Turns out all I had to do to fix time was confess my tragic, loop-breaking feelings. Classic stuff.”
Hoshi lights up. “Oh my god, it was a feelings loop the whole time!”
Malcolm groans. “I told you it was a ‘grow as a person’ loop.”
Trip points at him. “I hate that you were right.”
T’Pol sets a coffee down in front of him, joining him with her own tea.
“We will need to investigate whether the loop created external anomalies,” she says evenly.
“I should check the comm logs,” Hoshi says, already rising. “Make sure we didn’t miss anything from Starfleet while you two were having feelings.”
“I’ll come,” Malcolm says, standing.
There’s a beat. Hoshi kicks Travis under the table.
“Huh? Oh. Yeah. I’ll come too. You guys, uh… have fun.”
Trip watches them go. “Subtle.”
T’Pol slides her hand into his under the table. “Perhaps not. But it’s nice they are thinking of us.”
He smiles. “Yeah. I guess it is.”
Malcolm glances back through the closing doors, watching Trip and T’Pol lean into each other over their mugs.
“So,” he mutters, “do we remind them that several of those loops technically violated about a dozen Starfleet regs?”
Hoshi hits his arm. “Let him have it. He got stabbed for this.”
Malcolm exhales. “Fine. But if time starts fracturing again, I’m putting in for immediate shore leave.”