Chapter Text
2257
The long, embroidered sleeve of T’pol’s burgundy robe folded into the dirt as she bent down. Carefully pushing a hori hori into the sandy Vulcan soil, she slowly pulled out a small flowering Trill plant, roots forming a scraggly dance in her hands. In her later years, T’pol had taken to gardening. It calmed her, the monotony of watering plants, pulling weeds, harvesting peppers -- a spicier addition to her staple diet since her time aboard Enterprise and the Chronos -- letting her take time to think and process her emotions. Plus, adding to the sandy soil to be amenable to grow much of anything had been a challenge for the mind T’pol sorely needed after retiring her commission.
Gently cupping the plant she had freed in one hand, T’pol vaguely covered over the new hole she had created before grabbing the hori hori and heading inside her sleek, gray house a few meters away.
The moment T’pol entered the threshold, though, she could hear the incessant beeping of her computer at the entrance of the other room. She had gotten a message and likely a lot of them by the sound of the alert noises. Sighing, the old woman placed her gardening tool on the round wooden table in the center of the room -- a table with two chairs, one noticeably empty for a while, collecting a thin layer of dust.
Plant still in her hand, T’pol rushed over to the other room. While she had been outside, she had gotten a missed call and about three missed comm messages from Admiral Carmin. Frowning, T’pol cleared the notifications so her computer would be quiet for a minute and returned to the main room.
She’d answer him in a minute, but now she had to deal with the plant in her hand, roots loose and dirt getting all over her pristine floor. A small terracotta pot was already waiting for her with some Terran clay soil filling it halfway. She dug a well in it with her hand and let the Trill plant fall in, covering the corners with the leftover Terran soil.
On her last mission with the Chronos, T’pol’s pilot had given her a couple seeds of a plant native to the Trill’s backyard as a parting thank-you gift. T’pol had been strangely touched by the action and even though she never saw her old pilot in-person again, she swore to preserve the plant as long as she could. The seeds of the seeds propagated from the ones first given to T’pol almost forty years ago live on in her hands now.
T’pol didn’t consider herself a sentimental person, but after Hoshi died, she had gained a lot more regard for the human idea. In many ways, she carried on the concern and regard for the life of her bandmate when she died. This plant seemed to represent the time she spent on the Chronos and the gifts, physical and otherwise from everyone under her captaincy. The Trill plant needed to be first started in the ground before being in a dark, moist area for a few months in clay soil to simulate the conditions native to the Trill caves it is native to. Plant transplanted to her liking, T’pol filled a cup and drizzled water over the soil to pack it down, and placed it in a cabinet under her sink.
Disregarding the new trail of dirt on the floor, her home was mostly the image of Vulcan design. Everything was clean and tidy, but there was an eclectic sense to some of the decor, representing old trips or faraway friends from planets flung far. There was also a distinct air of something missing in the house as if the home itself had been holding its breath since Hoshi died.
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Walking with the deliberate steps of someone turning one hundred and seventy in less than a year, T’pol sat down at her desk before opening the Admiral’s message. She called him back on VC, preferring talking face-to-face when possible. T’pol had learned that however illogical, humans communicated a lot through non-verbal cues and liked to see the other person’s face to pick up on little things.
After a couple of seconds, they picked up, the garish yellow of their command uniform popping onto T’pol’s screen with a ping. Her old computer -- at least a decade out of date, with software sorely in need of an update -- displayed both of them on a split screen. T’pol’s clean bowl cut had grown into somewhat of a shaggy mullet in her old age (resembling T’pau’s old cut too close to be unintentional). Her skin was etched with wrinkles of a life spent among the stars. Admiral Carmin, on the other hand, wore his new Starfleet uniform with dignity, it’s bright gold complimenting their sandy skin.
“Admiral Carmin. Please excuse my tardiness. Why have you called me?”
“Captain! It’s good to see you. What has it been? Forty...two years since you retired your commission? I was barely a cadet. Anyway, I should be the one apologizing for my tardiness actually,” they chuckled, and T’pol refrained from commenting on how long it had taken them to get to a point: by the smile on their face, they meant well. “Starfleet is planning on launching The Enterprise again. The new one… that was obvious. Anyway, Captain Pike is taking her on a five-year mission of exploration and we would like you to give a speech at the launch because you’re the only member of Archer’s first team still alive and this ship is such a legacy as the first exploration vessel…. not that you and Commander Sato didn’t done great work on the Chronos resolving the effects of Terra Prime too… oh and uh speaking of Terra Prime, the first Vulcan-Human hybrid officer is serving on the five-year mission and considering your… history we-”
T’pol gave them a bemused raised eyebrow.
“I’m sorry sir. I was rambling there. I-It’s my first call like this and Starfleet Command is a little stretched right now. Please excuse my lapse of… logic there.”
She gave them a half smile and a nod to go on. Carmin had clearly been rifling through a couple of Padds while they spoke to her, hands moving fast as they explained the situation. The admiral seemed so put together at the beginning of the call, but she had observed humans tended to project an aura of responsibility when it often wasn’t earned. Not that she was going to hold it against him. In her time… babysitting the officers of Enterprise she had certainly seen nerves rattle people worse. If she could end up bonded to Hoshi, not making sense in a few languages when she first came aboard the ship, she could get through a strange briefing.
“Thank you, sir,” Carmin pulled down his shirt on the other end of the call, clearly pulling up a new page on his Padd, “Anyway, we would like to formally request you to give the keynote speech at the launch of Starfleet’s first five-year mission of exploration and scientific discovery.”
T’pol paused. The answer was on her lips but-
It had been too long since she’d been in Starfleet, and frankly too long since she’d left Vulcan too. Would she be able to relate to this new crew? She wouldn’t be on the five-year mission but still-?
The time since she first joined Starfleet was marked with so much loss. First was Malcolm, “the self-sacrificing idiot” as Trip so fondly called him. Then Jon and Trip not long after each other, both dying in the line of fire barely over fifty-five. It took her a while to fully accept their deaths, but Hoshi kept assuring her it’s how they would have wanted to go. Trip had never really been the same after Malcolm died anyway.
After Elizabeth’s death and their subsequent breakup, T’pol’s relationship with Trip had been shaky, but it hurt in an oddly poignant way to see him go. Their romance had never been genuine or truly good for either of them, and Terra Prime was only the last straw.
Humans were so susceptible to illness and space travel was so riddled with danger. Denobulans lived longer than humans, but that didn’t stop the shrapnel from the war hospital Phlox was volunteering at. Travis and Hoshi were the youngest of the original crew, but all good things must come to an end. Travis was old and wrinkled by the time he died, but Hoshi? Hoshi was still T’pol’s first officer on the Chronos when she fell from a phaser blast on an away mission never to truly regain consciousness.
Hoshi had been so full of life, of love.
During the first few years, T’pol had intentionally stayed closed off from the humans. She saw herself as a babysitter, the assignment as almost a punishment. Once she joined Starfleet, though, she began to see herself as a member of the crew. Not at the attending-senior-staff-basketball-games level of a crew member, but she allowed herself to go to movie nights, try new foods, and even go on a date or two. Now she was in an odd limbo: not that she’d ever admit it, but she harbored a lot of emotions towards her old crew, and at the same time T’pol still followed a code of logic. She wasn’t as touchy as her friends, not as expressive, but her emotions maybe ran further.
Oh Surak, if T’Les could see her now.
There was a certain curse that came when T’pol got attached -- completely logically, of course -- to the crew of Enterprise: she got to see the joy of her friends, the smiles and late night sleepovers in Engineering. But also, she got to see the loss, feel the loss of them and live to deal with it. T’pol was beginning to realize why most Vulcans refrained from friendship with humans.
The more time passed since her friends’ death, the shorter she had to meditate at night, but controlling her emotions would never be as simple as before she joined the crew of Enterprise.
T’pol’s entire crew was gone, most of her human connections dead or old. She had been at the unveiling of Captain April’s Enterprise and it had felt so foreign. And this time there was going to be a successful Vulcan-Human child on the ship? T’pol had heard of him. T’pau’s grandson… Spock? After Elizabeth died, she wasn’t sure if she should go meet the boy, not sure if she wanted to sort through her emotions surrounding Elizabeth’s death.
T’pol was filled with reservations about accepting the admiral’s offer but humans believe that sometimes you have to follow your instincts. A very illogical approach, but one she had come to embrace.
She wasn’t sure logically she wanted to go back to Earth, to be among humans again, but something inside her was tugging her to San Francisco, to the dusted navy blue uniform in her closet.
“I would be honored to give a speech to the launch of this five-year mission,” T’pol said simply.
“Oh good! I was worried there for a second,” Admiral Carmin chuckled, T’pol quietly thinking that she was worried too. “I can send a transport in two days, there’s already a ship headed to Vulcan on the way to San Francisco. Thank you again, Captain.”
With a small wave, Carmin closed their comm line. It was quiet again, save for T’pol’s thoughts. She sat there for a second before getting up again. There were a few more Trill plants to repot. She would think about the speech tomorrow.