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T’Pol and Trip had been working for hours trying to figure out how to disable Sphere 41, still hoping it was the key to disarming the Builders’ network and saving Earth and who knew how many planets.
Every idea T’Pol shared was knocked down by Trip. They were dangerous, yes. But they were running out of options. And time. Tension and irritation had been bubbling underneath T’Pol’s skin for days, and when Trip had the gall to say HE was the one trying not to make a liar out of the captain’s claim that the sphere network could be disabled, some of those emotions leaked out.
“We.”
“What do you mean by that?”
“You’ve dismissed all of my proposals.”
“When you come up with one that doesn’t involve blowing ourselves up, I’ll be a little more enthusiastic.”
“Well, you might surprise me with an idea of your own.” The comment was even more catty than T’Pol had anticipated as it left her lips, and it drove Trip from his chair and to her side, mere inches from her face.
“Maybe you haven’t had time to meditate, I don’t know. But whatever’s going on with you lately, I’ve had about enough.” Trip’s words were cold. "I’ll work on this in engineering. Call me if you have anymore brilliant ideas.” He was to the door when she responded.
“Wait.” She said it quietly. Barely a whisper that was probably lost in the whoosh of the opening door. “Trip!”
She turned to face him at the same time he looked back for her. Their eyes met and beneath the anger she could see something else in him. Concern.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I am…I’m struggling.”
Trip sighed and rubbed his hand across his eyes.
“I know,” he said. The irritation faded to tiredness “We’re all struggling-”
“No,” she interjected. “You don’t understand.”
Maybe it was the shake in her voice. The emotion that she couldn’t hold in check despite all her best efforts. But whatever it was, it brought Trip back into the room. He slid the door shut behind him and stepped close to her.
“What is it?” he asked. “What’s wrong?”
“It’s…” T’Pol drew a deep breath and couldn’t stop the shake of it on exhale. This wasn’t how she wanted to do this. She didn’t want to do this at all, but something inside of her knew that if she didn’t, she might never, and that would be ruinous. “It’s the Trellium D.”
“Trellium D?” Trip’s brow furrowed. “That’s been locked down tight. A leak would have shown on sensors.”
“No,” T’Pol corrected. “It’s not a leak. For a while I was…I was using it.”
“For what?”
“To understand…to FEEL…” T’Pol couldn’t finish, but it didn’t matter. Trip understood, and his eyes widened.
“Let me get this straight,” he said after a deep breath. “This ship’s been flying around the expanse all year, hitting anomaly after anomaly and taking damage because it doesn’t have the Trellium D insulation because of what it would do to you … and all this team you’ve been exposing yourself to the stuff anyway? For what? For kicks?!
“Trip-”
“T’Pol!” They both fell silent for a moment before Trip continued. “We put ourselves in danger to protect you. To keep you safe. And you…” Trip let the words trail off, too angry to even finish. “I’ll … I’ll be in engineering,” he said as he waved a hand dismissively at her and exited the situation room command center, closing the door behind him
T’Pol sat alone in her quarters. The flame of her already small candle had long since burned itself out. She knew she should have replaced it when she’d had the chance when they first entered the expanse and found that market that sold slave girl spies on the side. But she hadn’t, and now her last meditative assistance was gone. Just when she needed it most. She closed her eyes and took a deep breath, trying once again to find her center.
The door chimed.
She tuned it out, continuing her slow, steady breaths.
It chimed again.
Breathe in. Breathe out. Clear your mind.
She could hear in this state the sound of a few taps on the security panel, and she could almost imagine the weight of the thumb pressed against the override button. The door creaked open.
“T’Pol?”
“I didn’t say come in.” She neither opened her eyes nor looked in his direction.
“Sorry,” Trip said. “Can I come in?”
She opened one eye and glanced at him from the corner of it.
“It seems you already have.”
“Yeah,” Trip said with a sigh as he stepped fully into the room and shut the door behind him “I’m…I…I brought you some food.” He held up a black bowl and tilted it in her direction so she could see the pile of greens and other vegetables. “We’re smack in the middle of Phlox’s mandatory 20-minute R and R period.”
“I’m not hungry.”
“I’ll just…I’ll just leave it here, then.” Cautiously he approached her, reached out and set the bowl down on the bench beside her. He took several steps back, shuffled his feet a bit and finally moved for the door. “I’ll get out of your hair,” he said. The door opened, he stepped through it, and it had almost closed again before he stopped it, stepped back into the room in a hurry and forcefully pushed it closed.
“I”m sorry,” he said loudly and firmly.
“For what?”
“For what? For everything I said back there!”
“You were correct,” T’Pol said. “I put the ship and the crew at great risk. Your anger over that was more than justified.”
“Would you just stop being so damned logical for a second,” he said as sat down next to her. His hands clenched into fists of frustration and relaxed again as he took a deep breath and rubbed at his forehead. “I mean, yeah, it was the wrong thing to do,” he said. “But I’ve been saying for months that if you wanted to talk I’d listen. I’ve been pestering you to open up just once and when you do? I just completely lose my head. What kind of a … I mean who does that?”
“Most humans,” she said, finally turning her head to look at him. “Perhaps we should both be ‘sorry’ and move on.”
“Yeah.” Trip said. “Good idea.” He opened is mouth and was about to speak again when a loud rumbling came from his stomach.
“Damn,” he said. “I wasn’t too hungry when I stopped by Chef’s either.” He nodded at the bowl. “You mind?”
“Please,” she said with her own nod. Gratefully, Trip picked up the bowl and jammed the fork inside, bringing a forkful of spinach, lettuce and carrot to his mouth. For a moment, he chewed in silence, nothing but the crunching of vegetables filling the air.
“You know,” he said finally around a mouthful as he rooted around the bowl, “there’s something I don’t understand.” He was quiet again for a second, took a breath and got maybe half a word out before interrupting himself. “What in the world is that?” he said as he held up the fork, on which he had speared a fleshy, layered, green-tinted ingredient. Briefly, she glanced at it.
“It is an artichoke heart.”
“A wha- a heart? I thought you vegetarian?”
“It’s from the core of the plant- it’s from your world” she said, unable to mask the disbelief in her voice.
“Well, excuse me,” he said with something she was pretty sure was a gently teasing tone. “You know, my mama was a simple lady when it came to salads. Nothing you tear open and rip a heart out of.” He popped the vegetable in his mouth and chewed before wrinkling his nose. “Oh, that is not good,” with great effort he swallowed and expelled a hissing breath, almost like he was trying to expel the flavor from his mouth and memory. “That is not good at all.”
“Perhaps it requires a more discerning palette,” T’Pol said.
Trip moved his fork around the bowl before looking up at here.
“There are at least three more of these things in here,” he said. He tipped the bowl in her direction, gave a look T’Pol felt certain Ensign Sato would describe as “puppy dog eyes” and extended the fork and bowl to her. Shaking her head, T’Pol accepted, fished out the offending hearts and popped them into her mouth before returning the bowl and utensil to Trip, who smiled and went back to eating.
For a while, that was the only sound. If anything, Trip was conspicuously silent, and it wasn’t until T’Pol had swallowed that she thought she understood why. He was giving her an out. Whatever topic he was about to broach, he’d gotten cold feet about asking, deflected and was waiting to see if she picked it up. Putting the onus on her to decide if she wanted to talk about what had happened between them.
Maybe it was the emotions. Maybe it was the illogic of it. But she was tired of dancing around and reinforcing walls between them because it was easier than having a real conversation.
“What were you going to ask?” she said quietly.
“Hmm?”
“What don’t you understand?”
Trip glanced at her from the corner of his eye before nodding, setting the bowl down on the table to his left and wiping at his mouth.
There was a slight flutter in T’Pol’s stomach.
“I guess…” Trip paused, looking for the right words and running his tongue over his teeth, perhaps looking for stray greens, “I don’t understand why,” he finally finished. “Why would you do that to yourself, knowing what Trellium does to Vulcans?”
T’Pol nodded and closed her eyes briefly, searching for the memory that would help her explain herself to Trip.
“When I was on the Soleya,” she said, opening her eyes and looking at him. “As the Trellium they were using to insulate the ship began to effect me, I felt all these…emotions.” The words came out of her mouth with the tone of someone who didn’t know what to do or think about something that had been presented to them. Sort of like an artichoke heart. “When I was young,” she continued, “I struggled to control my emotions. All Vulcans do. Getting a grasp on suppression is a primary part of our education from the moment we’re old enough to understand words. I have no memory of not actively trying to dull and squash what I was feeling, until complete suppression was as natural to me as breathing. So, when I was confronted with all of these emotions that I couldn’t tamp down, I couldn’t eradicate, I couldn’t control, it was overwhelming. It was exhilarating. I wanted more.”
“I’ve seen the logs from sickbay,” Trip said. “You wanted more terror, fear, paranoia and rage?”
“No,” T’Pol breathed as she turned her body to look at him. “No, I wanted…” she paused, desperately looking for the right words. Her head tilted slightly in thought before she leaned back and began to speak, no longer in the rushed tones of before but something calmer. Something more Vulcan but also entirely not.
“Do you know how Vulcans greet each other?” she asked.
“Uh…hello?”
“No. A common greeting for us is ‘It is agreeable to see you.’”
“Oookay, I don’t…I don’t follow?”
“I wanted to know what it was like to feel ‘good’ to see someone,” she said. “To look at someone and feel a rush of excitement and happiness. I wanted to understand joy and humor and desire and love…” she trailed off, the last word dying at her lips almost as soon as it left but the damage was done.
“You don’t, I mean, Vulcans don’t feel love?”
“Not the way you do,” she said. “It’s…different for us.”
So did, uh, did it work? Did you feel…”
“I felt some things. It was not what I anticipated.”
“What did you feel?”
“Shame, mostly. Regret. Fear.” She looked at him briefly before looking away, but not before he saw the tears unshed in her eyes. “Sadness.”
“Why?” Trip’s brow crinkled and he scooted closer to her.
“Look at me,” she said. “I’m, as you would say, a wreck. I can’t control these feelings, I put everyone in danger, and I can’t…I can’t go back.” The words rushed out of her mouth and she could feel an unfamiliar heat behind her eyes. “I can’t undo the damage I did to my neural pathways. And these emotions will be with me forever.”
“You don’t know that. It’s not like Phlox has access to the most recent research here, and in time-”
“I do know,” she said. “When we encountered the alternate Enterprise — the one that had been transported 150 years into the past...”
“Lorian’s ship,” Trip said, the memory of the son he'd barely gotten to know caused him to look down at his feet.
“Yes. While they were here, I went on to that ship. I spoke to the older version of myself. She told me. This is my life, now, Trip,” T’Pol said. “And if this is how it is — if I can’t control these emotions, if I can’t suppress them anymore, am I even Vulcan? What am I?” Her whole body tensed as she leaned into the wall and squeezed her eyes shut. Her fingers clenched and unclenched until she couldn’t just sit there anymore. She rose to her feet, pacing the small the room, shaking out her hands. “I apologize,” she said. “I’m trying to control…” the words faded with her breaths.
“You don’t have to,” Trip said.
“What?”
“Look, I know I can be kind of an emotional guy, and that’s probably not for you, but one thing I’ve learned is that the harder you try to fight your feelings, the harder they’ll punch you in the face when you least expect it. I can’t pretend to know what it’s like for you, being Vulcan — because you ARE Vulcan, no matter what — but maybe…maybe if you’ve got these feelings, just let them be. Stop trying to push them down and let them out instead.”
For a moment she just stared at him.
“I can…I can go if you need some privacy.”
He stood and made for the door and it was almost magnetic the way she reached out, grabbing his wrist. As he turned back in surprise, an aged yet familiar voice rang in the back of her brain.
“Trip can be an outlet for these feelings…if you’ll trust him.”
“I…” words stuck in her throat as her breath came in shallow gasps. She could feel an uncontrollable quiver in her lip and a tightness in her chest that fought for release until she couldn’t hold back a sob. She dropped his arm and brought her hands to her own face, covering the snarl of anguish that ran through her like fire until something inside her snapped and she brought both fists down into her thighs, and then she was falling.
And then he was there.
Trip wrapped his arms around her, lifted her back up and held her tight. With her face pressed against his uniform, she could feel her tears as they bled into the rough fabric and the breath of her cries as it condensed with nowhere else to go.
“It’s okay,” he said softly. “It’s all right.”
“No,” she wailed. “No, it’s not, how could I do this to myself?! How?!”
“You made a mistake,” he said. “Everyone does.”
“Not like this.” She turned her head, eager to escape the dampening cloth, only to find the side of her face pressed against Trip’s neck. She felt certain he would push her away in disgust as her tears, saliva and even nasal fluid smeared across his skin, but he only held her tighter.
“I’m sorry you’re going through this,” he said. His voice was thick with emotion, and she couldn’t understand how he made it seem so easy nor how his words washed over her like a soothing balm that began to release the tension in her muscles, slow her heart and bring even keel back to her breath.
No, she didn’t know how that worked or how long they stood cheek to cheek in embrace, nor even how they had found their way back to the bench, side by side with their backs pressed firmly into the wall.
Usually with an internal clock that would have been the envy of most Vulcans, if they allowed themselves such an indulgence, T’Pol now realized she had no idea how much time had passed.
They sat in silence. One of her hands gripped tightly at her pant leg. The other rested lightly in Trip’s hand. He gave a slight squeeze, and something about it made her loosen her grip on her own uniform.
She took a deep breath and let it out slowly. The tension left with it, and it was then that she realized the calmness that had taken over. Her eyes had dried. The harsh edges of her emotions and softened and receded to something that was manageable. Something she could control. She looked at Trip out of the corner of her eye. He was leaned back, relaxed, staring at his boots as the thumb of his free hand absently rubbed circles around the pad of his middle finger.
“Thank you,” she said. He inhaled sharply at her words, almost as if startled and turned his head to look at her.
“Hey,” he said. “It’s no problem. You’re welcome. Feeling better?”
“I am,” she said. “I don’t understand.”
“Well, my momma always said there weren’t many problems that a good cry couldn’t help. Of course, she also used to say you could mash up a cauliflower and make yourself think its a potato, and that was a bald faced lie if I ever heard one.”
A puff of air escaped T’Pol’s mouth, and her lips curled up, baring teeth. She immediately brought her hand to her face, following the curve of her lips. Was this…?
“Well will you look at that,” Trip said, unable to hide his own grin. “A smile AND a laugh out of a Vulcan. And it wasn’t even a very good joke. I’m honored.”
“Wasn’t it?”
“No!” Trip said in between a bout of laughter. “No, it was the worst!”
As she watched him, she couldn’t help but follow suit. At first she thought maybe there was something wrong with her, the way her breaths came in short gasps and her shoulders convulsed and her mouth felt frozen in an unfamiliar expression. But as she watched Trip and the ease with which he smiled and how freely he laughed and looked at her with twinkling blue eyes, she realized she was smack in the middle of a new emotion. One she’d kept at arms length, thinking she didn’t deserve to have it.
It was happiness. Here she was, sitting on a bench over a bowl of salad with Commander Charles Tucker III, laughing about bad jokes and she was happy about it.
As their laughter died down, she soon found something else simmering beneath the surface of her newfound happiness. She couldn’t tell if it was from the contentedness in the way her future self had spoken of Trip, the lingering feel of his body against hers or the warmth radiating from him now, but T’Pol had never felt so at ease. So comforted.
And yet, the flutter in her stomach had returned. Nervousness. She recognized the emotion but not the circumstance. It felt out of place. After all, they had had the difficult conversation about her Trellium use and the damage it had caused. So why was she nervous?
“You got a little brow crinkle going on there,” Trip said.
“I’m sorry?”
“You look like you’re thinking about something.”
“Oh.” T’Pol took a breath before another thought crossed her mind. One she never expected to have, but there it was. “Is it…unflattering?”
“What? No, not at all.” If anything, Trip looked vaguely horrified that he’d given that impression. “No, I was just wondering what you’re thinking. You know or, what you’re…what you’re feeling?”
“Oh.” T’Pol saw no reason to lie. “I feel…nervous.”
“Nervous? About what? The sphere? The Captain’s mission? We can-oof”
T’Pol leaned forward, steeling her nerves and kissed him.
The first time she’d kissed Trip — first times, if she counted Sim — had been scientific. At least, that’s what she’d told herself. When she kissed Sim, there was a part of her that wondered what it’s effect would be on his mood as he marched to his death and another part wondered if on this ship she would ever have the opportunity to be intimate with a human if she let Sim slip away.
The second time they’d kissed — her first with Trip — had seemed logical at the time. She’d studied humans’ propensity for sexual tension. Rather than acting on their desires they often taunted and teased one another until the tension was so great that they snapped together. She wanted to explore human sexuality, and they seemed to be halfway there anyway, so taking the next step was only logical. Or, maybe she had been a little bit jealous.
But this was none of that.
This time, she kissed him because she couldn’t imagine not kissing him. Speaking intimately with him felt right. Being close to him felt right. Opening herself to him, showing him her vulnerabilities felt right.
And when he kissed her back, when his body leaned into hers, her heart leapt. She felt warm and loved and desired as his mouth traveled down her neck and came back to her lips.
They were deep kisses, full of passion and desire and a need neither realized they had, they’d been so caught up in the gravity of their mission. But the attraction — the rightness of everything — was undeniable. He had just wrapped his arms around her and pulled her closer when suddenly, he stilled. He didn’t move with her. He didn’t move away from her, he just stopped.
“Son of a bitch.”
“Excuse me?”
“No, not you,” Trip said as he extricated himself from her and backed away. Looking around the room. “Do you have PADD?”
She nodded to the desk drawer and he flung it open, pulling out the device and tapping furiously at the screen. “I think I figured it out.”
She stood and walked over to him as he paced and typed all at the same time. Staying in his shadow, she peered over his shoulder at the calculations he was inputting.
“I think … Here, I think this I’ll get us through the sphere. The whole thing should implode and take down the entire network.” He handed the PADD to T’Pol and stepped back while she scrolled through his data.
“We’d have to run some simulations, but this could work,” she said as she looked up at him.
“And, I think we can do it without blowing every relay in the ship.”
She nodded at him and then set the PADD on the table.
“Is this what you were thinking about while we…” she let the words trail off as realization dawned on Trip’s face.
“No!” He said frantically. “No, believe me, I was there, I was so there, and I wasn’t thinking about that it just popped in-”
A corner of T’Pol’s mouth ticked upward in time with a subtle eyebrow raise.
“You’re messing with me aren’t you?” Trip asked.
“Perhaps.”
He grinned at her, shook his head and quickly closed the distance between them, pulling her into a light kiss. For a moment she kissed him back before logic — still having a place in her life, she realized — took over and made her break away.
“This first,” she said, holding up the PADD.
“Right, right,” he said. “That first, then a lot more of this.” The tip of his nose touched hers as he kissed her once more before taking the PADD and heading for the door. He turned back once as he stepped out, his eyes traveling the length of her body. It was a suggestive look, she realized and it stirred a much different emotion in her. She looked away as he slipped through the door. Shaking her head, she smiled and followed.
The door had almost closed behind them, when her hand reached through the gap, stopping it as she re-entered the room, went to the desk and picked up the small bowl of salad. Rifling through it as she walked back to the command center, she found one more artichoke heart. Thoughtfully, she brought it to her lips, and studied the flavors and textures as she chewed, examining them from a perspective she’d been avoiding for months.
It was, she decided, delicious.