The Forgotten Time - Ch 4

The Forgotten Time

By enterpriseScribe

Rating: PG14
Email: enterprisescribe@yahoo.co.uk
Genre: Romance, Humor
Summary: Trip & T’Pol must travel to the future to save Enterprise.
Spoilers: All previously aired episodes.
Disclaimer: Star Trek: Enterprise & all characters owned by Paramount. The author of this story is receiving no payment.
Distribution: E-mail enterprisescribe@yahoo.co.uk for author permission.
Feedback: Please do!

Chapter 4

Trip let his hand drop away from T’Pol’s haunted face. Though she was motionless and tense in her seat, she seemed to be writhing inwardly as she stared at the floor.

Concerned, Trip took both of her clenched fists into his hands. “T’Pol,” he said gently.

She wrenched her anguished gaze from the carpet and fixed it to his face. He had never seen her look so terrified. His heart skipped, and adrenaline rushed past his ears and down his neck.

Trip looked her square in the eye and squeezed her hands. “What’s the matter?”

T’Pol slid out of the chair to sit cross-legged in front of him on the floor. Dread sagged her shoulders. She had no idea how to begin. She looked at her hands for a moment and a recent memory of Trip surfaced.

Listen...you know how much I appreciate what you did for me. When this is all over, if you want to talk, I'm all ears.

Well, the conflict was officially over. Except for this side trip of course.

Of course.

The memory wipe. Perhaps she could gain the benefit of Trip’s counsel without having him remember it after this mission. A trial run, as it were. But her conscience whispered the flaw in her plan. She wouldn’t remember it, either.

Suddenly she didn’t care anymore. She had to talk to somebody or burst out of her skin.

Gathering every shred of control and dignity she had remaining, T’Pol straightened her back and lifted her chin to meet Trip’s anxious blue eyes.

“Trip.” She tasted the name for a moment and then continued in her low, mellow voice: “There is something I need to tell you.”

Trip gripped her arms gently. “T’Pol, you gotta tell me what’s goin’ on— ‘cause you’re scarin’ the hell outta me.” His voice was edgy and fearful. T’Pol felt compassion for his concern blaze fleetingly through her control, followed by grim determination. Get this over with. She took his hands in hers and held them firmly.

“This is proving very difficult for me to say,” T’Pol started, and then hesitated. Her pride and stubbornness and desperation to reach out fought for a fraction of a second, and suddenly words flooded her mouth: “After my experience with Trellium aboard the Seleya, I found that I had gained access to certain emotions. Emotions I normally keep subdued and unnoticeable through meditation. I had… never felt that way before about anything—or anyone. After a few days, however, the effects diminished. At first, I was relieved to be free of the volatile, unpredictable sensations.”

T’Pol’s cheeks burned as she went on, “But as time passed, I wanted more. I started with small increments of Trellium—as an experiment—a few months ago. Soon I was injecting myself daily with increasing amounts of the substance. I became… erratic… undisciplined… but I could not stop myself. After one of the Xindi attacks I was cut off from the Trellium store in cargo bay two.”

T’Pol paused for a moment. She dropped her head and closed her eyes, unable to keep looking into Trip’s achingly compassionate face. She finished succinctly, her voice a shameful hoarse whisper, her composure nearly gone. “I… got an EV suit and went down to E Deck. The ladder was broken, but I tried anyway.”

Tears slid out from under her closed lids as the last of her control slipped away and her voice rose. “I fell from the upper level… I almost died. But I got to the Trellium and I still injected it. I couldn’t stop myself! I couldn’t stop!”

Breathless from shock and grief, Trip grabbed her in a bearhug and held her while she wept frantically. He had never heard anyone cry so hard in his life. It sounded like all the pain and loneliness she had ever suffered was pouring out in a relieved stream of stormy, wracking sobs.

After a while she quieted, the silence broken only with spasmodic hiccoughs that still tore intermittently from her throat. She rested limply against him, eyes closed against his damp, teary uniform, strung out with fatigue and emotional runoff. As he rested his chin on the top of her head, eyes closed, Trip realised with sudden insight it was probably the first good cry she’d ever had in her entire life.

He scooped her up protectively, and carried her to one of the bunks in the back compartment. Even in his distracted state, he marvelled at how light she was. Her Vulcan strength outstripped every woman and most men he had ever met, yet he lifted her slim body easily. He laid her down on the lower bunk, took off her shoes, and tucked extra blankets around her. Then he got another bottle of water out of the storage compartment. Wetting the corner of a towel and sitting on the edge of the bunk, he wiped the tearstains gently from her cheeks.

The face that returned his gaze mutely was that of his colleague, his friend, his lover, his verbal sparring partner… and yet he realised that she had never really let him close to her until today. Even when they had been as physically close as two people could be, she was still quietly locked inside the vault of her own thoughts. A self-imprisonment he had lately been suspecting was permanent.

Not so anymore. He knew now that T’Pol was as vulnerable as any of them. The sheen of Vulcan calm was simply a skill, like any other. Now—the sheen stripped away by the temporal field—he saw a fervour of emotion shining clearly and honestly through her eyes. She finally spoke, her voice hushed and husky: “Say something.”

A hundred things flashed through his mind. He knew how fragile she was right now; he wanted to get this right. He looked into her uncertain eyes, and thought about how he felt about her, and suddenly the words came to him.

“T’Pol, since we’ve been on Enterprise together… you’ve… become my best friend. We have our moments, but we also have our moments.” He grinned suddenly. “And I wouldn’t trade a second of it for anything else in the universe. I mean it. I don’t know why you felt you had to take Trellium and I don’t know why you never came to me for help, but I also know you have your reasons. So I’m not gonna pry. Like I told you before, when you’re ready to talk, I’m all ears.” He stopped and then went on seriously, “I’ve just gotta know… are you still doin’ it?”

At his caring response, T’Pol felt a wave of gratitude bend through her control, and she could only shake her head in answer to his question. After a minute she elaborated. “I stopped right before we met Lorian and his crew. I only told Phlox. He helped me through the withdrawal, but he says the long-term effects are likely permanent. My alternate self from Lorian’s ship told me that she never completely regained her authority over her emotions. My only comfort is that she seemed to live comfortably enough with them.” She didn’t mention what her older self had also told her about Trip. Her other comfort, if she chose to embrace it. But she wasn’t able to think about that tonight, with her emotions in an uproar and her control lessening every hour.

Trip sighed. At least she had come to her senses before any serious damage had been done. He took her hand. “Look, you’ve had a rough day. I know we’ve got things to talk about, but why don’t you just try getting’ some sleep right now?”

As he stood up and smoothed the blankets down, a strange thought occurred to him. He spoke without meeting her eyes. “In a few days, we’ll both forget this ever happened. You gonna tell me about it again when we get back?”

T’Pol had been wondering that herself. She felt relieved that she was no longer alone in her secret. She had wanted to tell him so badly, and now a massive weight had been lifted. She felt shriven, clean. She was sincere in her answer: “I hope so.”

Trip stroked her hair back and said, “Me too.” He dimmed the lights and left the compartment for the forward part of the shuttle, disabling the door so it stayed open. As if he knew that, tonight, T’Pol didn’t want to be alone with her demons.

***

T’Pol opened her eyes. She must have slept deeply; she hadn’t moved a millimetre from her original position. Her body felt stiff and sick as she carefully sat up and gently stretched her aching muscles. Trip came in and gave her tea. The tea smelled so good she burned her mouth gulping it down. She went to the conn to check their flight progress.

Trip came up and sat next to her. He had a strange smile on his face. His hands were behind his back as if he were hiding something.

T’Pol stopped her scans of the area and turned to face him. “Commander.”

“I have a surprise for you,” Trip said.

T’Pol watched as he brought his hand from behind his back and opened his fingers to show an injection unit lying in his palm, filled with what looked like Trellium-D.

T’Pol’s stomach sickened. Neck tense, she made herself look up at him. His face was inscrutable.

“I don’t want it.” Her voice was intense with anger and revulsion, but craving gave the assertion a serrated edge. Her lower lip trembled, and Trip’s face darkened.

“What’s the matter T’Pol?” Trip stood up, his voice suddenly strident and interrogative. He circled her chair. “Well, don’t be so shy! You didn’t have any problem with it before did ya? Huh?”

He spun the chair to face him again, and abruptly Trip had been replaced by Daniels in his ribbed black uniform. His mild face leered unnaturally at T’Pol, and he brought the injection unit up. The black Trellium was visible within. The mixture swirled, and it was filled with the white maggots of rot and decay. T’Pol gagged, paralysed. Daniels suddenly grabbed her throat low with one hand, forcing her back into the seat. He pressed the injector deep into the flesh of her neck just below the jawline and squirted the putrefied substance into her body as she screamed and screamed.

***

T’Pol was being shaken. She squinted her eyes against the light and tried to see the person holding her shoulder. Her vision focused and Trip’s face swam into existence. T’Pol leapt up as if electrocuted and scrooged herself back into the corner of the bunk, heart pounding, knees and blanket pulled protectively up to her chest. Her breath was coming fast and shallow, and she felt a chill on her damp clammy skin. Trip. Trip was hurting her. No… no, it was Daniels. Daniels was injecting her with Trellium.

T’Pol’s head cleared a little. She looked around the tiny compartment and then at Trip, who was watching her uncertainly. He broke the silence softly. “T’Pol?”

She nodded jerkily. It was all she could manage.

Trip squatted down by the bunk. His uniform was wrinkled and his hair tousled from the brief nap he had managed to catch on the upper bunk before T’Pol had started shrieking in her sleep. A more unholy sound he had never laid ears upon. He was pretty sure he had a mild cardiac episode before banging his forehead on the ceiling and jumping down to wake the comatose Vulcan.

He reached out his hand a little, but didn’t come too close for fear of increasing her distress. “T’Pol. It’s me. It’s Trip. Everything is fine. You just had a bad dream. Y’understand me? A dream. That’s all it was.” His voice was calm and soothing in contrast to his racing heart.

After staring for a minute, T’Pol slowly unclenched her body and pulled the blanket around herself. She crept forward to huddle in the middle of the bunk and quavered, “I don’t like dreams.”

Trip sat on the edge of the narrow bed, leaned back on his hands, and looked upward into the shadowy corners of the ceiling. “Oh, I don’t know,” he mused thoughtfully, “some dreams can be pretty fun. I mean, haven’t you ever had a dream where you could fly? Or,” he broke off laughing in a self-mocking kind of way. “…the dream where you’re standing in front of the class in nothing but your underwear.”

T’Pol frowned, puzzled, and tilted her head. “Do all humans have these dreams?” she asked disbelievingly, momentarily distracted from her emotional distress.

“Well, y’know, there are some things that are common among everyone, like wishing you could fly when you were a kid, or feeling self-conscious in class.”

T’Pol reflected for a moment before replying quietly, “I never thought about what it was like to fly as a child.”

Trip’s head came round and he looked at her surprised. “Never? Huh.” He shrugged and added, “I guess your childhood was a lot different from mine.”

“And about thirty years earlier,” T’Pol observed, her voice still shaky.

Trip flashed her a saucy grin. “Well, I’ve gotta say, you’re the best-looking senior citizen I’ve ever seen,” he joked softly.

T’Pol felt a surge of indignation at the insinuation she was elderly, chased by an unusually overwhelming urge to answer back in kind.

“Considering that you wouldn’t pass for a day under eighty on Vulcan, you’re not doing so bad yourself, Commander.”

Trip ducked his head and looked sideways at her. “Did you just make a joke?” he asked, incredulous. He laughed and addressed the empty compartment: “She just made a joke!”

Then the import of her words sunk in, and he frowned. “Eighty? I don’t look eighty!”

T’Pol had managed to calm herself enough for the moment to edge forward off the bunk and stand up. She resettled the blanket around her shoulders and then looked back down at Trip. “On the contrary, Commander, you look exactly the same age as my cousin Bres, and he will be eighty-four on his next birthday.”

“So I guess you’re not that much older than me after all,” Trip conceded smiling. He stood up and yawned. And he thought of something. “Y’know T’Pol, I’d really like it if you’d call me Trip.”

T’Pol turned in the doorway, a shadowy figure outlined by the soft light from the forward compartment. Some strong sensation flashed through her and left her breathless, but she didn’t know what to call it. She blinked. “All right,” she said. “Trip.”

She turned again and stepped out into the main cabin. Trip whistled to himself, thinking wonders never cease, and followed.

***

Trip watched the stars sail serenely past and wished he could be floating out in that cold quiet field of black and silver. Their cloak was still functioning beautifully, and no one had detected their silent course toward Earth. There was no point in recording any log entries as he was pretty sure Daniels would wipe the ship’s computer fairly soon after he was done wiping their own memories. He had read and reread the mission briefing till he could practically recite it. With thirty-six hours left till they reached Earth, Trip was at a loss for something productive to do.

And he needed something to distract him from his mercurial colleague. Presently, she was striding fitfully about the small craft, muttering to herself in Vulcan. Trip could make out a few words here and there, kya’shin being one she repeated. Her level of anxiety had increased significantly over the last few hours, and he was starting to feel a little nervous. He decided to try and talk to her and see if he could get her to calm down and maybe eat something. He took a breath to steady himself, pushed his sleep-deprivation to the back of his thoughts and put himself in an easygoing frame of mind.

Trip wandered towards the back of the cabin and took a seat on one of the low padded benches that topped the storage compartments. He reached into the compartment and pulled out two bottles of water. Unscrewing one and taking a long swallow, he offered the other to T’Pol. She surprised him by stopping in her tracks, taking the water, and flopping down next to him on the seat. She opened the top, upended the container and gulped the whole contents in one go. Letting the empty bottle fall to the bench, she covered her face with her hands and resumed her quiet unintelligible tirade.

Trip lightly tugged one hand away from her face. The dark eye it had covered surveyed him painfully. She stopped mumbling. He wanted her to talk to him, but as her disquiet increased, she had withdrawn more and more. He decided to be direct.

“What does “kya’shin” mean?”

She slowly lowered the other hand, and he could see the misery stamped on her face. He realised he had never seen that kind of anguish on a face framed with pointed ears before. New appreciation for the strength and depth of Vulcan control flickered through his mind. This was the real T’Pol, the genuine person at the core of her being. He knew he was seeing a very private part of her soul, and he knew how important her privacy was to her.

T’Pol hesitated for a second and then she explained in a voice gravelly with despair.

“Kya’shin is the teaching of thought over emotion. Vulcans spend their lives achieving and maintaining arie’mnu… the mastery of passion and emotion. I achieved my arie’mnu at the age of seventeen, and since that time, I have devoted myself to the cultivation and growth of that mastery. When my people see the level I have descended to, the ruin I have made of my control…. I have abandoned the wisdom instilled in me by my elders, I have insulted my entire race, I have…”

“Hey, hey, relax,” Trip interrupted her self-loathing. “You are doin’ an amazing job. Y’hear me? I’m amazed that you Vulcans do as well as you do, with the kind of emotions you’ve clearly got hidden away in there. You’re just not in practice when it comes to expressing these feelings. You’ll pick it up soon.” Trip put his hand on her shoulder reassuringly, and then snatched it back again as if he had touched a live circuit. In the instant he had touched her, an inferno of conflicting sensations had shouted silently through his brain and then ceased as smartly as shutting a box.

Trip blinked and shook his head. “Wha—what was that?” he asked her, startled.

T’Pol had also recoiled, and was staring at Trip as if she’d seen a ghost.

She stood and answered in a throaty and distressed voice, “It’s the nehou ni’var. The connecting of minds. Vulcans are touch telepaths, but the ability is deeply shielded. My defenses must be nearly gone. You had better not touch me again; I will cause you to lose control as well. You should change course, leave me behind on a habitable moon. I will only cause us to fail in our mission.” Her voice rose every second, until she sounded frantic.

Trip stood as well, but didn’t touch her. He raised his voice to get her attention, “Whoa, hold on there. Nobody’s leavin’ anyone anywhere, habitable or not. Now you and I are gonna get through this together, okay? Just like Daniels said. He’s sure that you’re strong enough to handle this. Those Vulcan colleagues of his are no better than you.”

“His Vulcan colleagues most likely don’t have permanent neural damage from recent Trellium abuse,” T’Pol muttered peevishly. Her moods were oscillating more rapidly.

“Well,” Trip hesitated uncertainly. “He’s been to the past and the future. He must have considered that.”

“Crewman Daniels spends his time jumping from one timeline to another, frantically trying to combat several different threats to the stability of the universe. He has access to knowledge of many things past and present, but he is only a man. He is not omniscient. He could have overlooked something. We cannot assume he knows of my foolish conduct. I have placed us both in jeopardy, and we must act now before it is too late!” The last words came out desperate and frantic. T’Pol was becoming overwhelmed by the strength and volatility of her emotions. She fell to her knees, twisting her hands, momentarily incapacitated by guilt and self-reproach.

Trip crouched down, uncertain of how to help. He couldn’t reach out to her without sparking that nehou ni’var or whatever she had called it. The weirdest sensation of his life. Emotions that were not his somehow had traveled across his brain, allowing him to see them, sense them, but as separate from his own. As simple as listening to another’s voice, Trip had listened to a brief moment of T’Pol’s inner chaos. He was shocked by how dissonant and grating her inner universe had become. In that one fleeting instant, he could see she was being battered from all sides by a pitiless onslaught of violent Vulcan emotions. Unable to sort through them, to name them, T’Pol was simply reeling from the sheer mass of sensations. Trip hadn’t understood until this minute how serious their situation was. Grief and frustration played over his face at his inability to do anything to help this ferociously strong woman who was being torn apart in front of him. He had to figure something out before T’Pol’s mind splintered from the strain.

An idea suddenly flashed through his mind. If her telepathic abilities meant he could hear T’Pol’s inner maelstrom of thoughts and emotions, then it was reasonable to assume she could hear his. And while his mental climate was by no means the carefully proscribed mental desert of your average Vulcan, he was doing a sight better than T’Pol today. Maybe he could help take some of the load off.

Trip sat cross-legged on the floor in front of T’Pol’s bowed form. Her eyes were closed and he could see she was straining every fiber of her being to keep herself contained. As he scrutinized her face, he suddenly remembered the very first time he laid eyes on her. The memory was vivid, like a piece of film in his mind.

***

Trip was feeling hot-tempered that day over the Vulcan ‘chaperone’ who had been insinuated onto Enterprise. The captain was reassuring him it was only for eight days, when the Vulcan in question had suddenly stepped into his life.

The woman barely acknowledged his existence. She glanced at him once and stated in her unemotional, mellow voice, “I'll try to remember that.”

***

Hardly an auspicious beginning, Trip thought, with a brief wry smile. The same woman crouched before him now, in dire need of help he didn’t know how to give. But she was not the same. And neither was he. Both of them had grown and changed in their opinions of one another. In some ways, he had never before been so close to another person. And at the same time, she was still nearly as enigmatic as the day he first set eyes upon her.

Pushing memory aside, Trip refocused on the problem at hand. T’Pol was losing the last of her ability to control her emotions. If he couldn’t find a way to help her, he would have to sedate her. He didn’t know if that was a good idea in her weakened condition, and was leaving it as a last resort.

He closed his eyes and calmed his mind as T’Pol herself had taught him during their neuropressure sessions. When he felt that he had a good handle on himself and his thoughts, he reached out and gently laid his hand on hers. The door flew open again.

T’Pol’s head snapped up, eyes wide and locked on his. Trip just hung on as the silently deafening roar of unbridled, unpracticed Vulcan emotion shouted through his mind. He tried his best to maintain the same level of calm and peace that he had built up, but he wasn’t used to mental work like this, and his focus was slipping around. Finally, he let go, gasping, and held his head for a moment while the stars cleared from his vision.

T’Pol sagged back against the benches behind her. She swallowed and tried to get her breath back. Trip’s mind was so quiet, so serene. In the brief moment they had been joined, Trip had taken on some of her madness and had given her some of his composure. She felt the tiniest bit better, but knew the effect was temporary.

Trip had recovered from the shock and sat up straight again. T’Pol had gathered herself somewhat and was sitting more firmly. She was tense, her mind tight as a drum. Trip pulled one of her feet toward him and started to manipulate the neuropressure points that induced calm.

By gritting his teeth and focusing entirely on the one square inch of foot he was pressing with his thumbs, Trip maintained contact for nearly a minute before he had to break off again, forehead beaded with sweat.

T’Pol, momentarily fortified by the brief reprieve from her burden, managed to fully take in the situation. Trip was massaging his temples and looked somewhat sick. Concern for him batted loudly in her mind. She crept forward a little, careful not to touch him, and peered into his face.

“Trip?” she asked softly.

“Yeah, I’m okay,” Trip mumbled as he rubbed his face briskly with his palms. He squared up again, ready to try a third time.

T’Pol was dismayed. The strength of her emotional pandemonium had clearly taken a toll on him, but he had a gleam of almost defiance in his eye. She didn’t understand.

“It’s like riding the mechanical bull down at the fair near my parents’ house,” Trip explained, “only using your mind instead. I’m enjoying the challenge. ‘Sides, what else are we gonna do to pass the time? Ready to try again?”

Gratitude flashed across T’Pol’s mind and behind it she felt the noise of the storm beginning again. But Trip was pressing her feet, and between the two of them, they managed to batten down most of the tempest. Feeling stronger, T’Pol grabbed Trip’s foot and removed his boot. The strength of the connection increased as she applied the familiar neuropressure technique that they had practiced so many times over the last year.

Opening her eyes, she looked at the man who was trying to help her. She vividly recalled her aged self, ancient and wise, looking back over the decades to advise her. She had told the youthful T’Pol only a few things, and she treasured these as gifts from an older sister. One of them surfaced now:

”Trip can be an outlet for these feelings. If you'll trust him.”

T’Pol trusted Trip with her life, but she still hadn’t trusted him with her innermost thoughts and fears. It seemed that now the two came down to the same thing.

Trip’s eyes blinked open, and he examined her face closely. He let go of her feet one hand at a time, taking her hands in his to maintain the link. The strain was still heavy on both sides as each tried to stave off a gale of sensations that neither was equipped to handle. But her one coherent thought had come through to him as crystal clear as if it had been his own. Along with the idea T’Pol was hiding behind it.

His mind formulated a question, but he heard it already echoing in T’Pol’s mind before he even opened his mouth.

— T’Pol, what’s a ‘mind-meld’?

She had no chance to formulate an explanation: the entire story of her forced meld with Tolaris of the V'tosh Ka'tur and the persecution at her own government’s hands as a result flashed into plain view. T’Pol felt Trip sicken in righteous wrath at her treatment. She struggled to form a coherent statement in her mind.

— Trip, I think it’s the only way.

Trip was still struggling to assimilate the barrage of information that had been fired at him concerning mind-melds. He started to realize what she was suggesting.

— But… but you never initiated one yourself. It was that Tolaris bastard, lousy son-of-a-bitch….

T’Pol winced at Trip’s digression into anger, and he sheepishly felt her recoil.

— Sorry.

T’Pol didn’t mind as much as he thought she did. In fact she was gratified at his protective reaction. She was using this nourishing break from chaos to look for the first time at muted versions of the emotions that had been blinding her before with their intensity. But this kind of telepathic link was too hard on both of them in their weak states. He with no experience, and she with the threadbare remains of her usual skill.

Gently, she showed him her idea, simply sharing thoughts instead of trying to put them into words.

The meld with Tolaris had been like this, she explained, but so much stronger. A bond like that could be maintained for the few days that they needed to finish the mission. Though she wasn’t of the minority skilled in melds, she thought that in this exceptionally uninhibited mode, she could perhaps initiate one where it would be nearly impossible for her to do normally.

Trip felt troubled. Her only other experience with the link had been an attack. He didn’t want to make her relive that.

So finally T’Pol let him see the rest of the memory she had of her elderly self:

“The emotions he stirred in me were powerful...and frightening. I tried to push him away. If Enterprise hadn't been stranded in the past, it's possible I never would've married Trip. But I can't imagine what my life would have been like without him.”

Her sister self gazed at her benevolently. “It will… in time.”

The memory ended. Trip was stunned at the sight of T’Pol’s older self. She was so different, and yet exactly the same. And she had spoken of Trip with so much love in her voice, it caught at his throat.

T’Pol’s eyes were smoldering and intense before him, eerily identical to those shining in her alternate self’s face in his mind. She broke contact with his hands. And spoke aloud.

“Trip, I trust you completely. But I have no wish to compel you to do this against your will.”

Trip considered the import of it for a moment… to completely share his thoughts. Pushing that aside after an uncomfortable moment, he shook his head decisively.

“T’Pol, if you think you can pull it off, I’m willin’ to try.”

To Be Continued…

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