The Beauty of Sharing: An ABC Challenge: A--re-entered

Trip and T'Pol Alphabet Challenge: A

The Beauty of Sharing

By ginamr

Rating: G
Disclaimer: Only the words expressed in this story are mine.
Genres: ABC Challenge, vignette
Summary: Entry for the ABC challenge: This one is for “A” and is set during the events of "Azati Prime" just after Archer volunteers for the suicide mission.--Trip and T’Pol share their concerns about their friend.

Trip exited Engineering, headed toward the Mess Hall to get something to eat. In all honesty, he wasn’t hungry. It was just an excuse to give him time to think. He hadn’t been able to concentrate on his work after the Captain’s decision.

To his surprise, he found T’Pol sitting at a table in the far corner spooning, but not eating, a bowl of plomeek broth. He grabbed a plate of spaghetti and moved to join her.

“Is anyone sitting here?”

She looked up and saw Commander Tucker standing beside her looking rather distressed. She extended a hand. “Please, sit down.”

Trip set the plate on the table and slid into the chair, picking up his fork and picking at his meal.

“You appear disturbed. What is causing your distress?”

Trip looked up. “Well, the Cap’n’s been awful withdrawn and I guess I’m finally startin’ to seriously consider that somethin’ might be wrong with him. I mean…he’s basically plannin’ ta commit suicide.”

T’Pol nodded. “I, as well, do not agree with his decision to take on this mission. He is being irrational.”

“I can understand why he feels it should be him tha’ does it; but tha’ doesn’ mean it’s the only way.”

T’Pol paused. “I have been studying the Vulcan database seeking a possible explanation for the Captain’s odd behavior and have repeatedly come across a disorder called bi-polar disorder more commonly known as depression. The Captain’s symptoms match many of those listed in the database.”

Trip frowned. “Maybe it’s because of all the stress the Cap’n’s been under lately.”

She nodded. “I reached the same conclusion. According to the database, stress can cause the disorder. However, knowing the Captain as I do, it is also possible that he is experiencing guilt and is assuming the role of martyr, feeling that his death will bring justice.”

Trip sighed and nodded. “I think ya could be right on tha’ count, T’Pol. Jon isn’ the type ta let somethin’ go without chewin’ all the flavor out of it.”

She paused. “We should speak with him. He may need us.”

“I know he does. He’s jus’ too stubborn ta acknowledge it.”

T’Pol paused again. “Perhaps you should speak to him first. You and he are rather close. When he returns…”

“If he does,” Trip muttered bitterly.

“He will return. The Captain has been in compromising situations before and has always found a way out of them.”

He smiled faintly. “Let’s hope tha’ his nine lives aren’ up yet.”

T’Pol nodded, vaguely understanding the reference. “Let us hope they are not.”

Fin (for now)

[EDITOR'S NOTE: "The Beauty of Sharing" picked up so many spam comments that I had to delete it and renter with a slightly different title--to give it a new url. Unfortunately, that deleted all the previous comments.]

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A whole mess of folks have made comments

That was very good..short and sweet!

I don't understand why the comments previously made were considered "spam". I felt like our discussion of Archer's possible mental state as presented in this fic... AND our debate of whether the behavior of his character on the series was consistent with having a situational depression vs possibly bipolar disorder... was pertinent and very interesting. Oh well... each to his or her own. It's still a unique perspective to explore whether mutual concern over their friend's emotional state might have been a factor in building TnT's relationship.

You misunderstand, D. After the REAL comments made by the readers, there were a dozen or so spambots that filled up the comments, all of which were advertisements for some sort of drug or something like that. THAT is what the spam is in reference to...

Aaaah, spambots. My guess is they crawled the 'Net looking for stuff to spam and came across this and all its mentions of bipolar disorder and depression, and went "ooh, someone who's depressed! Let's get them to buy our drugs!"

At least, that explains why they haven't hit the other stories...

Do Bucky and Myst have copies of the comments anywhere that they might be able to put up in an archive? On the BBS maybe? I agree, it was good discussion.

"Spambots" huh? I don't even know what those are. I get the picture in my head of little eight-legged mechanical thingies with bodies made of empty SPAM cans. Guess not. They sound annoying, though. I wonder if it was my links to the information sites about depression and bipolar disorder that led them to us. Could a link do that?

spambots are pieces of software written to scour Web sites, such as blogs, looking for keywords their "masters" are interested in. Once they find a match on a blog, they will enter spam blog entries advertising all sorts of stuff related to the keywords. I doubt the links had much to do with it, normally they are looking for keywords.

Ah. Good to know. Kinda scary, though... like we have Big Brother looking over our shoulders.

Still a nice little story, though. We'll have to come up with a creative way to discuss Archer's mood without using the "D" word, I suppose.

I was looking for the other version to compare to this one. You changed it a little, right? Did you trim it down some and remove a little of the emotion? I like this version. Maybe you made no changes at all and I am just hallucinating?

And what is the D word Distracted? Depression? Archer's decision to 'ride the bomb down' ala the Dr. Strangelove movie did seem out of place for a captain that was supposed to be minding the best interests of his ship and crew. But the Expanse does strange things to people. And I too think guilt was weighing rather heavily on him.

...*sigh*...

Grand story. Unfortunately the filthmongering spammers have struck again.

I got the suckers and banned the IP from the site, thanks to an alert from Rigil Kent. Since we can't check every comment that comes through, we appreciate notices about spam.