If you are seeing this paragraph, the site is not displaying correctly. You can see the content, but your current browser does not support CSS which is necessary to view our site properly. For the best visual experience, you will need to upgrade your browser to Netscape 6.0 or higher, MSIE 5.5 or higher, or Opera 3.6 or higher. If, however, you don't wish to upgrade your browser, scroll down and read the content - everything is still visible, it just doesn't look as pretty.

Tomorrow

Author - John O. | Genre - Angst | Genre - Friendship | Genre - Romance | Main Story | Rating - G | T
Fan Fiction Main Page | Stories sorted by title, author, genre, and rating

Tomorrow

Author: John O.

Rating: G
Disclaimer: Paramount owns Star Trek characters/names/fans’ souls/etc. If I owned it I’d be busy writing Season 6.
Genre: Friendship/Angst/Romance

Summary: Takes place immediately following one of my favorite episodes, Shuttlepod One (Season 1). I think T’Pol was worried about Trip while he was gone…

A/N: A million thanks to the help of JustTrip’n!! She’s too wonderful.



The night shift was well underway and Subcommander T’Pol made her way gracefully through the corridors of the starship Enterprise. Her duty shift had concluded nearly an hour ago; however, she was not immediately able to return to her quarters for meditation and rest due to additional duties placed upon her. As a result of Commander Tucker and Lieutenant Reed’s brush with death aboard Shuttlepod One, both Tucker and Reed were on medical leave from duty for the next three days. As executive officer, the tedious work of filling in the duty rosters and notifying crewmen of the changes fell on her. She punched in the code for her quarters and moved inside, allowing a slight sigh of relief within the comfortable confines of its closed walls. The human crewmen were accustomed to having their “days off,” and some were agitated by the Subcommander’s request to work additional shifts. In truth, many of the humans were still adjusting to being told what to do by a Vulcan, and a few would reply in agitation to any request. Given their reluctance to substitute for the Commander and Lieutenant, T’Pol wondered how these creatures managed any discipline at all without a Vulcan. Commander Tucker, however, held a certain fascination for her that she found herself unable to dismiss; despite his less tolerable qualities.

T’Pol had allowed three days to pass without meditation during the search and rescue for the shuttlepod. She instinctively needed to justify such a lapse with logical excuses to herself, and did so; though in truth, the source of her unsettled state was the absence and endangerment of her fellow officers—a very specific fellow officer. Lest she should be provoked into an emotional reaction in front of others, she buried her concern for Tucker amid study of the micro-singularities that had damaged the ship. Though the phenomena had captured her fascination and she spent a great deal of time studying them, a stronger, more persistently irksome emotional response sabotaged her meditation while the shuttlepod remained missing.

Inside her quarters, she relieved herself of her uniform and donned a comfortable maroon robe and silken slacks. She poured a cup of tea from a tall dispenser decorated with Vulcan glyphs and gilded ornamentation from her people’s distant past. Lowering the lights, she lit a candle and attempted to reach a deep meditative state. For all her stubborn persistence, however, it was hopeless; a defiant corner of her inner self required assurance through direct confrontation with the object of her desire.

Several minutes later, she blew out the flame and rose to redress the blanket of balance and discipline within which she had lived comfortably for over sixty-three years. To reach a state of calm should require no such emotional indulgence—and though she recognized this, T’Pol was looking for solutions, and the only one she could be certain of was sleeping in sickbay.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

0130

If not for the late hour and high likelihood that the corridors would be deserted, she may not have found the courage to breach the doors of sickbay, and may have returned to her quarters to suffer another sleepless night in meditative standstill.

Amid the low-lighting of the medical bay, she peered round a corner towards the quarter of sickbay where she last saw Tucker and Reed occupying biobeds. The beds were empty; the one on the left in which Reed had been resting was precisely made up and untouched. The adjacent bed, however, had its covers bunched in a heap. She shifted her weight and looked round another corner curiously as a wave of anxiety began to creep into her usually composed Vulcan demeanor. The low rhythm of medical equipment filled the soft hued sickbay with a solemn hum, lulling her acute hearing with gentle pause. She was alerted to the presence of another, not by sound, but by a curious awareness—and then a familiar, but unexpectedly potent scent. She quickly dismissed the initial precognition, but turned to find Commander Tucker standing behind her with discerning eyes, and a faint smile on his lips.


“What are you doin’ here so late?” he asked, striding towards her, taking a bite of a previously-unseen snack from one hand. He turned and keyed the lights in the room up to half-power.

“I – I was looking for Doctor Phlox. I see he is not in,” she replied in an uncharacteristic stutter. Tucker noticed her discomfort; she almost tripped backwards as he approached.

“You know better’n anybody he’s not on duty, T’Pol. You write the rosters up, nobody’s on tonight. Slow day, I guess,” he grinned wryly back at her after surveying the otherwise empty sickbay, save for the two of them. She let out a small breath as she realized that the late hour meant her daily nasal inhibitor was beginning to fail.

“Shouldn’t you still be in bed?” she chastised him. He chuckled and shuffled his feet.

”Ah, don’t be such a mother hen, I’m fine,” he ribbed her. An exotic eyebrow told him she didn’t fully understand the allusion but he brushed it aside with a wave of his hand as if to say ‘not important’.

“I see that your condition has improved,” she asserted, righting her stance and placing her hands at the small of her back in an iron-tight clasp. Tucker straightened reactively.

“Apparently havin’ a few drinks makes hypothermia set in faster. I had a little more of the Bourbon than Malcolm,” he confessed genially. T’Pol blinked, suppressing a recrimination as Tucker spoke up again.

“I was worse off, I guess, so he got discharged to light duty.”

He smirked at his good fortune. “Don’t tell him I said so, but the truth is he just can’t hold his liquor,” he chuckled.

“I, on the other hand, get to enjoy a few more days off duty,” he called over his shoulder, returning to the biobed. T’Pol instinctively followed him with her arms folded across her ample chest. He let out a relaxed sigh as he pulled the blankets over his body and fluffed the pillows beneath his head. He sat back, arms folded behind his neck with a triumphant and fun-loving grin. The opening gave T’Pol a chance to assert her disapproval of his behavior aboard the shuttlepod.

“It is exceptionally illogical, even for you, to imbibe alcohol amidst a critically life-threatening situation.” She narrowed her eyes at him, unconsciously moving to the edge of the bed. He rolled his eyes nonchalantly and craned his neck to one side, eliciting a loud pop before entertaining her indictment with a typical response.

“We just did the only thing that was left to do, considering the circumstances. It seemed pretty hopeless at the time,” he told her, rubbing his neck. She regarded him impassively but once again fought an inner battle with her breathing as she considered his death having been imminent.

“And hell, we got back didn’t we?” he asked rhetorically, mimicking her as he folded his arms across his chest. T’Pol’s gaze darted downward at herself, then at him, catching a twinkling blue eye as it winked at her in response. She straightened her arms down her sides neutrally and attempted to relax and regain some semblance of self-control amid the throws of this man’s torments. She refused to simply turn around and leave, for in doing so she would confess to herself the truth of the deepest secret still budding in infancy at her very core. She was far from ready for that yet.

“My little stunt worked, didn’t it? Blowing up the impulse drive got your attention, didn’t it?” he asked again, lifting his eyebrows.

“As I recall from the mission debriefing, the idea was Lt. Reed’s,” she quipped back. He rolled his eyes defeated, turning aside into his pillow and feigning to sleep. He turned back a few moments later and found the petite Vulcan still standing at his bedside. Her fingers almost dared to stretch along the edge of the biobed, when Tucker broke her from the trance.

“Can a fella’ get some sleep?” he asked with a smirk, melting slowly into a smile, as he glanced down and caught her fidgeting.

“Unless you wanna’ join me?” he jibed with a mischievous grin. T’Pol played the part of the disgusted Vulcan, and turned to hide her green-tinged cheeks from his inquiry. The heat was beating from her face now like the red-hot Vulcan sun, but she would not allow his dubious remarks to advance on her control. She moved casually to the sickbay doors.

“Not tonight. Good night, Mr. Tucker,” she replied curtly. Turning towards him, she met his gaze as he looked back from the bed, arms stretched out wide behind his neck. The boyishly suggestive grin was gone, though its obnoxious humor she could have easily tolerated—that human emotion, she had already learned to ignore. What looked back at her instead, was a different, more difficult and challenging thing to comprehend. A true smile, of genuine kinship, snuck back at her, and she barely resisted the urge to let it suffuse her and carve its contagious form into her own lips. His lips widened slowly as he contemplatively tongued the inside of his cheek and winked at her again, drawing out the moment like a slick blade. Her fingers held against the door’s edge, clutching it for support as she keyed the lights off, and the room went dark.

That’s all right, Tucker assured himself, staring up at the dim, blue lighting as it spilled around the ceiling. Something Malcolm said began to worm its way back through his mind and he considered once again the woman that just left the room.

Maybe tomorrow, he thought, turning into the pillow to court a pleasant dream.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~


T’Pol moved mechanically back to her quarters, feeling lighter now that she could silence the incorrigible part of her that inspired the pilgrimage to sickbay. Arriving at her quarters, she moved inside, and disrobed. She lit a candle and placed it near the bed, but did not mean to meditate tonight. Instead, she crawled under her Starfleet-issue covers that insufficiently warmed her Vulcan body. Pulling at something from the corner of the bed, she stretched out a thick, red and orange quilt made on Vulcan. When she had satisfactorily wrapped herself in it, she reached to depress a panel, turning out the light. The flickering illumination of the meditation candle danced from the night stand, and she turned on her side to dissect its glimmering tongues. Somehow, the radiant, unpredictable fire had always levied a certain tax upon T’Pol’s discipline; it offered an irresistibly fascinating territory to be explored, beyond the beaten paths of her ancestrally bequeathed logic. There was no telling if she would ever learn to confront the flame and at the same time keep from being burned. She could only hope that one day such a compromise could be possible, for that budding temptation living in her core was a part of her. How could she flee it? She was happy the Commander was well, and relieved that he would suffer no permanently ill effects—but this she could scarcely admit to herself, even consumed by the inspiring fire light that flickered across her face—much less to Commander Tucker. Her feelings in that regard were kept under heavy guard. For now, she would not challenge their captivity.

Perhaps tomorrow, she thought, as she turned away from the flame and sought the dreams that she denied.


The End

Back to Fan Fiction Main Menu

Have a comment to make about this story? Do so in the Trip Fan Fiction forum at the HoTBBS!


A whole mess of folks have made comments

John, I really admire your ability to use symbolism so eloquently. It makes your work quite moving.

T'Pol is fighting the good fight here against her inevitable feelings for OMT. It's a battle she isn't gonna win, though, huh? But she wouldn't be T'Pol if she didn't at least try to fend them off. Love can be so complicated...especially for a Vulcan. Thanks for this.

You're a poet!

John grat job with your story after the events of Shuttlepod 1 I really like how you had T'Pol concerned for Trip's well bing that she had problems meditating until she saw Trip and Talked to him I liked how you showed their friendhip and the banter between them here. I liked this story alot well done.

A great pre-Xindi story. Too bad so few authors write stories located in S1 and S2...

Very poetical and all that... but I find it unlikely that there'd be NO ONE on duty in sickbay when there was still a PATIENT in sickbay. I suppose I understand. You wanted them alone. I'll let you get away with it this time... but next time you need to have them take ADVANTAGE of their convenient solitude... maybe by raiding Phlox's supply of decon gel or something. ; D

haha. You know I was thinking about it and actually I decided to have there be nobody there on purpose, not just to give them time alone. I could have had Phlox just... step out for a minute or something.

The reason I decided to was because in every story you ever see (that I ever see anyway) Phlox is ALWAYS THERE. I realize he's kinda obsessed about his work, but he has to have quarters... he has to have SOMEWHERE else he goes, he'd get bored out of his mind. Besides that hospitals sometimes look pretty damn deserted. When I went to see my friend's brother I walked hall after hall after hall where it looked like just NOBODY was there. Of course there were, but it was very few and the middle of the night. I just decided that Phlox wouldn't figure it absolutely necessary to watch Trip if he was just spending his last night in sickbay but not critically injured. We never see sickbay empty, but I figure it's gotta be SOMETIME.

While it's true that hospitals are woefully understaffed these days, I'm sure the charge nurse was probably in a patient's room or something when you went to visit your friend's brother. Patients are generally kept in a hospital because they have some condition which would make it dangerous for them not to be within easy reach of a medical professional. I know it probably didn't seem like it at the time, but I'm sure if your friend's brother had had a sudden medical emergency there would have all of a sudden been nurses coming from every direction. They don't have to be in the same ROOM, though, so I suppose if Phlox's quarters were next door to sickbay and he had a monitor in his room with the biobed readings from sickbay... like the on-call room in most labor and delivery units... then I can stomach him being in his quarters. If we assume a monitor, though, then he might be able to guess what they were up to. That might make a funny story. Trip's vital sign alarm goes off and Phlox races in to find out why Commander Tucker's heart rate is so rapid... and, well... you get the idea. ; )

Sickbay is a large place. I'm sure that Phlox was in the OTHER part of Sickbay ... plus, knowing him, he has that whole sickbay cam built in so the moment the bio-monitors start indicating Trip's heart rate is speeding up, Phlox glances at the cam. Seeing S-C T'Pol there, he smirks.

And then hits the Record button. :-D

*snicker*

It's nice to see you setting the foundation for the T&T relationship during those first two years on Enterprise - a precoursor of things to come, done as others have mentioned, in a poetical fashion. And as Marc says earlier in these comments, there has not been enough attention by fic writers to the pre-Xindi days of angst and innocence. We will have to rectify that.

It's entirely possible that Phlox had to go to the bathroom.

Good one Jonny O! Excellent stuff.

Very very pretty, John. Thank you, and well done! :)

My gradeschool gym teacher used to call me Jonny O...