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I Told You We Weren't Going to Lose Touch

Author - Joycelyn Solo | Genre - Finale Fix Challenge | Genre - Future Story | Genre - General | I | Rating - G
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FIX the FINALE Challenge

I Told You We Weren’t Going to Lose Touch
a Star Trek: Enterprise - based fan fiction

by: Joycelyn Solo

Rating: G

Disclaimer: Star Trek: Enterprise and associated characters are property of Paramount Pictures. No copyright infringement is intended; this story is for entertainment purposes only.
Challenge Response: Fix the Finale on Trip/T’Polers
Genre: Trip/T'Pol Romance; Angst
Summary: Thanks to an old friend, T’Pol and Trip may have a new lease on life.

Author's note: This takes place shortly after begins his speech at the end of These are the voyages (aka: The final episode of “Enterprise,” aka: What the heck were they thinking?)

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Part 1

Standing alone in the Green Room, T’Pol listened to the polite applause as it welcomed Captain Archer to the podium.

Though she tried, she could not give her full attention to her commanding officer’s speech -- one she had heard snippets of for the past four days. In a way, she supposed she should have been grateful for the captain’s preoccupation with what he was going to say for this prestigious occasion. His anxiety had been a distraction from the more severe emotions -- yes, emotions -- she refused to let herself feel. The same emotions that had made it nearly impossible for her to meditate since...

Blinking, T’Pol turned her attention to the monitor that allowed her to watch the proceedings in private. Had things been different, T’Pol would have sat with pride beside her crewmates. She would have gladly sat in the company of the Humans who had become her friends in the course of ten years. But the absence of one man, one who had become much more than her friend, prevented her from joining her crewmates in the audience.

He had been her confidante, her lover, the father of her child.

And, now, he was gone.

Trip was gone.

The Human who had come to mean more to her than any being in her life, had been taken from her in a foolishly self-sacrificial act only he could be capable of. For reasons T’Pol could not fathom, the engineer had thought that destroying himself was the only way to protect Archer and assure the captain’s safe arrival back on Earth for the all-important speech.

Along with the grief his death brought, T’Pol could not suppress her anger. Only Trip would have been able to anger her in death as he had in life. Only he could make her acknowledge the emotions she had worked all her life to suppress; just as he had once brought her feelings of love, joy and belonging.

The Human who had done so much for her was gone. And she had unable to help him when he needed her most.

Even as the guilt, another emotion, threatened, T’Pol could imagine Trip’s voice as he admonished her for such thoughts. He would have said, in that garbled way of his that passed for English, “There wasn’t anything you could have done.” But T’Pol, alone with her grief, couldn’t help but wonder.

“There really wasn’t anything you could have done.”

T’Pol stiffened. The admonishment had come from behind her, and had sounded so much like Trip, that she knew she must have imagined it. The lack of meditation, in addition to affecting her tenuous control of her emotions, was obviously allowing her mind to play tricks on her.

“A fella’s dead a couple days and this is the welcome he gets?”

Turning slowly, T’Pol could not stop the widening of her eyes or the strangled noise that emitted from her throat. “Trip? But you...” Sure she was imagining the smiling Human before her, she drew a deep breath and straightened her spine. With calm detachment, she informed the apparition, “You are dead.”

“Well,” he said, taking a seat and making himself comfortable. “I was dead. Or pretty close to it. But an old friend of ours didn’t like that idea.”

“An old friend?” she asked, staring at the man who was, perhaps, not a hallucination caused by her emotional state. He seemed real enough. The chair had given under his weight. She could smell him -- the scent achingly familiar. If she concentrated, she could almost feel the echo of their long-dormant bond. He was...

As her mind raced for rational explanations of her former lover’s return from the dead, T’Pol was distracted by a shimmer in the air that took the shape of a man -- a man she recognized.

“Crewman Daniels.”

“Hello, Sub-commander,” the time-travelling agent, or so had his claim always been, smiled faintly at T’Pol. “It’s ‘Commander,’ now, isn't it? I’m sure this is quite a shock for you, but Commander Tucker insisted on seeing you himself, first.”

T’Pol was at a loss, her gaze going from one supposedly dead man to the other. “You died nearly seven years ago,” she informed the man who may or may not have been Daniels.

“That’s what I told him,” Trip -- or the Human who bore a striking resemblance to the man T’Pol knew as Trip -- said.

“And, as I told Commander Tucker, that’s one of the tricky things about temporal mechanics. Yes, to you, I died seven years ago. For me, however, it hasn’t happened yet. The man you saw die was me, only several years in my own future.”

“Don’t worry, T’Pol,” Trip said. “I didn’t understand it much the first time he told me, either.”

“And when, exactly, was that?” T’Pol asked.

“About six hundred years from now,” Trip answered.

Daniels, much to T’Pol’s surprise, rolled his eyes at the commander. “If you will take a seat, Commander, I will explain from the beginning -- or the beginning as you know it.”

T’Pol took a seat, more for her own comfort than for Daniel’s suggestion. If she was indeed hallucinating, she figured a sitting position would prove less of a hazard.

“Four days ago, a dying Commander Tucker was placed in the ___ chamber in hopes of saving him.” Daniels began, watching T’Pol flinch at the reminder. “However, the body that later came out of the chamber was not Commander Tucker.”

“Who’s body was it?” T’Pol asked.

“Actually, it wasn’t anybody’s body,” Trip answered. “It was a fake with some of my blood on it to make it look real enough for everyone.”

“For what purpose?”

Daniels, shooting Trip an annoyed look, continued, “Shortly after Commander Tucker was placed in the chamber, he was transported to a medical facility in the twenty-seventh century and his injuries healed.”

“If you hoped to prevent the commander’s death, why did you not simply stop the ___ or warn Enterprise of their pending intrusion?”

“Because of one man,” Daniels answered, inclining his head toward the monitor. “Archer had to make this speech -- the exact speech he’s giving now -- for the United Federation of Planets to form. For him to make this speech, Commander Tucker had to die.”

“But, as I can see, Commander Tucker is not dead.”

Daniels opened his mouth to answer, but Trip leaned forward and beat him to it. “It turns out, I wasn’t really supposed to die. In fact, I’ve still got an important role to play in history.” He smiled widely. “Actually, we have an important part to play in history.”

“You weren’t supposed to tell her, Commander,” Daniels informed Trip, his voice resigned.

“You’ve been telling me I’m not ‘supposed to’ do a lot of things, Daniels. Have I listened to you once, yet?”

From the look on the time-traveler's face, T’Pol assumed that Trip had been just as much trouble in the future as he had ever been in her present.

“What role are we supposed to play, exactly?” she asked.

Trip looked at her, his blue eyes drawing her into their depths. “I told you we weren’t going to lose touch.”

Their gazes intent on each other, the commanders barely noticed as the temporal transport effect claimed Daniels and retuned him to the future. A future that, with the Trip and T’Pol reunited, was once again a brighter place.


Part 2

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A whole mess of folks have made comments

I really like this idea. *pretends this is what actually happened*

Btw, yay, I'm first! :P

That was beautiful. Much better ending. Thank you.

so that would make me second? i can live with that... i couldn`t help noticing i read this idea of trip not really being dead but switched with a fake body before, in fact, in "back to the future", but thats not important. you thought off a good story, i genuinely liked it.

So what role are they going play?? Sequel please!

Now this I can live with. Thank you, thank you, thank you. :o)

Sequel! Seeeeequeeeeeeeeeeellll!!! No, really, write a sequel. This is too good to just sit here. Although I could probably deal with it if you did. I just really want a sequel. Please? :)

now this I can stomach!! I want a sequel!!

Aw shucks! Don't stop yet! I wanna know what happens next!

Yes! Yes! I've been wanting someone to write something like this. I've had this image in my head of Trip walking in on T'Pol just standing there, with a Daniel's explanation on hand! Yay!

You must continue!! :)

You have a very good grasp of character... and sitution and the explantion was much better then TAOV. I wanna know more. See archer's recation. Know how they affect the future.

Nice! Good save. And I concur with the others, it's only logical to write a sequel! Please. Pretty Please!

Nice. I'm not that keen om time-travel, but when TPTB have opened that possibility, I'm all for using it to bring our man back.

Great idea using Daniels and great justification of the fake death to give Archer's speech an emotional boost. Now, where is the sequel?

KEWL

KEWL

i agree with several ppl here, this i can stomach:)sequal please

Add my name to the list of those who think this is great! I could really accept this. Would love to know what's in store for them. Don't forget the sequel!

Add my name to the list of those who think this is great! I could really accept this. Would love to know what's in store for them. Don't forget the sequel!

Add my name to the list of those who think this is great! I could really accept this. Would love to know what's in store for them. Don't forget the sequel!

Add my name to the list of those who think this is great! I could really accept this. Would love to know what's in store for them. Don't forget the sequel!

Sorry about all the posts! I only hit the button once.
I really do hope you will add a sequel soon! This was so good.

Awesome, great way to involve Daniels. I liked it!

Good job. I loved T'Pol grieving and her reaction to seeing Trip alive again--and you can add me to the chorus of "sequel, please"-ers! I also loved how you kept to the (icky, should-never-have-happened) TATV canon--like a said in a different review, it takes a creative mind to work with what you have. I could see this actually happening. Thanks for a nice fix-fic!

Sincerely,
Emily

Good job. I loved T'Pol grieving and her reaction to seeing Trip alive again--and you can add me to the chorus of "sequel, please"-ers! I also loved how you kept to the (icky, should-never-have-happened) TATV canon--like a said in a different review, it takes a creative mind to work with what you have. I could see this actually happening. Thanks for a nice fix-fic!

Sincerely,
Emily

P.S.- The whole "your past, my future" thing with Daniels reminds me of Zathros turning up on Commander Sinclair's ship in Babylon 5; you know, how Zathros knew Sinclair (Zathros' past), but Sinclair had not yet met Zathros (Sinclair's future). (And if that made any sense, your IQ is probably about 250, LOL.)