Time and Again - Chapter 2

Time and Again

by Rogue

Category: Plot Summary #5, Trip/T’Pol Summer Challenge
Rating: PG
Genre: Romance

Disclaimer: Paramount owns all, lucky people. If I could make money doing this, I would be, but I’m not. *sighs*

Spoilers: Through Season 3. Since I’ve actually now seen seasons 1 and 2!

Summary: After the Alien-Nazi timeline is reset (because the concept boggles my mind), Trip and T’Pol learn how to live in a post-Xindi, post-Temporal Cold War era.

A/N: Thank you to all the reviewers! It’s really neat to have the authors I’ve been reading commenting on my story, and I appreciate the feedback.

~~~~~

Chapter 2

Trip barely managed to pull himself out of the bed in time to shower and find his other clean dress uniform in time for the shuttle to Tallahassee. Light streamed in from the streetlights illuminating the dark streets through the open windows in the living area of his San Francisco apartment, and he quickly stuffed a change of clothing and his shaving kit into a duffel bag. He rummaged around in the kitchen, finding a Starfleet ration pack stolen in his academy days stowed away in one of the cabinets. He ripped the meal bar from its package, and took a bite of the overly chewy substance as he hurried out the door.

Five o’clock in the morning looked a lot more pleasant when the sun was shining, and Trip was glad he’d remembered to grab his jacket on his way out the door as the nip of the cold air outside met his skin.

The transit station was only a few minutes from his apartment by the mag train, and he stepped aboard, pressing his Starfleet identification into the reader to allow him access without having to rummage around in his pocket for the correct change, and the train whooshed through the quiet streets of San Francisco, and Trip breathed in the quiet and peacefulness that was the city at rest.

His parents were waiting for him at the transit station, and Trip grinned at seeing them, despite his mere three hours of sleep after the reception. “Morning.”

“Good morning,” his father said, attempting to stifle a yawn as Commissioner Maupin appeared, looking possibly sleepier than his father did, beckoning for them to follow her.

The shuttle used to ferry the commissioner was about the size of the ones Enterprise used, and Trip glanced up at the sky in spite of himself, even though it was impossible to see the spacedock floating in orbit. He tossed his bag into the storage area, helping his mother into the shuttle as she yawned. “You okay, Mom?”

“Just tired,” she said, allowing another yawn to escape her. “I don’t know how you manage to look so chipper this morning with as little sleep as you’ve had.”

“I’ve made do with worse,” he said, strapping himself in. “Don’t worry. One of these days, we’re going to be transporting across continents.”

“I’m not getting in one of those things, ever,” his mother said with more vehemence than she should have been able to muster considering her current state of consciousness. “Dispersing my molecules over the continent.”

“They’re not as bad as you think,” Trip said as the shuttle lifted off and accelerated into the sky. “You hardly know anything’s happened.”

“You’ve been in one of those things? I thought you swore you weren’t getting in them ever again,” she said, looking rather distressed at the thought.

He shrugged, leaning his head back against the headrest. “Sometimes you don’t have much of a choice. We had a bunch of Xindi hatchlings that reverse imprinted on the captain. It was the doc’s medical opinion that something was wrong, so we mutinied, I transported down to the hatchery and stunned him, and then transported back up.”

“I don’t need to hear this,” Joyce Tucker murmured, leaning back and closing her eyes. “I need some more sleep.”

Trip grinned as his father laughed silently, and settled back for the trip.

~~~~

By shuttlepod, Tallahassee was a little under an hour and a half away from San Francisco. Morning was breaking over the ocean as the shuttlepod touched down at the Tallahassee Transit Station, and Trip glanced at his parents. “You sure you’re not coming?”

His mother nodded. “There are other parents out there who aren’t getting to be present. I don’t think I should be either. I’ll see you when you get home.”

She scrambled out of the shuttlepod before Trip could say anything else, and he looked up at his father, hoping for an explanation. “She’s not ready, son,” Charlie Tucker’s voice rumbled down deep in his throat. “I don’t know that she’ll ever be ready. Going to the memorial will mean once and for all that Lizzie is gone, and I don’t think your mother can face that. Especially when she’s so happy you’re home now.”

Trip nodded. “I understand. I’ll be home after while.”

“Come hungry,” Charlie said, looking relieved at an opportunity to change the subject. “I have a feeling your mother is going to go home and start cooking. There’s a bushel of peaches in stasis at the house, and the minute you came home, she went out and bought pecans.”

“Sounds good,” Trip said, handing his father his overnight bag. “See you in a few hours.”

~~~~

If Tallahassee was an hour and a half from San Francisco, Orlando was barely ten minutes beyond Tallahassee, including the takeoff, circling the busy transit station six times, and landing.

“Damn, it’s good to be home,” Trip said, stepping out of the shuttlecraft. The air in Florida was cleaner, sweeter, than the air any place on Earth or the dozens of alien worlds he’d set down on during his time on Enterprise.

“Commander,” the commissioner beckoned towards him. “We only have about an hour until the ceremony begins. This way, please.”

His feelings of good joy vanished as he entered the skimmer that would take them to the memorial site in Orlando. The skimmer pulled out of normal traffic, carrying them along a side road that ran along the deep scorched mark in the earth that signified the tragedy that had taken place here. He should have looked away, but his eyes traced the lines of the trench anyway, and he found himself transfixed by the memories of homes and people that had been in the way of the weapon blast. The Xindi could try all they might to make amends for what they had done, but it was small consolation to those that were left behind and traveling alongside the scar through the city of Orlando.

“Here we are,” the commissioner said, and Trip looked up, astounded, to find the woman barely affected by the sight that had rapidly passing along the window. “The memorial is ahead.”

The memorial was constructed of black stone, the same kind that stood in Washington commemorating the fallen of the Vietnam War and the Eugenics Wars, but instead of the gash through the hill, like the Vietnam monument, the memorial sat upon level ground. Two meters high, it was a wall of solid stone, bent in the shape of a circle nearly five kilometers in circumference, the space cleared from a public park and a portion of the trench that had been filled in by workers trying to repair some of the damage caused to the landscape. The circle was broken in one spot, perhaps six meters wide, to allow visitors access to the interior, where a cylindrical stone stood offset from the entrance, the image of Enterprise etched into the top, and the names of the Starfleet crewmen and the MACOs lost in the battle neatly engraved into the stone.

It was all he could do to keep from becoming sick, and Trip wondered if perhaps his mother had not had the right idea after all.

Maupin seemed to notice his green tint at that moment, because she stopped her conversation with her aide. “Commander? Are you all right?”

He snapped out of his reverie. “Yeah. Yeah, I’m fine. The memorial—it’s—it’s impressive.”

The commissioner smiled. “I’m glad you think so. It’s been a difficult road trying to get this built. There was a considerable amount of trouble getting funding. Some people thought it was unwise to go ahead and build the memorial when it was possible that Earth could be destroyed soon after, but those of us who chose to look on the bright side instead decided otherwise. It was actually finished this week when the last of the Enterprise names were added to the middle.”

He nodded, unable to say anything as the commissioner turned back to her work, directing placement on the temporary dais that had been constructed in front of the memorial for the occasion. “Commander!” a voice said behind him, and he recognized the aide Maupin had been conversing with moments earlier. The girl couldn’t have been much older than eighteen, and she handed him a sheet of paper and what he thought was a small rock. “I thought you might like to have this.”

The paper showed a diagram of the memorial, and a section on the inside was marked, the words “Tucker, Section P-8.”

“We’re starting in two minutes,” Maupin said, and he found himself propelled up onto the dais to stand next to the commissioner, who readied herself, quickly scrolling through the speech on her datapad. He just stared at the sheet of paper in his hand.

Someone started to sing, and Maupin spoke, but he barely heard them. Something about the great tragedy, the potential that had been lost, the heritage denied to the human race now. It was nothing that had not already gone through his head.

The service was over quickly, and Trip thanked his lucky stars that he didn’t have to stand there much longer. He stepped off the makeshift stage, filled with a single purpose, moving through the crowd, making perfunctory acknowledgments of greetings sent his way.

The memorial was colossal once he entered it, and he paused for a moment in front of the Enterprise stone, reading names. All were familiar, but a few gave him pause. Major Gregory Hayes. Ensign Michael Kamata. Ensign Jane Taylor.

He moved on, following the directions the aide had given him. It didn’t take more than five minutes to walk to the section specified on the map, given the proximity to the end of the alphabet his name had.

The stone was filled with names carved into it in sharp relief, and there it was, carved out in the exact precision as the other seven million names etched into stone was, not on the bottom, but near it, and he knelt down to see it better. He reached out a hand towards it.

Elizabeth Anne Tucker.

He finally realized that he was still holding the rock that the aide had given him, and belatedly found that it was a piece of graphite. Turning the piece of paper around, he placed it up against the memorial stone, and rubbed. Lizzie’s name transferred over with the same ease as making a rubbing of a stone or a piece of wood had when he was a child and he and Lizzie had kept themselves entertained an entire summer with a collection of rubbings they had made of rocks and tables and wood and trees and leaves.

So much to say about her, but all that could be spared was enough space for three words. It wasn’t enough. It would never be enough.

But he knew that now. He knew that there would never be a way to make it enough. And content with that knowledge, he rose, knowing his parents were waiting for him at home.

Continue to Chapter 3

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A whole mess of folks have made comments

Oh, that was beautifully written. I like the memorial set-up. Good job. I'm looking forward to more!

I am glad that Trip went to visit the memorial, hard and emotional as it was for him. The stark nature of the stone adding poignancy to a loss that cannot be filled nor forgotten. Ali D :~)

That was beatiful. Loved the selection of the black stone for the memorial. It's very symbolic of the sadness and loss experienced by all.

Excellent work.

Excellent story. I loved how the black stone of this memorial tied in with the real life Vietnam War memorial, and the fictional Eugenics War.

I don't mean to downplay the depth of this part, but would Sim have had his name placed on the memorial? I mean, Phlox recorded his death and Archer even gave him a Star Fleet funeral. Yes, he was a clone, but his lived and died so the Enterprise crew could complete their mission with their Chief Engineer.

Lovely work. One of the things that made it so effective, I think, was that Trip basically had this chapter to himself, so we were able to focus on his grief and reaction to the memorial. The tie-in to the Vietnam memorial was also very effective. Well done!

Ooh you're killing me here - that hit a little to close to home...I lived in Orlando for 13 years and still have many friends and my parents there...but great story so far!

Excellent job. For a moment there, I thought Trip would get thrown back into his grief. Beautifully done. Nice job with the description of the memorial. Maupin was a bit annoying- she seemed rather cool and unaffected. But then again, she might not have lost someone, and think of how many times she's seen that sight.
Well done!

The part with Trip in the memorial was well done. I can't wait for the next chapter.

awwww! I love it! Can't wait for more... so hurry! ;)