Addictions
By Laura Schiller
Based on Star Trek: Enterprise
Copyright: Paramount
"Who is the father?"
"Commander Tucker."
T'Pol left Sickbay with those words still reverberating in her mind. She could hear Captain Archer's footsteps beside her, but she kept her head down, not wanting to look at him. Her emotions roiled, too thick and dark even to identify. She clasped her hands behind her back to keep them from shaking.
"So," said Archer, his quiet voice unnaturally loud in the empty corridor. "On the other Enterprise, you and Trip … ?"
"That was the other Enterprise, Captain. At the present time, there is nothing between us." Her attempt to speak with her customary calm backfired; the dead flatness of her voice gave away as much as a shout. "Even if there were, it would be none of your business."
"T'Pol." Archer put a hand on her sleeve. She spun around, faster than she should have, and he stepped back with both hands in the air. "I'm sorry. Normally, the last thing I'd want is to invade your privacy… but I had to ask."
"Why?"
His hard, stern face, looking ten years older than it had when Enterprise left spacedock, was carved into lines of deep concern. "Something's troubling you, I can tell. Something beyond this mission. The other day, when Degra released me - " He held out his hand, echoing the moment she had handed him a towel to wipe his bloody face, "Your hand was shaking. And when we argued about stealing that warp coil, you shouted at me and smashed a padd. I deserved it, mind you - " A grim smile twisted his face for a moment, before leaving him even sterner than before. " – but that's not all. When we beamed over the Trellium-D in exchange for that warp coil, there were several canisters missing. Malcolm scanned the ship for them, and he found trace amounts in … in your quarters." Archer hesitated, as if even the word were painful. "T'Pol, talk to me. What's going on?"
Dr. Phlox's good-natured scolding ("Trellium-D is deadly to Vulcans, how could you forget?") had been hard enough for her to bear, but she was enduring it in exchange for his help. Archer's kindness almost undid her. He would have been within his rights to relieve her of duty, even put her in the brig for what she had done.
"Can we - " She swallowed back a lump of tears. "Can we speak in your office?"
/
"You couldn't have told me this sooner?" Archer paced back and forth in his tiny office, running a hand over his severely cut hair, looking almost as tormented as she felt.
"You have enough to worry about." She sat in his chair with her knees drawn up, staring absently at the pictures of ancient Earth ships.
"Damn right I do!" He swung around to glare at her. "I've got enough to worry about without my first officer suffering and refusing to get help!"
"I have help, Captain. I informed Dr. Phlox."
"Oh." Archer's sigh of relief made the whole room feel a little lighter. He dropped onto the sofa, which creaked in protest. "Okay. Well. And you're sure the two of you have things … under control?"
"I have not injected Trellium-D for two weeks." A simple fact, since there was none aboard. Never mind that her hands had kept shaking for days, and the sound of power tools still hurt her ears.
"Damn." He shook his head. "You of all people, T'Pol. Don't you remember what that stuff did to you on the Seleya? I had to stun you. What were you thinking, injecting it into your blood?"
There were several answers to that, none of them good enough. She might as well give them all.
"I was … overconfident, Captain," she confessed. "I was trying to develop an immunity, so that we could insulate Enterprise against the anomalies instead of wasting time charting a course through them. I also … " Humiliation burned her skin like the aftereffects of the drug. "As I told you earlier, I also felt a growing attraction to Commander Tucker. The Trellium … enhanced it. That is why I am now avoiding both."
"Oh God … " Archer's exclamation was so low, she suspected he hadn't meant for her to hear it. Was he expressing contempt, shame, sympathy, or something else? Even now, sometimes the nuances of human emotion were beyond her.
"I will accept any punishment you see fit to give me," she said.
"Punishment?" He rolled his eyes up to the ceiling. "We're in the Expanse, aren't we? That's already punishment enough. Besides, what kind of hypocrite would that make me? You know my record. Piracy. Torture. Fraud."
"You did what seemed necessary at the time." She hated to hear him speaking so bitterly, even if she knew exactly why.
"So did you," said Archer, in a much gentler voice this time. Why was it, she wondered, that forgiving each other came easier than forgiving themselves?
"Our chief engineer's not a drug, you know," he said, after a long silence, in an oddly casual voice that did not seem to match the atmosphere.
"Captain?"
"You can't just cut yourself off from him the same way you did with Trellium. Have you tried talking to him?"
"He is irrational on that subject." With another blush, she thought of how he had come to her quarters to check on her, and his kind gesture had led to a sharp exchange of words about how neither of them wanted a relationship. He needn't have been so quick to deny it. But that was her own fault, of course. An experiment, she had called their night together.
The truth was, she wanted Trip so much, it frightened her – his clear blue eyes, his sunny smile, his warm skin against hers, even his grief and his anger, so open and unashamed compared to hers. She wanted him, even though this mission might kill them, and even if they survived, neither Starfleet nor the Vulcan High Command would approve such a match. She had pushed him away for his own protection. Didn't he understand that?
"Irrational? No offense, T'Pol, but so are you right now," said Archer, so matter-of-factly she was barely even offended. "This is Trip we're talking about. Our colleague, our friend. Shutting him out won't solve your problems; it'll only hurt him more. Even if you argue, it'd be better than nothing. At least an argument gets things out in the open."
He got up from the sofa, caught the arms of her chair, and swiveled it so that he could look down into her eyes. She knew that look. I need you on the bridge, he'd said the other day, his hands on her shoulders, the first among the crew to notice her trembling. Find the time to meditate. She had gone straight to Dr. Phlox and confessed her addiction. Archer had that effect on her.
"As your captain," he said with quiet intensity, "I'm ordering you to keep this situation from affecting your duties. And as your friend, I'm asking you to do what's best for you, whatever that may be."
"You … believe I should return to him?"
"That's not for me to say. It seems to me this isn't the best time for a relationship, but then I'm no therapist. It's up to you and Trip to work this out."
The prospect was daunting. Vulcans did not have a concept of romantic love. There was sexual attraction, of course, and there was the loyalty between bondmates. She couldn't bond with Trip, who was neither telepathic nor willing to commit. ("All the other women on board must've been taken – otherwise, I can't think why I'd ever have married you!") As for sex with no strings attached, she'd tried that and failed – the strings had formed anyway. This uncertain middle ground that human couples thrived on, this practice of "dating", was a mystery to her. Even the Expanse was easier to navigate.
Besides, it might be even be worth losing Trip as a lover if she could keep him as a friend.
She looked up at Archer. Like metal drawn by a magnet, she could feel all that was best and strongest in herself rising up to meet those grey eyes.
"I will speak to him," she said. "I will do everything I can to maintain our working relationship. You may rely on us both, Captain."
"I never doubted it, Subcommander. Dismissed."
Archer smiled, straightened up, and gave the chair in which she sat another little spin so it faced the door. She took the hint and stood up to leave.
As the doors slid shut, she heard something behind her that might have been a sigh.