Title: And Already It is As Old As You Are
Rating: T
Disclaimer: Not mine.
Word Count: 2300
Fandom: Star Trek XI/Star Trek: Enterprise
Characters: T'Pol/Spock Prime. References to Trip/T'Pol and Kirk/Spock
A/N: Spoilers for the movie, obviously. I am also incorporating the "book canon" of Yesterday's Son.
Summary: Out of two histories full of losses, T'Pol and Spock try to make a future.
The flower that you hold in your hands was born today and already it is as old as you are. ~Antonio Porchia
When T'Pau turned down the seat on the Federation Council, T'Pol stepped into her place. She thought, at the time, that perhaps it would have been prudent to have hesitated a fraction longer than than she did. She was certain that her eagerness would find its way into the disapproving arch of T'Pau's eyebrow, or in the not entirely discreet smirk on Jonathan Archer's lips.
T'Pol was also certain at the time, that all the amusement and disapproval would not matter to her. As a Federation Council member, she could fulfill both her duty to Vulcan and the desire to remain free from the planet that had long since felt more like a prison than a home.
With the passing of years and the civilizations they had encountered on their travels, Warp Five was easier to reach than ever. Warp Seven was well within reach, and T'Pol reasoned that although she still felt an affection for her home planet, it would be far better to limit her association to the occasional visit.
The first time Spock saw T'Pol was on Earth, as he and his mother accompanied Ambassador Sarek to a meeting of the Federation Council. It was a fitting setting, as it was also the first time Spock could ever recall seeing a Vulcan other than himself look sad.
The other Vulcans in his life, including and especially his father, were always adept at hiding the emotions on their faces. Spock, even at such young age, was aware of that fact, and envied such skill with the same ferocity that he regretted not being able to do the same.
But her face, as she knelt in front of him, was far from composed. Those eyes, wide and full of grief, belonged on his mother's face, not on someone from his father's race.
Too much time among humans posed such a threat to all their people, Sarek would warn him later.
"You look unwell," Spock offered, giving as much sympathy as his father's blood would allow.
"No, I remain quite well, young Spock," she answered. "You will have to forgive me...but for a moment, you reminded me of my children."
"I wasn't aware you had any children," Spock's mother said, her warm voice seeking to extend a welcome.
"I don't," T'Pol replied, never taking her eyes off Spock's face. "But I did once."
Despite having one stationary location to conduct the bulk of their business, The Federation Council liked to make a grand show of visiting as many of the founding planets as it possibly could in a year. It was good for morale, President Archer had claimed during his tenure, and such a tradition, once it was begun was difficult to put an end to.
Many members of the Council complained and would have preferred to remain stationary entirely. But for T'Pol, the wandering reminded her of her years aboard Enterprise, and provided a soothing comfort for the science officer that remained within her.
It was particularly soothing when she was able to visit her home planet. Between Council duties, she revisited the lands of her ancestors, long since barren, gazed out in remembrance at the tops of Mount Seleya, and found time to visit the newly renovated school in the capital city.
It was there that she met Spock again. On her home world, her face was more carefully sculpted, but the degree of swiftness with which she dispatched the bullies causing him problems perhaps was not entirely Vulcan of her.
Truthfully, she was aware that her interference could cause additional trouble him in the future.
If Spock was similarly aware, he gave no indication. "Your assistance was appreciated, but unnecessary," he relayed. "I have successfully ignored their attempts to insult thirty-three times in a row without your help."
"I have no doubt," she replied. "If you will take an advice from an old Vulcan woman - "
"An ambassador," Spock supplied.
"A captain," T'Pol corrected.
Spock's eyebrow regarded her. "You prefer to be known by your association with Starfleet, instead of your association with the Federation Council?" he pondered. "I fail to see the logic in that decision."
"Perhaps you never will understand," T'Pol agreed. "But allow me to share something I learned during my association with Starfleet."
"Please do, Captain."
"Sometimes, Spock, logic alone is not enough to sway bullies."
"The teachings of Surak would disagree with you," Spock said, his little eyes wider than T'Pol was sure he meant for them to be.
"Of that I have no doubt. However, Surak was of one world, not two. You cannot claim the same," she reminded him.
The shame on his face was more familiar than she would like to admit, and was certainly not her intention.
The packages came from his mother's home planet and were books bound in the ways of primitives. But Spock read them eagerly, eyes and mind pouring over the human embellishment that was lacking in Vulcan's telling of early Federation history.
T'Pol was there, in every page, alongside her captain. The texts of Spock's home world gave gratitude to the savior of Surak's texts, but on his mother's world, T'Pol was hailed as a hero.
Spock was quite aware, of course, that reading the texts lacked in logic. He was also quite aware of the fabrications found within the Earth retelling of history.
But his mother's people depicted a far more fascinating history than his father's people did, and Spock spent many Vulcan nights curled around those texts, adding to the official history he had already learned.
T'Pol received many communications from Ambassador Sarek over the years, due to her post. She found his conversation stimulating on most occasions, in a way that might have persuaded her to remain on her home world for longer than the occasional visit, had there been more like him and less like the Vulcans she remembered.
But on the day that Spock declined admission to the Vulcan Science Academy, Sarek's communication was not the first she received. The first was from Amanda Grayson, whose steadiness and pride was accentuated only by the worry of a mother who informed T'Pol that "Space has taken my son from me."
T'Pol thought of another half-human, half-Vulcan son, the one she had lost to a quirk of a timeline years ago, as the rest of the communications poured in from her home planet.
The list was a lengthy one, and T'Pol sorted through them, growing increasingly intrigued by the outward hostility her planet continued to hold for a Vulcan who sought a life outside of the home world.
They would not call it hostility, of course, for that would imply emotion. So too would the particular tone Spock chose to wish them prosperity. She was not surprised at Spock's decision. Vulcan, with its bullies, conformity, and logic, would not hold the scientist that had surpassed all who had came before him.
She sent him a message that day, forgoing the typical greeting of their people entirely, wishing him luck in lieu of prosperity. "With the path you have chosen," she relayed, "You will need it."
His people were thankful for all that Ambassador T'Pol had achieved, and the scholars of his home world acknowledged their debt for the preservation of Vulcan history that she had been a part of. But they didn't understand her. Spock knew that much from the way their postures changed when she was mentioned, and the way the teachers' tones altered when they spoke of her.
When her communication full of advice came to Spock in his first year at Starfleet Academy, Spock didn't understand her either. Her "advice" included instructions to a Jazz "club" and directions to both a restaurant that specialized in pecan pie and to the capitol building of Carbon Creek, Pennsylvania.
Spock came to find pleasure in the music, though he could not say the same about the pie.
The significance of Carbon Creek completely surpassed him.
The Federation Council was holding a meeting on Earth when Nero attacked.
Starfleet gave her the requested records from the ships that had answered the Vulcan distress signal, though the Admiral who granted the request did not look particularly happy about it.
T'Pol didn't particularly care about the Admiral's happiness.
As the images of her home world being destroyed flashed across her screen, the ground beneath her seemed as fragile as the one onscreen. Memories assaulted every sense she had, from everywhere she had ever been. Though every memory ended with a red sky, others fought to compete. Flashes of the crew aboard the Seleya, the sounds of Elizabeth's last barely audible cries, the texture of T'Mir's purse, the taste of Trip's skin...and above all, the memory of Trip telling her that she could not begin to understand the pain of the Xindi attack.
T'Pol did not cry for her lost home, because despite all that had transpired to give her the memories she struggled to maintain, she was still a Vulcan. She honored those lost by maintaining control, even as she grieved.
In lieu of words, Spock played one of his favorite jazz pieces on his harp at the funeral service for T'Pol.
Jim accompanied Spock, though accompaniment was not unusual, as Jim accompanied him for most things. Nor was it particularly surprising that Admiral Kirk attended Ambassador T'Pol's funeral. He was far from the only important Starfleet Admiral in attendance.
"I didn't know you knew Ambassador T'Pol so well," Jim noted, over a slice of post-funeral pecan pie.
"I did not know her particularly well," Spock replied. "But she was, undeniably, an influence in my formative years. I have always found her struggles, in those early years, to be instrumental in providing a path for me to follow."
"I hear you both had a weakness for humans," Jim teased as he washed down the last of his pie with his coffee.
"Indeed. Perfection was beyond even a woman of Ambassador T'Pol's caliber," Spock agreed.
Jim took the comment as it was intended, and a light chuckle preceded his question. "There's just one thing I don't understand, Spock. Why the hell are we in Carbon Creek, Pennsylvania?"
She had not been a science officer in well over one hundred years. But her Vulcan senses of logic had not left her, and it did not take long to puzzle out the small gaps left in Captain Kirk's report of the Nero incident. They reminded her far too strongly of the gaps she and Captain Archer had once been forced to make, a lifetime ago.
But she did not have time to dwell upon the issue long. She spared only a thought to hope that Captain Kirk would gain some practicality to ground his recklessness and compulsive desire to cheat, before she departed, on a shuttle bound for the New Vulcan.
It was there that she met part of the missing gaps in Captain Kirk's story.
"If your purpose is to help repopulate our people, you will need to be far more truthful than you have been," were her first words to him. "At least, with your intended mate. As you and I are the closest in age among the survivors, it is logical to assume that will be me."
Perhaps it was the loss of a world that had always been his, no matter how much it had pushed him away, or perhaps it was the knowledge that his mother had perished far before she should have in this time line; perhaps still it was the truth that all of the pain in this world was his doing - or at least, could have been prevented by his actions.
Regardless of the reason, Spock was not quite able to prevent the relief from showing on his face, nor was he quite able to formulate the untruths he'd been planning on telling anyone who asked.
In the absence of a lie, T'Pol's questions were met with the truth she sought.
New Vulcan was hot and dry, in homage to the land they had lost. Pairings for those without a mate were quick, logical, and efficient, in the way of their people.
It would be difficult, for those Vulcans who favored a mate of their own sex. But the loss of their planet did not permit that consideration to be taken into account. Her mate grieved for them, T'Pol knew, even as he told her of the worlds and time he had left behind.
In the world he'd come from, he'd had a son from another time, similar but different from the circumstances that had given her Lorian. In the time that Spock came from, she had not had any children reach adulthood.
T'Pol remembered a time when her people staunchly denied the possibility of time travel. If she were not among the last of a dying race, she would have permitted herself to admit the humor of that not-quite-ancient belief.
But among a dying race she was, and still young enough to be fertile. Unlike others of her species, T'Pol knew she would not have to worry about developing affection for her new mate. As their bodies twined together, so too did their minds, revealing all that they had in common, and all that would bond them together beyond the desire to help repopulate their planet: hair tipped in gold, laughing humans lost long before the Vulcan life span ended, proud mothers lost in tragedies that defined them both, and ships named Enterprise.
She tasted the Iowa sun on his lips, and he tasted pecan pie on hers. The flavors mingled, providing a bittersweetness that was the best any of their people could ever hope to achieve in the shadow of the tragedy that had driven Spock and T'Pol to each others' arms.