Disclaimer: Paramount owns all. I shamefully used and abused one of my favorites by Robert Frost, so that credit goes all to The Poet. :
Author's Rant: I found this on my old HD the other night, and I thought I'd post it just for the hell of it. It's more of a drabble than anything else. Hope it makes at least some sense. Comments are very appreciated.
Spoilers: 3x08 Twilight.
Roads
by onescape
(Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;
Then took the other - )
He still dreams of her; this woman who is, and is not T'Pol.
She is the same: logical, firm, clean-cut. She is different: softer, older; one that lived through her failure.
He supposes she is what he would like his waking-time T'Pol to be, if he had any right to assume anything beyond the carefully devised façade she wears. An extrapolation based on perhaps insignificant details, and drawn to extremes. Because, in his dream, T'Pol cares about him.
Each morning it's the same nowadays. He wakes livid with rage and more than a little broken. The artificial light feels like shards of glass behind his eyelids. Stalking the few feet towards the sink to brush his teeth; a near miss with Porthos who scurries out of his way with a yelp. The look of the dog watching him suspiciously only serves to fuel his anger further. He has so many more dirty little secrets to be guilty about, now that he dreams of his first officer almost every night, that he can't even begin to feel sorry about the pet.
Archer is furious with himself. He's never been the kind of man to indulge in fantasies so far-fetched. Enjoy, yes; succumb to them, never. He now knows the feel of her hair gliding through his fingers; the small sounds of contentment she'd make; the arch of her spine – he knows it by heart. His subconscious sure made quite an effort to come up with this… That is how he knows he's getting old.
He is filled with resentment. The alarm is the most hated sound in the universe. It is the moment when the hallucination crumbles upon itself, and for a split second his eyes dart around the quarters in bewilderment. He is a stranger in his own world. Then reality pours back in again, bleak and uncomforting and familiar.
And he is scared. He will go to the mess hall now, to find T'Pol, who is and is not the woman, in conversation with his chief engineer, his friend. When just a few months ago they used to be at each other's throats on a daily basis.
He doesn't wish to stay, to stare down his breakfast plate intently and listen for the signs of burgeoning affection in their voices. So he doesn't.
"Captain. I wished to speak with you about the sensor adjustments we were working on with Commander Tucker –"
It hurts to look at her.
"T'Pol… Ah, hold that thought – I, I have some…other things I need to attend to. I'll meet you later, in my office, alright?"
They don't even talk anymore. It's his own doing, of course. But how can she not know?
How could she know?
She is, and is not the woman he is – was? – will be? – in love with.
Though that changes nothing about the fact that she stands there, on the bridge, each morning, just about forty minutes away from an illusion.
(And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.)