Breath-of-Ice

Minor Spoilers for the episode E2.

Curious…

Ensign Hoshi Sato walked the deck of the second Enterprise with confusion. She had lied earlier that day to Travis and Malcolm, saying that she didn't look at who the father of her two children was. The fact of the matter is, the log didn't say. The line for father merely said "unknown".

This disturbed Hoshi. How could it be that her future self didn't know the father of her own children? Future Hoshi was obviously there when it happened. It wasn't fair that past Hoshi couldn't know.

Thinking back to when she had first looked herself up, she had been relived to learn that she had had kids. The whole time she had been worried that she would end up alone like poor Lt. Reed, without family or a loved one. Now she had the family, just no husband.

Hoshi decided to give it one more go. She slipped into the now deserted science lab and locked the door.

The first thing she had done was watch the video streams of her and her children, their first day of school, their first birthdays, etc. She smiled each time they came on screen, but sadly there was no one in the videos that could have been considered out of place. At the parties the entire crew was there, the first day just teachers and other students.

Strangely enough she couldn't find any video of when the children had been born, and it had always been a tradition in her family to have documentation of births, just in case someone couldn't be there.

The next step was for her to investigate her own file much closer. The first time that she had looked at it she had strayed away from any personal logs or files, sticking solely to the facts of her life. Now each video and picture was up for grabs. There were some very cute ones of her with the babies, beaming in a vibrant light.

After what seemed like hours of searching, she found a deeply buried file, with an encryption coding. Hoshi felt her heartbeat speed up, her breathing became erratic. This was it! Whatever this file contained, the Future Hoshi didn't want anyone finding it.

It only took the linguistics officer moments to unlock the password and inside this deeply guarded file were two video clips, two picture files and a personal log. She tried accessing the pictures and log first, then one of the video clips but found that they too were password protected and no amount of Hoshi brilliance could unlock them.

Finally she tried the last video clip and shockingly found that it wasn't encrypted. It began playing.

A thirty-five year old version of Hoshi was smiling at the camera; her hair was shorter and left falling in black cascades down her back. The front of her uniform looked to be a little tight near the stomach area. The older woman started,

"If you're watching this right now then that means one of two things, either,

You're very good at figuring out passwords or

You're my younger self from the first Enterprise

I personally hope that it's the latter because that means that only you will find out the truth regarding the children. And I—we both decided that this was the way that we wanted it to be.

The father of our two children is, Malcolm. Yes, the armory officer. Are you shocked?" The older Hoshi posed. Shocked doesn't even begin to cover it. The Current Hoshi thought.

"What can I say? Being stranded on this ship enticed people to explore new ideas and relationships. And would you believe that it was Malcolm that asked me out. Our first date had some major chemistry there. We balance each other out in ways that I couldn't even begin to talk about here, just flip through some of the more personal logs to see what I mean.

But I digress. We dated for quite awhile before we…went all the way. And that was how I ended up here," She rubbed her stomach fondly, "pregnant with the man I love's child."

"You're probably wondering why it isn't or in my case won't be stated that Malcolm is the father and quite simply it's because…we didn't want to interfere with the past. Malcolm and I both thought that if we say the two of us got together and had children that it might somehow…influence you to do the same. And as happy as we are together, we wanted you guys to decide to be together on your own, without some creative meddling on our parts.

But I wanted to let you know that in this future, you fall in love with the quiet, adoring, passionate armory officer and that the two of you had or will have two-" The older Hoshi stopped as someone came into the shot.

It was an older Malcolm, his hair was still the same impeccable length but it had a few more grey hairs then it used to. In his arms he held a small baby wrapped in a white blanket.

"-Beautiful children together." He finished. He looked lovingly into the older Hoshi's eyes and set the child in her waiting arms. Kissing the side of her forehead, he got up and left the shot. The woman with the baby in her arms cooed and said back into the camera, "So, that's truth about your children. You can do whatever you want with this information, I trust you to make the right decision. If you wanted to see the rest of the things in this file the password is 'pineapple'. Bye!" She said and lifted the tiny baby hand to wave in her direction. The video ended.

The Current Hoshi felt a few tears run down her face which she quickly wiped away. She clicked on the next video and entered the password. This was the video that had been missing from her children's files, the video of their births. Malcolm had been there, comforting her, supporting her. She understood why the Older Hoshi loved him so.

She accessed the two picture files; one contained a group picture of Hoshi, Malcolm and the two babies shortly after they had been born. The two adults were smiling, she had never seen herself smile in a picture like that before and come to think of it she had never seen Malcolm smile…ever.

The other file contained a picture that actually could have been taken now. It was a picture of Hoshi, curled into Malcolm, his arm around her waist; both of hers snaked around his middle, smiling as if they were on a date. Hoshi smiled and let a few more tears fall. Feeling a strange attachment to the image she copied it into her own password protected file, so she could look at it later. She didn't want to take the other data; it was another life, another time. She came to decision right then regarding the information, if after everything with Xindi, they somehow both survived, she would start a relationship with him. She had always wanted to and this video had helped sort some things out. And maybe someday, many years from now, she would tell him that in that future they had been together, been happy.

Hoshi accessed the final piece to the puzzle, the personal log and started to read all about her life with the armory officer.

Fin

AN: My first drabble into the Star Trek fandom. I've recently become very obsessed with Star Trek: Enterprise (Trip/T'Pol!) so I have decided to try my hand at some fiction. Let me know what you think.