Autumn
By Laura Schiller
Based on Star Trek: Enterprise
Copyright: Paramount
Jon had been listening to T'Pol's story with rising bewilderment. His head spun, the way it had the first time he'd used the zero-G simulator at Starfleet Academy. He didn't know which way was up. Parasites in his brain, eating away his long-term memories. Ten years older in what felt like a single night. Earth and all its colonies, destroyed. Enterprise caught up in a futile resistance against the Xindi. Trip and Malcolm as captains. And T'Pol …
T'Pol sat opposite him, watching him with serene hazel eyes, looking not a day older than the day he had tried to coax her into watching Rosemary's Baby. And yet she had changed. It wasn't just the ponytail, though its softening effect on her face made her lovelier than ever. It was in all the little things: the way she called him "Jonathan" instead of "Captain", the way she would touch his shoulder in passing for no reason at all, the gentleness in her voice as she had broken the terrible news. She's had plenty of practice, after all, he thought bitterly, frustrated with his useless brain.
She had changed so much. Even in the few hours he'd been awake, he could see that. Without ever breaking the emotional discipline that was essential to her culture, she had learned to temper it with genuine sympathy. But at what cost?
My God, T'Pol. What a sacrifice, and all for the likes of me.
"I may have asked you this before," he said, forcing himself to speak calmly, "But there's one thing I still don't understand."
She waited him out in silence.
"You … you had other options." He waved his hands, trying to indicate the size of the opportunities she had given up. "You could have gone back to Vulcan. To your own people. And even if that didn't work for you, you could have stayed on Enterprise. You're – you were – an excellent officer. You would have been invaluable to them in their defense of us last humans. Instead … instead you're here on Ceti Alpha V, making breakfast for a cranky old man who can't remember eating it the next morning. That's the part I don't get."
He smiled wryly, trying to pass that flash of self-loathing off as a joke, but T'Pol's bright eyes saw through him. She raised a reproachful eyebrow. Parasites or no parasites, he knew her well enough to recognize that.
"Are you implying that my work as your caretaker is less worthy of respect than my previous position?"
"No!" He blushed. "And if you're going to split hairs, please don't. You always win that game."
"Then what is it you are trying to say?"
He caught a glimpse of the old T'Pol, the one who had never hesitated to challenge him when he needed it. How she had frustrated him at times, and yet he could not have done without her. Did she know that?
"All I'm trying to say is … you gave up everything for me. Why?"
She gave him a long, searching look, as if she could read his mind. He met her eyes squarely, trying to project strength and sanity, whatever that meant. Go ahead. I'm not made of cardboard. You've already told me something terrible; I can take whatever you throw at me next.
He felt a peculiar reassurance in the back of his mind, a wordless sense of it's all right. Imagination? It had to be. And yet …
T'Pol took a visibly deep breath, dropped her gaze, then lifted it again with determination. Her voice when she spoke was soft as ever, but with an undercurrent of strength, like the tide that wears away a stone.
"I did not give up everything," she said. "I kept what mattered most."
His breath caught in his chest. What had she kept? This small, prefabricated house with its plain white walls and tiny vegetable garden. A collection of science padds, most likely years out of date. Her candles; God knew where she found them these days. And finally, Jon himself.
"Our friendship, you mean?"
He could not deny that his heart was hoping, praying, for a different answer. An answer T'Pol confirmed by slowly shaking her head.
She smiled, an infinitely subtle movement at the corners of her eyes, and held out two fingers to him across the table. His mind had no idea what that might mean, but his body remembered, and he mirrored her gesture without thinking. She brushed her fingers across his, and it felt like a supernova had exploded in his mind.
Love. All the love she kept under tight Vulcan control, held back from her face and voice, rushed out to him in that single touch. When they broke apart, his heart was racing, as if he'd just spent an hour on the treadmill. His eyes were wet with tears. He'd known Vulcans had certain mental powers, but he'd had no idea it would be like this.
"When?" he gasped.
She understood. "Three months after we moved into this house. I began to think of you differently before then … the strength of character you showed in dealing with your illness was, and is, extraordinary." Warm admiration colored her low voice. "However, I had my … reservations … about the wisdom of bonding with a man who could not remember our life together."
He understood that. For a moment, his heart ached for her, living with him like this day after day. How many times had she shown him all her love, only to wake up the next morning as nothing but his First Officer? How many beautiful and painful memories had they made together that she must carry all alone?
"What changed your mind?"
"It began when Koss, my former betrothed on Vulcan, went into pon farr."
"What's that?"
She explained in a few clinical phrases and, before he could find the time to be shocked that the Vulcans, of all species, suffered from such an affliction, she continued with her story.
"The mating bond passed on his condition to me, as it should, but with unexpected consequences I became … emotional … towards you instead of Koss." Was there a deeper tinge of copper than usual to her cheeks? "I did not wish to leave you. You tried to send me away regardless, for my own good, but I did not listen. We had … an altercation … in which it became clear to both of us that our first priority was each other's welfare. Under those circumstances … " She shrugged lightly. "There was only one logical solution."
"Which was?"
"Koss went to visit the priestesses of Amonak, who are trained to assist men in his condition. As for you and me … " Again that flicker of a smile, like sunlight dancing across water. "We have been bonded now for eight years and five weeks, and I regret none of my choices."
Jon smiled back at her. In one sense, this moment was entirely unromantic – the spartan house and furniture, their comfortable old clothes, the smell of coffee and cold scrambled eggs, the Vulcan formality of her speech making it sound like she was presenting her latest scans from the command center – but in another sense, the sense that mattered, it was the most romantic moment of his life.
Our first priority was each other's welfare, she'd said. It had always been that way. Every time she defied her Vulcan superiors to stand by him; every time he left Enterprise unprotected by Trellium-D in the Expanse, painstakingly plotting a course between the anomalies instead, just so she could stay. Even his fateful refusal to leave her with her leg pinned under that fallen bulkhead, the cause of his broken memory. He did not regret it.
He had known that he loved her ever since that bizarre and humiliating time in the first year of their mission, when Porthos fell ill. He knew he had behaved badly that time, worrying more about the dog than about the risky First Contact he should have been leading. But what he remembered more than anything about that time was T'Pol: her accusations knocking sense back into his head; her body glistening with sweat as they raced their treadmills; his dream of holding her hand beneath a black umbrella; his awkward approach to a confession; her kind – and flawlessly diplomatic – way of stopping him before he could begin.
He had dreamed about her for so long, and now against all odds, she was his. Was it wrong to feel so terribly grateful for a chain of events that included the destruction of Earth?
I regret none of my choices.
He took her hand in his, human style this time, stroking her knuckles with his thumb. Her skin was hot, almost feverishly hot by human standards. It was like sitting by a lit fireplace in autumn.
"Me neither," he said.