Chapter IV:

A week later, the snow drifts began to melt as autumn launched a last-ditch effort to stave off the encroaching, frigid winter. Its defenses were marred with snow pack, the crevices and wind-worn peaks of Teakettle Mountain drowned in a blanket of pure white. In a valley in the base of the peak, not more than a kilometer from Jack's cabin, the red rock swirled in geological patterns; the Earth's fissures and fractures still clinging to narrow canals of the same coverlet that crept up to the peaks. T'Pol imagined the landscape might look like art from an aerial photograph or a reconnaissance survey. But Vulcans didn't look for art in landscapes, or new life in log cabins.

A stiff breeze blew the Subcommander's light brown hair across her eyes, but the wind was not all together unpleasant. She had grown used to the frigid cold, at least in her sensibilities, even if her biological senses still recoiled from winter's touch. On the wind was born a warmth amidst the frosty air, as if it were wrapped in a tubule all surrounded and shackled in arctic collars but escaped ever-so-briefly enough to touch her skin. The night would be cold, but warmer than those passed.

"Tipol, it's gettin' cold out, ya' might wanna' come in for supper," a voice called from behind her. Her fingers gripped the rough cotton sleeves of a long dress, thicker than one might wear in the summer but not warm enough to comfort her in the Colorado climate. She looked down to find herself, Vulcan Subcommander, in a faded yellow cotton dress with orange flowers with red-streaked pedals on it, and wearing a pair of softly worn-in leather shoes. Her ankles shivered. How strange I am, she thought, observing herself as if for the first time since she had taken Jack's offer to wear some more comfortable clothing. It was ironic that the colors were not all together strange to her culture. Red, orange and yellow were common themes for Vulcan attire, and for a Vulcan landscape. Staring out over chasm, she could almost observe the darkening of the yellow to orange, the orange to red, and the red to some indiscernible shade of black on the mountain tops in the distance. Her nostrils detected the smell of fresh water air mixed with a botanical tang, remarkably whisked from the Blue Lakes a dozen kilometers away through the air currents high above the valley, through the peaks of Teakettle and neighboring Ridgeway, and to her nose.

"Tipol?" Jack called again. She turned this time and nodded, walking towards the door.

It had been a full week since the snows had melted. T'Pol kept returning in her mind to the day when day Jack returned from scouting the trails and announced they were passable. He asked if she was ready to return home, and she struggled to find an answer. It would be the last time they discussed it.

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"Well, it looks like you'll be gettin' home soon," Jack murmured through a shiver, removing his coat. T'Pol sipped water by the fire, shivering quite unexpectedly. Her eyebrows flinched as she fingered the glass.

"It is warming," she replied with curiosity. The winter was coming and it failed to make sense that the temperature had risen and the snows receded.

"Yea'. It happens occasionally. I don't now, some kind of meteorological fluke or somethin'. I just figure Fall's not ready to give up yet, spends her last dyin' breath tryin' to warm things up before she finally gives up, kicks the bucket," he murmured, hanging up his coat.

"I know that's not how it really works," Jack cocked a smirk at T'Pol, who watched him wryly after his colorful personification of Nature.

Jack walked into the kitchen, then stopped and turned to T'Pol. She was facing the hearth, not exactly looking at him, but not exactly not. He began to speak but nothing came out. He paused, turned around again and walked to his room as if unsure what else to do.

"Perhaps, if it is warmer this evening, I can show you those stars of which we spoke?" T'Pol asked, raising her voice to reach the back room. There was a pause, and Tucker appeared in the doorway, overalls half-undone and a red and black plaid shirt spilling out over the denim.

"Well sure," he nodded, his voice dropping off. He cleared his throat. "Yea' I'd love to," he replied, trying to catch her eye. "But ah'… don't you want to be goin'?" he asked, unsurely. She turned to face him and lifted an eyebrow.

"Do you wish me to leave?" she asked simply.

"No, no, no, a'course not," he replied emphatically, moving into the room. He sat across from her, warming himself on the fire T'Pol had lit before he returned. She had not been sure why, but she decided to light the kindling before he returned. 'Good timing', she recalled him saying.

Jack sat across from T'Pol with the same half-worried, half-unsure facial expression she had seen on Commander Tucker's face as he waited to find out what she had decided about Koss' letter.

"You gotta' have family or someone somewhere worried about ya' though?"

"I…" T'Pol paused. She knew, deep down where her training on culture contamination lived, that the lie was more appropriate than the truth: that she still did not remember who she was with or how to get home. But she couldn't lie to him. At least, she didn't want to.

"I cannot get home," she said finally. Jack furrowed his brow and leaned forward.

"I don't understand," he said, sounding like Trip.

T'Pol pursed her lips, averting her eyes from his. "I can't tell you any more than that," she responded in a quiet voice, her eyes pleading that her condensed explanation would suffice. T'Pol knew he would not understand, closing her eyes as she waited for him to burst in frustration. Several moments went by in silence, when finally she looked up in curiosity. His face was frozen, eyes narrowed, frozen on her as if he were dissecting her, figuring something. She didn't like it. Just when she became uncomfortable, he leaned forward and looked up at her while hanging his head, his eyes warmer, like normal. He covered his face and groaned. T'Pol looked down curiously at him.

"Are you alright, Jack?"

He looked up, shaking his head. "I—I, don't know how to answer that, I've got this crazy idea in my—" T'Pol's brows rose instantly and she tensed like a cat. His gaze narrowed specifically from looking at her to looking at a part of her, those that were to the left and right of her eyes. T'Pol became very tense, concerned her cover was gone, destroyed, and things were about to get a lot more complicated. Tucker finally spoke after several seconds.

"You're welcome to stay here as long as you… have to. As long as you like," he added, carefully choosing his words.

"I won't ask you to go," he added.

I don't want you to go, he wanted to say. There was a long pause.

"Would you like assistance preparing the meal?" she asked cordially.

"Sure! Does vegetable stew sound a'right?" Jack asked with a grin.

"Indeed, that would be agreeable," she nodded, and rose from the chair.

"Pretty soon we'll have to go into town, stock up on supplies," Tucker thought aloud. "I've got some friends for you to meet," he added. T'Pol tensed instinctively. More people meant more influence, more chance of losing her cover. Before she could think of a way to politely turn down the offer, he spoke up.

"If you like, ya' know. If you'd rather pass, that's fine too," Jack amended, catching T'Pol off guard. He turned from cutting vegetables to see her removing a large pot from the cabinet where he had showed her.

"Thank you," was all she said.

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As she walked through the thick, wooden doorway, the number '26' weighed heavily on her mind. Twenty-six days. How many more before I can be sure they will never return for me? She asked herself. There was no telling how long it may take, but no logical reason she could infer that would require it take any more than mere microseconds for Daniels to return for her. Unless he couldn't find her, or they thought she was dead. Maybe she was dead. Illogical.

In any case, she was sheltered and fed, and would be kept alive as long as it took. It was that simple, she needed merely to survive and stay out of history's way and this human had offered his assistance in accomplishing that goal. It sounded so simple in her thoughts. But unlike the numerous cold, calculating decisions she had to make day after day for the past 50 years of service to the High Command, she had never encountered a barrier such as this. To receive his care, his hospitality, and something else of which she was becoming very aware, and to take it from him as merely a means to survive until the others came for her, felt unethical in a deeper way than she had every imagined the word could. Failing to site a source of research in a scientific publication was unethical. Informing the High Command of something Captain Archer told her in confidence was unethical. Taking advantage of Jack's feelings while holding out hope, false it may be, of returning to Enterprise wasn't just unethical. It stirred something deeper, a more jarringly personal definition of something she frightfully sought to understand. The fear of this unknown quantity would have been overpowering, but for the grace of another unknown variable, that soothed it away just in time. Even now, she was already beginning to understand this feeling as 'reciprocation'.

"You a'right?" Jack asked as he came out of his bedroom in a black, collared shirt and dark blue jeans. "You're kind of quiet tonight," he probed.

"I am fine. It is getting colder, I do not think it would be wise to continue observing the stars after sunset," she replied. T'Pol sat down in the plush armchair, sliding off the leather moccasins. Jack was disappointed at the news, but had noticed her shivering more and more each night. He climbed the loft and T'Pol sat down in front of the fire.

"Perhaps tonight shall be the last night," T'Pol amended with a slight curl on her lips. She pursed them quickly to remove any sign. Jack smiled as he walked down the ladder.

The dress was too short to reach to her feet, as she pulled her knees up to her chest to stay warm in front of the fire, the olive of her skin up to her calf slid out from under the cloth of the dress. She pulled and tightened and stretched herself, attempting to fit the garment around her tiny but not-tiny-enough body.

"Here ya' go," she heard Tucker say while laughing at her as she toiled with the dress. She looked up to find him kneeling down to the side of the chair, wrapping a large, wool throw around her, up to her neck.

"If I am completely covered, I cann—"

"I'll make supper, just you stay warm, a'right?" he grinned, tucking the last few folds of the blanket around the bottom of T'Pol's feet. His fingers ran into cold, soft flesh and he started back, as did T'Pol at first.

"Man, you are cold!" he exclaimed, at her lower body temperature. Without asking he walked around the front of her and reached under the blanket, covering both sides of one foot in his powerful hands. T'Pol's eyes went wide for a moment until his palms wrapped the arch of her foot in surprising warmth, working the ball of her foot with his fingers. She struggled, unsure whether to resist and ask him to stop. Her feet began to tingle slightly with increased blood-flow. Jack looked up at T'Pol.

"Where did you learn this technique?" T'Pol asked. Jack laughed lightly.

"From my pop," he recalled brightly, drawing himself back in time. His eyes settled on a far wall and his lips curved into a sad smile.

"When my mother was pregnant he used to massage her feet because she had bad nerves or somethin' and couldn't reach 'em herself. He used to sit up all night, tryin' to take the pain 'way, but he never could."

"Did he tell you this story?" T'Pol asked in a low voice. Jack's hands moved up to her ankle, to her individual toes and the sole of her feet.

"No, I was 'ere," he said quietly. T'Pol lifted an eyebrow.

"I do not understand," she replied. "Were you not still in the womb?"

Drawn back from reality, Jack looked back at her. His eyes were moist, their blue shaking in the vibrant optical dance as their color reflected and refracted through the growing tears in front of them.

"My uh, my mother… died in childbirth with a little girl," he paused. "With my sister," he told her, swallowing a knot.

"I am sorry," she told him, as a tear broke free down his cheek. T'Pol instinctively reached out, her fingers dangling over his head for a moment in pause, and then laid her hand on it. She wasn't sure why, but when she asked herself the answers came up dreadfully short of rationale, empty of logic.

Tucker rocked once with a sob, holding it back, clenching his eyes shut. Without sight, he could only feel T'Pol's hand pull him to her. His fingers stopped massaging her feet, his palms stopped rolling over her ankle and her heel, and he just held onto her while she held him.

T'Pol looked around the cabin, her vision blurring, the walls smearing with moisture. She looked down into his hair and straightened it with her fingers, stroking the back of his head as her mother had once done, long, long ago when her sehlat disappeared into the wastes, never to return.

Even she had sobbed, and sobbed and sobbed more, and her mother never chastised her, never told her to stop, to contain and resist her emotions, or to be strong - to be Vulcan. She never understood why she was allowed to cry that one time and never any other; why she was allowed to show emotion then, and no other time. As she had grown, she learned it was not about 'being allowed', but still the question lingered. Why even her mother, a grown Vulcan, one supposed to hold a high chin under the torment of emotions had permitted this indulgence.

She didn't care why, except that now it was her turn.

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"Are you sure?" Archer demanded, with a hand out straight.

Daniels exhaustively answered the question once again. "No—no, not about the time period, but I'm certain about the location."

Archer let out an exasperated breath and held his hips.

"Captain you have to understand that this exact science isn't… always an exact science. The only leads I have to go on to find Subcommander T'Pol is the database that Ruda stole from me, but that database contains literally thousands of planets, and hundreds of years of waypoints. She could be anywhere—and any time," Daniels added.

Archer sighed and paced away from Daniels who worked at a computer console on a strange looking ship. It was small on the inside, clearly only designed to travel with one passenger.

"I'll be the first to admit I don't understand how any of this is possible," Archer said aloud, furrowing his brow as he looked around him. Daniels glanced up and smiled briefly before returning to work. The Captain paced around the lab hands on his hips, critically looking at every console in total awe.

"I mean how the hell do you people keep from screwing up history every time you go somewhere? And for that matter how do you not end up…," he paused, "Negating your existence every time you screw up and just—not existing?" Archer asked, waving his hands and squinting in confusion at his own words.

"It's hard to explain, Captain, but there are ways of protecting ourselves from changes in a timeline we're traveling to. And there are mistakes made," he added, looking up. "We have an entire branch of Starfleet devoted to fixing them, sort of like your Starfleet Intelligence."

Archer heaved a sigh and returned to Daniels' side. "Any luck?"

"I've narrowed it to three time periods, give or take a year," he muttered.

"A year?! She's going to be trapped wherever he sent her for a year? It may not even be habitable!" Archer yelled.

"Captain, as I said, I'm reasonably sure that Ruda sent her to a mountainous area of North America. It's sparsely populated, and easily habitable."

"Aren't you always accusing me of thinking too three-dimensionally?" Archer asked. "How do you know she's not there in 2054 during the third world war when the entire region is irradiated, or sixty million years ago when prehistoric predators lived there?" he asked irritably.

"I've narrowed her spatial coordinates to a small area in the Rocky Mountains of Colorado," Daniels told him, ignoring his protest.

"That entire region was irradiated," Archer muttered under his breath, recalling the horror in the history books, the monuments, the massive cleanup that the Vulcans had to help with.

"I've narrowed our choices down by isolating the chronometric field down to three different subintervals, give or take a few months' accuracy. Trust me, Captain, that's the best it's going to get!" Daniels said firmly.

"Fine," Archer squinted. "What years?"

"2060, 1979, and 1888," he replied.

"Why those?"

"It's hard to explain but the chronometric field experiences fluctuations at regular subspace intervals, I was able to isolate the signal recorded by my ship's sensors that Ruda's jump key emitted down to three fluctuations. The fluctuations occur every 91 years for this region of space. The numbers vary depending on the area of the galaxy and the subspace activity," he muttered to himself.

"Which one do we try first?" Archer thought aloud.

"As you pointed out, the first nuclear strike of the third world war on Earth occurred in early 2052. My instruments were only able to determine these dates within a few months. If T'Pol were transported to 2060, the area in North America where I've located her signal went to so she may have been transported right into a blast region. If T'Pol went there, she probably didn't survive," Daniels said gravely, turning to Captain Archer. The Captain's eyebrows drew together and he stood up straighter.

"We don't know that."

Daniels lowered his head. "Fine. We will check that region first. But the latent radiation will render my ship's biosensors incapable of distinguishing her life signs to that small of a resolution," Daniels warned. Archer pulled out his communicator.

"She may have had a communicator on her," Archer suggested.

Daniels nodded, gathering several devices and gadgets in preparation.

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Archer to T'Pol, come in

There was no response. Jonathan frowned, looking down at his communicator. After checking the signal, he called again.

Captain Archer to Subcommander T'Pol, do you read? No response.

"She must be in one of the other time periods," Daniels observed. Again, Archer frowned at the communicator.

"No, I'm getting a signal. It means her communicator is being detected on a Starfleet frequency but she's not responding. We have to go down there."

"Captain, we can't risk—"

"I don't give a damn about your timeline! This is your fault to begin with for having my ship's information in that little device of yours and letting a dangerous criminal get his hands on it, now I'm getting my officer back and you're going to do everything you can to help me!" Archer shouted back. Daniels blinked through the shock, stepping back.

"Actually, I was going to say that we can't risk any more radiation exposure than one hour. The ship's bio-filters will automatically correct any DNA corruption caused at these levels as long as our exposure is limited less than an hour."

Archer blinked with raised eyebrows. "Good, then let's get down there," he smiled lightly. In a wisp of light and sound, they were gone.

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