Title: Consequences

Rating: PG

Disclaimer: I do not own any of the star trek characters or anything.

Keywords: AU, dark

Summary: This is the sequel to "Mistakes." It won't really make any sense if you don't read "Mistakes" first.

Hoshi deals with the consequences of her mistakes, while Malcolm joins some old "friends" from his past with the mission to take down Terra Prime. Trip and T'Pol try to cope with being apart, as T'Pol is called back to Vulcan. Trip finds a kindred spirit in Q'ell and T'Pol begins to find who she truly is.

A/N- So this was posted on , but I made some minor revisions. I thought posting here might push me to finally hammer out the rest of this story. I'm working on it now and should be posting more regularly until it's finished.

Chapter 4

=/\=

T'Pol

T'Pol lay in the sand as it cooled from the heat of the day. She ran her hands across it, letting it slip like silk through her fingers. The night sky was a landscape of stars, so many they sometimes seemed to sit one on top of the other.

Despite the familiarity of it all, T'Pol felt lost.

This was the desert her father had brought her to as a child. They had spent days together training for T'Pol's upcoming survival test, her rite of passage. At night he had taught her the names of the stars, the locations of the neighboring planets. She still remembered them. She could still point them out. Nal-Cheleb. And next to it Tel-Veket. In the far east T'Rukhemai.

T'Pol brought her hands up, cupping around her eyes. Blocking out everything else around her it was almost too easy to imagine she was on Enterprise, sitting on the observation deck, waiting for Trip to finish his shift. She would have a cup of tea in her hand, and a candle waiting for them on the table. There was rarely ever anyone in the observation deck after 2200. Sometimes she and Trip would meditate together in front of the stars.

She let her hands fall back into the sand. When had the ship become so much more home to her than her own planet? Why did she feel like an outsider here? Really she knew the answer to both questions. The ship had become home once she recognized the bond she had with Trip. And she felt like an outsider, quite simply, because she was. T'Pol could pretend she was the same as the others here, but she knew it wasn't true. The proof was in the ache in her chest and the fullness behind her eyes. Even though she could control these things, she could not ignore that they were there. She missed Trip terribly. She missed her home.

T'Pol closed her eyes tightly then stood up quietly, careful not to awake any of her sleeping companions. They had come to the desert in preparation of the intelligence gathering exercises. She walked silently away from the camp towards the rising caverns in the distance. It had become evident to her that she wasn't going to get any sleep tonight; perhaps a walk would calm her mind. As long as she was back by morning it would make little difference. Once she was outside of earshot, T'Pol took off her shoes, allowing her feet to kick through the fine, cool sand. The night air seemed to cleanse her mood, relieving the unshed tears and the knot in her stomach.

T'Pol walked until the caverns that had been so far away loomed in front of her. What would have been jagged red caves in the day were transformed into sloping purple mountains by night, the dark stripping them of their detail and color. The caves reminded T'Pol vaguely of the caves she had found her mother in not so long ago. Without much thought T'Pol ventured inside. It was like stepping into a bubble. Without the sounds of the winds outside the small cave was completely silent. Spotting a large flat stone, T'Pol climbed atop it and started her meditations. The silence around her allowed her a freedom in her mind she hadn't felt since she'd arrived back to Vulcan.

She let her mind expand and contract, stretching it beyond the confines it had recently been held. More quickly than she had been able in two weeks she had been her, she found the spark of Trip's consciousness. Warm and soft, she followed it, pushing herself ever closer to his mind. Finally she could her whispers of thoughts.

Trip…

The warmth found her almost immediately, engulfing her. How are you doing this?

T'Pol's reached out with her mind even farther then pulled him into her white space. Trip smiled as he found himself standing in front of her.

"Are you daydreaming about me again?" Trip grinned.

T'Pol gently touched his face.

"Really…how is this even possible?"

"Are you sleeping?"

Trip thought for a moment then nodded his head.

"Your mind is more open when you sleep. But even so contacting anyone at this distance is not a phenomenon I'm familiar with."

"I'm not real concerned with the particulars," Trip pulled her into a loving embrace, "I'm just glad to see you." He grinned before planting a delicate kiss on her waiting lips. T'Pol wound her fingers into his short hair, reciprocating more hungrily.

"I have missed you ashylveh."

"Are you alright there? Nothing's going on, right?"

T'Pol shook her head. "It's just not how I remember it being."

"Well you're halfway through the first month… only 5 more to go." Trip smiled, but T'Pol was not convinced.

"I cannot remember another time in my life when such a short period of time has seemed like such an eternity."

Trip kissed her gently again. "It will end and you will come home. The great thing about time is that it never stops. And besides, if we figure out a way to do this all the time, maybe it won't be that bad."

"I will try."

Something pulled at T'Pol's consciousness from far away.

"What is it?"

"I'm not sure. I think someone is here. I have to leave." T'Pol felt the warmth leave her as their connection broke.

I love you.

T'Pol opened her eyes, now very aware of the voices coming from within the cave. They spoke softly, but T'Pol's sensitive ears picked up bits of what they were saying. It sounded like three people from her training group. They were all speaking an ancient dialect of Vulcan and they seemed to be coming closer to where she was sitting. Instinctively, T'Pol hid, crouching into a small tunnel and pulling her cover over her head. The bodies of the voices finally emerged, entering through the small opening of the cavern. T'Pol wanted to get a better look but was afraid of being seen. She recognized one voice absolutely as belonging to the leader of her training group, Solvan. As she listened to them speak, the knot in her stomach returned. Although she couldn't understand every word, she could understand the meaning.

They were planning a coup.

T'Pol's foot slipped beneath her. In the relative quiet of the cavern, the sound of pebbles falling was undeniable. The group in front of her abruptly stopped talking. T'Pol heard footsteps come her way. If she stayed where she was she would be trapped, but it was unlikely that they wouldn't find her. T'Pol pushed herself out of the crevice and dashed across the cavern, putting distance between herself and people looking for her.

"Stop!" Solvan shouted.

Two others moved between her and the entrance of the cavern, while Solvan and another woman rushed towards her. Solvan reached her first, pinning her against the wall. He tore off her cover, revealing her face.

"It's the traitor."

=/\=

Trip

Trip jolted awake. Disoriented, he looked around the room for what had pulled him out of his sleep. His comm. station beeped loudly at him, as if to answer the unspoken question. Trip groaned, rubbing his hands across his face. "Lights…" He got up and switched it on; Moyer stared sheepishly at him from the other side of the screen.

"Sir, I'm sorry I woke you, but Hess said you wanted to be notified personally about anything out of the ordinary."

"Its fine, what's going on?"

"We're getting some maintenance readings from Deck 3; someone probably just forgot to shut a Jefferson tube, I can have someone up there in five minutes to check it out and I'll report back as soon as we figure it out."

Trip picked up a shirt and pulled it over his head, "My shift starts in a couple hours, I'll go see what the problem is."

"Are you sure Chief? We can take care of it if you want to go back to sleep."

"Don't worry about it, Moyer; I'm glad you called me."

Trip hurried out the door and into the turbo lift. Once he arrived to the deck he quickly rounded the corridor. He almost stopped as he heard someone drop something ahead of him. He hadn't actually expected to find anyone working down here. Trip felt his heart quicken in his chest, a thin sheen of sweat coated his palms as he clenched them into fists. He quickened his stride and as soon as he came into view, immediately recognized the lack of uniform.

"Hey…"

Trip couldn't help the anger he felt rush into him; this couldn't happen again. He grabbed the man from behind, yanking him from the power conduit he was working on, and pinning him to the wall.

"Hey!"

Trip was surprised to find Q'ell facing him.

"You better have a good goddamn reason," Trip growled.

"Wh…what?" Q'ell stuttered

Trip shoved him hard against the bulkhead, "Start talking."

Q'ell stood silently, looking shocked.

Trip ripped the scanner Q'ell was holding out of his hand and threw it down the corridor, "Now!"

"I…I'm sorry. I just… I thought… I don't want to go back. I don't want to be a miner. I want live out here with all this space. I… I thought maybe, if I could show you that I can be useful, maybe you'll let me stay."

Trip came back to himself, loosening his grip, "But… what were you doing Q'ell?"

"Anna told me that there was a power coupling that needed to be stripped down and replaced. She said that she would show me how to do it tomorrow. I just wanted to show you that I could."

Releasing him, Trip shoved trembling hands into his pockets.

"You want to check it? I… I'm not sure, but I think I got it all in there right."

Trip pick up the scanner he had taken from Q'ell, then started going through the couplings. After scanning each of them, he nodded, "You're right, you got them all."

Q'ell grinned as Trip handed the scanner back to him.

Trip patted his shoulder gently, "Are you okay?"

Q'ell nodded, "Yeah."

"I don't know what I was thinking."

"It's my own fault. I didn't think it through," Q'ell was silent for a bit, "You know, when I was little you were different."

Trip couldn't help the look of hurt that crossed his face.

"I don't mean this. You're just… I saw the same thing happen to my mom after my dad died. She just got heavy. I talked to Anna about it once, about you… I know what you were thinking, but… I would never do that."

Trip smiled gently, then closed the maintenance hatch, "Come on, I'm pretty sure I owe you breakfast."

Trip looked up from a PADD he was reading as Hess knocked on his open door.

"This report says we've gone through six regulator cuffs in the last month. What are you guys doing, installing them with a hammer?"

"I don't know Chief; we have to keep replacing the same two. I think we just got a bad batch."

Trip nodded, typing a reminder to himself, "I'll order some more," he set down the PADD, "What was it you needed Hess?"

"I just wanted to talk to you, do you have a minute?"

"You know I always have time for you," Anna closed the door behind her before sitting in the chair in front of his desk. "Did Q'ell say something?"

Anna looked surprised, "No… should he have said something?"

Trip waved his hand, "Just… what is it?"

"Moyer said he woke you up about a maintenance door glitch."

"He was following my orders, I told everyone, from now on anything out of the ordinary comes straight to me, day or night."

"I know what your orders are, sir, but there's been 23 of those calls in the last two weeks."

Trip started rummaging through his drawer, "What's your point?"

"There's three shifts for a reason, Trip, you can't take care of everything all the time."

"I'm Chief Engineer, that's my job."

"Trip…

He started rummaging through the next drawer.

"What happened with Q'ell?"

Trip stopped what he was doing, and sighed. Hess moved from her chair to lean against the desk.

"I don't know what I thought… he was stripping a power coupling…I lost my temper…"

"He was doing it wrong?"

"No, there wasn't any scheduled maintenance for that area… I thought…"

"Oh." Hess sighed, "Listen, I know things have been really messed up lately. But you need to start trusting your team. You need to let us handle the little things so that you can concentrate on the bigger picture. This whole overachiever kick you've gone on isn't helping anyone, and from the look of you, you haven't had a decent night's sleep in two weeks."

Trip looked at her silently for a moment, "Thanks Anna."

She shrugged, "It's my job."

"I know we joke, but in the last 5 years, anytime I've lost perspective, you've always been there to guide me back."

"So you'll stop micromanaging?" she smiled.

"Yes, Anna, now get out of my office. I have very important work to do."

"Of course, sir."

Trip smiled as she shut the door behind her. As soon as she was gone, Trip opened a communication to Archer.

"Hey, Trip, what can I do for you?"

"You have a minute, sir?"

"Yep, what's on your mind?"

"I think we should talk to Starfleet about accepting aliens into the program. I think Q'ell could be the first."

=/\=

TBC