The Empire's Destiny
By Asso
Chapter Thirty-seven
Tucker is…
5. Secret War
I know.
It is a short chapter.
Which leaves lots of things pending.
But it was not possible to go further.
Nevertheless you can be sure, my friends
Believe me.
There will come the time when all chickens will come home to roost.
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["There is a small problem, though, Admiral."]
Valdore's memories continued on that night that maybe could have been the night when those memories would have been able to inspire a very different feeling - and very worst - from the one, of mere although definitely true annoyance because of the capacity that even since that time Tucker had showed to break up his romulan self-control, that until then they had provoked when they had the bad taste to resurface in his mind.
The night - perhaps - of the truth.
The Human's words reverberated vivid in Valdore's mind.
["I have to get out of here, and I certainly can not get out as Cain."]
Valdore had nodded, fighting back every irritating emotion. The Human had every reason.
["No one has to know about me. Least of all, anyone of my former comrades. I have to reappear on Earth like a new man."
"Dying is easy here, Human. I do not see the problem."
"There is, however, Romulan."]
Valdore had driven back in the throat the irritation he had felt on hearing the Human speak with such presumption.
["Explain yourself, Human."]
The unnerving sardonic chuckle. Once again.
["It must be clear to everyone that I - that Cain - have met death. And ..."] The Human's face had become as gloomy as the darkest darkness. ["... together with me, anyone who has had to deal with me. Of me, of every person who has known me here, of every memory about me, no trace must remain."]
At that moment Valdore had had that thought for the first time.
That phaser shot on the face of the Human...
It had been like a gush of vitriol that had burned his face.
And his heart.
And fear had once again grabbed the one of Valdore.
He had dominated that shameful emotion.
["You mean the men and women of your work team."
"Exactly."
"How can that be possible? You can not quite deliberately and easily cause a catastrophe to kill all your mates together with you. And then, how could it be possible to do so that you can escape alive, I mean alive so as to reappear on Earth? Apart from the difficulty to do so, you'd still be Cain, the Cain that all your former comrades know. And, therefore, useless for the Romulan Empire."
"Without a doubt. My face is no longer what it once was, but I'd still be Cain. And, lest we forget, a lot of people would wonder what happened ..."] A shadow, heavy and fleeting, on the Human's face. ["... to my sister."]
The shadow had vanished, as quickly as it had appeared.
["I do not know what would happen to me, I do not know in what way the Empire would try to control the situation, because certainly my old comrades would strive rather intensely for disentangling the hank of mine and my sister's destiny, even though the particular moment the Empire is going through because of the Xindi could play in favour of the bridling of my old mates. In any case, I would not be of any use to your - and mine - purposes. No. We need to act in another way."]
Valdore had tried to regain control of the situation.
["That's right, Human. We have to…"]
Unsuccessful attempt.
["... take advantage of the circumstances, Mr…"] A quick sneering smile. ["…Romulan. Anyone who has decided that I should end up here has never seen my present face. No one who has known me out of here knows how my face is now and no one who has known me here knows how my face was once. No one, except those who have reduced my face like this. But ... "] What was that word? It was... yes... demonic. Demonic, exactly so. Such was the smile that had abruptly flickered on the disfigured mouth of Tucker. ["…but, apparently, they are no longer able to make comparisons."]
Tucker's face had become a deformed mask of frost.
["No one knows the face of Cain, such as it is now. No one, except you and your subaltern, with regards to whom there shouldn't be problems, right? And, obviously, no one except my current fellow workers. For this they have to go towards a better destiny than the one they have to face here. Of course, they would not know how to connect my present face with what it once was, but… and if I were so lucky to appear on Earth again and some of them so lucky to have the good fortune to do the same? No. They must pass away. They have to do it along with me. And along with the memory of my sister."]
Valdore had found himself swallowing empty, while Tucker had continued unabated.
["Cain, and everything concerning him, must disappear. Forever."]
How much had that heart sizzled, vainly screaming with pain, as it was being liquefied in the vitriol of hatred?
The words that Tucker had said right afterwards had reverberated of smug irony.
["And there is no need to cause a catastrophe. It's possible to narrow down the field of action to me and to my beloved and unfortunate fellow workers."]
And of malice.
Valdore had made a huge effort to avoid being overwhelmed by them.
["Too bad that, for them, it can't be a mere mise-en-scene."]
A heavy silence descended in the quiet of the night of the garden.
It was like if a breath of impetuous icy wind came suddenly to dispel the sweet breeze that had until then shook gently the leaves of the trees, for then becoming extinct in the most motionless and most gelid silence.
To T'Pol it seemed that even the mild flowing of water was stopping suddenly, as frozen and also the light of the moon seemed to lose its warm splendour.
Tucker's sharp profile stood out dark against the silvery ice of the moonlight.
His scarred eye turned to T'Pol. Obliquely. Only that one. As if he hadn't the heart to look at her frontally and with both his eyes, the healthy and the disfigured one.
His voice seemed to echo from a cavern.
"Are you still sure, vulcan doll?"
T'Pol gulped.
"Of... of what, Adun?"
Futile question. To earn futile time. Not to give an answer that did hurt.
Tucker turned fully toward her.
Into his eyes a light of darkness.
"You know it, T'Pol."
"I... "
"That's your Chosen One. Your Champion."
The unnatural chill in the garden seemed to become even more intense. But not as icy as the voice of him.
"You say that my purposes transcended my hatred, even if yours is an act of faith dictated by… by what you, unbelievably, feel for me. But are there purposes that can justify what I said to Valdore that had to happen of my companions? "
Darkness.
Darkness in that magnificent blue eye.
"Are there purposes that can justify the actions that I done?"
Darkness.
In his eye and in his voice.
"That can justify what I have become?"
And one more time, in that night that would be the night of all nights, T'Pol snapped, under the urge of an emotion that no one - Human, or Vulcan, or Romulan, or Denobulan, or member of any other race - could be able to control.
She hugged her Adun. She pressed him strongly to herself.
Her voice arose, muffled and heavy with uncontainable poignancy, from her mouth, buried into his neck.
"I did not hesitate to hurt you to achieve my purposes, my Adun. I did not hesitate to leave you to your destiny to achieve them. Even... even if, in the depths of myself, I knew I was hurting me. And yet, despite this ..."
T'Pol lifted her face from his neck. She looked at him with eyes that, unquestionably, without fear of contradiction, were glistening with tears.
"...despite all this, you say that I am justified in having done what I did. Why should it be different for you?"
Tucker watched the moist eyes of T'Pol, in surprise. And pensive. And glum.
"You're not a killer, T'Pol. I am."
T'Pol nearly shouted.
"Also I have killed! Also I've done that!"
"True. You did. But in war, T'Pol. Under the aegis of the Empire."
Darkness.
More darkness than in the darkness of nothingness, into that eye, the one pockmarked, while the other, the one untouched, so beautiful and so doleful, did shut, to hide its shame and its despair.
"I killed and I made kill in very different ways and in very different circumstances."
"No! It is not true!"
Tucker almost bent under the fury of T'Pol's scream.
"It is not true?"
"NO!"
"But what are you saying, T'Pol? What the heck ..."
T'Pol's hands grabbed Tucker's face so hard that it hurt.
"You've done what you've done for the same reasons why I did what I did."
T'Pol's gaze seemed to pierce that of Tucker.
"You too are at war!"
T'Pol's deep greenish-brown eyes shone coruscant.
"The secret war and dreadful that you're fighting all along."
Tucker almost ceased to breathe. "The secret ..."
"Yes. Your secret and exhausting war. The war that you're still reluctant to reveal to me. But that I know you're fighting. And which will see me from now on and forever deployed by your side."
Tucker's breathing became thin, thin, thin. It granted him not even the strength to reply.
T'Pol's voice rose, low and assertive and sure. The fronds seemed to tremble, like if shivering under the impact of the quiet steadfastness of her words. The water seemed to wait, as if suspended, before daring resume to make hear its perennial flow.
"My mind is clear, now, my Lord. I am no longer confused. Or, rather, I no longer want to be. I no longer fear the reality. I know, I know perfectly well, that I - I! Your vulcan doll. Your vulcan Princess. Your Aduna! - I have drawn you out of the darkness of death."
Tucker gasped.
The truth.
The truth, by both of them known and never clearly asserted, was now brought into full light, in no uncertain terms, by T'Pol.
"How did I do? I do not know. I really do not know. But I did it. I did it, my Adun."
T'Pol was a stupendous statue of blinding pride.
Her eyes were radiant.
Her voice was a canticle, serene and powerful.
"My breath was your breath. If I breathed, you breathed. My heart was your heart. If my heart throbbed, your heart throbbed. My soul was your soul. If my soul lived, your soul lived."
Everything was unmoving, while T'Pol spoke. Everything was stunned.
Everything.
Even the spirit of Tucker.
"I was inside you, my Adun. I was you. And I have seen. I have understood."
T'Pol's face brushed against that of Tucker. Her eyes sank into his
"I have seen the war that you fight, my Lord, my Master. O Lord and Master of my Katra. I was not granted a full understanding of what and how this war is, but I have seen it. And I have seen its terrible justice. And its tremendous ferocity. "
T'Pol paused a moment and then went on, her mouth on his mouth. Her heart on his heart.
"A fierce and ruthless war. So fierce, so ruthless, my Lord, that it can not admit half measures. That it demands to accomplish fierce and ruthless things. As ferocious and ruthless as this war itself, the war that you started on that day when you decided to sacrifice even your humanity just to arrive to win such dreadful a war. Yes. This too I have seen, my Lord. I have seen the price you pay to fight it."
T'Pol straightened proudly her bust, looking fiercely at Tucker, with bright eyes and brimming with pride.
"You say that you have sold your soul to Valdore. It is not so. You have sold your soul to the one that you Humans call the devil. You - you yourself - have become the devil. And this time I don't speak by metaphors. But why did you do it, Adun? Why?"
T'Pol's voice significantly increased in tone.
"I know why! I KNOW!"
Then her voice went down. It became a whisper.
"You have been willing to sacrifice even your soul just to win your secret war. And even if I do not know what and how this war is, I know that it is a just war. Terrible, ferocious, fierce, as only it can be in this universe. But just. Inspired… inspired by a superior and terrible justice."
If possible, T'Pol's voice became even lower. Yet it sounded like it was thunder.
"I know what's the purpose of this war, Adun."
Tucker managed to rouse himself finally. With great effort.
"You know it?"
"Yes. I know. I know, Adun!"
"And... and what..."
"You have been willing to incinerate your soul in the flames of hell that you made flare up around you and within you, heedless of being burnt in their scorching blaze, heedless of your destiny, in order to purify, with those flames, the Empire!"
"T'Pol! But… but what do you say!?"
"That's your secret war! That! And if your soul must burn forever in hell where you've flung yourself down, I... I've already said it to you, my Lord and Master. I've already said it to you and now I repeat it to you again, so that you understand it well. "
T'Pol stood up.
She straightened up proudly.
She looked at Tucker with eyes more burning than the hellfire where Tucker had plummeted himself, the eyes impassioned of love that only a vulcan female in love can have.
Her Adun would learn how mighty the feelings of a Vulcan female are.
He had uncapped the boiling pot.
Now - and from that moment on - he would understand why Vulcans desperately try to suppress their emotions.
Her voice was a tenuous and yet puissant whisper of pride and love.
"My soul will burn along with yours for eternity."
It echoed, mild yet powerful, between the branches, on the lawns, in the water, in the sky.
"Because my soul and yours are one soul."
Frost broke up. The water began to flow again. The breeze began again to make rustle gently the leaves.
The light of the moon began to shine again, mild and sweet and warm of faerie silver.
T'Pol's hands were warm and quivering on Tucker's face.
Her eyes were warm and quivering inside his.
"And I know - I KNOW! - that if you - if you and I - will win this war, the blood you've seen yourself forced to shed will not have been shed in vain."
At those words, Tucker snapped in turn. Forcefully he grabbed the wrists of T'Pol.
His gaze spurted sparks.
"T'Pol! But how can you say such things? But do not you realize? Do you not see... do not you see the monster that I've become? How can you think to join me in...?"
Tucker stopped short, struck by the words that he had not yet said at the very moment in which they were being formulated in his mind.
Like a whirlwind the thoughts crowded in him that he had already had before, on that night of all nights. Before. When, in the euphoria of their finally admitted and confessed love, he had thought that with her... with his T'Pol!... he could overcome any obstacle. When he had thought that the two of them, together, would have... would have...
But now... now that T'Pol herself, she in person, had given substance to that idea...
How?
HOW?
How could he think of making of her the ... the same cynical and ruthless abomination that he had become?
How could he ... how could he ask her to ... to...
Throttled, the words emerged from deep of him.
"How can you think to join me in..."
And for the first time Tucker admitted it. He said it. And - but this was impossible, of course - if he and T'Pol might have been not so lost in their blind and deaf passionate love dialogue, maybe - Maybe. Perhaps T'Pol, given her extremely acute hearing. - they would have perceived that slight noise, that very slight rustling of fronds, that very slight sigh, as of surprise, of sudden keen attention, of bated wait, which flashed in the night.
"...in my secret war?"
End of Chapter Thirty-seven
TBC
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Have patience, my friends.
The time will come.