Season Six

by EnlightenedSkye

The crews of the Enterprise and the Maelstrom adapt to ever-changing circumstances as the Romulan War rages on. [January 2157 to January 2160. 25 episodes. Fully episodic, so each chapter is a stand-alone story. ATP, Troshi, Malcolm/OC, P/C. Rated T throughout. Direct sequel to Season Five. In progress]

13. Episode 13: Through Heaven's Eyes

A/N: Welcome back and thanks for your support! These characters don't belong to me, and I don't make money from them. This episode is inspired by TNG 6x15 Tapestry. Of course, I don't have enough hubris to say my work is anywhere near as good as that classic. Here is where the events of our 1980s AU E6.8: Life in a Small Town start to reflect in the story.

I'm cracking up realizing that the list of fun things to do as a couple (if you're Malira) goes something like this: inventory phase pistols, talk smack about your coworkers, hijack cargo ships filled with radioactive waste, frame someone for kidnapping, dump stun grenades on a crowd of unsuspecting hybrids, etc. You know what they say, the couple that extorts entire governments together stays together.

Next time: Remember LD 1x08 Veritas, where the junior officers had to piece together what happened on a mission while also not knowing what the hell the senior staff was doing? Yeah...we're doing that. It's a prequel of sorts to TOS 1x06 The Naked Time and TNG 1x03 The Naked Now. Kov is getting his own episode, because he's a national treasure. This is just a breather episode before our next battle / ATP's epic revenge tour.

Season Six

Episode Thirteen: Through Heaven's Eyes

Enterprise First Officer's Personal Log, October 6th, 2158: Our repairs following the Battle of Vorkado continue. Fortunately, initial headcounts reveal we lost fewer officers than we thought - just two here, and less than a thousand across the entire fleet. While the Captain continues to monitor the Commodore's condition, I have temporarily assumed command. I would never admit this in a professional capacity, but the prevailing sense of hopelessness puts the Battle of Azati Prime to shame.

---

Twelve hours after the initial attack, Malcolm found himself wandering the halls of the Enterprise, dodging repair crews and welding sparks at every turn.

Fighting his way out sickbay had been a feat unto itself; he had been lucky that his disruptor injury had only been a graze, because the residual power signature corresponded to the next to highest energy band, ostensibly right underneath the vaporize setting. Though Yuris certainly had more critical patients to attend to, he took his time to clean and dress his wound, before loading him up with painkillers and advising him to get some rest.

Fat chance of that ever happening.

The atmosphere in the room could best be described as tense - soon, he learned that Archer had taken a blast for T'Pol and Liz, and was laying in a comatose state under Phlox's watchful eye. Internal damage, Dita told him over the comm, was largely to blame, and it couldn't be said whether his chances were favorable or not.

It took everything within him to tear himself from Alira's side, though she encouraged him to go, that it was all okay, that she was going to be fine, even though she was surrounded by field medics painstakingly removing glass shards from her feet. The moment they were distracted, he seized her hand and squeezed it hard, then hobbled out of the room before he could convince himself otherwise.

In all their years serving together, he had never seen T'Pol look so distraught. She scarcely noticed as he approached her side through the crowd of their own sickbay, so intense was her focus on her bondmate sprawled out on the biobed hooked up to all means of machinery and monitors and fluids. His undershirt had been peeled away to reveal a red, angry welt left behind by the disruptor blast, and the bruise was gradually spreading up his chest, turning his skin withered and necrotic. It was all so horrifically gruesome, and he forced himself to look away, to focus his entire attention on his commanding officer.

The nearest comparison he could make was when they were all convinced the Commodore had died back in the Expanse - though she tried her best to put on a strong front for the rest of the crew, he knew she was crumbling from within. Now was no exception. With both hands, she clung onto Archer's arm, eyes wide and brimming with unshed tears, an IDIC medallion laying on the sheets between them.

Malcolm announced his presence as quietly as possible. With the barest nod of her head, she indicated her PADD laying on the nearby counter, and he understood.

He was presently on the way to stand face-to-face with their most enigmatic prisoner, or rather, to inform him of the charges levied against him. At first, he had refused to tell anyone who he was, but the fact of the matter was his genetic material was left behind on Sergeant Cole's tactical vest as she carried him fireman style through the Romulan flagship. While they failed to capture Chairman Solan, and had ultimately lost two of their own, they had captured something more valuable, and it was his duty to deliver the Coalition's verdict, no matter how much he dreaded it.

Alira's reaction to his identity had been nothing short of shocked, then disbelieving, then incredulous. She laughed and carried on and nearly hyperventilated before Commander Hammond was able to calm her down, to ask her if she knew the man in question.

Of course I do. He was the navigator on my father's patrol ship. We were betrothed. He died...or I thought he died...almost nineteen years ago.

And he had heard all about it before, listened to her lament of the incident which had set the future in motion. Shran helped her fill in the blanks, helped her understand that her own government had conspired with the Andorians to furnish them with weapons during a time of great unrest with the Vulcans. For General Taxa's own protection, his entire crew of six was contracted by Special Ops. The drop went bad, and when he discovered their true affiliation, he'd been murdered by his first officer to cover the conspiracy before being unceremoniously shoved into an escape pod.

The rest of the crew vanished, and the Infantry constructed some story about a run-in with Shran's ship, which she warily accepted. Later on, his first officer returned and talked her into joining a kill squad to avenge his death. It was all their plot to keep the family in line so that the truth might remain a secret - and, as it seemed, Saben had been in on it all along. He didn't want to be, but he was, and had died after only just confessing the truth.

There had been so many betrayals and double crossings along the way. On Xantoras, they discovered her father's first officer was trading with the enemy, and Shran found that his CO who had prevented him from intervening that fateful day was selling them stolen Vulcan transports. Seeing as they were both the victims of horrific misfortune, they'd pledged to help one another from that day, to remain blood bound until the moment duty necessitated otherwise.

Her father's death had come with additional sting in the loss of her first love just days before their wedding. She carried a great deal of shame from it, and hadn't freely given herself back to the notion of love for quite some time after that - indeed, right up until the moment they met. Selfishly, he was glad the man had made such a horrific mistake, though it proved in his mind exactly why he didn't deserve her.

And he intended to make his distaste known in the best way he knew how.

Malcolm paused outside the brig, nodding to the trio of MACOs stationed there, and then slipped into the darkness. At first, he was just a silhouette, facing away from him while hunched over the bench, his boots planted firmly on the deck plating. Having spent his fair share of time in the brig, he knew exactly how uncomfortable it could be, and took great pleasure in discovering that Sergeant Cole hadn't bothered to remove his handcuffs.

"Nieron," he said firmly, and he startled, glancing back at him. His reputation preceded him, even though he looked so small. Their prisoner took swift measures to remedy this, rising to his feet and towering over him through the honeycombed glass of the hatch.

"Is this you?" He shoved the PADD he'd been carrying towards him, displaying his military headshot, his biography, and the date he'd been declared legally dead: 10 April 2140. When he didn't respond, he pressed on: "We've confirmed it in your database."

"Am I being detained?"

"I should say so. These are orders for your arrest. You've been being held on suspicion of murder of one Lieutenant Rachel Garcia. Rest assured, the proper authorities have been notified, but I doubt you've got a chance at extradition."

"And why do you say that?"

"I've got a half dozen different MACOs on record who all claim they witnessed you commit the crime." Dutifully, he scrolled through their names, and noted with satisfaction that their sworn affidavits were already recorded. "If you would like to pass along a message to your government, I'd be more than willing to do so. They're bound to cooperation with our investigation by terms of the Coalition charter."

"I understand she was a defector."

"As are you," he challenged, and waited for his reaction, any tell-tale indication that he'd been sent there by Special Ops to kill the Praetor himself, as he suspected.

Nieron wasn't about to give him the satisfaction. He shouldered up to the wall once again and sized him up from top to toe, curling his lips into a sneer. The fury within him grew from a flicker to a raging flame.

"It's you, isn't it?" Without giving him a chance to respond, he dug in further: "I knew I recognized you from somewhere. Tell me, how does it feel?"

"To be standing on this side of the wall?"

A sudden chuckle caught him off guard, dark and mirthless. He strained against his restraints, eventually separating his wrists enough to place both palms against the latch. "To know she loved me first."

The temptation to breach the barrier and beat the living hell out of him was overwhelming; he'd certainly broken Ensign Pascal's nose for the exact same reason, in almost the exact same circumstances, all those months ago. Still, he forced himself to remain resolute and stare down the traitor before him, understanding all at once how deeply sad and pathetic it was that he was so rooted in the past. Better he hear it from her lips than his own.

"I pity you," Nieron concluded, pressing his forehead into the glass, daring him to look away.

"And I don't think about you at all," he replied instantly, even though that was an enormous, egregious lie. To punctuate his remark, Malcolm struck the edge of the PADD against the wall, not being able to suppress a smile when he flinched. "Enjoy prison."

And with that, he was gone, leaving him to stew and almost certainly formulate a plan.

---

The last thing Jonathan remembered before oblivion overtook him was a rush of footsteps, a flood of abject terror through their bond, and the bright green flash of a disruptor rifle as it fired at point-blank range.

He felt very little between the impact and the ground underneath him. It could have been a breath or two, a heartbeat, a millisecond, but as the world fell away from him, all he could think was how desperately he did not want it to end.

It couldn't have been the last time he took a bullet for T'Pol - in the endless thereafter, he wracked his memory trying to figure out when and where it had been, but came up empty. He was adrift, directionless, detached from his body and mind as he drifted towards eternity.

As a young child, he and his mother had been in a horrific hovercar accident. They were en route to pick up his father from work in Bozeman, cruising down a two-lane highway in the middle of a snowstorm. One minute, he was singing along with her to some silly song at the top of his lungs, and the next they hit a patch of black ice, skidded out into oncoming traffic, and hit a tree head on.

Sally Archer had died that day right in front of his eyes. He lost consciousness upon impact, and when he came to, he was hanging upside down and covered in broken glass. Frantically, helplessly, he thrashed against the straps of his car seat, wanting to reach out to her slumped over the steering wheel but falling tragically short. He screamed until he was hoarse and the paramedics were there, cutting him loose and passing him into the arms of a random passerby.

She was resuscitated shortly thereafter, but it was an experience she wouldn't soon forget. Years after her husband was gone, she confided in him exactly what it felt like, the nothingness, the weightlessness, the sensation of overarching, abiding peace.

His mother died only weeks after that of an aneurysm. He had been on Jupiter Station conducting training maneuvers when he heard the news. Most of the usual suspects from the Warp Five Complex were at the funeral, as well as his friends from flight school, and they'd taken turns offering their condolences, saying that she had gone way before her time.

He knew that. Of course he knew that, but it didn't make the loss any less agonizing.

From her description, he knew what was happening to him, but couldn't wrap his mind around it. Throughout their travels, he'd dodged death time and time again, but now, there was no escaping it. Really, he'd been inordinately, horrifically lucky in every other instance, and it had finally caught up with him.

Their bond was completely severed, though he tried his best to reach out to T'Pol. After so long of hearing her intrusive thoughts, snide comments, and reassurances of love in the back of his mind, the absence was jarring. Rather than worry about himself, he was consumed by concern for her, and his heart broke anew.

Almost instantaneously, he emerged in a great, white open space, standing of his own volition, completely unencumbered. Self-consciously, he glanced down to his stomach, noting the ugly, charcoal black burn mark that had been scorched into the front of his uniform. If he were alive (his thoughts short circuited over that realization) he would have been bleeding out, but in his mindscape, he was anything but.

The whiteness extended out to all directions on every side, but his footsteps sounded heavy and leaden as he wandered aimlessly among the landscape. He was disoriented, unsure which was left and which was right and if he was facing up or down, and prayed that this wasn't it. He couldn't be dead - he was needed elsewhere, in the wardroom and on the bridge and in the arms of his bondmate. This couldn't be all there is.

He broke out into a run, and then a sprint, silently begging for something to appear. A sign, a person, anything. At one point, he nearly tripped over his own two feet, skidded to a halt, and doubled forward over his knees, breathing heavily. A flash of something caught his eye, and he quickly righted himself and spun around, finding himself face to face with the most aggravating temporal agent in the known universe.

Bran Audet, intrepid traveler of the twenty-ninth century, stood before him in a royal purple jumpsuit, not unlike the ones he'd seen worn by the officers of the Delphina all those months ago. He was Betazoid, with a curly mop of hair and eyes as black as the darkest night, and for days on end, had been a recurring presence in his nightmares.

Their complicated journey together began on their first contact mission to his homeworld, where Taxa accidentally uncovered proof that the Romulans were kidnapping members of the Fifth House to service their new and improved neural telepresence units. Thousands had already been stolen away, but they were determined to handle it themselves, and they soon discovered why.

Bran, upon discovering that their first contact was misplaced in history and that the neurogenic virus used to subjugate his people would be used to wipe them out, returned to the past with the intent of altering the timeline back to its natural state. They fought them over the privilege to chase down a telepresence unit that attacked a Vulcan transport; he told them that if the Enterprise went after it, they would cause their own demise, so they'd sent the Maelstrom, further altering the timeline and making his job a whole lot more complicated.

At Barisa VI, he had tried to force them into a reset, bringing back versions of Malcolm and T'Pol from 2152 in an attempt to avoid the incident in the Romulan minefield altogether. Their guests had ultimately subverted an attempt to destroy the ship, and their delicate dance continued.

On Bajor, after Hoshi's untimely death at the hands of the First Minister, he had brought a version of her back from an alternate quantum reality in exchange for an unnamed favor. Though he hadn't collected on it yet, he wondered if today might be the day, and cut directly to the chase.

"Where am I?"

"You're dead," he replied instantly, giving him the kind of smile that always made him want to knock his teeth out. "And I'm God."

Jonathan laughed, shaking his head. "You're not God. You may think you are, with your gadgets and your..."

"No?" He pulled a previously unseen device from his pocket, and they were soon surrounded by a blue checkerboard grid, which gradually filled out with planetary orbits and star charts and snippets of headlines in various languages, half of which didn't look even vaguely familiar. Various scenes danced above his head, visions of long ago battles and first contacts and trade missions, and just like the first time Daniels showed him the view from his Temporal Observatory all those years ago, he was speechless. Bran spread out both palms outstretched before bringing them into a triangular formation, zooming in on one spot in particular. "See there, you were shot about three minutes ago by a hybrid soldier. Your heart has stopped, and you're very near brain dead."

The visual was slightly fogged and warped, as though he were underwater, but he could only barely make out Phlox and his field medics rushing about, filling hyposprays and charging instruments. Lieutenant Cutler knelt beside him on the biobed holding pressure to his wound, and in the corner, T'Pol very much looked like she was about to fly apart.

"I'm not dead," he insisted, turning on his heels to face him. Time had dealt him more than his fair share of temporal nonsense, and he wasn't about to start bending to their whims now. "I refuse to play whatever game you're setting up here. Take me back."

"This isn't a game, Mr. Archer. I'm here to give you a second chance at life. Both of us, really." Before he could inquire further into that, he zoomed out again, and his features were temporarily obscured in a cloud of simulated stardust as the picture resized. Sure enough, a line ran from left to right across his plane of vision, notched and marked with sprawling bursts of text. If he squinted, he could make out a few dates: 2112. 2119. 2143. 2150. 2158…

"This is a timeline of your life. Due to your previous incursions into the natural flow of events, you were meant to die today. I'm offering you an opportunity to live, and an opportunity to save my people from certain extinction. If you refuse, that's alright with me, but just know that our contact and your time on this mortal coil end at this moment."

Thoughts racing, entirely unable to comprehend what was happening, he squinted into the near darkness, reading along as some unseen historian toiled away at his history with Sarin and Silik and the entire Cabal. "How is this possible? Are you in my mind?"

"Let's just say I've got friends in high places. They like to call themselves the self-appointed guardians of the universe, but to me they're just immortals with way too much time on their hands." He hesitated, then zoomed out further, revealing hundreds of intersecting lines crowded by headlines and moving images. Reflexively, he began to turn his head to the right past their present and into the future, catching a few moments of coherence in the chaos all around them.

2203. Tucker Memorial Engineering Annex opens on the bay. Children, grandchildren, and widow presiding.

2236. NCC-985 Mayweather commissions. Namesake's reputation sparks heated competition among commissioned pilots for the coveted helm position.

2279. Phlox Institute admits its first research fellows at the Teerza Prime campus. Preliminary expansion designs reveal intention for additional locations.

2327. Ret. Flt. Adm. Taxa provides the commencement address for the latest batch of SFA graduates. Pictured here with the valedictorian speaker, Ensign J.L. Picard, as well as Ensigns M. Batanides and C. Zweller.

And there she was, his former security liaison, dressed to the nines in a belted red uniform with white and gold trimmings. By then almost three hundred years old, she wore it well, her snow-white hair tied up in her signature ponytail and brilliant blue eyes shining among the crow's feet and fine lines etched into her face. The young people gathered around her were grinning like they were in on a joke, and his brain struggled to put this into a context he could understand.

"Look here," Bran insisted, grabbing his shoulders and forcibly turning him back towards the left, towards the beginning of his lifetime. Several points had been flagged and highlighted in red, and he couldn't help when his eye was drawn to them. "I've marked several points where just a slight adjustment in the timeline could save your life, prevent the subjugation of my people, and afford the war a swift and decisive end in your favor."

"Won't your superiors object to this?" At this bewildered look, he pressed further: "I mean, isn't this against some kind of regulation? Will you get in trouble for altering the timeline however you like it?"

"I'm not Daniels, Commodore."

"That much is clear."

"And I'm not technically with any temporal agency at the moment," he said plainly, then began to zoom in again, leaving that particular comment open-ended.

A rogue, then, Jonathan mused. He supposed it was entirely appropriate given how they'd been operating over the past few years.

"So you're telling me we can go anywhere, to any point in my life, and just alter it? Wouldn't that affect other people?"

"Why is life and death so linear to you?" Bran scoffed, then narrowed his focus on the display before him. "You have my word that nothing you do in my observatory will destroy the Coalition, cause galaxies to explode, or have a detrimental effect on anyone else. Besides, of course, the Romulans."

"And why should I trust you? All you ever want to do is wipe out the neurogenic virus, and you don't care how many necks you have to step on to get there."

"Is that not a Coalition goal as well?" He interjected loudly, his voice tinged with irritation. "We're asking too many questions of one another. You had a thousand chances to help us, but you didn't. I'm starting to understand that the only way to get you to cooperate is to make sure there's something in it for you."

That particular observation shocked him into silence, and he wondered fleetingly if the same could have ever been said about him in the early days of their mission. Then again, back when Enterprise had first launched, he had been an entirely different person. They all were.

Bran took his silence as his acquiescence, and soon they were flying through time and space, emerging in a flash of light into a cozy log cabin replete with a roaring fireplace. The lights were low and the curtains were drawn, but the wind still whistled through the cracks in the windows. Area rugs littered the ground, providing a shield to the icy floorboards, and the room was so stuffed with oversized furniture that there was scarcely space to move around.

Someone did venture into the living room, maneuvering deftly and easily, balancing a tray with both hands. As she drew closer, Jonathan recognized the slippers, the short crop of dark hair, the cozy robe, the same one he so often cuddled up to and napped against as a child. She turned in profile and crouched down, and his heart immediately leapt in his chest.

"That's my mother," he confirmed. "We're at the family compound in the Adirondacks, and it's a little after Christmas. I'm nine, maybe ten."

"Ten," Bran corrected him, taking one step to the side and pressing his back against the wall.

He watched himself startle and glance up from one of his astronomy books, which he'd been busily highlighting and doggy-earing pages containing the systems he'd visit someday. Smiling, he accepted her offering, bringing the mug up to his face and inhaling deeply.

"Warm apple juice with cinnamon," he whispered to no one in particular. It had been a comfort to him over the years.

"Thanks, mom," his younger self said, leaning to one side to look past her into the kitchen. "Can I have a popsicle? One of the strawberry ones?"

"Jonny, it's below freezing outside!"

"He's a kid, Sally. What's your point?" The reply came from somewhere closer to the fire, and he squinted into the low light, barely making out the form of a wizened old man sitting in an armchair puffing on a cigarette like there was no tomorrow.

"I don't want him to catch a cold." She closed the distance between them and passed a mug into his hands. "Jack, I wish you wouldn't smoke in the house."

"And I wish you would've found the time to put that damn Christmas tree back up in the attic at some point in the past week and a half," he grumbled, already reaching for his flask tucked into his pocket. Kentucky bourbon, Jonathan recalled, only the finest.

His mother rolled her eyes and took her leave of his great-grandfather, who, if his memory served him correctly, died less than a year after this particular encounter. Pushing one hundred and fully done with everything the world had to offer, Jack Archer was full of interesting stories, mostly stemming from his father's fighting in North Africa during the Eugenics Wars. As a child, he'd idolized him to an almost ridiculous degree.

Cutting a wry glance in his direction, he winked, indicating that a popsicle was absolutely in his future. Leaning forward ever so slightly, he extended his homemade hot toddy out to him, his voice a conspiratorial whisper. "Want a sip, Jonny?"

His younger self eyed him curiously, wondering if this was a trap, before rising to his knees and shuffling forward. So close to the fire, the heat was likely stifling, but he persisted, and his fingers had just closed around the mug's handle when a sudden loud noise from somewhere behind him drew his attention.

"You're not trying to give him alcohol again, are you?" It was his father, his features warped in irritation and disbelief.

Jack sniffed disdainfully, withdrawing his offer and settling back in his chair. "Just doing what my dad did. If you give them a few drinks at this age, they never get into the hard stuff."

"Really? And how did that work out for you, grandad?"

"I only drink because you drive me crazy," he mumbled, and took a long sip to punctuate his point.

Henry stepped forward into the warm golden glow of the fireplace, then crouched down, retrieving his son's discarded book. He studied the crayon marks and scribbles there, bracing his free hand on his knees. It was exactly as he'd remembered him back then, brilliant and strong and impossibly brave, still a young man with his entire scientific career ahead of him. Jonathan didn't want to believe - no, didn't want to acknowledge the fact that two years from then he would be dead. His Clarke's Disease had appeared slowly, and then all at once, and in the end, he hadn't been able to recognize him or his mother, trembling as he was consumed by pain from the inside out.

He remembered that night - he was too young to be let into the intensive care unit, so he'd lingered in the lobby, but his mother's wail of grief couldn't be mistaken. As long as he lived, he didn't think he would ever forget that sound, let alone the sight of her tear-stained cheeks as she emerged an hour later to deliver the news.

"What are ya reading, buddy?"

"All about the Arachnid Nebula and the Kreetassans. They live in the nearest system."

"Oh, yeah?" He made a big show of flipping several pages, his smile growing by the second. "You know, we only know about them from the Vulcans. One of these days, someone's got to meet them in person."

"That'll be me," his younger self asserted with unquestioning confidence.

"I've seen one on the news," Jack interjected, staring into his mug. "Real ugly sons of bitches if you ask me."

"Grandad," Henry chastised, and made a move to stand up, only to be immobilized by what seemed like a severe muscle spasm. He fell forward, landing on his hands and knees, before noticing his son was staring and affording him a reassuring smile.

Beside him, Bran snapped his fingers, and the scene before them froze. Turning on his heels, he asked: "This is one of his first outward presenting symptoms of Clarke's Disease. Do you say something, or do you let it be?"

"I…" He trailed off, exhaling forcefully as he calculated the ramifications. "What happens if I do?"

"He starts treatment next month rather than a year from now, and early action lets him live until you're twenty-five."

"But he still dies."

"Everyone dies, Archer," he corrected him sternly. "You were raised by your mother from twelve years old, and though I'm sure she did a fine job, she encouraged you to be brash and confident, and if I'm honest, entirely reckless. The presence of your father tempers some of your more impulsive tendencies, and to that end, you eventually let us take the telepresence data off the Vulcans' hands. We go after it instead of the Maelstrom, and one thing leads to another…"

"That would mean changing who I am as a person and as a commanding officer," he interrupted, shaking his head adamantly.

Bran looked disappointed, although he seemed to have been expecting it. "You're fine with him being in all that pain?"

"You said it yourself, pain will come, one way or another. If I were in his shoes, I'd rather go quickly than prolong the inevitable."

"You say that now," he muttered rather acrimoniously, and reached for the device on his wrist, ushering them back into the temporal observatory and robbing him of one final glance at the man whose absence only grew more painful by the day.

---

The view of surrounding space from the brig was cold, desolate, and bleak.

Nieron doesn't even need to see to know it - his captors seemed to have taken conscious steps to make the room as dark as possible, blocking the viewport and dimming the lights. Even when the steward came in to deliver his meals, they were out in a flash, not even daring to look at him. It was sensory deprivation, meant to loosen his tongue, and that was something he simply could not risk.

He had been alone for a long time, almost since that fateful day when everything changed. For a member of such a social species, the isolation had been grueling, and there were indeed times when he believed he was truly losing his mind.

And yet, through all of that, he clung to his identity and what he knew to be the truth, knowing that someday the opportunity would present itself. He would take that way out and restart his life the only way he knew how.

His deliverance came in the way of a five-foot-ten surly blonde wearing a strange uniform and a matching dour expression. She came to him without preamble, without visible intent, and leaned against the wall next to his cell without saying anything, looking him up and down as though she'd never seen him before.

It had been a long time, but she was just as achingly beautiful as she remembered, all prominent cranial ridges and corkscrew curls and cherry red lipstick. He couldn't help but smile knowing that his instincts had been correct, that his imagination paled in comparison to the reality of her all over again.

"You've grown out your hair," he said softly, dumbly, mentally kicking herself. To her credit, she scarcely reacted, though she did come around the corner to press her hands against the door, studying him with renewed scrutiny. So he tried again, hoping to compress almost nineteen years of longing into a few simple words: "I've missed you."

Alira didn't return his pleasantries, though he could practically see the wheels turning in her head as she calculated her next move. This was slightly unnerving, as she was normally ten steps ahead, but every doubt in his mind was swept away in the fluid grace of her next move.

She popped the latch and removed the barrier between them, approaching him in three shaky, staggered steps. The limp was certainly new, but he didn't have time to wonder where she might have acquired it, for in the next moment, she was guiding him to sit, stealing away his every desire to resist her.

Women were well known to be the aggressors in their culture - socially, sexually, politically, wherever it mattered - so he let her trail two fingers across his cheek and up into his hair, then across his chest and shoulders, dipping down to his wrists. All the while, she was inhaling deeply, and his mind couldn't help but leap back to the night she'd come to his quarters for the first time, all those years ago on her father's patrol.

It had been nearly a decade since he'd touched anyone. Every fiber in his being was giving him cause to tremble, but he resisted, all the while her expression remained impassive, and she grew imperceptibly closer, until they were breathing the same air, until her knee was teasing his across the bench.

And just like that, her smile was back, and it almost brought him to tears.

"Where did you go?" Her voice was tremulous, whisper soft.

"I've been everywhere," Nieron confessed, and once he began to speak, he couldn't stop. "I've been as far as Juhraya and Qo'noS. I've run freight and executed hits and sworn my allegiance to every kind of person who didn't deserve it. For a decade, I was undercover on Rigel V…"

Her eyes widened with fascination. "Did we have something to do with the civil war there?"

"It's a profitable business," he said quietly, "and having the Zami and Jelna at each other's throats has benefitted the Supreme Council more than words can say."

"I'm sure you can think of some."

"You'd be wrong. I've lived under Vesena's shadow for too long...after that night, she told me there was no other choice, that they couldn't discover we'd been helping the Andorians, that if I tried to contact you…" Unbeknownst to him, his gaze had strayed, and she swiftly corrected the problem, curling her fingers under his chin and forcing him to look at her. "Believe me. Not a day went by where I didn't want to reach out to you, to let you know I was still alive. I have known others, but I saw your face in every single one. I need you to tell me you understand."

She didn't even extend him that courtesy. When she spoke, her voice was perfectly even, something that didn't escape him for a second. "Tell me what happened."

"Well, I…" Nieron smiled ruefully. Looking into her eyes, he saw only heartbreaking sincerity, and wanted nothing more than to believe her. "We were all Special Ops envoys that night. Our orders were to rendezvous with the Kalaine, under the command of Commander Namara and Lieutenant Shran…"

The very corners of her lips twitched, but he forged on: "Your father wasn't supposed to find out, but he did. Internal scans tipped him off. He was threatening to turn us all in, but Varox got to him first. It was easier than explaining to him that the government was getting involved in arms dealing under his nose."

A tear broke loose and began to trail down her cheek, and he very nearly shattered along with it. This was the first time she was hearing this information, he was sure of it. "They decided to call it a border skirmish to cover our tracks. The five of us were scattered to the wind, and I know this looks bad for me, but they threatened my family and they threatened you. I promise you, when I get back to Denobula, Vesena will have my back and yours too, if you let her. We can find a ship, we can…"

"Run away together?" She suggested, and his heart nearly broke anew at the wonder of it all. For nearly two decades, he hadn't so much as spoken those words into existence, but now he knew he wanted that more than anything.

The affection was there, the love and the devotion, so much so that he was positive his never ending nightmare was coming to an end. He coaxed her forward until their foreheads were pressed together. "I know you're with that human, but you know it's always been you. He can't give you what I can, not now, not ever. You know I'd do anything for you, my beloved."

"Anything?"

"Anything," he promised, running his fingers through the hair at the nape of her neck, relishing in her warmth, her presence, her physical proximity. "I'd kill a hundred Praetors to have you again."

She chuckled softly at that, then reached for the collar of her uniform. Her next words made his heart skip in his chest.

"Could you say that into the microphone one more time?"

He saw it then, the bug clipped on the underside of the fabric, and then she was gone, back into the receiving area, closing the hatch behind her. Alira lingered there with her back turned for several seconds, deathly quiet, and when she turned to him, she was unspeakably enraged.

"Ten days," she began, clenching her fists into her sides. "You left me ten days before our wedding, and that's all you can say? That you'd do anything for me, when you couldn't even choose your betrothed over the uniform?"

"You would have done it, too. In fact, you did. All of these years in Special Ops, and you're no better than the rest of us!"

He could see he had struck a nerve - clearly, she didn't anticipate him knowing how Saben and Varox had lured her into their circle and forced her to commit horrific atrocities. Though they had been under Vesena's orders the entire time, it had technically been done as a favor to him, the first vital step to reuniting them. And yet, he couldn't - wouldn't - understand just how she'd fallen so deeply for the human cause, so antithetical to their own.

"The difference is that I got out. You and Saben can't say the same."

"Saben," he echoed mockingly. "I'm surprised you didn't wind up with him."

"There's plenty of reasons for that, but first and foremost it's because he's dead."

It was as if all air had been forced from his lungs. He moved to close the distance between them the best he could, grounding out: "What do you mean he's dead?"

"A few months ago now. He confessed to trading in our command codes. Surely you didn't think those came out of nowhere."

"I thought you were the one who sent them. I hoped…"

"Why would I…" She trailed off, visibly confused, then covered her mouth with her hand. Realization struck her like a bolt of lightning. "This isn't about my father anymore, or getting revenge on the family. Vesena wants me on her side."

It was then he knew, without a shadow of a doubt, that she knew everything about that night before she even crossed over the threshold. With his current knowledge of who was alive and who was not, doubtless it had been Shran who came clean.

"And you're not here to kill the Praetor - you did that knowing it would lead to me. Your real mission, the reason she sent you out here…"

"I'd stop while you're ahead."

"You traded our command codes for protection." She was furious, and trembling under the weight of it. Her expression warped viciously, lips curling in a silent challenge, daring him to tell her she was wrong when she was so very, very right.

When the invasion of the Beta Quadrant came to fruition - as he was certain it would, having listened to T'Leikha and Valdore and all the others talk - Denobula was likely to be a very low priority when it came to defense. Vesena knew it, her aides knew it, and all her envoys knew it, and although he'd all but blown their chances with his decision, he had to say that his heartbreak paled in comparison to what the new praetor would do when she came after them.

"If you're waiting for me to confirm that," Nieron said carefully, staring her down, "you're going to be waiting for a very long time."

There was a sudden sharp noise outside in the corridor, like something hitting the ground, and they both glanced towards it. The spell now thoroughly broken, she took a step closer, speaking slowly and deliberately.

"Look at what you've done, really think about it, and then decide what you're going to tell your commanding officer when you get back. You put me on a pedestal, remembering me as someone I could never be, and doomed all of our people in the process."

"You could say you want me dead in much fewer words, Alira."

"I don't. Can't you understand that?" A hint of a smile crossed her expression then, but it was gone in an instant, lost to the sands of time. "I loved the man you were. He was my first love, my moon and stars, my everything. But if I go chasing after a ghost, what does that say about who I am?"

The tides were already turning, and he was powerless to stop them. He knew that, and yet he spoke, because he had to know, he had to make sure, before he closed this chapter altogether and accepted the consequences for his actions, come what may. "Is this the life you want? With these humans? With him?"

"Unquestionably."

"Then you're making a big mistake."

"It's mine to make," she replied simply, and turned to leave.

She made it as far away as the hatch, and he wasn't sure if it was his pride, or his sorrow, or the confusing mess of emotions at seeing her again, but when he delivered his final riposte, it came out louder and more forceful than he intended. "Who's going to love you when he's gone, Alira?"

It would be a bold-faced lie to say she hadn't thought about that. In all likelihood, she knew that at best they only had sixty or seventy years together, that she would go on to live a century or two longer after that, that she would likely remarry when her own loneliness wore her down. But in the moment, something about that comment stoked something within her, the smoldering embers of rage which she'd held at bay, and when she reached out for the door controls, she punched it so hard the panel nearly went flying off the wall.

"Me!" She screamed, with decades of pain and anger and vitriol warping her voice past recognition. When the hatch slid open, she slipped out into the corridor without another word.

Malcolm startled, then immediately fell into step with her, keen to maintain a professional distance but plainly concerned by the storm of emotion in her eyes. She moved faster and faster, ignoring her worsening limp. He tried her rank, and then when they were out of earshot of the MACOs, her name, neither of which worked. It was only within the confines of the turbolift halted between levels that she dared to say what was on her mind.

"We got him," she seethed, noticeably removing herself from the equation. "We got the son of a bitch."

There was something else, something horrible and tragic, but now was neither the time nor place to dive into that. Though their time together was altogether too short, for the moment and overall, he knew exactly what she needed, and was all too willing to give it.

In the safety of his arms, she allowed herself to fly apart.

---

Jonathan and Bran reemerged outdoors on a warm evening, the sound of raucous music and crackling sparklers reaching them from a distance.

The difference was momentarily jarring, and he squinted into the darkness, into the dense crowds of partygoers all around them. Aerial floodlights had been dimmed, and even the windows of the surrounding office buildings had been switched off, indicative of a holiday, or else the slowest weekend of the summer.

It was July 4th, 2143, and though all countries flew just one flag as United Earth, some habits died hard. This was just two weeks before the helm of the NX-Alpha was decided in favor of his good friend A.G. Robinson. Though it had been fifteen years, he remembered that night as though it were yesterday - the officers' barbecue, the festivities lending a temporary distraction to his long hours in the flight simulator.

At this point in his life, Starfleet Headquarters represented his only home, the one place where he could forget that he was all alone in the world. Recently, he'd only been there to be berated or reassigned or debriefed, and he loved open space more with each passing day.

Just like that, Erika emerged from the crowd, dragging him by the wrist. She was carefree and unburdened - still Commander Hernandez at the time - and was dressed comfortably in shorts and beat up sneakers. Finally releasing him, she turned on her heels and threw her arms wide, her laughter pealing into the night air, a gorgeous and melodious sound that he would never get tired of hearing as long as he lived.

"You're worrying too much," she chastised, coaxing him out onto the grass. "Honestly, if I hear you talk about the NX-Alpha one more time, I'll rip my hair out."

"Just know that if Gardner or Duvall gets it, I might do the same."

She laughed at that, then bent at the waist to clap her hands together. There were fireflies everywhere. Electricity was in the air, and he had the feeling that if they waited very much longer the fireworks would begin.

"Anxiety is the thief of joy, Jon. Trust in your abilities, and they'll get you where you need to go every single time."

"That's real rich coming from you." His younger self slung a companionable arm across her shoulder and began to lead her across the line back to the buffet line, where the caterers were starting to serve seconds. "Like you don't have your future already lined up. You're a shoo-in for the XO posting on the Republic."

"To Vulcan and back ten times a month," she mused with a groan. "Lucky me."

"It's a hell of a lot better than being stuck here in the simulator."

"Don't lie. I know you love that machine. If it had two legs and a nice rack, you'd marry it." He visibly recoiled from that, about to chastise her for her crude joke, when she hauled off and waved frantically towards someone in the distance. "Hey!"

Before he could stop himself, Jonathan began to hurry towards them, suddenly desperate to lay eyes on his good friend. The last time they'd seen each other, he'd just won the command of the Enterprise, and A.G. was bidding him farewell ahead of his survival training in Alice Springs. That had been 2150, and the last time he would ever see him - he died three years later during a climbing expedition to Mt. McKinley, buried under a catastrophic avalanche. His body was never recovered, and closure was never achieved.

A.G. couldn't see him, but that didn't make the regret any less strong. He should have talked to him more, shouldn't have let their friendship languish and fall apart. Maybe then he'd still be alive.

He was on the arm of none other than Laura, then Lieutenant Commander Pritchard, the former CO of the NX-03 Cochrane and Erika's longtime partner before her untimely death. Now, as she moved to wrap her in a hug, he wondered just how blind he'd had to be not to notice those sparks all those years ago. Then again, they certainly hadn't either - not until they reconnected on patrols shortly before the war began, initiating a whirlwind romance that was doomed to tragedy from the start.

"Thought I might find you two over here," he began, gesturing towards the end of the quad, towards the bay, towards the stars. "Listen, I've been thinking about watching the fireworks from the observatory. Could I persuade any of you to join me?"

"Come on, A.G. Where's your sense of adventure?" Laura elbowed him sharply, causing them both to sway. On the opposite side of the lawn, the circle around Duvall erupted in raucous laughter.

"We should go down to the 602. Ruby's back to her old tricks, making men try and guess the names she's supposedly had picked out for her kids for years. She tells them she'll marry the first one who gets it right."

"Between you and me, I'm not so sure she has any in mind after all." Laura laughed, muffling it behind her palm, then gestured towards Erika. "We were in there a few weeks ago, and there was this lieutenant with the most obnoxious southern accent you've ever heard, really laying it down thick. He must've thrown out a hundred names in the space of an hour."

"You're forgetting about that cute little British cadet from last night. I'm telling you, he was green as they come, probably not even a week off the shuttle. He was luckier - pretty sure he got her comm code."

"It's all in the accent," A.G. admitted. "Guys like us just don't stand a chance, Jon."

"Arthur Geoffrey Robinson," Erika admonished. "I'll have you know that you've got many positive attributes. Let's see...you're a good pilot, and...uhm…Laura, can you think of anything?"

She shook her head and reached for her, meeting her outstretched hand halfway. "You've got me there. Let's get going before all the good tables are taken."

They took one step away from them and then another, before Erika glanced back at them, offering him a lifeline. "Last chance, guys."

Snap. Bran swiftly stepped out in front of him, approached his younger self, and began to adjust his collar and ruffle his hair. When he was satisfied, he returned to his side and bounced up and down on his toes.

"I know what you're about to say," Jonathan said warily, eyeing his A.G.'s beseeching, hopeful expression. For weeks leading to Forrest's decision, they'd kept each other at arm's length, unsure of how their friendship would cope with one being chosen over the other. Sure enough, it had almost imploded on its own, and the stunt they'd pulled to smooth things over had nearly gotten them both kicked out of the fleet. "I'm not seeing how going with him that night could've changed anything."

He said something in Betazoid, a single world or else a jumble of a phrase, and he looked at him curiously. "Every alien culture I've interacted with has an equivalent. I believe you might call it the butterfly effect. If you spend the rest of the evening at the observatory, you start telling him all about your great-grandfather's stories, about his father who fought in the Eugenics Wars. He hears about the sights and files that away in the back of his mind. The first chance he has to take extended leave, he decides…"

"He goes to north Africa instead of Mt. McKinley," Jonathan acknowledged, putting two and two together. "And he doesn't die in that avalanche."

"Meaning he's available to take command of the NX-02 Columbia that next year."

"Meaning Erika has to wait for the Cochrane."

"Archer," Bran interjected, entirely incredulous. "You'd be amazed how much death we can avoid if we just prevent her from enhancing the nuclear program. More than likely, you'd have Bajor on your side right now, as a full-blown member of the Coalition. I can't even begin to tell you how much trouble that's going to save humanity in about two hundred years."

"I can't take that away from her."

"Of course you can."

"I can't!" He turned to him, stepping well into his personal space, his voice full with conviction. "She may have lied and cheated and stolen across two quadrants to get us what we needed, but in the end, she believed she was following orders from the top. I can't fault her for that."

Bran searched his face then, perhaps probing his mind as telepaths were wont to do, until he finally arrived at his verdict. "You're serious about this, aren't you?"

God help him, he was. In the back of his memory, he remembered exploring the dark matter nebula with T'Pol at his side, telling her the story of the first NX test flight. It was one of the first times they were ever truly vulnerable with each other. At that point, he already knew he trusted her unconditionally, but he would cling onto that moment every time doubt was cast on her actions in the Expanse.

She had told him that Starfleet regulations prevented the captain from leaving the ship alone, but in reality, she was just worried about him. Her affection for him was difficult to miss even then.

And now, he might never see her again.

"Don't worry," Bran assured him, having sensed all of this and more. "You've got one more chance."

---

First Consul T'Leikha, the acting Praetor of the Romulan Star Empire, was feeling quite pleased with herself.

Though they'd lost nearly a quarter of their defensive fleet and hadn't quite managed to get what they needed from the Enterprise and the Maelstrom, she was in command, right where she always deserved to be. D'Deridex was dead, and it didn't matter how it had transpired. There were no recording devices in his study, though she presumed her assistant had followed through on her commands, fulfilling a separate mission she'd likely been given months ahead of time.

Sarva had been a human after all, and inherently faulted, but at least she suffered a horrible death before she had the chance to share all she had seen and heard.

Or had she?

It didn't take long to discover her weekly communiques, smuggled out on carrier waves bound for their reinforcements in the Alpha Quadrant. As soon as they heard word of her death, they began to investigate, and gradually deduced that they had been infiltrated by Section 31. It hadn't been the first time - they'd tortured and dismembered several agents before them - but it was still impressive that they'd managed to stay undercover for over eighteen months. Whatever her companion had to say on the matter, she was looking forward to hearing it, whether she had to coax it out of him or not.

Von strode in confidently and of his own volition, bracketed by agents of the Tal Shiar with his hands shackled in front of him. Though he tried to maintain a facade of calm, she could tell he was terrified, could practically smell it on him, and that thrilled her like nothing else.

She rose from her throne and closed the distance between them, watching as his breath quickened and his pupils dilated. In her periphery, she could see Chairman Solan reaching for his weapon, ready to shoot him down where he stood, but she cut him off with a dismissive wave of the hand.

Her dagger popped loose from its holster with a satisfying snap, and then she lifted it up high enough so he could see it, lifting his mask and pressing it to his neck for a split second before flicking the tip over the swell of his cheek.

Sure enough, his blood ran red.

Grasping his chin and turning it this way and that, she studied the slant of his eyebrows, the points of his ears, the pallor of his skin. Up this close, she could see where someone had gone to great lengths to tattoo over his freckles, and she assumed that underneath his disguise, he might have been a redhead or even a blonde. He was handsome, as much as any human pretending to be a hybrid could be.

"Your surgeon does excellent work," she purred. "I regret to inform you that your little friend is dead."

He actually shrugged, but made no attempt to pull away from her. Curious, she dug in deeper: "First, you're going to tell me your name, and then you're going to tell me exactly why I shouldn't wear your guts for a necklace."

To emphasize her point, she pressed the serrated edge into his stomach, not enough to break the skin, but enough to let her know she was serious.

In all honesty, she expected him to grovel, to beg, to plead for his life. That would have made the kill all the more satisfying, but he didn't do any of that. He smiled, something which truly caught her off guard, and told her exactly what she wanted to know.

"Ensign Simon Pascal, former navigator of the NX-01 Enterprise, contracted by Section 31 since 2150." He paused, casting a wayward glance in Admiral Valdore's direction. "That was going to be your next question, wasn't it?"

Truly shaken, T'Leikha disengaged and took a step back, studying him with fresh eyes. "Are you willing to tell us what you know, or shall we torture you first?"

"Won't I get tortured anyway?"

"One path leads to lethal injection, and the other to vivisection with a full crowd of onlookers."

"You drive a hard bargain. Can I sleep on it?"

Over her shoulder, Solan flipped the safety off his rifle and leveled it at his head, unwilling to entertain any more of his foolishness. "Answer the question, or your brains will be decorating that console behind you."

"I think you know I can help you," he began, twisting his wrists to hold up his hands in resignation. "At the very least, I can provide you valuable insight."

"Hold him down."

"Wait!" T'Leikha turned and swiftly approached her command chair, settling back into it and regarding him with casual disdain. The barest flick of her wrist, and his captors pressed him forwards until he was practically in her lap. With the end of her foot, she teased the hem of his pants, noticing how his legs trembled, irrationally appreciating his ability to put on a show. "Were you sent here to kill the Praetor?"

"We were."

"Do you believe your friend killed him?"

"I'm not so sure," he hesitated for a split second. "I know the Denobulan was being genuine when he told you he was seeking protection for his people - his personal aims just got in the way."

"How do you mean?"

"His betrothed is stationed on the Maelstrom. He's been missing for twenty years, and I'm willing to bet he realized it when we arrived on the battlefield."

"A small boy in warrior's clothes," Solan asserted, and she looked back at him, somewhat startled. "These Denobulans like to pretend they're fighters, but in the end, their emotionalism and illogic always take over."

"Exactly why the deal is off. When we mount our invasion of Sol, his homeworld will be our first conquest." She nodded, and a nearby yeoman jotted that down, effectively making it law.

"Then I suppose I can't persuade you to leave Earth alone."

"Not a chance."

"Even if I get in contact with the Section?"

"You ask too many questions. How does being blown out of a torpedo launcher sound?"

"There's no place for me back home. Everyone thinks I'm dead, and I'm wanted for arranging the kidnapping of a Minister of the High Command." Her eyes widened almost imperceptibly, and Simon knew he had her. By God, did he have her. "The tides of the war are turning - they're on the run. I'm sure you can sense that."

T'Leikha was certain he was deceiving her, but she was intrigued. At the moment, she felt untouchable, and sizing him up one more time, she was positive she would enjoy toying with him.

"Tell me how I can prove my loyalty."

You can't, she wanted to say, but forced herself to stay silent. Snapping her fingers, she called forth their intrepid doctor, who led the way through a hidden hatch in the wall. T'Uerell's assistants followed her closely, heads down, and a tenuous silence fell over the room in a crashing wave.

The two MACOs they'd managed to capture were strapped to matching stretchers, reclined to a forty-five degree angle, twitching and frantic with whatever tranquilizer she'd pumped into their veins. Immediately, she rose and approached the one on the left, who opened his eyes and regarded her with absolute unbridled terror. He thrashed, but the restraints held fast, and she hovered over him, blocking out the floodlight with the back of her head.

"Do you recognize this man?"

At first he seemed confused. The other soldier sputtered and coughed, and when he spoke, his voice was irreparably marred by emotion.

"Pascal," he seethed, desperately attempting to pull away. "You bastard. You're alive, and you…"

"I'm sorry, Moreno," he mumbled, though he didn't sound like it in the slightest.

"You better hope they don't let me out of here. I swear to God, I'll…"

"Choose one and gouge out his eyes, then disembowel him." T'Leikha passed her knife into his hands. "The other one gets to watch."

It should have stopped him in his tracks, or made him reevaluate his plan. It should have given him pause, but he immediately obeyed, sinking the blade into the nearest one's skull and eliciting an ear-splitting, agonizing howl.

As blood sprayed and stained his uniform, Pascal forged on, slashing his chest from collarbone to hip again and again. Now faced with his mortality, the other began to openly weep. Not being able to stand it, Solan quickly began to put an end to his misery, hitting him with a disruptor blast and vaporizing him right where he lay.

Once he made the final cut, Simon dropped the dagger, taking a massive step back. Enthralled, T'Leikha observed the naked rage in his eyes, and decided he would fit in quite nicely.

"You will be my pet," she said at last, once their prisoners were both dead. T'Uerell nodded and took her leave of them, though from her expression, she could tell she absolutely did not approve. "And share my bed and my table. Betray me, and I will give everyone in this room an opportunity to cut you to ribbons."

He cut a glance to his victims, towards the blood on his hands, then back towards her, understanding his fate was irreparably sealed.

"How could I refuse?"

---

The next thing he knew, Jonathan was standing in the near darkness under flickering lights, overwhelmed and nearly overpowered by the smell of dust and decay. Bran was the first to cough, hiking up the collar of his jacket over his nose. He turned away from him and was immediately presented with a familiar scene.

They were back in the Seleya, a derelict Vulcan science vessel floating through an asteroid field in the Expanse, and they were having a hell of a time escaping of it. The crew had been profoundly affected by the dense Trellium-D deposits nearby, so much so that they had gone mad and were actively trying to kill them. While trying to find an escape route, their MACO guard had been injured, leaving them to limp through dimly lit corridors and debris until they located the medical bay.

Malcolm had shot a member of the crew who tried to attack them on their way in, and T'Pol was frantically attempting to ascertain what was wrong with him, though she was still shaking and sweating profusely. He had been tremendously concerned for her, and if it weren't for the fact that they were presently running for their lives, he could have wanted nothing more than to comfort her, to soothe her, to wrap her in his arms and ensure she never had cause to worry ever again.

It didn't escape him that he had that opportunity before, but would no longer.

Jonathan watched himself, bruised and bleeding from several lacerations on his chest and arms, side-stepping Malcolm on his way around the biobed. All the while, he never looked away from his science officer, asking: "Any idea what's causing this?"

"I'm not a doctor," she reminded him, as if he didn't know.

"But you are my science officer. I need to know I can depend on you."

The look he was dealt was positively long-suffering. Though she didn't say it, after so long together, he could now tell exactly what she was thinking - that if he didn't trust her by now, their working relationship truly was a lost cause.

"I'll do my best." And by God, he knew she meant it. Her eyes drifted back towards their patient, half-conscious and seething. "His name is Solin. When I served here, he was the chief engineer. I knew him."

She repeatedly attempted to make personal appeals to him, to ascertain whether he recognized her, all to no avail. He simply thrashed and growled and attempted to break free from his restraints, and soon she was shouting at him, taking a step back and turning away.

Not even thinking about how it might look to Malcolm and Hawkins, he closed the distance between them, overwhelmed by the need to soothe her but desperately not wanting to cross the line. To see her in pain was absolutely heartbreaking.

"This is going to happen to me."

"You don't know that."

"It's already started, I can feel my control slipping away!" The volume of her voice rose uncontrollably and then fell, and she was backing up towards the wall, growing dangerously close to where they were standing.

"We're getting you off this ship."

"It's too late," she insisted, shaking her head, and at long last, they made physical contact, and she was squeezing her shoulders in reassurance as he had hundreds of times before.

"We're going to take the scans you made back to Phlox and figure out what's going on here. But first, we have to…"

"Stop," Bran intoned, breaching the plane of the scene and slapping his hand down on the edge of the biobed with force. At a different angle, Jonathan noticed her fingertips were flexed and turned in towards him, and though the incident in question was in the long-distant past, he ached to know that she had wanted to be held by him just as much as he wanted to hold her. "This man is a hybrid. Bring him back with you, and you crack the enemy plot wide open, and the High Command gets a two year head start to root out conspirators in their ranks."

"At what cost?"

"Once it is discovered that T'Pol's father was Chairman of the Tal Shiar, that her brother currently holds that position, she will be recalled and reassigned."

"No," he concluded, cutting off whatever he was about to say next with a decisive wave of the hand. "Absolutely not."

"You stay in communication. It would only delay your bonding by a decade at most."

"Maybe you're not hearing me. I said…"

"Need I remind you that a few years is nothing in the grand scheme of things?"

"It is to me," Jonathan insisted. "And the entire rest of Enterprise. The moment T'Pol joined the crew, I knew that we couldn't function without her."

"You mean that you couldn't function without her." Then, digging in deeper: "Archer, you're being selfish."

He hesitated, weighing the impact and consequence of his actions. "Maybe I am, and we've had our challenges together, but I wouldn't trade that for the world. Send me back to the moment I was shot and let me live the consequences to my mistakes. Let me die if it'll make you feel better."

"I can't."

"Why the hell can't you?"

"Because you're too important to the future of the Fed...the Coalition to lose like this. Your work is far from over, and whatever happens here won't change that."

The realization hit him all at once, and for one long moment, no one spoke. Slowly, he tested the waters: "Then what are we doing here?"

"There are forces at work here beyond our control." Bran realized he was being deliberately vague, and sought to remedy that. "Today, a sequence of events was set into motion which spells disaster for us all if we don't put an end to it immediately."

"You know, if this doesn't work out for you, maybe you oughta look into acting. Every single temporal agent I've met has a flair for the dramatic."

"This is serious," he insisted, turning back towards him, physically wrestling with his subconscious before deciding to lay it all out on the line. "You should know that Ensign Pascal is alive. Section 31 facilitated his escape, and he and Lieutenant Garcia have been undercover at Romulan Logistics Command for the past eighteen months."

Jonathan did a visible double take, not wanting to believe that, knowing he'd lied before, but also acknowledging that he had no reason to lie now. It was just far-fetched enough to be true. "And...were they at the battle with us today?"

"Technically, it was yesterday. Garcia killed the Praetor, and was murdered herself. To buy himself more time, Simon has allied himself with First Consul T'Leikha, who's going to try to cling onto power by whatever means necessary."

Anger surged within him anew, although with everything the Reeds had told them of their time with the Section, that sounded plausible enough. They tended to employ those with already questionable moral compasses, and though he wanted to believe he was just doing this to take out another man on the totem pole, Bran's concerns were enough to force him to face the inevitable.

"Their liaison is dangerous, and you can take that from me. No timeline where their partnership continues ends well for either of us. He's got to die by someone's hand, and that someone has got to be…"

"Me," he interjected, overwhelmed by the realization of it all. "Why can't you do it yourself?"

"Time doesn't work that way. Consider this me calling in my favor for saving your Lieutenant Sato on Bajor."

"I had a feeling you might say that." It wasn't as if he hadn't killed before, but it had never been a member of his crew, never a part of senior staff and certainly never someone who had repeatedly sat at his dinner table and availed him with stories of his childhood and past assignments and how much fun he was having, how much he enjoyed his work and how great it was to be here and have purpose and have meaning.

Come to find out, it had all been a lie.

The hull bucked and shook, and deep in his bones, he knew it to be indicative of something happening in the physical world. Bran knew it too, for he began to herd him to one end of the room, fumbling with the switch on his temporal observatory.

"Tell me what to do," he insisted. "Bring me back, and I'll make it happen."

"I'll try my best," he promised, and then the entire room vanished in a flash of brilliant white light.

---

By the time the Reeds arrived in Enterprise's wardroom, Alira's tears were long gone, but she wore her devastation visibly in her expression.

That was another thing that seemed to be characteristic of their species - they lacked anything remotely resembling subtlety. When she needed to, his wife had an impressive poker face, but ordinarily, if she was upset, he knew about it instantly.

Hoshi met them at the door. It was strange enough to see her and Trip there nearly three years after they left for the commissioning of the Maelstrom, but in the moment it was just enough to have them there, to reminisce, to receive a warm embrace from a treasured time in the not-so-distant past. Alira swiftly popped the wire she'd been wearing from her collar and passed it into her hands, then retreated to the table, taking a seat without a word. There was a mug of hot chocolate waiting there per the frantic instructions he'd sent to Trip just minutes ago, and she briefly glanced back at him, gratitude lighting up in her eyes.

Each of them had taken turns telling her that she didn't need to do this, that she didn't need to dredge up those memories, that they would find out the truth another way, but she had insisted on confronting her past head on. As far as he was concerned, she deserved every comfort in the world, especially because his last attempt to ply her with sweets had been interrupted by dozens of hybrid marauders trying to take over the ship.

"Rough birthday, eh, Taxa?" Trip, as usual, was attempting to dial down the temperature in the room. He was rewarded by a small smile.

"Believe it or not, I've had worse."

Commander Hammond slipped out of her chair so he could remain beside her, which was duly appreciated. During their somewhat awkward shuffle around the wardroom table, she managed to side swipe him right over his disruptor wound, causing him to inhale swiftly and hold it there.

"Be careful," Alira cautioned, and he mentally cursed her persistent concern for him. No one else seemed to hear it, so he settled in, sitting just as close as he dared.

As Hoshi cued up the audio recording, Trip gave her the once-over, taking in her furrowed brows, her tapping fingertips, the C-shaped curve of her back, and decided he couldn't keep his mouth shut. "You know, I coulda sworn Yuris told you to keep your feet up."

She smirked, tilted her head in Trip's direction, then swiveled around to drop her legs in his lap. Malcolm startled, but dutifully placed a protective hand on her knees.

Come to think of it, besides their wedding day, Hoshi didn't think she'd ever seen them be outwardly affectionate at all. From the look on his face, he could tell he was a little taken aback, but resolved not to make the situation any more awkward, queueing up the playback immediately.

The conversation was short, abrupt, starting as a whisper and ending in a scream. It reeked of desperation and loneliness, of halcyon days and lost dreams. At the moment Alira exited the brig, Julia reached out to press pause, all the while fighting the lump rising to the back of her throat.

After one long minute, in which time seemed to stand still, Trip finally managed to ask what they were all thinking: "How sure are you of this?"

"Captain, I've never been more sure of anything in my life. This woman caused my father's murder - her own husband - sent her envoys to trick me into a life of crime, and even now, she's directly going against the will of her own government. She took away my best friend and my first betrothed, and now…" Alira trailed off, looking confused, and rattled off a phrase in Denobulan to their resident translator.

Hoshi momentarily mulled that over before delivering her verdict: "Being gaslighted."

"General Vesena's been gaslighting me for almost twenty years, and I'm not going to stand for it any longer."

"Taxa…"

"No." She slammed her fist into the table, startling them all. "This ends now. This ends today."

"I don't know what you expect us to do." Malcolm nodded towards the viewport, as if she needed a reminder that the fleet was immobile, their crews demoralized and their defenses weakened.

"Whatever we want," Hoshi said automatically. "Whoever's in command of the Enterprise controls the United Earth forces, and at the moment, that's you."

Malcolm swallowed thickly, not wanting to believe it, not daring to come to terms with it. Even Trip seemed horrified by it all, and entirely shocked that she could have suggested something like that.

Julia's assessment on the situation was about to put all that to shame.

"Let's say for the sake of the argument that Garcia died during that explosion on her way back to court martial, just like the brass thinks. Let's say she wasn't undercover when she was killed."

"What the hell is that supposed to mean? We have a half dozen different witnesses, and he practically confessed to the crime, as well as killing the Praetor."

"No, he didn't," Hoshi corrected him, reached into her pocket, and produced a handful of wires that could only be the auditory sensors from the perimeter of the room. She didn't need to say much more than that; her meaning was well and truly understood.

"What you're talking about is extortion," Trip said carefully, making eye contact with each of them. "Blackmail, on a good day. If this goes south, and we're lucky, we'll get court martialed and sent to prison."

"As opposed to what happens when the war crimes lawsuit from the Betazoids pans out?" Malcolm's voice grew quieter and quieter until it was all but a whisper. It wasn't a question of whether or not he was capable of this - he'd certainly done worse during his heyday with Section 31, and if Harris had his druthers, he would soon again. Rather, he felt immensely beholden to his two COs, the one lying broken in sickbay and the one mourning for him, that he was temporarily frozen by the guilt and shame of it all.

Julia jumped in, hurriedly filling in the blanks. "None of this is complicated. Either Denobula becomes a full member of the Coalition of Planets and the Infantry joins the front lines, or we tell the United Earth Council all about how they reneged on the terms of their contract and consorted with the enemy."

"Causing them to be cast out," Alira concluded, frighteningly calm, and took an indulgent sip from her mug. She was talking about leaving her home defenseless, and she was sitting there like this was a normal catch up on any regular day. It was enough to send shivers down Trip's spine. "And effectively throwing them to the wolves."

"So what? You're willing to say that Saben betrayed all of us? You would really drag his name through the mud, cause his family all that shame?" From what he knew of their history, they'd been friends since birth, having grown up in the same building, their mothers being best friends. It would almost certainly tear them apart.

Alira slowly pulled her legs from Malcolm's lap, then leaned across the table slowly, coming so close to his face their noses were very nearly touching. She was trembling, brimming with an emotion he couldn't quite place, but when she spoke, he had no doubt she meant every single word. "Over and over again."

So tormented by her own past, she was determined to rid herself of it by whatever means possible. He was reminded of an old adage of his grandmother's, one whose context escaped him, but which quite applied to the present. He watched her spark and smolder before him, and knew what had to be done.

When there's nothing left to burn, sometimes you must set yourself on fire.

Trip nodded, effectively sealing their fate. She disengaged and settled back in her chair, polished off the rest of her hot chocolate, and sighed mightily, expressing relief even though their plight was far from over.

And then the hatch slid open behind them, revealing none other than Captain T'Pol.

The chorus of chairs sliding back from the table was thunderous. His heart immediately dropped down to the base of his stomach, but she regarded them all impassively, with the same clinically detached expression he'd seen time and time again during the early years of their mission. In her fight to maintain her composure, she'd retreated within herself, back to a time and place where she could pretend nothing could touch her.

There was little doubt she'd been hanging on every word. Ten centimeter thick duranium bulkheads couldn't stand up against superior Vulcan hearing.

"Ma'am…"

"Whatever you need to do," she interrupted, making her stance on the issue known. This practically floored them all, and for one long moment, no one spoke.

Hoshi cleared her throat, sweeping the wiring she'd pulled out of the wall off the table and into her pocket. Crossing her arms across her chest, she ventured to break the silence: "How's the Commodore?"

"He's in surgery," she replied evenly. "Dr. Phlox believes there is a new source of internal bleeding. His chances of survival stand at less than twenty percent."

It was so like her to retreat behind science and numbers to protect herself, to withdraw until she could dismantle and compartmentalize her emotions piece by piece. Ultimately, this was a fruitless charade to hide from the truth and the people she'd known for years. Trip was seized with the undeniable need to comfort her.

"Is the psionic resonator intact?"

Alira visibly startled at that - it was what the hybrids were after all along in the armory, the insidious device crafted by the High Command as a means of rupturing the synaptic pathways of those experiencing negative or violent thoughts. It was to be their secret weapon going into the next step of the war, and fortunately for all of them, none of her gamma shift attendants had vacated the armory when explicitly ordered. The device had been smuggled out along with them, hidden in one of the many pockets of someone's uniform.

"It's locked away in the nuclear isolation chamber." And under multiple layers of alphanumeric encryption and armed guards. She'd seen to that.

She nodded and took one step into the room before coming to a halt. "Mr. Reed, once repairs have been completed, we will be continuing on to Gamma Hydra to confront the rest of the Romulan fleet directly."

"What about the…"

"Withdraw our reinforcements from the Omicron sector and have them set an intercept course. Upon arrival, I will accompany you and a selection of Sergeant Cole's MACOs to their flagship," T'Pol continued, still without registering the impact of her words, as though she were simply rattling off a fleet report at the morning briefing. For a few of them, it was suddenly abundantly clear where she was going with this.

"To what end, ma'am?"

"We will bring the psionic resonator with us, and I will do the honors of killing Chairman Solan once and for all." Her upper lip twitched, but she caught it at the last second, desperately reigning in the emotion in her voice. Dipping her head towards them, she rapidly excused herself. "As you were."

And just like that, she was gone, leaving Trip to contemplate revenge and destiny and setting oneself on fire.

---

The hustle of the century took place in the wardroom shortly thereafter, with the blinds drawn and five different security codes placed on the door.

Trip was sure exactly what he'd expected - he'd certainly lied, cheated, stolen, and turned a blind eye in the name of turning the tides of the war, but nothing had been as blatant or vicious as this. For once, he was glad to have plausible deniability.

He stood between Hoshi and Julia adjacent to the viewscreen, which had been pulled out from the wall and angled towards the center of the room, affording a bit of forced perspective. Alira sat ramrod straight, her legs crossed at the ankle, her fingertips tapping a percussive rhythm on the tabletop. An easy smile adorned her lips, perfectly antithetical to her partner's dour expression. Somewhat anxiously, he began to shuffle through the PADDs arranged between them, desperately looking for something to hold his attention.

And then the connection flickered to life, cutting through the great stillness of subspace.

General Vesena, the Supreme Commander of the Denobulan Infantry, sat in her office aboard their flagship, resplendent in her spangled uniform jacket with not a hair out of place. He'd only spoken to her once outside of the chaos of the weekly Coalition briefs, while en route to bail their asses out at Kandar Station. Curiously, she'd turned a blind eye to the deaths of dozens of their best scientists, an error of judgment which was only aggravated by her personal connection to the devastation.

She was the second wife of Alira's father. Apparently, she wanted nothing to do with Taxa's children by his other wives, was singularly focused on gaining power and influence, and had been actively working to sabotage her career for years. If her instincts were correct, Vesena had also been involved in the arms deal which had resulted in the death of her husband, something that he couldn't wrap his mind around no matter how much he tried.

And now she appeared before them now, smiling with absolutely nothing behind it, studying their faces for the clues which they were only too reluctant to give. Self-consciously, Malcolm glanced in his direction, and Trip shook his head, biting back a grimace before it could bubble up to the surface.

"Ensign Taxa," she began evenly, immaculately calm. There was no warmth of familiarity to her voice - she was cold as stone. "To what do I owe the pleasure?"

She was a battle hardened general with decades of experience under her belt, and yet, her insistence on addressing her first had given away her position. The woman was nervous, and Malcolm was all too willing to cut to the chase.

"I wish we could converse under better circumstances, Supreme Commander."

"News has reached us of the Battle of Vorkado," she assured them, her tone positively frigid. "Allow me to extend my condolences and wish the Commodore a speedy recovery."

Off screen, someone whispered something in Denobulan, likely an aide. Hoshi leaned forward until her ear was all but pressed against the console, listening intently.

"I'm sure he will appreciate it. In the meantime, I've been named caretaker of the fleet."

"How fortunate for you," Vesena sounded bored now. "A young man like you should get experience wherever he can."

Beside him, Julia winced, rubbing furtively at her temples. That particular dig had gone over with all the subtlety of a stun grenade, and was particularly egregious considering she'd made it well known she didn't care for the likes of him in the family. It caused Alira endless frustration; after almost two years, their United Earth marriage license was yet to be recognized by the Supreme Council, and the dragging of feet was even calling Phlox's upcoming wedding into question.

She was determined not to give her room to breathe. "We've had limited fatalities and repairs are ongoing. You should be advised that we've taken on a prisoner."

Her ears perked up at that, though she tried her best not to show it. Hoshi held up three fingers, waving them about frantically. Alira's hands swept over the stack of PADDs in one fluid gesture, selecting one in the middle and pushing it ever so slightly forward.

"He has refused to tell us his name, but DNA testing matches a particular Infantry lieutenant who was declared dead in absentia almost nineteen years ago." Malcolm accepted her offering and turned it in his hands this way and that, feigning disinterest. "What's more fascinating is his personal connection to a member of this crew."

If it were at all possible, Trip could've sworn in that moment they could've heard a pin drop across a space of several hundred light years. Out of the corner of his eye, Vesena's jaw went slack before tightening once again. The trap was set, and they just needed for her to spring it.

"Since we have you on the line, you should know that we've been conducting further investigation into Corporal Saben's untimely death."

"Our comm officer has uncovered an encrypted message from the night of Ensign Nguyen's arrest. It originates in the MACO housing block on the Maelstrom and terminates at a disused communications relay in the Denobula Triaxa system." Malcolm activated the screen and began to scroll through Hoshi's findings leisurely, waiting for her to admit guilt or else shove her own foot in her mouth.

There was little doubt, he was sure, at least in her mind, that they knew. After decades of hiding behind protocol and orders and well-timed executions, she had been found out, and though most of her plot remained in question, these two pieces of information were sufficient to send the entire house of cards tumbling down.

"Curious," she noted, her voice a half octave higher that before. "If you choose to pursue this investigation, our military and intelligence service are at your disposal."

The insinuation there couldn't be missed. Julia held out her hand, made a fist, and twisted it on an axis, indicating that now was the time to go in for the kill.

"As a matter of fact, we'll be departing for an offensive attack on Gamma Hydra next week." Malcolm paused, giving her a lifeline. It wasn't enough to get her off the hook, but it was enough to ensure that she wasn't relieved of duty in disgrace.

Vesena nodded towards an unseen acolyte, who hurried away. Now armored by renewed resolve, she leaned forward until her face was incredibly close to the screen, then delivered her verdict.

"The Infantry offensive fleet can be there in nine days."

"I'm not sure that will be fast enough."

"Seven. I understand that this battle is seen as a last-ditch attempt to prevent a Romulan invasion of the Beta Quadrant."

That was the prevailing sentiment. If they couldn't persuade them to act on benevolence, the concept of saving their own asses might be their best bet.

Bribery and extortion also worked wonders, apparently.

"Are we to take this as your intention to expand your membership in the Coalition of Planets?" Alira asked smoothly, deftly, her smile unmoving.

For several seconds, the crackle of static across subspace was near deafening. It was as if his heart stopped and his breathing ceased, akin to the moment before crashing over the peak of a rollercoaster, but more profound, as though they were posed over the edge of eternity. Her fingertips ceased to drum on the tabletop, and she tilted her head inquisitively, daring her to say no.

"There will have to be an emergency vote of the Supreme Council. Rest assured you will have my endorsement."

As well as that of Alira's brother, a high-powered councilman of an influential district. Before anyone could prompt her, Hoshi pulled her PADD from her pocket and began to maneuver through several subdirectories, navigating them to exactly where they needed to be.

"Good," Alira all but cooed, ever so sweetly. "Prime Minister Samuels will be in touch."

"Starfleet Intelligence will initiate the extradition process of the defector." Malcolm's voice warped around the last word, spitting it out as one would a particularly virulent curse. He reached for the console at the center of the table, his hands hovering over the keys. "A pleasure as always, Supreme Commander."

The connection now severed, it was as if the spell had been broken. Alira pitched forward and buried her head in her hands, exhaling raggedly. In an instant, Hoshi was right there, wrapping her in a tight hug and whispering words of comfort and reassurance into her ear.

He made out her words as he drew nearer: "It's going to take a while for us to reach him. Maybe you should…"

"Is the transport close?" Alira's voice was so deep and shaky he scarcely recognized it. When she finally glanced back at them, he could see devastation in her face, realization, and overwhelming relief.

"They're going to be here within the hour," Julia said, casting a wayward glance towards the mess of shuttlepods and interceptors outside their window.

She nodded curtly and rose to her feet, accepting Hoshi's proffered PADD and passing it directly into Malcolm's hands. Quick as a flash, his free hand ghosted over her wrist, offering a nonverbal placeholder for all the things he couldn't say in public. She lingered for a second, then disengaged, and was halfway to the door before she could say anything.

"Handle it," she whispered, and then was gone.

---

No less than half an hour later, Trip stood outside the shuttlebay as the room decompressed, his mind a storm of confliction.

Alira had insisted on dragging her former betrothed from the brig herself, accompanied by two stony-faced MACOs. Malcolm had come along with him, and though the turbolift ride down had been tense, nothing could have possibly compared to the look in Nieron's eyes when his fate became evident.

He didn't wait until they were out of earshot. Hearing the thrusters of the pod disengage below them, he twisted around in his restraints and said something in Denobulan, his tone fraught and mournful.

"What did you do?"

She replied instantly, digging her nails into the blood-stained sleeve of his uniform. "Don't worry. It will just be a dishonorable discharge, and then…"

"That only happened to Saben because she wanted him to be here. Vesena's going to kill me. You know that."

Those two names cut through the confusion, and Trip found himself looking anywhere else but the scene unfolding before him, determined not to eavesdrop.

She wanted to tell him she was sorry, there was nothing else to do, that he deserved it, that he should have thought about this before abandoning her all those years ago, but suddenly found no room left in her spirit for malice or evil designs. Just like any meditation session with the doctor, her thoughts became an even tide, a placid ocean, and she allowed herself to surrender to it.

"Are you scared?" Nieron hesitated, agonizing over that, before nodding curtly. "I can't tell you that you don't have reason to be."

"Then what can you tell me?"

"Live through it and don't look back. Like I did." There were footsteps thundering up the stairs now, and he was visibly terrified. At the last possible second, he leaned towards her, and Malcolm reacted instantly, moving to throw him against the wall.

She placated him with a wave of her hand, meeting his gaze head on. He hesitated, clearly mulling his words, until they came out in one sprawling, emotional heap.

"On my life, Alira, I'll never love anyone as much as I loved you."

It was perfectly antithetical to what he'd said early in a fit of anger, but against her better judgment, she believed him, and momentarily allowed herself to get swept away in the rivers of her memory, the good times, the bad times, the all-consuming devotion and the tragedy that had been the first love of her life.

The doors slid open, emitting three well-armed agents of Starfleet Intelligence, and he withered as Malcolm conversed with them in hushed tones. While she was sure everyone was distracted, she snaked a hand around the back of his neck and pulled him forward until their foreheads were touching, relishing in that last bit of contact before the final aspect of her past went up in a towering, blazing inferno.

"I pray that's not true," she whispered back, and then fell silent. It was too much, and not enough.

In the end, it was all she had time to say.

The second he was gone, whisked away to parts unknown and his almost certain demise, they watched as the reality of the situation came crashing down upon her. She took one step back, then another, covering her mouth with her hand.

"Sirs," Alira said softly, already partly down the hall. "If you'll excuse me."

Trip elbowed his partner in crime hard in the ribs, and he instantly skittered after her, casting a grateful look over his shoulder and leaving him in the corridor where he stood, unsure of where to go and what to think and what to say.

In the end, all roads lead back to Enterprise's wardroom, where he found Hoshi tidying up. She scarcely looked up as he entered, though she appeared perfectly nonplussed by what had just happened, as though conning military leaders was common practice around here.

Wait...was it?

"Any luck reaching Mareth?"

His question shook her out of her reticence, and a small smile returned to her lips. Carefully, he wrapped her in his arms, resting his chin atop her head and tracing careful circles onto her back with his fingertips. Hoshi sighed contentedly and settled into him, all the tension flowing out of her body in an instant. "All the comm frequencies leading into the Supreme Council chambers seem to be tied up."

"I wonder why that is." He trailed off, frowning at no one in particular. She must have picked up on it, because she leaned back to hold him at arm's length, studying his expression curiously.

Asking what was wrong was a bygone conclusion.

"It's been almost twenty years for her," she reminded him, because he didn't know, couldn't know, just how she'd been working through that particular trauma for months, how she'd confided in them her entire backstory as she and Julia lay in bed with her the night Saben died. "In her mind, he was basically already dead."

"I just don't understand how she could cast him out that easily." They both knew that whatever was waiting for him back on Denobula couldn't be good.

She was right there once again, wrapping both arms around his waist and knitting her fingers together at the small of his back. Standing on her toes, she raised herself up until they were nearly eye to eye.

"You know, some people aren't meant to be with you forever, even if they mean a lot to you."

"Alira sent him to his death."

"And he had literal decades to make things right. Don't tell me he was confined by duty or whatever they had over his head. That's never stopped her from doing anything." She paused, then laughed ruefully. "Listen to me. Maybe I'm just desensitized. I've been kidnapped, tortured, drugged, shot and left for dead. This isn't even my own quantum reality. Your Hoshi is probably with the Prophets of Bajor now."

"You're my Hoshi."

"Trip…"

"And I love every version of you." He reached up to cup the side of her face, tracing the curve of her brow. "Even if all this does scare the living hell out of me."

From somewhere out in the hallway, there was a flurry of footsteps, and she reached over his shoulder to seal the hatch before returning her attention to him. "Join the club. I think this throws a lot of things in question."

"You think?"

"Really. Malcolm and Alira were going to go to the Commodore today and ask to be assigned to the same ship." From the absolutely dumbfounded look on his face, she could tell he hadn't known. "Think about it. If he dies, T'Pol will be next in line to command the fleet. Malcolm will become Captain, and…"

"I'm losing my tactical officer either way, aren't I?" He deliberately skirted over the crux of the issue - the fact that the death of the face of the United Earth forces, his mentor, one of his closest friends, was sure to tear them all apart.

"Nguyen will be next in line," she mused. "He should catch up with us on the next ECS convoy. That is, if you can stand the idea of someone who was almost convicted of orchestrating a massive data breach having the nuclear launch codes."

To be quite honest, in terms of the questionable state of his moral compass, he would fit in just as well with the rest of them. He hoped that much was obvious.

"In better news, we've got a letter from Natalie." Hoshi tilted her head back towards the table towards the stack of PADDs she'd brought over from the Maelstrom, and in spite of himself, he smiled.

On top of everything else, he was immensely grateful that the two most special women in his life got along. He'd dated the former (he could almost hear Jon's voice - the Natalie from Pensacola?) for several years leading up to Enterprise's commissioning, and were it not for the ridiculous strain long distance put on their relationship, they might have still been together. Although he was no longer in love with her, she did occupy a special place in his heart, so much so that in the middle of their directionless six months of leave after Terra Prime, he'd gone to see her in Florida to try and forget.

To his immense surprise, she'd found time to have a baby, and he'd whiled away the days with them, sightseeing and walking about town and building castles in the sand, monuments to impermanence. Leaving her had felt like a tremendous loss, but ultimately, it had brought him to reevaluate his friendship with Hoshi and take a long overdue step in the right direction.

Later on, during leave right before the commissioning of the Maelstrom, Hoshi had surprised him by showing up on the porch of the family home on Christmas Eve. Breathless and overjoyed, he had introduced them, and they'd hit it off right away.

That night, Natalie had beat him to the punch, telling Hoshi he was in love with her. It had taken him almost six months after that to finally own up to that, and he was immensely glad she seemed to know him better than he did himself, even after all these years.

"How is she?" Then, more urgently: "How's Katie?"

Soon after their last visit home, he'd been officially named as her godfather. Seeing as Natalie was an only child and her parents were growing older and living on Jupiter Station to lend their efforts to the warp eight project, he had been the next best choice. Trip tried his best to keep in contact with her, arranging for birthday gifts, sending her pictures of pretty stars and nebulas, and calling them at least once a month. Like his little sister Lizzie had been, she was bright and talkative, with a tangled mop of blonde hair and a radiant smile.

"She's loving preschool. You'll never guess what she wants for Christmas."

"I bet I won't."

"A tribble. Apparently, she saw it in one of the picture books about alien cultures you sent over."

"That's a tall order. She's going to have to give me a couple of weeks." They were difficult to acquire, illegal on most worlds, not to mention the fact that they bred prodigiously. "Think we can find one that's spayed or neutered?"

"I'll see what we can do," she said with a laugh. "I won't lie to you, I skimmed the letter. Natalie's already teaching her how to ride a tricycle. Trip, she's adorable."

The slight pout there was unmistakable, and though he was still waiting for the right time to pop the question, she found that he just had to know.

"Do you ever see yourself having a child, darlin'?"

"What, with you?" Her rebuttal was so rapid-fire and incredulous and quintessentially Hoshi that he couldn't help but smile.

"Well, I was thinking we could find you a good match, the uglier the better. Maybe a friendly neighborhood Nausicaan, or a Xindi Reptilian…"

"Stop," she squealed, slapping his shoulder. "You're impossible."

"But I'm yours." He pulled her close once again, holding her tightly against his chest. "No matter what happens."

---

Lieutenant Kov lingered around the doors of sickbay for far too long while working up his nerve.

Everyone had told him not to engage with her at such a delicate time. Captain T'Pol was a notorious private woman with a close circle of friends, but he liked to think he was one of them. Before Kuvak and T'Pau rose to power, they'd both been outcasts - she a known sufferer of Pa'nar Syndrome, he a member of the V'tosh Ka'tur - so they had bonded over that in the beginning. Back on Betazed, when he'd suffered a near fatal head injury, he'd confided in her exactly why he'd left the Vahklas, how he'd discovered that Tolaris had assaulted her and grown disillusioned when their leader wouldn't punish him for his crimes.

The High Command never felt like home for him. Everyone was too dour, too serious, and no matter how hard he strived to prove himself, his past followed him wherever he went. There's the Minister's son who brought shame to generations of his family, it was whispered, and it didn't matter that his father had forgiven him. In the eyes of his crewmates, that was all he could ever be.

But the humans had been different. They were boisterous, fun loving, and actually seemed to have a sense of humor. Their cultural and social practices entertained him to no end, and they never made any pretense of judging him or putting him down. Everyone was just as complicated as he, with a list of baggage a kilometer long. For once in his life, he felt like he was doing something important, and he would be horribly wrong not to check in on the woman who made it all possible.

Anna offered up her stash of Saurian brandy, but he politely declined. Instead, he brought her a steaming mug of chamomile tea, and announced his presence outside the curtain by clearing his throat.

A second later, the quiet reply: "Come in."

His breath caught to see the Commodore in such a state - his entire torso seemed to be held together by bandages and sterile dressings, indicative of a disruptor wound that was eating him from the inside out. There were whisperings of horrific internal bleeding, that he'd coded multiple times before Phlox managed to stabilize him, that he'd had to reconstruct several organs with the auto-suture while assessing the damage. Even now, his heart rate and blood pressure remained suspiciously low, and he was a shell of the strong, confident man they so often saw running the show from the bridge. Captain T'Pol sat vigil to one side, gently stroking his palm with her thumb. Her uniform was dust covered and stained with his blood, seeming to indicate that she hadn't moved from that spot for the entire day and then some.

The sorrowful look in her eyes wasn't something he would soon forget.

"I brought you tea, ma'am," he said without preamble, taking a step closer and holding it out to her.

She took it, and then immediately set it on the countertop by the Commodore's head. "Thank you."

Kov was sure she'd already received a lecture about eating something and getting some rest from the doctor, so he didn't bother with that. Ever so slowly, he pulled out a stool from the wall and sat a respectful distance from her, silently encouraging her to say something if she objected to his company.

Tellingly, she said nothing.

"I'm sorry for your loss," he said after a long period of silence, then frowned inwardly, knowing that wasn't anywhere near the right thing to say.

"He's not dead yet," T'Pol corrected him, caressing his arm up to the elbow with a featherlight touch. "There is no cause for concern. If he does not make it, we will carry on the best we can."

"Will you?"

She startled, and for a split second, Kov thought he might find the occasion to toss him out the airlock. Her expression softened, and she nodded, before settling back into her ministrations.

The nature of their relationship wasn't exactly a secret. It was known that they spent nearly every waking moment together, and had even combined their quarters a few months back. He knew all too well how painful it was to see a loved one wither away into nothing, so he went for a light-hearted approach: "How long have you been bonded?"

"Officially since Tellar Prime," she replied almost immediately, though it was clearly an uncomfortable question for her. Kov wondered just how unofficially far back their affinity for one another went - was it the Expanse? The commissioning of the Enterprise?

"I know he thinks very highly of you," he said, as though that weren't very abundantly obvious. At her slightly incredulous look, he pressed on: "The other day, he was telling Anna how much he admired your work, how he'd never met a finer science officer."

He could tell a day without meditation was taking its toll on her - one eyebrow quirked upward, in the way that most Vulcans did when restraining a smile. "And he is the best commanding officer I've ever had. I trust his judgment in all things."

Of that he was skeptical. "All?"

"Most," she acquiesced. "During the first few years, we had our fair share of…"

At that moment, she startled, and all but rocketed out of her chair, searching the Commodore's face for a reaction. As far as he knew, he hadn't moved, hadn't shifted in bed, but the Captain still reached up to rub at her temples, attempting to coax something forward that lay just below the surface.

Kov didn't hesitate. He called out for the doctor, and then when he didn't appear immediately, charged out in search of him. Meanwhile, T'Pol continued to reach out to him through their bond, chasing the essence of him she'd sensed through the darkness, like a distant echo across a chasm a hundred light years across.

Jonathan was in pain - that much was evident. He began to stir, and then tremble, exhaling through clenched teeth. It took everything within her not to climb on top of the biobed and envelop him in her arms, but she resisted, taking both hands and squeezing them, giving him something to hold onto in an sea of agony.

When the floodgates finally opened, the presence of him was a tremendous relief, and were it not for her defenses still perilously hanging on by a thread, she would have wept for joy. Jonathan's eyes fluttered open, and he recognized her instantly, his lips curling over several aborted attempts of her name.

Breathe, she encouraged him silently. You've been injured. You must breathe.

He obeyed, slashing through the fluid that had accumulated in his lungs, before turning his head to one side and descending into a coughing fit. T'Pol cradled his cheek protectively, feeling his pulse through the skin, reminding herself that this was real, this was alive, and they might still have a future together.

How long?

Less than a day. Much has changed since the battle. We must divert course immediately and head towards…

Gamma Hydra, he interrupted, then tremulously raised his arm, which was a feat unto itself in his weakened state. His fingers curled around her hand, and then he kissed her palm with the utmost tenderness, with such love and affection that her breath was once again stolen away. I know.

She nodded, hearing a rush of conversation from behind them. Knowing their reunion was about to be cut short, she asked: Where did you go?

It's more of a question of when, he admitted, knowing full well her distaste for all means of temporal nonsense. Were it not for their present situation, the consternation flowing through their bond would have been comical. Bran was there. He let me look at my life through heaven's eyes, like an innocent bystander, like…

And what did you discover?

At that moment, the doctor broke through the curtain with a flurry of field medics, and T'Pol was unceremoniously shuffled to one side. Through the haze of people and instruments and hyposprays, they locked eyes, and he confessed his truth to the depths of his soul.

That I can't live without you, T'Pol, he admitted, already feeling consciousness slip away from him again. And that we have one more mission to complete.

End of Episode Thirteen

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Next time on Enterprise…

Episode Fourteen: The Naked Truth

Following a disastrous joint mission with the Kriosian Sovereign Guard, Enterprise's lower decks contingent is tasked with forming a timeline of events.