Title: Reunification
Author: M.
Rating: R-ish? Vulcan sex isn't exactly physical. :-p
Keywords: AU, T/T'P, C-mas gift, Twilight Verse, Vulcan, Romulus
Spoilers: Twilight Verse. Semi-inspired by Season 4 events.
Disclaimers: Don't own 'em.
Summary: It's beyond comprehension...to lose one home and then the other.
Author's Note: this is, admittedly late, a Christmas gift for anr. I can honestly say Trip/T'Pol was the dead last pairing I ever expected to write for a plethora of reasons but yet...I looked at her wishlist and tried Sheppard/Weir and while I do have an idea that I do intend to finish, they've declared me evil and mean and I think John's hiding Elizabeth from me. So when Trip got chatty I about fell over in shock with what he was saying. And yet.

As for the title. evil grin Merci to angelsgracie for looking it over for me. I didn't get a T'P/T fan to look it over but...well, I'm hoping you guys will go easy on me anyway. :-p There are elements of the story inspired by the novel "Spock's World" namely the backstory T'Pol shares. The, er, sexual content? If you wanna see what it looks like at least the first part, the foreplay for lack of a better term grin, watch Spock & The Romulan Commander in "The Enterprise Incident". An episode that proved Vulcans can be intimate for pleasure but, gives me the impression they don't always go physical for that part.

And now I'm going to go hide somewhere.

"Reunification"
by M.
-
If the destruction of Earth was an impossible concept, something his mind could never really wrap itself around, then the desolation of Vulcan...that was beyond comprehensible. Yet the former had happened before his eyes, and the latter was happening around him and Trip Tucker was absolutely convinced he was losing his mind. None of this was real. None of this could be real. There couldn't be a fleet of Romulan warships overhead and they couldn't be firing on the planet.

Vulcan couldn't be falling to a sibling race they hadn't even known they'd had.

The sound of an explosion overhead provided a sharp and compelling argument to the contrary. Vulcan had already lost the fight. They'd lost it before ever really beginning it and there was something extraordinarily enraging about that. Trip wasn't sure when he'd come to think of the planet as a second home but he had. It was his home too, the one largely untouched by what had happened to the world of his birth but...he was going to lose it too. The Vulcan that would emerge from the battle now raging would not be the Vulcan he'd grown up suspicious of or the Vulcan that he'd come to love. It would be unrecognizable to him. Something more resembling the Vulcan of old, prior to the time of Awakening and the Reformation, and that - he thought - would be a Vulcan that would finally be alien.

It wouldn't be the home of the woman at his side anymore and Trip suspected the colony would be receiving Vulcan refugees before long. He sighed and made a mental note to call ahead, get some land cleared. Might as well be ready.

Sitting against the hard rock of the cave wall, he turned his head to look at the woman sitting beside him. T'Pol looked as severe and as composed as ever but he could see a tightness about her jawline, her eyes, she was as terrified as he was. Maybe more. She was thinking the same things he was. And that, Trip knew, was weighing heavy.

"Why?" He asked, breaking the heavy silence that hung in the cave. "Why are they doing this?"

"They have come home." T'Pol said quietly. "This is the end of it all. The final chapter in S'task's legacy is being written." She offered a wry twist of her lips. "It would appear the stories of my childhood are not as fictional as I would have believed them to be."

He turned, looking into her eyes, the question of it all in his own.

"S'task was a student of Surak." She clarified quietly. "A...disciple. The only one Surak ever allowed close to him." Warming to the subject, she straightened. "My mother told me the story when I was a child. I was never entirely sure of it's veracity and neither was she. The story has been passed down through the generations verbally. It has been since recorded, however, again, no one was entirely sure of how true it was." She paused, gathering her thoughts and memories than began to speak, telling of how S'task had convinced Surak to allow him past the tight walls of his privacy. Surak, like the Vulcans Trip now knew, prized his privacy above all. It was from him the Rule of Silences had first come, T'Pol confided, like so many other things that were now commonplace in the Vulcan culture. Or, more accurately, had been commonplace in the Vulcan culture.

Trip imagined that wouldn't last long.

"There was a failed negotiation." T'Pol said abruptly. "An alien race. Pirates...S'task was among those taken hostage. After a time, he led a revolt. Killing his captors. The resulting carnage was...especially brutal." She hesitated, picking her words carefully. "After helping the other hostages escape, S'task returned to the vessel and destroyed it. When he was recovered, near death, in a lifepod, Surak sat by his bedside until he awoke." She looked up at him and there was restrained sadness in her eyes. "He was gratified to know his student was alive...though by his choices, he had lost S'task to his choices. They were enemies until Surak's death and beyond that, S'task fought his teachings until he and those who followed him were cast out from Vulcan." She looked up at the rocky ceiling overhead as another explosion rocked the cave. "When we first encountered the Romulans, we had our suspicions but they were only that. Our cousins knew quite well where their homeworld was and who they had been. They had the benefit of knowledge...if we had known who they were..."

"This might not be happening." Trip volunteered sadly.

"This would not be happening." She corrected, matter of fact. "Though reunification at present time would be highly unlikely, we would have been able to prepare. To defend ourselves accordingly. We would have been prepared." She looked away, battling to regain control of the emotions which had caused her voice to crack ever so slightly on the last word. "We would have been." She repeated, calmer. Her gaze lowered but Trip still caught the faintest hint of tears. Her world as she'd known it was dying and T'Pol knew, and understood, that fact far better than he ever would.

Trip tried to imagine which would be worse. To live as he did, with the remnants of humanity scattered among a handful of ships and one tiny colony or to live as she would. Cut off from a world become but a ghost of its former glory. A living death of sorts.

In the end, he couldn't decide which was worst and put the thought out of his mind. "There might be something we can do." He offered lamely, knowing even as he said it that there was nothing. The human race could barely help itself much less help the Vulcans save their world. "We might be able to..."

"There is nothing that can be done. Not now." T'Pol pressed her lips together for a moment, considering a thousand and one potential solutions that Trip doubted he'd've ever dreamt of. She finally shook her head. "No, there is nothing that can be done. In the future, there may be hope but at present time, I can think of no way to stop the assault. The Romulans have surprise, preparation and sheer force on their side. Until we can even the odds, as you would say, there is nothing which can be done to change the outcome. The outcome was decided far before they ever lowered their cloak."

She reached out, warm, dry fingers brushing over the back of his hand. The touch was comforting to them both but it was more than that. T'Pol's eyes seemed almost contemplative, relaxed, her touch grew lazy and leisurely and Trip felt the hair on the back of his neck rise. He had the distinct sense something was happening but he'd yet to understand what.

"T'Pol what..."

She lifted her gaze to his and silenced him with a look. The look seemed to communicate her wish of his trust and he gave it. Sitting back, he let her continue on. He didn't fight her when she suddenly lifted his hand, positioning his fingers into something which resembled the salute he'd seen Vulcans greet each other with but...not. His inability to accurately describe it frustrated him but he suspected that there were no words for this.

Not in English at least.

T'Pol went to her knees before him and Trip watched her as she lifted a hand to match his. Their palms were a whisper's breath apart but instead of pushing their hands together, T'Pol turned hers and ghosted a touch along the back of his hand. Her skin barely skimmed his but the touch was electric. Something surged along his nerve endings and instantly brought his body to life in a way Trip had never felt before. They'd been lovers for some time but never had there been anything in the sexual encounters they'd shared which had been remotely like this and he began to wonder if...

"Yes." T'Pol murmured in a low voice which skimmed over him like a touch all it's own. "This is how it is...between us."

He knew the 'us' to which she referred had, until now, not been them. She repeated the touch and he moaned, fighting the urge to close his eyes against the intense pleasure.

Just the beginning...

It took his pleasure-fogged mind a minute to realize she had not spoken aloud. Her lips had not moved. But...

This is not a meld...

She answered the unspoken question and then seemed to melt closer, her palm pressing against his, their fingers winding together.

This is more...This is the Vulcan heart...this is the Vulcan soul...

Her gaze met his and for the first time he could remember, T'Pol looked well and truly alien.

This is me...

That was the last coherent thought he heard and then the pleasure overtook him again as T'Pol's mind brushed tentatively over his. She was afraid, he could feel beneath everything, of hurting him. Her Vulcan abilities against his woefully undeveloped human ones but Trip had no such fear. His hand gripped hers tightly as he mentally reached out, trying to echo what she was doing to him.

Ever a quick study, he copied what she'd done to him and fumbled forward into her mind, solidifying the link between them. The layers of T'Pol's mind fell open before him and he felt himself be drawn into the midst of her. There was no need for pretense here, no walls of discipline to keep things suppressed, there was only the truth of it and Trip was swept away. Everything was absolutely...

He moaned, or she did, or they both did...it didn't matter. Dimly, Trip was aware they were lying together now but it was as if in a different world. Nothing like the one he was in.

T'Pol...

I am here, beloved...

She would have never, would never, speak aloud in such a voice, using such words, to him. Even after this, he knew she would never speak to him like this. This was what lay at the core of her, this was T'Pol beneath the logic, beneath the discipline, beneath the control...this was everything she was and all she could never be. This was what could never be unleashed in the world.

This was the part of T'Pol only she could see. Until him. She took his breath away.

When the real world became relevant again, the explosions had long since ceased and there was silence. It was as still as death but Trip would never say so. The whatever it was that had exploded between himself and T'Pol had faded but it was not gone. Not entirely. He could feel it in the back of his mind, like an ember smoldering after a fire, ready to flare to life at a moment's notice. He couldn't say he didn't like it.

"I had not intended it to become what it was." T'Pol said quietly from beside him and he looked to find her watching him with cautious eyes. "I confess...I do not regret that it did."

"Me either.." It was on the tip of his tongue to call her darlin' but somehow, he just didn't think it would fit. "Couldn't regret a minute of that - or anything we get out of it - if I tried." He inhaled slowly and glanced up. "Bombing's stopped."

"They are in the capital." She explained. "The High Council and Surak's family have been arrested. In all likelihood, they will be executed." Rising, she held out a hand to help him. "That must not happen. Surak's family has much influence on Vulcan -- "

"And if we can get 'em offworld with us..."

"There will still be hope." T'Pol agreed. "It will not be easy..."

He smiled wryly. "It never is. We'll manage. We always do."

She turned to go but he caught her by the hand. "T'Pol.... if this doesn't..."

He felt the smile she would never show ripple through the connection between them.

I know.

She did. He did. And that was that.

Finis