This is a non-profit work of fan-fiction based upon the Star Trek: Enterprise television series created by Gene Roddenberry. Star Trek, and all related characters, places, and events, belongs to Paramount Pictures, and is used without permission. This story, along with any original characters, belongs to the author, © 2004.

Ceti Alpha V
By Orianna-2000

Inspired by the Enterprise episode "Twilight"

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Six thousand survivors.

So few, out of how many billions. Only six thousand men, women, and children survived the Xindi attack on Earth and made it to a remote planet of refuge. It was enough, of course, to begin again. The human race would start over, armed with little more than hope, and courage.

Jonathan Archer felt the agony of defeat when T'Pol told him of Earth's demise. He also saw how it pained her to tell him how few escaped. He wondered how many times she'd told him, and the thought renewed his belief that she was a good companion, loyal and caring. He wasn't sure why she'd stayed with him all these years, waking each morning with the knowledge she'd have to tell her former captain such painful news, again and again.

It was his fault, though he had no way of knowing. Early on, in the first few weeks after the accident, T'Pol had tried to thank Jonathan for saving her life, knowing she would have been the one with no new long term memories, if he hadn't insisted on staying behind to pull her free from the fallen support beam when the spacial anomaly swept through the ship. His reply stung her with its logic.

"There's no use thanking me," he said. "Since in a few hours I won't remember it."

Those words stayed with T'Pol; she knew Jonathan was correct. Simply thanking him verbally was not an adequate means of expressing her gratitude. Words were meaningless if he did not remember them. Thus she did the only reasonable thing she could and devoted her life to caring for him. Year after year, she stayed with him so that each morning when he woke with confusion, someone familiar would be nearby.

Years passed, and while T'Pol aged slowly, Jonathan aged much quicker. It pained her to see his hair turn gray, though she never showed it. Every few weeks she took it upon herself to cut his hair for him, not the regulation crew cut he wore on Enterprise; he had no need of such a strict fashion now. Rather she let it grow out, then styled it the way she knew best: the common style of a Vulcan male. It suited him better than it did most Vulcans who were so tradition bound they could not even choose a unique hairstyle. As for herself, T'Pol allowed her hair to grow long, and she styled it softly. It helped Jonathan to appreciate how much time had passed, lent credence to the story she told him each day.

T'Pol stayed because she felt she owed him. He saved her life, so she gave him part of hers. The balance seemed fair: she would outlive him by at least a century.

T'Pol also stayed because she felt guilty. As illogical as the feeling might be, it had merit. The Enterprise did not have adequate protection against the Delphic Expanse's anomalies because the only known protective substance was deadly to her species. On that fateful day, when an anomaly passed through the ship, the early shockwaves pinned her beneath a fallen bulkhead. Jonathan worked to pull her free instead of running as she'd told him to. He took the brunt of the impact, including infection by subspace memory blocking parasites, sparing her. When it became apparent that the captain could not function as needed with his new disability, she took command of the ship. But, with her Vulcan training and philosophy, she did not make the same decisions he would have. One such decision crippled Enterprise and gave the Xindi enough time to complete their super-weapon.

Thus, in a way, the destruction of humanity fell upon her shoulders. Nothing she could do would change that, so she made atonement the best way she knew how. By caring for the man who might have prevented the disaster in the first place, if it hadn't been for her.

Each morning Jonathan Archer woke up, confused. Each morning T'Pol was there to reassure him, to explain to him, to comfort him, to answer his questions. She would continue to do so until the day the human died. Then she would grieve, in her own way, for everything they both lost, for everything that might have been, for everything that should have been, but wasn't.

She would stay in the small house they shared for so long, even though his death would grant her freedom to leave the human colony. She could return, if she so chose, to the planet of her birth, the arid desert world teeming with life. But the presence of so many people on Vulcan would haunt her, as if to say, we are still here but where are they? So she would stay on Ceti Alpha V; she would plant vegetables in the small garden outside the house; she would kneel each morning at the smoothly made bed that was not hers and meditate on the events, both good and bad, which led to this fate.

And one hundred four years to the day after she'd brought Jonathan Archer to the last human settlement, T'Pol would see a blinding eruption in the sky as Ceti Alpha VI, their sister planet, exploded without warning. As a result the colony's orbit would shift drastically, and the growing population would all die within a few days, unable to survive in the hostile desert created by the disaster. T'Pol would outlive them all, enduring what the humans could not. She would not complain. In fact, she would appreciate the irony, for she had been one of the science team to select Ceti Alpha V as a suitable world for the last human survivors to migrate to. Just as she led the ship meant to save Earth.

Such an ultimate irony that the first Vulcan to grow to love humans would also be the one responsible for their extinction.

She would stay alone, in the harsh environment, until the cutting winds lay claim to her body. She would not seek forgiveness or solace. And when the desert finally took her, she would welcome the dark eternity of death.

(fin)