Disclaimer: Refer to Chapter 1.
A/N: Thanks to everyone who has reviewed, and to Sailor Coruscant and G. Eliot, my betas. &break& indicates change of perspective, but not time.
Chapter 7After directing Mr Tucker to Engineering, Jon had returned to the Mess Hall. Admiral Forrest suggested that there was no point in trying to continue the meal and the participants left the room with some relief. As Jon and Mike walked back to Jon's quarters, Mike started quietly chortling, though he tried to restrain himself until they were well inside where he laughed loudly. Jon looked at him with bemusement, seeing the humour in the previous situation.
Still chuckling, Mike managed to speak. "Your Head of Security got mugged while trying to pick up women?"
"Malcolm's normally very conscientious. But put him in a situation where Trip has a chance to lead him astray..." Porthos was jumping up and barking, trying to get Jon's attention. After a moment, Jon gave in, kneeling to rub the beagle around the ears.
"He seemed very uptight until that little display at lunch."
"He's from a Navy background."
"Ahh, that explains it. You know, sometimes I think Aldous Huxley had the right idea."
The conversational left turn threw Jon. While still playing with the beagle, he looked up at Mike quizzically.
"Brave New World. Test tube babies with no parents to screw them up. Because they all do." Mike smiled wryly. "Hey, I screwed my kids up, it looks like Trip's parents screwed him up and Malcolm's too. Your father screwed you up." Mike looked him square in the face. Jon felt his stomach drop, and all humour sublimated from his body. He stood up, and Porthos whined.
"My father did not screw me up, Mike." Jon spoke in quiet fury.
"Face reality, Jon. Your father was barely there for you, and when he was there, he wasn't really. You hero-worshipped him; he wasn't your father, he was your idol. You did everything you could to get his approval; you're living his dream, not yours, you never found out what yours was.
"Well he's dead, Jon, and you will never get his approval. You fought so hard for his engine but he wouldn't have cared. I knew him before you were born, he worked on problems no one had solved and once he was done with them he'd move on. He didn't care about the application.
"I'd like to think he'd be proud of your efforts if he was here, but I doubt he would be as he'd be too engrossed in trying to hit warp 7. He was obsessed, Jon, and it worries me that sometimes I see his obsession in you. You've got to figure out that Jonathon Archer is more than just Henry Archer's son and find yourself."
Jon tried to contain the warp core that was threatening to explode inside him. He forced himself to listen to the sentiment behind the words: worry and concern. He waited several minutes until he was calm enough to speak with a level voice. "You saw my father that way, and maybe he was obsessed, but I saw another side of him. My father was proud of me; he loved me. Yes, I worshipped him, I suppose I still do, but that's because he was more than just my father."
Mike spoke quietly. "I never meant to imply that he didn't love you. I just don't want you to become like him: obsessed to the exclusion of everything else. You've always acted as if you had something to prove to the world, to your father, to yourself. What do you have to prove now?"
Charles Tucker the Second stood looking out the view port at the stars. He felt like he was standing among them, walking among the stars. The lights were steady, not twinkling; so different to the Earthbound view. Everything looked different; the familiar patterns were harder to find. Rather than being the soft blanket that had shrouded most of his existence, it seemed like the view from here went on forever.
There were so many bright lights, some of them long extinguished, others creeping up on a spectacular end to life: that would spark the light anew; that created the very elements that formed his body. Some were just starting out in life and would burn themselves out in a whirlwind of energy before they had a chance to live.
"You don't have to leave," he said, still facing the stars.
"I'm sorry, Sir. I didn't mean to disturb you." Charles turned and found that he had been right to assume that the voice belonged to Ensign Mayweather.
"You're not." He turned back, trying to spot the pattern of Orion the Hunter, one of the easiest constellations to find when one was Earthbound. His efforts were thwarted again; the sheer number of stars confused his senses. "I was just admiring the view while my son finishes some repairs. Your parents aren't here?" He thought he might have spotted Betelgeuse, but the other stars around it weren't right.
"My father died a bit over a year ago and my mother is the Chief Engineer and Chief Medic on the Horizon, a cargo ship."
Charles gave up on Orion and faced the Ensign again with new interest. "You're a boomer aren't you?" He nodded. "What was it like growing up on a ship?"
&Break&
The excitement and interest on the father's face was so much like the son's. As Travis told Charles about his life, he couldn't help but feel like he was talking to the Trip he had first gotten to know, before a year ago. He realised how much he missed the old Trip; in some ways he'd even started to forget what his friend had been like before the Xindi attack.
"What do you think of my son?" Mr. Tucker suddenly asked.
Travis tried to the hide the surprise he felt at the question while considering how to answer. "Trip's a very good engineer and senior officer. He's likeable, always trying to take an interest in the people around him, to make friends. He seems adept at spotting those who don't have anybody else to be close to."
"Lieutenant Reed being one of them?"
Travis was surprised at how easily Mr. Tucker had picked that up. Lieutenant Reed had changed a lot over the time that Travis had known him, becoming significantly less reserved and formal. Well, less reserved and formal for Lieutenant Reed anyway. "Yes, they're good friends now."
"And Sub-Commander T'Pol?" Mr. Tucker said the words casually, yet Travis couldn't help but feel that the question was anything but casual. He thought about the other Enterprise and Lorien, and about how a father might feel about a son's 'friendship' with a Vulcan.
"They've become good friends over the last year. I think she was helping him to sleep." Travis had watched the slow darkening of Mr. Tucker's features and amended his words from what he originally was going to say. There was a silence; Mr Tucker stood looking out at the stars, seeming to have forgotten Travis' presence. Travis waited a couple of minutes, before leaving as quietly as he'd entered.
"Getting mugged while trying to pick up women, leading a mutiny, getting into a fight, threatening to shoot a senior officer..."
Malcolm stood at attention behind his father, trying not to be intimidated by the fact that his father had his back to him, trying to remember that he was not ten years old. "You forgot trying to blow up your bug collection," he added dryly.
There was a loaded silence before his father's shoulders started shaking. 'Wonderful,' Malcolm thought, 'he's so furious he's shaking.' Malcolm heard a snort, before full-blown laughter erupted from his father. 'Wonderful, I've driven my father completely and utterly barmy.' The laughter showed no sign of abating; his mother was sitting off to the side, smiling. "Is now a good time to mention that it was me, and not the cat, who broke your model of the Yorktown?"
The laughter abruptly stopped, but his mother's smirk widened.
'And all is right in the universe again.'
Trip mulled over the conversation with his father while he finished repairing the junction. He put a microcaliper down and picked up a hyperspanner.
Two civilised conversations in one day – it had to be a new record for them. But his father's comments about his friendship with Jonathon Archer bothered him.
Was dependence all it was?
Captain Archer had saved Trip's life at least twice. But had he been there when Trip emotionally needed him? It seemed that in the past three years either Malcolm or T'Pol had been there to fulfil that role.
But things had to be different now anyway, he was the Captain. He didn't need to deal with all Trip's problems.
Had he tried to be there for Trip when Lizzie died? Trip couldn't remember, everything from that period was jumbled, but he remembered Malcolm was the one who made sure he went to see where Lizzie died, who came along so that Trip wouldn't be alone.
Even when Trip didn't want to let anyone in, Malcolm had tried. The Captain hadn't. He'd distantly asked after Trip, questioning whether he was all right, but Trip had been able to tell that the only answer the Captain wanted to hear was "yes".
It wasn't just the events of the previous year; their friendship had been gradually falling apart since they came onboard Enterprise.
Now Trip had to decide just what to do about it. Did he want to let this friendship fall by the way, or did he want to fight for it?
A small ball thumped against the wall, high above Porthos' head. He sat, tail wagging occasionally against the floor, watching the ball as it hit the wall and bounced back towards his Master.
&Break&
Bang.
He hit Mike in the head with the ball.
Bang.
He hit him in the stomach.
Bang.
He hit Admiral Forrest for bringing Mike with him.
Bang.
He hit Porthos in the head.
"Porthos!"
Jon rushed over to the beagle who was looking at him reproachfully. He rubbed Porthos around the neck.
"I'm sorry, boy. I'm just...I don't know." He sat down on the floor, pulling Porthos on to his lap.
"I know that some of what Mike said is true, but how much? I know I was obsessed over the last year but that was the only way I could cope. Before that, I had to make this mission work, proving the Vulcans wrong. Making my father's dream come true, if it actually was his dream. What is there now?"
Jon sighed and addressed the beagle. "And I haven't been a very good cabin mate to you, have I?" Porthos licked his hand, and Jon smiled. "You're still not getting any cheese."
