Disclaimer: Refer to Chapter 1.

A/N: Thanks to everyone who has reviewed, and to Sailor Coruscant and G. Eliot, my betas. Sorry this has taken so long to write, I didn't intend it to be this long when I started, and one of my beta's computer crashed after editing it, and she had to redo it. We're about three quarters through season 3 in Oz now, so I'm getting more of an idea of how the characters developed during the season. Hopefully the next update should come more quickly.

Chapter 8

T'Pol did not expect to see Commander Tucker's father standing alone in the corridor. She nodded in greeting as she passed him, assuming that the human would not want to talk to her.

"Sub-Commander."

Apparently her assumption was erroneous. She stopped and turned to him. "Yes, Mr. Tucker?"

Mr. Tucker paused and took a deep breath, not unlike how the Commander would before he said something that he thought would offend. After a few seconds he seemed sufficiently prepared to continue.

"I want you to stay away from my son." Mr. Tucker stopped again; T'Pol speculated that he thought that he had either said enough or was awaiting a reply from her. She assumed the latter and formulated a reply.

"The Commander and I are both senior officers on this ship, Mr. Tucker; at times we have to work in close proximity. It would be highly impractical for me to, as you say, 'stay away from Commander Tucker'. Such an act would reduce the efficiency of the ship."

The man's face was set in hard lines, reducing any resemblance he had to his son. "That is not what I meant, and you know it! I've seen the way he looks at you; I'm no fool: I know that expression. He thinks he's in love with you."

"My relationship with Commander Tucker is none of your concern."

He moved closer as if seeking to intimidate her. "The hell it's not! You stay away from him, or -"

"What the hell is going on?"


Trip had finished repairing the junction earlier than he had expected, giving him some time to eat alone before he met his father in the mess hall. Trip had resolved that he would eat as soon as the repairs were done.

As Trip rounded a corner he saw T'Pol and his father ahead. It was immediately apparent that they were having a heated conversation: Trip recognised the anger betrayed by his father's stance even as he noted the slight tension in T'Pol's.

"My relationship with Commander Tucker is none of your concern," T'Pol said in a calm voice.

He saw his father move forward threateningly before yelling, "The hell it's not! You stay away from him, or-"

"What the hell is going on?" Trip didn't even try to repress his anger as he approached the pair.

T'Pol shifted slightly, but did not speak.

His father broke the silence, punctuating his words with a fierce glare. "You don't want to get involved with her; what the hell can she offer you? She doesn't have emotions, she is cold and you will regret it for the rest of your life. You do not want to be trapped in a loveless marriage by a manipulative bitch, believe me!"

Trip felt his anger seething with each word, but the last sentence was like another slap to the face. He found himself laughing, a laugh that was more like a sob. "What like mother trapped you, falling pregnant with me? It would have been a step up for her, marrying you, after all her family had no money and yours had too much. If she was so cold and you were so miserable, how the hell did I end up with a brother and sister? Were you drunk? Was that the only way you could face her?" Trip laughed bitterly.

His father had gone pale. "Charles... I -"

"Don't," Trip cut him off. "I don't want to hear anything else that you have to say. You never wanted me, you've made that quite clear since I was a kid. What was today, a game for you? 'Let's all see exactly how gullible Trip is, how much of your affection he will fall for?' I will make it clear to you, Father, just how much I need you: I never want to see you or hear from you again."

Trip turned his back on his father's stunned face and nodded at T'Pol, striving without success to make his voice calm. "I apologise for my father's behaviour, T'Pol." He spun away from them and ran blindly down the corridor, giving way to tears at last.

His father's words echoed in Trip's mind. He hadn't said anything that Trip hadn't already suspected, but for him to actually say the words hurt more than Trip had ever thought it would. He'd tried for so much of his life to understand why his parents never wanted to have anything to do with him, to finally find out that neither of them actually wanted him was devastating. Even though he'd tried to stop caring about what they thought of him a long time ago.

Trip had palmed open the door and stepped inside before he realised that he was back at his quarters. The door closed behind him and in the quiet of his room he noticed how ragged his breathing was. His knees became weak, and he leant against the wall.

Now that he was alone, Trip didn't know which emotion to give into first: anger or hurt. He made his way into the bathroom to look at the haggard man in the mirror. His eyes were glittering with unshed tears and there was a large red mark on one cheek. Trip brought his hand up to his face, touching the spot; it was tender. The mark must have gradually darkened over the day as no one had commented on it, or else they had been too wrapped up in their own affairs to notice it.

He stood there, staring at himself for awhile, cataloguing the features of the man in front of him. It was his eyes, he decided. They looked so exhausted, so tired of fighting.

"Maybe it would have been better if they'd just let me die."

The words sounded flat to him, there was no echo, no ominous music accompanied the pronouncement. Simply words that died on their own.

Trip didn't feel better for saying them out loud; it wasn't the first time that he'd thought about it and he wasn't sure when he was referring to either. Possibly the first time he'd tried to kill himself, if the incident on Shuttlepod One could be classed as the second, or the anorexia, the several times that Archer had saved his life, or Sim.

Sometimes fighting could be too hard. But Trip had a tough personality that had pushed and prodded him through most things and when he felt that he couldn't do it anymore he had people who cared enough to do the pushing and prodding for him. He had beaten anorexia and the negative voice in his head and he wouldn't let anything else tear him down.

It all came back to his parents. Thinking about them brought back the memory of what his father had said and the rising anger. He looked at the man in the mirror and saw the image of an older man with grey in his hair and brown eyes. The man's face shattered in a web away from a singular point around Trip's fist; his own reflection was near impossible to see in the cracked glass. His fist was stinging, he automatically cradled it in his other hand. Tears had started trickling down his cheeks; Trip sank down to the hard deck and pulled his knees towards him as he leant against the wall, crying.


Charles felt dazed. Everything had happened so fast that he wondered that he did not have whiplash. Words that he'd never consciously formed before had poured out of him, betraying emotions that he'd never fully realised he felt.

It was over.

His son would never forgive him now, and Charles wasn't sure he could forgive himself. He'd lost two of his children without getting to know either.

Charles looked at the blank walls around him, devoid of decoration and warmth, anonymous in their monotony. The corridor snaked its way past him in both directions, nothing to distinguish either end. If he tried to go back or forward, things would be the same. But he couldn't stay where he was either.

Reaching a decision, he walked purposefully down the corridor, knowing that either direction would take him where he wanted to go: the only place where he might still make a difference.


After the confrontation with Mr Tucker and the Commander, T'Pol had retreated to the sanctity of her quarters. Their argument had unsettled her, and though she had tried to meditate for several minutes in an attempt to quieten the emotions roiling inside her, the emotions would not cooperate. Her concern for Commander Tucker overrode her efforts.

He had seemed very distressed, more so than she had ever seen him. Commander Tucker had come to her before when he was distressed, but the fact that she was involved in this incident may have made him wary of that.

T'Pol stood up in a fluid movement and moved towards the door. Her body had decided her destination before her mind had time to reach the same conclusion.


Doctor Phlox sighed quietly.

He was sitting in front of a computer terminal in sickbay studying Commander Tucker's medical record. The Commander's behaviour at lunch had tripped an alarm in the Doctor's head. He looked like he'd lost weight, had avoided eating and on closer inspection the Commander looked like he was going to keel over like a Lirellian Lemming.

The red patch on the Commander's cheek had also concerned Phlox. While only a slight discolouration then, Phlox felt sure that by evening it would be prominent. Exactly how Commander Tucker had been injured worried him.

Phlox resolved to talk to the human in the morning before things had a chance to become more serious. The Commander's anorexia had been under control for almost two decades, but it would not necessarily stay that way.

The door from the corridor slid open and Phlox looked up to see the older Mr Tucker walk through. Phlox pressed a button to blank the screen before standing up. He noticed that the human appeared agitated and upset: his face was flushed and his hands trembled.

"Mr Tucker, what can I do for you?" Phlox gestured him to a seat as he sat again in his own.

The human sat silently for a few seconds with his eyes closed. His breathing gradually slowed down to slightly above normal and he looked again at Phlox.

"I..." Mr Tucker cleared his throat. "I want you to look after my son, to make sure that he doesn't hurt himself in any way."

Phlox could understand Mr Tucker's concern for his son, but he was puzzled by Mr Tucker requesting his aid. "I am the crew's physician, Mr Tucker. It is part of my job to keep the crew, including your son, healthy."

"You haven't been doing a very good job then," Mr Tucker said bitterly. He shook his head. "I'm sorry, that was unfair of me. You're the only one here who knows about his problems; I need to know that someone is watching out for him."

Phlox finally understood. "Because you won't be able to anymore."

"I don't think he'll ever want to see me again after today." The sadness and self-anger in the man's voice touched a chord within the doctor. "And I don't blame him."

Mr Tucker shook his head once more. "I was so stupid! I couldn't fix my relationship with my son in a day but I tried anyway. He'd opened up to me, the first time he's ever really done that, and I ruined it." He paused, lost in thought. "I need to know that somebody's going to look after him, to make sure that he doesn't get sick again."

Hearing the human's words, Phlox was reminded of his own strained relationships with his two youngest sons. "As long as your son is under my medical care, Mr Tucker, I will do my best to look after him." Phlox looked down at the monitor that had shown him the Commander's medical record. "You have another son I believe, James isn't it?"

The man nodded.

"Have you gotten back in contact with him?"

"No, not yet. Charles...I failed Charles the most. When he was two, he went through this stage where he would scream and cry if he was left with anyone else other than me. It went on for months, and he wouldn't stop crying from when I left him, he'd cry and cry until he threw up. And then he'd continue crying." He cleared his throat. "By the time that period was over, I just wanted to get away, from both him and my wife. But I never really came back." He sighed.

"When he was fourteen, I returned from a business trip and I couldn't believe it: he was like a skeleton. He was hospitalised straight away but it didn't make much of a difference, and when they let him out he tried to kill himself. Is that in your records?" Mr Tucker said bitterly.

Phlox was surprised and alarmed by this statement. "No, it isn't."

Mr Tucker smiled sadly. "I guess that he thought that was the one thing that might keep him out of Starfleet. He went to a clinic for eating disorders for almost a year. I stayed at home until he got out of the clinic and then I left again. So you see, James and Lizzie at least had a father that they could know and remember, Charles never did."

Phlox had been thinking about Sim while the human was speaking. Sim had never shown the same psychological problems and had never spoken of such a relationship with his parents. The Doctor felt the pang of regret and sadness that thinking of Sim always brought. "Mr Tucker, I understand why you approached the Commander first, but I think that might have been a mistake."

The human glanced at Phlox, a flash of pain appearing in his eyes, before studying his hands.

"You are trying to prove to him that you care, that you are going to be a parent to him now. If you prove that with your other son and his family first, Commander Tucker might believe you."

Mr Tucker looked up and nodded. "You're probably right. I'm going to see James when I go home."


T'Pol stood outside Commander Tucker's quarters hesitantly. Logic dictated that he was in there, but she wasn't certain he would want to see her. Given how exhausted he had appeared Commander Tucker might have fallen asleep and she did not want to wake him if that was the case.

She made her decision and entered her override code. The door opened and T'Pol stepped quietly inside.

Commander Tucker was not in the sleeping area of the quarters. T'Pol moved towards the open bathroom door and noticed that the mirror was shattered, although there was no glass on the floor. T'Pol looked further into the room and spotted him sitting against the wall with his eyes closed.

The Commander's eyelids were slightly red and swollen and there were dried tear tracks down his cheeks. His breathing was quiet and even, reassuring her that he was sleeping. Commander Tucker appeared unharmed; the knuckles of his right hand were reddened as if from an impact but the skin was unbroken.

T'Pol realised that Commander Tucker would have sore muscles from sleeping in such an awkward position, however, she was loathe to wake him. She walked back to his bed, untucked the blanket and carried it back to the bathroom.

As T'Pol placed the blanket over the Commander he stirred slightly. She knelt beside him until he settled back into a deeper sleep, before quietly leaving his quarters.

TBC...