Thank You's: Lt. Black Fire, JacobedRose, JadziaKathryn (Yes, the Gruesome Twosome have been through some stuff, and are considerably more…I don't know, adult about life now than they were when I first introduced them in Jail Break. That, of course, is going to throw Trip for a loop as he spends more time with them. And as for a redeeming character, there are two: an admiral you'll be introduced to in this chapter and his niece.), KaliedescopeCat (Trip and Madeline are definitely my answers to Trip and T'Pol, and I really adore them too. And, yes, what happened to my favorite Armory Officers does sort of plan in later, but in a more psychological aspect than anything else.), Tata (You know, there is a very good chance that you'll come to hate me.), and Luna.
Note: For the past week or so, I have become increasingly influenced by James Merrill and several other poets (Auden, Berryman, Whitman, Ginsburg, et cetera); but Merrill especially. I think you'll find that while reading. Also, the place where Trip and the Reed eat is fictional, as I have never been to San Francisco.
In Which MS Does a Little Rant for the Good of the Order: Once upon a time, lyrics were before the beginnings of each chapter. supposedly frowns upon that, but I see people doing it still. So, I figured, I'll just put the lyrics in again. Because, hey—they make sense with the story and I'm not even going to begin to think that I even had a little hand in writing them and—Look!—I credit! And Stephen King does it in his novels, and if Stephen King can do it, so can I, dammit.
Let's Play a Game: And if you get why the title of this part is extremely hilarious to me, you a.) know me and my love of a certain television show (hint: that I do not write for) very well, b.) also love the aforementioned show, or c.) are a really lucky guesser. (Second hint: Think politics, second seasons, and Ukrainians. Vague, I know.)

Three: The Man Who Came To Dinner

Here, I said,
Don't even let this go.

—Tori Amos, "Graveyard"

The door opens and the door closes.

In between, I find myself entering into the room of Admirals, this den of lions. They are seven sages, wise, knowledgeable old men with graying beards and balding heads; and then there is Jon. He looks like a child among them: his hair isn't as gray as the others, nor his face as lined with age. But he seems, somehow, harder than the rest. Maybe it is the shape of his jaw or the downward curve of his mouth. Maybe it's in the slight slouch of his shoulders. Or, maybe, it is in his broken earth eyes.

So the door closes, and I am against it, watching, observing these eight men. I look them over; a few I know, like Jon and Admiral Black—who, by the way, seems to have aged rather gracefully, and so has that new pip of his. There are others—the other six—who must be new, replacements. I know Forrest died while we were on mission, and obviously more died or retired while I was in my exile.

The Admiral at the head of the long table is the oldest and his shoulder's are the most weighed down. His eyes are very cold and pale, and his face is lined, deeply. I dislike him immediately. The Admiral who retrieved me sits at his right, looking out and over the others with his back ramrod straight. That's an old military hand if I've ever seen one. The one to the cold Admiral's left has a frown smashed into his face, highlighting absolutely insane eyebrows. Jeez, man, I think, how 'bout yew trim those sukers? Another Admiral, sitting opposite from Black, is a mixture of the previous three, and looks rather like he's got a stick up his ass.

And, in especial contrast to the rest of the men, one Admiral, sitting at the end of the table across from Jon, is fairly young, but still seems old (his dark hair is graying at his temples and lines are predominate in his forehead). It's his eyes, I think—they are turned inward, thinking, reflecting. And, yet, they seem to stare out and catch all. He reminds me, vaguely, of Ethan, shuffling. His dark, gray-less mustache and the lines around his mouth—his laugh lines—too, give him difference: they are deeper than the others' mouths and no one else wears a mustache (all the rest have beards or no facial hair). I like him.

"Sit, Captain Tucker," says Admiral Cold.

I do as I'm told and sit down at the end of the table, near Jon and Admiral Mustache. I smile at Jon, and he smiles back. Both of our smiles, I know, are strained and stale. I turn back to Admiral Cold, who is glaring at me. Well, buddy, I don't like yew neither.

"I am Admiral Corner," he says, his voice as cold as his eyes. He gestures to Admiral Old Hand: "General Jacobs." Hmm, General, eh? Jacobs nods at me, and Corner points to his right, to Admiral Eyebrows: "Admiral St. Ives."

St. Ives just gives me this dignified look, and I almost burst out laughing. Hey, if a man with eyebrows like that gave yew a look as dignified as that, you'd laugh too, okay? Admiral Mustache, at this point, stares across the table at Jon. He twitches his lips, moving his 'stache, and Jon covers his smile with his hand, pretending to cough. Black, next to Mustache, frowns at him but Mustache stares right back at him coolly.

Corner ignores Admiral Mustache and points to Admiral Black: "Admiral Black."

"We've met," I inform him. Corner raises an eyebrow.

"Really?" he says, disinterestedly. He points to Admiral Stick-Up-His-Ass next, saying, "Admiral Vincent." Vincent gives me a little wave of his hand. Must be an Englishman, I think; because he reminds me a little of Malcolm. Corner starts to point to Admiral Mustache, but the man beats him to it.

Mustache leans over to me, smiling easily, and says, a French accent thick in his voice, "I am Lucien Blanche. It is delightful to meet you, Capitaine Tucker."

"Back atcha," I tell him. Mustache—uh, Blanche—grins his easy grin again and I wonder how life hasn't gotten to him, how Starfleet hasn't gotten to him. Corner glares at both of us, before looking at Jon. Blanche winks at me. Corner says of Jon, "And you know Admiral Archer."

I contemplate cracking a joke, but I feel enough like the-man-who-came-to-dinner as it is and I think that I should maybe try to get along well with Corner. I nod.

"Now that the pleasantries are over," starts Corner. "We can get to business."

I shift a little in my chair. This is not going to be a fun conversation. I just hope I don't get all angry and employ those fighting techniques Malcolm taught me. 'Cause it'd get ugly real fast.

Plus, I think, brightening, I've got lunch with Madeline and Ethan later. Gotta stay un-bloodied for them.

-

I kind of stumble out of the meeting, tired. My patience was really tested in there—Admiral St. Ives was all for not, you know, going after Malcolm and just leaving him and his crew stranded out there so as not to waste needed resources. Corner, too, seemed a little warmed up to it, but Jacobs, Corner's obvious right hand man, seemed rather upset with it. Blanche leaned over at one point to tell me he was a MACO and a firm believer of 'no man left behind', and so was Blanche, apparently, judging by the color his face turned when he was talking about it.

So, after a while of yelling at each other (both Jon and I stayed out of it; me, because I didn't want to piss anyone off, and Jon, because he's, well, yew know), we reached the agreement that I indeed would go after Malcolm. Then they talked about who would be in my crew. I told them about my choices for Armory and Tactical. Vincent got his weird look on his face when I mentioned David, and so I plan on cornering Fritz and ask him what went down all those years ago. They also gave me a list of people I could chose from for the minor positions, seeing as I've already got me senior crew lined up; I just gotta make those phone calls.

Madeline looks up when I enter and she gets a worried look on her face. She starts to stand. "Are you all right, Trip?"

"Headache," I tell her. She nods.

"You think being with the Admirals for a couple hours is bad, try raising a son," she informs me wryly after her nod. I turn my head to look at Ethan, who looked up when I entered. I wink at him. He goes back to drawing. I turn back to Madeline. She's shaking her head.

She looks like she's about to tell me something when Blanche comes out of the office. He smiles brilliantly at both of us and takes Madeline's hand, kissing it. "How are you, my dear?"

"Fine, thank you, Admiral," she says, smiling at him. "Mr. Tucker here invited Ethan and I to lunch after our meeting."

"How wonderful," he says, looking me over. "I trust you'll take good care of our teacher, won't you, Captain?"

"Of course," I tell him. He smiles at me again and turns his attention to Ethan.

"Master Reed!" he calls cheerfully to the boy. Ethan looks up and gives him a dry glance. Blanche laughs heartily. "Good man," he says and Ethan goes back to his coloring. Blanche looks at Madeline again. "We are ready for you, Miss Reed."

"Will you watch Ethan for me?" Madeline asks me before she goes into the office. I smile and nod, and Madeline and Blanche enter the office. I turn to Ethan.

"Well, buddy, s'just yew and me, eh?" I ask. He doesn't look up. I click my tongue. Alright, I think and look around the room. I spy a phone. If Ethan doesn't want to talk to me, I'll just make my phone calls to the rest of the crew I want, while still keeping an eye on him.

-

Madeline comes out of the office half an hour later, looking a lot better than I did, I'm sure. I suppose the Admirals toned down their rhetoric for a woman. I'm sitting in the chair next to Ethan, who still hasn't spoken a word to me. (I'm beginning to suspect that he's a mute or just really doesn't like me.) I finished my phone calls and pretty much everyone I wanted agreed to help, because they all knew Malcolm once too and they wanted him back as much as me.

We're all meeting for dinner tonight.

"Where would you like to go?" she asks me, brushing back a piece of errant hair from her forehead.

"I know this little place down by the wharf," I tell her.

"Wonderful," she says. I help her pick up and put away Ethan's things. We leave quickly, before the Admirals exit their office. Madeline holds Ethan's hand and the boy stands between us.

As we walk, Ethan takes my hand, very gently.

-

"How'd yer meeting go?" I ask her, buttering a roll. I put it down on Ethan's plate. He looks at it for a moment and then he eats it.

"As it usually goes," she says. "They ask me questions, I answer; they thank me for my input, I leave. Yours?"

"Considerably less polite," I say and leave it at that. We eat silently until Madeline asks, "You met my brother on Enterprise, correct?"

"Yep," I say.

"What was he like?" she queries, a soft smile on his face.

"I didn't like him," I say. "At first, course. I thought he was stuck-up, prissy, annoyin', obnoxious, and a whole lotta other unpleasant things." Madeline's smiling more as I continue: "But then we got stuck in the shuttle pod together and we thought everyone else was dead. It changes people, that," I add. "We became partners in crime, afterwards, or so says Admiral Archer, and bar-hoppin' buddies."

"Risa," she says, grinning widely.

"Ah, so Mal did tell yew 'bout our adventures," I say.

"Misadventures, more like," she comments. "And he really didn't tell me. It was Ethan he confided in." She pauses. "I think he was frightened of my judgment."

"Really?" I ask.

"I think," she begins hesitantly, "that he thought I would berate him for what he had done."

"Would've yew?"

"Maybe for letting you go," she says firmly. "But not anything else."

"Lettin' me go?" I parrot.

"I don't know if you've ever known this," Madeline tells me, "but you were the best thing to ever happen to him." I can't form words and her eyes become very sad. "Father always loved me best, both Malcolm and I knew it, and I was always the popular one with the rest of the family too. Malcolm never really met up with the standards of the Reed family and he felt that very acutely. He wanted someone to be proud of him, to respect him for whom he was." She pauses again, and I see that her eyes are glassy. "You were the only person who ever gave him that."

My eyes burn a little after she tells me that. Because, yes, maybe I gave him that, but I also took I away when I left for the Columbia.

"He used to speak of you so greatly, too," adds Madeline. "It was always Trip this, Trip that. I always got the feeling that he missed you quite terribly when you left Enterprise, and I knew it was true when he got his ship. Because, when we were talking on the phone after he got the information, he asked me if I thought you would have been proud of him."

"I was," I tell her. "But I was too scared to tell him. I've always been too scared to tell him how much he meant to me."

She nods, and we don't say anything else for a while, both of us trying to regain loose grips on our emotions. I should have never let him go, I think. I should have never left. I was such an idiot.

"Why doesn't Ethan speak?" I ask Madeline after a few minutes. She looks up at me from her salad, startled.

"Oh," she says. "You noticed."

I nod, glancing over at the child. He seems to be staring at my lunch quite determinedly. I arch an eyebrow at him, but he doesn't notice.

"He's five," she notes, "and he rarely says anything, except for one sentence. I took him to a lot of doctors, trying to find why he wouldn't say anything else." She pauses. "We fear he might be autistic."

"Did yew ever take him to Doctor Phlox?"

"Malcolm suggested that too," she says. "And Phlox himself said he'd like to look Ethan over, but he is never on Earth long enough to see him."

"He's in today," I tell her.

"Really?"

"Yep," I say. "I found out earlier when I asked him to be the medical officer on the rescue." I pause. "We're havin' a dinner tonight for the rest of the crew I tapped. He's gonna be there. Yew should come."

"I would love to," she says, smiling.

Ethan, who's still staring at my plate, suddenly reaches out. He grabs the cookie that's sitting there, telling me in a very small English accent, "I need this."

It startles a laugh out of me and he stares at me with his big eyes over the cookie, which he promptly shoved in his mouth. I start laughing even harder at this, and at Madeline's stern look at her son. He just stares back at her.

It's the first real laugh I've had in a very long time.

-

We all decided to meet for dinner at a hotel and the staff has let us have free reign of the area.

Everyone's come. Fritz and David are there, mixing and serving drinks at the bar and I'm not at all ashamed to say that I don't think I'll be drinking tonight; Travis, who's a lieutenant now, is telling a story to them as they work. Jon is holding court with a bunch of my new crew, telling stories of the old days like Travis. Phlox is playing with Ethan and Madeline stands by, speaking with the doctor. I, myself, stand in the corner, talking to Hoshi, also a lieutenant, and her husband, Noah, who's not Starfleet but a linguist like Hoshi.

I catch Jon's eye and he falters, before smiling at the group and continuing.

We'll talk later.

"So you're doing well?" asks Hoshi.

"Yeah," I say. "I was teachin' up in Connecticut."

"What did you teach?" Noah questions. I like Noah, personally. He seems like a nice guy. Very affable.

"Physics," I tell him.

"I wanted to be a physics professor for a while once," Noah says thoughtfully. Hoshi rolls her eyes at me.

"What stopped yew?" I ask.

"Never studied physics," he informs me. I smile.

"Those college physics departments are real demandin' these days." We all laugh. I ask, "How'd y'all meet?"

"I was teaching in Brazil again," begins Hoshi; "and Noah was the translator at a hospital there. So, one day, I manage to slice the tip of my finger while cooking. It was bleeding pretty badly, so I went to the hospital and by the time I got there, it hurt something awful and I was cursing in a rare dialect and I couldn't bring myself to speak English. Noah got called in and the rest was history, as they say."

"Don't listen to her," Noah says. "She cut the best bit out. I was trying to calm her down and she slapped me across the face and broke my nose. I had to have her. So, on our adjacent beds, I kept hitting on her. She threatened to break my jaw next." He grins. "I wore her down."

"But not before I broke two of his fingers," adds Hoshi, an evil little grin on her face and a slightly mental glint in her eyes. I laugh again. Hoshi asks, "Anyone special in your life, Captain?"

"Nope," I say. My eyes flicker briefly over to Madeline, though, and Hoshi catches it. She sees who I'm looking at, and turns back to me, grinning.

"Madeline Reed?" she says. "Really?"

I spend the next five minutes denying it quite fervently.

"I think you two would be wonderful together," says Hoshi for the millionth time. Noah has been standing quietly the whole time, smiling to himself. I tried several times to get him to rescue me—the whole brotherhood thing, yew know?—but he didn't.

"Oh, leave me alone," I say, waving a hand at her. I point to Noah. "And yew—yew betrayed the brotherhood!"

"Technically," he says, "I did no such thing, as I'm neither helping you nor siding with the wife."

"Might as well be," I grouse. I look at my watch. "I gotta go do a speech."

"About what we're going to be doing?" asks Hoshi.

"Yep," I reply. I look at Noah. "Yew gonna be comin'?"

"If you'll have me, Captain," he says. "I've met Malcolm a few times—he came to our wedding—and I hate to think of him out there. I'd like to help."

"Sure," I nod. I turn away from them and start through the crowd. I was invited to their wedding, too; I didn't go.

People clap me on my back as I go through them. "Good to have you back, sir….Nice to see you in uniform again….We'll find him, Captain…. We'll bring him home…." I smile at them, weakly, strained, and mount a table, hitting a glass with a fork to get their attention.

When everyone quiets down, I begin.

"As some of yew may know, Captain Malcolm Reed and his crew went missin' a week ago…"

-

The group is considerably more subdued when I finish.

-

It's about twenty-three-hundred and we're starting to disperse.

"We'll get him back," says Hoshi as she leaves, kissing my cheek. "We just have to."

"Yeah," I agree. I shake hands with Noah and continue the goodbyes with everyone else.

-

As I walk back to the temporary housing assigned to me from dinner, Jon jogs to my side and slows down to a walk. I don't look at him and he doesn't look at me.

"Sorry about earlier, about St. Ives," he says after a moment.

I want to snap at him, asking him why the hell he didn't stand up for Malcolm in there, because he, of all people, should know how much Malcolm has meant to this place. Instead, I just nod and say nothing else. Getting mad at him won't help me any. We go quiet again and we don't speak until we reach the front porch of the house.

He turns and stares at me, his eyes shadowed in the fading light of day. "Bring him home."

"I had no intention of doin' otherwise," I tell him.

Jon presses his lips together for a moment and then smiles a little. He hops down the porch steps and starts to walk away. I watch him, my hand resting absently on the doorknob. He turns abruptly and says, "He never forgave me, you know."

"For what?" I ask when my curiosity gets the better of me.

He smiles again, bitterly. "A lot of things."

I blink and he turns away once more, his hands shoved deeply in his pockets and whistling a little to himself, and disappears into the night.