Trip looked up from his coffee and the data readings on the PADD in front of him to see T'Mir examining the warp engine. She ran her hand over it's smooth outer shell, caressing it, her eyes filled with wonder. She was a vision to be sure, with long robes behind her and youthful face filled with contemplation. Trip didn't see her that way.
"Aren't you supposed to be in the Brig?" he asked her, none too nicely.
She turned suddenly, startled. "I was ... released."
"You can't be in here, it's restricted access."
"I apologize, it's been so long since I've seen them." she let a broad smile cross her face, "Sentimental, I know, but they are beauties."
She was tempting him, he knew. He brushed by her, escaping to his corner office. "You need to leave." he stated gruffly as he passed.
She paused a minute, the most logical course of action was to leave as he had asked. She followed him to his office. "What are you working on?" she asked, leaning over him to get a glimpse of the PADD.
"Hey!" He used his arm to push her away.
"You're thinking of inversing the intermix ratio, and increasing the polarity of the warp conduits." She judged from the few words she had managed to glimpse. "A novel idea."
He didn't want her anywhere near, but she wouldn't move, despite his glowering stare.
"What type of yield do you expect?"
He answered, but grumpily: "About 300 GigaCochranes."
"I seem to remember that this engine isn't designed for those amounts of energy. You would lose most of the energy gained." She managed to push her way in to his console, mostly because he was slightly interested in what she was about to say. "Furthermore, I don't believe the structural integrity of the hull was meant for these speeds. But, it does seem logical that we could increase our anti-matter efficiency with this new design by maintaining the energy, creating a slower reaction turnover."
Trip looked up at the screen, contemplating what she had said, just in passing curiosity, he had to assure himself.
"Perhaps, the focus should be on Lieutenant Reed's force-field generators. If they could be improved to the proper specifications, it wouldn't be difficult to adapt them to the warp field."
"Okay, but then whatta we do when the system's power relays shut down?"
"We tie them directly into the engine. Reasonably, when the engine powers out, the field will be disabled, but not before. It will be a self-contained containment system."
"Who are you?"
She raised an eyebrow at him. "Kov was an engineer, and some would say it is 'in my blood'. I may have lived as an outcast for many years, but I am not oblivious, I am Vulcan."
x x x
T'Mir knocked on the doors to the Captain's quarters. She was met by distant shuffling, a groan, and an eventual, 'Just a minute'. Her face did not register the shock she felt when the Captain appeared in only his skivvies.
"Captain," she began, "I apologize for catching you at an ... inconvenient ... time."
"Quite alright, uh ... Please come in. I hope your quarters are suitable."
"They will suffice, thank you." She promptly sat down neatly on his couch, as if unaware of his casual dress. "I will be brief, I require a long-term placement on Enterprise. In return, I can offer you all the knowledge I have gained. In my universe, many new technologies have been developed and a great number of battles have been fought."
"I have no problem with it, you've already proven your worth. However, the decision affects some crew members more deeply than I can be responsible for."
"Commanders Tucker and T'Pol." she nodded. "I understand there may additional issues to resolve, but that does not affect our relationship, or my usefulness to your crew."
The Captain shuffled across the room.
"The All-England Water Polo Championships, Captain?" she noted, mostly to try to make him feel more comfortable.
"Huh? Oh, yeah."
"An excellent match."
He flicked off the recording.
T'Mir turned back to the Captain. "I take it I am to ask the commanders for my asylum."
"If they agree to let you stay on the ship, then the asylum is granted."
"Thank you, Captain. Would it be inappropriate to place an early bet on the upcoming FINA World Championships?" T'Mir raised an eyebrow, and walked out of the room without a further word, leaving the Captain utterly mystified.
x x x
"Are you alright, Trip?" T'Pol asked from across the meditation candle.
"I'm just mad about the whole thing, I'm not myself anymore."
"It is difficult to accept." T'Pol agreed.
"First, I never expected Elizabeth, but I was so happy. Then she died, and I got to thinkin' I would never have a child, that two days of parenthood would be it. Now there's this teenager runnin' around, who's apparently smart and beautiful and courageous, but it's too strange to let myself hope, ya know, it doesn't make sense."
"I also appreciated Elizabeth's life with us, however short it was. I too grieve for her."
"I just can't take another one doomed to die. First there was Lorian, and Elizabeth ..."
"Trip –."
"Ya ever think about havin' kids, T'Pol?" Trip went off on a tangent.
T'Pol was about to answer, when she was interrupted by the door chime. She raised an eyebrow and stood to answer it.
Outside stood T'Mir. She wasted no time in accepting T'Pol's invitation to enter and stopped just far in enough that the door closed behind her. "I wish to remain aboard Enterprise." she announced.
"You should speak to the Captain about such matters." T'Pol informed her.
"I have, he required me to speak with you before he will agree."
"We were just speaking of you, in a manner, prior to your arrival, but we have not yet come to a conclusion about your identity." T'Pol said matter-of-factly, standing between T'Mir and Trip.
"Ah." T'Mir nodded, noticing Trip's quiet presence. "I understand your apprehension. I too find the situation most illogical. However, I have been forced to accept the entirely improbable events that have recently occurred, and I am now faced with the difficult task of convincing you to accept them as well. If you would like, I am able to initiate a three-way mind meld so that you may read my memories and determine they have not been falsified."
"You are capable of such things?" T'Pol tried to conceal her wariness.
T'Mir nodded, "Yes. I have had a great deal of time to spend on the writings of Surak."
T'Pol paused for a full moment, trying to sort out the turmoil of emotions that overwhelmed her suddenly: Trip's emotions. "The meld is agreeable." she sighed, "Are you alright?"
T'Mir had a strange expression on her face, a quizzical smile as it were with a single raised eyebrow. "I was not aware you were bonded. It is agreeable to me."
"We are not bonded." T'Pol snapped back defensively.
"Oh, no?" T'Mir watched as T'Pol sat on the floor, her tongue rolling around in her cheek in concentration.
Sitting, T'Mir turned to T'Pol, "I ask only that you not attempt to access my memories of your own death, it was very ... unpleasant." She turned to Trip, "Commander, I do not know whether the meld will cause you any discomfort, but I am certain you will receive full benefit from it. However, I must ask that you relax and allow the contact, however disagreeable it is for you."
The two officers nodded, looking quite apprehensive, and T'Mir began, placing her hands carefully on their temples, "My mind to your mind, my thoughts to your thoughts..."
Suddenly, they were tossed into her subconscious. It was very organized, a result of extensive meditation, but with a certain charming clutter, not unlike the Engineering deck.
x x x
Firstly, they witnessed her initial moments of life, waking in an incubator with Paxton staring at her. And he moved back and was replaced with the commanders themselves, as they had been the first time they had seen her. T'Pol scooped her up then, and she was aboard Enterprise.
Everything thus far coincided with the version of the story they had been a part of. The Doctor picked up the screaming infant and tucked her into a stasis chamber.
In the next scene, she was pulled out and operated on immediately, and injected with a series of undisclosed medicines before being thrown back into the chamber.
The quick trauma of her life gripped the commanders, and Trip's hands tightened deathly around T'Pol's.
Then, the scene relaxed and she was comfortably in the arms of her biological mother. They were sharing a story telepathically, and T'Pol gently rocked her to sleep.
She was in Trip's arms, clinging to his fingers and shoving them in her mouth. He pulled back, testing her strength and tapped her on the nose. She let go of him, and he fingered her ginger ear points.
T'Pol was in engineering with the baby, Trip asked for assistance, and she bent down to help him configure the new engine. Suddenly the ship rocked, and the display they were working at flashed an angry red, the warp core had suffered a direct hit, it's breech was imminent. In the pandemonium, T'Pol handed her daughter to Lt. Hess and worked frantically at the panel with Trip.
Trip yelled for her to go, but she pulled rank. He left, but not without dragging her to her feet and shouting some sense into her. They ran for the doors while Trip shouted the authorization code to lock down Engineering. Trip made it through the doors as they started to shut. But T'Pol tripped over an exploding pipe, and fell as the two-tonne emergency doors shut on her. Trip cried openly, and Lt. Hess turned T'Mir's head away.
In his grief, Trip soldiered on in his parenting endeavour, holding her at the funeral and hugging her desperately while he cried for the dead woman. It took along time to get the engines running again, and even longer when they realized there was no hope of rebuilding them.
While the Enterprise was grounded at Jupiter Station, they played together, and he told her all the stories he knew while she quickly grew into a small girl. But he had headaches, and eventually consulted his friend Kov who told him she needed telepathic training. In the month that they spent in San Francisco with Kov, the girl grew significantly happier.
Trip took her on one last shuttle flight, taking her to a zoo, for ice cream, pony rides, all he could think of. At the end of the day, they crouched under the control panel of the shuttle and wrote on the interior panel of the console. Then he kissed her on the forehead and said, 'I'll be back real soon' and left her with Kov.
Together, she and Kov watched the shuttle fly away from the viewport at Spacedock and felt the little girl's grief consume them.
Kov lived in a little apartment in San Francisco with the little girl. He called her T'Mir and told her that she needed to control her emotions. He helped her, and smiled infrequently. Then he told her of the battle with the Romulans, and told her that her family was dead.
He sent her to a preparatory school, but anti-alien sentiments grew to unprecedented heights. She was ostracized and bullied at school and on the streets, neither of them were safe on Earth. They retreated to Vulcan, but Kov was not well received.
They had a little shop in the centre of a city and T'Mir began school once more. But the Vulcan children made fun of her in their dry humour, and harassed her when anti-human sentiments spread. Kov, too, was outcast for his blatant displays of emotion and they moved to the desert, inhabiting some caves as best they could.
Until Kov was recalled to the city by his father and began to serve the High Council. T'Mir was mostly alone, save for visits from Dr. Phlox with injections for her, and from Kov, and an elderly priest who wandered the mountains in search of Surak and who took pity on her and brought her books. There were long periods, several days, when she would do nothing but sit and meditate, or sometimes just sit and watch the sky across the rock formations.
She found her own food in the desert at night, and a stream through the back of the cave supplied fresh water. Long days were spent reading and practising old Vulcan arts. Other days were spent studying Kov's engineering textbooks and the literature of twentieth century earth.
One day, a stranger came to her cave of recluse. His name was Q and he wore a strange uniform that was red and black. He spoke with her at length, handed her several futuristic devices, data PADDs, and a map, then snapped his fingers and was gone in a flash.
She read the PADDs, poked at the devices, and eventually went to Kov in the city. The two of them travelled to Earth, secretly, and stole the recovered Shuttlepod 1 from the San Francisco Museum of Flight. After some upgrades that Kov was able to assist with, she followed the map to her destination in the middle of space.
The mysterious Q reappeared and they spoke again, much more seriously this time. Then he snapped his fingers, and she engaged the engines once more, hurtling herself into the middle of a binary system.
x x x
The three woke in the dark room with an explosion of emotion that tore them physically apart. T'Pol was breathing irregularly and heavily, her eyes wide. Trip struggled to plug the tears streaming down his face. T'Mir huddled, emotionless, on the floor.
"I am sorry, for what it's worth." said T'Pol once she had her breathing under control.
Trip had more difficulty controlling himself. Leaving puddles beneath him as he crawled over weakly, he collapsed beside her and hugged her gently, burying his face in her hair. No one should have had to go through that.
"You may consider your asylum granted." T'Pol said stiffly.
"That is agreeable." T'Mir muttered, not moving so as not to disturb Trip as he lay around her.