Never and Always...

Disclaimer: Star Trek: Enterprise is the property of CBS/Paramount. All original material herein is the property of its author.

A/N: The Pocket Books Enterprise Relaunch novel The Good That Men Do presented material about Trip's family that conflicted with several details I had already woven into my little Reconnecting universe. With this being the "Definitive Edition" of the series, I had the opportunity to line things up with the Relaunch as I was revising these stories...but I pretty much kept what I had. These are the folks I see and hear in my head, and I've gotten used to them. :)

A note about chapter lengths: I don't divide chapters according to word count; I let them break naturally, in keeping with the flow of the story. These early chapters may be on the short side, but hang in there. Later chapters will make up for that.

Chapter 4: Hello Muddah, Hello Faddah

As the viewscreen lit, Trip was greeted by a close-up view of his mom's mixing bowl. She must have punched up the call with her elbow. She stepped back into full view, vigorously beating her concoction by hand. No auto-mixers for this woman, no sir. "Yes?..." She hadn't quite turned her attention to her screen yet.

Trip spotted a smudge of flour on her cheek. "Whatever it is you're making, save me some."

Catherine Tucker looked up, startled—and her kindly, weathered face lit up. "Trip! Goodness, why didn't you tell us you were calling?" She set the bowl down, flustered, and ran her fingers through her strawberry-blond hair, leaving faint trails of flour. "I must look a sight."

"You look fine, Mom," Trip smiled. "You look beautiful."

She stopped fussing and blushed. She did look better, Trip was glad to see. The move to Mississippi had done her and Dad some good, if only by putting breathing room between them and the painful memories of Elizabeth's death.

"Let me get your father. Just—" Catherine vanished from view, but Trip could hear her: "Chuck! Where are you?..."

Half a minute later, he heard them both returning. "What're you hollerin' about, woman?" That was Dad, sounding mighty perturbed. She must have rousted him from his workshop.

"Take your hat off. There's a call for you."

"My hat? What for?..."

Then Mom was dragging Charles Anthony Tucker Jr. in front of the viewscreen. Sans hat. Chuck burst into a hearty grin when he saw his son. "Trip! Good to see ya, boy!"

"Hey, Dad." Trip saw a sprinkling of sawdust on his father's well-worn coveralls. "Building flower boxes?"

Chuck laughed. "A few. You wouldn't believe how many windows this place has."

"Just trying to make it feel more like a home," Catherine said, a little self-consciously.

Chuck put an arm around her shoulders. "We'll get there, hon. Just give it time."

Catherine turned back to Trip. "We haven't heard from you in ages."

"I know," Trip confessed sheepishly. "I was gonna call you after we got back into port, but then the embassy on Vulcan got bombed, and we had to ship out again. We're on our way back from Vulcan now."

Chuck's craggy face darkened. "Did you find the sons-of-bitches who did it?"

Trip nodded. "Yeah, Dad. We found them."

"What, the Vulcans didn't bother providing proper security to an alien embassy?" Chuck didn't bother to hide his bitterness.

Trip hadn't realized how deeply the bombing might resonate with his folks. In hindsight, it was obvious: it was the Xindi attack all over again, in microcosm. "Twelve Vulcans died, too," he said quietly. "And several dozen more were killed in another attack. Innocent citizens. Nobody got off easy, Dad."

Catherine, ever the conciliator, changed the subject. "So Trip, when you get back...do you think you'll have time to catch us up on what's been going on with you?" Hope crept into her voice. "Maybe a visit?"

Here goes. The first step. "Actually, that's why I'm calling," Trip replied. "A whole lot has happened in the last several months, but I haven't been able to talk about it, because there were some...issues still up in the air. But in the last few days, a bunch of stuff got resolved." He smiled. "So it's time to tell you everything."

Chuck looked intrigued. "Well? Spill it, son!"

Catherine nodded expectantly. "We're all ears, sweetheart."

"Nope." Trip shook his head resolutely. "I gotta tell you in person. And there're some people I want you to meet, too." He could feel his smile growing. "Some very special people."

He could tell by the looks on their faces that the wild speculating had commenced in earnest. Quickly, he continued. "The thing is, we've all gotta stay near Starfleet—there's going to be a memorial for the bombing victims. So how do you feel about a visit to San Francisco?"

Catherine and Chuck glanced at each other. "We haven't been out there since you were in Starfleet Training, have we?" Chuck commented. But the look he gave his wife said: Whatever this is, it's big. She nodded.

Damn it all, they were doing their secret-looks thing again. Trip had tried all his life to figure out what his parents communicated to each other when they traded those wordless sidelong glances, but he'd never been able to crack the code. It drove him nuts when they did it...well, actually, he envied them. It must be nice, being able to speak without words. He'd always thought that made his parents special.

"I've got a little more pull this time around—I'll get you a better place to stay," he told them. "And you can say hi to Captain Archer. What do you say?"

The two exchanged another look...Catherine conveying to Chuck, We're passing this up over my dead body, dear. He chuckled.

Trip sat patiently, waiting until they were ready to talk out loud, like normal people. Finally they faced him again. "We'd love to, honey," Catherine smiled. "Just tell us when."

"Great." Trip could already feel a knot of nervousness forming in the pit of his stomach. Oh, to be Vulcan now. "I'll call you when we make Earth orbit."

-tbc-