His smile was entirely heartfelt.

Leaning back in his seat, Trip found himself grinning as the recorded message from his father played on the small viewscreen. It had arrived earlier yesterday during the most recent data dump from Starfleet Command, but he had been so busy that this was the first time he'd been able to watch it.

"-worthless brother of yours has decided to move here to Jacksonville," the recording of Charles Junior was relaying with a smile. He looked much better than the last time Trip had seen him. "I think Mary was mostly behind that, though." The elder Tucker chuckled. "At least I'll get to see the boys more regularly." A positively wicked expression abruptly crossed the older man's face. "And I'm gonna spoil those boys like you wouldn't believe. Revenge for all the hell Billy put me through while you kids were growin' up." Trip found himself laughing along with his father's image. "Anyway," Charlie said, "I should let ya go. Give our love to T'Pol and stay safe out there, son."

As the image blinked out, Trip sighed. It was good to hear from his father, and he was overjoyed that they were unharmed in this latest attack on Earth, but he found himself wishing that he could have spent more time at home during his last visit. Even before the war started, he knew that his visits weren't long enough or frequent enough, but it wasn't until now that he really realized just how much he truly missed his parents' home.

With another sigh, he returned his attention to the work stacked up on his desk. Most of it was work orders from Hess' damage control teams, or status reports about the progress of repairs, and he gave each a cursory glance. Once he saw that T'Pol had already read them and made comments, he simply approved whatever her suggestions were without further examination. They had developed a discreet code with these reports; if T'Pol signed off on them using the acronym CMDR for her rank instead of the shorter CDR, Trip knew that he needed to read the report in depth.

With a grunt, Trip stood up from his desk and began to gather the PADDs into a neat stack. He was still at a loss how he constantly managed to acquire so many of the data devices. One of them was still active as he picked it up, and he glowered at the screen for a moment. Lieutenant Hayes' transfer to Starfleet Intelligence had caught him completely by surprise, and left him with a ridiculously green ensign straight out of STC to act as weapon systems officer. Trip had protested, of course; not even taking into account Hayes' connection to Harris' organization, the lieutenant was a very good officer. The timing of the transfer was especially unusual, and even Admiral Archer's signature on the orders had given him pause. Jon had been ... evasive about the reasoning behind the transfer when Trip had commed him to plead his case.

That particular fact bothered Tucker more than he could explain.

Glancing around his new office, he shook his head in mild amazement at how much had changed since Endeavour launched. Once, this entire area would have been part of Engineering, designed for systems analysis and manned 24/7. Following his decision to declare the A deck bridge 'off limits', he had quickly realized that he would need an office for official business; it had been Hess' decision to turn this unused section into a secondary ready room. She had even added a door that connected it to the new bridge.

Trip hadn't been surprised to learn that the ship commanders who survived Acheron had made an identical decision to abandon the vulnerable bridge.

Lieutenant Rostova was in the command chair as he entered the bridge, and she started to rise the moment he appeared. He quickly waved her back to the chair before giving the gamma shift a quick glance. Most of them were enlisted, but he trusted them as much as the alpha shift team.

"What's our status?" he asked.

"Continuing to waypoint epsilon at full impulse," the lieutenant replied quickly. She offered him a PADD, likely with a full status report on it, but he shook his head and gestured with the nine that he already had. "ETA: five hours. No sign of Romulan sensor signatures, but we are running silent per your instructions."

Trip nodded. Endeavour's current orders were to deploy a number of upgraded communication and sensor buoys at key locations along the periphery of the Sol System. Normally, this would be the job of a Boomer ship hired for the job, or perhaps an Iceland-class, but Starfleet Command wanted to make sure that the buoys would actually make it to their target locations. Boomer ships were simply too vulnerable for such a task should there being any hostile ships in the region, and the discovery of the Saratoga's remains in a rapidly deteriorating orbit around the Uranian moon Oberon only highlighted the vulnerability of the Iceland-class ships to Romulan fire. According to preliminary reports, the Saratoga hadn't even seen the bird of prey until it was too late.

Especially troubling was the Romulan use of Immobilizer-like weapons.

"Carry on then," Tucker said. "I'm going to bed. Don't crash my ship, Lieutenant." Rostova gave him a weak smile as he dumped the PADDs into her lap. "And take care of these," he ordered with a sudden grin. Sometimes, it was good to be in charge.

He made a quick detour to the mess hall for a late snack where he found, to his surprise, Lieutenant Commanders Eisler and Hess sharing a table. As their discussion really wasn't any of his business (both were off-duty, after all), he pretended to not notice them as he fished out a slice of key lime pie from the small refrigerator. It was weird, though; he'd always thought that Anna was a lesbian based on some of the things he'd heard her say. In recent days, however, he'd become halfway convinced that something was going one between his tactical officer and chief engineer; knowing about Eisler's contempt for fraternization, however, made Trip wonder exactly what it was that was going on. Shrugging, he ducked through the door before either of them looked up and saw him.

The pie was gone by the time he arrived at his quarters, and he tossed the small paper plate into the recycler before heading for the shower. Tentatively, he reached out through the bond and barely suppressed a smirk when he realized that T'Pol was in the stellar dynamics lab, working on her pet micro-singularities project. If she was off duty and wasn't in her cabin (or in his), the SD lab was generally where she could be found.

Trip spent an unusually long time in the shower, once more puzzling over the odd actions of the Romulan commander. If warning Endeavour away from his ship before self-destructing hadn't been odd enough, the commander's comments had only added to the puzzle. According to Hoshi, it had been a salutation between equals, something that she had never heard before. As the resident expert, she had theorized that the Romulan captain was paying Trip a compliment of some sort, and that simply made no sense whatsoever. The shower chirped, warning him that he had exceeded his daily allotment of hot water, and he shut it off. Shaking his head, he used some of the techniques that T'Pol had taught him to push the thoughts about the Romulan out of his mind.

He was very nearly asleep before his head hit the pillow.

The dream began like it usually did. Lizzie was at the cafe, sitting at the round table that she preferred. T'Pol was there too, meditating under the Florida sun, and Lorian sat alongside her, smiling that half-smile of his. A hideously deformed figure with bolts in his neck and half of his skull missing was between them, holding a baby in his arms; as the monstrosity shifted, scars and stitches could be seen across Sim's face, and he was smiling at the sleeping infant that he was holding. Trip wanted to close his eyes when he saw Elizabeth T'Mir's innocent face.

His breath caught as the Xindi weapon suddenly loomed overhead, blotting out the sun with its impossible size. It was bigger than the moon. There was no death ray this time, though. This time, it was spitting fission bombs that were all too familiar. Trip tried to scream, tried to warn them, but no words emerged from his mouth. As he shrieked silently, the dream T'Pol blinked as if she had just woken and looked around, her eyes almost instantly zeroing in on Trip. Her hazel eyes seemed to gleam with emotion, and she shook her head.

Instantly, the dreamscape transformed to a Tucker family picnic. The Xindi weapon was gone, and the paralyzing fear that had gripped him vanished. He inhaled peace as T'Pol stepped closer to him, her eyes locked on his. The part of him that was still aware of the world outside of the dream felt her warmth as she slid into bed beside him, and was glad that she had come. He didn't think that he could take the horrific images tonight.

"You won't," her mental image promised, and Trip exhaled with relief. The dreams that had plagued him in the Expanse had returned with frightening regularity following the second attack on Earth, displacing the usual ones of Sim's final hours, and Tucker knew that some part of his psyche blamed himself for the fifteen million who had died on Earth and on Mars in atomic fire. If only he had done something different, had acted faster, or was a better captain, then maybe...

"Dance with me," he urged as he pulled T'Pol to her feet, suddenly desperate to think of something other than the war. In this place, he could forget the terrible cost of lives that had already been paid, or the fact that the war was far from over. He could pretend that he was just Trip, and she was just T'Pol, and they were just an unlikely couple in love with no duties or responsibilities save to one another. The expression on her face as his request sank in caused him to laugh.

"Vulcans do not dance," she pointed out primly, and he laughed again.

"It's a dream!" Trip reminded her. "We all do crazy things in dreams!" She appeared hesitant, so he snapped his fingers. A tango pulled from his memory began playing, though there was no band, and he grinned as T'Pol's eyes widened slightly in recognition of the tune. It had been in an old twentieth century movie about a spy whose wife did not know he was a spy until near the midway through the film. "Dance with me," he repeated.

"I don't know the steps," she prevaricated, and Trip laughed again. No one would ever believe him if he told them that the fearless T'Pol was afraid of dancing. Her eyes flashed as she tasted his thoughts. "I am not afraid," she declared as he basked in the warmth of her katra.

"Prove it," he replied.