Trip
He goes on a date. He has no interest in dating anyone but he talked himself into it. He doesn't want to spend the rest of his life grieving for a child he never knew and pining for a woman who lives on another planet, a woman who is married to someone else.
He meets his date in the emergency room of the local hospital. One of his staff managed to burn himself rather badly with a plasma torch, she is one of the doctors who treats him.
He senses her interest immediately, he has to tamp down on a slight feeling of nausea at the realisation. He almost blurts out to her that he belongs to someone else. He doesn't belong to anyone and no one belongs to him. He has to keep reminding himself of that.
He goes home to his perfectly nice apartment, that still looks no different from the day he moved in, and sits on the perfectly nice sofa, that he doesn't really like but he can't be bothered replacing, and looks at the piece of paper with her name and phone number written on it and wonders why it's so damn hard to feel like a normal person.
He thinks about T'Pol. She went about it logically. Recognised that, rightly or wrongly, her bridges had been burned on Earth and just got on with it. Went back to Vulcan, got married, probably got a job, probably even got pregnant. No matter how real the dreams sometimes feel, they are are just that, dreams.
So he calls the Doctor. He can hear the pleasure in her voice. She would love to have dinner with him.
"Is Friday night okay?" She asks.
How is he supposed to answer that, any night is the same as the other.
She asks if they can go early, somewhere casual as she begins a late shift a 11:00pm.
He feels relief at this. Somehow it will be easier to get through it if he has an end time to work towards. There is a voice, in the back of his head, telling him that if that's his attitude he shouldn't be doing this. He ignores it, he's just trying to be normal, surely that's a good thing.
He meets her at the restaurant. He can't deny she is attractive. She wears a tight, red dress with a black leather jacket and black ankle boots, it's edgy and somehow elegant and sexy at the same time. Her long blonde hair hangs in artful waves down her back. She wears makeup, not too much, not too little. No, he can't deny she is attractive. He feels nothing.
To someone watching from the outside it would seem to be a successful date. With the same dispassion he takes to everything these days, except his dreams, he plays the part of an amusing, intelligent, confident, attractive man on a date.
He can quite figure out how he does this. He feels like a body snatcher, it is as though he's put on a Trip suit and is pretending to be the person Trip used to be. It's the same at work. He's pretty sure his friends from a Enterprise would see through it immediately. He doesn't contact them, so they have no way of knowing. It's like he's two people at once. His real self, trapped in this body and this life, just trying to fill in time until something changes, but who nobody ever sees, and Fake Trip, who is like a copy of the person he used to be.
The only time he feels like his real self is in his dreams. Am I an engineer who dreams he's in love with a Vulcan, or in love with a Vulcan and dreaming I am engineer, he wonders.
The lovely doctor is amazing.
She speaks with passion and animation about her job. How she loves the intellectual challenges but also the human side.
She describes her hobbies. She loves many of the things he does, fishing, diving, sailing. Her hands move about expressively as she describes a sailing trip she took after her final year at medical school.
She volunteers when she can, at a free clinic. She is obviously outraged that there are still people who struggle to afford health care.
She expresses sorrow at the loss of his sister, her face a genuine picture of sympathy. She says all the right things. She didn't personally know anyone who died, she can't imagine how awful it must have been.
She laughs at his amusing stories from Enterprise and asks intelligent questions about space travel.
Yep, she's amazing. Beautiful, intelligent, passionate, articulate, expressive, amusing. She is probably the perfect woman for him. He can't stand her.
Every expression, every gesture, every laugh seems so excessive, so unnecessary. He knows he's being unreasonable, that she's a perfectly nice person, a perfectly nice human. It's not her fault he doesn't want a human. It's not her fault she's not T'Pol.
At the end of the evening he drops her off at the hospital. She turns to him with what he knows is an attractive smile.
"I had a really great time tonight." She tells him.
Fake Trip answers her somehow. He thinks it is an appropriate answer because she smiles. He doesn't tell her what he is really thinking, which is that he never wants to see her again.
She pauses for a minute, still smiling at him, giving him the opportunity to kiss her if he wants to. Thankfully it's a first date so it's no insult if he doesn't. She's fluent in the language of dating, she doesn't wait too long for the kiss that isn't coming, but opens the door of the car and starts to get out.
"Call me." She tells him, with a smile.
"Sure thing." He lies, with a smile. He doesn't watch her walk in, but drives off immediately.
He feels a twinge of sadness as he wonders if he'll ever be a whole person again. He can't understand why the emptiness T'Pol opened up in him just doesn't go away. He wants to like this nice, attractive, intelligent doctor, but he can't seem to make himself feel anything but disdain. He almost thinks he should call this perfectly agreeable woman just to assure her that there's nothing wrong with her, that he's the one that's broken. He's smart enough to know that would be worse than not calling her at all.
He goes home and dreams he's kissing T'Pol in the shower. It's a normal, run of-the-mill sex with T'Pol dream until she throws him violently against a wall. When he gets over the shock and looks up at her she has become like a raging zombie. Her skin is green and ulcerated, her teeth are black and rotting, and her eyes are wild. She growls and bares her teeth at him, then pounces and starts to strangle him.
He wakes up gasping. It's like he can still feel her fingers around his throat and he's struggling to breathe.
XXX
T'Pol
When she gets home Koss is already there. Six months have passed since the wedding and she has come to know him as an honourable and kind man. A certain kind of friendship has grown between them. They pass a few comfortable moments as they talk about their respective days before she retires briefly to the bedroom to change out of her dusty clothes.
She looks at herself in the mirror. She looks so different from the shaking, ill creature of the wedding it is hard to believe she is the same person. She has gained weight, of course. Once the nausea passed and she was able to eat properly her appetite came back aggressively. She looks a little softer now, the extra weight shows in her face. She has grown her hair a bit longer, it was a sly protest against the High Command. It is not logical, but she needs these subtle expressions of her feelings in order to stay sane. She wonders for a moment what Trip would think and pushes the thought aside aggressively.
For her own peace of mind she cannot afford to indulge in thoughts of him which can often have the unfortunate side effect of dragging him into her consciousness. It is bad enough that he invaded her white space on a regular basis in her first few months back on Vulcan. As a result she would emerge from her meditation more agitated and emotional than when she entered it.
Eventually she learned to read his state of mind and discovered if she entered meditation during his deep sleep phase he would appear in the white space but would remain asleep. She still finds it strangely soothing to have him with her in her meditation space even though he is generally not conscious. Occasionally he stirs and speaks to her but with none of the bitter recriminations of their earlier conversations. Instead she treasures these tender moments when he usually confesses his love for her or tells her that he misses her. Even more comforting is when she is dragged into his dreams.
It doesn't always happen. Her sleep patterns on Vulcan do not always mesh with his exactly but when they do the dreams are vivid and engaging. It is in these moments that they are most like their old selves, working on a problem together, performing neuro-pressure or occasionally making love. He occasionally dreams of a baby with blue eyes and pointed ears, the pain of this dream is real for them both. It is after these dreams that she misses him the most and almost books a transport to Earth to try and locate him. It takes all her discipline to remind herself that this option is not practical for a multitude of reasons, that he has cut his ties, to Enterprise, to Starfleet and to her. She must live the life she has, not the one she dreams about.
She sighs and returns to the kitchen to assist Koss in preparation of the evening meal. Things would have been much more difficult for her without his assistance. He has been a stabilising presence in her life particularly in the aftermath of the death of the child. His ability to maintain his Vulcan control has helped her navigate the tumultuous emotions generated by the child's death and the subsequent information about her existence. Additionally it was his intervention that got T'Les back her job and he also assisted T'Pol by helping her acquire a position with the Vulcan Science Academy as a tutor's assistant.
It is a low level position, she is more qualified than her superior and often finds errors in his work which she corrects without drawing attention to them. After the Kir'Shara was rediscovered and the High Command dissolved, her status on Vulcan improved and she was offered a better position with more responsibility, she declined. She has lost her much of the drive of her previous career, currently life is difficult enough for her without adding the complication of ambition. She feels like she is waiting. Perhaps she has been infected with that most illogical of human emotions, hope; and despite everything she still believes she will find her way back to Trip and he will want her.
"You are quiet tonight. I trust everything is satisfactory?" Koss' concern interrupts her quiet reverie.
"I'm fine." She replies. He accepts her answer at face value. Trip would have sought clarification, he would not let her get away with that kind of evasion.
She is still uncertain as to whether she made the correct choice regarding the marriage. Knowing Koss better, she can see he has all the attributes that make for a good husband. She knows she should be able to live with him. But still, even six month's later, the thought of spending her entire life with anyone but Trip leaves her struggling to breathe.
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