Author's Note: Just one chapter remaining after this one. Can past mistakes be fixed? T'Pol tries to find out.

9. The White Space

In her quarters, T'Pol sat in front of an unlit candle.

She needed to meditate.

She was afraid to meditate.

If she meditated, he might be there.

But as she sat trying to master her emotions, she slipped involuntarily into the blank meditation space, where everything fell away.

Everything except him.

She felt him, heard him, before she saw him. "Oh, great," he said. "This is exactly where I want to be right now." He walked across in front of her, looking around at the emptiness.

I can't help it. But that would only provoke him. "I need to meditate."

"Well, I need to go tear apart a machine somewhere," he said. "So I guess we're both just out of luck." He sat down facing her. "You realize, this is probably the end of both of our careers."

She didn't respond.

"Mine was probably over anyway." he shook his head, bitter and rueful. His accent thickened when he was upset; sometimes, when he was very distraught, she struggled to understand him. She wasn't sure she had understood half of what he'd said when he was yelling at her in the ready room, although his emotions had certainly been clear enough. "I could've had my own command, if it weren't for you. Now that'll never happen, even if Cap'n Archer doesn't drum us both out of Starfleet altogether."

"I'm sorry," she said earnestly. She wondered if he was going to start yelling again, or if the double dose of sedative would at least spare her that.

"Of course you're sorry. People are always sorry when they make a bad decision. I'm sorry too. Just in case you didn't know. You're not exactly turning out to be the best decision I ever made."

"I didn't mean you," she said, barely whispering. "I meant the trellium injections."

"Just the first in a series of bad decisions, I'm sure." He looked away from her, at nothing. There was nothing to see. The white space went on forever, eternally empty but for the two of them. It seemed a fitting metaphor.

"This is why you wanted to watch films about people who escaped from prison," she said, around a lump in her throat. "You are hoping to escape from me."

"Well, I certainly am now," he snapped. "It was one thing when I thought I actually meant something to you, when I thought there was something mutual there. It kinda changes things, to know that I was really nothing more to you than a moment of addiction-driven weakness." His face twisted in disgust. "What a fool I was."

That, he had also said in the ready room.

The white space was tinged with red. The unbearable pain was everywhere: her chest, her head, her stomach, her shoulders. She had trapped him, without meaning to, without his consent. When he had not known that, they had for a time been able to work things out.

Now, knowing everything, knowing the worst of it, had destroyed everything between them. He wanted only to be free.

She owed him that, really. But at this point, there was only one way to give him back his freedom.

It really was the only logical course of action.

He looked at her sharply. A flicker of concern crossed his face. How comforting, to think that on some level he did still care. Even if it was nothing more than the concern any being would have for another in a time of crisis. She would carry that to the end, and let it give her strength for what she had to do.

"T'Pol?" he said. He leaned across and grabbed her shoulders, giving her a shake. But the white space was already fading away; she could see the familiar outlines of her quarters; she could see the unlit candle. She no longer felt him shaking her.

Back in her quarters, feeling curiously dissociated, she looked around. What would be fastest? She did not possess a knife. She did not keep toxins. Even the trellium she had left elsewhere, thinking that perhaps she would overcome her addiction on her own in the end.

There had to be something.

She went to the wall, feeling along it, and pried loose a panel. She ran her fingers along the EPS conduit there without touching it.

She would have to strip away some of the coating in order to access enough power.

She cast about for something that would serve.

"T'Pol!"

Trip's eyes snapped open. He was lying in his bunk. Instantly, he was on his feet and out the door, nearly colliding with a crew of workers in the corridor between his quarters and T'Pol's. They shoved and stumbled out of his way. He tripped over one of them, scrambled to his feet, and charged on.

He didn't bother with the annunciator. He let himself in.

She was lying on the floor next to a wall panel, and an open section of the EPS grid.

Trip hammered on the comm. "Phlox! Get down here!"

He dropped to his knees next to T'Pol, feeling for a pulse. He couldn't find one.

He laid her out on her back, opened her airway, and started CPR.

She was back in the white space, seated across from Trip. He looked wary.

"Don't ever do that again," he said, without anger.

"Where am I?" she asked.

"Sickbay."

"Where are you?"

"Also sickbay. I think Phlox and the Captain were almost as worried about me as they were about you. I think security personnel may have been involved. Also, more sedatives. It's kind of a blur." He looked around appraisingly. "Pretty sure I'm knocked out cold, at the moment."

"You should have let me go," she said.

"Oh, hell no," he replied. "Not a chance."

"I am imprisoning you. You wish to be free of me. I only know of one way to accomplish that. It was logical."

His sentiments regarding that statement involved stronger profanity than she had ever heard him use. She decided it would not be helpful to point out that logic could not copulate.

"T'Pol," he said, looking and sounding just a little bit desperate. "Listen. I'm sorry, okay? I'm sorry I yelled at you. I'm sorry I made you cry. I'm sorry I made you think that … that… that this could ever possibly, under any circumstances, be what I would want. I'm sorry."

He was utterly sincere now, unlike earlier, when he had been scornfully throwing her apology back in her face. But she did not want his apology. She did not want his pity, nor his guilt, nor even his kindness. She could not live with just those. "That does not change the fact that I have ruined your career and trapped you in a relationship not of your choosing, as a result of my own bad decisions." She met his gaze, uncertainly. If he truly wanted her gone, then she would certainly make another attempt on her own life — and she would take greater measures to ensure her success, the next time. She could not rest on half-measures now. "As a result of my impaired judgment resulting from my addiction to trellium-D."

He stared down into the space between them, where her candle would be if she were meditating. It was as if the floor had fallen away, and he was staring into a bottomless white abyss. How was it possible that either of them could ever find a way across? If they tried, it would surely kill them both.

"You told me," he said, without looking up, "that it was Sim who told you that I had feelings for you."

"He told me he had feelings for me. He could not speak for you."

"Well. I can speak for me." He looked up at her without raising his head. "I was completely hopeless over you already, before Amanda, and before Sim, and even before that — before the Seleya."

She returned his gaze. Her heart ached. She had always thought that humans were engaging in personifying imagery when they said that, but no: the ache was genuinely physical. It really did hurt. A lot. Enough that it was difficult to breathe.

"If it hadn't been for the Expanse, and for the trellium, and for…your…proposition, I don't know that I would have acted on those feelings — Captain Archer's opinion of my self-control notwithstanding, I really do take my position seriously, and I wouldn't ordinarily do anything to jeopardize that." He sat back, looking up, around, everywhere except at her. "What I'm trying to say is…it's not my feelings about you that I have doubts about. I'm not upset because I'm worried that maybe I don't really love you."

Their eyes met again, and the pain in her rib cage intensified until she thought it might bring her to tears again.

"I only really feel trapped if…" he looked away again, unable to finish.

"If I do not return your feelings," she finished.

He looked at her. He did not speak.

"This is something you were already concerned about," she said. "This is why you did not tell me you were returning to Enterprise until I demonstrated incontrovertibly my desire for your return."

He was still watching her. She guessed from his expression that his heart was probably hurting, too.

"Trip," she said, and for once the name did not feel awkward on her tongue. "I am new at feeling emotions, and managing them as humans do. I have found them powerful, and overwhelming. I had no names for them, not at first, not for a long time. I did not know what they were, exactly. But there is one that I am certain of, now. I didn't know what it was, but I do know that it has been there for a long time. Since we became close, in the Expanse, at the very latest, but possibly before that." It was still so hard to say it. Did humans find it hard to say? She did not know. "Trip. I love you."

He blinked, and tears ran down his cheeks. Yes, his heart had been hurting, too. Badly enough to bring him to tears.

And just like that, the uncrossable abyss was gone. Just like that, there was no more space between them, and she still could not breathe because he was holding her so tightly, as if he were afraid to loosen his grip; as if he were afraid to ever let her go.