it may take centuries

T'POL.

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code by jerky▹

SA-013-8294-VR

THIS IS LIEUTENANT COMMANDER T'POL.

Respond.

[T'Pol is very smart. She knows this, just as she knows she is prone to pride. And she knows by now that every time she uses her abilities, she is hurting herself. The logic is simple: the more she changes things, the harder she tries, the weaker she feels. She should stop, before she makes herself a prime target for any of the Humans.

No, that's not right; they aren't all like the Terrans she knows. But she has no doubt that someone on this ship is willing to treat it like a prison. So she should stop.

But the more she thinks it, the less inclined she is. When she leaves her room, she thinks it's cold, and rather than fetch a sweater, she warms the corridor around her. She warms everything around her, turning each room she walks through into Vulcan's distant desert. It's a faded memory in her mind, but since her failure to return home in Paris, she's been unable to banish it from her thoughts.

There is nothing she can do here, and the Barge dragged her back within sight of Vulcan. She was minutes from feeling Nevassa's warmth on her skin again, but instead she is here, wandering like a ghost, something less than - something less.

She still goes to work in the kitchens to prepare for dinner, no doubt making the room uncomfortably warm until the heat from the ovens takes over, and in the gym for the night shift, where she definitely cranks up the temperature. She's as quiet and reserved - and disdainful - as ever, but she's looking more and more fatigued as the days drag on.]

[Private to Barbara]

Do you still require assistance with the engines?

[Private to Steve]

[And later:] I need your permission to work in the engine room.

[The first few days, T'Pol refuses to leave the Barge. It's Earth, it's twenty-first century Earth and thus everything T'Pol never wanted to see. There is no scientific curiosity, she tells herself, that could convince her to go out among those monsters. This is the century of First Conquest. This is the century that the T'Plana-Hath will land in Bozeman, Montana in peace only to have its crew gunned down by the unpredictably violent Humans. She paces her room and grinds her teeth and wonders how far that date is, how many years until - or since - Vulcans attempted first contact. Have the crew's bodies been autopsied yet?

Eventually, that's what brings her off the Barge. She has to know how close this world is to April 5th, 2063.

She doesn't speak the languages: Earth Standard became English before its third World War, and T'Pol has never had occasion or reason to learn French. She knows pieces, mostly picked up as unexpected transference from the occasional mind-meld. That is what she does once her feet are on solid ground again: it would be easier to use her newfound abilities to connect her PADD to a news network, but it is more satisfying to corner a Human in a back alley, to leave sloppy traces in her thoughts, fingerprints on her brain that this century - this species - will never fully understand. What is one Human to her?

She gets the date: it will be more than half a century before the T'Plana-Hath lands. And that is when the idea begins to form.

T'Pol passes another day considering; in the end, she decides, there is no decision at all. The answer she arrives at is the only possible answer. The Admiral made the mistake of giving her his abilities. She will use them to protect her people from Humanity.

The Enterprise was constructed at Jupiter Station, but Jupiter isn't settled yet. Not even the moon is settled yet, and T'Pol cannot wait for technology to catch up. She doesn't have to. Somewhere above the Kármán line, well out of Earth's atmosphere, a fully functional starship suddenly exists. It seemed a simple act, a thought made real, but it takes its toll as all things must. She slumps against a space of empty wall, ignoring the buzz of an active Parisian street around her to get lost in the buzzing in her head. Her head still tilts up, looking in vain for something too far for even her eyes to see.

Later, much later, when she's recovered enough to move (to remember the point of all this, to save Vulcan), T'Pol takes herself to the ship and sets a course. She takes the captain's chair, revels in the silence of a ship empty of Humans, and promptly loses consciousness.]

[Late on Sunday night, T'Pol wanders the Barge. It's not like stalking the quiet halls of Enterprise while the majority of the ship slept: on the Starfleet vessel, there was no avoiding gamma shift or security. Here, she can wander the halls and, more often than not see no one. No one on duty, no one serving the ship or running errands. It still strikes her as strange.

No, not strange. It's just ludicrous. Too many of them trust, even after the absurdity of seeing a hundreds-foot tall....magma creature walk through a tear in reality. (There is a muted, distant part of her that is desperate to study the phenomena. It's almost silenced under the weight of all she learned on the command track in Starfleet.) Too many of them think that the death toll is an acceptable fall back - and though she can't deny it, T'Pol can forgive laziness, either.

She's been watching the antics as the days have dragged on: she can'd deny that the return of her wash room was a welcome change, but the rest? What purpose does any of it serve?

It's as she walks, restless, that she finally stops debating how best to use these abilities and just uses them. Aboard Enterprise, she always kept her door locked fast, but any senior officer had a code to override that lock. There was more than one occasion that she was glad to sleep with both her knife and phaser in reach. So as she strides down a hall, she removes a door with a glance. Maybe if they all fear a little more, they'll manage to instigate something useful - like martial law - on a ship that sorely needs it.

What she should really do, she thinks, is take herself somewhere else. The only thing stopping her from trying tonight is that she doesn't know where her best destination lays: Vulcan is a ruin, and if Sato has taken control of the Empire then it's nowhere that T'Pol wants to be.

The exhaustion sets in after the fourth floor; her pace, brisk at the start, slows to practically plodding. Her eyes are half closed, and she can't remember having this little energy on the Barge - outside of the death toll, at least. That thought sets her teeth on edge, so she pushes it back, and heads for her room.

There, she installs Enterprise's arsenal, and gazes blankly at the mass of phase pistols and rifles before she passes out in her bed. It's probably the best sleep she's had in a very long while.

In the morning, she walks the ship to make sure it wasn't a dream - she's been having far fewer of them, nearly none, since Captain Rogers started insisting on regular meditation with her, but T'Pol has learned to trust little here. Well, okay, she's learned to trust little anywhere.

She doesn't smile when she sees the doors gone, of course she doesn't. But she does lift her chin a little, looking into each room as carefully as she can without being too obvious. Eventually, she makes her way to the mess hall (in her Starfleet uniform, with her old weapons, a knife and phaser, strapped to each hip), and instead of waiting online to find something edible out of the Human line up, she takes a seat at an empty table. In a blink, there is a bowl of plomeek broth in front of her. She hasn't had it - she hasn't had proper Vulcan food at all - in years. The taste is almost enough to give her an emotional reaction.]

[Spam for Steve]

[When she wakes....no. That is incorrect. She was never asleep. It all rushes in with consciousness, one fell swoop of being aware and remembering and the sudden surge makes her want to scream. Her outer eyelids peel back, and a moment later so do her inner ones. She clenches her jaw shut tight, and for a moment she wishes she were on Enterprise. At least waking up in this kind of agony would make sense in his sickbay.

But she knows everything. Captain Rogers' body. His shield. Its weight on her arm and his friend's knife finding her heart. How did he know? Her thoughts immediately head in that direction, he must have known, it was perfectly aimed to put down a Vulcan. She was wrong to think the Terran Empire had no sway here, it doesn't matter if they come from worlds with slavery or without, because in the end they're all Human and that is little better than monster.

She doesn't scream. She learned long ago not to give anyone the satisfaction of her pain. But she does start to push herself up to get a dizzying view of the infirmary, ignoring the way it spins and twists in her vision. She'll stumble out of here if she has to.]

[Spam for Dean, forward dated]

[By all rights, she should still be in the infirmary. She should, at the very least, continue resting in her quarters. But the idea of sitting in there for hours, staring at the steel of her ceiling, laying in her blue sheeted bed, surrounded by the largely undecorated, plain, Human Starfleet issue room makes her want to scream more than the pain ever did. So she reports for duty on the dinner shift more than a couple days early. Her skin prickles, her anger hovers in the air around her. It makes her feel less brittle. It makes her feel strong.

All thoughts of suppressing her emotion are slipping away. Around any corner may be another Sergeant Barnes. Around any corner may be whoever killed Captain Rogers. May be another Human. But why give way to fear or paranoia when she can slip into rage like a second skin?

(Fear is always the root. Surak said, Dakh pthak. Nam-tor ri ret na'fan-kitok fa tu dakh pthak. Cast out fear. There is no room for anything else until you cast out fear. But fear so easily turns to other things, and she follows those threads without a single thought for Surak's teachings. All they ever did was teach Vulcans to lay down and die.)

She cuts onions without her eyes reddening or tearing, inner eyelids safely shut. She slams the knife down too hard, clenches her fingers around it tight enough that green blood pools to her finger tips, leaves her knuckles white. It's so different from her usual state of being, and only so much of it can be attributed to the death toll's lingering effects.]

[When she turns on the feed, the misgivings aren't clear in her expression, but she most certainly feels them. Out of sight, her hands are clenched into fists, white knuckled as she concentrates on control. She keeps it simple.]

This is Lieutenant Commander T'Pol, formerly of the ISS Enterprise, SA-013-8294-VR.

[She's considering leaving at at that - well that and her really intense stare - but she only pauses for a moment before continuing.]

Who rules the Terran Empire?

[She needs to know if the plan worked. She needs to know if the Defiant was destroyed. Needs it in ways she can't describe, because if she died for nothing - if she is trapped here and Archer has taken command of an entire Empire--

No 'then' follows. She knows the logical end, and cannot stomach it.]

( ooc: fourth wall! yay! everyone is welcome, but I'll sell a kidney to anyone bringing mirror!Trek muses! )

[Spam for Steve]

( she is used to dreams )

[Public Voice]

[T’Pol is still so far from herself when she makes this post that she’s surprised she manages to hide it. Her voice is level, unhurried, unbothered.

And just below the icy surface, she practically boils.]

I will be returning to my regular duties on the dinner shift and boot camp.

[There is a pause here, as though that might be the entirety of her message. She considered asking about the dreams of the Barge as a whole and decided against it before she even turned on the recording. She considers it again, now, and her frustration burns a little hotter at the experience of second guessing herself. She needs focus.]

Are there other areas in which I may be of service? [Because the prospect of spending one shift every night working, and every hour of the rest of the day thinking on her coma is maddening.]

[Open Spam]

[T'Pol can't recall the last time she was given a gift. She thinks it must have happened, at some point: it's highly likely her parents presented her with items for education. She doesn't recall them in detail, though. Faced with so many presents from a group of people who are, effectively, strangers, she stops trying to remember; the past is not important, the same as so many of these gifts are not important.

She doesn't put stock in material wealth, and never has. She understands it, certainly - well enough to use against others. But possessions have never been important to her. She hasn't owned anything in years.

So, really, she has no idea what to do with this new found wealth. Which means she's as clinically logical and practical about it as she can be. The clothing she inspects carefully for anything dangerous - satisfied with their safety, she puts them away, behind her duty uniforms. Not because she prefers the Starfleet issue, but because they are what is familiar. Another time, she will decide what she actually likes to wear for herself, but for now that lies unimportant. Everything else decorative and useless she puts away rather than hangs up, save for the Everstone from MewTwo. That she displays on her desk, the one decoration her quarters have ever seen.

Everything Vulcan is stored in a box and shoved into the back of her wardrobe. Old habits die hard, if they ever do. She almost regrets tucking away the wall hangings. It has been so long since she's been surrounding by anything but cold Earth blues. That is seized upon as unnecessarily emotional, though, and she shoves it away fiercely.

In the end, she returns to the clothing and grudgingly selects a sweater and jeans, annoyed to be accepting the gift. She doesn't like owing favors. But the temperature has reached intolerable levels, so she dresses more warmly, and heads out into the ship.

Most of her day is spent wandering, committing every inch of the ship to memory. She can be found in the halls, working out in the gym - from a corner, of course, where no one can sneak up on her - and, briefly, walking through greenhouse. Everything is too flush, there, the flora too Human; she leaves quickly. Come dinner time, she works her shift in the mess hall, following instruction in cooking. She's not bad at it, so long as there are directions. Cooking is a science of its own, after all, and she is predisposed. It's good that most meals are buffet style: serving she is much less predisposed to.

And at some point in the evening, she discovers that there are labs just beyond her reach. She loiters there, considering asking after the every day monitoring that must occur in there; instead, she waits for someone to let her in.

Much later, closer to the morning than the middle of the night, T'Pol leaves her quarters again when sleep eludes her. She winds her way up and down the Barge, eventually finding herself back in the dining hall. Finding it abandoned, she hesitates in the door way, glancing over her shoulder, up and down the hall, before heading for a table with a low burning candle. She pulls it toward her, staring at the flame and trying to meditate.]

[Private to Bucky]

Captain Rogers has volunteered you as my secondary warden.

[If he listens reeeeaaaaal close, he can hear the irony in her voice.]

( these voices in the mirror start quietly ) [Public Video] [She is inexpressive by most Human standards, calm and collected. Any Vulcan would see the struggle in her: T'Pol's emotions have always been close to the surface. Still, she is solemn as she tucks her hair back behind one delicately pointed ear, and doesn't waste words.] Have I been brought here as a slave? ( dear Admiral ) (ooc: T'Pol is about 5, and tags will be coming from closetothesurface!)

[The video clicks on to a very composed Vulcan. Anyone who saw her when she arrived might note that the gash across her cheek is gone, and there's only one light bruise left on her jaw; everything else visible has been neatly healed. She also looks a hell of a lot calmer than she did: the constant fight or flight response in her has been muted for the moment. That doesn't mean she's giving away any identifying information about where she is, though; the feed is focused on her face. For those who'd notice, the pointed tips of her ears are visible between locks of her hair: she has never tempered her pride well enough to hide what she is.]

I have a question to pose to all passengers [she says this with the faintest hint of irony; she knows at least a third of them are prisoners] aboard this ship. I understand that many of you come from a time when interstellar travel is not yet feasible. Regardless of your place in your galaxy, I would like to know more about where you come from.

What year is it? How does your government function? Describe the sociopolitical climate.

And avoid any personal indulgences.

[She wants to know about the various represented universes, not so much the people here. Then, as an afterthought she adds:] What was the result of the war game that was recently played?

[Laser tag is still fucking illogical.]

[Private to Marsh]

[It didn't take long to sort out how to send private messages, even without identifying information beyond a name.]

I was informed you function as a clothier aboard this ship. Was that information correct?

[Open Spam]

[She is not dead.

It is the first logical, and yet supremely illogical conclusion that she reaches. Her slowly waking mind tells her that she is reclined, her back pressed uncomfortably against a bulkhead. She reaches for each facts, and cannot make sense of them: she is in pain. She is breathing. She is not trapped, beyond the heavy restraints still linking her wrists together. Beyond the bruises she can feel deepening, and the bones that may be sprained, and the blood creeping along her skin, she can hear the sounds of people moving about. She is not dead, and as that thought settles, she forces her eyes open.

She is not in the empty room Archer used for interrogation, either. It's a dimly lit hall, unlike any aboard Defiant or Avenger; it's nothing like any ship she's seen, and she can't decide if that is cause for cautious hope, or expectation of pain. When the first Humans stumble gleefully past her, T'Pol presses herself against the wall and decide it's most likely the latter. That they don't turn their weapons on her she attributes to poor observation, and takes stock of her injuries: the cut along her cheek must have opened again, and she can remember something slicing into her side before everything became blackness. She had thought it was the bulkhead exploding in, had accepted the fierce joy that had filled her when she realized the Defiant was on the verge of destruction. It hadn't mattered if it would take her with it.

That it hadn't was baffling. Inching to her feet, using the bulkhead to steady herself in lieu of having free hands, T'Pol pauses to steady her breathing. Blood covers her bare side, stark green against tan skin. Judging by the fact that she still defies logic and continues to breathe, her heart isn't been pierced: that's fortunate, perhaps. There are other injuries, more superficial - Jonathan Archer was not known as a kind interrogator by anyone, and though it was well known that Vulcan discipline makes physical punishment rather pointless, that has never stopped Humans from exercising their supposed superiority.

T'Pol can taste coppery blood on her tongue, and swallows past a wash of dizziness. The pain is tolerable. What is intolerable is not knowing where she is, or how she got here. She starts forward, unsteady at first but quickly regaining her balance. She cannot hide that she is hurt, but she can bury all weakness.]

( Permissions Form )

( there is room for nothing until you remove fear )

( blah blah blah )

( I am not a slave )

( Alles kommt anders als geplant )

( They'll be laying flowers on my life )

( vulcans don't believe in that shit )