Missing Scenes from Season Two: Regeneration

By Alelou

Rating: G

Genres: missing scene

Keywords:

This story has been read by 857 people.
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This story is number 23 in the series Missing Scenes from Season Two


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SPOILERS: “Regeneration”

DISCLAIMER: Star Trek belongs to CBS/Paramount.  “Regeneration” was written by Mike Sussman and Phyllis Strong.

AUTHOR’S NOTE: Thank you as always, reviewers and [intermittent] beta jT.


 

When she went to the mess hall that night for a cup of chamomile tea, T’Pol noted that Commander Tucker was slumped over a mug and most of a piece of pie, but didn’t appear to be eating or drinking.  Instead he was staring tiredly at nothing; he hadn’t even looked up when she had come into the otherwise empty room.

“May I join you?” she asked.

He looked up and squinted at her.  “Can’t promise I’ll be good company.”

“My primary purpose in sitting here would be to drink my tea.”

He smiled and gestured at the seat in front of her.  “Shouldn’t be a problem, then.”

She sat and sipped. 

He took a sip of what she could smell was coffee and grimaced.  “Excuse me while I warm this up a little.”  He got up stiffly and walked over to the beverage dispenser and re-filled his cup, rolling his neck on his shoulders as he went.  She reflected once again that this discomfort would be easy to eliminate with neuropressure, if she could offer it to him, which she couldn’t.  That was assuming he would even accept it.  She had once offered to teach him Vulcan meditation techniques and he had said, “Thanks, but I’ve never had any luck with human meditation techniques.  I don’t think adding another layer of weirdness to it is going to help me any.”

“Perhaps you should ask Phlox for an analgesic,” she said.

“Nah, I’ll be fine.”

“How are repairs going?”

“All the important stuff’s done.  There’s just a lot of cleaning up, now.  But I want to go back and scour those plasma relays for any leftover alien hardware.  I’m going to have nightmares about green stuff taking over the ship if I don’t.”

“There is no indication that their hardware propagates spontaneously outside of an organic environment.”

“Outside of a person, you mean?”  His expression had darkened.  “We use nano-probes ourselves to diagnose problems and scrub conduits, and keeping track of them can be a real pain in the ass.  Who knows what they are capable of?”

“Even if they left something behind, any ability to control it was probably lost with their ship.”

He grimaced.  “We hope.”

“I could set up some additional internal scans.  Even small, incremental changes should be easy to notice.”

“That sounds good,” he said.  “But I still want to take another look at that area myself.  At least the stuff is easy to see in that day-glo green.  I’d say that was a tactical error on their part.”  He stretched his neck again.

“It’s after 0200.  You should get some sleep.  Perhaps someone from your gamma shift team could begin the project.”

“Gamma got roused out of their beds for the tactical alert, so they’re not going to be that much better off than I am.  I’m used to going without sleep.”  He took another sip of coffee.

This was unfortunately true.  After the incident with the cogenitor, she had often found the commander haunting the mess hall in the early morning hours – but she had hoped that traumatic episode was now in the past.  “Perhaps milk would be a better choice than coffee at this hour.”

 “Yeah, if I wasn’t trying to stay awake.” 

With any other crewman except Archer, she would have simply made it an order to go to bed, but she was reluctant to do that with Tucker, which suddenly struck her as odd.  Was this a relic of their early service together, when the chain of command had often been a source of friction between them? 

The reality was that they had, over the years, adopted an unspoken pattern of consulting together as equals which only really changed when she was in command and Archer was absent – and even then Tucker sometimes resisted her orders.

This had had some unfortunate results.  He had felt free to ignore her suggestions about the cogenitor.  And he would undoubtedly feel free to ignore her suggestion to get some sleep now – perhaps even more so if she made it an order. 

Which meant, objectively speaking, that Tucker had successfully resisted her authority. 

She frowned, staring at his head bowed over his coffee mug.  This should probably bother her as a supervisory failure on her part.   However, they had reached a kind of equilibrium that usually worked fairly well, and she saw little logic in getting into a power struggle with him now. 

Besides, one could always attempt to manage peers and even one’s own supervisor.  With Archer she had learned that certain pointed remarks, especially when delivered somewhat obliquely, could sometimes spark the desired result.  (They could also make him angry, depending on how determined he was to follow the course he had settled upon.) Tucker tended to respond better to a more direct approach; indeed, she generally tried to get his full attention face-to-face when he needed persuading, even stepping into his ‘personal space’ if the matter was important enough.

That was problematic at the moment, with a table between them.  “You need sleep,” she said, leaning forward.  She pinned him with a steady gaze and said, “I am sure you would be the first to tell your staff it is unwise to work with plasma flow regulators when you are fatigued.”

He met her eyes for a long moment, then sighed again, visibly capitulating.  “Okay.  I’ll try to sleep.  But if I have nightmares about glowing green tubes running amuck, it’s your fault.”

“That is a risk I am willing to take.”

He chuckled briefly and got to his feet.  “Don’t suppose you want the rest of my pie?”

“You may leave it,” she said.  She could clear his dishes for him.  “Goodnight, Commander.”

“G’night, T’Pol,” he said, and trailed his fingertips briefly over her shoulder as he walked off.

She deliberately sipped the remainder of her tea and stared at his nearly-untouched pie and pondered the many ways in which extended service on a Human ship had changed her. 

This was the first time since the abortive handshake when they first met that Tucker had attempted to touch her in a purely social way, and this time he hadn’t even given her a choice about it: he’d just reached out and done it. 

It should have irritated her. 

Instead, it had felt… surprisingly agreeable.

 


Comments:

Starwatcher

I totally agree with Honeybee'd first comment here: Regeneration is one of my favourite S2 episodes too and I like the little addition that you've made.

Alelou

Thanks very much, Transwarp -- but re continuity -- really I get to cheat on that, compared to show's writers.  One, I get to show you the character's interior thoughts.  Even more importantly, I have the very great benefit of already knowing all the upcoming shows, and not just the scripts but how they were played.  So these aren't really missing scenes so much as hindsight is 20/20 scenes.

Transwarp

This missing scene is very good; I'd have to count it among my favorites.  I think what I like most is the way you show the comfortable working relationship they've developed, and T'Pol's introspection that reveals her high regard for him.

But I am also greatly impressed by the way your missing scenes hang together, forming a story arc of their own.  Ah, if only the show had such continuity...

bluetiger

The fact that T'Pol realizes that they confer on things as equals was a good call. It is a good explanation as to why he sometimes did not follow her orders to the letter.

As tired as Trip was, he may not have realized that he brushed his fingers across her shoulder. That is what he would have done to another friend without thinking.

SHIA

SEEMS TO ME YOU ARE WORKING YOUR WAY UP TO SOME NERO PRESSURE  ;)  I LIKED IT READY TO READ MORE . THANKS FOR YOUR EFFORTS

Aikiweezie

:D Sweet!

Elessar

TOUCH! THEY TOUCHED! :)

Asso

Ah finally. How long for the end of season two?:p

Reanok

Nice to see their friendhip deepen in this story and T'Pol's concern for Trip and the changes they've gone through over the past year.

panyasan

G’night, T’Pol,” he said, and trailed his fingertips briefly over her shoulder as he walked off. I loved that line. Like this one very much, nice setup for NP.

Kotik

:D

 

Great stuff this. This second season is even better than your first one. I really like how you're setting up their growing friendship and the subtle setup of the Neuropressure in the future is pure genius :)

I hope we won't have to beg for a season 3 ;)

Honeybee

Regeneration is one of my favorite second season episodes - and one of the things I liked about it is that just a handful of borg are super scary - and that the episode deals with the failure to rescue the assimilated humans. You've really captured the good things about the episode here, in a TnT friendly context. Trip would be traumatized by it, and he's reacting very in character. So is she. Good job.

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