Seleya Journey

Chapter 1

Disclaimer:  I don’t own Star Trek or any of its planets or peoples.  I’m not making money from this story, no copyright infringement is intended.

Keywords:  Vulcan’s Forge, bond

Summary:  Trip had never held his baby daughter in life…

A/N:  This is the sequel to another story “The Double Edge” (still in progress, but I could never write anything in strictly chronologic order) and the prequel to “As Easy as Breathing” (see what I mean?), but I believe all my leaping back in forth in time (in the grand traditions of Jean-Luc Picard and Sam Beckett among others) should not prevent this work from standing on its own.  Thanks to Asso for all the encouragement at the moments when it has been needed most!

Unspoken thoughts (as well as “Bond speech”) are shown in quoted “italics”.  Other italicized items depend upon context.

Across Desert Sands

Vulcan - 4 March, 2155

They left for Mount Seleya as the dry desert winds blew away the strongest heat of the day.  As T’Kuht rose, she painted the desert beyond the skimmer’s windows in muted shades of amber, apricot, deepest umber and palest gold.

While T’Pol maneuvered the low flying craft above the rugged terrain, Trip gazed at the landscape and, under his breath, murmured the formal Vulcan words he’d spent half the journey from Earth trying to memorize in preparation for what lay ahead.

“By this ritual, this um…?  This…?  Ritual is ho-rah, right?  Wait, no…  Divine… ritual?  Ekon ho-rah…  Damn, I thought I had it down pat this morning!”

He’d always hated public speaking!  That was probably at least part of what had set the butterflies dancing in his gut, even though the ceremony was gonna be just about private.  Usually he wasn’t bad at the memorizing part, but now, not only had the phrasing deserted him, even without Hoshi’s ear for languages, he knew the pronunciation still seemed off, not to mention the intonation and the grammar!

“Oh, well, Vulcan spoken in the cadences of the Florida panhandle…!  Go figure.”

“Your intention,” T’Pol’s crisp, steady voice came from beside him.  “Will speak louder than your articulation.  Much of this, remember, will be conducted in the mind.”

 “Right…”  At least one butterfly left the dance as he dropped the attempt and concentrated instead on adjusting the high, stiff collar of his Vulcan robes.

He’d hesitated about wearing them, standing for what seemed like forever in front of the closet door, gazing at the long, flowing garments.

Last time he wore them was on one of the most heart-grinding days of his life, as T’Pol and Koss exchanged marriage vows.  That was a memory he didn’t want rekindled by the familiar smooth touch of the fabric, especially tonight when that same heart was aching with a fresh sense of the second impending loss of his beautiful little Elizabeth.

Still, the robes had belonged to T’Pol’s father.  They had been presented to him by her mother.  There was unspoken compassion in T’Les’s dark eyes as she smoothed the fastenings at the front, then encouraged him to tell her daughter he was in love with her.

God, he’d wanted to dash right out and do just that.

“T’Pol, I love you!  Call off the damn wedding!  Better yet, hey…?  We’re all dressed up here already, so why not just walk on out there and marry me instead of him?”

He hadn’t done that.

How could T’Pol have sorted out what her best course would be when she was caught between the demands of Vulcan culture, tradition and politics?  When she was press to honor the betrothal her parents arranged during her childhood?  Was the intended target of the High Command’s sabotage of her mother’s university job?  When joining Koss’s family, with their connections in Vulcan society could restore T’Les’s position there?

But still…

“T’Pol, wait!  That’s no reason to marry this guy!  He scarcely knows you!  And you hardly know him!  Not enough to love him!  And he doesn’t love you…  Not like…”

“Like I love you!”

A declaration like that would have added one more complication for her to deal with.  So, he’d shaken his head and said T’Pol had too much on her plate already.

Something in T’Les’s discerning dark eyes hinted that she understood what lay beneath his words.  That, much as it hurt to hold his silence, he loved her daughter too much to do anything else.  Without either of them speaking about it, he recognized in the gentleness of T’Les’s touch as she made the final adjustments to his robes, that there was a new acceptance of him, human or not, as somebody who would have made a worthy son-in-law.

Now, it seemed only right and fitting to wear the robes in her honor as well as in that of her granddaughter.

Not that it did a single thing to make the tight, stiff collar any more comfortable.

How long now until they reached Seleya?

Sighing, he settled for running the phrases he’d soon be reciting through his mind rather than making any more tries at speaking them out loud.

In their English approximation, they were as formal as the robes, but somehow there was a solemn tenderness, a hope within the words that was kind of comforting.

“May your katra, your living spirit, be surrounded and nurtured by the boundless wisdom of the Universe…”

He didn’t know all the subtle shades of meaning in the original Vulcan words, only that they had been almost unpronounceable.  All he could do was pour as much love for his daughter into them as he could and hope he didn’t bungle the ones he would recite aloud in a way that rendered them meaningless.  Or worse, ridiculous.

“You will do fine, Trip.”  Again T’Pol’s voice came as a quiet reassurance from beside him.

Of course she’d sensed his apprehension and the heartache beneath it, like he did hers.  He quirked a small, grateful smile in her direction.  The ceremony ahead was supposed to be elegant, even serene.  But it sure wasn’t gonna be easy.  Not for either of them.

Turning a little in his seat, he reached out to touch her sleeve, intensifying the communication pouring through their bond.

“We’ll both do all right, T’Pol.  I’m here for you.  Strong beside you, like you’ve been for me.  We’ll bring each other through this.  Bring our… our family… through this.”

It seemed to him that, even if it was not exactly delivered with the precision of words, the essence of his silent message was deeper than any language he ever knew, even though he understood their bond was still working its determined way toward completion.  Its growth had gone un-nurtured for so many long, frustrating, often hurtful months before they’d both realized what the confusing connection between them was.  They’d only begun to accept it, to explore…

“…and to revel… how about to absolutely rejoice!”

…in it when they were confronted with the surprise of Elizabeth’s existence, her illness and, before they had almost any chance to delight in her birth, they had to face the inevitability of her death.  Since then, while T’Pol carried the katra of their child, they had concentrated far less on sharpening their skills for detailed, specific communication than on the simple, steady assurance of their love for each other.  For the sustaining strength it provided so that T’Pol’s deepest focus could be directed inward, to nurture Elizabeth until they could make this, their final journey together as what she had made them- a family.

“Final.  That was a damned painful word, even if where they were going, what they were doing, was a good thing.  Even maybe a healing thing.”

“But it was gonna be so…  Well, the word said it all, didn’t it?  So… final!”

Still, the comradeship of his touch had been enough to ease some of the tension thrumming through T’Pol’s body.  The muscles beneath his hand relaxed as a returning wave of gratitude washed through him.  Gratitude and… there was something more.

Trip closed his eyes and, through their bond, looked at T’Pol.  He’d sensed before that, far deeper than could be explained by logic, her very body grieved for the baby she’d never carried within her womb.  But now he was awed by the depths of her sweet and fierce maternal protectiveness that had cocooned itself around the small, vague presence that was Elizabeth.

And around that cocoon, was a deep and somehow lonely sadness.

He wouldn’t presume to tell her he knew how she felt.  Even within a bond there must be a respect for the privacy of the other person’s individual experience.  Maybe especially there.  But he could offer her the quiet of his company, so neither one of them would have to carry their sorrows alone.

“I grieve with thee.”

Trip found her hand and circled it within his own.

Even through the sadness, it was a real sweet thing, to be holding T’Pol’s hand!  Real fine.  Always had been, ever since the first time she’d allowed it.  Even better when, like the time a few weeks back during a party at his folks’ house, she’d been the one to initiate that particular contact.

This time the sweetness was tinged with both relief and regret.

The bulky numbness in his fingers was finally gone, taking, (thank God!) that awful pins-and-needles prickle with it.  The dragging pain in his shoulder had dimmed to little more than an occasional dull ache.  He’d been free of both the sling and the neuro-stim band for close to a week and motion was starting to seem kind of natural again.  The last time he’d seen Phlox about it, the doctor assured him the remaining aftereffects of the injury he’d sustained at Mars Colony were well on the way to disappearing altogether.

“But that injury…  That damned injury…!”

It was Phlox, himself the father to five children, that Trip had been able to express the deepest pain of it to.  “I never got to do more than let her hold my finger through the glove insert in that damn incubator.”  he’d said.  “Between that awful little sterile box she was in and this shoulder injury, I never once got to carry her in my arms or rock her against my heart until she fell asleep…”

“Never had.  Never would.”

Final journey.

“No, this wasn’t gonna be easy.”

Sighing, Trip lifted his hand from T’Pol’s before the wave of regret could wash back across the bond to her.  It looked like she wasn’t the only one whose body grieved for a child it had never carried.

But dwelling on it wouldn’t do any good right now.  It sure as hell wouldn’t help T’Pol’s concentration as they skimmed over roughening terrain.  Wouldn’t help them get through the ceremony.  He’d better go back to centering his mind on his recitation again.

“Ekon hoo…” he began.  Then stalled.  “Ekon…?”

"Crap.”

Or, maybe, so he wouldn’t over-think and end up scrambling the words any worse than he had moments ago, he should just focus on the harsh beauty of the landscape again, watch the light pouring down from T’Khut and see whether he could figure out which of the approaching mountains was Seleya.