Blue on Blue

Chapter Eighteen

It was an irrational aspect of her growing fatigue that now, when she knew the captain was safe at her side, she almost expected to find Trip liberated from the tumble of rocks and debris.  He hadn’t been.  The one difference she could see was that he had lifted the scanner so that it lay on his chest and had one hand curled around it.

Jonathan lurched away from T’Pol’s grasp, then dropped to his knees beside his friend.  Once again, a hand emerged from beneath the makeshift cape, circled Trip’s arm with fingers that still jittered at intervals.  

“Trip!”  At the lack of response, Jonathan glanced over his shoulder at her.  “didn’t tell me…” His words trailed off. 

This was an unforeseen response to those careful word choices she had made on the way here in order to avoid talking about the meld.  Semantics carried its own set of consequences; so did shame, she decided, seeing the lines of worry form around Jonathan’s tired eyes.

“Would a description have gotten us here any faster?”  She asked, moving to Trip’s other side and lowering herself to the ground in careful stages on legs that threatened to buckle.  Turning her attention from the captain, she touched Trip’s shoulder and watched to see if his eyes would open. 

They didn’t.  “Commander?” She moved her hand to the pulse point in the angle of his jaw. 

Jonathan watched.  “You said he told you where I was…” 

“He did.  He was semi-conscious.  I will tell you…” she began.

Later. 

She would tell him later.  He was her captain.  He was Trip’s friend.  He had a right to know what had happened, especially if her impulse to use the meld had caused Trip any further harm.  No matter that he had gone along with the idea and encouraged her when she faltered.  She had made the suggestion, assumed the responsibility and…

Had that been movement beneath her hand?  The faintest turn of his head?

“Commander Tucker!” T’Pol said.  The challenging tone had had some effect before.  It might again.  At least to get his attention long enough to deliver her message.  “I want you to open your eyes.  I want you to see who’s here with me at this moment.”

Nothing.  She exchanged looks with Jonathan.

“Hey, Trip,” said Jonathan.  “Can you hear me?”

There was an echo in her head.  Captain…  Can you…? Over the hill, that word, that call had beckoned.  Then along the trail and into the mine, how long ago now? 

“Captain?” 

That was no echo.  Trip’s eyes were open. 

“I’m here, Trip.”

Several seconds passed.  Trip blinked, then worked to focus a wavering gaze that in turn filled with hope, disbelief, amazement and at last, relief.  His smile was small, tired, little more than that quirk at the corner of his mouth, but his entire face was lit with it.  “Good to see you…  Captain.  Even if… you look… terrible!”

Above the makeshift cape of her jacket, Jonathan’s shadowed, exhausted face split with that rare and total smile.  “Haven’t seen a mirror lately, have you?”

T’Pol looked from one to the other as their gaze held for several seconds.  What was it about human males that, in emotionally intense situations, caused them to express their affection by insulting each other?

“T’Pol?” Trip turned his head just enough that she sensed the weight of his cheek against the hand which had been seeking his pulse.  “You did it!” he said, not letting go the scanner, but making a small gesture with it toward the captain.

“No, Trip.” she corrected, brushing the side of his face where she had activated the meld and willing him to understand.  “We did it.”

The words rang clear in her memory.  My mind to your mind…  We will find him…  Our minds are one.

But they weren’t.  The connection had gone silent.  Why, when they had done what they set out to do, was she remembering that draining sense of separation?

“Okay.” Trip said.  His face still leaned against her hand.  That quirk of a smile came again.  She felt it against her palm even as his eyes drifted closed.  “Won’t…”   

She thought he was about to say “won’t argue with you”, or perhaps “won’t disagree”, but consciousness had fled.

“We’ve got to get him out of this,” Jonathan was caught in another bout of shivering, but he staggered to his feet and carefully began to shift the uppermost stone.  Without a word, T’Pol rose and circled the rock it rested against with both hands, found its balancing point and held fast until the other was safely moved.  Then, aware of the packed, dry dirt beneath her fingers, she loosened her own stone.

Stone with sharp edges.  That one goes to the canister.  Or should it be the case…?

No, all that sorting…  That was Trip, back in the cave, not her.  She was in the tunnel lifting a stone that should go on the ground.  A stone and another and when they were gone, she’d make certain Trip was covered up warm.  She’d douse Jonathan’s blanket with the rest of the coffee and bundle him up again too.  She would go to the entrance and contact the ship, find the search party…  She would…  She was going to…  She was… was getting so… Incredibly tired.

Jonathan’s worried eyes met hers, equally weary.  She could see his hands shaking around the edges of the rock he held.  “Was he like this when you found him?”

“He was…” she roused herself to consider. “Conscious for longer intervals.  But I believe much of that was driven by his desperation that I locate you.”

“And he managed to tell you how to find me?  That’s amazing.”

“It was…”  She began. 

It was illogical in light of her thoughts about the consequences of evasive semantics, to now find herself still seeking to avoid discussing the fact that she had engaged Trip in a mind meld.  She looked at the captain over a large, grey rock and searched for words.  But she was too tired to seek out an explanation of something she only in part understood herself, and habits of a lifetime could not be so quickly overcome.  “It was a matter of much… interpretation,” she managed.

“Well, I’m glad the two of you could ‘interpret’ each other so well.”  T’Pol couldn’t read the mix of emotions in his voice:  Amusement, annoyance, perhaps even an awareness of something withheld.  They were all overlaid with fatigue. She would, had to, tell him what she had done, but not right now.   Not when he was so tired.  Not when she was so tired that all the voices of memory kept repeating, lonely and dream-like in her head.

My mind to your mind…

Sometime when it didn’t demand all their combined concentration to keep maneuvering one rock…

Can you hear me?

After another…

Captain?

And another…

“Captain?”