Reflecting to You

Chapter 1

Spoilers: In a Mirror Darkly, Part I, and Terra Prime

Summary: A different ending to In a Mirror Darkly, Part I, results in the Mirror Universe T'Pol ending up on our universe's Enterprise when the relationship between Trip and T'Pol is at a breaking point. (later becomes a cross-over with ST:TOS)

Disclaimer: None of it's mine. I'm just a sad little fangirl that spends her days writing fanfic and watching taped episodes of her favorite shows :(

With much gratitude: I want to thank my techno-lohtar, Sierra Phoenix, who makes posting of my fics possible, and to boushh for beta’ing this story for me. You guys are the best!

Commander Jonathan Archer gritted his teeth in fury as the Defiant rocked under his feet. They would not take his ship; barely his but he would have it and to hell with anyone or anything that stood in his way.

“Get this ship out of dock NOW!” he roared at his scant crew aboard the futuristic ship’s bridge. The shattered remnants of their old ship, the Enterprise, glistened against the white starlight and yellow glow of the Tholian web blockading them. Archer glowered out at the remains of the Terran Empire flagship he had once schemed and plotted to command, and there was no remorse for those lost aboard her. He thought only of his new captaincy of an infinitely mightier ship. The promise of this vessel being at his command narrowed his thoughts to simple, direct objectives. First free the ship, take her reins and dominate her power, then turn that fire upon the Tholians. Archer would prove them too weak to deserve this glorious vessel.

Mayweather tried to jimmy the navigational controls and the ship gave a vicious jerk and buck in reply but did not break from its locked position within the hollowed meteor. T’Pol lost her grip on the science station read-out and fell to the floor, unnoticed and unattended.

Mayweather growled and slammed the control panel savagely. “We’re stuck!”

“Get us UNstuck!” Archer barked.

Mayweather, correctly fearing for his life based upon his superior officer’s rising rage, slammed a fist into the control console again and hissed, “Work, damn you!”

From his engineering console to Archer’s left came Tucker’s voice. “We’ve broken free of all of the moorings but one!” He turned his face, plasma-burned side toward his now-commanding officer, so it was a drooping, partially-closed eye that pierced Archer’s. “The main docking clamp won’t disconnect.”

Archer snarled like a rabid animal and shifted in his seat restlessly just as the ship rocked when another volley from one of the Tholian ships targeted their own stolen prize. They would sooner destroy it than let Archer have it . . . a fact the Defiant’s new captain took very personally.

Archer turned his fury on Tucker. “You better figure out a way to break that clamp, Commander Tucker, or you’ll die before the rest of us, I promise you that!”

Tucker’s disfigured profile sneered sinisterly at the threat but he turned back to his work with due haste.

T’Pol, climbing to her feet, braced herself on the railing that surrounded the depressed middle section of the bridge and bent her knees to better meet the lurching beneath her. Her hair, disheveled, caught on the delicate tips of her ears and stuck to her lips. She dared not spare a hand to reach up and remove the strands that were lending their gritty taste to the tip of her tongue.

“We’re receiving a hail from the Tholians,” Hoshi turned in her seat at the comms station and regarded Archer with an arrogant smirk, despite the tethered ship they occupied. There was a condescending amusement in the Asian woman’s expression, as though the possibility of death was little more than a background noise on a comms and she could not be earnestly bothered by it. “They demand our immediate surrender.”

“Never! Tucker!!” Archer bellowed.

Tucker spun in his seat and faced Archer head-on, half-burned face shadowed in the emergency lighting of the bridge. “Someone will have to go down and manually blow the main clamp connecting us to the station!”

T’Pol heaved and rode out another shudder from the ship as another blast of firepower found its target. Her eyes moved between Archer and Tucker as they regarded one another. They were calculating, each on their own, each reaching the conclusion everyone would. The task Tucker was suggesting had a good chance of being a suicide mission. Each was running through their options, trying to make a decision in a split-second on who among them was most expendable.

To T’Pol, it was an answer known before the question was asked. She was Vulcan, a member of a slave race, an alien and already a proven traitor to Archer, easily the least trusted even among conspiring, ruthless crewmates.

Archer turned quickly in his chair and pinned his cold eyes on her.

T’Pol was already expecting his words.

“Get down there and get us free!” he ordered, and T’Pol did not think of disobeying. Archer’s glare would have left little doubt that had she so much as opened her mouth to argue at such a heated moment he would shoot her dead. She was not that necessary; Archer would be willing to sacrifice others on his team, perhaps Mayweather next. She had no choice, her lot as a Vulcan interred under a human command.

T’Pol left her place by the science station and stumbled toward the turbolift. Before she reached the red doors she was intercepted by Tucker who shoved a PADD in her hand. His asymmetrical face glowered down at her, mirroring the deadly intent of his new captain, and she spared only a fleeting glance up at him before turning to leave.

T’Pol followed the floor plan she had been given as she made her way through the battered, gutted ship. The fire storm continued to hail. The floor ceaselessly rocked and shook from both the Tholian fire and Mayweather’s efforts to free the ship. T’Pol stumbled and tripped over bulkhead paneling, wires, and human corpses as she fought toward the port of the ship. The smell of burned wiring, decay, and Tholian body odor was nauseating and more than once T’Pol’s head swam, further upsetting and endangering her balance.

“T’POL!” Archer screamed at her over the communication’s system, and T’Pol shook her head and moved faster through the corridor.

It was not difficult to locate the clamp connection once in visual range. It was more of a dual-purpose airlock ripped into the side of the ship, strangely angular and silver Tholian technology raping the Defiant and locking itself to the inside of the smooth, gray wall.

T’Pol tossed down the ship map; she had memorized all she needed, and truly doubted she would need it for her return. She could tell that to destroy the clamp would blow out the side of the ship, at least where the clamp connected to the Defiant. It would be exposed to space and T’Pol, helpless, would die in the vacuum.

There were worse things than finally being free of her enslavement even by such drastic means.

T’Pol entered the Tholian airlock and quickly the rocking she felt lessened. The Tholian structure was sturdier and hardier than the whole of the Defiant, and the technology of which it bespoke gave T’Pol hope that her comrades would not survive their confrontation with the Tholians to turn the power of this ship against her rebellion brethren.

T’Pol looked briefly around the small space, half the size of the interior of an Enterprise shuttle pod, and finally decided to simply work from the point of contact with the Defiant’s hull. Removing her phase pistol from her side-belt, she braced against a shudder and proceeded to set her hand weapon to overload. Immediately the device began to shriek in an increasingly high-pitched tone.

T’Pol threw it to the floor where it rattled to a stop at the juncture between the Tholian airlock and the Defiant outer hull.

T’Pol pressed herself to the back of the Tholian airlock cell, for all the good it would do her, and closed her eyes. She called up the teachings of her people’s ancient prophet and tried to leave her physical body, to let her mind take her to peace with Surak as her body was either blown apart or pulled inside out.

The shrill tone in her ears was a distant escalation, her meditations taking her so far from the where her body cowered awaiting death. The world seemed to still and slow, her agony of a lifetime easing as she waited.

A warning beep like a far-off echo, a sense of energy, the sensation of physically falling, and her mind went black. Nothingness, freedom in the only way she could obtain it.