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The funny thing about grief, Trip thought, was that there were funny things about it.
His grief for Lizzie had been a hurricane - lashing, flooding, surging. It had shredded him and laid his foundations bare, had bent him almost to the point of breaking. But this grief, for another Elizabeth, one he'd known a far shorter time, was like the tide - steady and slow, and almost gentle. But inescapable nonetheless.
That wasn't the funny part though. The funny part was how he could feel this way, about a child whose existence he hadn't even been aware of a week before, and how learning she was out there had flipped a switch within him, clicked on some dormant state, and all it had taken was just the knowledge of her. And then he'd seen her, with those perfect little pointed ears, and his eyes, and the reality of her had crashed into him like a meteor strike, a voice inside him chanting She's mine, she's mine, she's ours.
Was that the funny part? Maybe not. Definitely not funny ha-ha. It was the kind of funny where you smiled a little at the beautiful absurdity of it all, with tears in your eyes.
T'Pol's grief for T'Les had been a muted howl, a scream half-caught in the throat, choked back like a torrent forced to trickle between stones. It was the grief of too much left unexpressed, of a wall built by two willing sets of hands, now too sturdy to be pulled down in time. Because the end had come suddenly, and the mortar was set.
The end had come suddenly with Elizabeth too, but there had been no walls. Which was fascinating, T'Pol reflected - learning of her daughter's existence had thrown wide a door, made an entryway into a future she had previously not allowed herself to contemplate. Part of the separation between herself and her mother had been built of that potential future, and for a moment, she had held it in her arms.
If T'Les could have seen her granddaughter, maybe she could have understood. But thoughts like that made the howl rise, and sometimes T'Pol could not stop it. And Trip heard. She knew he did.
He hated that he knew it, but then again, he didn't. Just when he'd thought maybe he was getting used to this Vulcan bond thing, it would change, the parameters shifting. He knew how she'd grieved T'Les because he could feel it, because it had slipped along the tie between them, like a transmission on a wire. And it had been weirdly comforting, and vindicating too, because she could make all the claims she wanted about Vulcans and what they felt, but he knew the truth.
He wasn't angry with her for it, or even annoyed. Not anymore. He got it now, as weird as that was to admit. Once he had realized it was all about pressure maintenance, he finally felt like he understood.
He did wish she'd talk to him, though.
They had sat together on her bed, hand in hand, and just…felt all of it. The sadness, the anger, the unfairness, the loss, but also the hope, and the wonder of that small life. She had existed, she had been real, she had been theirs. And she was gone, but she would not be forgotten. Ever.
But they didn't talk about it. Maybe that was how it was for Vulcans, he told himself, as they attended the memorials for their daughter, first on Earth, and then, just the two of them, on Vulcan. Maybe talking was overrated when you could hold someone's hand and share the sense of the things.
He liked it better when she used her words, though.
The memorial service on Earth was private, but still well attended, because it was an opportunity for the conference delegates to signal their support for the changed mission of the gathering - more than simple talks between disparate, partially allied worlds, now something more substantial seemed both possible and desirable. And T'Pol discovered that she didn't mind that. The idea that Elizabeth's brief life might be the catalyst for the creation of an alliance few would have believed possible just months before was a pleasing one. One man could summon the future. So too could one little girl, it seemed.
Would she give that up to hold her child again? Would she trade it away so that Elizabeth T'Les Tucker could grow up?
She couldn't answer that, and wouldn't.
It had been Trip's suggestion to give Elizabeth T'Les's name in addition to her aunt's. She had sensed, in the midst of their sharing, that he had liked T'Les, and wished he could have known her better.
So many missed opportunities. So many doors closed. So many what ifs. And all of it hovering, unspoken, just on the tip of her tongue. Why did she still hesitate now?
She'd just been a baby, and Trip realized that the thing that hurt the most was that he would never get to know the person Elizabeth would have become. When would she have started to crawl, to walk, to ask questions? When would she have learned to read, and what would her favorite books have been? Her favorite toy? Her favorite color? Would she have been a scholar, a scientist, an engineer like her old man? Would she have liked to lay under the stars with her mom and dad and learn the constellations?
He imagined T'Pol tying small shoes and teaching her the names of shapes in Vulcan, and his chest hurt.
The bond between them - not just in the Vulcan sense, but in every sense - had never seemed more real, more present and true, and it had never been farther away. She was sitting right next to him, on the transport back from Vulcan, and she was light years away. And-
No. He couldn't do this anymore.
Why don't you just say it?
Say what?
That you want me back.
That you want me for good.
Like a match, his baby girl had lit a fire, something to carry forward into the future. And as far as he could see, there were only two paths forward.
We call it quits. We start over.
What do you want, T'Pol?
She'd sought his advice once, in the matter of a marriage she could not bring herself to want, and of course his response had been terribly human. What do you want to do? It had been a question that annoyed and perplexed… and tantalized. And she realized now that she had run through her store of excuses, years worth of them. In her daughter's blue eyes, she had seen the inescapable truth, and strangely, it was a relief. She could stop now. She could release her clenched grip, and she would tumble away from the structures that had held her up for so long. But he would catch her.
Elizabeth was gone, but the future she had promised was still possible. All they had to do was reach for it.
What do you want, T'Pol?
You. This. Us.