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“Oh. Yeah. Of course, right.” Putting aside his commingled disappointment and relief, Trip realized that her idea was a sound one; even before he’d started working alongside a telepathically tamed Romulan, he’d come to appreciate the survival value in keeping his guard up as much as possible. And T’Pol had already mentioned that this house had been in the care of the master spy Denak ever since T’Les’s passing almost two years earlier.

Once T’Pol appeared satisfied that no one was eavesdropping on them, Trip said, “Ych’a told you what I’ve been up to lately, more or less. But you haven’t said what brought you back to the old hometown.”

“Captain Archer sent me,” she said with no hesitation. “My mission was to persuade Administrator T’Pau to bring Vulcan into the war.”

“Was,” Trip said. “I take it that T’Pau didn’t listen to you.”

“No,” T’Pol said, looking almost sad as she sat at the foot of the low, futonlike bed. Her eyes, however, were still aflame, though Trip did his best to pretend not to notice.

“Did she have a better excuse than the one she and Soval gave to the Coalition Council?” Trip wanted to know.

T’Pol stared off into the middle distance, apparently gathering her thoughts. “Administrator T’Pau has... a great deal on her mind at the moment,” she finally said, effectively explaining nothing.

Though he remained standing—he didn’t trust himself at the moment to touch her, or even to sit beside her—Trip wanted to do whatever he could to bolster her spirits.

“Maybe she just needs more time to think the problem all the way through,” he said. “Maybe if we both went to see her togeth—”

“I do not wish to disrupt your mission,” she said, interrupting. “Your objectives may suffer if you involve yourself in this. Besides, it is an endeavor that is likely to prove futile.”

“T’Pol, once I finish debriefing with the V’Shar about the Achernar mission, I expect to be done with all of this covert cloak-and-dagger crap, forever and ever, amen. I have no other objectives at the moment.” He paused, pointing at the sides of his face with both index fingers. “Other than hanging up these ears and heading home, that is.”

“Will you return to Starfleet?”

He nodded. “They’re not gonna be able to keep me away, at least as long as the freakin’ Romulans keep trying to finish what the Xindi started. But I’ve had a bellyful of pretending to be dead for some spook bureau, whether it’s attached to Earth or Vulcan. Besides, I want my life back.”

“And what do you plan to do with that life?”

“I haven’t quite figured that part out yet,” he said with a shrug. “Maybe I’ll go back aboard Enterprise and take charge of the old gal’s engine room.” With a playful grin, he added, “Wanna come along?”

She looked up at him. Something changed very subtly along the invisible cable that connected them, like a modulation in either amplitude or frequency, or a sudden increase in the distance between the line’s two end points. Or perhaps it was something else entirely, something that defied any engineering-metaphorical description. He searched her eyes and found it; alongside the passion he knew they were both still struggling to keep at bay, he saw misery and regret, emotional floodwaters that threatened to inundate the levies of her Vulcan reserve.

I’m losing her, he thought. Again. Or was it the other way around?

“My mission has ended in failure,” she said, lowering her gaze. “I do not know whether I can face Captain Archer ever again. Not after failing him twice in as many years.”

It took Trip a moment to realize that the previous failure to which she was alluding was the unauthorized rescue mission she had mounted last year. Though her plan had certainly been an ill-advised one, nobody could deny that she had prevented Terix from frying him with a disruptor pistol, with some help from Malcolm Reed. The ends might not justify the means, but results still had to count for something.

He sat