Tile: Living Legacy

Author: JB Trek 2001

Fandom: Star Trek/Enterprise

Pairing: Archer/Tucker, hints of preslash

Rating: PG

Summary: Set after Shuttlepod One. After nearly losing his best friend during the near-disastrous shuttlepod mission, Archer shares a secret with Tucker from Archer's past. A secret that has a profound impact on them both.

Note: I don't know if you guys would be interested in this story or not, it's a borderline slash story involving Archer and Tucker. More of a buddy/buddy story than anything else, but there are hints in there.

Disclaimer: I don't own these characters, Paramount does. They're so lucky.

Authors note: I follow where the plot bunny leads. Not all of my stories are connected, or make a series and this story stands alone from the others.

LIVING LEGACY
By JBTrek2001

The captain held a small dinner party for Trip and Malcolm to celebrate their safe recovery after their recent brush with death. Archer sat quietly, spending most of the meal just watching his two subordinate officers eat good food, drink good wine, and simply luxuriate in the fact that they were warm, safe and that Enterprise was definitely, very real.

As he watched Trip smile and tell Malcolm a funny story, complete with waving arms and sound effects, Archer's mind flashed back to what he saw when he cracked open the hatch of the frozen shuttlepod. The captain's heart constricted when he first saw the cold, frozen body of his chief engineer. Trip's skin looked so blue and so empty of life as he lay so still next to Malcolm. For one, horrible second, Archer was sure that his best friend was dead, and the grief that he felt at that moment was almost overwhelming.

It wasn't that Archer didn't care about Malcolm, or that he didn't hope that the armory officer was going to be all right, it was just that Trip... Trip was special. He was family. He had been ever since he all but moved in with Archer and his father to work on the Warp Five engine all those years ago.

The warp engine that brought them all the way out here. The very same engine that saved Trip's life the other day. Thank God Archer had Mayweather increase Enterprise's speed when he saw the impulse engine explode on their sensors. He would have never forgiven himself if he hadn't interpreted their silent distress call correctly. If Enterprise had arrived too late.

Archer shook his head to drive the horrors from his mind and concentrated on the laughing, animated men before him. They were alive and they were safe. That was all that mattered. The captain forced himself to relax and enjoy the rest of the evening. Chef had gone all out and served a scrumptious dinner, and now was the time to implement phase two of Chef's master plan for the meal. "How about some dessert?" Archer asked, seeing that their plates were empty.

"Oh no." Reed sank back in his chair and patted his stomach. "I've eaten too much already."

"We'll I've still got some room in me." Trip countered.

"Good." Archer was pleased. "Because Chef has made you something special." Archer waved the steward forward and the waiter set the dessert down in front of his friend.

"Pecan Pie!" Trip's whole face lit right up. "That's my favorite."

Archer smiled, sharing the engineer's enjoyment. "I know."

Malcolm was smiling at the engineer's delight as well. Trip offered Malcolm a piece. "You sure you don't want any? It's mighty good."

"No thank you, Commander." Reed's smile faded a little and the captain could see signs of weariness begin to cloud his eyes. "I am rather tired."

"You've had a rough couple of days." Archer agreed. "Why don't you go get some rest, Malcolm."

"I'll do that, sir." The armory officer stood up. "Thank you for a lovely dinner, Captain."

"My pleasure."

Malcolm and Trip exchanged a heartfelt goodnight, then the engineer was alone with his captain. "So, I hear that phenomena that nearly killed us is turnin' out to be some big discovery."

Archer nodded. "Micro-Singularities, T'Pol called them."

"Micro-Singularities?" Trip had never heard of such a thing before. "What the hell are those?"

"Mini black holes." Archer replied, talking in-between bites of pie. "I thought they were a
Vulcan myth, but apparently our little collisions have proved the myth real."

Trip shuddered, reliving the fear he felt when the micro-singularity ripped through the shuttlepod's cabin. Frenzied moments followed while he and Malcolm frantically tried to patch the small holes that were left in the singularities wake. Holes that were leaking their precious oxygen into space. Tucker knew that he would have nightmares about that for months. "Some myth."

"Yeah." Archer agreed, picturing the dire state of the pod when they found it. "I hope any other ‘historical discoveries’ we uncover will be found in a less dramatic fashion."

"Me too." The import of it all finally reached home to Trip. "Is this singularity-thing really a historical discovery?"

Archer nodded. "T'Pol thinks this could be one of the biggest scientific finds of the decade."

Trip thought about the historical impact that such a discovery would have on the scientific communities of both Earth and Vulcan. Only one word came to mind that could sum up the magnitude of this situation. "Wow!"

Archer smiled at Trip's remark, but said nothing. Trip knew, however, that it was something. "What?"

"Nothing." Archer demurred.

"No, come on." Trip insisted. "Tell me."

"We'll, it's just that, when you say 'wow' like that you sound just like my dad."

"Really?" Trip was surprised at the comparison.

Archer nodded. "I'd hear a 'wow' from him every time he broke new ground while working on our engine. If I heard him say it a lot I knew he'd be having a good day."

Trip smiled at the picture the captain was paintin'. He well remembered Henry Archer's passion for his work. A passion that he passed on to his son. That was one of the reasons why Jonathan Archer was out here. "I seem to recall your dad gettin' worked up at more than just his engine."

Archer nodded. "Starfleet was just beginning to push the boundaries of known space exploration back then, and I remember that dad seemed to live vicariously with every new discovery humans made. The whole galaxy was just one big playground to him."

"Well, he would have loved bein' out here. It seems that we find somethin' brand new almost every couple of weeks."

Archer's smile faded. His father would have loved exploring the Milky Way on Enterprise. Unfortunately he didn't live long enough to have the chance.

Trip saw the captain's reaction and realized, to his horror, what he had just said. "I'm sorry, Cap'n. I stick my big foot into my mouth sometimes."

"You don't have to be sorry, Trip." Archer shook himself out of his sorrow. "Without you we wouldn't be out here at all, and I wouldn't get the chance to fulfill my father's legacy."

"Without me?" What the hell was the captain talkin' about? "I haven't done anything."

"You've done more than you think." Archer hesitated, unsure whether to reveal this secret that he'd carried for so long. But Trip's near death of a couple of days ago convinced him. It was time for his friend to know the truth. "My dad spent his whole life working on that engine. He wanted the human race to explore space so badly. Making that Warp Five engine work, in spite of all the frustrations and setbacks caused by the Vulcan's, was his dream."

"It was your dream too." Trip pointed out. "And mine."

Major confession time. "More yours than mine, I'm afraid."

Archer's remark totally confused the engineer. "I don't get your meanin', Cap'n. I know you wanted to see that engine fly as much as your dad did."

"At first that was true." Archer paused for a moment. Now they were getting into hurtful territory. "But as the days and weeks went by the frustrations became more intense. At times it seemed that the damn thing was never going to work, and the fights with the Vulcan?s didn?t help any. I began to see the toll all the weight and responsibilities of getting that engine online was taking on him. Before I knew it I began to despise that engine, and by the time dad died I hated it!"

Trip drew in a deep breath at the captain's revelation. As far as he knew finishin' his father's dream had always been Archer's own. Tucker never knew that the captain felt this way. "You hated the engine?"

Archer nodded, almost too full of emotion to speak. But he forced his teeth apart with his tongue and started talking again. "The night Dad died I knew it was the engine that killed him. Not the Vulcan's. Not the stress. But the engine! That engine killed my dad and I was going to kill it!"

Stunned by Archer's ferocity, Trip could barely comprehend what the captain was sayin'. "What do you mean, you were gonna to kill it?"

Archer leaned forward. He could see the shocked expression etched in Trip's face, but it was to late to take his words back. He had to finish his story. "I mean that I was going to destroy it."

"Destroy the engine?" Trip couldn't believe what he was hearin'. The Jonathan Archer he knew would never do such a thing. No, this nightmare of a story had to be one of the captain?s strange jokes. It couldn?t be true. It just couldn?t be.

But Archer wasn't joking. "When I went to the Warp five Lab that night I was going to delete all of the schematics and plans from the computer. Then I was going to burn all of the hard copies, and finally, I was going to take an ax and smash the prototype to pieces."

"My God." Stunned, Trip sat back in his chair. It was beginning to sink in to the engineer that maybe the captain was serious. That this story was true. If so, Trip realized that he didn't know his friend as well as he thought he did. "I can't believe it."

"Believe it." Archer confirmed. "I had the ax in my hand when I walked into the hangar. It wasn't going to take long to hack that murderous engine to bits and I was going to enjoy every minute of it."

The tone of certainty rang strong and loud in Archer's voice and Trip finally began to let himself be convinced that the captain was telling the truth. But... "We're here. The dream still came true. What happened?"

"You happened, Trip."

"Me?"

Archer saw the question echoed in Trip's face and quickly answered it. "It was the middle of the night when I got to the complex. Ax in hand, ready to do my dirty work. But I couldn't and you know why?"

At a loss for words all Trip could do was shake his head.

"I couldn't destroy the engine because you were all ready there working on it. Do you remember that night, Trip?"

"I remember." Tucker sent his memory back five years. "I told you not to worry. That we were gonna to finish this engine together and we were gonna keep your dad's dream alive."

"That you did. You were there, following in my father's footsteps. Not me. Working yourself day and night to finish his work. Not me. You were the one keeping my father's legacy alive. Not me. All I could do was think about destroying everything my dad had ever dreamed of." Archer hung his head. "It made me feel ashamed."

It still did. Trip could see the echo of the pain still etched on Archer's face. Tucker searched his memory. He was there that night all right, but his take on events was totally different. "But, Cap'n. You didn't destroy the engine."

"How could I?" Archer countered. "With you working so hard to save it." Archer hurried to finish his story, while he still had the courage. "You shocked the sanity right back into me, Trip. I looked down at the ax in my hand and couldn't believe what I'd nearly done. It was as if I was waking from a horrible nightmare."

Trip pictured what their lives might be like now without the Warp Five engine and shuddered. "Some nightmare."

Archer raised his head and looked his friend straight in the eye. "But I woke up, Trip. I dropped that ax and went to work on that engine. At first it was just to keep my dad's dream going. Then, as time went by, it became my dream too. Exploring the galaxy on this ship, with this crew became something I wanted to do. I treasure every single day out here. Nothing we have accomplished since we left Earth, including discovering the micro-singularities, would have been possible without you."

Trip was stunned at Archer's revelation. No, not stunned. Shocked. He had no idea that he'd ever made such a big impact on the captain's life. "I... I don't know what to say."

Archer smiled at his friend. "You don't have to say anything."

"But..." Trip struggled to deal with all of the emotions stirred up by the captain's confession, and finally one question sorted itself out in his mind. A question he really wanted an answer to. "Why are you tellin' me all this now?"

A part of Archer had been dreading this moment, because he didn't know how to put his jumbled thoughts into words, but now he knew that he had to. The captain tried to make the engineer understand. "I nearly lost you this week, Trip. Serving on Enterprise isn't exactly one of the safest occupations in the galaxy and if anything happened to you... well, I couldn't let you go on any further without telling you how..." Archer faltered for a moment, then came up with the right words. The perfect words. "How much you mean to me."

Archer stared at his friend then, with a look that filled Trip with all the love and joy that Archer felt in his heart. Overwhelmed with feelings Trip struggled to think of something to say. Something that could match the magnitude of what the captain had just told him. But finally, only one word popped out. "Wow!"

Archer was startled for a moment, then both he and Trip began to laugh as they heard the echo of Henry Archer's voice in Trip's exclamation of excitement.

Archer relaxed and felt happy, for really the first time since Tucker's rescue. Trip was here with him, safe and sound, and Archer knew now that the spirit of his father was always going to be with him as well. As long as he traveled on the ship that was his father's living legacy.

END