The view out the window had gone. All there was to see was the pearly almost dark that was the inner hull of the huge Aquatic ship's cargo bay.

Swallowed whole.

There was, perhaps, a strange symmetry in it, in the timing of it. Irony, humans would call it. They tended to ascribe emotional value to everything, even the vagaries of random chance.

And yet, as the Xindi ship surrounded them, and sorrow and secrets pressed outward from within, T'Pol of Vulcan thought that there was, perhaps, considerable merit to the human interpretation.

Irony was a particularly logical form of humor.

So long as the force of it didn't crush her.

Or Trip.

She felt as though she was caught on the balance point between these forces. She wondered if she was strong enough to hold her balance, and what would happen, if she wasn't.

She had intended to report her addiction and her recovery to Captain Archer once the Xindi mission was concluded. Loyalty to the captain, and her own personal accountability, seemed to require it. She would not choose to begin a Starfleet career without making her fallibility a matter of record.

She'd wanted to tell him first, because she was less fearful of his reaction than she was of Trip's.

Jonathan Archer had been a friend, a mentor, an opponent when she needed one, a balance. While he would be upset, concerned, perhaps angry with her, she expected that he would control the force of those emotions, and deal with her conduct and her altered status in a sensible manner.

She had no idea what Trip would do. She was terrified of her ignorance, and the power of her need for him.

Jonathan Archer was dead. Trip had stepped into the void left behind - and now, already Awakened to him, she was also bound to him in grief. T'hy'la, indeed.

So far as she knew, no human had ever filled this sensitive function.

She must tell him. About Awakening. About the trellium, and the cost of what she had done. About the nature of Vulcan grieving. About her need for an outlet, and all she felt that she didn't understand.

She had prepared, as best she could, making a practice of it, illogically hoping it would quiet the anomaly field she still carried within herself. Behind her, on the meditation table, were two scanners and the Vulcan hypospray device, loaded with the injection she'd prepared after that nightmarish expedition to Cargo Bay 2. Her memories of that experience were still wound with delusions; she wondered how she had survived.

How would Trip react, when she told him?

She stared out the window, at the almost-nothing, and into her depths, where she felt there was, at once, too little and far too much.

She didn't expect that he would be calm. That would be to go against his nature.

The transforming device sat in her closet. T'Pol had asked herself, many times, why she hadn't given it to Phlox. She suspected she was unwilling to surrender it. There was a certain security in its presence here, in no one knowing she had it. It bore examination, this need to keep it, and the three tubes of trellium-traced fragments within it.

But she was too tired to examine it now.

Acid roiled in her stomach and up into her esophagus; T'Pol leaned her forehead against the smooth cool glass, and wondered why she couldn't remember the last time she'd eaten anything. Was she hungry, now?

She puzzled on this for a moment, but that led to a dull headache that promised to grow more powerful if she continued, so she released the thought before coming to any conclusion.

She was aware that she didn't want to be leaning into the window, but there seemed nowhere else that would be better, nor did she have volition to move from this spot.

She held tight to the journal her elder alternate self had gifted her; the one with today's date. She hadn't opened it.

She was certain of little, but T'Pol knew that she didn't wish to learn how the other T'Pol had shared this news – not until she had spoken to Trip. It would mean little, in any event. The alternate Jonathan Archer hadn't died. And she and Trip were not who their counterparts had been.

"Hey, T'Pol?"

She would have whirled at the sudden shock of his voice at her shoulder, if she'd had any energy to do so. "You didn't signal," she said, instead.

"Yes, I did. Three times. I thought maybe you fell asleep, or – well, it's been a helluva day. I wanted to check on you." He didn't touch her, but came to stand within reach, and pressed his face to the glass, mirroring her pose. "Are you okay?"

"No," T'Pol answered, honestly.

Trip turned, just a little, toward her. He seemed atypically cautious. "Can I help?"

"I don't know."

"Whether I can help, or what help you need?" Soft words, offering a cushion, of sorts, against what she must say.

"Both."

"Hmn." Trip fell silent, and they stood there, together, faces pressed to the window. T'Pol knew she was delaying, that she had no idea how to broach the things she must say.

"Have you tried scientific analysis?"

"For what purpose?" She wanted to look at him but didn't dare. Her emotions tangled and twisted like the many-tentacled creature that had been trapped in the cargo bay.

"To figure out what you need, to be OK. Or more OK. Even a little more OK is something you can build on."

He clearly spoke from his own grief and pain, and she wondered if they would both be absorbed by hers, or his, or what had grown between them.

"How would this analysis proceed?"

She could feel the smile in his voice, could see, in her mind, the way it tugged up the corners of his mouth, carved little hollows into his cheeks. "Humans have something called the Hierarchy of Needs. Shaped like a pyramid, with the most basic needs at the bottom, and the more evolved ones up above. There's a theory that needs need to be met from the base up, so let's start there. The big five are food and water, shelter, sleep, and sex. We kind of covered the last one earlier. So's the third. You don't need much water, either. So, when did you eat or sleep last?"

"That's a most logical approach."

"Don't sound so surprised. We're capable of logic, whether we use it or not. And this will only work if you answer the line of inquiry."

"I last slept in the airlock with you - I don't know the time." She tried not to remember how completely she'd lost her control, or think of what might have happened had Trip not been there.

"That was about 6 hours ago – and we were only in the airlock for half an hour, according to Hoshi. Seemed like a lot longer to me." He was quiet, for a moment, and T'Pol thought he was remembering. How much of the shared dreaming had he retained? Would he know what it meant? Could he? "That hardly counts as a nap, T'Pol. So what about before that?"

"I've slept little, else. Perhaps for several days – or longer? I don't remember when I last ate, or what I consumed." It helped, addressing the issue in this way. It was somehow, a balm against the constant eruptions and lava flows of emotion.

"Then you need to sleep and eat, for sure. I know you're tough - but you're not a machine. And take it from an engineer - even if you were, you would break down under too little fuel and constant use. Which do you want to do first?"

"I'm not hungry. I feel nauseated, and my head hurts."

"Hunger can do that to a person – well, a human one, anyway. My mother sips ginger tea when she needs to settle her stomach; have you ever tried it?"

"No. I don't wish to eat or drink anything, now."

The man beside her considered this – he seemed, for once, to be considering everything she said before answering. "Neuropressure would help, maybe." T'Pol heard the carefulness in his voice, and the longing – a longing she shared, but couldn't indulge again until she had been wholly truthful with him.

"Perhaps – later."

"My mama had a saying, to help me when I was little and feeling growly. "Trip, HALT,' she'd say."

T'Pol looked to his reflection in the glass. "She commanded you to stop?"

"No, not really." He smiled a little. "It's an acronym – a memory device. She wanted to know if I was hungry, angry, lonely, or tired." That's two more for you. Are you angry or lonely, pepperpot?"

She imagined she could feel his urge to turn to her, to offer himself...but it wasn't an offer she could accept any longer, with all that he didn't yet know.

She must tell him. Even if she was still far too uncertain of how she was to do it. "I have been both, far too often, of late."

His hand lifted, wiped his mouth in the way he had when he was surprised by her. "How often is too often? Seems to me that, if you feel that way, you do."

"I am a Vulcan."

"You keep telling me that like I don't know it." He sighed. "Last I heard, you're only supposed to be suppressing emotions. You've got them. It's not like you can stop." He stopped himself, somewhat remarkably, with a deep breath. "Sorry. My getting hot under the collar isn't helping."

"I am used to your emotional outbursts, t'hy'la. There are times when I even find them -palliative."

Trip turned suddenly, put his hand on her shoulder as she had done to him, to soothe. "You're used to my feelings, but not your own. That's it, isn't it? Or part of it, anyway? You're feeling things more than you thought you would, out here, and that scares you."

Another time, she might have had the strength to deny it. But now she was too exhausted, too emotionally spent, to try. "Yes."

"That offer I made you still stands. If you need to talk, about anything, I'll listen for as long as you need. I don't care if you talk in Vulcan, or about something that doesn't have anything to do with what's scaring you. I don't even care if you yell at me, or we just sit in the dark and don't talk at all. But I can feel you hurting, T'Pol, and it hurts me too much not to try to make whatever's wrong, right."

"And if I am what's wrong, Trip? What then?" T'Pol started slipping down the glass, She tried to stop the descent, but couldn't muster the necessary energy.

Trip caught her, eased her down, and helped her to sit propped against the wall, then settled beside her.

"You're not the first person to ever be wrong. You won't be the last. Believe me, you can get better at it - you just haven't had much practice, is all."

"What is there to practice?"

"Humility. Grace. Self -examination, to avoid further trouble. Making changes, if you need to. And moving on, even when it's hard." He took her hands. "We all fall down, T'Pol, sooner or later. It's getting back up that counts. But you don't have to do it alone."

"What if – what I have done…?" She found she couldn't go on.

"T'Pol, you live on a shipful of humans. Most of us like you. Granted, some of us more than others." That smile was back; she wondered how he could find something to smile about, with his best friend dead. "Humans help each other."

"I'm not human." What would it be, to belong to this people?

"When I say 'each other', I'm not just talking about my own species. You're one of us. We want to help you."

She lifted her gaze, but couldn't bring herself to look at him directly. She looked down and away, to study her knee. "Once, t'hy'la, you asked me if I had ever done anything by mistake that I was ashamed of, later. I told you no. I thought it was true, then."

"I remember. You'll be happy to know I've reformed. I don't snoop into anyones' mail, anymore." He gave her hands a gentle squeeze, and T'Pol understood that he was offering humor as a way of soothing her.

"I can no longer truthfully make that answer, Trip. And what I have done, I can't undo." She felt tears beginning to form in her eyes. She put a hand to the new moistness, studied it.

"I'm sorry," he said softly. "Whatever it is, I'm sorry it's hurting you now."