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[maytakecenturies]

[When she turns on the feed, the misgivings aren't clear in her expression, but she most certainly feels them. Out of sight, her hands are clenched into fists, white knuckled as she concentrates on control. She keeps it simple.]

This is Lieutenant Commander T'Pol, formerly of the ISS Enterprise, SA-013-8294-VR.

[She's considering leaving at at that - well that and her really intense stare - but she only pauses for a moment before continuing.]

Who rules the Terran Empire?

[She needs to know if the plan worked. She needs to know if the Defiant was destroyed. Needs it in ways she can't describe, because if she died for nothing - if she is trapped here and Archer has taken command of an entire Empire--

No 'then' follows. She knows the logical end, and cannot stomach it.]

( ooc: fourth wall! yay! everyone is welcome, but I'll sell a kidney to anyone bringing mirror!Trek muses! )

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[maytakecenturies]

[She knows his face.

His face isn't contorted in fear or pain, but she still recognizes him. It furrows her brow, and she almost doesn't notice it because the memory of pain makes her leg ache, her shoulder burn. She was - she dreamed she was ripped apart by a dog only she could see, while he screamed.

It's alarming. She tries to fight it down, but she can taste the anxiety in the back of her throat.]

Sammy.

[skateonmirrors]

Um. Yeah, but no one but Dean calls me that.

[He did not expect to be recognised, and his own brow furrows in confusion.]

...this Dean you have here? Did he...?

[Surely not.]

[maytakecenturies]

[Oh.

She waits for it to make sense, for the pieces to click into place: she tries to see it in a third person view, as if she was - Ruby, or whoever the blond woman really was. She pictures Dean trapped on the table, ripped apart.

It doesn't work. She can't see that man in the one she has worked beside in the kitchen.]

No.

[Almost awkwardly, because she's not sure she wants to offer any explanation, she adds:] There was a flood.

[skateonmirrors]

Oh, Dean told me about floods - one of those where you pick up each other's memories?

[He's just not going to think too hard about what memories this broken Dean might have. Some of them must, he supposes, be good ones; but bad ones strikes him as much more in-character for the Barge.]

I'm - my brother was a warden there. For quite a while. I talked to him this way a couple of times. The one you have onboard now, he's - his life went differently than ours. Worse. I don't think his brother's...

[Alive. Except Sam has an idea - more than Dean likes to think he might - about what his role in that aborted apocalypse was intended to be.

And he's alive, all right. Poor bastard. Sam winces internally and changes the subject.]

You were there too, the first time. But I think maybe she was a different version of you, too.

[surfaceshine]

Stop.

[skateonmirrors]

Okay. Stopping.

[maytakecenturies]

[That makes her straighten. She doesn't jerk back exactly, doesn't withdraw, but she does lean away from the camera for a moment.

She's not entirely sure how to feel about that at all, and it leaves her grasping for words at all.

(She doesn't forget what he has to say: his brother was a warden, the Dean she knows is an inmate, his life diverged and--)]

Another T'Pol was on board this ship.

[Speaking of herself in third person feels strangely clinical, and she tries not to think too hard on it.]

Was she a warden?

[skateonmirrors]

She was when I met her. She might not have always been? I didn't - I wasn't really at my best, that time.

[maytakecenturies]

[She almost points out that she is not at her best now, but that would require.....admitting that.]

How long ago was that?