it may take centuries

[T'Pol is very smart. She knows this, just as she knows she is prone to pride. And she knows by now that every time she uses her abilities, she is hurting herself. The logic is simple: the more she changes things, the harder she tries, the weaker she feels. She should stop, before she makes herself a prime target for any of the Humans.

No, that's not right; they aren't all like the Terrans she knows. But she has no doubt that someone on this ship is willing to treat it like a prison. So she should stop.

But the more she thinks it, the less inclined she is. When she leaves her room, she thinks it's cold, and rather than fetch a sweater, she warms the corridor around her. She warms everything around her, turning each room she walks through into Vulcan's distant desert. It's a faded memory in her mind, but since her failure to return home in Paris, she's been unable to banish it from her thoughts.

There is nothing she can do here, and the Barge dragged her back within sight of Vulcan. She was minutes from feeling Nevassa's warmth on her skin again, but instead she is here, wandering like a ghost, something less than - something less.

She still goes to work in the kitchens to prepare for dinner, no doubt making the room uncomfortably warm until the heat from the ovens takes over, and in the gym for the night shift, where she definitely cranks up the temperature. She's as quiet and reserved - and disdainful - as ever, but she's looking more and more fatigued as the days drag on.]

[Private to Barbara]

Do you still require assistance with the engines?

[Private to Steve]

[And later:] I need your permission to work in the engine room.

[The first few days, T'Pol refuses to leave the Barge. It's Earth, it's twenty-first century Earth and thus everything T'Pol never wanted to see. There is no scientific curiosity, she tells herself, that could convince her to go out among those monsters. This is the century of First Conquest. This is the century that the T'Plana-Hath will land in Bozeman, Montana in peace only to have its crew gunned down by the unpredictably violent Humans. She paces her room and grinds her teeth and wonders how far that date is, how many years until - or since - Vulcans attempted first contact. Have the crew's bodies been autopsied yet?

Eventually, that's what brings her off the Barge. She has to know how close this world is to April 5th, 2063.

She doesn't speak the languages: Earth Standard became English before its third World War, and T'Pol has never had occasion or reason to learn French. She knows pieces, mostly picked up as unexpected transference from the occasional mind-meld. That is what she does once her feet are on solid ground again: it would be easier to use her newfound abilities to connect her PADD to a news network, but it is more satisfying to corner a Human in a back alley, to leave sloppy traces in her thoughts, fingerprints on her brain that this century - this species - will never fully understand. What is one Human to her?

She gets the date: it will be more than half a century before the T'Plana-Hath lands. And that is when the idea begins to form.

T'Pol passes another day considering; in the end, she decides, there is no decision at all. The answer she arrives at is the only possible answer. The Admiral made the mistake of giving her his abilities. She will use them to protect her people from Humanity.

The Enterprise was constructed at Jupiter Station, but Jupiter isn't settled yet. Not even the moon is settled yet, and T'Pol cannot wait for technology to catch up. She doesn't have to. Somewhere above the Kármán line, well out of Earth's atmosphere, a fully functional starship suddenly exists. It seemed a simple act, a thought made real, but it takes its toll as all things must. She slumps against a space of empty wall, ignoring the buzz of an active Parisian street around her to get lost in the buzzing in her head. Her head still tilts up, looking in vain for something too far for even her eyes to see.

Later, much later, when she's recovered enough to move (to remember the point of all this, to save Vulcan), T'Pol takes herself to the ship and sets a course. She takes the captain's chair, revels in the silence of a ship empty of Humans, and promptly loses consciousness.]