The Sentimental Vulcan
by Bil!

Summary: A young lieutenant has some bad news to deliver as well as a lesson or two to learn that Admiral Archer is perfectly placed to teach.

Disclaimer: All hail Paramount.

A/N: Warning: mentions character death. Set in the future from a S1 or early S2 perspective, so please refrain from telling me this doesn't fit with canon as outlined in episode X of Season 3 – I haven't seen it and I don't want to know.

I was hoping to make my Lieutenant a canon character like Rachel Garrett or someone, but couldn't make the timeline work. Such is life. Also, my idea of Vulcans may differ from that of TPTB. IDIC, man!

Lieutenant Sydney Hamilton paused in the hot sun of a spring afternoon in Vulcan's Shi'kahr city, staring at the high stone wall draped in some unidentified greenery. She was about to meet a living legend. The Jonathan Archer of the Enterprise. Now if she could only remember how to breathe properly...

Sternly reminding herself that graduates of Starfleet Academy weren't supposed to succumb to hero worship, she stepped up to the wrought-iron gate and pressed the buzzer.

After a minute, during which she watched a lizard decked out in glimmering ruby scales sling his way up the vines, a gravelly old voice sounded over the intercom: "Can I help you?"

"I'm here to speak with Jonathan Archer," she said promptly, managing to keep most of her excitement out of her voice.

"Why?" the voice asked suspiciously.

"I'm Lieutenant Hamilton. Starfleet sent me."

"Hmph." He didn't sound terribly impressed but the gate swung open nevertheless, apparently of its own accord but obviously with some mechanism involved. "Come in."

Sydney stepped into a fantasy world. The garden was shaped by stunningly-formed boulders, cut by wind and water into crenellated turrets, towers, and castles. Plants of every shade of chlorophyll-analogue flourished at their feet and had been planted in nooks and crevasses within the boulders themselves. Lazing within the amazing garden was a low, white-painted stone house, doors and windows flung open to welcome in the least little breeze.

"So, what can I do for you?" the voice from the intercom asked. She spun hastily to find herself face-to-face with Starfleet's greatest hero.

"Capt—I mean, Admiral Archer!" she gasped.

He looked fantastic for someone who was one hundred and six Earth years, his hair as white as his house but his eyes clear, his hands steady, and his back still straight as an arrow. She surreptitiously scrubbed her suddenly sweaty hands on her uniform.

"Retired," he corrected mildly.

"Of – of course." Great; she finally got to meet her childhood hero and she'd turned into a complete flake.

Archer raised an eyebrow at her Vulcan-style, clinical and assessing, but with a warm humour in his eyes. "Come inside," he invited. "That sun's pretty hard on you if you aren't used to it."

Sydney's cheeks heated infuriatingly but she followed him inside to where a fan on low power blew a welcome puff of cool air through her hair. The wide hallway was lined with simple wooden bookshelves filled with real paper books of all shapes and sizes as well as an assortment of objects arranged in apparently haphazard order, including photos of various notables and items from places spread halfway across the galaxy. In just one of the many unexpected combinations, a Klingon d'k tahg shared shelf space with a beautifully-worked IDIC medallion under the watchful gaze of a Risian horga'hn.

As she took in this evidence of his wide and varied career, Sydney stared openly, her steps unconsciously slowing.

"They'll probably turn it into a museum when I'm gone," Archer said suddenly, making her jump. "I bet they get all the details wrong."

Hurriedly refocusing on him and hating the embarrassed flush flaring across her face, Sydney saw he was watching her with soft amusement lighting his eyes, his face composed. Like the greatest (and most awe-inspiring) Vulcans, he wore calm like a second skin. Certainly he had settled down from the brash, excitable captain of the Enterprise logs and settled into himself.

Even if she hadn't known who he was, hadn't already carried the burden of hero worship, his sheer presence, his weight of personality, would have stunned her.

Seeing that he wasn't going to get a response to his comments, Archer waved her into a sitting room that was painted in the sheer cool blues of Earth's summer seas and contained a few more of the eclectically-filled shelves. Sydney took the seat offered to her while Archer stiffly lowered himself into the couch opposite, a low coffee-table between them.

"So, Lieutenant, what can I do for you?"

She beat back her awe, squashing it beneath the heavy sadness of her news. "Capt—Admiral," she caught herself for the second time. "I'm afraid I have bad news." He simply nodded, leaving her to flounder for words. Why oh why had she been chosen for this task? "Admiral Tucker sent me to tell you—"

She broke off when he held up a hand. "She's dead, isn't she?" he said softly. It wasn't really a question.

Sydney stared at him wide-eyed and he shook his head, smiling faintly and looking down at the table. "It's all right, Lieutenant. I've lived long enough to see most of my friends die." He leant back in his chair to stare up at the ceiling. "Always figured T'Pol would outlive me, though."

Sydney was silent – she herself had found it difficult to believe T'Pol was dead; the Vulcan was another living legend and it seemed wrong that legends could die.

Archer focussed on her, his face calm but his eyes sad. "How?" he asked simply.

"She was on the Caruso, travelling to the Dialt Astrometrics Symposium on Betazed, when it was attacked by Orion pirates. When Captain Kilkenny was killed in the initial assault Commander T'Pol took over the Caruso and managed to convince the Orions she had something they wanted." Unable to stand his steady gaze any longer, she stared at her hands. "They took her and left the Caruso behind. When the Shi'kahr followed the Orions' trail they found her floating in space in an EVA suit. She died in sickbay, but told them she'd rigged the Orion ship to self-destruct." Grateful to have finished, she was silent a moment before venturing to add, "She saved a lot of people, Admiral." She risked looking up.

A faint, humourless smile twisted his lips. "Of course she did. It was the logical thing to do."

There was a wry, bitter irony in his voice that she didn't feel qualified to respond to, so she fell back on protocol. "Yes, sir."

He slanted a shrewd, measuring glance at her. "Never mind that. You didn't come here to listen to an old man's maudlin ramblings."

"Sir!" she protested, genuinely shocked. He'd just learnt of the death of one of his closest friends.

Her protest made him smile, though. "I've lived a little too long among Vulcans, Lieutenant; it's Not Done to air private emotions in public."

"But you're human, sir," she frowned.

"Oh yes, very human. Too human, Sorok likes to tell me. T'Pol gave up on telling me long ago." He sighed. "It's strange to think she'll never not tell me that again." Seeing her confusion, he said, "She had this one look that always told me she was thinking it, just not saying it."

As much as she would have loved to delve deeper into the relationship between the two, Sydney wasn't rude enough to pry further. Instead she remembered the box in her pocket and belatedly pulled it out. "The – her will hasn't been read yet, but Admiral Tucker said this was to go to you."

He accepted the smooth grey plastic box, which fit snugly into his palm, and said, "I'd been wondering why Charlie sent someone in person."

Opening it, he examined the contents with a slow smile that brought back the Captain of the Enterprise. Dearly longing to see what was in the box but unable to see from where she sat, Sydney twitched.

Archer snapped the box shut, to her regret, and shook his head fondly. "She always was sentimental, even for a Vulcan." She almost laughed but he was completely serious. Sydney gaped at him, wide-eyed, and he looked back serenely. "Don't tell me you buy their story of having no emotions," he said with amusement.

Confused and embarrassed again, she snapped, "What are you talking about? Sir." Oh gods, she'd just bitten the head off Captain Archer! Why couldn't the ground just swallow her up?

"I'm not laughing at you," he remonstrated mildly. "It just amuses me how people mistake 'passion's mastery' for having no emotions at all."

After staring at him for a long moment, she admitted, "I don't understand."

He offered her a warm smile and she felt like she'd just passed a test she hadn't known she was sitting. "Vulcans feel as deeply – more, I've always thought – as humans or any others of the so-called 'emotional species'. They just don't let it control them. A Vulcan heart can be broken, maybe even more easily than yours. But they're Vulcan. They've mastered their emotions so their feelings don't interfere with life. Even a broken heart will heal if given enough time. They almost destroyed themselves once. They won't do it again."

This completely unique take on the Vulcan race took Sydney by surprise. Vulcans were Vulcans: calm, logical... arrogant.

Archer was shaking his head. "What do they teach you at the Academy these days?" he asked with regret. "An alien race is never simple, never obvious. And just because the Vulcans are the species we've known the longest doesn't mean we have the first clue about what really makes them tick. After all, we can't even explain humans most of the time and we are them."

"I didn't—"

He twinkled at her knowingly. "Stereotypes are unavoidable, I'm afraid, but they lead to an awful lot of trouble. Look at T'Pol when she first came aboard Enterprise. She thought she knew about humans, we thought we knew about Vulcans. And we were all wrong. But we muddled through somehow and I'll never be more grateful to anyone than I am to that obnoxious Vulcan ambassador who was determined I had to have an observer on board my ship. Humans and Vulcans have a lot to learn from each other, you know. We opened her mind to new possibilities – she kept us honest. Infinite Diversity in Infinite Combinations. It's a beautiful idea, isn't it?"

"Yes, sir," Sydney agreed definitely, glad to have something in the conversation she could understand.

"You're stationed at the Embassy, I take it?" He'd been turning the box over and over in his hands, but now he put it down on the coffee-table.

"Yes, sir."

"You like it?"

Caught between a truth he wouldn't like and a lie, she hesitated.

"No, I didn't think so. You wanted a deep space assignment, I suppose."

"Yes, sir," she admitted. Exploring, meeting new races, seeing new planets... That was why she'd joined Starfleet. Not to dance attendance on a bunch of Vulcans who were never satisfied with her work.

"I'll tell you something, Lieutenant. You won't believe it, but I'll tell it to you anyway."

She nodded eagerly. Advice from Jonathan Archer! That would be something to boast about!

"You don't need to be in space to go exploring," he told her and she stared at him in blank confusion. "You're standing – sitting – on an alien planet. When I was your age only a handful of humans had that chance. If you want to explore, start right where you are. Did you know there's an Andorian community right here in Shi'kahr?" Disappointed and trying not to show it, she shook her head but he didn't stop. "The Interspecies Medical Exchange is just a transporter trip away. The Science Academy hosts a growing number of alien students. Lieutenant, deep space is all around you and you're not even looking for it. You're T'Pol and you're not taking the opportunity."

"I'm what?" she said in surprise.

"You are one of a few humans in a sea of aliens. This is your chance, Lieutenant. Visit the Andorians, talk to the exchange students. Immerse yourself in Vulcan culture. Look beyond the stereotypes and let yourself learn about the people around you. Maybe it takes a bit longer to get to know a Vulcan, but it's worth the effort." He smiled, reaching out to pick the box up again and weighing it gently. "It's definitely worth the effort."

Encouraged by his openness, she dared to ask a question she'd never thought to have answered. "Sir, why did you come and live on Vulcan? Why didn't you retire on Earth? Everyone knows how much you, uh, disliked Vulcans."

"You mean I hated them," he corrected, his smile widening. "As for why Vulcan? Well, T'Pol was here, Hoshi was here... But no, I suppose that's not it. You know what the worst thing T'Pol ever did to me was?"

"No...?"

"She turned me from a Vulcanophobe into a Vulcanophile. I mean, sure, some of them are arrogant SOBs who will never change their minds about humans, but on the whole they're a good people."

"Yes, but they're so... so... Vulcan."

Now he was laughing at her. "They'd have a hard time being anything else, Lieutenant."

"You know what I mean, sir."

"You mean overly logical, patronising, and closed-minded."

"Uh..."

"You do," he assured her. "But that's all right. You're too emotional, too naive, and too willing to accept unproven ideas."

"I—" She clamped down on her automatic protest, feeling like she was back at the Academy. Archer settled back in his chair, watching her with inscrutable amusement. Which didn't entirely make sense but she knew what she meant. "What do you mean, sir?"

"You're judging them from a human perspective. Try just accepting them as they are. You'll have fewer problems in the long run."

Wrinkling her nose, Sydney thought her way around this suggestion. "I don't know how, sir."

"Ah, but you thought about it. That's a good start, Lieutenant. Maybe you aren't a hopeless case after all."

She stiffened, but the teasing tilt of his eyebrows told her this was another test.

"That was a compliment, Lieutenant," he pointed out. "Let me tell you about Vulcans, then. I don't understand them – I don't think even Vulcans really understand them, any more than we understand ourselves – but I've lived with them for a long time." He studied the box in his hands for a moment as if choosing his words.

"You're right," he told her. "I used to hate the Vulcans. They killed my father's dreams, they refused to help us, they patronised us, and they kept their technology from us, only dropping us hints as they felt like it. But you have to understand, there's a whole lot more to Vulcans than that.

"A lot of us seemed to think they were gods or something, that they couldn't make mistakes and were stifling us out of malice. But they're Vulcans, not gods, and they're not perfect. They were scared."

"Sir?" she said in stupefaction. Vulcans, scared?

"Oh yes," he assured her, "they were scared. They'd never admit it, of course, but they were. Why shouldn't they be? We represented the greatest threat to their calm, dignified lives that they'd ever had to face. Noisy, bursting with emotion, rambunctious – and somehow crawling out of our dark hole after World War Three to spread our wings and soar."

"But, sir, the Andorians..."

Archer dismissed the Andorians with a wave of his hand. "The Andorians were too aggressive; they didn't interact with the Vulcans, they just fought them. We tried to interact as equals, tried to enter their ordered, unruffled lives. And we scared them, plain and simple. But still they offered us friendship, they hid the fear and came forward to meet us. More than that, they stayed. Best example of collective courage I've ever seen and I don't know what inspired it. Maybe they saw something of themselves in us, maybe they thought we showed promise.

"And we reached back like eager kids, grabbing onto their presence with enthusiasm, and we scared them all over again. They've seen worlds die as the beings on them battled with technology they weren't ready for. The Vulcans didn't want to watch another world destroy itself – this time because of them. Their compassion has been known to get them into trouble."

"Compassion?" she couldn't help interrupting in disbelief.

"You're thinking like a human again," he scolded softly.

"I am a human. Sir."

"All the more reason not to. Where was I? Oh yes. They didn't want to see another world destroyed, so this time they were cautious. They held back – for our own safety – and we resented them for it. Maybe they were too cautious, maybe they weren't cautious enough, I don't know. The point is, they were just muddling along the best they could, the same as we were. They didn't know what they were doing, they didn't know the rules; how could they be sure they were doing the right things? It's like parents with their first child: all the theory, all the logic, isn't enough. Logic doesn't keep you from making mistakes, so all they could do was make it up as they went along and hope what they were doing was for the best."

He shrugged a little, an affectionate light in his eyes. "I don't hate the Vulcans, Lieutenant. They did the best they could. They could have turned around and left us to struggle alone in the dark, but they didn't. I admire them for them."

He'd finished, but Sydney had nothing to say. It was going to take her days to even begin to get her head around all these strange, unexpected insights he'd just offered her. She had a feeling she was never going to completely understand. But she did know she'd been given something precious.

"T'Pol wasn't an explorer because she stood on the bridge of a starship headed for the edge of the universe," Archer told her. "T'Pol was an explorer because she was alone in a crowd of aliens and not afraid to learn." He watched her changing expressions and nodded with satisfaction. "I thought you might be able to understand. Here." Opening the box, he tossed her something from inside.

Fumbling clumsily, Sydney managed not to drop it on the floor and looked at it eagerly. It was a silver IDIC brooch, but unlike any she'd seen before because a little Enterprise silhouette was emblazoned in the centre.

"I had that made for her. Half expected a serious dressing down for defacing a revered Vulcan symbol, but I wanted her to have something to prove she was part of my crew. She wore it every day she was on my ship. One of the Vulcan diplomats nearly threw a hissy fit when he saw it but T'Pol ignored him. She was good at it, she could ignore you so well it felt like a slap in the face."

Sydney smiled. "It's beautiful," she said honestly and held it out so he could take it back.

"No, you keep it."

"Sir! I couldn't possibly—"

"Keep it," he said firmly. "You wear it and remember what exploration really means. IDIC, you got that? Just because you're human doesn't mean you have to think like one."

"Yes, sir," she breathed. "I won't let you down."

"No," he said simply, "you won't."

She knew then that if she was never posted off Vulcan she would still be content, because he was right. She didn't understand everything he'd said yet, but she had her whole life to work it out and a shining silver brooch that promised it was possible to. "Thank you, sir."

He smiled, old and experienced, but still learning, still standing in wonder. "I'm glad I could help."

"But, sir, I don't understand. Why tell me all this? Why give me this? You don't even know me."

He lifted an eyebrow, gently mocking. "You don't think Charlie – Admiral Tucker – sent you here just to deliver a message when he could have called me himself?"

"The box—"

"You're a Starfleet officer, not a postman. No, I know Charlie. He saw potential in you. He's a good judge of character; got it from his dad." He got stiffly to his feet. "Now, Lieutenant, it's time for you to go start living instead of moping."

"Yes, sir," she said, choosing not to protest his description. She had been moping, though she didn't know how he knew it. All she could hope was that she would learn half as much wisdom as he had; that would be a well-used life.

Archer escorted her to the gate, back through the fantasyland garden.

"Thank you for everything, Admiral," she said. "Especially for the lesson. And—" She hesitated. "I'm sorry for your loss."

"I know." The gate closed behind her on a frail, upright figure with sorrowed eyes but stubborn refusal to give in.

Sydney stood there a moment, looking at the closed gate, then set off across the street. She would learn to explore, she would learn to understand...

She clutched the little brooch in her hand, feeling the legacy of a human and a Vulcan whose lives had become intertwined and left the universe a little brighter. Their legacy would live on. She'd make sure of that.

Fin

2008