Dreams of a Lost Boy

Title: Dreams of a Lost Boy

Author: Jazz (andrews_j2002@yahoo.com.au)

Rating: PG-13

Summary: A day in the life of Trip Tucker.

Disclaimer: Characters, themes and all the biscuit dough belong to Paramount; some of the choc chips thrown in are mine – including the burnt ones.

Author's note: This was written to fight a depressingly sticky case of writer's block currently attacking another WIP like so many ants. I felt it had substance enough to stand up on its own.

Dreams of a Lost Boy

By Jazz

When Charles Tucker was a young boy his father gave him a model spaceship. Eight year-old Charlie had been disappointed; he'd had heart set on one of those antegrav baseballs which all his friends had and which was, he assured his parents vigorously, _the_ coolest toy around. Only nerds played with spaceships, and this one didn't even _do_ anything; it didn't even have retro-burners – how boring was that? So the spaceship was relegated to the back of his dresser, where it sat collecting dust and was soon forgotten. 

Charlie didn't know it back then, but that spaceship would one day ignite something inside him, which would take him up past the stars and into another world, another life. He didn't know that one day he would be running the engine room of the fastest and most advanced Federation ship into waters uncharted by human beings, into strange worlds which were both inspiring and terrifying. Into space, where life was still and silent, where time and distance was measured in a different scale, and the human race learnt to live in an eternal night just so they could play amongst the stars. He didn't know that, because how could a young boy possibly know? Instead Charlie played ball through the hot summer days and at night gazed through an opened window, and wondered if you could hit a home run on Mars.

How could a boy know such wonders existed?

Charles Tucker did not. He would discover, like all children did.

---

"Care to purchase a fine length of _I'kyaa_, sir? It's hand woven."

Commander Trip Tucker glanced down at the gaudy orange fabric and immediately wished he hadn't. It was crawling with hundreds of bugs. _Fleas,_ he thought, feeling nauseous. _Probably riddled with the things._ Why he had agreed to come with Captain Archer to this market in search of some special dog blanket Jon had heard about from their Tythian guide was beyond him. The rest of the crew were back on Enterprise, enjoying some sort of movie marathon Lieutenant Reed had prepared, as a celebration marking the end of their four-day visit to the Tythia System. Trip brushed the eager stallholder's wares away with a hand and tried to see where Jon had got to. God, but he was hot. He looked around at the rose-skinned Tythians wandering about and thought wistfully of the coolness of the ship's dark cinema.

He finally spotted the captain standing with Eekiv, their guide, at a stall laid out with squares of fabric. _Great, more rugs,_ Trip thought, and ran to catch up with them. Eekiv was chatting enthusiastically in his strange, singsong voice with the stallholder, and Trip pulled at Archer's sleeve, indicating he wanted to speak aside.

Archer gestured at the downy material excitedly. "Porthos will love one of these, don't you think?"

"Captain…" Trip tried to hide his grimace. "You'll give him fleas, bringin' one of those things aboard."

"You think so?" Archer frowned slightly. "They look clean enough to me."

Trip sighed. He had to be delicate when it came to Jon and Porthos; never come between a man and his dog. "I know so," he said. "Believe you me, we'll wind up sittin' in decon waiting for Phlox to douse us with flea powder. Besides, don't you think Porthos has enough blankets and toys as it is? Hell, that dog's got more rugs than I've got spanners. And _I'm_ the engineer!"

This put a smile on Archer's face. "Okay," he patted Trip on the shoulder, "you've made your point. We'll finish up here with Eekiv and get back to Enterprise." And then he added, "If we hurry you might be able to catch the end of the marathon."

Finally it was Trip's turn to laugh, and after beginning to feel like he was suffering from alien market overload, it sure felt good. _That's the good thing about Jon,_ he thought, _he knows me almost as well as I know myself._

---

In the end Trip saved Archer from making any purchases, and they sailed through decon in a flash. Though he knew he'd be late, but for the sake of seeing some familiar faces after days in the alien wilderness, when the doctor cleared him Trip dropped by the cinema. The end credits of some old war film were rolling when he arrived to see tired-looking faces and dragging limbs emerge. He spotted Ensign Mayweather first, and was rewarded with a friendly but exhausted grin from the young pilot.

"Hey, Commander, you're back."

"Jeez, you guys look beat. What was it?" Trip poked him on the shoulder; the poor guy looked ready to fall asleep right there in the corridor.

"Anthony Quinn marathon." Travis shook his head and blinked in an effort to stay awake. "We've just finished _The Guns of Navarone. _And don't ask me if I enjoyed it because all I can think about is hitting the sack. I wish I'd done like Hoshi and left after _Lawrence of Arabia._"

As if on cue, Malcolm Reed came out behind the young ensign, looking annoyingly awake. He said, rather haughtily, "I, for one, thoroughly enjoyed it."

That made Trip grin. "Hello Malcolm. Should've known you'd organise something like this. Glad I was away and had an excuse to miss it."

"If my grandfather had heard you he'd be turning over in his grave. He was a devoted fan." Malcolm stared at him for a moment. "Anyway, Commander, what are you doing back so soon? I thought Captain Archer had a special errand to run."

Stepping aside to let other crewmembers past, Trip coughed, hiding a smile. "Let's just say I talked him outa buying something he'd later regret."

The three of them began walking down the corridor, towards the mess, mainly on the urgent request of Travis' part for some coffee. "Well," said Malcolm breezily, "No doubt you're _itching_ to tell us of your adventures, if indeed you had any. Or may I presume from your tired expression that it was nice and diplomatic and dull?"

"Nice and diplomatic and dull," Trip repeated, and pretended to give this serious thought. "Yup. You've got it in one." He caught the teasing glint in the lieutenant's eye and laughed out loud. The others looked at him strangely, but said nothing, assuming Trip was as travel weary as they were film weary, and the three men continued down the corridor in amiable, if exhausted, silence.

---

Back in the days when Trip was a green ensign on his first posting out of the academy, he had to rely quite heavily on his alarm to startle him (always startle – why was he such a heavy sleeper?) into getting up in time for his shift. Even so, he was still reliant on cold showers and tankards of coffee to sufficiently get his sluggish brain cells pulsing in the early hours; a regime which became somewhat embarrassing as Trip duly spent the mornings in engineering alternating between a jittery state of caffeine-induced over-activity, and the urgent need to take discreet breaks to the bathroom. This went on for some weeks, until his supervising officer noted sternly at Trip's quarterly review that if his 'attitude' didn't sharpen up, he'd be relegated to gamma shift for the remainder of his posting. Trip remembered Lieutenant Commander Zoehrer being, in his words, 'disappointed'. "You are an extremely talented individual, Mr Tucker," Zoehrer had said; "and you deserve to be on alpha shift with your star peers. So please take this as an unofficial warning, and improve your approach before it is improved for you." Trip, who hadn't liked Zoehrer back then – the self-important, beady-eyed Vulcan wannabe was only a few years older that Trip himself – remembered in later times with bitter fondness that positive comments the Lieutenant Commander had bestowed upon him in _three and a half years_, including this one, he could count on one hand. 

Anyway, that story, interesting though it was on its own right, stood to illustrate the fact that Trip had since mastered the ability to wake exactly four minutes before his alarm went off, every day, without fail. He surprised himself with this impressive display of professionalism, albeit witnessed by him alone (but that's another story). Even so, Trip counted the fact that he only used his alarm as a token gesture to his youth, and to the memory of Zoehrer who, deep down, Trip still envied for being so good at such a young age. Though he still counted coffee as a necessary luxury, professionalism be damned. He _was_ Chief Engineer, after all.

After hot drinks turned into an impromptu breakfast, even though it was past midday, Trip bade farewell to Travis and Malcolm. This was partly because he was dog-tired, and partly because Malcolm was attempting to introduce Travis to the English delicacy known as _black pudding_. Trip, reminded slightly of the wriggling rugs back in the Tythian market, was forced with a sleepy bout of nausea from the table, and retired to his room to sleep it off. And for the first time in as long as he could remember, Trip Tucker missed his four-minute internal wake up call and slept through his alarm.

_So it turns out I'm not only Chief Engineer but human as well,_ Trip thought, throwing items of clothing across his room as he frantically searched for his spare uniform. _I can live with that…_Goddamn it! Where was his other boot? Spotting a boot-like shape in the furthest corner under his bunk, he grimaced. _Thanks a lot, Malcolm. _Trip coughed at the dust and wriggled his torso beneath the metal slats, sighing as his stomach gurgled unhappily. _I'm never again eating a greasy breakfast in the middle of the day. Never. _He emerged with the boot, bumping his forehead painfully on the way, and broke a lace-tying record before giving himself a cursory glance in the bathroom mirror, dabbing at the bump that was now bleeding delicately and finally grabbing a pile of padds from his desk, and exiting with speed into the corridor. 

_Please_, he thought, jogging the catch an opened turbolift, _don't let this be a precursor to my day._ Trip numbly watched the turbolift doors close and stood in the empty corridor, his head resting against the wall until pain from the bump, which, he noted with displeasure, was taking on a fetching purple colour, forced him to stand upright, and wondered if it was too late to crawl back into bed.

---

The Situation Room was located just off the bridge, and it was here where the senior staff held their weekly meetings. Like all large military organizations that considered themselves extremely weighty in the world scale, Starfleet stuck to the conservative side of things, and this included a fondness for decking out starship interiors in neutral, safe colours, flowing along straight, safe lines. No racy, bold décor for _this _ship of the line. 

Not surprisingly, _Enterprise's_ Situation Room was no exception. It had a long table; dark walls with little adornments on their faces; the usual assortment of communications consoles, monitors and data panels, all discretely dimmed so their beeps and whirrs were of little disruption to whatever was going on at the table; and nothing else. Apart from the single window framing a swirling landscape of stars, it was little more than a sanctuary for meetings, meetings, and more meetings. Situations barely came into it.

Trip, sitting at the far end of the table, felt himself fortunate to have secured the least conspicuous seat in the room. No-one was on either side of him, so he had a clear, unobstructed view of the stars, shining like pale pink sugar streaming into honeycombed spirals, and in the distance, sitting like a bright blue marble, the Tythian homeworld. It made him feel tired for some reason, which he shouldn't have, because God knows he'd had enough sleep in the last ten or so hours. After racing down to Engineering Trip had dumped the pile of padds on his desk, and had just started his daily inspection when he'd remembered it was Monday morning and everyone was waiting for him to show in the Situation Room for the weekly meeting. Of course, being the sort of day it was, Trip missed the first turbolift he came to, and coming out of the second he bumped into Chef and upset a box of vegetables. Being the gentleman he was, Trip stayed to pick up potatoes and chase a stray turnip, and thus he arrived, breathless, in the Situation Room, only to find Captain Archer was running behind schedule anyway, and Trip was in fact the first to arrive. Hence his refuge in the darkest corner of the room, away, he hoped, from frowning eyes. Especially beady little Vulcan ones.

_Don't you even dare, T'Pol, _Trip thought, perhaps unkindly. But tiredness was heavy upon him, and even _he_ was allowed the odd crabby morning. He looked at the stars again, and felt his eyes droop. _I'll just close my eyes for a moment._ Trip propped one elbow on the table and rested his chin in his hand. _Just a moment._

Some time later, Trip was happily in a semi-daydream state, his eyes on the Tythian orb, thinking of nothing in particular, when he became uncomfortably aware that talk had stopped and all eyes, Vulcan included, _were_ in fact upon him. He blinked rapidly; meeting Jon's raised eyebrows with what he hoped was a suitably alert and vigilant expression.

Archer's face was blank, but his eyes glinted. He repeated what had apparently been directed in Trip's direction.

"T'Pol wishes to know your opinion." The glint deepened. "Commander."

_Bastard,_ Trip thought, smiling despite himself. Jon knew he was caught, but wasn't going to let him go without letting his old friend squirm. Trip shifted in his seat and tilted his chin forward. _Better sit on the fence,_ he decided. "I think the Sub-Commander's on the money on this one, Captain." He smiled neutrally, folded his arms, and stared at Archer until the Captain nodded and signalled he'd let Trip off the hook by moving onto the next item on the agenda. Keen to avoid any more embarrassment, Trip dipped his head down and pretended to study his padd.

Actually he was pretty angry with himself. That was a bit of a shoddy act; almost falling asleep in the middle of an important meeting, albeit one that was routine and therefore dull. But still, there was no excuse. Everyone had bad days; the trick was to beat it with an ass-kicking work ethic. _Look at Malcolm,_ Trip thought, glowering slightly, _I bet _he_ never sleeps in._ But then he remembered that his own track record, up until today, had actually been pretty damn special. _Four minutes, remember, Trip._

That cheered him, until he saw Archer eyeing him mid-speech, and realised he was drifting again. With a sigh heard only by himself and the stars, he kicked his legs out, knocking against Hoshi's. But he ignored her curious glance, and with that gesture Trip resigned himself to the bad day blues, until whatever god played the double bass signalled his shift finished and he might start again.

---

In hindsight, it was perhaps erring on the self-indulgent for Trip to have deemed _one_ bad day as being the be all and end all of his life; in fact, he'd had worst days before this one, and was certain to have even worse ones down the line. And he had a lot to be thankful for, as his grandma would say. Actually, when Trip really thought about it, it was only his sleeping in which had triggered one unfortunate event after another. No, better than that, blame it on Malcolm's full English breakfast.

But if you were to tell this to Trip when he finally got to the end of his shift, exhausted out of his mind, not to mention having been constantly jibed by his senior colleagues throughout the day about his memorable non-performance at the meeting that morning, you would certainly not receive such eloquent philosophy, but something more along the lines of a dark comment alluding to the fact that Trip had 'had enough of the day and was going to sweat if away in the gym, if you'll excuse [him].'

Which was where Trip found himself heading to, gym bag in tow, after his shift ended. _Thank god that's over,_ he thought, letting a pent-up sigh escape as he stood alone in the turbolift. He rubbed his aching eyes, and smiled suddenly as his fingers touched the tender skin at his temple, less painful but still slightly swollen, courtesy of his bunk that morning. _God, I'd almost forgotten. It seems like ages ago, not ten hours._ He shouldered his bag as the doors opened, and walked down the corridor towards the gym, where, god willing, he might finally get some peace. _Knowing my luck, though, _he thought, _T'Pol'll be in there practicing karate or something depressingly agile and disciplined._ As much as he liked the Vulcan (though he'd never admit it), her innate lack of humour was no soother and tonic to the sort of bad day Trip had just endured.

He stood for a moment outside the gym's doors, listening for signs of activity. Hearing none, he was appropriately taken back to find Hoshi Sato on a mat twisted into all sorts of contortions. He didn't dare ask what she was about, tying herself up in knots like it was the most normal thing to be doing at twenty five past six in the evening, so he waited until she was bent over far enough to spot him through her legs, and said, "Hey, Hoshi," quite innocuously, and turned towards the change rooms.

"Hi, Trip." Hoshi uncurled herself, and gave him a little wave. Trip waited until he was out of her line of sight before he spoke further.

"So, uh, care to explain why I walk in here to find our chief linguist attemptin' to turn herself into a reef knot?"

Hoshi laughed. "Nice try. I'm not falling for that one."

"No, seriously." Trip emerged in his joggers and sweat pants and headed towards the treadmills. He pondered what speed to set for perhaps a nanosecond before switching onto high. He ran out his cooped-up energy for a couple of minutes before giving into his screaming muscles and turning down to a medium jog. Wiping a line of sweat out of his eyes, he nodded again in Hoshi's direction. "What is it? I'm curious."

"It's pilates."

"Right." Trip nodded. _Okay, we're heading into dangerous territory here,_ he thought, watching Hoshi over the bars of the treadmill as she bent herself in two. _Next we'll be discussing yoga. Better stick to what you know, Trip._

So he said, "I'm more of a weights and sit-up kind of guy, myself." He saw Hoshi smile but she said nothing in reply, so he left her to her exercises, and concentrated instead on his breathing, the pull in his thigh muscles, calves and lower back, until he felt the bad vibes ease themselves away under the smooth, practiced thud his feet produced as they pounded in a steady rhythm on the machine. It felt good just to run, to think of nothing and to watch the stars, much in the manner as he had done that meeting. _Except this time I'm not running late,_ he thought, his eyes absently connecting the stars together in spidery patterns. _Here, I'm master of my own domain._

"Bad day?"

Trip looked up. Hoshi had finished, and was sitting on one of the long benches that wrapped around the gym's perimeter. She raised her eyebrows in his direction.

He sighed, and hopped off the treadmill. Grabbing a towel, he blotted his face and wandered over to the bench. "Is it that obvious?" he asked wryly.

Shrugging, Hoshi shifted on the bench so that her toes were aimed in Trip's direction. "I wouldn't burn yourself out worrying about it," she said, sympathetically. "Plenty of things happened to _me_ today that I wish hadn't. The way I see it, they're going to happen no matter what I do; I've just got to treat them just like any bad situation. Deal with it, learn from it–"

"Laugh at it," finished Trip. In spite of himself, he did just that. "Four minutes…boy, did _that_ screw me."

He watched Hoshi screw her nose up, confused, which made him laugh more. "Four minutes?" she repeated.

"Up until today, Ensign," Trip said laconically, "that was precisely my level self-discipline each morning." He grinned at her and quickly dodged a sharp prod from Hoshi's foot aimed at his upper thigh. "Hey! That's no way to treat a commanding officer."

Hoshi groaned and got off the bench. She took her towel and proceeded towards the change rooms. "I'll see you later, okay?" 

Trip leant his head against the wall, basking in the post-exercise glow. "Yeah. Later," he said, letting his eyes close. He didn't see Hoshi smile wickedly, but heard her say, "Don't fall asleep again, now…"

With a grin, Trip let an expletive go, and in a single movement picked up a hand towel off the floor and, with his eyes still closed, threw it in the vague direction of Hoshi's voice. Her laughter echoed in the cubicles, and Trip, leaning back more comfortably, smiled to himself, and thought, _I think that just put things into perspective._

Not a bad end, actually, for a bad day.

---

C Deck was home to the senior crew's quarters, and hierarchy being as it was; that is, firmly in place, though not in any way lauded upon, the rooms were generously proportioned and, as deep space lodgings went, quite accommodating. Even so, Trip had still managed to fill his room with a quite astonishing amount of odds and ends. His taste in furnishings lent itself to the more practical side; so that instead of, say, a neat two piece sofa, he settled for a utilitarian work desk where he could house reports, work plans and all sorts of engineering paraphernalia to his heart's content. It was still cluttered, of course, but in this way he could _function_. It was a system that worked. And that's all that mattered.

Nevertheless, amongst the clutter Trip had kept a few relics from his childhood. A worn baseball; his harmonica; precious family holoimages. These things served to keep Trip's feet planted firmly on terra firma. He resolved on first joining Starfleet never to loose sight of that fact.

He finished up at the gym not long after Hoshi had left. There were a few groups chatting away in the mess, but Trip decided to forego conversation and opted instead to grab a sandwich and head back to his quarters. The liquid crystal digits on Trip's bedside clock melted from 19:59 into 20:00 as Trip entered his room. He watched the second divider blink on and off for a moment, then sat down slowly on the edge of his bed. His mind raced between ideas of nothing and everything; he thought of what Hoshi had said earlier; of what he had been thinking that morning; of his self-accusations. Perhaps it wasn't in his power to worry about he had or hadn't done; what he should and shouldn't do. Was he the only one who thought about things like this? _Boy, a shrink would have a field day on this ship,_ he thought, and laughed out loud.

Suddenly Trip got up. He walked to the aforementioned work desk, and rummaged around in the back of a draw.

"Gotcha…" he murmured, his hand emerging clasped around a small wooden object. He uncurled his fingers, and held it up to the light.

It was part of what had once been a model spaceship - the nose and cockpit. Its metallic paint was chipped, and the decals had rubbed away, but Trip touched it with warm fingers, grinning as a clutch of boyish memories pounded with sudden urgency in a corner of his brain. _This is what it's all about_, he thought. _This means more good than all the bad days in the world._ He cleared away a pouch of space beside his harmonica, and placed the broken model carefully down, then ate his supper and changed out of his clothes. He felt lightheaded; happy.

And so he slept, unhurried and with purpose. At some point his dreams melted away, and with them a picture of a starship, streaking like a bullet through space in the hands of a young boy who had loved it once, long ago.

END


End file.
