Archive of Our Own

Upon entering the Empress’ quarters, T’Pol is greeted with the sight of a man emerging from under her skirts, his face slick with what she can only assume is the remnants of the Empress’ orgasm.

It is an unpleasant sight.

“Ah, T’Pol,” Empress Sato sighs, stretching out on a lounging couch that she must have had imported to the ship, “come in.” She pauses to flick her fingers at the man, not taking her eyes off T’Pol as she does. “You can leave.”

The way the man’s face falls into petulant disappointment might have been amusing to any other observer, but T’Pol watches, unmoved, as he clumsily scrambles to his feet and scurries out, attempting to conceal his erection behind his hands.

He doesn’t succeed.

“Mm. I hate men.” Hoshi says, as the doors slide shut behind him. “You let them give you pleasure once, and they think that they’ll get to fuck you.”

T’Pol has no response to that. “You asked for me, Empress?”

“All business, hmm?”

She raises a hand to beckon T’Pol closer and, unwillingly, she follows.

The further into the room she moves, the harder it is to ignore the way the scent of sex lingers in the room, clinging to dark hair and silk robes.

When she’s standing directly in front of Hoshi, she is presented with a small, stoppered, test tube.

“Take it.”

T’Pol does. Inside is nothing more than one strand of hair.

“What is it?” the Empress prompts, a small smirk playing across her face as she watches T’Pol try to decipher the situation.

“A hair?”

“Yes,” Hoshi drawls, “and not just any hair. Guess whose.”

It’s an impossible ask – T’Pol can make basic deductions through sight alone, but she’ll never be able to give a definitive answer without any of her tech. Still, she examines the hair closely, brings the test tube up to her eyes; visually, it is unremarkable. A pale blonde. Fine. Most likely human.

“It appears to be Terran in origin.”

“Ooh, very analytical.” Hoshi leans back against the cushions like a cat at play. “But, not quite right.”

Test tube still in hand, T’Pol remains silent.

“As I’m sure you know,” the Empress continues, unhindered by the lack of response, “I have spies, out, across the galaxy.”

“A wise choice, Empress.”

Hoshi glances at her with something that might have been the beginnings of an actual smile. “Why, thank you.”

The calculating look returns.

“And some of them reported back to me, about a week ago now, telling me that there was this… organisation that had formed.”

“Against you?”

She shrugs. “Not exactly. They call themselves Terra Earth, they’ve got a tagline as well: ‘Terra for the Terrans.’ Which has a nice ring to it, I suppose.”

T’Pol glances back at the hair in the test tube. She cannot see the connection.

“Anyway, they disagreed with the continued spread of my Empire, so I had them killed. But not before we discovered a very interesting project they were working on.”

She looks to T’Pol again.

“See?”

The hair seems to pulse behind its tiny glass prison.

“A child?”

“Ah, but not just any child.” She uncrosses her legs, leans forward. “You know how these organisations work, trying to spread fear. They thought if they could show people the dangers of mixing with aliens, Earth would join them, see their side.”

“They created a human-alien hybrid?”

Hoshi gives her a smile that is both maternal and condescending. “Exactly.”

“I do not understand why you are telling me this.”

That gets a laugh. Sharp and delighted, the sound echoing far too loudly in the quiet of the room. “Oh, but I think you do,” she drawls, extending her vowels, “I think you do.”

And, despite everything, T’Pol does.

Hoshi rises slowly, a predator in silk, crossing the short distance remaining between them. She doesn’t stop until she’s so close that T’Pol is forced to tilt her head slightly to maintain eye contact.

The test tube remains in her hand, gripped like a weapon she knows she won’t get to use.

“Because it was your DNA they used as the alien half.”

T’Pol cannot stop herself from asking. “And the human half?”

“Well,” Hoshi finally steps back, “apparently they had agents on the Enterprise. Agents that… took note of the little interspecies fling you decided to have.”

She wants to close her eyes. Wants to scream, break the test tube, use it to rip out the parts of her that forced her to lose control in such an awful way. But she does none of this; she keeps her gaze locked with Hoshi’s, even as his mangled face appears in her mind.

“Trip Tucker.” Hoshi says, finally, low and lazy. “Yours and his. A poor doomed little hybrid. Half logic, half… charm. All weakness.”

A muscle in T’Pol’s jaw tightens.

“We found her in one of their research outposts. A little place on Mars.” Hoshi is circling her now, leaning in to speak in T’Pol’s ear. “Most of the data had been scrubbed, but she was alive. Barely.”

Her.

There’s a pause.

“I was going to kill her.”

T’Pol does not react. She can’t afford to.

“But then I discovered something else.” The Empress finally retreats back to her couch, stretching out. “Do you know what that was?”

“No, Empress.”

“I’m pregnant.”

T’Pol had fixed her gaze on the wall above Hoshi’s head, but she can’t quite stop it from falling back down to the other woman’s face at her declaration.

“Congratulations, Empress.” She replies, belatedly.

Hoshi doesn’t seem to care. “And it made me think… my child will be the future ruler of this Empire. It’s a precarious role, they cannot just be playing with other children, not when their parents could use that against me.” She pauses for a moment, thoughtful. “But… I won’t have my child grow up lonely, and you? Well. So, I brought the hybrid here, to fill that role.”

T’Pol stiffens. “Here?”

She waves a hand. “Oh, don’t look at me like that, it’s not like I gave the thing to Phlox.”

That had been T’Pol’s first fear, and it’s a little disconcerting that the Empress can read her in such a way.

“So,” Hoshi continues, “I am willing to offer you a deal. The child can live, if she is raised here. Beside my child. As… a friend, a companion, and a protector.”

T’Pol hesitates, just for a moment. “And if I refuse your deal?”

Hoshi smiles in response, satisfied. “Then I’ll kill the thing myself. And you can return to your people, live out the rest of your life as a Vulcan slave.”

Silence stretches the gap between them to an unimaginable distance.

T’Pol closes her hand around the vial, reaches out with her limited telepathic capabilities and feels the brush of another mind, one that she should have nurtured before it emerged into the world.

She does not have to give in. Not entirely. Just long enough to get her daughter, just long enough to plan an escape.

“As you wish, Empress.”

*

It turns out that Hoshi had thought the whole thing through, from multiple angles, before she had ever approached T’Pol about it.

Doctors have been placed on standby on Earth, ready to receive the pregnant Empress and her small entourage, and one – one that she trusts – has already been shuttled to them on the Defiant, along with the same nanny that Hoshi says raised her.

“A nanny?”

Hoshi glances over her bare shoulder – she’s in the middle of getting dressed, choosing one of the bright coloured uniforms today to deal with the crew – “We will be busy.” She says, as though T’Pol is being deliberately stupid. “Running an empire. We cannot always be with the children.”

T’Pol does not admit that she had expected raising the children to be the role she was to fill.

“Besides, Zara raised me. I know she’s loyal.”

They leave the baby with Zara who croons over the tiny, pointed ears. “Oh, isn’t she just darling? What’s her name?”

T’Pol freezes.

“God, T’Pol,” Hoshi says, frowning, “have you seriously not named the thing yet?”

She hasn’t. Names seem to elude her whenever she looks at the baby – six months old, and having been in their care for several weeks, and she’s still just… the baby.

Briefly, she had thought of her own mother, considered her name – T’Les – but it had seemed too serious, too Vulcan for a girl whose hair reveals that she will never truly belong to the desert planet.

It bothers her for the rest of the day, even as she remains at the Empress’ side, watching for any potential threats, noting anyone who seems to have retained loyalties to Archer or Forrest. And yet, nothing comes.

In a fit of what she’ll never admit is desperation, once Hoshi dismisses her, she leaves the child in the nanny’s care and heads down to engineering.

The engineers know better that to approach her. And she knows better than to think news of her presence won’t reach Trip before she does.

“Oh,” he says, leaning back against a consol, the scars on his face even more prominent that she remembered. “To what do I owe the pleasure?”

Briefly, T’Pol wonders if the child should be examined for radiation damage; he had once said that the amount he’d been exposed to could affect multiple generations.

“You are aware of the child.”

“The concubine to the future emperor?”

She grits her teeth. “She needs a name.”

There’s a pause and then Trip laughs. Loudly. “You’ve had her for three weeks and haven’t named her yet?”

T’Pol remains silent. He turns away, still laughing.

“Charlotte.” He offers, mockingly. “Charlie Tucker.”

“I am not naming her after you.”

For a moment, he just scoffs, and then his hand seems to hesitate where it’s reaching inside a panel. When he speaks again, his voice is softer. “Elizabeth.”

“What?”

“It was my sister’s name,” he says, forced casualness in his voice, “and she ain’t using it anymore.”

Elizabeth.

“I’ll consider it.”

T’Pol returns to her quarters. The nanny vanishes the moment she enters; silent, efficient, forgettable.

The child is where she left her, propped up in a nest of cushions, blinking slowly at the ceiling.

For a moment, she follows the girl’s gaze, wonders how her eyesight has developed so far; what she sees in the metal panelling.

When she looks back, the girl is looking at her.

“Elizabeth.” She says, aloud, testing the weight of it.

The child doesn’t react.

“It will do.”

Hoshi just laughs when she delivers the news to the Empress.

“I guess you can call her that. I’d have called her something like Bug Eyes.”

It is true that Elizabeth’s eyes are a little too big for her head, but T’Pol does not bother pointing out that it is highly likely she will grow into them. Just as she does not bother to correct the Empress whenever she calls the girl ‘Bug.’

*

They return to Earth; to people eager to pledge their loyalty to the new regime.

The building Hoshi claims as the centre of her new empire once belonged to the Catholic Church: a sprawling monolith to what humans had once believed in. A physical representation of the high and the holy.

Now it is hers.

The people who worshipped here were murdered long ago. With blades, not bullets, as though their aggressors were trying to make a point. There are still places where the tiles run red-brown at the edges, where no amount of scrubbing could quite remove the memory of blood. It stays, clinging to the marble like a penance.

Renovations are still being carried out when they arrive – the men who had lived here had never had families. Children were never expected to live here.

T’Pol does not question why Hoshi chose this place. The other woman goes straight to the top of the building, looks out across cities and people: the highest person in the world, it almost seems.

Stained glass remains in the windows, patched up with an attempt at art where it was fractured previously. Prophets and saints stare down at the new inhabitants, eyes cracked, hands and heads missing, as Imperial banners unfurl beneath them.

An alter is pushed aside to make room for the new throne, its back carved from the melted bones of a starship’s hull; an enemy that had been conquered. It is out of place among the stone. Hoshi likes that.

Only one room remains untouched; a chapel, filled with paintings T’Pol has only ever seen copies of.

The Empress enjoys lying in that room, a pillow under her head as she spreads out on the tiled floor, staring up at the ceiling. Elizabeth lies with her, head resting on Hoshi’s chest, eyes following hands that point as she talks.

“See that one?”

Her hand is extended, pointing at one that T’Pol somehow knows is called the Creation of Adam. Elizabeth, still young, approaching a year old (maybe, it’s hard to say), looks up, obedient.

“That,” Hoshi continues, focusing on Adam, “is you.”

Her finger shifts to the other figure, the bearded man surrounded by angels.

“And that,” her other hand comes to rest on her stomach, “is the baby.”

She only grows more volatile as the pregnancy progresses. Small failures become acts of treason. Missteps are met with screaming, tears, rage that burns through the corridors like plasma.

“Get it out of my sight!” she shrieks one day, throwing a datapad at a trembling minister who had arrived with incorrect figures on the new mining operations.

Sometimes she turns her fury on T’Pol. More often, she does not.

But T’Pol watches. Learns. Prepares.

And all the while, Elizabeth grows.

She takes her first stumbling steps under the watchful eye of the Empress, staggering away from her mother, hands reaching out to grasp silk, and T’Pol sits on the floor and imagines another world. One where there is no Empire, where it is not Hoshi, lounging on a couch that her daughter moves toward, drawn like a moth to a flame, but her father.

To a version of Trip that T’Pol has only ever seen in fragments – soft edges caught in half-memories, shadows of smiles that had nothing to do with power or conquest. A man who crouches low, arms outstretched, voice warm as he encourages her to try again. Who makes an exaggerated show of falling over when she topples, sending them both into helpless laughter.

But the vision never lasts.

Not with Hoshi’s laughter cutting through the air as Elizabeth steadies herself again, bottom in the air, hands pressed to the floor, her tiny face scrunched in fierce concentration. It’s not quite mocking. No, Hoshi doesn’t bother with mockery. It’s amusement of a different sort, the kind a monarch might find in the antics of her fool. A sound that says, Dance for me, little one. Earn my smile.

Elizabeth pushes to her feet again, wobbling forward with all the stubbornness of her bloodline. When she falls, she doesn’t cry. And that, more than anything, makes Hoshi’s eyes gleam with approval.

T’Pol says nothing. She only watches, wondering, whether this child will survive the life laid out for her.

Everyday she is told – by Hoshi, by the nanny, by T’Pol herself – about the baby growing in the Empress’ stomach. Told about her future best friend, her sister.

She sits at the Empress’ feet, looks up at Hoshi with wide, trusting eyes. Only a year old (or thereabouts) and already her loyalty lies with the unborn, stretching the skin; her eyes trained to notice the slight bulges in the skin that mean the baby is moving.

T’Pol says nothing.

And Hoshi, one evening, reaches down, cups the girl’s face with manicured fingers, sharp enough to leave marks.

“You’ll protect her, won’t you?” she murmurs, voice honey-sweet and full of command.

Elizabeth blinks slowly, nods – the kind of solemn, exaggerated nod only a toddler can manage, full of effort.

“Yes.” She says, the word soft and imperfect, but clear. “Yes.”

Hoshi smiles, slow and satisfied, one hand resting on her taut stomach, the other still cupping Elizabeth’s face. “Good girl.”

She presses her thumb to the child’s lower lip, and even as her nail must dig in painfully, Elizabeth does not pull away. T’Pol cannot tell if it’s because she had learned not to, or because the idea of pulling away from the Empress just does not occur to her.

“Because she’s going to be very important,” Hoshi continues, leaning back against her couch, as if this were a conversation between equals. “She’s going to be Empress someday. And an Empress needs someone she can trust. Someone who would kill for her.

Elizabeth’s eyes are wide and serious. She doesn’t understand what kill means. But she understands trust. She understands good girl.

She says, “Me.” Still stumbling and toddler-slow, but devout.

T’Pol remains sat on the floor, Elizabeth’s abandoned toys at her feet. She has been told not to interrupt, and she obeys – she always obeys – but her jaw is tight. Her hands, folded neatly in her lap, are clenched.

And later, as the days pass and Elizabeth’s command of language improves, when T’Pol is dressing her for bed, the child looks up at her and says, very quietly, “Gonna be a sword.”

T’Pol smooths down her hair. “You are a child.”

Elizabeth frowns, confused. “No. ‘m hers.”

And how can she respond to that?

Weeks continue to pass.

The Empress grows tired with the weight of the baby, their nightly gatherings move to her bedchambers, where T’Pol sits in a chair and watches as her daughter plays with toys she would never have been able to afford on her own. Watches as the Empress listens to the recordings sent back to her of new languages, sees how she eagerly takes notes, deciphering the alien sounds into something understandable.

“We should implement a standard language.” T’Pol says, one evening, as the Hoshi plays one sound over and over, “across the Empire.”

Hoshi looks up, tilts her head, “That’s not a bad idea.”

Soon after, she begins to remain in her bedchambers, taking guests there, sending orders out into the Empire, one hand perpetually resting over the future heir.

Whispers trace the edges of the palace, seep into the cracks, as servants and courtiers alike prepare for the birth – “It’s coming.” They say to one another. “It’ll be soon.”

T’Pol holds her daughter tight enough that it must hurt, although the girl never complains, and counts the days until her child is no longer hers alone. Watches as her window to escape grows smaller and smaller, and hates herself as she does nothing about it.

And then it is too late.

She’s woken by guards at an unnatural hour of the morning, only given enough time to grab Elizabeth and leave her with the half-awake nanny as they hurry her through the hallways, to the birthing chamber.

The Empress is in the middle of a contraction when they arrive. Her screams echo off marble and steel.

She looks like a creature possessed. And yet, she retains the air of superiority that she carries everywhere with her. She may be pained, but she is still their ruler.

In the doorway, T’Pol finds herself hesitating, aware, with a pained clench in her chest that this is her last real moment to leave. After this, Elizabeth’s loyalty will be solidified, concrete in a real person. But her hesitation cannot last long; two of the guards take her by the arms and drag her into the room.

“Give me your hand!” Hoshi howls. And then, to the room at large: “I want her hand!”

One of the guards shoves her even closer – clearly relieved to be able to escape – and her wrist is caught before she can brace herself. Seized and crushed in a grip that only tightens as the pain surges.

She grits her teeth as nails dig into the sensitive flesh between her knuckles. Vulcan hands are built for touch, for control, for affection.

They are not meant for this.

Green blood beads where Hoshi’s nails break the skin, the smell sharp and coppery, a contrast to the iron-rich air.

(Later, Hoshi will see the wounds and laugh, airy, unbothered. “I forgot your blood was green,” she will say, amused. “It looks good on you.” It is the only thing she will say.)

And then, Hoshi’s breath catches in her throat, the yells stop, and she slumps back into the pillows, partially dragging T’Pol down with her.

For a long moment, the room is silent. A midwife speaks urgently in hushed tones, and Hoshi’s grip tightens again, fear sparking where their skin meets.

Something icy settles over the room in those few, frozen moments, everyone waiting. Two midwives are bent over the small figure, blocking her from view, and T’Pol, ironically, feels a brief surge of hope.

And then there is a cry.

A whimper at first, that builds, high and thin and angry. The first proclamation of the future Empress.

Hoshi relaxes, finally, triumphant and sweating. “Bring her to me.”

The nurse hurries to comply. A bundle of silk and red cloth is placed in her arms. The baby is dark-haired, sharp-featured, and impossibly small. Hoshi coos at her, kisses her brow; soft, in a way T’Pol has never seen.

Beside them, the midwives are still moving, mumbling among themselves, things that T’Pol does not bother to hear until one of them steps forward. At the movement, the Empress raises her head, frowning.

“What will you call her, your imperial majesty?”

Every eye in the room returns to the baby.

“Hoshi.” The Empress decrees. “She will be Hoshi II, of the Terran Empire.”

“A wonderful choice, my liege. She looks so much like you.”

Privately, T’Pol thinks that the baby looks like every other newborn – red and wrinkled – but she is not stupid enough to voice the thought.

There is more pushing after that – the placenta must come out – and the baby must be weighed, measured, but not found wanting. T’Pol remains at the Empress’ side through it all, time that stretches out into what must be hours.

In the back of her mind, Elizabeth pulses like a beacon. As small and inexperienced as she is, she can still push her strong emotions through that weak familial bond, and she is desperate to meet her sister.

T’Pol remains until the midwives finally leave. Until the guards have swept the room, checking again for any dangers. Until the child is sleeping, red-faced and furrow-browed in the crook of her mother’s arm.

After everything, Hoshi is quiet; drained and pale. But she is still dangerous – the kind of dangerous that needs no movement to command a room.

Her fingers stroke the baby’s soft skull with a disturbing tenderness.

“You’ll bring Elizabeth now.” She says, without looking up.

It is not a question. Not even a command. It is just a simple statement of the future, a prediction as confident as if it had already happened.

And T’Pol could protest – wants to protest – could say that Elizabeth is sleeping, that it is still so early in the morning, that the baby is too new and fragile. But she fears what the Empress may read between the lines she speaks, and so she says none of that.

She bows her head and leaves.

Elizabeth is awake when she enters the nursery. The nanny looks up with a patented exhaustion that tells T’Pol she has not slept.

“Where’s the baby?” her daughter whispers, eyes wide with awe. “Is she here?”

T’Pol gathers her up, holds her close for a few moments too long. Thinks, again, about leaving, about making a run for it, regardless of their pyjama-clothed state, but where would they go? Back to Vulcan, where Elizabeth will live as an outcast? They could not stay on Earth, where Hoshi would find them. Out to the edges of the known universe? To the edges of a war?

No. She does not know enough to say that they will have enough food, that Elizabeth will be as healthy as she is under the care of the imperial doctors.

“Mama. The baby?”

“Yes,” she says, softly, “she is here.”

The nanny comes too – to remove Elizabeth should she get overexcited, or should the Empress decide she is irritating her – and the three of them enter the dimmed chamber.

Had it not been for the smell of blood, still permeating the air, the warm, gold light of the sunrise could have been peaceful.

The baby is still swaddled in red silk and Hoshi’s arms. Silent, sleeping.

Elizabeth hesitates just inside the doorway, glancing up at her mother, briefly uncertain.

Carefully shifting the infant, Hoshi reaches out to beckon her with one curled finger. “Come see her.”

The little girl crosses the floor, barefoot and silent, until she’s standing next to the bed, peering over the edge.

“Up.” Hoshi commands, and T’Pol hurries to lift her daughter onto the sheets, where she crawls, unsteady, up the bed, until she is leaning over the small bundle.

“This is your sister.” The Empress whispers. “She is your everything.”

Elizabeth scrunches up her nose. “She doesn’t have any arms.”

That gets a bark of laughter from Hoshi, the nanny echoing it a moment later. Her face is still disturbingly soft as she pulls the silk free, just enough that the baby can stretch one arm out.

“She does, see?”

“Uh huh.”

“It makes her feel safe.” T’Pol says, reaching over to rest a hand on the back of her daughter’s skull. “Warm, as though she is still inside the womb.”

Elizabeth looks at the Empress’ stomach, still distended from the pregnancy. “Safe.”

“Yes,” Hoshi agrees, “she needs to feel safe. Do you understand?”

She gets a firm nod in response.

The Empress smiles. “Good. Because she belongs to the Empire now. Just like you.”

T’Pol flinches.

Elizabeth does not.

Rather, she reaches out with one careful finger and touches the baby’s hand. The newborn flails, tiny fingers brushing Elizabeth’s, curling instinctively around one.

A perfect, symbolic grip.

Hoshi watches them for a moment. “Take a picture.”

Behind T’Pol, the nanny does, shifting slightly to get the image the Empress clearly wants – her, cradling her heir, with their sword leaning over protectively. 

“Perfect. Use that in the press release.”

After that, it is impossible to escape the influence of the baby. Every moment they are apart, Elizabeth asks about her, adopts the nickname the nanny had given her – Hoshito, Little Hoshi – and it becomes a core part of her vocabulary.

“Ito?” she asks, hopeful, “where’s Ito?”

They return to spending their evenings in the Empress’ chambers – four instead of three – where T’Pol takes the opportunity to read over the constant stream of articles that are written, keeping an eye out for any dissent, any negative portrayals of the imperial family. Hoshi sits with her, most of her attention focused on the girls.

“Anything interesting?”

It’s directed at her, so T’Pol shakes her head. “No. Some people have commented on how impressive it is that you have returned to work, so soon after the birth.”

Hoshi smiles, satisfied.

“Many have mentioned her name, suggested that you are setting up a dynasty.”

“Well, I am.”

She nods in response. “There have been discussions over whether you will set up a marriage alliance. The Andorian leader has a child only a few months older than Elizabeth.”

“The blue people?” Hoshi raises a hand to rub at her nose, thoughtful. “I don’t think we want a half-breed as an heir.”

T’Pol glances over, but Elizabeth does not flinch.

“I suppose it would not be necessary for her spouse to also be the father of her children.”

She sees the Empress turn her attention away from the children, feels the full weight of her gaze land. “That’s a good point.”

T’Pol tilts her head briefly in acknowledgement. “Although we should be aware that granting someone that position may allow them to make an attempt at their own play for power.”

Hoshi shrugs. “We can kill them. I killed Archer, after all.”

It’s the first reference she has made to Ito’s father, although T’Pol had long suspected it. Thankfully, Hoshi’s attention turns again, back to the children, before she can comment on it.

“Come here, Bug.”

Elizabeth rises unsteadily to her feet, still cradling the baby – T’Pol sits up, ready to catch should she fall – and toddles the few steps to land them both in Hoshi’s lap.

“Who do you belong to, Bug?”

She points at the infant. “Ito.”

And Hoshi strokes her hair in reward. “That’s right. You’re hers. You belong to her. And when she cries, you’ll be the one to quiet her. When she’s scared, you’ll stand in front of her. When someone tries to hurt her—”

She presses a single, painted nail against Elizabeth’s tiny sternum.

“- you’ll kill them.”

Elizabeth doesn’t flinch. She’s still too young to understand what is truly expected of her – and by the time she does, it will be too deeply ingrained in her conscience to be removed. But she nods again. Because she knows that nodding makes Hoshi smile.

Beside them, T’Pol watches. Says nothing. Tries to tell herself: it is just a game. She is too young to understand.

But, later that night, when the halls are quiet and the glow of the nursery dimmed, Elizabeth is refusing to get into bed, jumping around, stabbing at the air with the stuffed dagger toy someone had given her, she wonders.

“What are you doing?”

Elizabeth jumps on the bed, excited. “’m protecting Ito. From the bad man.”

T’Pol looks at the empty space. “Well done.”

In another universe, Elizabeth might have been learning how to paint. Here, she is learning how to smile while holding a knife.

“But you cannot protect her without adequate sleep.”

It works. Elizabeth drops onto the bed, wriggles herself under the covers and shuts her eyes.

She stands in the darkened room for a long time, hating herself for the choices she had made, even as she acknowledges there was nowhere else to turn.

*

Every day, the girls grow.

Despite herself, T’Pol cannot help but feel that every time she looks away, they both gain another inch to their height. Another blade in their arsenal.

Ito takes her first steps with Elizabeth shadowing her, tiny hands either side of a tiny body, just in case she falls. Her first word is “Bug,” and as she begins to speak more, Elizabeth’s real name falls out of use among the general court.

They grow more confident as well. Something T’Pol should be grateful for, and yet she finds herself mourning the days where Elizabeth had clung to her leg, when she was content to trail behind her with wide eyes and open hands.

The dolls they are gifted are not used to play tea parties but war.

Each one is given a different race – Vulcan, Andorian, Tellarite, Terran – and arranged across the black glass table in the centre of Hoshi’s chambers. Territories are drawn with chalk lines, armies assembled from whatever they can find, and battles reenacted.

Elizabeth likes to solve problems – she’s like her father in that respect – but she likes to win more.

Ito likes to watch things burn. And Hoshi watches her, like a god admiring their own reflection in the still surface of a lake.

Sometimes, T’Pol dreams of them as children on different world. Running through a desert garden. Playing hide and seek in the engine room of the Enterprise. Learning languages for exploration and not conquest. Laughing without calculation.

Those dreams leave her with a hollow in her chest, because in the waking world, Elizabeth learns to wield a knife, and Ito talks careful circles around people trying to deny her things.

They are too young for such things.

They are still growing. And learning. And they are no longer hers.

Not anymore.

Their ruthlessness begins to scare her. Leaves her wondering how she had acted at that age, because it seems to come so naturally to them both. Effortless and inevitable. Like breathing.

Elizabeth does not blink the first time she slits someone’s throat and Ito does not flinch when she returns covered in blood.

T’Pol tries to tell herself that they are just adapting. That this is the environment and their response is just survival.

But late at night, when the halls are quiet and her room is too cold, she wakes to see Trip’s eyes in her daughter's face. Not his smile, nor his laughter, just the look he had worn when everything had been falling apart, no matter how he tried to pretend it wasn’t.

Worse is the way she can sometimes hear Hoshi when Elizabeth speaks.

The combination chills her.

She does not want to see that man anywhere near either girl: not physically, not genetically, not even spiritually. And yet she sees him in every tilt of Elizabeth’s head. In every ill-timed joke that leaves the courtiers uncomfortable. In the flashes of charm the girl uses like a weapon.

Hoshi had given him the Defiant at T’Pol’s request. A gesture that seemed generous on the surface, noble. A reward for his service. A removal from his daughter's life.

She had half expected Hoshi to hold it over her head – a favour that she had granted out of the kindness of her heart – but she never brings it up.

He is gone. And yet, he remains everywhere.

She looks up one day to realise that her daughter is not her own person; she is a shadow. Walking two paces behind Ito, eyes sharp, always watching.

Even at seven years old, she doesn’t reach for a toy before she has checked the room. She does not speak unless Ito speaks first, unless Ito prompts her to speak. Her loyalty is not something she learnt, it is a honed instinct.

And T’Pol knows this because she sees it in herself as well.

Because she, too, is someone else’s shadow.

Too many nights now, she ends in the Empress’ bed.

It is not always by command. Sometimes it is a glance. A silence. A familiar tug of fingers on her wrist; the pretence of needing counsel or a late-night briefing stretched too long.

Tonight, it is only a look.

T’Pol finds herself standing beside the Empress as she pours a glass of something amber.

“You looked tired today.” Hoshi says, not looking up. “You’re overworked. Or guilty. I can never tell with you.”

“I am neither.”

Hoshi smiles. “Good. Come here.”

And T’Pol goes. Because that is what she does.

The bed, as always, is made in the Empress’ colours – crimson and gold, a sunburst across silk – and the sheets swallow her whole when she lays down.

Hoshi joins her only moments later. Not with urgency, but with entitlement; her body sliding in beside T’Pol’s as though it belongs there. And perhaps, by now, it does.

One of them curls around the other, warm and heavy and unrelenting.

“You’ve been watching them.”

“I always watch them.”

“Mm.” Her lips brush against the skin behind T’Pol’s ear. “She’s going to be perfect. They both are.”

T’Pol doesn’t answer.

Beside her, Hoshi shifts until she is propped up on one elbow, robe falling off her bare shoulder, studying her with careful eyes. “You’re jealous.”

“No.”

“Yes. Because Bug doesn’t need you the way she used to. She has Ito now.” Her fingers trail down T’Pol’s stomach. “And you—” she leans down, mouth against her throat, “—you only have me.”

It is not a question and it is not a comfort.

T’Pol lies still beneath her, thinking of her daughters – both of them – of the blades they are becoming. And she thinks of herself; once a scientist and commander on a starship, now nothing more than a hand to be held, a mouth to be silenced, a body to be used.

She thinks back to that first day, still on the Defiant, holding that test tube in her hand, and wonders when the transformation began.

When she stopped resisting.

When she became a shadow.

And then Hoshi’s mouth is on hers, commanding, claiming, and there is no room left for thought.

Only obedience.

*

They go to Vulcan once, because Ito expresses a desire to see it, and Hoshi merely shrugs.
“I suppose we deserve a holiday.”

T’Pol had not realised how much she missed her homeworld until the moment the shuttle broke through the upper atmosphere and the copper-red sands stretched endlessly below. But the feeling was tainted, even before they landed.

Her mother’s house – empty, abandoned for so many years – has a fine layer of dust clinging to every surface when they finally step over the threshold. For a moment, T’Pol can see her mother, standing in front of them, the same look of slight disapproval that had always been on her face when she looked at her daughter, but the vision fades as the nanny brushes past her, mumbling under her breath as she moves quickly through the rooms.

The girls do not care. They dart through the darkened corridors immediately, leaving their bags with the two guards Hoshi chose to accompany them – both Terran, both sweating in the heat – throwing open shutters, pulling down covers and exclaiming at the strange austerity of the place.

It is too much.

She leaves them to their exploration and steps back out into the courtyard, where she can see the next house over. Her mother’s neighbours have gathered in their own yard, along with others, here to see the spectacle of the Empress and her family.

There is nothing to say. She ignores them, follows the call of her daughters as she re-enters the house.

“Mother?” It is Ito, hovering in the doorway to T’Pol’s childhood bedroom.

“Yes?”

“Where are your toys?”

She steps around the girl to investigate the bare space – exactly as she had left it on the day she walked away. The meditation mat still sat under the window and almost nothing else occupied the space except the low bed. “I did not have any.”

Ito’s face softens in a heartbeat, and she throws her arms around T’Pol’s waist, pressing her head into her hip. Startled, T’Pol lowers a hand to rest awkwardly on the girl’s hair.

“You can share ours,” she says, earnest in the way only a child can be, voice muffled by the folds of T’Pol’s robe.

“Thank you.” The words stick in her throat. A wound that had not been exposed to the light in many years. Her mother’s words, proclaiming her too emotional. Not Vulcan enough.

Later, she leaves to walk the streets of her childhood, to see the shop where she had been sent weekly to purchase food.

There are watchers there as well. Never close enough to be a threat – Vulcans do not intrude without cause – but lingering. She sees them in the narrow alleys, standing in twos and threes, hands clasped behind their backs.

People she had once shared a classroom with, now watching her as though she were an exhibit. Some with expressions of faint curiosity; others clearly choosing to reveal their distain through their faces.

The warm streets seem cold now that she is out alone and she turns back, feeling the eyes of her watchers on the back of her neck.

One murmurs as she passes. Just low enough that she cannot tell who spoke, but not low enough that she cannot hear.

Traitor.

She had thought to bring Elizabeth to these streets. Perhaps it would be better to remain in the safety of the house.

The house is quiet when she returns, in a way that the Imperial palace never is. She passes the guards, lounging shirtless in the courtyard, clearly not believing there was any threat. They stand when she appears, their heavy boots silent against the sand.

There is only the soft hiss of wind slipping between the shutters, the faint creak of the roof in the cooling night and the muffled voices of the girls in one of the rooms. The occasional burst of laughter quickly swallowed by drowsiness – they must have worn themselves out. When she listens closer, she can hear Elizabeth, pretending to read aloud from one of the old Vulcan philosophy scrolls – her accent atrocious – and Ito correcting her with exaggerated precision.

Hoshi is waiting in T’Pol’s childhood bedroom, a book taken from her mother’s room in her hands.

“I assumed you would take the main bedroom.”

“Your mom’s, you mean?”

She nods, crossing the room to stare out the window, careful not to step on the meditation mat. The horizon forms a deep red band against the blackness of the desert, the last heat of the day radiating out from the stone walls.

It was the same view she had stared at as a child, imaging the universe beyond it. Then, she had seen escape. Now, it is just a reminder of what she has abandoned. What she has betrayed.

She thinks of the girls, of their excitement, the way Elizabeth had pried open every door and window, as if the air here was somehow purer. And she allows herself to imagine, just for a moment, that they had been raised here. Not in the Empire.

Elizabeth would have raced barefoot down the streets, darting between the market stalls, probably with a stolen sweetfruit in her hand – the shopkeeper would have come up to their house in the evening, requesting compensation, and T’Pol would have provided it, keeping her face stern until they were alone again and she could not hide her amusement.

Ito would have studied at the Science Academy, or left the planet to join Starfleet, her quick mind bent towards research and leadership. Not assassination plans and pain.

For a moment, she can almost see it. And then Hoshi sighs again behind her.

“I didn’t want to defile you in your mother’s bed.”

“I see.”

A hand slides around her waist, tugging just slightly, enough that T’Pol turns away from the emerging stars and back toward the Empress.

“They like it here.” Hoshi continues, pushing her back into the sheets.

“They do.”

“And you? Is it everything you remembered?”

She thinks of the whispers that followed her as she walked the streets. “It is close enough.”

Hoshi laughs. “We’ll make this a teaching opportunity, hmm? Remind them of the most important thing. To survive, you must be bigger, better and stronger than everyone else.”

T’Pol thinks briefly of the underlying threat in those words and finds that she cannot care. “As you are.”

“As I am.” Hoshi fiddles with the belt of her robe. Her voice goes quiet for a moment. “Am I?”

For a second, something fractures. The mask she always wears slips, and she looks almost human.

“If you were not, you would not still be here.”

Hoshi studies her. There’s a beat of silence where the entire room seems to hold its breath. Then she smiles, sharp and cutting.

“Good answer.”

The silk robe falls away, revealing miles of unmarked skin.

“Now, how about you put that mouth to better use, hmm?”

*

The girls are barely teenagers when the first assassination attempt happens.

It is neither sloppy nor foolish. It is meticulously timed for the moment the Empress steps onto the balcony to deliver her monthly address to the Empire. A single shot, only thwarted by Hoshi turning her head at the last moment, listening to something Elizabeth says.

That is the only thing that saves her.

Later, T’Pol follows the guards up to where they had found the would-be assassin. A young man hidden on top of the colonnades, rations that suggest he had been there for several days, and a second gun, tucked under his chin that delivered the fatal blow. He had been prepared to fail.

“Guess he knew what was in store for him.” One of the guards says, almost absently, as though he is not talking about the most brutal torture the Empire can deliver.

“Remove the body. I want to know if he had any associates.” T’Pol says, the image of the Empress’ closest confidant. “I want to know who he is.”

She turns away as they begin to follow her orders, looks across the gathered people – many of whom are only now standing up after the shot had rung out – to where Hoshi still stands, reaching the end of her speech.

She had not flinched. Had not missed a beat.

No weakness when the Empire can see her.

But after, in the safety of her rooms, T’Pol stands beside the girls and watches as Hoshi paces, watches her hands shake as they run through her hair.

“Security has been increased.” T’Pol informs her, repeating the report given to her by the shaking Head of Security.

His wild-eyed fear had been a parallel to how the Empress now looks.

“That’s not enough.” Hoshi hisses. “This can’t go unpunished. I need his co-conspirators, and I need an example made of them!”

“I have already instructed the guards to do this.”

A breath of air hisses out from between the Empress’ teeth. “I could have died.”

T’Pol sends the girls away, sends them to their schoolrooms, where they should already be. Looks to her daughter, one hand resting casually on the hilt of her blade. Looks to Ito, lounging against the wall, unbothered, calm, cool.

“She’s always calm,” one of the ministers had murmured once, half-drunk at a banquet, not quite out of the reach of her Vulcan hearing, “she’s just like her mother.”

Even now, T’Pol does not know which girl he meant.

*

Elizabeth is seventeen now, on the verge of Terran adulthood.

Tall and sharp and beautiful in a way that makes people nervous. She fights with her sleeves rolled up and her hair braided down her back – a thick, coiled whip. Her cheek bares a faint scar – ceremonial – from a dual Hoshi had insisted she win by blood. It only adds to the way T’Pol can see her father in her, only fuels her unease.

Ito is fifteen. A perfect parallel with no scars. She does not carry a blade – why would she need one? Her weapon is her word: when she speaks, people listen. When she smiles, people kneel. Out of fear, out of admiration, out of lust, it is all the same. T’Pol has seen diplomats buckle under the weight of that smile.

And together, they are terrifying. Not just as individuals, but as a unit, a mirrored pair: fire and ice, blade and command. Inseparable. They sleep in the same bed – a decision made by Ito years ago, a child’s demand – they eat the same food.

“They will go so much further than I ever could.” Hoshi says, unprompted.

They two of them are watching Elizabeth train. Ito circles the fight, head tilted, occasionally gestures to her sister, silent communication of a noticed weakness.

“They will.”

T’Pol used to dream about saving them from the Empire. The more she watches them, the more she thinks that it might be the Empire that needs saving from them.

And T’Pol is slowly being edged out of their lives. Of course, she remains with them, eats with them, but they no longer turn to her with questions, curiosity. They know everything now.

Still, the evenings end with the four of them in the Empress’ chambers. Some days, the girls even go to their knees in front of the glass table, draw chalk lines the way they did as children.

T’Pol reads. Vulcan philosophy, Terran philosophy, anything and everything on the fall of empires, words that she uses to strengthen theirs. Hoshi’s hair is damp against her shoulder, undried after her bath, and she is watching the girls argue; Elizabeth pushing back against Ito’s strategy with too much force.

“You’re emotional.” Ito says coldly.

Elizabeth flares. “And you’re arrogant.”

Ito is correct; had T’Pol raised her daughter on Vulcan, these displays of anger would never have been tolerated. Had she raised her on the Defiant, they may not have been encouraged as much.

“That’s enough.” She tells them, instinctive.

Both heads swivel to look at her. Two versions of the same predator.

It is Ito that responds – it is always Ito that speaks for them both – soft, but edged. “Do not overstep, Mother. You are here to observe, not to correct.”

T’Pol feels Hoshi’s eyes on the side of her face, dark with interest.

She retreats. “You will not serve the Empire by bickering between yourselves.”

The girls watch her for a long moment before they turn back to their chalk lines, unbothered by her words.

Later, Hoshi pulls her into bed without a word, runs her fingers down T’Pol’s spine as if she is looking for weaknesses.

“You see it, don’t you?”

The words are whispered into her throat, more cutting than a blade, and T’Pol closes her eyes against it.

“Yes.”

“They’ll burn the galaxy if I let them.” There is glee in the Empress’ tone. “Conquer the world so nothing stands against them. No danger remains for them.”

T’Pol swallows. Says nothing.

“And you?” Hoshi prompts. “Will you let them?”

“I will protect them.”

“That’s not what I asked.”

She says nothing again.

Hoshi laughs, low and pleased. “Still holding onto the Subcommander, I see.”

The girls are not yet adults when the next assassination attempt succeeds.

It happens on a morning like any other – clear skies and a bright sun over the towers of the what had once been Earth’s spiritual heart.

And yet, the Empress is dead before noon.

She stumbles, bleeding, into T’Pol’s private quarters – the ones she does not use very often – shaking hands pressed over a deep, bleeding wound, and a panicked look in her wide eyes, as she collapses into the same arms she had forced her way into.

“Hoshi?”

The Empress coughs, wet and pained. Behind her, someone has seen the trail of blood, seen the two of them together, and is yelling. For a doctor, for guards, for anyone. It does not matter, T’Pol can hear in Hoshi’s breathing that it is too late.

“The girls.” She manages to get out, blood flecking her teeth and lips. “You have to…”

T’Pol presses her own hands over the wound, as though that will change the inevitable, and feels warm blood welling up between them. “I will. I always have.”

She gets a laugh in response, the Empress melting away to leave the woman behind the mask. “I know. God, I know.”

The Doctors pronounce her dead only moments later.

She does not get to be the ones to break the news – word travels through the palace faster than she can – but she can pause in the doorway before she approaches, watching the girls, two heads bent together. She has washed her hands, and yet the feeling of Hoshi’s blood remains on them.

For one, solitary moment, she envisions fleeing while the palace is still in chaos. Imagines, as she has so many times before, taking the girls and running, away to a distant corner of the galaxy where they can live out the rest of their lives away from the fear.

And yet, even as she thinks it, she knows that she is not brave enough to do that. Before, she had feared Hoshi’s wrath, now she fears the untapped power of the Terran Empire, fears that it will be leashed by someone else.

“Listen to me.” She says, kneeling in front of them and taking one face in each hand, pausing just long enough to look them both in the eye. “Listen to me, you must be strong now. You must be brave. There will be time for mourning later, but you cannot show weakness in front of the people.”

Ito leans into her touch, deep sadness sparking up from where their skin touches – or maybe that is T’Pol’s own emotion. Regardless, neither of them cry. Not yet.

Elizabeth stands first, takes Ito’s weight from where it rests against T’Pol’s hand, and they both follow her out onto the balcony.

Cameras swivel the second she appears. Silence falls across the crowd like a blanket, and from her vantage point, she can see the sheer number of guards that have swarmed the square, the colonnades, everything.

It is safe for Ito to step out.

T’Pol breathes in. “The Empress is dead.” She announces, voice loud and clear, carrying over the people gathered. And then she takes Ito’s hand and raises it. An impulse. “Long live the Empress.”

“Long live the Empress.” The crowd replies, slightly bemused, but realisation spreads like a wildfire and suddenly a thousand voices are chanting up at them: “Long live the Empress!”

The new Empress – still a child – steps forward, holds a hand up, and the crowd below falls silent.

She stands for a moment, holding the weight of the moment. And then she gives her first decree.

“My mother has been murdered.”

Quiet noise spreads below; people had been aware, but it is something else to hear it aloud.

“I want those who plotted and carried out this crime found. I want them brought to me. Alive.”

More murmurings.

“A reward,” she adds, “will be given to whoever succeeds in bringing them to me.”

And then she turns and flees, back through the doors and into the palace.

For once, Elizabeth does not immediately follow her, rather she steps forward and eyes the crowd, coldly. “Long live the Empress.”

And her words are taken up again, a chant, a prayer, words that fill the space, echoing off the stone, as she turns and follows her friend, her sister, her ruler, leaving her mother alone on the balcony. Alone, for the first time in years.

The girls retreat to their quarters. Elizabeth leaves instructions that they are not to be disturbed. And T’Pol almost floats through the palace, a ghost inhabiting a body, until she finds herself back in the bedroom she had spent so many nights in.

Come morning, everything will be moved – these rooms are the Empress’ rooms, and so Ito will be transferred from her childhood bedroom to here – but for now, they are empty.

She imagines Hoshi lying beside her, as she had done so many times.

“I miss you.” She tells the imaginary woman.

The vision scoffs. “You didn’t even like me that much when I was alive. And it’s only been a few hours.”

“Perhaps. But I miss you.”

“Well, maybe you can take up a lover to fill the gap. Hey,” the vision laughs slightly, “remember what I did to your last one?”

T’Pol does – he had been a soft man, tasked with keeping the palace’s plumbing and lighting working, a low job that had been secure for the simple reason that no one wanted it. He had been blond, smiled like the sun, and reminded her of Trip, in his more vulnerable moments. Some days, she had thought that he was who Trip could have been, if he had not been raised in the Terran Empire.

She had kept him for three weeks, believing her trysts to be secret from the Empress until she had emerged for breakfast one morning and found his head on the table, sat on a silver platter. The girls had been unbothered by the presence of the head, but the image was one T’Pol had never forgotten; his mouth, propped open with cocktail sticks and his eyes bulging, still open, as if he had died in fear.

“What do you think of our new decoration?” Hoshi had asked, eyes dark and warning.

T’Pol could not remember exactly how she had responded – something about it being unsanitary, most likely – but the Empress had shrugged and gestured for her to sit.

“What’d he do?” Elizabeth had asked, mouth half-full of toast.

“He thought he could touch something that was mine.” Hoshi had replied.

The conversation had moved on, both girls accepting that answer, and T’Pol had never taken a lover again.

“Yes. I remember.”

“Will you?”

She thought of other hands on her body, of another mouth on hers. “No. No, I don’t believe I will.”

The vision sighed. “I’m sure the hoards will be disappointed.”

If the servants are surprised to find T’Pol there the following morning, they do not show it.

*

The coronation is small. Fast and efficient. There is no time for pageantry; the Empire cannot be seen without a ruler for too long.

Hoshi II is crowned Empress by the same hands that once dressed her in silks. The same court that once bowed to her mother, bows to her. Some do it out of loyalty. Most do it out of fear.

She does not cry. Not in public.

In private, only Elizabeth can get her to sleep using gentle Vulcan neuropressure that T’Pol does not recall teaching her. In private, her hands shake when she signs her first order; they shake less when she signs the second. And she might have flinched, when the guards called her Your Imperial Majesty, in those first few weeks, but she learns fast.

She is never far from Elizabeth, the same way her mother was rarely far from T’Pol, and she speaks with the same weight.

She speaks not as a child, but as a ruler.

And T’Pol, suddenly needed more than she had been in years, watches from the edges. She does not sit on the throne, but she is always near it. The court refer to her as the Imperial Matron. The staff still call her Lady T’Pol, and behind closed doors, the new Empress still calls her mother.

Elizabeth is even fiercer now; the Empress’ blade. Dressed in black, sliding in the shadows. There are no more childish braids, and her hands remain steady through any and every kill.  

She stands behind Hoshi II during trials. She escorts her into negotiations. She poisons two foreign ministers before they can speak. The Empress never asks questions.

And T’Pol remains behind both of them, silent, even as she dreams of different lives.

Ito – Hoshi II, now – is not her mother.

Despite it all, some of T’Pol has wormed its way into her: she refuses a conquest on Vega. Signs a peace treaty with the Tellarites and even lets one sit in her audience chamber. Declares that education is mandatory for all children across the Empire, even the non-human.

Some ministers whisper of weakness, but T’Pol breathes a little easier, and, alone, calls it progress.

And then an outpost rebels. They haven’t enough food, not enough resources, and they blame the Empress – long after they’ve ceased to exist, T’Pol discovered they had not even heard of Hoshi’s death, had no idea that there was a new Empress.

And they never get the chance to learn, because Ito burns the entire thing from orbit.

“Mercy is not the absence of power,” she says. “It is the choice to hold it back. This was not mercy. This was justice.”

T’Pol stands before the Empress’s window, looking down at the ash.
She remembers another child, once, who asked her what Vulcan sunsets looked like.

She does not ask if there were innocents in the outpost. She already knows the answer.

“They will retaliate.” Elizabeth says, perched on the end of the bed, one knife twirling between her fingers, sharp and fast. “Or, at least, people who knew them.”

“Martyrs.” Ito mumbles.

“’xactly.”

T’Pol remains silent. There is nothing she could add.

As Elizabeth predicts, the retaliation comes. It is calculated; enough time has passed that the guards should be relaxing again, assuming that the danger has retreated, but they are not. Elizabeth has not allowed them to.

It comes on the same type of day that her mother died on – bright blue skies, morning sun spilling in through the tall windows of the Imperial Audience Chamber. A crowd waits for the Empress to emerge, coming with petitions, requests, gifts, praise. Nothing seems immediately amiss, the guards report back.

Still, when Hoshi II steps into the room, approaching her throne, figures in the crowd begin to push through, suddenly armed, disruptors raised and eyes wild.

Elizabeth is moving before the room realises what is happening, every muscle in her body trained for this exact moment.

T’Pol watches as her blade flicks out, a whisper of steel and the first assailant’s throat opens like a book.

The spray of blood is what finally tips the room into chaos.

A second attacker raises his weapon, but Elizabeth is faster – Elizabeth is always faster – a thrown blade lodges directly in his eye socket and he collapses, crumbling to the ground. A third fires a disruptor at the Empress, even as she is being herded back to safety, the bold catching her shoulder with a searing crack.

T’Pol, pushing her way through the guards, arrives at the young Empress’ side just in time for her to stumble, the pain blooming bright in her mind as she collapses into T’Pol’s arms.

But she remains strong, even as her breath is ragged, it is steady. Elizabeth appears through the smoke moments later, eyes wide and scared, fingers pressing into the wound until she is satisfied that it is not lethal.

The room has emptied in the chaos, leaving only the guards and the bodies of those who had led the attack.

“Some of them may have escaped.” Elizabeth says. “They may come back.”

Later, Hoshi II stands on the balcony once again, a sea of faces turned up to her as she speaks with the voice of a woman forged in fire. She has left the blood, that spattered from her wound onto her face, and it only adds to her fury.

“There are those who mistake peace for weakness. Diplomacy for cowardice.” She says, eyes sharp, scanning the crowd as though making eye contact with each and every person. “They seek to undo all I have built. All my mother has built. And they will learn. I am my mother’s daughter. I am not only hers, but she made me.”

The crowd is silent, waiting for a verdict, waiting for the sentence.

“The rebellion is over. It ends tonight.”

Around the square, the guards emerge, weaving through the people, not yet acting.

Hoshi II nods, slowly. “It ends tonight.”

Elizabeth stands, just behind her, in the space T’Pol had once occupied whenever Hoshi spoke. The new Empress and her new companion, echoes of those who came before them.

That night, in the dim glow of chambers that had once been her mother’s, T’Pol watches Hoshi II pore over reports, the blood still on her face.  

“They will fear you now,” T’Pol said softly.

Hoshi II’s lips pressed into a hard line. “They already did.”

“But now they will hate you, too,” T’Pol warned.

“Let them.”

She stands, walks away from the girls to look out the window and over the city, to the distant glow of burning buildings casting an orange haze. The girl she had helped raise was forging her own crown of ash and steel.

A ruler and a weapon. Neither a tyrant nor a saviour, but something so much worse.

“We have to be bigger, stronger, better.” Hoshi’s ghost whispers in her ear. She must whisper the same in her daughters’.

The Empire survives. A phoenix, born out of other people’s ashes.