Author's Notes:

I don't own them; I'm not sure the converse is also true. No balance was added to my credit chit. All done for love, not money.

This is a missing scene story from "The Andorian Incident". It occurs after Captain Archer has decided to go to P'Jem, and T'Pol's conversation with Phlox. It attempts to deal with T'Pol's strange behavior during this episode, and ties it into the folara she experienced during her prior stay at P'Jem, which she doesn't fully remember until "The Seventh", so I suppose this can be said to be a spoiler for both episodes.

Head canon: Things got - interesting, and maybe a little dangerous - on Rigel Ten, when TnT shared a cell...more on that in future stories. Also, Trip and T'Pol met at Fusion night club, about fourteen months before Enterprise's launch.

There is likely to be more to this story, if people are interested. And, as always, reviews, criticism, and conversation welcomed, even if it takes me a while to get round to them, due to the writing! =)

P'Jem

"I know you don't want to take the Cap'n and me to your precious sanctuary, you know."

T'Pol repressed the sudden urge to startle, and focused on holding her tea mug steady. She wouldn't reveal that she had heard neither the Mess Hall door opening, nor scented the room's new occupant. Long practice allowed her not to shift her expression, but to meet the human engineer's blue-eyed regard.

Trusting herself to speak, however, would be an illogical risk.

Her silence did nothing to deter Commander Tucker. In his typical fashion, he seemed to take it as an invitation to continue. He gathered his white beverage from the dispenser, and came to stand behind the chair opposite hers. "What I don't know is why."

T'Pol found the barrier the table provided most agreeable. However, the Commander placed his drink on the table, pulled out the chair, and sat down. His scent came to her strongly; she resisted the urge to breathe it in deeply, even as her heart rate accelerated with apprehension. There was little logic in her autonomic response to him; there never had been.

The room was empty at this late hour, and human custom as she understood it dictated that he find another seat, or ask her permission to sit. She considered mentioning it, but decided against it. She had only been on Enterprise for nine weeks and three days. It was quite possible that she didn't fully grasp the variables for this manner of social interaction. Human customs seemed to be as malleable as their perception of logic, and Commander Tucker seemed to be a particularly unpredictable specimen, even for his species.

Trip – no, she must not think of him by that name. Chief Engineer Tucker simply kept talking, as though there could be no reason she would prefer solitude, or as though she had answered him. "Is it that we smell bad?"

T'Pol said nothing. There seemed nothing logical to say; he wouldn't likely understand her reticence when she didn't understand it herself. She understood her fascination with how he would respond to her continued silence even less.

He lifted his glass, making the same small gesture of salute he'd made in a restaurant in San Francisco. T'Pol considered the implications, then returned the gesture with her mug of tea, as she'd done the night they first encountered one another. Perhaps it would suffice, and spare her the need to decipher the still-unfamiliar and complex terrain of casual human conversation, which seldom seemed to have any direct point.

"Or is it that you just don't want to be seen with a shipful of illogical humans?" She should have taken into account that Commander Tucker had often evidenced a most unsettling desire to, in his words, 'see what really makes you tick.'

Now he tipped his head, and T'Pol found his gaze compelling. Perhaps she should leave, or at least look away from him, but she chose not to. It was possible that she, too, wished to know what made him tick.

"I've got it. It's not the Cap'n,at all, is it? It's me. That smarts, T'Pol. Just because I held a phase pistol to your head, and got myself with child by putting my hands in a box of pebbles, you think I don;tknow how to behave myself."

"While those incidents do contribute to a pattern of behavior, Commander Tucker, neither of them concerns me as much as your behavior in the Decontamination Chamber."

He had been about to drink, but instead set the glass down, perhaps somewhat more forcefully, as his face shifted into an off-center smile, Allowing herself to wish that she hadn't allowed him to distract her into speaking of that incident served no purpose.

"Well, now – I'll admit to being a bit too forward in Decon, Sub-commander." He stroked his hand over his mouth; she was learning that the gesture often accompanied him saying something impulsive and illogical. "I'd apologize about that, except that, as I remember it, there was a certain pointed eared lady who was about three layers of clothing and one impulsive human who also happens to be a gentleman from losing her supposedly unbreakable control in a pretty damned unforgettable way, back there on Rigel Ten." His voice was quieter, and there was a certain roughness in it that made it even more appealing to her, and T'Pol attempted to hide her struggle for control through the expedient of her mug.

Perhaps he would have introduced the topic in any event, but to have him know that she thought of those moments, of his hand slipping below the cloth of her undergarment, or caressing her ears, or the feel of his cool skin and firm muscles beneath her exploring fingers, the shifting in his scent and his blood flow, was unsettling. To know that he had been the subject of her incomprehensible lapse of control when they were incarcerated together. He was correct. She would have mated with him, had he not assisted her in finding some equilibrium against a primal response she'd never before experienced.

"Hey, T'Pol, are you all right?" The note of concern was a catalyst; again, paradoxically, he was both the cause of her agitation, and the solution to it. "Are you afraid they'll know what you almost did back there in that cell? That they'll – I don't know – make you do penance for your wicked emotional ways, or something?"

Something in his words triggered a flash of something that wasn't memory - hands, and terror.

"T'Pol? Hey, listen, I was only kidding. I'm not going to tell them – or anybody. Whatever ever happens - or never happens between us – a gentleman doesn't talk about private matters. Your secrets are safe with me, no matter what. Here, let me get you some more tea. Do I smell chamomile?"

Whatever the sensation had been, it was gone now. She focused on her companion, who seemed poised to leave. She didn't want him to do so; however illogical, there was something agreeable in his presence. T'Pol breathed deeply, centering herself.

"I'm grateful, Commander Tucker, but there is no need for concern. You need not trouble yourself on my behalf."

"Yes, I do. I keep telling you, T'Pol. I'm a gentleman. You don't have to admit it, but you're really bothered about going to this Pajem place."

"P'Jem," T'Pol corrected automatically. It helped, somewhat. "It's a monastery inhabited by a non-violent monastic order, and nothing more."

He rose, and busied himself with getting another mug. "Chamomile tea, hot." He half-turned back to her, and said, "Don't think I don't know you're a faker."

"I beg your pardon?"

"You don't have the knack for lyin'. So, what is it about this place, really? Are you going to get in trouble for taking us there? Because, if that's it, you can talk to the Cap'n, or, if that's too much for you, I could talk to him for you, tell him we're gonna get you in hot water."

Had she been in trouble, when she visited P'Jem before? Something – there had been something, but all she remembered was a long succession of restful days, after she'd come to know she no longer wished to work in the Ministry of Security.

Hard cold stone beneath her; she was trapped against stone. Hands and faces -

"T'Pol? Hey, you're worrying me now."

Hands, stone, faces, and alien words. Murky, as though seen at the end of a warp field. Not memory, not dream.…

Real.

Not to be ignored.

"T'Pol – talk to me. What is it? You can't tell me it's nothing. I already know you to well for that. You're white as a ghost, and you look like you just saw one."

That sense snapped away; leaving her to rub her hands over her arms.

The familiarity in his tone was too agreeable, and her own desire to speak of this to him provided the impetus she needed to regain at least surface control as he came to set the tea before her, watching her closely. Dangerous- what she felt for him was dangerous. She must repress it. She must restore her barriers, as the High Command's protocols demanded of her.

"It's far more likely that you don't know me a fraction as well as you think you do, Commander Tucker. My personal feelings, if I had any, on the visit to P'Jem would be irrelevant to the mission the Captain has ordered. More, my personal life is no concern of yours, nor will it be, in future."

That much was certain; her wedding date was swiftly approaching. There was no place for what they had shared, or what she might wish to share with him, in a Vulcan life.

Koss was her future. Commander Tucker was -

T'Pol didn't know what he was to her, or she to him, or why she concerned herself with it. She rose,and walked away, without parting words. It required a great deal more discipline than was logical to keep from remaining, and telling this most perceptive human of the fleeting impressions that danger awaited her at P'Jem, and that she simply didn't want to return there.

It wasn't until she returned to her quarters that she realized she was carrying the tea he had procured for her.