"How bad can it be if you're still having sex?"

Trip rolled his eyes in his head. Trust Malcolm to only see that side of things.

"Sex doesn't make everything fine." He shook his head dejectedly. "It's just different, still good but there's something missing."

"Perhaps you just need some spice."

Trip was starting to really wonder why he had chosen to open up to Malcolm of all people. The man had an eight track mind on a one track subject. And yet he knew that there was a lot more to his friends's relationship with Hoshi than sex. For one Hoshi wouldn't take any less. So Malcolm should be able to get it. Trip just sat, twirling his drink between his fingers. The two friends were on a couch in the stargazing chamber, as good a place as any to get drunk while crying over the state of things.

Except that Malcolm was not doing much of the crying. Finally he stopped pretending he didn't have any idea was Trip was talking about. "Hoshi and I have been talking about it."

"Hoshi and you?" Trips head whipped up. Was it that obvious?

"Oh you know Miss Enterprise News. Like you could ever hide something like that from her."

"Wait— how many people know exactly? Is it that obvious?"

Malcolm avoided his gaze. "Well, I don't know how many exactly. I think Hess may have had her doubts."

Trip groaned. If Hess knew the entire ship knew. His second was neither shy nor soft-spoken.

"So what does Hoshi say?" Now Trip was getting miffed that his friend and his girlfriend were going at it about the state of his relationship. To talk to Malcolm about it was one thing, but to have Hoshi involved...

"We're not sure we understand. I mean you say she wants to go back to Vulcan and that's why you're withdrawing, but Hoshi thinks she wants to go back to Vulcan because you're withdrawing."

"Has T'Pol told her anything?"

Malcolm laughed. "T'Pol talk about matters of the heart? No, but Hoshi is close enough to her that she can pretty much tell."

Trip snorted in his drink. Count on Hoshi to have it all wrong. That's why guys shouldn't discuss their best friends' relationships with their girlfriends.

Malcolm looked at him. "If you don't want her to go back to Vulcan, why don't you tell her so?"

That made Trip angry. Once again he was painted into being the bad guy. "Because it's always me making efforts to fix things between us, and I'm tired of it."

"For goodness sake, Trip, she's a Vulcan!" Reed exclaimed. He looked at his friend in dismay. What exactly did he expect? He knew she was a Vulcan when he married the woman, didn't he?

"Since she's blind I've done everything I could to help her through it, everything. But she won't take my help. Instead, she just goes on and does whatever she wants without including me. I finally figured out she's been preparing to leave the whole time. Like nothing I do's good enough. But I'm not going to hold her back this time."

Malcolm eyed his friend quizzically. He wasn't living with them day in day out so he certainly couldn't claim to know how their relationship worked from the inside, but it seemed they still cared very much about each other. Perhaps he was missing something.

He groped for a safer topic. "How's the visual thingy coming?"

Trip welcomed being able to talk about something he actually understood. "It's moving along pretty well. We're coming close to the point where she could wear it all day long." After three weeks of testing and re-testing, late nights and early mornings, the helmet contraption was close to operational. When she wore it, T'Pol could see. She had told him and Phlox that she was not getting the visual images most people associated with seeing, but she did get detailed mental representations of her surroundings which included colors and facial expressions. The echolocation device had become a big part of the helmet, which was now part visual part auditory all neural. T'Pol and he called it the vand, for Visual Auditory Neural Device. Perhaps someone would come with a better name someday.

"Good, she'll no longer have to worry about Mahdin tripping her up."

"Mahdin? What's with Mahdin?"

Uh-Oh. Malcolm realized that perhaps he had just opened another can of worms. Had T'Pol not told Trip? Honestly, the two of them were ridiculous, how little they truly communicated. Hoshi and he spent hours talking about everything and everyone. But then again, Hoshi was Miss Gossip, not something you could ever accuse T'Pol of. And Trip kept saying most of their communication was through some form of connection the two had, that was not sexual. Whatever rocked his boat. But that boat seemed to have developed a good-size leak.

In the meantime, he had a situation on his hands with a certain chief engineer going through a slow boil. Malcolm groaned inwardly. And he had been trying to lighten up the mood.

"What do you mean about Mahdin?" Obviously Trip was not going to let go. Malcolm weighed telling him versus not telling him in terms of conjugal peace and Mahdin's safety, decided that enough time had gone by that perhaps he could refer to it as "Remember when..."? In a few words, he caught Trip up on his encounter with Mahdin in T'Pol's lab and their later suspicion he had planted an obstacle there to make her trip and fall. Successfully.

Trip's mouth was pencil-thin when he had finished. It was hard to know if he was angry at Mahdin or angry at not having been told about it. Which unfortunately neatly brought Reed right back to where their conversation had started.

Obviously it was time for those two to start actually talking to each other.

xx

Trip was bent over the vand with a scowl on his face, checking the connections inside the protective shell. T'Pol sat next to him, impassively watching him work. "You say the connection's fuzzy?" he asked her.

"She nodded." Yes, it keeps coming in and out, as if there were a faulty circuit."

"Why didn't you tell me about Mahdin?" He still was looking into the vand.

T'Pol was reminded she had the echolocation device on, she would not be able to read his features even if she saw them, which was of no significance as his head was still partially hidden by the helmet. "There was nothing to be said."

"Really? There was nothing to be said? The man could be a threat and there's nothing to be said, even to your husband?"

She felt the anger surge at her, didn't clamp down on the bond fast enough to prevent its impact. Anger was a Vulcan emotion and her entire being was primed for it. It resonated within her, triggering a sympathetic physiological response. It took great synaptic effort to untether the anger from her higher cortical functions and suppress it down to a level of non-interference. She looked at Trip coldly.

"I was unhurt. Mahdin's culpability could not be established and his behavior has been exemplary since Captain Archer talked to him."

"Captain Archer talked to him?! And I didn't even know!"

For a fleeting second, T'Pol had a glimpse of the hurt and misunderstanding that had crept between the two of them. But her innate vulnerability from her lack of sight made it unbearable to lower her defenses further and she retreated instead into the cool arms of logic, as a comfort and a shield. "Logically, once Captain Archer had addressed the situation, nothing further required to be done."

"The hell with your logic!"

The vehemence of the response surprised her into silence. Her eyebrows knitted in confusion.

Trip was looking into the vand, close to where he had taken enough of the inner material out so that it no longer pressed on her ears. "I figured out what the issue is. You're not going to like it but that's the only way to correct for the erratic signal."

He was back to being all business again. She may not be Human, but even in a Vulcan his tone would have been indicative of trouble brewing.

xx

Hoshi looked at Trip and T'Pol as they stepped onto the bridge, one after another. Since they always comported themselves professionally outside of their quarters, nobody could have told anything was amiss between them. Nobody except an ace communications grand guru who could read body language about as well as she could read Vulcan and Klingonese. Not that there was much body language to be had from Vulcans, it was mostly in the eyebrows and the corners of the mouth, though the tips of the ears were more of a giveaway that the entire race realized, but Trip was Human, an emotive one at that, and his body language was a delicious smorgarsbord of gives.

She had told Malcolm way before Trip ever talked to him that things were not good between the two of them, and now he had confirmed they were even worse than either realized. As they stepped to their respective stations she was analyzing their stance for any clue that T'Pol was planning to go back to Vulcan and that Trip didn't care. And coming up empty-handed on both counts.

She shook her head. It was difficult enough figuring out relationships between men and women, they had to up the ante and try the double whammy of Human male to Vulcan female. If they couldn't read the hieroglyphics of each other's race and sex, well, they kind of deserved it, didn't they?

T'Pol caught her looking in her direction and nodded. Hoshi nodded back, part of her wondering why T'Pol still had the echolocation device on. Malcolm had told her the unit was ready, the wand she thought they called it, it was an appropriate name, kind of a magic tool. But she wasn't sure why T'Pol was not using it if it was as good as Malcolm said Trip said it was. She would ask her at the first opportunity. There was nothing like getting information directly from the horse's mouth.

"So where should we go next?" Captain Archer was scanning the bridge, waiting for an answer. Now that they had left Starbase 4, handed Wygdeld and Yonde to the local Federation authorities, picked up the visual prototype, caught up on some shore leave though after what happened at Luspypso requests for shore leave had been rather scarce, they were back on their exploratory mission, supposedly on their way back to Earth, which meant that they were free to explore anything along the way and if that happened to take them several thousand parsecs off course – well, that was the price of exploration. She could almost see Archer rubbing his hands at the thought it would be him, his ship and his crew on the open seas. Of space.

As everyone on the bridge was quietly waiting for the captain to make a decision, Archer went back to sit in the captain's chair. "Travis?"

"Yes, sir."

"What is the second to next star in the North/Northwest Quadrant from us on the Vulcan charts?"

There were a few minutes of silence as Travis looked up the charts. Hoshi noticed Archer hadn't asked Mahdin for the information even though the charts were already loaded in the science console. And he couldn't ask T'Pol anything that required actually viewing a chart. Hoshi really wondered about the wand. Malcolm said that Trip said it allowed her to read things normally. Why wasn't she wearing it?

"There's a cluster of three stars there, labeled MS450, 451 and 452."

Archer looked over at T'Pol. "Any significance?"

"The naming convention suggests that the planets were noticed but not explored."

A grin spread over Archer's face. "Travis, eeny, meeny, miny, moe, catch a tiger by the toe, full warp ahead to MS-451."

He turned back to T'Pol, whose eyebrows showed signs of wanting to reach the ceiling. "It's an old scientific Human method." He was grinning like the Cheshire Cat.

"I see." Her tone, accented by the eyebrows, managed to convey exactly how much regard she had for the primitive scientific selection methodology followed by the captain. She was looking at a point off-center from him. Hoshi wondered if Archer knew it was because focusing on the facial features, with the motility inherent to Humans and the poor rendering of the echolocation device, 'induced a feeling close to seasickness'. Probably not. Very few understood exactly how taxing and uncomfortable the device was, probably because they hadn't bothered asking.

Even if Trip had an idea about it he probably didn't know the full depth of it, she had had a hunch T'Pol would be trying to protect him from the full truth, even before Malcolm had confirmed communication between the two of them had broken down. It seemed so clear to her, why couldn't they figure it out themselves? T'Pol wanted to protect him from how disabled she truly was and he took it as her pushing him away. He should know her by now. He should know how proud she was. He should understand how terribly difficult it was for a Vulcan to feel vulnerable. He should, he should, he should. And she should know he was all about fixing things and it made him crazy that he couldn't fix that for her when he loved her so much and it had nothing to do with her being disabled and all that crap.

She wanted to reach over and hit both of them upside the head until some sense crept back into them.

Good thing they were on their way to MS-451 or whatever, it gave everyone more time to come to terms.

xx

"So, I have to hear from Hoshi that the vand is too uncomfortable for you to wear."

T'Pol briefly closed her eyes. If she were Human, she would have sighed. She had a resounding headache, like she did every time she had been on duty on the bridge and she had taken a detour by the science lab to rest for a while, not to get into another argument with Trip. If she understood the Human concept of argument. The Vulcan equivalent would have been a regularly paced exchange of increasingly cutting statements, running cold rather than hot. The Human-style argument on Vulcan would lead to the unnecessary shedding of blood.

She forced herself to look at his face, hoping it would be static enough not to induce nausea. However much easier it was for her, it seemed rather unfortunate that his face seemed caught in an unending frown. "Have you tried putting on the vand?"

He heard the appeal in her tone, seemed slightly mollified. "You know I've tried it every time I made an adjustment before I let you put it on. Of course, I've tried it."

"Have you tried putting it on without turning it on, just having it on your head."

Trip seemed taken aback by the question. "Well, no, not really. I can do it if you want."

"Please do."

Trip put on the helmet and crossed his arms over his chest. With the grid in front of his face like a whale's baleen plate, he could hardly see anything. He waited.

"What do you hear?" T'Pol asked him.

What did he hear… He wasn't hearing much at all if you asked him. And suddenly it cut through the silence, a noise like listening in a tight seashell, amplified by the close shell of the helmet, resounding all around his head. It would drive him nuts if he had to listen to that all day. All he had to do was add Vulcan hearing to the mix. He imagined it was sensitive enough that it could be painful.

He took the helmet off faster than he had intended, grateful for the additional space for his ears, it might have hurt otherwise.

"I'm not sure how to fix this…" He was staring at the vand in his hand.

"It is still very helpful to be able to see for a limited amount of time." T'Pol was explaining. "But that is why I cannot wear the vand for longer periods."

But Trip was thinking. Finally he had something that his engineer skills might be able to solve. "Not so far, not so fast." He held a hand up to stop her. "I'm not sure how to fix this doesn't mean it can't be fixed. It just means I'm not sure which way to go about it right now. I have to review some things." He looked up. "Where are the latest schematics padds, the ones where we note all the adjustments we've made?"

Within a short while she had handed them to him, he had handed her the vand in turn, and they started poring over the accumulated knowledge of the past month.

The thought hit Trip that they still worked very well as a technical team. He didn't think she would find the same level of easy collaboration with any other scientist on Vulcan.

xx

"It does take a couple of months to adapt to the device" Phlox was scanning T'Pol's retina, looking for any sign that the optic nerve was healing. He finished, injected her with a dose of novopraline. "This will help."

"What about permanent implants?" T'Pol asked, putting the vand back on. It no longer looked much like the helmet that had initially been delivered, shrunk in size to a band no larger than a half-face mask that wrapped around her head, kept from slipping down by a criss-crossing web at the top. Most importantly it no longer entirely covered her ears. It had taken an additional two weeks of tinkering and leveraging all potential system synergies, plus the broad engineering and scientific teams, but they had come up with a design that she could wear all day long.

In order to maintain a stable connection, the electrodes inserted into the vand needed direct contact with the skin, which required that T'Pol permanently shave two square areas on her temples. She had come to pragmatic terms with the changes by integrating them into a new stylish hairdo. What she was asking of Phlox was the insertion of permanent implants that the vand could connect with, which would allow her to regrow her hair but also, more importantly, would stabilize the visual input. The images she saw were fuzzy and distorted on the edges, and the cause of the headache that plagued her as soon as she slipped the vand on.

"It's still too early." Phlox replied, making sure to stay within the center of the vision field of the vand. He was well aware of the distortions on the edges, and that the fact that the headaches were caused by her brain trying to adjust. "It takes a minimum of six months for the nerve to regenerate, even with the treatment, and we still have a ways to go. I'm afraid you may need to deal with the headaches for a while longer."

T'Pol exhaled in response, a sound which cut straight to Phlox's heart. He needed to talk about something else. "You know, Captain Archer has been asking me to release you from light duty."

"I am not ready to regain my position on the bridge." The sentence came at knee-jerk speed, as he had expected. He turned to look at her.

"Now, that might have been true when you were limited to the echolocation device, but the vand allows you to see pretty much normally. If I am not mistaken, you can read, you can see the intercom on the wall and could reach it of you had to. I am hard pressed to find a medical reason that would prevent your presence on the bridge, hmm?"

He realized anew that the wand hid her eyes and her eyebrows, making it very difficult to infer what she may be thinking.

"It would be unsafe for Enterprise to rely on me as the only science officer on the bridge."

It was Phlox's turn to sigh. "And why would that be?" They had already had that conversation. Not many times, but enough that he knew all the pat answers she was going to serve up.

"The vand is a mechanical contraption, therefore more liable to breakage, either due to a faulty technical configuration or an external force, such as a fall. Probabilities are much higher than average that I may become completely incapacitated during a critical time for Enterprise."

"And by completely incapacitated, you mean?"

"That I would not be able to see."

"Let me make two comments to that, Commander. First, you already have experience with not being able to see and if I remember from your training logs, you were actually quite adept at functioning without sight. That would not meet the definition of incapacitated." Phlox took a breath. "Second, the risk that you would become injured or otherwise be prevented from functioning during, as you say, hmm, a critical time, is no higher now than it was before. So you're only looking at the additional probability that perhaps you would have to operate without sight during what in any case would be a short-term interval. I would like to know how you came up with 'much higher than average'?" Hoshi had told him that was called calling someone's bluff. He would have to teach T'Pol the expression at some point. But not now.

"Very well, Doctor. I will think about it." Her refusal to acknowledge his question was proof he'd got her.

Phlox smiled, knowing she would see his smile and know he only meant the best for her. "Do so but don't take too long. I owe the Captain an answer. How about you let me know in, hmm, forty-eight hours?"

T'Pol's only answer was to slide off the biobed in her usual feline manner. When she reached the door to Sickbay, she half-turned around, head cocked towards the ground. "Forty-eight hours."

Phlox watched her cross the threshold with a broad grin. He knew she would say yes. She didn't have much choice and the two days were a transition period. Once she came back to her full position, everything would fall back into place. He was certain of it.

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Hello, everyone. Once again the story is writing itself. Last night I thought there were only three more chapters (two after this one). Now I'm not so sure. Thank you for all the reviews, as usual extremely helpful. Hope you keep enjoying it. Feel free to let me know.

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