T'Lin asked, "Do you like tofu?"

Veral nodded. It was a contentious food on Vulcan. Terran soy was a major import, but those who disliked it claimed the mere presence of it on a table could put them off of their meal.

He followed her into the kitchen. T'Lin set out a block of tofu, plomeek root, coarse ground ug'yon-kur, and koleem oil.

She handed him the tofu, sealed in a food stasis container. "One centimeter cubes."

He looked around. "Where are the gloves?" T'Lin looked at him questioningly. "You do not wear gloves when you prepare food?" That was unsettling.

He sensed bemusement from her. "I wondered at your father wearing gloves when I saw him preparing food. I thought perhaps he had a contagious illness."

"No. We always wear gloves." He reminded himself that there was nothing unhygienic about food prepared with clean bare hands. It was simply not done. Rather, it was not done in Shi'kahr, or any of the surrounding areas.

"If you find it very distasteful, I can replicate a pair of gloves."

Veral took the tofu from her. "No. I will adapt," he said, and touched food that he was preparing to eat with his bare hands, something he had not done since he was a very young child, testing boundaries by deliberately ignoring the rules. At least they did not eat with their hands here. He had adapted to seeing that too, on the Eian, but the first time he had seen a Terran eat the dried flat bread they called tortilla chips and then lick their finger afterward, he had fully realized what was meant by 'culture shock'.

T'Lin left him to the chopping and heated the oil on the stove, adding the ground ug'yon-kur when it was hot. When the tofu and plomeek was chopped and mixed, she poured the hot oil over it, and put it into two bowls. They ate in the kitchen, sitting on stools at a high table. They were close enough that their knees brushed. He was aware of the heat coming off of her body, and the sound of her breathing.

When they were done eating, Veral removed the dirty plates and cleaned the kitchen, aware of T'Lin watching him the entire time.

When he was done, T'Lin said, "My first bondmate rejected me when we were still young."

Veral sat, and was quiet. She had not spoken of her first bonding previously.

"It was painful at the time, but now I see I was fortunate. He showed signs of instability early, and publicly. He did not hide what he was." She looked away. "He had a tendency toward violence. He lacked control. He rejected the very idea of control. I believe he thought it beneath him. In the beginning, when he first began to reject what it is to be Vulcan, he wanted to make me like him. When he found that I would not become like him-in no small part because my parents and his saw what he was, and intervened to separate us-he became very...angry."

Veral said nothing, but she read the question in his mind.

"He never harmed me physically. He did me very little harm at all, in fact. He was even so considerate as to declare himself v'tosh ka'tur. It might have been complicated otherwise."

Had he not rejected all of Vulcan society, and his bondmate with it, their being bonded would have become complicated indeed. A marriage contract could not easily be broken. If he had been shown to be a danger to her, a legal case could have been made, but if no clear threat could have be shown... She might have severed ties with him to some extent, but when he burned, Vulcan law would have prioritized his life over her rights. Kal'i'fee would have been her only recourse, and who would have fought for her?

I would have, he thought, but of course that was a foolish idea. He would never have known of her existence.

Pon farr was their curse. It tainted them. It forced them to compromise, to make impossible choices.

T'Lin sensed some of what he was thinking, and touched his hand. "I do not bring this matter up because it troubles me. I rarely think of it. I know what suffering is, and it is not the rejection of a selfish boy with no sense of duty or honor. I only wish for you to understand that because my bondmate and I were drawn apart before we completed our adolescence, there are certain experiences common to that age that I lack."

He realized what she was saying, and very nearly winced. "You came to our marriage with no sexual experience."

"Yes. You need not be concerned. I lacked experience, not knowledge. You were not subtle about what you needed. What transpired between us that day was entirely acceptable for what it was, but it was pon farr, and necessarily unpleasant for both of us, especially under the circumstances."

He drew a breath, and waited for her to continue, but her reticence had reasserted itself. He slowly breathed out.

"There are aspects of sexuality that are far more enjoyable," he said.

She nodded. This too was part of the curse of pon farr. Their sexuality was so tangled up in it, in the bone-deep shame of it, that they struggled to express themselves in explicit terms even with each other.

It had been easier with Najin. Their adolescent experimentation had had the all ease of naivete, but of course that was one of the reasons for early bonding. He and Najin would have gone to their marriage with no embarrassment.

He and T'Lin had known nothing of each other, and it had been, among other things, mortifying for both of them to be so exposed before a stranger. Veral's memories of that night were indistinct, but he clearly recalled his self-consciousness as T'Lin had helped him from his robes. Even in the depths of plak tow, he had retained enough of himself to feel that humiliation.

They were both struggling past that mortification even now, but they had to overcome it. Sex outside of pon farr was not necessary, but that did not make it unimportant. In just over four years, he would burn again, as surely as Vulcan would continue in its orbit. If they could cultivate a healthy sexuality now, pon farr would be...not pleasant, precisely, but far, far better than it would otherwise be.

He brushed his fingertips against her. "Will you come upstairs with me?"

"Yes."

It was late-evening, and dusk was settling. Their rooms were nearly dark, but neither of them wanted a light. They stood facing each other.

"What do you need?" T'Lin asked, wary and tense though she was trying not to be.

"I do not need, I want," he said. "I am entirely in control of myself. This for our pleasure."

The tension he sensed from her eased. "I know," T'Lin said, "but I am grateful to you for saying it. What do you want?"

He touched her face, finding the meld points, showing her what it was that he could not seem to speak. When he drew back his hand, T'Lin caught it before she could let it drop.

She brought his thumb to her lips, and touched her tongue to the top of it. Veral caught himself before he gasped. T'Lin, staring at him, ran her bottom teeth across the pad of his thumb, and he shivered.

Veral swallowed. "You were clever to have my bed sent," he said.

T'Lin touched his face. "Yes, I was."

They had amputated his hands. He could not recall why or when, but the fact remained that his hands were gone. Yet his colleagues were yelling at him to come help them. He couldn't see them, though they yelled so loudly that it hurt his ears. All he could see was an endless stretch of the dead and dying. He stared at his missing hands, and wondered what he could possibly do to help.

Veral's eyes snapped open. Disoriented and fighting against a panic reaction, he sat up and looked around. The room was dark, though an ashy sliver of light was coming in through the window. The curtains between the rooms were still open. He could sense T'Lin in her bed, where she had gone to sleep after their earlier activities, but he could not see her.

He was shaking. He swung his feet over the edge of the bed and settled onto the floor. He knew he should meditate, but he found he had not even the power for that. Instead, he curled over and rested his head on his bent knees, his hands laced behind his neck, and he performed one of the most elementary breathing exercises.

When the panic receded, he rose, and dressed quietly so as not to disturb T'Lin, somewhat surprised that she had not sensed his nightmare and woken up. But then, his mental shielding was very good, and his instinct was to shield his mind when he was in pain. He checked the time. He had managed less than two hours of sleep. He was profoundly exhausted, but could not face returning to sleep. He walked the house instead.

He found T'Reya and T'Lyra on the roof, taking tea and playing a game. He began to withdraw, but T'Reya gestured him to the table. They were playing a card game. He did not recognize it, but knew it to be alien. Vulcan had no native games played with cards.

T'Reya poured him a cup of tea. "You do not sleep."

"Not well. Not since I returned."

"Why?"

"I dream."

"Nightmares are a sign of an unsettled mind."

"That is true."

"What troubles you?"

"The past. The things I have seen."

"Why dwell on that which is gone? It is not logical."

"Forgive me, t'sai, I speak with all respect to the one who is my elder, but your efforts to aid me in finding logic will not be of assistance to me. My mind has suffered trauma. Logic is a tool to aid its healing, one that I am using to the full, but it is not a cure."

"What of meditation?" T'Lyra asked.

"It is very helpful, but also a tool, and ultimately limited. It cannot replace REM sleep."

T'Reya considered this. "You must be very tired."

"I am." There was the medication. He availed himself of it when the exhaustion became too great to bear, but most nights he preferred the fatigue to the mental blanks that followed medication-induced sleep.

They went back to their game. Having no knowledge of the game, he could not follow what was happening. The cards moved quickly back and forth between them, and piles of cards built up. Finally, T'Lyra said, "I concede."

T'Reya shuffled the deck. The cards were brightly colored and had gilding on the edges. "You should have him see to your eye."

"It is of no matter," T'Lyra said, at the same moment Veral asked, "What of your eye?"

"Vom-krizhiv," T'Lyra said. It was the local term for a benign growth on the third eyelid. It was not a threat to health or vision, but it did cause pain when the inner eyelid closed.

"I will see to it," Veral said. A month ago he could not have so casually offered to treat a patient, but as his father had predicted, his confidence had returned. "How long have you had it?"

"A year, perhaps."

Veral raised an eyebrow. He kept his voice neutral when he said, "The local clinic, I suppose, is closed."

"Since T'Gi went away to the war," T'Lyra confirmed.

"Will she return?"

"She lived," T'Reya said. "The injury to her brain makes it unlikely that she will practice medicine again."

"Where do you go for treatment?"

"Klan-ne," T'Lyra said.

Klan-ne was neither close nor convenient. A terrible thought occurred to him. "Have many people been delaying medical treatment?"

"Not for anything serious, but small things, yes. It is not worth two train rides and a six hour wait to have something minor seen to."

"I was not aware that the wait time was as bad as that."

"They took the doctors for the war."

He closed his eyes. Vulcan had offered up its children on the altar of the war, and that altar had burned hot. The suffering had not been confined to those sacrificed.

How foolish, how self-centered of him, not to have realized before now how badly the lack of medical personnel would have affected the people left at home. He knew that they had leaned heavily on older doctors, too frail to be sent into a war zone, some of whom were no longer even fit to be practicing medicine at the level that was demanded of them. He knew that they had closed local clinics and rationed non-critical care. But it had not fully dawned on him before, the real cost it would have had in the patient population.

The critically ill, like T'Lin, had been cared for and cared for well, but what of small things that were not so small when they caused someone to live with an aching knee or a painful eye condition or an uncomfortable intestinal disorder for months without relief?

He rose and excused himself with a bow. One of the house computers was down two flights. He logged on and sent a message to the central medical office, asking permission to use the local clinic for a day, to treat T'Lyra's eye, and anyone else who had been delaying care because of the inconvenience and the waits involved in going to the hospital in Klan-ne.

He checked his personal messages and found a note from Selesh. A few minutes later, as he was finishing his response, and long before he had expected it, an answer from the central medical office appeared on his screen.

He was welcome to use the clinic for a day, or for several days, or for many months if he wished it. He was in fact, welcome to take the clinic as his own, and if he did the medical office would supply him with any supplies he might need, and a house if he required one, and anything else that might aid in his comfort if it was in their power to do so. It was a letter that was only this side of begging him to take the clinic. He sat back, considering.

Rural clinics were a struggle to man even at the best of times. The challenging work was in Shi'kahr. If one could not secure a post there, one went to Nal'shin or Han'shir, where one would see a large, diverse population, and that was assuming that one did not simply go off world. A skilled doctor would be welcomed on any one of hundreds of planets or space stations. The work there could prove most challenging of all, and give one the opportunity for new discoveries that could make a career.

Some areas were forced to make due with a medic who had no special aptitude or training in the mental arts. A few very rural towns had been given modified EMH programs which were of course never used. Veral wasn't certain what logic had suggested that a population that viewed a healer's touch as something very nearly sacred would accept a computer for a doctor. He suspected it was less logic than desperation.

Of course a fully equipped medical shuttle could be anywhere on the planet in ten minutes, and dire emergencies could be beamed directly to one of the hospitals, but the lack of rural medical access took a toll. The general health of the population suffered if one was forced to take a day, or even two, to see a doctor.

Still, there was a reason no one wanted to work in a rural clinic. They presented a steady stream of vaccinations, routine exams, and minor procedures. A truly interesting case might present itself once every five years. And often there wasn't enough work to fill the days. He knew a doctor who worked at a rural clinic in Tra'voth who had sufficient free time to also be an accomplished composer. She found it suited her, but Veral was not so certain it would suit him.

He wrote back, saying that he would take the clinic temporarily, for as long as he remained in Xir'tan, but that he would have to consider any more permanent arrangements. He sat at the computer a while longer, considering the fact that he had gone nearly six nights without a proper night's rest, and wondering if it might be time to use medication, when he felt T'Lin crying out in pain.

He raced to their room and found her struggling to hold the hypospray so that she could inject it into her thigh. He took it from her, and said as he was brushing her hair aside, "It works more quickly this way." But of course she knew that, and was only settling for an intramuscular injection because she did not have the ability to inject herself in the spine. Illogical to state what was known.

He waited with her until the worst of the pain passed, then got the heating pad and helped her arrange herself on the bed so that she would be most comfortable. "Should I leave you?"

"Stay."

He settled onto the edge of the bed and waited. Her eyes were closed, though she was not asleep. He took the medical tricorder from the bag and switched it from lay settings to professional. It told him nothing he didn't already know. The nerve pain had calmed, but was not gone entirely. Her blood pressure and heart rate were high, but acceptable. Her breathing was steady and unlabored, her organ function was good. He put the tricorder away and brushed her hair from her face.

"It is worst at night," T'Lin said. "Every time it happens, I think that this will be the time that it does not stop. This time the medication will not work. I know that it is not rational, and during the day when it is light and there are people around, I can put that thought from my mind. But at night, it is dark. I am alone and half-asleep and my logic fails me."

He stayed silent, trusting in the bond between them to communicate all he wished to say, but had no words for. She opened her eyes. "There is a book on the table."

It was a codex-form book. T'Lin raised an eyebrow and said, "I read it when I am troubled. You disapprove."

"The Mastery is not the work that I would choose when seeking solace."

"It is has a great deal to say on suffering."

"It has far too much to say on suffering. It is a fifteen thousand line poem about someone being tortured to death."

"The torture is hardly the point. The work is about accepting one's fate. In the beginning, the narrator knows they will die and that they will suffer, and they think they have come to terms with it, but it is only when their torture begins in earnest that they learn true acceptance. I have read no more powerful words about the freedom that one gains when they come to terms with pain."

Veral raised an eyebrow. "You speak eloquently, but I am afraid I did not find that which you did in the work. Perhaps I lost the thread of it somewhere during the interminable passages of explicit torture."

"It is a very accurate work."

"It is needlessly graphic, and detailed to the point of dullness. It reads like a medical textbook written by someone with an unhealthy obsession with pain."

"It is pre-Surakian. One must make allowances."

"I can and do. I have read many pre-Surakian works. My father read me The Fall of the City before I could walk, which is, in retrospect, a questionable parenting decision, but even that has more to redeem it than The Mastery."

"We disagree. The Fall of the City is about nothing but slaughter until it becomes about cannibalism." T'Lin tried to adjust her blanket and winced at the movement. Her hands always hurt worst.

"The debate will keep. You need rest," Veral said.

He felt her disappointment. It had the potential to be a fascinating argument. Still, she did not object. She let him adjust her blankets and even hold the glass for her while she drank.

"Taluhk nash-veh k'dular, aduna," he said, and then wondered if he should not have. It was one thing for such thoughts to be communicated by the bond. It was another to give them voice.

"I know," T'Lin said.

tbc