==CHAPTER 2====/\=
("Horizon" 2)
She had wondered if he would find an excuse to bow out or at least be late, but her door chimed promptly, and she opened it.
"Subcommander."
"Good evening, Captain."
As she moved aside to let him in, he compared his crewneck and joggers to her loose, silken cyan tee and matching pants that he'd seen her donn before as sleepwear, and he tentatively placed a foot over the threashhold. "I'm not imposing?"
"I believe learning meditation techniques would prove useful to your concentration."
And he hesitated fully in his advancement. "I meant, you're sure this isn't a bad time?"
"This is not a bad time." He almost thought he'd imagined the flicker of the glance she gave his tee before returning her eyes to his. "I will transition to my own meditation after our session is over." She waited patiently for him to enter, and he did so this time while taking in the fresh scent of her spartan quarters which were decorated in drab blue, gray, and brown hues.
A good a conversation starter as any. "It occurs to me I've never asked what your favorite color is." He paused, she blinked. "Blue?"
"No." His face indicated bemusement, and although he didn't inquire further, she did supply him her preference, "Tomato.", and waited to see what he would make of that.
His interest was immediately piqued, struck at how abnormal it sounded for a Vulcan to know off the top of her head a very particular shade of color, in English, based on a terran fruit. She must have looked it up and remembered because she had wanted to, not because she would have a believably logical reason to. He almost pressed her on it just so he could be amused by her attempt at trying to explain it logically.
Feigning indifference at the shift in his expression, she redirected past it. "But blues and grays and 'softer' colors are utilized by Vulcans, as they are with the dominant culture of your planet, to psychologically aid in calmness and detachment. They are undistracting and used specifically in areas where high stress is to be expected."
"Hm." Living among humans was stressful for her, and he had known it would be from the start. There were times, especially early on, it was almost as stressful the other way around. But he'd hoped over time that she would be able to settle in, let her guard down a little, and get more used to them in general. He was in fact sure all of that had panned out to be the case, it was just her decor that hadn't caught up to the same extent yet. Visually poking around her quarters further, he noted that the few occasions he'd been in there before were for business purposes, and with it being so... Vulcan in character, it never occurred to him to let his eyes wander. He wasn't expecting to see anything out of the ordinary, certainly. He trailed after her as she crossed the room, and while she retrieved one of a handful of candles from a shelf, he squinted in the lukewarm lighting and noticed an unnatural figure previously hidden on the near side; its color and its character stood out from the sparse crowd of items to catch his eye. Pleased, he nodded a sly grin at it, the fluffy, red well, tomato, actually stuffed alien, not far from where the candles sat. It was to his further amusement that it seemed someone had already had a productive color discussion with the subcommander. "Does he help your meditation process?"
She chastized him with the barest change in her features. "'Gorak', as Engisn Sato calls it, was a personal gift from her." T'Pol clicked the room's panel, and the lights lowered further. Then, alighting with care the lone candle she held, she moved to the middle of the room and took a seat on one of two padded mats she had previously arranged. He took her lead, lowering himself onto the mat opposite her almost as quietly, in a mirrored cross-legg d position. After a thoughtful pause, she rested the candle on the floor between them, then formally introduced him to their meeting. "The purpose of this session is for you to gain a method of relaxation and an ease of introspection."
It was hard to argue with that; it'd been one hell of a year and a half out here, and he could use some of the relaxation at the least. Maybe if the meditation didn't work for him for the rest, Phlox could work with him a little more.
"The first goal is to clear your mind."
He considered that a minute, not wanting to lie to her if he had doubts he'd be able to. "I think I can do that."
In response, she held her hands out on either side of the candle toward him, palms up, and took a full breath, closing her eyes. In the last minutes of what he would later come to regard as his singlular, discrete life, he again mirrored her actions, fingertips only an inch from hers. All he could see were what he ever saw when he closed his eyes at night: blobs of darkness, along with a diffused blob of soft light near the middle from the candle.
She could tell he was still focused on the external. She kept her voice soft, and it washed over him as she instructed him at a leisurely pace. "You can feel the mat beneath you, the floor beneath your feet. You relax your body. You can feel the air around you. You breathe it in and breathe it out. You relax your lungs. You can feel the candle in front of you. You relax your face."
Gradually, thoughts and shapes and colors whisked away from behind his eyelids to reveal a blank, dark canvas.
"Concentrate your attention on the candle, amd then turn your attention inward. Pour your energy into that space."
He did what he thought she was asking. It felt like pushing a part of himself forward and having it renewed and sent back to him. His breathing had become slow and steady, his mind singularly focused on the task she'd requested of him. The flow of 'energy' regularized, and sometime thereafter, he became aware of the midnight drape of darkness that surrounded his calm. He must've leaned forward some in the process or maybe she had as well? because although it was unclear to him, the backs of his fingers had come to lightly lay on hers, causing his inner universe to shift just so and leaving him immediately feeling anchored. Off in front of that space, he felt or saw, he wasn't sure in his mind's eye what seemed to be that anchor, a slowly swirling, earthen-colored energy, soft at the edges. As he focused more on it, it seemed to center downward and gently reverberate around the ill-defined bubble of his mental landscape like ripples flattening out. He had no idea what it was. 'T'Pol?', he thought he whispered her name out loud, but his query was only expressed within his internal monologue. What he didn't realize was that this wasn't just a meditative state but that he was literally communicating with his mind through their medium of touch.
Momentarily, she froze. Had her mind fabricated the sound of his voice? She managed a reply, just in case it was not of her doing. 'More quietly.', her disembodied voice vibrated in his head. At 'hearing' her, she registered a level of similarly stunned disbelief from him, but he somehow kept himself from moving away, physically or mentally. He stayed silent for a bit, taking it all in and making a serious effort to stay calm because of the impossibility of this happening; she thought she could barely hear him whisper inside his mind to himself to follow her meditative directions from minutes ago.
'Am I imagining it, or can you hear me?', finally came his response to what had, or hadn't actually, transpired.
'You are not imagining it.'
Either he was talking to himself in his head or they were in fact communicating. He wasn't about to break the moment to find out for sure, making himself look like he wasn't taking the meditation seriously by opening his eyes. 'I don't understand.'
'Nor do I.' She added with perplexed reluctance, 'Humans are not known to possess the ability to communicate telepathically.'
'Telepathic?' He was incredulous, never having heard of such a thing outside of science fiction he had read as a child. 'Funny; I didn't know humans were aware that Vulcans could do that.' The comment was tinged with testiness and frustration, but it was not quite to the level of resentful and angry that it would have been over a year ago, and not just because of the calmed meditative state involved now. And even if telepathy were really happening surely not he wondered if she wouldn't pick up on every stray thought and feeling going through his head. He wanted to back away, but he couldn't make himself.
She seemed to take the comment of his, the one that she could hear well enough, and chose to divulge a tidbit about this bombshell. 'Only under certain circumstances. For instance, touching and actively desiring to communicate.' She could feel another mental brush of displeasure and unease from him, gaining her own unease as he pushed further mentally towards the source of her, thinking that would give him some answers, or that he believed he had the right to wander into her mental bubble merely because telepathic information about her species had not been shared with him. She placed a mental hand on his shoulder as if making to stop him, but she quickly discovered it had the effect of further anchoring him in their link. From there, the space between them seemed to shift again, to sink, shrink, and unravel, and then they both felt a click inside their minds, almost as if a door had been unlatched.
T'Pol's eyes flew open immediately, though unfocused, whereas Archer's remained closed and his countenance serene until a second or two later when he blinked "awake" as if coming out of a trance. In contrast, her breathing was, for a Vulcan, coming more noticeably shallow and quick than it should have after a meditation session.
His first breath was instinctual from his body needing to restore its oxygen levels. He hadn't realized he'd been holding his breath, and this time he took a long drag of air, wishing he'd come out of this feeling totally relaxed as intended, but... Training his eyes on her, he realized something was very off. "What happened?"
She looked confused startled? or angry? He couldn't say for sure. He also couldn't say for sure where he fell on that spectrum himself.
"We are finished here.", she eventually stated with a guarded caution he couldn't interpret the source of, and she rose from her position on the mat, never during the process allowing her eyes to settle on him.
"Did I do something wrong?", he looked up at her.
A simple, considered "No." came after a very brief pause.
But he got the feeling he had in fact done something terribly socially unacceptable as far as Vulcan culture went. Vulcan telepathy went. And he also knew whatever it was, it one was hundred percent the opposite of his fault. He nonetheless steeled himself with a breath. "Look, I'm sorry I was upset. Am upset." He glanced at the candle that was slowing down its dance that had been caused by her previous movement, then he returned his focus to her. "But I think why should be understandable."
He took her inability to communicate further, let alone look at him, as an indication to him the session was over, just as she had tried to make a point of moments ago. With a deeper furrowing of his brow, he uncrossed his legs and got up off the floor. "And I think I deserve an explanation.", he added. He waited to see if she was in the mood just then to explain. Seeing no reply on the horizon, he turned to leave, and that is when she spoke up.
"Captain."
He waited, her eyes now glued to his.
"Please I ask that you do not mention this to anyone." It came out like deer-in-headlights pleading.
The implications raced through his mind: 'Telepathic communication among Vulcans was most definitely a phenomenon Starfleet would find worth knowing. It sure as hell seems like something they deserve to know. Hell, what if... So many reasons why. The fact of the matter is, if they found out now, it could cause a serious interstellar upset, even if it only became "private" Starfleet knowledge, forget the disruption the knowledge would cause if Andoria and whoever else didn't know and found out. And now that it's on the table, it's my call to make.' He shook his head and dropped it, feeling caught between a rock and a hard place, and then he appraised his first officer. He didn't think this was the time to violate what trust they'd built between them, even considering what she'd accidentally revealed. "Alright. For right now.", he qualified. "But the two of us will talk about this soon." It wasn't harsh, but it was definitive. He didn't think it was wisest to start by forcing information from her to resolve his concerns; he'd much prefer some attempt at a reasonable-sounding explanation from her when she was ready. And he hoped she would be ready sooner rather than later.
She nodded in almost fearful submission, and this odd vulnerability she showed left him uneasy, wanting to fix this but continuing to get the impression that now was not the time. With one last look, he left her quarters.
Suppressing a shiver, she returned to her mat and stared at the candle, eyes a little wider than expected, breathing remaining a little more erratic than expected after what was intended to be a calming meditation session. She wasn't certain what had happened between them, or why the captain, a human, would be able to communicate with her telepatically, but she knew there was a line that had to have been crossed. And she knew she was the one who had allowed it to happen. This was why, she chastized herself, only family members should touch one another, or those well-trained and with a purpose should touch others. She derisively speculated that Vulcan children had better control of themselves than her; she should have had a far better handle over her mind and of the situation. And now she needed to meditate alone before bedtime, if not to regain better control of her mind, then to at least calm herself before she tried to sleep.
But all she could do was stare at the candle as the image of it burned into her retinae. Unable to concentrate well enough after some time, she finally blew out the offending flame.
