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Disclaimer: All publicly recognizable characters, settings, avatar picture etc. are the property of their respective owners. No copyright infringement is intended.

I like to thank Rishooter for his suggestions and improvements regarding this chapter.

Music: Waiting for love by Avicci

She wasn't a person anymore. Her soul had ceased to exist. Her mind and body seemed to be separated, apart. Somewhere her body was there, functioning, but her mind, her memories, her inner being that contained her katra was so tainted, so invalidated, so broken, so completely sullied that she no longer knew who she was. She was filthy inside, sullied in every pore of her being, a thing without value, trash that had been thrown away.

Day after day, hour after hour, Tolaris had invaded her mind, taking her worst memories and making her them relive them again and again. Then he had taken – o how much she had tried to stop him – her most precious memories, the ones that kept her alive, and mocked them. They weren't many, but Tolaris had been there in every memory, every moment she had been content, telling her she betrayed her loved ones and her mate, yelling to her she was unworthy of any affection. He sullied her memories, humiliated her every chance he got, never mentioning her name, always calling her Fool or Trash or Whore, always laughing at her pain, over and over again. His maniacal laugh still ringed in her ears.

He had broken her, and she had only been able to keep one memory from him, as Tolaris's torture of her mind continued on.

And now, she was in her dark cell, a gloomy, black pit. She sat at the bottom and she lacked the strength to climb. And there was nothing to go to, because above, beneath, on all sides, there was nothing more than darkness.

Then a sound entered her foggy mind. A door opened. A small light entered in, only to vanish as the door closed. There were footsteps. A familiar smell entered her nostrils. It smelt like iron, antimatter, musk, myrrh, citrus oil. Then he said her name, a name she hadn't heard in weeks. Her identity. The person she was. "T'Pol."

She couldn't react. Her head felt empty, her brain so hazy it couldn't give orders, her body stayed immovable. But she sensed him. She felt his strong, tender hands on her skin, as he cleaned her. She felt his care as he put some clean clothes on her. Then she submerged again in the darkness and when she opened her eyes again, Charles, because she knew that it had been him, was gone.

He had showed her mercy. She had hurt him deeply and he had repaid her with kindness. He had cared. He had valued her.

Charles's visit was the beginning of her healing, the rope of rescue for her to climb out of her dark pit. She found the strength again to start gathering the shattered pieces of her mind and being. For this, T'Pol returned to the past, to her childhood's mind. There she found, rooted in her katra, grounded in the bottom of her being, her childhood's meditation techniques. The ones her father had taught her. There was simplicity and order, a way out of the chaos.

As she reconstructed her mind again, as well as she was able to, T'Pol reconstructed the story of her life, piece by piece, starting with her happy childhood years, when Father was still alive, her friendship with S'Vai, her best friend from an early age, her assignment to Enterprise, her meeting with Charles and working with him, her betrayal of him, her punishment by the Empress.

It was a slow process, hindered by the flashes of Tolaris's torture that hid in her mind and came forward frequently. Every time they came, she felt sickened by the rolling emotions of fear, disgust, shame and guilt. Her first instinct was to suppress those memories. But that wouldn't remove them. So she stepped back in her mind, looked at the accusations Tolaris had yelled at her and tried to pick them apart by using logic. She didn't succeed all the time, and some of the things he had said about her character were unfortunately true, but slowly, bit by bit, clarity and order returned into her mind.

While taking control in her mind again and forced to give herself a hard look during hours of meditation, she realized one truth that she had denied before. There had only been one memory that she had preserved during Tolaris's torture. She remembered how she had primitively, without logic, fought with all her mind to keep it out of his dirty hands.

It was a memory of her and Charles, after the frenzied hours of them sharing the burning furnace that is Pon Farr. It made her realize something. He was a central figure in her life, more important than she had imagined, a man who had given her strength, who healed her soul by showing her mercy. Charles Tucker, a strong, kind and good man. And how she had betrayed and hurt him.

Every time T'Pol was confronted with this, she opened her eyes in an attempt to stop her train of thoughts. She wanted to be truthful to herself, but the subject of Charles was something confusing and frightening for her, she didn't want to think about him. But deep down in her katra she knew she couldn't escape now, she had to look in the mirror and face herself and the naked truth.

It was the least Charles deserved of her.

And so she made up her mind. In order to understand what was really true about their relationship, no matter how frightening that truth would be, she would go back and view her memories about Charles.

And so she did.

The first time T'Pol had heard of Charles Tucker was when she told S'Vai she was assigned to the Terran ship Enterprise. S'Vai had been her best friend since childhood, more than a friend, the sister she had never had. "Which department are you going to work for?" S'Vai, who had been working on Enterprise after her marriage to Korek, had asked. "Engineering," she had answered.

S'Vai seemed to be pleased with her answer. "That's good. Charles Tucker is the chief engineer of Enterprise. He is honest, hardworking and treats his crew well, even Vulcans."

She had been surprised. "I hardly can believe that there's such a thing as a good Terran," T'Pol had said. "If they exist," S'Vai had answered, "Tucker comes close. But watch out for Captain Archer. He has loose hands when it comes to women, and he doesn't care if they're betrothed or not."

S'Vai had proved to be right. T'Pol had spent her days avoiding Archer and his touchy hands, but she never minded working with Tucker. Her new boss never seemed to talk much and practically ignored her, but he valued her ideas and treated her fairly, like the rest of the crew.

And while she never would admit it, for the first time in her life, she liked working with a Terran. And he seemed to not mind to working with her. More and more she found herself having some kind of argument with him, after him saying something that provoke an answer, or she making a remark. When he did argue, she noticed a spark in his eyes, the small smile on his face, which suggested he took pleasure in their arguments. And if she was really honest, so did she and she hated him for liking him so much. What made it more complicated was the attraction between them. Deep down she knew it was there, but he would never show it and she would rather have had her right arm cut off before admitting it.

Things changed when Tucker had his accident. She had been there when it happened and his screams had still echoed in her own mind in the days after. T'Pol had been shocked about what had happened, but strangely also proud of this man who had saved the crew at the expense of his own life.

When Tucker returned to work, it had seemed that not only his face and body had been scarred, but his whole person. Tucker had never smiled much, but now his expression had seemed grimmer and his jokes, if he made them between the periods of silent work, had a taste of bitterness. Sarcasm had been dripping more and more into his speech.

Still, T'Pol had felt a strange kind of sympathy for this man, a Terran no less, who just like her fought for his place in this world, struggled to go his own way instead of being the Empire's puppet like so many other officers.

Their strange connection that had evolved during the years they worked together, it stayed. Soon their arguments returned, but it was clear his pent-up emotions colored the discussion more than before. Sometimes, his eyes would admire openly the shape of her body, or he made some casual remark, that proved he was attracted to her. She seemed oddly pleased by it. Or he would look at her so intently, almost like he meant to devour her. She feared that look, because it provoked emotions that she had a hard time suppressing. She shouldn't feel this way, it wasn't Vulcan, it wasn't right. She hated him for these strange feelings and spent hours in meditation just to free herself for it.

Then, in a period when she worked more closely with Tucker on a new project, she discovered she was suffering from Pon Farr. It was all clear: her mind was constantly busy with this the burning desire, the blood rushing through her veins, pumping in a rhythm: find a mate; quench the fire in a union with him. And in her mind an image rose of Tucker, but with all her mind she cast out any thoughts of him.

She had to talk about her condition, no matter how shameful she felt. She told S'Vai and Korek in the hope they would found some kind of solution. First they didn't believe her. "Pon Farr is a unique male condition," Korek had said. "You must be mistaken." He had paused and S'Vai had taken over. "Or this happens because of the proximity of your mate, which can trigger Pon Farr with a woman," she and Korek had exchanged a look which had made T'Pol very uncomfortable. "In very rare situations a virus can cause those symptoms with a female, but I haven't heard of an active virus in our surroundings."

T'Pol had clung to the idea of a virus as explanation for her Pon symptoms were too specific to be anything else other than Pon Farr and she didn't have a mate.

Since her betrothed had died many years ago, Korek offered to find and contact a male Vulcan on another ship to assist her. That thought alone had filled her with disgust and almost made her physically throw up. Her body, her blood only seemed to have one thought, sang only one song, over and over again, a repetition of desire: Charles Tucker.

Her longing for him grew deeper and deeper, unbearable, a fire burning in her body that intensified in heat every minute. Logic and nature dictated that she resolve the effects of this virus, otherwise it would kill her. Tucker was a discrete man. He was attracted to her. And her body seemed to ignore the fact that he was Terran, perhaps not cable of handling the violence of Pon Farr. The burning inside her swept away all rational thought and her feet found the way to his quarters.

She pulled herself together and knocked on his door in a controlled matter. After she told him she had an urgent matter to discuss, he let here in. "You're sick?" he asked. "You look feverish and off. You have my permission to take a sick leave." He sounded sincere.

"I need a favor," she managed to say.

"Okay," he responded, and gestured she should sit down on a chair. His room was orderly, with no decoration, except for a picture of a woman with long blond hair.

She swallowed. "Vulcans have a very violent past. Our ancestors saw that we were ruled by such strong emotions, that they decided that we had to contain them with logic. So we do. There is only emotion which in the root of survival, that is the need to propagate."

"You're pregnant?" he interrupted her.

She looked at him. Bewilderment filed her heart, the Pon Farr was driving her crazy.

"No," she said sharply, then more softly "That's not possible." Ever since the first time she was forced to have intimate relations, she had made sure that she wouldn't get pregnant.

A flash of sadness went over his face, and then it went neutral again. She blurted out the rest of her story. "Once every seven years a Vulcan experiences this urgent, very urgent need to mate. Otherwise we die. It's called Pon Farr, blood fever. I am suffering from Pon Farr. That's the favor I need from you."

He looked bewildered. "T'Pol, Terrans aren't monkey's that mate, even if it looks that way. So don't use that term. But to be sure, what you're suggesting is…"

"That we have intimate relationships," she said.

He looked at her with unbelief, but also with a hint of excitement. "You want to sleep with me?"

Her eyes went to the perfectly made bed in the corner of his room. "Yes. You will benefit from it. I will attend your needs."

"My needs…", he gave a short, bitter laugh. "What about yours?"

"They're irrelevant." She didn't understand his question.

"Not for me. And why me? Why not find a Vulcan guy for this Pon Farr?"

"You're discrete, you're attracted to me and you're available," she said.

He stood up, grabbed her arm and pushed her to the door. His voice was soft, but determined, his eyes close to her. She could see fury in his good eye. "Don't think I am a fool! I am still your superior officer and I can have you thrown in the isolation cell. Who put you up to this? Archer?"

"No one, Commander," she whispered back, but he didn't hear and continued with his rant "To think I would believe this story, from a cold fish like you, the ice princess, you're here to taunt me…"

She kissed him and all her passion and desire broke free and stopped him. The blood fever took over and the flames, the heat, took everything over and he kissed her back with such passion she thought she was going to die. And she did, and so did he, in the hours to come, the night spent in the throes of that burning desire, the lava of emotions, to burn with wild flames and still live.

Hours later she woke. She was in his arms, under the sheets. He had wrapped his arms around her and held her tightly. She felt his cooler skin on her warm body, a pleasant sensation, just like the ones that she had experienced last night. And now, when the morning had come, those feelings she had experienced confused her to no end. Charles was sleeping, his head on the pillow of the bed, his bare chest with the scars, as she slowly moved away from him.

She sat on the edge of the bed, naked, looking at Charles sleeping form. If he was Vulcan, he would be her husband, her mate in every sense of the word. But he was Terran, as his blond hair, now draped on the pillow showed. She had always hated Terrans, they had caused her so much pain. Why had she chosen a Terran to fulfill her Pon Farr? Why had she enjoyed it, was she like those men who had taken her and took pleasure in having power over her? She thought about her father, being shot before her eyes, the sounds she had heard when her mother was violated and the child in her had died. She thought of all the pain and sadness this universe had offered her.

Her body became to shake, first slowly, than harder, making Charles awake. He rose somewhat from the bed, saw her and asked "Are you cold?"

"So cold," she whispered.

He moved up, took a blanket and wrapped it around her shoulders. His strong arms surrounded her, he held her tightly, until the shaking started to cease. "Better?" he asked. She nodded, unable to speak. Then he kissed her tenderly on her neck and she just melted away. She couldn't fight him.

But she should. There was no way a Terran-Vulcan relationship would exist in this world and he would break her katra so many times, finding a Terran mate. She couldn't allow herself to be broken, she had to be strong to survive, to make it to another day without being killed.

So she made up her mind. T'Pol would push him out of her world, not letting him get close, because otherwise she would be lost.

"Stop!" her mind said. T'Pol opened her eyes. She remembered this moment if it had been yesterday. And she had been good to her word. Fueled by her fear of loosing control, by her hatred of Terrans, especially after the useless death of S'Vai at Terran hands, T'Pol had cast Charles away. She had used him, manipulated him, and even invaded his mind for her own causes.

She had made a terrible, terrible mistake. T'Pol had hurt the only man who ever cared for her, because she didn't want to be weak. But she had been weak in doing the wrong things, she had been so treacherous, so horribly wrong.

Guilt washed over her. She had hurt her mate in every way possible. There were no excuses, no redemption for her. She had been so wrong and he was so right to hate her for it.

And there was nothing T'Pol could do to make it right.