Title: Grey Matter
Author: HopefulNebula (HopefulNebula@hotmail.com)
Summary: Strange dreams and shippage (T/T). Just a plotless wonder from the Nebula. Newer, longer, beefier version. YAY! I never thought I'd have time to do this. (I was working on another fic, but I've got massive writer's block. Thought this might help me.)
New Note! Minor spoilers: Strange New World,
Disclaimer: If you don't know the drill by now, you don't read fanfiction.
Feedback: I love feedback and especially constructive criticism the way my cat loves to wake me up by licking my ears. We here in Colorado have flames up the wazoo already, so don't send any more, please. (Eggs are also not helpful.)
Rating: G. (Except for gratuitous sex… Kidding, kidding! It's harmless except for a little kissie.)
Visit www.terranbbs.com! I'm LyraSilvertongue there. Then let me know if you join.
~~~~~
I am drifting without an anchor
Through your ambiguous region
A strange continent immune to all reason
And I'm flattered by your grey matter.
~Jewel, "Grey Matter"
~~~~~
The landscape was that of a desert valley. The very few plants that grew here were small, but Trip Tucker found them beautiful nonetheless. He suspected that after even a slight rain, they would grow immensely. The sand was constantly being carried by the wind, but there were no dunes. The only variation in the landscape was created by the mountains. These mountains were of a scale Trip had never before envisioned. They were grand, rising far above anything he had ever seen. The landscape was tinted by a yellowish orange hue. Had this haze been red, Trip would be reminded of Mars. Though this place felt profoundly alien to him, some part of him felt comfortable here. This same part of his being realized what Trip had not been able to consciously relate: This was a dream, and he was on Vulcan.
Almost as he realized this, another presence manifested itself in the dream. He had felt it from the moment it had started, but now it and the dream seemed to intensify, as the scent of a flower grows as its petals open. Trip was unable to discover the identity of this other soul before the setting changed into something more familiar to the engineer.
This time, Trip and his unseen, unknown companion were waist deep in the salt water of the Gulf of Mexico. He felt the sand below him give between his bare toes. His family's home stood on a nearby hill. The sun was setting, turning both sky and water a brilliant gold. Trip and his brother and sister would often come out just to watch the play of colors change with the motion of the sun and clouds. When Trip was alone in the water, he enjoyed sitting in the surf and simply thinking. No matter what his day had been like, he loved having the time and space to simply be alone with himself.
Except that this time, he wasn't truly alone. Trip found that he could not only sense the presence of his invisible noncorporeal friend, but he could also probe more deeply, as if he were telepathic. He spent the next few moments tentatively exploring this newfound ability.
This presence was female. She felt as alien in this environment as he had felt in hers—
Her environment? Trip was astonished. That would be Vulcan! But the only Vulcan woman he knew was—
"The time is now 0615 hours. The time is now 0615 hours. The time is now—" the alarm clock droned just before Trip disabled it. He sat up, stretched, and groggily completed his interrupted thought.
T'Pol?
~~~~~
The Vulcan, meanwhile, was having trouble of her own. She had dreamed more vividly that night than she ever had before, a dream of the T'Lan desert valley on her homeworld. Midway through, it had become a dream of an ocean, or at least a bay, on Earth. She had felt supremely uncomfortable there, but some part of her being had enjoyed the sensation of the water and the sand against her body, and the beauty of the sunset.
After she had become accustomed to the setting, however, she had begun sensing another presence, adjacent to hers. She had investigated, and been startled by her realization that this presence was that of Commander Tucker. Somehow, she reasoned, in their dreaming, their psyches had met.
And what unsettled her the most of each of her revelations was that she took pleasure in the sensation of his mind against her own.
~~~~~
"Commander, are you okay? You've been acting a little off today…" Lieutenant Hess asked Trip that afternoon.
"I'm fine, Lieutenant. Just had some trouble sleeping last night," he replied. Well, that isn't that far from the truth, he reasoned. "Could you get me some of that coffee?"
"Sure thing, sir," she replied as she skittered off to pour the beverage. Trip returned to thinking about that dream. I wish I really could be back home. Then I could go out to swim and think about it… He certainly wished he could at least speak to T'Pol about what had happened. But he reasoned that she'd probably dismiss it as a result of his human emotions. He had to talk to somebody. Maybe the Doc'd be able to tell me if it was just a normal dream. But it certainly didn't feel normal. It was like she was really there with me. I'll talk to him anyway. Even if he can't explain it, he won't tell anybody. No harm in trying, he reflected. What if she had the same dream? I should ask…
"Here's your coffee, sir."
"Thanks, Annelle. Now let's get started on that preliminary diagnostic…"
~~~~~
T'Pol did not enjoy being confused. Confusion bred frustration and anger, and these took much work to control and channel. But these emotions were secondary; once she found the cause of her strange dream—their strange dream—she would not be confused, and so she would not experience them.
She found it hard to believe that she had enjoyed contact with the Commander's mind so much. Overtly, he was chaotic, loud and illogical. But his deeper self seemed to be a union of disorder and precision, of emotion and logic, that T'Pol felt somehow attracted to. She wanted to know more about his mind and soul. She needed to know more.
But why had they connected at all? Was there some emotional bond between them that had gone unnoticed by both? If this were true, then it would defy all that logic stood for. It would mean that she had eschewed her teachings in favor of a stubborn, emotional human.
And it wouldn't go away.
"T'Pol… T'Pol!"
The Sub-Commander quickly left her thoughts and responded to her command. "Yes, Captain?"
"Have you completed your analysis of those scans yet?"
"I have almost finished them. They should be complete in approximately ten minutes."
"Thank you. You know, for a second there, I thought you were daydreaming again," Captain Archer laughed slightly and turned to ask a question of the armory officer.
~~~~~
Trip sat on the edge of the biobed, awaiting the results of Dr. Phlox's scans. He hated hospitals, and this sickbay was no exception, no matter what it looked like. There was simply something in their atmosphere that Trip didn't like.
"Well, Commander, I can't find anything in my scans that would explain your dreams. I think I should see the Sub-Commander, however. Vulcans are somewhat telepathic, and if something in her brain is acting up, then I want to find it early."
"Thank you, Doctor. If that's all… I just have one other thing."
"Go ahead."
"Please don't tell anybody. I mean, you can tell T'Pol if you absolutely have to, but I don't want eighty other people and their brothers to know about this."
"Of course."
"Thanks, Doc."
As Trip left, Phlox sauntered to the nearest comm panel and summoned T'Pol.
~~~~~
"You requested my presence, Doctor?" T'Pol inquired in her typical Vulcan manner.
"Yes, I did," he replied jovially. "A crew member has seen me about a strange dream he had. It involved some form of telepathic contact, and feeling your presence. I thought it would be wise to check on you, to be sure—"
T'Pol interrupted the doctor. "Was it Commander Tucker?" she asked.
"Why, yes. How did you know it was he?" Phlox was visibly startled by T'Pol's knowledge.
She decided to ignore his question for the time being. "Did it involve a valley on Vulcan and then his home?" Phlox's reaction to the question confirmed that theory, so she chose to explain. "I had the same dream last night, and I felt the presence of Commander Tucker. Had you not called for me, I would have come here anyway. Is there any physiological evidence that can explain this?"
"I'm not sure. Let me run a few scans first. Lie down on a biobed, please."
T'Pol complied, and patiently followed his instructions as he took various scans. Once they were completed, she awaited the results much as the commander had done so: perched on the edge of the biobed..
"I don't have anything physical that would prove anything beyond your perfect health," he began, "but I do have a theory. May I ask you a, um, personal question first?" he ventured.
"Of course."
"Are you… attracted to Commander Tucker?"
T'Pol did not see fit to answer that question. Instead, she raised an eyebrow and replied using the silence that Vulcans over many generations had so gracefully mastered.
"You don't have to answer that, but hear me out. I suspect that Commander Tucker is attracted to you. If you feel the same way, then your subconscious mind may seek his out to connect with it. This would in all probability cause his to respond in kind. Now this would most notably manifest itself in dreams, but also in smaller ways." He paused here to recieve any questions from T'Pol. When she continued her silence, he continued. "Be aware of your behavior and thoughts over the next few days. If you notice anything odd, anything that would remind you of the commander, then that may be confirmation. Of course, this is pure speculation. There is no precedent…"
"Thank you, doctor. I'll inform you of anything out of the ordinary." With that, T'Pol gracefully slid off the biobed and out of sickbay, leaving Phlox to feed his menagerie.
~~~~~
They were dreaming together again, and neither could see the other. They could most definitely sense each other, however, and spent some time simply feeling each other's presence. Neither would remember that their setting was salt water surrounded by desert mountains. Both were too preoccupied by the sensations brought by feeling the other's mind. Then they started communicating.
Without words, T'Pol recounted the doctor's theory to Trip. She then felt a surge of agreement from the essence of the commander. She saw and felt his thoughts from a moment that afternoon in which he had briefly reflected how illogical it would be to slap his malfunctioning console. She sent him the memory of that morning, when she had started daydreaming on the bridge.
Before either could respond, a sudden noise reached T'Pol's ears. Whether it was real or imaginary, she never was able to find out, but it suddenly woke her nonetheless. Her frustration reached a high; she had to reach him on a much more profound level. Her mind would not let her do anything else.
Commander Tucker also woke with a start, unsettled by the premature severance of their link. Once this passed, he was left awake to ponder the doctor's theory. He felt better now, knowing what was causing this, but he also had to wonder: Were his feelings really that obvious? Phlox had correctly ascertained that he felt an attraction to her—stronger now that I've seen her mind, he realized—and that troubled him slightly. But how did T'Pol feel about all this? He thought that during the dreams, he had felt something that suggested that his feelings might not be totally unrequited. Yet he was far from certain. Both dreams had been cut off before either could go deeper, find what they needed.
~~~~~
Both Trip and T'Pol got to sleep exceptionally easily that night. Again, rather than dreaming away the whole of their night, both minds chose to reach out to the other.
Suddenly, almost as one, each entered the other's deeper being. They were together; they could not only see each other, but each could also sense the other's thoughts, desires, and feelings with incredible clarity, much more than they had felt in the two previous nights. No words were necessary between them here. They leaned into each other, touching forehead to forehead, nose to nose. This deepened their link even further, as both had known it would.
You know, T'Pol… Trip began. He didn't continue using words; they were a hindrance to him now. Instead, he sent her all he felt for her: the way he adored simply being in her presence, even though they bickered constantly; the sorrow of believing that she didn't or couldn't reciprocate; the fear he had felt whenever she was injured or missing.
On perceiving this, T'Pol understood how she felt, and now had a context in which to place these forbidden emotions. She responded to Trip's gesture in kind, sending him many of the same ideas: the pain she felt as she stunned him in the cave; the way her breath was harder for her to control when he looked at her; the way they needed very few words, even in the waking world.
Yes, they both knew. There were no more secrets.
Soft, romantic jazz music played in the background as they kissed.