In Its Time and Place
Chapter 7
The door buzzer awoke her. T'Pol found herself lying on her side on her bed, spooned against the chest of Jonathan Archer. This time, her awakening was not accompanied by the confusion of earlier--instead she found herself calm, with the last sensations of pon farr barely disturbing her. True, she was sore and exhausted, with aches in parts of her body she never suspected could ache, but those were minimal concerns. She had regained control of her mind ... or of the parts that belonged to her.
She rose quickly, not disturbing Jonathan. She pulled on a shirt and loose pants, and made sure that the blankets were pulled up around him, and firmly tucked in. Then she answered the door, with a good idea of whom was waiting outside.
As she expected, Phlox stood outside her door, with his normally cheerful smile lighting his face. He was accompanied by a food cart carrying two covered trays, which he pushed into the cabin with a metallic clang. Jonathan jerked awake and sat up abruptly, the blankets falling until they barely covered his lower body.
"Good morning, Captain, Sub-commander." He greeted them after the door had slid shut behind him. "I'm glad to see that both of you are in relatively decent health."
"Morning? How long has it been, Doctor?" Jonathan asked, as he resettled the blankets around him.
"About twenty-four hours since I sent you in to talk some sense to the Sub-commander here." He responded.
T'Pol could feel Jonathan's sudden worry, as she tried to cope with the new angle to this situation. Both of them had been so lost in their own desires that they had forgotten about the existence of the world outside her cabin. And that world included eighty-odd curious individuals, along with two larger worlds whose relationship was strained, to say the least.
"Nobody has tried contacting either of us."
"Because, as far as anyone else on this ship is aware, you both had the misfortune to be vulnerable to this little virus that came aboard with our last food shipment. Not fatal, but it causes some relatively violent vomiting and other digestive problems. You are both restricted to quarters for recovery for thirty-six hours, and the rest of the crew received an inoculation consisting mainly of saline solution about twenty hours ago. I warned Commander Tucker not to try to contact either of you during the time that you're restricted to quarters, and not to be worried if he had to and there was no response. Just to come to me.
"Chef has whipped up two delightful breakfasts for invalids, and wishes you both a speedy recovery. If you wish to order something specific for lunch today, please tell me and I will pass it along to Chef. Otherwise, I will just deliver whatever Chef comes up with."
T'Pol had to admit that Phlox had come up with a relatively ingenious solution. One that saved the both of them from awkward questions, or the need to expose information that other Vulcans would not want disclosed.
Jonathan nodded his head. "Thank you, Doctor."
Phlox busied himself with placing the breakfast trays on to her desk, turning his back to Jonathan. He quickly stood, glanced over at T'Pol and shrugged, then pulled on the briefs and shirt that were laying near the side of the bed. She hastily repressed the confusion of emotions that tried to erupt, and refused to allow herself the time to study him.
"Breakfast is served." Phlox pulled off the lids with a flourish, and tossed them onto the cart. "I will see you both in about five hours."
Phlox caught T'Pol's eye, and she walked with him over towards the door. "How are you?" He asked quietly.
"I am over the worse of it."
"I am sorry that it could not be handled in the way you wanted." He said, seriously. "I understand why you wanted to do what you tried."
"It is not fruitful to worry about what is past. Only to deal with what is here." Not exactly a thought she welcomed at the moment, but one that she had to acknowledge.
"How is it?"
"Complex."
"If you need to talk about it at any time, I'm available. Not that I'm sure that I can help a Vulcan ..." his voice changed to a teasing tone, then rose in volume. "And in twelve hours, I expect to see both of you in sickbay, to assess the visual damage."
He granted them both one of his smug grins, and ducked out the door.
"I think that Chef decided that he was feeding an army, not two invalids ... take a look at this amount of food!"
Slices of every fruit she had ever shown any indication of liking lay on one tray, along with bread and jam, and the grain-based hot cereal that she sometimes requested. His tray contained several types of cooked and rather greasy-looking meat, along with a pile of what she recalled were called pancakes. Tall glasses of juice and water sat on both, while her tray contained what she identified as a mug of hot tea, and his what appeared to be coffee.
She picked up the mug of tea and settled down onto the bed, sipping at it slowly. The warmth calmed her further, helping her banish the last remaining stray emotions from the past twenty-four hours. Jonathan sipped at his coffee, and through the emotions she was receiving from him, she realized that it had a similar effect. Although, if this was to remain a factor in their lives, she was certainly going to have to teach him some methods to control what he broadcast.
If? She realized that she was treating this bond as something that might remain a factor. He might not even be able to sense it, or to maintain conscious control over it, and in that case it could not remain a factor. According to the Vulcan Science Directorate, humans were on the low end of the scale for possible telepathic ability--some had a little, but barely enough to be measurable. She herself had little telepathic ability, and so had only received the basic training that all Vulcan children underwent. It should have not been possible for this bond to be intentionally created, much less subconsciously formed. Yet, it had been, an outcome she had not expected.
If he could not access and control it, it was unethical to keep the bond intact, no matter what it might cost her to have it broken. And, knowing how suspiciously humans viewed empathy and telepathy, he might not desire to maintain the bond even if he could control his side of it.
"Jonathan?"
"Yes?"
"We have something that we need to talk about."
"Well, I've already been mentally rehearsing my possible responses to both the 'get the hell out of my cabin' request, and the 'this was just an extreme situation, we can only be friends' request ..."
"I was not planning to make either of those requests."
"Oh."
"We need to talk about something more serious, something that occurred unexpectedly."
"And that is?"
"Have you felt anything peculiar in the past couple of hours?" She took his hand, closed her eyes and moderated her breathing, slipping into the light meditative state that she required to do anything overtly telepathic. Can you sense this?
His hand jerked in hers. She reopened her eyes, and he looked visually shaken. "I was hoping that was a result of exhaustion and an overactive imagination."
"So, you can sense it."
"Yes."
"Close your eyes. Try to locate its presence." He nodded his head. "Now imagine a wall blocking you from its presence."
The flood of emotions coming across their bond immediately came to a halt. She gasped, then realized that the bond was still present, although vastly muted. Until this moment, she hadn't realized how loud he had been.
"I think you can control it, if only in a crude fashion." He could sense it and control it. The Science Directorate would find this experience fascinating.
"What is it?" When he took his concentration away from his imagined wall, the connection grew stronger again. But it was not as strong as it had been earlier, a good indication that he could learn to control it in a relatively refined fashion. She could sense his suspicions and curiosity warring for control, and his cautious decision to wait her explanation. She dropped his hand.
"How much do you know about Vulcan marriage traditions?" She asked, not being able to figure out a more delicate way of approaching the situation.
"Only what is publicly available on Earth. I have heard that the majority of marriages are arranged."
"In some families, yes. I refused mine." That was a discussion for later. He gave her an odd look, but remained quiet. "That is not the tradition that matters here. What do you know about Vulcans and telepathy?"
"That some Vulcans are telepathic to some degree. That your scientists proved to us that an ability we had been dismissing as fantasy for thousands of years was actually possible, but that most humans have no telepathic ability. It apparently never proved to be an evolutionary advantage."
"All Vulcans are telepathic to some degree. My own abilities are limited. But because our culture is based on the presumption that almost all its participants are telepathic, there are certain traditions associated with it.
"As part of the Vulcan marriage ceremony, the husband and wife are telepathically bound to one another. The bond is a reinforcement of the marriage vows, and normally is only severed by death. The bond itself can be weak or strong, depending on the abilities of both partners, but it is always present. It is normally created in a structured manner as part of the marriage ceremony."
"Normally?"
Her ability to translate the Vulcan concepts into human terms was failing her, leaving her struggling to get the point across. "In rare circumstances, a bond may be created without the marriage ceremony, without the intercessions and ritual. Prior to the time of Surak, it was relatively uncommon, and since that time it has become almost unknown."
"Is that what happened?"
"I don't know." Now that she had laid out all the facts verbally, the utter impossibility of the situation struck her even more strongly, but the facts gave lie to that impossibility. "It should not have happened. The Vulcan Science Directorate has ruled that even consciously attempting to create a permanent telepathic bond between Vulcan and human would be difficult, if not impossible. One developing without a conscious attempt, between a Vulcan with weak abilities and a human with no known abilities should be impossible."
"The Vulcan Science Directorate rules that a lot of things are impossible." His face quirked into a grin. "It appears that circumstances have proven them wrong, again."
"Proven them wrong, in this." She shot back.
"In this." He agreed. "So what are our options?"
"If we were both Vulcan, once the scandal had passed and the bond accepted, all prior obligations would be declared void and we would be legally married."
"Your statement earlier indicated that you no longer have prior obligations?"
"No, I do not."
"Nor do I." He answered softly.
She had been trying to ignore the emotions he was sharing with her over their bond, trying to keep their conversation purely on a verbal level. But the emotions he broadcast stunned her.
"You want to keep this bond?" She asked.
"I don't know. Maybe." He looked her directly in the eye. "T'Pol, a lot has happened in the past twenty-four hours, and neither of us has had the time to process it. Right now this all feels unreal to me, like I'm caught in some strange world, twisted away from the real world. But I actually like this strange world, maybe better than I liked the original.
"Now on one level, this idea about this bond, the idea of sharing that type of connection with another person, scares the hell out of me. If you'd told me about it before I experienced it, I don't know how I would have reacted. Probably wondered how any species could permit such a thing ... such an invasion of privacy and personality.
"But it's here. I'm experiencing it. And although I know that I haven't thought through the full ramifications of it--hell, I'm not even sure that I can grasp the full ramifications--it's not as scary as I would have expected. It doesn't feel like an invasion. It almost feels right, like I've suddenly gained access to something I was missing, but didn't know that I was missing."
He paused, and his vast array of flickering emotions revealed to her how torn he was, between fear born out of prejudice and suspicion, and acceptance out of experience. "I think that I need some time to process it."
"That is a logical request." She used half-recalled techniques to attempt to dampen her side of the connection further. Although she could not completely block his awareness of the link while it remained, she could control what he sensed from her. She could attempt not to allow herself to influence his decision. "Perhaps you might want some time alone to process what has happened?"
And perhaps she needed some time alone to regain her own equilibrium. Even with the desire of pon farr reduced to almost undetectable levels, his presence was still challenging her control of her desires. They were not all sexual in nature, and she recognized them as valuable to helping develop a stable and long term relationship. Many of them were driven by the presence of the bond, the signal to her body and mind that she had entered into a long term, exclusive relationship that needed to be developed and sustained. But in this circumstance, with their relationship to one another so questionable, following those desires could possibly lead to emotional pain for both of them if they severed the relationship.
"That's probably a good idea. It's early enough in the morning shift that I can probably sneak back to my quarters without anyone seeing me in the hall and telling on me to the good doctor." But he didn't stand up. Instead, he turned towards her and placed his hand against her knee. Despite the closeness forced by the size of her quarters and their attempt to both eat a breakfast barely balanced on her desk, she had avoided touching him since she began the conversation about the telepathic bond. But when he touched her, every damper she had put into place came crashing down, exposing both her and him to the rawness of one another's emotions. Her mental control shook before the power of his emotions, allowing all the emotions she was controlling to leak into her conscious mind. He was actually more stable after the shared initial burst, probably because he had better tactics than she for dealing with unexpected floods of emotion.
"I see." He murmured, pulling her against him as she struggled to process it, to force all her emotions, the emotions she desperately had tried to prevent from influencing their conversation, back where they belonged. She was embarrassed, for her control was no better than a young child's at the moment. But rather than turning away in shared embarrassment, or as a reprimand, like another Vulcan would have, he held her and continued to share her struggle for control. He gave her strength, gave her calm, and shared in the return of her clarity and peace. Once she had returned herself to some approximation of what she wanted to be, he took her face between his hands, and gently touched his lips to hers.
She returned the kiss, and accepted the open flow of emotions between the two of them. He felt what she had not been able to verbalize, and she felt the depth and complexity of his emotions regarding their sudden shift in relationship, his desire to be loyal to her, his desire to only do what was right for his ship and crew despite his personal needs, and his loyal but conflicted relationship with earth. She recognized in him the same issues that were plaguing her, and how similar their two positions were.
He released her, and the bond gently faded back to the lower intensity it had had before. He swallowed audibly, and gave her a brief smile. "We definitely need to talk more, later." As she struggled to find the right answer, he picked up his tray and headed for the door, only doing a brief corridor check before leaving.
She continued staring at the closed door for a few minutes, knowing she had to accept what had occurred. That she had just completely opened herself to someone, someone whom she hadn't wanted to influence in that way. That she had no control over completely opening herself to him, sharing everything she was unwilling to admit to herself, because that was the nature of the bond they shared. That this was what the words of the Vulcan marriage ceremony meant, to become one mind existing in two bodies ... greater together as a whole then apart.
That she had once again come up against one of those internal contradictions that riddled Vulcan tradition and society--that in a society that claimed to master emotions, the relationship between two adults was expected to be based upon the sharing of mind, and by extension, emotion. That there was a true difference between mastery and control, and part of understanding that difference lay within experiencing and living this type of relationship. And that she was only a child in her own understanding of it.