Chapter 3: Fish story
Malcolm crouched along the lakeshore, intently watching the fish dart in and out of the shadows beneath the overhanging trees. He hefted his spear in his hand, feeling its weight, waiting for the right moment.
In the two weeks they had been trapped on this planet, he had crouched in this very spot on countless occasions, even hurled the spear several times, but always came up empty. The fish were just too damn fast.
His right foot felt like it was going to sleep, so he shifted his weight slightly to rest more on his left. The back of his neck itched, but he refused to move and perhaps frighten his prey away again. Today had to be the day. He was sick to death of eating the sour, underripe berries that T'Pol had deemed safe for consumption. Tonight he was determined to dine on seafood.
The weather, which had been cold when they arrived here, had turned warm in the past week, and Malcolm wore his uniform top down, the sleeves tied around his waist, which left his chest and shoulders bare. Several days ago he had received a nasty sunburn, hence the itchy neck where the burnt skin was peeling.
One fish, about as long as his forearm, lingered in a sunny spot for a split second longer than the others. Malcolm saw his chance and he took it, thrusting forward with the spear and catching the fish in the midsection. At first he wasn't sure he had actually caught it, but when he pulled the spear from the water there was the wriggling fish, impaled neatly on the end.
Malcolm let out a whoop of victory. Then he froze, hearing his cry echo off the cliff on the other side of the lake. It wouldn't do to let T'Pol know how excited he was. She would find some way to shoot him down, he was sure. Better to treat this triumph matter-of-factly, as if it were unimportant, hardly worth mentioning. That attitude would rob her of her ammunition against him.
**
T'Pol carefully arranged berries in rows on rocks in front of their shelter to dry in the sun. She had already finished one batch and was starting on the second when she heard Lieutenant Reed's cry from the lakeshore. She almost started towards him, thinking perhaps he was in trouble, but quickly realized that his cry was not one of fear, in fact quite the opposite, he sounded excited.
A few minutes later Reed entered their campsite, carrying his handmade spear over his left shoulder, right forefinger hooked through the mouth of a fish. A tiny smile played about his lips.
T'Pol raised an eyebrow in surprise. "You caught one."
"Yes," he said nonchalantly. He carefully leaned his spear against a tree then casually tossed the fish down on a large, clean rock. He knelt next to the rock and took out the pocketknife from the emergency kit, wiping the blade on his pant leg.
"Well done," T'Pol said with a slight smile, and his head snapped up at the rare compliment. When he saw her smile, his face lit up with a triumphant grin.
"Thank you." Reed quickly ducked his head and returned to his work of gutting the fish. T'Pol studied him for a moment, watching the muscles in his back ripple as he expertly sliced open the belly of the fish. The skin on his shoulders had darkened in the sun, a layer of pink overlaying the tan underneath. His hair, which had grown well past its usual military cut, curled slightly at the nape of his neck. For a brief instant T'Pol found herself wondering what those curls would feel like.
She shook her head at the foolishness of her thoughts and returned to her own work of laying out the berries to dry. I must try harder to meditate, she told herself. She had tried several times in the past two weeks, but each time had failed to achieve proper concentration. The flame from the fire was too diffuse, and the only candles available were in the emergency kit. She did not feel that lack of meditation was an emergency situation which warranted wasting their only candles.
T'Pol reflected that perhaps it was the mere closeness of their living situation combined with the lack of meditation which led to her current difficulty with control. Their second night on the planet, she had simply laid out the blankets together without consulting him, and he had not complained. They had been sharing the blankets ever since, even though the change in the weather made it no longer necessary. T'Pol found that somehow she just slept better with him next to her. The steady rhythm of his breathing soothed her, lulled her to slumber. She did not even object to his smell anymore, which perhaps was indicative that she had become too comfortable with the situation. She resolved to put some distance between them before she did something she would later regret.
That night T'Pol laid out the blankets on opposite sides of the fire, and if Reed was surprised he gave no sign. He said goodnight, and then turned his back on her and immediately fell asleep. She lay awake for nearly an hour, straining to hear the rhythm of his breathing over the crackle of the fire.
**
After several hours of tossing and turning, par for the course lately, Archer had just crossed the threshold into sleep when the buzzing of the comm. awakened him. He reached up and pressed the button without opening his eyes.
"Archer."
"Captain!" came Hoshi's excited voice. "I think I found something! Can you come to the briefing room?"
Archer didn't even have to ask what she found, or indeed even what she was doing on the bridge at this hour. She had only been working on one project for almost three weeks now: finding that shuttle. Archer made a mental note to order her to take some time off soon.
When he arrived in the briefing room, Hoshi, Travis, and Trip were already there, clustered around the viewer. Over Hoshi's shoulder Archer caught a glimpse of something that looked like an hourglass tipped on its side depicted on the screen.
"What's up?"
"I picked up a trail," Hoshi answered. "It's faint, but I think it's the shuttle."
"And what's that thing?" Archer gestured to the screen.
"That there is a gravity well," Trip said. Archer moved in to get a closer look.
"It looks like they were sucked in, Captain," Hoshi said quietly.
"Wouldn't they have picked it up on sensors?"
Trip shook his head. "Not unless they were running level five scans like we were when we were searching for their ion trail."
"So they were sucked in. Then what would happen to them?"
"Well, it's theoretical, Cap'n. As far as I know no one's ever been inside one of those things before."
"Ok, fine then, theoretically. Could the shuttle survive that?"
Trip took a deep breath. "Theoretically, maybe. The gravitational forces in the middle, the narrow part, are incredibly intense, like being at the bottom of the deepest part of the Pacific Ocean, only multiply that by about a hundred. Our shuttles weren't exactly built to withstand that kind of pressure. After they went through the middle, the shuttle would be tossed out the other end at a high rate of speed, kinda like a slingshot."
"So they'd end up over here." Archer pointed to the far end of the hourglass shape."
"Yeah, but cap'n, that's a huge area. We're talking about millions of cubic kilometers."
"Well, then, we've got our work cut out for us. I don't know about you all, but a search area of 'millions of cubic kilometers' sounds a lot better than 'the entire galaxy.' Trip, download the search parameters into the navigational computers. Travis, set a course, warp five. Hoshi, let's keep our sensors searching for the shuttle's locator beacon or any distress signal they might have sent."
**
For the fifty-seventh time in less than four weeks, T'Pol lifted the power cell from the neat row of communicator components in front of her and closely examined the intricate circuitry within. She could see no obvious reason for it to malfunction, the circuitry appeared intact. If it were functioning properly, the power cell should have recharged itself with solar energy. However, despite its apparent undamaged state, the cell stubbornly refused to recharge.
She turned the device toward the fading light of late afternoon to trace again with her eye the path of the delicate wires. She found that in the insufficient illumination, she could no longer distinguish the circuitry from the housing.
With a tiny sigh, T'Pol carefully replaced the components of the communicator into the container that she had designated for that purpose. She would resume her work tomorrow. In the meantime, a cup of tea was in order.
As she crossed to the fire, T'Pol noticed that the collapsible kettle was already nestled in the flames. When she reached it she saw that it was empty, apparently having boiled dry. Her lips tightened.
T'Pol used a stick to retrieve the kettle from the flames, her annoyance growing when she saw that the bottom was blackened from the heat. Looking up, she spotted Lieutenant Reed sitting on a rock some distance from the shelter, sharpening his spear with the pocketknife.
"Lieutenant," she called tightly.
"What?" Reed turned his head in her direction, but his attention was obviously still on his task.
T'Pol closed the distance between them, holding out the kettle. "You allowed the kettle to boil dry again."
"I suppose I got busy. Sorry." With a dismissive shrug, he turned back to his work.
"The bottom is blackened," T'Pol continued, heat rising in her voice. "If our only pot is ruined, we will have no way to boil water or cook food."
"Look, I said was sorry," he responded in kind. "What more do you want?"
"You must pay closer attention. Your carelessness nearly cost us our kettle."
"But it didn't, did it?" he pointed out, his attention still on his work.
T'Pol felt her irritation build to a flash of anger. She knew that she was dangerously close to losing control of her emotions, but for one second she didn't care. "Lieutenant," she said sharply.
His hands stilled, his face half-turned in her direction. "What?!"
In her anger, T'Pol spoke rashly. "Perhaps if you had been paying closer attention on the shuttle, we would not find ourselves in this predicament."
Reed jumped up and whirled around to face her, the color draining from his cheeks. His lips parted but he said nothing. In an instant T'Pol's anger melted away, only to be replaced by another, even more uncomfortable emotion: guilt. Her comment had hurt him, deeply, as part of her had known it would.
T'Pol forced her voice into a more even tone. "Lieutenant, my comment was inappropriate. Please disregard it."
Reed's lower lip twisted briefly, then he abruptly turned away from her, hand clenched into fists. T'Pol watched the muscles tighten in his bare shoulders. She had damaged him emotionally, and she realized that she had no idea how to repair the damage. Physical injuries she could mend, emotional injuries left her completely baffled.
She attempted to excuse herself, to explain away the insult. "I have not been able to meditate since we arrived here, due to the lack of candles. My emotional control is . . . slipping."
Reed stood very still for a moment, only the muscles rippling in his shoulders as he clenched and unclenched his hands. "Are you finished?" he asked finally, voice thick with an emotion that T'Pol easily identified as contempt. Contempt for her, she thought. T'Pol felt a surge of contempt for herself as well when she realized that with one comment, she had destroyed any respect or affection he might have held for her.
"Yes," she said flatly.
Reed strode off toward the lake without looking back, leaving his spear behind. T'Pol opened her mouth to call him back. It was late afternoon and the air was cooling rapidly. At the last minute, she stopped herself, closing her mouth without speaking. She had no right to tell him what to do, not after what she had said.
**
T'Pol was stoking the fire when Malcolm returned over an hour later. The sun was nearly gone, a few last rays peeked out from between the distant hills and washed the campsite in a kind of golden light. When she saw him, T'Pol dropped the last log on the fire and stood, uncertainly, to watch him approach. He was carrying something.
He entered the shelter without speaking and set his burden down on a rock, lining up what looked like a dozen pinecones in a neat row. When he had finished he finally met her eye. In the light from the fire she could see that his eyes were bloodshot and his face was smudged with dirt.
"These are for you," he said, a current of tension underlying his quiet tone.
T'Pol stared at the pinecones, not sure what to say. After a moment, he picked one up and crossed to the fire. He held it to the embers for a few seconds until the top started to burn brightly. Sheltering the flame with his hands, he moved back inside and carefully placed it on the rock.
"It's a candle," he said awkwardly. "Well, not exactly a candle, but it should do in a pinch."
She entered the shelter and knelt beside the rock, staring mesmerized at the flame, which continued to burn brightly, flickering in the slight breeze. "How did you make this?" she asked softly.
"I covered pinecones in pitch. Each should burn for several hours."
"I see."
There was a pause, during which T'Pol continued to stare at the flickering flame, peripherally aware that Malcolm was shifting uncomfortably from foot to foot.
"Look, T'Pol . . ."
She broke her concentration and looked up at him. A lock of his hair had broken free from the rest and curled over his forehead. "Yes?"
He turned away with an almost inaudible sigh. "Never mind. I'm going to wash my hands." Malcolm zipped open the emergency kit and extracted their last bar of soap, which had already shrunk to nearly half of its original size.
T'Pol watched him head down to the lake, until he disappeared in the gloom of twilight. She returned her attention to the flame, under her breath reciting the familiar litany to enter meditation.
Her mind stubbornly refused to clear, her attention drifting away from the solitude and purity of the flame. For some reason that she did not fully understand, she found herself picturing Malcolm's face when he brought his first fish back to camp, the grin of triumph that lit up his features. She smiled slightly at the memory.
Next her mind replayed the moment after she had blamed him for the shuttle crash, picturing again his crestfallen expression, his lip twisting with the effort of controlling his emotions. She reviewed her comments following the insult and discovered that she had not actually apologized to him, only made insufficient excuses for her words, excuses which sounded hollow to her own ears.
She had wounded him deeply, and his response had been to bring her a gift. T'Pol closed her eyes briefly, remembering the awkward silence, during which she had failed to even thank him for his kindness.
Exhaling sharply, she gave up the pretense of meditating. She had to find him, repair the damage she had done, apologize properly and thank him for his gift. It was the only logical response in the situation.
T'Pol blew out the candle and set it beside the others on the rock. She rose to her feet and set out in search of the Lieutenant.
It did not take her long to find him. He was seated on a log at the lake's edge, bent over alternately scrubbing at his hands and dipping them into the water to rinse. He apparently did not hear her approach.
T'Pol stood for a moment behind him, eyes fixed on the curls at his neck. "Lieutenant," she said softly. His head came up but he did not turn toward her. "Lieutenant . . . I apologize."
He turned to face her, his eyes hesitantly meeting hers. The lock of hair fell across his forehead again, softening his face, making him look very young and vulnerable. T'Pol's breath caught in her throat.
With an expression of mild irritation, Malcolm blew a puff of air at the curl, which flew up and then resettled on his forehead. Before she realized what she was doing, T'Pol reached out her hand and gently brushed back the errant lock. Ears turning red, Malcolm looked back down at his wet hands, refusing to meet her eye.
T'Pol skirted the end of the log and crouched in front of him, looking up into his face. He kept his eyes fixed on the ground, one wet hand still rubbing the other.
She caught his wrists and turned his hands over to examine the palms. "Lieutenant, your hands are clean," she said softly. He continued to stare at the ground, chewing on the inside of his lip.
T'Pol lifted his hand to her cheek and inhaled deeply, drinking in the scent. His hands were a heady mixture of pitch and soap, strength combined with surprising tenderness, a perfect metaphor for the man himself. T'Pol suddenly found it intoxicating. She closed her eyes and breathed it in.
"I tried not to use too much soap," he began apologetically. T'Pol's eyes slowly opened and met his at last. They held the eye contact for a long moment, his hand still against her cheek even though she had released his wrist.
"Malcolm," T'Pol whispered, just to say his name, because she had never called him that, but now it felt right. She rested her palm against the side of his face, ran her thumb gently along the faint scar that was still visible on his cheekbone.
Leaning forward, T'Pol brushed her lips against his in a light kiss, and after what seemed like an eternity his lips pressed in to capture hers more firmly. She moved her hand to the back of his neck, fingers slipping through the soft curls at the nape.
Later T'Pol would tell herself that she had lost control, that the kiss, and what followed it, was a momentary impulse, but it wasn't true. Very deliberately she lifted her hand, first two fingers spread in a V. After a moment's hesitation he responded in kind, his fingertips resting against hers.
As soon as their fingers touched his lips parted in a sharp intake of breath, and he blinked in surprise at the slight brush of her mind against his. T'Pol kept the touch light to shield him from the full force of the meld.
She broke the contact, stood, and held out her hand to him. He put his hand in hers and willingly followed her to the shelter.
Malcolm crouched along the lakeshore, intently watching the fish dart in and out of the shadows beneath the overhanging trees. He hefted his spear in his hand, feeling its weight, waiting for the right moment.
In the two weeks they had been trapped on this planet, he had crouched in this very spot on countless occasions, even hurled the spear several times, but always came up empty. The fish were just too damn fast.
His right foot felt like it was going to sleep, so he shifted his weight slightly to rest more on his left. The back of his neck itched, but he refused to move and perhaps frighten his prey away again. Today had to be the day. He was sick to death of eating the sour, underripe berries that T'Pol had deemed safe for consumption. Tonight he was determined to dine on seafood.
The weather, which had been cold when they arrived here, had turned warm in the past week, and Malcolm wore his uniform top down, the sleeves tied around his waist, which left his chest and shoulders bare. Several days ago he had received a nasty sunburn, hence the itchy neck where the burnt skin was peeling.
One fish, about as long as his forearm, lingered in a sunny spot for a split second longer than the others. Malcolm saw his chance and he took it, thrusting forward with the spear and catching the fish in the midsection. At first he wasn't sure he had actually caught it, but when he pulled the spear from the water there was the wriggling fish, impaled neatly on the end.
Malcolm let out a whoop of victory. Then he froze, hearing his cry echo off the cliff on the other side of the lake. It wouldn't do to let T'Pol know how excited he was. She would find some way to shoot him down, he was sure. Better to treat this triumph matter-of-factly, as if it were unimportant, hardly worth mentioning. That attitude would rob her of her ammunition against him.
**
T'Pol carefully arranged berries in rows on rocks in front of their shelter to dry in the sun. She had already finished one batch and was starting on the second when she heard Lieutenant Reed's cry from the lakeshore. She almost started towards him, thinking perhaps he was in trouble, but quickly realized that his cry was not one of fear, in fact quite the opposite, he sounded excited.
A few minutes later Reed entered their campsite, carrying his handmade spear over his left shoulder, right forefinger hooked through the mouth of a fish. A tiny smile played about his lips.
T'Pol raised an eyebrow in surprise. "You caught one."
"Yes," he said nonchalantly. He carefully leaned his spear against a tree then casually tossed the fish down on a large, clean rock. He knelt next to the rock and took out the pocketknife from the emergency kit, wiping the blade on his pant leg.
"Well done," T'Pol said with a slight smile, and his head snapped up at the rare compliment. When he saw her smile, his face lit up with a triumphant grin.
"Thank you." Reed quickly ducked his head and returned to his work of gutting the fish. T'Pol studied him for a moment, watching the muscles in his back ripple as he expertly sliced open the belly of the fish. The skin on his shoulders had darkened in the sun, a layer of pink overlaying the tan underneath. His hair, which had grown well past its usual military cut, curled slightly at the nape of his neck. For a brief instant T'Pol found herself wondering what those curls would feel like.
She shook her head at the foolishness of her thoughts and returned to her own work of laying out the berries to dry. I must try harder to meditate, she told herself. She had tried several times in the past two weeks, but each time had failed to achieve proper concentration. The flame from the fire was too diffuse, and the only candles available were in the emergency kit. She did not feel that lack of meditation was an emergency situation which warranted wasting their only candles.
T'Pol reflected that perhaps it was the mere closeness of their living situation combined with the lack of meditation which led to her current difficulty with control. Their second night on the planet, she had simply laid out the blankets together without consulting him, and he had not complained. They had been sharing the blankets ever since, even though the change in the weather made it no longer necessary. T'Pol found that somehow she just slept better with him next to her. The steady rhythm of his breathing soothed her, lulled her to slumber. She did not even object to his smell anymore, which perhaps was indicative that she had become too comfortable with the situation. She resolved to put some distance between them before she did something she would later regret.
That night T'Pol laid out the blankets on opposite sides of the fire, and if Reed was surprised he gave no sign. He said goodnight, and then turned his back on her and immediately fell asleep. She lay awake for nearly an hour, straining to hear the rhythm of his breathing over the crackle of the fire.
**
After several hours of tossing and turning, par for the course lately, Archer had just crossed the threshold into sleep when the buzzing of the comm. awakened him. He reached up and pressed the button without opening his eyes.
"Archer."
"Captain!" came Hoshi's excited voice. "I think I found something! Can you come to the briefing room?"
Archer didn't even have to ask what she found, or indeed even what she was doing on the bridge at this hour. She had only been working on one project for almost three weeks now: finding that shuttle. Archer made a mental note to order her to take some time off soon.
When he arrived in the briefing room, Hoshi, Travis, and Trip were already there, clustered around the viewer. Over Hoshi's shoulder Archer caught a glimpse of something that looked like an hourglass tipped on its side depicted on the screen.
"What's up?"
"I picked up a trail," Hoshi answered. "It's faint, but I think it's the shuttle."
"And what's that thing?" Archer gestured to the screen.
"That there is a gravity well," Trip said. Archer moved in to get a closer look.
"It looks like they were sucked in, Captain," Hoshi said quietly.
"Wouldn't they have picked it up on sensors?"
Trip shook his head. "Not unless they were running level five scans like we were when we were searching for their ion trail."
"So they were sucked in. Then what would happen to them?"
"Well, it's theoretical, Cap'n. As far as I know no one's ever been inside one of those things before."
"Ok, fine then, theoretically. Could the shuttle survive that?"
Trip took a deep breath. "Theoretically, maybe. The gravitational forces in the middle, the narrow part, are incredibly intense, like being at the bottom of the deepest part of the Pacific Ocean, only multiply that by about a hundred. Our shuttles weren't exactly built to withstand that kind of pressure. After they went through the middle, the shuttle would be tossed out the other end at a high rate of speed, kinda like a slingshot."
"So they'd end up over here." Archer pointed to the far end of the hourglass shape."
"Yeah, but cap'n, that's a huge area. We're talking about millions of cubic kilometers."
"Well, then, we've got our work cut out for us. I don't know about you all, but a search area of 'millions of cubic kilometers' sounds a lot better than 'the entire galaxy.' Trip, download the search parameters into the navigational computers. Travis, set a course, warp five. Hoshi, let's keep our sensors searching for the shuttle's locator beacon or any distress signal they might have sent."
**
For the fifty-seventh time in less than four weeks, T'Pol lifted the power cell from the neat row of communicator components in front of her and closely examined the intricate circuitry within. She could see no obvious reason for it to malfunction, the circuitry appeared intact. If it were functioning properly, the power cell should have recharged itself with solar energy. However, despite its apparent undamaged state, the cell stubbornly refused to recharge.
She turned the device toward the fading light of late afternoon to trace again with her eye the path of the delicate wires. She found that in the insufficient illumination, she could no longer distinguish the circuitry from the housing.
With a tiny sigh, T'Pol carefully replaced the components of the communicator into the container that she had designated for that purpose. She would resume her work tomorrow. In the meantime, a cup of tea was in order.
As she crossed to the fire, T'Pol noticed that the collapsible kettle was already nestled in the flames. When she reached it she saw that it was empty, apparently having boiled dry. Her lips tightened.
T'Pol used a stick to retrieve the kettle from the flames, her annoyance growing when she saw that the bottom was blackened from the heat. Looking up, she spotted Lieutenant Reed sitting on a rock some distance from the shelter, sharpening his spear with the pocketknife.
"Lieutenant," she called tightly.
"What?" Reed turned his head in her direction, but his attention was obviously still on his task.
T'Pol closed the distance between them, holding out the kettle. "You allowed the kettle to boil dry again."
"I suppose I got busy. Sorry." With a dismissive shrug, he turned back to his work.
"The bottom is blackened," T'Pol continued, heat rising in her voice. "If our only pot is ruined, we will have no way to boil water or cook food."
"Look, I said was sorry," he responded in kind. "What more do you want?"
"You must pay closer attention. Your carelessness nearly cost us our kettle."
"But it didn't, did it?" he pointed out, his attention still on his work.
T'Pol felt her irritation build to a flash of anger. She knew that she was dangerously close to losing control of her emotions, but for one second she didn't care. "Lieutenant," she said sharply.
His hands stilled, his face half-turned in her direction. "What?!"
In her anger, T'Pol spoke rashly. "Perhaps if you had been paying closer attention on the shuttle, we would not find ourselves in this predicament."
Reed jumped up and whirled around to face her, the color draining from his cheeks. His lips parted but he said nothing. In an instant T'Pol's anger melted away, only to be replaced by another, even more uncomfortable emotion: guilt. Her comment had hurt him, deeply, as part of her had known it would.
T'Pol forced her voice into a more even tone. "Lieutenant, my comment was inappropriate. Please disregard it."
Reed's lower lip twisted briefly, then he abruptly turned away from her, hand clenched into fists. T'Pol watched the muscles tighten in his bare shoulders. She had damaged him emotionally, and she realized that she had no idea how to repair the damage. Physical injuries she could mend, emotional injuries left her completely baffled.
She attempted to excuse herself, to explain away the insult. "I have not been able to meditate since we arrived here, due to the lack of candles. My emotional control is . . . slipping."
Reed stood very still for a moment, only the muscles rippling in his shoulders as he clenched and unclenched his hands. "Are you finished?" he asked finally, voice thick with an emotion that T'Pol easily identified as contempt. Contempt for her, she thought. T'Pol felt a surge of contempt for herself as well when she realized that with one comment, she had destroyed any respect or affection he might have held for her.
"Yes," she said flatly.
Reed strode off toward the lake without looking back, leaving his spear behind. T'Pol opened her mouth to call him back. It was late afternoon and the air was cooling rapidly. At the last minute, she stopped herself, closing her mouth without speaking. She had no right to tell him what to do, not after what she had said.
**
T'Pol was stoking the fire when Malcolm returned over an hour later. The sun was nearly gone, a few last rays peeked out from between the distant hills and washed the campsite in a kind of golden light. When she saw him, T'Pol dropped the last log on the fire and stood, uncertainly, to watch him approach. He was carrying something.
He entered the shelter without speaking and set his burden down on a rock, lining up what looked like a dozen pinecones in a neat row. When he had finished he finally met her eye. In the light from the fire she could see that his eyes were bloodshot and his face was smudged with dirt.
"These are for you," he said, a current of tension underlying his quiet tone.
T'Pol stared at the pinecones, not sure what to say. After a moment, he picked one up and crossed to the fire. He held it to the embers for a few seconds until the top started to burn brightly. Sheltering the flame with his hands, he moved back inside and carefully placed it on the rock.
"It's a candle," he said awkwardly. "Well, not exactly a candle, but it should do in a pinch."
She entered the shelter and knelt beside the rock, staring mesmerized at the flame, which continued to burn brightly, flickering in the slight breeze. "How did you make this?" she asked softly.
"I covered pinecones in pitch. Each should burn for several hours."
"I see."
There was a pause, during which T'Pol continued to stare at the flickering flame, peripherally aware that Malcolm was shifting uncomfortably from foot to foot.
"Look, T'Pol . . ."
She broke her concentration and looked up at him. A lock of his hair had broken free from the rest and curled over his forehead. "Yes?"
He turned away with an almost inaudible sigh. "Never mind. I'm going to wash my hands." Malcolm zipped open the emergency kit and extracted their last bar of soap, which had already shrunk to nearly half of its original size.
T'Pol watched him head down to the lake, until he disappeared in the gloom of twilight. She returned her attention to the flame, under her breath reciting the familiar litany to enter meditation.
Her mind stubbornly refused to clear, her attention drifting away from the solitude and purity of the flame. For some reason that she did not fully understand, she found herself picturing Malcolm's face when he brought his first fish back to camp, the grin of triumph that lit up his features. She smiled slightly at the memory.
Next her mind replayed the moment after she had blamed him for the shuttle crash, picturing again his crestfallen expression, his lip twisting with the effort of controlling his emotions. She reviewed her comments following the insult and discovered that she had not actually apologized to him, only made insufficient excuses for her words, excuses which sounded hollow to her own ears.
She had wounded him deeply, and his response had been to bring her a gift. T'Pol closed her eyes briefly, remembering the awkward silence, during which she had failed to even thank him for his kindness.
Exhaling sharply, she gave up the pretense of meditating. She had to find him, repair the damage she had done, apologize properly and thank him for his gift. It was the only logical response in the situation.
T'Pol blew out the candle and set it beside the others on the rock. She rose to her feet and set out in search of the Lieutenant.
It did not take her long to find him. He was seated on a log at the lake's edge, bent over alternately scrubbing at his hands and dipping them into the water to rinse. He apparently did not hear her approach.
T'Pol stood for a moment behind him, eyes fixed on the curls at his neck. "Lieutenant," she said softly. His head came up but he did not turn toward her. "Lieutenant . . . I apologize."
He turned to face her, his eyes hesitantly meeting hers. The lock of hair fell across his forehead again, softening his face, making him look very young and vulnerable. T'Pol's breath caught in her throat.
With an expression of mild irritation, Malcolm blew a puff of air at the curl, which flew up and then resettled on his forehead. Before she realized what she was doing, T'Pol reached out her hand and gently brushed back the errant lock. Ears turning red, Malcolm looked back down at his wet hands, refusing to meet her eye.
T'Pol skirted the end of the log and crouched in front of him, looking up into his face. He kept his eyes fixed on the ground, one wet hand still rubbing the other.
She caught his wrists and turned his hands over to examine the palms. "Lieutenant, your hands are clean," she said softly. He continued to stare at the ground, chewing on the inside of his lip.
T'Pol lifted his hand to her cheek and inhaled deeply, drinking in the scent. His hands were a heady mixture of pitch and soap, strength combined with surprising tenderness, a perfect metaphor for the man himself. T'Pol suddenly found it intoxicating. She closed her eyes and breathed it in.
"I tried not to use too much soap," he began apologetically. T'Pol's eyes slowly opened and met his at last. They held the eye contact for a long moment, his hand still against her cheek even though she had released his wrist.
"Malcolm," T'Pol whispered, just to say his name, because she had never called him that, but now it felt right. She rested her palm against the side of his face, ran her thumb gently along the faint scar that was still visible on his cheekbone.
Leaning forward, T'Pol brushed her lips against his in a light kiss, and after what seemed like an eternity his lips pressed in to capture hers more firmly. She moved her hand to the back of his neck, fingers slipping through the soft curls at the nape.
Later T'Pol would tell herself that she had lost control, that the kiss, and what followed it, was a momentary impulse, but it wasn't true. Very deliberately she lifted her hand, first two fingers spread in a V. After a moment's hesitation he responded in kind, his fingertips resting against hers.
As soon as their fingers touched his lips parted in a sharp intake of breath, and he blinked in surprise at the slight brush of her mind against his. T'Pol kept the touch light to shield him from the full force of the meld.
She broke the contact, stood, and held out her hand to him. He put his hand in hers and willingly followed her to the shelter.