Chapter Thirteen
Dr. Phlox fed his Pyrethian bat. It was not as active as it should have been and the lack of activity worried him, usually he couldn't keep it in the cage, lately it had lapsed into a kind of torpor.
He was, therefore, quite preoccupied, when Sub-Commander T'Pol and Captain Archer walked in the sliding glass doors. He'd examined the Sub-Commander briefly, after her twenty-two hour shift, but other than a compounded case of exhaustion, she was as well as reasonably expected.
The plasma burns from the Orion weapons were actually more of a nuisance than an actual hazard. Her Vulcan uniform had taken the brunt of the energy, they were exceedingly painful, but not life threatening. The Sub-Commander had insisted that he do nothing but clean the wound on her jaw, where the Captain of the Orion vessel had tried to decapitate her. If he had to hazard a guess, some primitive corner of her mind wanted a tangible mark of what had happened.
She been on light duty for the past few days, working mostly with the information they'd collected from the Institute. The progress they'd made in the treatment of Pa'Nar syndrome was nothing short of miraculous for the time that they'd been working. Her synaptic deterioration now all but stopped, the only difficulty, or rather the only difficulty that she would admit to, was an acute case of insomnia.
He wasn't quite sure what brought on the sleeplessness, though he did have a number of theories, but treating a Vulcan for a psychological disorder was like performing brain surgery on the worlds leading neurologist. Talk about the worst patients….
"Doctor?" it was Captain Archer's voice. Not anticipated, but neither was it completely unexpected.
"Yes, Captain…Ah Sub-Commander" he bustled over to the examination table, shrouded by the curtain, she took her privacy as seriously as the Vulcan she was, which is to say, she wanted not to be seen in sickbay.
"The Captain" she gave him a sidelong glance, with one of the Vulcan non-expressions that usually indicated she was humouring the one she was looking at, "Insists that I be examined again before I return to full duty."
"A wise precaution, Sub-Commander," he fiddled with the settings on the medical scanner, calling up the appropriate scans for the copper based life form, Vulcan physiology was so intriguing.
"Oh my" he nearly dropped the scanner at the reading he took of her mid-brain, the seat of her telepathic ability. It was the first and most crucial area attacked by her syndrome. "Sub-Commander: tell me, have you been meditating?"
She exchanged a much more intimate glance with the Captain than she should for such a trivial question, something the Denobulan doctor was surprised to see and noted accordingly. The two of them had grown much closer in recent days, the relationship bore studying, a first interspecies liaison for both peoples.
"In a manner of speaking," she temporised, another mental red flag went up. T'Pol never gave an answer that was anything less than the whole and unvarnished truth unless she was protecting something.
"Well you may want to take a look at these readings," he projected the image onto the main viewing screen above the imaging chamber.
"Fascinating" he recognised her expression, it was the one she used while looking 'through' people while her mind travelled at levels that he couldn't begin to comprehend.
"What is it?" poor Captain Archer was neither scientist nor physician, the intricacies of the Vulcan mid-brain were mysteries to him. Phlox pulled up two previous scans he had of T'Pol's cerebral cortex.
"This is a scan I took, of her brain when she first came aboard as part of her physical, its standard procedure. I'll colour it so you can see the differences." He tapped the appropriate key strokes, and the important sections obligingly outlined in green, "now this is the scan I took of the Sub-Commander yesterday, when she came off duty several days ago."
"Wow" he looked dismayed. Even to untrained eyes the deterioration was palpable, "I didn't know it was like this"
"Now this is the scan I took just now" he pulled up the recent scan and colorized it blue.
"It's different." He observed, not quite knowing how, or really comprehending the magnitude of the achievement.
"The pathways have stabilized," she explained, sounding vaguely bored, "They are still damaged, of course, neural tissue is notoriously non-regenerative, but it a stable, albeit somewhat crude configuration"
"T'Pol" Phlox burst out; he was frustrated at her depreciating statements, for the beginning she had become increasingly negative about the truly remarkable progression of her treatment, "This is more than 'crude' this is bordering miraculous. I know Vulcans are capable of self-regeneration, but I've never seen the effects this precise on this kind of scale before."
"It is possible, and I believe documented in several sources at the Council of Physicians" she sounded outwardly non-plussed, but he thought he detected a note of pride in her voice, "The effect is remarkable, but hardly miraculous."
"Sub-Commander I really think that a thorough examination of …"
"Am I fit for duty?" she interrupted.
"Certainly, however…" he wanted to analyse, he wanted to measure and record. She was having nothing of it.
"Thank you Doctor," she turned on her heel and began to stride out of sickbay. Out of desperation and a certain sense of duty he dug at a nerve he wasn't sure she knew that she had.
"You initiated telepathic contact with the Captain didn't you? You realise you could have infected him with the disease."
That froze her in her tracks, but his information had no appreciable effect on the Captain, which surprised the Doctor; Archer had no real way of knowing the trauma that accompanied the disease. Even if he had consented to the contact, he was in ignorance of the real risk to his health she'd taken.
"You have no way to prove that" she paused halfway to the door and turned, "And I'm not that careless."
"And you" he said forcefully, "have no way to control it"
"I beg to differ," she said coldly, "Now if you'll excuse me"
"I will be examining the Captain" he projected his voice slightly louder, even though he was quite familiar with the range and sensitivity of Vulcan hearing.
"As you wish" if she had been wearing a traditional robe it would have swished angrily about her ankles.
"Sorry about that Doc," the Captain sounded more amused than contrite, "She gets kinda… touchy about it."
"Captain Archer, you have no concept of the dangers that this rampant telepathic interaction could lead to. If this syndrome can wreck havoc with Vulcan self-control, I don't even want to think about what it can to a non-Vulcan psyche." As the Doctor spoke, he switched the scans from Vulcan to human biology, and began scanning.
"Actually Doc, I have a pretty good idea, of what I'm getting into" Jon remembered the state T'Pol had been in before they'd started working. Pa'Nar syndrome was big, ugly, nasty, and scary, but he was not afraid for himself.
"I don't suppose there is any way I could convince you to stop this activity immediately," he said, sounding more and more like a very snappish mother hen.
"None whatsoever"
"Hmm," he examined his scans closely, and from his expression of dour resignation Jon knew that there was nothing useful on the machine to report. "Well your dopamine and seratonin levels are elevated, and there seems to be an inordinate amount of mid-brain activity, but other than that everything seems normal."
As Jon slid off the bio-bed, the Doctor sighed and turned to him, "I really must re-iterate Captain: this is highly dangerous."
"She came to me for help, Doc. You know Vulcans pretty well; I think you understand how rare that is. I could no more refuse to help her than fly"
"From a personal perspective, I understand completely," Phlox sighed, "Perhaps that's why I need you to understand the risks. She is stable, for the moment, but…She. Is. Not. Cured. Every time you touch minds, there is an exceedingly high danger of transmission. I can do nothing to stop it."
"I understand Doc," he slid off the biobed, "I'm not going to stop."
"As physician I cannot condone that" the Doc sighed, "But as a man, I understand why you have to"
"Thanks"
When he got back to the bridge, she'd regressed almost completely back to her shell of Vulcan indifference. He knew now that it was as façade, another form of mental shielding. The altercation between her and the doctor had really distressed T'Pol. She was only truly expressionless if something disturbed her.
That evening he waited in her quarters for her. It probably wasn't the best thing for him to do, she did value her privacy, but he also didn't want to be seen lingering outside her quarters, she wouldn't appreciate being the butt of speculation.
He had a long wait. Most of her days, or rather most of the three straight shifts she always seemed to work, she'd been spending on the Orion ship, repaired, refurbished and now following Enterprise. She was trying, with the help of the former slave girl, to crack into the navigation computer to track this 'depot' that they believed Chief Spencer ended up.
The Betazed cargo ship, amid declarations of gratitude, returned to their homeport. They had several crewmembers in desperate need of what T'Pol called Mind Healing. They had made every promise of telling their government about Enterprise's 'bravery and courage' but Archer wasn't about to count ships to assist in the capture of the Orion base.
He was almost asleep on her desk when she showed up at her quarters it was that late. He was groggy enough to miss the first soft noise of surprise, but when she upped the illumination, she accosted him with a very questioning eyebrow.
"I assume there's a reason you're here" she walked over to her bed and gently sat, then lay flat on the neatly made blankets. It was Vulcan equivalent of flopping face down in exhaustion.
"What if just wanted to see you?" He quipped, smiling softly.
She toed her boots off and delicately took off the socks underneath with her toes, not moving her body at all. She had spent the first thirty years of her life barefoot or very thinly sandaled; nearly five decades later it still felt more natural to bare her toes to the air. Her fingers worked the throatlatch of her uniform, until it released the tight hold on her neck.
"Long day?"
"Nearly twenty of twenty four hours," she replied, closing her eyes, she focused on her body, deliberately relaxing the muscle groups that had tensed up during the day. It eased her headache and made the slight pain between her shoulders go away. Jon got up and began moving around the room, but she ignored it, he was a restless man, always in motion.
"Here"
She opened her eyes, directly in front of her face was a pile of fabric, Jon was holding out her nightclothes: his undershirt, and a pair of loose satin pants. He was smiling; tilting his head in what she understood was a sympathetic gesture.
"Thank you" completely non-plussed she began to change, Jon immediately turned his back. She arched a brow at this, he'd seen her in less than her nightclothes in decon, but he was nevertheless giving her privacy now. It was gentlemanly.
As he turned his back, she couldn't help but notice the solid, strong planes of his shoulders. Her 'accidental' transformation of his clothing into a Vulcan warrior's kilt had led to a number of disturbing observations. Several times she'd found her eyes wandering the planes and slopes of his body as he moved. She'd caught herself before anyone had noticed her…undue attention, but right now it seemed a little more proper.
Of its own accord, her hand reached out for the breadth of his shoulders, much different than most of the men of her aquaintance. Vulcan males, as a rule, were long, lean, and rangy. Jon was anything but; broad shouldered, wide across the stomach and chest, with relatively short, but solid legs. He turned at her touch.
"T'Pol I'm…." his voice trailed off as her hand, still on his shoulder wandered down the front plane of his chest. She tilted her head at him, conveying both keen interest and contained amusement. It wandered for a few more seconds, exploring what until now she'd only seen. The muscle was warm and firm under her hand.
"I'm sorry," she pulled her hand back, but he caught it and brought it to his lips.
"Don't be" he used her hand to tug her, unresistingly into a tight embrace. It had been a long hard week for both of them: the abduction of Chief Spencer, the 'incident' with the pirates, and the collapse and re-building of T'Pol's metal barriers. It was a relief to just hold and be held.
T'Pol noticed, somewhat to her alarm that physical contact with Jon let his thoughts pass through her shielding as though it wasn't there. It was vaguely disconcerting, but she realised that he'd had so much to do with their construction that they didn't recognise him as a foreign presence.
These things should not be happening. He shouldn't be able, let alone willing, to help her with her control. His presence should be irritating, not welcoming. She was Vulcan he was human, this relationship was …illogical.
"Nothing wrong with a healthy amount of illogicalness" he murmured into her neck.
"Clarify," she questioned, pulling back and looking at him with 'the eyebrow'.
"Like this" she had a split second warning before he set his teeth on her neck. Even her Vulcan mind had no time to act in response and after a few seconds, she had no desire to. It was darkly thrilling, as the forbidden fruit, and T'Pol knew now a personal definition of the word erotic. He pinioned her against the bed frame before he stopped and gasped, "I don't have this much control, T'Pol."
He was giving her an out, and for a moment, a very long moment, she turned the thought over in her mind. It was the most temptation she had ever experienced at one time, in her entire life. Nevertheless, she was Vulcan: temptation she could endure.
She wasn't however, about to deny herself the comfort of his presence, even as he offered T'Pol her privacy, she pulled back the sheets of her narrow bunk. As she was drifting off to sleep, her back pressed against Jon's chest, he chuckled slightly in her ear. She never moved, but gave him a mental query equivalent to 'the eyebrow'.
"I should have known, you're such a little spitfire on the bridge, but I never would have guessed that such a sensualist was under that Vulcan exterior." He spoke softly into her ear, sending slight shivers down her back.
"I am not a sensualist."
"Really?" he made a show of surprise, "Satin pyjamas, silk sheets, chenille blanket, down pillow…."
"It is illogical to be uncomfortable if the amenities are available."
"Keep telling yourself that, sweetheart," he kissed the tip of her pointed ear and chuckled again, "if it makes you feel better."
She decided, judiciously, not to respond.