A.N: Would you look at that, I got another chapter done. Yey for me I suppose. Exam's are on the 14th, not the 12th like I'd thought, but that's of insignificant value, it's still next week.
To answer a couple of queries. Yes, we get to meet Uncle Paul. Uncle Paul will most defiantly be stirring some feathers (or pointed tipped ears, probably both actually). And no, I haven't forgotten about Phlox, I'll be working him in hopefully within the next chapter or so, but he won't be anything of a major character, not just right now anyway.
Anyway, onto Chapter Four.
. . . . . . .
For the most part the beautiful day that had erupted gracefully from a gorgeous morning was lost and wasted on me. The handsome golden sun that reigned in full boast above, the flawless blue sky and the shapeless, satin clouds all had no effect on my quiet blue eyes as I stood on the spot I had secretly avoided for close to five years now.
I had never fully understood why I had made such an extraordinary effort to stay securely clear of the ground that now chipped away below at my feet; I never fully comprehended the reason for why I had had no desire before to stand in front of the sleek black gravestone, except for I knew it would be proof of a death long since denied in my heart.
I understood now though as I was dealt a chilling slap across the face, given without asking for it a proper confirmation. It was a stark reminder of the truth and looking at this spot forced me to cover my ears to the blaring truth it voiced so effortlessly and what I had always been so deaf to - Elizabeth was dead, as simple as it was to stay the statement, she was dead. And I hadn't fully allowed myself to ever believe that despite the number of times I had said goodbye to her - until now.
As the searing shock of what I should have already understood collided with my reeling mind I felt in my hand the collection of white roses and lilies that I had brought in mark of a regretful death slip. Only a gentle nudge from my saving grace, Malcolm, stopped them from crushing in a pitiful mess on the concrete slab that I rested my wavering stance on. I quickly gripped the bouquet tight once again and as a consequence felt the stern jab of a rose's thorn bite lustfully into my palm. The sharp, obvious pain should have prompted me at least to have flickered in a protest of pain, but instead it did nothing more than draw a thin sliver of rich red blood from a beating vein without much of my concern or even notice to it.
I had to picture Lizzie now - even if I hadn't wanted to, her bright, optimistic gaze and full, fantastic smile wavered in and out of my memory's line of sight, without my consent or my protest. I chose in the end, despite suffering a constant stamping on my heart, to hold onto what fun and laughter my mind had decided to conjure forth of her.
Nothing of a specific date or moment in time came back to me, it was all just a beautiful golden haze of vague and entirely fond pictures that evoked me, and as I read the golden words on her tombstone all of a sudden I suffered from blurry, salty vision. It read:
Elizabeth 'Lizzie' Tucker
Daughter and sister and friend to so many
You left too soon but we'll always love you
Us
I hardly remember how I took it but Malcolm assured me with his familiar reassuring smile that I took it well and took it like a big brother should. For a long time at least I knew I had stood and done nothing. I had stood and although very little happened bodily my mind ran itself to emotional exhaustion. For the entire forty-three minutes that I had apparently gazed longingly into the gravestone wishing for the impossible, for Lizzie to come back or for me to go to her, I didn't stop remembering and didn't stop paining until I had had enough.
I turned to Malcolm finally, who had gazed and stood in a long stationary silence as well. His hair rustled quietly in the wind and that was all he dared to make in way of noise, except for his clothes, which struck out quiet, almost timid, tuneless notes along with his hair. As my gaze fell on his downcast eyes he felt instinctively my watery pupils on his face and in respect locked his own dark blue gaze back onto mines.
I wouldn't have survived this revolution without him, and he fine well knew it. His smile was ruined slightly with a daring cheek, only provoked because I offered one first amongst my damp, red face.
"Ah have a fresh bottle of Kentucky Bourbon sittin' waitin' for us to make a couple o' long winded speeches, if yer up for it?"
The tilt of his brow seemed almost insulted that I even had to ask in a choked, smiling drawl.
"Guess that be a 'sure thing Commander' then."
. . . . . . .
Porthos had needed a walk. The abstractness that pealed out of the concept for T'Pol made her contemplate it for longer than was necessary. The fact that she contemplated the idea to begin with worried her - in a Vulcan sense of the concept of being worried - worried in that she contemplated the thought of 'taking out the dog' for what was a prolonged and unnecessary amount of time.
Vulcan psychology had always been something of a weak point in her exceptionally smart mind; ironic because she seemed to posses something of a tight and crudely accurate grasp on the human condition.
She had been rendered into a graceful silence as she strode along at a languid pace with Jonathan through uncharacteristically quiet streets and roads, the ageing beagle that was the reason for their outing only slightly ahead as his eager wet nose continued to stop him at every stained corner and muddy crevice along the route.
Jonathan had been thinking, then finally decided and declared that now would be a more than perfect time to talk about and establish some ground on T'Pol's almost immediate future, if nothing else than just to gain a much needed perspective on her muses and plans for the months ahead. He assumed without much detailed contemplation that she would have drawn fourth a logical and attainable map for herself by now.
"I take it then that you've been thinking about what you want to do now that the mission's over."
T'Pol's silence became focused on Jonathan then instead of the dry, scuffed pavement in front of her as she turned with a clean, focused gaze directed slowly towards his fixed forward eyes.
"Thinking, yes."
She offered him nothing more.
Porthos halted on his stubby paws at a grotesque collection of wild, brown, choked ivy that accumulated along a dark brick wall and the couple overtook him for a second before he grew bored of its stale scent and trotted on ahead again.
"Surely the High Command'll reconsider your position, or maybe even another placement for you, after all you've done. They can't point-blank ignore you. I'd call that being irrational." He smiled, and although it seemed T'Pol was tempted to join him she remained impartial in her expression.
A brief spark of the scepticism she had always felt for her future back at the High Command lit up in her calm ebony pupils though before she said quite flatly and decisively, "That is doubtful."
His brow quirked slightly as they turned a corner into yet another enigmatically still street with yet another empty road. A fiercely protective instinct to again reassure T'Pol returned from its last appearance at the party and Jonathan smiled with a gently sympathetic wrinkle in his eyes.
"Well, no great loss then I guess. I imagine there's plenty of places on Vulcan that would offer you just as good a position in a heartbeat."
There seemed to be a distasteful smirk in T'Pol's next roll of words, smeared on every vowel and flat accent she uttered, but her face continued relentlessly to stay smooth and straight and her voice gracefully toned.
"Actually, to earn the status I had at the High Command alone took me decades to acquire, and I strained through most of my life before Enterprise to gain it. My childhood and many years of my early adulthood were devoted to the goal of making it into the High Command and I was… lucky, in a sense, that they decided to take on such a…" she hesitated for a second, reflecting on a past part of herself that she had never really cared to share with Jonathan before, mostly because when looking back at it now it seemed so insignificant, "bold candidate." She carried on again without a mark of hesitation. "What I did by staying on Enterprise has most likely destroyed any chance of me winning over once again such a high and valuable position. There are plenty of others with as impressive a calibre as myself who have never given the High Command any reason to be wary of them, such as I have…" Finally, more pointedly she added, "I will have to choose a different path now as I see no point in wasting any time fighting with them for a lost position."
On her last more hushed note she trained her steady gaze once again ahead of her, unflinching and cool as if everything she had just uttered was of no great deal in any sense at all.
Jonathan knew he should have been mad, mad as he had been back on Coridan when the High Command had found a scapegoat in T'Pol for P'Jem, mad to hear dejection in her voice and to witness the fall of status in her brought on solely from the ignorance of her people. He should have been mad as he was at her father, at Sovol, even directly at her, but quite simply he wasn't. He felt the wave of pity that had become commonplace in his emotions but he also fell on a surface of understanding and found he could really only nod to tell truthfully that he understood. She acknowledged this in him with a single thankful nod of her own before she spoke again with slightly more volume, a Vulcan equivalent to enthusiasm.
"I had considered staying in San Francisco."
This managed to provoke a more lively reaction in him.
Atop the reaction sat a smile, a smile that longed to say so much, poke a little fun and overall to express feelings that he wasn't even sure about, couldn't name and didn't know what to make of.
Ultimately he was quite happy - which showed without question as every inch of his facial features broke into a brilliant and somewhat ecstatic beam - after assuming for the months it had taken them to voyage back home she would be leaving for an overdue return back to Vulcan after they landed, most likely never to make the effort to cross his path again thereafter. These at least had been the extremes he had pondered over and grown to despise beforehand.
San Francisco however lay no more than two hours away from his small, homely apartment and there, in the relatively short distance, lay the beautiful opportunity for frequent visits and to be a general pest who could never quite leave her without a visit for any more than the space of several working weeks.
"Fell in love with the golden city then?"
T'Pol faced Jonathan briefly and elevated a sleek brown eyebrow. "I did not, 'fall in love', with the city. I have simply grown accustomed to the area." She paused, it seemed, almost for dramatic effect and he felt himself hanging restlessly for a brief second.
"I have also already spoken with several of the Universities there. They seem quite interested and keen in take me on, if not a little… surprised, that I offered myself to their teaching staff."
He had always had mixed feelings about the gift she possessed to spring several revolutions at once on a person without so much as a metaphoric pause of the mind to allow a soak in of whatever chain of news in question was. On this particular mountain of moments, although the gift rendered him into a dumb silence for a generous few minutes, he found the quality endearing. He may even have risked a silly, brief hug, if not for the Vulcan Nerve Pinch that she was more than capable of holding as a very real threat against him and any expressions of close bodily contact he may have tried to articulate. Once he had suffered it and once had been enough.
"I…"
Porthos darted around a corner as his owner stuttered, the beagle's curiosity dragging his old stumpy paws towards a new unseen scent,
"Teaching?" Jonathan lacked dangerously in any better response. He recovered only a fraction with "Teaching human students? Well… wow."
T'Pol failed in every sense to be able to share in Jonathan's bemusement, or even to see why he indulged in bemusement at all. She would hardly be the first or the last of her kind to take up a position of teaching on Earth in a human schooling facility. She remembered Trip and his long-suffering tales of angst about the lectures he had suffered under the rule of a Vulcan elder. She felt Jonathan's blank face and slightly ajar lips deserved something of an explanation on her behalf though.
"Teaching was always my first choice of profession. However I became a science officer and starship Sub Commander under the order of my father, who with my superiors saw the potential in my intellectual supremacy to go on and work successfully with the High Command instead, as my father and my brothers had."
It all rolled gracefully off her tongue in the fashion of a well-prepared speech. It rather astounded him in modest, quiet ways.
"Now that these paths have collapsed I see no other more logical choice than to return to what I had sought out originally to be - a lecturer in other world Newtonian and Quantum physics."
Her gift had continued to prevail. It wasn't the physics that had successfully grabbed his acute attention however.
"Brothers?"
T'Pol's lack of understanding over his bemusement continued to domineer.
"Yes, I have two, both of which work with the High Command. Why would that be of any interest to you Sir?"
Jonathan frowned but a dark smile took away any vicious edges of anger and only gave him a wavering annoyance in his expression.
"Jonathan, T'Pol. My name is not Sir, and I'm not your Captain anymore, I'm just Jonathan. How many times?"
"Sorry…" she hesitated heavily on her tongue before quietly uttering as an afterthought, "Jonathan."
He nodded in slight satisfaction with a far more content, sunlit smile. "You know I never pinned you as being a-"
He managed not to seize the chance to stress a 'sister' on his Vulcan companion before their ears were abused with a heart-wrenching yelp, a brutal, deep-throat snarl and a blood chilling, sky filling howl.
Although T'Pol's sensitive, delicately structured ears had never quite experienced firsthand anything akin to an Earth dog's howl before - Porthos never so much as even whimpering to her in the past - she assumed along with the clue that was Jonathan's dangerously paled cheeks that the sound was not, and could never be, a good one. She paused on her toes but Jonathan was gone in a flurry of speed and frantic cries of his beloved dog's name before he dived neatly around the corner. She hesitated for a second but wiped her confusion thoroughly clean before deftly taking off not a second after him.
The scene around the accusing corner was barbaric. It visibly startled T'Pol as she halted sharply on a dig from her heals into the cement ground to save herself from colliding messily with the wresting figure of Jonathan; a fury filled, unstoppable Jonathan.
It was a tan coated, black-jawed bulldog that had rendered Porthos and Jonathan into such a desperately frantic spirit. T'Pol had never encountered a bulldog before and so to her it was simply a burly, slobbering, one colour coated version of Porthos, that had its brutal yellow dyed teeth and dirty brown glower locked onto the smaller elder dog's trembling hind leg, as he pathetically and worthlessly tried to drag himself away from the unwavering grip.
Jonathan (T'Pol looked carefully and amongst his red raging frown and pale twisted mouth she thought she caught sight of a delicate silver tear) took his large rough hands to the bulldog's jaw without hesitation and played the foolish hero as he tried valiantly and idiotically to break free the skin tearing, blood shedding grip.
The domineering dog happily let go to take a wide mouthed dig at Jonathan instead and successfully managed with ungainly ease to hook its treacherous canines into Starfleet's finest Captain's forearm.
Porthos, before he could adopt his owner's reckless heroic acts, was grabbed and scooped up by T'Pol into her tight but tender embrace - a careful embrace that seemed to inaudibly tremble for the old dog's and the Captain's well beings alike.
A sharp whistle broke the air. T'Pol quickly restrained herself from a cringe and Jonathan swore gracelessly and shamelessly as the dog's ruthless clamp was released and its stout paws trotted obediently, if not somewhat reluctantly along the seemingly empty street and into the shallow bay of an apartment block. It left behind without a sniff of a concern a thick pool of rich crimson blood and several artistic drops of saliva.
Not even the pain laden soft whimpers of Porthos, or the rare distress that had crept into T'Pol's whispered voice as she called his name could stop the wrath of Jonathan as he took up a storm of a walk toward where the dog had been called to by the faceless whistle. T'Pol, Porthos tighter and closer still to her chest, followed cautiously at his marching heal.
"What the hell was that?!"
Jonathan had found the owner of both whistle and dog. A pale skinny boy dwelled in a languid state across three front door steps to a modern array of apartments, a sleek grey bundle of structures that towered over the assembly of dog holders.
The boy, as Jonathan hollered at him much in the fashion he had become famous for, forced his bony shoulders up in a slow casual shrug with seemingly great effort before he took his bulldog's collar and held its slobbering panting form back. The dog looked as uninterested and bored now as the young boy though, and holding it back seemed of no great effort to him.
"Y' don't look like a Vulcan to me."
This was Jonathan's full comprehensive answer, until T'Pol stood sternly with Porthos in front of the accused couple. The dog once again without even the space of a blink took up its vicious stance and an effort now had to be installed to restrain its brawny mass.
"But then again, she does." Although his pale shadowed face did not smile, the couple could feel it instinctively off the boy, and in response Jonathan's eyes narrowed to mirror the level of danger in the yapping dog's teeth.
"You know how much animal control would love to take a dog like that?"
Jonathan cracked the boy's casual façade with his grounded comment and he as a consequence showed the Vulcan and the Captain that he was capable of more than just a secretive smile with his eyes widening in horror and emotional distress in the next second.
"Hey, y' can't take her away, it was your stupid dog that stunk o' whatever Vulcan scent it was. She was only doin' what she's been trained to do."
Jonathan reached for a sleek black cell from an ancient brown leather belt hooked around his waist, ignoring with much restrained the innuendo behind the boy's pleads.
"Hey, hey stop it now!"
The dog's temper swelled with her beloved owner's fear as she strained harder still against the tight grasp around her studded collar to get to T'Pol, who stood unflinching and unimpressed just beyond her jaw's line of reach. And although the boy looked desperate, he would not call off the bundle of guarding energy, as every time he placed his horrified glare on T'Pol it narrowed and the very real risk of losing his dog seemed worth it for some inexplicable reason.
Jonathan began to dial. Porthos growled and struggled restlessly in T'Pol's ceaseless hold as he begged urgently with her to let him go, to let him serve and protect, as he had always been willing to do. She was drenched in his sweet smelling blood, and the fresh scent came close to tempting her to show some form of distaste in some sort of manner across her face.
The scene quickly went from one extreme to another, for as Jonathan with his stubborn pride spoke confidently into his cell phone to animal control the boy too had to cave into his pride and let go of the dog with some suggestion of smugness in the glint of his hazel iris.
The dog rejoiced as she tripped slightly in the sudden release around her neck, but also quickly in her freedom recovered her paw-fall and lunged without remorse, only simple pleasure, for T'Pol's vulnerably exposed ankle. She met her target as well with much ease and hell spread its overjoyed fiery glory for the next minute in a tempest of swearing and barking and more calls from other throats as clarity was demanded and not met from the scene.
"Shit!"
Jonathan hadn't even known he'd expressed the word as he dropped his cell phone and grabbed T'Pol as she dropped Porthos who landed with surprising cat-like grace then sat pathetically on the grey curb with his shattered back leg, a horrible whine pitching from his throat as he witnessed helplessly a horror that should never have been allowed to rise to the momentum it had.
The boy's parents finally tumbled outside. T'Pol kicked with frightening power and the dog could do no more than let go as her jaw was yanked forcefully, but with the littlest of harm provoked. Jonathan felt the power of the kick with the power of the jerk that coursed through her body and had to admit for a fleeting moment his surprise, before he made a fresh grab at her body and stopped her small weight falling deftly with the lack of a supporting ankle.
The father's eyes never once raised his eyes to the scene of the couple and their dog as he grabbed his son and spoke with terrifying, but quaking authority.
"If you've got that dog attackin' that poor Vulcan boy again Jake, ah swear to Gawd son, ah swear to the almighty Gawd-"
The father's vocal wrath could not be stopped as he let himself swim on a current of swearing and cursing and general threats to the boy whose skinny arms shielded him from a volley of spitting and shaking and foul howling breath.
The mother had the head on her to take the family dog by her worn leather collar and summon forth fear into the beast's liquid brown eyes than neither of the men could. As she threw the complaining mass of a pet back into the doorway where the father and son retreated she straightened her lithe body up and faced the silent blinking couple. For a flicker of a second her eyes rested with neutral tones on the Vulcan before she fell into a mass of apologies and begs.
"Ah swear that dog aint out of control, ah do. Please, don't go callin' the pound - we'll get 'er sorted. She aint usually an attacker, ma boy must just of got her wound up or somethin'…"
She trailed off hopelessly in the wake of the silence of Jonathan and T'Pol. Porthos ended back up in the crane of his owner's gentle arm and Jonathan next requested only one thing.
"Take us to the nearest vets."
. . . . . . .
"Jon?"
The answering machine to Jonathan's phone broke violently through the lull of sweet silence that had evoked the apartment for the majority of the day.
"Cap'in? T'Pol?"
A high-spirited, if not somewhat slurry Southern twang continued to smash the peace.
"Me an' Malcolm an' ma bourbon are wan'in' some company," there was a slight trace of alcohol in his smiling voice and from in the background a giddy English accent tried in vein to interrupt him, "Willin' ta join us?"
A volley of hiccups escaped the yipping Englishman's background drone and the Southerner had to pull away from his speaker for a second to recover from painful laughter. The hint of alcohol became almost a statement now.
"Well, feel free t' drop by if yer ever in the neighbourhood…" there a small pause with hope that Jonathan would pick up the phone. The hope dashed away with a lob of Southern hiccups.
"'Though," there was a horrible hybrid of hiccups and giggles in the message now, "ah don't think it be a good idea Cap'in ta bring your new girlfriend round, what with all that non alcohol, non meat, non chicken fuss she's always goin' on 'bout."
The Englishman had been slain with hardcore laughter,
"No offence T'Pol, but ah think you'd agree. Tucker out."
. . . . . . .
A fright of white, lustful anger and rage coursed relentlessly through Jonathan's tempest of veins and barbaric notions of the mind. His dog had now disappeared behind a monstrous pair of swinging doors, gone plain from sight between an unbreakable barrier that stood to tease out the longest amount of angst and worry they could as vets and nurses sauntered by, casual in their stride to provoke as well this same fidgety, blood curling concern.
Several times now in the waiting room he had been asked if he was the infamous first Captain of the first Warp Five Starship but the irrelevance of the question to the current dire situation often meant these curious fans only took off of him the advanced warning to leave him be, which was a complete shame as on most any other occasion he would probably have stood up and made a smiling, wholly intriguing show for the fans.
T'Pol sat quietly at his side, managing easily to go by unnoticed. Her ankle had not yet ceased to bleed. She refused for it to be seen to for now and Jonathan hadn't the spirit to argue with her trademark stubbornness. He did however, as she glanced down for brief seconds at the creeping stain of green that circled around the bottom of her tanned trouser legs, touch on her wrist gently with whole sympathy and asked himself to see it.
As she started blatantly at him, and carefully shook off his touch, he desperately searched her smooth eyes to find some of the concern he had picked up in her voice earlier, but she hadn't much of a care for herself and the torn wound at her foot so he had to board upon himself concern enough for the both.
"Just a quick look T'Pol, I wont touch it."
She seemed unmoved by the statement. "It is not your touching it that I base my refusal for you to see the wound on. You are obviously quite distressed over your dog, and there is no need to provoke more worry with seeing an injury that will heal quick enough on its own. Besides," she nodded to his left arm and the perfect imprint of the bulldog's jaw that had been left there in his weather-beaten skin, "you have your own health to worry about."
His eyes traced over the shallow puncture marks and the irrelevance of the tears in his skin compared to the work that had been done on T'Pol with thin distress. He shed little if any blood, so found it difficult to comprehend worry for himself, instead sighing wholly impatiently.
Her heal tucked itself quite neatly behind the smooth silver leg of a waiting room chair. Where her foot had once sat, now a small, almost insignificant smudge of thick Vulcan blood sat on the edges of a brilliant white floor tile.
He was as dumbfounded at her casual nature towards what must have been an agonising gash as she was for his worry over Porthos. Understanding failed miserably between them and they tented in a Catch-22, quite happy to sit it out with the other and wait for their own way to come along.
Not once had Jonathan ever been able to estimate the long-standing patience and stubbornness of his first officer correctly.
"T'Pol," his voice had dropped dangerously in volume and every vowel came out in a sharp, clear whisper, "let me see it now before I have to throw you on your ass, grab your ankle and take a look that way."
T'Pol was familiar with the phrase 'tough love', as apparently all the necessary pain Phlox had ever cause his patients before came under the title of that phrase, and even as she raised her brow to a new level across her forehead as a first voiceless response to Jonathan she understood that that was what shimmered through his taut emotions now.
"I assure you, it is fine."
"T'Pol…"
Trip would have laughed at the banter, he would have laughed for hours and make snide remarks and jokes quite relentlessly throughout dinner that night if they were still on the Enterprise, but for now the situation to the two involved was as volatile and delicate as any communication between a Klingon would be.
"Please, T'Pol."
A slight appeal weaved its way with skilful subtlety through Jonathan's voice and T'Pol's persistent nature faltered slightly. He nodded an encouragement and she drew in logic to summon the conclusion that this hassle was not worth it just to avoid a simple, harmless look. At least that was what she convinced herself of in the end.
Carefully she bent her knee up tightly almost to her bloodstained chest and tucked her leg neatly into itself to allow her foot to rest on the smooth white edge of the chair. She had been right to try with great effort to avoid Jonathan getting a look, to barricade any further worry. His face dropped as he saw for the first time properly the battered structure of her bone thin ankle.
"So, are you going to tell me that doesn't hurt?"
She shook her head. "It does hurt, tremendously. But there is nothing we can do about it now, so it is best if I just overlook the pain."
Jonathan's mouth twisted and turned viciously as he tried and failed several times to concoct a reasonable comeback. He should have known by now there were rare few comebacks to Vulcan logic.
"I thought Vulcans suppressed emotions, not physical pain."
T'Pol made to lowered her ankle back down on the sterile tiled floor carefully but Jonathan stopped it with the gentlest of holdbacks. He lifted the trouser leg slightly higher still and, seeing as she wouldn't be, winced for her.
"If we are in our own proper state of mind then yes, we suppress any reaction to physical pain. Crying over a wound will not seal it back up."
Jonathan nodded offhandedly as he fought with temptation to touch the loose folds of skin that had ripped away with the bulldog's canines. He thought in amongst the mass of thickening blood and sallow skin that he caught sight of a clean white bone, but he couldn't stomach it enough to carry on surveying. The tough skin around the sickening hole was red and inflamed, as if being bitten had provoked an allergic rash.
"We should take you to the hospital."
She shook her head and finally managed to place her ankle back down.
"The last time I was a patient in a hospital in San Francisco I concluded that I would have been better to stay away and treat myself." She remember with every detail the accident she had had with a speeding boy's bike, and then the horror that had been three days quite literally messed about in the San Francisco hospital. "I take it you have medical supplies in your apartment?"
With reluctance, ever unable to lie to T'Pol, he nodded.
"Then I shall be fine."
Arguments closed as Porthos' vet reappeared from those impending doors. His dark face was as difficult to scan for foreseeing hints as T'Pol's constantly was and Jonathan's frustration was nipped at again. He stood rather calmly though, on his own as T'Pol remained seated and still.
"That was some nasty bite your dog took there."
Jonathan whipped back a rising frown from making a sinister appearance. "Yes, I know how bad it was, will he be okay?"
The vet consulted his PADD, so absorbed for a second in the knowledge it contained that Jonathan thought a telepathic link had been made, before he could answer the concerned, pale-cheeped owner.
"He's an old dog Sir,"
Jonathan's heart fell as it raced,
"He'll be okay, for now, but that's going to be one heck of a battle scar to recover from."
His heart crash-landed at the bottom of his traipsing stomach.
"I'm afraid he won't be coming home with you either, not tonight anyway."
His stomach finally flat lined as well.
"But you can see him."
A strained wariness settled over Jonathan but a blinding drive to see Porthos gave him a much-needed nudge. He turned to T'Pol who looked up at him with her perfectly composed, plain brown eyes. She nodded, as though Jonathan had turned for her approval.
"I'm sure he'll be glad to see you Jonathan."
It was without competition one of the most unexpected things T'Pol had ever come out with. He relished every word entirely, with all their sweet flat comfort.
. . . . . . .
Three messages sat urgently on Jonathan's answering machine, an angry digital red 'three' flashing at the base of a small silver disk that was his expensive, compact phone. He ambled aimlessly by it. Behind him T'Pol paused at the phone's position and gave it a brief blank stare before turning back to Jonathan who promptly collapsed on his cushy sofa.
"You have several messages waiting on your phone."
The disheartened dog-owner lifted his neck with great aching effort from its draped position over the back of the couch and mirrored the blankness in his eyes that T'Pol had spilled over the urging digital three. Disgruntled he waved his hand in an offbeat flurry and threw his head back again amidst the thicket of a lung-filling sigh.
"Just hit the play button."
Both, in the next five minutes that followed, listened in a hanging silence to the giddy pleads of Trip and Malcolm to join them in their post-tribute to Lizzie. The first one was the only barely vocally legible of the three; the other two were simple, wasted messages of alcohol and laughter. Nonetheless, an abstract twist of a smile found itself wilily planted on the utmost tips of Jonathan's dry lips as he lifted his disheartened head for a second time and shared a high brow with T'Pol.
"I never pinned Malcolm as the kind to overindulge with the spirits. Trip's got too much influential power. Have to reconsider him being Godfather to my kids."
As Jonathan's eyebrow slowly rested on a flat again T'Pol's stayed with an accent of elevation.
"'Kids'?"
He laughed a scratchy laugh but a genuine laugh all the same. "It was just a stupid promise, made a long time ago over a bottle of Whiskey in a bar in Tampa. The gist lies in 'he'd be my Godfather if I'd be his'. Doesn't seem I'll have to worry about that any more though."
His dejection was more skilfully hidden this time under a tone of airy dismissal, but T'Pol's ears had developed an ironic taste for emotion and most any that was expressed in a human, intentionally or not, she could capture in her lobe. Jonathan was all too painfully aware of that gift.
He watched, as she wagered his mood, how she stood with an inch missing from her usual perfect composure, as she leant slightly to the left. Quite guiltily in the ride home he had forgotten the other deviating half to the dangerously trained bulldog's attack.
"Sit down and I'll fetch the first-aid box."
The notion was not up for debate as he lifted himself off his cushy sofa and headed into his gold trimmed, white tiled en suite. She without a word, almost in a timid and willing silence sat closely beside the warm dent he had made with his weary body.
There was a great deal of rooting as Jonathan searched high and low for the long abandoned little green box that had served him through many teething days with Porthos, and horrific paper cuts with many unsuccessful short stories as he had tried and failed years ago to find his creative side.
The small box had never been laden with the responsibility of anything more sever in injuries than a morning shave that had gone terribly wrong one hung-over Sunday, and Jonathan before he had even unearthed the toolbox for mending wounds began to doubt with a flipping stomach its abilities to close up a dog torn ankle.
In the next room T'Pol removed her shallow healed sandal and rolled up the cuff of her blood marked, plain tanned trouser bottom.
With a drizzly level of triumph Jonathan found his medical gold and carried it protectively under his arm back to the living room.
Once there he quite involuntarily whispered T'Pol's name in sharp accusation as he cast his hazel gaze on her freshly exposed ankle and laid sights on a wound that could only have gotten worse over the past strenuous hour. She failed completely to understand the prompt for the harsh calling of her name and the expanding whiteness of Jonathan's eyes. In a haste of footsteps he retreated back onto the sofa and sat with all caring concern drowning him as he camped beside his new patient. She still failed as she caught a better view into his frantic eyes to discover the catalyst for his distress.
"I believe all it will need is a mild antiseptic and a dressing. Your, first aid box is equipped with that, I presume."
The box sat neatly between the couple. Jonathan abandoned it from his priorities for a moment as he slowly with all caution reached forward with both hands to touch the ankle that sat on his couch, atop a collection of frail tissues from a yellowing box on his black-glass coffee table. T'Pol flinched. She did it wholly involuntarily and startled Jonathan faintly with herself. His eyes became soaked in gentle sympathy however as he eyed her levelly with his trained authority.
"Either you let me see it T'Pol, or I'm phoning Starfleet medical and asking for Phlox."
The threat lacked any dangerous innuendo or even tone but T'Pol in her undying reluctance to receive what she perceived to be unnecessary medical attention grudgingly handed over her torn ankle to Jonathan.
His touch as it landed on the swollen skin around the circular tear surprised her in many ways with its cooling touch and understanding tenderness. She scrutinised his fingertips' every move as they held the burden of her ankle, twisted it in acute angles and brushed off scatters of dry, dusty blood and dead skin.
"It looks infected."
"That is my blood, it's suppose to be green."
His smile was dark and narrow as a reaction to her thin, desperately dry humour, although he wasn't entirely sure if it was humour at all, or just patronising.
"I mean the skin around the wound, it's red and swollen and slightly sallow. It's either an infection or an allergic reactions"
"Vulcans do not suffer from 'allergic reactions'."
This was utter defence. It was an instant answer with a tang of pride on each slightly pitched accent. She kept her face calm and her chin tilted upward slightly and Jonathan repeated his wan smile. It wavered though and he went back to laying his sights on the aftermath of the bite.
"I'm sure you don't, and if that is the case then it's an infection."
Her mouth moved open for debate but he stopped her with the raising of a silencing finger, which she grudgingly obeyed.
"Here…"
As his voice rolled off his tongue in a compassionate whisper he took her ankle in a fresh position in his hand, cupping it with care and concern in one large gentle palm and taking a bottle of silvery liquid from the little green box in the other.
"This might sting a little."
It was of no alarm to her he knew, to have to endure a small nip, but he felt a need to warn her even so in his soft caressing voice.
From a tiny hole he poured in modest amounts the icy liquid around the epicentre of the gaping hole, then generously more around the inflamed sidetracks. She watched in bated silence with a tilted head and some untraceable amount of interest for some unaccountable reason. It took only a second it seemed for him to be become engrossed in his work and then only another second after to focus his attention back on the guest and patient who shared his apartment and his company.
"Done."
He smiled. She nodded in a voiceless thank you. He then pulled out a roll of thick, untouched dressing. Holding it up for her to analyse he smiled once again and let her know in that smile that she had no choice. The wound, as they lacked the technology to close the skin properly, would be dressed. She did not argue. There was no logic in an argument here.
He carried on working with a beautiful tenderness that seemed to keep her captivated as she continued to watch the slow healing process. He was efficient but he took his time, and wrapped and touched the injury as the best in the profession of medical care would. He was ever sympathetic to the pain he could not feel, and the discomfort he knew she would not express to being touched for so long by another being.
As he worked though he observed something that hindered on being disturbing, but for now only intrigued his curiosity in a fretful manner. The hot redness of the skin around the bite had spread. T'Pol seemed blissfully unaware of this, truly unaware and not ignoring it as she did so well the pain, but he was close enough almost to watching the spread of the heat and the once olive skin morph into an unnatural dark pink. In the darkest of the rouge areas sat little rough bumps as if her muscles crawled viciously underneath and her blood vessels tried in all vain hope to escape the tight layer of skin that held them back. She seemed to be suffering in much the way Malcolm had once across his face and wrists when digesting pineapple he hadn't known about. And still she was wholly unaware of what had stopped Jonathan's hands from working and rendered him into a considering silence.
"Sir?"
He awoke again on the prompting hush of her voice and on reflex scowled her for her 'Sir'. She apologised offhandedly.
"Is there something the matter?"
Suddenly a notion of insignificance hit him rudely as he stared thoughtfully down at the finished work of bandages around her ankle. The wound was hardly as bad as he had wagered, he convinced himself, and she was on no level of pain that required intense treatment - as per usual he found himself frantic only over nothing but the 'what ifs' and not the truth that sat in plain, unspoiled sight before him. T'Pol had always and faithfully been good at reminding him and saving him of this almost unbreakable habit of nature.
His digital holographic wall clock all of a sudden seemed to pitch a volume that attracted his attention to its status on the kitchen wall and the attention he had poured over her rough red skin vanished on a graceful clearing wind through the subconscious. His brow rose and he smiled thinly, without any heart.
"I should have gone out and bought that Vulcan food by now."
T'Pol too found herself absently drawn to the clock with her subtle liquidy gaze.
"It is of no concern now. I can endure another serving of beans and rolls for another night."
In his weariness he almost leant over and kissed her in a comically grateful fashion. Thankfully he did not.
"Perhaps you should phone Charles and Malcolm."
He found a small oddity there in hearing Trip's correct title, but if T'Pol struggled to go from 'Captain' to 'Jonathan' then he could no more than understand her reluctance to refer to someone with their nickname. He wondered next why he had spent so much of a long minute contemplating over such a small oddity.
"No, no I'll give them till the morning. They're gonna need it."
Her uninterested pupils left the clock once again and landed gently on Jonathan. He in turn met the gaze with all respect and manner and shamelessly engaged himself briefly in the gentleness of her watch.
For a short-lived second he was infatuated and could never from then on say properly why. His only certainty lay in that he treasured the wave of attraction and left it unexplained with all willingness. He restrained himself with a sorrowful lust not to touch her and instead got up to make their early dinner.
"Beans it is then."
. . . . . . .
Chapter Five as soon as I come up with and write it.