AN
I heard there was gonna be a forth series of Enterprise, I jumped around a lot when I found out smile And I'm confident it'll be around for the seven series, and if the cast stay interested that there'll be movies. I don't know about Friday nights over in America but Friday at nine in the UK is the best T.V timeslot you can get, it's when they show Friends over here, and that's the highest rating show right now (last episode Friday!)
Darrah – I was wondering when someone would pick up on that. Yeah, I read the other day that T'Pol says in The Xindi (mind I haven't seen it) that she doesn't have siblings. I wagered she said it to Trip so I'm gonna pretend she was just trying to make him feel better in her own Vulcan way, when really she does have two brothers (I'm sure I can get away with it if I don't mention it). I've had the idea of the two brothers in my head for a while now, and they're gonna have fairly important parts in this story later on. I was reluctant to scrap them and so decided I'm just gonna go ahead with using them. Thanks for pointing it out anyway though, good to know you're paying attention smile
Lastly I apologise for my American geography, if it seems a little absurd or farfetched where the characters are jumping to-and-fro. My Scottish geography is hardly the best, so I stand a pitiful chance of good educated guesses on the times and distances between places in America. It's why I'm not specific with where they all live. I hope I can be excused as I was for doing nasty things to T'Pol.
Telaka
. . . . . . .
The woeful serenity had returned once again in a layer of cool, innocent peace around the dark grey corners and surfaces of Jonathan's archaic apartment. The hot flush that had shot through every rudely awoken inch and disturbed doorway had disappeared with the flurry of panic and fear that had vengefully stirred it into rising to begin with. It had escaped through the front door and carried on down the empty motorway that would lead the couple to the nearest base of Starfleet from Jonathan's apartment, the one in San Francisco.
Jonathan's given room to T'Pol still sat in an edge of unrest, but was gradually settling once again into this dull harmony. At one wall, lying dormant and timidly still beside the crisp white floor border of the room was a small pile of neatly broken glass boasting a sheen of brilliant silver in the small amount of moonlight that poured out endlessly in a cloudless night through the thin, airy curtains. Underneath the glass lying in a creased pile was an old, faded photograph with lit up smiling faces; a father and his twelve-year-old son; Henry and Jonathan several years before the distinguished engineer had eventually passed away.
It lay in tatters now because of T'Pol.
The night before she had sat perfectly still and perfectly calm on the bed in facing with the picture, gazing with an unbroken stare into the matching glint of the fantastic hazel eyes of father and son, and felt an unmistakable wash of liver green envy as she did so. It was a pure emotion that shot through her body quicker than she could seize it and bury it, but she didn't entirely mind that it had bombarded her.
She had rarely expressed the emotion of love before. She had felt it; without doubt she had felt it for Trip many times before, until it had faded into an indestructible love for a friend instead of the pure raw lust of infatuation that she had once experienced for him so.
It was not either of those breeds of love though that she was spiteful of not being able to express right now, but the love of a family that for her had either never existed or was simply as distant as the space between herself and her relations on Vulcan was right now.
She had watched fathers and their offspring before, at school or out in the street, loyally side by side and always like this in spirit and soul until their dying days. And although it was true that love was not a thing stressed at in most any Vulcan, it was a thing that you could pick up on very slightly in the grey eyes of a father as he watches his son take his beautiful mate who bore his first grandchild, or his daughter when she becomes that symbol of power in the High Command, or even a University that they had always strived together to get.
Taron had never cared enough to express that flash of pride and love in his stern grey eyes for his daughter, and T'Pol had never before considered it a thing to be emotionally concerned about. There was no reason for why he should favour her enough to be proud of her, or to actually express love for her. Although he did so in those subtle ways to his two older sons.
The picture of Henry and Jonathan encouraged further the emotions of envy in T'Pol that was fuel by this fact. It was a prized picture of Jonathan's of the two on a camping trip together a few months before the cancer had been announced in Henry's body.
T'Pol had struggled fiercely the night after, when Jonathan had stumbled in during the climax of her suffrage and tried to take her up in his desperate hold, if anything than just to offer an outlet of comfort.
Whenever her strength was put into practice he was surprised. He had wrapped his arms around her shoulder blades and she had pushed out with her arms covered in sickly blotches of dark green hue, almost without strain sending him to the wall. The wall had shuddered; a ripple of nervy vibrations shot through the plaster and concrete and then there was the awful, deafening shatter of glass against the maroon carpeted floor. The beautiful white frame of the prized picture was taken beyond repair and Jonathan for a brief second had turned on T'Pol with vengeance blazing wildly in his exhausted eyes.
It took very little to extinguish the flare of hot anger. She continued to shiver and curled into herself in chocking pain and he could do no more than re-approach with some heavy amount of pity in his eyes before he gathered her up quickly with no further falter, held her almost too tight and carried her out of the room, uttering only one weak comment of 'Vulcans don't suffer allergic reactions my ass.'
The long night road to Starfleet's San Francisco base was cold and harsh, unforgiving in length and merciless in its rough terrain and awkward corners that were spitefully littered throughout the many miles ahead.
There was only one Godsend and that came with the face-slapping fact that they were travelling through a damp, velvety black half four in the morning. Adrenalin kept Jonathan awake but thankful so many others slept in peace and the roads were eerily empty for it being such an ungodly hour. He sped on regardless to speed traps and traffic control.
The landscape was nothing but a hasty blur of opulent dark greens and dull greys, the sheen of silver from a full moon still in full reign and displaying itself in shameless pride along steel barriers and magnificently tall lampposts.
Little was actually visibly focused to Jonathan save the dreadful path he had to follow in front of him, and the shivering entity to his right, buried deep under the only thing he had remembered to pack for a two hour road trip, a thick, fleecy cream blanket that usually belonged draped uselessly over the back of his couch. Right now that blanket took on the heroic role of lifesaver to the heat that continued to race out of her body, despite the heat of the wound and the fire in her stomach.
Jonathan hit a long stretch of perfectly straight road and threw his foot on the accelerator, not a flicker of hesitation stopping him from desperately topping the speed limit by a couple of twenty kilometres. He gritted his teeth, his knuckles turned a smooth ghostly white and his eyes became indistinguishable under a dark, concentrating frown.
He dared to throw T'Pol another quick glance. Nothing had changed in her curled figure and he had to force himself to believe that to be a good thing. At least last time he had checked she was still breathing, somewhat.
There was a sliver of some pale purple sunrise from the western border poking through, but it was nothing to illuminate the dark and T'Pol remained hidden tactfully in the shadows of her own body and the heroic blanket. Neither the blanket nor the night could hide the small grunts and moans she made in a useless protest to the pain and the reaction though. Jonathan strained his ears and a few times he fancied that he had heard his own name uttered, said in something of a strangle, with almost no volume in the pronunciation.
He took his right hand off the gear stick briefly and pealed back some of the fleece from T'Pol's head, giving himself somewhere on her body to focus on. As the blanket piled onto her shoulders and his hand retracted back it swept the crown of her coarse hair and he stroked it slightly, applying enough pressure so that she might be able to distinguish his tender touch. She seemed to warm to it, and he ran his rough fingers over her soft, cold cheek next, before he threw his hand back onto the gear stick and swerved through a bombardment of sharp, horrendous corners.
Half an hour until they would reach Starfleet. Only on his life would they be too late in getting there.
. . . . . . .
He fancied that under the buzzing numbness of the bare exposed skin on his dead left arm that he felt a familiar stretch of rough leather from a black couch moving back and forth as he subconsciously began to move himself. He preyed it was a green dyed blanket that had slipped wilily from off his shoulders to a crumpled mess on the floor, and that the floor beneath him was a glossy laminate one.
Upon him was donning something very akin to the worst hangover in the entire memory of his thirty-six years of life. Behind it would soon follow the deepest trench of regret known also to him and perhaps to mankind.
Malcolm's cheeks were blazing, and he sat up blinding to touch on them tenderly, on their glowing red entity, before he opened his puffy, dull blue eyes and found he was blind anyway as he sat in the midst of an enclosed living room, Trip's living room to his relief, at seven o'clock in the morning.
His location this time around was at least was better than some of the destinations he had been chained to on a fair few stag nights for vague friends of his back in England. For some reason a field of cows came to mind in him, although for now in the haze of an approaching headache he wasn't entirely sure why. He just knew it wasn't for the obvious reasons…
A low, scratchy moan erupted from the ebony centre of the living room and Malcolm strained with all the power in his eyes to see past the shadows and to make out the bulk of grey that had begun to shift around on the wooden floorboards. Most likely it was Trip, but he could never entirely rely on assumptions.
"Trip? Tell me that's you Trip."
Irritation oozed from every syllable of the Southern accent that answered back. "Course it's me y' idiot."
Malcolm smiled, wholly glad that their black surroundings covered the sly expression on his lips in turn of Trip's annoyance. And Trip carried on to rant in annoyance with lack of thought about the words he was uttering in his own looming hangover.
"Who y' expectin', the Cap'in? No, Jonny's too busy with his new girlfriend t' come celebrate with the guys right now, no. Can't come out no more, nope…"
He trailed off, too exhausted and too in pain to continue complaining. It was hardly as if he meant it anyhow, except for the small twang of jealously that accented a few of his more stressed words, specifically 'girlfriend'.
"Too many years rising early in Starfleet, we can't even break the habit in the aftermath of the biggest binge on Kentucky Bourbon in the history of Lieutenants and Commanders drinking together."
Trip managed to smirk freely in the dark. "Amen to that." He then clapped lightly to the ceiling with his hot palms.
Pain shot through their heads like pain had never done before. Trip had hoped to summon a gentle glow of pale yellow but instead they were abused by a holy shower of brilliant white, almost as if from the laughing gates of heaven itself.
"Trip, Trip kill it now before I bloody well kill you!"
There was no protest against the threat and Trip clapped rather madly at the sleek silver ceiling until they were once again plunged into a soothing darkness.
Two soft thuds echoed flatly around the apartment as both men fell back into their makeshift beds, Malcolm's the couch once again and Trip's a pile of randomly collected towels and rugs pilled haphazardly on the wooden floor of the living room. Neither was up for a decent complaint about it.
There was a moment of whispered serenity and in it Trip could almost hear the grinding of Malcolm's mind as he thought tactfully as a Tactical Officer should about what to say next to the brother of the deceased Lizzie. It made his Southern face smile, somewhat sadly and somewhat humorously. He always admired Malcolm's somewhat vein efforts to be subtle, as subtly just wasn't in his blood.
"What time is it?"
Trip's watery eyes did a lazy tour of the living room, searching for a clock with a glowing face that should have been able to cut through the darkness with ease, and should have been sat on his bookcase. Instead it sat fallen to the floor and under the coffee table, several yards from where it should have been.
"Seven."
Trip listened to the gentle scratching of Malcolm's nails against his hot, reddened neck. There was a commotion of leather against bare skin again as the Englishman settled down somewhat, then coughed then resettled.
"Somethin' botherin' y' Lieutenant?"
Yet another cough emitted from a rather dry throat, then a sigh as Malcolm threw away his hesitations.
"I was just wondering… feeling any better?"
A warm, crude laugh flew through the apartment, the Southern boom of it sinking into every corner and announcing more pain in both the men's hangovers, yet still Trip kept a smile on his face.
"Alright? Malcolm this is the worst bloody hangover ah've had since ah was eighteen, Gawd only knows what we did last night, an' Lizzie still aint back from the grave."
Malcolm could see no answer to that. Trip gave him one instead.
"But ah'm the best ah have been for five years, an' ah'd say the grieving's finally given up on me, so cheers mate."
He placed his hands together in another gentle clap. A glow of soft, sympathetic pale golden light trickled from the beams of lights on the silver ceiling above and after a second of squinting Malcolm found his eyes adjusting and focusing before landing on Trip. The man had all intentions of innocent evil in his brilliant blue eyes.
"Wonder if Jon and the Sub Commander got the messages."
Malcolm instantly buried his face back into a menagerie of pillows and leather. He clearly did not want to know the answer to that query, as much as Trip did.
"Ah say we visit them today."
As Malcolm lifted his head to utter some worthless protest he allowed his eyes to hover on the corner where Trip's prized computer sat, always on and always ready for a heavy abuse of games and networking.
"You have some messages yourself."
Trip spun in his pile of fabrics to crane his neck painfully back towards the slight glow of the compute screen. In the right hand corner sat a little grey box with a little red three in it; emails, and already the two had wagered whom from.
Trip made something of an unnecessary and wholly ungainly commotion as he rose to his feet, his legs failing to have almost any real power in them as he fell with a definite thud on his elbows then got back up again and repeated the act several more times across the living room floor. It was a process of crawling that he almost used in the end to reach his prized possession in the corner.
Behind him Malcolm came up, steady on his own feet now and only a little pale on the cheeks. Trip threw him an odd look of confusion over his stiff shoulder. He ignored the Englishman's composure and the slight twang of jealousy he felt for it then as he threw himself in a silver swivel chair and placed his fingertips on the touch board, guiding a curser around that was shaped like an NX Starship.
"Where did you get that?"
Malcolm pointed towards the curser, his eyes rolling into a hybrid of wanting and scoffing. He was still to decide whether he was impressed by it or not.
"Downloaded it from some fanatic kid's website in Detroit."
Malcolm decided it to be rather sad in the end.
Trip moved onto his emails. The sender was who both had expected, three from Starfleet.
Despite the constant lash of throbbing pain that coursed through the two men's eyes they successfully managed to read all three letters in only a small collection of minutes. Both seemed to be emitting an aura of pride and overwhelming cheer when Trip logged off his Starfleet email address.
"Lectures, tours o' the NX-02, blueprints, conferences; ah'd say we've become pretty popular down there Malcolm."
He was not to disagree, and his smile was as wide and bright and gloating as the Southern ones was.
"Nine o'clock in San Francisco it is then."
Trip nodded eagerly, the redness of his eyes seeming to evaporate on the mist of the invitations. His frame of mind as a one Commander Tucker ran back to him as fast as the headache ran out of him. Malcolm was washed with a tint of healthy colour once again as he stretched and stood to in his proper stance once more.
The two had just found the best cure for a hangover.
. . . . . . .
She was gone; preformed the same disappearing act as his dog had through cold steel doors, all the while flanked by many donned in white trench coats who spilled waterfalls of medical jargon from their lips and nodded sagely to each other in turn, as she lay blissfully unaware in the epicentre of their sudden gathering. He preyed Phlox would be behind those doors after she crossed their white bleached midst.
His head tilted back as he ran his trembling fingers through his wispy dark hair and let go his own flood of curses and dark, damnable jargon. For a moment his silent hazel glare was closed and titled to the ceiling and he stayed rigid with two large, upset hands on his face and a dangerous quiver in his knees that trembled through the fabrics of his old black trouser bottoms.
He wondered for a second why he hated himself so much at this current hectic moment, then realised he didn't much care for the 'why' and knew he just did and most likely wholly deserved the self-loathing. It was very easy to lay blame on himself at least, he knew.
In the stormy haze of his spiteful confusion Jonathan heard but did not register a voice, projected and speaking to him somewhere behind him. He didn't much care to heed the presence of that either, until the voice trickled down his neck in a hot billow of breathless speech.
"Jon?"
In unexpected fright he jumped, spun at a sickening speed on his sharp heals and titled his chin down slightly to the shorter and unexpected presence of Admiral Forrest.
It had only been two days since they had spoken together at the extortionate party but their moods simultaneously had managed in that small period of time a clean 180-degree rotation from proud, gloating smiles and congratulations to dark, overcast brows and bundled concerns.
The Admiral's mood had been cemented as so for several months now though. He had been brooding over certain delicate and corrupt matters for many tedious weeks, matters that should have been discussed as they had occurred to Jonathan, or at the very least when the Enterprise had landed the two days ago. As it was they had not been, and the Admiral had neglected his duty to keep Jonathan informed as he should have for several slightly valuable reasons.
Jonathan's disposition had been on this sharp, icy edge of remorse for only short of three hours now. He was rather more a little uptight.
"Jon, I heard you were here. Your first officer…"
"Took a bad bite in the ankle off a bulldog this afternoon. Taken an allergic reactions now."
Forrest fell to a cold silence, his cool blue gaze resting on the floor before he could stop it, concern, fret, anger and hot nerve all displaying an unpleasant mixture of confused emotions in his suddenly lost gaze. The sole nature of this supposed attack would clarify something to Forrest that he would rather not know, despite the essential need to actually know.
"And the dog, was it a stray, just a random attack?"
Jonathan frowned. The Admiral was one of a rare few that could keep his tempter at bay just by his lone presence, even when it was pulled at its frayed edges with tedious banter such as this.
Forrest in turn of the grey shadow that rolled over Jonathan's gaze looked flushed. Certainly he was short of breath and his harried volley of speech did nothing to help him regain a steady pace in his lungs. He was more on a dangerous edge of build up tension than Jonathan had ever been before, or could even know. It was electric between the men, although neither meant it to be.
"No, it was a little boy's dog. Didn't look too bothered that his dog decided to take a chunk out Porthos' and T'Pol's leg…" The last part rolled out as a bitter murmur.
Forrest heeded it and grew increasing sombre now amongst his rolling emotions.
"I knew we should have talked about this earlier, but I didn't think anything would happen. I'm sorry Jon, if anything happens to your first officer…"
Jonathan's frustration lined with thick layers of guilty angst, made his patience for such cryptic comments, even ones from the Admiral, short.
"Talked about what, Admiral?"
. . . . . . .
They ended up in Forrest's colossal affair of a pine decked, silver laced, comfortably airy office. It was, in short, a beautiful room, overseeing an array of lush green gardens and echoing with sentiment. It was cool and cushy and effortlessly put Jonathan's homely quarters on the Enterprise to shame.
It all went blatantly unnoticed in Jonathan's mind as he was offered a sleek silver chair to sit on at the front end of Forrest's black pine desk. He became settled as he felt a wash of numbness sink into the tattered nerves of his body. His mind had begun to hypothesis the different outcomes for T'Pol, and his habit of coming to the worst conclusions kicked in painfully hard.
A pair of unflinching, dirty green eyes tipped slightly with a splash of sorrow and regret watched him carefully as his own blank hazel gaze walked unleashed over to the windows, overseeing the gardens and un-focusing on them as his mind raced frantically. Very delicately the Admiral coughed and sympathetically commanded the former Captain's attention again.
"We have the best medics in San Francisco here Jon, she'll be fine."
He at least seemed to hear him as he moved his gaze with somewhat of a blush in his pupils back to Forrest. "Sorry."
Forrest shook his head then came out with the beginning of his news.
"I knew I should have contacted you about this the day it happened, but for some reason I didn't. I figured, I suppose, that you'd turn right back round to Earth, when it wasn't necessary. That, and you might have…"
Jonathan narrowed his eyes. He didn't cover the slight burn of scorn in his impatience. He believe for now that his place was at the side, or as close as he could get to it, of T'Pol, not cosy in his boss's office.
"And?"
Forrest could only hesitate for so long, he knew.
"And you might have turned on your Commander."
"Trip?"
"Sub Commander."
There was a slight twist in Jonathan's pale lips as they drew up faintly in a misplaced smile with the dark hazel shadows in his eyes.
"And why would I do that?"
"Well you were never a fan of the Vulcans Jonathan, you have to admit that. She could be your wife and you'd still have your grudges."
The twist slowly settled into a flat line once again as he listened to Forrest skip around the gist of the news he so urgently had to share a few minutes ago.
"Admiral, would you please just get to the point. What did the Vulcans do now?"
Forrest shook his head quickly. "No, no it wasn't the Vulcans, not directly anyway."
There was another silence for a taut moment. Forrest shifted in the elegant grandness of his black leather chair then saw he could play Jonathan no longer on wavering pauses.
"There was an attack on Earth."
Jonathan slid forward very slightly on his chair. "There's a familiar phrase."
Weakly Forrest smiled. "It wasn't one on any major scale, but it should never have happened, not here on Earth anyway." There was yet another pause before the Admiral continued with a blunt statement of the truth.
"It was an Andorian attack on the Vulcans."
Jonathan slid back that fraction on his chair.
"They targeted the High Command's San Francisco base, and there was casualties from all sides; Andorian, Vulcan, and us."
The 'us' churned loudly in Jonathan's beating mind.
"Twin boys coming home from baseball practice, twelve, and an Ensign from Starfleet, Ryan Gallacher who was at the High Command as part of his linguist course. The Vulcans retaliated with force and lost five men and the Andorians two."
Jonathan felt in the next bout of silence the tan of handsome light brown that so often coloured his cheeks slowly drain with any heat from his body.
It was a rather painful silence, drawn out and put in more ache by its length, during which Jonathan's mind had to consider where the brunt of his worried lay now – with T'Pol or the donning realisation of this unspoken prospect of the war Shran had always warned fiercely about. There was no temptation for him to turn on the only Vulcan he had ever shared a smile with though.
"They later attacked Vulcan but the Vulcans were ready this time and there were no casualties, the Andorians just found themselves limping a little afterwards."
Another weak smile graced Forrest's face and Jonathan, despite every confused inch of steadily rising anger he felt, shared in it with a pathetic curl of his lips. Both expressions slowly faded away again though as Forrest carried on his report.
"The attack's left a lot of unrest now Jonathan. Old hatreds have been rekindled. A lot of people are resenting the Vulcans again, blaming the three deaths entirely on them, and there've been a few attacks now, Humans on Vulcans. My guess; T'Pol was just another victim. The dog was probably trained to go for Vulcan blood."
Jonathan moved forward the fraction in his chair again. There was no subtle hint of anger in his gaze now, but a war of the emotion on every inch of his face. His mouth was contorted into an expression of unspeakable rage and he only just harnessed enough will not to take Forrest's computer and aim it deftly for the window to the gardens.
Forrest didn't protest the anger he saw, as his reaction when finding out the reason why a Vulcan had been hospitalised with third degree burns in the sickbay in Starfleet had almost mirrored a level of rage to match Jonathan's now. He would never be an utter fan of the aliens, but he had made his peace with them a long time ago now. He may wish to see them in the wrong sometimes, but never if any unjust harm.
"Starfleet and the High Command are looking into some of the attacks, but it's unlikely they'll come up with any evidence to pin responsibility on anyone. It's mostly young Vulcans, ten or eleven. If it's kids attacking kids then there's little we can do about it."
A quiver of unease shot through Jonathan and he found in that second he could sit no longer. He rose at breakneck speed then stood in a quiet lull, nothing making complete circles of connection in his mind just yet. It left him harassed and agitated, with himself and whatever else there was on hand to blame.
"Why didn't you tell us this when we landed then? At the party, after the press conference, even when I said goodbye to go home? You knew she was coming with me, why didn't you tell us to be careful?"
On every set of syllables his voice rose without his consent or his care. Slowly his feet began to trace a small line back and forth rhythmically in front of Forrest's handsome desk. For a while all he could see was the smooth pine floorboards at is pacing feet and for a while it was all he wanted to see, and all he could bear to face.
"Is that why there were no Vulcans at the landing party?"
His voice had suddenly lowered to a kind of calm mumble.
"Partly, yes. Partly because they still disagree with Enterprise ever leaving space dock, partly because they still objected to you captaining the ship and partly because of T'Pol. They detached themselves from the mission a long time ago Jon, unofficially since P'Jem and official since the Xindi I'd say."
A small bob of Jonathan's head signalled that he grudgingly understood.
"I don't think we have to worry about the Andorians attacking Earth again."
"No, only Vulcan."
There was a rare trace of concern in Jonathan's voice for the Vulcans now, but then seven years befriended to one (whether she would admit to being a part of the mutual bond or not) had swayed his opinions on the race in many slight ways.
"They know they have our backup. It's just a matter of whether they'll accept it or not. But we'll do what we can for them."
Only another slow bob from Jonathan's stiff neck signalled at all that he was registering Forrest's subdued words anymore so the Admiral stood up.
"I'll walk you to sickbay."
It was the only simple sentence that was going to effectively seize Jonathan's attention again, and the sharp snap of his eyes back onto the Admirals dirty green ones proved it.
"Phlox is down there, and I don't think he's stopped talking about the crew and humans since he got back. We're doing everything we can to keep him aboard with us, but Denobulan is keen to have him back as well. Ultimately it'll be his choice"
If a smile graced the Captain's face then it was too brief for the Admiral to catch as he took Jonathan's tense side and walked to the door with him.
"You know we're keen to keep T'Pol aboard with us as well, if she wishes."
Jonathan nodded, the action quickly becoming a commonplace response, although he added a vocal afterthought this time round.
"She wants to be a lecturer in other world Newtonian and Quantum physics. Figures."
Forrest smiled for the both of them as they began a passage down a golden hall smeared shamelessly with pride, which showed in the numerous photographs of humanities' achievements throughout the many decades of technology that were plastered on the cream walls.
"We have more than enough room for a lecturer, especially a Vulcan lecturer."
Quietly Jonathan muttered another "Figures" before he silently demanded a quiet root down to Starfleet medical with Forrest, allowing as they went that feeling of self-loathing to creep slowly back onto him, still without a cause for it being there and still without him caring much at all for the 'why' of it being there.
One certainty that he felt linger painfully was that he owed T'Pol a long overdue apology, for something.