Trip walked into engineering at 0800 the next morning ready for a day's work. There hadn't been any major problems since Enterprise's refit after their return to Earth, but he was looking forward to getting Kamea's opinion on some things. He'd been hoping to make a few modifications to the ship, and with someone like her around, he had a feeling he wouldn't have any accidents – not like the one that had put him in a coma.

The first person he saw was Crewman Rostov, who was one of the unfortunate souls with the night shift this week. "Rostov! Any sign of Kamea?"

Rostov approached him, holding a PADD and looking exhausted. "Sir?"

"She's supposed to meet me here. She's gonna be helpin' out for a while. Really knows what she's doin'."

Rostov suddenly smiled and pointed. Trip followed his finger and found Kamea buried in one of the engines up to her stomach, so that only her legs were visible. "She's been here since 0400," Rostov said. "I think she's memorized every bolt."

Trip grinned. Yep, they definitely needed someone like Kamea down in engineering. That seemed to be what really got her going. Trip could identify with that. Stick him anywhere else and he was a fish out of water, but put him in front of a warp drive and he was all business. Trip clapped Rostov on the shoulder. "Thanks. Get some sleep."

"Shouldn't order your crew to do anything you don't, Commander," Rostov said with a smile. But he turned and left.

Trip stared after him. He had been sleeping much better ever since he'd come to terms with Lizzie's death. Of course, T'Pol's neuro-pressure sessions had also helped, but they hadn't had one in months – not since they'd slept together. She avoided him now, no doubt about it, but he couldn't get too bent out of shape about it, since he was avoiding her, too. He shook his head to clear the thoughts and wandered over to Kamea's legs, which were flailing about. She looked stuck. He stepped onto the ledge and peered down into the hole she had crammed herself into. "Need a hand?"

She raised her head. She was covered in grease. "Just looking around," she said. "I was trying to get my footing, and then I realized that I'm short." She buried her head back in the engine. Her next words were muffled. "So that didn't turn out as I'd hoped."

Trip laughed. The more time he spent with Kamea, the more he liked her.

"I got my mother's height, of course," she said. "Vulcans are tall by nature, but my mother was just a shade over five feet." She finally managed to find her footing and pulled herself out of the hole. She looked nothing like T'Pol. It was amazing that they were related.

"Something wrong?" she asked after he'd stared at her for a while.

Trip shook his head. "I was just thinkin' how you look nothin' like T'Pol."

She cocked her head to the side. "Not very surprising, though, is it?"

He smiled. He found himself wondering how much she acted like a human and how much she acted like a Vulcan. T'Pol, he'd noticed, acted more human the longer she stayed on Enterprise. Of course, she'd been every bit the good Vulcan when she'd married Koss in order to salvage her mother's career.

"I guess not," he said, his good mood rapidly dissipating. He gestured that they start walking, and she followed him through the engine room. "I was gonna start by showin' you the engines, but you seem to have taken that upon yourself, so I guess we should go through my old logs – familiarize you with Enterprise's history and everythin'."

Kamea waved her hand. "I've already read them."

Trip stopped and stared at her in disbelief. "All of 'em?"

She nodded, staring back at him. She didn't even blink. There must've been some genetic code in Vulcan DNA that prevented blinking. T'Pol never seemed to blink either. "Yes."

"There's seven years worth of logs."

She shrugged nonchalantly. "I read fast."

He eyed her suspiciously. She had to be joking. She'd only been there four hours, according to Rostov. There was no way she could have read through that many logs in that short period of time, no matter how fast of a reader she was. Trip did not consider himself a writer by any means, and the engineering logs were boring, even to him. "You didn't read them," he said.

She licked her lips. "'August 27, 2152: Upgraded the plasma converters; still no problems with the warp drive. Trying to get it past warp five but no progress yet – '"

Trip interrupted before she could get much further. "You memorized 'em?" To say that he was shocked would be an understatement. He was sure his eyebrows had disappeared into his hairline; they certainly couldn't go much higher. "You memorized seven years worth of logs in four hours?"

"No," she said. "It only took three. I've been checking out the engine for the last hour."

Trip nodded, impressed and slightly freaked out. "When'd you sleep?"

She smiled. "I don't sleep. Besides, I was in hibernation for a month. I'll be awake until I'm sixty." She paused, her tongue poking out between her lips, apparently lost in thought. "Which isn't that far off, now that I think about it."

So she was under sixty. She looked so much younger than T'Pol, but T'Pol was only sixty-six. She wasn't that old for a Vulcan either. He considered asking Kamea her age but knew that Vulcans considered age intimate information. He had thought that T'Pol admitting her age to him meant something, but then she'd up and married Koss.

Still, he couldn't resist. "So that would make you how old?"

Kamea shot him a death glare. She was certainly more expressive than T'Pol – probably her human half. Lorian had been like that, too.

"Sorry," he said, grinning. "I forgot that age is intimate for Vulcans."

"I'm half-Vulcan," she said, in a very clipped voice, "and it's not that. You should just never ask a lady her age. It's a huge faux pas no matter what culture you're from. Next you'll be asking me how much I weigh, and then I'd be forced to hurt you."

Trip chuckled softly. He definitely liked Kamea. She knew her way around a warp drive – if their impromptu build session yesterday was any indication – and she had a sense of humor. Then something she said earlier came back to him. "Out of curiosity, when was the last time you slept?"

She furrowed her brow in thought. "What's today? Tuesday?" He nodded, and she sighed. "Seven years ago. Actually, seven years, nine months, twelve days, fourteen hours, thirty-six minutes and – " She checked her watch, " – twenty-nine seconds. So almost eight years, I suppose."

And he thought his insomnia was bad. "How d'you function without sleep?"

She lifted her shoulder in a barely perceptible shrug. "Vulcans don't need as much as humans, and I've had periods of extended hibernation, which makes up for my not sleeping the rest of the time."

He was confused. "So you don't sleep because you don't need to?"

She shook her head sadly. "Every time I close my eyes, I have to watch my parents die. To be forced to relive that night after night…" She shuddered. "Eventually, I just stopped trying. I thought it might help me keep my sanity."

He understood all too well where she was coming from. After Lizzie had died during the Xindi attack, he'd had the same problem. Every time he tried to sleep, he dreamt about her dying. It was the reason T'Pol had agreed to give him neuro-pressure treatments.

But he was slightly surprised that Kamea was being so open with him. He had never met a Vulcan who was quite as willing to share seemingly personal bits of information with almost complete strangers. He had known T'Pol for three years, been intimate with her, and still barely knew anything. Then he remembered Kov, a member of the V'tosh ka'tur, and figured that her openness had something to do with her human half.

"You ever think 'bout sedatives?" he asked.

Her eyes widened imperceptibly. "I've been drugged too many times to even consider the possibility."

Trip decided to let that comment slide. Besides, Phlox had told him that sedatives weren't meant to be used for long periods of time – and seven years was generally considered a long period of time. "How 'bout neuro-pressure?"

She narrowed her eyes. "Neuro-pressure?"

It had been neuro-pressure sessions with T'Pol that had led to their night together. Trip had always been attracted to T'Pol – ever since their first argument, back on that first mission – but had never acted on it. It was a dance they did; they would fight, sparks would fly, but then one of them would concede and it would start all over again. Besides, he had never in his wildest dreams believed that T'Pol reciprocated. That night, however, was burned into his memory. They were in her quarters, kneeling on the floor. She was in that silk robe she wore, and he was shirtless, as usual. She was massaging his throat, and then she was…

He broke off the thought abruptly and forced himself to concentrate on Kamea, who was looking at him with confusion. He figured that maybe she didn't know what neuro-pressure was, having been raised on Earth, so he started explaining it to her. "The stimulation of the – "

"I know what it is," she said. "How do you know what it is? It's not a very common practice."

He coughed uncomfortably. He hadn't wanted to bring up the subject, especially because Kamea was telepathic. She was wearing her headband, yes, but that didn't mean that she couldn't figure out what was going on. "My sister died during the Xindi attack," he said, figuring that he should probably start at the beginning so she wouldn't get the wrong idea. "I had the same problem you do; every time I closed my eyes, I had to watch her die."

Kamea put a hand on his shoulder. "I am sorry for your loss. It is never easy to lose someone you love." She paused, her eyes distant. "Especially in such a violent, abrupt way."

Trip smiled slightly. Maybe Kamea was more like T'Pol than he'd originally thought. "Anyway, the doc recommended neuro-pressure, so T'Pol was teaching me how to do it."

He wished he hadn't said anything. She raised her eyebrows suggestively as she removed her hand from his shoulder. "T'Pol was instructing you in the ways of Vulcan neuro-pressure?" He gave her a hard look, which only made her grin. "It's a very intimate procedure. My parents used to use it as a means of foreplay."

That was more information than he needed to know. He twisted an eyebrow quizzically. "I thought Vulcans were private."

She looked confused. "They are."

"Then why did your parents tell you they did that?"

Her nostrils flared slightly, but other than that, her face was a mask. "They didn't."

"Then how – " He broke off as he realized what she meant. He felt a smile creep onto his face as he imagined a little Kamea walking in on her parents. "Must've been very traumatic for you."

She shuddered again. "Turned me off neuro-pressure for life," she said. She glanced around at the engines, then looked back at him. "Well, since I've already done what you intended to do, what do you suggest?"

Trip grinned. "Now that you mention it, I've been dying to make some modifications to the warp drive."

Her smile threatened to split her face in two. It was odd, seeing such a huge smile on a Vulcan, and Trip had to remind himself that she was only half-Vulcan. Still, Lorian hadn't even shown that much emotion, and he was half-Vulcan, half-human, too.

"Lead the way," she said with a wink. She probably already knew the way.

A/N: I also read insanely fast; however, I don't have a very good memory, but some people do. Some people are able to recall the most insignificant details about something that they've read (my sister), so I wasn't trying to make Kamea into some super woman or anything. She's human (well, half), and she's going to have some major problems in upcoming books.

Oh, and you will eventually find out what happened to Kamea's parents. I mention it in I think the next chapter, but I'll go more in depth in a later book, which has yet to be written (although I had it written, and then my computer died and I lost everything on my hard drive, so I'll need to re-write it).