A/N: Here it is -- the last chapter. I hope you enjoyed it. I hope even more you leave a comment if you did! Thanks!

CHAPTER 13

The door in front of Hoshi and Jon began moving. Unlike the last door, which had opened toward them, this one moved away, retreating into the archway.

Its progress was agonizingly slow.

"Don't let go yet!" Hoshi said, maintaining pressure on the engravings she had pushed down. "It might move back into place."

Jon didn't say anything. He kept pressing on his set of engraved blocks. He watched anxiously as the slab moved inward. When it finally ground to a halt, he looked to Hoshi for permission to let up.

She cautiously removed her hands at her panel, and he did the same at his. The door stayed where it was.

"It didn't open all the way," Hoshi said in disappointment. "It's still blocking the way out."

They walked over to the recessed opening. Jon studied the stone door and put his hands against it and pushed. Hoshi joined him, putting both her hands against the door and pushing as well.

"I can feel it moving but it's not balanced like the last one," Jon said.

Knowing she was the stronger of the two, being in his body, Hoshi pushed harder, straining every muscle. The door moved a bit more. Hoshi turned around, putting her back against the door and pushing as hard as she could. Next to her, Jon did the same.

The increased pressure against the door succeeded in moving it farther until at last it popped out the other side, letting in a gust of fresh air.

With a smile of triumph, Hoshi looked at Jon. Together they stepped through the opening.

And the surroundings shifted.

She wasn't standing. She was lying on the floor. She turned her head to the side and found green eyes staring back at her.

With a start she realized she was looking at Jon -- really looking at him. It was Jon in his body looking back at her, a silly grin on his face.

She sat up, her head spinning, and held her hands in front of her face. They were her hands. The nails were a little chipped, she noticed, arching an eyebrow as she realized she'd forgotten to tell Jon to take care of them.

But that thought was gone in a flash as she started to laugh. She was back where she belonged! That's all that mattered.

Strong hands grabbed her and pulled her into a hug.

"Hoshi?" she heard Malcolm's breathless voice in her ear. "Are you OK?"

"Yes," she said, then impishly added, "How do you know you're not hugging the captain?"

She felt him freeze for a moment, then he hugged her harder. "Because if you were the captain, you would have decked me."

Malcolm helped her to her feet. Next to her, Trip was helping the captain up.

"We're back in our own bodies," Jon said. "But don't you two think you ought to get out from under the arch, just in case?"

"Damn! Didn't think of that, Cap'n," Trip said as he hurriedly helped Jon away from the arch. "I was just so happy that you two came around. Ya had us kind of worried there for a while."

Malcolm assisted Hoshi in moving a safe distance from the archway, and Phlox began running the med scanner over Hoshi and Jon. T'Pol, too, was busy, taking readings on a fast-fading power surge.

"You appear to have been switched back," the doctor said. "How do you feel?"

"Better now that I'm back in my own body," Jon said.

"But a little tired and sore," Hoshi said. "I can't believe we moved that last stone door by ourselves."

"What are you talkin' about, Hoshi?" Trip asked, his brows drawn together. "You didn't go anywhere. We watched you the whole time."

"We were in some sort of stone maze," Jon told Trip.

Phlox made his characteristic "hmm" and said, "You may have thought you were somewhere else, but you were lying here the entire time after you collapsed. At least, your bodies were."

Jon frowned. "You mean that whole test was a figment of our imaginations?"

Phlox shrugged. "To you it was real, even though you weren't physically somewhere else. And you think it was a test?"

"It sure felt like it," Hoshi said, rubbing her elbow where Jon had scraped it as she pulled him out of the pit. She remembered he'd hooked an elbow over the lip of the hole to help pull himself up. But there was no tear in the uniform and although she felt the familiar burning sensation of a scrape, there was no outward indication that her elbow had been injured.

She darted a glance at the knees of Jon's uniform. There was no rip in the fabric where it had torn during her desperate attempt to get Jon out of the hole.

"If we didn't really do anything, why do I ache?" she asked.

"We still don't fully understand the brain," Phlox answered. "Whatever happened, it was very real to you. You believed it to have occurred. I expect it's a residual effect and will go away soon."

"You said it was a test?" T'Pol asked.

"I don't know what else it could be," Jon said. "First Hoshi had to pull me out of a hole, then I had to squeeze through this little opening--"

He broke off at T'Pol and Phlox's puzzled looks. "We weren't switched back yet," he explained with a laugh. "Come on," he said. "Let's get out of here."

The first thing Hoshi wanted when they returned to Enterprise was a long, hot shower. Jon was of the same mind, and he gave her permission to get cleaned up before the entire landing party reconvened in his ready room.

Malcolm walked with her to her cabin, taking her hand as soon as they rounded a bend in the corridor and left the others behind.

She sighed and squeezed his hand. "I've missed this," she said.

"I know."

She smacked at him playfully as he grinned and easily dodged the light blow.

She let him key in her access code at her door. She wasn't surprised when he followed her into the cabin.

"Much as I'd like to do something else right now," she said, pausing to give him a heated look, "we've only got enough time for me to get cleaned up and get to the meeting."

"I know."

"Is that all you can say? 'I know?'"

"At least now that I'm certain about things, yes, I believe 'I know' is the only thing I can say right now."

Hoshi considered him. "You know, after we get done with this meeting..." She let her words trail off, giving him a sultry look.

"I know," he said for a third time, giving her a decidedly heated look of his own.

She laughed and headed for the bathroom and a shower. The best part was putting on a fresh uniform, knowing that Jon hadn't been wearing it.

Malcolm was waiting for her when she was finished showering, and escorted her to the captain's ready room.

"Do you think we'll ever know what happened?" Malcolm asked her as they boarded the turbolift for the bridge.

"I don't know," she said, then caught his smirk. She rolled her eyes. "If I ever crack that language, we might. But for all I know, the words above the archway say, 'This way to exit.'"

They were laughing as the turbolift door opened. Stepping out, they made their way to the ready room, but not before Travis caught Hoshi's eye and gave her a thumbs-up and a big smile. To Hoshi, it seemed like everyone was smiling today. It was good to be back where she belonged -- in more ways than one.

She stopped to check over the shoulder of the crewman on duty at the communications console.

"Did that program I left running finish?" she asked him.

"About an hour ago," he said, handing her a padd. "I downloaded it for you."

She took the padd and caught up with Malcolm who was waiting outside the ready room door. At his inquiring glance she said, "I tried another decryption program on the language before we left to go down to the planet. Should be interesting to see what it came up with, if anything."

Trip and T'Pol along with Doctor Phlox were already in the ready room. Jon was seated at his desk.

"First thing I want to do," Jon said, "is leave some kind of warning for others who might visit here. Then we need to contact Shran, who I'm sure is chomping at the bit to know what happened."

Jon and T'Pol began outlining specifics for placing a warning buoy or some kind of marker at the archway. By the time Trip got involved in the discussion and was recommending various solutions, Hoshi's curiosity got the better of her. She quietly turned on the padd and began looking at the results.

"Or we could just blast the place to smithereens," Trip was saying with a crooked grin at Malcolm. "That way, nobody else would have to--"

"I don't believe it!"

Hoshi's outburst brought the discussion to an abrupt halt as the others looked at her.

"Hoshi?" Jon asked curiously.

"I'm sorry, sir. It's just that, after all we went through..." She continued scrolling down the padd, punching in a few commands, and swearing under her breath in several languages.

"Hoshi?" Jon asked again, demanding attention. "Have you figured it out?"

"Yes, sir. You're not going to believe this," she said, looking up at him and still experiencing the immense relief that she had felt when they'd first been switched back into their proper bodies and realized it was his eyes staring back at her.

"Go on."

"It wasn't a test. It was a learning experience and a lesson in ethics all at the same time!"

T'Pol gazed at her with interest. "Elaborate, please."

"The species that lived here had the ability to switch their consciousnesses with each other," Hoshi explained, looking back down at the data on the padd. "They did it as a matter of course. But once in another's body, they were expected to learn its limitations as well as its strengths. The maze we went through wasn't a test; it was a way to learn about those bodies."

"I suppose it would give the participants a greater appreciation of each other's abilities," Phlox said.

"Yes," Hoshi said. "That's it exactly."

"Talk about walkin' a mile in somebody else's shoes!" Trip put in.

"And the final portions of the maze were to show how people have to work together," Hoshi said, looking at Jon. "Neither one of us could have gotten out of there alone, but working together we were able to do it."

"So we weren't in any danger?" Jon asked.

"Apparently the only danger would have been if your physiology was significantly different from the creators of the apparatus that engendered the switch," Phlox said. "Even then, I think they would have built in safeguards to keep that from happening. They seem to be a considerate group if they were willing to switch bodies to learn about each other."

Both Jon and Hoshi stared at the doctor.

"That's a matter of opinion," Jon said. "I, for one, would have liked to have known in advance what was going to happen."

Phlox shrugged, his customary smile in place.

The meeting began to break up, but Hoshi remained behind, waving Malcolm to go on with the others.

"Yes, Hoshi?" Jon asked as the others filed out.

"I was wondering, sir, what you're going to tell Shran."

Jon smiled. "Much as I would like to let him figure it out on his own, that wouldn't be right, would it? As soon as I'm back on the bridge, you can put a call through to him for me."

"We could always tell him the people who have been switched just have to be back under the arch. We don't have to tell him about the rest, do we?" she asked, a new light shining in her eyes. "We could let him figure out the rest on his own. Maybe even tell him he has to switch with someone before it will switch everyone else back. It might teach him something about respect."

"This idea wouldn't have something to do with Shran's behavior toward me...ah, you...both of us?"

"Maybe, sir." She turned to leave but paused at the door. "But it would serve him right, don't you think?"

Jon laughed long and hard. When he finally pulled himself together, he said, "Maybe I should just let him talk to you."

"You never did figure out how to channel PMS to your advantage, did you?" she said. "Oh, that reminds me. About all that chocolate you ate..."

---the end---