A/N: Man, I just am not in the mood to write lately. I have all these ideas and no motivation. Also, it's hard to give the people what they want and still take this story in the direction I wanted it to go. So I have to do a little tweaking, and all of you may not agree with it or like it, but it's my story, so there you go.

Kash-nohv: mind-meld

Makua kane: father

Sa-mekh: father

Ko-fu: daughter

Kanapapiki: son of a bitch

I had intended for this chapter to be longer, with this whole big huge discussion between Trip, T'Pol, Malcolm, and Kamea, but I rather liked the idea of just keeping it with Malcolm and Kamea. I think it turned out nicely, if I do say so myself. And if you don't like it, well, tough noogies, because the relationship between Kamea and Malcolm is the reason I continue this series.

But I intend to torture you a while longer. At least until the next story. Ha ha ha ha.

As always, reviews are appreciated.

Chapter Eleven: Kash-nohv

The man standing before Malcolm could only be one person. Even if he hadn't seen pictures of him, he would have known who he was. The resemblance to Kamea was uncanny – the same facial structure, the same nose and cheekbones, and the same piercing eyes that were the same unnatural blue. Lorian stood stiff and alert, hands clasped behind his back in what had to be the traditional Vulcan stance, since every Vulcan Malcolm had ever met always seemed to stand like that. Except Kamea, who looked about as relaxed as a person could be in a situation like this. And while her face was full of life and expression, Lorian's face was stoic, but his eyes were searching – scrutinizing Malcolm the way a father would survey a man traipsing around his daughter's consciousness. And as Malcolm had never been traipsing around a girl's consciousness before, he wasn't sure what to expect.

Kamea, still seated on the imaginary floor in front of him, used her hand to gesture back and forth between the two men. "Malcolm, this is my father. Makua kane, this is Malcolm. Malcolm, Dad. Dad, Malcolm."

Lorian turned his stare on his daughter. "I have asked you repeatedly not to call me by that word."

She rolled her eyes, and Malcolm could feel the irritation she was feeling, almost as if it were his own. But there was a playful undercurrent in her tone when she said, "Why do you think I continue to do so?"

Oddly enough, Malcolm could also feel Lorian's frustration, which he found odd. Feeling Kamea's emotions, he could understand. Apparently, he was in her head. But how could he be feeling Lorian's emotions, when Lorian had been dead nearly a decade? Despite his frustration, it was with an unbelievable amount of love that Lorian said, "When I was your age, children respected their parents."

Kamea smiled with her eyes but not her lips. "When you were my age, sa-mekh, a lot of things were different."

"Indeed," Lorian said, and he brought his gaze back to Malcolm's. Malcolm flinched automatically. "For instance, women did not meld with men to whom they were not betrothed."

At this, Kamea stood, and any playfulness was gone from her voice. "You're the last person to lecture a girl on tradition." She stepped between Malcolm and her father. "He wanted to know what it was like to be me. Such an explanation defies conventional description. This was the only way."

"It was illogical."

Kamea cocked an eyebrow. "Based on whose idea of logic? Logic is a relative concept." She smirked and pointed a finger at her father. "I believe you taught me that."

"Kamea," Malcolm said, and Kamea turned to face him, "when you said your father was in your head, I didn't realize you meant literally."

She nodded. "I know. That's one of the reasons I pulled you in here. I didn't feel I could accurately explain it to you, and I need for you to believe me." Doubt washed through her so quickly that it almost knocked him over. "You do believe me, don't you?"

Malcolm pinched the bridge of his nose with his thumb and forefinger. "How exactly does something like this happen?"

It was Lorian that explained. "It is called the fal-tor-plak – the transferring of one person's katra to another."

Malcolm remembered Kamea having said that when they first arrived on Vulcan. At the time, he hadn't thought anything of it. "Soval said that it was impossible."

Lorian's eyes darkened, the way Kamea's often did when she was angry. "Soval says a great many things."

"Actually," said Kamea, "it was T'Pol who said that. So, apparently, you tape everything I say, but you don't remember anything anyone else says."

Malcolm chose to ignore that. "But how – "

Kamea looked up at him, her eyes pleading. "I told you that my father touched my face before he died – the same way I touched yours, just now. He melded with me, passed his soul into me."

Malcolm fought back the bile that was threatening to rise in his throat. The whole thing sounded sexual, and the fact that this was her father she was talking about just made everything worse. She must have sensed what he was thinking, because a dark flushed tinged the apples of her cheeks and the tips of her ears. She shook her head fiercely.

"Why?" Malcolm asked. The question was directed at Lorian, but he kept his eyes on Kamea.

She blinked slowly. "To torture me is my best guess."

Lorian cleared his throat in an irritated fashion, the way T'Pol always did. "I wanted to protect you. To remind you of who you are."

She rolled her eyes and shot him a thumbs up. "Great job, Dad."

"Please do not call me that."

"Or you'll what?" Kamea asked. "Ground me?"

"These dreams you've been having," Malcolm said loudly, trying to direct the conversation back on course, because he was still confused as hell, "aren't really dreams, then?"

Once again, it was Lorian that answered. "They are my memories. I pass them to Kamea while she sleeps and is most susceptible to them. I feel it is important that she have all the facts."

"About what?" Malcolm asked.

Lorian's eyebrows shot into his hair. He seemed surprised by the question. "About who she is. She is…different."

Malcolm bit his tongue and fought the urge to roll his eyes. "I hadn't noticed."

Kamea lifted the corners of her mouth in the barest hint of a smile. "A girl likes to be noticed, you know."

Lorian turned to face his daughter, and though it was not obvious in his expression or his stance, Malcolm could tell that the Vulcan was angry with her. "You have proven your point, ko-fu. You must stop this at once."

Confusion was a state of mind to which Malcolm was rapidly becoming accustomed. The more time he spent in Kamea's company, the more confused he seemed to get. This was no exception.

Kamea's eyes were hard as she stared at her father. If Malcolm hadn't already known that Kamea had issues with her father, this entire conversation would have clinched it. "I'm well aware of the risks."

Lorian pursed his lips. "Yet you do not seem to care."

"When did I ever care about the risks?"

"It is that attitude that constantly got you into trouble."

Kamea snorted and brought her hand up to her mouth, as though she were using a communicator. "Hello, kettle? This is Lorian. You're black."

Lorian sighed heavily. "I realize that I am not the best example of – "

"Dad," Kamea said, putting a great deal of emphasis on the word, since he obviously didn't like it when she called him that, "I know what I'm doing."

"But you don't," said Lorian. "You have never done this before. And the longer you hold the connection, the greater the chance that you will – "

Malcolm looked from father to daughter and back again. He had seen a lot of things in his four years on Enterprise, but this was definitely a first. He could honestly say that he had never been in anyone's mind before. It was disconcerting, to say the least. If he could feel what Kamea was feeling, then surely she could feel what he was feeling, and if that were true… Malcolm desperately attempted to stifle every impure thought he'd ever had about her, lest she – or, God forbid, her father – discover his true feelings towards her.

Kamea and her father stopped their argument and exchanged a look as Malcolm went rigid, his body so tense that his muscles were literally aching with the effort of maintaining that position.

"It's okay, Malcolm," Kamea said. She reached out to touch his arm but he snatched it away before her fingers could come into contact with his skin. With the three of them trapped in this bizarre convergent dream, the last thing he needed was for her to touch him. He'd lose it. But moving his arm away from her was obviously not the right move, because she looked hurt by the action, and she felt hurt, too, and then there was anger, which seemed to be coming from Lorian.

"I didn't mean…" Malcolm said, but he couldn't finish that sentence. He didn't know how.

He backed away from the both of them, his hands covering his face. This was all too much. There was no way that one person could handle all of this. It was impossible; it was insane. How did Kamea deal with this on a daily basis and not go completely crazy?

"It gets easier," Kamea said, and if the hurt hadn't been evident in her voice he still would have known. It was that palpable. "And it does make you crazy." She gave him a small smile, one that didn't quite touch her eyes. "Why do you think I act the way I do?"

He spread his fingers so as to peek through the gaps. "Because you're crazy?"

This time her smile was genuine. "Everyone's crazy, Malcolm. I'm just not as good at hiding it." She paused and took a step closer to him. "Now take your hands off your face."

He slowly lowered his hands, and in an instant, the white room dissolved into a beach scene. He looked around, unable to believe his eyes. They seemed to be standing on a deserted island, because there were no signs of civilization anywhere nearby. No houses, no people, nothing. Just the white sand, the palm trees, and the ocean – which was the same color blue as Kamea's eyes. It was so real that Malcolm could almost taste the salt in the air.

Lorian, he noticed, had also disappeared.

Malcolm raised his eyebrows. "Impressive," he said, turning to face Kamea. But she was no longer standing beside him. She was at the water's edge, already removing her shoes and rolling up her pant legs. "Kamea?" He moved hesitantly to stand by her side, attempting to avoid the water at all costs. "Where are we?"

Kamea looked at him as though the answer should have been obvious; and maybe, if Malcolm were better at sorting through the barrage of thoughts streaming through his brain, it would have been obvious. She gestured at the ocean with a sweep of her arm. "Home." She waded into the water. "You want to know how I deal? This is how I deal. I come home."

"Where's your father?" Though Malcolm was personally glad that Lorian was no longer there. It was starting to freak him out.

She dismissed the question with a wave of her hand. "I shoved him back into my subconscious. He was getting on my nerves."

"Besides," she continued as she walked further into the water, "he makes it a lot harder for me to focus." She waded until she was waist deep. The force of the waves kept knocking her backwards, but it didn't seem to bother her. She spread her arms and threw back her head, staring at the sky.

None of this made any sense to Malcolm. "How does this help you deal?"

She looked at him. Her face shone with a light he'd never seen on her before. The breeze kicked up and whipped her hair around her face like a thing possessed. She was…intoxicating. Radiant. Beautiful. Like nothing he'd ever seen. The way she was staring at him, the look in her eyes, he would have done anything that she asked of him in that moment. So when she held out her hand to him and beckoned him closer, he went without hesitation. It wasn't until the water was up to his knees that he realized what he was doing.

He froze. His heart stopped beating, and his entire body seized up with panic. He couldn't even breathe. He was afraid of water, what the hell was he doing here? And she knew he was afraid of water, why the hell had she asked him to join her?

Kamea walked towards him, unaffected by the motion of the water. She reached up and gently placed her hands on the back of his neck, twining her fingers in the hairs at the nape. "Breathe, Malcolm. You need to breathe."

He stared at her with wide eyes. She was saying something. What was she saying? He had no idea. He was in the process of going absolutely crazy.

She quirked an eyebrow at him. "You do remember how to breathe, right?"

He took a deep breath and shakily let it out. He completely forgot about the water, concentrating instead on the fact that Kamea's hands were on his neck, that her face was inches from his. Even though he couldn't see her, he could feel her, like she was a part of him. He could feel her breath, warm on his face. He could practically feel her heartbeat.

This was a bad idea. This was a very bad idea. But there was no force on Earth strong enough to drag him away from her.

"Just focus on the sound of the water," she said, applying the barest amount of pressure to the nape of his neck. "Don't pay attention to anything else – just the water and the wind." She kept one hand on the back of his neck but moved the other to the junction of his neck and his shoulder blades, applying gentle pressure there as well. "You've been on a starship for months. It's stuffy, confined. It's a tin can with an engine. I don't know why more of you guys aren't claustrophobic."

He wanted to laugh, but his body wouldn't let him. He was still practically frozen in place. Instead, he took another shaky breath.

Kamea took a deep breath and slowly exhaled, lightly blowing on the shell of his ear as she did so. He shivered in spite of himself. Damn that woman. "Smell the air, feel the sun and the water… I know you don't like water but bear with me."

Malcolm had to admit, he was feeling more relaxed, even with Kamea inches from his body. How that was possible, he would never know.

"Breathe in, breathe out." He did as instructed, and Kamea continued. "When I was a kid, I couldn't get to sleep unless I could hear the ocean. It's one of the reasons I hated MIT. Too far away from the water. I had to have one of those white noise machines – drove my roommates nuts. Of course, none of them really liked me anyway."

Malcolm tried to imagine what it must have been like for Kamea while she was growing up and couldn't even begin to picture it. He was teased mercilessly as a child because he refused to go swimming with all the other kids. To be different in the way that Kamea was different – the only one of her kind anywhere in the entire universe – must have made for a very lonely childhood. How she had grown into such a sociable, well-adjusted, amazing, incredible, beautiful woman was nothing short of remarkable.

"Their loss," he said.

There was laughter in her voice when she responded. "Flattery will get you nowhere, Lieutenant."

Malcolm continued to take deep breaths, concentrating on the sound of the waves and the rustle of the wind, the warmth of the sun and the coolness of the water, in which he was now waist deep. He kept his eyes closed; it helped him to concentrate. "You really grew up here?"

"Not here," Kamea said, and she applied some more pressure with her fingertips. "This isn't real. But it's my memory of the cove where I did grow up. It's about as secluded as you can possibly get. My dad wasn't big on having neighbors, you know." She sighed. "We had a house at the back of the cove, cliffs on three sides, palm trees in the backyard. My bedroom windows looked out on the water. Walk out the front door and you were right on the beach. Sit on the roof and you could see every star in the sky."

"Do you miss it?"

He could feel the sadness in her voice even though it wasn't evident in her tone. "Every day."

The hand on the back of his neck moved to his other shoulder, while the hand already on his shoulder moved to his chest, just above his heart, which unfortunately began to beat faster. He had to ask. "What are you doing?"

He felt her shrug. "Neuro-pressure."

His eyes flew open, but her face was blurry. She couldn't come into focus, she was so close to him, staring up at him, smiling that smile that drove him crazy. This was neuro-pressure? This was what Commander Tucker and T'Pol had been doing, locked in T'Pol's quarters every night? Now he could see why the commander got so defensive when Malcolm made comments about it.

He finally found his voice. "I thought you hated neuro-pressure."

"I never said I hated it," she said matter-of-factly. "I just don't want it done to me. There's a difference."

A fairly powerful wave pushed them backwards, nearly knocking them over. Malcolm's hands automatically came around her waist to steady her, but it didn't do any good. She lost her balance and toppled, dragging him down with her. As always seemed to happen with the two of them, she ended up on her back and he landed on top of her. She was pressed up against him, and he thanked God for the cold water, because it would have been extremely embarrassing for a certain part of his anatomy to reveal what he was really feeling – but she had to know he was feeling it, because he could feel her arousal as easily as he could feel his own. Hell, she was so turned on he could practically taste it. She wanted him as badly as he wanted her, and that changed everything.

If he didn't kiss her soon, he was going to explode.

Unfortunately – or fortunately, depending on who was asked – he didn't get the opportunity. She gently pushed him off of her and slid out from underneath him, scrambling up the shore in a warped kind of crab walk until she was completely out of the water. He remained where he was, still using his arms to support his weight, though they were straining with the effort. But he didn't dare move. He didn't go after her, because this could fast turn into something they would both regret.

Although, would it even be real? After all, they weren't really on a beach, they were in Kamea's mind. So if anything happened between them, would it really be happening?

"See?" she said, breathless. "I told you it gets easier."

"Kamea," he said, allowing his voice to trail off. He wasn't sure how to continue that sentence, but he knew that they had to talk about this. They just couldn't let something like this go, not with the situation they were facing. He could barely control himself on Enterprise, when there were other people around and when he hadn't been aware of her feelings. How the hell was he going to be able to hold himself back when they were alone in T'Les's house and he knew she felt the same?

He felt rather than saw her tense. "Do you feel that?" she asked.

He felt something, that was for certain, but he was so inexperienced with this entire concept that he never would have been able to identify what exactly he was feeling.

"Kanapapiki," Kamea said, and the beach dissolved.

Malcolm felt like he was being ripped from his body, when in reality he was being returned to it. He felt himself get thrown backwards, and when he opened his eyes he found that he was once again on the floor of T'Les's main sitting room, only he was on his back and several feet away from his previous position. Kamea lay a few feet in front of him, rubbing her head gingerly from where she'd obviously hit it on a table.

For a moment, they lay in silence, staring at each other. Malcolm was positive he could still feel her in his brain.

"Kamea," he said, but he again got no further than that.

She shook her head and smacked herself hard in the temple. "That re-entry's a bitch."