January 21, 2317

Lieutenant T'Lassa sat on the floor of her office aboard the Hercules, propped against the wall, her legs crookedly folded beneath her, giving the appearance of having stayed sitting where she had fallen. She only became aware of his presence as his shadow blotted out a patch of light on the floor from her desk lamp. "Doctor, " Tim said softly. She looked up, but almost through him, as if he were invisible. Her face was blank. He crouched, crawled next to her, sitting gently beside her. "You said, before, that it was some kind of mating drive," he started bluntly, direct and open. He had very little finesse when it came to starting conversations. She looked away, lost.

"It's how Vulcans procreate, isn't it?" he asked, confident that he was correct. She barely nodded her head. "You're pregnant, aren't you?" he asked bluntly. She tensed beside him, almost visibly cringing as he said the words out loud. He had not anticipated his own reaction, the feeling of his heart breaking over her ongoing struggle. In the next breath, anger surged to block out the sadness, fury directed at beings evil enough to have hurt her so badly. "What are you going to do?" he asked softly.

"What do you mean?" she asked, troubled by the unsteady quality of her voice.

He stared without answering, unable to put such obvious and terrible choices into words. "What does logic demand?" he asked, appealing to her Vulcan-ness.

She inhaled sharply, answering him in a monotone. "To not give birth to the child of a man who--" Saying the word out loud made it seem too real. She closed her eyes, the images rushing back at her, blazing through her consciousness despite her fight to tamp them down. The butt of the disruptor across her face…her clothing being torn…the knife-like pain as he had torn her open….all the while delirious from the blood fever, unable to stop her body from responding to the assault as she would have to her husband, had they not been separated...and then the second soldier, when she was lucid….falling dead after she had shot him in the midst of him reopening her wounds with his vile attack...killing the other where he stood, not caring if she accidentally shot herself dead in the process….so long as it would stop...

He watched in silence, afraid he had pushed too hard, upsetting her, unaware of her raging thoughts. He knew not to touch her, because she was Vulcan, but also because she seemed poised to strike like a wounded animal. He could see her trembling as she rolled her hands into fists, and watched the tangible fight to calm herself.

"It should be easy to decide, then, if you use logic?" he asked calmly, finding it easier to focus on facts than emotions.

"I cannot deny my emotions, even though I suppress them," she said, her voice tenuously close to breaking.

His insides aching at watching her suffer so, he asked quietly, "What does your heart tell you?"

It was feigned intimacy, with this young man, because of the trauma they had shared. She knew this logically. But, the fact that he alone knew the whole truth and all of her trauma, made her innately trust him. She sensed the kindness in his demeanor, despite his overt discomfiture at interacting with her. She closed her eyelids, closing the window to her sadness.

He watched her fold her arms across her abdomen, cradling her stomach as if it were a full-grown baby. "To love my son." Her tone was even, but he heard the defensiveness as she continued, "None of this is any fault of his. He is innocent. And now, I am the only one who can protect him."

She prepared herself for his argument, curious instead as he asked, "How do you know? So early?"

"I am Vulcan, Ensign. That is how," she explained.

"A Vulcan with a human heart," he whispered.

She lost her breath for a second, absorbing his words. How had this human who barely knew her literally put all of her experience into a six word sentence? A sentence that made more sense about who she was than anything she had ever even thought before. She continued to stare, wide-eyed, at this unassuming man.

"If none of what happened to us had occurred...what would be happening to you right now?" he asked.

"I would have gone back to Vulcan. Married Stolon. Most likely become pregnant with his child. Stayed on Vulcan."

"A man you had only met once. When you were seven," he repeated.

"It's the oldest of traditional Vulcan customs," she proclaimed.

He nodded, showing his understanding. "But instead you are here. Alone and pregnant."

"My grandmother asked me to come home. So she could help me," she said in a withered voice.

"And give up your Starfleet career? Everything you've worked for?" he asked in disbelief.

"I can still practice medicine on Vulcan," she argued.

"There's a reason you chose to join Starfleet to practice medicine, isn't there?" he quizzed.

"My grandmother's mother was in Starfleet. My family believed it to be a noble pursuit," she expounded.

"And you just give it up? You are too good at what you do," he insisted.

"I cannot have a child, alone...and stay enlisted. It isn't possible. That's the reason T'Mir's mother left Starfleet. To have her," she argued.

"I have a solution, Doctor," he said. "Marry me instead."

She was shocked, he knew, but she reigned it in quickly. "That is illogical."

"Is it? You were willing to give up everything to go home and marry someone you didn't even know. Instead, you can marry someone...who knows you….who admires you…." He blushed scarlet red, looking at the floor as he spoke. "And you can stay in Starfleet." There had been no family or civilians on Starships at this time, but Starfleet had taken to posting married couples together whenever they could.

"This is your whole life. You should not give up your future...simply to commit an act of kindness," she told him.

"I'm not giving up anything." He looked at her, deeply into her ice blue eyes. He swallowed hard, searching for the right thing to say. "You saved my life...during the worst thing that ever happened to you."

"I'm a doctor." She said nothing else, letting that answer everything.

"You thought I was unconscious the whole time. But some part of me absorbed what was going on. I've had nightmares ever since…full of the sounds of what those animals did to you. I can't imagine how awful it's been, for you, dealing with that all by yourself. I should have been able to stop them." His voice broke, and he covered his eyes with his hand.

"You tried. You were almost killed for it," she whispered.

He sucked in his breath, puffing out his chest in resolution. "I couldn't help you then. But I can help you now. Please, T'Lassa. Think about it." He leaned forward, and turned to face her. "You can have as little or as much to do with me as you choose. I'll help you anyway I can. Help you raise him. Let you raise him alone. They'll station us together. So you have help, if you want or need it."

Bewildered, she asked, "Why would you pledge so much, for someone you hardly know?"

"I'm….not very sociable. I'm sure you noticed," he said hesitantly, shifting awkwardly as he spoke. "I ruled that stuff out for myself a long time ago. For a lot of reasons." His cheeks reddened, so hot in his embarrassment she could feel the heat radiating towards her. "But now...I don't know, it sort of makes sense."

"It does not. It is highly illogical," she asserted.

"You need something. Something I can give you, like no one else could. Any other man would worry about the things you said. That doesn't apply to me. It never did. It may be a piece of my life I'm offering to you. But I have it to give, because of what you did for me," he countered.

His motivation may not have made sense, but his argument was logical nonetheless. Kindness and compassion were the best of human virtues. T'Mir had taught her such, her own life full of perfect examples. Something T'Mir's mother had taught her to cherish, if she was lucky enough to find it. The selflessness she was seeing now, she understood, was proof of this. She felt, if T'Mir were here, she would tell her granddaughter to marry him. She had lost Stolon, but had found someone else.

"Yes."

"Yes what?" he asked dumbly.

"Yes, I will marry you. But I can't call my future husband 'Ensign Horatio'," she replied, a tender half-smile pulling at the corners of her mouth.

He sprung out in front of her. "You will?" he asked excitedly.

"That is what I said," she said dryly.

"Timothy. My name is Timothy. My family calls me Tim."

"Tim," she repeated, warmth unmistakably coating her words. Her eyes were open, but she leaned forward and kissed his lips softly. He stood still, thunderstruck. "We begin here. It will become...what it will."

"That was my first kiss," he whispered, so bright red he looked sunburned.

"How old are you?" she asked.

"Twenty-one," he said, cringing as the words came out.

"I am 24. And that was mine as well," she said, in an attempt to put him at ease. He smiled nervously, kissing her cheek again before he stood. He pulled her up by her hand.

"Let's go tell Captain DeSalle."

October 13, 2318

"T'Lassa!" he called, striding purposely into their shared quarters at Starbase 11. He looked around the small room, seeing she had cleaned. Everything was pristine and straightened. He knew she was there, after he had checked with the station computer. In the sleeping quarters, he thought. In his hand, he still clutched the padd that had been delivered to him at his post in the propulsion lab.

He saw her as he entered, sitting on the edge of the bed, bent over at her waist as if she were in pain. "What is this?" he asked, thrusting the padd out in front of him toward her. She ignored him completely. He took another step toward her, tossing the padd on the bed next to her. "Answer me," he demanded.

She straightened slightly, unfolding her arms, still silent.

"T'Lassa!" he called again, grasping her shoulders in exasperation. Something clattered to the floor as he shook her. Looking down, he saw the green plastic rattle lying on the carpet. His irritation melted, sadness filling his insides like flooding rain. He bent, reaching for it, afraid to touch it. The gentle, familiar tinkling sound it made as he lifted it ground his heart like sand, the deep, empty hole inside him growing.

"Where was this?" he asked, his voice hoarse.

"Under the bed," she said meekly, still looking away. "I remember not being able to find it...while we were...packing those things...for storage…." He watched the single tear pool in the corner of her eye.

He sat next to her, his face already drenched with tears. He clutched at his chest, as if he could hold his broken heart together with his hand. Two months. Tomorrow would be two months since T'Lassa's son... our son, he angrily corrected himself, had died. He had not been of his blood, but he loved him no less than any father loved his baby son. T'Mir had told him so in her understanding, the very first time he had met her.

She leaned against him, grabbed his hand so tightly he feared she might break his fingers. He wept openly, all his wounds still raw. Every day contained some of this…grieving for a child. By far, it was the longest process, never completely done. They sat that way for close to an hour. He had almost forgotten what had brought him here to her, until he saw the padd lying next to them.

He picked it up, shaking it, as if he could shake the words out onto her lap so she could see them. He tapped her leg with it, gently. "Why are you doing this?"

"It is the right thing to do." She sounded drugged, dull.

"Is it what you want?" he asked, afraid of her answer.

"What I want is irrelevant. Your offer was based on assumptions, situations….that don't exist anymore," she said flatly. "It was the next logical step."

"What you want is not irrelevant. Not to me," he said forcefully. She tried to pull her hand back, but he grabbed it and held it firmly. "I don't remember there being any caveats when I said my vows."

"You deserve your life back," she argued.

My life, he thought sadly. His life had become being a father to his son, being a friend and confidant to the woman who was his wife, though they lived only as roommates. Being the sole witness to her suffering, he had been her support for nights when she could not sleep. Vulcans never needed counseling the way humans did, since suppression of all emotion worked to heal her. He spoke to the human half of her, calming her when she trembled. They could talk for hours about anything. That was the life he wanted back, aching at the knowledge that it was forever gone.

"Las," he whispered, using his nickname for her. "Don't do this."

"Tim…" she felt her throat burn, almost choking on the words. "You have time….to—"

"If you want me to go, I'll go. Can you tell me that, honestly? That you'd rather I left? Just sign the padd….walk away….never see you again?" He wept again, tears streaming unabashedly down his face.

Her jaw hardened like stone, her bottom lip trembling, she sat still. "Is it what you want?" he asked again, emphasizing each word.

"No," she whispered. "But I have no right to ask for any more."

"You're my wife. It's not asking. It's what I've already given. What I will always give, if you'll let me." He shook his head, frustrated that he was so inadequate with his words. "You don't understand, do you?" he asked. She met his eyes, the questions there behind her sorrow. "I never thought I was capable of this. But it's…" He sighed, muddling his words again. "I love you," he blurted.

Her expression changed, confusion letting way to an almost crazed desperation. "Tim…."

"It doesn't matter to me, if you don't have the same feelings. It's enough, just that you enjoy my company. That we can talk. Be together. Be friends. But I won't ask you to stay here, if you want something….or someone else," he told her sadly.

"That is not true. It never could be," she whispered.

"I understand, either way. I promise," he whispered.

Her eyes darted back and forth, settling on his face. "Will you meld with me?" she asked.

She saw the fear, abject terror on his face. "It is something Vulcans share...with those who are close family. Husbands and wives...and their children." He was absolutely terrified, but still nodded yes to her.

"My mind to your mind," she started to intone, touching his face. "My thoughts to your thoughts. Our minds are merging. Our minds are one."

When she pulled her hand away, almost 15 minutes later, both of their faces were wet. The grief of their shared loss had flowed between them, leveling out like osmotic pressure. All of her life, her hopes and dreams, had flowed into him, just as he had done the same. The joy of Stelk's birth, his life, every moment they had shared together and apart. He lived every moment of her ordeal in the cave, and she knew every pain of his social phobia, his self-isolation.

He took her in his arms, held her against his chest, savoring the scent of her hair. It was the first time he had ever even done more than graze her skin with his hand. He lay down, pulling her with him. Time disappeared, the minutes turning to hours. He held her, sure she was comforted in his embrace. She eventually slept.

Somewhere in the middle of the night, he woke briefly, uncomfortable, realizing he was still in his uniform. They had always slept separately, a convenience of their arrangement. The thought of going back to his bed to sleep filled him with dismay. He stood, removing all but his shorts, and climbed back in next to her. She stirred, startling awake to find him with her in her bed. "Let me be your husband. After all this time...I…"

She kissed him, deeply and firmly, pulling his body close to her in the darkness. They no longer spoke. She removed her clothing and pressed herself against him. The darkness offered sanctuary, from his awkward inexperience and her hesitant fear. It was fumbling with uncertainty. But above his unease, he was infinitely gentle. The feel of his penetration, the warm pressure, this time was a comfort, a way of connecting to him, not reminiscent at all of the pain she had experienced before when she had been assaulted. The relief of knowing this, that he had erased her past suffering, was satisfaction enough from the act, as she felt him finish.

"I'm sorry," he whispered against her hair. She felt the warmth from his embarrassment, his flushed cheeks.

"Ssh," she whispered, her fingers against his lips. "My husband." They fell asleep, intertwined.

In the early morning half light simulated by the station's chronometer, she initiated the link again with their minds. He initiated the physical act, more confident now, knowing how she felt. Access to her thoughts made his efforts to please her more successful, his heart relaxing as she arched against him with the sensation. When she caught her breath, she whispered against his ear, "I do love you, Tim."

"I know," he whispered, running the back of his finger against her cheek. "We stay married." He ran his fingers over her lips. "There's no reason why we can't have a baby, the two of us, is there?"

She squeezed him, holding him tightly. He felt her shake her head. After a few moments, she pulled her head back. "I've never told anyone this, for multiple reasons, but my mother was three quarters human, not just half. My grandmother was half human. There truly is no reason."

May 31, 2386

Coming awake slowly from her dream about her husband, as she lay next to Aaron was disorienting. Vulcans didn't dream the way humans did, although her human side somehow allowed it to occur. Meditation tamed her dreams, so they were far less intense than they otherwise would be. She watched Aaron sleeping, marveling at how similar to Tim he was when he was asleep, surprised that she had never noticed before. Being part Vulcan, she could make an emotionless comparison between the two men without complications. Their sleeping repose was their only similarity. The fog from the dream brought to mind the differences in the ways they had been intimate with her.

Tim, so young and inexperienced, had preferred total darkness, insecure about his body and his movements. In a way humans called sweet, he had always done his best to please her, in bed and out of it. Knowing firsthand, both with his memory and her impressions left on his mind after their first meld, how her initiation to this had been brutalization at the hands of two strangers, had created an exquisite gentleness in him. Whenever he touched her, the gentleness was incorporated into his very being as he learned to be with her. That in itself made her feel extraordinarily loved, and frequently was intoxicating enough to satisfy her without a climax, holding him against her as his emotions frequently overwhelmed him.

Being Vulcan, she had remained youthful, and had watched him mature, lines on his face and gray in his hair, the impermanence of the situation poignant, as their entire marriage had been spent trying to conceive another child. He had been in his late seventies when T'Mira had been born. The mental bond between them sustained them.

Aaron, she knew, was so different. Before she had ever even touched him, she had fallen in love with him. He was solitary, but not awkward. He was a leader, with a commanding presence when he entered a room. He thought quickly, focused intently. He was quiet, but in a conversation he was sharp and intelligent, impressively well educated about so many things, even things outside of the realm of engineering. He never relaxed, always wound like a coil ready to strike. The bond formed during her blood fever was deeper, extremely profound, exemplified by the way they could communicate like Betazoids even at great distances. Although Aaron himself was relatively as inexperienced as she, having been intimate only ever with his wife, he was not hesitant. He was magnificently skilled at pleasing her, bringing her to the pinnacle effortlessly. His intensity permeated all aspects of his life, including lovemaking.

Tim, her husband, was a scientist. He experimented when he needed information. Sometimes he was successful. Other times he learned, then tried something different. She was never bothered by the fact that he did so with her, content in knowing he loved her. She was closer to him than any other being in her life. He knew everything, provided comfort in that way over the many years they were together.

Aaron was an engineer. He studied systems and how they worked. He utilized their link to his advantage--using her slightest nuance as cues, to achieve maximum results. Rough was a word she knew could be applied, but a word she never associated with him, reserving true roughness for the violence that had been done to her when she was young. Knowing this, she knew Aaron wasn't necessarily gentle either. He was precise, directed, not needing to be gentle when he knew exactly what to do. Their encounters challenged her control, making it difficult to remain quiet as their mutual pleasure and emotion amplified. Being with him like that was as intoxicating a thing as anything she permitted herself to indulge in.

She knew Aaron loved her, felt it whenever she focused and sensed him. That in itself was comforting. But she also knew how long, and desperately she had loved him before he had ever had any idea, and it was only in the throes of her blood fever that he had known for sure. The flame burned more intensely, but logically, she knew, those flames tended to burn out more quickly. In a place that she shielded from him, she knew she feared losing him, irrationally. The slow burning embers of her feelings for Tim had sustained them more than half of her lifetime. And still, his death had left her bereft in a way that, although he equated his situation with her, she knew Aaron could not possibly understand. Time. It wove the strands of their lives more tightly. It seemed counterintuitive, but she knew it was true.

Even the brief thought of what would happen to her, if he….Her mind wouldn't focus on it, as she felt the darkest abyss looming, waiting to pull her in. She couldn't process it. Losing him...she would never recover from it. The thought both frightened and comforted her. There was no world she could live in, where he had existed, and loved her, and then had gone...

She closed her eyes, shaking off the dread, clearing the strange essay her brain had been composing. They were different, but she loved them both, for who she was when she was with each of them, who they were, who they were together. It was as she had told him, as he worried about his feelings for his wife.

She noticed a vague sense of what he was dreaming. She felt a warm surge of emotion she knew to be tenderness infusing her insides. He was peaceful and content. Happy, T'Mir would have said, for simplicity's sake. It comforted her to know he felt like that, heartened that it was their relationship that brought him so much joy, especially after so much suffering. She rested her head against his shoulder, breathing in the scent of him...his faded cologne, his shampoo and soap, and the light musk of his past exertions before they had slept.

Lazily, his eyes fluttered open at the touch. That instant, awake, yet not focused, he was at his most endearing. Beautiful in a way only a lover could know. He turned on his side, smiling radiantly, encircling her waist with a strong arm. Sleep, T'hy'la, she heard him whisper in her thoughts.

Emotions roiled to the surface, safe in their bond. She kissed his unshaven cheek, his neck, the lobe of his ear. She heard his heart begin to pound, feeling him, aroused, against her thigh.

Again? he asked, laughing inside her mind.

You are irresistible, remember? she teased, although she could not disguise the raw need beneath.

How can I refuse that? he responded playfully, at the same time sensing her need and never willing to deny her. He was positively giddy when he felt what he had now come to anticipate--the surge of relief as he touched her, the flood of calm as they fused.

He pleasantly exhausted her, and himself. Her hair entangled their sculpted form of meshed arms and legs, encasing them as if in a cocoon. They fell asleep.

}LS{

It was early morning, the tail end of Gamma Shift, when B'Elanna had woken Tom up in the middle of the night. After a brief argument concerning the fact that false labor was rare in the case of a mother who had already given birth once before, she had still thought they should go to the Infirmary, just in case.

Tom now stood beside her, yawning, as the Gamma shift doctor, Dr. Reth, examined his wife. "False alarm, Doc?" Tom said sleepily.

"According to T'Lassa's notes from your last exam, you could go at any time," Dr. Reth, a Bajoran woman, explained.

"Any time?" he almost shouted. "You didn't tell me that, Honey," he explained, suddenly wide awake.

B'Elanna rolled her eyes. "Tom, Miral was born at 35 weeks, full term. The Doctor explained a long time ago that my mixed ancestry shortened the gestation for Klingons. I am 32 weeks. It's not unfeasible."

Dr. Reth smiled. "It's all those redundant systems, with those Klingon genes. All of the developmental changes have occurred already. Now, he's just growing. But," she stressed, "you aren't in labor yet. You had pre-labor contractions before, correct?" she asked.

"Oh, ho, yes, she did," Tom snickered. "For two weeks straight."

"I don't remember them feeling the way I felt when I woke up," B'Elanna explained.

"Everything is usually worse with the second one, because your body remembers. Like it already practiced," Dr. Reth smiled. "Nothing to be concerned about."

"Except lack of sleep," Tom complained. Clarifying, he added quickly, "Her, not me. She's been working a crazy schedule, which she hasn't scaled down at all, even considering she can apparently give birth at any time."

Tom was thankful the doctor was standing between B'Elanna and him, as she looked angry enough to rip his head off. "I am not an invalid, just because I'm pregnant," she stressed, reminding him of similar arguments in the past when she had been pregnant with Miral.

"No, Commander, you're not," Dr. Reth confirmed. "But you're increasingly uncomfortable, and it makes certain parts of doing your job more difficult. Those things, you should cut back on or delegate. It's a fair compromise, don't you think?"

Feeling ganged up on, but relenting, mostly because she knew her husband was genuinely worried. "Fine, you both win," she grumbled.

"So you can delegate the reactor maintenance overhaul, right, Honey?" Tom asked, though to B'Elanna it almost felt like an order.

Still grumbling, B'Elanna answered him, "Yes, I can ask Cho to take the lead." He was her assistant chief.

It was another moment, so innocuously seeming, that Tom would look back to, and wish he could have changed.