A/N: Please take this warning seriously. I hate rapists with an extreme passion. Tolaris dies in this chapter. It is an extremely gruesome and bloody death even though it takes place fully within the mental landscape of the mental connection he established.

Trip knew that it wasn't his body that was in pain. Suddenly the pain eased to manageable proportions. When the pain receded Trip saw that the area around him was flickering between T'Pol's meditation white space (a place that he had only seen twice) and the red sands of Vulcan. In front of him was T'Pol and Tolaris and he realized that they were battling over the environment. Whoever could dictate the landscape would dictate the tide of the battle. And he knew that it would be a battle. T'Pol would not submit to this jackass for anything.

But neither was gaining the upper hand. T'Pol was distracted by the sensations of a world she hadn't seen in years. But Tolaris couldn't overcome T'Pol's years of discipline. But there was one place where he and T'Pol could turn the tables on Tolaris.

Tolaris may have distracted T'Pol with images of Vulcan but she was as comfortable meditating in the Florida Keys as she was in her white space. Tolaris on the other hand, was familiar with both the white space and the Vulcan desert. But the Atlantic Ocean should freak the hell out of him.

Trip reached out and took T'Pol's hand. A quick look and T'Pol threw her mental strength behind Trip. Together they easily overwhelmed Tolaris and took control of the mental landscape. The area stabilized into one of Trip's favorite places, his father's fishing boat at sea. "Ya know, ya'll shouldn'ta gone an done that," Trip drawled. As with every time they came here Trip was wearing one of his Hawaiian shirts and tan cargo shorts while T'Pol was dressed in a blue and red bikini.

"You cannot prevail against me Human!" Tolaris snarled. "And when you are dead she will be mine!"

"You are not worthy to clean my mate's maintenance shafts!" T'Pol snapped, recalling the worst and dirtiest job in the Enterprise's Engineering department.

Trip just laughed, "Boy, you really picked the wrong people to try this with. My wife ain't no shrinking violet you can sweep off her feet. And me, well you really picked the wrong way to fight me." Trip knew that as a Human he had been using his imagination to build fantasy worlds for far more years than either Vulcan.

The only warning Tolaris had was a low rumble. Then the boat was engulfed in a hurricane. Wave after wave crashed over the sides, drenching the shocked Vulcan but missing the couple standing hand in hand on the deck. Trip easily rode the rocking of the boat, having gotten his sea legs before he could walk. T'Pol drew on his skill through their bond. Tolaris tried to reject the imagery but as it was actually one of Trip's memories it was too real for him to overcome. He had spent so long seeking out sensation that he could no longer reject it.

That was when Trip really struck. No one was going to hurt his wife if he could help it. Drawing upon his well developed memory of old horror movies, Trip brought monsters on board. He sent drowned sailors crawling up the sides and a Kraken's tentacles as well. The sailors grabbed Tolaris' ankles with bloated pale blue hands and the Kraken grabbed him by the throat. They dragged him over the side and the gale subsided, turning the waters crystal clear once more. Trip leaned on the railing and looked down at Tolaris hundreds of fathoms below the boat. T'Pol stood behind him with a hand on his shoulder.

Tolaris was struggling. The dead sailors were dragging him down and the seaweed that was a part of them was attaching itself to him as well. He couldn't break free. The Kraken was trying to pull off his head but wasn't quite managing more than a tug of war with the sailors. While the two groups were fighting over their prize, sea creatures were converging on the struggling Vulcan.

T'Pol could feel Tolaris' fear but made no move to stop her mate. She was interested in finding out what form of execution Trip had chosen. Simply frightening the man to death was not enough as far as she was concerned. Tolaris had tried to break her marriage bond and had to pay for that with his life.

A moray eel was the first to strike, tearing off a piece of Tolaris' arm. A manta ray sliced a piece of meat off of his leg with its stinger. A sand shark went for his fingers. And so it went, as more and more of Tolaris' blood flooded the water, more and more sea creatures, both real and imaginary came to take a bite of the Vulcan. The carnage reflected Trip's cold fury over Tolaris' actions. Mental or not, the man had just tried to rape his wife and he could not allow that to pass unanswered.

Tolaris fought back; pulling drowned sailors apart, ripping the Kraken's tentacles off, and breaking the bodies of the carnivorous sea life. Trip brought in Sirens with mouths filled with shark's teeth and Kelpies in water horse form. The Sirens feasted on his entrails that the Kelpies ripped out of him with their clawed hooves. Tolaris managed to fight them off and then struggled back onto the deck of the boat. When he arrived, Trip straightened up and caused iron chains to fall all over him. The chains then fastened themselves to the deck.

Tolaris was struggling to reform his mental body but T'Pol did not give him time to focus his attention. She had something she wanted to say to him. "I am very angry at you Tolaris. Your feeble attempts at a logical argument were difficult enough to ignore but Captain Archer instructed me to 'play nice with the other children'."

"That's Human for the diplomatic art of not getting into a fight with someone you want to strangle," Trip said as he called up a flood of small crabs. They swarmed over Tolaris, taking small chunks of his flesh in their claws and ripping them off of his body.

"You have caused my mate and I a great deal of pain," T'Pol continued from where she stood beside Trip. She had moved her hand from his shoulder to his hand when he had stood up straight. "You tried to sever our marriage bond. You know the price you must pay for your actions." She could see when he realized that the damage Trip was inflicting wasn't going to stop. They intended to kill him, slowly and painfully.

Tolaris began ripping crabs off of himself and flinging them at the couple leaning against the rail in an attempt to strike back. He was shocked to see that instead of making the deadly creatures disappear, they both stood relaxed while the crabs landed and then scurried down their bodies. The crabs headed directly for him as soon as they reached the deck. This was not how any mental duel he had ever fought before worked!

By now Tolaris was a bloody wreck. His clothes were gone and the only places that weren't bleeding were those covered in chains. He truly started to panic when the crabs began to enter his body. No part of his body, external or internal was safe from the crabs. He tried to pull away and sever his connection to T'Pol's mind but she refused to allow it. He disappeared under a swarm of crabs.

They could both sense when Tolaris died. His malevolence gave one last shove at them before disappearing forever. Trip dismissed the crabs and the chains, and then turned to T'Pol. "Are you alright?" he asked, quickly looking her over. He had been so intent on their enemy that he had not had time to check.

"I will recover with time, as will you," she replied serenely. "I find your method of execution most intriguing. What caused you to select it?"

Trip snorted and pulled her onto his lap as he sat down on a deck chair. "Well, the monsters came from old horror movies but the rest came from stuff I've seen out here." He gestured to the surrounding islands. "There's nothing like seeing a feeding frenzy to give you ideas. Besides, I swore to my sister that's what I'd do to any rapist I got my hands on."

T'Pol looked carefully but she could see no sign of distress on Trip's face. "You are not upset that I refused to allow Tolaris to escape death?" she asked.

"Nope, any man who tries to force a woman into intimacy of any kind deserves exactly what Tolaris got. Rapists of all sorts make me extremely angry T'Pol," Trip explained. "When someone tries to hurt someone I love it only makes things worse."

T'Pol nodded. His anger was normal, coming from both the attack on their bond and from his own moral stance. "Why did you promise this to your sister?" she asked snuggling into his arms.

"An older friend of ours was raped when Lizzy and I were kids. We were old enough to understand what had happened but we were too young to do anything about it. So we did the only thing we could do. We talked about it a lot and what we would do if we ever got our hands on the guy. As for doing it to Tolaris, well I figured he'd never even seen an ocean before and it would help keep him off balance."

"You are undoubtedly correct about Tolaris' experience with oceans. It was very helpful. We should rest now. We shall have many things to explain once we awaken." T'Pol pointed out.

"You're right," Trip agreed and they drifted off; the feeling of their bond washing over them like a healing balm.

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In sickbay Phlox was monitoring all three patients as well as keeping an eye on the small group of Vulcans gathered in an out of the way corner. Concerned because of the damaged that one of these unvulcan like Vulcans had already done to members of his crew, he called Hoshi to 'remind her' about a non-existent check up.

When Hoshi arrived in sickbay she had a pretty good idea of what he wanted. The fact that he greeted her in Denobulan simply clinched it. "Hello Hoshi. I hate to impose but they have been down here conversing for the last hour. I'm starting to get a bit worried for my patients." Phlox's smile never wavered as he set Hoshi down on a stool and ran a scanner over her.

Personally she agreed with Phlox, this should be looked into. With two of the senior officers suffering from a psychic attack from a member of that crew, it was a good idea to find out what they were talking about. What she heard surprised her. They were quoting Surak! She could have sworn that T'Pol had said that this group had rejected Surak's teachings.

(Tavin's group speaking in Vulcan)

"I don't think that the Humans will allow us to help with any treatment. OTHER, why did Tolaris have to strike these two people in his madness?" A young Vulcan woman said bitterly. "Even if a ship of Vulcans would have blamed us all, at least the victims would have been properly cared for!"

"'The spear in the other's heart is your own'," Tavin quoted. "The true tragedy isn't that they aren't on a Vulcan ship where they can be cared for, but that they were attacked at all. That's why we're out here in the first place. So that no one who is unaware of the dangers is placed at risk. We must find a way to help them once they destroy what is left of Tolaris. We must also find a way to ensure that we do not descend into madness as well."

"'Within us all is the capacity for barbarity'," Kov agreed. "Has anyone had mental contact with Tolaris in the last year? I have not." Heads shook all over the group as they searched their memories.

"You believe that increased mental contact within our group will prove beneficial?" another Vulcan man asked.

"At the very least if we had know that Tolaris was experiencing difficulties we would have tried to help," Tavin pointed out. "And we certainly would not have allowed him to interact with anyone without strict precautions. We all know that on our path the madness that engulfed our ancestors is possible."

Hoshi softly translated for Phlox as the Vulcans continued to discuss ways to help the injured couple as well as ways to prevent their own descent into madness. She believed that they were sincere.

Phlox agreed. There had been no attempt to disguise the anguish on Tavin's face when he had accepted what Tolaris was doing. He walked over to the group. "What is the correct treatment for an assault such as this?" he asked.

"As they are bondmates, physical contact with each other is paramount," Tavin said in English eager to help. "Isolation from other minds is also helpful. It can increase the speed of healing by quite a bit. They will be extremely sensitive for at least a week. I do not know about Humans but for Vulcans repeated deep contact with a bondmate in mental isolation is the best treatment."

"What about Tolaris?" Phlox asked. What Tavin had said agreed with what he already knew.

"He is dead," Tavin said flatly. "And no one will mourn him, not even among us. He could have asked for help in controlling himself at anytime and did not do so. If we do not ask for help when we need it we will fail. We all know this." Tavin closed his eyes in pain. "Trying to break a mating bond is madness. It will only damage and possibly kill all of those involved. A chosen mate bond is far stronger. The only outcome possible is the death of the attacker."

Just then the alarms on Tolaris' biobed began announcing his death. Phlox waved off Crewman Cutler and silenced the alarms. Although he was a physician, and thus sworn to aid whenever possible; he would not attempt to revive Tolaris. He turned to check on his other patients. To his relief their brainwaves showed that they were settling into a deep sleep. "I need to inform the Captain."