Chapter 22: Excursions
A/N: Hi romulanlover, thanks for your comment and question! Vekal worked his way up to the position of commander in charge of several warbirds. This jarred with his peaceful nature, and he switched careers within the military to computer systems programming on Romulan space vessels.
LORIOVER50, thanks for your kind review! While Asha and Christine get on well after clearing the air, Asha prefers to hold back her feelings, as Christine can get impatient and unconformable with passionate displays of emotions.
The Vas Hatham is a non-canon bird of prey on Romulus.
About two months after the attack, Asha realised that she was struggling. She was making sure to visit the woods as usual in order to confront her queasiness around the area until she felt truly comfortable again, but it was very hard, and she simply could not go near that place where she had almost been strangled. She kept looking around like a hunted deer, getting a start at the slightest sound, or trying to hide when she heard Romulan hikers approaching her vicinity. Because of her limited rights, she was not allowed to carry weapons on her. Nor did she refuse Thorek's company when he asked her about once a week if they could go hiking together. Other regular weekend hikers – all of them Romulan – soon became used to seeing them around the woods and ponds, and most would incline their heads in greeting to them. Asha felt safe with Thorek next to her, but she was conflicted about this. She didn't want to be a woman who felt she could only be safe in public when accompanied by a Romulan man. The other problem was her growing attraction towards her husband. Developing feelings for him was a catastrophe for her. It was something – from her point of view – both of them could do without.
With such an uproar brewing in her mind, she would suddenly feel during odd times of the day that she was about to lose control over her emotions and burst out crying.
When she slept, the feelings she suppressed surfaced in the shape of nightmares.
One night, she woke up, sweaty. She turned on the light, crawled out of bed and stood at the window, trying to forget. What reason had she to cry when she had managed to live? The house was completely silent, and it was three in the morning. She could hear her heartbeat in her ears, like a perturbed sea. She felt hot and cold at the same time. Her feelings were in turmoil.
"Asha?"
She turned around with a gasp and when she saw it was Thorek in a robe over his nightwear, put her hand to her mouth. "I'm sorry, I got a start." Her eyes suddenly filled with tears. Thorek approached her and took her in his arms. She buried her face against his shoulder, shivering in his embrace like a leaf. He rubbed her back and stroked her short hair, murmuring to her in English and Romulan as she cried. When she looked up at him, she noticed that his cheeks were wet, too.
She hugged him tightly. "Please don't tell me I've made you cry?"
"We Romulans have a reputation for being most emotional. Hence our Vulcan cousins' attempt to turn to logic as a solution. Does it disturb you?"
"No! Why would it? But I don't want to grieve you with my griefs."
"Asha, over the past months, I have learnt to share a life with you. Is it not natural that I share your emotions, too?"
She smiled through her tears. Once they were both calm, he asked:
"Do you wish me to stay during the night?"
"If you don't mind."
"Never."
She got back into bed and raised the covers for him. He joined her, and they lay in each other's arms. Her hands were cold. He held her close and chafed her fingers, and for the first time in many nights, she slept well, surrounded by his warmth and affection. Thorek remembered how faithfully she had visited him during his nasty bout with the Terothka virus. Of course, it had been a completely different situation, but that sense of being able to rely on each other, to trust each other, was the same. In the morning, both woke up refreshed, and they decided that she would join him in his bed whenever she wished, and he would do the same. She did so the next night, a little shyly, but without shame, tiptoeing her way into his bedroom when he had already turned off the light. As a Romulan with sensitive and pointed ears, he could hear keenly. It was the same with his night vision, and both were definitely better than Humans (though he refrained from telling his Human wife so).
"Come," he said, sitting up and drawing back the covers. She got into his bed, and he wrapped his arms around her. It had been some time since he had held a woman in his arms at night, he thought. And not just any woman. Asha was rather a joy to hold, for she held him back just as tenderly, and when she slept, her quiet breathing and the gentle rise and fall of her chest against his own lulled him into sleep himself.
After a particularly stressful day at work, Thorek decided to visit her bedroom. Asha, who was reading, smiled and sidled over onto one side of the bed to make place for him.
"My ailhun, I notice I feel easier in mind when I am in your company at night."
She smiled, amused that he used such lofty vocabulary even at this late hour.
"I feel the same way, my deyhhan."
They were silent for a little, then Asha asked: "Vekal and Christine sent a message asking about our room arrangements for our excursion on Mirek. Will one bed for us do?"
Thorek heard the slight uncertainty in her voice, her fear of rejection. And he said: "One bed will do just fine for us."
"Wonderful, I'll tell them."
"I must admit that I am very excited about our three weeks in Mirek, my wife. I have been reading about their tree farm and Vas Hatham birdwatching sites. You can watch the birds feeding their young."
"I'm looking forward so much, too. Romulus is a beautiful planet."
Thorek smiled in the dark.
"Maybe I'll visit Earth one day, provided our government sees some sense."
Asha chuckled, amused at how much he had changed his mind about her and her planet. And so the remaining nights until their trip to Mirek passed, and in the stillness and darkness of the quiet hours, their affection for each other grew. A few times, she woke up after a nightmare, and once, Thorek himself woke up after reliving the memory of the Tal Shiar thugs dragging his parents away in the middle of the night, disruptors in their hands; and then Asha was there for him, and his breathing slowed down to its normal rhythm.
In the meantime, while her attraction for Thorek deepened, her tutor Rhian instructed her in poetry writing, and encouraged her to read through a wide assortment of Romulan sonnets and theatre pieces. Asha was soon engrossed in a volume full of erotic poetry that made her get in touch with her body in ways she had almost forgotten about. The Romulan library had devoted a huge section on everything sex-related, from poetry to academic research. Had it not been for Rhian's suggestions, she would have spent hours wandering among the shelves at a loss.
That volume made her flush, tingle, freeze, sweat, catch her breath repeatedly and wonder what it would be like to touch and be touched with desire. The scorching lines of poetry made her hand steal into places of her body she explored thoroughly while having a bath.
Thorek went over all their luggage meticulously.
Asha smiled. "I think we've remembered to pack everything, my husband."
"One can never be sure," Thorek said fussily. Asha caught Kihika's eye, and both of them turned away with a smile.
Thorek was glad to be on holiday, as his workload had been gruelling, supervising his students' work, preparing conferences, speeches and lectures, and doing research on a new kind of colourful nebula. He enjoyed telling Asha about his work and showing her pictures of astrological phenomena, for she displayed a lively interest in his activities and began to include what she saw in her poetry. She called it "closet poetry", since she wrote her poems in secret. They were a great outlet for her wishes, desires, emotions – for just about anything distracting her mind.
Thorek stood back. "We are ready."
The house staff stood at the gates to see them off. Thorek addressed a few words to the head of the staff, and he accompanied the couple and Kihika to the flitter, loading their luggage into the flitter and bowing before them. Asha was slowly getting used to this hierarchical system, though she disapproved of it, considering it outdated and socially unjust for such modern times.
They sped off with Asha at the wheel to the Jo'reks, who were waiting with their own flitter. Asha greeted Christine affectionately and accepted Vekal's fatherly kiss on her forehead with a smile, greeting him with "Eneh." Their assistant Galan was making sure all the luggage was properly secured inside the flitter.
The two couples exchanged information about the route of one day's driving before installing themselves in their respective flitters and taking to the air, Asha revving up the engine ominously. Thorek immediately stiffened up in the seat, and Kihika coughed loudly.
"My ailhun…" Thorek said tersely.
Asha giggled. "I was teasing you. I'll drive just as carefully as before."
"Please do. I don't want our remains to be used as fertiliser for the Botanical Gardens in Mirek."
"The plants would whither if they did that."
Thorek's mouth quirked. He was hugely relieved that Asha's sense of humour and daredevil streak were making themselves observed after such a long time. Though she had not been daredevil enough to satisfy herself when sharing a bed with him. He recalled how they had once woken up in the morning, and she, in the belief that he was still sleeping, had begun to touch her upper body, and finally her hand had stolen down…and then, noticing that he was seeing what he was seeing in the dim light, he had stirred a little. And she had immediately pulled out her hand and gone still, holding her breath. She had not done so again (which Thorek found deeply regretful), but her actions had greatly piqued his interest in more ways than he wanted to admit.
He dragged his thoughts back to more practical matters, running over the contents of their luggage in his mind.
