|
"The Forgotten Time II: Ashaya"
Rating: R (for occasional language) Author's Note: This story takes place between Kir’Shara and Daedalus. Chapter Seven
“T’Pol. It is agreeable to see you,” Koss said. The old priest simply nodded curtly. T’Pol inclined her head slightly. “You appear well,” she replied distantly. “And you also.” Koss returned just as distantly. Trip stepped forward. “All very healthy here.” His brash tone of repressed bravado and discomfort briefly reminded T’Pol of their own first-ever meeting in the Captain’s ready room. T’Pol cleared her throat and indicated Trip. “Koss, I believe you have met—” “Ah yes, your…human…friend.” Koss interrupted. He stepped toward Trip and, after a pause, proffered his hand awkwardly and formally in human fashion. “Skip Tucker, isn’t it?” he inquired somewhat delicately. Trip grasped the other man’s hand unsmilingly. “Trip, actually,” he grimly corrected him aloud, “but you can call me Commander Tucker.” And his thoughts continued unheeled: Jeez, this guy always looks like he’s been pasted together. He must visit his tailor twice a day to keep those shoulder pads so damned pointy. T’Pol’s eyes widened imperceptibly behind the priest as she caught the notion that had flashed so psycho-audibly through Trip‘s mind. Koss seemed to hesitate warily for the tiniest instant as he shook Trip’s hand, but Trip couldn’t tell if it was because he had picked up on the thought or whether it was just the guy’s natural suspicious manner. Damn it. “Hot enough for you?” Trip asked suddenly and loudly, as if addressing an elderly person who was hard of hearing. Koss frowned, not understanding, and glanced briefly at the priest. “The temperature is average for this time of year.” They were still shaking hands. Way too long. Trip snatched his back. He and Koss looked at one another. Then, wiping his sweaty palm slowly and absentmindedly down the leg of his pants, Trip backed towards the kitchen area. “I’m just gonna…” he gestured over his shoulder with his thumb. “Wipe up. Lunch, you know. So, I’ll just…yeah.” He hastened away from the three Vulcans and busied himself noisily opening and closing cupboards and drawers as if hunting for an errant spatula. T’Pol surveyed this exchange impatiently and closed her eyes in irritation. Koss gazed mildly at the flustered man’s efforts for a beat and then turned to T’Pol with an expression of bland curiosity. However, unlike Trip, T’Pol was unmoving under Koss’ eye. She had known him since childhood, was two years older than he, and wasn’t the slightest bit intimidated by him. “Shall we?” All business, she indicated the courtyard beyond the glass doors. * * * Trip watched the trio of sober-faced Vulcans as they passed out into the shady stone courtyard. His hand still moved idly over the countertop, the cloth he held whispering against the flawlessly smooth surface, as he wiped and wiped and tried not to think anything at all. * * * The ceremony proceeded quickly. The priest maintained an air of detached disapproval throughout the proceedings as he intoned the ancient lines severing the bond that had supposedly linked Koss and T’Pol since their marriage. The priest served as an intermediary, his highly trained abilities giving guidance to the skills of the two participants while they created or severed the bond. As a matter of custom, the priest kept his own thoughts separate from the thoughts of the couple, simply orchestrating the meeting of the minds. The desiccated old cleric chanting the ancient Vulcan lines above T’Pol’s head was not overly concerned with pronunciation or ritual. He probably wanted to get home to his tea and plomeek before having a nice long lie-down during the hot part of the day. T’Pol detested the dry, thick skin of Koss’ fingers against her own when the ritual called for them to press their hands together in the ritual ozh'esta, the finger embrace. Vulcans were touch telepaths, needing both a physical connection and a desire to communicate via thought transference to achieve the communication. Only between two mated and bonded individuals who were on extremely open and intimate terms would one find telepathy taking place across larger distances and without physical touch. Needless to say, telepathy was one mental skill that most Vulcans did not indulge in frequently, if at all. Marriages were based on logical family decisions. Rarely did a couple develop such an attachment for one another that they would even want to share their thoughts more often than would happen by chance physical contact and, of course, mating. Marriage was for the sake of industrious partnership and the production of offspring. Nothing more. During a marriage ceremony, the ozh’esta finger embrace was held to maintain a physical link while the mental bond was cast. During the p’pil’lay, it served to hold the mental link one last time while the priest assisted the couple to remove their telepathic sympathies permanently. T’Pol tried her hardest to concentrate as the priest spoke the final fateful words separating her from Koss. She could sense his thoughts through the connection at their fingertips, but only as she would have sensed the thoughts of any Vulcan she chanced to hold on to for a few minutes… something she did not often do. His uppermost impressions and musings were audible to her thoughts, but only on the surface level. They mainly treated with her and her unorthodox, tiresome, human-type habits. She ignored these. T’Pol knew, any deeper digging, and he would throw up a standard wall of defence against prying minds. Not that she wanted anything to do with his deeper thoughts, dry and mouldy and dogmatic as they were. Koss and T’Pol maintained a silent and flinty eye contact steeped in thorough dislike, as each tried to keep their own disparaging thoughts about the other as unobtrusive as possible simply so as to speed up the unpleasantries. However, just as the ritual was wrapping up, Koss’ beady eyes suddenly burned deeply, almost greedily, into her own, and he tried to cheat custom a little by pushing his way quickly past her defences and into the topmost layer of her hidden thoughts. T’Pol pulled her fingers suddenly away from his, as if from a snake, and slammed shut the locks of her mind, catching Koss’ awareness a bit of a blow, and he staggered slightly. The priest didn’t notice any of this, simply closing his rheumy eyes and raising his crabbed old hands to the sky in a final hopeless benediction over two young people who had just made bad choices. The ritual was over. It had only taken a few minutes. The priest gathered his things and left wordlessly as soon as he had finished his distasteful task. T’Pol and Koss were alone in the courtyard, and despite her homeworld’s baking heat, she felt cold. Koss appraised her frankly. “You do not appear well. Do you regret what has happened here today?” His voice was businesslike. T’Pol glowered at him momentarily. “No.” She rubbed her upper arms and looked away. “It is nothing.” She wouldn’t admit that he had thrown her. Since the Trellium, her abilities were handicapped in comparison to those on her homeworld. It was easy to forget that when with Trip, but Koss had just given her a lesson. What had he seen in that brief instant? Nothing, she was sure, but she must be more careful. They were on a mission. Meanwhile, Koss had nodded. “I see.” He wandered over to the edge of the courtyard, and spoke again: “I myself was somewhat surprised by the proceedings.” This caught T’Pol’s attention, and she looked into Koss’ eyes. His beastly symmetrical baby face betrayed nothing, but at this close physical range, she could still sense some of the basic underlying motives of the man she had met and been psychically semi-tied to in childhood. He was somewhat surprised. T’Pol’s face also betrayed nothing as she tried her best to master the un-Vulcanish thoughts that chased around her brain. “Surprise. It is unlike you,” she stated with careful disinterest. “Yes, it is unusual,” Koss agreed calmly and readily. “I would say nearly as unusual as being unable to detect a difference between a bonded state and an unbonded one with my own wife.” Suddenly, he regarded T’Pol intensely, his desire to get to the bottom of the mystery quite apparent. Again, T’Pol kept her tone mild as she replied, “I have no idea to what you are referring. And I am no longer your wife.” “As you say,” Koss acknowledged. After a tense second, and with a little, vicious nod, he made to leave. T’Pol pursed her lips. “Wait.” Perhaps Koss’ insights could help her figure out what was going on with her and Trip, why they could suddenly share their thoughts. “Please elaborate.” Koss stopped and spoke without turning around, his back as stiff as the stuff his tunic was fashioned from. “Far be it from me to claim that I know what it is to be bonded to a mate,” he paused to allow the barb its full effect, and then turned and continued: “However, it would seem logical to assume that if one is telepathically bonded to a mate, and then if later, that bond is removed, the subjects of these operations would likely be able to detect some difference between being bonded and not being bonded, wouldn’t you agree?” “It would seem so,” T’Pol responded. “And yet,” Koss finished, “I do not feel that I was bonded or unbonded to you any more than I was to that jar over there.” He pointed at one of the massive ornamental containers dotting the courtyard. He fixed T’Pol with an inquisitive stare. “It is… curious, is it not?” “Real curious.” T’Pol turned gratefully at the sound of Trip’s voice. He was standing in the doorway, still holding the tea towel. For the past minute, he had been watching the two Vulcans circling one another, speaking civilly and poisonously as knives and hemlock. For an unemotional species…. Trip left the thought, tossed the towel in his hand over his shoulder and stepped down into the stone courtyard. As he approached the two Vulcans, Trip again tried his best to keep his thoughts centred solely on the words he wanted to say. “Now, Koss,” Trip began nicely, stepping rather closely into the other man’s personal space, “You’ve had your visit, you’ve had your divorce…you’ve even had your say. And now, I think it’s time that you—” “—come in and have some tea,” T’Pol inserted calmly and seamlessly. Trip, his left hand on his hip, and his right pointing the way out the door, stopped in mid-sentence. He looked once at T’Pol, pursed his lips, and then sighed. “Yes. Come in and have some tea.” |
Like it? Hate it? Just want to point out a typo? Join the discussion now.
Disclaimer: Star Trek in all its various forms and its characters are the property of CBS/Paramount. No copyright infringement is intended by the authors of this site, which is solely for the purpose of entertainment and is not for profit. This site is owned by CX and was opened to the public in February 2008.