Chapter 2: When A Man Loves A Woman

His gait was unsteady as he neared the coordinates he had received. At one hundred and sixty years he was by far not at the end of his natural lifespan, but the relative inactivity of the last years had taken a toll, especially if one took on a hostile environment like Vulcan's Forge.

Thankfully sand fires were extremely rare at this time of the year and predatory wild life could easily be avoided by spending the nights on the crest of a dune. Even after seventy years he could easily remember the old paths to the few wells that existed in this treacherous landscape.

The grave was easily found, not only because he had the precise coordinates, but also because, unlike traditional Vulcan graves, it was marked by a large black carved stone. On the left side was a carved statue of a young human female wearing feathered wings on her back. The polished front was ornamented with gilded human script:

He sank to his knees, exhausted by the long journey and overcome by his grief. Here in the barren wilderness he did not need to hide his true nature. Touching the stone as if doing so would connect him one last time with his deceased mate, he screamed in agony, and Turius, who was now V'Nur again, wept bitterly.

Malcolm walked slowly through the park with the women matching his sedate pace on either side of him. For no discernible reason Trip's old-fashioned manners came to mind and following an impulse he offered one arm to each of them. Both gently put a hand in the crooks of his elbows.

He could tell that Hoshi was very moved by the gesture. Most likely not only because it was the first physical touch they had shared in many days, but also by the symbolic nod to their absent companion. They continued walking in silence until they found a piece of trimmed lawn near a small pond in the middle of the park. He held their hands as they sat down, before he joined them on the ground.

"I have spent many hours helping you to accept and interpret your emotions," T'Pol started evenly. "But you suppress them again. Hoshi will testify that I have failed spectacularly at doing so, and I am a Vulcan. Tell us what drives you away from us Malcolm."

He looked at the ground in shame, idly twisting a blade of grass as he searched for the right words.

"I'm terrified," he admitted, his voice barely above a whisper. "I'm terrified of my own reaction to when Trip is awake. I've been a shooting man all my life. The sheer thought of losing vision horrifies me. The realization that he will spend god knows how many years in darkness until someone has worked out a solution – I'm going mad over it."

"Welcome to the club," Hoshi said, her voice breaking as tears welled up in her eyes.

"It will be the least of his problems," T'Pol said calmly and Malcolm could see that Hoshi was equally surprised.

"Why do you think that?" he asked.

"For several reasons," T'Pol explained. "He was not born blind. He knows and remembers the look of the objects he will feel with his fingers. As an engineer he had to work many times in cramped spaces where he had to rely on his tactile senses, and I know from experience how quickly the tactile senses sharpen when one has no use of sight. During and after sexual climax I temporarily lose vision and after some time to get used to the condition I am almost effortlessly able to navigate familiar surroundings instead of remaining still until my vision returns. It can take up to thirty minutes depending on the intensity of the encounter."

Seeing that Hoshi did not react with much surprise to T'Pol's intimate revelation, he looked hard at his wife.

"You knew that already, didn't you?"

He could see Hoshi blush and she looked down. Then she drew a deep breath.

"I've seen it firsthand this morning, Malcolm."

It wasn't the shock it perhaps should have been. His career in the Section had honed his naturally acute powers of observation, and he'd been aware almost immediately that the interaction between the women had been different. Add to that the fact that he was well acquainted with the signs of sexual satiety in his wife, and in addition he knew that the two of them had been spending a great deal of time together lately. It didn't take a mathematics expert to put two and two together and come up with four.

"I take that to mean you had sex with T'Pol." He stated the obvious, careful not to make it sound like a reproach.

Hoshi nodded and started sobbing in shame. He reached over, took her hand and kissed it gently.

"I think it was only a matter of time until it would happen," he said soothingly, seeing T'Pol and Hoshi look at him, both plainly flabbergasted by his acceptance of the revelation.

He shrugged. "Let's start with the fact that the two of you have been close since forever. Add to that that I've been a selfish, egocentric bastard and neglected Hoshi because I've been too busy running away from my problems. And frankly..."

He could see Hoshi's head shake in an effort to absolve him from the self-reproach, but he forestalled the reaction by raising his hand in her direction.

The next bit was going to be difficult. Hellishly difficult. Part of it was something that he'd concealed for a long time; it had too many associations with the Section. He'd always been heterosexual by inclination, but working undercover the use of your body was just another thing you sold - much like your conscience, though at least you got your body back afterwards ... He took a deep breath of his own, and it wasn't as steady as he'd have liked it to be.

"I'm the most inhibited among us and I've had intimate dreams of all of you ... even Trip."

He bit his lip to prevent an emotional reaction, remembering that the latter dreams would remain just that due to Trip's injuries. Color scorched his face, and it was with an effort that he glanced up to assess his wife's reaction to his confession.

It was obvious, however, that she regarded his inadvertent nocturnal adventures as far less grave than her own fall from grace. At a guess she hadn't had time to process it properly; he grasped in half-shameful relief at the thought that she didn't realize how closely his dreams sometimes mirrored his waking fantasies.

"You're not upset?" she asked in disbelief. He could literally see her anxiety at what his answer would be.

"Were you upset? I just admitted dreaming about T'Pol."

Hoshi shook her head again. She looked totally bewildered, and he gave a faint, wry smile.

"I can only speak for myself," he said. "I am fine with it. Let's face it - what right have I got to complain? If I'd never got so wrapped up in my self-pity party it might never have happened." He shrugged. It was starting to hurt, and he had a lot of mental readjustments to make, but that was something he'd have to do in the privacy of his own mind. Inwardly his smile grew bleaker; that too was a legacy of the Section. "I love both of you and the fact that you are intimate with each other doesn't change that. You'll have to justify it before your consciences and before Trip. It will hurt him in any case. The damage has already been done. The pain might be less for him if it remained one desperate misstep instead of becoming a repeated occurrence. It is a question you must answer for yourselves."

If he was honest it was a question he himself would have liked to know the answer to. The pain might be less for him too, for now there was a void of uncertainty where before there had been security. Was it a one-off, was it just something that would happen now and again, now that Hoshi had revealed her bisexual side, or was it a subtle signal that his marriage was heading for the scrapheap? A 'misstep' was something that could be forgiven and forgotten - he was speaking honestly enough there - but if it was something that had to be factored into his relationship, that would take some coping with. And if it was just the writing on the wall for his marriage, well, it wasn't like he hadn't had ample experience with relationship breakups, though this one would hurt more than anything he'd ever experienced in his life.

He saw the accepting nods from both women, and congratulated himself on still being able to show nothing of the complexity of his thoughts.

"Will you come home?" Hoshi asked in a whisper.

"I don't know, love," he admitted. "What about T'Pol? Since I suppose you two were sleeping in the same bed. Will we send her downstairs? I might drop by in the mornings and the evenings, but I don't think I'll stay the nights. My long days weren't all excuse and it gives me some sense of purpose."

He could see that he was hurting his wife, but he saw no other way to solve this. His heart ached at having to disappoint her.

Her response - or lack of it - on who would be occupying the other half of her marital bed from now on hadn't exactly been reassuring either.

It seemed that loneliness would be something he'd have to get used to all over again.

Slowly his tears started to dry up and the long process of healing from his grief started to begin, though its immediate manifestation was a vast, aching, exhausted void. He was still touching the human-made tombstone.

"Charles had it made and transported here almost two years ago. I find myself quite attached to the memorial."

V'Nur turned around slowly when he heard Soval's voice.

"You have followed me," the Romulan stated the obvious. "Do you no longer trust your security detail?"

"I wanted to satisfy myself that the Eldest's advocacy for your return to the clan was not misplaced."

"Are your findings satisfactory?"

"Not even a Romulan can feign grief to that extent. Your motives are genuine. I welcome you back into the clan ... brother."

Stunned by Soval's acceptance, V'Nur returned the offered greeting of kinship. He still remembered every single detail of it.

T'Pol quietly steered the shuttle home. They had dropped Malcolm off at his factory and taken the time to tour the facility. In his office he had confessed about his heavy drinking over the last few days and recalled the events of the last night when – in his words – T'Pau had 'all but literally bashed some sense into my thick skull'.

Hearing about his plans to establish a research laboratory for Phlox had renewed their hope and for the first time in many weeks she wasn't consumed by hopeless despair.

"Where are we going?" Hoshi asked.

"To a sex shop," T'Pol replied dryly and heard Hoshi gasp. "We need blindfolds."

She could see Hoshi relax again as her young friend probably began to suspect her intent.

Phlox studied the readouts on the bio-monitor and nodded with satisfaction. Less than twenty-four hours after starting the gradual reduction in anesthetics, the life-signs of Mr. Tucker started to improve markedly. Some low-level brain activity had started, freeing him of the worry that his patient would die without the machinery that had kept him alive for the last seven months.

If no unexpected complications presented themselves they could try to remove the intubation tube from his throat within a month as it looked as if he was starting to breathe on his own again.

"I am coming to the conclusion that the danger of remaining in a persistent vegetative state is diminishing with every brain region that regains function," the Denobulan dictated into his recording device. "It is too early to extrapolate the exact extent of the recovery, but in the short time since the reduction of sedatives the patient's life signs have improved slightly better than expected. The process will be long, but the prognosis improves with every day."

Morro Jable, Fuerteventura, Spain, December 8th 2157

T'Pol sat in their modified wheel chair. Her eyes were covered up by the blindfold.

"Cheese," Hoshi commanded and T'Pol carefully moved her hand towards the memorized position that the plate with the cheese occupied on the breakfast table every day. Her first attempt missed the plate by a few inches, but her roaming hand found it quite quickly.

"Drink."

T'Pol's hand reached for the right side of the table, deliberately stopping short of where the container would be. If it was a bottle she would possibly topple it over by trying to grab it. Instead she carefully pushed her finger tips along the table cloth until she found its bottom. It was indeed a glass bottle and by feeling the shape, she could tell it was a beer bottle. Her finger tips searched the body of the bottle until she had found the Braille label that Hoshi applied to all food containers that required reading. Carefully she ran middle and index finger over the embossed dots on the paper.

"Staropramen, Export. Consumable until ... Dec 15th 2158."

"Correct," Hoshi confirmed. Then, after a moment, "Milk?"

"Door, lowest shelf, right side." Her memory supplied the information after a moment.

"Correct."

"Navigation: Refrigerator, left side access, ten centimeters," T'Pol commanded and pressed the start button on the small console in the armrest. The wheelchair started backing away from the table, pivoted and navigated the kitchen, coming to a stop ten centimeters to the right of the left-hand refrigerator door. She grabbed the handle and opened the door. After checking the label with her fingers, she took out the bottle and closed the door again.

"Navigation: Kitchen table, north side, central position," she commanded and pressed the button, but had to stop the travel when she sensed that the wheelchair took a wrong turn. Pressing the reset button the device backed up to the nearest programmed object, which, after feeling her surroundings, she found to be the communications console. Consulting the memorized kitchen layout, she deduced that the device had misinterpreted her command and was about to deliver her to the small coffee table.

After she had repeated the command more slowly the wheelchair brought her to the correct position. She carefully searched the table top for the glass, finding it precisely in its designated place. She raised it and cautiously tilted it until the bottle-neck and the rim of the glass made light contact. She started pouring slowly, making judgments by the sounds of the liquid and the increasing weight of the glass. A light beep sounded more and more frequent as the filling level rose, to help her accuracy.

She put the glass in its designated place, followed by the bottle, feeling the area with her little finger for obstructions before setting each item down. Removing the blindfold, she checked the situation. The bottle was slightly out of place, by nearly 10 centimeters in fact, but the glass was accurately placed.

"The salad is out of place," she said with some disapproval, and put it to its correct location on the table.