One Soul

One Soul

By HopefulNebula (HopefulNebula@hotmail.com)

Rating: PG for now (for one itty bitty swear), but I might raise it when (yes, when) I continue this, general, romance.
Summary: It’s always good to learn about other cultures.
Disclaimer: If I owned Enterprise, I wouldn’t be wasting time thinking of “I don’t own Enterprise” disclaimers, now, would I?
Feedback: All kinds but no flames, please.
Visit www.terranbbs.com! I’m LyraSilvertongue there.
Spoilers: Broken Bow, Breaking the Ice, Sleeping Dogs, and The Communicator.

******

Chapter One

One Soul

The mess hall was nearly empty. A few solitary crewmembers were scattered among the tables, and most of them were reading or doing work rather than making conversation.

T’Pol sat by a window, loosely holding a padd but not reading it. Instead, she stared absently at the stars, allowing herself to exist without thinking or worrying. Her awareness of Enterprise, of the mess hall, slowly slipped away, leaving her consciousness drifting through the stars. This may have been unusual for T’Pol, but she enjoyed it nonetheless, and so did not fight herself as she entered this reverie.

She did not know how long she remained like this before she felt a hand on her shoulder, bringing her back to herself. T’Pol turned to face the one who broke her reverie, the sandy blond engineer who never failed to affect her in any number of ways.

“Hey, T’Pol.”

“Hello, Commander Tucker.”

“I brought you those crew evaluations you wanted.”

“Thank you, Commander.”

“Mind if I join ya?”

“No,” T’Pol stated flatly.

“Good.” Trip sat across from her. They remained silent for about a minute as the Vulcan resumed eating. Trip, for his part, was deciding whether to ask the question that had brought him to this particular table. After what seemed a long time to the commander, the inquisitive explorer in him won the mental argument, and he spoke.

“So, um… T’Pol?

“Yes, Commander?”

“I’ve got a question I’ve been meaning to ask ya for a while.” He paused a moment, waiting for her consent for him to ask. When she didn’t reply, he realized that she was waiting for him to continue. “Well, you see, T’Pol, you’ve mentioned meditatin’ to me a lot in the time we’ve known each other, and I’ve wanted to know for a while now… what’s it like to meditate?”

T’Pol remained silent, composing her reply. How could she describe to him the stillness inherent to meditation? It was both a profound awareness of the universe and a complete lack of awareness, and it defied accurate verbal description because of this dichotomy. Without intending to, before she could think of anything to say, T’Pol spoke four simple words that surprised even her normally unflappable self:

“Let me show you.”

“Okay,” the cautious engineer answered.

T’Pol would have been mortified, had she been human. Teaching Ensign Sato to meditate was simple enough, but training Commander Tucker would be far more of a challenge to her. She found it hard enough for her to control her thoughts in his presence already; what would this be like? What would happen to them both, to their friendship, if she was unable to maintain her control? There was only one way to find concrete answers, and it seemed she didn’t have any further choice about whether she wanted to learn them.

She took a deep cleansing breath and began. “First you must sit like this.” T’Pol arranged herself carefully, gracefully, crossing her legs, placing her hands in her lap, and adjusting the angle of her spine against the chair. Trip copied her position.

“Wait a second,” he asked warily. “Don’t we need a candle or something?”

“Not for this exercise.” T’Pol paused again. “Close your eyes.”

Trip looked into her eyes, watching them slowly close, before he shut his own. T’Pol spoke quietly, soothingly, instructing him without disrupting his experience.

“You must breathe deeply, slowly, through your belly. Completely fill your lungs, then completely empty them. Focus on your breath, how it feels in your lungs. If you feel your concentration slipping, return to your breath.” She waited a full minute before continuing. “Imagine each of your breaths as pure white light. Hold it in your lungs for a moment before releasing it. Feel it spread through your body, cleansing all it touches, allowing you to relax.”

They remained silent for what seemed a much shorter time than had actually passed before T’Pol spoke again. “Now imagine that everything the light touches slowly decomposes, drifting away as dust… until you are nothing but spirit.”

Trip imagined… and felt nothing, save for embarrassment and self-doubt. What had he been thinking?

T’Pol felt the table press against her slim body as the engineer shifted uncomfortably in his chair.

“It’s not working,” he told her quietly as he slowly opened his eyes. “I don’t feel any different.”

“You’re not relaxing,” she replied. T’Pol thought for a beat, wondering if she would have the strength to do what her mind was currently planning. For the second time in nearly ten minutes, she spoke almost without being conscious of speaking. “Give me your hand.”

Trip complied. T’Pol’s hands were soft and delicate, yet they were definitely strong and thick. The warmth emanating from them surprised Trip; the last time he had sustained physical contact with the sub-commander was in decon, and they had both been freezing then, from the blizzard on Rigel. He watched her take his right hand in both of hers, lightly running two of her fingertips over his palm. Trip was enthralled by her touch. He seemed focused on it above all else; and this indeed had been T’Pol’s intention. The commander seemed to be in need of a focal point, and she had given him one. T’Pol had to continually remind herself that this was the only reason she was holding Trip’s hand was to teach him about meditation. Yet she remained doubtful of herself even as she spoke.

“Now close your eyes again,” she requested. This time, they shut their eyes in tandem, each secretly savoring their last glimpse into the other’s eyes.

They repeated the same exercise, more slowly this time, and more quietly. Trip’s last conscious thought for quite a while was that it was almost like she wasn’t actually speaking this time, and indeed, she wasn’t. Along with her instructions, T’Pol was sharing with him a sense of calm, of peace.

As T’Pol finished her coaching, Trip felt as if he was floating. The focused calm he felt now had been unimaginable to him only ten minutes before, and now it seemed to be imagining him. He felt aware of the entire universe, yet oblivious to it. He had immense energy coursing through his body, but felt completely relaxed. He simply was. Somewhere in the recesses of his consciousness, his thoughts buzzed quietly, and he allowed them to flow without disturbing them.

Despite this heightened awareness, he did not notice when T’Pol slowly removed her hands from his own and quietly left the table until long after she had gone.

******

She slipped her hands away from Trip’s, carefully setting his hand down on the table. Without making more than a slight noise, T’Pol stood and left the table. What had she been thinking when she chose to touch his katra? The contact may have given him peace, but it had left her mind reeling. She had never felt this while helping Ensign Sato control her emotions. Their contact during T’Pol’s weekly sessions with the ensign helped them both to focus. But helping Commander Tucker had brought more discord into her being than had sixteen months of living among humans. Touching him in that way had been a mistake. That was all. She would have to meditate some more—alone, this time, she thought, almost mirthfully—before sleeping tonight.

*************

It was nearly 2200 hours when Trip returned to wakefulness. His first impulse was to thank T’Pol for the entire experience. He currently felt the best he had in years; more relaxed than he could ever remember feeling before, and he was compelled to thank her.

But she was gone. His hand still felt warm from T’Pol’s touch; there was a lingering energy flowing through his palm that Trip could not explain or understand, and he needed to understand what had just happened.

For something had, indeed, happened between them that went beyond a simple lesson in meditation, Trip realized. There had been some energy, some impression-- something-- that he could not figure out on his own. He needed to talk to her.

**********

T’Pol knew who stood outside her quarters as soon as the door chime rang. Trip had arrived, and much later than she had anticipated. Had he waited to contact her? Or had he continued meditating on his own? T’Pol thought the latter highly unlikely for the chaotic-minded engineer. Perhaps he isn’t as unstable as you think, some unconscious part of her noted. T’Pol suppressed the thought.

The chime rang again. T’Pol had three options: she could ignore the commander; she could let him in and be honest with him; or she could let him in and find some excuse for what had happened. She doubted that ignoring him would do anything but aggravate him, and she only lied if she had no other options. She had to be honest with him.

“Come in,” T’Pol said. The doors opened to reveal Trip, in the same informal pants and shirt that he had been wearing in the mess hall. He was smiling slightly, just enough to make his smile slightly enigmatic.

This was only the second time he had been in her quarters. Last time, T’Pol had been nearly overwhelmed by the scent he had left. It had taken a full week to diminish. Now, it didn’t seem as awful as it had. She had become acclimated to Trip after all the time they had spent together. His odor was still… distinctive, she decided, but more tolerable than it had been.

“T’Pol… I want to thank you for what you just did for me. It felt great, it really did.” T’Pol was slightly surprised upon hearing this. Was he not angry at her for leaving him? She doubted she would ever understand Trip. “But I’ve got another question for you now. When you touched my hand… what was that? Why could I only relax then?”

T’Pol drew in a sharp breath. Could he really have felt that?

“And I can still feel something in my hand now. It’s like… Damn, I don’t know what it’s like. It kinda tingles. Feels real strange, kind of like when my arm got cloaked. It’s still warm. Is that normal?”

T’Pol shifted in front of her meditation candles. “Please sit down, commander,” she said. It was almost in the tone of an order, but not quite. When Trip was situated on the edge of T’Pol’s bed, she continued. “When I held your hand earlier this evening, our katras touched each other.” Upon seeing his confusion, she clarified: “A katra is a Vulcan word for living spirit… what you would probably call a soul. Through this connection, I was able to help you relax and enter a meditative state.”

“Oh,” Trip stated disbelievingly. T’Pol raised one eyebrow and continued.

“The lingering sensations I—“ here, she stopped quickly and corrected herself—“we have experienced indicates that our katras are more attuned to each other than those of others.”

“What do you mean, ‘attuned to each other?’” Trip asked incredulously.

“Our… souls are simply closer to each other than either of us had been able to admit before tonight. It is a phenomenon known as katran’nyat, or ‘one soul,’ which is often found in siblings, a mother and her children…” T’Pol paused uncomfortably for a short beat, then continued in a whisper, “and bondmates. It should fade soon.”

“Bondmates?” It was now Trip’s turn to raise an eyebrow in confusion. Had he just heard embarrassment in her voice?

T’Pol mentally cursed herself. Why had she said that? She certainly didn’t want to explain Vulcan mating rituals to this human. Those two simple words had complicated relations between them even further. But she had to explain the concept of bonding to him now, which made her unspeakably uneasy. “When a Vulcan couple joins in marriage, they form a telepathic bond between themselves.” This answer seemed to placate the commander, who visibly, albeit slightly, relaxed.

He still had questions, however, and was intent on finding answers. “So what does this ‘one soul’ thing mean for us? We’re definitely not siblings, and I don’t think you’re my mother, even though you’re probably old enough to be,” he said, laughing slightly. “Does this mean we have to… bond with each other?” he asked tentatively.

“No. However, the fact that we are katran’nyat probably helps to explain why we are such close friends, despite our radically different personalities,” T’Pol replied.

“Maybe we aren’t really that different,” Trip theorized. “Maybe… maybe we’re just alike in different ways. I mean, we’re both stubborn, but we both show it differently enough that we usually end up fighting over things. Friendship has a tendency to work that way.”

T’Pol nodded. She knew he was probably thinking of last week in Engineering, when Trip had nearly shouted her out of his office for making an unauthorized change to the duty roster. As the first officer, she had the responsibility of being sure there were enough people on each shift. When three of the people on Engineering’s alpha shift had contracted a mild stomach virus, T’Pol had pulled two crewmen from the night shift and temporarily had them work on alpha to make up for the discrepancy. The captain had approved her plan, as had the crewmen in question, but she had neglected to ask for the approval of Commander Tucker. He had been livid when he found out about the change, much to T’Pol’s well-hidden dismay.

And T’Pol knew that what the commander was saying now was true. They were genuinely more alike then either had cared to admit before tonight. The fact that they were katran’nyet was not a hindrance to her any longer. She had only one thing she had to ask him now.

“Commander— Trip— if you are still interested in meditation, I could teach you how to do it on your own.”

“Yes, T’Pol. And thank you. For everything,” Trip said, stunned, as he got up. She had never called him Trip before. She hadn’t even called him Charles before. He knew what had changed, however, and that nothing between them would be quite the same from now on. On his way out, he crouched in front of T’Pol and lightly stroked her bare arm with the back of his hand. It produced the same tingling sensation as before, and both human and Vulcan welcomed it.

As the doors to T’Pol’s quarters swished open, Trip asked, “See you tomorrow?” Even though he never looked back, he knew T’Pol was nodding.

*************

Note: I am going to continue this. It just won’t be for a few weeks; between rehearsals for the school musical, a RR I’m doing at Terran (see the URL in the header), exams, and winter break (no internet access at home), I’m swamped. So I might not post Part 2 until sometime in January. Sorry folks!
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Continue to Chapter 2

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