Missing Scenes from Season Three - Exile

SPOILERS: "Exile" and it may not make sense without them.

DISCLAIMER: Star Trek belongs to CBS/Paramount. "Exile" was written by Phyllis Strong.

AUTHOR'S NOTE: I was going to take a little break before the semester, but I snuck this one in anyway. My beta appears to be unavailable, so I'm just flying solo.  As always, many thanks to my reviewers.

She could not stop pacing.

She knew the bridge crew was watching her, no doubt puzzled by her atypical behavior. It would certainly be preferable for her, as the person in command, to sit in the captain's chair and radiate a useful calm.

But then that had never stopped Captain Archer from pacing, either.

She couldn't shake a terrible anxiety that something had gone wrong, and she now understood - for the first time - how this otherwise pointless movement could somehow help reduce those disturbing feelings to a more manageable level.

She had felt something very odd earlier - a sudden odd spike of surprise and consternation - and looked around only to see everyone calmly working at their stations. The strange sensation had passed quickly, some time ago now.

Time which was surely more than sufficient for two men in good health to gather any necessary scans.

She took a slow, steady breath, desperately trying to reach her usual state of confident self-possession. That odd sensation had obviously been just another random surge of feeling, an after-effect of her recent exposure to Trellium-D. For the last week she'd suffered continued unpredictable swings of raw emotion. In fact, they had actually worsened in the last two days. Since this seemed to fly in the face of logic, she'd theorized that it might be because the benefits of neuro-pressure had been unavailable to her.

Just as Ensign Sato had been temporarily exiled from her shipmates, T'Pol had been temporarily exiled from the one shipmate who knew how to soothe her.

Mr. Tucker had been preoccupied with insulating the shuttle pod. He wouldn't come near her, despite her suggestion that the work must be tiring and warranted a session. "It's hard to get that stuff completely off," he'd told her. "It's not worth the risk."

It now struck her as quite a minor risk indeed, compared to disappearing behind a sphere's cloaking barrier, completely cut off from Enterprise's sensors or communications. Even if Archer and Tucker could call for help if they needed it, there was no way Enterprise could survive the locally intense levels of gravimetric flux long enough to rescue them.

They would have to insulate another pod, which would take at least 36 hours.

Should she get a team started, on the off chance it might actually make any difference at all?

"Archer to Enterprise."

She turned and all but dove at the helm, their comm. station this shift. "We're here, Captain."

"It was right where you said it was, T'Pol. We got all the scans you asked for."

He sounded jubilant. And he'd said we. "You took longer than we expected."

"We took a little damage on the way in, but nothing we couldn't handle. I'll tell you all about it when we're aboard."

In the background, before the connection shut, she could distinctly hear Tucker say, "Don't tell her everything."

x x x

Once again she came her door in that silk robe. Apparently she considered pajamas normal wear for neuro-pressure. Trip wondered whether he should inform her that this was the kind of thing that could give a guy the wrong impression, but decided that would be stupid. One, she obviously wasn't giving neuro-pressure to any other guy. Two, she might stop wearing them.

"You're sure it's not too late?" He couldn't help a cautious look up and down the corridor. He might know she was up to nothing but a little helpful massage, but any crewman who saw her greeting him like that ...

"Is this not the usual time?" She stepped aside to let him in.

"I had Phlox put me through a decon cycle, just to be sure. He says I'm all clear."

What he had assumed would be welcome information did not even seem to register with her. She said, "Shall we begin?"

Yes, ma'am. He took his shirt off, then his shoes, and could have sworn that her eyes got darker as she watched him.

Did she usually watch him do that? He hadn't noticed it before. "Bench?" he said.

"Please."

She didn't pause to warm her hands, as she usually did, just launched into the first posture. Fortunately, her hands were not cold this time. Rather warm, in fact.

"That feels great," he said, between careful breaths.

She said nothing.

Was it his imagination, or was her technique a little different tonight? She held each position longer, spread her fingers wider, almost as if she was seeking as much contact as possible.

It felt nice, but he began to feel concerned when she didn't respond to any of his conversational gambits with anything more than instructions for the next posture.

"You all right?" he said.

"I'm fine," she said calmly.

"You're kind of quiet."

"Breathe," she said, and then had him sit up for the Surah'tahn.

Had he done something wrong? Was she still mad about earlier? She'd glared at him upon their arrival at the bridge, and stiffly informed them during the subsequent meeting in Archer's ready room that she had heard Mr. Tucker's comment, but saw no reason why they couldn't make a full report to her.

"Oh, me neither," Jon had said, for he was clearly delighted to share the story of Trip's little misadventure with the port thruster.

"I was just jokin' about not telling you everything, you know," Trip said now. "Though I suppose I was kind of hoping I could ward off future warnings from you about accidentally sparking something ..."

"Without the pod, you would have run out of air in less than five hours," she said abruptly.

Huh?

He sat there, breathing by rote, and wondered why the hell she would say that. Every away mission had an element of danger. For her to be pointing that out, as if in reproof, felt completely wrong. It was almost as if she had actually been worried or something. No, that wasn't it ... for he was convinced she did worry, in her repressed Vulcan way, much as anyone in command would.

But for it to be this obvious ... for her to actually betray that...

Damn.

It was the Trellium-D, wasn't it? It had to be. Maybe it hadn't fully cleared her system yet. But it was already a whole week after the Seleya. Had she perhaps been permanently affected?

"How 'bout some neuro-pressure for you?" he asked carefully, trying to sound as neutral as possible, trying not to suggest that she was in any way impaired.

"I would appreciate that," she said. "Since ... the Seleya ... I have found neuro-pressure most helpful in maintaining my emotional control. Apparently it will take some time to properly process the extreme emotions I experienced."

He nearly sighed in relief. Of course. That made sense. And she was aware of it, which meant she would handle it. Was handling it. "Always glad to be of service," he said lightly, as she turned her back to him and began to work the buttons of her shirt.

He took a breath and placed his fingers in the correct position on her luscious back.

Oh yes, he was definitely glad to be of service.