Post 268: Beneath the Surface

Stardate:70630.1200
Title: Beneath the Surface
Author: Salvek
Scene: Arboretum - Lily's Meditation GardenTime: One Day after "Seeing Ghosts" and "Time to Deal with the Issues"

"Come in, Commander." Ashlyn called, after hearing the arboretum doors open in the distance. She knew it was him, because the doors parted at precisely 11:15 hours and zero seconds. The same time as his appointment.

Salvek unceremoniously walked across the arboretum and into Lily T'Ana's Japanese meditation garden without a word of greeting.

"Thank you so much for coming." She greeted him.

"I was ordered here Doctor, I had no choice. We will need to be brief. I have duties to attend to." He looked around for a chair, but there were none here, only cushions on the ground. Salvek chose to stand and examine a bonsai plant in the center of the garden.

*He's not going to make this easy is he? Nothing like a defensive Vulcan to start your day off right. Fine, if he wants to get right down to it, that's what we'll do.* Trind thought to herself.

"What happened on Bajor, Salvek?"

"I have filed all the appropriate reports, Doctor."

"No, what happened to you?"

"I am well. Dr. McBrayne has cleared me medically for duty."

"Indeed. Please take a seat Commander."

Salvek bypassed the cushions, instead choosing to simply sit on the ground directly beneath him. Trind noted that his defiance was almost childlike, as if he were regressing into an unconscious and instinctively defensive mode.

"Your wife is worried about you Salvek. She told me you have not melded with her since your return. She misses you."

Salvek sat silently, staring at the ground.

"You're trying to come up with an answer but your inability to lie is stopping you."

Salvek was taken aback by just how transparent he was to Doctor Trind.

"It is of no consequence. I have dealt with the situation."

"So there is a situation? Let's discuss that."

Salvek lifted his eyes to meet the doctor's for the first time. His gaze indicated a modicum of frustration with her line of direct questioning. He thought back to the surface of the planet. Specifically to the night they had rescued Daia Hilani.

"The woman. The one that Mr. Blane and his pet rescued on the planet. She nearly died because I was eager to move on. If Blane hadn't insisted we stay, she would have most certainly died." Salvek once again chose to examine the plants around him rather the make eye contact with the Doctor.

"Why were you eager to move on Salvek?" Trind asked, finally able to fit a few pieces of the puzzle together in her mind, as Salvek began to open up.

"The team was exhausted, and there was much more land to cover. I felt Daia Hilani's home was a lost cause, and that we could not let an animal dictate our search pattern."

"So your interest was in continuing on to look for more survivors? Is that not logical?"

"Not exactly." said Salvek. Trind could have sworn his cheeks were flushed with a bit of green. "By that point I had assumed there were no more survivors, and we simply needed to tag everyone as quickly as we could, to complete our mission so we could leave."

"You wanted to go home?"

"Yes," Salvek stood, turning his back to Trind and clasping his hands together. His stance indicated to her that deep within his guarded exterior there was shame over these events. "I gave up on the Bajorans. On Kellyn's people. I have shamed myself, as surely as if I had given up on her myself. I have not melded with her because..." Salvek trailed off mid- sentence.

"You don't want her to know."

Salvek did not answer.

"Salvek, how long had you been on the surface by that point?"

"Days. Too long."

"Why were you anxious to leave?"

"My team was exhausted, filthy, hungry. And the dead... they just stretched on and on and on."

"Would you say your desire to return was based upon concern for your crew's well being, or your own desire to not be exposed to the misery on Bajor anymore?"

"Those are both accurate statements," he paused. "Have you ever loved anyone, Doctor?"

Trind was not expecting to suddenly be the target of the questioning, but she knew a question like that was leading to a statement, not another question. "We all love, Salvek."

"You have been a doctor many lifetimes have you not?"

"Yes."

"Have you not ever looked at a Trill patient and thought how easily that person could be your own child? Or spouse, or sibling? How easily that child you find on Bajor could be your own, and that woman could be your own wife. Now look at those faces hundreds of times each day."

"Salvek, what you're saying to me is that your love of your family made you unable to fully cope with seeing your wife's people suffer. You desire to bid a hasty exit from the devastation is fostered by your compassion for the Bajoran people. But your Vulcan training in logic does not exactly know how to process those feelings because you suppress them so fully."

Salvek finally turned to look at her once again. "I'm not exactly sure what you mean?"

"Salvek, where it comes to Kellyn, and your child, you are not exactly entirely Vulcan are you? You do allow your family to see a certain amount of emotion from you?"

"Yes, I chose not to fully complete the Vulcan disciplines, because I felt I owed it to my wife to share some of myself with her, rather be fully suppressed."

"And now that you are seeing Kellyn's people suffer, you cannot help but allow some negative emotions to seep through the crack in your psyche you have left wedged open for Kellyn and Arie. Where someone like Blane knows how to set these feelings aside to perform his duty, you are not prepared to handle them the same way because you are not used to feeling negative emotions where it comes to your wife. You are used to fully suppressing them and not feeling them at all. This leaves you not understanding your feelings, and wanting to run from them."

Salvek tried to absorb fully what she was saying, but still could not get past the feeling that he had abandoned the Bajorans when they need him most.

"Salvek, there may be something else. Your emotional reaction to this is quite strong, even for someone like you. Tell me," Trind asked as she examined his medical records on a PADD. "Was your last Pon Farr really..."

"6 years, 11 months ago."

"But that's not right. You and Kellyn married ten years ago- following the blood fever which I diagnosed and documented myself," The Trill had been serving as the Indy's CMO at the time. She did the math quickly in her head and the numbers just did not add up.

"Doctor, when we were on DS23, there was an," Salvek chose his word carefully, "Event. The station suffered a series of fractures, what you might call time reversions. This was due to the transwarp engine experiments Kellyn and I were conducting." He averted his eyes.

"One of the repercussions of these reversions was a repeat of the Pon Farr which had occurred three years previously on the Independence. After which Kellyn and I were married."

"So, in effect, the rifts reset your body clock and it has now been,"

"Six years and eleven months since the last blood fever. And as I am sure you will be pointing out, this particular event in a Vulcan's life can amplify emotional responses."

"Boy howdy it can. I'm going to need you to think about this discussion, and talk to you again another day. With your family as well. In any event, I want you to take the time that Captain Gilmore has given you off and use it to the full to be with them, Salvek. That's an order."

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Commander Salvek
Chief Engineer
USS Independence