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Far Away From Home	By : mancer Category: S through Z > Star Trek (2009) > Star Trek (2009) Views: 2090 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 0
Disclaimer: Star Trek is owned by Gene Roddenberry/Paramount Studios/JJ Abrams. I own none but this writing and the non-canon characters within. Work published for shared fun, not profit.

Chapter List
- 18
- 19
- 20
Trigger notice for this chapter: Conversation about surgery and doctor disagreements.

Vuron remained downstairs for a time. He wasn't necessarily nervous about returning to his room, and his bondmate, but without her presence in his mind he couldn't gauge how poorly she'd taken his latest actions. To be truthful, angry shouting, while outside his realm experience, spoke of a truer reaction in a Klingon.
Emotional reflection did not seem to be a normal reaction... then again, he'd mostly been dealing with politicians and Master Chijqa, whom one could argue didn't show the actions of a "true Klingon" either. At least, not the typical reactions of the individual one might pass on the street.
If he went to the kitchens, it was on the urge of his own biological functions. Not to scrounge up whatever faux meat Chef had been saving for those public dining occasions when the vegetarians at the table had to blend in with the rest of the diners. Not to assemble a peace offering on a platter. Not to shield himself from what ever violent emotion awaited him on the other side of his own door. If the tea, and bowl of reheated plomeek soup was an afterthought, he didn't put much weight in that fact.
The back hall, the stairs, the pathway to his rooms, all silent save the quiet pad of his footfalls.
He stood outside of his quarters for several minutes.
He had never lived with Rellig. Never ate a meal in contemplative silence, or discussed the painful minutia of politics. They had not shared each other's warmth beneath a pile of furs, or tested each other's mettle on the sparring mat.
After two weeks, given a certain measure for his Time, he'd felt closer to this Klingon than he'd felt with any of his own kind.
And now a wall more solid than this wood and iron stood between them.
A barrier that made him hesitate to open his own door.
How many times had he taken such a small invasion of privacy for granted? The fact that a gentle query, barely even perceivable by his mate, allowed him to know if he might be intruding, if she expected him, even what she expected of him.
His door slid open, his glowering mate meeting him eye to eye.
"How much longer do you plan to stand out here?"
"You heard me?"
"No. Smelled you."
She turned on her heel, plopping back into his seat at the computer terminal.
Vuron set his tray down, scooting the previous out of the way. The bread that'd been sent up earlier had gone cold, untouched.
He examined his mate out of the corner of his eye while he settled the eating utensils, kettle and cups. Even with her mobile face, expressive hands, attempting to determine her inner thoughts by her outwardly projected articulations threatened to be treacherous interpreting.
Dark eyes flashed at every movement he made, arms crossed tightly over her ample bosom, obscuring nearly every inch of the cutout over her heart to his gaze. Even her lip curled up a touch over her fangs in a snarl.
"What is this?"
"A bit of warm food," he replied with purposeful vagueness. "It is late, and we haven't eaten since the package your cook prepared for the trip back."
Her mouth tilted somewhat, then settled back into a frown that lined her mouth more deeply.
"It doesn't smell quite right."
Vuron nodded a little.
"We do not have real meat here, my cherished. The taste is rather similar."
"I don't trust your sense of taste," he replied, but her arms unfolded and she poked one artificial slab of targ ribs with a bare fingertip. "Your attempt to prove your worthiness as a mate is admirable, considering."
"You would prefer I go out into the storm and hunt you a fresh targ?"
Her smile tugged up one side of her face and sent a warm little shiver into his gut.
"No, not in this blizzard. Before you settle down to your... whatever that is, switch your blasted computer back. I was in the middle of a communiqué when you threw that bad javelin."
Vuron stepped behind her, mindful of their personal space, and quickly switched the UI back.
They ate in silence. Vuron taking silent record of the number of items she touched with her bare hands after handling the food. His fingers itched to drop his spoon and retrieve a cleansing cloth.
You've eaten with your fingers, he reminded himself. His inner voice seeming to echo about in his skull. Then again, you were no where near anything that might be damaged by food detritus.
A muscle in his jaw twitched as she forcefully jabbed a greasy thumb against the screen to send something.
Her eyes met his over the desk. A slow frown pulled at her lips again. Vuron tipped up one eyebrow in silent query.
"What does that mean?"
"To what are you inferring?"
"Your cryptic little," she waggled her hand around her temple. "Eyebrow thing."
"I was curious what caused your frown."
She sighed dramatically. "Typical male. Can't simply ask what's wrong."
He felt the skin around his eyes tighten in a little smile. Even while attempting to pick a fight, she inadvertently complimented him. He could grow quite fond of being disparaged for being a "typical male."
"It is temporary, isn't it?"
He blinked at the hop in conversation.
"The bond. This damn block she put in. It is temporary."
A statement. A question. A plea.
He nodded. "Yes. She assures it is temporary. She also recommended we see a mind healer."
"What would a mind healer do?"
"Form a more permanent correction to our bond."
J'Mara stared at him for a long time while he spooned up reheated plomeek.
"You say 'permanent correction,' like this will be the way we are for the rest of our lives."
"I have no way to estimate what the results of a skilled mind healer will be."
"I've noticed a difference," J'Mara decided after a moment. "I can't tell what your thinking." Her hand reached for his, then stopped abruptly and returned to her lap. "I thought your facial expressions were subtle before, but now... now you are just as stone-faced as the rest of them."
"You can still kill me and be rid of all of the complications in one go."
She blinked at him. "You're joking with me."
"I have found that humor, when used in stressful situations, can be effective in defusing social hurdles. Especially with members of other species."
Another staring fit took them before J'Mara returned her attention to the computer terminal.
"Maybe this is for the best," he heard her grumble in a low voice. "Actually have to get to know you, instead of just knowing you."
"An interesting distinction," Vuron considered. "But apt, considering that your people don't usually have such insight into their mates."
A sharp glare gave him the hint that she hadn't intended for him to hear, let alone respond, to that.
"Do your people divorce?"
Vuron blinked at the question. "Not frequently. Because we are bonded at such an early age, and grow with our mates, there is often little cause. I have heard of it happening, in cases of abuse or infertility.
"Should I make inferences based on this inquiry?"
"Idle threats. Here. I'm finished. Do you need to do anything, or should I shut it off?"
"An item or two."
They exchanged places. Vuron wiped his keypad and screen down with a cloth before switching the language of the UI again, for the sake of his own reading speed and comprehension, and began sending out messages of inquiry and planning as he needed to.
He attempted to focus on the work in front of him. The occasional sound dragged his eyes off of the brightly lit screen: J'Mara roughly stacking the dishes, plopping the trays into a corner by the door, sloshing more hot tea into both of the mugs, dragging off the stack of fabric coverlets from the bed, stomping about the room, then flinging them right back over, toeing off boots and tossing them against the wall.
"You are an inconsiderate husband!" J'Mara shouted.
Vuron blinked up at her. She'd removed her armor, leaving herself topless and bedecked only in her tight woolen leggins.
"I am a tired husband who is attempting to finish up a few last necessary correspondence."
She snarled and scratched at some unseen itch at the base of her skull.
"How can you be so blind to the needs of your wife?"
To that Vuron had no answer at all.
J'Mara stamped up, her bare feet smacking against the cool floor. Her hand snagged his wrist, dragging him up and away from the terminal. With all the roughness usual to her people, her fingers dragged against his in a crude, plainly understood gesture. He shivered at the arousal kindled up in him from such a rough kiss.
"Ah," he said in understanding.
Her eyes flicked down, staring at their joined hands. Bashfulness?
"I am sorry, my t'hy'la. Without the bond, it is difficult for me to tell the difference between an argument for argument's sake, and an argument intended as foreplay." He stroked her fingers in return with his usual finesse, drawing out another shiver from deep within his belly.
"It is strange," J'Mara said in response. Vuron's hand stilled at the sudden quiet in her voice. Not the low growl that she used when she intended to speak to herself, and certainly not the loud, authoritative tone she typically used. "I don't feel anything."
He ran his index and middle finger to the tips of hers, and back down again, paying special attention to every fold of her knuckles, every scar won in battle.
"You feel nothing?" He questioned. His own voice a tad breathy and deep.
"No." Her eyes met his again. Not bashfulness. Confusion. "That... that little touch had been such a turn on. I loved that I could do that, in public, and it felt like the most intimate contact I'd ever had. Now... now it's just your fingers, icy and dry, touching mine." She shivered as if physically chilled by his touch.
Vuron withdrew. A bucket of ice water might do more for his libido at the moment than the look his mate gave him.
"Kiss me," she demanded, her eyebrows drawn down in fierce concentration. She snagged his silk labels in her fists before he could protest. Her lips gnashing hard against his.
When she didn't find what she sought she withdrew. Dusky fingers wiped a trail of green blood from her lips.
"J'Mara I-"
"Don't. Just... don't. I need to think. You have more work to do?"
He nodded.
Her fingers returned to her lips as she turned to the low bed. Without further word she climbed in, cocooning herself in the feather ticks and woven blankets. He reached for the strong upward sweep of one shoulder, only to stop himself. She shivered involuntarily as his hand nearly fell onto her naked skin.
He grasped the trailing edge of a coverlet instead and tucked it up to cover the exposed flesh and returned to work.
Without her providing visual or auditory distractions, he found his work go both faster and agonizingly slow. His thoughts drifted back to her still, curled form again and again. Not just the physical presence of her, but the absence of her warmth within his mind.
He clicked off his computer, once he realized his fingers had been hovering over the keypad without decision for eight point five minutes. Pointless to keep the machine running and waste power without motivation to continue. He'd taken care of the more important things. Preliminary reports to the Elders on Terra Prime could wait; especially when he did not possess enough accurate data.
His gaze swept over his sleeping mate for a moment, just a shadow in the dark, before he decided it might be more prudent to retrieve meditation materials.
He lit his fire pot and some incense. The woven reed mat rubbed familiar, uncomfortable ridges into his rump. Long, deep breaths pulled him into accustomed patterns of contemplation.
Swirls of concerns floated in and out of his conscious thought. Various plots for rescue attempts, data in various minutia... a thousand little observations about the other being in the room.
As his mind wandered to his mate, he found that she flooded his thoughts. Her being as large in his mind, even devoid of their bond, as her personality itself.
Her warmth. Not just her core temperature, but the fiery temper, the unconventional acceptance...
Acceptance, that is, until he violated her privacy. Her trust.
What of their bond?
The opportunity to examine the bond, their relationship, unhindered lay before him. T'Sai judged correctly; their bond had formed incorrectly. He knew this. It was too strong. They should not loose one another within the meld like they had. Without care, they might very well kill one another.
But...
Could he willingly give that bond up? Live, like this, not feeling the other, even as she curled up in dreams only a meter away?
Live, as he had, with Rellig? Compartmentalized, even within his own mind? Barricading off every thought, every sensation, because of unseen censure?
No. He had no wish to return to that way of life.
Mating with a Klingon... unforeseen complications might very well be his way of life, for the rest of his life.
Hundreds of if-then statements plotted out within his mind, creating a road of possibilities that stretched into eternity before him. Some he could trace well.
If he allowed T'Sai's block to remain, found a mind healer to break it permanently, then J'Mara would return to her lands in the mountains. Return to her pupils, her own private studies. He? He would follow the delegates off-world. The Vulcans would not remain here longer than necessary. Travel to Terra Prime, where the Ambassador would make his report, and everyone would be reassigned.
If he melded with his mate, tore down the artificial barrier, he'd loose the confidence of those whom rely on him. Without anyone with military experience to organize the efforts, the rest of the delegates were certainly lost.
He abandoned that line of if-thens, along with a hundred others. Too many variables to reliably predict.
If he did reinstate the bond with his mate, he might delve into the intrinsic thought processes of the natives of this planet. He'd touched her mind often enough, knew that the very foundation of her mind had been built in ways that he barely grasped. This knowledge, this structure, predicated every nuance of her people. Being aware of it, actively aware rather than simply cognizant, might mean the difference between successful negotiations and...
"Vuron."
For a long moment, he didn't realize that his name had been spoken aloud. He took a deep breath in, attempting to reconstruct his mental shields and recompartmentalize all the complications before he had to release the breath again.
"Yes, J'Mara?"
"You're keeping me awake."
He blinked his eyes open.
She was staring at him, in the weak light given by the single flame. Her cheek cushioned by her hands. Only her face visible for all the bundled bedclothes. In the weak, wavering light, she looked quite a bit younger. Her eyes opened a little wider than usual. Her lips pressed in a taunt line.
Apologizing wasn't logical, nor did her language hold the vocabulary for his intended words. For a long moment, the ghost of those possibilities stretched out in his mindseye again.
Several leaps down one probability chain, he saw the two of them sitting across from one another at a table, some restaurant, maybe. Not on her homeworld, obviously not on his. She knew Standard, enough to be bold in conversation, but the gaps in her knowledge had felt like voids in his own mind. Fluency in Klingonese, Standard, Vulcan, and a handful of others had been prerequisites for his employment. So, they would sit, across from one another, speaking Klingonese on some alien planet. Occasionally delving into one another's minds for a concept that neither had vocabulary, or social experience, for. He would sit, eating in small, measured bites while she joked, laughed, flicking bits of skin and bone from greasy fingertips. Would she be content with this view of domesticity?
"Vuron."
"It was not my intent to keep you awake." The closest thing to an apology he could muster in the borrowed language. He blew out the tentative flame. "Is the incense disruptive, or may I keep it burning?"
He listened to a few of her deep breaths in the dark.
"I like it. It smells like you."
"In all probability because I use this particular incense nearly every evening for meditation."
"Come to bed."
His bed felt small, when shared with someone else. He reclined on his back, waiting still and silent while J'Mara settled herself around him. She snagged his left arm, stretching it out perpendicular from his body. After a good deal of wiggling, her shoulder finally tucked into his armpit, her cheek against his collarbone. Her body pressed along his side, somehow working a way so that their hearts, each beating its own independent rhythm, thrummed close enough to one another that he could feel her pulse through his side. She tucked the layers of fabric over them and gave a dramatic shiver.
"Brr. You're freezing."
"You are radiating heat," he observed in response. Indeed, her greater body temperature had warmed the bedclothes to the point of near comfort.
The sigh that played along his collarbone might have been one of contentment or frustration.
J'Mara's palm slipped between them, pressing over the beat of his heart for several long moments, before moving upward to trace the scars that bisected his chest. The gesture familiar, but off now that he didn't feel the sensation of touch through her mind.
"No one else has ever touched me like this," he admitted aloud, cupping her hand in his.
"I know." Her fingertips circled over a nub in the scar tissue. "What's this? I thought you Vulcans had superior science crap."
"Shunts. One on either side, to drain out excess fluid. Even with laser scalpels, when one has enough tissue removed, fluid can build up around the surgical site. If too much collects under the skin, it will not be able to connect correctly to the exposed muscle layer beneath it."
"Huh," she said simply, her fingers seeking, and finding, the hard nodule of scar tissue on the opposite side where that shunt had been installed. "What was it like, having them removed?"
He flexed his left hand open and closed a moment. He had a mattress wide enough for their two bodies, pressed together, but that left the perpendicular arm stretched out into the cool air. With an awkward shrug to get his arm under the covers, he curled his arm around J'Mara's waist, tucking her even closer against his side.
"Given a few days, when we are reconnected, you could look into the memory of it. Experience if for yourself, if you want to."
"So you will meld with me again."
Vuron nodded, his chin brushing against the soft curls of her hair. "If you wish it, my cherished."
Her fingertips returned to their exploring caress.
"Tell me about it, now. Husbands should tell stories to their wives, not make them shift through memories."
Vuron contemplated this demand. A possible solution to the undercurrent problem.
"I petitioned for sole guardianship of myself a couple years before I came of age. It was difficult meeting the requirements, but without it my parents would not have consented for the surgery to be preformed."
J'Mara's hand stilled as Vuron spoke. She probably intended to ask only about the surgery itself but... the process for preparing himself, mentally, physically, financially, that had been just as large a part of it.
"They did not approve?"
"No. But, as an independent adult, they had no say in the matter. As part of that process, I had to move out of my family home, acquire work, housing, and finish my schooling. Because it is considered an elective procedure, I had to save my credits to finance it by myself."
"What work did you do?"
He briefly considered going into the enforced time at the clay mine... and discarded it.
"Anything that did not interfere with my educational requirements. Courier, janitor."
"Menial labor."
Vuron nodded.
"How long did it take you to save enough credits?"
"Long enough that I was in the age of majority, chronologically." He shook his head, rueful at his young self for being so impetuous. "If I had been thinking logically at the time, I would have remained with my family, still finished my schooling and taken the jobs I could, and saved the credits I spent on rent and food. Nevertheless. I achieve my goal somehow.
"A month after receiving my diploma, I began interviewing doctors. It was fascinating how few understood my request. Even among my people, it is more common to request an enhancement of such endowments, rather than a reduction. A couple refused to talk with me, once I had explained my requirements. One stated that he was willing to preform it, once I'd reached the age of one-hundred.
"'You must live half your life with dissatisfaction,'" Vuron said, mimicking the man's nasal voice. "'Before you can be assured that you do not wish to live this way.' Another was willing to remove half of the mass, to make them appear smaller, for the same price of removing them in toto, and then repeat the procedure a decade later, with a repeat of the charge as well, when I was assured that I wanted them gone completely."
"You found someone eventually?"
He nodded again.
"A skilled doctor, half the world away. She was very considerate. Listened to my every concern, and had an answer to every question without looking it up in some obscure medical text. She had done the procedure before, several times."
Vuron's thumb traced one thin edge of a scar himself, remembering the woman's artificial face. Considering her profession, it made sense that her lips had been enhanced, the wrinkles of her brow removed, her face rejuvenated and hair colored. At the time, his young self had been rather intimidated by the buxom, statuesque beauty, but unable to place the unease he felt at looking at the face that had been made too symmetrical over the years.
"Female doctors have often proved more difficult to communicate with, so it was doubly interesting that he was the only one willing to work with me, after a host of males."
"Why would women be more difficult?"
"A human doctor, a woman, suggested that subconsciously, they see me as rejecting all that is female, and thus feel I am attempting to insult them. It is hard to attribute such emotion to one of our people, but the pattern is there, nonetheless."
"The surgery itself?"
"I was placed on a table that was off-horizontal by perhaps ten degrees, to aid fluid drainage. The doctor placed massaging pads under my legs, to reduce the chance of blood clots. A heated blanket was tucked around me. One of the assistants administered a painkiller, which made my blood feel very cold. I woke up several hours later, and they were gone. I was painfully cold then, and for several months afterward."
"Cold? Is that a side effect that Vulcan's have to surgery?"
"No. I'd had several kilos of biomass removed. It had acted as an insulator for my ribcage. Without it, I perceived the exterior temperature with greater accuracy than I had since I was a child. Until my nerve clusters rewired themselves, and I became accustomed to the change, I wore a lot of sweaters."
"And now you're the big strong man I'm growing to love."
Vuron's hand tightened around J'Mara's, unsure how to respond to many points of that statement.
- 18
- 19
- 20
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Far Away From Home