Ad Astra :: Star Trek Fanfiction Archive ^{Beam me up, Scotty.}

Chapter Text

Their response is sufficiently rapid and the surgery effective enough there is no serious damage to the brain. It is a simple surgery, though urgent, but T’Volis feels particularly exhausted afterwards. 

“We’re going to have more incidents like this, not less,” says Tyrell, sounding equally tired. 

“You like her,” T’Volis says, like an accusation, because Tyrell doesn’t indulge in liking anyone.  

He blinks large dark eyes at her with consternation. “Well,” he says after a moment, “I’ve had worse captains. Besides, I stuck her back together after Cardassia, I take it personally some virus is ruining all my hard work. That eye replacement was difficult. ”

“Logical,” she says, with the implication she absolutely doesn’t believe him. Her commbadge chirps; Diane is waking up. She goes, so Diane will not wake up alone. 

The next day, the coughing starts. Or, re-starts. She coughed plenty in the first few days of infection, but now it changes, deep and wet and bloody. Her blood levels show an overreaction of the immune system, the poetically named human condition of a cytokine storm . It killed fast, before modern medicine. 

They do what they can, pumping her full of immunosuppressant drugs, persuading her immune system to calm and leave her systems alone, but once she’s resting comfortably from that, a secondary infection arises, something else she was exposed to–a fungal pathogen intended for Tellarites, they realize, once the crisis is passed and it’s isolated–and attacks her liver and kidneys with vicious effect. 

When it is over, she is very weak, and still coughing, and it is still wet and ugly, but the fluids her body was pumping into her lungs have slowed to a trickle and she is not dying for now. She is wrung out and gray, and she does not try to sit up. Her lips are cracked, her eyes sunk in dark, bruised-looking sockets. When she thinks she’s unwatched, they close, or stare unfocused at the wall. 

She has stopped trying to make jokes. She is not trying to talk more than the bare minimum. She lies there, sleeping when she can, doing exactly as she should, and somehow the cooperation is horrible to T’Volis, who is used to Diane spitting in the face of should . 

They will have to try the vector treatment when she is a little stronger. When they’re not still chasing fungal hyphae through her body for microsurgery. But putting it off is dangerous too. 

She coughs and coughs, like her body has forgotten how to not cough. T’Volis watches her, numb. It is not that she has given up on Diane’s survival, it is not that she thinks it necessary to stop trying. It is simply that she cannot see a way to succeed. 

It’s late into the evening, and T’Volis is returning to the isolation chamber when she realizes Diane has a visitor. It’s well after hours; he’s not supposed to be here. But he is–the Tal Shiar agent, Tanek. He is standing by the wall, a hand pressed against the transparent aluminum, and the low murmur of his voice carries down the corridor. T’Volis is close enough to see their expressions, but he is speaking very quietly, and she cannot make out what he is saying. 

There are enough differences between Romulans and Vulcans that T’Volis hesitates to name his body language as affectionate, but the expression on his face gives the game away. It’s strangely gentle, humor papered thinly over fear, and the way his hand rests on the isolation unit wall is a study in hopeless passion. And Diane’s face, as she looks up at him, leaves no other possible interpretation. Humans are so expressive, and she’s making no effort to be anything but. She’s letting herself look tired, and scared, and appreciative of what he offers her with his own affection, a stark emotional intimacy that T’Volis finds uncomfortable to look at. It is too much. Too human, too demanding. To feel these things is one thing. To put them on your face like that, demand acknowledgement like that…

But here is Tanek, offering comfort, and Diane blatantly showing him she needs it. That she accepts it. 

That he is the one person here she does not need to put on her captain’s mask for. 

And here he is, the Tal Shiar officer, offering helpless comfort to a Starfleet captain, offering what little he can and suffering for it—it’s illogical to conclude anything but that her affection is returned. That perhaps she was not even the one to initiate it. 

This realization is shocking in its pain. 

Maybe Lt Commander Hawthorne is correct. Maybe Subcommander Tanek of the Tal Shiar sees her interest as a mission objective. But that idea doesn’t sit well with T’Volis, it doesn’t fit with the sad, scared man she sees in that corridor. When he realizes she’s there, he straightens up with a farewell to Diane, and stalks back along the corridor, darting a venomous look at T’Volis as he passes.

“He is worried about you,” T’Volis tells Diane, after she has suited up and entered the room. Her vitals are fortunately unchanged, but cortisol levels are higher than she’d like, and heart rate is still elevated.

“He’s always worried about me,” says Diane. Usually this would be delivered with some amusement. It is not. She doesn’t even open her eyes, her expression inturned and tight with discomfort. “It’s either one hell of an act, or the Tal Shiar gave me the biggest worrywart in the entire Romulan Empire.”

She is making light of it. T’Volis pauses in her work. “I would not identify those as the only possibilities.”

“If it’s anything else,” Diane stops, clears her throat, holding down a fit of coughing. Another breath and she fails. T’Volis waits, timing it to see when it’s appropriate to step in with medication. 

“If it’s anything else,” she says again, when it passes without intervention, “he can’t afford to have me notice it. It would get him killed. It could get his family killed.”

Her own feelings don’t factor in, T’Volis knows. She won’t ask someone to take that kind of risk for her. 

“I see,” she says aloud. 

“He says he does not wish to have to familiarize himself with the foibles of a new captain,” Diane says, doggedly, “not after having adjusted to mine, and if he says that, that’s what I’ll believe.”

“Then I too will accept that explanation,” says T’Volis.