It is the first logical, and yet supremely illogical conclusion that she reaches. Her slowly waking mind tells her that she is reclined, her back pressed uncomfortably against a bulkhead. She reaches for each facts, and cannot make sense of them: she is in pain. She is breathing. She is not trapped, beyond the heavy restraints still linking her wrists together. Beyond the bruises she can feel deepening, and the bones that may be sprained, and the blood creeping along her skin, she can hear the sounds of people moving about. She is not dead, and as that thought settles, she forces her eyes open.
She is not in the empty room Archer used for interrogation, either. It's a dimly lit hall, unlike any aboard Defiant or Avenger; it's nothing like any ship she's seen, and she can't decide if that is cause for cautious hope, or expectation of pain. When the first Humans stumble gleefully past her, T'Pol presses herself against the wall and decide it's most likely the latter. That they don't turn their weapons on her she attributes to poor observation, and takes stock of her injuries: the cut along her cheek must have opened again, and she can remember something slicing into her side before everything became blackness. She had thought it was the bulkhead exploding in, had accepted the fierce joy that had filled her when she realized the Defiant was on the verge of destruction. It hadn't mattered if it would take her with it.
That it hadn't was baffling. Inching to her feet, using the bulkhead to steady herself in lieu of having free hands, T'Pol pauses to steady her breathing. Blood covers her bare side, stark green against tan skin. Judging by the fact that she still defies logic and continues to breathe, her heart isn't been pierced: that's fortunate, perhaps. There are other injuries, more superficial - Jonathan Archer was not known as a kind interrogator by anyone, and though it was well known that Vulcan discipline makes physical punishment rather pointless, that has never stopped Humans from exercising their supposed superiority.
T'Pol can taste coppery blood on her tongue, and swallows past a wash of dizziness. The pain is tolerable. What is intolerable is not knowing where she is, or how she got here. She starts forward, unsteady at first but quickly regaining her balance. She cannot hide that she is hurt, but she can bury all weakness.]
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