it may take centuries

[Late on Sunday night, T'Pol wanders the Barge. It's not like stalking the quiet halls of Enterprise while the majority of the ship slept: on the Starfleet vessel, there was no avoiding gamma shift or security. Here, she can wander the halls and, more often than not see no one. No one on duty, no one serving the ship or running errands. It still strikes her as strange.

No, not strange. It's just ludicrous. Too many of them trust, even after the absurdity of seeing a hundreds-foot tall....magma creature walk through a tear in reality. (There is a muted, distant part of her that is desperate to study the phenomena. It's almost silenced under the weight of all she learned on the command track in Starfleet.) Too many of them think that the death toll is an acceptable fall back - and though she can't deny it, T'Pol can forgive laziness, either.

She's been watching the antics as the days have dragged on: she can'd deny that the return of her wash room was a welcome change, but the rest? What purpose does any of it serve?

It's as she walks, restless, that she finally stops debating how best to use these abilities and just uses them. Aboard Enterprise, she always kept her door locked fast, but any senior officer had a code to override that lock. There was more than one occasion that she was glad to sleep with both her knife and phaser in reach. So as she strides down a hall, she removes a door with a glance. Maybe if they all fear a little more, they'll manage to instigate something useful - like martial law - on a ship that sorely needs it.

What she should really do, she thinks, is take herself somewhere else. The only thing stopping her from trying tonight is that she doesn't know where her best destination lays: Vulcan is a ruin, and if Sato has taken control of the Empire then it's nowhere that T'Pol wants to be.

The exhaustion sets in after the fourth floor; her pace, brisk at the start, slows to practically plodding. Her eyes are half closed, and she can't remember having this little energy on the Barge - outside of the death toll, at least. That thought sets her teeth on edge, so she pushes it back, and heads for her room.

There, she installs Enterprise's arsenal, and gazes blankly at the mass of phase pistols and rifles before she passes out in her bed. It's probably the best sleep she's had in a very long while.

In the morning, she walks the ship to make sure it wasn't a dream - she's been having far fewer of them, nearly none, since Captain Rogers started insisting on regular meditation with her, but T'Pol has learned to trust little here. Well, okay, she's learned to trust little anywhere.

She doesn't smile when she sees the doors gone, of course she doesn't. But she does lift her chin a little, looking into each room as carefully as she can without being too obvious. Eventually, she makes her way to the mess hall (in her Starfleet uniform, with her old weapons, a knife and phaser, strapped to each hip), and instead of waiting online to find something edible out of the Human line up, she takes a seat at an empty table. In a blink, there is a bowl of plomeek broth in front of her. She hasn't had it - she hasn't had proper Vulcan food at all - in years. The taste is almost enough to give her an emotional reaction.]

[Spam for Steve]

[When she wakes....no. That is incorrect. She was never asleep. It all rushes in with consciousness, one fell swoop of being aware and remembering and the sudden surge makes her want to scream. Her outer eyelids peel back, and a moment later so do her inner ones. She clenches her jaw shut tight, and for a moment she wishes she were on Enterprise. At least waking up in this kind of agony would make sense in his sickbay.

But she knows everything. Captain Rogers' body. His shield. Its weight on her arm and his friend's knife finding her heart. How did he know? Her thoughts immediately head in that direction, he must have known, it was perfectly aimed to put down a Vulcan. She was wrong to think the Terran Empire had no sway here, it doesn't matter if they come from worlds with slavery or without, because in the end they're all Human and that is little better than monster.

She doesn't scream. She learned long ago not to give anyone the satisfaction of her pain. But she does start to push herself up to get a dizzying view of the infirmary, ignoring the way it spins and twists in her vision. She'll stumble out of here if she has to.]

[Spam for Dean, forward dated]

[By all rights, she should still be in the infirmary. She should, at the very least, continue resting in her quarters. But the idea of sitting in there for hours, staring at the steel of her ceiling, laying in her blue sheeted bed, surrounded by the largely undecorated, plain, Human Starfleet issue room makes her want to scream more than the pain ever did. So she reports for duty on the dinner shift more than a couple days early. Her skin prickles, her anger hovers in the air around her. It makes her feel less brittle. It makes her feel strong.

All thoughts of suppressing her emotion are slipping away. Around any corner may be another Sergeant Barnes. Around any corner may be whoever killed Captain Rogers. May be another Human. But why give way to fear or paranoia when she can slip into rage like a second skin?

(Fear is always the root. Surak said, Dakh pthak. Nam-tor ri ret na'fan-kitok fa tu dakh pthak. Cast out fear. There is no room for anything else until you cast out fear. But fear so easily turns to other things, and she follows those threads without a single thought for Surak's teachings. All they ever did was teach Vulcans to lay down and die.)

She cuts onions without her eyes reddening or tearing, inner eyelids safely shut. She slams the knife down too hard, clenches her fingers around it tight enough that green blood pools to her finger tips, leaves her knuckles white. It's so different from her usual state of being, and only so much of it can be attributed to the death toll's lingering effects.]

[Spam for Steve]

( she is used to dreams )

[Public Voice]

[T’Pol is still so far from herself when she makes this post that she’s surprised she manages to hide it. Her voice is level, unhurried, unbothered.

And just below the icy surface, she practically boils.]

I will be returning to my regular duties on the dinner shift and boot camp.

[There is a pause here, as though that might be the entirety of her message. She considered asking about the dreams of the Barge as a whole and decided against it before she even turned on the recording. She considers it again, now, and her frustration burns a little hotter at the experience of second guessing herself. She needs focus.]

Are there other areas in which I may be of service? [Because the prospect of spending one shift every night working, and every hour of the rest of the day thinking on her coma is maddening.]

( these voices in the mirror start quietly ) [Public Video] [She is inexpressive by most Human standards, calm and collected. Any Vulcan would see the struggle in her: T'Pol's emotions have always been close to the surface. Still, she is solemn as she tucks her hair back behind one delicately pointed ear, and doesn't waste words.] Have I been brought here as a slave? ( dear Admiral ) (ooc: T'Pol is about 5, and tags will be coming from closetothesurface!)