Meet Lt. Zariel Sindile, temporarily assigned to Voyager for its rescue mission in the Badlands. Now she's stuck in the Delta Quadrant, her children are at home without her, she has no one to depend on, and her darkest secret is about to be laid ba...
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Stardate 52033.7
"It's gone again. Dammit!" The wind from this outburst nearly extinguished the flame of the Vulcan meditation lamp Zariel was holding, and she carefully set it down on the coffee table in Tuvok's quarters. She had been kneeling on one side of the coffee table, Tuvok on the other, and now she made to rise, but only caught a shoe in a pants leg and sat down hard, the momentum causing her to slam her spine and shoulders into the front of Tuvok's couch. The impact caused several items on the couch to slide and the end table to topple.
When she had regained her wind, she said, "Sorry, Tuvok."
Levelly, he asked, "For what?"
"For the outburst. For disarrangin' your furniture. For not being able to get this technique. Whatever. Take your pick." She slammed her palms down on the floor on either side of her legs, then drew her knees up toward her chest.
Tuvok had surveyed her clinically while she was speaking, taking in the high color of frustration and embarrassment on her face, the way one hand had gone to her stomach and the other to her forehead seemingly without her knowledge. He rose smoothly from the floor, and walked to the replicator, where he tapped a couple of panels. The replicator obliged with a mug of familiar yellowish-orange liquid, which Tuvok placed on the table in front of Zariel without comment before returning to his kneeling posture across the table. She gave it a brief baleful look, before extending an arm to pick it up.
It was indeed the spice tea that T'Lin made, perhaps a little lighter on the ginger. She sipped a few times, and her stomach seemed to acquiesce. She set the mug back on the coffee table and scowled deeply. "This is ridiculous. I don't know why I can't get this. I understand exactly what you're asking me to do, and what it's supposed to look like, but the image just won't coalesce." She folded her arms around her body, and muttered resentfully, "I should be able to do this."
Tuvok folded his hands on the table. "I wonder, Zariel, if you are aware of exactly how often you say things like that."
Now she did look at him, confused. "Like what?"
"I should. I shouldn't. I ought to. I should have."
She glared at him, and he continued, "It is one thing to strive for excellence, it is quite another to burden oneself with unrealistic and unattainable expectations. I think it pertinent to ask you to consider the source of those expectations."
"The source?"
"Yes. 'I should never make an error for any reason. I ought to be able to learn and execute a very difficult Vulcan mental technique immediately. I should be flawless in my duties, in my command, on stage and on the baseball field.'" He laid his hands flat on the table and leaned toward her, challenging. "To borrow from your parlance; says who?"
She sighed and let her head drop backwards to rest on the seat of the couch behind her shoulders. "I think you know perfectly well 'says who.'"
"Indeed I do." He straightened up and steepled his fingers in contemplation. "At some point we will need work through this particular obstacle, however, for the moment we shall again go around it. I pose this: if I were teaching Ensign Wildman or Ensign Hall to use this technique, how many attempts do you imagine it should take them to master it?"
"How am I supposed to know that, Tuvok? I'm just learning it myself, or failing to, and they don't have the motivation I do to learn this stuff."
She didn't look at him, but she could feel his eyes on her. "Assume then, that they have the same motivation and the same training you have. How many attempts?"
She cast her eyes about the room, as she cast her mind about for the answer. "I don't know, five or six? How long does it take a Vulcan to learn it?"
"Vulcan children begin studying this discipline at six years of age." Ignoring her splutter of indignation at the thought of not succeeding better than a child would, he went on, steadily, "Most master it by the age of nine, although some never fully do so. I would say that less than one Vulcan child in fifty succeeds on the first attempt."
She sat silent for a moment, properly chastened. "I saw what you did there, Tuvok, asking me what I'd expect of someone besides myself."
"I would be quite surprised if you had not. There is another distinction that I feel constrained to point out, as you evaluate your progress in this matter."
"What's that?"
Tuvok rose and came around the table to kneel on the floor next to where she still sat with her back against the couch. "Vulcan children learn this technique in mind meld, either with a parent or an instructor, and the adult will hold the image for the student until he or she can hold it unassisted."
Zariel froze, irrationally terrified all over again, her eyes never leaving Tuvok's.
"I am willing to assist you in the same manner, if you will consent to a meld."
She shook her head rapidly, trying hard not to lean away from him. "It's fine, Tuvok, it'll be fine, I'll just keep practicing, I'm sure I'll get it."
Tuvok didn't move or speak, trying not to alarm her further, but she scrambled to her feet. "Thank you for the lesson, Commander, and the tea, I really do need to be..." Unfortunately, she couldn't think of anywhere she could say she needed to be, so she just motioned vaguely toward the door as she crossed the room.
As her hand hovered over the panel beside the door, ready to release the lock, Tuvok asked, "Zariel, will you please consider it?"
She pushed the button, the door swept open, and she looked over her shoulder at him and whispered, "No."
The door closed behind her, and Tuvok stayed where he was for a long while, contemplating.
