Fade into you (Part 1)

Posted on Thu Apr 9th, 2026 @ 9:15am by Commander Atna & Lieutenant Commander Intharia T'Zor

2,061 words; about a 10 minute read

Mission: Histories
Location: Science annex 5, DS13
Timeline: Between Mission 1 & 2

“As a member of this station’s science department, even a civilian volunteer, it is undesirable,” Atna said as her conclusion to the explanation of why she’d asked T’Zor here, “for you to possess a capability with tactical and scientific applications that you cannot reliably deploy under varied conditions.”

Intharia T’Zor, seated cross-legged on the edge of a biolab worktable, smiled over the rim of her tea. “You have a very charming way of saying 'I think you’re doing it wrong'.”

Atna looked up. “If I thought you were doing it wrong, Doctor, I would say so directly.”

“That’s more or less praise by Vulcan standards, isn’t it?”

“It is not.” Atna refuted expressionlessly.

The answer came too fast to be fully convincing. T’Zor’s smile widened.

They were alone in one of the smaller science annexes off the main department in the upper sphere, a room meant for controlled material testing and delicate field harmonics work.

Atna had converted the room for the afternoon with severe efficiency. One diagnostic table. One sensor arch. One open case of the more delicate sensory instruments. One meditation mat she had produced, apparently from nowhere official, and placed in the centre of the floor.

T’Zor slid down from the worktable and approached the mat.

“So,” she said, folding her arms, “your theory is that Vulcan mental disciplines can help me refine biotic output.”

“My theory,” Atna corrected, “is that your nervous system, endocrine responses, and psionic centres appear to operate in concert during biotic expression. You describe the process in emotional, intuitive terms. That may be normal for your people. But intuition can often be improved by structure.”

T’Zor laughed under her breath and stepped onto the mat. “I’m beginning to think your people have no idea how you sound.”
Atna’s brow moved a fraction. “And I am beginning to think you share the tendency of most of the beings in this universe to engage in recreational imprecision.”

“That is because precision is usually less fun in matters of discovery.”

“At present,” Atna said, setting down the padd, “we are not engaged in fun.”

“No,” T’Zor said lightly, “we’re engaged in science. Very different.”

Atna almost sighed. Almost. “Please begin first stage manifestation,” she instructed.

T’Zor closed her eyes.

She had already tried, over the last several days, to explain biotics in ways the station’s scanners and models would accept. The difficulty was translation. In her own universe, the language around biotics had shaped around use, around instinct, around bodies that had grown with the expectation of mass effect fields being a thing one could feel, influence, and live with. Here, every explanation came out sounding mystical or theoretical or both.

Atna, at least, had not dismissed it. She had merely listened, asked exacting questions, and then started making diagrams. A light glow appeared around Intharia’s person, like an internal aura that shone out through her pores.

“Centre your breathing,” Atna said.

“I am.”

“It is shallow.”

“I’m relaxed.”

“No,” Atna said, “you are attempting to enforce relaxation to enhance your performance.”

T’Zor opened one eye. “You’re more observant than I gave you credit for.”

“I am Vulcan.”

“That’s one word for it.”

“Doctor.”

T’Zor closed her eye again, smiling despite herself.

She drew in a slower breath. Let it out. Again.

Atna circled her once, not predatory, exactly, but clinical in a way that still made T’Zor keenly aware of her physical presence: the measured footfalls, the faint clean scent of desert soap and sterile fabric, the impossible neatness of her posture. Atna moved like she had never once in her life wasted motion.

“Now,” Atna said, “describe the sensation before activation.”

T’Zor lifted one hand, palm upward. A moment later a small distortion shivered above it: bluish, wavering, no more than a lensing of light. “Pressure. Not physical pressure. A sort of… anticipatory tension. Like knowing where a falling thing wants to go, and disagreeing with it.”

Atna considered that. “That is not sufficiently scientific for developing a methodology.”

“It’s true.”

“It is… poetic.”

“You say that like a pejorative.”

“Yes.”

The blue flare above T’Zor’s palm brightened, then guttered.

She hissed softly and let it vanish.

“At the point of failure,” Atna said, “what changed?”

“Your tone became vexatious.”

“That is unlikely to be causal.”

“It felt causal.”

Atna picked up the sensor wand and checked the readout. “Your heart rate increased. Cortisol spike. Neural activity destabilized before the field collapsed.”

T’Zor opened her eyes. “That tends to happen when people loom over me with medical equipment.”
“Vulcans do not loom.”

“One small loom for Vulcan...” T’Zor teased before realising she wasn’t sure if that particular human cultural reference still made sense here.

Atna set the wand aside. “If standard verbal guidance is proving disruptive, there is another option.”
T’Zor saw it then; not hesitation, exactly, but deliberation. On a human face it might have been uncertainty. On Atna it was subtler: a stillness before commitment.

“What option?”

“A limited telepathic link,” Atna said. “Not a full mind meld. Merely enough to observe the structure of your concentration and neurokinetic scaffolding as it forms.”

T’Zor blinked. To her people, a link was a deeply intimate exchange, for someone as remote as Atna to suggest it was almost startling but not unwelcome.

“I understand your people can also join minds,” Atna continued. “If there is sufficient overlap in process, a controlled contact may clarify the mechanisms involved.”

T’Zor found her voice. “You want to get inside my head for science.”

“For observation.”

“That’s a little less invasive.”

“I would not proceed without consent. If you are uncomfortable, we will not proceed”

Atna said it plainly. Not distant. Not cold. Simply true.

Something in T’Zor’s chest shifted.

She had met competent people on the station. Kind ones, too. Curious ones. But Atna’s manner had a peculiar effect on her: the more controlled it was, the more every small concession seemed to matter. Every courtesy had weight. Every pause meant she had chosen not to force the moment forward.

T’Zor stepped off the mat.

“How limited?” she asked.

“At first contact? Minimal. Enough to share orientation, emotional tone, perhaps sensory alignment.”

“You make that sound very tame.”

“It can be.”

“And if it isn’t?”

Atna met her gaze. Dark eyes. Steady. Impossible to read unless one paid attention to what she chose to say.

“Then we disengage.”

The answer should have settled it.

Instead it made T’Zor suddenly, absurdly aware of the silence in the room.

Aware of how close they stood.

Aware that Atna’s hands, clasped lightly behind her back a moment ago, were now at her sides.

Aware that this was a terrible idea if she wanted her pulse to remain where it belonged.

“Well,” T’Zor said, and heard a slight breathlessness she hoped universal translators would suppress before it carried, “I wouldn’t be much of an explorer if I said no to new experiences.”

“That,” Atna said, “does not sound like a scientific justification.”

“See? You are learning.”

Atna extended two fingers and held them forward.

Not touching. Waiting.

T’Zor looked at the offered hand, then at Atna’s face.

“Have you done this with non-Vulcans often?”

“No.”

“With people from other universes?”

“Never.”

“With women who should be cool with this sort of thing after centuries of practice but still feel weirdly nervous?”

Atna’s mouth changed by a millimetre. “Not recently.”

T’Zor laughed softly, raising two fingers to meet Atna’s. She had read about the Vulcan technique.

The first contact was almost disappointingly gentle.

Fingertips to fingertips.

Then the world narrowed.

It was not the overwhelming plunge of a full asari joining, not the vast and ecstatic flood she associated with true neural embrace. This was finer than that. Cleaner. A line drawn in light. She felt Atna’s discipline first, not as repression, but as architecture. Rooms inside rooms. Doors precisely fitted. Elaborate but austere freezes and floors. Emotional currents moving under stone, not absent at all, merely guided so well they did not spill.

And through that structure came Atna’s perception of her.

Interest.

Concentration.

Respect.

And, to T’Zor’s immediate and destabilizing surprise, attraction so abruptly recognized that Atna’s control tightened around it a fraction too late.

T’Zor inhaled sharply. The sudden invigorating feel of it through the eyes of another caused her to release all control she held over the way she had felt since she’d first laid eyes on the particularly well-constructed Vulcan.

Atna’s eyes widened by a hair.

There you are, T’Zor thought before she could stop herself, and because the contact was open enough, Atna heard it.

The answering sensation was not words at first. It was the unmistakable Vulcan equivalent of being caught looking.

They separated at once.

Neither moved back more than half a step, which somehow made it worse.

For one impossible second they only stared at each other.

Atna recovered first, though not entirely. “That,” she said, voice perfectly level except for being a degree quieter than before, “was sufficient for initial observation.”

T’Zor folded her arms, because otherwise she might do something inadvisable and memorable. “You found the process informative?”

“Yes.”

“Good.”

“Yes.”

Another silence.

Then T’Zor, unable to resist: “So. Your interest in this subject is not entirely objective. And… you know that my acceptance of your tutelage might not be either.”

Atna’s expression returned toward neutrality with visible effort. “I do not believe it is a relevant factor.”

“No?”

“Attraction is not,” Atna said, choosing each word with dangerous care, “inherently disqualifying.”

“No?”

“No.”

T’Zor tilted her head. “Very progressive Vulcan thinking.”

“At present,” Atna said, and now there was unmistakably something new beneath the control, something dry and almost warm, “I am more concerned with whether your biotic expression improved.”

That made T’Zor laugh outright.

“Of course you are.”

She returned to the mat, still smiling, still far too aware of the imprint of Atna’s mind against hers. The room felt different now, not safer or less safe, but charged, as if some invisible piece of machinery had finally powered on.

She lifted her hand again.

This time the field formed instantly.

Blue light curled over her palm, denser and brighter than before, a compact well of manipulated mass that hummed against the air. The instruments on Atna’s table chirped in surprise.

T’Zor stared at it. Then at Atna.

“Oh,” she said.

Atna looked from the readouts to the glow in T’Zor’s hand. “Your control has improved significantly.”

“Yes,” T’Zor murmured. “Fascinating.”

“At this stage,” Atna said, “further testing is indicated.”

T’Zor’s smile turned slow and brilliant. “Commander. Are you asking to share minds again in the name of science?”
Atna held her gaze.

“Yes,” she said.

And for the first time since she had come aboard Deep Space 13, stranded impossibly far from home and trying very hard to make herself useful rather than lonely, T’Zor felt the sudden dangerous certainty that she was standing on the threshold of something she would not want to walk back from.

Normally she avoided such things with other races, she was old enough to have seen friends from childhood grow old and die in the natural cycle. Vulcans though had greater longevity than most, the knowledge alone was enough to keep her from dismissing this outright. That, and the fact that Atna was particularly exceptional, which she'd known even before she got a firsthand look at the inside of her mind.

“That,” she said softly, stepping closer, “is the most appealing thing anyone on this station has said to me.”

“Very well. The readings suggest we may experience diminishing returns from further testing today. The same time tomorrow then?” Atna asked.

"I'll be here." Thari said with a calm smile.

"Until then." Atna said with a nod, returning the equipment before leaving abruptly.

Intharia knew now she had seen Atna flustered, subtle though it was. She liked it, and she looked forward to the opportunity to fluster her tomorrow.

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