Author's Note: Star Trek and all its intellectual property belongs to Paramount/CBS. No infringement intended, no money made.

Please note: This story is rated for some bad language. If this offends you, please consider before reading it.

Between the idea
And the reality
Between the motion
And the act
Falls the Shadow

(T. S. Eliot, The Hollow Men)

Chapter 1

With a sigh of relief, Holly lowered herself into the hot bath.

She'd been working hard in the garden all day, and was looking forward to a long, relaxing soak. Her nose detected with idle pleasure the various scents of the aromatic herbs she'd mixed into a home-made bath-ball and dropped into the water; rose petals bobbed among the bubbles, a small luxury gathered from the roses that had blown in the heat of the afternoon. The crimson ones offended her at some minor level, she being a Yorkist through and through, but the bush in the very sunniest corner of the kitchen garden was so old that it seemed almost sacrilege to dig it up, and the perfume was so beautiful when she dried the petals to make pot-pourri; she could stretch her tolerance thus far, although the roses that scrambled over the arch at the front gate and the trellis around the front door were properly, respectably, indubitably white.

She'd switched her music player on and left the door open. The first track had just started, Paillard's recording of Johann Pachelbel's Canon and Gigue in D Major, her favourite piece from the wide range of classical music that she loved. The exquisite sound filled the cottage.

She had just laid her head back against the scrolled end of the high-backed bath when the phone rang.

Perhaps she can be forgiven for muttering a word that was not at all in keeping with the ambiance she had put so much effort into creating. Fortunately she had not yet picked up the glass of elderflower wine that was scheduled to be the crowning moment of her relaxation, or she might well have flung it at the offending machine that was the robber of her half-hour of hard earned peace.

However, in the line of work she had chosen there was effectively never a day or even an hour when she was officially 'off duty'. With a sigh she levered herself out of the water and padded across the rough-hewn slate floor, leaving a dripping trail that mattered not at all. If she was lucky, it would just be a wrong number anyway (her number was only one digit away from that of the local ice cream parlour), and she could politely supply the correct number, close the conversation and return to her hedonism with a clear conscience.

"Holly! It's a pleasure to hear your voice again!"

She was undeniably startled, and just as undeniably pleased. "Max!"

It was unlikely to be purely a social call. As one of Starfleet's top admirals, Maxwell Forrest rarely had time for chit-chat, even with a woman with whom he'd enjoyed a loosely romantic relationship for a few years. Both of them understood what that relationship was, and accepted it amicably. As a result, their warm feelings for each other survived long periods when neither remembered the other existed. He was a good man, and she liked him immensely, but she was far too clear-sighted a realist to imagine that any romantic relationship would ever be more important to him than his career.

They had mutual friends, and she knew several members of his family. It wasn't just a necessary social obligation to spend a few minutes exchanging news; she was genuinely interested; but nevertheless she knew that the demands on his time would mean he would get around to the real reason for his call sooner rather than later. That suited her just as well as it did him, because then she could get back to her elderflower wine, her hot bath and the long luxurious soak this call had interrupted.

"I'm afraid I have another job for you, Holly," he said at last, his tone now a little apologetic.

"Of course you have, that's why you called," she replied, amused. "So tell me the details, and I hope they're interesting."

She heard his long exhalation. "You know, I hate doing this to you."

"You say the same thing every time, Max. It's my job, and I enjoy it. Tell me and be done with it, I've got a hot bath going cold."

He knew what the bath was like, of course. He'd stayed over more than once. "You had to mention the bath."

"So I'm a sadist," she replied cheerfully. "Come on. Spill the beans. I've got elderflower wine too, and you're spoiling a potentially beautiful friendship."

"I've got machine-brewed coffee and a doughnut that tastes like it was made last month, but don't waste any time feeling sorry for me."

"I won't." She walked over, picked up the glass and took an audible swig, swishing it around her mouth before swallowing right up against the receiver. "You can keep your coffee."

"You're right, you are a sadist."

"But you love me anyway."

"I'm rapidly revising that delusion." He chuckled, but then sighed and sobered. "I wish there was someone else I could trust with this particular part of the job."

"You know the quick way to put me out of work." Shut down the damned Section.

Of course he knew, and of course he couldn't. Section 31 had their tentacles firmly dug into Starfleet, and even he as an admiral couldn't tell exactly where the authority lay that could close them down, or even who was responsible for their continued existence. They had their uses, and those uses gave them leverage. By now he was cynically sure that they had a lot of very powerful friends, so that even if anyone ever thought to call them on their often extremely suspect methods, the accusation would be bogged down long before it got anywhere near a court of law.

What you can't fight you have to learn to deal with, and as a realist that's what Maxwell had done. He disliked the fact that the Section existed, but as he couldn't deny that they were useful, and couldn't wave a magic wand to make their existence unnecessary, he contented himself with keeping a wary eye on their activities from a distance and doing what he could to curb their influence within the organisation. And – as he was today – occasionally acting as the enabler for one of the Section's casualties to receive some kind of remedial treatment for the psychological damage that the life they led invariably inflicted.

It was extremely dangerous work. She was under no illusions about that. But each casualty she treated made her more experienced, and as she grew more experienced she felt that she was better able to minimise the danger, both to herself and to the damaged individuals who turned up on her doorstep – usually bitterly resentful of the fact they'd been sent here at all.

That she was infallible, that she would never make a mistake that could cost her dear, she never for a moment believed. But that wasn't going to stop her trying.

"He's just back from an undercover operation," Maxwell admitted. "I don't know the details. Hell, nobody tells me things, I'm just a damned admiral. But I've been asked to get this guy checked out. He's valuable. And damned dangerous."

"We're all damned dangerous in the right circumstances, Max." She took a sip of the wine. "When do I expect him?"

"He's booked on the redeye from SFO on Tuesday. You should see him sometime Wednesday evening."

"Will he be escorted?"

"I wouldn't want to risk the escort." His dryly humorous tone almost managed to disguise the fact that he wasn't joking.

"I'm looking forward to meeting him already."

"The two of you should get on. He's as English as you are."

"So if he kills me he'll do it very politely."

"With impeccable politeness."

"What a way to go." She took another unnecessarily loud swallow of the wine. "I was going to send you a couple of bottles of this, but perhaps I'll need it myself."

"I was going to tell you to look after yourself, but my concern for your safety's getting smaller by the minute."

"Enjoy your coffee and doughnut, Max." On which vindictive note she ended the call, knowing that he would be grinning ruefully at the other end of the line.

It really was good wine. She poured herself another glass and walked back to the bath, where she ran in a bit more hot water to bring it back up to piping hot, the way she liked it. It seemed this wasn't the only hot water that she'd be up to her neck in that week.

Wincing and squeaking, she lowered herself back in, retrieved her glass and sipped the contents thoughtfully, staring at the square of window where the evening sky was now luminous blue-green. English, eh? Serving in Starfleet? Admittedly the organisation prided itself on its inclusivity, but she was faintly surprised to find a man of 'impeccable politeness' being recruited into the ranks of Section 31.

"Perhaps he was too polite to refuse when they asked him," she murmured, and fell into quakes of giggles.

Nevertheless, the job to come was one which she knew full well would be no joking matter. The people who got sent to her were beyond the scope of the average range of treatment; it was the mixture of her professional competence and her absolute discretion that made her the ideal candidate for Starfleet to call upon, though she knew that Maxwell still worried about the danger. Although she didn't discount this and never had, she had extraordinary compassion for the people she treated. That, perhaps, was what made her so successful. Too successful sometimes for the Section's liking, for now and again her interventions were so far-reaching that they had a detrimental effect on a patient's continued usefulness.

Maybe it was those occasional successes that made her so determined to go on with her job, in spite of the danger. For all that most of the time she was simply restoring a machine to functionality – a functionality that could well be described as criminal – there was always the chance that she might effect a real rescue of the man or woman inside the machine. That had been Max's reasoning the first time he asked if she would be prepared to make the attempt.

She hadn't succeeded, that time or for the next few. Realistically she doubted whether anyone could have; the Section did its work well. Too well, on occasions. Every now and then she had caught glimpses of something, some process, associated with certain of their operatives that was beyond anything found in the standard textbooks on obedience conditioning; not enough for her to frame specific ideas, let alone specific charges, but enough to prompt her to watch for the subtle signals when they appeared.

Well. It seemed that she was set for an interesting couple of weeks; that was usually the time that a new patient would stay with her, though the stay could be extended if it was necessary. Ideally they would remain 'as long as it took', but Section 31 were rarely willing to wait – it appeared that there were a significant number of pies into which their long fingers needed to slip, and they released their hapless agents only when these became so unstable they were as much of a threat to their teams and handlers as they were to the people upon whom they were supposed to be set.

"Here's to the new kid," she murmured, lifting her glass slightly.

Another adventure was about to begin.