"Mr Vulcan."
Tuvok regarded the Talaxian with a raised eyebrow: an appropriate expression for the middle of the sleep cycle. "Mr Neelix. How may I be of assistance?"
"Am I disturbing you?"
A human would have lied. "Yes," he said, "but given that we share the same shift and sleep-cycle, you were doubtless aware of this fact before you roused me."
The Talaxian's face fell; which had a curious effect, as if a small, helpless animal had been injured. Tuvok restrained a sigh. "How may I be of assistance, Mr Neelix?" he repeated patiently and, this time, stepped to one side in a silent invitation.
Neelix nodded eagerly and steeped into his quarters. He picked out a spot and sat, unasked. It was a spot Tuvok would often choose for meditation, one facing the small fire-demon he had kept tucked into his possessions, even when with the Maquis. It was not, by any stretch of the imagination, a spot any other visitor would have chosen. "Mr Neelix."
"I've been thinking," the Talaxian said abruptly. He looked up at Tuvok and then swiftly looked away, his features tightening. "I know that you don't think very highly of me, Mr Tuvok. You think I'm emotional and impulsive and - and - simple." Some heat fired his voice; Tuvok watched, fascinated, as the Talaxian swallowed and it bled away. "I always knew. But after - after what happened..."
It appeared that the Talaxian, too, had trouble articulating it. Standard had no appropriate words for the experience, falling instead upon trite, emotion-laden language better suited for greeting cards or commercial music. We who are one - joined as one - together - one being - he had searched for several hours for a way to articulate this episode in his life without resorting to Standard's sexually-loaded language. The Vulcan words existed, true - they had existed before the drive to Mastery had spread across the ancient houses - but they were words without companions: dead-end words, stunted and lost in the language. No translation for them, merely a soft beep when the universal translator stumbled.
"You are discomforted in the aftermath of our joining," he observed, using the closest approximation to what he understood they had experienced.
The Talaxian flushed beet-red. Evidently this phrase had some sexualised meaning for him as well - maybe so, for was this thought not doubly-translated, to Standard and back again? "It feels odd, to be alone," Neelix said at last.
"We were never 'together', Mr Neelix. Tuvix was an entirely new entity, not merely the sum of our parts," he reproved gently.
The Talaxian nodded. His bristles had rustled forward, signalling extreme agitation or distress. Odd, then, that Tuvok felt nothing from him: no wave of strong emotion battered at his defences; no soft undercurrent of can't-have-want, as he had often encountered among the crew. The Talaxian had been loud and clear just a few days previously; now, there was nothing.
Several times Neelix started to speak but stopped. His hands fluttered ineffectually, as if communicating by body language alone. "It felt nice," he said at last.
Tuvok was silent for a long moment. His quarters, too, were silent. His mind, also: nothing came from the being sitting opposite him, though his distress was apparent. "It did," he allowed, finally. As Tuvix, he had certainly felt; foreign though the sensation had been, he had recognised it. One could certaily characterise it as 'nice'.
"I miss it," Neelix said.
Tuvok said nothing. They sat in silence: whole, entire, separate.
*
fin