Grief Process for a Half-Human, Half-Vulcan
by misscam
Disclaimer: Not my characters, just my words.
Author's Note: Set at some point not too long after the 2009 reboot movie. Much thanks to lotus79 for helping out with phrasing and finding the right tone for this one.
II
On the fifth night Uhura wakes to find Spock rising from their bed, she does not ask where he is going, merely puts her robe on and follows him.
II
Night has no real meaning on a starship. Space is always dark, and filled with stars that all create day somewhere at any time. But with lights dimmed, it is enough of an illusion of night to pass muster.
The Enterprise is sleeping, apart from those doing night-shift. And him, Spock thinks, and Nyota now because of him.
She says nothing as he sits down, merely sits down close a heartbeat later. She looks determined, a look he first remembers as she was trying to master the phonetics of a particular Romulan vowel after three unsuccessful attempts.
"You should sleep," he says. He can feel a 'the same would apply to you' coming, but she settles for giving him a look that says it rather than voicing it aloud.
"The same dream?" she asks instead.
"In essence, yes," he says. Always the same rush of images, mingled and confused. And the noise, seeming to drown him until it is the silence that does. Even now, it feels like it clings to him, an unwanted embrace of so much quiet. Six billion lives lost of quiet, and his mother too.
"If you tell me it is illogical, I will have to argue with you," she says, and he looks quizzically at her. "It is entirely logical that the images you have repressed and controlled so carefully when awake, would be all the stronger when you let go of that control."
"As while sleeping," he concludes.
"Yes," she says firmly. "Perhaps if you repressed and controlled them less when awake, they wouldn't dominate your dreams."
"I do not know what to say," he says awkwardly. He doesn't. What is there to say when you have lost your planet and your mother in one moment, an action that seems to defy logic by its mere absurdity?
"You were angry," she observes, probably remembering his provoked attack at (now) Captain Kirk. "Are you still?"
Yes, he knows, feeling it rise merely thinking about it. But with it, there is a strange fatigue that he doesn't quite remember. Perhaps it is because the one he might logically direct his anger at, the Romulan who caused his loss, is lost himself now. Trying to direct it at anyone else would conflict with his sense of logic, even if it might ease the strength of it.
"I do," he acknowledges. She nods, looking down at his hand entwined in hers. He didn't even notice doing it, he realises, as if the action was on instinct rather a conscious choice.
"I sometimes forget it has happened," he hears himself saying. "It seems such an illogical fact, that Vulcan should be lost."
"Because of how it happened?"
"Yes. And just because it did."
She touches his cheek, and the grief in her eyes almost startles him. If his own is even just a mirror of that, it is no wonder it wakes him at night.
"I'm sorry," she says, and for all she means it, the words still seem so insubstantial. Everyone has said it, as if it needs to be said when it makes no difference at all.
Anger, he thinks sternly. Illogical targets.
"You know more languages than I," he says instead. "Do any of them master expressing grief to ease it?"
She thinks, but then gives him a sad smile. "I don't think any language can master it. Some have expressions that might come more easily or feel more consoling, but grief has its own language, as emotions all do. Translation is always an imperfect process."
"The Vulcan language has no adequate words to express the loss of our home-world," he says harshly, then checks himself. "We do have meditative processes for purging emotion, including grief."
"You have no applied those yet," she observes.
"No."
"Why not?"
"If I did, it would become merely fact. My mother would be dead. Vulcan would be gone. As long as I grieve, it is still illogical, it is still..." He falters, and she leans against him. "I do not wish it to be fact."
"I know," she says softly, and for a while they were sit so, her head against his shoulder, his arm at her back.
"Humans attempt to apply logic to emotions such as grief as well," she says after a while, straightening to look him in the face. "Such as the Kübler-Ross model, attempting to describe the process in five steps, even if some dispute it."
"One of the stages is denial," he says, remembering. Denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance - like a check-list, and almost presented as such by the Starfleet councillor that gave the seminar. "You think I am at stage one?"
"I think you are human also," she says, kissing him softly. After a breath, he kisses her back, a touch more uncontrolled than he would want to, but she doesn't seem to mind.
Human and Vulcan, he thinks distantly. Perhaps she is right, and he cannot handle the grief just as a Vulcan. Just as he can not deal with it just as a human. He must find his own way between the two.
Stages of grief for a half-human, half-Vulcan, perhaps. With stage one, sleeplessness, in full force, brought on by the human desire for denial and the Vulcan desire for emotional control.
Put like that, it sounds almost logical. As does going back to bed, even if it isn't to sleep, as her touches are implying. Even if it is to take comfort in the woman he loves, and for a moment, let go.
II
On the sixth night Spock wakes from a dream, he does not rise, merely edges closer to Nyota, and she listens to his breath until it steadies and he is sleeping again.
Perhaps it is a sign his grief process is moving along. Perhaps. She isn't sure what will be stage two for him, or if he even knows himself. She just knows she will be there with him. For him.
As humans do, when someone dear to them suffers a loss.
FIN