All Our Yesterdays
(I wrote this some time ago but never uploaded it. This is the episode from Spock's perspective.)
oOo
It happened imperceptibly at first, so that he didn't notice it before it had him. He didn't remember feeling any different after he went through the portal, but somewhere in the snow and ice of the bleak, lonely desert it must have started.
After, when he could look at all that had happened with the knowledge of hindsight, it was easy to find the clues. He still couldn't say when, precisely, it started, but he knew that Zarabeth fascinated him from the moment she pushed back her hood. He didn't know why. There was nothing about her that should have held his interest, and yet there was something. He wanted to protect her. He wanted to comfort her. He wanted to make her happy so he could see her radiant smile again.
But that was later.
"It should be an equation," he said, and yet it was not. Even in the most dire circumstances, it was always an equation, and yet this one was not, because the answer was not right.
And then she told him he could never go back.
The atavacron changed their cell structures. He could get through the portal again, but he would die by the time he reached the other side.
And his emotions. He was sure they must show on his face, because there were so many of them, all conflicting, and for once there was no question of thinking it through logically. He could not go back.
None of them could go back.
He tried to explain it to McCoy.
"Zarabeth explained it to me." The word Zarabeth, it was that which gave his whole sentence irrefutability. He explained it quite patiently, awaiting the inevitable burst of emotion. But it didn't come. Not then, anyway. He could read the man's thoughts just by looking at his face, he was going to argue, but not before he found an argument.
He had already changed then, though he didn't fully notice it. He knew he felt different, but gave it no other thought, because he had changed.
McCoy ate what Zarabeth gave him to eat and tried to charm her, but Spock knew what he was doing—he'd seen it often enough before, and he didn't want it. He surprised the doctor. He had often won points against him but never before in this way. He secretly enjoyed the look on the doctor's face when he made himself clear. Zarabeth was enjoying herself hugely.
Alone again in the part of the cave that was like a separate room, McCoy asked, "I wonder where Jim is."
"Who knows," he answered. The doctor should have noticed then that something was wrong, he might know more of those human expressions than he let on, but he would never say them. And yet he did, now.
"We can only hope that he is well, wherever he is." And it was a hope. A fervent, heartfelt hope, mingled with a dull ache of something lost, the agony of not being able to do anything about it.
And then the doctor brought up the subject of the portal again.
He was angry, he admitted it. Couldn't he see that they could not go back, not ever? Did he have to keep acting as though there would once again be a Deus Ex Machina? Could he not accept the truth, and move on?
Why did he have to stir things up, when nothing could be changed?
He knew he was walking fairly menacingly toward the man. He explained it all, once again, and he knew he was being unpleasant and yet part of him wanted to hurt him for his inability to understand.
And then McCoy said, said it right out, accused him of wanting to stay here, of using a handy excuse, and he didn't understand.
What made it worse was, he did want to stay. He tried to pass it off lightly, with a shrug, but the doctor wouldn't take that, he never could let things lie when they were better not disturbed.
"Now listen here, you pointed eared Vulcan—"
He didn't even know he had started moving until he was holding the doctor by the scruff of the neck. "I don't like that," He said roughly. "I don't think I ever did, and now I'm sure." And he was not himself at this moment, he was only his emotions, brimming over, ready to explode, and his only halfway coherent thought was wondering if this was why Romulans were always looking for war.
And the moment stretched on.
"What's happening to you Spock?" McCoy asked, wary.
"Nothing that shouldn't have happened long ago," he answered, and at that minute it was the pure and only truth.
He pushed the man back onto his bed, staring at him still, dangerous in a way he hadn't been before, and McCoy realized it.
…
He was sorry, that he could not return her to her own time. She answered that this was her time now, she'd had to accept that. She was very wise for being so young, he thought. McCoy hadn't accepted it, that was the way he was, stubborn till the end, but they understood each other.
"Do you know what it's like to be alone?" Zarabeth asked. "Really alone?"
"Yes," he answered, "I know what it is like."
"I believe you do," she said, and there was nothing to be said after that, so she changed the subject, asking him to have something to eat. Please.
"If it pleases you," he answered.
It was animal flesh. Of course, he should have expected it, in such a cold climate. He tried to rationalize his decision and it was rational, he could eat or starve, a greenhouse could not be built in a day and even he could not go without food for so long without starving, but what made some small part of himself that was still who he had once been afraid, was that that was what it had been: a rationalization of a decision already made.
If it pleases you.
"He did not want it said that he had me killed," Zarabeth said. "But to send me here alone, if that is not death, what is?"
She smiled ruefully. "A very inventive mind, that man."
"But insensitive, to send such a beautiful woman into exile." The words were foolish, taken logically—what did beauty have to do with anything? But that was the point—they were not meant to be taken logically. They meant something other than what had been said; like the conversation earlier with the three of them, it was more than words.
"The cold must have affected me more than I realized," he said, with the voicing of his last words, the uncharacteristic nature of everything that had been happening became clear, and he was appalled.
"Please pay no attention I'm not myself," he said, standing up as well, walking off a little ways, turning his back, and now he was talking out loud to himself.
"I'm behaving disgracefully," he said. "I have eaten animal flesh and I have enjoyed it. What is wrong with me?" It came out an accusation.
"I tell you you are beautiful." And then, "but you are beautiful; is it so wrong to tell you so?" He was in front of her now, facing her.
"I have longed to hear you say it." Unlike before, she is not looking at him, not facing him.
And now they are facing each other, and he has her head cupped in his hands, and hesitantly he touches her lips, and leans forward to kiss her, then pulls back—but he has lost his captain, his future, and himself, and he has nothing left to lose anymore.
.
.
.