Anger was an emotion, Spock reminded himself. Control. It would have been impossible had he not been on the path of Kolinahr—a path two of his closest friends had just flat-out refused to help him along.
He looked, stunned, at the cadet who stood before him grinning like a Romulan, her arms crossed before her chest. Had it been any other circumstance, had he had emotion, he would have been overjoyed to see Saavik again. It had been years since they had met face-to-face; he had taken minimal shore leave from his five-year mission, and she was busy at Starfleet Academy. As it was, it only made things even more difficult than she was making them.
His voice belied his state of mind, calm outwardly but inwardly, threatening to seethe with the opposite of anything Kolinahr-related. "Excuse me, Saavikam, but on what grounds do you refuse my leave taking?"
"Oh come on, Spock, I can't have been the first. If you showed more emotion it would have been clear how frustrated you were even before you asked me." Her grin faded, a serious depth entering her eyes. "I admire your logic. I admire you as a person. I'm envious, even, that you're ridding yourself of emotion. But removing the problem is not the answer; you have to face it. And beneath the exterior, you've always had some degree of emotion; it's the whole Spock. If you did this to yourself, you would be dead to me."
"That's the idea," Spock said, arching an eyebrow. "I will be entirely different, changed for the better."
"No, you will be no longer yourself."
He could not succeed in removing all traces of anger that wound through his mind. Perhaps his human side was a handicap, after all; he contemplated his feelings, found they were difficult to examine and thus to purge. The simple matter of shoving them aside had proved more difficult than logically planned, as it had when he had asked Doctor McCoy.
It was interesting that she, who had known him for far briefer periods in her life, who clung so desperately to logic at times to prevent regression into the feral child she had been on Hellguard, was the one who told him this. Not McCoy, or even the lady Amanda.
Saavik sighed as the computer stated she had only a few minutes before her classes resumed. "I ask you only this. Ask me again in a few days. Reflect on your decision, in the meantime."
—
Two Days Previous
A Bar In ShiKahr, Vulcan
McCoy had acquiesced at first, respectful of his old colleague, mollified that Spock even wanted to visit him. A few drinks and an evasion from a mindmeld later, he had slammed his glass down on the table with a solid clunk.
"No way in hell, Spock."
The calm, unchanged look Spock still gave him unnerved McCoy to no end. There was so little of Spock left in that Kol-whatever robe he wore and the absolute motionlessness. And his eyes…McCoy had definitely needed a few drinks before he could look Spock in the face and face his wrath.
"May I ask why?" Spock pressed after a long while. No, no doubt about it—he didn't look frustrated, but inwardly there was something going on. McCoy could tell, if only by guessing. Spock could remain silent for much longer when truly calm.
"Spock, look…dammit, you're not going to gain anything from packaging half of yourself away! Where will you be when you're cut off from everyone you once knew? Miserable, that's what! I can't be part of that. I can't have it on my conscience."
He gripped his glass tightly and glared at the Vulcan, whose fists might have been clenched underneath the sleeves of his robe.
Spock nodded. "Our ways will be parted anyhow, even if you do not accept my taking my leave of you. It is unlikely I will ever see you again."
He waited.
"Look, you green-blooded, exasperating…" Whatever he said was cut off mid-sentence as McCoy slumped to the table. Spock noticed the numerous empty glasses beside the unconscious doctor. He paused for a moment, considered reaching down and melding with the doctor to get this over with, then the wrongness of that course of action made him simply look down at the now-snoring man in regret.
"Good-bye, my friend."
He couldn't make himself take leave of his captain. Not yet. He thought, looking at the red heat-hazed horizon outside the single Terran bar on Vulcan, of another desert planet. First, to lose himself as utterly as if he had stepped into a sandstorm—but not lost, perfected, made into what, logically, he should be. Vulcan.
This train of thought left, and the other planet returned. He realized with a pang swiftly quelled he had entirely forgotten for five years—
Saavik. He last remembered her an uncivilized, untamed child wary of all but those she trusted, unfamiliar with Vulcan and stubborn about the smallest thing when she was not unexpectedly insightful. This more permanent separation would be more taxing, but made him a little uneasy: did Saavik still require guidance that he had mainly provided? Was she still forming and healing after Hellguard?
He was mostly convinced that, as a young woman in Starfleet Academy, she would be more emotionally stable and far different than he remembered—and that, even with difficulty, he could get her agreement to never see her again.
—
Back at the Academy
Saavik's nod was not necessarily agreement. She had no expression on her face, but her dark eyes flashed with something like accusation. It stung, a little. Spock bitterly hardened himself against rejection, as he had done before countless times with his father. This time it hurt more deeply.
He cleared his mind. At her nod, he had moved forward to place his fingertips on the psi points at her temple and brow, initiating the meld. Just before, his glance darted to the cabinet near the door of Saavik's compact room, seeing with a flash the contents of a drawer years before. He wondered absently if the knife she had guarded so fiercely on Hellguard was still hidden away among her possessions. She hadn't changed, in some ways.
He stiffened himself against the shock of contact: she was warm, he had forgotten. He had melded with her only once before, patiently teaching her the ways of the mind she refused to learn, and that faint connection burned.
"My mind to your mind," he intoned, deeply controlled. "My thoughts to your thoughts," they both whispered. Saavik's eyes flashed with something defensive again, Spock could see before his eyelids dropped shut and her mind hit his.
There was no softening of her accusations. Her disapproval over his choosing the ways of the Kolinahr was strong, pervading everything in her thoughts in the recent present. Her mind cried out against losing its identity…no, Spock losing his…and latched onto his, hurling him into her regression caused by this massive upset—
Not. Spock notgo—
Countless images and emotions of the child she had been, that still surfaced sometimes in her expression. She shielded from him the jagged edges he would have difficulty escaping from with coherence—brief glimpses of a terrified boy suddenly silenced by the rock in her hand—running—Romulans—physical traumas she did not allow him to see; it was not important to now.
It cleared away when Saavik realized what part of her mind Spock witnessed, followed by her adult voice, in complete, shaken logic:
Spock, do not leave me alone—
What will I become, bereft of logic and wisdom? How will I ever change?
He had judged wrongly when he thought she was ready to be on her own, he—
Nonsense. Her mind suddenly pulled away from him.
An unwilling acceptance crept into the chill between them. Whether it was his or hers, he could not say, until, taken aback, he could recognize his own mind again.
Hers. Acceptance, still laced with the deep pain it caused her.
You will do as you must. Live long and prosper. I—
Her unspoken words trailed off. In the twilight in-between state of their minds becoming distinct and the meld separating, he caught something surprising from her subconscious.
He was still thinking, even after he exited Starfleet Academy, knowing he would never see her again. His fingers still burned.
Something about her mind he couldn't face, had made him turn away and leave. He had reeled back as if hit by a powerful blow, then, shaken, retreated into his own head.
He would continue the path of Kolinahr, if only because he was not yet ready to face this confusion. Not so soon after seeing her again for the first time in years…
Back in her room, caught between shocked tears and thoughtfulness, Saavik turned up the corner of her mouth in an unconscious half-smile. She had the oddest feeling that Spock could not successfully complete Kolinahr…
She would wait.