What Never Truly Was
Jim stood naked in front of the mirror, feeling everything too sharply. It occurred to him that all this seemed false and artificial: the chill of the air over his skin, the unforgiving deck under his feet, and bright light in his eyes all somehow ridiculous against the tightness of dirt still under his fingernails, the smell of smoke still lingering in his hair, and the visceral discomfort of barely-healed wounds. The stones had hurt, but their pain had been delivered in ignorance; it was knowledge that tormented him now.
He wished the amnesia had gone both ways; wished that he could not remember Miramanee with startling detail or still feel the softness of animal skin over his body. He wished that he could not remember what he had lost, or what he had regained. A wave of disgust washed over him as he deliberately slid his bare foot over the carpet, registering its feel, his very being cringing from the realization that some part of him resented his ship. The simple world that had stretched before him was now gone, vanished on the funeral pyre of unyielding Vulcan telepathy.
Spock… . His first officer was still in command, with so much left unexplained. That meld had been so deliberately direct, so relentlessly efficient, a penance or a punishment, and for whom? He had tasted desperate emotions shivering between them, including a starkly revealed truth that he couldn't face, not now, not with his wife still so vivid in his memory.
His wife, his child, and what had been his whole world, now gone. He studied his reflection, seeing the oddness now in the length of his hair and the deep golden tan over his skin, the smear of paint across his cheek. He had not seen himself in three months, knowing only his reflection mirrored in laughing dark eyes. And as he shivered in this cool, dry air that smelled vacantly clean, he felt grief welling anew in his belly. He felt angry and cruel and his heart was sore, and he lifted a hand to stare at its calluses and dirt: all that remained of a world he was never meant for. He looked again at his face, seeing hardness in his own eyes, and turned abruptly toward the shower to wash away the final trappings of a life that could never be his.