AN: Title is a reference to Mercedes Lackey's Valdemar series. All my recent fics are cross-posted to Archive of Our Own under the name dragonsigma.
This barren planet is colder than he remembers. It is illogical to yearn for that which one cannot have, yet still he sometimes finds himself longing for the heat of Vulcan. Long years on frozen Delta Vega have never truly left him, despite the decades passed since then. Years of lonely rebuilding, lending what help he can to the remnants of his once proud race. Now, there is no more he can provide; the colony must continue to grow by its own might. There is one task left to him.
Before him, the being he seeks looms bold in ancient stony reaches. It is eternal and constant, the relic of continuity locking divergent universes around a single point, allowing so many conflicting possibilities to exist beside each other and yet so far apart.
Touching and not, he thinks, and very nearly smiles. He looks to the arch of rock, and speaks.
"You are the Guardian of all that was and will be, all possibilities across all of time."
I AM. WE HAVE MET BEFORE.
"Far away from here. Though my other self might one day find his way to you."
YOU ARE NOT OF THIS UNIVERSE, YOU WHO COME TO ME AS YOU APPROACH THE END OF YOUR TIMELINE. YOU ARE SO FAR FROM HOME, LOST VULCAN. DO YOU SEEK TO BE RETURNED THERE?
"I had no home there when I left."
THEN WHAT IS IT YOU SEEK?
"My bondmate was a human. In my universe he was lost long before I left."
I OVERSEE COUNTLESS WORLDS, AND IN COUNTLESS WORLDS YOUR BOND IS KNOWN.
A fraction of infinity is still infinite, he knows. Basic mathematics. Yet he finds it comforting that the all-seeing Guardian would grace them with such a distinction.
HE WAS LOST TO THE NEXUS, AN INCOMPLETE WORLD THAT TOUCHES MANY OTHERS. HE SPENT A TIME THERE, AND THEN WAS RELEASED AT THE END OF HIS LIFESPAN.
He considers this, pushing back an utterly illogical anger at the natural phenomenon that would dare take his love from him.
"I wish to travel to that point, to impart my katra to him…" But of course the Guardian knows Vulcan death rites, knows them more thoroughly than the Vulcans who developed them. Vulcans who still live, back in the universe of his birth.
It is illogical to yearn for that which one cannot have. But this is no longer out of reach.
IT IS WITHIN MY POWER.
A moment of light like the heart of a star, and though all the universes of existence are infinite, after this tiny yet unforgettable restoration, there is somehow more order than before.