Disclaimers – I don't own Invictus, Kirk, Spock, or anything in the Star Trek universe. This is probably the only reason I am still alive, and haven't been murdered by my seriously obsessed sister, HiddenFiresIndeed. This one's for you, babe.
Warnings – Uh… extreme sap and fluff. It's not intended to be slashy. But you hentais will read into it anyway. I speak from experience. ^_~
Reflections
By DearLittleSev
I've only ever loved one man.
I watch him now, crouching behind a large boulder, his face smeared with grime, his shirt hanging off of one shoulder, blood seeping through his sleeve where he was caught in the crossfire. He manages to stay upright, though I do not know how; his frail, human physique should have given way long before now. But it has not, and I know with a resolution bordering on obsession that he stands tall for his lover, cold and sleek, hovering in the heavens above. He cannot see her, but the mechanical hum of her engines vibrates in his veins, and it is this loving hum that he fights for now, losing blood, staggering and swaying on the spot. He returns fire, but we are outnumbered. Still, he fights for the ship.
I fight for him.
They rush over the hill now, and our security team has fallen. It is just the two of us now, crouched closely, gasping for air. The atmosphere is thin here; my chest rises and falls heavily. He is nearly spent. A land mine, one of their own, explodes on the other side of the boulder, and I tug on his shoulder with fingers that are not strong enough, not lithe enough. I do not know if I can save him. He stumbles after me, not uttering a word or a whimper though I can feel his pain through the last vestiges of our many bonds. He accepts my arm of assistance silently. We scurry as fast as his legs will allow, down into a ravine that opens up into a rocky plain. There is not enough cover here. Behind us, we can hear them coming, and I slap my communicatory open once more, praying for a break in the electrical storm. "Mr. Scott, do you have our coordinates?"
"Locking on, sir!" the Scotsman's voice is frantic, his brogue thick; I have no time to placate him. "The transporters are down, I can only take one at a time, sir!"
My captain opens his mouth to bark the command I know I must prevent. There is not even a moment's thought before my palm is wrapped around that mouth tightly, ignoring the flailing struggle of his wounded body. "Mr. Scott, beam the Captain directly to sick bay."
"Aye, sir! Give me a few minutes, sir!"
"We do not have a few minutes, Mr. Scott."
Amber eyes stare up at me in utter fury and betrayal, and already know that, should I survive this experience, I will have to endure a long lecture, and possibly a reprimand. Not that it would make it into my record. They never do.
Jim is out of time. As I release him, his hands thrust me away, searching for his communicator as he bellows, "Belay that, Mr. Scott!" It matters not. I know the crew. There is an unspoken understanding amongst officers that the Captain will not be left to die on some alien planet when he has spilt his blood, guts, and tears across the galaxy saving them. Saving everyone. When I hear the low buzz of the transporter beam, I know it is not coming for me.
I do not wish it to. Our aggressors are close now, and out of the corner of my eye, I can see a long, wicked, gleaming spear being raised. It catapults into the air. I turn to look at Jim, his face frozen, caught in the locked beam. He is not gone yet. The spear will run him through and end him.
Unacceptable. I have only loved one man in my life. I will not lose him to this bitter end.
"Spock!" His voice is the last thing I hear before I intercept the spear with my flesh. It is somewhat comforting. My name, on those lips, is probably the one thing I would have asked for, should I have been given the choice. I land with a sickening crunch, but the pain is minimal. I can feel the poison from the tip surging immediately through my nervous system, shutting my vital functions down one by one, and as I feel the ground tremble beneath me with the force of their arrival, I lift my head, my last great effort, and see Jim dissolve before my eyes. My chest shudders once, twice. I let my head roll, and my eyelids slide shut of their own accord. There is no one here to witness my shame as I permit a small smile.
The poison claims me, and I slip into oblivion.
Oddly, oblivion is not very comfortable.
I do not open my eyes for fear of seeing the deformed faces of those wretched creatures. They had hurt Jim, and I wished with everything inside of me, human and Vulcan alike, that I could get a glimpse of my Captain, safe on board the ship under the doctor's snarky, passionate care. I wanted to see him lying in a bed in Sickbay, tended by a pretty nurse, his arm bandaged, his swollen cheek iced, his torn clothes mended. I wanted to watch him eat with that casual fervor that he poured into every single thing in his life, including me. I wanted to sit next to his bed while he slept, deep in the dark recesses of the night, long after he drifted away, long before he woke. I wanted to worry over him. I wanted to watch over his ship for him, to mind the store while he was away, because I knew that the only time he took a rest was when I was on the bridge. He trusted me.
He would never know what that meant to me.
My father would be so ashamed of me. I felt my cheeks heat with humiliation as the extent of my ardent passion revealed itself in the blackness of my thoughts. I was dying, though, and it occurred to me in that moment that it didn't matter whether or not I died as a half-Vulcan, a half-human, or anything in between. I would still be dead. I probably already was. If so, this was a sad excuse for an afterlife. There was a persistent ringing in my head, peculiarly high pitched and grating to my sensitive ears. It was most likely punishment for my inability to adhere to my Vulcan heritage. How many years had I chased that perfection? And in one moment, one disastrous, unmitigated second, James Tiberius Kirk had ruined me. It wasn't a particularly memorable occasion; he had simply acknowledged me when we met. We exchanged a few polite words. I had thought him rather flippant and shallow. No, it was not an earth-shattering event.
It was simply the most important moment of my sad, painful life.
I wish I could recall the first time I called him "Jim." If I were truly devoted to my discipline, I would have perfect recollection of every interaction that had transpired since childhood. I blame this on Jim, though. Every time I sit down to meditate, I receive a call from the bridge for a crisis. Or an extra shift. Or perhaps a quiet breakfast with the Captain in his quarters. These had been more frequent as of late; Jim seemed restless, and frustrated. He asked me why, and I gave him my standard answer. Space blues. Something would crop up soon. I did not have the heart to tell him that he had not punched anyone in the face or saved the world for several months, and I secretly suspected this to be the root of his problem. If he'd needed me to, I would have let him pummel me, if it would take that antsy, far-away look from his eyes. I hated that face. Looking back, I realize now that the Captain had been reckless on this mission, too eager, too jittery. He would be blaming himself right now for the bodies we'd left on the alien planet.
He'd be blaming himself for me, too.
That hurt. I let myself lie in the darkness and the pain, abandoning all pretense and feeling exactly what my body and my soul told me to feel. This was… liberating. I wonder how long I would be adrift in this sea of turbulent emotions and blank emptiness. Jim was somewhere right now, skipping on the stars and mourning for the loss of his stoic first officer. I knew he would mourn me. If there was one thing that Jim could not do, it was hide his emotions. At least… from me. I saw each and every one, burning in his eyes, flitting across his chiseled features, quirking in the edges of his curved mouth, flexing in his back, twitching in his fingers. I knew that I loved him more than he loved me; I accepted that. It wasn't his fault. He loved everything, loved it passionately, with a fire that the underground volcanic fires of my home planet could not begin to compare with. He loved his crew, and his ship, and his officers, and he loved me. But my cold, sullen Vulcan heart could only hold enough love for him.
This was why I ignored the women on board. This was why I refrained from embracing my humanity. This was why I refused to look for a mate on Vulcan. I knew that I had only enough love for one. And I was not about to give any small piece of that rare and precious sliver of emotion I allowed myself to anyone but him. After all, Jim knew how much I loved him. He'd seen himself through my eyes, our minds welded together as one, and I had seen myself through his eyes as well. It never ceased to amaze me how he saw me: regal, noble, sacrificial, sacred. Odd. I saw in him the very same.
It was not desire, at least, not in the carnal, human form. It was a low burning, heated worship. It was the sensation of finding something so extraordinary, so exceptional, that you knew you would never find it again in a hundred million years, and it must be kept preserved and maintained and protected and hidden from all seeking eyes. I cherished the soft, confiding whisper he reserved just for me. I longed for the sidelong glances that spoke directly to my spirit. I rejoiced in the fact that I knew what he was thinking, feeling, planning, just by a brush of his hand on my shoulder, and the way he spoke my name.
I would never see him again.
I have forgotten how to cry, and somehow, distantly, I wish that I could. Only now, as I am pondering the fatal realization that he will never look at me again, do I realize the dreadful truth.
Several of the doctor's best swear words pop in my head at once.
I never transferred my katra.
Now I really do wish I could cry. This blackness… this numbing emptiness… this is all that's left for me. I will drift in this oblivion until the end of time, after everything is gone, after my planet and my people have long been eradicated from this universe, after the Enterprise is nothing but a memory, and Jim… Jim…
"Spock."
I do not understand how his voice can reach me still, stirring within me a violent urge to respond. My body… if I still have one… is rigid and rebellious, refusing to obey the commands from my cranium. I want to sit up, to force my eyes open, to look about wildly for the source of that warm, comforting murmur. I cannot, though, and I lie still, silently begging for another sound, a whisper, anything. It feels as if the darkness around me is swirling around me hazily, and there is a brightness to it, a familiar shade of deep green before my eyes.
"Spock." He lingers now, echoing in the walls of my skull, a lovely torment that will no doubt haunt me through the ages. I never thought of eternity as lonely; I've been alone my entire life. And now, the prospect of drifting through the millennia with nothing but the echo of his voice seems to be the most exquisite torture imaginable. For I am adrift, and with my katre still intact, I am lost, lost with my own reflections, lost with memories he has shared during our bonding, utterly and forever lost, knowing that he loved me.
This limbo is fast becoming an interesting experiment. My left hand feels cool, several degrees colder than the rest of my body. For in stretching my limits and pushing the boundaries of my consciousness, I find that I do, indeed, have a body. I can tell because of the pain. It twitches though my limbs, like an electrical current, but it is not unbearable. It is merely pain. I want to test the suspicion that I remain corporeal, and so I reach out with my mind, command my extremities to submit to my bidding. My toes are unresponsive, but if I concentrate every bit of power in me, I can feel my pinky finger flicker. Progress.
An odd beeping sound drowns out the ringing in my ears. There are other voices now, too, grating, like sandpaper over volcanic rock. I try to sift through them, searching for the one voice I need to hear. It is the burn of liquid fire that scorches my Vulcan heart. It is the whisper of silken threads that binds me to this existence. It is Jim, and Jim is everything.
"You can't stay here any longer." I recognize this voice as well, and a flash of annoyance mixed with condescending affection rushes through me. It is beside me, so near that I can feel the cool of his breath on my face, an odd taste of whisky and medicinal sanitation. "You've not had any sleep for three days. You look like death warmed over."
Though there is no reply, I can feel him on the edges of my consciousness, and he is close. Oblivion was feeling less like limbo, and more like the Enterprise. It occurs to me that perhaps my essence is not yet lost to the universe. Perhaps I am simply a melodramatic, half human fool, like my father maintained. At the moment, I cannot bring myself to care. I realize that the reason my left hand is cold is because he is holding it, and at the good doctor's words, those cool fingers squeeze mine wordlessly.
I am not dead. I am still in possession of my body, and my katra, and my Jim.
The clicking of boots signals the doctor's departure, accompanied by a heavy sigh. I want to open my eyes now, want to assure myself that I am, indeed, aboard the vessel. But my body is not yet in complete obeisance to me, and I resign myself to lying still, listening to the Captain breathe.
His breath is labored. He is not yet fully recovered. I am angry with him, and I am quite sure Dr. McCoy is as well. He needs his rest. He is the Captain, he needs to be strong.
As if in response to this thought, I hear him again, murmuring. I feel a weight on my chest. It is his head, and his words are being muffled in my bedclothes. I can pick them up, though, a warm rumble throughout my thin frame.
"Spock, come back to me. I don't know how to go on. I need you." Jim Kirk sounded much like a plaintive child. What I should have abhorred, disdained, resented, I now drank up, like a man dying of thirst. "I need to see you standing behind me. I need your hand on my chair. I can't make these decisions without you there to temper me. Bones… Bones can't be my conscience and my soul. Spock. We need you. I need you. Come back to me."
His hand shakes in mine. If I had been capable of staring, I would have. If I had been capable of speech… it would not have mattered. I have no words.
I know from the way the pain is growing that my body is regenerating. I know that in a few hours, I would be in control of my functions again. I would speak like a Vulcan, and conduct myself in a manner befitting the son of Sarek. I would temper Jim, as he asked, and I would be his friend.
But for all the control I exhibited, this piece of me, this corner of my soul, would be rebellious, unfettered, and free. It belonged to him from the beginning. I relinquished control of it gladly, and I have never looked back. I feel Jim's breathing deepen as he falls asleep, still leaning over onto my chest, and I recall the poem that so captured my attention during my time at the Academy. Through the trials and tribulations of an alien recruit on a strange planet, I clung to those words, repeating them to myself like a mantra until it was deeply ingrained in me, as deep as my Vulcan training.
Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.
In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.
Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds and shall find me unafraid.
It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul.
Except now, it was no longer true.
I was no longer the Captain of my Soul.
He was.
In a few hours, I would check myself out of Sickbay under protest, and resume my duties as Science Officer and number two on the Starship Enterprise. I would insist Jim stay in Sickbay until fully recovered. I would ignore the whining and the pleading and the threats. In a few hours, everything would be as it should be.
For now, I am able to finally force my eyelids open, and I gaze down at the man I love, deeper than a lover, more passionate than a friend, more loyal than a brother. I gaze down at the other half of my soul, my Captain, the Master of my Fate, and I watch him sleep.
OWARI (The End)