The Undoing
Disclaimer: I do not profit from writing about these characters.
Spock thinks about death every day, not because he's morbid, because Vulcans are not morbid, and not because he is obsessive, though Vulcans are obsessive. He thinks about death because the people he has lost—his mother, the Ambassador—are always present. His mother's eyes look back at him from the mirror. The Ambassador's voice vibrates in every word Spock speaks.
He hasn't always thought this way about the dead. This new sense—this awareness of their abiding presence in his life—began as he hunkered down in a cave on Altamid. His impending death seemed so close, so certain, that thinking about anything other than death had seemed, if not exactly illogical, then at least irrelevant.
"Feeling philosophical? Massive blood loss will do that to you," McCoy quipped, and while that might have been true, Spock knew even then that losing Nyota—deliberately walking away from that relationship—was the biggest reason he faced death with regret.
No matter that the Ambassador's death had left Spock reeling, determined to honor his memory with a sacrifice of his own. Now his earlier plans to leave Starfleet and move to New Vulcan seem, in retrospect, the desperate measures of grief instead of well-thought-out actions.
"You must follow your own path," the Ambassador told him more than once.
Advice that should feel liberating, but Spock finds himself mulling it over obsessively, the way Vulcans do.
He's never been this indecisive before. As a teenager, he hadn't hesitated to apply for admission to Starfleet Academy. Despite disappointing his mother, he hadn't blinked at staying in San Francisco after graduation to accept a teaching position.
And even his growing and uncomfortable attraction to his singularly gifted third year student in xenolinguistics—once he'd given in to it, once he'd decided his involvement with Nyota was inevitable—he'd never looked back.
Until news of the Ambassador's death made him question everything—his Starfleet commission, his place on the Enterprise, his friendship with Jim Kirk, his loyalty to his crewmates. And above all, the necessity of Nyota in his life.
"Glad to see you came back to your senses," McCoy said as he slid into a seat across the aisle on a transfer ship from Yorktown to Earth. After a week of lengthy Starfleet debriefings about Balthazar Edison and the loss of the Enterprise, Spock was reluctant to engage with the doctor in conversation on their journey home. Seated next to Nyota, he said nothing in reply—though he had the distinct impression that she and McCoy communicated something with a look.
In some ways he's glad to be back in the familiar territory of San Francisco—his stomping grounds, Jim Kirk calls it. Most of the crew are here, taking temporary postings at the Academy or headquarters while the Enterprise is rebuilt. For the time being Spock lives in his father's apartment near the Vulcan embassy, and when his father is on earth, they make a point of eating at least one meal together, usually something simple and reminiscent of home—plomeek soup, or crispy flatbread, though the plomeek imported from New Vulcan has a distinctive metallic underpinning that Spock finds slightly off putting. Illogical to expect a genetically engineered vegetable grown in alien soil to taste identical to native Vulcan plants. Yet he does, and that realization is as disturbing as the odd taste.
Sometimes—rarely—Nyota joins him, though for now they are making their way slowly through the thicket of grief and hurt he erected when he told her he was leaving her. No use regretting it, but he does. If he's lonely, if he longs for her company, if she is still skittish around him, he tries to be patient. This is his doing. Its undoing is up to him as well.
Tonight is a chance. On the kitchen counter he sorts the fruits and vegetables he selected at the greengrocer earlier in the afternoon—tomatoes and oranges and Thai basil, a lemon almost the size of his hand, a melon that smells like a cross between lavender and elderberries. Open beside them is his mother's cookbook, one of the few mementos he has of her.
His mother's eyes watch him in the mirror as he washes up and shaves later. The Ambassador's voice calls out Enter when Nyota buzzes the front door later still.
As he always does when he sees her, Spock feels his heart race and his face flush. A purely autonomic response, but it embarrasses him every time. She steps past him at the door and makes her way to the sofa, and for a moment he stands immobile, watching her. Then with a start, he shuts the door and crosses to a chair.
Two months after returning to Earth and the awkwardness between them is palpable. For a moment they are silent, neither making eye contact.
"Something smells good." Nyota's voice has a forced cheer that feels like a rebuke of sorts.
Spock nods. "The gespar. I thought we'd make my mother's favorite recipe."
"I'm glad," Nyota says, her voice softer, more genuine. She gazes at him and his face flushes again.
"Perhaps we should begin? The broth requires some time to fully develop." He gets to his feet and then adds, "Unless you would rather wait?"
Instead of answering, she shakes her head and rises, following him into the kitchen. From the corner of his eye he watches her, enjoying her fluid walk, the lingering hint of years of dance lessons in her childhood.
"Are you staring at me?" she says, catching him by surprise.
"If I am," he says, willing his heart to slow back down, "it is with good reason."
She sidles beside him and picks up a carrot. "Let's get started, then," she says, her tone more playful than mere dinner preparation requires.
Or so he hopes. He directs her attention to the open cookbook.
"Peel these," he says, "while I dice the gespar."
When she finishes the carrots, he hands her the fragrant melon and takes a moment to appreciate the way she lifts it to her nose, inhaling with her eyes closed. They work almost silently side by side, cutting and measuring and stirring a large pot as it simmers on the cooker. When she dips a spoon in the broth and parts her lips to taste it, he catches his breath and meets her gaze.
"It's not quite right," she says, and again he has the sensation that her words are doing double duty.
He adjusts the seasonings and now there is nothing more to do than wait. Tea mugs in hand, they sit across from each other at the small wooden table at the far end of the kitchen. He feels clumsy and tongue-tied, unsure what to say. Finally Nyota breaks the silence.
"Are you enjoying your work in the lab?"
It's an odd question, and for a moment Spock considers how to answer. His current assignment is supervising a research group in Starfleet's computer interface lab, sifting through the archives of the Franklin. It is necessary, intense work, and though the human researchers occasionally complain that it is tedious, Spock finds it satisfying enough. But does he enjoy it? That implies a more favorable emotional reaction.
He knows that people often start conversations by asking a question they don't actually want answered. Is that what Nyota is doing now? In the past he has tried to answer such questions truthfully, only to offend or baffle someone.
Not Nyota, of course. She would listen and be interested. The odds are high that she would ask a series of more probing questions, and while he isn't averse to sharing those details with her, it is not what he wants to talk about right now. Instead, he says what his mother taught him to say when he isn't sure what to say.
"It is fine."
Her eyebrows lift—a signal that she expected a different answer. He takes the opportunity to press forward.
"I am more interested in hearing about you," he says. "About whether or not you are…happy."
Now he is the one speaking in veiled sentences, hoping she hears through the words to his meaning.
Is she happy with the way things are between them? With seeing him so rarely? With touching him even less?
She runs her forefinger around the rim of her mug and he feels it as an electrical jolt.
"Where's your father?"
Spock blinks in undisguised surprise. "On New Vulcan. He wanted to be there for the Memorial."
That today is the anniversary of the Vulcan genocide can't have escaped her notice. This dinner—the meal prepared from his mother's cookbook—is a tribute of sorts. Nyota must know that.
"So he's not going to be here tonight?"
"We spoke earlier in the day."
Nyota reaches across the table, a spark leaping between their fingertips.
"I'm so sorry," she says. Through her fingers he sees fleeting images of his mother, his world.
"I am also sorry," he replies. He lets his grief leak through their connection—not just about his mother and the Ambassador, but about what he has done to her.
The pot on the cooker gives a loud burp and they both leap up.
"Apparently I misjudged the necessary heat level," Spock says, fidgeting with the controls. "I set it too high."
Nyota is suddenly between him and the cooker, her arms snaking up around his neck.
"Are you sure? Maybe we should turn the heat up."
A joke—and a not-so-hidden invitation.
"The meal is almost ready," he says, teasing her in a way that he thought he might never be able to do again. "Perhaps we should eat."
She grins, pulling his face closer to hers. "Let's start with dessert," she whispers.
He starts to speak but she silences him with a kiss.
And there it is, the undoing of pain, the remedy for heartache. He closes his eyes and listens to his heartbeat racing in his ears, and underneath that her slower, steadier pulse like a musical counterpoint played on his ka'athrya, or the steps of an intimate ballet for two.
Author's Notes: Hello after a long time away! Work has been incredibly busy, but a lull in my schedule let me jot down this little snapshot of my favorite couple navigating their way back to each other. It was so much fun to write in this world again. If you enjoyed reading it, thanks for letting me know!