Spock POV
I struggled to keep my composure until I was safely behind closed doors. Only then was I able to securely vent my frustration. I frowned as I started to inspect the sample for a third time. "Ununseptium," I muttered, trying to stay on focus. "Can combine with oxygen to create… nitric acid…" I couldn't continue as my throat began to clog and my eyes were stinging with tears. This whole situation was just too much, just too much for me to handle. My life, up until a year ago, was perfectly adequate and kept me content. Now, the loss of my planet, and the loss of two very important people in my life continued to rise to the surface of my mind time and time again.
The loss of my mother was the hardest to deal with. She was the only person to whom I had ever shown my emotional side. The only person with whom I shared my most private thoughts, however childish they sounded, without fear of a reprimand or of embarrassing my family by proving I was capable of illogic. The second loss was the loss of my relationship with Nyota Uhura.
Nyota. Our first, halting kiss in the turbolift. I was already overcome with emotion, allowing it to come to the front of my being. I… enjoyed it. For a short time, Nyota mesmerized me, and lead me further and further away from the path of logic. A memory resurfaced.
"Spock," she said, one night after we had eaten together in my quarters,"we can't keep doing this." She pulled out of my arms and looked at me intensely, her dark eyes full of emotion.
"Doing what, Nyota?" I asked, trying to bring her back into my arms.
"I love you, Spock, but I have the feeling that you love somebody else. You may be trying to hide it, even from yourself. But I know you. We can't continue."
She kissed me on the cheek and left the room. My superior Vulcan olfactory nerves could still pick out the scent of her perfume, lingering in the air. After initial pain, confusion set in. Who was the other to whom she was referring? And how could she sense that?
Coming back to the present, I was conflicted as I was once as a child. Then, I realized who she meant.
