Chapter 10: Memory
Disclaimer: I own little and profit from nothing.
The list of the dead takes 9 hours to arrive.
Until it does, the Academy goes about its business with a sense of hushed grief. Even the cafeteria and the student center, usually bustling with noise and motion, are subdued as everyone watches the updates scrolling across the vidscreens.
The USS Camden, caught in a particularly violent ion storm, ruptured a baffle plate—an event feared by all space-going sailors. The dead are the lucky ones—survivors of Delta radiation exposure are always horrifically maimed.
When the news of the explosion first breaks Tuesday morning, Nyota is in her dorm room, dressing after a shower and gathering up her books before heading to breakfast.
"Did you see this?" Gaila says, pointing to the computer screen. "That's J.C.'s posting, isn't it? And Rama? Isn't she on the Camden?"
Dropping her books on her bed, Nyota reads over Gaila's shoulder, stunned, frantically running through the list of recent graduates she knows who are aboard. Between the two of them, she and Gaila can think of at least a dozen.
It doesn't matter. Even if she hadn't known a single one, Nyota would feel the loss keenly. Starfleet is family in the way the military has always been family.
All day as she goes to class and then to the language lab to run tutorials, Nyota checks the news feeds. A survey ship, the Camden has a crew of 95 and is on routine patrol—or as routine as any trip exploring several ionized nebulas can be. By the time the list of the dead arrives, Nyota has read and reread the specs and public log entries enough times to have most of the details memorized.
No amount of information, however, prepares her for the shock when the names of the dead finally become available.
Seventeen—and the number of confirmed casualties is expected to rise as the Delta radiation takes a toll.
And there, at the top of the list, is J.C.
When she sees his name she feels the blood rush from her head and she reaches out to steady herself.
"I know him," a student sitting at a computer terminal in the lab says, pointing to a name on the list. From across the room someone else checking the list says, "Oh, my God!"
It occurs to Nyota that almost everyone on campus knows someone on the Camden. A scheduled rotation right before commencement last spring means that the ship has an inordinately high number of recent grads serving.
And J.C.
Tall and skinny—and with light brown hair that refused to stay neat. Always flashing a grin when he saw her across the cafeteria or in the language building hallway.
Gone.
J.C. is the reason she is Spock's aide—the reason, in fact, that she ignored the warnings of numerous first years and signed up for Spock's advanced biolinguistics class her second semester at the Academy.
"He's brilliant," J.C. told her as they puzzled over their course descriptions before registration. Two years ahead of Nyota, J.C. had met her at a dorm mixer, striking up a conversation that eventually blossomed into a short-lived spell of dating which they abandoned in favor of friendship.
"People complain he's too hard—but you won't have any trouble," he said. "He's tough but fair. I hope I get the job as his aide next year. Or at least that he'll agree to be my senior adviser."
As it turned out, Spock hired J.C. and agreed to advise his senior project. In the meantime, Nyota took a second class from Spock and decided that most of the cadets who complained about how hard he was were actually reacting to his Vulcan demeanor—and the certainty that he would not accept excuses for shoddy work.
When J.C. applied for duty aboard a survey ship—a surprise to Nyota, who thought he was heading for academia—he had suggested she apply for the aide position.
"I warn you," J.C. told her, laughing, "it isn't easy. The Commander can be very demanding. I know five other cadets who didn't last a semester with him. I might get a medal if I make it to the end of the year."
She hasn't seen Spock all day. The one class he teaches on Tuesdays is in the computer science building, though he usually stops by the language lab during the afternoon. Nyota can trouble-shoot most computer issues on her own, and Spock's advanced students schedule their lab time during his office hours on other days in case they need his help. On Tuesdays he has no real reason to stop by.
How odd that she hasn't thought about that before.
When the list of the dead is posted, the students working in the lab leave and Nyota sits for a few minutes, debating whether or not to lock up and go back to her dorm or wait to see if anyone else stops in. Surely no one will want to work now.
She stands up shakily and begins the shut down procedures.
"Are you leaving?"
She jumps visibly and turns around to see Spock just inside the door.
"Everyone left," she says, making a fluttering motion with her hand toward the empty room. An inane comment—he can see that no one else is there. Still, she feels the need to say something.
Or at least to communicate her sadness with the tone of her voice.
"The lab doesn't close for another 43 minutes," Spock says with such detachment that Nyota is instantly angry.
"Commander!" she says, taking a step forward. "The Camden's casualty list was just posted. I don't think anyone is going to come to the lab right now."
Something flicks across his expression—a shift in his brow, a narrowing of his lips, his eyes dark and intense. She meets his look and frowns.
Instead of answering, he turns from her as lithely as a cat and heads down the hall toward his office. He's angry? The idea makes her furious.
When she finishes closing down the computers, she pulls the lab door to and follows him.
Here it is again—that strange gulf that sometimes seems to separate them…his refusal to attend his father during his surgery, his dismissal of the Brodhead Prize. At those moments Nyota thinks that she doesn't know him at all—that he is too alien to ever understand.
And then…and then.
And then she remembers the fleeting glimpse she had of his thoughts as he kept her from falling in his office.
Or the unexpected moments when she felt overwhelmed by his heat and intensity—standing poised above her on the stair before walking to the art gallery, or brushing his fingers along her palm when she handed his comm to him in the hallway of his apartment building.
Her imagination?
She's never been a fantasist. Indeed, her family calls her to account for her hard-nosed realism. If anything, she is the least likely person she knows to imagine…—and here she falters.
Imagine what, exactly?
She rounds the door into his office, her mouth open to… argue?...about his obvious annoyance that she closed the lab?…and sees that he is on the videophone. As she backs out the door, she notes that the person on the line is an admiral, his dark gray uniform and Starfleet insignia unmistakable.
Spock casts a glance back at her and signals with his hand. Wait. She pauses just outside the door.
"I intend to do so," Spock says into the speaker.
"Good," the admiral says. "I'm sure the family will appreciate it."
Silence then, and Nyota realizes that the admiral may be waiting for Spock to acknowledge his comment.
"As soon as the memorial service times are set," the admiral says, "I will let you know. Not before the weekend, I'm sure. That should give you plenty of time to prepare some remarks for the eulogy."
"Sir," Spock says, and Nyota feels a tingle judder up her spine. She has never heard that tone of voice from him before—alarmed, almost pleading, fraught with emotion. "I do not wish to speak at the memorial service."
"I don't understand."
The admiral is clearly annoyed.
Nyota hears Spock shifting in his chair—an uncharacteristic twitchiness that, like the tone of his voice, is new to her.
"Is this," Spock says, "an order?"
"Of course not," the admiral says hotly. "But I thought you would want to say something. Wasn't Lieutenant Ellison your student aide last year? You are listed as his thesis adviser. Or did I get those facts wrong?"
The last question is said with such sarcasm that Nyota recoils.
"Your facts are accurate," Spock says, the same strain in his voice. "However, I must decline the invitation to speak."
The silence this time stretches on for what feels like an eternity.
Finally the admiral clears his throat.
"Very well," he says. "Komack out."
She isn't sure what to do next. Her chest feels tight and she realizes that she has been holding her breath. She lets it out with a rush.
"Cadet Uhura," Spock says, and she ducks her head around the door frame. "Come in, please."
He is sitting up so straight that his spine doesn't touch the back of his chair. Nyota sits in the chair next to his desk and folds her hands, waiting.
"I have been tasked," Spock begins, "with writing to the family of one of the Camden's crew."
"J.C.," she says, turning to watch him. "The admiral said—"
Before she can continue, Spock says, "I know that you were friends with Lieutenant Ellison. He…mentioned…your association when you applied for this position."
At this Nyota's eyebrows shoot up. She had no idea that J.C. had spoken to Spock about her, probably putting in a good word. Her throat tightens and the tears that have been threatening all day spring to her eyes.
Spock glances at her briefly and turns to the PADD on his desk.
"I am uncertain as to the expected words of condolence," he says, picking up the stylus and offering it to her. "If you would—"
She jerks her hand back as if burned.
"I will not write that note for you! You owe that to him!"
He is suddenly unmistakably, inexplicably angry.
She's never seen him angry before—not like this. Oh, he's been annoyed—usually with cadets who had the temerity to come to class unprepared the one and only time they ever dared—and then his irritation was merely hinted at with a raised eyebrow, a slight grimace.
But now.
His eyes are dark and heavy-lidded, his breathing flushed. The air around them seems unnaturally still.
For a moment she is afraid.
She might be ruining everything.
Taking a deep breath, she says, "Sir. Commander. I'm sorry, but I cannot…do this for you. J.C.'s family would be upset."
Spock doesn't move. His eyes stay on hers, flat and so black that she cannot see how she ever thought they reminded her of tea.
"It's just that—" she begins and then stumbles to a stop. "You probably knew him better than anyone else here. You can offer his family some comfort by letting them know—"
And then the tears that have been threatening do come, arcing down her cheeks as she tries to blink them away.
With one part of her attention she is aware that Spock is still watching her, the earlier fury in his expression gone, replaced by an indifference that hurts her feelings and saddens her. He is unmoved by her tears, by her obvious grief.
She has never felt so alone in his presence.
"Dismissed," he says, and she blinks again, this time in surprise. Hesitating a moment, she says, "I don't mean to offend you, but…you may not be familiar with how…humans react to loss. We need to feel connected to people who knew—"
"Cadet Uhura," Spock says, anger once again sharpening his tone and narrowing his gaze, "I believe I said you are dismissed."
Her backpack is on her chair across the room; she waits, standing in place beside Spock's desk, her own anger heating her face and twisting her stomach.
She's mortified that he has pulled a curtain between them this way—his tone, his words, separating them into commander and cadet, human and Vulcan.
No. Not a curtain. A chasm.
"Yes, sir," she says, not bothering to hide the anguish in her voice.
If he hears it, his stony expression gives no clue.
X X X X X X X
He has to look hard to see the scar.
Less than a centimeter long, it lies just below his 10th rib on his left side. He rarely thinks about it. If not for the pneumococcus vaccine he receives with his annual physical, he wouldn't have to think about it at all.
That wasn't always true. For the first few years after the surgery—from the time he was four until he entered school-his mother had been so vigilant about his health that he had complained more than once to his father.
"Human memory is not eidetic," Sarek said, "but is strengthened and altered by emotional reactions. In time your mother's memory of almost losing you will be less intense. Be patient until then."
But being patient was difficult. And his memory was eidetic.
He remembered, for instance, the pleasure of life before school—being young enough to stay contentedly beside his mother as she worked in her garden—she culling young plomeek shoots while he dug for worms and inspected them.
Or sitting at his father's feet in his study, both with PADDs in their hands—Sarek taking notes about some upcoming diplomatic mission, Spock scrolling through information about distant planets.
He remembered the gradual exhaustion that began to dog his afternoons—the need for rest before eating the evening meal, the loss of interest in music.
The times he surprised his mother by curling up beside her as she read, his head on her lap, too tired to examine the puzzles and photochips his father brought back from his travels.
His parents were worried—he could sense that, though they tried to hide their concern from him. Not just through their bond, but in conversations late at night, overheard snippets and sudden silences, Spock knew that something was wrong.
When Sybok came home for his midterm break from boarding school, Spock rallied a little, following his 14 year-old half-brother around as he did chores in the house and worked on a research project.
"Why so quiet, little one?" Sybok asked after a few days, but Spock was too weary to answer. That night a healer came to the house and reassured his parents that nutritional supplements would increase his energy.
"You may also," the healer said as he was packing his equipment and preparing to leave, "want to include some Terran foods in his diet. Perhaps his…unusual…metabolism is suffering because of a human deficiency."
His mother bridled at the implied insult. His father thanked the healer and showed him to the door.
The next morning Sarek and Sybok made a trip to the market district in Shi'Kahr to a specialty store that sold off-world foods. When they returned, Spock was listless in his bed, one arm draped over his pet sehlat, the other tucked under his head.
"The store manager said these were special," Sybok said, sitting on the side of the bed and unwrapping a bright pink confection before lifting it to Spock's lips. "Here, take a bite."
The candy was so sweet that it was cloying. He let it dribble back out into Sybok's hand.
Standing in the doorway, Sarek shifted slightly and Spock felt his wave of concern. From the kitchen, he heard his mother set aside the vegetables she was cutting. In a moment she joined Sarek at the door.
"Are you hungry?" she asked, her face signaling her distress. He shook his head and Sybok said, "The candy did not appeal to him. That is all."
Yet even as he heard his brother saying it, he knew Sybok was being untruthful. His worry was evident.
For the next three days Amanda forced Spock to chew several mineral supplements at each meal—and at first, he seemed to have more energy. Then Sybok had to leave to return to school and Spock begged to be allowed to go with Sarek in the flitter to take him to the transport station.
Instead of being annoyed at his insistence, his father seemed oddly pleased. He's getting better, he felt his parents tell each other. Sybok, too, looked more upbeat as he headed into the busy station.
The respite was short-lived. The evening after Sybok's departure, Spock refused any food at all, putting his head on the table and falling asleep. His alarmed parents bundled him into the flitter and hurried him to the medical center in the city.
Later as a teenager Spock often thought back to what happened next, unsure of the accuracy of the memories. For 27 days he languished in the hospital, his mother never leaving, his father making frantic calls to various healers. Spock endured a succession of tests—numerous scans and blood samples, at first with some resistance, and then with mute indifference.
The pain started soon after, a dull ache in his side that alerted the pediatric cardiologists to a possible heart defect. At first his parents seemed relieved to have a plausible diagnosis—but his heart was fine, and the healers could not discern what was causing his pain or his exhaustion.
"It is our opinion," the head healer said to his parents as they stood in the hall outside his room, "that the child is simply not thriving."
"What does that mean?" his mother said, her voice pitched higher than normal.
"He means," Sarek said, "that Spock has stopped progressing naturally. He may not be able to—"
His mother's dismay was like a lance in his mind. He winced when she spoke.
"Don't tell me that!" she said with such anger that Spock felt his heart skip a beat. "Tell me what to do about it!"
"The hybridization appears to be unsuccessful," the healer continued, apparently unfazed by Amanda's outburst. "We will notify the geneticists, of course, but we may be seeing the limits of what this particular organism can do."
His mother's anger and grief washed over him like a wave—and underneath it, his father's fury.
And then he knew. He was going to die.
He must have lapsed into semi-consciousness—his memories of the next weeks were patchy and incomplete. At some point his aunt Cecilia and her husband, David, appeared at his bedside, both with the same expressions on their faces that seemed etched on his mother's.
"How could he do so well for four years and then just stop?" his mother asked them, weeping. "How is this possible?"
Eventually he was too tired to open his eyes. From time to time he felt a sharp prick as more blood was taken. A smooth hand palpitated his belly. His mother's cool fingers brushed back the hair from his forehead.
And then he stopped hearing, too—the sounds of the hospital receding into muffled confusion.
Yet he wasn't afraid, or even alone. His mother was there, and his father—in his mind, soothing him, or trying to. Their distress was more upsetting than the idea that he was dying.
We will have his katra.
His father's words, and his mother's tears as he said them—Spock struggled to open his eyes but failed.
When he was a teenager Spock thought of this time often when he visited his aunt and uncle in Seattle and someone—Cecilia, usually—made some cryptic remark about his health.
"You keeping up with your shots?" she might ask.
Once she scolded him for neglecting to call home when he arrived for a two-week visit.
"Your mother does not deserve another fright from you," she said, her eyes shooting daggers—a phrase his cousin Anna had recently taught him. "Call her now."
In the end, humans saved him—he has always known this. Although his family doesn't tell the story, they know it.
How his pediatrician aunt and her surgeon husband insisted that they be shown his records—how Cecilia and David culled through them for any clue, any hint—and found one in his blood composition.
Even in the few weeks that he was hospitalized, his red blood count—always miniscule—had crept up. The Vulcan healers had noted it but thought it insignificant.
When Spock began complaining of pain, however, Cecilia narrowed her focus.
"That's when I started thinking about your spleen," she told Spock on one of his summer visits. "In human infants, the spleen stops making red blood cells before birth and starts making antibodies instead. Yours, however—"
She had smiled and patted her own side.
"It was churning out red blood cells enough to trigger an auto-immune response—and churning out enough antibodies to finish you off. Humans can live without a spleen. You couldn't live with one. Case closed. Easy fix."
It was an easy fix—surgery to remove his spleen, an organ unfamiliar to the Vulcan healers—leaving enough splenetic tissue to fight off ordinary infection and cut the red blood cell production to minimal. An annual vaccine could protect him from the riskier, hardier pneumococcus bacteria.
Still, Spock's recovery was relatively slow. For him, at least. Within a few weeks after the splenectomy he was ready to resume his normal activities. His mother had other plans.
That's when he began appealing to his father for help.
"Be patient," Sarek said more than once. "We almost lost you. Your mother needs time to really know that you are here."
By the time he was preparing for his kahs-wan, his mother's memories of his surgery had lessened enough that she no longer cautioned him every time he went out alone—though he was always aware of her worry, the way he could feel his own breathing or the thrum of his heart.
If he expected her to stop worrying once he had successfully completed his kahs-wan, he was disappointed. He could still sense her concern for him through their bond, as he could feel her pride—and that of his father, and even of Sybok, recently graduated and home before starting his studies at the Vulcan Science Academy.
Tall and stocky like Sarek and wearing his coarse black hair long enough to tuck behind his ears, Sybok often folded himself into a chair in the corner of Spock's bedroom and chatted with him in the afternoons before they busied themselves helping prepare the evening meal.
"She worries because she loves you," Sybok said. Spock's chest tightened at his brother's words—just the kind of unrestrained talk that increasingly elicited a rebuke from Sarek. Although Sarek and Sybok did not quarrel openly, Sybok's experimentation with emotion—or at least, his uncensored speech about it—bordered on scandalous in polite Vulcan society.
When Sybok proposed a short camping trip into the mountains before the school term started back, Amanda at first said no—and Sarek, too, though his reasons were unclear to Spock.
"His mother would be anxious," Spock overheard Sarek telling Sybok one night after the evening meal. "And your trustworthiness is in question."
"You find me untrustworthy," Sybok said, not hiding his irritation, "because I dare to challenge tradition."
"Exactly," Sarek said, his own voice raised slightly. From where he lay in his bed, his bedroom door opened slightly, Spock angled his head to hear better.
"Tradition," Sarek said, "is a guide—"
"It is a restraint!"
For a moment Spock heard nothing—but the tension was a lead weight settling in his side.
And then, the voices of his father and brother, indistinct, quieter now, murmuring on and on, even as Spock's eyes grew heavy and closed against his will.
Whatever was said, the next day Sybok woke him early with the good news—they were going camping.
"It may be the last chance we have to get away for some time," Sybok said, wrapping slices of dried fori and whole kasa and tucking them into his backpack. "Once the semester starts, my studies will keep me busy."
A frown flashed across Sybok's face and he said, "And you, too. I know how…school…has been for you."
He couldn't know, Spock thought. Could he? He looked up at his brother and wondered, not for the first time, about Sybok's uncanny ability to see inside him, to read him.
The first day of the trip was uneventful—even, if the truth was told, boring. Rather than being freed by their time away from home, Sybok became quiet and almost reticent to speak.
Spock attributed his mood to anxiety about his upcoming interview. Normally students were accepted to the Vulcan Science Academy after a single round of interviews and conferences. Ever since the head of the Academy requested a second round from Sybok, the tension in the house had increased tremendously.
As they unrolled their sleeping mats the first night, Spock broached the subject.
"Are you nervous?" he asked, almost ashamed for asking. What if Sybok took his question as a vote of no confidence?
But if anything, Spock's question unstoppered Sybok's silence. His big brother laughed long and loud into the shadows, frightening some creature that skittered away into the rocks.
"Yes!" Sybok shouted. "And no!"
"I do not understand—"
"I feel both things, little brother! I want to do well, to study at the Academy—"
And then Sybok lay back, his arms crossed behind his head, looking up at the darkening sky.
"But the universe is very large," he said, "and there are many things to do if I do not get accepted."
They passed the night on the first large plateau in the L-langon Mountains, a half day's walk from the southern-most edge of Shi'Khar. The rocks of the mountains were the intense red that most off-worlders thought of as typically Vulcan, rising up from the landscape like jagged bricks. Scrubby bushes grew in the lee of the scarps; thin, tough grass edged the larger boulders.
Although the night was cold and uncomfortable, Spock felt sleep tugging at him before he could say all he wanted to. Sybok's voice was a pleasant drone; the stars flickered and grew more distinct as Eridani set completely.
"What would you do?" Spock asked, pulling the thermal blanket more tightly around his shoulders. "If you are not accepted? Where would you go?"
Sybok waited so long to answer that Spock began to think that he had fallen asleep. A rustle, a sigh, and then Sybok sat up, his image dark against the shadows.
"Out there," he said, and Spock saw his arm lift up to the stars. "To see what is there."
A strange thought, to leave home that way, and disquieting somehow. Spock fell asleep uneasily.
When he opened his eyes the sky was still black, the stars still sharp and bright. He had been asleep only 87 minutes—a short interval, even for him. Something must have awakened him.
The night noises were disorienting—insect chirps and bird calls, and the steady sound of the wind soughing around the nearby rock formations. To his left he could just make out Sybok's heavy breathing—rhythmic and steady and indicative of sleep.
Spock hushed his own breathing and listened.
There. A low growl. Almost too faint to hear—but Spock felt the hair on the back of his neck rise.
Something was padding this way. Footfalls, and another snarl.
And suddenly he knew. A le-matya—larger than a Terran puma and more powerful, with poisoned claws.
For a heady second he hoped the le-matya would pass them by—a fanciful thought that had no basis in logic. Clearly the animal had caught their scent and was actively stalking them.
Before he could call out to wake Sybok, Spock heard the le-matya springing quickly across the loose stones. With a jolt he was rocked sideways, his sleeping mat tearing as he tumbled under the weight of the large cat-like animal. The stench of carrion was overwhelming.
With its huge paw, the le-matya swatted Spock hard enough to roll him forward several feet. In vain he tried to wrap himself in the tattered sleeping mat, but the le-matya grabbed it with its teeth and shook it loose.
Completely exposed, Spock waited for the le-matya to bite down.
From behind him he heard a roar as Sybok lit a flare and waved it wildly. The le-matya paused and cowered slightly—as if uncertain what to do. Another shout from Sybok—and the le-matya reluctantly backed away, slowly at first—then paced a few feet toward the escarpment.
"Go on!" Sybok yelled again, running forward. With a final snarl, the le-matya loped away into the shadows.
In an instant Sybok was at Spock's side. He held the flare over him with one hand and placed his other palm on Spock's chest.
"Let me see you," he said breathlessly. "Are you injured?"
Spock shook his head, but as soon as he moved, he was so nauseated that he gagged.
"No, no, no, no, no," Sybok said through clenched teeth. His face was contorted into a broad grimace—and that, more than anything, alarmed Spock.
"You can't be," Sybok said, waving the flare over Spock, looking for an obvious wound.
And there it was on his forearm, a knick no larger than his surgical scar, and as neat, too—the telltale scratch from the le-matya's poisoned claws.
Glancing down, Spock examined the scratch in the flickering light of the flare. It hardly bled—but the skin around it was already starting to pucker and swell. His arm was alternately hot and numb—and then throbbing, needle-sharp.
"We have to get you back," Sybok said, the sound of his panic unmistakable. Back? They were hours from home by foot. How were they going to get back?
Another wave of nausea made him retch and he rolled weakly onto his side.
"Come on," Sybok said, slipping his arm under Spock and tugging him upright. Without meaning to, Spock yelped and batted at Sybok.
"I'll carry you," Sybok said, but the pain in Spock's arm was traveling so quickly through his torso that he couldn't bear to be touched. He yelped again as Sybok tried to pick him up.
"You have to help me," his older brother said, lowering him back to the ground. "Spock, listen! You have to help! You have to manage the pain so I can carry you. Concentrate! Pay attention!"
But he couldn't. The pain was everywhere—it was as big as the sky, as the universe. It radiated through his body and heated up all of space. Even the stars, distant and cold, felt the heat of his pain.
He could hardly breathe.
"Listen to me!" he heard Sybok shouting in his ear, but he couldn't listen. The pain was as loud as a thunderclap, as high as the mountain they had painstakingly climbed up the day before. The pain was an animal, chewing him up, swallowing him in pieces.
He had never felt pain like this before—freezing him and burning him simultaneously, making him cry out like a small child. I am dying, he tried to say, but his mouth was full of ashes and his nose was filled with clay.
I am dying, he thought, the idea as stark and clear as a mathematical equation. I am dying, and no one can stop it.
He felt a gentle wash of sadness competing with the pain for his attention. His parents would be distressed, and some of his teachers, perhaps, and one boy at school who always stood apart when the bullying started, pulled away by some sympathetic sensibility that was not strong enough to help him raise his voice or his hand against Spock's tormentors.
But Spock had noticed him—had taken comfort from the boy's stepping back, his symbolic rejection of what was happening.
He would like to have told the boy thank you.
So many things were answered by his death—things that no longer would be problems, he thought, his sadness ebbing away until the idea of his death was a mere abstraction, something he could consider without a flicker of emotion.
His parents' recent flurry of searching for a suitable bondmate for him—one less thing to concern them, now.
His father's tension with Sybok—his brother who drifted in and out of his life at odd times, away at school or visiting his Vulcan relatives—people Spock had never met, had wondered about often. Perhaps his father would let go of his disappointment of them both.
"Listen to me!"
Sybok, still calling him.
He felt Sybok's fingers on his face, probing past the pain—his hot fingers scorching his cheeks, his temple, his brow.
I am dying, he thought, but instead of the empty echo of before, he heard Sybok's voice answer.
I am here.
Always in the past, Spock's bond with Sybok had been warm but tenuous, like a candle seen in the distance.
But now his brother was in his mind, soothing him, cooling some of the raging heat of the le-matya poison with his force of will.
"Hold on," he heard Sybok say aloud, and he felt himself lifted from the dirt, and then Sybok's burly arms circling him, holding him as he began to jog across the shifting rocks and sands of the plateau.
Twice as they descended the mountain path, Spock cried out—and both times Sybok offered him mental distractions—pictures from his own childhood, very different from Spock's.
A motherless child—an orphan in many ways—raised by an austere aunt…Sybok's visits from his father intermittent and fraught with recrimination from his mother's family. A story Spock had surmised without knowing many of the details—and the ones he did know, never spoken of openly, taboo.
In the haze of his pain, Spock struggled to follow Sybok's narrative—the faces of his father and mother and Sybok's aunt floated and bobbed unevenly, and over them all, Sybok's longing and loneliness.
I never knew, Spock thought, abashed, sorrow for Sybok's own pain rushing through him.
You have kept me from being lonely, Sybok told him, reassuring him. And Sarek—though we sometimes hide our affection from each other.
And I have your mother.
At that Spock saw his mother through Sybok's eyes—her smile, her hand on his shoulder, her affection she did not hide—all were a healing balm for her stepson.
"I have him!" he heard Sybok say.
By then the pain was gone, replaced by a lightness of being that was almost pleasing.
I am leaving now, he told Sybok, but a sudden jerk forced his eyes open.
Two men in some sort of uniform were taking him from Sybok's arms, and his father stood to the side, and his mother, her face blurred and distorted—
Why were they here, in the desert? He shifted his gaze idly and saw the familiar mountain range—red and imposing.
A whirring noise hurt his ears—and Sybok's face swam away as the uniformed men strapped him to a carrier and slid it into a waiting hovercraft.
A healer—a thin older woman with a hood protecting her head from the sand raised by the hovercraft rotors—stroked his head and looked up as Sarek climbed up into the hovercraft.
"His katra," the healer said, "is still here. If we can save his body—"
A terrific roar and the hovercraft took off.
That was the last thing Spock remembered until he awoke at home, in his own bed, startled to realize that 32 hours had passed.
No one was in the room with him—he knew without opening his eyes. The room was too quiet—and he could hear voices in the study.
Not his mother's—he reached out through their bond and located her in her bedroom, dreamlessly sleeping. The voices, then, must be his father and brother.
He let out a sigh and closed his eyes again. The le-matya—he saw it again, and remembered the rough nap of its fur, the stench of its breath.
"Inexcusable," Sarek said, and Spock's eyes snapped open.
"He is unharmed," Sybok said, a note of umbrage in his voice.
"Unharmed! When we found you, he was close to death."
Someone paced heavily across the floor—Sybok, most likely. Spock couldn't imagine his father making such an emotional display.
"But his katra was safe—"
"You should have exercised more care," Sarek said. "Your choice of a place to set up camp was ill-advised. You both could have been killed."
Spock could hear Sybok's voice—not his words but the rumble of his reply. Anger—even without seeing the two men, Spock could feel their heightened emotions flaring.
"Your impetuousness almost cost Spock his life," Sarek said, loud enough for Spock to hear. "It is one thing for you to destroy your own chances with your illogical behavior and quite another to put Spock in danger."
"I would never knowingly harm Spock—"
"Precisely," Sarek says. "You choose not to know a great deal—in your pursuit of your own emotional gratification. Your choice to feel instead of know what you should do is inexcusable."
Silence then—not even the sound of a footfall. At last Spock heard Sybok speak again.
"And your choice to know instead of to feel what you should have done—years ago when you sent me away…"
"I did what I deemed best."
"For you! I needed you—"
"Your mother's family claimed you, Sybok. I had no legal recourse until your aunt died—"
"But," Sybok said, his voice low and husky, mocking, "there are always possibilities."
Slipping from his bed, Spock felt the cool tile floor beneath his feet. He stood for a moment, weaving unsteadily, before pushing open his door and padding down the hallway to the room where Sarek and Sybok stood glaring at each other.
They looked up in unison at him.
"Spock—" Sybok began.
"Why are you out of bed?" his father said.
"I heard voices," he said, glancing from Sybok to his father, looking like versions of each other, flushed and dark eyed.
"Go back to bed," Sarek said, but Spock didn't move. For a moment he considered outright refusing—sitting on the floor, immovable, keeping Sarek and Sybok focused on something other than their argument.
At last Sybok took a step forward.
"Come on, little brother, " he said, leaning down and offering his arm. Spock looked up at his father and then slipped his arm through Sybok's, letting him lead him back to the bedroom.
"You need rest," Sybok said, lifting up the covers while Spock slid between them. He sat on the side of the bed and tucked the blanket around Spock's shoulders. "That little human thing…that spleen—it worked overtime keeping you alive."
"My spleen?" Spock said, confused. "It was taken out when I was four."
"Not all of it," Sybok said. "You have just enough to help fight off le-matya poison. I heard the healer telling Father."
Sybok shifted on the bed, smoothing his hand over the blanket.
"How lucky that you are part human. Otherwise you would just be a dead Vulcan."
At this Sybok's eyes crinkled and his lips quirked up.
"A belief in luck is not logical," Spock said. "The term lucky implies the existence of a sentience that determines our destiny."
For a moment Sybok was silent, but then his lips quirked up again.
"You may be right," he said, "but that does not mean I am wrong. You are lucky that you are also human. You have more…freedom…than you know."
He stood up then, looking down at Spock for a moment before treading lightly across the floor and palming the light switch by the door.
"Where are you going?" Spock asked.
"Going?" Sybok said, quizzically. "I'm not going anywhere."
But it wasn't true. In the morning Spock found his mother preparing breakfast in the kitchen, her face streaked and her eyes red.
And Sybok was gone.
X X X X X X X
He gets the notice about the Camden in the middle of the night—not that he is asleep, but most of the humans on campus are. The briefing is scheduled for 0500—with expected release of the first public notice a few hours later.
Despite the loss of sleep, most of the officers and professors assembled at the auditorium at headquarters are hyper-alert—wide-eyed and jumpy. The mood stays taut until the casualties are announced at the end of the meeting—and then the anticipation turns to something quieter, stiller. Grief, or the beginning of it—and the shock of recognition.
Spock stares unblinking at his PADD as the crowd around him begins to disperse, some of them talking softly to each other, others mute and subdued.
He reads it again.
Lt. J. C. Ellison, communications officer.
The first name on the list.
The name he put there.
Dimly he is aware that only a few people remain in the auditorium by the time he rises and makes his way to the aisle.
In three hours he is scheduled to meet with his computer science class—a group of advanced students working on a neuronal network to replace the slower binary one currently used in the universal translator. The public announcement about the Camden won't be posted until after the class is over—and the information has been embargoed until then. Facing the students knowing that they have lost friends or family and do not know it yet will be a challenge.
He lights his asenoi as soon as he gets back to his apartment.
Useless.
The class itself is a welcomed distraction. The eager faces of the students working with their lab partners, the buzz of easy conversation—they help him avoid thinking about Lieutenant Ellison—J.C.
Too soon the class is over and the students file out. Watching them, he has an illogical impulse to call them back, to invent some excuse to hold them here longer.
But he says nothing, and soon the room is empty.
Normally he heads to the language lab immediately after his computer science class, but today he has such poor control that he hesitates.
Last night he came close to falling—the touch of Nyota's palm under his fingertips as he picked up his comm was almost more than he could bear.
Giving in to that impulse—
It would cost them both.
He knows he needs to stay away now, while his control is shaky.
When he leaves the computer science building he can tell that the news is spreading. Small groups of cadets stand clustered, talking in hushed tones. When he passes it, the cafeteria appears empty, even though lunch is being served.
Until he finds himself there, Spock doesn't know that he is heading to the outdoor amphitheater that overlooks the bay. Students come here often to sit and chat or read or study—indeed, several are here now, and no one looks up when Spock slips to a seat on the top row.
He had sat here—if not in this precise spot, close enough—when he told Cadet Ellison that he had been posted to the Camden after all—not a sure thing, given the competitiveness of the candidates.
"Thank you, sir!" J.C. had said, his normally sunny attitude even more spirited than usual. "I know you had to pull some strings! I wouldn't have had a chance without your recommendation. You won't be disappointed!"
Spock had said nothing—had let the young cadet express his gratitude and enthusiasm without cautioning him to show more restraint—something he had done from time to time when J.C.'s ebullience wore thin on his patience.
The cadet had never seemed to mind—had, in fact, been a very good aide. By the middle of their second semester together, Spock had suggested J.C. might apply for the position of communications officer on the Enterprise still under construction at the Riverside Shipyard.
"Are you thinking of applying, too?" J.C. had asked, and Spock realized something he hadn't articulated to himself—that teaching was slowly slipping from interesting to routine—that fewer of his students seemed able to meet his standards of excellence or were too willing to settle for less.
The Enterprise would need a science officer—a way, as Sybok had said, to see what is out there.
How strange to think that the Vulcan Science Academy—that the safe refuge it had once seemed to offer—felt so…alien.
Was Starfleet Academy also becoming a place to hide?
"An interesting proposition," Spock had replied. "I know you yourself have spoken of your interest in teaching, and that may be the right path for you."
He had looked at the young cadet carefully before continuing.
"But in the time that I have known you, I have heard you speak often about the appeal of exploration. Staying here will not provide that for you. Active duty onboard a ship might offer more possibilities."
They had continued their discussion from time to time—Spock suggesting that if J.C. really were interested in a posting on the Enterprise, experience would be key.
When the Camden rotation was announced, J.C. asked Spock to write his recommendation and Spock complied—and more.
He pulled some strings.
Not hard—and not for someone undeserving.
But he sent a note to an admiral who in turn put in a good word.
And now—Lt. J.C. Ellison's name is at the top of the casualty list.
The wind from the bay turns chilly as a cloud covers the sun. Spock stands up and heads toward the language building.
As he goes up the stairs he meets two students coming down—both in such obvious distress that he can't help but notice. The casualty list, then—it must have been posted. At the briefing this morning the admiralty had said the list would be released as soon as all of the families were notified.
On the third floor he walks to the end of the hall, looking into the lab where Nyota is moving slowly at the master console.
"Are you leaving?"
Nyota jumps visibly and turns around when he steps inside the door of the lab.
"Everyone left," she says. She may be unaware of the time—not unusual for humans, particularly when they are upset.
"The lab doesn't close for another 43 minutes."
To his astonishment, her face changes instantly—her eyes narrowing in anger.
"Commander!" she says, taking a step forward. "The Camden's casualty list was just posted. I don't think anyone is going to come to the lab right now."
His eidetic memory serves him poorly now, showing him images he does not want to see. J.C.'s face flashes in his mind like an afterimage.
Nyota meets his eyes and frowns. What can he say?
That he is the reason her friend is at the top of the list?
Instead of answering, he heads down the hall toward his office. When he is still twenty feet away from the door he hears the videophone chiming.
With one hand he touches the screen to answer the call. As he slides into the chair behind his desk, he is surprised to feel his other hand clenched into a tight ball. With conscious effort he unbends his fingers.
"Komack here."
"Admiral."
"Captain Jensen is sending a letter to the parents of Lt. Ellison, but I thought you might want to do the same. The captain has only known him a few months."
Behind him he hears Nyota rustle at the door and he glances back at her. She is backing away, leaving, and he motions with his hand for her to wait.
"I intend to do so," Spock says into the speaker.
"Good," the admiral says. "I'm sure the family will appreciate it."
"As soon as the memorial service times are set," the admiral says, "I will let you know. Not before the weekend, I'm sure. That should give you plenty of time to prepare some remarks for the eulogy."
Spock has attended few memorials—and spoken at only one, the service for T'Pring's grandmother, T'Zela.
Losing T'Zela had been a blow. At the time he was living at home, hopeful that he and T'Pring could forge the sort of relationship that blended friendship and intimacy.
Certainly T'Zela had seemed to think they might.
Because she died alone, T'Zela's katra was lost—a far greater disappointment to Spock than her physical death. Disabled for many years, T'Zela had often said that death would be a relief—and she had been scornful of the Vulcan preoccupation with preserving someone's katra.
At her memorial he had spoken truly, that losing T'Zela and her katra was a double blow that saddened him. From where he stood on the dais, Spock noted T'Pring's disapproval tick across her face—so quick and faint that he would not have seen it if he hadn't also felt it across their bond.
When her turn came to stand in front of the mourners, T'Pring looked carefully over the crowd and said clearly, "My grandmother is free in every way possible. For that I am grateful."
He felt her words as a rebuke.
"Sir," Spock says, "I do not wish to speak at the memorial service."
He knows that his voice wavers, but the idea of revealing his part in J.C.'s death is untenable.
Logically he knows he is not at fault…and yet—
"I don't understand."
The admiral is clearly annoyed.
"Is this," Spock says, shifting in his chair, "an order?"
"Of course not," the admiral says. Spock hears the annoyance in his voice but cannot think how to explain his reticence. "But I thought you would want to say something. Wasn't Lieutenant Ellison your student aide last year? You are listed as his thesis adviser. Or did I get those facts wrong?"
"Your facts are accurate," Spock says. "However, I must decline the invitation to speak."
Finally the admiral clears his throat.
"Very well," he says. "Komack out."
A sigh so soft that he almost misses it.
Nyota, waiting in the hall.
"Cadet Uhura," Spock says, and she ducks her head around the door frame. "Come in, please."
He is sitting up so straight that his spine doesn't touch the back of his chair. Nyota sits in the chair next to his desk and folds her hands, waiting.
"I have been tasked," Spock begins, "with writing to the family of one of the Camden's crew."
"J.C.," she says, turning to watch him. "The admiral said—"
Before she can continue, Spock says, "I know that you were friends with Lieutenant Ellison. He…mentioned…your association when you applied for this position."
At this Nyota's eyebrows shoot up. Something has surprised her. She hasn't forgotten that J.C. was his aide last year. Is she surprised that J.C. would share personal information with him? That they had moments of friendly conversation?
Is he that alien to her?
Hold onto that idea. It may offer the space he needs—the space they need—between them.
Spock glances at her briefly and turns to the PADD on his desk to avoid showing the alarm he feels. Her eyes are filling with tears—understandable, of course, but he will be called upon to respond.
If only his control were stronger.
The asenoi, the book of Kohlar's poetry—nothing has given him a measure of peace.
"I am uncertain as to the expected words of condolence," he says, picking up the stylus and offering it to her. "If you would—"
She jerks her hand back as if burned.
"I will not write that note for you! You owe that to him!"
She cannot know that what he owes J.C. is so vast that he cannot put words to the fury he feels.
The universe has no sentience that determines our destiny. What a folly to try to intervene—to pull strings—on someone's behalf. He won't make that mistake again.
A promising cadet—one who would be safely in graduate studies now if he hadn't intervened.
Instead, all that he is—all that he was—is as lost as T'Zela.
As lost as Sybok, whose silence offers no hint of his whereabouts.
And to a degree, as his father, their relationship still so strained that a trip home during his surgery is unimaginable.
He tries to steady his breathing and fails.
"Sir," Nyota says, her eyes seeking out his own. "Commander. I'm sorry, but I cannot…do this for you. J.C.'s family would be upset."
Spock doesn't move. His eyes stay on hers, holding onto something, someone.
"It's just that—" she begins and then stumbles to a stop. "You probably knew him better than anyone else here. You can offer his family some comfort by letting them know—"
And then tears arc down her cheeks and he feels an almost physical pain lance through his side.
You are lucky that you are human, he thinks, watching her face contort even as he struggles to mask his own. You have more freedom than you know.
"Dismissed," he says. If she doesn't leave now he will fall—and he can't, he won't—allow himself to cause more destruction today.
"I don't mean to offend you," she says, "but…you may not be familiar with how…humans react to loss. We need to feel connected to people who knew—"
"Cadet Uhura," Spock says, hearing the rising panic in his voice, "I believe I said you are dismissed."
Her backpack is on her chair across the room; she waits, standing in place beside Spock's desk.
"Yes, sir," she says, turning slowly away, tearing a hole in the universe.
When her footfalls stop echoing in the stairwell and a subtle shift in the air pressure signals that she has opened and closed the outside door, he sits, idly rubbing the tiny keloid under his 10th rib, feeling his heartbeat pulsing under blood and bone.
This is better—this ache that will help him stay apart.
No, not better.
But essential.
A/N: As always, thanks for letting me know what you think. If you haven't yet checked out StarTrekFanWriter's "Accidental Intruder," it is full of humor!