I just can't seem to give over being mean to them, apparently, though there is some good in this chapter, too--some twisted, some not. God knows it's long enough, jeeze.
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Uhura was not easily daunted, but facing what remained of the Vulcan High Council would daunt anybody. Even if they were trying to help her with something she…very much needed help with.
A tiny, almost doll-like old woman whose face was made up of a thousand wrinkles was carried in on a litter. If she looked that old for a Vulcan, it meant she had to be pushing three hundred, and with a jolt Uhura realized she must be T'Pau. Oh, God.
It was confirmed by Sarek, whose deferential treatment of the old lady only made Uhura even more nervous. "Nyota, this is T'Pau of Vulcan, Eldest of our Elders.
Somehow regaining self-possession, she raised her right hand in the taal. "Peace and long life, T'Pau."
The woman arched an eyebrow before returning the greeting. "Let me see thy mind, child," she said, without further preamble, and with an inward quail Uhura knelt so she could lay a gnarled hand on her face.
This was nothing like a meld with either Spock or Sarek. This was a woman of such vast experience that even so intimate a meld was second nature, something that required no great strength or effort.
'Be still, child. I will not hurt thee.'
'I know.' And she did; Vulcan or not, T'Pau's mind was more than a thing of pure logic--warmer, like the lost sun of Vulcan. Between that and whatever the hell was in the n'deth juice, Uhura felt no need to fight.
Deeper into her mind that warmth delved, down past the memories she did not want to share, until it hit that horrible thing, alien as a tumor, that clung hard and would not let go. T'Pau said nothing more, but Uhura could feel her doing…something. What, she didn't know, but she could feel things shifting in her head, until finally the old woman's hand left her face, and she opened her eyes.
"I would speak with her alone," T'Pau said, a little imperiously, and the others moved at once. Uhura glanced at Spock, who gave her a reassuring lift of an eyebrow.
"He will return, child," T'Pau said, catching that look. Not until they were all gone did she speak again.
"Thee did not know of this," she said, and it was not a question.
Uhura shook her head. "Not at all. I couldn't feel anything until Spock tried to teach me to meditate, and…ran into it." She had to think of the katra as 'it'; thinking of it as Nero would drive her insane. As if all the other shit he'd done to her hadn't been violating enough…
"We do not know nearly enough about our Romulan cousins," the old lady said, shaking her head. "Thee should not have this, child. I think the only reason thee does is because of the level of psychic trauma thee endured prior to Nero's death. He does not want to leave thy mind, and thy mind itself is helping him stay there."
Uhura's eyebrows shot up. She barely bit back an astonished return, settling for a quiet, "What do you mean?"
T'Pau's cool Vulcan eyes grew a shade less cool. "Thee carries great guilt," she said. "It hovers around thy mind like a cloud. Thee hated him and thee killed him, and it is that guilt that keeps him in thy head now."
"How do you know what--"
"--guilt is?" T'Pau finished. "We do feel. Spock should have taught thee that much. Mastery of emotion does not mean its destruction unless one is kholinaru, and few enough of our race truly attain it. Thee are filled with guilt and shame, confusion, and until it has ebbed there is little even I can do. Were I to extract Nero's katra now, the damage it would do would leave thee mad."
Of course. Of course. As if all the rest hadn't been bad enough--as if it wasn't bad enough she'd had to kill him to escape him, now there was this. She still hadn't escaped him, and now he was violating her far worse than he ever had alive.
"So I can't get rid of him until I don't feel guilty anymore?" she asked softly. "I…don't know how to do that. I mean, I killed him." And she'd wanted to do it, there was no doubt about that; wanted it so much her very soul had burned with it. Even now, she couldn't honestly say she'd not do it again, if she had a chance to go back in time--she would have just made sure he didn't touch her before he died. Anger welled in her at that, sheer red rage at the thought that he'd found a way to haunt her still--literally, she thought bitterly.
"There is hatred in thee, too," T'Pau said, and Uhura wondered if she'd felt it even without a meld. "Hatred alien to thy nature. Permit me thy memories, Nyota."
It was the first time the old woman had called her by her real name, and Uhura quailed.
"I--there are--you don't want to see them," she said hoarsely, horror washing over her in one hot-cold wave. "They--he--" The thought of this formidable, self-controlled Vulcan seeing--experiencing--what had happened to her, what she herself had done…it was a sort of humiliation not to be borne. And she felt weak, so weak because of it.
"I know objectively what happened to thee, child," T'Pau said, a little impatiently, "and I see there are a few things about Vulcan nature Spock has never told thee. Shame is illogical, Nyota, especially shame for things one cannot undo."
Shame might be illogical, but that didn't make it any less real. Uhura swallowed, and hoped like hell she wouldn't cry.
"All right," she said, reluctantly, completely convinced this would only end horribly. T'Pau laid her hand on Uhura's face again, and saw--
--everything.
That place in the hold, Nero's interrogation-torture-whatever room, too hot and too bright, and the sheer mind-numbing terror she'd felt when two Romulans had dragged her there. Terror made even worse by Nero himself--too tall, too inhumanly strong, and far too insane. Convinced she would die there eventually, ashamed she should be so afraid of what might happen first. An officer should know better, should be stronger.
And Spock, clear lines of panic lacing around her first sight of him, a certainty they would both die and there was nothing she could do to save him. Helplessness, impotent fury at that helplessness, knowing how useless her human strength would be.
And the drugs--oh God, how could she let this woman see and feel what those drugs had done to her? What Nero had done, what he'd made her feel and made her want, however wrong it was, and how much that drug had made her want nothing more than to touch him, to be touched--how she hated him but hadn't even cared, in that moment, until all thought faded.
Then the horror of waking in a bed not her own, in a robe not her own, horribly aware of the warm presence beside her, and knowing, knowing it wasn't over, that she somehow had to endure it all again. And she'd copped out and taken the drugs, let him make her enjoy it because she was too afraid not to. How much she had enjoyed it, even though what of her could still think had loathed both him and herself.
Then, afterward, jagged incoherent thoughts of violence before she'd slept--thoughts not normally at home in her head. Even in sleep they'd become dreams of murder, of complete revenge, and how carefully she'd pried her ultimately useless weapon from the bathroom, gripping it even while she slept again. Oh, how utter hatred had settled in her chest like a burning ball, rage that followed her back into her dreams, until she woke again, only to fail in her task.
And…and…her thoughts tried to fragment from there, to avoid any memory of what they'd both done afterward. Even now she didn't understand why--she'd started just to hurt him, to inflict as much damage as she could within the one venue he wouldn't kill her for, but then she'd liked it and God, what had that turned her into?
'Thee was affirming thee was alive.' T'Pau's voice cut through her miserable self-loathing. 'It is not a thing a Vulcan would do, but humans are hardly alone in that response. The mind does very strange things under great stress. Thee has a strong will for a human, but thee are still only human.' There was condescension in her tone, but not so much as Uhura might have expected. 'Thee also is glad thee killed him, whatever thy grief, and that too is human. A Vulcan thinks not of revenge, but thee is not Vulcan.'
Uhura knew that all too well. 'If I had been, I would have been strong enough to kill him as soon as he set me free.'
'If thee was Vulcan,' T'Pau said, a little reprovingly, 'thee would not have done it.'
'Spock would have. I know he wanted to.'
'Spock is half human.' The words were disparaging, but Uhura would swear there was some measure of affection in there as well. T'Pau was his godmother, wasn't she, or whatever the Vulcan equivalent was? 'And even a Vulcan would do more for a bondmate than for themselves. Thee are not bonded, but in his mind thee are.'
That…did not surprise her, actually. 'It's why I…he's why I did everything I did, so he wouldn't get hurt--so Nero wouldn't kill him, or worse.'
'I know. He knows. And Nero knows, too.'
That startled her. 'You know what he's thinking?'
'He is very awake within thy mind. Thee must speak with him before he may be removed.'
That made Uhura twitch. 'Speak with him? How? And why?'
'Spock has taught thee the rudiments of meditation, child. Thee must do this alone, without his or anyone else's help. Nero's mind is as restless as yours--in death he knows no peace, and will not move on until he does.'
'Don't tell me he thinks he feels guilty,' Uhura said, the words nearly a snarl.
'He does, among many things. He was not sane then and he is not now, but still he feels.' There was clear disapproval now. 'We Vulcans mastered our emotions because they run too deeply, too strongly; without that mastery we are savages. The Romulans have no such discipline, and so there is no diverting what they feel.'
'So what does he feel, that he's so determined to stay stuck in my head?'
Now there was no reading T'Pau's voice. 'He loves thee, child,' she said. 'Or believes he does. The hurt he has done thee has kept him here.'
That really made Uhura twitch--twitch, and nearly panic. God, why did this have to just keep getting worse and worse? Was there no damn end?
'Hell, if that's true I'll never get him out,' she groaned.
T'Pau's thoughts seemed to steady her, to stave off that incipient panic. 'Thee must forgive him.'
'Forgive him? FORGIVE HIM? That--I don't think that's even possible. You saw what he did to me--how could anyone forgive that? If I have to forgive him I really will be stuck with him for life.'
'I did not say it would be easy,' T'Pau said, with more than a little asperity now. 'But as I told thee, if we were to try to remove him by force now it would destroy thy mind.'
Her tone softened a little. 'Thee is not alone, child. Thee has Spock, and Spock will only benefit from this distraction. His mourning runs as deeply as any of ours, but his human nature cannot subsume it as we do. Helping both thee will help him, as difficult as it will be for all of thee.' She paused. 'I gave Sarek no blessing when he wed Amanda. I would not do the same, when Spock bonds with thee.'
That absolutely floored Uhura, so much so that she couldn't say a thing.
'Spock is half human. Thee are not half Vulcan, but thy mind is suited to him. Never has he had a true place in either world, but with thee he does. Thee and he can make a world of thine own.'
'I…uh, thank you.' She didn't know what else to say.
'One does not thank logic. I will prepare the room, and then I will take my leave of thee. The rest is up to thee and Nero.'
She broke the meld abruptly, leaving Uhura reeling. With careful, deliberate steps she rose, moving slowly but purposefully around the room, gathering Uhura didn't know what. Incense, strange oils--how did she know where everything was, anyway? Did she inspect all the rooms or something? Uhura wouldn't be surprised.
Down went the lights; up went the fire in the firepot, the smoke of some vaguely sandalwood-flavored incense filling the air. An aide was dispatched for a meditation robe, and then Uhura was alone in the hot smoky dimness, alone with her thoughts--and with Nero.
Now that T'Pau was gone she let herself shudder, fumbling with her clothes. The idea that he was somewhere in her brain, watching all this--jeeze. She wasn't sure this could even get any creepier.
Finally, robe donned, she sat as Spock had showed her and tried to clear her head, with an astonishing lack of success. No way could she stop thinking, find anything like a Zen state, and finally she gave over trying.
Are you in there? she thought, feeling like an idiot. If she hadn't felt him until now, how the hell was she to start?
The response, when it came, was not in words. Instead it was yet more warmth, different than T'Pau's and Spock's--a little rougher, less polished, and with it such a strong phantom of Nero's scent that she shuddered. Such conflicting responses that scent elicited--cold horror up her spine even as heat spiked through her. Damn him.
She shut her eyes, trying to stay calm, and when she opened them again she found before them not Sarek's dim, smoke-hazed quarters, but the Narada--the Narada-in-her-head. And this time it wasn't deserted.
She was standing on one of the platforms, and facing her, separated by a yawning gulf of a drop, was Nero.
At least he wasn't obviously dead--no mental zombie out of a horror holo. He looked exactly like he had alive, and that shook her almost as much as it would have if he had appeared dead. What could she say to him? His very presence churned up all the emotions she'd just started to sort out, the anger and guilt and shame and that peculiar, persistent sense of loss. His eyes were so very black, his tattoos almost delicate, and she found herself unable to look away. He belonged in the Narada, but not the Narada-in-her-head, and she didn't want him here.
"Aren't you going to say anything?" she asked at last, when the silence stretched unbearably.
He didn't--instead he took a flying leap across the chasm, making Uhura jump back before she could help herself. Even in her head his proximity was…alarming, dredging up memories both horrible and dangerously--not. This whole thing was so real she could feel his heat, smell his strange spicy scent, and something lurched in her stomach as he stepped toward her--a mingling of dread and guilt and a weird sort of curiosity. Looking at him now, she couldn't believe what T'Pau had said; whatever else his expression said, it did not say he loved her.
Which was a ridiculous notion anyway. Nero hadn't even known her three whole days--even if he'd been sane, that wasn't nearly long enough to form anything like real attachment, much less love. He'd been obsessed with her because he was obsessed with Spock, and nothing more; it hadn't even been her name he'd breathed when…yeah…
Speaking of which, "Who is Mandana?" she asked, falling back another pace. "Your wife?"
Nero nodded, still wordlessly, and the sudden fierceness of grief in his expression halted her cold.
"You're afraid to face her, aren't you?" she asked softly, a little more gently. "I don't think you were so insane after all, if you can be guilty enough to be afraid." If that were true, little wonder he'd latched onto her mind. Were she in his position, Uhura wouldn't want to face her spouse, either.
Somehow she held still when he reached out to touch her face, managing not to recoil when hot fingers brushed her skin. And with that touch…well. It was certainly more tender than anything she ever could have expected.
"Forgive me," he said quietly, and the sheer agony in his voice made her shudder. Oh, he knew guilt all right, far more intimately than she would have thought any being could.
"I don't think you understand what you're asking," she said, her voice unsteady. "You…you…you know what you did to me, and you want me to just forgive that?"
She wouldn't have believed the grief in his face could grow any more terrible than it already was, but it did. His eyes were fathomless wells of pain, black holes that threatened to suck her in and never release her.
"I…do," he said, so softly she could barely hear. "Please." His fingers traced the line of her jaw--gently now, free of that horrible intense lust. "I can't undo it, but…I need you to forgive me."
She caught herself trying to lean into his touch and jerked backward. "I'm not a saint, Nero," she snapped, forgetting he would not know the word. 'I don't know if I can ever do that. You broke my wrist, you raped me, you tried to fucking choke me to death--what do you think I am, that you expect me to forgive it? You tried to destroy me, and not even because of anything I'd done. You use me like a pawn and expect me to--to--" she was horrified to find herself perilously close to tears, and stepped away again, fighting hard not to let them fall. "I'm going to have to deal with this for the rest of my damn life--how DARE you ask me for forgiveness?"
She lost her battle with tears then, and angrily wiped her eyes with the back of her hand. She was so angry that she didn't realize she'd called him by name for the first time, but he certainly did--something in his expression changed, somehow adding a new depth to the hurt already there.
"I didn't try to kill you," he said quietly. "I just didn't want you awake. I didn't want you to see--"
"See you try to destroy the rest of my life?" she broke in. "See you kill Spock for something that hasn't even happened yet--watch you kill half of me, too? Tell me what the hell you meant to do with me after that, if you'd succeeded. Let me hear the grand master plan of the avenging Romulan." The sight of his pain hurt her, too, and that only made her angrier--at him, and herself. What should she care if she hurt him? She should hurt him--he deserved it a thousand times over. The sudden bewildering ache in her chest did not belong there.
He stepped toward her again, reaching out but not quite touching her face. "I…would have kept you," he said, his tone indicating he knew how impossible that would have been. "You…were more than just revenge on Spock. You made me remember--so many things, and I--"
"Would have killed me," Uhura interrupted again. "You would have, and you and I both know it. You wanted your wife back, and I'm not her, and you would have come to hate me for it. Maybe even before you drove me insane."
"No," he said fiercely, and now he did touch her, cupping the side of her face with his hand. "No. I would have--we would have gone to Romulus. I could have found a place there with you. I could have been something else again."
She shook her head, but did not draw away. "No, Nero," she said, firmly convinced of what she was saying. "You went too far. There could be no going back, for you or anyone else. If you'd killed Spock I would have found a way to kill you, too, however long it took me."
He brought his other hand up to her face, heat spreading from his fingers. "I didn't want to hurt you," he said, his eyes holding hers. "I'm sorry. I can say no more than that."
"And you can do no more, either. I want you out of my head, Nero. I won't let you hurt me anymore."
God, why was the anguish in his eyes so terrible to her? Why didn't she just draw away and have done with it? She didn't care what T'Pau said, forgiveness just couldn't happen, not now, not after all he'd done to her and all she'd done to herself. But she couldn't pull back, not even when Nero bent his head to brush his lips along her hairline. Even that light contact made her shiver, and then--
She saw Romulus, the Romulus of the future where he had once lived. Saw the Narada as the mining ship it had once been, the crew the contented workers they had once been. Before the grief, before the tattoos…they had been happy, all of them, once--including Nero. He'd had Mandana and his son on the way, his life, a real life. He'd been a good person once, long ago now, someone who loved and was loved and had an actual conscience, an actual sanity. He really had been a person, not a monster, not the homicidal madman who had destroyed all of Vulcan out of insane heartache. It was a firmer vision of the faint echo she'd felt from him before, in that brief time they'd laid together in the dark without fighting one another. And she could pity that man, could understand his grief even if she could never reconcile what he'd done because of it.
And…oh hell, T'Pau had been right after all. He did love her, in some fractured, broken fashion--a demented, imperfect, unhealthy love, born as much out of his madness as anything else, but love nonetheless. She really had reminded him of things long forgotten, but Uhura could recognize what he could not--that his plans and wants never could have worked, because he really was too far out of his mind.
Her thoughts snapped back to the present with a tangible jolt, and after a moment she realized he was kissing her. Not a hungry kiss, not brutal or even really possessed of much carnal desire--just a kiss, as bizarrely gentle as the last he'd given her, before she killed him. She actually shut her eyes and let him, but when he drew away she shook her head.
"I can't yet, Nero," she said quietly. "I…see, now, I think, but I just can't. Not yet. It's just…it's too much too soon." She wasn't even aware there were tears on her face until he touched one, his finger tracing the hot wet track down her cheek.
"I know," he said, and there was only a little bleakness in his voice. "But…someday. Please. I want to see her again, and if I'm ever to get her forgiveness I have to have yours."
Uhura nodded, not trusting herself to speak--
--and when she blinked, she was back in the present again, in reality, the warm, dim haziness of Sarek's rooms. And she sat there for a long, long time, and wondered what the hell she was going to do.
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YEESH, the end of this thing just keeps pushing itself farther and farther back. Next chapter sees Spock, Sarek, and Spock Prime, and maybe a bit of Kirk & co. Eventually we will see Kirk made Captain, but there's a bit more going on before then. Quite a bit.
Also, onimosity, that idea you gave me is going to be a direct offshoot AU of what Nero just told her. I can't help it. XD
