At Heart
Jim glanced again at Spock.
(Too silent, maybe. Too still. (What had the man been like, Before?))
His stomach roiled; and he sought for the right thing - for some thing - to say.
He wanted to say how sorry he was - how very, very sorry. He wanted say that he was sad for him - that he understood - that he felt bad for things that had been said to him; how he had been treated; the losses, (oh, God) the unimaginable losses he had suffered.
Jim listened to his own breathing, and tried to imagine how Spock could continue doing it day after day after day.
He struggled to find words to express even one of the jumbled mixture of things he was feeling - But once more, as seemed to happen all-too-often, he was speechless in the face of cool Vulcan equanimity.
Only… Now, he was becoming aware of how much was encompassed in that word.
He thought he might be sick.