When he dreamt—in the rare occasion that he did dream—it was almost always of the same general premise.
And she hated it with a smoldering avidity that trumped all other things.
He turned his face into their pillows to hold his breath, and though he did not entirely wish for her comfort in those moments, he would never ask her to remove her hands from him, as they drifted under his shirt and down his back, and would never tell her that there was nothing she could whisper to him in the silence of overnight hours that would ease the guilt of having seen so many slow and painful and burning deaths while he remained alive.
While it was likely the source of his upset that evening, he had yet to tell her of the missive he had received from one of the last people he would have ever expected to hear from again. He had not thought to wonder whether or not this person even still existed, and had left the message unread in his inbox for far longer than he otherwise would have, given that the subject line had told him quite blatantly what it was he would come to read within the body of it.
Stonn had died almost instantly in the Battle for Vulcan, his ka'atra irretrievable. He had been in the building that was leveled by the arm of the drill that had shot through the small city in which it had fallen.
T'Pring's bond sickness for him was debilitating, and apparently she had been told that it could be eased by reforming her betrothal tether to himself, and she had inquired after his willingness to do this when it seemed that her sense of dignity and decorum had been lost along with her departed beloved.
He felt not even a tremor of longing for her, but though she had hurt him in many ways throughout his life, it did not necessarily follow that he could not empathize with the devastating and desolate emptiness that came with such an unforeseen loss of one once thought impossible to live without. He had forwarded the information to his father with the thought that he may be able to help her, but had second guessed his own logic in having done so the moment it had gone through, too late to call it back, and still too soon for him to have yet replied to it.
He was nearly certain that Sarek would attempt to convince him that T'Pring's appeal to him would be an agreeable one to accept. That they could pick up where they left off, rebuild and repopulate and reconfigure Vulcan society with her in a way that he did not think his father would ever believe a human woman was equally capable. The New Vulcan High Council had sent him a similar message two weeks prior that had left him angered at their sudden break in pure-blooded elitism that had never been anything other than a means to prove him inferior for his hybrid heritage.
He would never lie to Nyota, never, and he was not intentionally keeping this missive from her, but he genuinely wished he could simply ignore it as though it never happened, as though it had been lost in transmission, no matter that it still sat at the top of his roll, unable to bring himself to delete it like every other missive he was sent as soon as it was read.
She would not understand why he did not tell her sooner, but he would tell her soon. He would tell her all the vulgar and unkind things he wished to say to all those who had petitioned to have the Ambassador removed from his position for his half human son, if only to have someone left to say it to.
He would tell her, would actually use the words to tell her that he loved her, and would not omit how conflicted this made him feel for his sense of greater good to his people over his own happiness.
He would tell her how badly he wished to be more like his elder counterpart, seemingly a perfect balance of unwavering logic and integrated welcoming of human instinct that he himself had never learned to have, as he had never truly tried to be more open to the way his mother must have felt to be so put upon and dismissed by him for the entirety of her life.
She would not understand, but he would tell her the truth.