Saavik woke up in a black void. Nothing gave her a clue. She had been left uncertain in the dark, trapped within herself. This cold vacuum was her.

The entire universe shook on the outer layers of her presence. Something had happened to her body. The physical violent upheaval happening to it and her mind had made her unaware of her surroundings at first.

She was not alone.

Someone had melded with her. Someone was still here.

A meld by itself could be physically dangerous since it required the one who was touched to make pressure changes in the nerves, and blood vessels. Once stabilized, it brought a sensation of a strange euphoria, like the body floated. Then the subject opened their mind, so that the two minds moved together, sharing the same thoughts. It was no wonder why it so deeply personal to the Vulcan people, and part of their private lives.

But whoever had initiated this meld hadn't asked for Saavik's permission. They had forced it and during a physical upheaval, even as her consciousness fought for its survival against an enemy she could not name. They had caused a meld that actually made her retreat far inside herself.

Unacceptable. She did not retreat. And she did not merely accept someone forcing themselves into her mind.

"I should never have been born."

The voice – she couldn't believe it. She hid from him? She reached out further and the presence coalesced into a visual form: a baby, Vulcan, and as alone in the darkness as her. "Spock?"

She watched him age as she had on Genesis, only now she saw him from infancy through the other ages that had happened before she had arrived on the planet. He started crawling and then walking to just appearing in infinitesimal steps in a corkscrew around her, finally reaching the first stage she saw on Genesis.

She touched his mind, but he didn't respond, so she created a visual of herself, hoping he'd react to that stimuli since he had chosen it for himself.

It was if he did treat her for T'lokan schism, the physical condition stemming from traumatic memory repression, and he was her pyllora, melding with her and acting as an observer to bring the memory into visual memory so she could reconstruct it and objectify the experience.

She crouched down by him and asked him what was wrong. He repeated the phrase, "I should never have been born."

She rushed to tell him that wasn't true, but he disappeared. She called for him, and heard him again, off to her side. "I should never have been born."

She turned, and now he was the older child from Genesis. She demanded to know why he thought this.

"I was told it," he answered. "I know it is the truth. It is a surety in me that I cannot deny."

"Spock, who told you this?"

He was gone again, reappearing once more slightly off to the side and behind her, so that his spiral path continued. He answered her question. "You told me."

She stopped, both by the answer and by his age. She met the dark eyes she never thought to see again: Spock at 19, possibly early 20s. Spock at the age where she shared in his pon farr. Only now he stood straight and tall, hands clasped behind his back, regarding her calmly.

"You," she whispered breathlessly. She started to touch him, but pulled back. She could not believe the impact of seeing him like this again.

He nodded. "I should never have been born, Saavik."

"Spock, I would never have made such a statement to you!"

He frowned, confused, and then looked up, sure of himself. "I should never have been born."

She started to argue, but he began to fade, and then suddenly stayed. She wondered why when the others had so quickly left, when he surprised her again by breaking out of the pattern happening so far.

"You somehow wish me to stay." His eyebrows suddenly shot up. "Was this when our time together...?"

So, he did have some of his memories. She nodded once, searching for the words, but he cut her off with an awed, "Fascinating."

He took a step closer, his hand hovering near hers at her side. "Saavik..." His voice deepened, aged, until it foreshadowed the way it sounded in the present.

The moment froze until he stepped back with a palpable wrench to them both.

More formal, he asked, "Can I be of any further assistance?"

"No," she said softly. "But your offer honors me."

He began to speak, stopped, and with obvious hesitation asked, "You chose an ahtiá name?"

She nodded.

"Will... you tell me what it is?"

She felt a rush of warmth and it glowed from her eyes and in the aura of her presence surrounding them. She reached out, just barely touching his cheek with her fingertips. "Not to you," she said softly. "Not this time. You and I have shared so much already."

He blinked, and the lashes brushed her hand. "I... understand. Not to me, but perhaps...?" He looked now into the darkness where his other years waited.

She dropped her hand, expecting to see him morph away from her into another self. But he didn't. She suddenly realized he stayed this way because of her. "Go. I will not keep you any longer."

He reluctantly left for the next Spock, the Spock who cringed in torment on Genesis, begging her in his expression to take the pain away as she had before. It haunted her still, reappearing in some nightmares. But now he was calm. " I should never have been born, Saavik."

She rushed out the words, "Spock, where did you first learn this?"

He pointed ahead of them. And was gone.

The next came to her, and now he was as cognizant of what was going on. She didn't have to ask. He spoke: "The suggestion is buried. It is the very thing killing you."

And then he too was gone. The aging was happening more rapidly as she more quickly recognized the truth.

And now the first Spock she had actually known, the Spock she followed from a tent on Hellguard and saved from a hybrid boy intent on killing him. She asked him, wasting no time. "When you melded with me, you heard this?"

"Yes," he replied and was quickly replaced with the Spock, her teacher in the Academy. The Spock who died on Enterprise.

"And you took it into yourself," she realized. "The suggestion entered your own subconscious." He nodded. "Spock..."

He was gone, but no other replaced him. She addressed the dark, "Why is this killing me?"

And now the Spock here on Vulcan, fighting to save her from the disease, came to her shoulder. "Because you believe it."

"To live, Saavik, to cure the disease, you only have to do one thing: stop believing that what it says is true."

So. This was why Sajjan had died. She couldn't stop thinking that what the disease told her was true. Thus she gave into death believing the words on her lips: I should not have been born.

"Saavik. You must no longer believe it. You are not to blame for your birth. You have the right as any other to live."

She had no words until she whispered, "In the meantime, it kills you as well." The meld joined them together. It bound them so the disease pulled him down with her, to be swallowed into it like the grasp of a black hole.

He nodded. The dark color in his eyes came from her darkness surrounding them, seeping through the visual image of himself. It testified to how deeply he had been drawn in. It had started dissolving his separateness as it engulfed him. "Together, we will--"

"Tkváyh'kth."

He stopped at the sound of his first name, his ahtiá name, reflecting his true self; a secret for those closest to him. She let the image of her fade away as if drifting in wisps on a wind, and drew in his presence like one last breath.

"My name is Avrách'laba."

And before he could react, she shoved him hard, with all the force she had, and he was pushed out of the meld. It ended as violently as it began.

It might also have been the last thing they ever shared.

Eight seconds.