Chapter Six: Erasures

Disclaimer: Making no money here.

As Nyota snaps off the lights and locks Commander Spock's office at the end of her shift, she's already texting Gaila.

Where r u? Need u. Will b there n 10. Stay.

Sighing, she slips her comm in her pocket and makes her way down the three flights of stairs to exit the language building, watching all the while for Commander Spock.

For three days in a row she's come to work but he hasn't. Or rather, he comes when she's not here, in the middle of the night, leaving a work PADD on her desk with a list of duties.

Such as this one from today:

Open lab. Take packages to post office. Sort mail and forward personal notices.

The list is a statement of the obvious, things she does everyday. He hardly needs to remind her.

"I am aware that most humans are not gifted with eidetic memory," he told her once, back before their relationship had become so…fraught. Back when such a comment would have made her laugh, or at least smile.

"And Vulcans don't forget anything?" she had teased. His expression did not change.

"We do not," he said, and she pointed to the photo cube on the shelf in his office.

"Why do you need this? If you recall everything with perfect clarity?"

Most of the images on the photocube were of Vulcan—a sand-colored home, a rock-lined garden—but one was of a striking dark-eyed woman the Commander said was a friend—said with a tone of voice that implied an unspoken intimacy. Ever since, Nyota has been curious. Or something.

Now that easy teasing seems unimaginable, their camaraderie built of casual lunches and innumerable conversations over cups of tea wiped away by the events of the last few weeks.

It all started the day she fell—she's sure of that now, if she wasn't before. Weakened by a sprain during a rougher than usual game of parrises squares, Nyota's ankle had given way suddenly when she stood up in the office one day, the Commander's quick reflexes saving her from hitting the ground.

His arms had circled her for only a moment—but it was long enough for her catch a glimpse of his unshuttered thoughts, as if the two of them had—in those few seconds—shared a mind.

Which, she realized, they had.

"Oh, yeah," Gaila said nonchalantly when Nyota broached the subject later, "a mind share, or meld, I think they call it. That's why Vulcans are so careful not to touch anyone. Imagine what that must be like in bed when they do touch—"

"Gaila!"

"Well, maybe not," Gaila grinned. "I'd hate to wander around in a Vulcan's mind—all those boring mathematical equations—"

Nyota gave a reluctant snort and Gaila darted a glance in her direction. If only she knew—

Nyota's uneasiness came not from violating some Vulcan taboo or even from intruding in the Commander's privacy but from what she had seen there in his mind: Images of herself—not just as she was at that moment, slumped against his chest, his right arm keeping her from tumbling to the floor—but also as she has been since she's known him…sitting across from him in his classroom, leaning over a computer keyboard in the lab, reclining against one of the rickety chairs in the breakroom, lifting her hand and waving as she picked her way across the sunlit commons.

A collage of pictures of herself, or a kaleidoscope of bits and pieces as he sees her—the delicate bones of her wrist, the curve of her ear, the tilt of her chin. All stitched together like a quilt, and overlaid with a jumble of emotional echoes—pride and pleasure and amusement, and worrisome feelings, too, like discomfort and loneliness and longing.

When he'd flown to New York that same afternoon to visit friends from Vulcan—perhaps the friend on the photocube—Nyota had half-convinced herself she'd imagined the entire thing—or at least was projecting her emotions, wrongly assigning her uneasy feelings to him. When he'd returned the next day—tight-lipped about his journey but nevertheless clearly disturbed—she'd tried to winkle out the cause before deciding it was none of her business.

Which of course it wasn't, except that whatever had happened in New York had shifted something in their communication, adding a restraint that is new.

He's avoiding her—coming into his office at night to leave her a list and then staying away during the day while she opens the lab and sorts his mail.

She's both relieved and dismayed that he's doing so. Relieved because the past few weeks have left her confused and uneasy—and if truth be told—anxious that she will slip up and reveal the all-too-human emotional undercurrent she feels when she's with him.

But she's also dismayed because she's never been one to dodge an uncomfortable situation, never one to duck away instead of facing something headlong. When she accepted this teaching assistantship she knew it would be a challenge—the Commander had a reputation for being a stickler, a perfectionist, an austere and demanding supervisor. Nyota didn't care. She knew him already, had weathered two courses under him successfully. If he was a formidable presence in the classroom, he was also surprisingly engaging. She expected him to be the same as her supervisor. And he had been, for a time.

For a time they had continued their friendly sparring over shared lunches, over tea—their conversations ranging far and wide, her conviction growing that no one was as interesting to talk to as the Commander.

And for his part, he seemed to enjoy her company.

Until the fall. That literal fall had set a metaphorical one in motion, and whatever friendly relationship they had built started crumbling the day she landed in his arms.

Not that every time they are together they are at odds. When Commander Spock learned he was the winner of this year's Brodhead Prize for teaching, Nyota happily convinced him to accept it. When he gave a frankly emotional eulogy at the memorial for the USS Camden dead, she alone understood what it cost him to publicly acknowledge his private grief.

But lately he's pulled away, leaving cryptic emails and work PADDs to communicate with her. She's done something to offend him, or to make him regret hiring her, but she can't sort out what. With a sigh she makes her way back to the dorm, her resolve to do something wavering as soon as she opens the door and hears Gaila's trilling laugh.

"Gotta go," Gaila says into her comm, and before Nyota can stop her, she snaps it shut and stands up to give a comical salute. "Reporting for duty, as ordered," she says, her red curls bobbing. "So, what's this all about?"

"I'm sorry," Nyota says, shifting her bag from her shoulder and sitting on her bed. "It's nothing."

Gaila cocks her head to the side. "It's something," she says, "or you wouldn't have told me to stay."

Nyota's face flushes. "Yeah, I'm sorry about that. That was out of line."

"Are you going to tell me what's going on? Because I turned down twelve hot dates just to be here with you now."

Only an Orion could make such a joke with impunity. Despite herself, Nyota laughs.

"Okay, okay," she says, holding up one hand. "I'm having trouble understanding something Commander Spock wrote."

Gaila cocks her head in the other direction. "And?"

"And," Nyota continues slowly, "I thought that since you work with him doing programming, you might help me figure it out."

Lifting one eyebrow, Gaila slumps onto her bed and leans against the headboard. "You're the communications expert, Ny. I'm just a coder."

Swallowing, Nyota says, "But I'm missing something, and I don't know what. He hasn't been to work for three days—"

"He's sick."

"I don't think so. But I don't know. He comes in when I'm not there and leaves me…this."

She pulls out the work PADD from that day and hands it to Gaila, who flips it on. "So? It's a list. What about it?" Gaila asks.

"It's just that it's a stupid list," Nyota says. "I don't need it, and I don't know why the Commander would leave it for me."

Gaila shrugs. "Why don't you ask him?"

All at once Nyota feels the wind go out of her sails. Of course she should just ask him…but when she tries to imagine doing so, she falters. If he's pulling away already, a direct question might close communication down altogether.

"I, well, yes…I should—" she stumbles. From the corner of her eye she sees Gaila break into a wide grin.

"Or," Gaila says, holding up one finger, "I could use a time-stamp wyrm to uncover any edits to the list. Considering it's Commander Spock we're talking about, there probably aren't any. I bet he never changes anything once he writes it down. But if he has, we can see what he wrote originally. That might give you some idea into what's going on."

Gaila's tone is so excited, so conspiratorial, that Nyota eyes her intently. What her roommate is proposing is, if not outright unethical, at least questionably so. The wyrm will show all the versions of his note in reverse chronological order, even though Commander Spock only intended her to see the last one. She opens her mouth to tell her no when Gaila adds, "What's the use of having a supercoder roommie if you never take advantage of what I can do? You said you want to know what the Commander means, right? Then you need to see everything he wrote. After all, everything he wrote was for you, right? You aren't reading something he didn't intend for you to see—at least at one time."

Nyota still isn't convinced. Gaila goes on. "Here's the thing. I know how Commander Spock values economy in words. What he's probably done is try to logically whittle all the extraneous stuff out of this note—and he's just overshot the mark. There's nothing wrong with going back and recovering what he meant to say."

In one corner of her mind Nyota is sure this is wrong—but if it helps her understand why the Commander is so skittish around her, she's willing to silence the corner of her mind that is frantically waving a red flag—

"Okay," Nyota says, "but there's one catch. You can't tell anyone what we find out. Not anyone!"

"I'll do better than that," Gaila says, her fingers flying over the screen of the PADD. "I'll set the wyrm in motion and then I'm going out. By the time you start to get a report on any edits, I'll be at Moe's on the dance floor with a beer in one hand and one of the twelve cadets I turned down in the other. I won't see a thing!"

It's not too late to stop her, Nyota thinks, but even as she does, she knows she won't. Gratefully she takes the PADD from Gaila and settles back as her roommie scurries around getting dressed. Sure enough, by the time she's saying her goodbyes, the PADD is beeping and Nyota opens the screen to the note Commander Spock left today.

Open lab. Take packages to post office. Sort mail and forward personal notices.

It's time-stamped 0121, and for a moment, Nyota thinks that Gaila may have been right about the Commander not needing to edit his work. This appears to be the only version—except that as she watches, a second version queues up behind it with a time-stamp twenty minutes earlier. She taps it open.

Two students specifically asked that you be available to assist in the lab this afternoon. Both found the tutorial you wrote on Triskalien fricatives useful. In addition, I will be off campus when the post office is open, so your taking the packages there will be helpful. The packages include redundant hard copies of reports already sent via email so you do not need to hurry. Running this errand during your lunch break would suffice, especially since the cafeteria's proximity to the post office would make a single trip feasible. Finally, the odds are 89% that I will not be in the office today. Please forward any personal mail or notices to my comm queue. Everything else you can attend to with your usual efficiency.

Gradually as she reads, Nyota becomes aware that her mouth is open. He deleted this version? Why? She blinks and shakes her head. Compared to the bare bones note she did receive, this one is incredibly detailed—too detailed, in fact. And suddenly she knows why Commander Spock deleted it. A human wouldn't mind so much direction, but a Vulcan might find it…insulting—not that they would admit to it. He's assuming she shares his sensibility and he didn't want to offend her.

The PADD beeps a notice that yet another, earlier, version is in line. She tabs it open.

Cadet Uhura, I have been remiss in not speaking to you earlier

That's it? An incomplete sentence? And not even connected to the list of things he wanted her to do that day. Nyota rubs the crease on her forehead.

I have been remiss.

An apology? For what?

I have been remiss in not speaking to you earlier

He's apologizing for not speaking about something to her. With a leap of insight, she knows he is referring to her fall in his office. Neither has said a word about it, yet apparently both have thought about it since.

"Then we'll have to talk about it," she says aloud, partly to comfort herself with the sense that she is finally moving forward, and partly to cover the hammering of her heart. In her hand, the PADD beeps softly once more.

Yet another version, his first attempt. She opens it up.

Nyota,

That's it. Her name and nothing else. No, not nothing else. A comma afterward, as if her name is the salutation of an unwritten letter.

He's only called her by her name once—a private moment with nothing untoward about it—coupled, as it was, with a simple thank you—but sometimes in her dreams she hears him say it again, the slight breathiness of the middle vowel the only hint that Vulcan is his first language.

She looks at her name on the PADD.

Nyota,

He was going to say something about what happened that day in his office when her ankle gave way and she fell into his arms, into his mind, but his courage or his logic faltered and he deleted the evidence of his attempt. Did not say what she suspects—that the wordless yearning she thought was hers alone is not only understood but shared—

The unfinished letter is maddening, calling for a patience she doesn't feel. If she asks him about it—

She can't, of course. Doing so would mean admitting that she's seen his edited versions. Would humiliate him, to know that the track of his thoughts are on display like this.

With a vicious swipe, she toggles off the PADD, ashamed of seeing what she should not have seen, and grateful, too, that she has.

X X

Earth's moon is full tonight, something Spock notes without conscious effort, the same way he is aware that the ambient air temperature is 17 C/63 F, that the prevailing winds are from the east, that the humidity is 42% and falling. All this he gathers as he walks across the Academy grounds from his apartment to the language building. The only other people out and about are cadets doing late laps around the commons, training, perhaps, for the upcoming city-wide half-marathon.

Once inside the language building he ascends the stairs two at a time, the automatic lights flickering on to keep up with him. As a general rule Spock prefers quiet, but the silence of the empty building is almost unnerving. If he had better control he would not have to resort to coming in when he knows Cadet Uhura will not be here…but since the day he accidentally revealed how much she occupies his thoughts, he is safer staying apart, keeping his focus on the external world—the phases of the moon, the chill of the night air—rather than take the measure of his own internal atmosphere.

He opens his office and goes immediately to his desk to type up a list for Cadet Uhura. To his surprise a work PADD is already lit and propped up, as if someone has left it there for him to find.

Cadet Uhura, naturally. He picks up the PADD and reads the short message.

Finished everything on the list. Let me know what else I can do to help.

An odd message. The first sentence is self-evident and therefore unnecessary. The second sentence is strangely phrased, or with an unexpected tone. He puzzles over it for another minute before deciding that "what else I can do to help" implies something beyond her normal duties—solicitous or friendly, like something his mother or a cousin would say.

Setting the PADD aside, he pulls up a set of tests and spends the next 35 minutes grading them. Then he picks up the PADD and reads it again, convinced that he's missed something elemental in the meaning. Perhaps she is asking for additional duties or is bored with her routine?

He circles around again to the incongruous phrasing. "What else I can do" is straightforward enough, but "to help" implies a personal calculus that throws him.

Let me know what else I can do to help.

Not tell me more work to do but let me help you. Except that he has expressed no need for additional help—or for any help at all.

Unless—and his ears grow warm with the idea—she means that on that day in the office when their minds had brushed together, she felt what he thought was deepest and most hidden—his quiet desperation, his complete and utter inability to dismiss or explain away his feelings for her. If she is offering to help him set those feelings aside as the inappropriate and inconvenient emotions they are—

But how would she do that? Tell him directly that she knows what he is, what he thinks about? Remind him of the hopelessness of pursuing anything other than a professional relationship with her? Had she gotten a sense of T'Pring in the brief incursion into his thoughts? That was before he flew to New York and found Stonn gloating in T'Pring's room, not bothering to hide their infidelity.

Does Nyota—Cadet Uhura—know that he's already surreptitiously, shamefully, consulted the Starfleet code of conduct governing fraternization? Not because he intends to act on his feelings, but because his eidetic memory inexplicably failed him when he tried to recall the exact rules?

Not knowing what she knows is intolerable. Briefly he closes his eyes and tips his head up, searching for some equanimity. Useless—as useless as his hours of sitting cross-legged in front of his asenoi, as useless as the extra suus mahna sessions. Opening his eyes, he picks up the PADD once more.

Somewhere there's a key to what she means.

Almost of their own accord, his fingers drift over the screen. Several seconds later, a reverse chronology of the cadet's note and all its editions queue up. Tapping past the most recent one, Spock reads the one immediately before it.

I met with the two students who needed an additional tutorial on Triskalien fricatives and set up another lesson. Hopefully it will be as useful as the last one. The post office was closed when I went during my lunch break but I mailed your packages after work. Since there was no hurry for their delivery, I assumed that would be okay. You received no personal notices to forward to your comm queue—at least not while I was here. Sorry I missed you. Let me know if there is anything I can do to help.

In his side his heart beats so hard that he presses the fingers of his right hand against it. Every point of her note is an answer to the detailed one he wrote—and deleted. Somehow she's managed to read it anyway.

If she read that earlier draft, then she might have read the ones before it—

Struggling to keep his hand from shaking, he tabs open an even earlier draft of her note.

Commander Spock, If I've done something that is keeping you away from the office, please let me know.

That she blames herself for his absence is inexcusable. He presses his fingers again to his side, willing his heartbeat to slow down. Somehow he has to restore a measure of normalcy to his work schedule. Obviously his current actions are causing Cadet Uhura distress. How to proceed, however, is unclear.

The PADD in his hand shows one more time-stamp earlier than all the others. Spock tabs it open.

Can we talk?

Is it talking if they read each other's erasures? If they sort through what didn't get said to find the truth?

And what if that truth must always remain hidden?

He can never confess to her what he barely admits to himself—that as distracting as her presence is, her absence causes him very real pain.

In the meantime he is the one causing pain, his schedule distressing her in a way he never intended. Tomorrow he'll resume working the day shift when she's there, coming up with an explanation for his temporary disappearance. A lie of necessity—or better yet, the kind of vague dodge that Vulcans use for misdirection.

"Something unexpected required my attention," he will say, not untruthfully, his tone suggesting the discussion is closed. "I was remiss in not speaking to you about it sooner."

A/N: Yikes! Fitting this story into an already existing canon is more difficult than I anticipated! I don't want to retell what I've already written, but those touchstones are important in understanding what these characters are feeling and doing. In this chapter, for instance, I allude to several events rather quickly—Spock's Brodhead Prize, the memorial for the USS Camden, and Spock's discovery that T'Pring and Stonn are together. Each of those events is described at length in "What We Think We Know," and believe it or not, "Subtext" will move beyond that period. Thanks for being so patient and supportive!