Chapter 6
Spock's face doesn't show anything. Of course it doesn't. Short of physically attacking him, Stonn doesn't know what else he can do to get him to react, to do something. He has tried logic, tattered as it might be. He has begged, and raised his voice, and invoked their friendship. He has no more cards left to play. Southern passion can no more breach ShiKahr logic than his ancestors' forces could take that impenetrable fortress.
Suddenly he's exhausted. He steps backwards.
"I wish I could have come to you with my thoughts disciplined and ordered. I wish I had a fool-proof defense, a logical path untainted by jumbled emotions. I wish… that there was some way for the two of us, the three of us, to remain… katen. I wish many things, but if wishes were like clouds, it would rain every day. But I… am not important here." He points upwards to the left - they both know exactly where all the ships and docking bays lie in relation to each other in geosynchronous orbit above.
"She's on the freighter, and the two of you need to talk. Let her do the tevyah, or do the tevyah to her, or do it together in full Surakisi noble mysticism, or just sit and talk like ordinary survivors would after something like this shatters your world. But do something. I... beg you."
He wets his lips, looks down. He has nothing left to bargain with, and the pride and fury that were shields a few minutes ago, are now simply too exhausting. He falls to his knees. His head is spinning.
"When the sand storm has passed, we must still heal the desert together."
It is another Old High Vulcan quote, this time from that other Spock, Surak's disciple, the Great Unifier. As much a legend to modern Vulcan children as this Spock has become through his far-flung travels among the stars.
For a full twenty-three heartbeats, the desert is still and silent. Stonn feels that his breathing becomes labored. Then Spock moves into his personal space and he has to brace himself to not let his body instinctively sink into a defensive position. He lets his mental shields drop, but Spock only lifts his chin up until there is no escaping his gaze.
Then, as when shades are opened up, Stonn feels Spock's shields deliberately roll down. The other man is still guarded, but there is a blessed steadiness there and a calmness that feels like the first glorious drops of autumn rain on the parched earth.
"For a poet, your Old High Vulcan pronunciation leaves much to be desired." Spock says, drily and pulls him up.
"Drink this. It should be dissolved enough by now" Spock holds up the waterskin, with the strange calcite substance in it. Stonn hesitates for half a second before he brings it to his lips. The taste is horrible and he nearly gags.
"All of it."
Stonn drinks it. Is this a penance? Is this part of some strange symbolic Surakisi ceremony of forgiveness?
He asks and is rewarded by a raised eyebrow.
"A few minutes outside the dome is perfectly fine, Stonn. Running out into the DE3 desert with no radiation medication is ill-advised, however. This is the quickest way for you to get the counteragent in you, since you neglected to carry a dosage apparatus that injected it slowly through your skin."
"...Radiation?"
"I assumed that was your plan, to force me to come after you?"
"Ah. I had not…"
"Quite thought out your plan in detail?"
"I am a poet, Spock. I leave the plans to you and T'Pring." He blinks. "But you…"
"My hybrid physique means that I am unaffectedly by this particular type of radiation. I wear it because local law requires it of everyone."
He should really have read up more on the little planetoid. But once he learned that the Enterprise was in orbit around the dome settlement, it was difficult to focus on anything else.
Spock's hands are still on his arms, steadying him. After another minute, Stonn's breathing is easier again and the half-Vulcan speaks.
"For someone who has asked to be forgiven, you have seemed most unwilling to give me an opportunity to speak."
Spock tightens his grip on his arms. They are in a desert, albeit far from their home star. It is the place for such things.
"I am not prepared to say that the cause was sufficient. I wish that you had attempted to disrupt the ceremony in some way, but I admit that in the moments when I was lucid, I thought T'Pau would stop it before it went as far as it did… before he died. Before I killed him."
Stonn closes his eyes. He had never seen anyone killed before that day, and since then he's seen it in endless loops behind his eyes. The worst part is that he remembers feeling nothing but a possessive yearning and jealous fury directed at Spock and Kirk when it actually happened. Maybe it was the strange leaves burning in the incense, maybe it was a biological drive that kicked in for him as well, maybe it was the way T'Pring smelled, maybe, just maybe, it wasn't really his fault at all… Or maybe those desires are always within him, just waiting, and he is deluding himself. Maybe the Surakisi are right to be paranoid over emotions.
"You are right, Stonn." Spock says, and releases him. "T'Pring and I should have dissolved the bond years ago. T'Pau should not have insisted on carrying on the ancient rites. You should have been stronger. But none of that helps us now. We must… put it behind us."
"...How?"
"I do not know. But I have given my captain my word to let go of my guilt over my own actions that day - to forgive myself, as the humans say," Spock continues. "If I am to do that, I must extend the same courtesy to T'Pring and you. Forgiveness should come easy to any true follower of Surak, but in this I have realized how far I have yet to travel on that path."
They are quiet for a while. When the autumn sand storms finally die, up there in the strange Surakisi land that Stonn has come to call home, it is sudden and jarring, leaving Stonn cautious but relieved, eyes taking in a world reborn, a landscape fundamentally changed - until the next storm will rearrange it again. Stonn can feel Spock beginning a breathing exercise, and he follows, copying it. He knows that there is something that he needs to acknowledge now, before he can go on. But he hesitates. Spock seems to understand anyway.
"Forgiveness is like water seeping into the ground: it matters not what is deserved, only what is needed. Another Surakisi idiom for your collection." Spock takes a deep breath. "We will have to find the path together. I will... speak to T'Pring."
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Author's Note: One more chapter to go! I hope you're enjoying my High Vulcan poems :). Thanks for all your thoughtful and reflective comments.
