Chapter 11: Ni'var
It was with great relief that Taurik realized it was over.
He would still have some symptoms of the pon farr for days yet, but the worst of it was over. He felt his mind returned to him as if the past days and hours had only been a dream.
He was in Saalle's bed on the floor near the back wall of the house, under the thin summertime sheets, with the late morning sunlight spilling across the wall. The domed house was a more characteristic one-room dwelling than Skal's, though the layout was similar. The kitchen was near to the front of the house, and a bench for visitors and a comfortable chair faced it. Curtains, glass, and filigree decorated the place; and it smelled of hot, clean dust. Dust and heather and the resin of sandalwood.
Their sense of decoration was as opposite as possible: he, almost ascetic; and she, almost luxurious.
He could get used to the thick carpet pile, the hanging glass curtains along the walls catching the sunlight. The pillows surrounding him and the curtains draping the bed, though disheveled, were comfortable… obscuring. Though he knew there was nothing else in the room outside the bed, he still felt the need to hide.
Saalle laid beside him, dressed in a purple robe, silk and tied. She opened her eyes, perhaps in response to his wandering thoughts. "Awake, I see."
"How long have I been here?"
"You came here yesterday morning, and were finished by afternoon. You've mostly slept since."
He didn't remember that, but he could sense her impressions of it. He saw the brief memory of weeping into her hair, inconsolable until she told him he hadn't hurt her. He could sense her trying to hold some of it back from him.
He knew he might be able to remember, if he tried… He didn't. It wasn't pleasant. Nothing about it had been. The pain had been overwhelming and indistinct until it wasn't, the compulsion wild and clear. He'd been lucid enough to be afraid, but not enough to restrain himself. Not after he completed the telepathic mating bond—he'd never felt a tie so tight. A desire so strong. He knew he fought, but lost in the end.
"I'm sorry."
"Do not be. It has only ever been together that we could endure this. It's how it must be."
Still… what had she endured just so that he could live? So he could live like this. "I am ashamed."
"You did what was required of you," she said.
He brushed her cheek with his fingers, the brief contact enough to remind him he didn't need to touch her in order to feel her thoughts. He felt her care and concern, the deep affection and a fleeing wariness.
"I remember waking," he said. "You gave me food." Cactus leaves and flowers, bread made from the most familiar red and black and yellow grains grown in the plains, fruits of the mos-nei and shek-tukh pods and other foods he once considered common but now seemed like delicacies.
"You awoke three times, though I think you weren't strictly conscious. You were particularly concerned about the ornamentation." She looked around at the sculptures and a painting of the sea on the wall. "I didn't realize how irritating it is to you."
He looked around the room again. They were ostentatiously appointed, but almost anything seemed like that with his sense of aesthetic. "It's unfamiliar," he said. "If I am irritated by it, I seem to have unconsciously put it away now."
"Your quarters on the Ramsar are decorated," she said, almost as if accusation. "That must be the doing of your Human roommate." With a considering sigh, Saalle ran her fingers through his hair. He had no idea why it should be so pleasant, and closed his eyes for a moment. "You must be constantly irritated."
"If I am, I am unaware." He waited for her to say something else, but nothing new appeared.
She had been so patient. And understanding. Saalle brought him a distinct familiarity, a dark maroon, unlike the rest of his highly-saturated family. Rich in depth and feeling. There was so much more yet to know, but their lifetime of association had prepared them for a commitment to study each other, appreciate each other, and support each other. Not all married couples did, but it was a usual hope. Common to make an attempt.
"I have no doubt I will come to appreciate your sense of aesthetic quickly," he added.
"I will expect some compromises," she said after a moment. "Such as more honesty than that you've given me these past months."
Taurik shifted to look at her directly. "I can't have been dishonest. If I have, it was not my intention."
"You've never lied," she said. "You've withheld the truth. You've withheld yourself."
Yes… he'd begged her forgiveness for that. He meant it then as much as he felt it now. Perhaps now, the feeling was only more acute. He wasn't sure what he should have done, but he should have tried more. Perhaps he could have pruned the darkness surrounding Vorik's death and let her in. He could have shut it away long enough and securely enough to visit.
"I've known you were… suffering," she continued in a whisper, as though even only words might hurt him. "Since Vorik's death. Even now, even as we are so close… you hold me away from it. You haven't been the same."
He let his gaze redirect to the ceiling. Everyone who had known him before had finally ceased to be concerned. So normal had adapted. He had never grown past it; he had only grown with it.
"It seems… I'm not the same," he said softly. "Coping with his death was extremely difficult—even now, in some ways. I will attend to it more closely, and to you. I shouldn't trouble you with an unsolvable problem."
"I don't intend to solve the problem," she said, and moved her hand onto his bare chest. "I intend to share it. I am your wife. Last night I saw only the edges of it, but… it is unavoidable…"
Taurik closed his eyes. "His death touches everything. I cannot pass a single day without thinking about him." Even these past few days, when his thoughts were so thoroughly dominated by other matters—he was in a cup of tea or the patter of sand on the windows or the eyes that met his in the dim reflection of a console. He was in wishes and waiting, in fear and content. It was only ever for a moment anymore, but the moment was always there.
He opened his eyes again to find her looking down at him in concern. "I have managed for fifteen months now," he added, a bit hopefully. Four-hundred fifty-three days. "I have adapted."
"You held this back from me. That is not what we promised," she said, her tone a light accusation. More hurt than anger. She seemed to think about that for some time, since he had nothing to say about that, her fingers lightly dancing where they rested. "Perhaps it would be best if you stay on Vulcan for a time, if you study with a master."
Taurik shook his head and closed his eyes, hoping the conversation wasn't going where he feared it was. "Like I am a child again? Or as if I am in rebellion?"
She sighed. "You believe you are broken. Perhaps you could even heal."
And even still, he wasn't sure he wanted even that. He had lapsed the habit of wishing Vorik good morning, but, with few exceptions, he'd never stopped saying good night. He'd yielded to the emotional impulse every day for a long time—and he planned to continue for as long as he lived. He'd already decided that even if the recollection was only pain, he would endure it. Anything else would be intolerable.
"You think it would be worse to heal?" she asked after a moment. "How is that logical?"
"It is not. Why would you expect something as ordered as logic to result from a random and meaningless death?" He rested an arm over his eyes. "That is illogical."
He didn't realize he'd thought it so often that it had become a part of him. So much for the allowance of only one evidence of pervasive illogic… He'd spent uncountable hours in meditation, logically rearranging the knot of chaos at the center of the universe to find any reason, any response with equanimity, with composed stillness to his brother's death. There was no string of logic he could follow that led anywhere but here. It made no practical difference whether he pressed away the grief or not—it was still and always there, for Vorik never was.
Saalle didn't respond for a while. The only thing he felt was a tender concern. He didn't know why that was so surprising. Finally, she spoke again. "If you think about him every day, then that is your life. And your life is mine now. So show me." Saalle pulled his arm back to see into his eyes. "Show me what my life is."
He shook his head again. Leave me alone.
She brushed his hair from his forehead, her fingers resting lightly in a gentle request to enter. "Please, Taurik," she whispered.
She didn't have to say anything; he needed only to let her in.
So, with the weight of resignation, he opened the door he'd kept closed.
The space that he and Vorik used to share was once a seamless transition in Taurik's blue and Vorik's gold—not blended, but distinct and in unity. Between them was a line he could never find. Two were one: a harmony more perfect than any other meeting of minds. Even when divided, they yielded the same result.
There was a word for it, an ideal, a philosophy that he could no longer think or say without feeling an irrational and irresolvable anger. The two had divided, and become less than one.
Now there was a clear and ragged edge where there had once been no distinction. That space was a roiling tar pit, still painful to the touch despite the time. Still icy with resentful anger and thick with grief. Though more than a year had passed, he was still discovering scarred silhouettes of Vorik, things he'd once considered his that never were—and always were, because they were one.
He felt Saalle's secondhand sorrow, and regretted having shown her.
"Taurik," she whispered when she felt him pull back. Please, show me.
No clear memories persisted of the darkest days after his loss. Only that they were pitch black, silent, and cold like a deep cavern, misty with pain and indistinct with time. The guilt that he hadn't turned down the Enterprise to be with him, the misery at the constant awareness that he would never see or speak to him again, and, perhaps worst of all, the anger at Vorik for dying.
He no longer felt shame, even though she could hear the screams and see the tears.
Saalle shook her head, wondering with a trained distance how he had survived this alone.
He hadn't. He showed her the lamps that lit the trail. Gabi and her irresistible lack of social boundaries. Sam and his supportive brotherhood. His work and colleagues on the Enterprise lent the barest structure until he found what remained of himself. Even Saalle had been there in ways she probably didn't realize. She sometimes felt like his only connection to the world—the real world, not the surreal life of aliens and empty space that he had with Starfleet. Both had been necessary, but Saalle seemed the only rock that remained to him here.
Nothing would repair that sharp boundary, and nothing would return what he'd lost, but he had grown impatient and even become accustomed to the resentment toward that stark line between himself and nothing.
He was once so much more.
Taurik pressed Saalle away, exhausted. It had been a long time since he'd examined the loss. "There is nothing else." He kept his tone low to hide the emotion quavering beneath the surface. He didn't know why he bothered—she could feel it.
She raised his hand to press her lips against his fingers. "If you had shared this with me…"
"I…" He hesitated to decide which truth to tell. "I did not wish to concern you," he said after a moment. "I have adjusted. This is who I am. I'm sorry if you feel I've misled you. Or if you're disappointed."
"I could not be disappointed."
He touched her chin for a moment as a flood of her affection seemed to bury him.
However unlikely that seemed, it was even more implausible she should lie. More than anything at the moment, he wished to thank her for her attentiveness. For her understanding. For her patience. Now, she owed him these things, as his wife, just as he owed her; to thank her for them was illogical. Sentimental. Of course, in his condition, and for the next few days, sentiment was more permissible than at any other time.
She pressed up from the mattress. He tried to rise beside her, but she pushed him back down and hovered over him. "Now we are one."
He frowned. "Now we are?" He restrained himself from asking about the past nearly-twenty years of the distant telepathic dance of leaving and returning. Despite their years of physical separation and the tumult of panicked uncertainty the day before, he somehow felt he'd come home. She felt a wholeness she'd never felt before.
He felt a wholeness. A harmony, fledgling and untested, promised unity.
Two had become one. He didn't realize until just now that he felt it, too.
He'd never felt quite this way before. Somehow, in her presence, with her mind, he was part of another whole. He was one again, and not less than half of what he'd been. He felt his breath quiver for the realization as much as for her body coming to rest against his. He sighed, shut his eyes, and felt. Her hands worked beneath his back, and her hair flowed off her shoulder to brush against his cheek. A soft and tentative passion enveloped his mind and leaned on a sure fondness and sense of compatibility.
She kissed his jaw, then his cheek, then his temple with an implicit plea sparking a deep maroon over his consciousness. "Unless," she said, "you have something more to show me?"
He opened his eyes again, and found her there. "Are you certain?" It wasn't need. It could not be. The fever had settled and the dust had cleared.
It was only desire. A desire he'd controlled his entire life.
"I've been waiting for you since you arrived," she said.
"Then, yes. Yes, I do."
As he moved to hold her again, find her and feel her again, all sense of place and person fell from existence. He sank into her mind until the line between them blurred beyond sight or sense. Her feeling and form were as his. Though everything in the moment seemed different and new, she could not have been more familiar. This was who they were, and he could not be disappointed.
Now, they were one.
#
Taurik looked at the small gate for almost a whole minute. The neighboring houses were just as familiar as the succulents in the garden. He had the thought to leave now and go back to Skal's house, as he'd done the day before waiting for Saalle to return from her work. She had stayed with him for four days, and her transfer to the Ramsar required attention. He also needed to go outside.
He might simply go back, now.
Most of the people that lived here were their relatives. Cousins lived on the same streets, though their relation was distant enough there wasn't a Human word for it. He saw faces he didn't recognize, but somehow was able to label them despite the distance of time and space. Some of them, he'd never spoken to personally.
Saalle lived in one of the buildings in her parents' walled compound just outside town. Though Taurik's family was unimportant and relatively small, in their own world they had just as many names of honor and places of importance, if only to themselves. They lived in the mountains for generations where they pulled their lives from those rocks. Once, they had been rich and important, before other planets made their mineral deposits mere slivers. Their precious stones were less precious: such crystalline lattices were formed the same way, with time and pressure. His family had formed in much the same way as his father's mother's had, back a thousand generations.
Time and pressure. Their miners and cutters had become geological analysts and crystallographers.
This outing might only be called a long walk.
His visit with Skal yesterday had been beneficial, he thought, for both of them… though he doubted that could be replicated. Skal was essentially solitary, and Taurik's presence, their discussion of marriage and death seemed to have exhausted Skal. Nevertheless, the warmth and gratefulness in their familial bond in sharing their grief for Vorik's loss had been clear. Skal even told Taurik to visit the next time he returned to Vulcan.
Taurik could think of no more polite way to tell him he would not be welcome again soon.
He'd come all this way with the intention to see his mother. His sister. His home. There were not many places he called home in which he was welcome.
The last time he'd been here, he was with Vorik. They'd learned almost everything here, from calculus to rock-climbing. He learned to restrain the animal until it tamed, to lie until it became true. He learned his natural inclinations were not who he was—he learned to choose what he thought and what he felt, and it seemed that sometimes he'd made the wrong choice.
They'd plotted their course to the stars here.
He pushed in the gate and walked up to the front door. It, like all the other buildings in the area, was white, the doors and cobbled pathways red like the landscape and the sky. He pressed his thumb over the call button and waited.
He thought his mother would answer, unless she was working. His sister might answer… if he knew his family's schedule, he would have arranged it so that would be the case.
When the door opened, his mother stood before him in hooded gray robes with a long shawl and lace veil. She'd been wearing something very like this when he was here last. Though it was only three years, it seemed like someone else's life.
"Taurik."
"Mother."
She looked at him, finally stepped aside to allow him entrance. "It consoles me to see you," she said, and seemed to search for words as he walked past. "To see you well. It's been three years."
Taurik nodded, didn't answer as he looked around.
The decoration had not changed. The same pictures hung on the walls and in the hallways. Curtains were held aside from the windows by strings of glass beads. Wisps of incense curled over the low tables, and next to one of them a small holocube that Taurik knew without turning it on was a portrait of Vorik—probably his Starfleet Academy ID photo. Some of the pillows had been replaced. He knew from his last visit with Vorik the year before he died that the room they had occupied as children had been transformed into a study room for their younger sister.
"I regret any… disturbance I may have caused by my absence." It was true, though coming back after Vorik's death would have been detrimental. He did not regret staying away.
"It does seem at times I lost two sons that day."
He waited for an invitation to sit he wasn't sure he was going to get. He wasn't even sure he wanted it. Regardless of whether he received an invitation, there didn't seem much to say to that besides another apology. He wasn't sure why, but he decided to try it.
"The pain enduring the death of a son must have been immense," he offered, and considered. "I was unable to offer any support, so I thought it unwise to return home."
"You always do what you think best." It sounded like an accusation that she hadn't quite finished. She always had more to say.
Mother stood a bit taller, gestured to a seat at the table where he'd eaten thousands of meals. As he approached, she reached out one hand toward his face, and he thought he might have flinched. Two of her fingers touched his temple, her palm brushing his cheek. "You seem… well. Different."
"I am. Both."
With that brief touch, her familiar stability seemed to prop up the entire house. Even his father sat beneath her pillar of emotional well-being, and she was much the same now even after enduring the death of a son. Unsurprisingly, he could detect the impact of Vorik's loss, but she had only become more impassive and stalwart as consequence.
His sudden arrival at her door was jarring. Or, perhaps less than his coming was simply his being. He and Vorik were identical in more ways than mere appearance—but no one in their family had experienced seeing or feeling one of them without the other in close proximity: it was impossible. He could only imagine the wrongness she might feel in their bond, in his missing half the light that comprised his soul. To simply know it would be missing was unlike seeing how different he was without it.
She was shocked at the difference. He had expected that. "As are you," he added.
"As you said, enduring an offspring's death was painful. Our family supported each other, and we found a new equilibrium." She watched him for a moment, seeming confused and concerned… But he only heard accusation when she spoke: "Without Vorik and without you."
"Do not imply I would have been welcomed or comforted." Taurik looked away toward the windows at the back of the house. "I would have come home if I thought it would have been beneficial for anybody…"
She whipped her hand back to her side just as Taurik could see the cracks in their tentative connection. "The loss of a child is never beneficial, Taurik. Nothing constructive can come from it."
She was angry. Taurik had never known her to be angry. Not with him, and not like this.
Mother frowned, searched his face, and finally shook her head. "Regardless, we have missed you. Would you have tea?"
He nodded, and sat. "Is T'Leall home?"
"She will return soon… She is attending classes," Mother answered. "Doing very well. We expect she may even obtain select seating in her medical fellowship. Though she is too early yet to select a specialty, she has shown great interest in osteopathy lately."
Taurik knew very little of medicine, despite Mother's career in it. He had no interest. Except if T'Leall was interested, he would want to know about it. "I am pleased she's found a topic that interests and challenges her."
Mother nodded, watching him as if from the top of a plateau. "Tell me of… of your work. And what brings you back to us."
Taurik took a small breath, pulling at the high collar that had become uncomfortable. "I plan to have full lieutenant next year," he said, which he knew meant little to her. "I intend to return to Earth for trainings to obtain credentials in starship design the following semester and be stationed at Utopia Planetia or other research and development laboratory the following year."
"You have many plans."
"It is why I joined Starfleet. I thought… you might be satisfied to know I've been successful."
"You could have stayed here."
He pressed his lips together and said the only thing that came to mind. "Almost all Vulcan shipyards are primarily staffed by former Starfleet officers and Academy graduates." Though, of course, Vulcan ships were a triumph of efficiency unparalleled in other starship designs. He would have found serving on a Vulcan science ship interesting—the challenges would have been different, and now he wondered if he should have.
But it was illogical to speculate that way. "We have talked about this and always come to the same conclusion."
"Of course. You always reach the same conclusion," she said and sat on the pillow across the table from him. She slid a teacup and saucer over the polished sandstone table to him.
Traditional white tea. She possibly didn't know Vorik's preference for adding lemon while at the Academy. Taurik had never liked lemon.
"Our not attending the Science Academy was logical."
"Logical?"
"Yes. Starfleet has the best engineering corps in two quadrants due to its academy and field training. Even Father agreed with that."
"You cannot deceive me with the deliberate misuse of Sokar's opinion."
Taurik shook his head. "I did not intend to imply we went with his approval. I'm simply pointing out that even Father knew, if we intended to receive the best training possible in our chosen paths, that the Academy was the best option. It was illogical to…"
He bit off his last words, and took a steadying breath. It was not his place to criticize his father this way, even if his response had clearly been illogical. Clearly in some ways outright emotional. It was illogical to overlook the entire existence of his youngest son simply because he didn't pursue the path he might have wished he would.
But he knew what he had to say. He put his palms on the table in front of him, a placating gesture of submission. "I apologize. I regret the rift between myself and my father."
Mother shook her head. "You have always been a headstrong, arrogant, and selfish boy. Your ordering of priorities never took your family into account."
He didn't know what to say to that, so he didn't. He looked down at the tea he wasn't going to drink and pondered what a mistake it had been to come here. He knew it would be, but hadn't expected the response to be this… violent.
"So you will go to Earth and make ships equipped with more phasers and photon torpedoes than sensors," Mother said, almost as if it were the next logical step in their conversation. Perhaps, to her, it was. "Because that is what Starfleet is."
He lifted his hands, covered his face with them. He didn't expect her to be so direct, either. Certainly not this quickly. Didn't she see his regret the same way he saw her anger in that briefest touch before? "Mother."
"How many more do you expect to kill with your irresponsibility? And your pride?"
His hands were back on the table; he stood before he quite realized he'd made the decision to do so. "I apologize—I shouldn't have come."
"Why did you come?" Mother stood, too, more softly; her tone was stiff.
"I don't know." He wasn't sure he could have answered that ten minutes ago. He knew even less now. "I wanted to see you. It was an emotional impulse."
Mother watched him, almost impassive except for the heated inquiry. He went toward the door.
"Taurik, wait… wait for your sister." She sighed. She almost sounded apologetic. "I know you came to see her. She will be… she would see you."
He hesitated, hovered by the door before it opened for him. "She cannot wish to see me. I am responsible for her brother's death. Surely, she thinks of me in much the same way."
"She is… compassionate."
"Like Vorik?" Taurik looked over his shoulder to see her shrivel ever so slightly… "I will send her a message. I will have time to see her before I go, should she be amenable."
Taurik turned back to the door, but Mother spoke again. "What was that emotional impulse? Did you come to torment me with the face of my lost son?"
"Forgive me, Mother." Taurik went outside, and the door shut behind him.
In the hot summer suns he nearly trembled with rage and regret, and barely withheld himself from running to the gate. The door opened again, and he could feel his mother's eyes on him. He didn't look back, and she said nothing as he let the gate fall closed behind him.
He made it to the end of the street before he ran.
He didn't know where he was going until he reached the bank of a broad and shallow river just over five kilometers away, panting and tired and sore. It had been almost a decade since he and Vorik were last here, and he could still sense their footprints in the red sand. He dropped to his knees from the exhaustion. His barely-contained scream was from something else.
Partially due to his continued inability to reason. At the end of his time, he would look back on his visit home as having been illogical from inception.
The water gurgled pleasantly with the reminder of a hundred days in the light and escape from the persistent logic of priorities so different from his own…
Taurik didn't know for certain whether those priorities were so different from Vorik's, though. Vorik was… like this river. He was even-tempered and agreeable; he might have never left Vulcan if Taurik hadn't wanted something else as much as he did. Taurik was… headstrong. Arrogant. And selfish. He didn't remember ever asking Vorik what he wanted.
Vorik would have followed him anywhere. Didn't Vorik know the same was true of him?
Taurik would have stayed on Vulcan if that was what Vorik had wanted. But they talked about leaving all the time. Or was it only Taurik?
He must have asked, but…
But he could not remember.
Taurik turned toward the infrequent feeling that Vorik was still with him and asked, knowing he'd receive no answer. Had he ever asked? Was Vorik doing what he'd wanted, or what Taurik had?
Taurik carefully sat, drawing his knees up to wrap his arms around them comfortably, and went back to that place on the edge of himself.
Vorik was the compassionate and caring one. Taurik was sarcastic, and used to being penitent for it largely because of Vorik. Taurik was ambitious, while Vorik valued modesty in both temperament and accomplishment. He was optimistic, but Taurik was too practical for that.
Without him, Taurik didn't know what he was. He hadn't noticed any measurable outcome from what felt like a shorter temper, but he didn't doubt he would. And because he wasn't compassionate enough, he might not even think to apologize for it. He would forget how to be modest, and how to apologize.
The idea that he might forget who he had been with Vorik in a hundred years was unbearable. The reality that he would likely one day be unable to recall his voice without a recording to aid him was inevitable. He lost his lamp already, and that was of no consequence…
"Brother?"
Taurik sat, turning toward the sound of T'Leall's voice, surprised she was here as much as that he'd somehow laid down. Somehow fallen asleep in the sunlight. She knelt in the sand a meter away, dressed in casual beige robes tied with a dark blue sash.
"T'Leall."
She tilted her head, and still looked like a child at nineteen. "What are you doing?"
He looked at the suns to see it was only approximately thirty-seven minutes past apogee based on the time of year. He still had hours. "Waiting for Saalle to return home."
T'Leall slid closer on her knees. "You have fulfilled your Bond with her, then?"
"Yes."
She nodded a demure and curious acknowledgement, perhaps because Skal hadn't informed the family, and he could feel the pluck of the string between them.
He watched her for a moment, and she, him. He couldn't tell whether she was pleased to see him or not. She must have come from speaking to their mother. When it became obvious she had nothing to say, he realized once again they were sitting by a river five kilometers from home.
"I see my choice in location was predictable."
"I always wanted to accompany you and Vorik when you would come here," she said, and turned her gaze about the distant red canyon walls. "I often followed you when I was old enough to keep pace."
Often? "I was… unaware." In retrospect, he supposed he regretted that. Bonds between siblings were usually less significant than that he shared with Vorik, especially at his age. "I regret if we unintentionally communicated you were unwelcome."
"At times, you intentionally communicated that," she said.
"I apologize."
"I never held any bitterness."
Then, perhaps, she was the only one… "Mother told you I came to the house."
T'Leall seemed to consider that as she settled more securely, shifting to cross her legs instead of sitting on her heels. She was always settled. Not nearly as stormily-tempered. She reminded him of Vorik in some ways, except she was more pragmatic than compassionate. "Mother is unwell."
Taurik wasn't sure how that followed, except that she'd clearly been negatively impacted by his visit. He didn't get to ask before T'Leall explained.
"Her moods are quite… destructive. When I returned from classes," she said, and paused. Seemed to think about how to phrase what she was about to say. "She was crying."
The surprise was nearly a physical response. "She—?" he asked, before realizing repetition of what he'd heard would explain nothing. "How is that possible?" Not that he had been any better… except recently. Recently, he had been much better.
Seeing Taurik at all would force the loss back to the surface, remind everyone of the pain that may have become more distant for some of them. He couldn't avoid that. "I shouldn't have returned."
"Your appearance may have triggered this latest response, but it isn't new. I have tried to tell her she must seek help, but you know..." T'Leall looked off in the direction of the village and shrugged helplessly. "You know her."
She was proud. Unaccustomed to needing help at all, and certainly not with her emotional control. "Perhaps," he said, though he doubted that would have helped. "I thought my presence would only intensify the loss."
"I believe you are correct," she said, impassively. So impassively that Taurik couldn't be hurt for it. She took a small breath and shook her head. "Mother is not angry with you."
"She certainly seems to be."
"She is angry with herself. And with father." She crawled forward then, knelt with her knees touching his. "May I share your grief?"
Taurik eyed her. "You assume I've not adapted?"
"Adaption is an increase in capacity to live in a new situation. Grief… is a new situation. It doesn't seem to have an end. At least not that I see," she added with a demure shrug. "I'm told I'm still too young and inexperienced to know."
He sighed. Nodded. "Perhaps we both are."
"Our home is not what you remember," she said, and seemed almost annoyed by it. "Mother is volatile, and Father… has been behaving illogically as long as I've known him. I have designed to obtain kolinahr within the next ten years—perhaps the rest of you would be benefitted to follow me one day."
"That seems drastic." And, he wanted to say, unlikely. But she was an adult, capable of her own decisions, and she would choose when the time came. In the meantime, increasing capacity for mental control was an avenue rarely pursued by their progenitors due to apparently genetic lower-than-average natural aptitude.
His prediction now would only seem… discouraging. He tucked the thought into a small corner of his mind and quickly forgot about it.
"So does grief." She looked at him for several seconds, and offered, "Which, I would have willingly shared yours with you had you come home before. All of us would have." That nearly went without saying, though with the added caveat that he doubted the outcome would be favorable for him, personally. She went on in a whisper, "I was… I thought we might lose you, too."
"Mother exaggerated the danger."
"I have since realized." She cleared her throat and lifted her hands. She looked into his eyes. "May I?"
Requesting verbal consent before a meld was a habit he was pleased to see T'Leall adopted. Not many Vulcans did as common practice, due to obtaining implicit consent in a meld's earliest stage. However, not many Vulcans were as inextricably connected as he and Vorik were. Whatever privacy they could hide in had to be sacred between them, and the agreement to consent externally had carried to their family members when they were still young.
T'Leall, as the youngest, had never known any other way.
To be asked in voice instead of thought felt like home in a way no other sensation could.
He nodded, and she pressed her fingertips to his cheeks and temple, whispering the words he hadn't heard in what felt like a lifetime; he did the same and echoed the response. As with his mother, his telepathic connection with T'Leall was familiar, and she probably didn't need to use the words to focus her mind to his despite their natural distance—he certainly hadn't needed to.
T'Leall was the sunniest orange. He'd never seen the precise color of her psyche naturally on any planet he'd visited. The closest he could compare it to was a Vulcan spring sky.
As he'd expected to find, she was a calm river moving across his own sapphire blue landscape. He'd not anticipated how calming the presence of family could have been—if he'd just come home when things were at their worst, he might have been alright.
Or perhaps not, since he could already see a darkness T'Leall held back from him.
How different you are… T'Leall observed from a close distance.
And you are the same. There was a comfort in that, and she was pleased.
You're so… She wasn't entirely pleased, of course. She was distressed. Fractured, she finally decided, as if she'd found the jagged edges where pieces of his soul had been ripped off.
And yet whole, he offered. There's no reason for concern...
Her designs toward purging all emotion had muted most of her responses, though her training couldn't have started in earnest yet. Even as she studied his intense emotions of his past year, he found her silent dedication and distant concern for their parents' irrational behavior admirable. It must have been difficult for her, and he was proud of the way she'd grown through this pain. That pleased her, too.
Still, his experiences evidently distressed her. Perhaps as much as finding their mother in emotional shambles this afternoon—which he now knew had amounted to one or two tears hastily brushed away. That was nothing, and she now knew, too. She promised to keep Taurik's breakdown from their parents, though he hadn't asked.
After a few moments of mental alignment, "catching up," as a Human would say, she shared the difficulty of the past two years where Vorik was concerned. How deeply troubled she was that he would never send her another message—which he had once done twice monthly. Taurik was only tangentially aware of that then, and had forgotten about it completely until she reminded him. She was hurt that Taurik chose to remain on the Enterprise, and had felt alone in her concern for him specifically.
Because there was that dark corner she wasn't letting him see.
I doubt what you're hiding could hurt me more than Vorik's death has.
It's not mine to share, she said of that shrouded memory. He could see it had occurred some weeks after Vorik's death, when his family was still sending him messages to return home. She had been afraid she would never see Taurik again, either, and he regretted that. He could see she had been eating at the time—flat cakes. It was breakfast.
Do not pry. It's not constructive.
All the same, it seemed he should know if it was about him…Whatever it is troubles you greatly. Perhaps if you share it, you could let it go. He turned away from the memory, anyway, because she'd asked.
She seemed to consider that. I predict it would be more injurious to you than holding it is to me.
He doubted that
In response, she showed him the cracks in his ability to check certain emotions even now. It was easy for her to see the crushing depression he'd since dealt with, pressed away whenever it resurfaced and simply returned to work. Since these emotions could not be set aside with any permanence, he'd settled for no longer trying to move beyond them—but he'd succeeded with suppressing external reaction. Success was more important under these circumstances.
She pointed out he was still imbalanced.
He pointed out he was missing half of his whole: she was reproving a one-legged man for limping.
With a regretful acknowledgement, she apologized.
Despite the passing of time, time each of them had taken to manage their brother's death in their own way, they could still grieve together. They shared brighter memories of Vorik, and the instances in every-day life they would have preferred to share with him. The small, pointless things that reminded them of him, like the colors in a sand dune or certain types of tea. Despite T'Leall's carefully-controlled reactions and study toward removing her emotions entirely, his sorrow seemed something she had always been prepared to share. To Taurik's surprise, T'Leall even put aside her control and wept within with him.
Perhaps he should have come home…
Taurik apologized for having stayed away for so long, and T'Leall assured him that he'd made the right decision by her estimation.
There was still that dark corner.
I have no intention of returning home, he offered, and she knew he meant ever. Whatever the thought was wouldn't affect him, because he would never again see the one who thought it.
That seems wise to me. At least, not until Mother has found a way to cope with her difficulties.
Is her health in danger?
No. At least, I think not right now. Her reaction to Vorik's death has been inapplicable, and… she is ashamed. She has fixated on one unexamined thought I believe she doesn't truly hold, but it consumes her.
Taurik broke their connection, sliding away from her as she opened her eyes in confusion. "I know." At least, he imagined he did. So he… guessed. "Mother wishes it had been me."
T'Leall nearly shrank back as he spoke, but didn't respond.
"It doesn't affect me. It's an impulsive thought I understand, at least."
"She even said it. Once, though she regretted it."
Taurik nodded. He understood that, too.
T'Leall reached for his arm, her fingers seizing on his sleeve. "This isn't constructive. I think she's disgusted she ever thought it. Ashamed. As she should be. I cannot imagine wishing…" She shut her eyes against the spiral of her own carefully contained emotion. "Such a thought is illogical beyond my ability to categorize. The notion of wishing to choose between you and Vorik is repulsive."
She looked up at him again, and, though he hadn't expected her to lie, he'd never seen her more sincere.
He pressed his palm to her shoulder. "I cannot say if her wish is sincere." He did wonder if she was ashamed she'd thought it at all—or ashamed she'd let her guard fall so far as to express it. Either seemed as likely. "It's inappropriate for me to judge her reaction. I do not know the pain of her loss."
"You do," T'Leall objected. "You objectively know more. I've seen both."
"Our connection yields clarity, T'Leall, not identity."
The look T'Leall gave him encapsulated all the argument and condescension he would have expected of her when she was a child. She quickly willed her reaction away, but she still clearly thought she had the correct view.
"I cannot understand her pain as she feels it. Even if she were to share it with me in its entirety, I still only see from my own perspective, from my own ability to cope. Her ability to bear it is the only metric by which it can be measured—" At least—he hoped T'Leall understood. As if this type of pain was something that could be measured at all… What he meant was, "I have adapted."
"You have." T'Leall sighed. "And yet you still… limp. To borrow the metaphor."
"I always will. She will, as well. I cannot comprehend the grief in the death of a child." She still disagreed, still defiantly holding a place of superiority over his defense. "And neither can you," he added.
"And she cannot comprehend the pain of what you've lost."
He'd known for a very long time that Mother didn't understand him—however clearly she could see him and his mind. It only took him time to reason he didn't understand her, either.
"I cannot disregard the way she's treated you. And now the likelihood you will ever return home again is… small." T'Leall looked at him, obviously upset, and edged closer to him.
He looked toward Fisolekau T'Ha'sular, the tallest plateau in the canyon. "The last time I was here… I was with Vorik. Even if our parents welcomed me home, to be here is painful."
T'Leall pressed down on her knees as she looked at the sand around them and the washed-away footprints of two boys who no longer existed. "Father believes you never consider the family in your decisions. Only more so now that Vorik is gone. I cannot disagree."
Neither could Taurik. "Vorik was the even-tempered and agreeable one. And I have never been." If there were a choice between the two of them, it ought to have been straightforward, but there was nothing logical about the universe. At least, not this way.
T'Leall didn't respond for a while, then reached for his knee. "You always considered your family. But I think you only ever considered him. To reorder one's priorities is always difficult. Disruptive."
"My priorities have shifted once again," Taurik said. "And once again, they may not involve what he might deem important."
T'Leall nodded, and he felt her solid agreement with his assessment. He wasn't sure whether he should have considered her agreement weightier than anyone else in their family—she was extremely young and had the reasoning to show it. Still, she said, "I will remind them that your priorities have shifted. And they may again."
"I doubt they will ever align with his," Taurik said.
"Then perhaps Father's will align with yours."