MOUNT Seleya'S YOUNG
Kirk/Spock by Phoebe
My father's words to me, the watchful gaze of the priestess, the gentle encouragement from the familiar, but disturbing blue-eyed doctor... none of these held meaning for me. I lived. Yet, the thought occurred while in the midst of these stranger-beings, that I remained alone.
It evoked a feeling in me that was perhaps the only truly recognizable thing here. This then was an old acquaintance. Loneliness.
*No, this is not--no longer true. That was before... * An errant voice whispered through my thoughts.
*Before... what?* No explanation, except that ethereal presence tickling deep inside my mind again. I became possessed then of a sudden need to find the source of that bond. It was an imperative that could not be denied, nor did I wish to. I would find it--him. I would not be alone.
My conviction grew with each step as I was escorted from the massive chamber and towards the small band of humans waiting at the base of the ancient stairwell. Beyond, lay the ascending path to where the healers waited. For a brief moment I hesitated, and glanced upwards to the dawning sky, feeling as though some star should be there but was yet missing...
But, only T'Khut shone down, returning my gaze solemnly from the brightening heavens.
I focused my attention again on my bedraggled shipmates. My father had briefly explained to me who they were, but, as everything and everyone else in this place, their names failed to spark any sense of recognition within. Now I silently passed them by, my eyes downcast, and my cowl protecting me from their searching looks. My mental shields were in such a disarray as to leave me acutely vulnerable to their raw emotions. I sensed... I sensed that they greatly desired something from me, but in my present state I felt inadequate to understand what it was.
*Kaiidth,* The thought materialized on its own. It seemed appropriate but I could not precisely recall why. Frustration, then. And an unsettling feeling--
He was here.
Here, among the others! I had gone but a little ways beyond him, when it happened. The sense of him, that intimate connection between he and I, roared into the fore of my consciousness. Like the brittle, hot sands of a desert windstorm, his mind swept through mine. A fury of energy coalesced into a voice, echoing a half-memory from the past.
*No, Spock... please come back. I need you. Don't--leave me.*
Impossible to ignore that plea. Impossible to deny the vision of another time, here on Vulcan, when I had heard that same voice calling me from across the void of space. Now calling to me once more, and turning aside--from the adepts, from T'Lar--I made my way back towards him. Again. As I had done before, as I would always do.
So little I knew of myself in that moment. Or of my past, though I had been returned to life against all logical hope. Yet, the certainty which drew me to him at that moment remained clear and undiminished by all that had happened to us. Lowering my hood, I calmly regarded his companions. One-by-one, I slowly passed them, until I came to stand at last before him. That incarnate force of nature who had somehow brought me back from death.
When his searing eyes lit into mine, it was as though I had leapt into Eridani's fires. He, the last remaining construct of my shattered universe. Of all the constellations--flickering suns of memory dotting the ink space of this inner void--his was the brightest, and the fiercest. Ah, to touch such fire within! I saw it clearly then, how firmly fixed his burning essence was in mine. So deep within me as though it anchored my very katra to this plane of existence. I instinctively gravitated to him, like a moth to flame.
Giving in to his pull, I drew even closer to him. I could not subdue my body's reaction as pure fire washed over me from those hazel eyes. My heart raced, my lungs ached. And I trembled as another sensation, even more disturbing, tore through me with an unimaginable force. My breath caught in my throat as I felt his pain--like a bitter keen--radiating from him in intense waves.
*No! He should not suffer so. Not him. Never him--*
Somewhere, something demanded I relieve his suffering. A conflict raged within me, as my fledgling intellect struggled to understand the origins of this imperative. But, oh how fiercely I wanted to remember it all in that moment when he demanded, begged me, to remember, needing to know whether my memory had survived.
"Don't you remember?" *Please, please,* like a prayer in my mind--
/madman--he's going to kill us all/
/do not greive, my own--/
/only minutes, Admiral/
/stop him stop Khan/
/engineering, now-now-now /
/--wish to touch you/
/Jim, forgive me--/
/love you/
/t'hy'la... /
/running out of time, must act now-/ yes so sweet your
lips, ah they burn!/ Burning radiation my flesh like
your touch hold me always hold on hold on save the
ship save him/ nottoleaveJim, ohbesafebesafe/
nodontleavemeplease--no--!/
Images flowed in torrent before my mind's eye, cascading down through the bond, nearly sweeping me off my feet in their intensity. I was remembering, the memories were real, were mine, and precious beyond measure. Foremost among them was one--
*We could not touch, could not touch... *
Over and over, the lament played through our minds, reverberating and echoing between us, so loudly that surely all of Vulcan should have heard it. But the others could not sense the serrated edges of his bleeding essence within as I did. We had lost so much, *so much.* Now, I needed to mend that which had been mine, and must be again.
"Jim... "
It was as if a small nova occurred as I spoke his name.
*T'hy'la. Never and always, touching and touched.*
*I love you, Spock--*
The fingers of his grief and joy strummed through my being touching here and there until we both ached with the power of it. There, standing before the others and all of Vulcan, he loved me within our bond, with all the passion of his human heritage. His beauty was blinding, casting light into every darkened corner of my being. And in that moment, I, Spock of Vulcan, was born anew in the sweet agony of our souls' reunion.
Neither of us was alone anymore.
