BEREFT
Title: "Bereft"
Author: Starshadow
Rating: G
Pairings: S and original character, sadness, angst, death, despair. And finally hope.
Disclaimer: Vultures and thieves (from the song) known as
ParaViabBorg own Spock. Sessek is mine, you hear, mine. Anything
not owned by the Evil Corporate Entities is all mine, and no money is
changing hands.
Warnings as above. Don't listen to Sarah McLachlin early in the morning. It can do strange things.
Beta: Tony Pearson, all mistakes mine
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Spock threw back his head and howled. There was no one to hear but the
empty stars, and he was alone in his small craft, moving cloaked
between the places of Ch'rian where he'd been working for the past few
decades. If there had been anyone to hear, surely they'd have thought
that some demon was being tormented beyond all feeling, all sanity. And
in some sense they'd have been correct.
Spock, bereft. One more bond broken. Deaths--not just of his bondmate,
but of his entire family, seared through the link. Hot tears fell,
unbidden, from his lined and worn face, and his eyes, once so warm in
his impassive face had gone cold as the black depths of space.
Sessek. Once his pupil, then his friend, finally, Need answering all,
his bondmate. Not a replacement for his first and only t'hy'la--such a
bond comes few in generations--but a new and deep affection, even love,
had accompanied their joining. Two friends, two souls adrift, had found
one another and been comforted thereby.
He never had thought it would happen. In the beginning, he had moved
from cell to cell in the Underground, spreading Surak's teachings to
young and old and middle aged who were tired of the endless
machinations of the Empire, tired of its excesses and tired of the
empty glory of war, which left the populous ill-fed and ill-clothed,
and empty of sons and daughters gone to feed the endless appetite of
the wars.
Sessek had been named Richak then, and he was of noble blood, yet
genuinely interested in this new way of thinking, and applied himself
to the disciplines, and learned the Mind Rules. And he had taken on the
name of one of Surak's early disciples, honoring the teachings that he
had brought to his entire house.
And because a kind of link had formed between them, they thought, when
Spock's Time finally came again--always irregular, and once again, he
had hoped with the long ago death of his first husband to avoid going
through it altogether--Sessek too had Burned. And so they had joined.
Their passion had been deep and real, tempered by their advancing
years. Sessek was no young man. He was older than Spock, though his
face had not been carved and lined by the desert winds as Spock's had,
so long ago. Even his Genesis rebirth had not erased those etchings.
As Vulcan and Rihannsu, neither looked at appearances in the same light
as would Humans. And in their joined heritage, Sundered no longer, but
each somewhat outcast by birth, circumstance or design, the Bond they
had forged had been strong. Both were telepaths, both with strong
Gifts, and though the love between them was not that one of youth and
giddiness, but of respect and a deep abide, it was yet mutually
satisfactory to both.
And because Sessek was older by some decades, Spock never thought to
lose him so soon. They had only two decades together. Together, they
had journeyed to Vulcan and had a public wedding. It had been attended
by several StarFleet captains, Spock would later remember, when
rationality returned, one of them later became the captain of the Enterprise.
Jean-Luc Picard, then a Lieutenant.
Many years later Spock had been mildly curious about this current
captain of the latest Fleet ship to bear the name of the ship which had
been his only home so long ago. They had exchanged pleasantries, and
Picard had been kind enough to talk to Spock about Jim's death, and
even allowed a meld.
By then the loss had been a long ago ache, like a remembrance of pain,
like a tooth long gone, whose nerve yet twinges in the imagination when
probed with a tongue, but if left alone, did not hurt. It hurt him less
than he thought it would, to see his beloved die on that world. Perhaps
because in some sense it still seemed unreal, as the Bond had grown
silent, but not broken.
Not like this break. He had wept at the loss of his first love. But
Jim, however strong the Bond they had, had been mind-blind, except
where the Bond was concerned. And so the strands, golden though they
had been in their glory, had faded like the strands of floss in an
antique tapestry, and finally died fully the day Jim Kirk had died
fighting at Picard's side. Saving millions of lives once again,
as he had done all his remarkable life.
Sessek had been proclaimed bondmate and heir to the House and to Clan
Surak, and his
nephew and niece, and later his oldest daughter
had
followed the two to Vulcan and taken up studies there. They and their
families were at least safe, but Spock knew without a shadow of a doubt
that the rest of Sessek's family were all, down to infants in arms,
dead.
It would be so easy to give in to hatred. And that he must not allow.
He had not hated the Klingons that took his students and turned them
into so much smoking meat. He had not hated Soran, who had taken his
t'hy'la. He had not hated Valeris, on whom he had pinned so much hope
and who had betrayed all that he worked for. None of it had been in
vain. There was peace between Klinzhai and the Federation now. He had
met that Klingon who served under Picard. An honorable man.
No, he would not dishonor their memories by hating. He would continue his work, somehow. But now he would mourn. Again.
As his shaking hands lit the candle in the small space that served for
quarters and kitchen and storage, the craft on autopilot, he worked to
still the turmoil that his thoughts had become. He would work past
this. He would find out who or what had betrayed his new family and he
would work to repair the damage to the cells. He knew whatever else had
happened, none of the family would have spoken of secrets, which is why
they had died, undoubtedly.
And the work would go on, as it must.
Slowly, trembling, one more casualty of the Sundering pulled together
the pieces of his inner peace and reassembled his composure. He would
mourn and he would move on, and he would find comfort in knowing the
labor was worthy of the laborer. One day
there would be peace and the rejoining. And though Spock knew he
was unlikely to see it, he would comfort himself with knowing that he
had set the Reformation in motion, and its irrevocable logic would one
day do what over a thousand years of denial had not.
Sighing, Spock rose from his meditation and reset course for Ch'rian.
(written while listening to Sarah McLachlin's "Arms of the Angels." Yeah, I know. But the muse sometimes bites hard.)