Chapter Text
Leonard didn't dwell on sight of the fingers Spock had pressed against Valeris' cheek. All that smeared in his vision now were the colors of the hand gripping her arm: green slipping away from tensile knuckles, leaving them white.
The speed with which the hues of a hand could flee while the being in their grasp could not ... apparently a constant in any universe. Leonard had never wished to think about it again, that grip. Strong like iron- like it would leave a lingering stain of rust even after it was all over. All over... But oh, now his eyes trailed up to the fingers digging into the girl's cheek and he knew it had only just begun.
Maybe he should have been glad that Spock was facing away from him, that he wouldn't have to see that empty expression again. But their position at the front of the bridge served only to give Leonard a prime view of Valeris. He saw every time she flinched under Spock's grip. Himself, too, he saw underneath the white-iron. He saw the terror in her eyes. Saw it in his own. Was this the sorry sight he looked all those years ago?
And the man that once stood before him... how had he looked? No wrinkles, not then, a sculpted face even beneath that beard. That beard was the only physical tell that something was wrong, something not even the man's expression, cadence, name would give away.
But this was their Spock, or maybe they were his, so long as he could keep a grip on them.
"Who else?" Jim pressed for the first- maybe the second- time.
Names spilled from Valeris' lips, and Spock's in turn. They flickered out in the fog of Leonard's mind. No matter. He wasn't the one who needed to know.
Whatever Jim, now standing, asked for next, it too was snuffed in the fog. All Leonard knew was the slackening of Spock's grip, the path of that hand up, up, up to mirror the first on Valeris' other cheek. He watched her expression hang suspended then crumple into tears. Oh, God. What he had once endured in silence now drove a disciple of restraint to let out a guttural cry. How could it be happening again? How could it be worse?
Why wasn't he doing a damn thing?
In the time it took him to complete the thought, Spock's hands had released Valeris. He shook his head, "She does not know." What the bearded Spock had once looked for in Leonard, he had at least found. There was no such mercy for her.
And Spock walked back, back to Leonard's side. He didn't flinch. In fact, it didn't feel as though the Vulcan were really nearing him at all. The room sprawled before him as though he was watching a holovid.
Spock departing from the girl: some twisted piece of choreography.
The distance from Leonard Spock would stop and settle into a parade rest: blocked out beforehand by some divine force.
Divinity... perhaps Leonard could really make himself believe there was a reason for all this. Otherwise, he'd be left to face the fact that what had just happened had happened and there was nothing more to it.
Through the interrogation and the tactical orchestrations that followed, Leonard kept his gaze on Valeris. He was supposed to be a healer. She was in pain. But what could he do? He could not even heal himself. After all these years he couldn't stop the fear now eating through him at Spock's proximity. As the minutes passed, it rose up through his throat and seemed to corrode all in its path.
Spock has always been capable of this. Not just the act, but the choice, too. My God... he still is.
The assembly dispersed. Leonard started shakily in the settled silence, "Forgot my Lexorin this morning, I'd better go." And he was already through the lift doors.