Work Text:
――――
"Wait, professor!" You rush after Saavik,"I've read the reports. You were an exceptional scientist. Why choose teaching instead? For a Vulcan, staying here must present...unique challenges."
She stopped, her head cocked slightly, showing no particular emotion.
It suddenly struck you - she was a Vulcan who had completed Kolinahr. A wave of regret wash over you.
Because you knew why she had chosen it.
"It's a fascinating question."
She still aches for David's departure, but emotions can no longer influenced her. Saavik is uncertain if her choice was correct.
Now free from suffering, she lives efficiently - without the one she loved.
"Many things were never revealed. It was not...appropriate." Saavik turns her gaze to you. "But I am no longer object to speaking."
You can't reconcile the Saavik other professors call "the most human-like, the most human of all" with the one before you. Yet you sense it - when the unspeakable Genesis Planet is mentioned, her voice still wavers.
Logically, emotions should hold no power over her, but the Genesis trauma defies even kolinahr.
How did she deceive Kolinahr?
How did she deceive herself?
――
The data remained stable and all systems were nominal. David glanced at Saavik with quite delight. She was analyzing the weather patterns across Genesis's sectors. She shared his passion for the Genesis. Finding himself speechless, a sudden wave of dizziness hit him.
Words could only harm what lay between them now.
So he simply watched as Saavik continued processing the readings.
Her focus unbroken.
Saavik turned her head, glancing back at David with curiosity. "You've been watching me. " she observed sharply. "It's reducing your efficiency." David nodded and returned to his duties. An illogical pang of1regret struck Saavik.
Had she not pointed it out, little would have changed.
She had noticed his gaze earlier.
Saavik considered speaking, then dismissed the thought. He was already engrossed in his work, and she refused to disrupt him.
So she turned back to the console, resuming her analysis of the weather patterns.
――
"Looking back now, I find it more puzzling why he never those things, which I could only understand after losing them." Saavik averted her gaze. "I can only share the unclassified portions."
Her tone was utterly flat and you felt as though you were speaking to a computer. The details of Genesis remained classified. The UFP would likely never revive the project.
"And Kolinahr...?" you thought, voicing it.
――
It was a bitter time. Saavik could barely remember it now. Her mind had unconsciously chosen to forget those fragments. She had struggled in agony. With the time, the figure in her dreams no longer wore the imagined visage of David's death.
She dared not look, even if she regretted it. It was no mere memory.
It was an endless nightmare.
David wouldn't have wanted her drowning in grief either, Saavik told herself.
She knew better than anyone when Kolinahr would end.
It was the day David in her dream no longer bore the marks of death. He stood alive, his eyes brimming with sorrow as he looked at her.
"Abandoning it now would be illogical." Her mind finally calm. He was her last karmic obstacle. "But I will always miss you."
"So do I, Saavik. No regrets, not one. I would still do it." David said.
His gaze as he looked at Saavik remained as fiercely1sincere as ever - untouched by time or the separation of death.
Saavik couldn't discern if this was her imagination, a trial of Kolinahr, or the true David.
She awoke, all inner turmoil gone. Was this escapism? Saavik had no other choice.
――
Silence claimed you, not shock, nor1any nameable emotion.You studied her face, searching for something...and found nothing. Saavik ached from David's loss on Genesis, but went no further. Kolinahr, after all, was a ritual to purge emotion. Through it, she forgot what most could never endure.
She hadn't deceive Kolinahr. Nor had she deceive herself.
She simply ceased to think of it.
But she had never let go.
END