Chapter Text
There are stars. Radiant, burning stars in the distance. Supernovas. They fall from the sky, from space, from the darkness above. They flare with a purity you could only find in the middle of a flame. Then, there are flames. White-hot magma spews out from beneath crumbling rock and it licks the ground as if in search of prey. There is a grumble, like hell were hungry. The cracks forming below his feet look like a path illuminated — a fantastical stairway to the end of time. He could swear the molten liquid boiling under the rocks was pure gold. He could almost touch it, but not quite. Yet he knew without touching that it would feel as real on his fingers as his own flesh and muscle simmering and blistering in the volcanic heat… as real as warm human skin on his—
Spock’s eyelids cracked open. That was new.
The hum of the heat regulator filled the dimmed quarters, like a lulling assurance that he was safe in the Enterprise, and not in the middle of a Nibiruan volcano about to erupt. Not close to death. He heard the familiar gentle breathing beside him, where Uhura was curled up with one arm against her cheek and the other extended in Spock’s direction. Fully clothed, of course. They had not made love in weeks. He laid there for a minute, collecting his thoughts, and then compartmentalising them based on their soundness in logic, so he could tell himself as he did multiple times before: Dreams have no part in reality.
And yet Spock knew, at this point, that this was not as true as he had once been able to believe. First of all, his nightmares were becoming so frequent and so troubling that he had put off sleeping at all for two weeks at a time. This would have been fine for a half-Vulcan such as himself, with the exception of these biweekly night’s rests being disrupted time after time by emotionally-charged dreams, which brought along with them an immense mental exhaustion. And even though Spock could keep his head up during work, as First Officer of the starship, he would have preferred to be functioning at full capacity instead of a wavering three-fifths. Accompanying all that, was the fact that these were really, in essence, only half dreams. They were memories.
However, this was a memory his mind had not tread in a while. Majority of his nightmares about death before tonight had revolved around Jim, not himself. At times, Captain Pike would find his way into these dreams as well, but the overriding sense of dread would meld and dissolve, and sculpt like a marble effigy a dying Jim Kirk, always with his blue eyes gazing from a pallid face in semblance of a grotesque doll. Sometimes the glass door would separate them, and other times their hands would meet palm-to-palm. Which was worse, Spock could not tell. He did not exactly favour the idea of spending his time considering symbolism, however, so he did not try to. All he needed was time to rationalise.
Dreams have no part in reality. Dreams have no part in reality. Dreams have no part in reality.
It was his favourite new mantra. He meditated to the voice in his head that whispered it almost fiercely, but as though wires in his brain had been cut or a fuse had gone, a flashback to Jim’s limp body would grip his feeble mantra by the throat and wring it, laughing in its face. He had stopped needing to sleep to have nightmares.
So he rose from his bed, deciding for the twenty-ninth time in four-point-five months that if he was going to grapple with these memories whether he was asleep, in a trance, or awake, he might as well be awake so he could be productive towards his ship and his crew. Or, well, three-fifths productive.
He quietly made his way around the quarters to get ready for the day, careful not to wake Uhura. Truth was, he had not told her about his dreams or visions, and was doubly cautious of letting his shields down when he was around her. Spock knew she was attempting nothing but comfort, but when she slipped her hands into his every now and then as she always did, he felt sickened by the sense that someone was prying into him. The lovely, brilliant Nyota was once a breath of fresh air to him, and arguably still was, except recently it had started to feel more like a rosebush growing in the middle of a rancid swamp. She impressed upon him an aura of love and peacefulness amid the turmoil, but he knew he would one day pluck her every stem and shed her of her lush foliage. She would not flourish with him any longer than he would with her. And yet, she was too familiar to let go. It would only accelerate his waxing losses, and he had lost enough. He could only be in control of that much grief at a time.
The mess hall was only slightly filled when Spock walked in, with smatterings of red, blue and yellow nestled in groups, at various ends of the room. He ignored the small but buzzing crowd, making his way to retrieve his breakfast from a replicator. Fruit, salad and yogurt on his tray, he scanned the hall for a spot with the largest possible radius from every other person, and seated himself there.
Shields up.
The solitude did not last long, however, when an animated presence planted itself beside him on the bench. He did not know how, but it was as though he could hear it smiling.
“Ha'tha ti’lu, ” a bright voice greeted with slow deliberation, thick Russian accent in tact. “Commander!”
Spock turned his head to face a beaming Pavel Chekov, whose expectant countenance he could not help but smile at, even if ever so slightly.
“Good morning to you too, Officer,” Spock replied, and went back to chasing a tomato in his salad with a fork.
“Ah — du… muhl? ” the boy tried.
Spock let out a short chortle, causing Chekov’s eyes to light up. The Vulcan quipped under his breath, “Ring. Arie’amp heh ma k’oh-nar. ”
At this point, Chekov’s eyebrows were so scrunched up together, Spock wondered if he had ever seen an elderly human with as many wrinkles on their forehead as the teenage boy had on his in that moment.
“I’m sorry, sir, can you repeat that again? Slower, this time.”
Spock simply smirked. “Are you attempting to build greater solidarity between us by conversing with me in my native language?”
“Ah — well — I do hope to learn more about you, sir!” Chekov responded, his cheeks turning pink. “But I must admit, today I am trying to learn more from you.”
Spock waited.
“I would like to master the W—Vulcan language. During my free time, I have actually been reading and trying to translate The Teachings of Surak. You see, when I was in the Academy, I took an elective on Extraterrestrial Cultures and Societies, and especially took interest in your planet and your customs, your philosophies!”
“Extraterrestrial Cultures and Societies,” Spock repeated, the hint of disbelief only barely evident. “I find it fascinating that your focus has always been in theoretical physics, and that you topped your class in transporter theory and stellar cartography, yet you chose to take a Humanities elective.”
“You find it illogical, sir?”
“I believe I said ‘fascinating’.”
Chekov smiled gently.
“I do hope you are knowledgeable of the fact that The Teachings of Surak have long been translated into English, so it would be unnecessary for you to master the Vulcan language, if your intention is to read them with ease or to translate them,” Spock said.
“Oh, I know, sir!” the boy laughed. “No, no, I am reading Skon’s English-translated versions, but I am trying to translate the Teachings into Russian.”
Spock raised an eyebrow. “Then mastering Vulcan would still be unnecessary.”
“I would beg to differ, sir. I would like to read the original scriptures as well, because I believe that every language has its own words and phrases that… sometimes cannot be so easily translated. It would change the meaning and the real heart of it. For example, in Russia, we have a word: ‘toska’. It means sadness — melancholy. No, pain. No, lovesick! An emptiness when you have lost or cannot have someone you love or—ahthereistoomuchdepth—you see what I mean, sir? So just imagine if this happened not once, but twice; Vulcan to English, English to Russian! There would be too much room for error and misinterpretation!”
Toska. Fascinating.
“I do appreciate your earnest,” Spock said, a beat later. “And I wish you good luck.”
Chekov began to say something — probably in Vulcan, considering his widened eyes and hesitant tongue — when he was cut off by their Captain, who had swaggered his way into the mess hall to join them. He picked up an untouched apple on Spock’s tray and took a large bite out of it.
“What are we talking about, then?” he asked, mid-chew.
As Chekov started to explain to Jim Kirk his translative endeavours, Spock chose the moment to tune out and examine the Captain’s face. It always glowed, like the sun had personally held his face in its warm hands and planted rambunctious kisses all over it. He probably had been under the sun a lot when he was on Earth. The trail of freckles across the highest points of his face, however faint, told you that much. Yet his skin was soft and pleasant, as rugged as he could sometimes look on a hectic day. Spock knew because he remembered from the time he touched his face when he was still recovering from… Spock stopped himself, and focused on the living and breathing Jim before him again. His cheeks had a delicate flush about them, like he had always just stepped off a treadmill. The sort of rosiness an athlete would have, so you knew their blood was coursing like fuel through their veins, and that they were ready for anything. A bloom you would only see on somebody filled with spirit, with life. Life.
All of a sudden, Jim’s face was pale and grey again. There was no more flush. The light had gone from his eyes. Then the dead man’s lips parted with a crack.
“Spock?”
Spock blinked, and realised his body was tense and clammy. He was gripping his fork in a strange way, as if he were about to stab something. It took all he had to stop himself from trembling as he released the breath he had been holding.
“Spock, are you feeling all right?” Jim asked quietly. When Spock remained silent, he grinned a little and said teasingly, “I won’t take your fruit in the future, okay?”
Dreams have no part in reality. Dreams have no part in reality.
Spock shook his head and made a dismissive gesture towards the quarter-eaten apple in Jim’s hand, as if to say in his earnest Vulcan manner that it was not a problem. “Forgive me, I was mistaken. I thought I saw something—” he paused and searched his mind. “— odd.”
Jim chuckled, “Well, you were staring at me, so that’s not great to hear. What, is my hair getting too big for my head again?”
The Vulcan began to speak, ‘no-I-find-that-your-hair-suits-your-cranium-very-nicely’ at the tip of his tongue, but Jim went on, “Right, so what do you think of all this, Spock?”
What did he think of what?
“The Commander has given me his blessings!” Chekov proclaimed.
Ah, that.
“And so, if you don’t mind, sir.” He pulled out his PADD and placed it on the table. With a few quick taps and strokes, and then several tentative ones when he came to a page full of Golic Vulcan, he opened a self-created, dictionary-like spreadsheet. As he was navigating his PADD, Jim took the opportunity to shoot Spock a bemused, handsome grin, to which the latter found himself blushing at. Luckily, Chekov blurted that he had finally found what he was looking for, and Jim peered over to look at the PADD instead of the green blooming about Spock’s ears.
Chekov pointed out a familiar lexeme to the Vulcan.
“Shan’hal’lak,” the boy sounded out carefully, and glanced at Spock eagerly as if to register what the native speaker thought of his pronunciation. “Could you explain to me, in your own words, what that means to Vulcans?”
“Well, didn’t you put the definition in right here, Chekov?” Jim pointed to the text in the adjacent cell and read out, “Love. At. First. Sight.”
“That is indeed a common translation, yes. But the phrase does carry within it a much deeper, emotional layer of meaning,” Spock murmured.
“What could be deeper than love at first sight, Spock?” Jim jested. “And really? Vulcans and emotional layers?”
“Shan’hal’lak is an emotional engulfment. A submergence into, a consumption by, an inundation of feeling. Humans have the phrase ‘bone-deep’. I suspect such a feeling would be symptomatic of shan’hal’lak. For Vulcans, emotions are profound. As you are in the process of reading the Teachings of Surak,” Spock looked at Chekov square in the face. “I assume you know this well.”
Chekov swallowed. “I—I do, sir! Which is why I’m so intrigued! Romance isn’t just romance for you, is it?”
Spock went silent.
“No, it is not,” he finally said.
“Lucky Uhura,” Jim quipped dryly, mouth full of pilfered fruit.
“I am not sure I—”
“And this one, sir?” Chekov interrupted. “T’hy’la?”
The silence returned. Spock knew the answer to this. He had known what its definition was since he was a child when his parents explained it to him, and when the elders married him to T’Pring. He was never able to fully understand what it meant then, however, as T’Pring had broken the bond before he could find out. He was not sure he knew what it meant now, either. To be one with another, to be another as one.
“Friend, brother, lover, lifelong soulmate,” he listed impassively. As soon as the words left his mouth, it felt like they would fall flat onto his tray.
“What does meeting your t’hy’la feel like? Is it shan’hal’lak?” Chekov inquired thoughtfully. “Or must love… or that feeling you have… be formed with effort, before you know someone is your t’hy’la?”
Spock half-expected Jim to say something at this point for the banter, but even he appeared interested in Spock’s answer. From his experience with T’Pring, he formulated an adequate response.
“I believe to truly become each other’s t’hy’la, the two must be actively bonded. Not just in the ceremonial sense of the word, but simply, the two must find what it is about the other that makes them t’hy’la. It is a divine compatibility that only mutual spiritual effort can realise. You make each other better, whole.”
“So then if you… lose your t’hy’la, or if your t’hy’la lost you, — not that I would want that to happen to you, sir — do you lose that type of connection forever?” Chekov asked. When he saw the Vulcan freeze, he squeakily added, “I would just like to understand how rare such a bond is. Sir.”
The question was innocuous, but it felt like an interrogation to Spock’s groggy-enough mind. Like a blinding light had be shoved in front of his face, and a Centaurian slug was about to be dropped down his throat. He felt like he was treading dangerous waters at a time when he was doing all he could to avert such emotional rumination. He curtly said, “One can have more than one t’hy’la.” which caught Chekov’s attention so well, the boy immediately began to make a note in his PADD, along with a reflective series of other questions he could ask.
“How do you even know when you’ve met someone like that?” Jim asked suddenly, his voice earnest and low, as if he only needed Spock to hear it.
“I do not know for certain, Jim,” Spock replied, his voice in the same low tone, because he only wanted Jim to hear it.
Jim read his face for a second with his piercing eyes, then, as if nothing had happened, turned away and remarked mirthfully into the open, “Well, Chekov, I’m not sure if you just got a Vulcan linguistics lesson or a crash course on dating!”
“Isn’t it captivating, Captain!” Chekov exclaimed, and then entertained himself with the realisation that the two words sounded so alike.
“I find the ensign’s sincerity in this project to be respectable. And as my planet has been destroyed and its heritage endured by but a few thousand, this has the potential to be a small step towards helping more people understand our species,” Spock said.
“A small step,” Jim parroted to Chekov, chuckling. “I love this Vulcan, he’s so honest.”
Spock held himself back from saying he probably loved Jim too.
Glossary
"Ha'tha ti’lu": Good morning
"du... mahl?": You... well? / Are you well?
"Ring. Arie’amp heh ma k’oh-nar.": Not in the least. I am emotionally mad and have a fear of losing control.