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Spock considered the pounding in his side. He considered the speed, the strength, the rhythm of each beat. He considered the heart that rested beneath his blue tunic, the source of the pounding, and pictured the aorta, the ventricles, the veins and arteries. He even, despite himself, considered the popular human conception of the heart: two curves, one point, and a great deal of emotional significance that Spock did not understand.
He had intended to do research into the symbol – though he doubted that he could ever appreciate its cultural significance, he could perhaps appreciate its history – but had never had the opportunity. Right now, he doubted that he ever would.
The green pool of blood he rested in grew larger with each beat. Which made a great deal of logical sense; his heart pumped his blood, and his blood was spilling. He was not sure where the spill was emanating from – perhaps his side, his leg, his head. Each of them hurt and, despite his usual Vulcan awareness of each limb and breath, he could not determine which was more gravely injured. That was not a good sign.
His thoughts returned to his beating heart. He needed to slow the rhythm, to coax his body into a healing trance. He measured his breaths, and he measured his heart. It should not be a difficult task; he had in the past used his own heartbeat to measure lengths of time and to count the beats of music, dividing the space between each by eighth notes, sixteenth notes, thirty-second notes. Spock enjoyed the precision of it. But his heart stubbornly continued its pounding, precise as ever, and the pool grew ever wider.
That was also not a good sign. If he could not induce a trance state, then clearly his mental abilities were also failing him, which probably explained why he was thinking about human hearts and thirty-second notes. His pulse would have to slow of its own accord, then. Which, judging from the amount of green now surrounding him, would not take very long.
It was not just green that surrounded him, he realized. It was also red – human blood. And blue – Andorian. An interesting palette. The colors swirled together, but they did not mix. Which Spock considered to be a good thing because, from what he knew of color theory, they would have surely turned brown.
Spock remembered, unexpectedly, the time Jim had insisted that Spock accompany him to an art museum. It was housed in a Federation station that they had stopped at for repairs. Jim talked excitedly about how it featured the works of Abstract Expressionists from nearly every Federation world, a very visual testimony to the spirit of cooperation and cultural exchange.
Though Spock did not favor the work of expressionists – the movement had never influenced the artists of Vulcan, and its disorder did little for his aesthetic sensibilities – he of course consented. He always consented when it came to Jim. And the two of them spent hours looking at the alien textures, colors, and shapes of the museum, Jim all the while endeavoring and failing to explain to Spock the concept of aesthetic for the sake of aesthetic.
No, that was not the term Jim had used. Spock searched his mind for it, even as his mind began to fail and his heartbeats became less precise. Discouraged that it was not there, he briefly adjusted his hearing so that he could listen to the heartbeats around him, as if they might provide an answer. Most of them had already faded, had already turned into the synaptic activity of the newly dead. Nonetheless, he took an interest in the sounds they created, arrhythmic as they were.
Art for art’s sake. That was the term Jim had used.
And with that thought, a new pounding entered Spock’s awareness. It came from without rather than from within, shaking the ground and disrupting the syncopated rhythms of the failing heartbeats around him. It was uneven and unreliable, but it was constant enough that Spock decided to count its beats, internalize it because he knew his own heartbeat would fail soon.
The pounding faltered. A boot appeared in the corner of his vision.
Spock did not look up to see who the boot belonged to. Instead, he frowned, realizing sadly that it had stepped into the pools of blood, causing them to mix together into an unsightly brown.
Unfortunate.
A hand grasped his. Spock returned the favor, feeling the steady pulse beneath his fingers. Another hand touched his side which was, Spock finally realized, where most of the blood was coming from.
He looked at the green. And then the brown. And then the black which had only just now appeared – probably, Spock knew, because his vision was failing.
*~****~*
A beat.
And an explosion of color.
Spock felt a pressure and pulse on his hand. He grasped at it and felt more than heard Jim’s deep sigh.
There were words, but Spock could not hear them over the pounding of his heart and the beeping of machines. He knew they were said with a smile.
He looked at the gold of Jim’s tunic, at the steady rise and fall of Jim’s chest. He looked at his Adam’s apple, the way it bobbed up and down as he spoke before finally coming to a rest as Jim realized he wasn’t being listened to.
And Spock looked at Jim’s face. It was splattered with blood – human, Andorian, and Vulcan. There were, Spock noted, flecks of blue in his eyelashes. It would have been a morbid sight in any other context. And Spock couldn’t quite say what was so singular about this particular context. Except that Jim was smiling at him.
Art for art’s sake , indeed.