Ficlet: Inversion
Universe: STXII
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 670
Warnings: (implied/cliffhanger) major character death, spoilers for STID trailer.
Summary: One interpretation of that interesting moment in the Japanese trailer.
You approach the containment barrier as one dreaming. Only during the weeks and months after your mother fell into the abyss were your dreams this vivid.
The echo of your steps is deafening. Your chest feels too dense, and your limbs too light. Your heart rate is elevated. You cannot calculate how much. Numbers escape you like the final grains of sand in an hourglass, and they seem insignificant anyway.
Behind you Nyota makes a stifled sound, a drowning gasp for air.
He stands almost facing away from you, left hand braced against the transparent aluminum. His mind is as rigid as the set of his shoulders. You know this from years of observation. You know the parameters of the scenario he’s facing. You know what he must be thinking.
And yet he is smiling.
“So how do you feel about re-tests, Spock?” he says.
“What?” you say, dazed.
“Kobayashi Maru.” He huffs out a faint, humorless laugh. “No cheating this time.”
The wounded ship trembles beneath you at the sound of his voice, her struts keening under stress.
“No.” You protest for her sake. For the sake of everyone who calls her home.
“Yes,” he says.
There is no room for argument in that word, but your eyes trace where barrier meets bulkhead and you say, “There are always alternatives.”
He rounds on you, wild and angry, irises hyper-saturated in the white glare. Shards of his planet’s sky on the razor’s edge of winter. “Look at me and tell me you believe that.”
Indeed, you don’t. You’re not certain why you said it.
Ah, because you wish it were true.
Illogical.
“We don’t have time for this. One override button, that’s all it takes. I’ll flood the compartment. He’ll have nowhere to go. Commander, look at me.” Your gaze has dropped to the floor as you envision his plan, and the title is a much-needed slap in the face. You obey him. “Am I wrong?”
“I estimate a…” You falter, running the calculations again, and a third time. “A ninety-six point three percent chance of success.”
Relief visibly draws his breath deep and slumps the tension out of his back. “Good. I’d better get to it.” But he doesn’t move. He averts his eyes, and his smile returns, a strained, frail thing. As is his voice, so soft it must be meant for your ears only. “Vulcans live a long time. Are you gonna remember me, Spock?”
Somehow your shaking hand forms the ta’al. You press your palm against the glass, fingers aligned with fingers, and imagine the barrier is not there. The gesture’s significance is not lost on him, if the tightening of his jaw and abrupt sheen in his eyes is any indication.
“I always shall, my friend,” you say.
You have never told him this, not out loud; the labeling of relationships had seemed a pointless human exercise at best. Now that you finally have, the word ‘friend’ proves inadequate. Ripples of unidentifiable emotion thunder through your mind, the discordant chaos eliminating all remaining traces of rational thought.
Perhaps you shouldn’t have said anything. Your words appear to shatter him, and something odd darts through the lines of his brow and lips, as if he’s ready to abort the plan altogether. The moment passes so quickly that you doubt your perception of it. Normality descends again. His overconfident veneer snaps back into place.
“Take care of them for me.” He smiles over your shoulder at Scott and Nyota. “And tell Bones I’m sorry.”
You nod once.
Then the light slips from his eyes, and his hand slips from yours, and he dons the stony expression of a Captain. No longer Jim, no longer a man, but a single-minded force of nature. The avatar of duty. As he pivots entirely away, it occurs to you that this is the last time you’ll see his face.
He bolts down the corridor. Four point nine surreal seconds and he is gone.
A nightmare, you think belatedly. Not a dream.