Fic: Two Summers, 2-18
His whole team is with him, walking through an art gallery. The Enterprise is on a diplomatic mission, but the ambassador of one of the representative planets is such an admirer of Jim and his crew that she invited them to join her for dinner and a tour of a special art exhibition. Jim’s polite and so are his crew. They accept her invitation without complaint.
The exhibition is of a pre-Warp Terran painter named Mark Rothko. How this planet has a Rothko collect, he doesn’t know. Jim generally doesn’t know anything about Rothko. During the tour, words like ‘depressed,’ ‘suicide,’ ‘abstract expressionism’ are mentioned, but Jim’s distracted by the paintings themselves. The fields of color.
That’s the first thing he notices-the colors. After his eyes becomes used to seeing the floating blocks, he becomes aware of other things like the opacity or translucency. Like the way some of the borders melt, while others are strongly delineated. The way that the colors interact with each other, the way that the blocks are layered. Sometimes only a border of color peaks out from under another and he feels almost as though he could lift that first layer away to reveal the brilliant hues lying underneath. As he walks along, he can almost imagine this man, Rothko, putting down each tone. Jim pauses every once in a while to take in the texture of the brush strokes, the way the paint was moved around and has quality to itself.
He loses himself in these fields of color. He can’t help it. It’s like they pull emotions out of him. Jim also becomes aware of his crew’s reactions to the art.
Nyota looks like she doesn’t want to follow their host. She looks like she wants to just stand at her leisure and stare at a canvas to take in all the minute details. Jim’s drawn to the continuum of Rothko’s works, but Nyota’s drawn to specific color combinations. Or maybe the better word is specific moods. Jim wonders what she sees, how she’s processing these canvases, the depth of understanding and insight she brings to the works and Rothko’s oeuvre. Out of all of them, she and Spock were the ones who appreciated and understood art most. Jim learned a lot about art by virtue of being Spock’s lover and because on almost every diplomatic mission, it was one of those “things to do for visiting officials” planetary governments did to show off their cultures.
Scotty looks around the room with interest, but he’s mostly listening to the words of their host. He occasionally asks questions about Rothko’s career, what happened after the suicide, where are most of his works housed. Scotty’s a genius and can recognize the genius of another, but Jim can see that he can’t quite understand the type of genius that’s drawn to self destruction. As an engineer, Scotty creates. He makes solutions and saves them from death. As Rothko’s canvases get darker and-Jim didn’t know this was possible but it’s true-more abstract, he can see that Scotty’s a bit uncomfortable with the darkness of it all.
Sulu is the model of politeness and tact. He doesn’t get art. It can be interesting, but this art that’s borderline obsessive, repetitive blocks of color, isn’t his thing. Some color combinations strike him and he pauses in front of the canvas or gives it a second glance, but he moves on. Keeps up with the host. Doesn’t think about his reactions, doesn’t analyze whatever emotions are coming up. Sulu reminds Jim of himself, before art appreciation was drilled into him by Nyota and Spock. He briefly wishes he could go back to that time, when the only eye for detail would’ve had was naming the colors and backgrounds. Which is funny, because the more Rothko canvases he sees, the more it becomes obvious that he can’t name the colors. One canvas of red-white-yellow-orange is different from another red-offwhite-orange-yellow. There are a thousand different shades in hundreds of combinations, each evoking a different emotion.
Bones is quiet. He looks at a canvas, then looks back at the ones preceding it. Not methodically, but Bones keeps looking back. Like he can trace the path of Rothko’s psychological life or something by the colors the painter uses. Like he’s comparing the vibrant tones of the beginning to the darkness that’s encroaching, that will eventually consume Rothko’s vision. There’s got to be some metaphor for life in there. Bones looks like he’s getting angry, as though he disagrees with Rothko’s message-if the painter had a message at all-and he’s like nothing better than to shake the canvas out of their deathly colors. Jim can’t blame him. Bones is a doctor, and Rothko committed suicide.
Chekov is more like Sulu. He has no reaction to most of the canvases, but some of them seem to take him by surprise, and not always in a good way. They reach out and grip him bodily, but after that initial shock and reaction, the emotions go away and he follows the group to the next canvas. It has Jim worried. What does Pavel see? What is he reacting to? Sometimes he regrets that he let Chekov stay on the Enterprise at the age of seventeen. Space is exciting, but it’s also brutal. Jim, Spock, Bones, everyone went through traumatic times that they felt like they couldn’t handle. People much older than seventeen succumbed to severe PTSD. Pavel is still standing, changed, but changed quietly. Spock’s death made him even quieter.
Christine feels the canvases. Feels them, digests them, absorbs them and is absorbed by them. Smiles little smiles, frowns slightly, eyes glow with moisture. She keeps pace with their group, makes occasional comments about how one canvas reminds her of watermelons or another looks like a desert moon. The host and the others react to her, opening up the atmosphere and chipping away at the stifling mood of the gallery. They all have their distinct reactions, they all see the way that Rothko’s vision is getting darker. But as much as these canvases draw out their individual emotional landscapes, they are walking together as a group. They are aware of each other’s presence, comfortable in that knowledge, taking stock in it. Jim finds himself responding to the banter that is by turns light, by turns serious.
Maybe this is what they needed. Because by the end of the gallery, when the fields of color are variations of black, deep plum, violet, when their eyes adjust and they see colors evocative of the shades of death, there is no way of avoiding Spock. And they all react so differently.
Nyota’s silent, tears streaming down her cheeks. Scotty goes to her side and wraps his arms around her. He looks like he’s holding back tears too. Sulu put his hand on Nyota’s shoulder, face closed with deep scratches of grief. Chekov walks away, refusing to look at the canvas. But the way this part of the gallery’s constructed, a version of the black-not-black hangs on every wall. He turns back to the group, stands slightly apart from them, body radiating tension and denial. Bones picks up on that, excuses himself to the very confused host, and he leads Pavel out of the room, out of the gallery entirely. Christine comes up to Jim.
The ambassador is flustered and making clumsy apologies. She’s connected the dots, recalled that Spock is dead, that these canvases are powerful, that obviously the memory of Spock’s death is still close to them. She feels awkward-it’s written all over her face-like she’s made a huge social blunder, committed an embarrassing faux pas. Jim’s piercing blue eyes pick up on everything. It’s telling that she’s mortified and blundering through “I’m so sorry for your loss,” instead of saying “I’m sorry.”
He assures her it’s fine. He apologizes that she feels discomfited. Christine is next to him, unearthly grey eyes going between him and the ambassador. She reassures the ambassador in looks what Jim says in words. But Jim does ask if they can have a moment alone, and the ambassador hastily says “of course, I’m so sorry, of course” and leaves.
They have their moment.
When they finally leave the gallery, they meet Bones and Pavel outside. Pavel’s smoking. There are two stubs on the ground. Bones greets them, says something sarcastic about never going to art galleries again and how they should put up signs that say “Warning: depressing and harrowing experience.”
There are laughs. Jim jumps on that momentum and goes for the jugular, saying that Spock would be really amused by all of this emotional compromise on his behalf. He breaks the tension of that statement by moving back to safer ground, offering his opinion that he liked some of Rothko’s earlier works, but the later ones weren’t his thing.
And they’re off. The heaviness is slowly dispelled as Sulu says he didn’t like the gallery at all, the whole time he was wondering why they think the painter was a genius, Scotty says that Rothko strikes him has man who didn’t know any good knock-knock jokes, Nyota tells Scotty he’s not one to talk because knock-knock jokes aren’t that great either...
They’re regrouping. Jim smiles, adds his own terrible and somewhat graphic joke to the growing pool.
They head back to the quarters on the base.
To no one in particular, or to Spock, he thinks, he reminds himself, “we’re getting there.”
He can almost see Spock agree.