Stardate:70723.0900
Title: A Very High Price
Author: Lt. Commander Lair Kellyn
Scene: Personal Quarters aboard the Independence
Time: Hours after "The Core of the Problem"
---------------------------------------------
Their quarters were still, with only the two of them now present.
Kellyn had sent their daughter off with Jariel, after speaking briefly with Zanh Liis and insuring that they would be relieved of duty for the next few days. Until it was over.
She brushed her hair, absently staring at Salvek in the mirror as his image reflected back at her from across the room. She felt powerful, troubling emotions radiating from him and had to look away.
This was the part she hated, seeing him suffering. In pain. She finally raised her eyes again and watched as he sighed, slowly and heavily.
His breath extinguished the meditation candle before him, unintentionally.
He responded to this by picking the candle up, and without a hint of a change in his expression, forcefully throwing it across the room and shattering it into tiny fragments.
As it made impact and came apart, melted liquid wax from within splattered all over the wall.
"So this is really how it's going to be." Kellyn took a deep breath. She walked to the closet, withdrew a new one from a box on the top shelf and slowly approached his position. She had learned from past experience that it was unwise to make any sudden or unexpected moves toward a Vulcan in this state of mind.
She leaned down and set the candle on the table, then lit it. She felt the heat of the fever radiating from him, physically. Perspiration matted his hair.
He had said nothing that made sense to her since they had left deck fifteen. He had taken a seat on the floor, and been mumbling and whispering to himself. Sometimes chanting in a vain attempt to find calm, sometimes laughing out loud. Then there were the outbursts of temper, such as the high-fly candle to center field.
She recalled a brief exchange they'd had as they finished up work on the computer core earlier.
*Flash*
"It is too late. Too late. Now matters are worse." Salvek growled, tossing his hydrospanner into the tool kit. "Far worse. Now is not the time for this. I have duties I must attend to."
"What about more intense meditation," she'd offered. "Theta 12 alpha injections? Maybe buy us some more time?"
"I told you, It is too late!" He repeated, his voice rising in volume. "We were trapped in the holodeck too long! It was not supposed to happen like this! Not now!"
He slammed a metallic access panel shut and became frustrated when the latch would not catch. He repeated the exercise several times before Kellyn finally stepped in, gently turning the handle so that the mechanism would lock.
"So, the timing is bad. Would it ever be better, really? You never run out of duties to perform, you never slow down. Perhaps this is nature's way of ensuring that you do stop every once in awhile. So you don't burn out entirely."
"This," he snarled softly into her ear, "is nature's cruelest joke."
*Flash*
Kellyn knew that he hadn't really meant it, yet the words still stung.
Only those mated to Vulcans could understand the high price that their logic demanded of them when their time came. To outsiders, Vulcans were simply viewed as emotionless beings. Cold, removed, and unfeeling. In fact nothing could be farther from the truth.
Centuries of violence on Vulcan had demonstrated just how deeply the emotions of the people ran. Hatred, passion, bitterness, and anger had nearly destroyed their civilization and had brought their species to the very brink of extinction. Then came the Time of Awakening, and everything changed. For most of the planet's populace.
It was much more difficult for Salvek than most to maintain this higher logic. He had to fight for it, struggle to hold onto it even in the best of times with much more conscious effort than other Vulcans had to expend.
The trauma of his parent's death, which had occurred right before his eyes when he was only a child barely five years of age, had altered his abilities when it came to maintaining complete control. Permanently.
His brain had resequenced itself as best it could at that tender age, but the lasting effects were something that could not be completely remedied.
Kellyn knew that he had always admired the control his older brother had over logic and suppressing his emotions so much more efficiently. It troubled Salvek that there was only so much he could do- his neural pathways were altered.
He did the best he could do, and for the most part he could live with that. He had also found that in trying to help Kellyn over the years to learn the traditional Vulcan techniques to lower stress levels and control her emotions, that he had also benefitted from teaching the exercises.
When the fever was upon him, though, it was entirely another matter. It seemed he suffered more greatly than most Vulcans in this, as well.
To see it broke her heart, every time. To be so stripped of his dignity, so helpless and confused. He ranted now, and tears came to her eyes at the sight.
It was not logical that he should feel this way toward Pon farr, he reprimanded himself. Illogical to a ridiculous degree. It was the way of his people. This was not the way it had been for him in the past, it was different and he was dying inside, he could feel it.
Kellyn had heard enough. He was in trouble, and there wasn't much time left to intervene. She lowered herself to the floor, to a cushion facing his.
He focused on the flame of the candle, trying to ignore her nearness. He was still angry with her, still feeling jealousy for reasons he couldn't justify or understand. He did not want to give in to his demanding instincts, he wanted so badly to deny them.
The skirt of her deep red dress pooled around her on the carpeting, her dark hair falling forward as she leaned toward him and began softly chanting.
"Salvek, nam-tor nash-veh."
"No." Salvek was visibly shaking. "Not now." He felt terror at the thought that unless he could control his anger, his mind would overpower hers and she would be lost to him forever. Her own personality erased and replaced with the destructive power of his suppressed rage and jealousy. He could not allow it.
"Salvek," she repeated, her voice growing louder in an attempt to gain his attention, "nam-tor nash-veh." She reached out, lifting his hands toward her face.
He pulled back with remarkable strength. "NO!"
"There is nothing to fear here," she jumped to her feet as he retreated across the room and began throwing anything he could get his hands on. "Why do you fight?"
"For you! I fight to save you. From this rage, and this anger," he stopped just short of smashing the music box that he had made for her as an anniversary present with his own two hands, years before.
He turned it over, analyzing it carefully as if somehow he was seeing it for the first time. He set it down gently, looked at her finally, and began to weep.
"Rage. Sadness," he turned away. "So much sorrow. You cannot see. You cannot see!"
"I'm not afraid, listen to me." She shook him by the shoulders now, her own physical strength and emotions fueled by the telepathic link which connected them. "Listen! There is no other way." She grabbed his wrists forcefully, and held his hands up before his eyes.
"These hands. This mind, Salvek," she grappled with him as he stumbled backward. "Would never hurt me. You will not hurt me. Do not be afraid."
"I am afraid." His shoulders shook and again he sank to his knees. He sounded completely broken, at a total loss as to what he should do next. Everything in him demanded he surrender and link minds with hers, but still he feared the damage he may do.
"I am not afraid." She dropped down before him, closed her eyes and began once again to speak the traditional words.
"Salvek, nam-tor nash-veh." She moved closer to him, until their knees touched. She leaned forward, her forehead pressed to his and added, "Poprah kyi'i." She repeated the phrase again, to herself as much as to him. "Poprah kyi'i."
Take courage.
The words resonated in his mind, finally reaching him through the chaos. Salvek's trembling hands pressed first against the right, then the left side of her face.
"Kellyn, dahshal s'nash-veh heh worla dahshal. Worla eh kwon-sum estuhn heh vesht estuhl. Ragel-tor etek na'shi kru'minik."
"Salvek, dahshal s'nash-veh heh worla dahshal. Worla eh kwon-sum estuhn heh vesht estuhl. Bek-tor tu nash-veh."
Her hands grasped his wrists tightly as she felt his mind link with hers. She jolted, shocked to find that his katra, which in past melds had appeared to her gently represented by calming shades of blue and green, looked and felt entirely different this time.
She felt a physical sensation of heat, and found her thoughts surrounded by waves of brightly burning oranges, yellows, and violent, bloody reds. His mind and soul were in torment and Kellyn reeled, inhaling sharply.
After ten years, she had finally been granted entrance into the deepest level of his own personal Hell.
----------------------------------
Lt. Commander Lair Kellyn
Engineering Officer
USS Independence NCC-90791
NRPG: And you thought Pon farr was all Hallmark cards and romantic vacations on Risa. ~LK