Return to Valjiir Stories
Jim Kirk scowled furiously. He rose from his seat and crossed the room to where Lieutenant Commander Sulu and Ensign LiLing were just taking seats.
“Mister, I want to see you in my office. Immediately,” he snapped.
Sulu glanced at LiLing who was smiling innocently. He stood. “Yes, sir,” he said.
The ensign touched the helmsman’s arm, murmuring, “Hurry back,” and Jim scowled again. He pivoted, nearly marching from the mess, not waiting for Sulu to follow.
“I won’t tolerate that kind of display from a senior officer while on duty, Lieutenant Commander,” Jim began when they were seated in his office. “Your private life is your own business – as you so crudely pointed out on the Bridge earlier – and so what you do off duty can’t legitimately concern me, but if your uncharacteristic, indiscreet, tactless behavior continues, not only will you be barking up against an official reprimand, but I’ll have to seriously question my judgment in recommending your recent promotion. Starfleet requires diplomacy and discretion from its senior officers, and so do I.” He stared sternly into Sulu’s guarded eyes. “Do we understand each other, mister?”
“Yes, sir, we do, sir,” the Lieutenant Commander replied, carefully correct. “The incident won’t be repeated, sir.”
Jim nodded. He leaned forward over the desk that separated them. “Now this is unofficial and off the record.” He studied the younger man intently. “Sulu, just what the hell do you think you’re doing? Ensign LiLing is certainly a beautiful woman, and she’s obviously more than interested in you, but…” He paused. “Do I really need to remind you that you’re a married man?”
“I beg your pardon, sir,” Sulu returned, “but I’m not.”
Jim frowned. “Technically, legally, no, but…”
“Then with all due respect, Captain, it’s my affair.”
Jim stood, slamming his hand down on his desk. “Damn it, Sulu, if it’s over, at least have the decency to tell her instead of making it a public spectacle! You‘re going to upset an awful lot of people with this behavior, not to mention my Assistant Engineer, and…”
“That’s their problem,” Sulu muttered.
Kirk’s jaw tightened. “That may be,” he said slowly, “but if it starts disrupting my ship…” He took a breath. “You’re a damned good helmsman but I’ll replace you before I reorganize my entire crew.” He paused. “And I’ll transfer Ensign LiLing before I replace you.”
Sulu glanced up, the guardedness in his eyes now hard obsidian. “Captain, you said what I do off duty can’t concern you. Don’t concern yourself.” He stood and turned toward the door.
“Mister, you haven’t been dismissed,” Jim said warningly. Sulu stopped and turned back to him with a crisp, military pivot.
“Captain,” he said formally, “request permission to return to duty, sir,” and he snapped off a smart salute.
“Denied,” Jim returned. He moved around the desk. “Sulu, is it too much to ask that you use a little discretion? We all know how hard it is to keep our privacy on board ship. Do you really want to subject Mrs. Majiir to questions and pity she can’t handle?”
“She’s Indiian, sir,” Sulu reminded unnecessarily. “She’ll feel it whether I use discretion or not.”
“Then you planned to humiliate her?” Jim accused. The helmsman didn’t answer. Jim scowled. “Very well. You want LiLing. I can’t stop you. But unless you want me to question my judgment as well, show a little respect for the woman you’ve been living with for a year and a half.” He paused again. “As befits a man who merits a senior position in Starfleet – and aboard my ship.”
“Is that all, sir?” Sulu said stiffly. Jim sighed, biting back further recrimination.
“That’s all. Dismissed.”
Jilla fled down the corridor, her face burning, tears streaming down her cheeks. She couldn’t see where she was going, and didn’t care. She rounded a curve and literally bumped into Jade Han. When the doctor reached out to steady her, she collapsed in a sobbing, anguished heap.
“Gods, Jilla,” Jade burst out, immediately kneeling down to the Indiian, “what happened? What’s wrong?”
“I cannot… there is too much… Jade, he has…” Jilla’s voice broke, her head bending down to nearly touch the deck. Jade stared off the crewmen who were gathering around, then helped Jilla to her feet.
“Let me get you somewhere more private,” the doctor murmured. Her arms around the Indiian’s waist, she guided Jilla into her cabin and sat her down on the bed. Jilla fought for control, but she was shaking, humiliation compounding her misery.
“Doctor, you understand,” she rasped. “Help me. I must… control…”
“Control what, Jilla?” Jade asked.
The Indiian hugged herself, her face drawn, radiating shame and sorrow. She spoke slowly, forcing the words out against the pain that wanted her to scream.
“Sulu… has… he and… Ens – Ensign LiLing… they are…”
“Go on,” Jade prodded gently.
“They have been – intimate.” Jilla bent her head, her voice barely audible.
Jade’s eyes closed and there was a long, uncomfortable silence. She quelled the immediate yes, I know, as well as the strong, conflicted emotions. She had been dreading this for two weeks. With Ruth Valley off the ship, where would the Indiian turn when her paramour’s benighted actions became too public for even Vulcan stoicism to ignore?
Paramour, she thought, and it called forth her own reactions to the infidelity of Selar’s wife. The initial shock had worn off, but Jade couldn’t cleanse the anger she still felt whenever she thought of the vow Selar had taken, the vow Indiian culture insisted on – the vow Jilla, not her Vulcan husband, had broken. Jade’s unrequited love cried out in her, wanting her to simply tell the Indiian that Sulu’s behavior served her right. It was fair, wasn’t it? Jilla was unfaithful, how could it be any more than poetic justice that Sulu was as well?
No, Jade, stop it, she chastised herself. You know better than any non-Vulcan – except Amanda, Alana Phere, and Jilla herself – how strong the pressures of pon farr are. Jilla had no choice and it was Selar who left her none.
She quickly brought her attention back to the Indiian. She was a medical officer, the ship’s psychologist, and she had a duty to help such obvious, terrible anguish.
She steeled herself, putting on her best professional face and asked the stupid question. “Are you certain, Jilla?
The Indiian’s voice was hoarse with bitter humiliation. “They embraced publicly,” she whispered.
Jade sighed. So it’s out. Again, she wasn’t surprised. After studying Sulu’s psychological profile, her only real question was what had taken him so long. To be in a monogamous relationship was something she would have never expected of one with his personality. Nor that, if he was, it would be with someone like Jilla. But she has a knack for making people act against their natures, came the acid thought. She made a sensible, logical, thoughtful Vulcan commit a deliberate act of eugenics. Her emotions again threatened to overwhelm her judgment and she fiercely put them aside, again forcing professional calm.
“And you wish to control your reactions, since you can’t control his,” she said as gently as she could.
Jilla’s only answer was a helpless sob.
All right, she asked for help, for control, Jade reasoned. Quickly she recalled the techniques she had learned on Vulcan for aiding a child in learning the strictures required by the culture. The first, simplest idea was that of focus; giving the child something to concentrate on beside the emotions within him. On Vulcan, this was accomplished by pressing one finger sharply into the palm of the student, telling him to turn his awareness to only the physical.
Jade pulled a chair up beside the bed, sitting down, carefully taking Jilla’s right hand. “You want control,” she said softly. She pushed a rigid finger down into the center of Jilla’s palm. “Focus on this, Jilla, think of the physical…”
Before she was done speaking, Jilla cried out, collapsing around her hand and Jade’s, sobbing uncontrollably. Jade swore silently. She had thought that using Jilla’s right hand wouldn’t trigger the terror of damnation. But you were obviously wrong.
Sudden memory flooded her, Richard’s voice, dripping with sarcasm and disdain. Richard Novacek, the first man, after her father, she had ever loved, a bitter, suicidal psychology intern. She had tried to help him but couldn’t save him, and he’d told her, over and over, that it was because she was always, obviously wrong.
Jilla was suddenly leaning into her arms, her sobs words of tormented worthlessness: it was her fault, her doing, her own desperate need and crushing despondency that had driven Sulu away. She was to blame, she had no right to demand fidelity, to ask for kindness or consideration and Jade realized that, despite Jilla’s desire to react as a Vulcan, she was dealing with an Indiian. The engineer was being consumed by grief and anger and hopelessness and guilt – exactly the same emotions Jade was herself feeling. She needs her emotions validated, not controlled, Jade knew with sudden clarity. She needs the strength of her biological heritage, not her artificial facade. She needs to understand that Sulu’s behavior is not her fault. And with it, came the understanding that not only did she not need to keep her own emotions in check, letting them envelop her would actually help Jilla. The Indiian would feel as she did, the emotions magnified and echoed, as they would be if Jade herself were Indiian. It was the comfort and vindication Jilla would receive if she were on Indi, among her own people.
Jade took a deep breath, allowing the learned calm to drop away, letting her emotions well around her. There was no need to tell Jilla why Jade felt as she did: no need to explain her grief at Selar’s loss, her anger toward Jilla’s own infidelity, the hopeless love she still felt, the guilt for Richard, her father, so many others…
She felt tears beginning in her own eyes, and let them come, hugging and rocking Jilla in shared sorrow and desolation.
It took a while, and Jade was exhausted from her own turmoil, but Jilla at last calmed. Jade gently pulled away, getting tissues to wipe her face, handing several to the Indiian. Then she went to the replicator and asked for two cups of tea.
Jilla took the offered liquid gratefully, then stared at the deck for long minutes. Jade took deep, even breaths, and waited. Finally, Jilla asked dully, “Why does he not leave me?”
Jade sighed, again calling up all she knew about Sulu’s psyche. “I think he still loves you,” she replied quietly. “He’s highly susceptible to – ” She changed the ‘emotional manipulation’ she was about to say. “— physical beauty, more than most Humans, which is saying a lot. It’s simply not in his nature to be monogamous.” At the renewed misery on the Indiian’s face, she quickly added, “Jilla, it’s not in the nature of most Humans.”
“I cannot live without him,” Jilla whispered, and Jade doubted the Indiian had heard a word she’d said. “He is all that makes my shame bearable.”
Jade said nothing, waiting for Jilla to continue.
“I have broken my vows fourfold…” Jade stifled both her shock and her curiosity. She knew, of course, about Spock, but… fourfold?
“…yet while Sulu loved me, forgave me, I could forgive myself. But now he turns from me and there is nothing to mask the ugly truth of…”
“Jilla, you are not to blame for this!” Jade broke in sternly. “Either Sulu doesn’t know what he’s doing or he doesn’t care, but either way, it’s no fault of yours.”
Jilla looked up, helpless and defeated. “What can I do?” she asked plaintively. “How can I continue when my emotions – things I have no right to feel…” she broke off, her eyes gleaming with a fever that Jade couldn’t identify. “The Vulcan in me is not strong enough,” she insisted. “I will disgrace myself every time I am near him.”
Again Jade took the Indiian into her arms, again letting the emotion cleanse fear and shame and guilt. She did her best to ignore the voice in her head telling her how good the lush body felt in her embrace, and how much help she could truly be to both of them if she were to be the one loving and forgiving. She recognized the transference – Jilla was a solid, emotional link to Selar – and the pull of her own bisexuality, even while acknowledging that she had never really considered the Indiian as a partner. The race had absolutely no history of anything other than heterosexual union. Then she realized that in reacting to the younger woman in such a fashion, she must have, through the shared emotions, finally forgiven Jilla herself. And with that, she pulled the Indiian closer, the anger within her now directed wholly at Sulu, and resisted the urge to tell her that in her opinion, since he could publicly display such insensitivity, Lieutenant Commander Takeda Sulu wasn’t worth the anguish.
Sulu spoke softly to the plants in the garden, occasionally glancing across the walkway to where LiLing was pruning the rose bushes. They were off duty after one of the worst afternoons of his career. Word of the scene in the mess had reached nearly everyone on the ship, and they were all doing a marvelous imitation of Spock at his most Vulcan. He found that the deliberate snubbing hurt more than he’d bargained for. It would have been easier if they’d screamed at him; then he could have mustered the self-righteousness to be angry.
But it doesn’t hurt enough to stop, does it? he accused grimly. Tell yourself they’re all just jealous. Tell yourself they don’t understand what living with telmnori is like, and fighting Vulcan logic and a dead man and engines on top of it. And let’s not forget about a living Vulcan mate. He scowled. What is it with Vulcans anyway? They’re not perfect husbands, despite what Spike says. And what do you expect, she’s still honeymooning. The thought soured even more as he remembered Alcon and Ruth’s easy teasing. Which only made him remember Ruth’s easy everything. He’d never believed marriage to Spock would be so good for her. But I’m forgetting; all Vulcans are saints. At least the ones Jilla’s fucked. It might be good for Ruth, but with her occupied so much more of the time, it sure is hell on me. I’ve lost the companionship of the only friend Jilla isn’t jealous of. And I really don’t need her to be reminded of Vulcan sexuality. His own jealousy flared sharply. Selar, I hope you’re burning somewhere! came the vicious thought. And have Spock join you!
No, that’s not fair. It’s not even true. Spock’s got nothing to do with it. There was a bond between Jilla and Spock, he’d always accepted that. And he accepted Jilla’s marriage. That really had nothing to do with it either. I don’t want to hurt her, I really don’t, but… damn it, it’s inevitable, isn’t it? Selfish bastard, worthless whore… it’s what I am, Jilla, and you know it. I’ve tried to deny it, tried to be strong… but I can’t do it. I can’t handle it. I can’t be what you need. He sighed bitterly. And why go through it all again? I am what I am. He was well aware that no one else would understand, but it didn’t matter. He had to end the charade. And LiLing was so willing to help…
He felt her hand glide gently across his back, up to his shoulders, stroking the back of his neck. The touch was fire and he let his thoughts go, getting lost in the sensation. She was fire and passion, always what Jilla had only been on Alcon. She initiated the desire, seducing him as he had seduced countless others. She was experienced in a way Indiian innocence could never be, not even after a year of his patient, expert teaching. With her, he could be the selfish bastard, the wanton whore…
He turned, taking her into his arms, thanking whoever gave her roommate Second Watch duty as they left the garden.
“Sulu-chan, you have to tell her.”
Sulu frowned at the silky voice that was interrupting his exhaustion. A part of his mind wanted to snarl that he’d already given her the sex she wanted, why wouldn’t she shut the fuck up and let him rest? Another part was busy beating down the automatic guilt. A third was damning him; selfish bastard, wanton whore. But it was a fourth part, a closed, grimly amused part that answered.
“Do you really think that’s necessary anymore?”
“Are you going to move her out, then?” LiLing rose out of his arms, smiling delightedly at him. It annoyed him, but he kept his reply noncommittal.
“Soon.”
Her eyes darkened. “When?” she demanded.
“When I’m ready,” he snapped, then sighed at the anger that hardened her beautiful face. “It’s not an easy thing, Li,” he softened.
“Why?” she returned, and though her voice was quiet, he could hear the shrillness behind it. “What’s difficult about telling a woman you no longer want to leave your quarters?” He sighed, but before he could answer, she continued. “You don’t want her, do you?”
“I never said that,” he replied tersely.
Abruptly she was up off her small bed. She grabbed her kimono, throwing it furiously around her slender body, crossing the room to the door. “If you want your silver one,” she complained as it hissed open, “you’d can just get the hell out of here!”
Sulu bolted up from the bed, striding furiously to pull her away from the door. Uhura was walking past in the corridor outside and he met and matched the communication officer’s icy stare. The door closed and he grabbed LiLing by her upper arms.
“I never said that, either,” he snarled at her. “I thought I told you that I wasn’t going to discuss my relationship with Jilla.”
The ensign’s lovely mouth was pouting and he became aware that she was trembling in his grasp. “Sulu-chan, why do you want to hurt me?” she murmured, her gaze on the deck.
More guilt seared into him and he sighed, letting go of her arms. “I’m sorry, Li, I didn’t realize I was holding so tightly.”
“That’s not what I meant,” she said, though she immediately started rubbing her upper arms.
“Then what…” he began brusquely.
“She won’t let you go as long as she believes there’s a chance you still love her,” she whispered, then looked up, and her eyes were misting. “Do you?”
He knew it was manipulation. He’d been taught all its ins and outs, every nuance, every detail, by a master. And though he didn’t want it to, it worked.
He enfolded her in his arms, letting her melt against him. “I’m here, aren’t I?” was all he could bring himself to say.
“Will you tell her?”
He hesitated. One artful sob escaped her, and he fought the pain and anger and grief; but the sorrow-filled sound, too, had its intended effect, and he relented. “Yes,” he said, and damned his capitulation.
She looked up at him, her dark eyes pleading. “Tonight?”
“Tonight.” He kissed her tears away. Selfish bastard echoed in his mind as they found their way back to her bed.
It was late when Sulu entered his cabin, and he was hoping against hope that Jilla was already asleep. But he could hear the quiet sound of the lyrette as the door opened. He silently damned it, then squared his shoulders. It’s not going to get any easier, he told himself. After this afternoon, you can’t really keep putting it off.
You could if she doesn’t mention it.
And what are the odds on that?
Pretty damned good. How often do we talk about anything uncomfortable?
So – what? Just keep on lying to her?
And didn’t she say you didn’t have to? She knows. Just let it be.
And what is Li gonna say about that?
Fuck Li and she’ll shut up.
So now you’re gonna lie to both of them?
Like I haven’t been?
Selfish bastard, greedy whore…
He closed his eyes and let the melody wash over him. It was a piece he was very familiar with, a Vulcan entreaty to peace and calm. Jilla played it whenever her emotions threatened to overwhelm her. It was her way of focusing and releasing all the things she never wanted to think about.
Like the selfish whore who destroyed her one chance to be happy.
He found himself wondering, not for the first time, how things might have turned out if Ruth had managed to give Jilla McCoy’s miracle cure while still in Spock’s cabin. Jilla would have then been with the Vulcan when the chemical change from sex to emotion hit her. It would have been Spock she fell in love with. She never would have had to face wanting to damn herself. She and the First Officer would’ve been married, and he and Ruth might have…
I’ll never be more than half in love with you.
At least she would’ve never expected fidelity.
The pain and frustration welled up in him, doubled by the reminders of Jilla’s association with anything Vulcan, tripled by the thought of how happy she might have been married to Spock. His own inadequacy overwhelmed him, turning all his emotion to anger. He strode past the divider, toward the bed where Jilla sat. He snatched the lyrette from her hands, retaining enough control to toss it onto the bed beside her rather than throwing it at the bulkhead. She stared up at him, confused, frightened, and he could see the streaks of tears on her face.
Don’t do this, she needs you! cried within him and it only increased his grief and guilt and fed the misdirected fury.
“You want to be Vulcan, why didn’t you marry Spock when you had the chance,” he snarled at her.
“I do not love Spock,” was the tremulous response.
He closed his eyes, fighting the pain. “And I’m supposed to believe you love me,” he said tightly.
“I do…” she began and he heard the sob in her voice.
“You have a hell of a way of showing it,” he found himself saying. He opened his eyes, staring down at her. “Every day’s a battle, Jilla. You hide in the engines and I have to come and drag you out. You close your hand and I have to kiss and caress it open and pretend it doesn’t bother me. I tell you, show you over and over again what I want, what I need, and I still have to seduce you every single fucking night. You dream of Selar, you hear his voice, you wake up and cry for him and if I’m hurt or angered by it you weep and tell me how damned you are and I have to swallow everything I feel and soothe you back to sleep. It never gets any better.” He took a deep breath. “When do I get a little back, Jilla?”
Renewed tears were sliding down her shimmering cheeks. “I am sorry…” she whispered.
“And I’m supposed to fall to my knees in front of you and hold you and tell you it’s going to be all right and forget all about what I need,” he growled. “No. Not this time.”
No? You tell me no, Kamikaze?
Cal’s voice, so long buried, sounded ominously in his mind, and he fought the panic.
“Does she give you what you need?” Jilla asked and the pain-filled, plaintive question seared him.
She’ll let you go on, he told himself with equal measures of triumph and bitterness. You can fuck LiLing and not lose her.
And go on, affair after affair, breaking her heart over and over again, watching her die a little more each time…
No. I have to stop hurting her. It’s all I have left to give her.
“I’m done, Jilla,” he said.
“Done…?”
He lashed out at the familiarity. “Done with this, done with fighting.” He took a second deep breath. “Done with you.” He closed his heart to the cry that escaped her, turning his back to her. “I’ll call the quartermaster to move your things tomorrow.”
“Sulu… al lina, sumin tu, bez, bez!”
He tried not to translate the Indiian, but his long study of the language betrayed him: please, have mercy, no, no!
Mercy is what I’m trying to give you, he told her silently, and defeated, he left the cabin.
Jade was awakened by a soft knock on her door. She sat up, wondering why whoever it was hadn’t used the signal, then realized the sound came from the door to the head. Nightmares, she thought, abruptly wide awake. Please, let it be nightmares.
She rose, pulling a robe on over her nightgown and crossed to the door. It slid open. Jilla stood in the dim light, her head bent, her thick fall of hair throwing her face into shadow. Her silvery skin was dull, and when she spoke, her voice was every bit as lifeless.
“Lieutenant Commander Sulu has asked me to vacate his quarters,” she said. “The quartermaster will arrange for another cabin in the morning, but I – I cannot lie in his bed –“ Her voice stopped. Not broke, as if there were more she would say, but simply stopped.
That cold-hearted bastard! Jade seethed, and saw Jilla wince with the strength of the reaction. As she quickly debated whether or not her previous tactic was required, Jilla spoke again.
“If it would not trouble you, perhaps I could remain in your common room. If that would be inconvenient, I can work in engineering –“ The Indiian’s voice again stopped, and Jade bent her head, trying to see the engineer’s face.
“Of course you can stay here, Jilla,” she said, trying to assess what was needed. Jilla’s face and voice gave no hints.
“My thanks for your hospitality, Doctor,” she said, but she made no move to step into Jade’s cabin. Gently Jade reached out, intending to take her arm, and, as she had in reaction to the older woman’s emotion, Jilla winced. It seemed to register, though, for she took several steps into the room, allowing the door to hiss softly closed behind her. Then she stopped again; not glancing at anything, not hesitant or reluctant. Simply unmoving.
Alarm bells were going off in Jade’s mind and she pulled a chair from her desk, setting it next to the Indiian. “Sit down, Jilla,” she said. Jilla did so. Jade herself sat down on the bed. “What happened?”
“Lieutenant Commander Sulu has asked me to vacate his quarters,” Jilla repeated tonelessly.
Shut down, Jade identified. She’s in complete emotional withdrawal. The idea of emotional overload was common in her study of Indiian psychology, and the usual reaction to it was for the affected person to fall unconscious, allowing his senses time to recover. But she had never run across an Indiian who simply retreated. Was this the result of the Vulcan genetics, or an indication of something more seriously wrong? And how should she handle it? What was the healthy psychological course of action?
I could do what I did this afternoon, and force my emotions onto her. But if Vulcan inhibitors are overwhelming her physical systems and not just her emotional ones, that might be dangerous. It could even trigger a hormonal flood – and wouldn’t Lady Xtmprosqzntwlfd love that. I could try logic; in her present state she might respond very well to it – or not at all, in which case I’ll have gained nothing, but lost nothing either. Or I could simply react as I would if I were a friend rather than a psychiatrist and see what reaches her.
That was the safest course, and so Jade swallowed, and put away her professional face.
“I’m so sorry,” she said softly. She reached out, touching Jilla’s hand. The Indiian flinched and withdrew it from beneath her fingers. “Jilla, does my touch hurt?” she asked.
“Yes,” Jilla replied.
When no further explanation was forthcoming, Jade asked, “Why?”
“It is real,” was the dull answer.
Jade blinked. That made no sense. For an Indiian, anyplace there was emotion had to be real. Why would a physical touch make anything more real? Or less, for that matter, Jade added privately. Furiously she began going through her mental notes on both Indiian and Vulcan behavior and response. A Vulcan would sometimes withdraw, and because they were touch-telepaths, physical interaction would be particularly unpleasant – but Jilla wasn’t telepathic. And I thought you were putting away the psychiatrist.
Jade took a breath. It was, of course, her fall-back position and Jilla’s behavior was disturbing enough that she had taken refuge in it without thinking. She shook herself, and returned her attention to the young woman before her.
“Why is it real?” she asked, letting the fullness of her confusion color the question.
“I must be allowed to fade,” Jilla said, not quite answering. “It is necessary, it is long past due. It is, it was blasphemy.” She looked up and Jade was stricken by how pale her grey eyes were. “Why did they not let me die?”
With sudden horror, Jade understood. Jilla was telmnori and while there were no case studies of those unfortunates included in her dissertations, she was aware of the Indiian apocrypha on the subject. The damned, those unfaithful to husband or wife, were living ghosts; their very presence ignored and shunned, both emotionally and physically. It was why these poor beings died; they quite literally wasted away, faded to nothing. And for them, any touch of emotion or any other sense was bitingly painful precisely because it was real, and they were no longer entitled to that reality.
And this is what Sulu has been keeping her from for years, Jade thought, then added angrily, this is what he condemns her to. Selfish son of a bitch!
She heard Jilla’s soft sob and calmed her emotions. The last thing she wanted to do was to cause the Indiian more pain. She decided to answer her question.
“They didn’t let you die because they cared about you. They couldn’t…”
“I could have gone to Selar,” Jilla whispered, and Jade winced with the repeated, disturbingly abrupt end to the sentence. “No longer. Sumin tu, tonos, e cortay’ez; celett’ez, al lina, tu telmnori.”
The fact that the words were said in the same, lifeless manner as everything else belied their grief-stricken meaning; Have mercy, husband, there is no eternity; do not love me, I beg you, for I am damned.
Jade had to close her eyes against the anguish. The fact that she knew beyond any doubt that if Selar were able to hear and answer, he would deny the words, added to the pain. He loved you Jilla, and if there is such a thing as a soul, he loves you still.
It was too much, and Jade found herself trembling. All her own emotion was overwhelming her, memory crowding out judgment and good intent. She remembered vividly the gracious, calm, proper Vulcan wife Jilla had once been. She remembered how she had demanded an explanation of that fact from Selar, how he had told her of Jilla’s misery before his alteration of her genetics, how that alteration was a successful attempt to ease his wife’s sorrow. The long-healed slash on his palm was proof enough that what he’d done had been out of love.
And what’s your motive, you heartless bastard!? she found herself mentally shouting at Sulu. Did you love the woman you’re destroying? She’s bound to you, don’t you know that? Selar couldn’t foresee his own death, or even that his attempt to help her would lead to pon farr – though the gods know he should’ve thought of it. But you – you know what you’re doing, you self-serving son of a bitch! You know you’re killing her! What kind of monster are you? How can you let her fade away to lost, empty…
She suddenly became aware of Jilla’s voice, still muted and deadened, her words a mixture of Vulcan and Anglo and Indiian. Jade pushed her own emotion aside, focusing on translating. The Indiian was more of the same, confession to Selar, wanting to keep her iniquity from him, the Anglo broken and devastated and almost exclusively to Sulu – though Jilla’s tone still conveyed nothing but listless lethargy. The Vulcan concepts were ancient and strangely distorted, twisted honor and betrayal and blood fever, but gradually her meaning became clear. The Indiian was proclaiming her damnation, yes, and begging, but she was not asking for mercy as befit her culture’s mythology. She was begging for death.
Jade shuddered, reeling with memory and loss and grief. Everyone I love dies! cried in her mind, and the wretched thought ignored the fact that she had never actually loved Selar’s wife. Transference again, but she was too horrified to truly comprehend it. She knew only that she needed desperately to help, as she had not been able to help her father, or Selar, or Richard…
She abruptly grabbed Jilla’s shoulders, shaking her and was both gratified and grieving at the pain that flared in the Indiian’s eyes.
“Stop it, stop it!” she demanded. “You don’t – you can't know what you’re saying! You cannot want to die! There are others here who care for you, Jilla, others who can give you life and being. You’re an engineer, an officer, a musician – you’re needed for Valjiir – your worth is more than Takeda Sulu gave you!” Jade felt Jilla’s shoulders starting to tremble. The pain was filling her, yes, but it was bringing reality with it. Encouraged, Jade went on.
“You’re taking the blame for his sin, Jilla, his fault, his flaws. Don’t let him do this to you. I know it won’t be easy to go on, but you survived Selar’s death, you survived pon farr and Leonard’s chemical intervention and the aftermath of it – what Sulu took advantage of…”
“No!” Jilla burst out. “No, he did not take advantage! I gave… I gave to him…” A sob caught in her throat, choking her… and then she was wailing, all the terror and anguish and lost despair pouring from her in tangible, audible waves. Jade filled herself with answering emotion, pouring back in equal measure and knew that being was returning to the Indiian. It was agony personified, but as long as it prevented Jilla from fading, Jade refused to begrudge it.
It was a long night, and Jade was well aware that the emotional catharsis only delayed the inevitable, but she intended to delay it as long as possible. Jilla had been given a spark of reality, and as long as it burned within her, she would stay alive. For the time being, it was all Jade could hope for.