"Doctor, will she survive?"

"I don't think so, Spock. What's worse, I don't think she wants to."

"Is there nothing we can do?"

"I've done all I can..."

"I meant to ease her death, Jade."

"Spock!"

"It is the only logical choice left, is it not?"

Jilla slowly came to consciousness, only differentiating that state because she could recognize the voices that were speaking around her - and that they spoke of compassion. Leave me, it is undeserved, her Indiian half sobbed. Her Vulcan half rejected the logic of euthanasia, thirsting for vengeance, for Challenge and Claim. She was almost grateful that she would not be called upon to make a decision. Already the ice of telmnori was consuming Vulcan blood fever. If they would but leave her alone, she would at last take her place in Beggar's Court...

And free him from the consequences of his actions? Vulcan seethed within her. Allow him to shame you, damn you, with no cost?

He made no vow...

The vow is here, I feel it!

Enough, telmnor! Face your doom.

"Leave me," she whispered, and winced as Spock's tia washed over her with waves of sorrow and dismay.

"Rilain," he said softly, "allow us to ease your suffering." She shook her head mutely. "You see Ensign LiLing as rival, your Vulcan blood will burn you unless..."

"Let it burn, Spock."

"If it could cleanse you, or hasten the inevitable..." There was clear anguish in his tone, and again Jilla winced.

"It comes soon enough," she rasped. "I have blasphemed for more than a year. A few weeks is just." Her voice caught. "More than just." She steeled herself and opened her eyes, looking up at him. "Please, I beg of you." She shifted her gaze, meeting Jade's worried, fearful expression. "Jade, please, stop this. Let me go."

The doctor turned abruptly and Spock hesitated, then with grieving resolve, slowly nodded.

You have every right to be angry. You had the right to attack one who deliberately harmed you. You have the right to live, to feel, to be...

Ruth, do not do this to me.

Ruth abruptly sat up, opening her eyes to stare down at Jilla's face. The Indiian's skin was again ghost white, her lips and eyes pale. Ruth had come to Sickbay after spending nearly an hour arguing with Spock. Her Vulcan husband was sorrowfully resigned to the idea of Jilla's imminent death, but Ruth could not so easily accept it. She was determined to do all she could to convince the Indiian that there were yet things worth living for. That it was exactly that attitude which was the ultimate cause of Jilla's damnation was no deterrent; Ruth still believed she'd done the right thing two years earlier. And as she could convince herself that this was a healing which called for desperate measures, she had few qualms about telepathic intrusion. "I didn't realize you were awake," she said, and was determined not to feel sheepish.

"I have asked to be allowed to face Aema," Jilla replied in a barely audible rasp.

"You know I can't do that," Ruth returned. "I'm keheil."

"Have you no mercy, then?" Jilla said. "Or is your goddess secretly an agent of Aema's Judgment, committed to prolonging my suffering?" Her voice was so inexpressive that Ruth couldn't suppress her shudder.

"Jilla, please..."

"He is life and being," the Indiian broke in. "Without him, I have neither. Please, Ruth, I beg you..."

"I can't just let you die!" Ruth cried in despair.

My wife, let it be.

Ruth started at Spock's voice, clearly, quietly sorrowful, in her head.

I can't...

At long last, we will do as she wishes.

What of her bond to you, what of Valjiir, what of...

We will grieve. We will go on. She must be allowed this, Dei'larr'ei.

I CAN'T!

"Ruth, I have asked so little of you," Jilla said softly, and Ruth became aware that Spock was allowing the Indiian to hear all he had said. There were no tears in the grey eyes, but Ruth's were spilling over.

"No, Jilla, please... don't leave me!" she sobbed.

Come home, wife, Spock urged. Come to me. Be with me when it happens.

Spock, NO.........!!!

"Go to your husband," Jilla was whispering. "Be a comfort and a help to him. When the bond fails, he will need your strength."

Ruth stared wildly at her too-pale friend. "I can stop you!" she rasped, "I can make you...!"

"But you will not," Jilla returned.

"The hell I...!"

Wife! Attend!

"He calls, Ruth. Will you deny him?"

Again Ruth started as hands came to her shoulders. "Ruthie," Leonard McCoy's voice said, and she collapsed into his arms, weeping. As he led her out of the Sickbay isolation room, Jilla sighed her thanks. She said a soft goodbye to her mate. She took a deep, final breath. Aema, I have betrayed You, sounded within her thoughts. I beg You, release me from this life. I accept Your Judgment. Then she closed her eyes.

Sulu was approaching Sickbay when he saw Dr. McCoy aiding Ruth out of the room. Panicked terror hit him in the midsection, making it nearly impossible to breathe. No, it can't be too late! his mind screamed at him. Then Ruth's head was lifting, her eyes blazing hatred at him, her face streaked with tears.

"Die, you bastard!" she hissed, and he tensed for the telepathic and empathic blow he was sure would follow her words. But she only doubled over, her sobs more wracking, falling more completely into McCoy's embrace.

Then something did hit him, a bolt of agony tearing across his soul. It scattered his thoughts, screeching into every fiber of his being. Some part of himself was ripped out of his chest, and for an instant he was aware of the keening of lost isolation, prayers and begging entreaty that were forever unheard and unheeded. With sudden clarity, he could see Jilla's form, taking her place, kneeling outside the gate of an immense and heart-breakingly beautiful courtyard. Her arms stretched out and up, her voice adding to the cacophony of moans. He let out a wordless cry, tearing at nothing, desperate to reach her, to kneel beside her, but a door of ice was slammed against him, leaving him sightless and purposeless and empty.

The first thing that struck the First Officer as he and Captain Kirk overrode the lock set on Lieutenant Commander Sulu's quarters was the smell; bitter and rusty. The second was the music that softly filled the cabin. He recognized it. It was a piece from the Valley Collection.

Click here for the song

Like the perfect ending
It won't be too long
Till everything I've ruined has seen me gone
In time, I pray you'll forgive
Now you know the man I am
Can you forgive me?

I fall
Like the sands of time
Like some broken rhyme
At feet no longer there

If only I could call the rain to melt and wash away the pain you feel
I would
You gave yourself to me and showed me what the truth could be
For that, I say thank you
This was my life
It never made much sense to me

Jim quietly went to the intercom, calling Medical. Spock stepped toward the grillwork that divided the living area of the cabin from the bedroom, his dread making his steps slow and faltering. He stopped just outside it.

"Jim," he said. "No need.

With every lie that I lived
Part of me would fade
Into this empty shadow I've become
And now I feel so numb
I no longer know myself
But I still know you

I call
And there's no reply
Like some phantom cry
On ears too far away

I close my eyes and watch as my life passes by
The only thing I see is you
For all the times you walked the line for me and standing by my side
I say thank you
Here lies my life
It never felt that real to me

The bed was covered in a pure white spread, Jilla's lyrette and drafting tools carefully placed on it. There was a tatami mat on the deck, it, too, covered in a white cloth that was now anything but pure. Before it lay the helmsman's wakazashi, its hilt and one third of the blade carefully wrapped in white silk that slowly seeped to dark red. Sulu's body was slumped sideways, the double cuts deep; one across the abdomen, the other perpendicular to it, from belly to chest, but no longer gushing the gore that spread over both the white kimono that was open and bunched about his waist and the hakama pants that covered his legs. Spock bowed his head, and saw the small scroll that rested beside the mat. There were spatters of blood on it.

"Spock, what..." Jim's voice said, then stopped. "My god," the Captain breathed.

Spock stepped forward, carefully avoiding the pool of sticky, drying blood, and lifted the scroll from the deck. He heard Jim's catching coughs as the Human struggled with the powerful urge to vomit. It was only then he noticed Jilla's Aeman shrine against the wall, the goddess within facing the scene laid out before it.

In the Captain's office, Jim turned from making his report to Starfleet Command. "Such a terrible waste," he murmured.

"It was the only honorable course left to him," Spock said.

There was silence between them, then Jim said, "You picked up something in there. What was it?"

"His jisei," the Vulcan replied. "It is traditional for a samurai to leave a death poem."

"What did it say?" Kirk managed.

"One word," Spock replied. "It said, 'listen'."

You'll always mean so much to me
And there's no reply
And there's no reply
You'll never know how much you meant to me
And there's no reply
And there's no reply
You'll never know how much you meant to me
If only I could call the rain to melt and wash away the pain you feel
I would
You gave yourself to me and showed me what the truth could be
For that, I say thank you
I close my eyes and watch as my life passes by
The only thing I see is you
For all the times you walked the line for me and standing by my side
I say thank you
You in my life
It all meant so much more to be.

The End