Disclaimer: I love these characters and have for all my life. They are not mine, sadly.

To Dance with Death

Nyota Uhura is beautiful.

Spock had known from their first meeting that her physical body was considered attractive, though he hadn't understood the lure that attraction was expected to be. Her symmetry of feature and form, her grace in movement and gesture, were elegant things. They were to be admired, as all well-made things of nature were to be admired. The attention many of the male and some of the female cadets had shown her; the conciliatory, lust-filled comments of a handful of the younger instructors bemoaning her status as a cadet, he had been able to comprehend neither, showing him yet again how different he was.

He had not understood the human definition of beauty. Had a feeling that perhaps most humans didn't understand the human definition of beauty, for though she was worthy of the praise and respect that evidently went with the description, it had nothing to do with the physical attributes the humans almost always cited.

Her mind is warm, open, welcoming, questing yet never probing. It is not an acceptable use of the Vulcan mind meld, what he is doing, but the same recklessness that allowed him to turn his back on the Academy years ago allows him to keep his hand on her face. She leans into his touch, into the meld, strong and yet so gentle, trying desperately to discern what he needs.

He needs this. He shouldn't need this, shouldn't allow himself to need this. There are ten thousand Vulcans suffering the same loss. Surely none of them are being so selfish and cavalier. Surely none would risk the sanity of another sentient creature for their own gratification. Surely none of them even need worry about risking the sanity of another, their own firmly intact...

The self-recrimination has no time to build, stripped away by a fiery will that becomes a fiery sun. He recognizes Earth's bright star and blue sky, though the landscape is unfamiliar, perhaps entirely unreal.

As unreal as the beautiful woman dancing on a crystal lake.

As unreal as the voice that fills the world, surrounds the world, creates the world, powerful and true.

Silver flashes at the woman's wrists and ankles, water glistens at it flies from beneath her feet to strike the vibrant grass surrounding them, and always the voice continues to sing. He knows only a handful of words in Swahili, but he is one with the dancer, is one with this world that she loves, and so he understands what she is singing. The dark husky tones of the hunter; the soft answering tones of the parent and the lover; the light tinkling voice of the child. She knows all the ancient parts, can caress them all here, own them all, and she offers them freely to him.

Offers them gently to him.

He does not guide the meld, letting her essence and mind flow through his, over his, surrendering his identity to the goddess singing the world into being. The landscape twists around them, the singer's language changing, and for a brief moment it is no longer water that leaps from beneath her feet but stars. The universe is wide and cold, but it holds no fear for her. Then that second is gone, and their surroundings shift again, and again, and again, her feet touching upon a dozen planets. And if they are rote pictures she dances within, the most famous images from the most famous worlds, the singer gives them true life. Each language is stroked, cherished, caressed in its own vowels and syllables while still being bent into the rhythm of the song.

He watches, and listens, and for a brief period of time he is able to forget who he is and what he is. The universe is made of song, and the song is made of a dozen languages and thrice as many dialects, but it fits together. It flows. There is no competition. There is no contradiction.

There is only song, and dance, and being.

He is so lost in the essence of the simple pleasure of existence that he doesn't recognize the new language quickly enough to guide the meld away. He does not want this. He does not want to see her dance in a place that she will never stand upon. That no living thing will set foot upon again.

He is in too deeply, though, his being merged too firmly into hers, and he has surrendered control. He cannot stop the images from flowing around them. Dark feet slipping lightly across the balcony where his mother frequently stood; dark hands caressing his mother's face gently, and Amanda smiles at the woman. The dialect the singer speaks in is his own, the Vulcan with which his father taught him and the children ostracized him.

A single step and she is standing within the black bubble that constrained his early schooling, caressing the walls, singing to the computer in lilting tones. He follows, helpless, afraid of where they will go next, afraid that they will see—

The desert, and sand flies from under the dancer's feet, scratches at her eyes as the singer's voice slows. Pain drips from that voice, oozes through the world as it cracks and groans. The heaving of the planet does nothing to halt the dancer, her feet landing where they will, upon solid ground or absent air. Her movements have changed. Still graceful, but this is a grace of grief, of terrible loss. These are movements that will not be denied, a eulogy for a planet, a song for despair and destruction.

She does not try to deny them, though. She offers her body to the dance, reaches to her limits and beyond, trying to encompass in her frail human mortality the enormity of what happens around them. For the first time he feels strain in her muscles, pain from the exertion that would be. Should be. Could be, if this were real.

This is not real. This is fantasy, fiction, illusion of fact, his mind giving her illogical humanity something to play with. A dreaming. He should end it, should pull them back from this brink of insanity. He should—

The sight of the older woman halts his thoughts, freezes his poor attempts at regaining control of the forces he has set free. Of course she is here, in this place, as the planet keens around them. Of course she extends a hand to the human he heartlessly brought to this place, a smile upon her face.

They whirl together, dark and light, old and young. He never had the opportunity to see his mother dance, and surely if she had it would not have been in the hectic madness of leaps and bends and turns that this dance has become.

The unseen singer is no longer alone. Two voices trace the lines of the song, Vulcan words set to Terran music... and Vulcan music... and so much more. The universe is formed of a medley of grieving, vast and diverse, but somehow the end result is still beauty rather than gaudiness.

This should not be. It is illogical. It is dangerous. It is possibly madness.

Yet he is drawn to it, driven to it. He does not know what he means to say, what words he plans to use to silent the haunting, grieving vastness they are drowning in. Spoken words are futile in this world, at this point, and so instead he simply adds his voice to the song. The other voices part for him, slide up in octaves, build upon his simple designs.

Two hands reach for him, draw him to the dance, and he realizes that he has physical form.

There is no thought in the dance. There is no thought in the song. There is no room for thought, no room for logic. There is only room for grief and loss and the desperate mortal calling of those things to the vastness of the universe. The world trembles and dies around them, collapsing in upon itself, and they dance upon the ashes of a planet, upon the atoms of wishes and hopes and potential futures, until there is only darkness.

His voice goes quiet, drops from the music that defines the world. The void beckons, empty, simple, close. His mother's voice halts as well, her feet slowing as her hand settles into his. He cannot look at her, cannot look away from the emptiness that has consumed everything.

Her hand strokes down his face, tender and familiar, pulls his head around so that he is looking into her eyes. "You have much life left, my son."

There is no bitterness in the depths of her gaze, no anger, no terror. Only the same love and strength and devotion that always shone from her eyes. Right up until the moment he let her fall. Right up until the void opened within his katra as swiftly as the black hole did within his planet.

"Grieve, Spock. Grieve, and live, and remember." Her hand strokes his face as arms wrap around him from behind.

The dance has ended. The dancer trembles against him, pressed full-length against his back, sobbing and shaking with a grief that is beyond containing. The world-song has slowed, the words becoming quieter, shifting first into English and then back into Swahili.

His mother's hands cup his face, her smile bright even as her eyes fill with tears. "You will always have a mother who loves you."

The words are not right, not the words from memory, but they somehow fill a small part of the void in his being.

The dream is ending, the meld slowly breaking apart as the singer's voice softens, softens, slurs, and he can no longer understand the words, though the emotion in them is clear. The void recedes, the dancer guiding him again among stars, but he knows where the darkness is, where it will always be.

The dancer's hand slips from his, her mind retreating into the safety of her own being. He should do the same, plans to do the same. Instead he finds himself looking back once more at the darkness of nothing.

Only the void is not empty. Framed by stars, his mother dances with Surak. Her face is lit by joy and laughter; his countenance is the strict emotionless mien with which he defined their species.

The meld snaps apart, a sharper severing than there should have been, and for a moment he is disoriented in his own body. His fingers tingle, the tips numb, and it takes him longer than it should to realize that his hand is no longer pressed against Uhura's face. Instead their bodies are molded together, her arms wrapped around him, holding him tightly against her. Shivers traverse the length of her form, mimicking themselves in his. Or perhaps he is shivering, and it is her form that mimics.

It doesn't matter for the moment. The deep meld that should not have happened is broken, but subtle conduits remain open, a crack in the door between minds.

I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm so sorry.

She doesn't say anything. She doesn't need to. They aren't ready yet for words. Maybe he will never be ready for words. So many human words for emotions he is not supposed to feel, is not supposed to act on.

Emotions that shine from her. His grief, his loss, his agony, poured out in tears upon his own shoulder.

He cannot cry. Sarek taught him too well to be Vulcan for tears to come to his eyes.

But he can embrace her as she cries for him, for a mother and a planet and a people that she will never get to meet.

Holding her gently but firmly, he knows she will feel at least a faint echo of the gratitude he does not know how to voice.

Hopefully, it will be enough.