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

To Dance with Death

Spock is bleeding.

It's a slow flow, a steady loss of invisible blood. Most of the people around them can't see it—don't want to see it, can train their mind's eye away from the hideous wound. So long as he is able to function, is able to pace steadily, stoically from one of the bridge to the other, there is no need to acknowledge what is happening.

She sees it, though. She can't not see it and she hurts for him, hurts as she hasn't done in a very long time. As a child her mother called her empath when she shared other's pain, berating, scared of what her little girl would grow up to be. A strong woman, a good woman didn't cry so easily, for sorrows that were not hers.

So she doesn't cry for him. She wants to, how she wants to, to give sound and form and meaning to that terrible pain and horrific, ceaseless loss of being. He's hemorrhaging out all that he is, all the humanity and sardonic wit that drew her to him, and he won't let her stop it. He rebuffs her attempts to staunch the bleeding.

It wasn't the right way to go about it. She knows that now, knew it then, that he couldn't reach out to her as any other human would. He couldn't melt into her arms, couldn't open his heart and cry. Starfleet officers didn't do that. Vulcans didn't do that.

Instead they bled on the bridge, left trails of blood so hot that most people couldn't perceive them.

It's why she can't hate Kirk, despite the fact that she wants to. He's cocky and arrogant and he treats women the way her mother always warned her soldiers did. But he saw the blood. He saw the pain. His bandage may have been woven of violence and his heart driven by revenge, but he did something. He reached Spock when she couldn't.

But Jim Kirk isn't here. He's not the one who was approached with a whisper, an awkward entreaty, a terrified suggestion.

Spock is ready to heal. He's asking her for help, and though she's afraid too, her thoughts hectically scattered, she can't let him know it. He'll turn away, countenance that Vulcan effigy of silent acceptance, and he'll keep bleeding.

She's not a child anymore. She's seen what real empaths can do, and she knows she isn't one. She can't heal with a touch, can't take away the pain with a kiss, though she would if she could. Would do anything, be anything if it could bring back the man she had known as a teacher and friend. All she can be is Uhura, though, the frightened, headstrong human.

Hopefully it will be enough.

His quarters are dark, the lights at less than one-quarter power. He doesn't meet her gaze as he leads her to sit on the edge of the bed, taking up a perch in front of her. He opens his mouth, starts to explain again how dangerous this is and how she doesn't need to acquiesce so readily to his illogical suggestion. Shaking her head, she places a single finger over his lips.

If this is what he needs, this is what he'll get.

His fingers tremble as they reach for her face, and she fights the urge to shake as well. He won't hurt her. Of that she is certain.

But there will be pain. Of that she is also certain, though everything else about the meld is a beautifully dark mystery.

His fingertips are soft, tender, spiderweb silk against her skin. She knows that isn't right, knows there are calluses on his hands just as there are on hers, but there is no time to dwell on that. Caging fear and banishing caution, she leans into the touch.

And feels the world dissolve around them. Sensation vanishes, leaving only thought… and him.

He is beautiful. An equilibrium of forces, yin and yang, human and alien. She had never understood what it meant to be Vulcan before. It isn't pointed ears and green blood. It isn't even logic, though that is a part of it. It is a way of thought, a way of feeling that is completely new to her. She wants to explore it. She wants to dive into that alien consciousness, hold it, feel it, experience it as her own.

That isn't what she's here for, though. She's here to help him, here to offer solace to a friend, and she can feel how badly he needs it. Self-recriminations race through their mind as the meld deepens and strengthens, and she gasps in sorrow and denial. He has done nothing to deserve reproach, and she will not stand for it.

Her mind is his mind, her fierce rejection of the doubts burning them away. It is heady, exhilarating, control such as she has never known before. It is also terrifying. What is she to do, in this world that is empty save for them? With pure thought as her only weapon, how is she supposed to help him?

The answer is there as soon as the question is formed, a knowledge of what he wants. He wants her. He wants to cease being for a short time, to drown his thoughts in the essence of her being. He wants her to lead.

She can do that. She can give herself. And she can give them form.

The darkness yields to the fiery passion of Sol, the vastness of the African plain. Her home, hot and full of life, and he welcomes the heat just as she does. There are many places in Africa she could have taken him—mountains capped in snow, lakes thick with fish, villages filled with a people strong and brave. This is the one she loves most, though. This is the one that is hers. Traveling on foot with her father, learning the animals and plants and petty old dangers of their world; soaring above it with her mother, seeing the vastness of the world stretch away, the slowly moving black masses that were the herds.

Song comes unbidden to her, spills from her mind before she can contain it. She does not want to contain it. The songs are as much a part of this world as the landscape, and she loves them, caresses them, dances to them. They are old, these dances, far older than her, but she owns them. The hunter, her mother, stalking foreign dignitaries, wile and wit and sharp courage proving to them that Africa is a force to be reckoned with. The lover, her father, a touchstone for them both, switching between the mantles of teacher and comrade and political sounding board with gracious ease. The child, herself and so many others, learning to live with their heritage, to love it. Pride and sorrow and so much change for them to try to comprehend, but the old dances can be adapted, because the old roles have not changed on a fundamental level. They are simply more open.

There is a man bleeding on the edge of the water she dances upon. Red drips from a hideous wound in his chest, but he is unaware of it. His eyes are fixed upon her, his being surrendered to her, and he loves this place as she loves it but he does not belong here.

Neither of them belong here. This place shaped her, created her, as she creates it now, but it could never contain her. It is her mother's place, purchased with struggle and sweat and a terrible, implacable will. It is her father's place, tended with love and compassion and deep surety. But it is not her place.

Her place is among the stars. Her place is among the planets, twisting into the songs and the words and the myriad people that she will some day meet. He follows her there, passive, yearning to be empty, to fill himself with her, but she will not allow that. They are one, and she will give him everything she is, play it out upon a stage as vast as imagination, but she will not replace him. She will not fill the hole in his being that trickles green blood onto the mountains of Malur, red blood into the waters of Sikaris.

There is nothing left in the universe that can fill that hole.

But they are not in the universe, and Vulcan is not dead in this place. The words come easily to her, slip into the rhythms of the song, and she cannot say if it is her will or his that guides them. The places they walk through are his, as is the woman who walks beside them now, silent, serene, and achingly beautiful.

Amanda Grayson is dead. Uhura knows that, and yet a thrill goes through her as the woman smiles at her, welcomes her to the world that created Spock.

A home, combining the austerity of Vulcan logic, the tradition of Vulcan beliefs, and more than a touch of the human.

A black bubble, a computer speaking quickly, flashing information more quickly, and yet she can process both inputs at once. She can respond to it, tease it, invite the computer with a lilt in the song to dance with them.

A desert, and she almost screams, the agony is so great. He died here, died and yet continued to live, and he does not want to see it again but can't find a way to pull them away.

Shouldn't find a way to pull them away. This is the wound. This is the injury that is slowly destroying him, the horror that he can't name, can't face, can't understand.

And she can't understand it, either. Though she feels it she can't state what it is to lose a planet, to lose a people, to watch Mother die, having brought her so near safety wrapped protectively in her arms. The Vulcan high council there to save, the culture of their people, and she puts her arms around the human.

Logic says there is no personal God, but surely what transpires here is punishment for poor choices, past and future.

Her muscles ache, her chest burns, but she throws herself into the song and into the dance. He does not know how to mourn for this tragedy, but her people do. The scale was smaller, but they have lost everything in the past, to the folly of others as well as to their own.

Many peoples have paid dearly for the simple sin of existence, and mourning is a song known throughout the universe. She gathers the threads to herself, gathers the song and the words and the rhythms, and she gives them to him. He is not alone. He is not wrong.

Amanda is there, and though she knows it is only an image, only an imagining, she loves the human woman who holds out a hand to her and joins her in the dance. How can she not love her? Spock loves her dearly, holds her clearly in his mind, the focal point around which the inconceivable loss of a planet's population can spin.

He is still passive, still a watcher, and that is not what needs to be. It is his grief they channel. She will not be callous enough to steal it from him. Extending her hand is a fluid part of the dance, as is Amanda's offer, and she does not know which of them gives the woman that power.

Has a feeling that perhaps neither of them have.

She cannot think after that, cannot wonder or reason or even cry. A planet dies before her, a thousand cities torn to bits, and she cannot do them justice. She cannot encompass all they were, all they could have been, but she can try, and at least Spock is with her now.

Yin and yang, the golden mean, Human and Vulcan, he dances with them. Steps away from her, and it is red blood that stains his chest, human eyes that well with sorrow; steps toward her, and it is a Vulcan she holds, blood green, ears pointed. But there is a deeper divide, a deeper mean even to that, and she comes to see it as he dances.

A twist of his wrist, a toss of his head, and the Vulcan is not emotionless. He is fury, he is rage, he is helpless despair as he witnesses what happens.

A shift of his foot, a howl in the words of his song, and he is logic, he is acceptance, he is nerveless functionality.

Balance, a creature of balance, and it is heartbreaking to see him here, to see him struggle to regain that balance as the darkness swallows the light around them. Tears flow down her face as the tragedy comes to a close, the music slowing. There is nothing left to dance for.

Spock is still, a bitter stillness of uncomprehending acceptance as he stares at the emptiness around them. Welcomes it, a surcease from pain, and her tears flow harder as she comes up behind him, wraps her arms around him. She will not lose him to this.

Amanda is there, comforting him, loving him, and perhaps this is what ghosts are made of, for again she cannot tell if one or both or neither of them guide the being that wears his mother's face.

"You will always have a mother who loves you."

The words are soft, are gentle, are dual, and she knows if she moves from Spock to look behind her she will see her own mother standing there. Not proud, as Starfleet wasn't the dream she had long held for her baby girl, but accepting. Standing straight and tall, a smile on her face, willing to hug her daughter and wish her well even if she doesn't understand why she acted as she did.

Was it human nature, to need that reassurance in the face of the unknown and the frightening? Or was it merely the nature of the child, to need someone who loved them even when they failed? Either way, the simple statement strengthens the flow of tears her mother had always warned her against.

It is time for them to leave. She can feel her thoughts getting sluggish, her body and mind beginning to buckle under the unaccustomed stress. Taking Spock's hand, she leads them back the way they came, stepping slowly and quietly among stars. They will still explore them someday, test her skills with language, test his skills at command, but it will not be as it could have been. Should have been.

The meld cracks, fractures, breaks, and she is in her own body again. They are not sitting as they had been but rather lying full-length on the bed.

It is a human impulse that causes her to wrap her arms around him while his breathing is still shallow, his mind still coming back. She cannot hold all that she saw, all that she experienced, all that she was and he is in her human mind. The memories are fading already, blurring around the edges. His mind is alien, though it is beautiful, and she cannot follow all the thought patterns that burned between them in that world.

But she can remember a dance, and a planet dying, and a mother's love that will not fade.

She can remember a man bleeding, red and green, calm and furious, lost between balancing worlds.

He cannot cry. She understands that now. The outburst on the bridge, the fury and hate on his face as he gleefully, consciously strangled another sentient creature, it was as much Vulcan as human. It is a precarious balance he strikes, human against Vulcan, logic against empty emotion, and he does not know how to loose one emotion without loosing others. He cannot cry without wanting to hurt. He cannot mourn without wanting revenge.

She can.

She is not an empath. She cannot take his pain. It is not hers to take, though it is his to share. She can only be human, as he cannot be. She cries against his shoulder, shakes with sobs that are ripped from deep within her being. Allows his grief to have voice, fierce and aching and desperate.

When finally she lies still his arms are wrapped around her, cradling her gently. And though she isn't sure how she knows, she's quite certain that finally, after far too many days, Spock isn't bleeding anymore.