vulcanreforged | (Reply)

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It was a Standard year from the death of Ah'rak (the death of Amanda, almost as great a blow as Ah'rak itself, spinning into the void of space) when Sarek felt his blood burn. He had known, from the moment her death tore a hole in his mind, that this day would come too soon. Ah'rak, hot bitter world, he thought, pressing his hand to the shielded warp-glass, you burn into me, into my heart, from beyond the dark you draw me, even though I will never see you again.

The burning would shake him soon, scald through his blood. He closed his eyes and saw Amanda, as she had been the first time, young and strong and facing him without fear, her naked body bone-pale under the red sky. She was all coolness to his fever, slippery-wet like her world when he slid into her body. When the plak tow had passed and he could speak, Vik, he had called her, well in the desert.

He saw her again, years later, four burnings later, her skin softer and her hair grayer, laughing as she bore him down upon their sleeping-couch and drew his body into her own, too human to know that a male in pon farr is never taken: he only takes. And yet even in the burning, he could deny her nothing, his desert well.

Amanda.

His nails bit into his palms; this had come upon him hard and fast. Had he a few more years, he might have been able to remarry, but the wound of her absence was too great, still. Even had he wanted to, the healers said his mind could not sustain a bond yet; they advised another Standard year before he even attempt it.

The soul-healers, the ritual sex-caste of his people, had all died with Ah'rak; he had no one to whom he could turn to ease the burning.

A scent touched him, then, something enticing and rare, on the edge of his awareness. He opened his eyes and turned; an Orion woman in a Starfleet uniform stood at his shoulder. "Ambassador," she said, "I -- I didn't want to intrude, but you're giving off sex pheromones like CRAZY, and I have NEVER run into a Vulcan doing that before, and I thought, WHOA, and also, do you need help with that? Because I could help."

Her own pheromones, then, were that enticement on the edge of awareness; a knife through the dark of the burning. "My wife died," he managed. "With Vulcan. I--" loved her "--need her."

"Oh," she said. "No sex for a year? I know Vulcans don't talk about sex much, but you're in a state, if I may be so bold--"

"Clearly you may," he said. Her mouth was wide, and the curve of her breasts beneath her uniform--

"OK," she said. "I probably shouldn't do this, but: I'm off-shift at 1800 hours. My quarters are D9-58A. You decide you need me, you show up between 2100 and 2130."

"I could hardly impose," he said, dazed by the offer; her scent winding around him. Nothing like Amanda's scent; suddenly, she was everything he wanted.

Her eyes flicked up and down his body, and she smiled. "Trust me, it'll be no hardship, Ambassador. Just don't tell the Captain."

"You may rely upon my discretion," he said, feeling the burn low in his belly, wanting to see her bright red hair and long green limbs spread beneath him. Amanda, is this a betrayal? Yet this woman would open her body to him willingly and without fear, for nothing more than the pleasure it could bring them both. In that, she was like Amanda, if in nothing else, and Amanda would want him to live.

"See you then, Ambassador," the Orion woman was saying, and he blinked rapidly, recalling himself and where he was.

"Of course--" --he looked at the stripes on her sleeves-- "--Lieutenant."

"Gaila," she supplied, with a wink. "You'll be screaming it by 2200 if you're lucky."

Before he could respond, she strode off, her back ramrod-straight, her long fingers clasped behind her back. "Gaila," he whispered, as the door to the observation deck hissed shut behind her, that he might not forget the name of the one who offered him life, with the gift of her body. "Gaila."