Mestral’s Legacy: Chapter 20

July 18th, 2119
Somewhere over the Rocky Mountains

“Want some?” Alaia offered Vorak some of the almonds that she had been munching on. He had been glancing at them since she had brought them out. They were in the cockpit of a small flitter, Alaia in the passenger seat and Vorak piloting.

“The rental agreement specifically prohibits the consumption of food in the flitter.” Sighing, Alaia sealed the package and slipped it back into her backpack. He had been like this ever since they had left San Francisco that morning. He ignored her unless she spoke to him and when she did, she usually got a curt or critical response.

Peering out of the window she saw mountain peaks, trees and lakes. They were heading to an isolated cabin that Vorak had rented. He had taught her a lot over the last few months, but it was hard to establish mental shields when there were so many unshielded minds around. Trying to do it in a large Terran city was next to impossible. They were hoping that in the middle of nowhere there would be enough telepathic silence to let her concentrate. Right now, she was concentrating on figuring out what exactly was making her Vulcan mentor so moody.

“Alaia, stop what you are doing.”

“What? I haven’t even moved in the last five minutes.” Whoever said that Vulcans didn’t have emotions had never been stuck in a flitter with a grumpy one.

“You are trying to probe my thoughts.”

“Oh. Sorry, habit,” she said almost inaudibly. Great, that’ll put him in a better mood. She hadn’t even been trying to probe his thoughts, it just happened. In fact, they still hadn’t finished a ‘discussion’ about the fact that she was using her ability to hear other people’s thoughts as a crutch and was afraid to lose it.

“There are other methods to accomplish the same thing.” She looked at him questioningly. “It is customary to ask.”

Alaia sighed, “What’s the matter?”

“My student is engaging in fruitless pursuits instead of meditating as she promised she would.” She glared at him. When she thought he wasn’t looking she stuck out her tongue. She saw him raise an eyebrow in profile, but he didn’t comment. Jerk. He adjusted the ventilation controls allowing a jet of air ruffled his usually immovable bangs until he found the right controls. Cute jerk, she amended. She closed her eyes and tried to meditate the rest of the trip.

* * *

It was a few days before she realised that whatever was wrong with him went beyond his occasional frustration with her. Their sessions became progressively shorter until he was spending most of his hours meditating instead of teaching her. When she had brought it up, he had yelled, actually yelled, at her to spend some time practising the techniques that he had already taught her.

In the stunned silence that followed, he had turned on his heel and left. When she had finally gone looking for him, she found that he hadn’t gone very far. He was sitting cross-legged on the deck, meditating. He didn’t come in for lunch. Or dinner.

Determined to find out what was going on, she grabbed a blanket and went out on the deck. He didn’t acknowledge her presence when she sat down beside him. At a loss as to how to proceed she sat there quietly hoping something would come to her. She took the opportunity to look at him: whatever was wrong with him, meditation didn’t seem to be helping. His eyes were closed and for the first time she noticed bags under his eyes. It made him look older, somehow. Usually he looked about the same as a Terran twenty-year-old instead of the forty or so he probably was. He was sitting in the lotus position. He had taught her to meditate with her palms relaxed, face up. His hands were balled into fists and the muscles in his arms were bunched as if he were barely containing himself.

“Please, leave.” At first she wasn’t sure she had heard him say anything until he repeated himself.

“What’s wrong with you?” She asked quietly. This wasn’t the Vulcan she knew, or thought she knew.

“Please.” It was a plea and despite the cool mountain air he was sweating. The perspiration ran down his face, although, in the dusk, she thought some of it might have been tears. Not knowing what else to do she got up to go inside, pausing to drape the blanket over his shoulders. Her hand grazed his shoulder as she positioned the blanket and she was startled to feel a rush of emotions from the contact. He shrugged out of her reach, yanking the blanket away from her. He didn’t the see the post in his arm’s path until his fist glanced off of it.

He was scared, but of what she wasn’t sure. And angry, definitely angry. The other emotions that had passed to her she couldn’t discern. She went back into the cabin, returning with the first aid kit. Stepping out onto the deck, she saw that he had given up on meditation and was sitting with his knees drawn up to his chest, his forehead resting on his knees.

“I’m going to clean up your hand,” she told him, not wanting to take him by surprise. He didn’t move, and he didn’t object. After a moment, she gingerly started to clean up the blood from his bruised and scraped hand. She was surprised when he yanked his hand away.

“What did you use?” He asked shortly, rubbing his raw knuckles against the deck. Fresh blood darkened the spot in the fading light.

“What?”

“The pain is fading, what are you using?” She hadn’t even realised that she was doing it until he said something. She had always been able to do that, absorb the pain, but she didn’t understand how and so she didn’t know how to stop doing it. Instead, she handed him the antiseptic wipes to finish cleaning off his hand himself.

“What is it you’re scared of?” She’d decided to ask again since he seemed to be on speaking terms with her now. There was an interminable silence, and then he asked her the very last question she expected.

“What do you know,” he said hesitatingly, “about Vulcan sexuality?”

At first she thought that she had misheard him, but she soon realised that he wasn’t going to repeat his question.

“Um, nothing accurate,” she said, blushing in the twilight as she thought of all the strange things that she had found on the worldnet, most of them too bizarre to be believed. At the time she had told herself that she was just curious and that it had nothing to do with her Vulcan mentor, or the fact that spending time with him gave her butterflies.

“Humour me,” he insisted, grinding his injured hand into the deck. She cringed as the stain on the deck expanded.

“Why are you doing that?”

“It distracts me,” he said with some difficulty. “Answer my question.”

“Um, well that you only do it every seven years, and, um, that it can drive you insane or kill you, or that you kill each other, and stuff,” she mumbled, embarrassed at having to tell him the Terran rumours.

“Ah.” He didn’t say anything else for so long that she thought he was meditating. “Not so inaccurate.”

“It’s not?”

“They all seem to be references to Pon farr.” He was shivering now that the sun had set, but refused her suggestion to go inside.

“What is that: Pon Farr?”

So he told her, explaining as dispassionately as possible that although Vulcans didn’t have intercourse only every seven years, once they reached maturity males had a biological cycle that required them to engage in it at least every six to eight years: Pon Farr. If they didn’t, the hormonal imbalance eventually killed them, but not before stripping them of their logic, their control, and eventually their minds.

“Oh,” she said, hugging herself tighter on the chilly deck. Oh Spirits, that’s what’s wrong with him. The realisation made her ill. No wonder he was scared.

“That’s what’s wrong with you, isn’t it?”

“I believe so,” he said sounding resigned.

“You don’t know?”

“It is not something that I have experienced before, but I am of the right age,” he admitted, “and it would explain a great deal.”

“Is that why you brought me out here?”

“No,” he said so forcefully that he startled her. He looked wounded at the suggestion. They sat in silence for a long time after that, neither wanting to disturb the fragile peace.

“What are you going to do?”

“I don’t know.”

“Well, you must have thought about it. Can they treat it? Or is there someone on Vulcan? A girlfriend or wife–”

“No, no, no . . . I don’t know,” he said with uncharacteristic anger. “I don’t know,” he repeated frustration colouring his words. The chill in the night made them both shiver and eventually she convinced him to at least go inside.

She left him in the living room and was pouring the hot water for tea when she saw him out of the corner of her eye, standing in the doorway. He was staring at her, his gaze wandering over her body in a way that made clear what was on his mind.

“Vorak?” she said uncertainly. His eyes snapped back to her face and he seemed to change back into the person she knew, except for the green tinge of his cheeks. He turned without saying a word. She heard his bedroom door slam, and then silence.

* * *

It was increasingly difficult to meditate. He could feel his body burning and nothing he tried would quench the fire. He was trying to control his baser instincts but she would not leave! He dreaded a joining such as his sister’s. It had been expedited because her betrothed had begun Pon Farr. She had been uncertain about the match but it hadn’t been logical to condemn her fiance to die because they were ill-suited. The first time that he had seen her afterward she was changed. The spark in her eyes was gone. She was withdrawn. Lifeless.

His mother attributed it to her being with child, but he had not believed it. Not the way that she looked at her mate when she thought no one else could see her. He did not want anyone to look at him that way, ever. Better to be dead than to kill someone else’s spirit.

Alaia. He had not been truthful earlier: he had thought about it. He wanted a match of his own choosing and had thought that he might find one before his time came. He had never considered that it would be anyone other than a Vulcan, least of all a student. He should have left months ago when he had finally acknowledged it to himself but he had found logical reasons to delay, telling himself that he would know before it was too late. He had not wanted this! She could not possibly understand this madness.

* * *

She was sitting across from him in his room, after she had finally convinced him to open his door. He was trying to meditate with little success. She was trying not to stare at the bulge in his lap but it was difficult to ignore. They were discussing solutions to his problem.

“Can’t you, um, take care of it? By hand?” She asked tentatively. She saw his hands tense into fists but otherwise he didn’t move. His eyes slit open and he gave her a withering look that made her want to disappear into the floor.

“Masturbation?” He asked dryly. He shifted, trying to find a comfortable position, something that he decided was unobtainable in his current position and state of arousal. He would have stood up, but Alaia’s eyes seemed drawn to his erection and standing up would leave very little to her imagination. It was beginning to irritate him, actually, that she could not grasp the inevitability of his condition and he was finding it increasingly difficult to hide his annoyance.

“Have you not considered,” he asked, voice dripping with sarcasm, “that at some point, in the history of Vulcan, that approach might have been considered?” He watched her face flush deep red, and she looked away.

“Sorry.” He watched her blink rapidly, rolling her eyes towards the ceiling. From previous experience he knew that she was trying not to cry. After several moments she appeared to have composed herself.

“In any case, I have already determined that approach to be ineffective,” he admitted quietly. It would be too simple. The cycle would serve no biological purpose if it was so easy to circumvent it. No, there were only three known resolutions to the plaktow. Two were out of the question and he was unconvinced that the remaining solution would work. In any case, she hadn’t yet left him alone long enough to try intense meditation. It was his first cycle and he had not recognized the origins of his sleeplessness and slipping control until it was too late. Most likely too late for meditation, definitely too late to return to Vulcan. Not that there was anything there for him in any case. He had resigned himself to meditation. If it failed he did not want her to witness the final stages: derangement preceded death. She refused to leave, sensing that he was lying to her.

* * *

She watched him struggle. At times in the past she had found his control infuriating, now she wished only for him to have it back. He told her leave, but she couldn’t. He had been the only one to help her when no one else would. There was no way that she would walk away. She sat down beside him.

“Stop telling me to leave, because I won’t.”

“You don’t understand–”

“I leave, you die. I get it.”

“Alaia–” She silenced him by slipping her hand into his. It was like touching lava, and then everything was afire.

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