Fic: Observations, Ch 255
I would live for the captain.
I will live for the captain, and I will live for myself.
I once said that whatever price I had to pay to live and be with Jim, I would pay it without hesitation and without regret. I believe that all lovers feel this way at some point. Love gives a reckless courage, a sense of invincibility and the conviction that no matter what one experiences, love will conquer all.
I have paid a price. What this payment was extracted for, I do not know. There was no reason or logic behind my rape-there is never any reason or logic behind the violation of an individual. It robs you of your sense of self, destroys your willingness to trust others. It takes away any faith you might have that the universe is good. The abstract notion that people are desecrated every day is suddenly a reality. It is concrete. And it makes you ask, what universe is this that we live in? How do people continue on, after facing such darkness?
I do not have an answer to that question. The simple fact is that I am alive, and I have survived. When you are faced with all consuming despair, what brings you back from the brink?
It is not love.
When you are alone, you cannot remember love. It is overpowered by the indifference that stares at you, swallowed by the abyss that surrounds you. When there is no escape love, life, and laughter are impossible to recall. There is only your self, and the shreds of your identity lying broken at your feet. In that kind of isolation, men go mad.
The simple fact is that I am alive, and I have survived. I counted the minutes, like bullets in my hand, and continued to breathe.
I still have not told Jim of everything that I went through. I do not believe I will ever tell him. I know that he will not reject me because of the abuse that I suffered. If anything, his patience and quiet strength have been supporting me through this, as I rebuild my world. I know that my silence hurts him, but I believe my full disclosure would be more harmful. He already blames himself for so much, when much of this was out of his control. The fact that he found me is miraculous in and of itself. I shudder to think of the possibility if he had been too late-James T. Kirk has remarkable emotional resiliency, but everyone has a breaking point.
I once said that I would undergo anything if it meant I could be with Jim. There is no point in obsessing over what is past, or asking oneself if one would go through the experience again. I would not wish this on anyone else, and the knowledge that it occurs every hour makes me shake. The thought that it could happen to Jim fills me with contradictory feelings-grief, rage, despair, anger. What is this universe that we live in, that intelligent beings can perpetrate such crimes against each other? I never believed that evil existed. I thought darkness was simply the absence of light. Now I find that it is not so.
I will not dwell on the moments I was imprisoned. What is done is done. To continually revisit the past would drive me mad. I am alive, I have survived. What is important now is going forward.
The question is then, having survived the darkness, how do you find the light again? When you have been broken but are still alive, why do you continue to fight? Why do you rejoin the endless, toiling, rending battle that is life?
Part of it is love. Part of it is the knowledge that you have friends and family who support you. They share in your pain and they will carry you through the struggle when you do not have the strength or will to fight. They remind you quietly, with small words and gestures, that there is kindness. There is compassion and goodness, sympathy in the midst of indifference, hatred, evil. They provide a clean place. They give you clothes to cover your shame, they give you food to feed your soul, they give you love to sustain you. The gifts they give you are like drops of water-insignificant and weak compared to the brute force of cruelty. But over time, even water wears away rock. Over time, the taint of rape is washed away.
But love does not heal all. There is only so much that friends and family can do. At some point, you must rediscover how to stand on your own two feet. You must recreate the courage to keep walking. There is no one who can do that for you, though they might long to help. This is the true breaking point that all face-the choice to rebuild, or to shrink from reality.
It is hard to face the pieces of yourself. When the core that seemed to keep everything together is suddenly extinguished, it is difficult to rekindle that fire. I wanted to forget, but that is impossible. I wanted to lose myself in sleep, stay in the oblivion of slumber. There were days when I could do nothing but stay in my quarters and watch my hands shake. I was alternately enraged that I could not recover faster and suddenly depressed by my lack of progress. My emotions were utterly uncontrollable, and that discouraged me further. I longed to be normal, I longed to go back to some indeterminate time before when my sense of self was not shattered.
I considered Kolinahr as a solution to all my problems. To purge myself of all emotion was appealing. I longed for the stability of pure rationality, I wanted a guarantee that I would never feel any of this again. The idea had an almost hypnotic hold over me, and several times I sat down to write my letter of resignation. Several times I wrote it completely, and each time I deleted it.
A memory kept me from sending that letter to Jim and going to Vulcan II.
It is not what Terrans would call a happy memory. But it is the memory from which I draw my strength.
Vulcan, the advanced educational facility in which I was enrolled.
I had completed the evaluation sequence in the learning pod. The majority of students had left the room.
“Spock.” Familiar voices, familiar spite.
Anger and defiance rose up, but I quickly suppressed those feelings. “I presume you have prepared new insults for today.”
“Affirmative.”
I turned around, walked forward, and faced them. There were three.
“This is your thirty-fifth attempt to elicit an emotional response from me.” Thirty-five pathetic attempts by mediocre minds, petty children who sought to elevate their status by trampling on others.
“You are neither human nor Vulcan and therefore have no place in this universe.”
“Look, his human eyes. They look sad. Don’t they.”
“Perhaps an emotional response requires physical stimuli.” Sy’thlon pushed me backwards with considerable force. “He’s a traitor you know, your father. For marrying her, that human whore.”
I have always believed that my control snapped at that point. Now, I wonder if that is an accurate assessment of the events.
Sy’thlon was taller and physically stronger than I was. Accounting for this, I pushed him into a learning chamber and put him off balance. I gained an advantage as my movements were controlled, while he was still scrambling to readjust to the change in setting. He hit me, but after that one hit, I decisively gained the upper hand and proceeded to beat him methodically, even as I screamed and cried.
Following the incident, my father told me many things. My mind raced with questions. I could only see his frown and took it to mean disapproval. Looking back, I wonder if it was not disapproval he felt, but a certain anguish, for he concluded our discussion with what I thought at the time was a strange choice of words. Now, I believe them to be appropriate.
“You are fully capable of deciding your own destiny. The question you face is, which path will you choose? This is something only you can decide.”
For many years in my early life, my path was chosen for me. I desired the acceptance of my peers and the acceptance of my father above all things, I molded myself strictly to the standards set forth by Vulcan. I conformed, but only to a point. I never groveled. I never begged for acceptance, but sought to prove myself. I desired to be recognized on my own merits, not because I debased myself before others. I was told from all sides that I was inferior in some aspect. As a child, I partially believed them and strove to rid myself of that defect. But even as a child, there was inside me a conviction that I was the equal of any Vulcan. Some part of me, both Vulcan and Terran, embraced my individuality and fiercely hoped, secretly burned to find a place where I would be free and accepted.
When that opportunity presented itself, I chose that path and followed it. Even when my father rejected me for it, even when I endured isolation and estrangement from all I held dear, I remained true to myself and my convictions. I did not find the acceptance I searched for at Starfleet, but I did find respect. There was genuine admiration among students and professors for my scientific and mathematical acumen. Though some derided it because I am Vulcan, this was the exception, rather than the rule. I did not know it then, but the respect I found was the beginning of a long journey: a journey that still continues, a journey I have shared with remarkable beings, a journey I could never have predicted.
I draw strength from that memory because it reminds me who I am, how far I have come since the years of my isolation, and how far there is yet to go. I draw strength from that memory because it shows that I am a fighter. When those around me reject me for who I am, when they attempt to suppress me and dominate me by whatever means, I fight back. I have never submitted to the will of another, I have never betrayed myself. When a challenger, or several challengers, present themselves I do not turn my back on them and cower. I stand and fight with everything I have. I have never chosen the easier alternative and I will not do so now. The only way I can betray myself is to give up.
I will not betray myself. I will not abandon those who love me, I will not grieve those who care for me by running away into the rituals of Kolinahr. I have worked too long, I have striven too hard, to give up on life. They violated my body, carelessly broke me, but I will not let the legacy of their actions consume me. I found the axioms on which I created my own mathematics. I found my thread of truth and defined myself according to that pure standard. I will not let them take that away from me. I did not shrink from Sy’thlon and his taunts then, and I will not begin now.
This road I have chosen will be difficult. I have not fully recovered from all the damages inflicted. There will be days when I will want to turn back-those are the days that Jim, Nyota, Leonard, Pavel, Sulu, Scotty, Christine, will carry me through. Whatever distance I cannot bridge, I know they will help me. That is the confidence that love provides. There will be other days when it seems I am fully healed. Those will be days I can savor, times I can be thankful for. They are promises of the future, of a day when the shadow of rape no longer hangs over me and I stand once again in the light.
Jim swore to me that someday, I will have so many good memories that the memory of this violation will be buried in my mind. I cannot see the day when this will be true, but I will hold him to his promise. I wish I could give back to him more than I can. He is dealing with his own emotions, and his struggles are different from mine. He offers me as much support as he can, but I cannot do the same in return. All of my energy is devoted to pulling myself back together, there is nothing else I can spare.
But I can give him a promise of my own. A promise I made rashly once before. Now that I understand the cost, now that I have paid it and am still paying for it, this vow takes on a new meaning.
I will live for myself, and I will live for Jim.
This shadow will pass. I will breathe freely once more. There will be a day when I live, love, and laugh with Jim. What should have broken me, what should have broken us, will serve to strengthen us, though the experience tastes as bitter gall now. I have fought too long, too hard to give up on my friends and this family we have forged. This love resonates deep within my katra, and I have searched too long to let it slip away into a grey twilight.
For this is life. A fight, a fire, a sorrow, a struggle.
And this is love.