Title: Sleep
Author: Saavant
Contact: saavaant @ yahoo . com
Series: TOS
Rating: [Strong Content]
Codes: Saa/m, S/Saa, Saa/m/m
Part: 1/1
Disclaimer: Paramount owns them. I get no money for this.
Summary: Between "The Search for Spock" and "The Voyage Home," Saavik has nightmares...
Archive: Sure.
Warning: Mentions of rape and canon death.
Note: Inspired by a challenge from Farfalla and Maoric. Some details about the Saavik/David relationship are from the novelization of The Search for Spock.
***
I cannot sleep. My mind is full of David's kiss and his arms and his tender voice in those few nights on the Grissom, discovering a doomed love we did not yet know to be doomed. Despair is made fathoms worse by remembering a time when one had hope.
"We could collaborate on a paper," I teased, when in those lazy hours we tried to define what love meant.
His startled look, then sudden realization of my humor... then laughter, and more kisses.
Later, epiphany in the darkness: "I am not sure how a human would define love-- but I choose to define it as the feeling I have for you."
Tossing from side to side alone in my Starfleet bunk, I long to will away memory.
***
I cannot sleep. My mind is full of the touch of Spock's young body, among the cliffs and trees on Genesis-- blood fever searing my skin from the fingertips inward.
Trembling touches built to violent passion, and the mind that opened to me was that of an animal, knowing nothing but wilderness and the primal needs of the flesh.
Touching his thoughts, I held my own mind back as hard as I could, but he could not help tasting the refined order of it, a lifetime of complex knowledge filed neatly away. And his response was pure confusion, burned soon to unconscious ashes by his flame.
*To forget everything; to be so simple,* my heart yearns as I twist my limbs in the rumpled sheets.
***
I cannot sleep. My mind is full of the leers of Kruge's henchmen, their eyes on my body until their leader beamed up to battle the Enterprise. Wanting, with the crude urge that was the only kind of attraction they knew.
As soon as Kruge was gone, they were upon me, holding my hands behind my back, pulling me into the bushes.
Harsh, demanding voices.
"You're our prisoner now, so you must do as we say."
"If you open your legs for us we might let you live."
I glanced through the foliage at David and Spock. "I will not, for my own life," I hissed back, "but to save them I will."
"Saucy bitch! You'll probably be killed first. And I won't guarantee both your boyfriends will live. But for a turn with us, we'll put a slight priority on the life of one of them. Which one?"
The memory of David's kiss burned my lips. I needed to turn my eyes away as I spoke the answer I had to give. "Spock." The man who saved me when I was a child; the man Captain Kirk would give his life for; the man capable of saving the galaxy if he had to. David and I were expendable next to him, if he could ever regain the soul he had once had. And on Vulcan, that paradoxically mystical and scientific world, one might imagine such a thing being possible.
And then I was pinioned between two sweaty bodies, as they violated me as many ways as they could think of, in the few minutes available. I thought of David, of Spock, of anything to distract me from the rough assault of flesh and emotion, but when they dragged me back out of the bushes I was shaking with exhaustion and nausea.
My stomach revolts even now, and manages not to empty itself only because it is already empty.
***
I cannot sleep. My mind is full of three-bladed knives and endlessly replaying repetitions of the gurgling grunt he gave when he was stabbed. My mind is full of "David is dead" and withdrawal into the shell of Vulcan control, the only thing I thought could protect me, the thing that has now crumbled from the violent emotions trapped inside it.
I cannot sleep and I cannot serve on a starship ever again, unless I hide myself away and build back the parts of me that have broken.
I must stay on Vulcan. If I can find shelter in the home of Spock's family... if I can rest and meditate and seek the help of healers... if, even a little, I can push down the memories that fill my mind... then perhaps I can learn to sleep again.
END