Rating: G
Summary: She has only heartbeats left. Amanda GraysonÕs final thoughts.
Series: ATOS
Notes:
Disclaimer: I own nothing but my imagination.
Special thanks to HopefulRomantic for beta services. Also, I am startraveller776 at ff.net. There is no plagiarism happening here. :)
Warning: Major character death
Amanda has always found it strange how the mind perceives time. Lovers, after an intimate moment, will feel as if time were a starship traveling at high warp, swiftly propelling them to an inevitable, unwanted parting. They will blame time for accelerating when they had wanted it slowed.
On the other hand, a child waiting for a special event will feel as if time has come to a standstill, like a boat in stagnant waters, its sail drooping against the mast. Each second seems stretched into an hour. He will complain that time has become his enemy when it should have been a friend, speeding up instead of inching along at an agonizing rate.
Time, of course, is time. It is as measured as it always has been, never hurrying or slowing at whim. Time itself is not the problem, but the mindÕs perception of it.
Amanda understands this, having lived among Vulcans and their logic for most of her adult life. Yet, as she regards her grown son through the white light of the transporter beam, her human mind chooses to perceive mere seconds as something akin to eternity. She hears the earth groaning, feels the ground shuddering beneath her feet, and she knows she will not survive. Spock cannot save her.
Spock.
She sees the worry, the anxiety written in his eyes. All that she would say to him in a final farewell cannot be expressed in the seconds left to them. He is still a child in many ways, she realizes as she studies him for the last time. He is still unable to find balance between his Vulcan and human halves. Will he ever come to understand that he is more because of his mixed heritage—more than Vulcan, more than human, better than both?
The rock crumbles beneath her and she cries out—not out of fear, but out of sadness for the loss of years yet to come. Her fall should be swift, but her mind again decelerates the moment—as if her subconscious wants to deny that she will not be rescued. She sees SpockÕs hand reach for her and hears him yell, but it is too late.
No! SarekÕs anguish slices through her as she tumbles into the swirling abyss below. Tears spill from her eyes at her bondmateÕs grief, more deep and overwhelming than any human could experience.
This is not how she wants him to remember her—this final moment in which she is taken from him so senselessly. Through their link, she shares with him the memories of their time together, memories that play in her mind like an old, beloved holo-vid. Every moment is on display, from their nearly disastrous first meeting to the slow build of their friendship, and then the sudden realization of an unexpected love between them. She thinks of their years together on Vulcan—the humor in their learning to meld two very different cultures, the pain of babies lost before the miracle of Spock, the ease of their relationship as they both quietly came to accept each other as they were.
Broken shards of earth batter her, and she knows that soon she will be gone. I love you, she tells her husband through their shared mental link as he transports to safety. I will always be with you, kÕdiwa.
She loses consciousness then, and succumbs to the darkness of eternal night.
~FIN~