Work Text:
He visits her late, knowing she’ll still be awake and consuming coffee.
“Tuvok,” she says, and he catalogues the dull twist of her expression, the telltale guilt.
He regrets causing it, however unintentionally. He regrets even more that he can no longer look at her without unusual effort to control a surge of emotion.
“You’d like to understand,” she intuits, pouring his tea with an almost imperceptible tremor, “why I ended Tuvix’s life in favour of restoring…”
“Mine,” he finishes, and sips his tea to mask that bone-deep, gut-wrenching anger.
How dare she? What right had she to delete a living, breathing, composite being – the embodiment of his race’s most fundamental philosophy; infinite diversity in infinite, sacred, unexpected combinations – so that two others could live?
“The needs of the many,” she says, softly, and meets his eyes. “You are needed, Tuvok, by all of us.”
He will never be the same. Part of him will forever be missing.
How will he endure?
His tea has gone cold.
He dreams of T’Pel, and Trellan crêpes, and the emptiness of solitude.
In the morning, he will lay an orchid on the captain’s desk: an offering of forgiveness.
But he will never forget.