Shame
by Claire

Afterwards you stare at your reflection and want to smash it, though you know that won't hurt you. You want to hurt yourself, though, want to punish yourself for this.

You hate yourself for it, though logically -- logic, you hate logic right now, you wish the concept didn't exist -- you know that you have no control over this, that it's a normal biological function, a primal need that you cannot control. That no one can control.

It's nothing to be ashamed of.

But you know that they are ashamed of it, all of them, and beneath the calm, cool exterior of every single Vulcan is the seething anger, the fury and the humiliation that despite their logic they can't change this inevitable fact of life.

You were begging for it, rubbing up against anyone you could find like an animal.

Oh, it's nothing to be ashamed of, it's nature, you have no control over it.

But there's a reason no one ever discusses it with outsiders or even with their own family, and that is the shame, the self-revulsion that hits when the longing and the craving wears off and the thirst has been quenched, when logic gives way to desire and you are raw and exposed and all the efforts you've made at distancing yourself from everyone crumble in an instant.

And you sit quietly in your quarters and clench your fists and wonder how long it will take them to forget.

 

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