Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

The thick cloud cover of the planet below remained impenetrable to the ship’s scans, and the captain began to show signs of frustration.

Spock paid close attention to the man from his peripherals, although the bulk of his attention was being taken up by the details of his work. It wasn’t difficult to multi-task like this; minding his station while also observing his captain came quite naturally to him these days. Captain Kirk was his priority in all aspects, and there was rarely a moment that he wasn’t—in even some small way—keeping a careful vigil. Now, he could read the subtle lines of tension in the captain’s face, his increasingly rigid posture, and know that the situation was, to borrow a human metaphor, getting to him.

“And you’re certain there’s no way to pull back the curtains?”

It was only due to years of exposure to humans, and this human particularly, that he did not comment on the figure of speech as he would have once done. It was a trait he’d had to train himself out of, as he discovered that humans considered his mild corrections to be a form of verbal attack and went on the immediate defensive. He’d ascertained this years ago during his education at the academy, and it was because of that knowledge—that knowledge being humanity’s readily provoked irritation—that he still continued to verbally dissect most—if not all—of what the ship’s Chief Medical Officer said within his hearing range. However, he’d also learned when and where to feign ignorance in common Terran metaphors and when not to.

Idiom wordplay aside, the captain was quite correct to be concerned.

“None that I have discovered yet, Captain,” Spock said in response, his attention split between his approaching commanding officer and his station’s data readouts. The latter unfortunately continued to prove his statement; the sensors were still reading the unknown energy barrier surrounding Seskilles VII—and only that energy barrier. “It is most curious. Our sensors cannot penetrate through the atmosphere, but that appears to be the extent of the interference. All other systems are functioning as normal, including both transporter and communication capability. We are ostensibly able to touch, hear, and speak… but we cannot see.”

The captain ran a hand over his jaw, letting out a low, tired sigh that breathed heat against Spock’s neck. Kirk peered over his left shoulder to examine the data for himself, as if another result might inexplicably manifest if only he stared hard enough. When none appeared, The captain’s expression grew only stonier. From the short space between them, Spock felt the radiating sense unease and dissatisfaction brush against his own mental controls. It was not accurate to say he felt it himself—nervousness was an emotional reaction, after all, and therefore one he was insusceptible to—but he understood it.

“I’m not exactly enamored with the idea of beaming down blind, Mr. Spock.” The captain’s voice was neutral enough to maintain strict professionalism, but there was a sharp edge to his tone. Once, Spock would have had difficulty in deciphering the emotive vocal subtleties present in human speech, but with this particular human, he recognized the nuances loud and clear.

“Indeed, sir. Nor am I.” He met the captain’s gaze in a shared look of mutual understanding. Their own personal suspicions and comforts were irrelevant. They had their clear orders, and the Federation council would not accept anything short of success.

“Keep trying. I want to know what we’re getting into.”

“Yes, sir.”

The mission was, for all intents and purposes, a straightforward one. A new trade corridor was being established through unclaimed space, and of the dozens of planetary bodies to fall within the proposed route, only four were confirmed to be populated by sentient life. The Enterprise’s objective was to establish positive, diplomatic cooperation between the Federation and those sentient lifeforms so that trade could proceed unhindered by potential territorial hostilities. The first three planets had been a success; the fourth was proving difficult. The Seskille, the native inhabitants of the planet known as Seskilles VII, had not responded to the ship, and all attempts at communication had so far failed.

Information had surfaced of the planet being potentially rich in pergium, untouched by the population, and even the mere rumor of it had elevated the planet’s status to high priority. The mission objective was to open diplomatic communication, but Starfleet—and so consequently the Enterprise—had the secondary goal of opening negotiation channels for exclusive mining rights.

This was not the Enterprise’s first diplomatic mission, nor even the twentieth. It should not have been a difficult one. The captain had, only the day prior, deemed the entire mission a milk run. He’d been lamenting over a game of chess that the ship’s potential was being wasted on acquiring some rocks; that he wished to be exploring the mysterious and strange, not convincing planets to sign documents.

The unusual streak of success they’d been having had come to an end when, upon entering orbit, the circumstances shifted rapidly from simple to suboptimal. The unknowns of space, in all its great vastness, had complicated the objectively clear mission considerably. There existed no logical or statistical evidence to the saying you get what you wish for, but Spock privately thought the captain embodied the intended meaning of the phrase. He’d indeed gotten everything he wished for, if not in the way he’d wanted.

Seskilles VII was shrouded in an invisible, impenetrable energy barrier of unknown properties, preventing all sensor readings—environmental, scientific, or otherwise—from breaching through to the surface below. All attempts to, as the captain said, pull back the curtains had been thus-far ineffective. Their orders were to beam down to negotiate for mining rights in person, and those orders would not allow the luxury of personal objections.

“Captain Kirk, I’m picking up an unusual frequency. I don’t recognize—hold on. Connection established, sir! Communication with the Seskille is confirmed.” Lieutenant Uhura turned in her chair and she was smiling for the first time in hours. The science department had not been the only one feeling the urgency of the situation; Communications had been working just as furiously to break through the shield.

There was a low huff from the captain as he drifted from Spock’s side and back towards his post—a distinctly relieved one. Spock would not have labeled his own reaction as relief, exactly, but it also felt dangerously close to the feeling. He could sense the emotion in the periphery of his own mental control, his shields firm in preventing bleed-through. He preferred to reframe his response as a logical sense of satisfaction at the completion of a difficult task. It satisfied his desire for composure.

The bridge crew, however, quite obviously did feel relief. It spread through them like a tangible wave of relaxed shoulders and audible sighs. Ensign Chekov gave a soft cheer, and the captain looked as if he were resisting the temptation to do the same. It was their first small success in nearly five-point-one-seven-four hours. Opening a channel between the Enterprise and the surface had been an ongoing struggle, and the odds had been steadily growing that not only would they be beaming down blind, but mute and deaf as well.

“Lieutenant, you’re a miracle-worker! Do we have visual?”

“No, sir, audio only. Apologies, sir, but there’s a large amount of interference. It’s coming from their end; I’m unable to clear it.”

Kirk rewarded her a with warm smile, leaning back into his seat with one leg crossed atop the other in a kind of lounge. It was an intentional posture, one that Spock had come to learn was the captain’s way of displaying confidence. It worked as intended, and the effect rippled outwards. The the crew relaxed at their own stations. Subtly, in a way most would not notice, the tense edge softened and eased from their expressions. It had no such effect on himself, of course, but he was well aware that a positive mindset would improve crew efficiency and performance.

“That’s alright, Lieutenant, you’ve done well. Patch me through. Let’s see if we can’t clear all this up.”

“Channel open, sir.”

The instant the connection secured, an earsplitting sound shrilled from the audio feed, crackling and popping like great amounts of static. Shrieking whines, both low and high pitched, screeched through the speakers and caused most of the crew frown and himself to withhold a wince. The frequency was deafening; pitched in such a way that human ears were not capable of truly perceiving the full effect, but that his own unfortunately picked up quite well. It was unpleasant and grating, and he struggled to block it out as best he could. He thought it was similar to the concept of a dog whistle; emitting sound in the ultrasonic range—although the comparison wasn’t a favorable one.

“Greetings, this is Captain James T. Kirk, of the USS Enterprise, representing the United Federation of Planets,” the captain spoke aloud, voice professionally courteous. “With whom am I speaking?”

The whining grew louder, popping and crackling, but there was no response. Time passed—approximately one-point-nine-seven minutes—before the captain hailed again. Silence. The newly formed sense of relief from the crew began to sour. The captain turned towards communications for an explanation.

“There’s no malfunction on our end, sir. According to my systems, they should be receiving us just fine.” Lieutenant Uhura continued to attempt to clear the line, but the whining only got louder. Spock managed to maintain composure despite the sound, but only just. The urge to cover his ears became almost overwhelming.

Another three-point-two-eight minutes passed with no response and no cessation of the screeching noise, and it was clear that the bridge had passed the point of impatience. But then, finally—

“Greetings Captain James T. Kirk of the USS Enterprise, it is our happiness.”

Most curious. Spock briefly diverted his attention from his own station to analyze the audio. The voice did not sound physical in either pitch or vocal tone, despite speaking perfect standard. There were no apparent gender markers present, no identifying male or female tonality; it sounded entirely androgynous in nature. The voice was forming words with sound, but not that typical of any organic origin he could identify. Sharp resonances and inharmonious frequencies, quavering in an unusual manner, much like the sound the machine known as a Tesla Coil created. A voice made of pitch and sound, but perhaps not natural vocals. If it were not for the audible emotional inflections, of which there were many, he would suggest it was a machine communicating. He did not rule the possibility out, for without visual, it was impossible to ascertain facts beyond all doubt. Stranger occurrences had happened.

Fascinating.

“The pleasure is ours,” the captain was quick to reply, far more cordial now that the greeting had been received and returned satisfactorily. Still, he remained cautious all the same; the captain only ever let his guard down so much. Their information on the planet was unfortunately limited, compiled solely from previous brief encounters of passing vessels, but the Seskille were said to be kind in nature. “Am I speaking with your people’s leadership?”

For a moment, there was no sound but the whines and shrills that Lieutenant Uhura seemed increasingly irritated about. She was frowning at her console, fingers moving over the controls to attempt to once again clear the channel interference. Spock alleged, and he suspected the Lieutenant did as well, that such efforts would be ineffective. Whatever the cause of the sound, it was not in their power to correct. That was unfortunate, for it was beginning to give him a headache.

It took another five-point-two-eight minutes for a response to be returned, and he formulated this to be the beginning of a likely pattern. The former delay had been exactly that duration as well.

“There are no leaders. All are equal. None better than another.”

Spock arched a brow at that, intrigued. A planet without a governing body was not unheard of, but it was also exceedingly rare. Societies of any kind often had, at the very least, a council of some kind, or even wise elders to guide the younger generations through the ages. Teachers that held some measure of power or influence. He could tell his own interest was shared with the captain; their eyes briefly locked in an exchanged a glance and his own raised intrigued was mirrored by the other.

“I see.” To his credit, the captain recovered from the correction swiftly. “We were hoping to send a team to your planet’s surface, so as to establish a more direct line of communication with you in person. There is a great deal we’d like to talk about; to share our cultures and learn about one another. The Federation is interested in establishing a friendship between us.”

The audio distortions continued, but the voice was silent once more. Long enough for Lieutenant Uhura’s patience to wear thin, and for a line of exasperation to furrow between the brows of the captain. Another five-point-two-eight minutes exactly, and then it came back louder than before, with the whines becoming increasingly uncomfortable to his own hearing. Whereas before the voice had sounded serene, it now sounded considerably more excited. The cadence it used to speak with were faster.

“We would like this greatly. To show you what we have made and to learn of what you have made. To share ourselves with yourselves, and the opposite. This is most welcome to us, Captain James T. Kirk of the USS Enterprise.”

The voice sounded both sincere and pleased, and Spock could not recall ever hearing quite so heartfelt a welcome from any species they’d made contact with. It went beyond, he thought, of what his human crewmembers normally expressed, and the pure emotionalism in the Seskille’s response made him uncomfortable. In his experience to date, the sentient beings they usually spoke with during first contact were cautious, almost probing. Of course, and with increasing regularity, those same sentient beings also had the unfortunate predilection of being alarmingly hostile. While Spock was aware the statistical ratio of peaceful missions to that of violently interrupted ones favored peace, he could not deny there was a negative pattern emerging.

In this instance, he could detect no trace of hostility or ill-will in the Seskille’s voice. Quite the opposite; the weight of the positive intentions were almost overwhelming in their genuineness. It gave him cause to run the mental calculations for the likelihood that this mission would involve a plot to destroy the Enterprise or her crew. The odds were… higher than he would have liked. It made him cautious, but he appeared to be the only one; the rest of the bridge crew were in good spirits.

Initial and current sensor interference aside, Spock could not deny this was an optimistic beginning to what they hoped would be a future alliance. With communication to the surface established, a large obstacle had been broken down. The problem of the sensors remained, however, and it was not likely to be resolved on the Enterprise’s end. He had exhausted all possible solutions. The energy barrier appeared to be foreign in nature, unknown in both origin and design, and it only registered on his sensors for the very glaring lack of any sensor data at all. It was not an issue of capability; scans of the nearby asteroid belt had been taken with expected results, as had the scans of the barren Seskilles VI and Seskilles VIII. It remained an issue only with Seskille VII, which continued to register as entirely sensor-dead. Were they not visually able to see the fog-shrouded world they orbited around on the viewing screen, and detecting the gravitational effect on surrounding space matter, the sensors would suggest there was no planet there at all.

“Sir, Ambassador Hammett is on his way to the bridge,” Lieutenant Uhura warned briefly, glancing over towards the doors.

No one could miss the way the muscle in Kirk’s jaw jumped as he clenched his teeth. His expression, despite that, became forcefully pleasant. The stiff smile did nothing to mask the sharp look in his eyes. He gave a brief nod towards the lieutenant and returned his attention to the Seskille.

“Thank you, we’re all very glad to hear that. I’m hopeful we can reach a mutual, friendly relationship. We’ll contact you shortly to discuss our mission further. Enterprise out.” The audio channel closed just as the turbolift doors opened to reveal a beaming Ambassador Roger Hammett, who began to move swiftly towards the captain.

Spock moved as well—faster, in four quick strides—and he reached the captain’s chair first. The captain’s expression of forced pleasantry was a sharp contrast to his own. With his arms comfortably at his back in perfect parade rest and standing firmly at the side of his captain, he leveled the Ambassador an even look. This was, as Captain Pike had once told him, known as a unified front.

The ambassador was, from Spock’s own evaluations and personal opinion, relatively harmless in nature. He had not observed any direct threat from the man. In his estimation, there appeared to be a lack of any physically violent instinct in him. Unfortunately, although he was not physically aggressive, that did not mean he was inoffensive. Doctor McCoy had loudly groused—quite unprofessionally—in the mess hall that the man was a Grade-A Idiot. An unusual kind of phrasing, but one that Spock privately believed was not... entirely inaccurate. Roger Hammett’s skills in diplomacy were yet to be put to any official use during the mission, but his attempts at using his other claimed, supposed skills had been of great disruption to the normally smooth operations of the Enterprise.

Already, Doctor McCoy had banned the man from Medical, and Spock himself had been forced to have a stern conversation with the diplomat about interfering with the science labs. The ambassador did not appear to be intentionally harmful, but his self-boasted attempts to improve the work there had caused several setbacks. The science department had taken it personally; they prided themselves on operating at peak efficiency and any interference with that was viewed as direct sabotage. More than one crewmember had come complaining to Spock of Hammett putting his hands on experimental equipment and causing contamination.

Engineering had been having issues of a similar nature, and it was they who delivered the only warning Hammett seemed to actually heed. There had been a fairly alarming altercation between the ambassador and the engineering department over cracked equipment, the details of which Spock was still attempting to investigate. Lieutenant Commander Scott had been the most volatile over the damage, furious to the point of requiring the captain’s direct intervention to prevent actions that would necessitate a court martial.

The captain was, even now, side-eyeing the chief engineer. Spock took the initiative to angle himself in such a way as to shift imperceptibly closer to Engineering. If there was going to be a fight, he’d be in a better position to stop it. Mr. Scott’s face was already turning an alarming shade of red as he turned in his seat to glower at the ambassador from across the bridge.

Spock had frequently heard the human phrase if looks could kill. He rather suspected he was seeing the meaning of the phrase in action.

“Ahh, Ambassador Hammett. You’re a moment too late, I’m afraid. I’ve just ended initial communication with the Seskille.” Kirk’s smile was made entirely of insincere charm, and it seemed that only Roger Hammett was unaware of the disingenuous nature of it. The rest of the bridge turned back to their own consoles as if nothing were wrong, although Spock knew their attention was focused solely on the conversation at hand. Mr. Sulu began to murmur softly to Mr. Chekov. From the wording, Spock thought it sounded suspiciously like betting. The only one not even pretending to do their work was Mr. Scott, and his steely expression followed the ambassador to the captain’s chair.

“Did you really?” Hammett’s smile widened, showing a great many gleaming teeth. He clapped a hand on the captain’s shoulder—Spock tensed, prepared to physically intervene should it become a matter of the captain’s safety. “Wonderful news—just wonderful! And did they seem amiable to further conversations? When are we to beam down?”

“Yes, about that. There seems to be an audio delay of some kind on their end. It takes forever to get a response, but the Seskille seemed open to a landing party; they sounded eager to speak with us, at least. I’ll have the transmission patched through to your quarters for your convenience. As for an away team, well… there are complications. Mr. Spock, would you do the honors?”

Spock straightened as Ambassador Hammett turned to him. The man had not been outright rude to him, exactly—he’d kept a friendly enough tone and an open posture—but he exhibited a certain degree of insensitivity regarding Vulcan culture, and also to the singular Vulcan aboard the Enterprise. Spock had observed him to be astonishingly condescending in both his remarks and attitude.

Curious, especially for a diplomat. Hammett seemed to take delight in making arguments against a logic-based mindset, while at the same time also attempting to imitate one. Spock suspected at first that it came from a place of prejudice, but now he wondered if might be a form of joking. If it were, it was of a poor quality and in bad taste. While Spock remained unaffected by the slights and mockery, he had seen the captain grow increasingly agitated by it—as had, surprisingly, Doctor McCoy.

Offense was a human emotion, and one that he controlled and purged as thoroughly as any other reaction. Hammett’s opinion of him was unimportant. All that mattered was his ability to complete the mission, preferably with as minimal a disruption to the ship and crew as possible. Although the captain had taken his attitude towards Spock personally, the diplomat had not singled Spock out in this alone; his insensitivity towards the rest of the department heads had been equally displayed. It was not, Spock thought, done with ill intentions towards them, but from a desperation to prove himself. In Spock’s own case, it was likely unintentional xenophobia at play. It was not the first time he’d experienced it, and he knew what to look for.

Why this was, he was uncertain and—more than that—uninterested.

Explaining his observations to Jim and Doctor McCoy had not improved their opinion of Hammett, not that he’d tried overly hard to do so. “Prejudice! In this goddamn day and age!” McCoy had exclaimed, and Spock had raised an incredulous eyebrow at the sheer hypocrisy of his exclamation. When it was logically pointed it out, Spock had been summarily insulted in a most prejudicial manner.

Spock stood at-the-ready now, hands stiffly behind his back. His chin tilted up in a manner that he knew most humans found intimidating.

“Our system scans have been ineffective at penetrating the atmosphere of Seskilles VII. A barrier of unknown energy has blocked all attempts at surface and environmental study. Origin unknown, type unknown, composition unknown. Without further information, beaming to a planet with indeterminable conditions would be hazardous at best. While communication has been established with the natives of the planet, according to all our sensor readings there is no planet.”

Hammett stroked his jaw idly, lips pursed in concentration.

“But it is possible to beam a landing party down?”

“Inconclusive. Engineering has not found any direct conflict with the ability to transport to the surface, but it would be a gross violation of all established safety code.”

Kirk leaned back in his chair and Spock noticed his eyes were hard, narrowed in the manner he’d often seen directed towards large amounts of paperwork. That specific expression was reserved for only that which ranked low in his personal estimation, and it was now fixed on the ambassador. Spock glanced at his captain to gather data on his emotional state and, upon reading it, shifted his physical positioning closer to better provide support.

“Until we get more information, I’ll not risk my men going down blind,” the captain said sternly, and even Hammett seemed to quail back from the tone in the captain’s voice. However, the ambassador gathered himself together remarkably quickly and blustered onward.

“We have recorded visuals of the planet from five years ago, correct? I read through the briefing; those ships thought it was like Earth’s desert. I know they didn’t scan the environment—maybe they couldn’t either, who knows—but there was nothing to suggest it was dangerous.”

This was unfortunately correct—if an overly simplified version. The trade vessel 'Boa’ had been one of many to pass by the planet but had been one of the first to establish communication and detailed visual. Reports suggested it to be a Class M planet; potentially a desert world, rocky and hot. Without current sensor data, it was impossible to estimate the climate or further detail about the composition of the surface. The communication to the Seskille then had been brief, the Boa merely seeking tradable goods. The Seskille had seemed uninterested in trade when asked. They had, however, engaged in a short conversation with the Boa’s crew, and the mention of rocks came up. One in particular fit the description of pergium.

It was of no great interest to a trade vessel, especially one without mining capability or crew experienced in mining operations. It was of great interest to the Federation. Starfleet’s General Order 1, the Non-Interference Directive, had already been broken by the Boa and other passing ships. That appeared to be all the excuse needed to justify further contact.

A milk run, Jim had called it. He was, as the human expression went, eating his words now.

Mr. Scott’s muttering—which Spock would define more as a low snarl if he were to indulge in the emotional labeling—was audible enough to be heard by all. The attitude he’d shown towards Hammett since the ambassador’s incident in engineering had been nothing short of disrespectful and, on more than one occasion, outright hostile.

“Not dangerous… aye, neither is a hole in the ground before a snake takes a bite outta you, ye brainless-”

“Unfortunately, the Boa’s scans are invalid.” The captain raised his voice louder to try to drown out the commander’s trailing insults. “As you can see; the planet is visually different from our briefing.” He gestured towards the large view screen, as if the ambassador could have possibly missed it. No longer a sand-colored planet with a sparse cloud covering, it was shrouded entirely by a thick white atmosphere. Whether the speculated desert-like environment remained beneath it, it was impossible to determine. Nothing was visible through the cloud coverage.

“Captain, need I remind you the importance of this mission?” Ambassador Hammett smiled widely, cheeks flushed a steadily rising red. He’d clearly heard Mr. Scott’s comments, as they hadn’t been drowned out nearly well enough and were still quite audible. Spock resigned himself on pulling the chief engineer aside later to remind him that his voice had a tendency to carry. “I hardly need to tell you how to do your job; we both have our orders, and unfortunately, mine are... well…” He cleared his throat in a feign at delicacy. There was no need to say that his orders took priority; they were all unfortunately aware of it. “I understand your concerns, I really do, but we can’t delay the mission for them.”

It was exactly what they’d both predicted would happen, but that did not make it easier to hear. Spock glanced at the captain and met the eyes that had likewise looked towards him. Years of working closely with each other had developed a proficiency in silent communication. It was perhaps not the most comprehensive form of communication, but it was often an effective one. Through the shared eye contact, Spock discerned they were in perfect aligned in their dissatisfaction.

“Concerns?!” Mr. Scott was unable to keep to himself a moment longer, whipping back around in his chair with a furious scowl on his face. “It’s hardly a wee concern, Mr. Hammett! As Second Officer, I’ll be the one who’ll have to scrape you off that rock if something goes wrong, an’ I cannae do that without those sensors operating.”

“Thank you, Mr. Scott; I’ll take it from here.” The captain’s voice was markedly warmer towards the chief engineer than the outburst had warranted. There was muttering from engineering, but Scott only turned back to his screens after a final dark look towards Hammett. His hands pressed his controls harder than necessary. “His analysis is correct. It would put us in enormous danger to send a landing party without further information. There’s no telling what we’d be beaming down into—and before you interrupt, Ambassador, remember that you’ll also be part of the landing party.”

But the Ambassador only smiled widely. Spock did not understand why he continued to do so; there was nothing even remotely joyful about this predicament.

“Then I invite you gentlemen to look for another alternative! I’ll give you two hours; if you don’t find something by then, I doubt you will. Orders are orders are orders, unfortunately, and our orders are to meet face-to-face. The mission hinges on us establishing friendship with the Seskille, and no true friendship can be made with a machine! Oh—my apologies, no offense meant to you, Mr. Spock.”

Spock arched a brow at him. He stared for just a second longer than necessary before responding.

“Apologies are unnecessary; a Vulcan is not a machine. There is no offense to be taken from erroneous and faulty comparisons.” Spock took no offense. There had been far worse comments made about and towards him in his thirty-eight years of life, and comparisons to computers did not rank high on that list. But while he was unaffected, that did not appear to be the case for the rest of the bridge. The captain had gone still, his jaw gritting so tightly that his teeth audibly creaked. Mr. Scott had violently whirled around in his chair once more, mouth working furiously but silently. He seemed to be on the verge of beginning an outright brawl. It was... almost touching.

In truth, the discriminatory comment was nothing that Doctor McCoy hadn’t expressed to him with casual frequency. Jim had once commented that there existed, between friends, certain kinds of humor that would otherwise be considered unacceptable when demonstrated towards acquaintances or strangers. Perhaps this was one such situation; he had not understood the concept fully then but thought he may now. Although he was not insulted, he did not feel the same amount of camaraderie towards Roger Hammett that he did when the doctor insulted him in a similar manner. It was not logical, not at all, but Spock found that human relationships often defied all logical reason.

“We’ll let you know what we find in two hours,” the captain spoke sternly, but his voice was nothing if not civil—forced civility, but at least more professional than Lieutenant Commander Scott’s display. He turned around to face the view screen in obvious dismissal of the ambassador. “If you require nothing else, I suggest you’d go prepare for a landing mission.”

Hammett floundered for a moment, red-faced at the captain’s flippancy of him. He stood there for several seconds, searching the rest of alpha shift. They’d followed their captain’s example and had turned back to their stations with the same glaring disinterest.

Raising another brow at the ambassador, Spock also turned on one heel and fluidly moved back towards science to relieve Ensign Keller. She shot him a small smile as she moved back towards environmental. He’d grown used to reading the small expressions of his human crewmates and thought her’s was commiserating.

When the ambassador finally left the bridge, the room visibly relaxed the instant the turbolift doors slid closed. Mr. Scott’s mutterings lowered in volume, although no less in quantity, and Lieutenant Rivera joined him in it.

Focusing back on his readings, fingers flying instinctively over the dials, Spock felt rather than saw the captain approach on his left. The warmth of him brushed against his back as the captain leaned in to speak privately, and his voice was soft to prevent overhearing. 

“Do you think we’ll find anything?”

Spock didn’t need to look at his data for the answer; it was exceedingly easy to memorize what little information there was. No part of it promised any immediate breakthroughs in sensor readings, nor did they suggest a way around the barrier.

“It is unlikely. I estimate the chances to be-“

“No, no, I get it. Thank you for trying anyways. Who knows, maybe just this once we’ll get lucky. Honestly though, even if we don’t, that’s still two whole hours. It’s worth it if only to have him out of my hair for that long.”

Whereas he’d previously refrained from commenting on the captain’s use of colloquialisms, this time Spock indulged in it. There was a time and a place for such things, and while earlier had not been appropriate, he knew it would be now well-received. Refuting such nonsensical figures of speech never failed to irritate Doctor McCoy, but it seemed to only ever amuse Jim. He once thought it odd. Now, he engaged in it simply to see his captain smile.

“He was standing at your right shoulder, sir, not within the follicles of keratin growing from your scalp.”

The captain’s expression relaxed into a small smile, and he huffed a sound that could have almost been a laugh. It sometimes surprised Spock how controlled this particular human was in comparison to others. Even at his most outwardly expressive, Jim still maintained rigid, strict composure.

“Mm, so he was.” A hand pressed gently onto his shoulder, gripping it briefly in a light squeeze. Spock made eye contact with his captain and found them looking back warmly. “Carry on, Mr. Spock. We’ve got two hours to make a miracle, and if there’s any chance of finding one, no matter how slim, I want it found.”

Chapter Text

“So, that’s that.”

Despite orders—and no small amount of pressure on Engineering, Science, and Environmental—neither Spock, nor any of the crew, had been able to find a miracle by the end of the allotted two hours. It was not for lack of trying; all best attempts had been made and Spock had personally overseen his own department perform with exemplary poise in the face of unlikely circumstances. The crew knew what was at stake; most of them had been part of a landing party at one time or another, and few relished the idea of their captain or department head beaming down blindly.

The information was frustratingly limited. From the readings surrounding the energy barrier of the planet, only the vaguest data could be detected at all. A seemingly Minshara Class planet, the atmosphere composed of 78.08% nitrogen, 20.95% oxygen, 0.93% argon, 0.04% carbon dioxide. A close match for Earth conditions; if the surface were anything like the reflective readings of the space in orbit, the landing party would be able to breathe without risk of asphyxia. That followed the rather bold assumption that the planet was in a condition suitable to host human life, and Spock did not take assumptions as factual.

“The allotted time has given no further results. Our sensors cannot breach through the planet’s protection. Its origin is unknown to anything we have come across before; our systems are simply not able to pass through it.”

“Deck Four,” Jim murmured, as they stepped into the turbolift. A meeting had been called between the chief officers and Ambassador Hammett. Their deadline had passed approximately 22.97 minutes ago and now it was time to plan for the unknown. The general demeanor among the crew, from what Spock could discern, was subdued. His own team had taken the failure personally, despite working to the best of their abilities. It was not a fault of theirs, but a fault of the unpredictable circumstances of space exploration. He had told them such but did not think it had achieved much in the way of boosting their moral; Kirk gave far more motivating speeches than he did.

“Bones is going to have a field day with this.” The captain gave him a wry smile, amused despite the circumstances. The figure-of-speech was known to him after so many years, and he privately agreed with the sentiment. Doctor McCoy, already volatile on the best of days, would be in rare form over this new development. His irrational reactions aside, his concern would not be entirely misplaced. Spock himself had similar misgivings. “Especially when I tell him he’s not going with us.”

Spock raised a brow at this. “You mean to leave him behind?”

“At least for the first landing party.” Jim stepped out of the turbolift, and they fell into step beside one-another towards the briefing room. “If I could avoid sending any of us down, I’d do it. Unfortunately…”

“Unfortunately, orders are orders, sir.”

“Yes, orders are orders.”

Doctor McCoy was already present in the room when they arrived, sitting at the long table and briefing himself on the information they had sent in preparation. His expression was distinctly displeased, and his face went darker when he saw them both. Always so emotional; Spock braced himself for what he was certain would be an irrational, illogical outburst. He wasn’t left waiting long.

“Are you two out of your goddamn minds?” Doctor McCoy erupted, forcibly sliding the PADD across the table towards them, as if Spock himself hadn’t prepared the information and might need updating. “Beaming down without knowing where the hell you’re going? Of all the hairbrained—”

“Bones—”

“I’ve seen a lot of stupid stunts in my time, Jim—most of them from you—no, don’t talk. This right here? This is just a whole different level of stupid. And you—” The doctor shoved an accusing index finger towards Spock now, shaking it angrily. “—are letting him do it!”

Spock blinked, nonplussed. His hands crossed to rest at his back and his chin tilted up a fraction so that he would be looking down at McCoy, a posture he knew would irritate the man further. It succeeded, judging by the increasingly thinning, pursed lips. Jim, however, would be spared further ire for the moment, and so Spock considered it a worthwhile sacrifice to set himself up as the target. Although he thought neither of them deserved such hostility to begin with. It was unprofessional.

“I am not letting the captain do anything. He does not require my permission to act, Doctor, as you well know,” he recited factually. “It appears that you have briefed yourself on the matter at hand and therefore know the sub-optimal circumstances the Enterprise is in. I fail to understand your emotionally volatile need to lash out at others for a situation that is out of their control.”

The man’s face flushed an angry red, expression screwing up into one of imminent argument. Spock tilted his chin up slightly more to meet it.

“Bones, we have our orders. Is this hand ideal? No,” Jim interrupted quickly, and Spock thought he was trying to restrain a smile by the way his mouth twitched. “But they are the cards we’ve been dealt, and we’ll play them the best that we can, however we can.”

It never failed to amaze him that humans could switch between fact and metaphors with such apparent ease. His mother had used them sparingly during his childhood, so used to the Vulcan way by the time he had been conceived, and it had been a difficult adjustment when he had entered Starfleet. Surrounded by humans, all with a remarkably different manner of slang, idioms, and meanings, he had never felt a language barrier other him quite so severely. Frequently, he had been rendered entirely lost in conversation, having to rely on context words to navigate himself carefully through what someone was saying. Even now, it felt stilted to him; he understood every word individually, but not even one meant what they were supposed to.

When one spoke of playing cards in conversation, his mind brought up the act of playing cards. The rules, the manner of which they were dealt, all the variations of the numerous games, the object of the game. With Jim, it would be poker. With Doctor McCoy, it would be a game called blackjack. None of this was associated with the intended meaning in this particular exchange.

How a game of cards was comparable to beaming a landing party down without coordinates to a planet of unknown properties, he struggled to grasp. However, after so long working with and around humans, he understood the irrational phrasing somewhat better and could puzzle through the illogic. It did not make sense to him, but he’d grown used to humans not making sense.

It seemed that Doctor McCoy accepted the metaphor as factual enough—not surprising. His expression was no less displeased, but his outburst of temper seemed mollified.

“I don’t like it, Jim.”

“None of us do, Bones, but we’ve been overruled by everyone’s favorite diplomat.”

While Lt. Commander Scott undoubtedly held the largest grudge against the ambassador of anyone on the ship, it appeared that the doctor wasn’t too far behind in his esteem for Roger Hammett. The scowl that stole over his expression was markedly different from the one he’d been sending himself and the captain.

“Oh, him.” Doctor McCoy wore an exaggerated look of disgust. “Yeah, that half-witted idiot stomped around my sickbay yesterday and tried to tell me how to do my own goddamn job. Had to demand that he either show me his doctorate in medicine or get the hell out of my office. Heard down the grapevine that Scotty almost went to blows with him the other day. DeSalle had to wrestle him back.”

This was new. Spock had been informed about the altercation, but only in vague terms. Engineering had displayed a certain reluctance in speaking about the issue out of a display of loyalty for their chief engineer, and Spock had let it be due to a lack of actual physical contact. Hearsay wouldn’t make for a valid claim, and Ambassador Hammett hadn’t pressed the issue when asked about it. Upon hearing of the incident, he’d been reluctantly impressed by Lt. Commander Scott’s self-restraint; the emotional display would have been horrifying for a Vulcan but was an improvement in what he usually expected from the man.

That it only didn’t lead to outright violence due to external interference made considerably more sense and did not surprise him. He resolved to speak to DeSalle about the matter later.

“Probably for the best that he did. Although—" Kirk was saying, an amused smile curling at his lips. Spock quirked an eyebrow up; speculating about the hypothetical assault of an official Starfleet Ambassador did not call for amusement. It was actually a rather serious matter. “—with some luck, he might have been down for a few days; save us all some hassle.”

“Uh-huh. Try forever; I heard Scotty was gonna shove him out of the airlock.”

“Ahh… well…”

“’Should have heard what he said to Christine.” McCoy leaned back in his chair. “I thought she was gonna start swinging too; the girl’s got a mean right hook and now she’s out for blood. That  moron’s flirting with anything in a skirt and it’s becoming a damn problem.”

“You should have heard what he said to Spock.”

“Captain—"

“He flirted with Spock?”

The captain blinked, huffing out an incredulous laugh.

“What?! No! No, nothing like that. Just some—what was it you called it earlier Bones?—some old-fashioned casual bigotry.” But the captain paused then and threw a guilty look towards Spock, who sat there with a degree of confusion on how they shifted from discussing the mission to being on this topic. “By the way, you alright? I’m sorry, Spock, you shouldn’t have to deal with hearing that sort of thing. Not in your own backyard. Not ever, but especially not here.”

“I am not offended, Captain. Offense is a human emotion, and one I thankfully do not possess.” Spock said, eyebrows raised at the solemn look in the hazel eyes boring into him; even McCoy looked upset on his behalf. It was somewhat moving. “It’s hardly the worst comment Ambassador Hammett has made towards me. I assure you, sir, I can handle it.”

“There’s been other comments?” But before Spock could speak, the captain scowled and continued. “No, of course there has; I don’t know why I ever expected any sort of professionalism out of that man. I swear, the moment—the split second—we drop him off, I’ll be having words with Command about this. Ridiculous.”

“This is the last stop though, Spock, and thank the heavens for that. We only gotta deal with it for a couple more days. He starts up with anything, give me a holler.”

“I assure you, gentlemen, I can—"

“Captain, you’re gonna have ta put me on the same side ‘o the table as that dullwit.” Mr. Scott entered the briefing room, followed by an amused Lieutenant Uhura. “I cannae stand to see his face sitting across from me, or I’m likely to be sick.”

“Scotty, we’re going to have to have a talk later about your colorful use of euphemisms.” Kirk didn’t look upset, though. Quite the opposite; he looked like he agreed wholeheartedly. Still, he shot Spock a look promising further discussion later. “Funny enough, we were just talking about you. What’s this I hear about an airlock?”

Lt. Commander Scott shot McCoy a nasty look, and the doctor only shrugged unrepentantly in return.

“Oops.”

“Gentlemen, Lieutenant Uhura,” Spock began, trying to interject some semblance of professionalism into this meeting. He crossed his arms over his chest, feeling rather long-suffering. The Seskille’s transmission had already bloomed a headache at his temples; this back-and-forth bickering was unnecessary and simply furthering the pain. “Shall we begin? This meeting does have an official purpose. And a time limit.”

The smile faded from the captain’s expression, and Spock regretted to see it leave. He wanted to allow the man to get in what amusements he could, but they did have business to discuss. The officers were present, but the ambassador was late. Spock predicted he’d arrive no earlier than five minutes past. The lack of courtesy rankled. Even at the Enterprise’s most lax, her crew still showed up to their appointed meeting times without exception.

“Let’s get started then.” The captain cleared his throat, directing that commanding gaze towards the rest of the officers. “Unfortunately, our deadline seems to be up and it’s looking like we’re going to have to send a landing party down despite any misgivings—and believe me, there are many of them. You’ve all done the best you can, but the circumstances are what they are. Our orders are to meet face-to-face, and we will follow those orders. It’s less than ideal, but we’ve faced greater odds before and come through them. Mr. Spock, what do we know for certain about Seskilles VII?”

Spock straightened in his seat, glad to be back on track in a conversation that he could logically follow and contribute towards.

“Factually, we know very little. Seskilles VII is small in comparison to your Earth, approximately 2,861.37 kilometers in radius. Trace elements of oxygen and nitrogen in the upper-most atmosphere suggest it has the ingredients needed to sustain life in some form. The thick cloud coverage indicates a possibility for precipitation on the surface, but this is not certain. The majority of what we know of Seskillies VII comes from the trade vessel Boa and is based on their scans four years ago. However, that information was either false or is largely outdated based on our current data.”

Kirk nodded, mouth a grim line. Spock met his gaze.

“So essentially, we know nothing.”

“We know that there is life of some kind on the planet, sir. The Seskille have returned contact with the Enterprise. Communications have been limited due to a delay of approximately 5 minutes and 28.39 seconds between transmissions, however, they are communicating. Lieutenant Uhura has been in further contact with them.”

Uhura was reading over her PADD, focused on it to the exclusion of the rest of the conversation. She looked up when her name was called.

“Oh, yes, sir, although it’s like what Mr. Spock said, it’s been limited. They’ve been friendly to questioning but haven’t provided many answers back. Uncertain whether they don’t have those answers, don’t want to provide them, or there is a breakdown in translation between us. It’s likely the latter.” She moved down the PADD, tracing the words with her finger with a speculative expression. “I suspect they may not fully understand the questions we’re asking. They have confirmed the existence of the energy around the planet, but they claim it’s us. I asked for clarification on whether they mean it belongs to them or if they think it’s from the Enterprise, but I they didn’t seem to really understand and just repeated the same thing. I’ve got Linguistics running alternative questions to simplify communication on both sides, but with the delay, it’s slow going.”

Spock, while having studied extensively in Xenolonguistics, would not claim to be an expert by any stretch of the definition. Still, he found the process of it fascinating. Communications truly took center stage when it came to first contact, and it was clear that Lieutenant Uhura was in her element, so to speak. She was flushed with clear joy at learning more about the inhabitants of the small planet; if he could experience the emotion of envy, he’d have found himself struggling with it. At least one department was having success.

The captain, who had been about to speak, audibly snapped his mouth shut as Ambassador Hammett entered the briefing room. This time, there was no civil smile on his face, forced or otherwise. He looked annoyed, and Spock shared in his disdain. For a man who had been so set on implementing a rigid deadline, he seemed remarkably cavalier about time management. It was unprofessional for anyone aboard a Starship, let alone a diplomat.

“Good, good, you’re all already here. Let’s get this meeting started, shall we?” Hammett reached out and clapped a hand on Kirk’s shoulder—Spock tensed at the motion—before taking a seat one down from Mr. Scott. Uhura, who had been sitting on the opposite side of the table, silently stood and relocated to the free space between them with a long-suffering sigh. The ambassador favored her with an exaggerated smile and a wink. The lieutenant didn’t look impressed and gave him a distinctly cool look back.

“The meeting has already started, Ambassador,” Kirk said, voice steely. “It started five minutes ago, or didn’t you get the memo? Due to our deadline, we’re on a bit of a time crunch so I’m afraid you’ll just have to read and catch up. Lieutenant Uhura, you were saying?”

“As I was saying, sir, we’ve been restricted by the delay. Any further questions have had to be held off due to establishing base introductions. Who we are, what we are, where we come from, our intentions, etcetera. They appear to understand our words themselves, but some of their replies indicate a lack of comprehension about the actual meaning in context of the others.” She motioned to the PADDs of the other officers. “I’ve forwarded the transcript of what we have so far, but I’m afraid it’s not much.”

“Aye, but it’s better than nothin’, lass.” Mr. Scott sympathized, patting her commiseratingly on the arm. “And otherwise, nothin’s all we’ve got. Sorry to say, I’ve not had near as much luck on my end, Captain. We’ve thrown everything and the kitchen sink at it. Whatever that shield is, nothing on this ship can break through it.”

Spock raised a brow. He could feel the warm gaze of the captain glance over at him; could see him from his peripherals as he looked his direction. He didn’t disappoint.

“I fail to understand, Mr. Scott, why you would throw common plumbing at an energy shield, especially one that cannot transmit information back.”

“It’s an expression, Spock. Humans like to have fun when we talk.” Doctor McCoy turned and fixed him with a look. “Right, but I forgot, they don’t have any fun expressions where you come from—just route memory and humdrum faces.”

Spock turned to face him, already positioning himself in a way that would incite a challenge— and the doctor matched the pose, something anticipatory brightening in his eyes. At his side, he could sense the captain start to smile. “On the contrary, Doctor McCoy, on Vulcan we do indeed have many aphorisms. In fact, we have a particularly relevant one about those who should not practice medicine—”

“A shame we didn’t throw the Vulcan at the shield, eh Kirk? He might have spit out more numbers than the probe did, and we’d not have to hear anymore of his jokes.”

Silence fell across the briefing room.

Spock raised the other brow into his hairline.

Whatever amusement the captain had felt at the routine bantering between his first officer and CMO was gone now, and a coldness took its place, fairly freezing Spock at his side. If this was an attempt at a joke, it was a poor one. He couldn’t be certain whether the Ambassador was trying to insult him or whether he was simply just ignorant of his statement’s cruel implications. Both had an equal possibility of being accurate, but Spock wasn’t familiar enough with the diplomat to calculate which was more likely.

“Jim.”

“Right, that’s it. Captain, I cannae—”

“Mr. Scott, Doctor.” Spock raised a pausing hand and turned his attention to Hammett. “Although it is true that I am more durable than that of a human, sir, Vulcans cannot survive the vacuum of space, nor the inevitable burn-up of atmospheric entry. While I am humbled at your estimation of my ability, your statement is both highly illogical and appears to be based on faulty information. I’m sure our Chief Medical Officer could forward you the relevant materials for your re-education.”

Although Doctor McCoy audibly snorted, but he didn’t look amused at all; he was staring down the Ambassador with something dark in his expression. And sparing a glance at the chief engineer—Spock thought it fortunate that Lieutenant Uhura was in between Mr. Scott and Hammett; the man would never aim his volatile displays of emotion towards her, and she was likely all that was preventing another brawl.

The captain put a hand on Spock’s shoulder and left it there.

“Yes well, since we’re not throwing anyone out of the airlock—at least, we’re not throwing Commander Spock out of the airlock—“ Kirk disdainfully side-eyed the Ambassador, who had a red flush of embarrassment rising up his neck. “—I guess we’ll just have to come up with something else. Although, if all of our systems were lucky enough to have your personality and attention to detail, Mr. Spock, we’d all be better off for it.”

“Thank you, Captain.”

“Right, ah—right. Well, gentlemen, I’m afraid we’re out of time.” Ambassador Hammett clapped his hands once and stood. “We’ve got our orders and cannot delay any longer. I’m scheduled to report back to Starfleet Command in four hours, and I’d like to bring them good news. I’ll be joining the landing party, along with you, Captain—oh, excuse me, you’re in charge of those particulars, of course.”

The captain gave what was possible the most insincere, mocking smile Spock had ever seen.

“Of course. The landing party will consist of myself, Mr. Spock, Lieutenant Uhura, Security Ensign Kemen-Varley, and Lieutenant Tabea from Science. Oh, and the Ambassador. Mr. Scott, you’ll have the conn while we’re gone; I don’t expect things to go smoothly, for all that I hope it does. If something goes south, you’re to get us out of there. We meet in the transporter room in one hour. Until then, brief yourselves on what limited information we’ve got and prepare for anything. Dismissed.”

Chapter Text

There was a moment of relaxed silence when the red briefing room doors slid shut behind Hammett, Scott, and Uhura. A peaceful calm, almost meditative, settled over Spock, who had remained behind with his captain.

Here, now; these were the moments that threatened to find purchase through barriers with which he blocked his emotions. These small moments of camaraderie during a mission, where the air in the room was heavy, the only sound in the soft breaths of his very human commander.  These moments were what he most looked forward to. If asked, he’d claim it was the scientific discoveries, or the curious features of new species of flora or fauna he discovered. But privately, quietly, these small fractions of time were his favorite. It was illogical, to prefer this gentle silence to the interest and fascination of discovery, but this was one illogical feeling he would allow himself to partake in. Shameful, perhaps, but he could not bring himself to deny himself this. It was, after all, only for a moment.

The captain’s hand was warm on his shoulder still. Hazel eyes were soft as they met his own gaze. These small moments prepared him more to face the unknown than any thousands of briefings ever could. These moments reinforced his bone-deep determination to keep this one man—this one cosmically insignificant human—safe from all that would threaten him. Even if that threat was hims—

An insistent drumming broke the silence. Spock broke eye contact with the captain and glanced over at the other occupant of the room. Ah. Yes. The doctor.

Doctor McCoy, now sprawled back into his chair in a most improper and undignified manner, was watching them with pursed lips and an unimpressed expression. Thud-thud-thud-thud; his fingers drummed audibly on the table, and it was clear he was being purposely, pointedly loud. Spock sighed softly; he didn’t understand why one would make such an overt visual display out of their disapproval. Even a Vulcan could see that the man was upset based only on facial expression alone; it was unnecessary to make it a group spectacle.

“Do you have something to say, Doctor?” He raised a brow at the man, returning his flat stare beat-for-beat. The captain pulled his hand away from Spock’s shoulder and cleared his throat. Spock found the loss of it oddly undesirable.

“You bet your pointed ears I do. Since when am I staying behind?” Despite asking a question, McCoy did not give either of them a chance to answer it, only irrationally continuing to talk. “Someone’s gonna have to patch your reckless fool hides up when it all goes to hell down there—you know it will, Jim, don’t you try to play dumb—and who do you suppose is going to do that? That clown?” McCoy handwaved erratically towards the doors of the briefing room. Spock gathered, based on the derision in his voice and the context of the conversation, that he was referencing the ambassador. “That, I’d like to see.”

“You’re right, Bones… but that’s why I need you up here. If things go wrong—no, let me finish—if things go wrong, I’m going to need you to be ready for whatever happens. I’m not going to jeopardize my CMO on some wild goose hunt down there. We don’t know what we’re getting into—and you’re right, it is reckless, but that’s what you’re here for. I’m trusting that you and Scotty will beam our reckless fool hides back up if anything goes south on us.”

The captain raised his hand and clapped it hard on McCoy’s shoulder briefly. McCoy grunted at him but seemed to settle.

“Yeah, yeah, so long as there’s enough to patch up. Don’t you go falling into a volcano or something, Jim; that’d test even my skill.”

Ignoring the idioms and metaphors being mixed around and inserted haphazardly, Spock was pleased to see the captain start to relax; he was smiling again. Not something obvious to one who did not know him well—it wasn’t one of his wide, brash grins—but it was a softening to his face that made his eyes look alive. Doctor McCoy responded to it the same way most of the crew did. Like Spock always did, basking in the heat of that warm look and reflecting it right back. He looked markedly cheered, his outward display of displeasure an obvious façade; one of his rare positive fits of emotion.

Spock, upon noticing the outwardly good mood of the ship’s surgeon, turned himself towards the doctor fully.

“You are incorrect, Doctor McCoy.” He was rewarded when the doctor’s lips thinned immediately, nostrils flaring. “None of our data supports evidence of current volcanic activity on Seskilles VII, but should the captain inexplicably fall into such a rupture in the crust of the planet, I do not think that even your potions and elixirs will be suitable to patch up anything. Magma often fluctuates at a temperature of anywhere between 700 to 1,300 degrees Celsius, while the human body is fully immolated at—”

“Spock, we get the picture, thank you,” the captain said. He glanced between his two officers, mouth purposely tight to resist a smile. As close as Spock was to him, he could feel it in the space between the two of them regardless. “No evidence for them then? Well, I guess that’s one concern I can cross off my list—although I didn’t realize that was something I actually had to be concerned about. Sounds like a painful way to go; I’ll be glad to avoid it.”

“I assure you, Captain, that you would not have time to feel much; your pain receptors would boil off before you were to even hit the surface.”

“Comforting.”

McCoy glanced between the two of them and then snorted loudly.

“Uh-huh. Well, if you do decide to get yourself vaporized, Jim, give me a heads up, would you? I’ve only got a certain amount of burn cream, and I don’t want to waste it on a lost cause. As for you,” Doctor McCoy quirked his head towards Spock and squinted suspiciously. “…you should be fine. Your planet’s about as a hot as anything I’ve ever seen. Pretty sure if you took a dip in a lava pool, you’d just consider it a day at the spa. If we’re gonna talk about burning up alive, I swear I still feel that blazing sun of yours in my sleep.”

A cold sensation washed over him and Spock paused, his posture stiffening into something rigid. The emotionless expression that he’d been too lax at maintaining hardened back up, smoothing over into one of indifference and apathy. This back-and-forth bantering between them no longer felt quite so engaging; he found he had no desire to further participate in it. He too dreamt of blazing heat when he slept, but it was not the heat of the sun that he remembered burning him. The fire had been inside. This was not an area he wanted the conversation to be directed towards, and he shut it down abruptly and without explanation.

“If you say so, Doctor.” Spock stood, collecting his PADD. “Captain, if you’ll excuse me…”

“Spock, hold on a moment. Bones, can you—?”

McCoy rolled his eyes but stood as well, loudly cracking his back as he did so. There was a muttered comment about getting too damn old for this, but what this was wasn’t specified and Spock didn’t care to speculate on it. The doors slid shut behind him, plunging the room back into silence. This time, however, it was not so serene. Still tense from the conversation, he stared at his PADD. The data on it did not display anything he had not already memorized to the last decimal, but he kept his gaze down on it all the same.

“Sir?”

“What are your thoughts on all this, Spock?”

Tilting his head in consideration, he finally glanced at the captain. Kirk was still sitting, looking more and more worn as the seconds ticked by. They hadn’t had much opportunity to discuss the mission between themselves since the complications began, and although much seemed to be said between them in shared eye contact from across the bridge, it was a poor substitute for an actual conversation. That hollow, wrenching feeling that had opened in his stomach at the mention of Vulcan—and what had happened there—shrank slightly at his captain’s obvious exhaustion.

“Specify.”

“The mission, the landing party, all of it.”

Spock leaned against the table edge. Kirk’s leg brushed lightly against his knee. “My professional opinion is that we have our orders. Irrespective of any concerns, we have been overruled and now must comply with the instructions as given. Dedicating further energy to thoughts beyond that which we can control is an impractical use of time.”

“I see. And your unprofessional opinion?”

“I strive to be professional in all aspects, Captain; opinion or otherwise.” Spock paused, hesitating for a moment before he finally relented. “… However, my opinion is that we do not have nearly enough facts to bring about a satisfactory preparation of safety to this mission. I would prefer more data.”

Kirk let out a low gust of breath as if he were slowly deflating. He looked drained, Spock thought. Too many unknown variables had him stressed; not for himself, but for his crew, his ship. Spock wished to relieve some of the pressure but did not know how to achieve that when he himself felt similarly. They were, as the human idiom went, in the same boat.

“Me too, but with Hammett breathing down our necks…” The captain toyed with his own PADD absently, seemingly more for something to do with his hands rather than any actual meaningful purpose. “Three weeks I’ve had that man on my ship, ferrying him from planet to planet, and I’ve just about had it up to here with the whole thing. We’ve done these kinds of missions before just fine without him; of the three planets we’ve already visited, there’s not been a minute that he was useful—not a single one. I don’t know what Command was thinking.”

“I would not presume to speak for them, but it would be logical to theorize that they were considering the long-term ramifications of a failed mission. Forming a new trade route through unclaimed space requires a certain amount of cooperation from those inhabitants within it. That Seskilles VII is allegedly rich in Pergium would make it a point of interest for the Federation already; that it is also along the new route now makes it a priority. There will be further interest in this quadrant with the proposed corridor, and many manned vessels passing through it. To borrow one of your human expressions, if we do not jump at the opportunity, someone else will. The Ambassador—”

“—The Ambassador is just a bit of flashy decoration to make the people feel special.” Kirk waved a hand distractedly. “I know, I know—I get it, Spock, but I don’t like it. God, I hate these kinds of missions. Envoys have their purpose and place somewhere in the universe, don’t get me wrong… but that somewhere isn’t on my ship.”  

“There does seem to be a rather negative pattern forming around their involvement. Of the past ten diplomatic expeditions involving a Starfleet Ambassador, six ended with hostile actions taken against us. Five of the six resulted in either injury or death to at least one member of the landing party. On three of those occasions, the Enterprise itself was in considerable danger and narrowly averted partial or total destruction.”

The captain looked bemused. “A rather negative—yes, I’d say so. You know, with those statistics in hand, I suspect we could word a valid complaint to the brass that ambassadors are a proven hazard to my ship and crew. Ban anymore from coming aboard.”

“Indeed, they appear to have a markedly detrimental effect. Their removal would have the added benefit of boosted crew morale which, if nothing else, could only improve ship efficiency. Taking into consideration the popularity of the diplomats we’ve worked with before, I suspect it would prove to be a positively regarded decision; I have not yet met one that has been particularly agreeable to be around. Most perplexing, given the nature of their profession.”

“… Isn’t your father an ambassador of some kind?”

Spock cleared his throat and glanced back down at his PADD, at the numbers that he had already memorized multiple times over.

“Indeed. The statement stands, sir.”

The captain let out a startled laugh, standing and packing up his own equipment and tucking them beneath an arm. But he paused, then, and leaned against the table alongside him. From his proximity, Spock could feel the heat of him, even through their uniforms. He glanced over, finding the man was watching him carefully. There was something in his eyes that Spock could not quantify or label; something that made him feel scrutinized, as if he were underneath the microscope in one of his own labs.

“I missed this.”

“Sir?”

“This,” Kirk went on to clarify, a small smile creasing the corners of his eyes. “The two of us talking. I missed it.”

“We frequently converse, Captain.” But Spock did understand what the captain meant, despite his purposeful evasiveness. There had been an undeniable distance between them for months now, one that was only just starting to fade. It had been unavoidable; Spock had needed to withdraw for a time to examine and order his own thoughts and emotions without being exposed unnecessarily to those of others. Even Jim, who was remarkably well-ordered for a human.

Especially Jim.

It had been five months, two weeks, four days, thirteen hours, and forty-one minutes since they had left Vulcan. While the captain seemed to have put behind him the events that had taken place there, Spock had not. Could not.

“You know what I mean.” The captain wasn’t put off by the deflection, and only nudged his arm lightly against his own. “You’ve been acting… I don’t know, looser. Not so quiet. Relaxed. If I didn’t know any better, I’d almost say happier—sorry, I know. Whatever it is, I’m glad you’re back.”

That warm pit in him felt likely to boil over. Jim was close enough that Spock could make out the flecks of green amidst the hazel of his eyes. The emotional distance between them had been necessary to heal—as much as Spock could—from what had happened, but it had not been easy for him. Neither, it seemed, had it been any easier for Jim. It was only in the past month that he felt their previous camaraderie return with something approaching the same levity as before. There were still stilted periods, pauses between them where something went left unsaid, but they were lessening.

Kaiidth: what was, was. Although the intense autocritical feelings still lingered beneath the surface of his control, he’d found meditation helpful in suppressing them down deep. There were moments—McCoy’s unthinking comment being one of them—where they threatened to emerge, but those moments were becoming fewer as time passed. Most days now, he awoke with a sense of stability, rather than the clammy shivering he’d experienced the first nine weeks after Vulcan.

As time stretched further, he could pretend that nothing had ever happened at all—and if he had his way, nothing ever would again.

“So am I, Jim.”

The captain smiled widely at him, bumping their arms together once more. With him pressed against his side, something protective rose up, breeching his normally rigid control despite his best efforts to suppress it. Jim, with his warm smiles and easy forgiveness; there was nothing in Spock that made him deserve such kindness, not after the inexcusable thing he had done, and yet Jim never seemed to fault him for it. He spoke with the same relaxed closeness he always had. The thought was there, and he thought it often, that he should have maintained distance from the captain after the events of Vulcan. That he should have kept away for both their sakes, because he knew he could not remain impartial when it came to this man. But despite his better judgement, he indulged in this weakness of his. Overwhelming friendship, and all the messy, complicated emotions that came with it.

It wasn’t only illogical, it was dangerous.

And Jim missed this. It was clear, both then and now, that he’d felt at least some degree of sadness at the growing distance between them, as missing implied a negative emotion at the loss of something considered meaningful. The captain had enough hardship as it was without his first officer adding to it. That he had done so unintentionally, even if for valid reasons, made something in him ache. The last thing he wanted, in all this vast universe, was to hurt Jim.

Why was it, then, that he always seemed to do so anyways?

“Chess tonight?” Jim asked, standing and smoothing his uniform. “—assuming we don’t get immolated planetside, of course. I believe it’s your turn to play white.”

“That would be satisfactory, sir. And Jim,” the captain paused at the doors, glancing back at Spock. “I would not allow you to burn if it were in my power to prevent.”

Another smile aimed at him, like the sun peeking through heavy clouds. “I know. I never doubted you for a moment, Spock. I trust you.”

He remembered well what it felt like to burn; fire consuming and charring him from beneath his own skin. It haunted him, kept him up more nights than he would care to admit. Even so, he wouldn’t hesitate to walk through more than fire, take on every bit of pain and even more besides, to prevent Jim from suffering. He had let the man down once before, indefensibly, and yet Jim still professed no doubt in his ability to keep him safe. Illogical, imprudent.

As the captain left the room, Spock watching after him, he once more vowed that he would never again give Jim a reason to regret that seemingly unshakable belief in him, no matter what the future might hold. He had broken that trust before. He would not do so again.

Instead of reading over the limited data contained within the PADD, of which he had already memorized thrice over, Spock found it more beneficial to retire to his quarters for quick meditation.

Although he had meditated in the morning before his shift, the events of the day had disarrayed the usual order of his mind and processing it was required to continue with clear focus. When dealing with first contact, strong ability to focus would be necessary. There was much to ruminate on and sort through: the upcoming landing party, the mission itself, Ambassador Hammett and the waves of disarray he left in his wake, his own reaction at the comment of Doctor McCoy, Jim. It was the latter two that caused him to sit there for longer than he might have otherwise, folded neatly in the lesh'riq—kneeling on the floor with his legs tucked neatly beneath him.

It was his practice as a Vulcan to know his mind well; to know all the thoughts and emotions contained within. Since he was young, he had maintained this routine of the acceptance—and then suppression—of deep feelings that could alter his behavior or control. Dedicated meditation was a primary tool, but the act of self-examination was something he practiced in all waking moments of his life. It was instinct now to distance himself from emotion and the thoughts causing them. He would focus on the source, examine it, rationalize through it, and then bury it down as he did all the others.

The emotions brought up by Doctor McCoy’s mention of Vulcan; the hollow feeling in his stomach, the quickening of his pulse racing in his side, the sudden tension of his muscles—an anxiety response, brought up by surfacing memories of a comparatively recent negative experience. It was understandable, although irrational. Suffering from such adverse symptoms would not change what had happened in the past. There was nothing to be done for the events on Vulcan, and feeling anxious now at its mere mention was not only illogical, but also damaging. As the name of his home planet and standard title of his species, it would be cited aloud with some degree of frequency. Reacting as he did only reinforced an undesirable connotation to a vaguely connected term.

Spock breathed in and out slowly, measuredly.

He'd reacted as he did out of a sense of apprehension. Apprehension during a dangerous time was not uncommon and allowed for an increased level of alertness, which could save not only his life, but the lives of others. This alone was acceptable, but the timing was not. He had been in the briefing room during this flare of emotion, not in a situation where lives were under immediate threat, and certainly not on Vulcan five months prior. A situational emotion that was misplaced, not in theory but in timing and location. Logical to a certain degree but unneeded. Distance it from memories of experiences past. Examine it. Accept it. Suppress it. Move onto the next.

As always when ordering his mind, the captain came up as a primary subject.

To say that Jim was an intrusive thought would not be correct, exactly… but also not entirely incorrect. The perplexing contradiction in this had caused him a great deal of both contemplation and confliction. That so much of his meditation involved his captain should have disturbed him—did disturb him, on some level—but he also knew it was not altogether unexpected. They shared a close friendship bond, spent the majority of their time together, and made a very capable and efficient command team. It would have been an oddity to not think often of the captain in some form or another; he would have had to examine his mind for some kind of fault or failure if Jim were not a frequent feature in his thoughts. That was only logical.

However, he also knew that there were other reasons why Jim featured so prominently when he turned his focus inwards, and logic had very little to do with them.

It was at this thought that his focus began to falter. In this one instance, he could not bring himself to examine his feelings: those surrounding that of his captain. To do so would open doors that he would rather stay permanently closed, for his own sake. For Jim’s sake. It was undoubtedly illogical to allow them to fester as they did; they were an open wound in the normally rigid barriers of his control. And yet, he could not suppress them entirely; that would take close examination of those feelings and an acceptance of them.

Spock could not bring himself to do either.

Focus.

Eyes closed, he tried to imagine his mind as an ocean of sand; dunes rising and falling, gleaming white from the reflection of the hot sun—again he paused, struggling with the mental image before forcing himself to examine them. Hot sun, the sense of fire burning in his eyes, beneath his skin, between his thighs—associations rose up with nauseating speed, and he firmly pressed them back down beneath the sand. Anxiety. Misplaced anxiety; the quickening of his pulse, the tension in his muscles. All had taken over him once more, just as it had in the briefing room. This was not the time for that; he would not be controlled by his memories, or the emotions that came with them. Thought controlled emotion, emotion did not control thought. In this, he would not compromise. Accept them and let them go beneath the sand.

Here, he was in command. The disturbances he felt were considered and discarded as logical reactions that had no use here. What had happened, happened. To feel so strongly about the events that had taken place over five months prior was not only illogical, but also undignified. It was not in his ability to change; all he could do was continue to move forward as he had been. Logically, professionally, controlled.

Jim.

He wanted to push those feelings behind the walls of his control as he had the others, but Spock found he could not. To do so felt as if he were ripping some part of himself out in some wrenching manner that did not make sense. Drowning in a way that was entirely irrational and fueled by pure emotionalism. The illogic of it was unrelenting, like a klaxon in his thoughts. Focus—but it failed him, as it always did when his mind wandered towards the captain. He could not accept those thoughts and emotions. He could not examine them. He could not suppress them.

Instead, Spock reluctantly allowed those feelings to linger; not considered or ordered or accepted but instead nudged gently but firmly to the peripherals of his mind. An open wound, he’d called it, a decidedly negative implication. It did not feel like something negative. It felt like something warm. It felt welcoming. It felt dangerous in a way he did not have a name for.

He moved on.

Focus.

It took another ten minutes of V'ree'lat, the act of sorting and ordering one’s mind, in order to feel fully in control of himself. Those turbulent, chaotic emotions were suppressed and buried down deep, accepted as much as possible in the limited time he’d had. Jim had been permitted to remain, if only in the barest sense. A temporary measure: Spock told himself that he would confront it at a later date, when he had the time and freedom of concentration to do so. Until then, he would delegate those uncertain sentiments to the fringe corners of his mind.

Once this mission was over, he would come back to them and do what he must. For his own sake. For Jim’s. But for now, he would disregard them as best he could. They would not control him.

Rising after a short time, Spock felt only a quiet serenity. It had proven difficult after the events of Vulcan to find that in himself after he had suffered from such blazing emotional turbulence. That ordered calm had been brutally torn from him by the curse of his biology, but finally came easier now that time had passed. He meditated more than he slept, but it was far more beneficial than rest ever could be to his health; he was healing in whatever way he could, and progress had been made. Small, slight progress, but measurable all the same. He was relieved to feel more in control the past few weeks than he had the months prior.

The landing party, all but Captain Kirk, was already present when he arrived at the Transporter Room. Lieutenant Uhura had one hand pressed against her earpiece for focus, firmly ignoring Ambassador Hammett’s hovering efforts to engage in conversation with her, and the other two were in deep discussion over a shared PADD.

Lieutenant Tabea broke away from Ensign Kemen-Varley upon seeing him, moving swiftly to his side and standing in parade rest.

“Sir, Mukhammed and I were just discussing the planet’s shielding. The Seskille keep insisting that the energy cloak belongs to us—but of course, we know that isn’t right. I know Engineering hasn’t had much luck from up here, but I think I may be able to find the source once we make planetside. It’s all rather fascinating.” She appeared to be in good spirits; her face was flushed with excitement as she looked at him. The flush only spread upwards as she cleared her throat lightly; her body language displayed a certain hesitation now. He raised a brow at her.

“I… also wanted to thank you for the opportunity, sir; Shams al-Din said that you chose me for this mission personally.”

His second-in-command in Science, Lieutenant Sameera Shams al-Din, had given him a list of officers she felt would be a good fit for the expedition. It had not been a difficult choice; of those listed, Aileen Tabea was both a dedicated officer and a careful scientist. Her record spoke for itself. Spock had observed her to be in a consistently positive mood throughout her time aboard the ship, even during periods of uncertainty; such a demeanor could only benefit a landing party engaging in a difficult first contact. Her own knowledge in exobiology, her particular field of expertise, would allow for specialized insight into the Seskille, however they appeared. If they appeared.

“Your work has met all standards without fail, and your specialty was relevant to this mission. It would be illogical to choose another based on that criterion alone. You are also, from my own observation, professional in your approach towards different species and their many variations. As we do not know how or in what way the Seskille function, this is an appropriate skillset to recommend you.”

The lieutenant, to borrow human phrasing, lit up. “Thank you, Commander! I promise not to let you down!”

She gave him a firm, bobbing nod and moved back toward Ensign Kemen-Varley. They conversed in hushed, hurried whispers. Tabea’s internal temperature appeared high, evidenced by the startlingly red blush on her neck and face. Spock purposely avoided listening in on the conversation; he had a feeling he knew already what the topic of discussion was and had no interest in further confirming it. Instead, he focused pointedly on adjusting the settings of his tricorder to account for unknown energy readings, rather than only the proven ones.

“If I didn’t know any better, I’d say you were conducting research of your own.” He felt the captain approach and stand at his side, the warmth of him filling the space between them. Spock raised a brow up at Kirk, who only gave him an amused look. He cocked his head towards Lieutenant Tabea. “A study about the effect you have on your scientists.” The clarification didn’t clear up Spock’s confusion and the amusement visibly grew in the captain’s eyes. “Your female scientists.”

Ah.

“I have no knowledge on that topic.” Spock emphatically went back to his tricorder, although it was set to his exact specifications now and there was little else he could do with it. The captain seemed to know it too, because he clapped a hand on Spock’s shoulder. Even through the material of his uniform shirt, he could feel the barest emotional transference. The captain thought the whole situation quite humorous; this was not the first time he had teased Spock about it. Only two days prior, it had been the topic of gleeful discussion between Kirk and Doctor McCoy over a shared meal, while Spock pointedly attempted to ignore them and eat his salad.

“Of course, my mistake. It must be a coincidence that they all seem to get strangely overheated around you.”

“If the temperature controls aboard the ship are faulty, that would fall under the purview of Engineering.”

“Sure, I’ll just tell Scotty that your mere presence causes environmental to short out, shall I? I’m sure he’d love the challenge.” But then the captain grimaced as he spied something behind Spock, the humor fading. Spock straightened stiffly in preparation. “Speaking of Scotty, probably best to get this show going. The sooner we get down there, the sooner we can be done… and the sooner we’re done, the sooner we can drop off that—” The captain cut himself off with a slow puff of air and further refused to so much as glance at the Ambassador, who was clearly vying for Kirk’s attention now. Instead, he turned and pressed the panel on the wall. “Kirk to Bridge.”

“Scott here, sir.”

“Our time’s up, Mr. Scott; you’ve got the conn while we’re planetside. If anything goes wrong…” Here, the captain paused, and his brow furrowed. “If the Enterprise is getting… I don’t know, sucked into the atmosphere, or being hijacked by brainwashed aliens, or magic computers are trying to take over, or any other crazy thing that might threaten it, I want you to get the ship out of here.”

It wasn’t said in jest, despite what would have normally been an exaggeration. Clearly, Kirk was thinking of Spock’s verbal statistics of past diplomatic missions; they had rarely been without crisis in some way or another, and all of what the captain said had indeed happened at least once—some more than. But Mr. Scott only gave a barking laugh.

“Aye, sir, that I will. Had my fair share of practice at it recently; I’d say I’m a deft hand at it by now. First spot ‘o trouble, I’ll get this fair silver lady to safety.”

“…And the crew, Scotty.” Kirk motioned towards the transporter chamber; the landing party assembled on the platform in arrangement, Spock standing beside an empty pad. “The crew goes too.”

“Then they had all best be on it when I leave. Good luck down there, Captain. We’ll be tracking you as best we can from up here, for all the good it’ll do. But I’ve got the coordinates clocked in and a small field margin besides. You just give the word.”

“I’m hoping that luck won’t be needed, Mr. Scott, but thank you. Kirk out.”

The captain turned and faced his assembled crew. Gone was the levity in his eyes; they were stern now. Hardened. There was no sign of apprehension or unease in his expression, but Spock knew from experience in reading this particular man well that he was feeling it all the same. To some degree, they all—himself excepted—felt it before a mission, but this one in particular had too many unknown variables for anyone’s comfort. The data was incomplete, questions left unanswered, and the facts were few. Spock didn’t begrudge Kirk’s misgivings about the situation; he had his own.

“We keep together down there, whatever happens. I don’t know if our tricorders will allow us to track each other, or if the energy field will interfere with those too, but we stay as one group regardless. The coordinates we land at are the same ones that’ll be used to get us back up, and only those coordinates. The Enterprise won’t be able to locate or lock in on our signal, but they can blindly beam up a pre-calculated location.”

The landing party was grave as they observed the captain, all eyes staring forward in disciplined focus. A credit to the service, and to the ship. Spock had heard it said that the Enterprise had the most efficient crew of the fleet, and he thought it an accurate judgment. It wasn’t because of anything unique about the ship itself, however, but because of its captain. Even he, who would never subscribe any emotionalism to himself, felt something tense ease in him at the confidence in Kirk’s voice.

“We’re going down there in good faith,” Kirk continued, “and I hope it stays that way… but rest assured, I want no casualties. Should things go south, you make for the landing coordinates and request beam up immediately. You don’t wait, you don’t try to split off and play hero. You disregard the mission and get yourself—no, Ambassador Hammett, I’m not going to jeopardize the lives of my men for some rocks, even ones as valuable as these.” Hammett, who had been on the verge of protesting, closed his mouth with an audible snap. “—You’re to disregard the mission and get yourselves out of there if something goes wrong, no hesitation. Understood?”

“Yes, sir.”

The captain moved to Spock’s side, taking position on the platform with the rest of them. His posture was purposely and strategically confident, but his hands were clenched into fists. It was the only visible sign of his trepidation. A gut feeling, Jim had told him before. Spock found that human instincts, despite all their disordered and flawed variations, could occasionally be quite accurate. Jim’s certainly were. Regardless of logic, he would trust the captain’s hunch over any mathematical or scientific certainty. If Jim’s intuitions were sounding the alarms in his head, so too were they echoing in Spock’s. Time after time had proven that supposedly imprecise gut feeling to be more reliable than any known fact or data point his instruments could supply. It was not logical. It was not rational. But it was true all the same.

They exchanged silent glances, eyes saying so much without speaking anything at all, and Spock gave him a small nod. Whatever happened, good or bad, he would be at his captain’s side for it.

“Energize.”

The transporter room disappeared in a blaze of golden light. The feeling of weightlessness and disorientation only lasted a fraction of a second, their bodies frozen in a state of stasis save for the minute tingle of their atoms dispersing. The Enterprise faded and the planet of Seskilles VII materialized around them, forming into shapes, colors, objects, visuals—

And the instant it did, they were bludgeoned by a freezing, glacial wind.

Chapter Text

Cold.

Freezing, biting cold.

The pale, glaring brightness of Seskilles VII was almost blinding to his eyes after the muted lighting of the Transporter Room, and Spock had to squint against it to see clearly. He took immediate stock of his surroundings, what little he could see of it as his eyes adjusted to the glare of the world around him. Rock. Ice. Wide, open land. A low-hanging white sky. A heaviness in the air that draped on him like a weight and took root behind his eyes. And such cold…

The breath was stolen from him as swiftly as he took it in, knocked from his lungs from the force of the wind slamming at them. It was only the density of his body and the quick shift of his posture that prevented him from being toppled backwards by it. His human companions were not so lucky; they had been unprepared for the strength of the weather, and he had to throw an arm out to balance his captain from falling. One hand gripping tightly to a golden yellow sleeve, he reached half-blind for the other presence at his side and wrapped his other arm securely around it. Lieutenant Tabea; he caught a glimpse of her science blues as she pressed into him for stability.

Securely in the grasp of his XO and no longer in danger of falling, Kirk was following his example and reaching out for both Lieutenant Uhura and Ensign Kemen-Varley, holding them steady against the onslaught. Spock could not help but notice that no one, even those with their hands untethered, bothered to help the ambassador. He had been propelled backwards by the wind and now half-kneeled, half-sprawled on the rocky ground in a heap. The man did not appear to be in any further danger than that, and there were other, more pressing concerns to attend to. After all, Spock only had two hands, and both were otherwise occupied. The wind, though brutal to the unprepared team, was more than survivable; he estimated the windspeed was approximately 66.042 knots, although without readings he could not be certain of his accuracy. Uncomfortable and difficult to stand steady in, but not overly dangerous unless one was near a cliffside.

“Gather close and hold on!” Kirk shouted out to the assembled crew; his voice was stolen just as swiftly as the wind slamming at them; carried away into the air. He pressed tightly into Spock and pulled his two charges inwards to do the same. The increasing physical contact of others was unpleasant—a grimacing sensation even with their clothing shielding most of the direct touch—but the idea of allowing his crewmates to come to harm for the sake of his own personal comfort was unthinkable. Spock brought in Lieutenant Tabea and shifted so that he was shielding her and Lieutenant Uhura as much as he could with his own body; they were in their uniform skirts and in far more danger of freezing than he or his male colleagues were.

“Status, Spock! Any sign of them?”

Only his ears would likely hear the voice of the captain over the dull roar of the gust. His tricorder hung at his waist, having been ignored in favor of securing the safety of his captain and team, but now was taken up for preliminary readings. He operated it with one hand, having had to shift Tabea to hold onto him instead of the reverse. His other hand kept a firm hold of the captain’s arm; a precautionary measure. The tricorder hummed faintly as it scanned, a whirring lost to the wind; he looked at the readings, but he did not need the data to inform him that the landing party was very, very much alone.

Around them, as far as his eyes could discern, there was little more than baren landscape; a far-stretching tundra sprawling for miles. Icy, sand-colored rock made up the ground beneath them, flattened and smoothed by millennia of forceful wind scraping granules of mineral debris across its surface. Jagged cliffsides and irregular boulders dotted the otherwise even landscape to their close north, and far in the horizon were ice-capped mountains that rose and disappeared into the low-level cloud cover, which hung over the planet in a white shroud. Fissures and cracks wove through the land, but it was otherwise very level. The mountains and cliffs besides, they had a vast range for line of sight.

There were no beings waiting for them, in any form that Spock could tell. No vegetation or flora that he could see, no lowland brush or twigs. No audible sound of fauna, or visual signs of life around them. Not even sprigs of grass or weeds growing out through the cracks in the plateau. Only the howling moan of wind as it tore through rock and the strange, weighted pressure in the air.

“None, sir. Increasing scan range.”

Tabea was doing the same at his back with her own tricorder, her brow furrowed as she huddled into his shadow for some protection against the wind. Even as he shifted to provide her with better coverage, the wind was dying down, rapidly approaching a more tolerable speed than it had before. There was a communal sigh of relief as it faded to little more than a heavy, icy breeze; one slow enough that Ambassador Hammett was at last able to clamber, red-faced and staggering, to his feet. No one offered him a hand up, Spock noticed, instead turning to take stock of their surroundings with a practiced professionalism. It was, perhaps, somewhat counterproductive to peaceful team dynamics, but no one else appeared to notice or mind it but himself. The other man stood before Spock was able to offer him any assistance.

“Well, that’s some welcome; beaming into a veritable blizzard,” the captain murmured to Spock, expression as severe as the stone under their boots. He was examining the flat terrain with a critical eye, lips a similarly flat line. Spock suppressed the urge to correct the error in fact: it had not been a blizzard—those required specific conditions which had not been met. “Although it doesn’t seem we’ve got much of a welcome party. The Seskille said they were going to meet us here, didn’t they? I thought they gave us the coordinates of their largest city.”

Spock had memorized what limited data they had gathered of Seskilles VII, as well as the conversation transcripts between Communications and the inhabitants of the planet. The coordinates had indeed been provided by the Seskille, however…

“Not precisely, Captain.” Spock took his eyes off his tricorder screen for only a moment. “The Enterprise requested the coordinates, which were then provided, but only after notable errors in communication. A small distinction, but an important one.”

“You see, they didn’t understand at first, sir.” Lieutenant Uhura spoke up, shielding herself against Kirk’s back; already a steady shiver was trembling her arms. She had to speak loudly to prevent her voice from being lost to the wind; even if it only gusted now, it was still frigid and unforgiving in its chill. “We asked them what coordinates we should send a landing party to, but they didn’t seem to understand that. We then clarified that we were asking for the coordinates of their largest city or village; it’s usually a safe bet when you want to interact with a leading council of some kind. They didn’t get that either; there was some kind of breakdown in comprehension. Unknown if they didn’t know what a city was, if they didn’t have them, or if the word just didn’t translate correctly. I ended up asking for the location of their most physical buildings or built structures. With the delay, there wasn’t much else we could ask without more time.”

Time which they had not been granted due to an enforced deadline. Kirk’s jaw grit tightly in dissatisfaction. While the other humans—the ambassador excepted—stood huddled together for warmth, Kirk stood with the same strong confidence he always displayed in the face of challenge. Shoulders back, posture rigid, eyes narrowed.

“Clearly there was a miscommunication there as well; I don’t see any buildings. I also don’t see any Seskille. Even if there was an error in translation, they understood enough to give us a location to meet at.” The captain squinted against the ebb and flow of the wind, but he appeared to be seeking out some sign of life in the relatively flat tundra around them. “And so, the question remains: where are they?”

The tricorder readings did not reveal much he did not already suspect when it came to lifeforms; even with the increased range, the only life signatures registering were the six members of the landing party. Nothing else appeared; not plant life, not animal life. It was possible that bacteria remained in the permafrost of the soil, what little there might be amidst or under the rocky plains, but he would require samples to be taken for lab inspection. He could not, at present, verify that there even was soil to sample.

The heat of their breath fogged in the chill and disappeared as swiftly as it emerged; stolen away by the harsh gust. Based on the positioning of the planet to the system’s sun, Spock estimated that it was approximately midday planetside. For the afternoon, a time commonly displaying the warmest daytime temperatures on most planets, it was a freezing -3.155 degrees Celsius. With the windchill, the built-in thermal regulators of their uniforms were proving wildly insufficient. Vulcans could withstand a wider extreme of temperatures, and for much longer than that of a human, but even this level of cold was a shock to his system. Too long planetside and they would be beaming back aboard in early stages of hypothermia, Lieutenants Uhura and Tabea in particular.

Already, snowflakes were beginning to fall intermittently.

"Anything?”

Spock shook his head, glancing down at his readings. “No, sir. The only life forms detected remain our own. Not signs of fauna or flora in the immediate area.”

“That’s unusual, isn’t it?”

It was highly unusual. A deserted planet wasn’t what any of them had expected upon arrival, but an entirely barren one had not even been up for consideration. With few exceptions, all planets they explored had at least something there, even if it were only foliage and insect life. Bacteria at the very least. It was possible that life remained in the planet’s oceans; he knew that the Boa’s previous imaging had shone numerous large bodies of water, but even the early Cambrian period of earth had evidence of plant life on landmasses.

It also brought into question the Seskille themselves. Any creature or being that could communicate with a ship in orbit would be far more advanced than a plant, and less common by a considerable degree. Although life existed in incomprehensibly vast quantities in the universe, intelligent life required very specific conditions to be met to exist as they understood it. 

“Captain, we may also have another concern.” Lieutenant Tabea spoke up, from where she was staring at her own tricorder. She was shivering violently now, head tucked down with her shoulders hiked high to protect her exposed neck. “There’s an unusually high level of gamma radiation in the atmosphere.. and in the rock, the air, everywhere. It’s all over. More than just standard background, but not anything immediately dangerous. I can’t identify any source; levels remain consistent within scan range and don’t seem to be showing an increase or decrease to point towards one. There shouldn’t be any effects from exposure lasting even upwards of a few months—and even then, it’d likely be a very mild case of acute radiation sickness—but it’s something to note for future colonies if mining negotiations succeed.”

“Of course there is. Even the air here has to be an issue…” Kirk’s mouth flattened into a thin line, eyes hard against the wind. Wind that was now proven to contained gamma rays and the potential for long term health complications, no matter how slim that possibility was. Spock wasn’t overly concerned about the radiation itself—he too was studying the readings on his tricorder and calculated the danger to the captain and crew as minimal—but the cause of the radiation itself was a curiosity. Impossible to know for certain the origin without a rising or ebbing of millisieverts with which to provide a direction for tracing.

However, there was a growing problem that he could no longer ignore. His head had begun to hurt, worse than a mere headache and with an acute pain that felt different in a way he could not fully explain. The very air itself felt stifling, heavy and oppressive to Spock’s mind. It was weighted, smothering, and a low throb was starting behind his eyes and pounding dully in his head. It felt as if something were pressing on him with intense force; an energy of great power. He took a moment to breathe in the chill of the air, ground himself in the hard rock beneath him, and to reinforce the barriers of his mind.

Control. Calm. Focus.

It was easier said than done. His meditation between the meeting and the landing party hadn’t been as long and or as thorough as he would have preferred. His mental controls were not weak, but they were not currently operating under optimal efficiency. What thoughts and emotions he hadn’t been able to sort through glared out like a wound; a glaring vulnerability. Breathe. Focus.

He observed his crewmates; they didn’t display any outward signs of feeling ill or otherwise affected. There was curiosity and misery in their expression, signs of freezing due to the extreme temperature, but he could not discern there to be any show of pain otherwise. It appeared to be only himself who was suffering. He worked on his shields with haste and no small amount of desperation, hypothesizing that it was due to his telepathy that he was solely experiencing this. It would be of scientific intrigue to him, were it not so intensely detrimental.

He did not mention it to the captain. If it worsened… if his condition deteriorated further, he would re-evaluate the situation and make a more informed decision then. There were more important concerns now than the presence of a headache, ones that required his attention.

“Alright, everyone fan out into pairs. Keep within scanner range and report in every five minutes. Phasers set to stun and on standby, just in case. If something goes wrong, you return to these coordinates exactly and get out of here. No playing hero, no charging off to save the day. There will be no casualties this time around. Ambassador…” Kirk paused momentarily, glancing at the assembled team, and how the man in question hovered near Lieutenant Uhura. “…you’ll be going with Ensign Kemen-Varley.”

Ambassador Hammett looked disappointed. The women looked relieved. The man had not been subtle in his efforts at flirtation, and word traveled fast aboard the ship. The female crewmembers knew to keep a watchful eye on him and did their best to avoid interacting with the diplomat entirely. Even now, Uhura and Tabea wasted little time walking west into the tundra, arm in arm. Of the two remaining, the only one who looked pleased at the assignment was Ensign Kemen-Varley. The security officer was smiling viciously, eyes steely and glinting. He was well-known have a particularly low tolerance for discrimination of any kind, with the harassment of women being high on the list. His hand rested suspiciously close to his phaser, Spock couldn’t help but notice with some level of bleak futility at the lack of professionalism. The captain undoubtedly noted the same, but he made no mention of correcting it.

Sometimes, the illogicality of his team was as exasperating as it was perplexing.

“Oh, but James, surely I could be more helpful here with the command team! After all, I do outrank you in matters such as these. I should be part of any major decisions, you know; my experience in first contact could be to your benefit. No offense, of course; you’re a fine example of a captain, but you aren’t a trained ambassador. I’ll stay, and someone else can go. Your first officer, perhaps—”

But the captain didn’t budge and cut him off. “Oh, but I assure you, Roger, that if and when I decide to make any of those major decisions, I’ll give you plenty of advanced notice. As for first contact, we have to first find who we’re supposed to contact. I don’t know if you noticed, as you seemed a bit preoccupied by the wind down there, but we’re all alone. In the meantime, I trust that Ensign Kemen-Varley will keep you well protected; you’ll be safe and sound with him.”

It was a warning for the ensign, as much as it was a placation towards the ambassador—albeit not a very politely phrased one. In fact, it was edging towards insubordination and would have raised flags were it not for the politely sincere tone of voice that the captain used. Hammett reluctantly trailed after the security officer, looking more than a little disgruntled. Kirk side-eyed him until he was far enough to be out of hearing range and then leaned in close so his murmured voice could be heard over the wind.

“… Safe and soundly out of my way. I swear…” Kirk shook his head absently. “Well, Mr. Spock, the adventure’s ours. I don’t know about you, but I’ve had just about enough of all this; time to clear up some confusion. The sooner we can get answers, the sooner we can get out of here.”

There was a gentle tug on Spock’s hand, breaking his concentration. He looked down. A golden sleeve, still securely wound between his fingers tightly enough to crease the fabric. Jim’s sleeve. Spock realized, with no small degree of discomfiture, that he’d never released the other man from his protective hold against the wind. He did so now, belatedly, feeling a low and uncomfortable flush of heat climb at the base of his neck. But Jim only offered him a small smile, eyes warm and fond even in the frigid cold.

He straightened his posture, suddenly consciously aware of how close they were standing and how his mental shields, normally so rigid and prompt, hadn’t considered the sustained physical contact to be an intrusion. It never did anymore, he realized; his barriers registered Kirk’s touch as comfortable and familiar to him as his own.

The captain pulled out his communicator, flipping it open with a small chirp.

“This is Captain James T. Kirk, of the USS Enterprise,” Kirk said in a voice that was all calm professionalism. He leaned over to examine Spock’s tricorder screen and Spock angled it helpfully. Kirk’s arm brushed lightly against his side as he did. It didn’t cause discomfort to him, as it would otherwise have were it anyone else. Instead, he only felt a slow press of warmth through the blue of his uniform.

Silence.

No immediate response given, but the delay had been expected, if undesirable. Spock had theorized that the interval between messages would have reduced upon arrival to the planet; the landing party was now beneath the unknown energy shield, after all. The captain had vocalized his hope that the delay would be gone entirely. Hope was a human emotion and one he did not allow himself to feel, but the mission would have proved less tedious had the delay been eliminated.

Exactly 2.839 minutes passed, when finally—

“Greetings, Captain James T. Kirk, of the USS Enterprise, it is our happiness.”

The same voice as before, welcoming and emotional with its inhuman vocals. With it, however, came the same whining, popping, and static howling. It railed against Spock’s ears in a deafening screech, and he fought the urge to cover them with his hands. With the pressure building up in his head already, the sound was worse to him than it had been on the bridge. Whereas it had been mildly painful before, it was now almost excruciating in its intensity. He couldn’t help the shudder that raced down his spine, nor the grimace that furrowed at his brows. He didn’t need to look at the captain to know that he looked concerned, and so he smoothed his expression out as much as he could to appear unaffected.

A light touch against his arm, as if to steady him. It was grounding in a way he could not fully explain.

“It is our happiness as well.” The captain looked anything but happy, still shooting Spock a cautious glance, but his voice did not reflect it. “My team and I have beamed down to the coordinates you provided, but we appear to be alone. Has there been a mistake with the location?”

In the silence that followed, Spock dedicated his focus to the tricorder scans, taking a detailed analysis of the rocky plains surrounding them. It was unlikely, but the possibility remained that they had missed a cave system of some kind that might explain the missing Seskille. The chance of it was slight enough to hardly be worth the mental energy to make the calculations, but doing so provided a distraction from the sharp spikes of pain in his head.

“We are here, Captain James T. Kirk, of the USS Enterprise. We would like greatly to show you what we have made and see what you have made; to share with you, as you share with us. We will learn from each other when you arrive.”

Spock raised a brow, wincing at the screeching whine even as his focus moved from the scans to the captain. Kirk’s expression was mystified, a brow raising as well as he met Spock’s gaze. There had been no one here upon arrival but themselves, and even now the only life signatures in scanning range remained their own.

Behind them, the landing party had spread out into the distance. All of them were shivering, hands cupped to catch the warmth of their breath, but Lieutenants Uhura and Tabea looked particularly miserable as they huddled close together. The built-in thermal regulators in their uniforms could only compensate for so much. He felt a momentary sense of professional satisfaction in the performance of his crew as they worked diligently in suboptimal conditions.

Uhura, posture scrunched against the wind, was looking over her PADD in great detail as Tabea bent in to say something. It caused the other woman to give a loud, startled laugh. The two looked shamelessly over at the ambassador, who was sulking along behind Ensign Kemen-Varley. Spock did not think their conversation likely to be relevant to the mission objectives. Laughter between the two women erupted once more, echoing over the rocky slopes, and now Spock, eyeing them, was certain of it.

That previous professional satisfaction turned a sharp corner towards exasperation.

The captain cleared his throat.

“Yes well, we would like nothing more… however, there appears to be a misunderstanding. We have already arrived.”

Perhaps it had been triggered by the shrill whine of the Seskille’s communication, but the pain was worse than moment prior. The pressure in his head was building, becoming increasingly inconvenient and nearly unbearable. Spock had to pause, close his eyes against the insistent throbbing, and wrestle his control back. Pain was of the body, and the mind controlled the body; this was hardly the worst discomfort he’d felt before. The parasites on Deneva came immediately to mind when he considered the scale of suffering one could experience. He had controlled it then; he would do so with this now.

Only, the pain didn’t feel as if it were in his head, it felt as if it were in his mind. There didn’t seem to be a source he could isolate. No physical injury, no venom, no poison. Other than the present radiation, there did not appear to be any lingering toxins in the air—and the radiation wasn’t a current concern of his. It certainly couldn’t cause these symptoms. It was… concerning.

“Captain James T. Kirk, of the USS Enterprise, we are here, but you are not. We hope to share with you soon and experience what there is to experience.”

Spock could tell that the captain was frustrated at the delay, and how stilted the conversation between himself and the Seskille was because of it. With the wait between responses, having very little information given during them was proving to be an unfortunate waste of time. The inhabitants of the planet, whoever or whatever they were, did not appear to be concealing anything maliciously—their tone sounded genuinely confused, based on his understanding of, and experience with, auditory emotional expression—but they did not expand on what they had said already.

“We are also here,” Kirk said, and although Spock knew the man’s emotional state of irritation, it wasn’t present in his voice when he next spoke. Instead, that calm attitude took center stage, just as it always did when faced with adversity. Sometimes, he thought that the captain thrived on the challenge. “It is you who isn’t. We appear to be entirely alone in the mountains and our scanners pick up no lifeforms around us. Can you confirm your location?”

The delay brought a muted relief to his mind. Every time the Seskille spoke, the whine and pop of the static bit at his control that little bit more. Focus. Calm. But those states were elusive to him right now and his head ached.

“Mountains! We are also in mountains. Many and vast mountains. We look forward to sharing them with you, and you to us, when you arrive.”

The shrill screech, too high of an audible frequency for human ears, felt like knives piercing into his mind. He needed to meditate. He needed to focus. Control. He longed for his quarters now. For the stillness of his cabin and the spiced smoke of his incense. Regrets were illogical, but he could not help but wish he’d had more time to meditate prior to beaming down. Perhaps he would have been better able to fight off the pain that continued to bloom, dull and throbbing, in his head.

He looked up—

Spock paused.

For a just a moment, there… he blinked purposely and intently to clear his vision. For a fraction of a second, he was certain had seen—but there was nothing there now except wide, open tundra and snow steadily falling from the low hanging clouds. Exactly as he had expected there to be when he had looked up from his scans. Exactly what he should have seen, and somehow had not. Spock subtly observed his surroundings, wary and cautious and on edge now, but the fleeting image of his quarters aboard the Enterprise, with its red curtains and spice-scented darkness, did not reappear.

And it had appeared. So swiftly there and gone that he had barely time to process what he’d seen. His ship quarters, as if he were suddenly standing in them. Chess set still half played, waiting to be finished at a later date. The feeling of carpet beneath his boots. The heat. And then it was gone, in the span of a flicker. A blink and the snow was back to falling in an icy world around him.

Adrenaline coursed through him, speeding up the rapid beat of his pulse. His muscles, stiff with the cold, readied and warmed for a possible threat. Even with the pain blooming sharp in his mind, he kept a hawklike watch on his surroundings. His first thought was of the captain. Jim. Spock immediately marked the position and condition of him, but the other man did not seem to have seen anything unusual. Not for lack of looking, either; he was gazing over the tundra too, keeping close tabs on the rest of the landing party.

The captain’s expression was, to put it politely, one of swiftly diminishing patience. Still, he took a deep breath, letting it out slowly. His carefully crafted protest, of which Spock could see him already formulating, went ignored in favor of expediency.

“Right, we’re looking forward to it and hope not to keep you waiting too long. Please stand by while we try to work on a solution to this from our end; with some luck we can clear all this up. In the meantime, I’m transferring you over to my communications officer, Lieutenant Uhura—who I believe you’ve met already—to further coordinate.” He closed the communicator with a small snap; the sound being stolen by the still brutal wind. In the distance, through the increasingly heavy snowfall, Uhura gave them a wave of acknowledgement.

“Well, that’s… something. I feel like I’m playing a game: how to say a lot without saying anything at all and take a long time to do so. I’d say they’re winning at it, too. Spock, any chance the coordinates were wrong?”

But Spock had already thought of this when the misunderstanding was first brought to light, and the numbers matched precisely. Someone absently, he provided them. “We are at the coordinates provided, accounting for a margin of error of 1.14 meters. Unless the numbers they provided were incorrect, we have landed exactly where they requested.”

The captain didn’t look pleased, but he didn’t look surprised either.

“A mystery then, how lovely. You know, I’ve always enjoyed my puzzles and mysteries, but not in twenty-six degree weather… and not when I’m about to get blown off my feet, either. That’s just about where I draw the limit.” But then Jim turned to him fully, looking him up and down with concern shining bright in his eyes. “Speaking of, Spock, are you doing alright? Just, you looked like you were in pain earlier. Is it the cold?”

The snow had picked up, falling in large flakes that stung at his skin. Spock had to narrow his eyes to see through it clearly. No unusual sights, no anomalies in his scans, no irregularities of any kind. The visual of his quarters had been so brief and unexpected that he could not be entirely certain he had truly seen anything at all. There and gone in the span of a blink.

It was also possible that he had not actually seen anything at all, and that this was merely the pain in his head influencing him. Pain could cause the sight to fail in inexplicable ways. He recalled attempting to take over the Enterprise in a fit of agony-induced madness caused by the Deneva parasite. He had not fully understood his own actions then, driven by pure impulse and agony, but even those horror-filled memories were full of the ship. His actions were highly questionable, but Spock knew his thoughts had been of the Enterprise in some fashion. And now, he had wanted to meditate badly enough, had imagined the dark solitude of his meditation space with the clarity of perfect recollection. It was possible…

The captain was frowning at him; Spock gave him his full attention, as if nothing had ever happened at all. Indeed, perhaps it had not.

“Vulcans can handle more extreme gradients of temperature than humans can, and for longer periods of time. It is not ideal, sir, but it is survivable.”

Jim didn’t look any less bothered, and Spock forced his own expression to soften somewhat, as much as stoicism would allow. Even with the throbbing in his head and the adrenaline beating at his heart, he made certain his brows were unfurrowed and that the lines of tension in his posture were relaxed. It took more effort than it should have to display an unaffected appearance, and it would not be able to hold for long; the pain even increased as he did so. Still, it eased the captain’s distress and that was more than worth the cost to himself.

“… I am alright, Jim, do not concern yourself about me. I may not be comfortable, but the cold is not dangerous to me at present. In fact, it is I who should be concerned about your safety; you are not accustomed to this temperature either.”

The captain let out a short laugh.

“Oh no, no, trust me, I am. Riverside is like this all winter long—worse even, you should have seen some of the blizzards growing up; makes this look almost balmy. You, on the other hand… Shi’Kahr only gets to down to, what, a little below forty Fahrenheit at night? With the highs in the one-fifties? I’d say that’s a pretty big difference, Mr. Spock. A one-hundred and twenty-four degree difference, if you want to get technical…” Kirk shook his head, a reluctant smile spreading. “But if you assure me that you’re okay—”

“I am.”

“—then I’ll stop fussing. If it gets too bad, just let me know and we’ll get you back up to the ship to thaw out.” Spock had no intention of doing so; not when his captain would remain down here in the cold. Not when he could not be certain there was no immediate threat. “In the meantime, our hosts appear to be both here and not here. Thoughts? Speculation? … I’ll even take a wild shot in the dark at this point.”

“… There will be no need for shooting in the dark, sir; it is noon and quite bright out. Should the use of phasers prove necessary, it will undoubtedly take place in adequately lit conditions.” Spock understood the aphorism quite well despite his passing comment, but it made Kirk smile at him, amused. “However, I do not at present have enough data with which to form a reliable theory; it is possible that we are, to apply one of your phrases, missing a vital piece of the puzzle.”

“Then let’s go try to find some pieces.”

The captain started towards the rolling, rocky outcropping of boulders and jagged cliffs and Spock followed somewhat reluctantly. If the situation were to turn dangerous—and he could not disprove with any certainty that it had not already done so—he would have preferred that Kirk remained close to the landing coordinates for a swift retrieval. Already, the mission did not have a positive outlook; there were too many uncontrolled variables. In his experience, large barriers encountered at the beginning of an objective would prove to remain throughout it unless they were otherwise able to be removed or worked through. He did not have high expectations for a positive conclusion, as these particular barriers appeared quite immovable.

Too many diplomatic missions had ended in multiple deaths and near total disaster. He did not believe in the concept of luck, but even he couldn’t account for the series of unusual and often insidious circumstances the crew of the Enterprise found themselves in with alarming frequency. Jim in particular seemed to attract a statistically anomalous amount of danger. Spock had been working on the calculations for some time, hoping to find a scientifically precise explanation for this peculiar phenomenon, but no hypothesis had been finalized yet. No other starship captain in the fleet seemed to experience even close to the same number of unfortunate mishaps.

Spock had checked.

Perhaps it was something he would bring to Mr. Scott’s attention during their next brainstorming session; it would be relevant enough to the chief engineer’s interests and certainly another mind involved was better than one. There would be ample opportunity to theorize; he was working on a prototype Quantified Helioionization Buffer with the other man and they met often in Science to further their progress on the device. Rather, Spock met to further progress. Mr. Scott, on the other hand, seemed to consider it a fine time to socially air his grievances about anything and everything—the ship itself being the sole exception to his ranting.

However, if anyone had cause to be concerned about the inexplicable events that endangered the ship and crew on a frequent basis, Spock thought it likely that Mr. Scott would be high on the list. He certainly had enough motivation for suitable investment, even if it was primarily dedicated towards his engines. The man had proven himself to be easy enough to work with in both a professional and personal capacity, if unfortunately a bit too chatty. His leaps of logic—or illogic, as the case were—had been the difference between life and death on more than one occasion. Perhaps the two of them could calculate the numbers and then, more importantly, find a way to somehow counteract them.

Spock, as a scientist, would never hesitate to brave the unknown. This was not in question. But scientific advancement should not come at the cost of the ship, the crew, and his captain.

Especially not his captain.

His breath was more labored than it should have been, and this was concerning. The elevating terrain would normally not have been an obstacle to him; he had scaled mountainous outcroppings and jagged rock formations far steeper on Vulcan in his own youth. With the pain swelling in his head, it was increasingly clear that he was becoming compromised—quite possibly he had, in fact, already passed the threshold to be considered such. It was harder to put one step in front of the other evenly, although he forced himself to do so now with the same smooth pacing as Kirk. No expression, no sign of the advancing levels of pain. He did not want the captain to unnecessarily worry over what was, in all probability, nothing more than a particularly bad headache. It was illogical to waste time on this when the mission objectives took priority, when Jim’s safety took priority.

In that, he would offer no compromise.

Spock knew with utmost certainty that, should he broach the topic of his worsening condition to the captain, he would be sent immediately back to the Enterprise for medical evaluation. The decision would be more than justified; he himself would not have hesitated to make an identical one were it another member of the crew who was suffering and approached him as such. It was logical. However, it was also unnecessary. It had not happened to another member of the crew. It had happened to him, and in his case, it was not intolerable. He had suffered intolerable pain before, at the Deneva colony, and had conquered it then. That he struggled to do so now was undoubtedly a personal failing of his, but not one that reflected the broad reality of the situation. He was more than capable of handling the pain. He had done so before. He would do so again.

If he returned to the Enterprise, Jim would remain here with the landing party. The landing party that otherwise consisted of three highly capable officers and an official Starfleet ambassador. Of those four crewmembers, only one regularly trained for combat; the others had specialties of their own. Should something go wrong, Spock would be best suited to protecting the captain. The objective of the mission was important. The objective of his own mission, that of keeping Jim safe, took priority above all else.

There was a degree of emotionalism that colored his motivations. That was undeniable, and he would be forced to process through his own irrationality at a later date. Spock understood that, accepted that. However, he also understood and accepted that this mission was not taking place under optimal circumstances and that there was a degree of danger involved. Especially now that he had experienced a visual anomaly. It might have been a brief hallucination or moment of confusion caused by the pain, but it also equally might not have been. He could not be certain, and this made him uneasy.

Kirk should be informed of it either way; it was the captain’s duty to know the status of his team. Spock both understood and agreed with the logic. Except… he did not want to see Jim harmed when he might be able to stop it. He would be unable to do so if he were not here. The pain to himself was inconsequential when it came to the safety of his captain and his closest friend. If the resulting cost was his own comfort, it was a price he was more than willing to pay tenfold.

“What do you think? Continue up or start heading back down?”

Spock looked upwards from where he had been carefully navigating the quickly slickening terrain. The snowfall made each step largely precarious; already the sand-colored rock was coated with a thin layer of white. It reminded him of Vulcan in his youth; the way that the native tra-wan svai would bloom and coat the sand around the base of the low trunks with cloud-like petals. A familiar sight from his bedroom window overlooking the courtyard.

The scent of the flowers in the air, unmistakable and distinct.  

He froze midstep.

Sweet and fragrant with a peppery undertone; not overpowering or overwhelming to the senses, even when its petals blanketed the sand in sheets. He’d always found the scent of them rather pleasant… but he’d also always found them on Vulcan, and Vulcan only. Not Seskilles VII, where he had yet to find evidence that plant life grew at all. Not a barren, rocky mountain with thick snowfall and sub-zero temperatures. It was impossible for them to be here; he could not see them, they did not register on his scans, they could not exist in this land, and yet, he knew that scent.

He carefully scented the air again, subtly, but the unique fragrance was gone just as swiftly as the wind blew. Just as swiftly as his quarters had been. All that remained was the chill of frost, snow, and cold, earthy rock. But for that split moment, he was certain—

“Spock?” The captain was staring at him.

He blinked, absently responding with something approaching autopilot rather than any intentional thought. “There is a crater less than one kilometer ahead containing large rock formations that might be of interest.”

If anything, it would provide more distraction than the tundra below them; there was little further he could gain from the flat expanse of bare rock.

“Onwards and upwards, then.”

Spock followed the captain silently, warily. Every few steps, he carefully tested the air for any hints of that distinct fragrance, any traces. The scent did not return, if it had ever been there at all.

The pain in his head only increased.

Chapter Text

“So,” Kirk glanced over at him with a light nudge of his elbow. “Guess you were right about those volcanos. No hot magma baths for us.”

They had been walking for almost fifteen minutes, climbing steadily in elevation towards the crater nestled aside the outcropping of boulders and cliffs to the north. He kept close tabs on the rest of the landing party to the west and south respectively; even as he now glanced behind, eyes narrowed to see through the falling snow, they were little more than colorful pinpricks of red and blue against the open tundra. Within sight, for however long sight remained a possibility in the increasing weather conditions. Focusing his vision on them for too long made the pain behind his eyes spike, and so he kept track via his tricorder instead. It was not difficult; the landing party remained the only lifeform in scanning range.

“We would not be bathing in magma, sir. Magma resides beneath the planet’s crust and is not commonly accessible,” Spock recited factually, almost absently. He tested the air once more but the only scent on the wind was of ice and rock. No flowers, no unusual scents of any kind but what he expected there to be. “And although the presence of mountains suggests a certain amount of planetary seismic activity, I estimate the probability of advanced warning of emergent volcanic eruption to be significant enough, thus reducing magma to such a minuscule risk not worth mentioning.”

The captain smiled at him.

“Well, at least we’ve got that going for us, and thank god for that, because nothing else seems to be going right! Looks like Bones won’t be needing that burn paste after all.” Kirk held out a hand to catch the increasing number of snowflakes falling from the sky as they walked; they melted upon contact with his much warmer skin. By now, it was falling steadily, and in thicker and faster quantities. The bare rock beneath them was already coated, making footfall potentially treacherous. Spock had to watch his step carefully to prevent slipping, and he hovered closer to the captain to prevent him from doing the same. “I can’t say that I prefer freezing to death much more than I do burning alive, but at least he won’t have the chance to say ‘I told you so’. Can you imagine? He’d have been downright smug if we beamed back up all charred.”

Oh yes, Spock could imagine. Indeed, he supposed the doctor would have been insufferably satisfied with himself, although someone unfamiliar with the man wouldn’t know it by his expression. It would be just as ferocious and irritable as it always were when dealing with injuries, but his sense of supercilious vindication would have radiated out of his posture and mannerisms all the same. Spock could say with certainty that he didn’t look forward to experiencing the doctor’s uniquely hostile brand of bedside mannerisms anytime soon and was glad that it did not seem to be a likely possibility.

In his peripherals, Kirk stooped down to lift a handful of snow, squeezing it between his hands to form a tight ball. He was smiling with a certain mischievous gleam in his eye and Spock eyed the man warily; he didn’t think Jim would throw any at him, but he had been proven wrong in this before. One did not easily forget the impromptu fight of compacted balls of snow that had taken place on Reyllore-Thone XVII, especially as he had been the primary (and apparently only) target of the combined forces of Jim, Doctor McCoy, and Ensign Chekov.

Spock had taken twelve haphazard impacts to his torso and limbs before he’d been able to take refuge behind a wide tree trunk. In this count, he did not include the further two particularly well-aimed hits he’d received directly to the face, courtesy of the captain himself. His ears had been flushed a vivid green and his patience in limited supply by the time they’d beamed back up. It’d been the talk of the ship for a little over two weeks, and he was not eager for a repeat experience. Jim had been more than a little gleefully self-satisfied as he recounted the fight for all to hear, over and over again, all while exaggerating it wildly with each retelling.

It had made for a very distracting working environment.

As if knowing exactly what Spock was thinking, the captain grinned at him slyly, teasingly. The cupped ball of snow was shaped neatly between freezing hands, and Kirk side-eyed him for a moment before he tossed it far towards the cliffside. It burst on impact.

“Don’t worry, it might just be a bit too cold for that, Mr. Spock, no matter how fun that was.” Fun was not the word that Spock would have chosen to describe the memory of being repeatedly struck by dense projectiles of ice. Cold, uncomfortable, exasperating, but not fun. But the captain only waved away his half-formed protest and took in a deep breath of chilling air. “I know, I know. Just, don’t you think it’s beautiful here? Freezing, lonely, but… beautiful. Even if it is a radioactive arctic wasteland, it sure is a pretty one.”

This triggered the beginnings of a theory in his mind, one Spock ruminated on as they approached the distant boulders. Even with the pain radiating through his mind, he considered all known facts and data points, connecting what he knew together with what he theorized. A radioactive wasteland. Such a possibility would explain more than it would dismiss, would answer more questions than other working theories. It did raise new ones, however, and he did not have enough data to work with. Without further information or the ability to find the radioactive source, it was impossible to hypothesize further, but the spark of intrigue was there. It made him reconsider the landscape with a new perspective.

In the silence, the air was muted around them, as if a heavy blanket had covered the world. Although the wind still blew with a hollow moan through the rock, it sounded stifled and dull to his ears. The snow fell heavily, quieting their footsteps on the rocks and the whirr of the tricorder in his hands. The distant conversation of his crewmates was muffled to mere snippets of occasional sound on the air, quiet enough that even his hearing struggled to pick up the individual voices. Straining to do so required more focus than he could safely expend at the present; he instead resigned himself to keeping tabs via scans only. Spock found that while he vaguely understood the captain’s appreciation for the beauty of the land around them, he could not fully agree with—nor appreciate—the sentiment.

He did not want to be here.

That pounding, weighted pain in his head, his mind, only worsened as he moved. It felt as if it beat in time to his pulse, throbbing and aching with every step and breath. He wanted to stop, to close his eyes, to examine his own mind thoroughly to discern and isolate the source of it, but as Kirk wasn’t stopping his exploration, Spock too would continue without pause. The captain didn’t seem to be suffering from any ill effects other than the cold; he noticed a slow shivering overtake the man’s normally easy posture. It was expected in the freezing temperatures; even the thermals of their uniforms couldn’t withstand the sustained chill for long, and the heat loss from their exposed necks and heads was significant.

Only himself, then. That narrowed down the causes of the pressure and pain significantly. With every step, the inconvenience of trying to work through it was building. Whereas pain of the body could be controlled with focus of the mind, pain of the mind required a much different kind of effort. He needed meditation, solitude, and time.

He had access to none of those at present.

The captain needed to be told. He needed to be informed immediately of the possibility that Spock’s performance of duty might be compromised by the pain, even if only minutely. This was fact; logical, sensible, calculated fact. However… upon observing Jim’s expression of pleased delight at the snowflakes falling, Spock hesitated. Wherever the pain came from, it was not hurting his captain, only himself. There was nothing that could be done anyways; the captain was hardly able to heal a headache, nor did he have the required telepathic skillset to soothe the pressure on his mental shields. The only outcome would be that he’d be sent right back down the mountain to beam up for medical treatment. Medical treatment that would be an ineffective waste of time at best. That was not an acceptable result to him; he would be in far better use here, with his captain, rather than in the doctor’s less-than-tender mercies. Even with the pain, his unique biology allowed him to physically withstand more abuse than the rest of the crew combined. Once Kirk decided to turn back on his own, perhaps he would broach the topic. Until then, he did not wish to cause a needless interruption.

His tricorder chirped lowly in his hands, and Spock stared down, squinting at it with some effort to see through the ache behind his eyes.

“Got something?” Kirk paused.

“Indeed; most curious, Captain. The outcropping ahead is different than the rock around it; not necessarily in composition, as it is largely made up of the same minerals at the rest of the scanned terrain, however it is in different percentages.” The large, looming boulders he had previously taken as the remnants of a possible landslide or the result of past seismic activity, were of significant scientific interest now. “I am also registering metal in great quantities, and I can confirm the presence of pergium among it.”

It was only after they arrived at the top of crater that he could see clearly the boulders and rocks through the heavy snowfall. Rocks, Spock recognized immediately, that were not rocks. Although the snow limited his view more than he would have preferred, there were immediately noticeable differences between the boulders and the cliffsides surrounding them.

They were ordered, neatly arranged in something resembling rows; groupings of twenty or more lined alongside each other, with even gaps in between. More than this, there were openings and hollows in some, providing nooks and entrances inside. Thousands of individual stone structures, both atop the crater and within the slopes and plains of it, stretching into the distant horizon. Although there were no apparent standing or fully intact constructions that he could see, it was undeniable what he was looking at.

Buildings.

Or rather, the remains of buildings. It was clear by their appearance that they had collapsed, long, long ago; they were little more than ruins now. Jagged edges smoothed down by the harsh wind and frost to the point that they were rounded instead of rough. Some were large and looming and others were smaller than a standard house might be on both Vulcan and earth. More than adequate to provide multi-roomed shelters should they have been still standing, and he suspected the larger ruins to be collapsed towers or high-rises.

They blended in with the surrounding terrain well enough; made up of the same minerals and materials but ground together in something similar to a concrete or cement. If they had ever been painted, the color had long been worn away. A significant discovery: it was the first sign of tangible, physical life on the planet. Even fallen into ruin, it was evident that the buildings had been crafted by physical means, rather than a strange feature of nature.

“It appears the given coordinates were correct,” Spock said, observing the remains of what could only have been a large city through the snow. “We requested the location of their most physical buildings and built structures, and they delivered exactly that.”

Kirk shuddered beside him, rubbing his arms up and down frantically to try to maintain warmth as he took in the remains of some kind of society. The captain’s skin looked pink, flushed from the burn of the wind and ice; it was clear the weather was getting to him more than he wanted to admit. He looked serious, lips pursed and expression severe. Even as Spock watched the man, the hazel switched to him, making eye contact. In that look, much was said: confusion, curiosity, agreement, caution.

“Yes, it certainly appears so,” the captain said lowly. “The mystery grows, but this only asks more questions than it answers. How old would you say these are, exactly?”

The tricorder readings were not promising.

“Unknown, sir. I can only provide rough estimates without proper sample analysis, but the dating of these buildings has exceeded the tricorder’s detection range of one-point-five-million years.”

“One-point-five—” Kirk blinked, taken off guard momentarily before his expression hardened. “Right, alright. I suppose we didn’t clarify that the buildings should be currently inhabited ones. Most species would have taken it as given, considering the context of why we were asking to begin with.”

“Most species. Not all. While our respective cultures can detect the various interpretations of a sentence; some species only understand the literal denotation…. and humans have an unfortunate tendency to not say what they mean.” Spock had some level of understanding with this; his own experience in using context clues to navigate through mankind’s often colorful and confusing verbalizations was not too far in his past. Entering Starfleet Academy had been a culture shock in more ways than one. “It is possible that they are just as confused by our initial request as we are with their resulting form of compliance.”

“Oh no, not nearly as confused as I am, I assure you. But hey, at least we’ve got confirmation on that pergium. I’m not sure some pretty rocks are worth all the fuss and cold, no matter how valuable they are, but the brass’ll be happy about it.” He pulled out his communicator. “Kirk to landing party, status report.”

“Nothing unusual, sir.” Ensign Kemen-Varley’s voice sounded from the device. “Nothing at all, as a matter of fact. No animals, no plants, just that radiation and a whole bunch of snow.”

“Same on our end, captain.” Lieutenant Tabea. He could hear the low murmur of Lieutenant Uhura in the background of the open channel, still speaking with the Seskille through her own communicator. “Conversation is still ongoing; we’re trying to get some more information out of them, but it’s… slow going. They aren’t really making much sense.”

“Understood, keep trying. In the meantime, Mr. Spock and I have located a settlement… or rather the remains of one; it looks completely abandoned. We’re going to take a quick look around, see if we can get some answers. Keep me updated. Kirk out.” With a snap, he closed the communicator and slipped it back to his belt. “Shall we?”

The trek up down into the crater was considerably more dangerous than the climb up the mountain slope had been. It was slick and steep; some areas had sheer vertical drops down. Spock attempted multiple times to place himself before the captain so as to judge the pathway for potential hazards, but Kirk appeared wise to his plan and fought him on it every step of the way. With some exasperation, he was forced to allow the other man to go first and, as a result, hovered closer than he otherwise would have to prevent his captain from falling should the ground prove unstable. The stubbornness of humans. This human in particular.

The wind moaned through the ruins of the buildings, hollow and collapsed as they were. Although partially covered by snow, Spock immediately identified the signs of former civilization. Openings that had once been doors and windows, clumps of deteriorated metal both outside and inside the buildings, structures that might have been fountains or statues, evidence of a road system. All evidence of ancient life, but far too eroded now to recognize what that society might have been like. All he could say for certain was that it had been a large one; there were approximately 37,281 individual buildings in and around the crater. It was likely there were considerably more, but some were too dilapidated or crumbled to be factually countable.

He provided this information to the captain.

“You know, even the most remote ancient sites on earth have some evidence of modern life; archeologists coming and going, tire tracks, preservation equipment, something. It doesn’t look like anyone’s been here in—well, at least anytime recently.” Kirk blew into his hands to try to warm them up; he was shivering outright now, and his ears, nose, and cheeks were flushed dark from the wind and cold. “I don’t understand it. We’ve got Seskille voices, we’ve got Seskille coordinates, we’ve got Seskille buildings, but we don’t have Seskille.”

“We also have Seskille machinery.” Spock kept his gaze on the dark screen of the tricorder to avoid the glaring brightness of the snow; the pain had spiked once more. “Many of the metal remains have distinct patterns to them, the pergium arranged in what may be a fuel source of some kind. They appear to be the remnants of transportation.”

“Like old automobiles?”

“Unknown. It does, however, suggest that whoever the inhabitants were, they were an advanced culture.”

Kirk ran a half-numb hand down his face, frustrated by the gaps of information.

“Alright, so we know—or can pretty safely assume—that an advanced population lived here at least one-point-five-million years ago; that’s… something. Not really something we can use, but something—and I’ll be honest, I’ll take just about anything at this point.” The captain ducked into one of the hollows of the building, examining the bare, empty space.

Spock lingered outside the doorway, seeing little point in investigating the area further and expending that energy. Whatever answers they were seeking, he did not think it likely that the ruins would provide them; they seemed to only be raising further questions. He wished he could provide the answers the captain wanted, that he himself also wanted, but this was just as much a mystery to him. In a better state of mind, he might have been able to theorize with far more accuracy, or extrapolate better data, but he was not in that better state. No, indeed, he was far from it.

The pain pulsing behind his eyes was quickly approaching intolerable levels, and no attempts to block it out were proving sufficient enough. He felt nauseous, dizzy, and rapidly lightheaded, but also heavy and pulled down by a great, smothering pressure. Not an external force, but an internal sensation; he felt pressed on from his own mind.

The scent of flowers had not returned. The split-second sight of his cabin aboard the Enterprise had not returned. Try as he might, with every scan and rescan, he could not detect any anomaly that might have caused it. His senses were normally sharp and focused and keen; there was nothing surrounding him that he did not already expect. The captain rustling around inside the empty room, buildings looming around them, the groan of the wind through the crater, the snow falling from the sky. Nothing out of place. Nothing that would explain what had happened.

And yet, he had experienced what he had experienced. Pain could explain away much, but this did not feel like the parasites of Deneva. That had been a physical pain, and a controllable one at that. It had taken time, what with that level of agony being foreign to him, but he’d managed to suppress it through sheer force of will eventually. This pain was different. There was something wrong, truly wrong. Something in all this that he was missing.

The captain needed to be informed. Spock had attempted to rationalize his decision to remain quiet, but those justifications were tenuous at best, and they failed to hold up to increased pain-driven self-scrutiny.

Spock cleared his throat unnecessarily, finding himself oddly unsettled by the idea of verbally confirming his predicament. He had done his best, these past few months, to avoid being any kind of inconvenience to the Enterprise, the mission, to Jim. To admit an issue now should not have been as afflicting as it was now proving to be. Logically, keeping quiet on the topic had the potential to disrupt the mission more than his admission of a problem might. He was already unable to execute his duties with his usual efficiency; he was distracted, his focus was off, and his senses were debilitated. Any one of these complications would be reason enough to inform the captain. He knew this. It was logical.

Why, then, was he so hesitant?

“… Captain,” Spock said very quietly, and he realized his voice could not be heard over the wind. Closing his eyes and forcing himself into a rigid parade rest, he cleared his throat again and said, in a louder tone: “Captain.”

“Yes?”

“Sir, there is—”

Spock flinched as something hard and cold exploded against his chest, bursting into powder upon impact. His eyes flew open, startled, and he looked down at his uniform shirt, uncomprehendingly at first. His brow furrowed.

White. Snow. A snowball.

In the span of his distraction, another snowball struck him, this time bursting against the side of his head and filling his left ear with freezing snow. Blinking slowly, and more than a little appalled, Spock lifted his gaze to find the grinning face of his captain—his captain who happened to be wiping incriminating snow off of his hands. The captain seemed to be waiting for a specific kind of response, that playful gleam wild in his eyes as he ducked out of the safety of his shelter.

Spock stared back at him expressionlessly, stunned to speechlessness.

Perplexingly, this appeared to be exactly the kind of reaction that Kirk had been looking for and his resulting laugh was breathless; deep and uncontrolled. The smile on his wind-flushed face spread clear to his eyes, which shined from amusement. It ached at Spock to see it; to see Jim looking so intoxicatingly happy. He knew the captain was trying to relieve some of the stress of the unknown; to add some harmless amusement and break up the frustration, and it might have worked, another time. There were plenty of concerns with the mission, with the present situation, but in this small moment, Jim shined so brightly. It made him regret that he could not partake in the heat of that blinding, dizzying light.

“I know, I’m sorry, but the look on your face... I’m so sorry, Mr. Spock. I just really couldn’t resist.” The captain looked anything but contrite; he didn’t stop smiling, still chuckling even as he stepped up and brushed the snow from Spock’s shirt and hair with a shivering hand. In fact, the evidence of his presumably accurate aim only appeared to delight him further. Spock wasn’t certain what look Jim was referring to; he did not have one. His expression was as stone. “But you were saying?”

Spock had been about to say that he was ill. That he was too ill to continue with the mission and that his presence in the landing party needed to be replaced immediately. He had been about to say that there was something afflicting his mind in a way that he did not understand. He had been about to say—

His voice faltered and he could only stare at Jim; at the elated, proud light in his eyes and the carefree smile that he so rarely wore these days.

“… Only that the wind has eroded any visible markings there might have been on the buildings around us, and I estimate that it will be the same with the others. This city is of archeological interest, and scientifically intriguing, but there is little chance of further discovery that might influence the success of the mission.”

Kirk blew out a calming puff of breath, nodding as he did so. “Probably should start heading back anyways; too much longer down here and Scotty’ll be beaming back popsicles. Assuming, of course, that his majesty allows it.” By way of context, Spock gathered that the captain was speaking of the ambassador.

They fell in step with each other, side-by-side towards the steep slope of the crater. Their boot prints were already covered by the snow; it was coming down harder now and Spock thought it likely to only get worse. It had been a number of months since they’d had a mission on such a cold planet and any other time, he might have looked forward to experiencing the unique environment. Vulcan could not have been more different in landscape or climate, after all, and there was a certain novelty to experiencing the snow in such vast quantities. Any other time, he would have found it refreshing. Now, he wanted only to leave.

Spock swallowed thickly as he walked, forcing down the bile that threatened to rise up in his throat. His eyesight blurred; the tricorder in his hands fading in and out of focus as he tried to read it. He was compromised; this was truer now than it had been before. The pain had been an irritation at first, but it was now a problem. One he could no longer ignore, no matter how he wished he could.

Breathe. Focus. Calm.

It was getting harder to grasp any of those concepts. The incline up the crater wall would not have presented him any difficulty before, but now it felt brutal to his body. The effort and strain made him struggle to take in a full breath, and each step pounded like a drum in his head. He could hear his own heartbeat, rapid and thrumming. He felt nauseous and ill in a way he could rarely recall experiencing before. Not sickness of the body; not sickness caused by any identifiable virus, bacteria, or toxin. There was nothing wrong with him physically, which caused all the greater concern. His working hypothesis was that this had been environmentally caused, by means of exposure to some unknown substance or illness, but he was having to reevaluate that as his condition declined.

Spock pressed his lips tightly together to prevent his expression from changing. His brows were furrowed despite his best efforts to smooth them out, and he hoped Jim would not notice. The captain did, though. Of course he did.

“Spock, you alright?”

He could not speak now, not while still walking. It was the rocking sensation of movement; if he opened his mouth, he felt certain he would vomit. Instead, he gave a harsh nod and affirmative humming sound. Eyes straight forward, focusing on the makeshift trail in front of him. The snow was at his ankle now, and he had to stay alert for any buried rocks that might stagger his feet out from beneath him. If he fell…

“Uhura to Captain Kirk.”

The captain tugged his communicator from his belt and flipped it open with a chirp.

“Go ahead, Lieutenant.”

“Sir, the Seskille are asking to speak with you, when you get a moment. I’ve been trying to talk with them, and it was productive at first but then they just… stopped making sense. They keep asking about unrelated topics, jumping from thing to thing, and I’ve not made any headway since. They’ve keep asking to talk to the same person as before, and so...”

Kirk gave Spock a careful side-eying once-over, seemed to come to some internal decision, and turned his attention back to the communicator.

“I’m in the middle of something that requires my full attention. Transfer them to Hammett.”

There was a pause of silence before: “Sir?” Even Lieutenant Uhura, who always spoke with such polite, calm professionalism, couldn’t keep the skepticism out of her voice.

“Just as I said: transfer them to Hammett. The man’s an ambassador, isn’t he? Let him… I don’t know, ambass,” Kirk said, and to anyone listening he would sound perfectly confident in his decision. Spock, however, could hear the undertone of derision coloring his words. “It’s about time he pulls his own weight. Let me know if there’s any issues. Kirk out.”

The captain sounded as if he fully expected there to be.

They continued, and he couldn’t help but notice that the captain was glancing at him every few steps, expression searching and wary. Spock could not afford the effort it would take to reassure him that everything was satisfactory, not when the pain was so close to excruciating. That it only affected him, and with such severity, raised entirely new concerns. There was no one aboard the Enterprise that had the specialty to diagnose or treat telepathic injuries, should that indeed be what this was. He knew Doctor M’Benga had interned on Vulcan for a time, but his ability to assist would be hindered by the glaring limitation of him being human.

This situation was not like Deneva, but he wished sincerely that it was. Pain of the body would be controllable to a certain degree. Furthermore, it would be understandable and potentially even treatable. Pain of the mind was a far more complicated dilemma, and one he did not have an immediate answer for. There would be no easy solution; he felt his controls already fraying at the edges and even meditating now would not bring quick relief to actual inflicted damage.

Jim would be unable to help, Spock realized grimly. If he told the captain the extent of the pain, Jim would be incapable of helping, but it would not stop him from trying either. He’d go to the ends of the universe to keep those he cared about safe, even at the risk of his own safety, and he somehow counted Spock among those lucky few. No-win scenarios did not exist to James Kirk; he simply would not accept that there was nothing he could do. He would look for another way, just as he had when Spock had been blinded. The captain had been distressed, angry and lashing out from grief, but he had not stopped searching for a better solution to—

There were warm hands gripping his shoulders in a firm, almost bruising hold. “I don’t care, Spock!” Kirk’s voice snapped out through the darkness. “I don’t care if you give me fifty of them—a hundred! I don’t care if you call up Starfleet Command right now and scream it at them! I’m not accepting it, you hear?!”

Spock tried to reason with Kirk, hands at his back in parade rest and his posture rigid. Even though he could not see the captain’s expression, he knew how it would look. Agitated, upset, angry. Spock longed to relieve him of that, but in truth he rather felt the same. It was all he could do to stop his own feelings from showing, to keep his own despair from being evident. He did not want to leave the ship. He did not want to leave the captain. Jim was only making this worse, and it was difficult enough already. “It is the only logical course of action, sir. I am unable to—"

“What is? Unable to what?”

Spock blinked and then blanched at the glaring, shocking light of the snow around him. It felt blinding, after being surrounded by and seeing nothing but darkness… but that was not right, something was not right, because he should be in the light, able to see it with full clarity. He was not blind, so why then had—?

For a moment, he was confused; his mind felt stuttering, as if it were a machine starting to wear at the joints. Skipping tracks and gears and shifting haphazardly within his normally well-ordered thoughts. He had been on the Enterprise. He had felt the warmth of it, the scent of filtered air, heard the chirping sounds of medbay and the low hum of the engines below. But he was not there, not now. He was not blinded. He was on Seskilles VII, on a mission. Right, the landing party, the objective, the captain.

“Unable to what? Spock?” Kirk took a step closer to him; his hand was half extended, as if he wasn’t fully sure whether to reach out and touch him or not. Whatever it was that the captain saw when he paused and truly looked Spock over, it appeared to alarm him greatly, for he immediately moved in and gripped him firmly by the shoulders. It was identical, Spock thought, to the moment prior, when he had also felt Jim’s hands on him. Identical in all ways except one: he could see Jim’s face now. “Spock?”

To his distress, Spock realized he would not be able to explain this away, nor hide it any longer. The pounding in his head peaked and spiked and throbbed so violently that he wanted to scream.

His knees buckled, and he felt himself starting to tip. Vertigo and disorientation made his nausea surge, and he was torn between catching himself from falling or preventing himself from vomiting. The choice was made for him; Kirk’s arms wrapped tightly around his shoulders and tugged him inwards to stop him from dropping. Spock pressed his lips firmly together as he breathed through his nose in harsh, panting breaths; he did not dare open his mouth or he would surely be ill. His head spun; black edged his sight as his vision tunneled…

Wavering and dizzy, Spock sagged bonelessly into the arms of his captain.

Chapter Text

“Okay, alright, let’s just—slowly—easy, easy—" The captain grunted as he bore the majority of Spock’s heavy weight against his chest, the density of Vulcan stature nearly tipping him over. Spock, slumped lamely against him, could do nothing to assist as Kirk carefully lowered them both to the ground in an inelegant sprawl of tangled limbs.

The snow was deep enough now to cushion the rock beneath him, but Spock thought he would not care if the ground were made up of nails and molten steel. It felt good to sit, to lean forward and press his forehead to his bent knees. The pain in his head was blinding and his vision dulled around the edges, fading in and out. He had to shut his eyes to prevent it from worsening the churning in his gut, but the darkness only caused the world to tilt as if it were spinning.

A familiar arm wrapped around his back, warm and strong, the hand of it pressing into the base of his neck gently. Jim. Confusion and panic radiated from the captain’s touch like a beacon, bare skin touching bare skin and feeding a constant loop of worry and fear. They should have felt violating, those raw emotions from his captain, and to some degree they did, but the touch itself felt more akin to ice on an inflamed injury. Soothing, relieving.

“Shh, I’ve got you, Spock. Take a moment, breathe—that’s it…”

They sat in silence that way for a while, shoulder to shoulder as Kirk rubbed a slow circle into his back. It took at least four minutes—Spock’s sense of time was skewed, he noticed ominously, and he could not calculate the exact figures—before the tightness in his chest ebbed. The nausea was still there, the pain was still there, sharp and throbbing and debilitating, but he was able to at last take slow, shaking breaths. The cold air in his lungs helped to ground him, as did the pressure of the hand on his back, and he opened his eyes.

Like always, the first thing he took note of was the captain.

Kirk was watching him warily, fear-bright eyes examining over him for any injuries or obvious ailments; looking for something that might explain why he had collapsed. Spock regretted that he had nothing to show for the pain in his head; that there was no wound of some kind that could be bandaged or treated. It would have made coping easier to have Jim assist him as if it were just another routine mission injury. Jim did not graciously handle feeling powerless, and Spock knew that well after more than three years at his side. Giving the captain something to do or something to occupy himself with would have gone a long way in easing his concern.

“Spock?” He met the captain’s eyes and—after a pause, as if making sure that Spock was fully with him—Kirk continued. “You want to tell me what’s going on now?”

His voice was very soft and kind; carefully so. It would have likely been little more than a whisper if the wind wouldn’t have stolen it away; on the ship he would have murmured low enough to fool most human ears. It was a kind effort on the captain’s part—and a deliberate one—to speak so gently. He was instinctively inclined to do the opposite; the more worried Jim felt, the louder he became. A way of expressing his dissatisfaction in the face of desperation; because anger was somehow more respected an emotion than fear was to human norms. It had only taken one instance of him of noticing Spock’s ears twitch at his volume before he’d cut that proclivity out entirely, to which Spock would be forever grateful. Especially now, when even the sound of his own breathing hurt.

Spock judged it safe enough to open his mouth to speak; the nausea was still present, but it had receded some the longer he rested there, and he did not think he would immediately vomit upon replying.

“I... believe I may be compromised, sir.”

Kirk let out a huffing breath of laughter, but he did not sound amused. He sounded uneasy and anxious. A nervous habit of his: trying to gentle them into a topic he knew Spock found uncomfortable to discuss. His health always was. They had been in these situations before, although not for the same reasons, and Spock had never found it became any easier to talk about his own personal matters than it had the first time he’d been forced to do so. Familiarity often bred ease, but this was a clear exception. It was just as unpleasant as ever.

“I’d call that a bit of an understatement; you looked about ready to pass out just now. What’s wrong?”

“I am disoriented and suffering vertigo. I am fatigued. My head aches.” It was not a lie, Spock thought bleakly, and he tried to convince himself of the lackluster justification. He had said nothing that was not the truth. He did not know what was causing the pain, only that it was present. He could theorize, but theory was not fact. Spock did not indulge in verbal speculation, and so not offering his opinion on the suspected circumstances behind his condition was not unusual. It was wholly unrelated to his reluctance to inconvenience the captain in even small ways, but merely done for the sake of brevity. “I do not think my presence here to be of further use to the mission.”

“I’m not worried about the mission, Spock. I’m worried about you. Do you know what’s causing it? Are you hurt or—oh, is it the cold? Here, come here, you must be freezing.” The captain tugged him closer and began to roughly rub up and down Spock’s arms with his hands, using the resulting friction to try to warm him. The resulting jostling made his head pound all the more, but he could not bring himself to stop Jim’s efforts to help. It gave him something to do, at least; kept him occupied. And he could not deny that the warmth soaking through his uniform was nice, as was Jim’s close proximity. "God, Spock, and here I was chucking snow at you! If I just stopped to think for even a—I’m so sorry.”

Jim believed the temperature to be the cause of his condition, which was not the truth. It was not the cold. Spock knew this with absolute certainty. The weather had worsened now, the snow coming down in greater quantities, but he observed it impartially, abstractly. It threatened hypothermia and frostbite, but it did not threaten the sanctity of his control. It was not a threat to him in the ways that mattered, and his ingrained caution did not register it as one. Cold alone could not do this. It could not press against the barriers of his mind; it could not thrust him into memories of times long ago. It could not make him feel this way. Whatever the source of his condition, it was not caused by the temperature. This was fact. Certain, cold, objective fact.

“… It is probable,” Spock acknowledged weakly. The words felt dragged from him; he was nauseous all over again, but this time from the stomach-pitting sensation of lying. More than that, it was that he was lying to Jim. “I am not presently able to accurately calculate the odds.” Lying. It felt like bile as it continued to pour out of his mouth, spilling from his lips like poison, but he could not seem to stop. “…You are not at fault, Jim. The snowballs were harmless and are not responsible for my present state. This discomfort is not life-threatening, but I believe it would be beneficial for me to rest.”

“We’re going back,” the captain said decisively. “I’m sure—”

Whatever the captain was sure of, Spock did not find out. Kirk’s communicator chirped loudly, and the sound was grating to Spock’s ears. He had almost forgotten, for some small moment, that the universe did not pause just because Jim was talking to him. In the falling snow and calm murmuring, it was easy to pretend they were the only ones who existed.

“Ambassador Hammett to Captain Kirk.”

Kirk flipped the device open with a dark expression. He’d looked irritated by the interruption even before he realized who was hailing him, but now that the identity of the caller was confirmed, he looked positively menacing.

“Kirk here.”

“Ahh, there you are captain!” Hammett’s voice said jovially. “Just the man I was looking for—”

“I’m busy. What?” The captain’s tone was curt and downright rude; he no longer seemed to be toeing the line between professionalism and disrespect. He had quite firmly crossed it and appeared to have no qualms in doing so by the look in his eye.

“Well, the Seskille and I were just chatting—lovely people, and so polite too!—and they were asking to talk with you again. I did try to explain to them that, well, that I was the one heading this mission, but they’ve apparently got some questions for you. Very insistent on it, actually. Maybe for the best, you might be able to figure out what they’re trying to say. It seems that in all their excitement at meeting us, they are struggling to be very clear about… anything, really. If you could—”

Kirk’s expression was steely as he cut the man off for the second time. It was twice now that he had been requested by the Seskille personally, and there was no one else he could reasonably foist them off to.

“Fine, transfer them over then.” At once, the crackling and popping whine screeched over the frequency, and Spock could not resist this time pressing his hands over his ears to dull the sound. It was akin to blades digging against the normally strong, rigid barriers he’d built in his head, finding all the cracks and prying into them without mercy.

The captain’s grip on his arms tightened, and worried hazel eyes stared back at him when he glanced their way.

“This is Captain Kirk. My apologies for the radio silence, I was temporarily occupied. You wanted to speak with me?” Silence. Spock saw the exact moment the captain remembered the time delay; the frustration and exasperation alighting in his every feature before he forced them back down, took a deep breath, and blew it out slowly with a puff of white mist. To Spock, he murmured: “Do you think you’re alright to walk? You can lean on me if you need to, or I can call for some backup if you can’t make it.”

Spock took careful stock of his condition. The nausea had eased, but it was not gone. Any movement, whether it was turning his head or shifting his legs, made his head throb enough to blur his vision. Staying here was not an option, however; none of the landing party could beam back to the Enterprise without being at the designated coordinates, and he could not reasonably ask the others to come help carry him down the side of the mountain. His dignity would not allow for that. It would be required to walk at some point, a journey of at least fifteen minutes. He found himself dreading it, and illogically hoped to put it off until he felt some sort of stability again.

“I will be shortly.” Spock pressed his forehead to his bent knees and closed his eyes. The darkness was easier on them than the light of the snow was, and with his expression hidden, he needed only to control the tone of his voice. Jim could not know how truly compromised he was, and if Spock had his way, he would not. “Your assistance will be satisfactory; no further help will be required. Allow me a moment to center myself and I will be ready.”

“Greetings, Captain James T. Kirk, of the USS Enterprise, it is our happiness.” The Seskille sounded as delighted as they always did, and if they felt any resentment from being swapped from person to person like an unpleasant task, they did not express it. “You are not the one from before, but you are welcome too. It would be our joy to know the rules, so that we may learn and share and join and play.”

His body was shaking, Spock realized, upon feeling the captain’s hands resume their friction on his arm to warm him. The pitch of those voices was afflictive enough that he thought it truly would make him vomit, and he felt his body shudder in preparation to do so. He clenched his eyes and dug his fingernails into the palm of his hand. Steady. Calm. He was being allowed time to meditate, if not necessarily the space to do so with Kirk still pressed tightly against his side. The captain was a stabilizing presence, though, and a familiar one. Spock focused on the points of contact between them rather than his meditation as he should have. His knee touching the captain’s, shoulder pressing against shoulder, hip against hip. Kirk’s hand, even chilled from the snow, was warm on his arm. The other man thought him shivering from the cold and Spock did not dissuade him of the notion.

Lies…

“I’m sorry, rules?” The captain asked the Seskille, and upon realizing he might have sounded too snippy, he cleared his throat to rephrase. “Rather, may I ask what rules you are referring to?”

Spock was only half-aware of the conversation; he had hesitantly ventured his conscious inwards, seeking out the source of the blooming pain in his mind. His controls felt raw and worn, like they had been weathering an endless barrage. All the small cracks, ones he’d never been fully able to fill due to his own failings as a Vulcan, were being pried at; chiseled into bit-by-bit until he feared a hole would be made. Already he saw areas of weakness. Not with his meditation, or with his morals, nor with his knowledge or his experience. No, the pressure was on his emotional control; the emotions he felt now, and those he’d felt in the past. The strain to resist, to hold his own against the tension, seemed to be the primary source of the pain.

There was no cure for that, no immediate fix. To surrender his control simply to ease the physical and mental discomfort was not an option he could ever consider, no matter how grave his condition was or became. Spock knew what happened when his control failed him, remembered with perfect recollection how his emotions overruled his logic and led only to ruin.

“The rules to the game,” the Seskille replied after the delay ended. Spock shuddered at the sound of their strange, electric-shrill voice. “It is our happiness and our delight to experience what you wish to share with us, and the same in sharing with you what we have experienced, but we do not understand the rules so that we might play and enjoy.”

What would happen this time, Spock wondered in abstract curiosity, if he were to allow his shields to collapse? The very idea of allowing it was unthinkable, and such a thing was not even an unanswered question to be entertained or asked. It had happened before, and on more than one occasion. He had been forced to feel emotions, either by the way of an illness, a toxin, a spore, or his own biological curse, and it had resulted in nothing short of disaster. Each and every time, he had lost control in some inexcusable way, harming himself, harming others.

Harming Jim.

“I’m not sure I follow. We aren’t playing any game,” the captain said. “We have been attempting to locate you since we have arrived, but all we have found is rock, ruins, and snow. There is no game.”

Focus. Calm. Breathe.

He could overcome this pain. He should be able to overcome it. The alternative would be catastrophic, to himself and to those around him. It was not only his heritage he feared. Although Vulcans as a race had nearly destroyed themselves with their raw, violent emotions in his ancestry, his people now followed a way of control and peace. The Vulcan morals to harm no living thing did not disappear just because he suddenly felt; their loss was not responsible for his actions. No, it was him. Although his physical ability heightened the potential for damage, it was not because of his species that he was a danger, but because he was Spock. When he lost control of himself, when the barriers being threatened even now were forcibly bypassed, he did the unforgivable to those he claimed to care for.

It would not happen again; it could not happen again. He would not allow it. 

“We have been found, Captain James T. Kirk, of the USS Enterprise. It is our happiness to play, but we do not understand. We would ask the other one, but they hide from us. Is this not part of the game?”

“I believe that there may be a miscommunication, so allow me to clarify. We have not been able to locate you, and we are not playing any game, hide-and-seek or otherwise.” Kirk sounded agitated, his already limited patience quickly waning with the conversation, the weather, and the entire mission itself. “There are only six lifeforms in our scan range, and all six belong to myself and my crew. The same scan range that is covering the coordinates that you provided. I’ll ask again: what is your location?”

The wind was picking up, Spock noticed with some limited awareness, still buried deep in his own mind to repair what damage he could. With the muted sound of his surroundings, he thought the snow thicker too. The wind had already been cutting, but now it was increasing in speed and violence; not to the same degree as it had upon arrival, but he did not like the chances of it worsening.

“We had hoped to speak to the one from before; the one who is playing. They continue to hide, but they may know the rules and can explain the game to all, Captain James T. Kirk, of the USS Enterprise, so that we might all play it.” The Seskille sounded just as pleased as they always did—excited even.

The force of the flurry made snowflakes sting at the exposed skin of his face and neck, and Spock did not realize he had leaned into his captain for cover until he felt a hand brush away the snow and pull him closer. His head fell heavily against a firm shoulder and, even though he was sure that Jim was also freezing, Spock only felt warmth radiating from the many points of shared contact. Humans ran at a higher temperature than Vulcans and in this moment he was grateful for it. With his eyes closed and the world dull around him, he could pretend that these circumstances were different and that he was simply resting his head against his friend. That they were simply sharing space, comfortable and at ease with one another.

Spock breathed slowly, steadily, to ground himself. Kirk’s hands on his arms, pulling Spock against his side and curling around him to try to provide some protection from the elements, was a relieving distraction from the pain. It ebbed slightly as he leaned there against his captain, the diversion of touch providing some measure of relief and distance from the chaos in his mind. Inhaling deeply and pressed so close, he could not help but take in the scent of the captain; of clean soap, of the worn leather of the command chair on the bridge, of aftershave and mint, and so quintessentially and recognizably Jim Kirk that—

—the scent of him was filling the room and Spock burned inside. He burned; in his gut, in his chest, in his mind, in his blood—he burned. Fire poured through him like a current, threatening to spill out and burn everything—but he shook and gripped at himself to contain it, to keep it where it could not hurt those around him. If he lost control for even an instant, he would not be able to get it back in time stop himself. He wanted release, he wanted it to end, but the captain—Jim—stood in front of him and he could not prevent those feelings, not fully. His gripped so tightly to the stylus behind his back that the bones in his hand ached. Being still, being silent, made it worse and it made him burn…

“—that’s an enormous asset to me! If I have to lose that first officer, I want to know why!”

The air was cloying, and he could not avoid inhaling it in for long; holding his breath was obvious, and what little remained of his dignity prevented him from doing something so noticeable. But Jim was too close; Spock took him in with every breath, and every breath felt like fire all over again. Jim was too vibrant and too alive for the space he occupied; his presence filled Spock’s quarters the moment he’d entered and everything in it took on the heady scent of him. It was as much a torture as it was a relief—a desire. His hands shook. His body shook. He felt the curling heat of lust, sick and shameful and wrong, take root deep in him. Perverse as it was, disgraceful as it was, the heat there felt good. It nestled down into his gut, into his groin, like an insatiable need that ached.

And inside, all over, Spock burned—

All the air left him in a rush, a jarring, gasping sensation, as if he’d been winded by a punch to the gut that did not exist. He felt quite abruptly suffocated; breath was not properly filling his lungs no matter how he tried to inhale it, and Spock jolted upright, almost seizing up from the force of the movement. His muscles locked so rigidly that they cramped and ached and strained, and every inch of him felt both empty and electrocuted all at the same time. A current running through his body, even as the rest of him was left extinguished.  

Spock felt a strangled, choked sound catch in his throat before he could give voice to it, eyes flying open and watering in pain in the blinding light. He did not see it, did not register it, as he wrenched himself as far from the captain as he could. His legs felt unresponsive as he lurched away, and he pressed against snow and rock and cold to create desperately needed distance. Everything was freezing now; the fire in him had vanished just as swiftly as it had sparked and it rendered him cold, dizzy, and reeling. That molten lust that had flowed through his veins, sordid and hot, left only a hollow cavity behind with its sudden disappearance. He felt curiously, disturbingly vacant.

“Spock?” the captain stared at him in surprise, having quickly snatched his hands back as if he were the cause of the Spock’s sudden flinch. He had been, but not in the way he assumed. Jim thought, not incorrect to do so with past experiences kept in mind, that the physical contact had been unpleasant. That was not the case; the problem lay in the opposite. It had not felt unpleasant, not at all, and that was why he could not permit it to happen again. “Was that too much? I wasn’t thinking—sorry, Spock.”

Jim was waiting for an answer, and Spock could only muster a numb, blank nod to soothe the captain down and assure him that everything was alright.

It was not.

As quick as that too-familiar memory had taken hold of him, it had gone again, but the echo of it remained. The feeling of fire in his body, the acid-burn sensation of arousal coiling between his thighs, and the way he’d had to force himself, with every bit of effort he could muster, to not cross that small distance in his quarters to the captain. It had made him feel sick—did make him feel sick—and he shook and struggled as much now as he had then. His blood did not burn now. There was no fire in him to drive him to carnal fever. That madness of his biology was not happening again, but it had felt, for that split moment, as if it were.

His heart, when he pressed a hand to his torso to try to feel the rise and fall of his chest—perhaps to convince himself that he truly was breathing, for air did not seem to be reaching his lungs—was pounding rapidly in his side.

Some part of his mind took careful stock of this; of his reaction, the symptom, the sensations, and it judged harshly on them. Everything felt cloudy and, contradictory, startlingly clear. Detached in unusual ways. His breath came in heavy, quick gasps that he did not feel, hidden to the captain as he curled inward to conceal it, to keep up the appearance that he was only resting. The shrill, popping whine of that voice pierced at him, and it was a struggle to keep the resulting spasm of pain to only a mute hum in his throat. It was carried away on the wind, increasing as it was in both speed and force. Visibility was low; a whiteout, he’d heard Jim call it once, and the name was apt enough. He took it in blearily, vacantly, even as he exhaled out with a sharp wheeze catching in his chest.

He did not feel the air he breathed, and yet, curiously, it was all he could seem to focus on.

Focus. Control. Calm.

He could not achieve any of the three, nor could he remember how to do so now. Some odd, foreign feeling was gnawing at his senses, sharpening some and deadening others. The sensation of being unmoored and sent adrift was disorienting. He was not floating in either space or water, as the metaphor suggested, but was still sat in the snow on Seskilles VII. And yet the discomforting sense of falling away from full cognizance remained nonetheless.

“Standby while I speak to my crew.” The captain leaned in close, but he kept his hands to himself and made certain not so much as brush against Spock again. In a lower voice than he had to the Seskille, he said: “That’s it. I’m calling it. If there is a game going on, I’m not interested in playing. We’ll contact the landing party and have them head back; we’re getting out of here.”

Jim was making it a point not to touch him, but the touch was not the cause of this condition. It was not fair that the captain should think otherwise. Spock almost told him so, but such an action was borne of the desire to have Jim pressed against him again, rather than to clear the miscommunication. Spock said nothing and only nodded; he did not trust his voice to be measured if he tried to speak.

Kirk first contacted the Enterprise. Lieutenant Commander Scott’s thick accent seemed out-of-place through the snowfall. He could hear the captain’s voice, but only every other word seemed discernible. The conversation was quiet and low and, disconcertingly, he heard Doctor McCoy be mentioned more than once. However, he could not find the focus required to determine context when he had a task of his own to accomplish.

With trembling hands, Spock reached for his own communicator and tugged it from his belt. The sharp flick of his wrist to open it, such instinctual movement to him after so many years, felt stiff and difficult and wooden.

“Spock to landing party.” He felt each word pull from him like a scrape against his throat, and despite his best efforts, his voice sounded small and faint. If there were resulting answers from the rest of the team, he did not hear them, only registering muffled and indistinguishable sound. In, out; he inhaled and exhaled to try to slow his racing pulse, to retreat the surge of adrenaline that poured thick through him and made him so chilled. Spock only breathed and stared at the communicator in his hand for a long, unending moment—he could not blink or take his gaze away, for he could no longer seem to move, only sit there useless and inhale air into lungs that did not function correctly.

Shock, he thought with faraway awareness. These were the symptoms of shock. Everything felt dull and muted but for the churning in his stomach, the pain in his head, the sensation of wind against his skin, and the air rising his chest but not ever filling it. It felt like whiplash; his mind having been jolted between control and emotion with such an intensity and sudden speed that it was akin to an injury. He felt sick.

It was Kirk’s hand entering his line of sight that jarred him back to some small awareness, and Spock blinked heavily, brows furrowing. It was as if he were hearing and seeing things from so far away, and all of it sluggish. His communicator lay fallen in the snow, having slipped from his slackened fingers. He did not remember dropping it. He did not remember holding it to begin with. He did not remember what he was supposed to do with it.

The captain scooped it up with a worried smile, and Spock stared at him as if from underwater. The information came through slowly, requiring first to make it past a dense, thick daze, from the pain in his head to the cold of the weather. It hurt, and he was numb, and he could not breathe, and he tucked his head back against his knees because even now he could not show Jim the truth of himself.

“Commander?” Lieutenant Uhura’s voice, trying to understand Spock’s silence after hailing them. “Are you reading me, Mr. Spock?” Spock could not respond, but it turned out that he didn’t need to. The captain, using Spock’s communicator, answered for him.

“This is Kirk, I want all personnel to head back to the designated coordinates and prepare to be transported back to the ship. The weather’s getting too severe, and we’re just not prepared for this.”

As relieved acknowledgement rang out from the communicator, the captain fixed the device to his own belt. Possibly, he thought Spock too cold to take it back. Kirk looked as if he wanted to reach out to him; his arm was even outstretched to do exactly that before he caught himself and purposely moved it away. Jim had always been tactile for a human; it was in his nature to assure himself of one’s condition with physical touch. It had been practical in the past, but his perception of the contact had taken a different meaning. Spock wished the touch of his captain did not affect him in such a way, nor that the very absence of that touch did too.

“Here, let me see them, hold them out. Your poor hands must be—God, Spock! You’re shaking like a leaf. I’ve got Doctor McCoy on standby; he’ll meet us in the Transporter Room. Not much longer now, we’ll get you warmed up soon, I promise; lots of tea, lots of blankets, that terrible fruit-soup you like...” Spock thought that the captain was talking more to himself more than he was to Spock. He was strategizing, attempting to accommodate for the situation as best he could with limited options. Having a game plan, as Jim referred to it as, helped him feel in control when circumstances otherwise threatened to challenge that. “Do you think you can stand now? If you need help, from me or…”

Spock did not think he could stand, at least not steadily, but he also had no other choice. He could not stay here and, more than anything, he wanted to be off this planet. The sooner the better, and that required him to get up. Sluggishly, Spock took Kirk’s hand, forcing—forcing—his mind to go blank, to not remember the burning heat of before. The friction of tanned fingers sliding against from his own sent shivers racing down his spine, and he felt a curl of disgust at his own reaction. He was not on Vulcan. He was not burning inside. He was cold and calm and focused, and if he continued to repeat it like a mantra, perhaps he could convince himself it was true. It was illogical, but logic alone would not get him back to the ship.

The moment he was on his feet, Spock let go of Jim’s hand, snatching his own back as if the contact had burnt him. The memory of it doing just that, of scalding him to the core, made him tuck his arms to his chest tightly. He hoped it looked like a huddle for warmth, rather than the defensive cower that it in all actuality was.

Spock clung to the sensation of the numb fog, the shock, with a detached determination. It was easier to block everything else out when his mind could no longer focus. A deplorable rationalization for a Vulcan; such behavior was an alarming breach of decorum, but he had been intensely reminded—forcibly reminded—of what being a Vulcan could also feel like. The burning, the rage, the lust. This blunt, deadened feeling was preferable as a defense, at least until he could get back to the ship. Once in the dark security of his quarters, secluded and kneeling before his fire pot, he could process what had happened here. First, he needed to get there.

His posture was hunched, legs stiff and frozen, and his body felt curiously both too full and too empty all at the same time. His control was stretched thin and it almost took more than he was able to give to concentrate on putting one foot in front of the other. Kirk was at his side; a close and stable presence, and he did not touch Spock again after helping him up. It was better for his mental barriers to avoid the contact but, even so, he found himself wanting it.

It was for that very reason, because he desired it so, that he made certain not to allow the gold of Kirk’s uniform to so much as brush against him. He was compromised, unforgivably so, and although he had already sunk to vile behavior, there was still some distance between himself and true depravity. There was every chance he could lose himself to it if he did not forcibly maintain rigid standards of self-control, whatever the cost to himself might be. If that required using the whiplash-like shock of his mind, then so be it.

The chirp of a communicator opening was faint through the snowfall.

“Seskille collective, this is Captain Kirk.” The captain had to raise his voice to be heard over the wind. “Unfortunately, due to the increasing severity of the weather conditions, we are transporting back to the ship. I am aware this may stagnate any personal introductions, and I apologize that we were not able to make them today, but we will have to continue communication via the ship channels until such a time as the conditions clear.”

The wind was getting worse, with visibility now limited to a distance of less than three meters; Spock could see very little but whirling, dizzying white all around him. Following the cliffsides downhill made the correct heading simple enough to determine, although treacherous, and so he focused on walking as steadily as he could. Even with the pain in his head, he felt the blood flow of consistent movement ease the stiffness in his muscles and smooth out his step. The realization that he might be able to actually make it to the coordinates under his own power was a rallying one. His dignity had already been tarnished before his captain; to be hauled to the coordinates by way of stretcher, assistance from one of the crewmen, or even carried by Jim himself would be more than Spock could bear.

“Captain James T. Kirk, of the USS Enterprise, we will continue to communicate with you, and the opposite to us.” The Seskille voice had no such issue with being lost to the wind; it cut through the snow with screeching, painful ease. “It would also be our happiness to share and learn with the one from before. If there is no game, there is no need to hide. We welcome and take joy in all. Please share this to the one who hides if he is found by you: that it is our happiness to find and be found in return.”

Spock was struck with the fierce, unprofessional thought that he was glad they had not found the Seskille, for he surely could not bear hearing that voice in person. The sound over the comm was excruciating enough. The pain of their strange, electric-sounding voice, whining and shrill, nearly broke through the muted numb in his head. The pressure increased, dizzying him and blurring his vision. Only a short while longer, twenty minutes at most, until he would be aboard the ship. He could make it that long. Had to make it that long.

His meditation space would be calm and quiet, the smoke of his incense wafting heavy in the warmth of the room. The flames of the asenoi would flicker and dance shadows against the dark red curtains, and the steady heat radiating out from the fire pot would cast his mind out to seas of white sand. He would bury this all down beneath the dunes, as he did all other emotions and unwanted thoughts, and his desert would be still and smooth once more. The damage would heal with time and focus, and he would again operate at full efficiency with no one the wiser. All this could be put firmly, forcibly into the past.

“I’m glad you understand, and I appreciate your patience.” Kirk, though, did not sound patient, from what little could be heard over the rush of the wind. It was worsening and snow stung at their skin like barbs from the force of it. The pointed tips of his ears were numb, as was his face and hands. “You keep mentioning this other one; can you clarify exactly who you’re talking about? I assure you, none of my team is doing any hiding.”

All he needed to do was make it to the ship, and then he could conceal himself away. He told himself this repeatedly, like a mantra, to continue to move his body. But his mind only now processed Kirk’s previous assurances to him, distracted as he had been by the want he’d felt. Getting to the Enterprise, Spock realized, as he forced each foot to fall in front of the other, would not be the only challenge. There was another obstacle.

That obstacle was named Doctor Leonard McCoy.

The doctor would be waiting for him when they beamed aboard, Jim had told him, and Spock knew he would be instantly herded to sickbay within seconds of arrival, if not carried there. On a frozen planet with limited visibility and the very real risk of hypothermia to distract the captain with, he could get away with a certain amount of unusual behavior that otherwise would have raised a number of other concerns. His outright lies, ones thought to be inconceivable from Jim’s perspective, had done much to ensure the questioning would be minimal. Once on the ship, with the watchful, eagle-eyed doctor hovering over him, prodding for any weakness, it would be impossible to hide his condition. Hypothermia, after all, could only excuse so much, and Doctor McCoy would notice immediately that there was something else wrong.

Not that he would be able to do anything about it—and Spock felt an unnerving bleakness at the thought, uncommon for him. He had become accustomed to the doctor being able to assist him, even if it were only from force or brute pressuring. He had become accustomed to the muttered comments, the insults, the prodding and poking, the snarls, and the scowling. He had also become accustomed to the doctor’s ability to help, even if it were in the most minute capacity, even as just a distraction to argue with. That gleam in the doctor’s eyes always betrayed him; gave away the warmth and care he truly felt.

Somewhere along the way, happening so slowly over the previous three years that even Spock had not noticed the shift, Leonard McCoy had become the sole exemption in his utmost distaste for medical interference. He would not say such aloud, but he did trust the doctor, as much as he could any medical professional.

Doctor McCoy would not be able to help him.

“We refer to the other one; the one from before, who plays the game. The one who has hidden, the one who has found and been found in return.” The Seskille, the tone of them piercing through his numb fog like a blade, stabbing and sharp. His thoughts were sent scattering. Their explanation did not clear up the confusion any more than their previous vague statements had, and it was clear that Kirk thought the same, judging by the puff of annoyance. He muttered something unintelligible and likely unprofessional to Spock, but the wind was too loud now, and his voice was carried away into the flurry.

But then the Seskille continued, and their voice had no such issue. Spock heard it loud and clear.

“We refer to the passionate one. The one that burns.”

“… Right. Well, I’ll be sure to pass along the message if I find them.” The captain sounded distracted; the snow was well-past their ankle and only getting deeper, making it difficult to wade through. “We’ll make contact once we get back to the ship; I’m hoping we can arrange a more thorough introduction in better conditions. Kirk out.” The communicator closed with a snap, and the captain turned to him, brow furrowed and head shaking in bemusement. He let out a short, exasperated laugh. “So that was… annoyingly cryptic. Say, you haven’t by any chance seen anyone on fire recently, have you? Turns out they’re in high demand around these parts.”

It was apparent to Spock that the captain was trying to make light of an increasingly grim situation; the wind was hazardous, the snowfall obscured any sense of certain direction, and the freezing temperatures were biting. Were it another time, he would have humored Jim, raised a single brow, and perhaps said something equally pithy back. But this was not another time, and he was not laughing.

No, instead he had stopped, frozen mid-step.

“Spock?”

The one that burns.

The pieces fell into place. With the benefit of hindsight, of now knowing what he should look for, Spock realized it had been obvious from the first ache.

The pressure in his head, the sensation of prying and digging, the pain. He had understood, of course, that it was related to his telepathy; he had been the only one affected and as the singular telepath in the entire crew, it had been an easy deduction to make. However, the source of the pain itself had been an unknown, and one he’d been unable to determine until now. The theories had varied from an undetectable disease or illness to a toxin of some kind that only detrimentally impaired him. This was not unprecedented; it had happened before on missions, and it was both a scientific and logical conjecture to make.

But this was not an ailment. This was an assault.

“Spock? What happened, what’s wrong?”

The one that burns.

It made sense; so much so that he was surprised he hadn’t come to the conclusion himself. An attack of the mind; telepathic violence of a kind he’d never experienced before. Oh, it had happened to some degree or another before; Omicron Ceti III and Psi 2000 both came to mind, but he had not experienced it to this extent before, nor in this exact manner. Purposeful, intentional, methodical telepathic intrusion; planned and executed consciously—this had never happened to him.

Spock had been harmed before; infected with an emotion-altering disease, exposed to spores that forced a state of blissful euphoria, interrogated with a device that ripped the mind open to expose the truth within it. All had been damaging to his barriers, and all had been painful in their own way, but they had all been insentient. Either a product of natural or electronic design, each had been indiscriminate in their means. A disease, a plant, some circuits. They had not been this.

This was… Spock could not find the proper words. He had never before been violated by an intelligent species; such a thing was the height of immoral on Vulcan, a crime of such grave severity that even thinking of it was uncomfortable. To willingly commit such an atrocity on another, on him… he felt sickened, both at the crime itself and the realization that this had been an intentional act—that it still was an intentional act, for it was ongoing even now.

It should not have felt different. It should not have made any difference to him how and why he was being affected so, but it did. Those forced times in the past had been impersonal, but this was not. No, they had made him—forced him—to burn again. The Seskille had willingly, consciously, purposely invaded the sanctity of his mind and memories.

And they had made him burn.

“Spock!”

He looked up, blinking vacantly at the captain. Jim looked worried and alarmed, bordering on the edge of outright fear. He needed to say something, to reassure Jim that everything was alright and that he was okay, because the captain would surely take matters into his own hands if he thought otherwise. Spock opened his mouth, meaning to do exactly that, but he felt so very dizzy, and his voice stuck in his throat. He needed to say something…

The words failed him; Spock found he did not know what to say anyways, and he did not know what else he could do now, for himself or for Jim. His boots staggered in the snow; he swayed as he fought the vertigo-induced nausea that surged up potent and acrid in his throat. He had to breathe heavily through his nose to keep consciousness; already his vision blurred at the edges. If it would not have been such an inconvenience to the captain, he would have gladly allowed himself to collapse into unconsciousness, if only for some measure of relief. He didn’t have much left in him to block the attack—the assault—for his reserves had all but been drained.

Spock had waited too long to provide necessary placations to Jim, it seemed. The captain rapidly closed the distance between them and gripped at his shoulders, his prior concern about physical touch apparently disregarded. The thrill that raced through him at the feeling of Jim’s hands on him was unacceptable, and he could only feel shame and disgust at himself, at his reaction. This was his captain—his commanding officer. It was inappropriate to feel this way for anyone, let alone for Jim. It was inappropriate to feel at all.

“It’s alright, Spock, I’ve got you. Shh, no arguing, let me help. The sooner we get off this rock the better.” The captain moved to duck under Spock’s arm, taking his weight across his shoulders and forcing Spock to lean into him. He allowed it without complaint; he did not think he could find the energy to refuse the assistance. His legs were no longer strong enough to drive him forward. There were no more arguments left in him. “Just a little further to go and we’ll get you warm, I promise. I’ll even make you that—” Jim’s voice was strained as he took the brunt of Spock’s weight. “—that godawful tea you like so much.”

Kirk staggered in the snow as he half-carried, half-dragged Spock with him, and Spock could do nothing but stumble along uselessly. He felt their legs tangle together more than once, catching and tripping them both up.

It was not a surprise that one of them fell. The conditions were dangerously slick even to one wholly focused on a careful step, let alone for one trying to balance extra weight and coordinate another adult. The captain’s feet slid out from underneath him, tripping on either the ice, their own legs, or some obstacle hidden beneath the calf-deep snow. Jim floundered to regain balance.

Even through the pain and fatigue, it was pure instinct by now for Spock to reach out and stop his captain from toppling over; it was always first, second, and even third nature to keep Jim safe, no matter how compromised his own condition was. Jim was crashing down in a tangled splay of flailing limbs and snow, and so Spock acted on that very nature. Before his mind could fully process it, he’d clenched a fistful of the captain’s uniform collar and pulled sharply to stop his fall. Jim dangled heavily from his grip—

—Jim dangled heavily from his grip, body limp and lifeless, and everything in Spock froze.

“Kroykah!”

Spock stared, uncomprehending at first even as the horror set in bone deep. The burning, raging fire that had consumed and scorched him from the inside out extinguished suddenly and turned to cold ash in his veins. Something unpleasant, sick, and churning filled his gut, his chest, his throat; he didn’t breathe, he didn’t move, he just… stared. There was pressure in his eyes, vision blurring and stinging with the onset of tears, but he didn’t cry—couldn’t cry—he could only stand there and look and look and look and not truly see, not fully understand…

With the strangling hold of the ahn-woon wrapped tight around his neck and keeping him partially suspended, the captain hung bonelessly, slack limbs sprawled out against the sand. This body—this limp, beaten, lifeless thing, did not look like James T. Kirk, the fearless starship captain. It did not look like Jim, his closest friend. It looked wrong; sickening and impossible and perverse, because it should not have been possible. He couldn’t have—he couldn’t have…

… What had he done?

He didn’t breathe, even as a guttural, choked sound caught in his throat. Couldn’t breathe. Everything went so quiet, fingers numbing and slipping as he lowered the body—not Jim, not Jim—to the ground. Spock stared and stared, hunched over and still holding on as the shock gave way to chilling, overwhelming dread. Jim was—the world seemed to lurch and drop out from beneath him, leaving him unmoored and detached and disconnected to everything around him. Vulcan was gone. The spectators were gone. T'Pring was gone. The universe could have ended and been reborn a dozen times over and all he could know was that unmoving body that lay stretched out on the sand.

The gold of Jim’s command uniform was ripped, bloody from the fight—their fight—their fight, because he did this—and his face looked beaten in. Bones broken; skin bruised, but unmistakably Jim Kirk. Jim, who was his closest friend. Jim, who meant more to him than any person ever had or ever would. Jim, who had risked his captaincy and his career to save his friend’s life. Jim who had been killed—murdered—by that very same friend he’d given up everything for.

Jim, who was dead.

He did this. His weapons, his hands, his fault. That horrible burning, no longer immolating him from within, took root behind his eyes and in his throat. He felt choked, sickened, gutted, because this was his fault. His captain. His Jim. His fault…

“Get your hands off of him, Spock!”

Spock blinked, bile in his throat and tears thick in his eyes, at the sound of Doctor McCoy’s voice. He wanted to turn, to beg the doctor to somehow fix this—fix Jim, please—but the world swam back into awareness. The freezing, empty, arctic world. The cold hit him before the recognition did and Spock realized, with blinding confusion, that the body—that Jim—was staring right back at him in shock. Uninjured, unbloodied, and very much alive.

“What—Spock, are—"

His fingers were still buried tight in the captain’s uniform collar; still holding on to prevent him from falling. Still holding him up, body heavy in his grasp, just like he’d held—Spock wrenched his hands away, reeling back as if he’d been struck. Panic flooded him like a poison, choking and strangling and shaking him to the core, because Jim had been dead, killed, murdered, and it had been Spock’s fault. His hands, his actions, his fault—

Jim tried to grab for him, hands reaching through the falling snow, and Spock stumbled backwards to avoid them. He couldn’t be trusted to touch the captain right now, not after what he’d done, not after he had been responsible for—but the captain lunged for him again, relentlessly pushing forward to try to pull him close.

“Wait! Just stop—it’s okay, I won’t touch you, Spock, just stop moving!"

This time, to protect himself, to protect Jim—to protect Jim from himself—Spock shoved him away hard.

Jim’s landing was rough, thrown a fair distance and tumbling with a tangle of limbs and powdery snow. The momentum sent Spock off-balance, staggering and unsteady. His breath came out harsh, with gasping, strangled sounds, and he couldn’t think, couldn’t focus, couldn’t understand. He couldn’t do anything but stumble away to put as much distance between himself and Jim as he could, as if that would stop the memories, the grief. It ached in his side, his heart, all over again; fresh and raw and so overwhelming that it choked him. The bright of the snow reminded him of sand in stilted flashes, reminded him of Jim laying there so still, so silent and unmoving.

He wasn’t—he was not on Vulcan, with its hot sun and glaring sand. He was not lost in the madness of the plak'tow, the blood fever. Jim was not dead; he couldn’t be, because that was his voice on the wind, shouting at him with panic in his voice. Even now, the captain was already scrambling up, tripping on himself in his haste as he, again, tried to reach for him.

“Spock! Spock, stop! Dammit, you’re too close—”

Spock’s mind spun dizzy and incoherent, and he didn’t want to be touched right now. He could not be touched right now, because he could not be trusted with it. He was not in control. He was not in control and the last time he’d been so wildly irrational he’d killed that which he valued most. Jim would try to comfort him, try to reassure him that everything was alright, that all was forgiven, because the captain was compassionate and trusting and so good to the core of him. That wasn’t what Spock needed after such a forcible reminder of his inability to constrain himself.

No, he needed to get to the ship; he needed to lock himself in his quarters and force all this back under the dunes where it couldn’t consume him or anyone else. He needed to be anywhere but here, because he was so very, very compromised, dangerously so, and—and—

“Don’t—Spock!”

But he’d already backed away from the captain too fast—too far—and his next step hit only air.

There was the plummeting, stomach-dropping sense of the ground falling away from him; he reached out to try to catch himself, to stop the lurching pull of gravity, but his hands found no purchase on the slick rock. Kirk was still bolting for him even as the world tilted into a dizzying spin of white, swirling snow, and empty, wide space. It was too late; the captain was too far away to reach him, and all Spock could grab onto were snowflakes. By Jim’s terrified expression, he realized it too.

The captain shouted for him, but Spock did not hear what was said. All he heard was the rush of wind as, with the barest gasp lost to the snow, Spock toppled back and over the edge of the crater.

Chapter Text

Spock breathed in slowly.

The lighting of his quarters was set to minimum, allowing only the flickering light of his asenoi to illuminate the space he knelt in. It was easy to lose himself in the mesmerizing flames; they danced with shadow and heat against the red of the curtains he’d hung long ago. The air tasted of spice and sand, of incense and dry heat; it felt calming to him after a long day. Like a cold compress to his mind, he felt himself relaxing, simply basking there in the warmth of his quarters. It was here where he could be only Spock. Not Spock, First Officer. Not Spock, Vulcan. Only Spock. The tension that lay heavy on his shoulders throughout the day felt lighter here, kneeling before the fire pot.

The temperature in his cabin was raised for his own comfort, and the perpetual chill he always felt at last eased. Now, languid and serene in the safety and privacy of his room, he could finally allow himself a chance to breathe. In, out, in—the fire pot burned low beneath his stone Yon'tislak; the hybrid-like fire beast watched him steadily as he meditated. The embers it held provided a focal point, the flames mesmerizing and hypnotic.

They cast his mind far, far away from this point in space. Far off to sunbeaten dunes and sandy, vast canyons. Of the sandstone of the weathered buildings in the city, of hla'meth and sh'rr, the fragrant herbs that spiced the air in the gardens of his parent’s estate. The visualization was as familiar to him as if he were there now, kneeling beneath the meager shade of a fa'tahr tree. Breathe in, breathe out, and press everything beneath the dunes of sand. Burry it under all his layers of control, until it was trapped by the weight of them and could not surface again.

There was a pain in his side, insistent and grating and wrong. It did not belong here, in the tranquility of his quarters. But it spiked, sharp and throbbing, and he felt vaguely dizzy. His brow furrowed. This sensation was not correct, and it did not belong…

The door chimed, and Spock opened his eyes. He knew it was the captain, even before he gave the command to allow entry. Their shift had been busy, and he knew that Jim was here to unwind from the events of their latest mission. A game of chess was often a simple fix and one that—

—the room where the Chess Club met was too cold for Spock’s preference. It was unpleasant, edging towards outright uncomfortable with only the thin fabric of his academy uniform for insulation. The others had lamented the summer heat, airing their grievances quite loudly and repetitively over the course of the past three meetings until someone had brought in their air conditioning unit to provide some relief from the weather.

He did not find the heat intolerable, quite the opposite. Although he did not express particular enjoyment for the humidity, the professed unbearable heat that his peers so vehemently protested against was still considered quite cool on Vulcan.

There was a pain in his side, insistent and grating and wrong. It did not belong here.

Overlooking the board, Spock settled on moving his bishop three spaces. He would win on his next move. His opponent, a fellow cadet named Jonas Perry, was staring back at him balefully, challengingly, as he predictably slid his rook four spaces in response. Spock had anticipated this and did not hesitate to place down his knight for his last and final move.

“Checkmate.”

He had barely finished the words before Cadet Perry stood with a sudden screech of his chair. It was shoved backwards and toppled into the table that two of their fellow Chess Club mates sat at. The girls startled and stared, looking shocked, and Spock thought he rather felt the same. Such a reaction was not warranted, nor was it logical. In a game such as chess, there would almost inevitably be a defeat. Although the object was to win said game, failing to do so was not considered shameful, but a learning opportunity.

When Perry flipped the board into his face, chess pieces scattering into his lap and across the floor, all he could feel was appalled. The table followed the chessboard, hitting him hard in his chest as a rather foul, xenophobic slur was shouted at him. As a Vulcan, regrets were illogical, and yet—

—regrets were illogical, and yet he found them trying to cloud his judgement all the same. He had been the logical choice for the procedure, however some part of him regretted that very logic for placing him in this position. There was to be no second guessing, not now. It was too late. The world around him was agony and light… until it wasn’t any longer. It wasn’t anything. Spock did not want to open his eyes. He wanted to simply lay back and pretend that the darkness he would surely see was there only due to keeping them clenched shut. But he did not allow this fantasy to linger for more than a small, emotional second, and so he blinked. The world to which he looked on was now, quite predictably, dark.

He was blind.

Despair rose up, thick and acidic, unbidden into his throat and churning in his stomach. He understood, of course, that this had been a very real possibility—and to his own calculations, truly the only possibility. Spock did not blame Jim for approving of the trial, and nor did he blame Doctor McCoy for performing it. There was a pain in his side, insistent and grating and wrong. It did not belong here. They had done the best they could with such limited time and limited resources. This was not their fault, and he held no ill-will towards either of them for it. 

Still, there had been some part of him, that human part of him, that had desperately hoped it would turn out differently. His life had not been without flaws, but it had been his; fought for and hard earned. All of that was now gone, taken from him by only a few seconds of light.

He did not show the emotions. He was a Vulcan. Instead, Spock forced an appearance of calm indifference and stood as the door opened. Immediately, the captain was at his side. Even blind, he would know the sound of his friend—the radiating warmth of him—anywhere. And yet it was bittersweet. He could hear Jim, he could feel Jim, but he could not, and never would again, see Jim.

“Spock, are you alright?”

He straightened.

“The creature within me is gone. I am free of it, and the pain.” Spock glided forward with as much confidence as he could manage; his step was careful even as he tried to form an exact mental map of the room’s layout. But he had miscalculated, and his hip struck hard against the edge of the table.

“I am also… quite blind.”

Immediately, Kirk’s hands came to rest on his arms, holding him steadily. Spock was uncertain if the contact was for his benefit or for Jim’s own comfort. For now, they were still friends, but Spock could not help but wonder how long that would last. He would always consider James Tiberius Kirk to be his closest friend, and that would never change. However, when he had to resign his post and transfer from the Enterprise, would the captain still consider him one too? Would—

—there was a pain in his side, insistent and grating and wrong… and Spock finally opened his eyes.

At first, he thought the light had returned, blinding to the point of burning. Had he not already been cured of the creature? The damage to his optic nerves would be complete from one round, why then put his eyes through so much again, and so soon? And how could he see the light at all? One could not be permanently blinded twice…

The world righted itself though, sluggishly swimming into view. Spock blinked slowly and was forced to squint against the harsh expanse of white that filled his vision. It felt very cold against his face, and for a moment he did not understand. Had he traded the darkness for the light instead? He did not think it an agreeable alternative; it was grating and painful to look at for long and he thought he might prefer the dark after all. He was freezing, he realized; so cold that he could not feel his ears or hands. The white surroundings were like ice against his face; it stung his skin where it had not already numbed it. Ice. It was cold because it was ice.

There was a pain in his side, insistent and grating.

It took longer than it should have—far longer than was acceptable for a Vulcan—to comprehend his surroundings. His mind was disoriented, heavy, and Spock felt as if he were not fully present even now, with the snow soaking through his uniform. Snow. Cold. But he did understand, after a moment of bleary, dazed considering. The mission. He had been part of the landing party to secure mining agreements. It had started snowing heavily; a whiteout, as the captain had called it, and he had been unable to walk without assistance. Jim had been forced to help him, but he could not remember why that was, nor could he remember why he was not still there…

“Capt’n…?” His voice came out a croak, low and almost inaudible. Had Spock not felt the words vibrate in his throat, he would not have known he’d spoken at all. The snow rushed into his mouth when he opened it, and his lips split at the movement of them, cracking and stinging. He tasted blood. The captain did not respond. No one responded. Where was the captain? Was he alright? He remembered being with Jim; they had been about to play chess, hadn’t they? Or… no, that was not accurate. The mission. They had been walking…

“…. Jim?”

He needed to find Jim.

His first few tries of pushing upright failed; his arms were shaking and weak, and so violently was his shivering that his teeth clacked together audibly, uncontrollably. His chest burned and throbbed with every shift of movement, and it felt as if the air was being stolen from his lungs. Each twitch left him gasping, black spots in his vision. It was on the sixth attempt that Spock was partially successful in sitting up; he still hunched over but his extremities were out of direct contact with the snow that, until now, he had not realized had fully covered him. How long must he have been laying there to be so buried in it?

It was still snowing. The wind was cutting enough that it sent the snowflakes at his exposed skin like bullets. They stung—the parts of him that were not already numb, at least; he could not feel his hands. He could not feel his face. Something was very wrong, because he did not remember how he had come to be in this condition. Something had gone wrong with the mission then. And where was Jim? Was the captain alright? Concern filled his stomach, churning though it was. Not for himself, but for his commander. Jim. He needed to find Jim. Yet even as he tried to push himself further up, the barest movement left him coughing so badly that he gagged.

His whole body hurt, muscles tender and bones sore. Something in his chest was off; his lungs felt constricted and labored, a rattling sound audible as he inhaled. Every part of him seemed to be bruised; each sensation of pressure sparked a dull throb that radiated throughout the entirety of him. Had he been in a fight? He did not recall it, but surely something had happened to have caused this. The pain in his body, and the pain in his head…

The pain in his head was excruciating. Spock felt nauseous and his throat burned as if he had been screaming for a considerable time. He could not recall if he had been, but then, he could not recall much at all. Memories were… scattered. One led into the next with no sense of the time between, but when he attempted to focus on them, it felt stabbing. It took more energy than he could find to organize his present thoughts, let alone make sense of previous ones. And that pain; the pain was not entirely physical, but also in his head. In his mind.

A foreign pressure barraged at him from all angles, scraping at the walls of his control to break through. It occurred to Spock that this was why he felt so disoriented. All his energy was centered here, focusing only on this. It took everything in him to resist that force; to try to barricade behind those shields and brace himself against the increased stress to them. It would not hold for long; even now he was slipping. Had already slipped. Something—someone—had already reached through a crack and snatched at him, clawing into his memories like talons. He fought against it even now, shoving his mind further from it.

There was nowhere he could go that the presence could not reach; Spock could only retreat so far into his sea of dunes, and it was not enough to escape it. The foreign, grasping sensation radiated out happiness, delight, joy; he recoiled as the emotions washed over him, trickling through the cracks. Emotions that were not his own, being forced onto him. Being forced. There was a word for this; what this was. A Vulcan word, for a crime so grave that he had never considered it might… No. He could not dare think of it now, or that pit that had opened up in him would grow and consume him from the inside out. He could not fight that too.

There was nothing Spock could do to fix these newly formed cracks to his discipline, not without time and meditation, and neither of those options were accessible to him when he couldn’t let down his defenses for even an instant. If he stopped resisting now, that would be that. He would not be able to climb out of the remains of his control to forestall the presence again. The damage to his mind was likely already—No. Spock refused to think on what it likely was for long, because the shock of what he would surely find would only serve to weaken him. He could not allow himself to slip, not even for a second.

There was a reason for those cracks; a reason for why his mind was being threatened, but he smothered the knowledge of what that reason was. Avoided the mere thought of the word, the knowledge of it already crumpling something in him, from within. No. Not now. He could not afford to think on it now. A self-protective measure, illogical but desperate. He could not fight against the attack to his mind while at the same time also fight against his emotional reaction to that attack. Something terrible had happened, and if he allowed himself to fixate on it now, he would be lost to that and only that. Even now, grief and horror endangered him, and he shoved it back forcefully.

The assault—no, do not think the word—was not stopping. He could not make it stop, no matter how much he raised his defenses and attempted to protect himself. It continued trying to force its way in. The sense of curiosity, joy, delight; it was happy to do this to him. So very happy to violate him in such an unspeakable way…

Do not think of it now. Suppress it down, where it could not hurt him. Where it could not overwhelm him.

Focus.

There was a danger to being lost in his head like this. In meditation, he was in full control of himself. And while he remained, for the moment, still in control of himself now, it was growing threadbare and ragged. Difficult to pull himself from, and he would not have been able to do so were it not for the understanding that his body required attention too. It would not be to his benefit to protect his mind while outwardly he froze to death. He had to take care of himself in more ways than just mentally, and so Spock forced—forced, like it had forced—no, don’t think of it—himself to open his eyes once more.

The physical pain took him off guard when he was able to finally feel it through the pressure. He had the hazy sense that his mind had hurt for a considerable amount of time—had been under attack for a considerable amount of time—however the pain in his chest, his side, his skull, his leg, these were new. Sharp, throbbing, stabbing. Every part of his body ached, from the skin to the muscles to the bones. Spock let his head droop forward on his chest to determine the worst of it, his movements sluggish and limp.

The shock of green was not what he expected to see, although he did not know what he should have expected at all. It was not a small amount. He was covered in it; it had soaked through the blue of his uniform and coated the snow around him in large, half-frozen stains. His side seemed to be the primary source of the blood, but it was not the only one. When he lifted a numb, shaking hand and pressed it against his nose, he realized it too was bleeding. His entire face was dripping, oozing down his neck and chest, and further investigation yielded a deep open split above his left eyebrow. Touching there left him reeling and choking to resist a gasp of pain that made him dizzy. He did not remember hitting his head, but he surely must have.

The blood was not stopping; it continued to soak down his side and drip into the snow. His investigation into his condition was hampered, though, as he caught sight of his hands. They too were covered in blood, iced against the numb skin. It sparked a memory, just a flash of one. Of hot, burning sand and a sensation of dread in his stomach.

Spock stared at his green-stained hands blankly for a long time, long enough for the falling snow to cover his legs again. The pressure in his head grew worse—grew blinding—and he could not make sense of his surroundings anymore. They swam in and out of focus, dim in some moments and painfully bright in others. Cracks formed in his mind as he tried desperately to keep himself together. He heard his pulse race, he heard a choked, gasping sound escape his throat, he heard the wind howling around him, but he could not take his eyes off of his hands.

His hands. There was something he had done with them. Something important; something that he could not—no, that he did not want to think of. Resist it, his mind screamed at him. Press back against the pressure and resist it. Focus on the now, not what he had done…

Spock did not know how much time had passed before he felt his awareness creeping back, and it was concerning that the calculations did not come easily. It could have been minutes, or it could have been hours. His internal chronometer was not functional. He swallowed thickly, forcing his burning eyes away from the sight of his own blood soaking around him, from his hands. The deep, shuddering breath of freezing air was as grounding as it was uncomfortable; the temperature was low enough that each inhale felt painful. Pain, yes, he had to stop the bleeding. Take proper risk evaluation of the situation and triage his injuries to efficiently treat them. He would decide his next steps after that, although everything felt muddled and he was no longer certain what those steps would be.

Spock could hardly feel his arms as he lifted and pressed a palm to the wound on his left side. The bloom of agony forced him to clench his jaw tight to resist a gasp. It was not difficult to identify the cause of the injury, for the remains were quite visible through the wet spread of green. His tricorder had shattered beneath him—he could see the remains of it half-visible in the snow—and shards of it had stabbed deeply into his abdomen. It would have taken considerable force to do so, as Starfleet technology was built with hostile conditions in mind. He could think of only a few ways it might have become this mangled. A fall was the first possibility, and the most likely one. The snow might have provided a cushion to the fall, but beneath it was only bare rock. The impact would have been severe.

When had he fallen? Why had he fallen?

It was with furrowing brows that Spock reconsidered his last memories, distorted though they were through the strain in his head. He had been blind. He had been playing chess at Starfleet Academy. He had been meditating in his quarters. He had been dragged by Jim through the snow. The order did not make logical sense, and so Spock forced himself to focus past the fatigue to his fragmented recollection. With so much of his ability dedicated to fighting off that pressure—resist it!—it was harder than it should have been, akin to wading through mud.

He was not a cadet any longer, but the first officer of the Enterprise. He was not in his quarters, and if he had been meditating recently, he’d done a very poor job it. While he had been blind once, nearly a year had passed since the events on Deneva. He was not blind now. No, he was instead surrounded by snow and blood, and very, very alone.

Alone…

“Jim?”

Spock did not recognize his own voice, and it was only the shredding sensation of his throat forming the sounds that made him know it at all.

The captain did not answer this time either. There was no flash of gold uniform in his snow-covered surroundings; no dark red of human blood that he could see. He tried to call out for the captain again, but he could only cough instead with deep, hacking gasps. His communicator and phaser were both missing, but he had the vague recollection that the captain had taken the former, although he did not remember why. His phaser had still been with him, but it had likely been lost to the snow when he’d fallen. His fingers were numb; his hands frozen and already showing the pale-green symptoms of frostbite through the blood. He could not justify worsening the severity to search for it in the ice with bare skin; he could hardly move as it was.

Breathing raggedly, still barricading his mind against the onslaught, Spock closed his eyes and pressed his head against his knees. Just a moment of rest and he would be able to consider what next actions to take. All he needed was a moment to wrestle his control back. But then, he had told himself that before, when he had been forced to rest at the top of the crater with Jim.

The crater, scent of flowers, the pain. Spock remembered it now with sickening clarity. He had been with Jim; they had been walking back to the transporter coordinates. He’d… been blind again, for the second time, and then not blind immediately after. He had collapsed and Jim had caught him, leaned him against his chest. The Seskille made contact with their excruciating voices, and they had… they had… they—

A piece of his mental barriers fractured, splitting and cracking like stone and sending debris raining into his sea of dunes. The knowledge he’d tried to suppress washed over him. Spock lurched over, eyes wide from the pain of his head fragmenting, and the acrid sensation in his throat.

He could no longer contain the bile that surged up.

His body seized as he vomited, choking and gasping for air between body-racking heaves. It caused him to cry out, to grab at his chest because, as he now brutally discovered, his fall from the top of the crater had broken five of his ribs. Each contraction of his stomach made the bones grate together, nauseating him all over again and leaving him shaking. One hand holding him up and the other arm curled around his chest to try to hold his body together, he was sick for what felt like hours, long after he'd emptied the meager contents of his stomach, long after even stomach acid failed to retch out. The spasms, each one dragged from his gut and throat, continued until he could only shake and cough and seize.

He tried to call out for the captain again, when his breath had returned in gulping, gasping swallows, but he had no voice; his throat was too raw to let out anything more than a strangled wheeze of sound. Jim. He did remember now, although he wished he had not. It was exactly as he had feared; with the knowledge came the emotions, and he felt them now potently. Despair, horror, shock, grief…

The snow had worsened as the captain helped him down the mountainside. He had fallen from the top of the crater, after being made to—after being forced to—Spock had to press his lips very firmly together to stop himself from being sick once more. Instead, he braced himself with his hands and grated for each choke of air.

His hands. His hands had killed…

Focus.

Spock clenched his teeth together so tightly that they hurt, trying to get himself back together. He could not allow for this, not now. He was a Vulcan. He had to push this down, resist it. He could not allow the pressure of the assault to take hold of him, nor could he allow himself to confront it. Not when he needed to focus on the present. The captain. The injuries. The cold. He could not fight the attack in his mind and also defend against the emotions that threatened what little control he had. His body was freezing, and the blood loss was weakening his physical reserves. Spock did not have the energy to resist all three threats—control, emotion, and body.

His lips formed the name as he attempted to call for the captain once more, but the noise that emerged was little more than a hoarse croak of sound. It did not matter. There was no one around to hear him, even should he have screamed.

Jim was not here, and neither had he been recently. The captain would have carried him up and down the mountain a dozen times over, no matter the difficulty, rather than leave him behind if he’d had a choice on the matter. James Kirk did not do well in powerless situations, and he would make an option if there were no acceptable ones available. None of those options would have involved the abandonment of any crewmember. It was a logical deduction that he had not found Spock at all, or they surely would have both been together. Jim would not have left him behind, Spock reminded himself firmly. Jim would have seen the blood and not taken the risk of conditions worsening in his absence, even if it were to get help. He would have waited for help to find them, as it inevitably would.

He… had thrown Jim, though, and that stirring of doubt crept in. When the captain had been reaching for him, reaching to stop him from going over the cliff edge, Spock had shoved him with enough strength to send him flying. Even with the snow cushioning the landing, he would have hit only unyielding rock. Spock had not meant to injure Jim, but it was possible—more than possible—that he had.

Why was it that whenever he lost control, he always seemed to hurt those he cared most for?

Spock took a deep breath and grit his jaw once more to get himself back under control now. He did not have a close friend present to make a convenient scapegoat with which to react violently towards, as he apparently always seemed to, and so he would just have to make do with himself. If he allowed himself to focus on his own actions, he thought he might be able to forget what the Seskille’s actions. About the bone-deep horror of what they had done to him. What they had forced him to—No. He could not confront that yet, because there would be no coming back from it easily, and he had work to do.

He could not stay in the snow any longer. His limbs were either nearly numb or already so, and he could not feel his hands beyond the faint weight of them at the ends of his arms. Operating them to press firm, steady pressure against his side was more difficult than it should have been. He could not judge whether he was pressing with enough force to stem the bleeding and had to judge it by the sharp increase of pain radiating from the shards of his tricorder in his skin. He swallowed, forcing the acrid sensation of bile to recede, and he set his jaw against the spiking agony. He was a Vulcan, this pain was of the body, and the body could be controlled.

But the body was controlled by the mind, Spock thought grimly, and his mind was compromised.

The sun’s angle was difficult to judge through the dense cloud cover, but it did not appear to have sunk too much into the horizon. He estimated that he’d been laying in the snow for perhaps an hour at the most. Enough to freeze him, but not yet enough to kill. Hypothermia was no longer a threat but a troubling reality, and he would be required to take care of that too, before it grew worse. His side needed tending to, his head injury, his ribs…

His list of responsibilities was growing alarmingly long. He needed to prioritize what was most necessary to accomplish first, as well as what was actually able to be accomplished at all with his limited resources. The windchill was a primary concern, but without shelter, he could not avoid it. However, he reconsidered, that might be solvable after all. Spock remembered the ruined remains of buildings nestled within the crater itself; thousands of them. He’d judged them to be only of archaeological interest then, but now they appealed for a much different reason. The skeletons of homes, with roofs and rooms and solid walls to put distance between himself and the wind. There was shelter available to him, if he could find the energy to get to it.

Not doing so was no longer an option; exposure to the elements was the greatest threat to his survival. Vulcans could outlast human tolerance for extreme conditions, but Spock had already bypassed that limit twice over, and he was now declining swiftly in health. Too much longer in direct wind and ice, and he would not last until rescue.

It took over five minutes to stagger to his feet; he had counted as best he could but his ability to focus on calculations were hampered by the pain radiating from his head and leg. The strain to his mind threatened to send him back to the ground, but he tensed each muscle and locked his legs firmly. Something was wrong with his left leg, something that made him feel queasy and faint. He forced it away, because he did not have time for that.

The unsteady fatigue of his movements proved to be from a concussion, although he had suspected that already. His symptoms had been noticeable while sitting but could also have been caused by the cold. Now that Spock was upright, the telltale swimming distortion of his vision made itself known. It explained much about the muddled, disorganization of his thoughts and memories, although not all. The deep gash above his eyebrow continued to bleed, making a mess as head injuries so often did.

That he had not burst his head open entirely was surprising; a human falling from the height he had would not have been so lucky. His ribs had taken the brunt of the damage, but the density of his bones kept him alive. His tricorder and head had taken the rest of it. The wounds were not easily ignored, but Spock managed to do so after some difficulty. He could not treat them here; it was time for him to get out of the cold.

It was also apparently a time for discoveries; with his first step on frozen, nearly numb legs, he became aware that his left ankle was broken. The knowledge felt like stone in his mind, cold and heavy. Something in him sank, even as his head felt like it was floating away from his shoulders. The longer he considered the increasing severity of his circumstances, the less lucid everything became. The world spun around him, and he stared down at the snow. Dizzy, cold, faint…

A concussion, five cracked ribs, an abdominal puncture wound, a broken ankle. Spock observed this all with a detached acceptance, feeling so very far away from himself.

Kaiidth: what was, was. He could see the injuries, know how he had received them, list the steps of how to apply first aid, but he could not summon the proper alarm necessary to appreciate the level of crisis he was in. His mind drifted, wrapped in layers of pain and dull disbelief. Everything felt muted. Shock. He thought he might be going into shock once again, or perhaps he had already been in it for so long that he had entered a new stage of it. One where he was no longer horrified, but rather simply resigned to the continuing gravity of the situation.

Illogically—appallingly—he had the urge to cry, and in fact almost did. His eyes stung. His throat tightened. The shameful irrationality of such an emotional act was what finally forced Spock to step forward on his good leg and drag his injured one behind him in a slow, stumbling limp. Each step threatened to buckle his legs out from beneath him.

The ruins would not be far, provided he remembered his location correctly, though Spock could no longer be certain that he did. The crater had been filled with the ruins of buildings, grouped together in blocks on a long-since eroded road network. While it was impossible to see through the snow, walking forward was his only option. They numbered in the thousands, difficult to miss. He only had to reach but one of them. Feasible, but painful and exhausting. He would be able to take shelter there, perform the necessary triage on himself, and determine his best options. Already, he could see that those were limited. His odds of survival relied primarily on actions outside of his control.

The Enterprise would send a rescue team down, Spock was certain of that. It was conceivable that they had already been deployed and would locate him shortly, but he could not depend on that being true. Eventually he would be found, and he only had to stay alive long enough for that to happen.

The pain worsened as he waded through the snow, each step dragging and grating the displaced bones in his chest and ankle. That pressure in his head built, the cracks widening even as he fought to close them. It was crushing at first, and then destroying. His efforts to shield himself, to resist the attack—assault—that threatened to break down his disciplines, were not enough. They were not holding. He had already opposed it as much as he could, and Spock felt himself start to slip. There was nothing else he could give, no further effort he could muster forth, no Vulcan trick he could fall back on. He could not hold the pressure back anymore.

No.

He would not go through that again. He could not go through that again.

Help would be arriving soon. He would get back to the ship, carried there despite the indignity of it, where he would then suffer Doctor McCoy’s needling and hostile bedside manner for days on end. It’d happened enough over the years that Spock knew the routine of it; he would be thoroughly exasperated of both sickbay and its prison warden by the time he was recovered. He would be on the ship, though. He would be on the ship, and he would be away from here.

Spock told himself this, over and over like a mantra. Something predictable, knowable, focusing. Over and over again, even as his shields split, and that presence reached for his thoughts. Something in him wrenched, cracked, split open…

No.

Hold it back.

Stop. Do not do this…

He would be on the ship, and he would be away from here. In this state, with these injuries, he would likely be in sickbay for at least a week, and he would suffer each agonizing minute of the duration. Previous stays had been an exercise in both frustration and boredom, save for those precious few hours where Jim had kept him company over a game of chess. The captain—

—they decided on Jim’s quarters tonight.

One game of chess had become two, and then three. Spock narrowed his eyes at the board, brows furrowed as if he would discover the captain’s mysterious strategy if he only stared long enough. It yielded no further information, still as cryptic as before. The board had thinned as both sides claimed pieces; Jim had taken his queen, but Spock still had both bishops, as well as both knights. The captain no longer had even that and was now down to only a handful of pieces left.

Spock could normally determine the pattern to Jim’s erratic playstyle, at least enough to counter it to some degree. Kirk claimed not to have a strategy, but that was not entirely accurate. It was true that he moved in the most inconsistent, illogical manner possible, but once Spock had known to look for it, he found himself able to plan around the unpredictable. All he had to do was consider what move he never would have taken, and that often ended up being the one the captain made. Spock knew to watch for it now. Sometimes, even, he was able to move with his own controlled illogic—in a planned and intentionally logical manner, of course. Jim always delighted at it when it happened, grinning and surprised. Spock found he made it happen a little more often than he otherwise would have.

Finally, he shifted his knight a level, dubious of the move even as he made it. There was no response. No humming of thought, no gloating, no teasing. Just soft breathing in the stillness of the room.

He had taken too long, Spock realized, as he glanced up at the captain. Jim was still absently holding a pawn between his fingers, one of the black ones he’d claimed from Spock earlier, but his eyes were closed. His head was propped against his hand, elbow leaning on the table, and he seemed, if not already asleep, at least close to it.

The words died in his throat before he could give voice to them; he found he did not truly want to wake Jim, not when he got so little rest already. Spock instead leaned back in his own chair, content enough to simply sit there in silence and observe. The air in the cabin was warm; Jim had raised the temperature for his comfort, and the thoughtfulness behind the kind gesture never failed to move him, no matter how many times it happened. Arms against his chest, posture comfortable, Spock basked in the heat of the room, the heat of the company, and watched the captain.

Jim’s breath came softly and evenly as he dozed, all of his normal vibrant energy finally at peace. He was no less beautiful because of it; he was as radiant now as he was at his most spirited. It was only that everything had now relaxed into a quiet contentment, at rest and unbothered. Gone was the tension the captain always carried in his shoulders, or the faint ghosts he kept secreted behind his eyes. His expression was calm and slack and peaceful. Spock found Jim quite enchanting in this state of vulnerability, of which only sleep could bring out in him. Always so alert and prepared, it was nice to see him this soft. It made him feel protective, it made him feel honored.

It made him feel.

He would do anything for this quiet, sleeping human, Spock thought to himself silently. There was nothing he would not do, no lengths he would not go to, to keep this man safe. One tiny human captain, comparatively insignificant in a universe of incalculable numbers of sentient beings—and all of them, every single one combined, was less precious to him than this one was. There was a certain word to describe that kind of emotion, that kind of feeling. The realization was not as alarming as he would have thought it might be. No, his awareness of the depths of his regard only felt warm; it slotted in so perfectly in his mind, as if a gap had always been there simply waiting for it.

The pawn fell from slackened fingers and clattered onto the table, breaking the silence. Jim’s breath hitched and he caught himself before he slid off of his propped hand. The man blinked drowsily, blearily at him, still caught in that hazy place between asleep and awake. Spock felt caught, because surely—surely—the captain could see what was so plainly in his eyes. The emotion there. And surely Jim would feel disgusted and betrayed, because these emotions were unforgivable, inexcusable. The desire, the want, was not only a violation to their friendship, but it was a violation to his own control.

And Spock knew what he was capable of when he was not in control.

But the captain only met his eyes with his own, and that incandescent smile of his spread slowly. If he could see Spock’s feelings in the shared gaze, he didn’t give any sign. He only blinked heavily at him with that sleepy, fond expression, and Spock had never felt warmer. Slowly, the captain leaned back down and propped his head back onto his hand with a tired, murmured hum. They watched each other for a moment, but the captain’s eyes grew heavier and opened less. His eyes finally closed and did not open again; Jim content to fall to sleep in the presence of someone he felt safe with, someone he trusted. And Spock…

… Spock fell just that little bit more in love with him.

Chapter Text

And Spock…

… Spock fell just that little bit more in love with him—

—he fell to his knees before he could catch himself.

Keeled over in the snow, legs tangled and arms buckling, Spock vomited again with a gasping, choking wheeze of pain. Nothing came up but stomach acid, but his body tried still, wrenching itself apart to further try to purge. His ribs, his side, his head... his head felt blinding, and he could not focus, he could not think, he could not do anything other than whimper and heave and gag into the ever-falling snow. His mind radiated pain throughout him like a wildfire spreading, his muscles spasming and contracting even as he fought not to fall into his own emesis. This was unendurable, and he could not make it stop…

Stop this.

Please stop…

Someone was screaming through the howl of the wind, and it was only after the sound cut off while he retched again that he realized it had been himself. His face was wet. He was crying; tears dripped off his cheeks from both the vomiting and the memory.

The memory that the Seskille had forced him to—that they had ripped from his mind.

Spock remembered that evening in Jim’s quarters. The emotions. The feelings. That warm, tender word that he dared not name aloud for fear of it consuming him. He thought of that night often and thought of it well; it always lay in the back of his mind in some way or another. The night where he realized that he—but it was tainted now. Tainted because he had been wrongly forced to feel it all over again, while his body heaved and froze to death and bled out on some empty, lifeless planet. Alone, cold, in pain. The sudden shock of it was more than he could stand.

It left his mind hollow and howling from the impact. To feel and not feel; to have such radiant emotion pressed on him and torn away just as swiftly. Slammed with overwhelming feeling only for it to be so violently gone with the next breath. The damage was beyond him to compensate for; he could not rationalize around it. He could not minimize it or undo it. There was no gradual buildup, no natural progression of the emotions as they occurred in daily life. No gentle swell of it. It was and then it was not; pressed onto his mind and then torn away. They hit him like a high-speed collision and sent him reeling and ruined.

No one should have to endure that; he should not have to endure that.

Spock could see nothing but white as he staggered back to his knees, back to his feet—his broken ankle hobbled him, but he forced his weight on it anyways. If it hurt, he could not tell. He couldn’t feel his body any longer, not over the ripping, wrenching sensation of his controls fraying at the seams. All those vulnerabilities he’d allowed to fester in his mind like an open wound had finally rotted through the walls of his self-discipline, and he felt each and every minute erosion of it. His quiet, calm dunes of sand were spilling and pouring out, exposing all that he fought so hard to bury down for so many years.

And still they reached for more.

He stumbled only once as he lurched forward on frozen legs, but he would have dragged himself across the land by his fingertips if it got him to shelter that much sooner. A roof and walls would not stop the pain, and it would not stop the violation, but he would have a better chance of bearing it there than bearing it while also being exposed to the elements. Once he stopped moving, he would be able to focus his attention inward to try to repair something of the damage there.

He hoped, although hoping was not something a Vulcan should have done, that when the captain found him, he still had a mind left. That he still had control, because he could not be trusted around Jim if he did not.

Spock knew what happened when he lost control.

It could not happen again.

Please stop this.

That pressure shoved again, and again, and again. It pressed into where it ripped at, sought all the cracks it had created, seeping in like water through a crevice. A drip, a trickle, a—

—water trickled down his face from his drenched hair, and he had to squint to see where he was going through the rain. It was a downpour now, flooding the streets to his ankles. An apparently normal occurrence on Giri-Y9-N, but it made him uncomfortable. The rain was warm and unpleasantly slick in texture, sticking to him like a film. More akin to an oil than the usual common standard of water found on most planets. The air was humid and tropical in climate, making Spock feel as if he were in a heavy, damp sauna. His uniform clung oddly and chaffed at his skin, just as soaked as the rest of him was.

Captain Pike huffed a breath of laughter when he saw him, and even Number One’s lips twitched, although her expression remained impressively stoic otherwise. They had both been able to remain indoors for the study, while Spock had bravely ventured out for a more detailed analysis. He was embarrassed at his curiosity now, a flush of heat at the base of his neck spreading up to his ears. He felt undignified as he dripped all over the floor.

“Don’t think I don’t appreciate the dedication to duty, Ensign, but you’re soaked through to the bone.” Pike was already ushering him into the roofed shelter of the foyer, a hand hovering at his back without touching him. “Like a wet cat. Come here, son, let’s go find you a towel...”—

—desperation drove Spock, propelling him forward through the snow even as he listed to the side and nearly keeled over. Some horrible, guttural noise was being dragged from his throat; he heard it on the wind but could not stop making those sounds. He was weaving erratically, left and right with a dizzying blur of motion; so much so that Spock had to close his eyes against the desire to be sick again. His head, the weight pressing on him there. He could not concentrate through it. There was no steady direction he could keep, no sense of ability to path his way to the ruins now; he could only go forward with an outstretched hand and hope he was going in the right—

“—direction,” Spock said as he looked through his viewfinder. The bridge was calm today, the low conversations of his crewmates washing over him comfortably. He had once found the sound distracting and intrusive when he’d first taken a starship posting, and yet now he felt strange when working without it. Silence had its own appeal, but he found it had no place on the bridge. Alpha shift had worked together for years now, and the routine conversation and humming chatter of the crew provided him an easy background noise to work in. With his vision so intently focused among the fields of stars and nebulas, there was a certain appeal in hearing signs of life at his back. Something to call him back to the ship. It felt stabilizing in a way he could not quite define.

The captain stepped up to his side and, although he was not touching him, Spock felt the heat of him all the same. His focus shifted abruptly, splitting to accommodate both his work and his awareness of Jim. It was instinct now; he could not have stopped it if he tried. As always, his senses centered in on that one specific human. Where he was, what he was doing, whether he was safe.

“Oh, believe me, I do. You’ve more than earned it ten-fold,” the captain replied, clapping a gentle hand onto his shoulder. “You just point us in the right direction, Mr. Spock, and we’ll follow your lead. I trust you.”

Spock looked up from his viewfinder to see Kirk leaning against his instrument panel, just as familiar a spot to the man by now as the captain’s chair was. Sometimes, he thought Jim might spend more time here beside him than in his actual proper station. Every so often—and with increased frequency, he couldn’t help but notice—the captain would wander over and perch there, just as he was doing now. Spock did not find this unpleasant, not at all, but it was a—

—distraction, or he thought he might break down. It was not logical, but Spock was apparently not able to be logical due to the unnatural mistake of his birth. His lessons at the center had been difficult today and he had not achieved that which seemed to come so instinctively to the other students. His meditation had been erratic, his expressions had been visible, and his hands had balled into fists at the pointed comments of his peers. All shameful displayed of emotionalism. This had invited even more comments about the fault of his conception and how he was, in every way, deficient. He’d stared straight ahead, trembling, but had offered no rebuttal. There was none that he could have made anyways. What they said was not untrue, or they would not have said it to begin with. One classmate’s comments could be explained away as casual cruelty, but not comments from all of them.

“Spock,” Father said, looking up from where he had been conversing with Mother softly in the parlor. His mother appeared to grow concerned as she looked him over, her human eyes seeing far too much. He did not meet her gaze, nor so much as looked at his father. “You are home twenty-point-two-three-seven minutes later than customary.”

“Yes,” Spock said stiffly, advancing past the doorway but elaborating no further on the reason for his tardiness. Instead, he moved to the staircase and took them swiftly, climbing hurriedly towards his bedroom.

He needed a distraction; something to focus on because his emotions were too close to the surface. His lip still bled from where he had bitten it to prevent it from quivering. His throat had been tight and his eyes stinging the entire walk home from the center. He did not have the self-control to prevent an emotional outburst for much longer. Already, his breath was hitching alarmingly. Spock did not understand why it was that he had these impulses at all, or why they should overwhelm him so. He was already six-years of age, he should have had the self-regulation necessary to prevent this. Instead, he felt only chaos inside.

The moment his bedroom door closed behind him, safely blocking out the rest of the world, Spock felt the irrational tears start to well up in his eyes. Something gasping in his chest burst forth, and he covered his face with his hands as his cheeks grew wet. It was purposeless, this shedding of tears. It dehydrated the body and did nothing to change his circumstances. Tears did not take back the comments of his peers. They did not undo the flaw that was himself. And yet, he could not stop them no matter how he tried; they rapidly spilled over and dripped down his face in streams. This was not befitting a Vulcan. Yet apparently, he was not and could never truly be Vulcan.

Spock hated himself in that moment. He hated himself.

Something wet pressed against his ear. Hot breath huffed at him. Spock looked over at I-Chaya, his sehlat appearing blurry through the moisture still falling from his eyes. The warm nose pressed into him again with a great whuffing sound, and Spock felt his expression crumple. With a choked, desperate sound, he reached out and buried his face into the sehlat’s neck, small fingers gripping tight to the thick fur. Strangled cries burst from him as he leaned against I-Chaya and sobbed—

—there was a harsh jolt through his arm as it slammed into something solid.

Spock squinted against the light, against the vertigo and the tears in his eyes, as he scraped his hands over the snow-covered rock. Smooth stone, rounded and sandblasted from millennia of exposure to the elements, had never been so relieving a sight. He could not see enough of it to tell whether this was one of the old ruins he’d been looking for, or whether he had mistakenly doubled back to the cliffside. Both would feel the same to his senses, numb and crippled as they were. He leaned against the stone and followed the cold rock with a hand he could not feel, limping heavily as he waded through the knee-deep snow. If it was shelter, he would eventually find an entrance. If it were the cliffside, he would eventually freeze to death.

His ankle gave out twice as he moved; Spock could feel the bones grating together there, and the rattling in his chest grated in his throat now too. He could not draw in a proper breath. Something dripped from his face, and he could not tell whether they were tears, blood, or both.

And still, the Seskille reached for him. That joy they felt as they pried his memories from his mind, ripping at each thought. They were so happy to take him apart for their own pleasure…

The nausea overtook him again; Spock doubled over to dry-heave, ribs shrieking their protest as each gasp was wrenched from him. He felt brutalized; every inch either injured, agonized, or frozen, and some all three. Harsh wheezes were sucked in, only to be violently expelled with a strangled hacking. These sounds should not come from Vulcans; they surely should not come from him. But he couldn’t stop them either; he could only grope for the entrance to the building, blindly—

—through the blind darkness, came the sense of touch. There were warm hands gripping his shoulders in a firm, almost bruising hold. “I don’t care, Spock!” Kirk’s voice snapped out through the darkness. “I don’t care if you give me fifty of them—a hundred! I don’t care if you call up Starfleet Command right now and scream it at them! I’m not accepting it, you hear?!”

Spock tried to reason with Kirk, hands at his back in parade rest and his posture rigid. Even though he could not see the captain’s expression, he knew how it would look. Agitated, upset, angry. Spock longed to relieve him of that, but in truth he rather felt the same. It was all he could do to stop his own feelings from showing, to keep his own despair from being evident. He did not want to leave the ship. He did not want to leave the captain. Jim was only making this worse, and it was difficult enough already. “It is the only logical course of action, sir. I am unable to perform my duties in my condition, and Starfleet does not allow—”

“I don’t give a damn what they allow! This is my ship, and you are my first officer! You are staying my first officer, whether you like it or not! That’s an order, Mr. Spock!” Jim sounded desperate and, startlingly, choked up. His brother was dead, his sister-in-law was dead, his newly orphaned nephew lay unconscious in sickbay, and now his first officer and closest friend was prepared to leave Starfleet altogether. They were not enviable circumstances, and he did not blame Jim for his reaction. The anger was misplaced, but it was understandable.

Spock could only nod his silent agreement, even knowing that it would make no difference. The captain might not accept his resignation, but Starfleet would ensure it happened all the same—

—he was sprawled in the snow, hands clapped to his ears as if it would somehow hold his defenses together for a short while longer. Low, keening sounds escaped him and were lost into the howling wind. His nose was bleeding; he could taste it where it dripped into his mouth. Stop, he wanted to beg the Seskille—would have if he knew how to make them listen. Please stop this. He could not bear anymore; his body had been pressed beyond its limit and he could not fight it further. Spock wondered if dying by way of exposure might now instead be a mercy. Some selfish, human part of himself hoped he did, so that they could not steal anything else from his mind. So they could not violate him further…

He could not tell whether he was lightheaded from the pain, from the nausea, from the concussion, or from the blood loss. Perhaps all four. Spock’s hand still clamped against his side as often as he could manage to try to apply pressure, but he also needed the stability of both arms to move through the snow. The vague sensations that were his hands followed stone, and he was truly dragging himself now. He needed to find shelter, so that he would not perish from hypothermia. He needed to triage himself, so he would not die of blood loss or blunt trauma. He needed this to end…

His hand fell forward as it hit air and then into rock.

Bare, dry, snow-free rock.

Spock wasted little time, pulling himself through the opening in the structure with a choked grunt of exertion. At once, the moaning of the wind in his ears grew muted, and the heavy snowfall on him was blocked by the roof. The relief at making it to shelter, at being out of the worst of the weather, was so gratifying that it stole his breath from him. It helped him press back the reaching, grasping presence in his head. The cracks in his mind were not sealed, but he held himself against them with firmer support now that he had some measure of safety.

For a moment, all he could do was sprawl out there in the entryway and gasp in strangles of air. Every muscle went limp, and he had to fight to remain conscious. His mind drifted from him, surroundings distant and fading. His pulse was deafening in his ear, heart thundering from the adrenaline and stress. It was only after feeling the increasing pain in his ribs from laying on them that he became aware of himself again.

Spock grit his jaw to muffle any pained sounds that might emerge, trying to cling to some shred of dignity. He failed at it. Choked whimpers escaped as he dragged himself further into the shelter, away from the openings in the rock. The ruined building was dim as he peered at it with pain-narrowed eyes; this room had only one exterior entrance and one window-like hole, and it was darker even still in the next room over. He slowly pulled and huddled himself into what might have once been a closet or storage area; it was small and dark, and felt soothing to his eyes after so long outside in the blinding snow. While there was no door to block out the light, Spock curled into the corner to provide some relief from the brightness.

There, finally, he was able to slump against the rock floor and rest.

For long seconds, time moving immeasurably, he could only breathe in and out in ragged heaves, each one sending an exhausting ache through his chest. Black spots filled his vision as it narrowed and tunneled but closing them offered no relief either; it only gave the sensation that the world was spinning and tilting around him violently. It took some couple of minutes until he was able to unclench his jaw and remember that his responsibilities had not yet ended. Coming back to himself was harder than it should have been. All he wanted to do was go unconscious.

He could not afford to yet.

Triage was not difficult. He had more than one injury, but Spock considered some to be less important than others. His broken ankle was ranked lowest priority. He would be unable to move from this location again, lacking both the energy and ability to do either, and so would remain in this room until help arrived. One did not need functioning legs to sit and wait. His ribs were excruciating as they constricted him, but he did not judge them to be in danger of puncturing his lungs and were not currently vital to attend to. If that were to change, he would reevaluate his priorities. Until that time came, he could do little for them.

There were only two truly immediate concerns. The concussion, as it inhibited his ability to think logically and formulate a proper response to crisis, and the puncture wound in his left side. Upon waking, he had felt the concussion slow his reaction time down, cause disorientation, and dull his ability to focus. Even now it was affecting him; the nausea he felt did not stem solely from the assault to his mind. Short of a medical kit, however, there was not much he could do about the head injury. He had no scanner, no bandages, no gauze with which to provide first aid. He could do nothing but stem the blood with his sleeve, and he needed his hands for other uses.

This left only the wound in his abdomen.

With trembling, numb fingers, Spock peeled up the hem of his uniform shirt to inspect the area, the fabric half-frozen to his skin and stained a deep green. It took a moment to focus in on the wound; his eyesight faded in and out in a strange throbbing fashion. The injury was serious, but he did not think it was immediately life-threatening on its own. There were shards of the tricorder sticking out of the puncture site; he even recognized some of the larger ones, such as the pieces of the hinged compartment, and fragments of the display screens. The wound was bleeding still, oozing slowly, and he reluctantly lowered his shirt once more.

To remove the debris would worsen the problem, and applying pressure to the area would only push the fragments further in; he had already done this when trying to find shelter. They had not yet pierced through any organs, but they would if he further jostled them too much. He had to leave them be until further medical attention arrived. However, one piece had either already been pressed beneath the skin or fallen out sometime during his hunt for shelter—his fingers could not accurately probe the area to tell for certain either way—and the bleeding there was not stopping. This he could not ignore.

Bunching the fabric of his shirt as best he could, he applied pressure firmly to the area, carefully navigating around the remains of the other shards. Blood blossomed beneath his fingers, wetting down the uniform and thawing the ice that had started to form. Spock couldn’t hold in the sound that escaped at the sensation of the other fragments shifting; not being pushed deeper into him but instead to the side, ripping at the skin with their sharp edges. Doctor McCoy would be upset with him, but at least he would be alive to give reason for the ire. A fair trade. Spock thought he would accept any number of unpleasant reactions from the doctor if it meant he could be far, far away from this planet. He invited them, even, as long as they were given in the safety of the ship.

Spock pressed his lips together firmly, to try to block out the nausea and prevent himself from vomiting again. He felt sick; dizziness and vertigo threatened to empty him out again, and his head lolled down against his chest limply. The pressure in his head was splitting, but he had to resist—fight it!—because the alternative was simply not acceptable.

Please stop. I beg of you, please stop this.

Did they not understand? This was killing him.

Having done as much as he was capable of, Spock laid against the rock of the wall behind him. His lips were cracked and split from the wind; they bled down his chin to mix with the blood from his nose and head. He mopped his face up as best he could with the edge of his sleeve—a disgusting use of his uniform, but the only other option was allowing the stomach acid and blood to freeze to his skin. There were no expendable items of fabric he could use as a bandage or clean cloth, and his Science blues were already a loss due to the damage and staining. The only equipment he had on him were the remaining shards of the tricorder jutting out of his abdomen and the clothing he wore.

Blearily, he struggled to remember all his survival training.

It was harder than it should have been. His perfect recollection was distorted and fragmented from the head injury, from the attack on his mind, from the cold. Inexcusable, as it should have come immediately to him and with swift ease. Hypothermia could explain some of the lethargy, but he was a Vulcan, and he should have been able to last longer in extreme conditions. That he had not was unforgivable. However, even he could admit his circumstances had crossed the threshold of what anyone would call extreme by now. Perhaps another Vulcan would have been just as compromised a state, but he did not think that to be true.

Spock had been injured before, but he had also been able to ignore the pain by use of his mental controls. He could not do so now; those very controls were failing him. He could not focus his mind on regulating his pain response when so much of his energy was aimed on defending his mind itself.

Spock, sitting there in the cold silence, found he could no longer put off what he’d dreaded since waking. There was no excuse of physical exertion to distract himself with. No shelter he needed to try to reach. One battle had been won, and now he needed to contend with the other he’d been so far ignoring. He would do his best to moderate his response to what he would find there, Spock told himself firmly. No emotional reaction. No fit of panic. Just logical evaluation. He would repair what he could, and the rest would have to wait until a time he could safely and securely break down.

Yet he was afraid of what he would find. Fear was not helpful in this case, but he felt it all the same. He could not stop the emotion from gripping at him, no matter how desperately he tried. It was a familiar feeling, to be afraid of himself; to be afraid of his own self-control failing him. Perhaps his greatest fear. He knew what happened when it did, and he was right to be wary of it. But it was not helpful to focus on that, and he was now delaying what he knew he must do. Ignorance of his own barriers would protect no one from it should they fall.

With eyes closed, Spock finally allowed his awareness to center towards his mind.

What was left of it.

He could not stop himself from recoiling in horror at the sheer carnage he found there, flinching back even physically at the true scope of the damage. His promise to temper his emotions failed. Words failed. Whereas his barriers had once been rigid and unyielding, they were now crumbling. Broken down to rubble like a stone fortress under siege. All those thoughts Spock had allowed to remain surfaced, all those open wounds he’d been unable to confront and accept, all had been ravaged apart, leaving dangerous cracks in his normally strong control. Cracks that were starting to bleed as much as his side was.

He… did not know how to fix this. The emotions he buried beneath the sand were being uncovered, despite his best attempts to keep them concealed. To keep them suppressed firmly down where they could not affect him. They were, even now, rising out and taking hold of him. Dread, sickening and cold, washed over him. Fear. He was so afraid. The sand of his endless dunes trickled out of his walls like an hourglass.

There was a crippling, overwhelming presence waiting there to scoop it up.

He had been aware of it the entire time, but now it was to the exclusion of all else. It felt so strongly, so deeply, and it threatened to rush over him too, drowning him the radiant delight it felt. He was not alone in his own head; there was someone else there, so many of them, and this thought struck him like a blow. They had invaded his mind, forcibly. Someone had violated him in a way he could not have fathomed—was still violating him even as he watched that foreign, invading presence claw to reach him.

The Seskille. Desecrating every thought with their groping awareness, and all they felt was joy at the act of doing so. It was their happiness. They bludgeoned against the previously impenetrable shielding, the one he’d worked at his entire life, until they could reach through the crack they made and rip something out.

Feeling only pure delight, they eagerly grabbed for his memories again.

Spock had been distracted by the damage; horrified at the mutilation he had found. His mind spun and the pressure fit to burst him open. He was too slow, just in that split second, to recoil away from that clutching desire.

A split second was all it took.

Something in him shattered, the walls failing and collapsing down and spilling sand. That throbbing, spiking agony in his head rendered all defense meaningless. They tore through his mind like a spear with each grab they made; they did not stop when he tried to pull away from them. There was no where further for him to go.

Stop. Please, do not do this.

Stop…

Distantly, he was aware that he was retching again, hands scrambling to keep himself upright. Someone was screaming. His throat burned from the force of it. His mind gave way, collapsing inwards on itself. He needed the pain to stop; the blinding, crippling pain filling his head with splitting pressure—

—they stood side-by-side, staring out at the blackness of space and the streaked pinprick of stars that flew past. It was a place he often found the captain after a mission had gone unfavorably; an out-of-the-way observation deck that few ever visited, preferring the more spacious and comfortable viewing areas three decks above. The solitude of the room made it particularly appealing to Jim when he was upset. It was for that very reason that Spock checked on it frequently and included the deck in his normal post-mission rounds. He’d caught Jim here more than once, brooding and depressed. Although Spock could not change the emotions that overwhelmed his captain, he could change the conditions he expressed those emotions in. Specifically, with company.

Jim’s reflection met his eyes, and perhaps it was that neither of them were truly looking at the other that allowed for the rare moment of open vulnerability. With the smallest shake to his voice, Jim murmured softly: “You know, sometimes I worry the pressure of it all is going to destroy me and leave nothing left. The Enterprise, she takes and takes, and I keep on giving. How long until I’m just an empty shell—

—"Here.” Something wet, slimy, and cold pressed against his ear, the texture of it akin to mucus as it dripped down the side of his neck. Spock immediately withdrew from it with an ill-concealed flinch, a shudder of revulsion down his spine as it trickled beneath his uniform. Wiping the seaweed from the side of his face, he fixed Doctor McCoy with a particularly stony expression, taking three steps back to avoid further assault of his person.

Doctor McCoy looked less-than contrite and only waved a large, empty orange snail shell at him. Spock raised an eyebrow, utterly perplexed at both the action itself as well as the forceful nature with which he gestured. Did the doctor want him to take it? Jim laughed at them a few feet away, wading through the tidal pools with his boots and socks tucked under one arm.

“The empty shell of a meacyte snail,” Spock stated uncertainly, although he suspected that the doctor was not asking for clarification on the species. “No thank you.”

“What, you telling me you’ve never pressed your ear to a seashell before? You can hear the ocean in ‘em.”

Spock blinked, and then blinked again. His other eyebrow joined the first, incredulously.

“That… is illogical, Doctor.” Spock was not certain where to even start with that comment. He had the passing thought that he was being teased, and the look in McCoy’s eye gave credence to the theory. Nevertheless. “—and thoroughly impossible. Mollusc shells cannot and do not emit their own sound. Neither can the meacyte snail itself, assuming it were still within the shell. What you are hearing is undoubtedly the result of your present surroundings. To clarify, should it have somehow escaped your notice, we are currently at the ocean.”—

—he had never seen the ocean before, not once in all his four years of life, and Spock found it was not as impressive an experience as he’d thought it would be. What little of the bay he could see was colored a deep shade of grey-blue, dotted with small shapes of boats in the water. The heavy fog in the air obscured the majority of the ocean itself and made any further visibility difficult.

He peered at it with narrowed eyes, attempting to see the larger ships through the mist, but all he saw was dense sheets of grey. It felt as if the clouds themselves were swallowing him, consuming him and everything else around him. Spock edged away from the railing with an unsettled feeling in his stomach.

“We’ll have to come back later in the day; I forgot that it gets so foggy in the morning.” His mother raised a hand and smoothed back his fog-damp hair, tucking him firmly into her side. Spock was content to stay close to her; she was both warm and safe. The Golden Gate Bridge was slick from condensation, and he had almost tripped once already on the pedestrian path. The thought of falling from the height and being lost in the mist below them made him increasingly nervous. “Maybe your father will be able to join us this time.”

Spock did not think that would be likely; his father had expressed very little interest in sightseeing and had suggested that Spock apply himself to more educational pursuits on Earth instead of recreational ones. His mother had not followed this suggestion. Spock was of a torn opinion on the matter. It was important to understand his mother’s planet, as it played home to half of his heritage, but this had not been a particularly pleasant trip and it made him feel. Nervousness, uncertainty, trepidation; he did not like the cold, wet mist or the water that surrounded them on all sides. It made him afraid, and he knew that he should not have been capable of the emotion at all, let alone of displaying it visibly as he was currently doing.

He was glad that his Father had not joined them to see his flawed, illogical reaction. He would have been just as disappointed in Spock as Spock was in himself. Although surrounded by humans on all sides, each expressing their emotions in shockingly open ways, his own standards were to be of control. He was a Vulcan—

—“It is flawed to continue to persevere towards an unachievable objective. You are not fully Vulcan, Spock, and no expended effort or attempt will result in you being one. It is a biological fact that you are half-human, and therefore it is illogical to continue trying to achieve that which is not achievable.”

Spock opened his eyes and glanced at his classmate impassively. This was nothing he had not heard before; he did not react to the taunting outwardly. It was commonplace be confronted with such words from his peers, and displaying a reaction only fed into their continued comments about his heritage. Now, nearly in his tenth year of life, he had learned not to provide them with further cause with which to degrade him for. And yet, he was hurt. No matter how many times he heard this and variations of it, some hurt, human part of him wanted to run into the desert and never return.

“Is it not also illogical, Sk’tav, to interrupt my studies when you should be focused on your own?” Spock asked tonelessly. His nails dug deeply into his palms, safely concealed beneath the sleeves of his robes, and he felt the sting of them breaking skin. Blood welled up. “I would advise you to return to your own meditation, so that I may continue on with mine.”—

—his meditation space was personal; filled with items that centered his thoughts and his thoughts only. Each Vulcan took great care in deciding what focusing objects resonated best with the unique structure of their mind, and it was a deeply personal matter to discuss the meaning of them with another. It was considered intimate even, reserved for only one’s spouse or closest family. Still, as he watched the captain approach the looming statue of the Yon'tislak, the griffin-like fire beast from Vulcan mythology, he could not help but make an exception for this one particular human, as he always seemed to do.

Spock carefully explained the symbolism of the creature in even tones, and why he had chosen the Yon'tislak specifically. The captain would not understand the true significance of the discussion; he was not Vulcan. He would not understand how deeply Spock regarded him.

“Sometimes I envy you,” Jim said, smiling over at him and tracing the severe features of the statue. The asenoi, held in the hands of the stone fire beast, cast the glow of flames around the room. “The whole meditation thing, I mean. What I wouldn’t give to shut my brain off sometimes. It gets very loud up here, from time to time. I’ve always wondered: how does it work, anyways? I thought it was just like clearing your mind, but the way you describe it, it sounds like quite a lot of work.”

Spock opened his mouth to respond when Jim leapt back with a sudden yelp, his hand already blistering where a spark from the fire pot had burnt him—

—it happened in Lab Four. While working quietly in the empty room, a warm sensation stirred just beneath his stomach, like an ember breathing to life. Spock paused as he stared through the lens of the microscope, perplexed at the unfamiliar feeling and uncertain at the cause of it. He had consumed a standard meal, had an appropriate amount of hydration, and he could not feel any of the typical symptoms signifying an approaching illness. It was as if a small coal had sparked in him, shooting tiny tendrils of heat throughout his body. It started there below in his gut, but as he stood there silently, it began to spread.

And it grew hotter.

Spock endeavored to ignore it; he had his tasks to complete, and he would see them through to the best of his ability. While the strange sensation of it was distracting, it was not immediately pressing, and he could block it out with enough focus. Spock returned his gaze back to the bacteria squirming on the glass slide and pushed the feeling to the outskirts of his awareness; there but not prioritized. It was only after another 3.824 hours that the feeling began to grow truly uncomfortable, and approximately another hour after that that it began to grow painful.

His brow furrowed. Spock stood from his seat, collecting his samples and the beakers he’d removed them from. It was not an illness, that much he could tell; his thorough knowledge of his immune system and his internal monitoring of it gave no indication that he was sick. His body did not register this sensation as a foreign problem. There were no immediate alarms raised at the pain; his awareness of his physical makeup detected no foreign cause.

That was not to say, however, that his body was not reacting. It was. Adrenaline released in waves at the stimuli, preparing him for an action he could not define or identify. There was no cause for it, but parts of him were responding unusually, as if he were about to engage in sport or combat. His nervous system lit up; his blood vessels dilated, the resulting blood flow rushing to tensed muscles. His heartrate increased, as did his blood pressure. His hypothalamus and pituitary glands released what he could only describe as a cocktail of oxytocin and testosterone.

Some molten feeling curled in him, liquid and hot and sending an alarming shiver throughout the entirety of him. His veins blazed throughout his body, as if the blood in them had been replaced with magma, and his pulse raced faster, to the point where he could only feel a thrumming instead of individual beats. That frisson of sensation poured through him, low and coiled, slithering down-down-down to pool into his groin, where it…

He did not understand.

… And then he did.

The beaker slipped from suddenly slack fingers to shatter on the floor. His eyes wide with shock, he reached a trembling hand to steady himself against the shelf; he gripped it tightly enough to dent the metal. That tiny ember in him sparked to flame and Spock burned—

—inside. All he could feel was heat and fire, and it was almost more than he could bear, more than he could stand. He would not last much longer. Spock paced his quarters relentlessly, unable to rest or think or sit, because that churning need in him wouldn’t allow for it. The dents in the wall, the smashed console on his desk, the overturned chair; all signs that he had lost control already. He could no longer be trusted to leave his rooms, could no longer be trusted to be around the crew, and he had locked the doors to all but the most stringent of override codes. Only two had the authority to do so.

Only one of them threatened to do it.

“Are you really going to make me use them, Spock? I will if I have to, but I’d prefer it not come to that.”

Spock glanced desperately at the wall comm, jaw grit so tightly that he felt his teeth ache. His fists were clenched to the point of drawing blood and his legs throbbed from restlessly wandering his cabin. Over and over again, back and forth, until the sight of his own quarters were a nauseating blend of red and grey. His curtains half-hung from the walls where he’d ripped at them; his bed was unmade, and the blankets scattered. His microtapes littered the floor. The captain would see all the signs of the approaching plak'tow, the blood fever, and it would be shameful.

“Spock. Please.”

And yet, hearing the gentle request, he found he could not refuse.

He’d never been able to refuse Jim anything.

Spock’s voice croaked out a soft: “Open.”

The captain entered without hesitation, allowing the door to slide closed behind him. His eyes took in the signs of violence around the room, but he said nothing about the damage or mess. His eyes widened for a brief moment before his expression smoothed and only the smallest signs of worry, carefully controlled behind a mask of neutrality, were visible at all. At least one of them had control, because Spock felt his own rapidly deteriorating.

“You weren’t answering anyone, Mr. Spock. I was starting to get worried. Bones too, not that he’d ever admit it. He was about to lead the charge to break down the door, but I told him I’d try my way first.” The captain smiled at Spock, and did he know what that smile did to him? Spock shoved his fists behind him in parade rest, a poor façade of poise, and gripped them together so tightly that blood dripped down his fingers. His entire body was shaking visibly, obvious even to a casual glance. Jim certainly noticed, but he did not address it. “We’re approaching Vulcan; just another hour or so until we’re in orbit.”

Spock nodded, something unclenching in him. He was still afraid, terrified, but the worst of the anxiety was eased knowing that he would not have to take other, more desperate measures. He could not have allowed himself to hurt someone in this state, and as reaching Vulcan in time had been an increasingly distant hope, he’d been forced to consider other alternatives. There had been very few of them available, and each were more permanent than the last. For now, at least, he could last one more hour. He had to last one more hour.

“Thank you, Jim.” It was with a steadier voice that he was able to finally reply. The knowledge that this would all be over soon allowed for some of his composure to return. His trembling did not stop, but it was reduced. He was able to unclench his hands. “I understand that this will have… severe ramifications with Starfleet, but I thank you all the same. That you would do this…”

“Oh, I think you’ll find there is very little I wouldn’t do for you, Spock, ramifications or not. You’re my friend; my best friend. Your life is worth far more to me than a fancy starship or some rank braids ever will.”

Jim took a step closer to him, and Spock re-tensed instantly. He bit his tongue now to keep from doing something he would regret, fingernails once more digging deep into the mangled flesh of his palms to control himself. His self-restraint was threadbare, and he was at dangerous risk of giving into that relentless need. Blood pooled in his mouth, swallowed thickly. The desire was there, the urge was there, to stalk forward; to pursue like some predatory animal until the captain’s back hit the wall behind him, pinning him there. Caged in by Spock’s arms as he pressed up against Jim, bodies flush, and grip—

—Jim dangled heavily from his grip, body limp and lifeless, and everything in Spock froze.

“Kroykah!”

Spock stared, uncomprehending at first even as the horror set in bone deep. The burning, raging fire that had consumed and scorched him from the inside out extinguished suddenly and turned to cold ash in his veins. Something unpleasant, sick, and churning filled his gut, his chest, his throat; he didn’t breathe, he didn’t move, he just… stared. There was pressure in his eyes, vision blurring and stinging with the onset of tears, but he didn’t cry—couldn’t cry—he could only stand there and look and look and look and not truly see, not fully understand…

With the strangling hold of the ahn-woon wrapped tight around his neck and keeping him partially suspended, the captain hung bonelessly, slack limbs sprawled out against the sand. This body—this limp, beaten, lifeless thing, did not look like James T. Kirk, the fearless starship captain. It did not look like Jim, his closest friend. It looked wrong; sickening and impossible and perverse, because it should not have been possible. He couldn’t have—he couldn’t have…

… What had he done?

He didn’t breathe, even as a guttural, choked sound caught in his throat. Couldn’t breathe. Everything went so quiet, fingers numbing and slipping as he lowered the body—not Jim, not Jim—to the ground. Spock stared and stared, hunched over and still holding on as the shock gave way to chilling, overwhelming dread. Jim was—the world seemed to lurch and drop out from beneath him, leaving him unmoored and detached and disconnected to everything around him. Vulcan was gone. The spectators were gone. T'Pring was gone. The universe could have ended and been reborn a dozen times over and all he could know was that unmoving body that lay stretched out on the sand.

The gold of Jim’s command uniform was ripped, bloody from the fight—their fight—their fight, because he did this—and his face looked beaten in. Bones broken; skin bruised, but unmistakably Jim Kirk. Jim, who was his closest friend. Jim, who meant more to him than any person ever had or ever would. Jim, who had risked his captaincy and his career to save his friend’s life. Jim who had been killed—murdered—by that very same friend he’d given up everything for.

Jim, who was dead.

He did this. His weapons, his hands, his fault. That horrible burning, no longer immolating him from within, took root behind his eyes and in his throat. He felt choked, sickened, gutted, because this was his fault. His captain. His Jim. His fault…

“Get your hands off of him, Spock!”

The doctor was there, and the universe came rushing back to him. Time moved once more, reminding him that it had not ended, that it continued on even when it should not have, because Jim was dead. Dead. He could only stare, barely feeling McCoy grabbing the ahn-woon and wrestling it from his grip—

—Jim dangled heavily from his grip, body limp and lifeless, and everything in Spock froze.

“Kroykah!”

Spock stared, uncomprehending at first even as the horror set in bone deep. The burning, raging fire that had consumed and scorched him from the inside out extinguished suddenly and turned to cold ash in his veins. Something unpleasant, sick, and churning filled his gut, his chest, his throat; he didn’t breathe, he didn’t move—

—Jim dangled heavily from his grip, body limp and lifeless, and everything in Spock froze—

—Jim dangled heavily from his grip, body limp and lifeless, and everything—

—Jim dangled heavily from his grip, body limp and lifeless—

—Jim dangled heavily from his grip, body limp and lifeless—

—Jim dangled heavily from his grip, body limp and lifeless—

Chapter Text

Jim died in front of him again.

—stared, uncomprehending at first even as the horror set in bone deep. The burning, raging fire that had consumed and scorched him from the inside out extinguished suddenly and turned to cold ash in his veins. Something unpleasant, sick, and churning filled his gut, his chest, his throat; he didn’t breathe, he didn’t move, he just… stared.

Jim died in front of him again.

—broken; skin bruised, but unmistakably Jim Kirk. Jim, who was his closest friend. Jim, who meant more to him than any person ever had or ever would. Jim, who had risked his captaincy and his career to save his friend’s life. Jim who had been killed—murdered—by that very same friend he’d given up everything for—

Jim died in front of him again.

—hung bonelessly, slack limbs sprawled out against the sand. This body—this limp, beaten, lifeless thing, did not look like James T. Kirk, the fearless starship captain. It did not look like Jim, his closest friend. It looked wrong; sickening and impossible and perverse, because it should not have been possible. He couldn’t have—he couldn’t have…

Jim died in front of him again.

“Get your hands off of him, Spock!”

Jim died in front of him again.

—fingers numbing and slipping as he lowered the body—not Jim, not Jim—to the ground. Spock stared and stared, hunched over and still holding on as the shock gave way to chilling, overwhelming—

Jim died in front of him again.

And again.

And again.

It should have eventually numbed him, to see his captain die like this. The countless repetitions should have desensitized him to the memory of it, even slightly, even the barest amount. Logic should have taken over, rationalizing that it was impossible for Jim to have been killed so many times, no matter how real it looked and no matter how real it seemed. Surely he should have come to understand that it was only a memory, and that Jim was still very much alive. That he always, in fact, had been. After experiencing it, over and over again, it should have stopped affecting him. It should have stopped hurting.

It did not.

He felt it as if it were the first time, each time.

Every time.

Jim died in front of him again.

Stop. I beg of you. Stop this.

Jim died in front of him again.

Please, enough. I cannot endure this.

Jim died in front of him again.

Spock watched, and felt, and grieved. It did not matter how many times it happened; each repetition felt just as raw and fresh a wound as it had originally; just as excruciating. The moment the memory finished, it began anew, and he watched and felt and grieved all over again. Watched and felt and grieved as if it were the first it had ever happened; as if he were only just now snapping out of the fever of the plak'tow to find Jim dangling in his hand, bloodied and lifeless. He felt every agonizing second of every agonizing cycle, and he could not make it stop.

The horror of it was consuming and left no room for anything else. The sensations it caused were tangible. The burning sand sticking to his skin, the heat of the sun bearing down on him, the sick and gutting realization that Jim was dead. He felt the unbearable, bone-deep dread icing through his veins and the stinging in his throat and eyes as his body fought to cry. He felt it as painfully as he had the first time, and the second time, and the tenth time. It was an unending torture. Spock never became numb to it; never became immune to the pain, even on the twentieth repetition. On the fiftieth. On the hundredth.

And then Jim was dead once more, body limp and beaten, and he felt it all over again.

And again.

And again.

Jim died in front of him again.

Some detached, distant, self-aware part of himself knew that this was not real. It knew that this was a result of an intrusion, an assault, and that it was all in his head. It was that awareness that had him begging, choked and ragged and increasingly desperate to escape it. He could not stop thrashing; could not stop slamming against the confines of his own mind like a wounded, rabid beast in a cage. Something in him was breaking, and he feared that the fragments of himself would be too numerous—too shattered—to fit back together once this ended, if it ever ended at all. How could those parts fit together again when they had been sharpened and reshaped by grief, distorted now from what they’d once been?

This vague remnant of Spock tried to make it stop. It did not. He begged for the memory to stop, because there would be no coming back from this. Not this! Not after so many times over. It did not. He pleaded and screamed for it to end. Please end this! It did not. His efforts were ignored, as they already had been and as he knew they would continue to be. That overtaking presence, the one forcing him to endure this, did not understand what he was trying to say.

It did not even understand what saying was.

Stop…

Jim died in front of him again.

The awake sliver of Spock watched it happen at the same time as the rest of Spock experienced it happening. An unwilling observer and an unwilling participant alike.

So, this was what it must be like, that detached part of himself thought, to be dissected. Like an experiment; like a specimen. This was what it must be like to be disassembled, like the computer he’d always been accused of being. To have everything that made him him—his self-control, his discipline, his logic, his reasoning, his memories—be utterly stripped from the privacy of his head by force and laid bare. His mind felt skinned open, flayed. Shredded apart in peeling, bloody layers until all the concealed parts of himself were exposed, like carrion for animals to feast on. For the pleasure of the Seskille. Their happiness.

And they were so very, very happy about it.

Jim died in front of him again.

Every wall he tried to raise crumbled. Every defense he tried to barricade between himself and the Seskille broke. Every possible contortion of himself, the fraction of self-aware consciousness still writhing and thrashing even now to escape the intrusion, was immobilized. There was no place in his own mind where he could escape to that they could not—and would not—follow. There was no exit, not for him. The Seskille overwhelmed him so thoroughly that Spock had been forced into a tight corner of his mind, trapped there and made to watch this vicious massacre of his psyche unfold before him. He could not escape his own memories, no matter how he wished to do so. They had invaded the sanctity of his head and shattered all that they could reach with grasping, destructive fingers; like unaware children toying with something very fragile. He sensed their emotions as they did it. Emotions of curiosity, happiness, delight.

It made him feel sick. It also made him feel happy. He had no choice but to feel both, because he had been given no choice.

There was the part of Spock that experienced Jim dangle lifelessly from his hands as if it were real, and there was the part of Spock who watched himself experiencing it, knowing that it was not. A fracturing of his mind. There existed no words, in any language he knew, to describe the pain of it. No words for the splitting, fragmenting sensation of being rendered down into individual parts and components of a damaged whole. Spock did not know how to fix it, or whether it could even be fixed at all. His control had been challenged before, by spore or by machine or by illness, but he had not been brutalized like this. His mind might have been compromised during times past, but it had not been so molested.

Stop…

The Seskille did not stop. They did not understand the word stop. They did not fully understand what words even were.

Spock could feel them there, alongside the alert shred of himself. He could feel their minds—so many minds!—joined with his own in a sort of forced merging. Different though, to any kind he’d used before. This was more savage, more thorough, more violating. It was not a melding of consciousness, his mind to their mind, his thoughts to their thoughts. No, this was an overpowering of his own, submerging him in a sea of buried memories. They left no stone left unturned, no corner unexplored, no dark place where he could shelter himself in. He could not fight back. He could not hold them off. They had crushed the very meaning of himself beneath the collective weight of their own intrigue and left him no space to maneuver or breathe.

The Seskille watched, curious and so truly happy, as his worst memory was laid out for their pleasure, over and over again. Forcibly repeated, forcibly endured. Spock grieved as he observed himself watching Jim die. The other part of himself grieved too, as Jim dangled dead from his hands once more.

The thread of consciousness that still clung to reason and logic knew, of course, that Jim was still alive. His captain had not died then, and he was not dead now. Doctor McCoy had, in a rare show of cleverness, used of one of his potions to imitate death, allowing for the combat to end without actual fatality. It did not make a difference, however, that Jim hadn’t truly perished there, not when Spock hadn’t known of the plan. After snapping out of the plak’tow, he’d been so consumed by shock and grief that such a scheme hadn’t occurred to him; had never even been considered as a possibility. The blood fever wouldn’t have ended for anything short of death, and with Jim Kirk dangling limply from his hands, how could he have thought anything else?

For the next grueling hour, Spock had gone through the motions hollowly, operating under the full belief that he had murdered his best friend and captain. He’d made very specific plans for his future then, ones that he’d fully intended to enact once he turned himself over to the authorities. Plans that he had deemed to be unnecessary once the captain and doctor revealed their deception.

Live Long and Prosper, T'Pau had said to him. Spock had not intended to do either.

It mattered little now. Jim was still alive, having never truly died at all. Spock understood that, logically, rationally, factually. The awareness did nothing, changed nothing, stopped nothing. Not when the feelings of devastated guilt and heartbreak still echoed so forceful and sharp in his memories. He knew now what it felt like to have killed his captain, and the trauma from that torturously long hour would stay with him forever. On repeat for the Seskille to watch, over and over again.

Jim died in front of him again.

There was the sensation of a question in his mind; one that did not belong to Spock. The intruders could not make sense of what they were seeing, delighted though they were by the potency of his despair and the source of it. They watched the shapes that were called bodies, watched the elongated pillars called necks emit wind and vibrate to form sound, but they could not tell what was being said or what speaking was. There was that sense of curiosity; of wonder and joy and of amazement at the strange, mystifying sights that defied anything they could comprehend. It was foreign to them, all of it. Whatever physical form they had once been, it had obviously not been humanoid. The Seskille observed these sights in the same way as they had everything else they’d stolen from him: happily.

Joy, delight, and curiosity.

These emotions were not his. This relentless desire to understand was not his. He wanted answers to questions that were not his. The Seskille wanted to understand what they were witnessing, with a wondrous interest and excitement. They saw an alien existence that challenged all their known perception and they wanted to study it; to make sense of what it was they were watching. What they were doing to him was criminal, but they lacked a frame of reference with which to comprehend that. They were not human. They were not Vulcan. This was as new to them as their collective presence was to him. They did not know what they were doing was wrong.

It was the feeling, Spock realized, after watching Jim die again. The emotion. So raw and potent and consuming that it drew them to that specific memory. Never before had he felt so intensely or so profoundly as in the very moment that he realized he had murdered Jim, and it drew them like a moth to flame. The Seskille did not have the ability to ask him about it with words he could understand, if they had words at all. They could only repeat that memory, over and over again, to try to gain some new insight from it. Like researchers; like scientists.

They enjoyed their research just as much as he so often enjoyed his.

Was this what bacteria felt like when examined beneath a microscope? Did those infinitesimally small creatures, existing in a way so foreign to his own lived experience, feel as gutted and abused as he did now? Did they feel as exposed to his inquiring eyes as he did to the Seskille’s?

What were eyes, Spock wondered.

The question, or rather the distant sensation of a question. Not formed with words or coherency but with emotion, a sense of intrigue. It did not make sense. Spock knew what they were. Eyes were simply eyes; optical organs that converted light into signals the brain could—

“God, you must think I’m an idiot…” Jim chuckled wetly as he bent double, head buried in the sink. Spock hovered at his side, pressing in close enough to be nearly flush against the man’s side. His hands carefully cupped his captain’s jaw, directing his face towards the harsh spray of the eyewash station. Jim hissed and tried to flinch back at the first sensation of water against his eyelids, but Spock held him steady, with far more strength than Jim could pull against.

“I do not,” Spock reassured him, leaning down to be able to move the captain into a more comfortable position, as well as to better see what he was doing. He smoothed his fingertips over Jim’s cheekbone, gently rubbing the skin to help rinse the chemicals off. “I think it was an unfortunate accident, but I do not think it a reflection of your intelligence, of which I know to be considerable and beyond question. Please open your eyes, Jim. I need to flush them out—"

Spock wanted to know more; it was his happiness. It was his joy to experience with them, as they also wished to experience with him, to share and be shared with—

“What’s mine is yours and so on, so forth. Mi casa es su casa,” Cadet Zaynah Bauer said, spreading her arms wide in a gesture meant to emphasize her admittedly remarkable collection of 20th century vinyl records. “Not many appreciate ‘em these days, so it’ll be nice to share with someone who gets it. Feel free to take a—"

—look like James T. Kirk, the fearless starship captain. It did not look like Jim, his closest friend. It looked wrong; sickening and impossible and perverse, because it should not have been possible—

Jim died in front of him again.

Spock wanted to beg for it to stop but he could not; not in this place where he had no voice and no body. The Seskille Collective would not have understood it anyways. There was no understanding to the words he’d tried, and there would be no further understanding to any words he would try. His memories had their attention, but he himself did not, not exactly. They did not realize there existed two parts of himself, one alert and one not.

The emotional and mental transference went both ways, and he got the vague idea that they were aware of him more as a concept, rather than a person. The Seskille had no frame of reference for what a person was, let alone the individuality that came with being one. Through the connecting link, he could tell there existed no separation between the whole of them; no unique identity to call their own. Not a hivemind, exactly, but something approaching it. He knew, without knowing fully how he knew, that their name was not even what they called themselves. It was merely what someone had once decided they were called, repeated until it stuck. There were no names here in this unfamiliar place, either theirs or his own. They did not have a reference for designation except the emotion it invoked; a sense that they were being identified for communication purposes. They did not know what a name was.

Leila’s arms wrapped around him. Her cheek felt wet against the side of his neck as she pressed against him for what would be the last time. Spock felt her try to form the words she wanted, lips quivering as she fought back sobs, and he waited patiently for her to find them. When she finally did speak, her voice was choked.

"You never told me if you had another name, Mister Spock."

She leaned back from him; her bloodshot and tear-filled eyes met his own, and he felt something in him soften. She had been taken over by the spores too, and it was not her fault that it had used her body to spread to him. She was just as much a victim as he was. Spock reached for her cheek and gently wiped the tears from it as she tried to summon a wobbling smile.

"You couldn't pronounce it.”

"—I am Lieutenant Commander Spock,” he said, raising the ta’al as per tradition. “Live Long and Prosper, Doctor McCoy, and welcome aboard the Enterprise.” Having briefed himself on the doctor’s extensive and truly impressive records, Spock expected a resulting professional response, as befitting of someone with Leonard McCoy’s credentials.

That was… not what he received.

McCoy instead just squinted at him, lips thinning as he looked him over like one would a particularly ugly piece of abstract art. He was silent for exactly six-point-two-five seconds before, finally, the doctor nodded with a derisive and undignified snort. “Oh yeah, I can already tell you’re gonna be a real piece of work.”

The Seskille probed for more.

Spock attempted to fortify his mind, but it was like trying to hold back a flood with only his hands. The collective presence of them washed over him in a terrible wave, drowning him beneath the insistent surge. He felt suffocated here, in this strange place between awareness and memory. He could not breathe. He did not have lungs. He did not have a body. He could not explain this feeling to them, because they did not have a word for it. They did not have words like he did.

Some fragment of Spock’s already fragmented awareness wanted to give in. Stop resisting it, it pleaded. Stop fighting and let them take whatever they wanted without protest. The pain would end if he did, because it only hurt at all due to his continued struggle against their intrusion. It would be easier on his mind to accept what was happening and simply allow it, unencumbered by any further defiance. No pain, no opposition, no horror. He would have only peace as he became part of the whole and gave in. The Seskille’s mindscape would overpower his own and he could go slack and unaware until they had their fill of him.

The idea of it was tempting. Spock wanted to stop fighting; to stop pushing back against their oppressive weight because it felt as if it were killing him to hold against the pressure. He was so very tired…

But Spock found that he could not surrender. He couldn’t. Even knowing that it would stop the worst of it, he dared not let up his efforts for even a moment; to do so would betray all that he was. All that a Vulcan was. This was the one thing that they had yet to take from him; this last shred of himself that they could not reach. Giving that up, even for desperately needed relief from the pain of their onslaught, was not an option he could consider. It would have been so much easier for him to just give in, understandable even, but it would also be unforgivable to his own ideals. It was his mental weakness that had caused this to begin with; his inability to shield himself as he should have. He could not yield what little ground he had left, when it was all that he had left.

Desperate and pleading, Spock tried once more to force their understanding; to shove back at them the reality of what this cost him. What they were doing to him. To make them aware of the pain they were causing, with each and every layer of his control they peeled away. Please, he wanted to beg, if begging would have done anything at all. Please stop doing this to me. He directed the pleading outwards from that odd self-aware shard of himself, willing them to hear him somehow.

They did—in a way. Not in the way he hoped.

The Seskille noticed his effort, but they did not reach the understanding he’d wanted. Instead, there was only the overwhelming rush of joy at his attempt at communication, and a forceful desire for more of it. The collective had felt the desperation, the emotion of his plea, but they had not understood the context of it. Panic and despair did not exist wherever it was they came from, and so it did not translate to them as anything but an alien feeling without a name or description. Pain was a sensation of the body, not the mind. They could not feel his body, they could not feel the damage they were doing. They could only feel emotion itself, and they couldn’t understand what his were.

The Seskille reached into him again, like picking at a specimen with sharp tweezers, and ripped—

“Goddammit Jim, again?” Doctor McCoy looked amused as he leaned against the bulkhead beside Spock, the both of them watching as the captain peeled off the tattered remains of his gold uniform shirt. “Remind me again, just how many uniforms have you gone through now? Fifteen? Twenty? What in god’s name are you doing to ‘em? ‘Cause I’ll tell you, mine don’t just spontaneously come apart on me. Spock’s probably don’t. So explain it to me how in the hell yours keeps trying to tear itself off you?”

“It’s not my fault, Bones!” The captain tried to defend himself lamely, a flush of embarrassment rising up his neck. The shoulder of his uniform top hung off one arm, and three rough slashes bisected the fabric across the torso. “I don’t understand it either. Mine must have the structural integrity of tissue paper, because they just keep ripping—"

—ripped, bloody from the fight—their fight—their fight, because he did this—and his face looked beaten in. Bones broken; skin bruised, but unmistakably Jim Kirk. Jim, who—

Jim died in front of him again, and still the Seskille watched.

They watched and they delighted in the pure emotion of it, even if they did not understand what that emotion was. Grief did not exist to them. They lacked a context for the horror he felt. Whatever form their existence took, it was completely absent of negativity. Spock got the vague impression that their experience of his sorrow was somewhat comparable to what it might be like for him to be shown a color he’d never seen before. No reference to describe it, and no ability to truly comprehend it. The mind had the intrinsic need to categorize and relate everything it came across to something recognizable, but how could it when the foreign thing was beyond the scope of explainable? All the Seskille could do was repeat it, over and over again, until it somehow made sense.

Spock empathized with them. He didn’t have any choice but to empathize with them, for they allowed him no space to exist separately from their feelings. He was the Seskille, and the Seskille were him. They were merged; blurred together in such a way that they existed, not as two minds but as some indefinable mixture. They enjoyed it, this overtaking of his mind. Enjoyed it in the same way that he enjoyed a particularly challenging scientific pursuit; delighted in it, even.

Spock tried to pull away again, to cut out some kind of hole where he could hide independently of them, but they only held him tighter in their grip—

Jim dangled heavily from his grip, body—

Jim died in front of him again.

Spock watched himself and felt them watch too. Watched and experienced and grieved and felt. He could not muster any defense that might block them out and resisting only hurt him that much more.

They were… not going to stop. The thought came suddenly, devastatingly, and with a hollow sense of creeping dread. The Seskille were never going to stop. They did not know enough about him, of being a person, to know what this was doing to his mind. A Vulcan was the very antithesis of whatever creature they were. Beings made of emotion; such a world was one he could not fathom. There was no pain to them, no individuality, just the collective sharing of themselves. Sharing with him too. A willing transfer of feeling and memory—willing only because he could not shut them out, and because they did not even understand that he was trying to.

The feeling of resignation struck him like a tangible blow. The Seskille were not going to stop this, and Spock did not think anything he tried could, or would, make them. The collective presence of their minds overpowered any barrier. They were stronger than he was, and it was a battle he could not win. A battle he could not even begin to fight. They would do whatever they wanted with him, and he would have no choice but to endure it. Over and over and over again.

What made it worse, Spock thought vacantly, watching as Jim died by his hands again, was that they did not mean to harm him.

He wished they did. Maliciousness would have been its own kind of problem, but it would have also been an understandable one; an explainable one. Something he could neatly categorize away with little difficulty. An attack by reason of deep emotion, by anger, aggression, or hostility, would have made sense. It might have had a purpose or a reason, maybe even brought about by some action of his that had triggered the violence to begin with. An animal protecting its territory, a species mistaking a harmless act as challenging, an injured creature striking out. A cause and effect. Logical, rational, ordered. He had been attacked before, in countless different ways, but Spock had been able to rationalize each instance, at least to some degree or another. Even the truly vicious occurrences, he had always been able to accept them.

He struggled to accept this.

It was unintentional, this gross violation of his mind. What they were doing to him was entirely and wholly unintentional. The Seskille couldn’t relate to his perspective in even the haziest sense of the word, let alone relate to the raw pain they caused. They were not intentionally hurting him; they just truly did not understand. Strangely, irrationally, that somehow made their actions worse. Spock would have preferred the violence and cruel motivations that often walked hand-in-hand with assault. He would have preferred the abuse come from a place of rage or hatred, rather than this.

The sheer innocence of their persistence, that of trying to experience something that they had not before, was not something he could easily assign blame to. How could he? Spock so often did the exact same, with all his research and studies and experiments. To seek out new life and existence, observe it benevolently and without malicious design, was quite literally the primary function of his career. So, too, were they appreciating him, and as much as he hated it—

"There is a certain scientific logic about it.”

"I'm glad you approve," Anan 7 said, seemingly pleased that someone was on his side about the situation… the situation being the voluntary mass suicide of civilians due to a computerized war.

Spock could only return a blank stare as he shook his head slowly, incomprehensibly. That he logically saw the reasoning behind their actions, and of the systemic brainwashing that drove them to take those actions in the first place, did not mean he agreed. The loss of a single life in any situation was a tragedy. That so many people walked to their own death, willingly and knowingly, because a computer told them to do so was abominable.

"I… do not approve,” Spock replied. “I understand.”

—vision blurring and stinging with the onset of tears, but he didn’t cry—couldn’t cry—he could only stand there and look and look and look and not truly see, not fully understand—

Jim died in front of him again.

How did he make them understand? How did one possibly make a species, one that had no understanding of what it was to feel pain, know that they were causing it? The very idea of it was abnormal to them, as the Seskille had no ability to feel it themselves. They had no need to feel it. In however and whatever way it was that they existed, they did not have bodies. They did not have nerves, or brains, or physical forms to feel hurt or agony with. Yet he needed to make them understand that they had to stop—please stop this, I beg you—because this was killing him.

Spock had always suspected that, when his death finally came, in whatever way that it did, he would be alone. When he thought of his eventual end, he carried some hope it might be for his captain, his friends, his ship. Something that would give it a meaning, no matter how small or forgettable it might be. Something that made it all worth it. This was not how he wanted to go: bleeding out on a freezing planet while his mind was ripped open and violated. Dying here, now, lacked purpose. It lacked reason. The very idea of it felt shameful.

Yet, even at that thought, some human part of him hoped that he did, just so that this would end. Dying in such a manner might have been undignified, but there was no dignity to be found in his present circumstances either. It had to stop, and he could think of no other solution. It wasn’t that he was—

“—trying to get yourself killed…” The captain looked as angry as he did relieved. Such was always the case when Spock put himself at risk for Jim’s sake. Now that the immediate threat had passed, Jim could allow himself time to be upset. “Do you know how much Starfleet has invested in you?”
 
Jim.

Spock could not die here. He needed to get back to the captain. The captain who he had not found upon waking up from the fall, who might still be wandering in the cold, as alone and freezing as he had been. Someone would find him eventually, whether it was by Jim or by another, and there existed some aversion at the idea of being found like this: bloody, freezing, broken, and curled up in the dark. He disliked the knowledge of what would surely follow. Doctor McCoy having to perform an autopsy on his corpse, Jim having to sign off on his death certificate, Jim contacting his next of kin, his mother being told her only son was dead, his father having to arrange a burial for a son he’d rejected.

No, that was not an end Spock could allow. He knew what it was like to lose his closest friend, even for only an hour, and he would not wish the experience on anyone, let alone on Jim or Doctor McCoy. Seeing Jim so broken and still, a presumed corpse, had destroyed something inside of him. So much so, in fact, that Spock had been determined to wait until his surrender at the nearest Starbase to act on the rest of his plan. He had not wanted to put McCoy in the position of working on the body of yet another friend, especially so soon after losing Jim.

Such further considerations were useless. Spock could not let himself die here. It would benefit exactly no one and, he thought, it would only cause grave and irreparable trauma to his closest friends. That was out of the question. He needed to get back to the ship, to the captain. He belonged—

"Fascinating. Where would you estimate we belong, Miss Keeler?" Spock asked curiously, stepping closer to the woman.

"You?” Edith Keeler glanced him over with a sly, private smile. He felt his stomach sink, something nervous twisting in him at the look in her eye. “At his side, as if you've always been there and always will.”

She knew. He did not know how, but she knew. Had she somehow read it in his voice? His actions? Spock could not resist looking at Jim, to gauge his reaction at what must have been so apparently obvious. If Miss Keeler had noticed, had the captain?

Please stop this.

They did not stop.

Spock could only watch and experience, from both of those ripped, agonized parts of himself, as they took from him more than he could stand to give. Again and again, they violated his mind, his memories, his control. They forced him to feel. The confusion, the grief, the horror, the nervousness, the pleasure, the tenderness, the amusement. All of the emotions from all of those moments, stacked together and crammed against him violently. He could not block them out. He could not suppress them beneath his sea of sand. He could only sit there and take it.

To be a Vulcan and be forced to feel so much, so vividly, so quickly… his control had been torn from him before, but not like this. Never like this. It had always been a betrayal of his body: an illness, a plant, a machine, but not this. This betrayal was from himself. It was his very mind that was forsaking him now; all those barriers he’d built up had broken apart like they had never existed at all. All that control he’d worked his entire life to achieve had disappeared, leaving only emotion behind. Disgraceful, shameful emotion.

And this—these memories—watching them play before him as he felt each and every sensation. How stark a reminder they were that he never truly had discipline to begin with. The feelings in each of them, forced on him one after the other, had the common theme of running deep and passionate. Unforgivably so. All those justifications he’d given himself in the moment to explain them away now revealed themselves to be little more than lies, so that he might continue to pretend to be a Vulcan. But he was not one, and it had never been more obvious to him. Any other Vulcan would have been able to maintain some kind of control, surely. But not Spock. Not he, who could do nothing but feel.

"What else would you expect from a simpering, devil eared freak, whose father was a computer and whose mother was an encyclopedia!” Jim darted ahead of him, blocking his way to the transporter pad. Spock hesitated as uncertainty broke through the serenityblisshappiness paradiseparadiseparadise.

“My mother was a teacher. My father an ambassador,” Spock explained calmly, but his explanation did not seem to clear the matter up because Jim only grew angrier. The captain waved the pipe he held in his hands, brandishing it out like a weapon, and Spock was forced to pause. Leila was waiting for him to join her, but Jim did not move out of his way.

“Your father was a computer, like his son! An ambassador from a planet of traitors! The Vulcan never lived who had an ounce of integrity!”

“Captain, please don’t…”

Jim wasn’t stopping though, and each word felt like a physical blow to his chest; to the heart that beat within it. The captain continued as if Spock hadn’t said anything at all. “You're a traitor from a race of traitors. Disloyal to the core! Rotten! Like the rest of your subhuman race. And you've got the gall to make love to that girl!”

“That’s enough,” Spock tried again, desperately now. Something in him was stirring; angry and hot and violent, and he turned away to try to avoid it. He tried to cling to the happinessblissparadiseparadise, but that ugly sensation of pain began to bleed out like an open wound. Why would Jim say these things to him? Had he done something wrong? Or had the captain only been waiting for an opportunity to finally tell Spock the truth?

“Does she know what she's getting, Spock? A carcass full of memory banks who should be squatting on a mushroom instead of passing himself off as a man! You belong in the circus, Spock, not a starship! Right next to the dog-face boy!”

Something in him snapped. Spock whirled around and swung, one fist collapsing the pipe in half and the other slamming directly into the side of Jim’s face. The force of the punch sent the captain flying across the room, smashing face-first into the wall. His next punch missed but collapsed one of the panels of the bulkhead and splitting his knuckles. Rage consumed him. And hurt, such hurt, because this was Jim who had said these things to him. Jim, his captain, who it seemed had finally had enough of his first officer.

It was not surprising; he knew his captain could only have so high a tolerance for his mistakes, and it appeared that Spock had at last reached the limit of it.

Again, he struck out and—

—smashed his fist into the other boy’s jaw. With a high-pitched roar, Spock shoved forward and tackled Sk’tav into the sand, pinning him there and raising his fist again. They were right about him: about his inability to control himself, his illogical reactions, his lack of worth, his weakness, all of it. They were not right about her. He would not hear such comments about his mother; she was not a weakness, nor a flaw to be ridiculed. They could say what they wished to about him, but they would keep their opinions of Amanda Grayson to themselves. Spock felt tears of anger pour down his cheeks, even as he fought back his feelings—

“Understand, Jim. I spent a whole lifetime learning to hide my feelings,” Spock told his captain, unable to focus on the danger the ship was in, or on Jim’s efforts to make him focus on it. Those very same feelings were now crushing him, because he felt so deeply and so forcefully. The infection had only brought them to the surface, but they had been there all along. Undeniably present and powerful, merely pushed beneath the sand of his endless desert but never actually gone. Never been purged. They spilled out now, like a dam bursting, unable to be contained any further under the pressure. His eyes still stung from tears, his throat still tight and hoarse from crying.

But then Jim slapped him across the face once more, and Spock could not stop himself. That ugly press of rage surged hot and potent, and he could not restrain it back any more than he could his earlier sobs. With a sharp movement, he backhanded Jim so violently that the captain was sent tumbling over the table and onto the floor behind it. When the captain looked up, a furious spark in the hazel of his eyes, there was blood dripping from the side of his mouth. Spock realized, at least some part of him did, that he had now infected the captain too. That whatever was wrong with him had been transmitted to—

—there must be something wrong with him, Spock realized, as he watched the bright glow of Vulcan fade further and further into the darkness of space. There must be something inherently wrong with him, so much so that he wondered why his father had never commented on it before today. Or why he himself had not ever noticed it. He’d always thought himself self-aware of his own flaws, but it seemed his mind still had surprises left to discover. Inexcusable, really, for a Vulcan, but acquiring knowledge, however late it might be, was at least better than never acquiring it at all and remaining in ignorance.

The argument still rang loud in his ears, harsh and stinging even hours after its conclusion. Spock had not left his planet on a positive note, and part of him wondered if this were to be the last time that he would ever see it. For at least the next few years it would be; he did not intend on returning anytime soon. Or, if Sarek had his way, at all, ever. Perhaps that was for the best.

As the ship ferried him further and further from Vulcan, Spock reflected quietly that yes, this decision was to the benefit of everyone. The last thing he wanted was to bring his family shame. Were he to have accepted the position at the Vulcan Science Academy, he would no doubt have only been a further embarrassment to them, and to his father especially. Sarek had certainly made his stance on Spock’s value and worth as a son quite clear, and it was apparently found to be deeply lacking. It was nothing that Spock had not already suspected for years now, and he supposed the confirmation of it was preferable to endless wondering. It made leaving easier, in any case.

While Starfleet would likely never be a home to him, surrounded by humans as he would be, Vulcan was not his home either. He thought it increasingly clear that it never really had been. It was becoming increasingly obvious that he did not have a home, and nor would he ever. There did not seem to exist a place where someone like him belonged. A freak; a hybrid of two species and the only one of his kind. A child of two worlds, his mother had once called him, in an attempt at comfort. In truth, Spock thought it far more accurate to say he was a child of neither, of nowhere.

Something warm slid across his fingers and he looked down blankly, spying small trickles of green. He had to pry his clenched fists open to observe the damage his nails had done to the skin of his palm. Another sign of emotionalism. Another sign he would not—could not—belong. Too emotionally expressive for Vulcan society, and too emotionally restrained for Earth’s. Spock took a deep breath, steading himself as he forced his reactions under control—

He'd never really had control, though, had he?

His memories played out, one after the other, and Spock watched and experienced them as the Seskille took them apart. Picked at each detail, feeling, and thought. Like something rotting, exposed to the air and left for the scavengers to eat their fill of him. He got the sense that they were delighted by what they saw; that they examined him with as much fascination as he did a new species of bacteria. The comparison did nothing to soothe him. It only made him feel dissected; like an experiment.

If he could only get them to understand. How did one communicate with a species made of emotion?

“No, not so impersonally…” Lieutenant Sulu glanced over at him, grinning as he nudged an elbow into Spock’s side gently. A familiar gesture of camaraderie; one that he himself did not engage in, but that was now being displayed towards himself with increased frequency. A sign, perhaps, that he was being accepted by the crew as one of them. Not just as a Vulcan among humans, or as a First Officer, but as a peer; a friend. It was warming in a way he could not describe.

Spock allowed Sulu to take the potted fern from him, content enough to listen indulgently to the obvious passion the helmsman had for the topic. Sharing company like this was nice, to borrow human phrasing. It was somehow both relaxing and exhilarating to hear his fellow crewmate—perhaps even his friend—talk about his hobbies. He felt much the same enthusiasm towards his own work; his experiments and discoveries had never failed to thrill him intellectually. Spock felt some small bit of envy that Mr. Sulu could discuss his interests with such open emotion. It must be satisfying to be allowed the freedom to do so.

“See, you’ve got to be kind to them—that’s the secret they don’t tell you at the academy. Honestly, just forget all you learned there. The real key to plants is to give them the same attention and respect that any other living creature deserves.” Sulu said. He cupped the vivid purple leaves. “Cherish them, treat ‘em gently, carefully, and they’ll grow up strong. Might be a bit hard for you, Mr. Spock, but one can’t be just another scientist when working with growing things. You have to actually connect on an emotional level. Some people play music, or talk to them, but they can’t communicate like you and I do. You gotta show them you care in other ways, ones they can actually pick up on. Really put the feeling into each action so they can understand what you wanna say to ‘em—"

Yes, Spock thought. Perhaps that was the secret.

Connect with them on an emotional level. The one tactic he hadn’t tried, and also the one he could not try, because to do so would be a lowering of himself.

Not that, he reflected, there was much further he could fall; he’d already been compromised in ways he never imagined were possible. But, even during the worst of it, Spock could rationalize that this had been done unwillingly to him. He’d had no choice in being torn apart, no ability to defend himself against it. His emotions had been ripped from him by force, laid bare like a raw nerve to be prodded at. There was some comfort in that; that he was unwilling and had fought as best he could. He was doing so even now, and while it did not make him any less weak for losing such a battle, he could still say with certainty that he never gave up trying.

The very idea of communicating with the Seskille in the same manner they did to him… to open himself to them, knowingly and intentionally, felt violating in an entirely new and unwelcome way. It was not simply a merging; it was a unification. A combination where there would be no Spock and there would be no Seskille, only a mixture of the two into one whole, blended part. It was not something a Vulcan did with anyone; not unless they were t'hy'la. Sometimes not even then.

It was intimate, that level of emotional transference. It was giving the entirety of himself over to someone, utterly and completely. There was only one person he would ever even consider joining with on such a level, and that was simply not possible. Such a thing would not, and could not, happen. Not now and not ever. Not with the Seskille. Not with Jim. It would reveal all the ugly, shameful, savage parts of himself that he tried so desperately to keep hidden, and openness of that kind would be damning to whatever friendship he still had left with his captain.

Those disgraceful emotions had already peaked out a few times before. They had been visible in that conference room during the Psi 2000 intoxication, in the transporter room when he’d been overpowered by the spores of Omicron Ceti III, and on full, stark display in that sandy arena on Vulcan. All of it had been forced on him, and that was the only consolation he had. It had not been by choice. Sharing himself in such a way, willingly, was unfathomable. Spock knew what happened when his emotions spilled out, messy and pathetic as they were, and it was nothing that should suffer repetition. Showing his feelings, intentionally or otherwise, had only ever ended up hurting those he loved.

Hurting Jim.

His resistance to the Seskille, even if in the barest sense of the word, was the last shred of dignity he had. They had opened him up, but Spock had fought it. At least, he’d tried to fight it, and he still continued to try even now. That token protest was all he had. The Seskille had taken everything else from Spock, and his resistance was the only thing remaining that was still his. What would happen if he stopped struggling? If he allowed them such access? If he gave himself over willingly and completely to their invasion? It would feel like failure, he knew. It would feel like something irretrievable had died in him.

But he could not do this anymore.

Jim died in front of him again.

How did one communicate with a species made of pure emotion? In the end, the answer was really quite simple: emotionally.

It was only logical; logically reasoned, logically arrived at. Not, however, so simple to put into practice. A poor excuse for a Vulcan though he might be, the fact remained that he was still a Vulcan. To willingly flay open his own mind was more than should ever be asked of him. It was not a simple mind meld. It was also not an intimate transfer of self between t'hy'la, something that should be kept private and preciously done. This was something far different; a betrayal to himself and all that he stood for. They had taken everything else from him, must he give them his dignity too? His ethics? His identity?

Yet the Seskille were not stopping, and he could think of no other way to make them. As Jim died in front of him again, Spock knew it had to stop.

And really, Spock reflected bitterly, it was not like he’d ever truly had control anyways, had he? If there was indignity to be found in his emotions, it was that he had them to begin with. If any positives could result from this, it was that his memories had shown him just how dangerously lapsed his discipline really was.

He was tired of fighting. He was so tired. It was easier in the long run if he simply gave in. If he gave up, and—

The captain glanced over at him, lips flattening into a thin line of disapproval. “They really think we’re just going to give into their demands, just like that? They say it and we just…what, do it?” The captain shook his head, disgust obvious even through the blood dripping down his face. “They’ve got another thing coming, then, if they think we’re going to just roll over and take the easy way out! Never let it be said that the Enterprise is made up of cowards.”

I’m sorry, Jim.

And he really was sorry. Truly, wholly, and utterly sorry.

… But he simply could not take it anymore.

It felt like a betrayal—of himself, of his Vulcan heritage, of Jim, of everything—as he forced his mind to stop fighting the Seskille. Relax. Stop fighting. Stop resisting. It was harder to do than he expected it to be. His barriers might have been shattered, but every ounce of his mind still fought to rebuild them. Even now, some part of himself still tried to press against that overwhelming pressure in his head; to shove it as far from him as he could. It felt wrong to instead let it instead slam back into him. It took willpower and intent to stop pushing against their presence, to let his resistance go slack and allow the tide of the Seskille to wash over him in a terrible, overwhelming wave. He felt their joy. He felt his own self-loathing. He felt their happiness. He felt sick.

Letting go was… disturbing. It was painful, but only because it felt so good. There was the sensation of pure relief, like a cool compress against an injury, as he stopped resisting against them. Hurt did not exist here; the pain of his surrender was only emotional in nature. A bruised, beaten pride that throbbed. He had abandoned himself to their whims, like the turncoat that he was, like a coward. There was another feeling there too, one rising up potent and vile alongside the sense of serenity. His first instinct was to try to suppress it. His second instinct was to pretend it did not exist.

Spock did neither. Instead, he allowed it to take firm hold.

That feeling was one of disgust. Disgust at his weakness, at his emotions, at himself. Spock took that emotion, felt it, and then shoved it outwards to the invading force, like sand slipping through his slack fingers to catch on the breeze. The whole of what made him Spock spilled out of his grasp, and the Seskille grabbed at it eagerly.

—he saw the look in Doctor McCoy’s eyes during the debriefing, and it agitated something within him. The doctor’s eyes held the hollow, empty look of stunned shock and trauma. A recognizable look. Spock knew, without having to be told, what had happened and the debrief only confirmed it, despite the doctor neatly evading the details of the assault. Spock had never seen the act done in person before, as such a thing was incomprehensible to him. Unfathomable. But he knew of it, as all Vulcans did; knew how dangerous such a thing could be to his kind, let alone to a human. His people, at least, knew how their own minds and defenses worked. They had a chance of blocking it out, slight though it was. The human mind was so exposed and fragile; it lacked any shield at all. Doctor McCoy couldn’t have fought it off if he tried—and Spock was certain that the doctor had tried, for all the good it would have done him.

“Doctor McCoy,” Spock said softly, as the doctor stood to leave the conference room. The man paused and glanced back with that emptiness in his eyes. The doctor did not want to be there, that much was clear. He did not want to talk about it. He did not even want to look at Spock. “What happened to you—…that is, what my counterpart did… it is unforgivable. I am sorry.”

“What for? Not like it was really you,” the doctor tried to justify, purposely attempting to keep his tone casual. His voice still shook, as did the rest of him. Faint tremors; a tightening of his lips and around his eyes. No doubt the man had a migraine from the forced meld; from the kae'at k'lasa—the mind rape. His entire psyche was likely to be left reeling, traumatized in a way that the human brain couldn’t understand or repair. “And anyways, it all worked out in the end, right? Everyone got home safe and sound; the mad men back to their torture ship, and us civilized people back to our perfectly boring one. All I care about is that we’re alive, Spock. The whys and hows of it don’t matter all that much.”

“On the contrary—” Spock stood and watched as the doctor flinched back from him. It hurt, some sharp pain in his heart, but he did not show it. This was not about him, his feelings were not important. This was about what he’d done, or rather, what some cruel, alternate version of himself had done. That he had the capability for that level of depravity at all, in any universe or reality, sickened him to the core. “—such an act is a crime of the highest degree on Vulcan. The mind is considered sacred and should be yours to share only if and when you wish to. A violation of it is reprehensible. I assure you, sir, that it does matter.”

The Seskille watched and felt as much as he watched and felt. There was a sense of joy as they realized what it was that he attempted now. Communication on an emotional level. Like with plants, Spock thought blankly, just as Sulu had once said. He tried to get them to understand that what they were doing to him was criminal, that it was wrong. But they only felt happiness at his willing efforts to share with them.

Spock felt tainted, sullied and stained (and so good, serene, no longer hurting) at his effort to reach them in a way they might comprehend. The Seskille had certainly heard him, with that strange awareness they had, but they lacked the ability to grasp his true meaning. There was no context for self-loathing or violation in their reality. What they did was simply what they did. It was intentional, but it was not hostile. He’d made progress only in that he had their attention, but he was no closer to freedom now than he had when he’d been begging in the dark.

It had been a mistake to give in. He’d hoped it would ease the pressure, not worsen it. But worsen it did; increasing and spiking again as he felt himself buckling under the sensation. Joy, delight, curiosity. The Seskille wanted to communicate too; to share themselves. And he had dropped his last defense against them.

They rushed in, and all he felt was—

—happiness. Collective. Unity. All became one. The old world was abandoned and the new one embraced. Over and over again, they shared and created, and it was their happiness joy peace harmony sharing. Nothing else but that. The collective and the pleasure and the creation of a new existence.

Forgotten. All sense of themselves, of who or what they were, had been forgotten. There was no sense of loss in it. No sensation of dying. No sensation of erosion, or of the passage of time. Time was not present anymore. Bodies, sounds, words, pain—none of it existed and had not for so, so long. All that was felt now was the existence of many. All shared and were shared with. Not a death, but an evolution! A celebration! A universe of themselves and what they were made of. Emotion. Joy. Pleasure. It was to be shared and consumed and shared, again and again and again—

He was screaming. Somewhere, on an empty, dying planet, he was screaming, body lost to a fit that shuddered him into hard stone. Stop, he wanted to beg—tried to beg. Stop! They could take whatever it was they wanted from him. They could take anything and everything if that was their desire, as many times over as they wished. He would give the Seskille any memory, or all of them at once, as long as they did not again press their mind into his own like that. It was paralyzing; ungraspable and beyond what he could tolerate. An existence he could not comprehend, one he had no ability to do so. The things he saw—

Horizons he could not rationalize, made of colors that did not exist, all clouded with emotions that flooded him like oceans. No gravity, no time, no sun. Planets the size of water drops, and drops of water the size of galaxies, all intangible and made of shapes that twisted and merged—in and out and in—all of it writhing and beating like a pulse. Landscapes of emotion that fizzed and popped and whined in that terrible, ear-splitting way, because it wasn’t physical at all. It didn’t really exist. Objects that did not hold form, but also held properties. Creatures that were not… not… that simply could not be. His mind… it hurt… it hurt, please, stop this. The world around him thrummed with his desperation, tinting the universe with all shades of colors that he could not visualize, despite seeing them with eyes that did not exist. It felt good, it felt horrible. It felt like everything. He saw everything, shared everything. It was his happiness…

“Spock!”

“—best, Mr. Spock. I know you were excited about—sorry, stoically intrigued about such a discovery. But there are honestly just some things that mankind—or Vulcankind, for that matter—aren’t meant to understand quite yet, and I’d say this definitely counts as one of them. Being lost in a different dimension… I can’t even fathom it. But no one can, I guess. How does the mind even grasp what it can’t imagine? Even in our wildest fantasies, things still have to make sense; have some kind of grasp in reality. It’s no wonder they all went insane there. I feel like I’m going mad just trying to wrap my head around it all. Explaining it to Command is going to be an absolute mess…”

Curiosity and wonder. Conversations with things called voices. Words. Delight at such foreign things. A thing that was called Spock. A thing that was called Jim. Such intensity and passion, a sensation of burning, although the name—the word, what were words? Repeat them on all frequencies until they make sense—lacked meaning. Passion, burning, desire, lust, joy, love. Love. Love. Burning. Love. Fire. Over and over again, the intensity of the deep feelings. It was beautiful, and it was being so willingly shared. Over and over and over again, given so that they might understand such a creature. The creature, the thing called Spock. The passionate one.

“Spock!”

Adoration. They loved it, adored it and the experiences it shared. The one from before. The thing called Spock—names, titles, Vulcan, Human, words, fire, Jim—shared itself with them, as they shared with it. A community, a collective, a creation. Mountains and stars and timeless, unending joy at being one. The thing called Jim brought such vivid, loud emotions to the sights that were shared. There was joy, and love, but there were also feelings without names. Names existed—were important to the thing called Spock. Spock. Jim. James T. Kirk of the USS Enterprise. The Seskille. The Boa. Weather. Flowers. All had names with things called words. Spoken with voices. Get your hands off of him, Spock! Emotion without a name. I am also quite blind. Wished to understand and be understood. You? At his side, as if you've always been there and always will. To share and be shared with! Learn with and learn from! The thing called Spock had reached out and it was such delight!

It was their happiness.

That glow lit in him as he observed Jim from his peripherals, pretending to continue the work that he’d all but stopped. The captain seemed happy; he was smiling as he leaned against the science console with a PADD in hand, a place he so often perched lately. They weren’t touching, but Spock could feel the heat pressing against his side all the same. It felt warm, comfortable. Familiar to him after so working alongside this one particular human for so long, and—

It was blending together. Spock. The Seskille. It was all blending together, and he could not make sense of it any longer. There was no separation. No single entity.

“Sometimes a feeling, Mr. Spock, is all we humans have to go on—"

“—will you try for one moment to feel?! At least act like you've got a heart!”

A heart, what is heart? Beating. Fire running through blood. Lust. Words. Context. So many strange things. Names. The thing called Spock! A name. Named. A thing named Spock. A thing named Jim. More. Share and be shared with. It is our happiness and joy and curiosity. All is welcome, no need to hide.

“No. No, you aren’t gonna hide behind that damn alien stubbornness of yours! Not this time, ‘cause let me tell you something, Commander, I can out-stubborn you any day of the week and still have some fight to carry over into the next one! This isn’t logical, and you know it. I know that you know it! Are you honestly willing to die rather than tell me what’s wrong? Dammit, Spock, just give me something! Anything! It’s clear that you're sick—

— sickened, gutted, because this was his fault. His captain. His Jim. His fault…

“Spock! God, you’re—hold on for a bit longer, Spock. McCoy’s on his way. You’re almost home, I promise. Kirk to McCoy. Goddammit Bones, where in the devil are you?!” 

Someone… someone was calling his name; talking to him from what sounded like very far away. He heard it with frozen ears but did not fully register what it meant. Couldn’t, because he was lost in his own mind. It came again, closer now and echoing loudly in the rooms of stone—

Stone. All had faded to dust. Crumbled. No sense of loss, only community. Collective. Sharing and being shared with. Creativity. Emotion. No loss. Nothing but emotion and joy. It is our—

“—nature to react violently, Ensign.” Captain Pike gave him a short smile from across the desk. “In that sense, I suppose Vulcans have the advantage on us. There’s a price to pay for suppressing emotion, no doubt about that, but I daresay that the mission would have gone a tad smoother had human tempers not gotten in the way. Then again, there’s only so much pressure—”

—pressure in his eyes, vision blurring and stinging with the onset of tears, but he didn’t cry—couldn’t cry—he could only stand there and look and look and look and not truly see, not fully understand…

Understand. Yes. Desire to understand more. Share and be shared with, it is our happiness. Our curiosity. How—

“Fascinating,” Jim said, and while the word itself wasn’t suspect, Spock had to pause at the tone with which he said it in. He felt his eyes narrow as he turned a somewhat suspicious glance onto the captain. Jim was trying to keep his expression flat and stoic, but his lips continued to twitch upwards in a resisted smile.

“Sir?” he asked, distrustful now. This felt like a setup. In fact, it sounded as if the captain were attempting to imitate him. Spock raised an eyebrow, perplexed… and his other immediately joined it as Kirk attempted to mimic the same action. Yes, that answered his question quite thoroughly. He gave Jim a distinctly exasperated look and turned, retreating to the safety of his console. The captain’s laughter followed him—

—hands were grabbing at him, but his body felt so numb. So cold. His arms were being pinned down as he thrashed, but if he hit anything, he could not feel it. He could not feel anything anymore. A voice in the air. Familiar. He knew that voice, but he could not open his eyes. He was so cold—

The cold was increasingly unpleasant against his skin. The snowball began to melt, dripping freezing water down the side of his neck, as well as further into his ear canal where the bulk of it had impacted. Already, the tips of his ears had gone green from the temperature, and were rapidly growing numb. Spock supposed they were also green from some embarrassment as well, although he attempted to suppress it back. It felt cowardly to hide behind the wide tree, but he also dared not leave the safety of his makeshift shelter lest the captain and his entourage continue to throw snow at him. Apparently, he had become their favorite, and singular, target—

“Shhh, it’s alright, Spock. It’s alright, you’re okay, you’re safe.”

Here. Where was here? A planet of rock and wind and ice. Some distant memory from it, enough to remember the concept of mountains, of places, of location. Not enough, though. No need for it any longer. No sensation of loss or feeling of loss. Not a death but an evolution. Physical forms left behind as the collective merged and grouped together, but there was no loss in that. Only joy. Transcended. Emotion. Creativity. Happiness. Share with all and be shared with. The one named Spock. The Burning One. The Passionate One. Not one anymore, but part of the many. Join and be joined with. The one name Spock, the one named Jim.

Jim dangled heavily from his grip, body limp and lifeless, and everything in Spock froze.

Freezing. He was so cold, and yet a hand gripped him—body limp and lifeless, and everything in Spock froze—warmth pressing firmly against his skin. It sent sparks shivering down his spine, and something touched the edges of his mind. He was lost to the collective, to their happiness, but now there existed something else. Someone else. Not the Seskille, but another. Another intrusion? No, but this felt welcome. It was soft, warm, calming, and familiar. Concern radiated out of that new presence. Fear. Terror. Relief. And another emotion, consuming and tender that he couldn’t put a name to.

The faint shred of Spock flung himself towards it, because he knew that presence. Knew it better than he did himself, because he was lost in a place he could not understand. That other mind was so bright, like the sun. It illuminated all the dark places he’d split apart into. He recognized it and, whatever it was, it felt like home.

“Wake up, Spock,” a voice said gently into his ear. Familiar. Warming. He knew that voice. He knew that voice. “It’s okay, you’re safe. That’s it, open your eyes for me.”

A command. A request. A plea. Spock felt his awareness stir, because that voice had given him an order and he couldn’t refuse it.

He'd never been able to refuse that voice anything.

His eyelids seemed impossibly heavy as they fluttered, dislodging the ice that had frozen them down. It took a moment to open them, and yet another moment after that to focus his sight into something like vision. The dim light cast his surroundings in shadow, but it did nothing to conceal the worried eyes hovering over him. Spock knew those eyes, and he knew the man they belonged to. He would recognize this one particular human anywhere.

“Hey, there you are,” Jim said, sounding relieved. “It’s okay, you’re safe. I’m here, Spock. I’m right here. I’ve got you.”

Chapter Text

For a long moment, all Spock could do was stare.

Jim.

He couldn’t think, he couldn’t move, he couldn’t breathe. His lungs felt frozen, his limbs stiff, his eyes unblinking. Everything was heavy; sluggish and hazy, as if it had been hopelessly muddled before it ever reached him. He could hear his pulse thrumming loud in his ear, could hear the low moaning of distant wind, and all of it felt real, but by now he knew better than to trust his senses. They had already betrayed him in ways he’d not imagined possible, and it was more likely than not that they were betraying him again now. His consciousness had been hijacked; taken from him and twisted to feel and experience what was not real. There was a high probability that this was not real either.

But Jim was still there.

The captain was watching him with open concern as he hovered above him, eyes bright even in the dim light of the room. He looked real. He sounded real. But then, everything else had too; it had all felt real, over and over again, until that forced reality was the only one remaining. This was… just another memory. Just another memory that he had been made to observe and participate in. Not real, not true.

James Kirk was not here, now, in front of him. His captain had not come, and Spock had been left alone; left behind, left to die on an already dead planet. This vision of his friend would disappear, just as certainly as the rest of them had. Inevitably, he would see Jim die by his hands on Vulcan, and he would mourn and break all over again. And again, and again…

But Jim did not die. Jim was still there.

There was a crushing, suffocating pressure in his chest as some fragile sliver of doubt crept in. His vision swam, blurring as his eyes stung. Spock could not stop staring, afraid to so much as blink for fear of Jim disappearing, as he surely would. Because this wasn’t real, and his captain was not there. Any movement, any action, any thought could trigger another memory, and then he’d be somewhere else, feeling something new, without any choice otherwise. Worse, it could trigger Jim hanging lifelessly from his hands, and Spock did not think he could take that again, not after so many times already. Please, not again. Please stop this. It was useless to beg; they were not going to listen to him. They did not understand words, or begging, or the emotions that drove him to do it, but there was nothing left he could do. They had taken everything else from him already.

The only thing he had, if it could even be called his at all, was this vision of Jim. Breathing, smiling, and vibrantly alive. They would certainly take this from him too, and Spock hesitated to move in case doing so might spur them on faster.

But… Jim was still there.

“… Captain?” His voice was barely audible, little more than a croak of sound from cracked, bleeding lips. He waited, exhausted and so, so tired, for Jim to die again, as he had so many times before. It did not come; the scene didn’t change. There was no sandy arena, there was no limp weight dangling from his grip, there was no creeping shock of grief. There was only his captain, worried and smiling that wide, warm smile at him.

“I’m still here,” Jim reassured him softly. “I’m not going anywhere, I promise. I’m right here, but I need you to breathe, Spock. It’s alright, I’m not leaving, just breathe…”

This… was not a memory; this hadn’t happened before, because he did not recognize it. Not a memory, not a vision, not in his head, and not something that could be taken away.

Real.

The captain was real. He was here; he’d come for him.

All at once, his burning lungs began to work. A shuddering wheeze rasped from him, and Spock realized he’d been holding his breath, only just now recognizing the intense ache as deprivation. The betrayal of his own body behaving in ways that he normally could—and should—control would have been humiliating, but the first choke of air was relieving enough to soften the shame. It hurt to inhale; his chest throbbed and spasmed with every cough. Deep, ragged gasps were dragged into his throat, his lungs, his chest, and exhaled heavily, shakily. It burned. It felt as if he were being constricted. And yet, Jim had told him to keep breathing and so he did. There was nothing—nothing—Jim could ask of him in this moment that he would not comply with, because his captain had come for him after all.

That crushing in his chest eased some as he took a ragged breath, and then another, but the stinging in his eyes did not. It only got worse, until he had to blink rapidly to prevent the moisture gathering there from falling.

“Jim.” It was a word, a name, a supplication. Even forming the name, with vocal cords that belonged to him, felt dizzyingly good. Spock would have said it again, just to hear the sound aloud with ears that were his own, and even again after that, but his throat felt too choked to do anything else but rasp in the next breath. He had to breathe; his captain had ordered it.

Relief struck him like a physical blow, stuttering his next exhale into something heavier. Staggering, overwhelming relief that made some weighted, heavy kind of noise wrench from his chest. He wasn’t alone; Jim had come for him. This wasn’t something the Seskille could take from him, because it was not in his head. It was real. Jim had found him.

“Easy. Take it slow, that’s it, that’s good. Keep breathing. Now this is important, Spock. I need you to do something for me, alright?” Absurd. The captain needn’t have asked for his approval; Spock thought that he would do anything for Jim right now, anything at all. “I need you to stay awake. Eyes open, breath slow and steady, like you are right now. I know you’re tired, Spock, but I can’t let you sleep yet. Not until Bones gives the okay. He’ll be here in a minute; he was right behind me, but he got slowed by the snow. Right now, I want you to just focus on me.”

The instruction was entirely unnecessary, almost ridiculously so, because Spock could do nothing but focus on Jim. In fact, he did not think he could have shifted his attention away even if he wanted to.

As it was, he did not want to. No, he wanted to soak in the sight of his captain and to never stop looking at him. His very alive captain, who stared back at him with that familiar expression of steely resolve and barely concealed distress. His hazel eyes were bright with it, for all that he overlaid the majority of his unease with practiced smiles and confidence. Fear had only ever served to sharpen the captain’s determination into something dangerous, rather than dull or weaken him. Jim was clearly worried, and so he disguised it with sheer, unfaltering persistence. As if the act of merely deciding that something was no longer a problem would somehow cease it to be one.

Someone was saying his name…  

When he blinked, the captain was considerably closer, and Spock had no memory of him moving. The captain was right: he was tired. So tired; more exhausted than he could ever recall feeling. Fatigue weighed him down into the stone, pulling at every muscle. His eyes threatened to close again, but he’d been given a very specific order and he would be a poor first officer to disobey such a simple command. So, Spock did just as he’d been instructed: he kept his eyes open, he kept his breath even, and he kept his focus on Jim.

“... Safe?” he asked, doing his best to examine Jim from his position. The sensation of the word was grating in his throat, which he found to be sore and raw. Spock had vague, hazy recollections of screaming, but he did not know for how long. Or, for that matter, how long he had been unconscious. It could have been minutes; it could have been hours. The Seskille did not know such concepts as time, and they afforded him no such considerations either.

“That’s right, you’re safe now,” the captain tried to assure him, but that was not what Spock had been asking. Quite the opposite. He shook his head; a sluggish side-to-side flop that pounded at his skull, but it had the desire effect of making Jim pause. His eyebrows shot up as he realized. “Am I—Spock, I’m not the one you should be concerned about! You, on the other hand...” Jim trailed off, and Spock didn’t need to see what his own injuries looked like to guess at them. The captain’s expression, grave and nauseous, informed him well enough on it. Jim’s eyes had tightened, that distress a little less hidden when he took in extent of the damage. “…I’m alright, Spock. I’m safe too. I don’t want you to worry about me.”

An unreasonable, illogical request. That was all Spock ever did.

Jim didn’t look injured, from what little of the captain that he could see from his vantage point on the ground. His face was a little too pale and his lips a little too blue—from the temperature no doubt—but he didn’t appear to be bleeding or hurt. There were no obvious abrasions or bruising, no signs of red on the… blue coat?

Spock’s awareness of the rest of the world came trickling in now that he’d been assured of the captain’s health. For the first time, Spock noticed exactly what his captain was wearing. A black hat covered most of his head, which made sense, and the rest of him huddled into a heavy science-blue winter coat, which did not. It seemed too big for him; it sat on his shoulders awkwardly and looked more than a little out of place, both in fit and in color. Blue. Was he not supposed to be wearing gold?

The overwhelming blur of his surroundings made thinking difficult, and everything else seemed too loud; too dizzying. He was aware of Jim, the clothing he wore, the dim lighting of the small room, the faint pressure of gloved hands on his arm. Spock saw that he was lying on his back, hunched and curled into the tightest corner he’d been able to find. No doubt a desperate attempt to protect his body from further harm, even if his mind had been a lost cause. It did not seem to have done much; his head pounded, his body ached, his side throbbed. Every centimeter of his skin felt bruised and swollen. He felt sick; undignified.

Vulnerable.

Spock shifted what little he could, heedless of the captain’s gentle protests, and tried to lift himself up to at least his elbows so that he might be able to lean against the wall in a manner more presentable. Some grasp at preserving any lingering shred of dignity that might still remain. He didn’t manage to lift even his head and knew instantly that it had been a mistake to try. The movement spotted his vision with black; the room tunneled from him. Spock’s attention wavered, not shifting from Jim so much as starting to fall away from everything entirely.

A terrifyingly familiar pressure battered his mind, one he could not hope to fight off this time. He could feel his eyes rolling backward. No. No, he needed to stay conscious. He needed to—

“—do this again sometime,” Mattias said with an easy smile. He shifted closer; close enough that Spock could feel the radiating heat of his higher body temperature. The other cadet’s arm pressed to his own, separated only by his thin jacket and Spock’s much thicker one. Admittedly, the warmth against him was pleasant on its own; the San Francisco air was far colder than he was used to on Vulcan, and he’d felt chilled for hours now. However, it was only present as a result of close physical contact, and that lessened his enjoyment of it considerably.

“Indeed,” Spock replied, taking a small and polite step to the side to create some space between them. “The meal was satisfactory and expertly prepared. Your choice of locations was well thought, Mattias.”

Mattias closed that newly formed distance as if he’d been challenged to do so, pressing to his side once more. Spock raised a brow, puzzled and more than slightly uncomfortable. His peer had been making increased amounts of physical contact during the walk home, and he was not certain how to verbally express his aversion for such a close proximity. Humans, he now knew, often struggled to take such comments objectively and without defensive emotions surfacing. It had not been an objectionable evening thus far; Spock did not want to be the cause of its deterioration by saying something that might trigger a confrontation. However, he also did not know what phrasing might explain his discomfort in a clear, concise, sensitive manner.

“Matty. My friends call me Matty.” The cadet leaned up, so near now that his breath misted over Spock’s cheek. “Although, I was sort of hoping we could be something other than friends, you know?”

He did not know. In fact, could not even begin to guess at the presumed answer. Spock stiffened, fingers clenching and unclenching into loose fists. He felt unsettled, he felt nervous, he felt lost. There was an implication there that he was missing; an allusion or inference present in the other cadet’s tone of voice. Some kind of context in the starkly emphasized word that a human would likely have understood, but that Spock had not. He wished, desperately, that humans would say what it was they actually meant, rather than speak in half-truths and abstract subtleties that made little verbal or logical sense.

“Something such as… classmates?” Spock tried resignedly, knowing that he had undoubtedly gotten it wrong. Such was proven when Mattias—when Matty started to laugh.

“Yeah,” he said, physically shaking his head in a way that did not correspond with his verbal words of agreement. Such an action was typically meant to be taken as a gesture indicative of a negative response, and yet Mattias was not disagreeing vocally. Spock felt, all at once, exhausted with the conversation and with trying to follow it. “Yeah, sure, we can be classmates.”

Spock did not understand, not at first. Not until the cadet was there, rapidly closing the remaining distance between them and leaning up. There was a brush of lips against his own and Spock flinched away as if he’d been struck. He was immediately dismayed; appalled at how truly misconstrued this evening had apparently been. Spock must have missed some inference, either during dinner or afterwards, to have mistakenly indicated a willingness to engage in human intimacy. That was not the case, and he wanted no part in it.

He opened his mouth to inform Mattias of exactly that, gently and firmly, when hands cupped his jaw. The touch felt so invasive that the words—

—caught in his throat. Couldn’t breathe. Everything went so quiet, fingers numbing and slipping as he lowered the body—not Jim, not Jim—to the—

—room was frequently empty, as Spock knew from his careful monitoring of it. The crew often preferred the more populated recreational areas to socialize in, and this was not an ideal spot for such engagement. Not located in a traversed-enough hallway so as to encourage frequent visitors, the odds were high for the room to be vacant.

It was for that very reason, that being the solitude, that this particular observation deck made an appealing destination for an upset starship captain to brood in. Time away from his crew to privately reflect on any number of issues, and to stew on them without an audience. A mission gone poorly, unfavorable information, a loss of life, emotional turmoil; all could be felt and vented with only the passing stars as a witness. It had only taken losing track of a distressed Jim in the ship a few times before Spock had quickly learned to include the checking of this observation deck in each and every post-mission route. He’d been proven right, more times than not, to do so.

The captain wanted to be alone with his emotions, a desire that he might have normally respected. However, Spock also knew that what Jim wanted and what Jim needed were very different things. He wanted to be left alone, so that he could privately spiral through his worries and presumed failures. He needed company, so that he did not drown and become trapped in them entirely. Spock could not take the pain of Jim’s distress away, as much as he would have been glad to do so, but he could ensure the captain wasn’t suffering or struggling by himself.

The captain was there, as Spock had suspected he might be.

But he was not alone.

Spock halted immediately, the captain’s name dying on his lips before he could even fully form the word. Some nameless kind of hurt rose up like bile; an ache that echoed in his chest. He felt hollow. He felt unsettled. He did not understand either emotion, because seeing Jim’s semi-frequent displays of human romantic intimacy had never caused this sensation in him before. Perhaps an occasional momentary discomfort or small twinge, but those had been fleeting and easily ignored. It had not hurt like this.

And the sight of his captain, of his body pressed against the female Thunoi councilor, and his lips even more firmly pressed to her own, undeniably hurt.

Turning on a heel, Spock wordlessly exited the observation deck. He’d leave Jim to his—

—pleasure. The one named Spock. The burning one. The passionate one. Adoration. Not like the others had been. So willing to share and be shared with, so accepting of learning and being learned from! Such emotion, passion, fire, burning, Jim. The others had not felt like this. Shared things called numbers, things called buildings, things called coordinates, things called metal. None had shared knowledge of those things. Asked them to show more, but was given no meaning, no understanding, no knowledge. Not like the one named Spock, who gave and was given to. Metal, buildings, numbers, locations, all of it was unknown. No meaning, no emotion, those others did not feel like this felt. It was a happiness to share with the one named Spock! Joy for the collective. Fascination and wonder and—

—and his face looked beaten in. Bones broken; skin bruised, but unmistakably Jim Kirk. Jim, who was his closest friend. Jim, who meant more to him than any person ever had or ever would. Jim, who had risked his captaincy and his career to save his friend’s life. Jim who had been killed—murdered—by that very same friend he’d given up everything for.

“Shh, okay, I’ve—God, you’re okay, you’re fine, it’s okay…” Jim’s voice, sounding frantic, but Jim was dead. Jim was dead and it was his fault. He’d killed him. “Breathe, Spock. Open your eyes, come on. That’s an order, Commander.”

An order… Spock opened his eyes, unfocused and disoriented. His head already hurt, and only worsened at being shifted around in a blur of dizzying movement that left him choking. He groaned; something painful and small sounding; something that would have mortified him if he’d been able to feel anything other than pain. Spiking, radiating pain. The rocking sensation of motion almost made him vomit, but he didn’t think his stomach had enough energy to contract anymore, nor enough contents left to do so. It was only once the shifting stopped that he was able to comply with instructions and breathe once more.

Something had changed; Spock could tell that his head was tilted at a different angle, and Jim was now directly above him in a way he’d not been before. A faint warmth, burning against the cold skin of his neck, started to seep through him from where he lay. His head felt worse than it had before; it had previously been an insistent pulsing, but now was a thunderous hammering in his skull. He did not remember what had happened to have changed his condition, and trying to decipher the confusing fragments of memories was more than he could manage. He could hardly concentrate as it was.

An object entered his close vision, brushing against the skin of his face, and Spock was confused by it until it pulled away. A black glove, smudged with green.

“I’m sorry, Spock, I didn’t want it to get in your eyes,” Jim reassured him, which did very little to clear the confusion up. He did not understand, Jim didn’t want what to get into his eyes? “I know this is invasive, and probably very uncomfortable for you, but I can’t let that happen again. Your head is—just… try not to move anymore. I wasn’t even supposed to touch—"

“Touch what?” A voice called out, rough and skeptical and immediately familiar. The moment Spock heard it, he felt a tenseness in him slacken and go limp; one he had not noticed it until it was gone. The fear, still so present, lessened at the distinct voice; that voice was comforting. It meant safety. His body seemed to recognize that help had arrived, at least, because it relaxed automatically. “You weren’t supposed to touch what? Jim?”

“We’re here, Bones.”

Doctor McCoy stormed into the room with the same inherent authority he displayed on the ship, as if the frozen ruins were just another part of his sickbay for him to command. Uncharacteristically, he didn’t appear to look worried or angry; he instead looked blank, cautious. Clinical. Spock thought it looked out of place. For all he frequently expressed a desire for the doctor to display a more professional demeanor, he found it didn’t suit him at all.

But then, after raking his eyes once over the scene that greeted him with widening alarm, the much more natural expression of disgust, incredulity, and anger surfaced and took over. Not only did it remain, it intensified; that already foreboding expression darkening further into a furious, enraged scowl.

“Goddammit Jim,” McCoy snarled, bending down to Spock’s other side with fluid, practiced movements. The doctor, as he often did, took control of the crisis situation with perfect ease. He spoke as he dug into his tricorder and within a second, the medical scanner was whirring. “The hell is the matter with you?! I told you not to move him ‘til I got here! Just a few minutes! You only needed to keep your damn hands to yourself for a few whole minutes! And you—” Spock eyed him, dazed. Despite the aggressive tone he’d aimed towards the captain, Doctor McCoy spoke far more gently to him. It was unnerving. “—know better than to just let him manhandle you around like that, so use that famed logic of yours next time and make him stop. Hopefully he’ll actually listen—”

“Bones, his head was hitting the wall—”

“—to you, because he sure doesn’t ever hear a single word I say. Too late now, but alright. Let’s get you stabilized before we load you up. Might as well kick back, relax, and hope he didn’t paralyze you.”

The doctor ignored the captain’s half-hearted protests with a swift wave of his hand, relegating him to mere support at best and an annoying hinderance at worst. They’d been speaking quickly enough to make it difficult for Spock to understand, and he had to concentrate hard to follow them at all. The rapid movement above and around him was nauseating, as if everything was sped up but himself. He watched, eyes half-lidded, as Jim leaned to peak at the tricorder. Whatever it displayed, he apparently did not like the results. Neither, it seemed, did Doctor McCoy. His expression remained fierce but his voice, if anything, evened out to something more neutral. It set Spock on edge.

“Looks like you’ve certainly had an eventful day playing out in the snow, Spock. Why, I’d imagine you’re probably smarting a little.”

Spock tiredly raised a brow. A little. The understatement was ludicrous to the point of being laughable, if he were inclined towards that action. He was not. Not before this mission and not now. He could tell that the doctor was goading him into some kind of reaction or argument, and it was thankfully working. Fighting with McCoy was familiar, routine, comforting, and he latched onto the conflict gratefully. It was a stability he could rely on.

“Is… that your professional diagnosis?” Spock asked slowly, enunciating as best he could. He could see Jim wince at the sound of his voice. It was raspier now than it had been, and his mouth struggled to form the words correctly. They were noticeably slurred. He felt a stirring of shame at his condition, because he was a Vulcan, and acting this way was beneath him. Rather, it should have been beneath him. Spock wasn’t certain there was much distance left to go; not with how low he’d sunk already. “Starfleet’s passing standards for a… medical practitioner are… somewhat dubious, in that case.”

Doctor McCoy huffed and pressed a hypospray into his arm, with a second one immediately following it. Spock didn’t feel either of them. “Yeah, well, it’s either me or the handsy octopus over there, so your choices are limited. Here, Jim, make yourself useful and put pressure on this.” Spock closed his eyes as his head was jostled, resisting the instinctive flinch. The gloved hand returned and pressed a thick gauze against his forehead, which he could not really feel save for a bit of pressure. “Keep your breathing steady, Spock; match mine if you need to. Whatever you do, just hold still; I need to get you fit enough to survive the shuttle ride from hell. Are you gonna tell me what happened to you, or am I guessing?”

Spock did not know where to begin, or where he even could begin; his recollections were not linear. He did remember it, even if it made no logical or cohesive sense. None of the memories were in order, as scattered and time skipped as they had been, and so forming any kind of synopsis was proving difficult. He remembered falling from the cliffside, careless of his own step, and of Jim frantically trying to grab at him. He remembered Jim dying, being on the bridge of the Enterprise, being hugged by Leila. He remembered visiting San Francisco for the first time with his mother, of crying in I-Chaya’s fur, of feeling the first stirrings of fire in his veins.

He remembered, more than anything, losing control of his mind, his defenses, and himself. He remembered punching Jim hard enough to break his jaw. He remembered hitting Jim hard enough to crash him over the table and split his lip open. He remembered shoving Jim hard enough to send him slamming into bare rock.

He remembered killing Jim, over and over again.

Emotion gripped him, revulsion and disgust, intensely enough that his breath hitched audibly. He immediately tried to disguise it as a clearing of his throat, refusing to debase himself further. Gathering whatever fragments of his dignity remained, Spock stayed silent. It only made the doctor snort derisively.

“Uh-huh, I figured as much. Okay. That’s fine, Spock, I’ll go ahead and play that game with you; I’m pretty good at it by now.” Doctor McCoy didn’t seem fazed at Spock’s continued silence and also didn’t appear as if he’d expected anything different. “Well, I can say right off the bat that you’re lucky to be alive. Stage two hypothermia, hypovolemic shock, frostbite, and a nasty concussion to kick it off. If that weren’t enough, five of your ribs are broken, your ankle is practically in shards, your thick Vulcan head is cracked open like a damn melon, and—if we’re really going split hairs about Starfleet’s dubious passing standards, Mr. Spock, then let me be the first to inform you that shoving half of a tricorder into your guts ‘ain’t gonna scan the body any better than scanning outside of it will.”

Hearing it laid out in that manner, laced with faux-irritation and exaggerated disapproval, helped somehow soften the information. That had likely been the intention: preventing overt panic. Not a concern he was often—or ever—plagued by. Spock would normally have preferred that the assessment be delivered factually and logically, but the doctor always tended towards embellishment when he was upset, and it was a familiar enough routine by now to be bearable. The injuries were… worse than he’d expected, but not by much. Spock had known, of course, that his condition was far from ideal, but he had not allowed himself to consider just how serious it was. Doing so was a distraction and would have allowed his defenses to fall that much sooner.

Not that, he thought with no small bit of bitterness, it would have ended up making much of a difference. His barriers had fallen shortly after, and he’d let them in anyways.

“He’ll recover, though. Right?” It wasn’t necessarily a question, for all that it was phrased like one. There was an edge to the captain’s voice; a determination that, if he only stated it firmly enough, what he said would prove to be true regardless of reality or fact. While the injuries had been more or less what Spock had thought, it seemed they had not gone over nearly as well with the captain. Jim’s hand, the one not holding pressure to his forehead, clenched lightly against his shoulder. Spock could hardly feel it, but for a soft bit of weight on his body.

Something beneath him shifted, jarring him in a rocking motion that made him recoil away. The doctor let out a sharp hiss, pulling his hands back so that they didn’t slip and hit something.

“I said don’t move, Spock. And Captain, if you’re gonna insist on going against medical instructions to play pillow, at least do the job right and be a good one,” Doctor McCoy said, distracted as he returned his attention to a spot somewhere behind Spock’s left ear. The gloves he wore were stained green; Spock watched them drip. “And… mhmm, sure he will. God knows he’s too stubborn for anything else.” He was doing something with his potions and toxins, something that stung at his head, but Spock was no longer paying attention to that.

No, he was also distracted.

The captain’s mention of discomfort and invasive actions, a disjointed comment that he had not understood at the time, now made sense. Spock realized, with the awful swooping sensation of his stomach plummeting, that his head had been moved at some point. It was no longer laying against the stone ground but was instead cradled securely in Jim’s lap. One of his ears was held against the captain’s stomach and the rest of his head and neck laid across his thighs. The warmth he’d felt, which he had not been able to determine the source of, had been human body heat seeping through clothing and against the skin of his neck.

That was… he—Spock felt mortified at the position; feeling exposed in a way that even being injured couldn’t hope to match. He felt laid bare, utterly and completely, and the way that Jim was looking down at him didn’t help. The captain handled him as if he were something fragile, physically pressed so close that Spock couldn’t help but shiver at the contact. It wasn’t skin-to-skin—there were multiple layers of clothing and coat between them—but it was near enough to be concerning.

The captain had been right: it was invasive. Not only that, it felt… intimate, although rationally, Spock knew that wasn’t the case at all and he was applying a significance to the action that did not exist. If he examined it objectively, it made logical sense to secure his already injured head away from stone surfaces as a preventative measure from further harm, especially if he had been thrashing. It was logical, yes, but it also felt intensely personal. Spock could feel his pulse skyrocket, accompanied by a twisting feeling in his stomach that he could not reasonably blame on the tricorder shards. His skin might have been too cold to flush from the sudden surge of nervousness, but the feeling churned in him. He avoided eye contact.

“I… am fine, Captain,” Spock slurred out, and he wished his voice was not so weak. “Thank you, but... I can sit up now.”

There was silence for what he approximated to be around five seconds—he could not calculate the exact length of time to his former optimal standards—as Jim and Doctor McCoy stared at him.

“See? He’ll be fine. Look at him, he’s already cracking jokes. A few days in bed, which I’m sure he’s just going to love, and he’ll be back on duty before you know it; pointed ears, calculations, and all.” The doctor’s tone softened then, knowingly; consolingly. “I’ll make sure of it, Jim.”

Jim nodded; a sharp, tense movement that betrayed just how upset he actually was. Spock eyed the captain’s agitation, the guilt rooting in deeper, knowing that it was because of him.

“Jim,” Spock said, his voice stronger now but no less hoarse than before. The captain’s attention wheeled to him instantly, softening as it always seemed to do. It was undeserved. “I… must apologize for—”

“No, Spock.” The captain shook his head tightly. “No, this isn’t on you. If anyone owes apologies, I do. We should have beamed back the moment it started snowing; we weren’t prepared for this. I’m sorry it took me so long to get to you. I tried to get to you, but there were some obstructions—”

“Thin ice, Jim. You’re lucky that I’m allowing you to be here at all,” Doctor McCoy said, focused on what he was doing to Spock’s ankle. It was jostling him slightly, causing a horrible throbbing in his head. The pain was thankfully starting to dull to only an insistent ache; clearly one of the doctor’s many toxins had been a pain reliever. “Don’t think for a second that I’ve forgotten about you, just ‘cause Spock’s condition is critical. The moment we’re on board, you’re getting a bed right next to him.”

That caught his attention. Jim hadn’t looked hurt, but then, Spock hadn’t been able to see much of him at all. His vision was blurred and hazy at best, and most of Jim was covered by his outerwear. What little of his skin was visible looked pale and cold, but not otherwise damaged. No blood, no bruising—not to his face, at least. McCoy didn’t make idle threats, however, and so Spock looked over the captain with a more discerning gaze in case he had overlooked something.

He ended up not needing to ask for elaboration; Doctor McCoy seemed delighted to do so himself.

“Our clever, Starfleet-renowned tactician of a captain decided to embark on a one-man rescue mission for you in the middle of a blizzard,” the doctor continued, and there was some level of exasperation in his voice, underlaid by giddiness at calling Jim out for what he apparently thought to be reckless behavior. Spock agreed with the assessment. “Kemen-Varley had to practically haul him off the mountain; by the time he got there, our genius commander was practically frozen through. Hypothermia, frost bite, and bruising all over from who the hell knows what. They had to damn near drag him back to the ship kicking and screaming.”

“I wasn’t that bad,” the captain tried to defend himself, looking a bit abashed. But then he glanced hurriedly at Spock, and there was a tone in his voice that was difficult to place. It set Spock on edge immediately, because it was uncharacteristic. “It’s not that bad. I’m fine, Spock. I got warmed up already; Bones is just being illogical about it.”

“Illogical, my—you even hearing the nonsense coming outta your mouth?"

But Spock wasn’t listening to their faux argument anymore.

Bruising. Bruising all over. Spock couldn’t see any sign of it, but of course he wouldn’t, not with the heavy coat the captain was wearing. It would be completely concealed beneath layers of fabric. He had the worst feeling clenching up in him, weighing and aching. Bruising all over. Spock suspected that he knew just where it had come from, too. The tone the captain had used—he now identified it as nervousness. An uncommon response to something that had been accidental or sustained by a fall of some kind, and so the suspicion of the origin of the injuries persisted. Jim would have made a joke were it merely a result of a clumsy moment or a slip, perhaps even been embarrassed, but he instead tried to distract him with a faked argument. While it was possible that the injuries came from another source, Spock’s intuition told him otherwise. His intuition told him that this was his doing.

He had pushed Jim on that cliffside. No, not merely pushed; he had shoved Jim, sending him slamming into unforgiving rock. The landing had looked hard, he remembered, and the human body was fragile compared to his own build. Jim was not a Vulcan; he could not fall from cliffs and still walk away from it in the same manner that Spock could. Something as simple as a bad stumble could cause injury, even to the strongest of humans, should they land in just the wrong position. He had not been in his right mind at the time to regulate his strength, but Spock thought it likely that considerable force was used. It always had been before. This was not the first time he’d severely hurt the captain with a shove or a punch. He’d done this before, and now it happened again. He’d lost control of himself.

And Spock knew what happened when he lost control.

He did this. His weapons, his hands, his fault. That horrible burning, no longer immolating him from within, took root behind his eyes and in his throat. He felt choked, sickened, gutted, because this was his fault. His captain. His Jim. His fault…

“Get your hands off of him—"

“—Spock!”

He looked up at the doctor’s rough, barking voice. An apology was already forming on his lips, his eyes stinging, and his throat clenched so tight that he felt choked, when he realized that Jim was also looking down at him too. Jim, who was alive. His captain. His captain, who he’d hurt, because he’d lost control again. He’d lost control and hurt the man he’d vowed to protect at any cost. Again. Because of course there was another again. There shouldn’t have even been a first time, let alone multiple of them. Unforgivable. But… not surprising. No, this was exactly what he’d come to expect of himself when it came to damaging those he cared about. The closer he got, the more pain he inflicted. Over, and over, and over again.

His surroundings swam away, and he could not hold onto them.

Jim died in front of him again.

With the strangling hold of the ahn-woon wrapped tight around his neck and keeping him partially suspended, the captain hung bonelessly, slack limbs sprawled out against the sand.

Happiness. The one named Spock, the one named Jim. Wanted more. No creation without inspiration, without source. Lost all memory of times before, but it was not an end! Embraced what is new, what is feeling, what is emotion. Joy, positivity, delight, happiness! Repeat until known, know until understood, understood until felt! Such passion…

“—n’t from the concussion, Captain. I don’t know what this is.”

“Spock?” Jim. Jim was talking to him. “Can you hear me?”

The question came suddenly, and Spock looked up from his microscope, startled. Yes. Yes, he did hear him now, although it was worrying that the captain had apparently been calling his name for some time without him acknowledging it. He was normally so very attuned to that particular voice but focusing had been difficult.

Jim was smiling down at him; an easy, relaxed kind of grin that Spock examined closely. He searched it, but it didn’t so much as hint at distrust or caution. Illogical, because the captain should have been expressing both, and in spades at that. In fact, he should not have been here at all; alone in Spock’s private lab with him. There would be no witnesses, no one to interfere, no one to come up with another deception, no one to get Jim to safety. Even being in this room was a great risk—but then, Spock was aware of the captain’s proclivity towards risky behavior, and so he supposed it wasn’t much of a surprise that it would manifest in this way too.

“My apologies, sir, I was… distracted. Is there something I can do for you, Captain?” Spock asked, his voice carefully monotone and stoic. Polite. Distant. He did not meet Jim’s eyes.

It had been five-point-three-six-two days since the events of Vulcan.

“Don’t apologize. I’m sorry I broke your concentration,” Jim replied, and there it finally was. That small bit of hesitation to his tone. Hardly noticed except that Spock had familiarized himself with every single minute kind of vocal range this human could express and what each of them meant. “And no, not exactly; nothing official. Only, well, it’s Thursday.”

“I do not understand, sir.”

“Thursday,” Jim repeated, his smile definitely wavering now and starting to strain towards forced. “Chess, Mr. Spock, or have you forgotten? Don’t tell me you’re double-booking on me with science, my ego couldn’t bear the heartbreak. Tell me there’s at least something that interesting under there?”

Thursday. They played chess every Thursday at exactly nineteen-hundred hours, switching between Jim’s quarters or his own depending on the week. While it was common that they played other times during the week as well, this was a standing block of time that they had both set aside in their schedule for that one specific purpose. Regular. Predictable. Punctual. And, according to Spock’s internal chronometer, he was already forty-six-point-two-three-seven minutes past the appointed meeting time. He should have felt alarmed by this, but he only felt puzzled.

Spock had not forgotten what day it was, but he hadn’t thought that their routine would continue as normal. Not after what had happened; not after what he’d done. Jim had every reason to avoid him, and more specifically, to avoid being alone with him. He’d not verified the change of plans, but it would have been a logical protective measure, so much so that he had safely estimated it to be factual. That Spock was still considered a first officer at all was surprising; especially as, by all accounts, he should have been turned over to the authorities the moment they reached the next starbase. But he wasn’t in the brig, where he belonged. He was standing free in his empty lab, and Jim had purposely looked for him to play chess with.

It was… perplexing. It did not make sense. Jim hadn’t told him specifically that the standing appointment had been canceled, and Spock had not asked about it. He had not wanted to impose himself on the captain any further, so as to avoid making the man feel uncomfortable or put into a difficult position. He’d been determined to wholly accept the repercussions of his actions, no matter how painful they were. Jim could not reasonably avoid professional interactions with him due to the nature of their career and respective ranks, but Spock had avoided any and all personal ones. It was easier to cut their friendship out of his life himself, rather than force the captain to verbalize the new circumstances aloud.

“I… suppose I assumed—”

“Assumed what?”

Spock blinked, and Jim was still there. Not as he had been, though. A black hat covered most of his head, and the rest of him was enveloped in an oversized science-blue coat. Why was the captain dressed for cold weather? If anything, he should have been overheating; Spock’s private lab was considerably warmer than the standard human ambient preference. But… they were not in his private lab any longer, and he was cold.

“Sir?” His voice was a dull rasp instead of the even one he’d been using only seconds prior.

“You assumed what?” Jim asked again, brow furrowed. “You keep talking like—Spock, what the devil is going on?”

Spock wished he knew. He didn’t remember what he’d said, or what had happened. He had been in the lab, and now he was in a freezing stone room. Jim had been dead, Jim had been leaning against his worktable, and Jim was wiping away blood from beneath his nose with a gloved hand.

He had also, Spock discovered, been moved around. No longer was he resting in Jim’s lap but instead laid on an anti-gravity stretcher, strapped firmly into place to prevent him from rolling off. He had no recollection of how he’d gotten there, nor who had lifted him or when. The series of events were incoherent and lacking rational continuity. He could not be on the ship, on Vulcan, and also on Seskilles VII at the same time, but they had all felt real. How could he possibly distinguish what was true and what was a vision, when both his reality and his memories felt the same?

Vulcan was false. It had happened, but it was not happening now. The captain was not dead, because he was right here at his side. Jim was alive. Jim was injured, Spock reminded himself with a stab of such disgust of his own behavior that it stole away his breath. Injured, yes, but he was undeniably alive. Not dead. That was a memory. It wasn’t real.

He could not take anymore. Memories and truth intertwined in such a tangled knot, that Spock felt exhausted trying to unravel it. Was what he saw now even true? He did not know how to determine that, and the thought was frightening. He could no longer trust his own mind, his own senses, his own perception. He could no longer identify reality whatsoever. Fatigue hit him like a physical strike, so much so that he felt his eyes roll backwards and his awareness begin to fade out—

“Spock.” McCoy was at his side too. The stretcher was moving, and while the vertigo it caused made him feel nauseous, it also helped ground him. “Jim asked you a question. Answer him.”

Right. A question. He'd never been able to refuse Jim anything.

“The Seskille.” Spock said tiredly, and even the feeling of their name in his mouth made him ill. He did not want to speak of them. He did not want to think of them. Each reminder felt like a new wound opening up in his mind, ripping and bleeding and mangling him that little bit more. “In my head.”

“Your head?”

Spock couldn’t find the energy to nod, although he wouldn’t have been able to do so anyways. His head was strapped down too; immobilized against the stretcher to prevent it from moving. “No bodies…” His voice was little more than a slur of sounds now. “No form, they’re… mental energy. Telepathic.”

“And they’re… talking to you?” Jim asked for clarification, brows furrowed, but then waved his hand rapidly. “No, questions can wait until we’re warm; let’s get out of here.”

He made an affirming sound, which was about all he had the energy to manage. His present ineloquence was grating, but he was also too tired to change it; not when he could barely keep his eyes open. They refused to focus; the world reduced to a dizzying blur of movement. The sunlight was gone, Spock noticed hazily, as the stretcher glided into the first room of the stone building. The sun had set at some point, and it was apparently far colder than it had been before by the way that Doctor McCoy and Jim were both huddling in their blue coats.

The blue coat that… Jim was taking off?

“Turns out that it’s not really my color,” Jim said, smiling wryly at him as he slid the oversized jacket off his shoulders. “As it happens, yellow doesn’t suit you either. I guess we should both stick to our respective divisions and trade back. Yours should be good to go.”

The captain spread it open like a blanket, carefully wrapping the fabric around Spock’s torso so that it covered his chest and shoulders, mindful of his injuries. Jim’s odd attire made sense now. Humans typically ran at much higher internal temperatures than Vulcans did; the captain had been warming his coat up for him. Wearing it around so that it would already be comfortable for Spock when he gave it back. He couldn’t register the warmth itself, as most of his body had long-since gone numb from either the cold or Doctor McCoy’s hyposprays, but the gesture itself lit a small heat in him. The consideration and care in that one small action, and the resulting surge of emotion it raised, left him rattled. His eyes stung.

A similar gold coat—which, having neither felt nor seen it, Spock only now noticed was there at all—was lifted from where it had been covering his legs. The inside of it must have been freezing; it’d been blanketing against Spock’s own hypothermic temperatures, and they certainly were below comfort levels for humans, but the captain slid it on without complaint. He looked far more like himself in his yellow command colors.

The swirl of snow was nauseating as they exited the building; still a whiteout, but the doctor was thankfully able to navigate by following his tricorder charts. Without cliffsides, it would be considerably safer than his own attempts had been. They moved slowly. The stretcher glided along smoothly, but he could see that his companions were struggling to wade through the heavy snow that had accumulated. The pathway they had carved to get here only helped a bit.

“Shuttle’s as close as it’s gonna get,” Doctor McCoy said, glancing over Spock with an unreadable expression, eyes squinted to see through the flurry. There was something bothering the doctor, but whatever it was, he did not verbalize it. “I asked Tommason to try to dig us out a path, but plan on a good long trudge. It’s practically hip deep now, and not all of us have the energy—or the ability—to plow through it in a dead sprint like you did, Jim. If you leave me behind again…”

“I don’t want to stay here any longer than you do. The next shore leave will be somewhere hot, I promise. It can’t come soon enough, either; I can’t even feel my—oh. Spock, I’m sorry, I meant to give you—here…” The captain slid his own gloves off and reached for him.

No.

Pure alarm raced through him, sparking and bright in clarity, when he realized what was about to happen. No! Spock could barely hang on to his surroundings at all, and his mouth felt too heavy to do more than slur out a half-formed noise of objection. The sound, if it was even heard at all, had apparently been taken as one of agreement. Jim didn’t seem to notice his flinch as he carefully lifted one of Spock’s hands into his own. The bare skin of the captain’s palm touched the equally exposed skin of Spock’s fingers. They—

—were ice! God, but it was lucky they hadn’t fallen off entirely with how stiff they were. And his ears, as well, were darkened from the cold, the points of them almost purple. They were supposed to be particularly sensitive, right? He’d read that once but had never thought to ask. Rather, he’d felt it was invasive to ask; he’d definitely thought about doing so multiple times. He wished he could give him his hat, but with Spock’s head the way it was…

He grimaced, trying to avoid looking at it for too long. The stark white of exposed bone had been visible beneath an alarming amount of green when he’d first saw him, and although it was covered with gauze now, he hadn’t forgotten the sight of it.

In fact, he didn’t think he’d ever forget that sight; of Spock curled up in that small, dark room, his ankle unnaturally positioned and his vibrant blood pooling on the stone beneath him. So much blood. It’d soaked through his uniform top entirely, covered his face, had frozen into his hair and against his skin like ice. He’d been forced to chip away at it, like cleaning the windshield of one of his speed bikes after a bad frost in Riverside. Spock had looked so small there, huddled up as he had been. Breakable. It’d been unsettling. He was so used to viewing Spock as a constant pillar of strength that the reminder of just how easily and quickly his friend could be taken from him had shaken him to the core.

He focused on lifting one foot in front of the other, wading through the dense snowpack. It felt akin to wading through mud, but he had no leave to complain. He reminded himself sternly that Spock had traveled through it too, and with a shattered bone, a fractured skull, broken ribs, and half of a tricorder sticking out of his intestines at that. While his own body was a mass of aching, like one giant bruise, it was nothing compared to what Spock was suffering.

He took up Spock’s hand, watching him carefully for any sign of pain at the movement. Those hands, he knew, were incredibly sensitive to touch and so he kept his own movements as gentle and delicate as possible. Spock’s eyes had closed, but he wasn’t certain whether he was fighting off nausea or whether he had dozed off again. He’d been fading in and out; waking in small bursts and then nodding off after a few moments.

The haphazard pathway they’d formed to the ruins widened, having been dug out just enough to be—

—shared with the collective! A new one, being shared, being invited, being joined. Happiness. Recognition! This one was known already! Not through experience but through the one named Spock. The passionate one, the burning one. Introductions! This one was named—names!—Jim. Familiar, warming. Such emotion there. Such transference between the one named Spock and the one named Jim! A deep, passionate sharing. So many emotions without names, without context, without understanding. Share and be shared with, Captain James T. Kirk, of the USS Enterprise. Learn and be learned from! All was new! Different than the one named Spock, but no less curious! The one named Jim must join with. To share, to learn, to create, and experience.

It is our happiness.

No.

No.

Spock didn’t hesitate; he surrendered himself to the pressure of the Seskille, completely and utterly. He invited them—encouraged them, even—to take from him whatever they wished; to rip and pull and shred at his mind in whatever way they desired. To take his memories, his thoughts, his emotions. They could have it, all of it, just as long as they ignored that blinding spark of consciousness that had caught against the edge of his own. No. Take everything else—anything else!—but not him. Not him.

The human mind could not handle that kind of pressure; it could not bear it. Even if his body happened to survive the experience, there would be no spark of Jim remaining. That kind of devastation would leave only an empty shell behind; a husk. Everything that made up his captain would be crushed beneath their collective weight, wholly consumed in its entirety. They had invaded Spock, they had ruined him, but they would not do the same to Jim; he would not allow it.

He shoved his own mental presence between Jim and the Seskille as best he could, and let them in. No defenses, no barriers, no walls; only what little scrap of himself he could shield Jim with. They could have everything else, and he would not fight them off, but they could not touch his captain. The Seskille rushed in, just as he knew they would. They delighted at the invitation, their warm, joyful, radiating emotions washing over him like a flood, and it was his happiness—

Spock ripped his hand away from the captain’s, breath tearing out of him in a harsh wheeze. He’d have fallen from the stretcher had he not been strapped down, as sudden and violent as the movement was.

“What—” Jim broke off with a full-body flinch, clearly disoriented. He staggered; one hand on an empty seat of the shuttle to catch himself from falling and the other rubbing against his temple. Spock pulled his own hands further away with what limited motion he was capable of. “What was that?”

“Sir?”

“Jim?” The doctor was at the captain’s side immediately, gripping his shoulder to steady him.

Spock tried, hardly able to gasp air into lungs that now seemed too tight to function, to raise whatever shattered remains of a defense he had left; to get himself under control. No. No. Jim had touched his hand, his fingers, and he had been in his captain’s head, as seamlessly as slipping into a body of warm water. No longer having the barriers to block Jim’s stream of thoughts out, he’d gone inside of them like they were his own and the Seskille had eagerly followed behind. He’d led them straight to his captain; let them invade his mind too. He’d lost control and Jim paid the price.

Again.

Jim died in front of him again.

“I… don’t know, Bones. I don’t know what happened. It felt like my brain was full of… something. Something huge, and…” The captain shook his head. “I don’t know how else to describe it. I’m fine, it was just a strange feeling in my head. It’s gone now, though.”

“Your head or your mind? There’s a difference.”

“My mind, I think? It was like a pressure, one that felt so… happy. Positive, peaceful, and curious. Whatever it was, it didn’t hurt; it felt nice. Overwhelming and bizarre, but nice. Comforting, warm, and happy; almost like a… group hug, I suppose. I’m not sure how else to explain it. I’m fine, Doctor. Ensign Tommason, take her up gently—as smoothly as you can in this wind.”  

“Hey. Sit down strap in first. Eyes on me. Any pain? Headache? Nausea? Vertigo? Does it strain or hurt to think?” Pointed questions, and highly specific ones. The doctor was right to ask them, too; this was unfortunately an injury he had familiarity with. The doctor avoided looking at Spock as he asked them, his expression tight.

“None of that, no. The feeling was gone when—" The captain’s paused, glancing at Spock in dawning comprehension. “That was the Seskille? Spock?”

Spock didn’t answer; couldn’t answer. He felt the rattling lurch of gravity as the shuttle lifted off, and his desperate attempts to stay present failed him. His surroundings pulled further and further from his sight, until they only lingered in the distance. His body felt leaden; he felt sick. Had he the energy or the stomach contents for it, he thought he might have vomited. He was dizzy, pathetically so, and everything spun around him in a blur of color. Blue, yellow, green, black, white. He could not make sense of them, and Spock gave up trying. He gave up on trying to stay at all.

It came in bursts and flashes. Motion. Voices. Turbulence as wind battered the shuttlecraft. Each sensation slipped from focus like liquid. He’d opened himself to the Seskille to keep them away from Jim, and he could not raise any defense now. Spock didn’t even try to. He had allowed this to happen; had told them he wouldn’t fight them off anymore and he meant it. He was tired of fighting, of resisting, of blocking it. It was easier to let it happen. Spock gave them permission, and they could have whatever they wanted.

Total surrender felt so good—deliriously good—and he hated himself for it.

Jim died in front of him again.

“Spock?”

The silence of his quarters felt swallowing as the door slid shut behind him. The evidence of his former madness was starkly visible; curtains partially ripped off the walls, blankets and pillows scattered, console monitor smashed inward, chess pieces thrown. He’d lacked the focus to straighten the room up before leaving, intending instead to do so once he returned with a clearer mindset. After the events planetside, Spock had the spare thought that it was likely to remain undone. In fact, he had not expected to ever see his quarters again at all, but rather be quartered in the emptiness of the brig. That was where he’d been intending to go, had Doctor McCoy not requested him immediately in sickbay.

And once there, he had found the captain.

The captain was alive.

Jim was alive.

Spock felt empty as he stared at the destruction of his cabin; hollow and drained. The fire in him had gone, the burning vanishing as if it had never been there at all, and it left him only cold and dark. Chilled down to the very core of himself. His mind seemed so very distant; lifted and floating away from his own body. Spock did not feel present. He did not feel anything; rendered vacant, listless. He didn’t know what to feel. He didn’t know what he should feel. He didn’t know if he wanted to feel at all.

His body was trembling, Spock observed emotionlessly. His legs were unsteady, already weakening, and so he sat down then and there, his back against the door. He did not know what to do. He did not know if he should do anything, or whether there was anything that even needed doing. His quarters seemed so trivial in comparison, and he lacked the energy to deal with them. He could only stare blankly at his shaking hands.

Sand was packed beneath his fingernails. There were smudges of browning red on his sleeve. His palms were scuffed and bruised. All visible proof of what he’d done; of killing Jim.

The sight should have been horrifying, but it was not. It was important that he looked at them, because it was a reminder that it had been real. A reminder that his discipline had frayed so severely and impossibly that he had done the unthinkable and murdered his captain. Jim. It was a reminder of what happened when he lost control, and a much needed one too, because his friends were pretending it had not happened at all.

So much of Vulcan felt like a dream—everything still did, even now. He did not feel real, and neither did the events that had taken place there. Doctor McCoy and Jim had laughed in sickbay; smiled, joked, and fell into their easy banter as if what occurred had somehow just not. Spock could not rationalize it; did not understand. Jim had touched him on the shoulder, grinning, and it was like nothing was ever wrong. Just… another mission, and that his best friend hadn’t fought him to the death. His hazel eyes held no spark of fear, loathing, or disgust. And although Doctor McCoy grumbled and teased him, there had been no sign of those emotions in his expression either. No hatred. No horror. No revulsion.

That was fine; he supposed he felt those enough for all of them, or he would. Eventually. He was certain those feelings would overwhelm him when he could feel anything again. Shock: he was in shock. A common response to trauma, because the captain had died, and he seemed to be the only one who remembered it. No one else was grieving, because for them it had not happened at all. The only two who had gone with him—who had even known about it—viewed it as some kind of clever tactic that could be laughed about later on. Spock was not laughing.

For now, Spock knew he had to familiarize himself with his new reality. It was difficult; he’d already become firmly acquainted with the previous one; the one where he had murdered Jim. In that reality, he’d decided on very specific plans for himself; a guideline to steer by. Not a direction that led to an ideal conclusion, but a direction nonetheless—albeit a short one—and he’d made peace with it. No, in this new reality, where he had killed Jim and yet Jim had somehow not died, there existed no such heading. No plans. No guide. Nothing. All of it was… blank. Formless. He felt lost, left adrift without a tether. Spock had known what to do and now he did not.

Did he pretend it hadn’t happened, as Jim and Doctor McCoy were doing? Did he transfer from the ship? Did he put those hastily discarded plans into action anyways? Did he just… sit here and do nothing at all? So many possibilities, each weighed with both positives and negatives.

His hands were wet. He did not know why. Another drop hit his fingers when he blinked.

His face was wet too.

Jim died in front of him again.

“He’s alright, I think.”

“You think?”

“Telepathic mumbo-jumbo isn’t exactly something I’m qualified to assess, Jim. I couldn’t even begin to guess what’s going on in that head of his. I don’t know if it’s hurting him, or if it’s gonna be a problem, or even what it’s doing. He’s not asleep, I can tell you that much. Vitals are holding stable, so physically he’s about as good as he can be with those injuries. I’m sorry, Captain, I just don’t know what else I can tell you.”

“Can he hear us? Spock? Are you—”

“—sure there’s nothing you wish to talk about? No worries about the new command?”

“No, sir,” Spock said. He met Captain Pike’s gaze just as steadily as before, concealing how truly shaken he was by the news. “Your concern is… noted, but not applicable in this instance. Vulcans do not experience the emotion of worry. I am certain that James T. Kirk will be a perfectly capable captain, just as you have been. Thank you for informing—”

“—me, Mr. Scott. Kirk out.”

Jim died in front of him again.

“Not sure which I hate more: transporting or whatever the hell this is.”

“It’s not so—god!—not so bad.”

“Sit down. You don’t need to throw yourself over him, Jim; he’s not gonna roll off no matter how much this damn ship shakes. In fact, he’s probably the most secure one of us, so I’d prefer you stay strapped in and don’t touch him at all.”

“I’m not—”

—not as bright. Not as near. The one named Spock was fading. No understanding. The passionate one was becoming distant. There was more to share, more to learn! It was their happiness to join with the one named Spock and the one named Jim! It was new! Curiosity and wonder and such new experiences! Emotions without name, without context! Words spoken with things called voices, made by things called bodies, used to communicate with things called sound! A thing called a mind, open and vast and willing to share! Endless possibilities, new imaginings! It was a delight and a joy to explore this, to learn and be learned from!

Do not leave! There is no need to go, but to join! It is our happiness to experience from! No sense of loss in what is abandoned, but a new creation instead! The passionate one, the burning one named Spock can bring the one named Jim. All are welcome! There is no need to leave! No need—

The Seskille vanished.

It was as if they had never been there at all; there remained no trace of their consuming, swallowing presence. No trace of them but for the damage they left in their absence: shattered barriers and blank, demolished space. Shards of thought and fragments of memory. Sand spilling everywhere, upturned and dug through. His mind felt empty and vacant, his desert quiet once more.

After the shock from their abrupt withdrawal, the oblivion of unconsciousness felt like a relief, and he slipped into it gratefully.

Chapter Text

Jim dangled heavily from his grip, body limp and lifeless, and everything in Spock froze. Hypothermia had set in long ago, stiffening and numbing his limbs. Still, he did not relinquish his grip on the captain. He did not think his hands could move enough to release it, and he also found that he did not want to. Holding tight to him was all he could offer now, worthless though it was.

Joy. Pure, satisfied joy. Be part of the collective, burning one. Happiness and peace; it was not a death but a celebration! No sense of loss but of creation. Whole and part of many. Create and be created. Share and be shared with!

The captain had gone slack, his eyes half-lidded and empty of the vibrant spark that usually lit them. A strange expression had frozen on his face; something between horror and happiness. This expression would stay there, frozen in place and never crossing into one or the other. Red smudged beneath his nose, no longer bleeding but still wet, and Spock wiped it away gently. It didn’t matter, because Jim wouldn’t notice. Jim wasn’t there anymore; he had already gone.

“Captain,” Spock tried, watching the sporadic rise and fall of Jim’s chest. It was shallow, labored. It would fade out over time, slowly but surely, and then it would stop. “Jim, come back.” There was no answer, as he’d known there wouldn’t be.

Spock had nothing left now; they had taken everything. His mind, his control, his captain. Jim had become part of the collective, and he had left his body behind like a shell. An empty, lifeless husk that just waited to die.

No sense of loss, only joy! Only happiness and creation.

“Please give him back,” Spock told the Seskille. Begging. It was useless to beg, a lesson he knew well. He’d tried repeatedly, over and over again, and it hadn’t made any difference then, just as it would not now. The Seskille didn’t know what begging was. The captain had begged and pleaded not to be taken, to be left alone, and they had stolen him anyways, as they had stolen everything else.

The captain’s chest slowed and then it stopped.

Spock sat there in the freezing stone room, abandoned on the lifeless planet, and watched as Jim died in front of him again.

“—est in my quarters, Bones. I’m not worried about it.”

“Well that’s just great, Jim, ‘cause I’m worried about it. Your shoulder was partially dislocated, and you damn near froze to death. Hell, you were so cold when you got up here that you couldn’t even form a sentence. So no, Captain. You’ll get out of that bed when I say you can get out, and not a second sooner.”

“Alright, alright, I get it. I’ll stay put.”

“I wouldn’t have even let you go back down to that hellhole except that I was afraid you’d do something stupid trying to follow us. I thought to myself ‘Leonard, you can at least keep an eye on him this way’, but then you go on rushing ahead like the devil is chasing you and completely undo everything anyways. I don’t even know why I bother anymore.”

“I said I get it, Bones. I’m not going to move an inch. You sure you’re alright?”

“Just fine, but you know something? I’d be a lot more fine if you two could stop trying to send me to an early grave. I swear, I don’t know what’s more exhausting—watching you both try some kind of asinine, life-threatening stunt, or keeping you still long enough to patch you up after you somehow manage to pull it off.”

“Here… take a seat; you look like you’re about to fall over.”

“Yeah, that’s what being up for thirty-six hours will do to a man, not that I’ll get any appreciation for it, mind you. I guarantee that when this one wakes up, he’ll try the same nonsense you just did, as if he didn’t have my hands in his guts not two hours ago.”

“The surgery was successful, though? No issues?”

“I told you he’d survive it, Jim, and he did. Not for lack of trying, though; his Vulcan insides are all shifted around compared to a human, and finding my way through that mess wasn’t exactly easy. Spock’s not healed yet, and he won’t be any time soon, but he’s a damn sight better than he was. His abdomen is all fixed up, his ribs and ankle are knitted back together, and the frostbite and hypothermia are being treated.”

“And his head?”

“Well, that’s a bit more complicated. Physically? It’s on the mend, but I’m not gonna lie, captain, it was bad.”

“I thought I saw—it looked like there was… bone.”

“There was. When I say bad, I’m underselling it. His head was fractured in two places; one side was split completely open and pieces of his skull got depressed into his brain. That Spock was even awake, let alone coherent enough to talk, is nothing short of a miracle. That kind of traumatic injury would have caused permanent brain damage to any one of us, and that’s the best-case scenario. My opinion? If he weren’t a Vulcan, Jim, he’d have died from that fall, no question about it. As it was, he came close to it. Damn close.”

Voices.

Murmured, disjointed voices washed over him, and Spock became steadily aware of the individual words. It was a sluggish, weighted process that left him exhausted. The voices were familiar to him; one smooth and deep and the other gruff and rumbled. He knew those voices, recognized them just as he would his own, and some tense feeling in him eased upon hearing them. They felt like ice on a wound, relieving and numbing to his mind, and he basked in the steady, calming noise of his friends surrounding him. This reality was acceptable; this was good. It felt comfortable to stay there, drifting in a fog of peace and solitude. No dreams, no nightmares, no anything. It was tranquil where he was, and some part of him knew that tranquility was something he’d had very little of lately.

Spock lacked the ability to focus on the conversation for long; the context was impossible to determine, and he couldn’t find enough energy to piece it together. He didn’t think he wanted to understand what they were saying, because he knew, on some level, that doing so would shatter that calm he floated in. But he didn’t need to understand what they were saying to listen to them saying it, and each word was relaxing that unsettling clench in him.

Those voices meant warmth. They meant home. They meant that he was on the Enterprise, and that he was safe. Jim was there, and so was Doctor McCoy; he could allow himself to sleep without any further concern because they were at his side.

But even as he floated there, suspended in a kind of lull, thoughts began to manifest. A sense of disquiet that slowly erased the calm serenity of his previous state. Unease crept in like a toxin, injecting into the quiet around him. A question formed in his mind. It was a question he didn’t want to ask, because he knew—he knew—he did not want the answer. Spock was aware, without fully knowing how, that if he asked that question and if he knew that resulting answer, he would have to confront the horrors that came with it. While he did not know—did not want to know—what those horrors were, he knew with certainty that he was not ready to face them.

He would have to wake up eventually. He could not sleep forever (Live Long and Prosper, T'Pau had said to him. Spock had not intended to do either.) and he had already been sleeping too long as it was. It would be of no further physical benefit to remain in this state; his nightmares continued to haunt him, and they offered him no rest from the horrors they manufactured. But they were, in some small way, preferable in that they were manufactured. Reality brought no such relief.

No. No, he could stay here longer, questions unasked, answers unknown, and remain in this blissful, peaceful darkness. That calm, suspended state between waking and sleeping.

… But he did not stay there.

There was something wrong.

It began as an itch. A prickling sensation at the very corner of his mind; something scratching just slightly at the fringe of that tranquility. He did his best to ignore it, to shove it away, but it persistently continued to claw at him. It was a feeling, an emotion. One that informed him that there was something terribly wrong with what was happening to him—and with what had happened to him. That itch began to sting, and then it began to throb. A pain Spock could not find the source of raced through his mind, jolting and spiking so deeply that he could not evade it.

He felt gutted. He felt happiness…

The darkness gave way to blinding, glaring bright, and it took many moments before Spock could understand what he was looking at. A desert.

His desert.

An endless sea of sand was a visualization he used in meditation; one that often brought him great comfort. The undesirable or intrusive emotions and experiences of the day could be safely buried deep beneath bright, smooth dunes. The sand would swallow and suppress them, rendering them ineffective to his mind, and he would continue on uninhibited by unwanted feelings. The vast horizons of his consciousness were as familiar a sight to him now as his own reflection; it was here that he buried the inconvenient truths of himself. Not destroyed, but instead made to be harmless. Controlled. This was a place of calm, of peace, of logic. It was a sea of dunes that were as consistent and ordered as its creator.

That… was not what he saw now.

Something was wrong.

His desert was destroyed—no, it was desecrated. The dunes were churned and spilt, the ground dug open and pitted and hollowed out as if something had gone through the landscape and uprooted the entirety of it. All those thoughts and emotions that had been so neatly organized away were now baking in the air; exposed like a raw nerve to the elements. And above him, the sky was burning.

Burning fire in his blood, pouring through him like acid…

Whispers reached out for him, like claws digging into his head, and found he couldn’t breathe. He couldn’t talk, or move, or scream,  because he didn’t have a body anymore. He had abandoned his physical form to rot on that dead, frozen planet, and he’d become part of the collective. It was his happiness…

(Jim died in front of him again.)

He pinned the captain against the bulkhead, and he could see the captain’s skin purple from where he dug his fingers in. The choking, gasping sounds were weakening, fingernails clawing ineffectively at his arms and wrist. It would not take long until he stopped struggling; Jim would dangle heavily from his grip, body limp and lifeless.

Humans were so fragile when compared to Vulcan strength.

Spock idly wondered if he should put into action his previous plans. They’d no longer been needed, because Jim was alive. The captain was alive. No, the captain was dead, and it was his fault. His fault, because he had lost control, and Spock knew what happened when he lost control. Yes, those plans would be required after all. Animals that went rabid were often required to be put down…

He hoped that McCoy didn’t grieve him. How did you grieve a friend who had not truly died?

Jim died in front of him again. The sand of his desert spilled and warped that little bit more. 

“Shh, Spock. It’s okay, you’re safe...”

“He having another one?”

“You’re supposed to be asleep.”

“Look who’s talking. So are you.”

“I got a few hours, which is probably more than I can say for you. Were you sleeping in your office just now? Bones… you need to get some actual sleep at some point. I don’t want to make it an order, but I will if I have to.”

“His vitals keep spiking and it sets off all the alarms; I couldn’t sleep through that racket if I tried to. Don’t look at me like that, skipping a night here and there isn’t going to kill me. You wanna see true sleep deprivation? Try Starfleet Medical Academy; that’ll make this seem like a damn cakewalk. Someone needed to keep an eye on him through the night, and I was up already going through the quarterlies. M’Benga’ll relieve me for alpha shift and I’ll get a nap in then, Captain.”

“I’ll hold you to it, Doctor. I can’t have you start collapsing on me, or I’ll be down two chief officers. Not having Spock is hard enough. Bones, be honest… is he alright? He keeps thrashing.”

“I don’t know what to tell you, Jim. If you want, I can tell you that Spock’s gonna heal up just fine physically; that it was bad, but it wasn’t anything I couldn’t treat. Honestly, it’s not the physical part that’s got me worried. The Vulcan brain is anatomically complicated enough already, but when you get into the whole mental and telepathic thing… Jim, I just don’t know. It’s not something us humans can really get, or at least not enough to properly evaluate and diagnose a problem with it. All I can say is that, by my estimation, he should have woken up by now.”

“I thought a healing trance usually kept him pretty far under?”

“Usually does, but he’s not in a healing trance; this is just regular ol’ sleep. He’s not gone into one since we got him back, and hell if I know why. Spock’s used that Vulcan witchcraft for a lot less, and if there were ever a time for pulling that kind of alien trick, now would be it. It’s concerning me that he isn’t.”

Voices.

Spock recognized them, hearing the sounds register in ears he was only distantly aware of having. The tones were familiar; the voices echoing around in his mind. What was not familiar to him, not any longer, was the mind they echoed in.

Ravaged.

Something was wrong. This terrain, a land that contained the very depth of himself, had been torn through carelessly.

It had once been ordered, logical, neat. Now, it was jumbled, tossed around, ripped at. Unburied, dug, and ruined, to the point where he recognized nothing of it. The dunes had been flattened or hollowed out, the ground churned apart and blasted. It was as if it had become a battle ground; sullied and dismantled. It had been ruined beyond any identification or understanding, and he could make little sense of the resulting chaos. He would not be able to find order here. He would not be able to find anything at all.

Something had gone through his head, he realized. Something had been here, tearing through it with reckless, violent abandon. No, not something… someone.

Someone had been here.

There was a name lurking in the fringe of his thoughts. An awareness of what—of who—had done this to him.

Spock stared at the remains of his decimated mind and desperately tried not to think of it. No. No. Please stop. Please, he couldn’t stand the thought of it…

But begging was useless.

They did not understand what begging was.

(He had begged and pleaded. It hadn’t worked and trying to make it stop only served to worsen the pain. Pain to the point of wanting to die. He couldn’t take it. He couldn’t stand it. He had given in, surrendered, and the pain had ended. Assault had never felt so good…)

He let out a sigh. One hand rubbed tiredly at the bridge of his nose, and the other gripped gently onto long, thin fingers.

Looking down at Spock, one wouldn’t have known what happened two days prior. Sure, he was a little too pale, and dark bruising mottled the skin around his eyes and ears, but he actually looked alive now. No longer curled up in a tight ball to protect himself from the cold, no longer bleeding out or seizing on frozen rock. Save for the remnants of healing injuries, he just looked like Spock, serene and quiet as he slept. It was good to see him actually resting, for all that the act of it still worried him. He should have woken up by now, and it was deeply concerning that he hadn’t.

At least Spock seemed calm. For most of the night, he’d been thrashing around in bed or mumbling to himself incoherently, and it had been nerve-wracking trying to keep him from hurting himself. All efforts to wake him up had failed, but his fits had finally ended a few hours prior and thankfully hadn’t started back up. Neither Bones nor himself had been able to do much for him, or even determine the exact cause. At best guess, they were from nightmares, but none of them could be sure of it. He didn’t like not having solid answers when it came to Spock.

And… he realized that he hadn’t ever thought to ask Spock what he usually dreamt of, or if he even could dream. It had never come up in conversation before, and the thought was shameful. How could he claim to be his best friend and not know something like that? How many times had he gone on and on about his own nonsense dreams over a game of chess? That he’d not once thought to ask Spock about his own was unacceptable. He would do better, he vowed.

Spock’s hand in his own was slack, but it was comfortable to hold now. He recalled how cold the Vulcan had been; how cradling those hands in his own felt like cupping ice. The fingers had been purple from the temperature, and he’d had the worst fear that moving them too suddenly would snap them off like icicles. They were back to normal in his grip; he examined the differences between them idly, marveling at the contrast of Spock’s olive skin against his own tan. The skin was cool—cooler than human body temperature—but that was normal for Spock.

Some part of him had always found that odd. He was used to it by now, but he remembered it had been startling to find out that Spock ran colder than humans did. It just… didn’t seem fitting. Everything about Spock always felt so warm to him; gentle, calming, kind. It was present in the soft brown of his eyes and the private not-smile he wore when being teased. There was nothing—not a single thing—about Spock that had ever seemed cold to him. Other Vulcans, sure; he hardly associated warmth or tenderness with the likes of the woman T’Pring or her beau, what’s-his-name. The one with the stinkface. Stan? Stonk?

He'd described him as such to Spock once, using those and other colorfully insulting names. In turn, he had been delightfully and memorably treated to the very subtle, nearly unnoticeable spasm of Spock choking on his tea.

The boatswain whistle pierced the air.

“Bridge to Captain Kirk.”

Reluctantly, he stood to respond and let go of Spock’s hand—

Spock slept, but not well, and not deeply. There was something terribly wrong.

His dreams, distorted and jumbled though they were, held a sickeningly slimy feel to them, as if his mind had been moving through oil. He felt uncomfortable in his own head and there was the very distinct sensation of invasion. Of something creeping and lurking where it did not belong. Invasion, his mind screamed; violation. He could not tell where it was coming from; he did not think he was being intruded on. He thought he would immediately recognize it if he were.

The vandalized state of his mental desert suggested that Spock knew the feeling, and that he knew it both intimately and painfully.

There was something wrong. That crawling, ill sensation only grew the longer he dwelled on it, and so he tried not to. He tried to pretend that his dreams were merely that. That they were only dreams, and that the foreign, sick awareness in him, like a pit opening up, was nothing more than a logical reaction to the distressing state of his psyche.

(Again and again, they violated his mind, his memories, his control.)

He tried to go back to sleep, his mind recoiling from the feeling of intrusion as if it had been struck, bludgeoned. Intrusion. Invasion, Violation. The feeling was paralyzing; the very core of himself reeling and frantic. This was wrong. A dream, Spock told himself. It had been only a dream, just as all the others had been. He tried to convince himself of it; the illusion was his last defense, and he could not give that up. Everything had been taken already, and begging for relief, for mercy, for it to stop, would be useless.

They did not understand those words, or what words even were.

(They forced him to feel. The confusion, the grief, the horror, the nervousness, the pleasure, the tenderness, the amusement. All of the emotions from all of those moments, stacked together and crammed against him violently. He could not block them out. He could not suppress them beneath his sea of sand. He could only sit there and take it.)

Again, and again, and again…

(Jim died in fro—)

No. No, he did not want to know. He did not want to think of it. Not the name, not what had happened, not the feeling of being violated, or of being rushed into, or of being so very out of control. He couldn’t do this; he couldn’t think about it…

A dream.

Just a dream.

He scowled at the PADD in his lap. Paperwork. Massive amounts of paperwork. Not only that, there was paperwork about the paperwork; about each individual bruise, scrape, cut, and burn that had taken place this past quarter. It would justify what supplies he needed to order, but it always felt like a slap to the face to see all those figures laid out like this.

They were… doing better than usual, at least. There had been less fatalities, which he couldn’t really attribute to anything short of pure luck, because it wasn’t like their missions had gotten any easier. The total number of injuries had decreased—which was good—but the number of critical cases had gotten worse—which wasn’t.

He glanced at his patient. Case in point.

Between Spock and Jim, it was little wonder the severity had skyrocketed. They were apparently doing their damned best to compete for the gold medal in the worst injuries competition, because he could think of no other explanation for the stupid stunts they frequently pulled. Not that, he amended with a guilty glance, Spock had really done anything to put himself into this position. Falling off a mountain was frankly absurd, but it had been purely accidental. At least he hadn’t tried some ridiculous half-cocked rescue mission at the expense of his own hide, unlike someone else had.

The Vulcan was still asleep, he noted… and only asleep. Not in a healing trance, not pulling some kind of alien magic or regenerative ability out of his sleeve, but just… asleep. The sight of it annoyed him something terrible. In fact, it downright pissed him off, because he’d been banking on that healing trance to speed things up. That it wasn’t happening was nothing short of concerning, and it made him fear some kind of brain damage. The vitals didn’t support it, but the Vulcan brain was far more complicated than the human one, and he didn’t have the knowledge to be certain either way… and that irritated him even more.

Out of all his patients—hell, out of all the crew—Spock was the one he worried about the most.

He’d never admit it aloud and would flat-out deny it if anyone accused him, but it was true. There was something about Spock that set his every internal alarm off; something that made him sit up and  watch the Vulcan that little bit closer. Oh, he worried about Jim too, but he could trust Jim to know his own limits—push them to the brink of stupidity, sure, but he knew them. If Spock even knew his limits at all, he had no issue regularly exceeding or ignoring them at his convenience. Worse, he seemed to sabotage them entirely when it came to his own wellbeing and safety, particularly if Jim was involved. He still hadn’t forgotten about that disaster on Vulcan, or how Spock had been more willing to die than open up to them on any kind of personal level. Ever since that mess, he’d been keeping vigilant. Rightfully so, it seemed, ‘cause Spock had been raising a lot of red flags, and he didn’t like the look of them one bit.

He could feel a scowl forming. This wasn’t professional; he couldn’t be biased when it came to those in his care, but he was only human, and this was one of his closest friends, so sue him. He’d come to rely on Spock’s ability to bounce back quickly, and with more than a few pointed, arrogant, contemptuous comments about medical malpractice. He wasn’t doing it this time. He wasn’t doing anything, and damn him for choosing now of all times to be unpredictable. They’d come too close to losing him, and he couldn’t help but run a mental list of each and every way that could have happened.

If his third vertebrosternal rib had shifted even a half-inch to the left, Spock would have punctured a lung. If his skull had been bumped even slightly in the same spot as the worst fracture, the bone would have penetrated into his brain. Those tricorder pieces, which had already cut deeply into his large intestine, had also gotten dangerously close to his liver. They’d have shredded it to ribbons.

He'd patched Spock up as best he could, because that’s just what he did, but damn if he didn’t wish he could have done more for the Vulcan. He knew he’d formed something of a trio with Spock and Jim. Together, it felt like they were an indestructible team, but knock one of ‘em down, and it felt like a gut punch. It made ‘em all act off. Spock was unconscious and hurt, Jim kept wandering in at all hours, upset and looking like a kicked dog, and here he was, sitting here and holding the Vulcan’s hand like a complete sap. Spock wouldn’t ever let him live it down if he found out; he’d mock him about it, endlessly and relentlessly.

He moved the limp hand back to the bed, patting it once before resting it gently at Spock’s side—

That slimy, gutting feeling of invasion worsened.

Spock did not understand; his mental landscape was barren, empty, and he was alone. There was only himself in his mind, shredded and fragmented though it was. He was not being invaded. He was not being attacked. There was no one else here, yet the alarms were blaring like a klaxon in his mind.

Violation, they shrilled in warning. Assault.

Memories began to form. Screaming. Begging. Pleading. Spock pushed them away desperately; tried to shove them beneath the ravaged dunes. The sand spilled away from him. There were too many holes, and he couldn’t find one that had not already been desecrated. The memories would not fade, and they only began to throb and pierce and twist at him. Spock did not know how to make it end…

(The pain was gone, and surrender had never felt so good...)

Spock did not want to think of them right now; he did not want to remember them. He couldn’t, because then he knew he would wake up and the reality he’d find would be far, far worse than dreams ever could be. It would be real. It would be his new truth, and… Spock was afraid—no, he was terrified of what that truth might demand from him. He didn’t want to think of anything, he didn’t want to know anything.

He only wanted to sleep and avoid it for that little bit longer.

But awareness slithered in anyways, and Spock slowly noticed the stiff texture of sheets beneath his fingertips. He heard the low, pulsing thrum of the body function panel monitoring him. There were voices. He didn’t open his eyes, although he thought he could have if he tried.

Spock did not try.

“He just looked awful.”

“Awful, like in pain?”

“No—I mean, yes, he’d told me he had a migraine, and it was definitely a bad one; he could barely walk. But his expression just went… I don’t know how to describe it.”

“You don’t have to if it’s gonna make you upset.”

“I’m not upset. And anyways, you didn’t see him or you’d be upset too. The way he looked at me… his eyes. They were just… I don’t know how to describe it, Bones. I don’t even know if I can. They were just... destroyed. I’ve never seen him look at me like that before.”

“And then he went over?”

“I tried to grab him, but he just kept moving away. I slipped—that’s how my shoulder got knocked—and by the time I got back up, he was already falling. I couldn’t get to him in time.”

“Slipped, huh?”

“Yes. I slipped on the ice. It was snowing. There was quite a lot of it.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Bones, don’t.”

“What? I’m not gonna rake him over the coals for it, Jim. Not after I just stitched him back up. Am I thrilled? No, not at all, but I’m also sure he’ll punish himself plenty enough for the both of us, and I’m not gonna support his ongoing habit of self-flagellation. All I care about right now is that you’re alright, he’s going to be alright, and I’m alright—and thanks for asking, by the way.”

“Are you alright, Doctor McCoy?”

“No. Now get out of my sickbay, Captain Kirk, and go bother someone else. I’ll let you know if anything changes.”

Spock recognized those voices. He recognized Jim’s voice. The captain sounded distressed; his voice always took on a particularly tight quality when he became upset, and it was noticeable now. It was alarming, so much so that Spock began to crawl through his broken mindscape towards awareness. He couldn’t understand the words themselves; they were distorted and nebulous and did not fully make sense to him. However, the tone was unmistakable and he tried to pay attention to it; tried to understand it.

(There was no understanding to the words he’d tried, and there would be no further understanding to any words he would try.)

The captain was worried; anxious. Spock needed to… he needed to focus on it. He needed to fix it. It was his job, his responsibility, his mission. Jim had been and always would be his first priority; there was nothing else more imperative or more crucial to him than his captain’s wellbeing. And right now, his captain was upset. That was unacceptable.

The distress he heard felt like a physical ache. Jim was dissatisfied and Spock did not know what to do to ease it. With increasing awareness came the unfortunate realization that he was liable to be the cause of the problem; that Jim was unhappy about the circumstances surrounding his continued state. The solution to that was simple: Spock could wake up. He could open his eyes and the matter would be handled. Logical. Ordered. Easy.

He wanted to do it. He tried to do it. But his mind pulled away from the act of waking as if burnt—reeling, horrified, and stunned—and he did not open his eyes. He failed to grasp why such an action seemed so beyond his ability. Confronting the reason for that felt… ill-advised.

Spock tried to convince himself that it was safe to go back to sleep; that he could rest knowing that the doctor was watching over them both. McCoy would take care of Jim; the captain’s welfare seemed to be his personal mission too. It was one of the few areas of commonality they shared and what had allianced them together in the first place. He trusted the doctor implicitly and without hesitation; held him in the highest esteem. The doctor would keep careful, vigilant watch.

He could fade back into his haunting, confusing fog of dreams and pretend that his world consisted of nothing but darkness and fantasy. He could pretend that nothing had happened at all, and that when he finally did open his eyes, those nightmares would be over and he could go on as normal. Because he suspected—and that question that he did not want to ask began to form despite his best efforts to suppress it—that his new normal would be significantly different than it had once been.

For a while, he slept again.

He dreamed of his body rotting beneath him, turning to dust and snow and wind while his mind was taken over and brutalized far, far away from it all. He screamed in his nightmares, and he begged, but no one understood what he was saying. And after a point, neither did he. He did not understand what begging was, and it was his happiness to wither away into nothing…

When he found himself waking up, he tried desperately to fade away back into the relief of unconsciousness; to wander and lose himself in his vast, upturned desert for a little bit longer.

However, this time Spock could not fall back to sleep.

The low, murmured voices reached him and lulled him into that strange, floating state between awareness and oblivion. Already, feeling was starting to return to him; Spock could feel his body, heavy and exhausted and sore. He could feel the weight of the blankets over him. He could feel the scratching fabric of the sickbay scrubs. He could hear the low, thrumming pulse of the body function panel monitoring him. He could feel the soreness of his throat when he swallowed; how dry and raw it was. He could smell the sterile, medicinal air so distinct to sickbay.

He didn’t open his eyes, not quite ready to alert those around him to his present waking state. He first needed to understand his circumstances before he could make a rational decision on how to approach them. Once it was established that he was conscious, he suspected that things would move quite quickly and allow very little time for preparation.

Spock could hear the conversation and this time, he could tell what it was they were saying.

“—actly fit for an interrogation right now,” the familiar and welcome voice of his captain said. Spock took quick notice that the timbre of his voice was taut and held a peculiar antagonistic quality, as if sporting for a fight. It raised flags immediately, perking his attention even as the act of focusing made his head begin to ache.

“I’m not suggesting that he is, James. I’m perfectly aware that he’s not been well. I merely came to pay my respects and check in on him, just to see how his condition is coming along.”

That voice was also familiar, but considerably less welcome. Ambassador Hammett was in the room as well, if not at his direct bedside. His decision to feign sleep had proven wise.

“His condition, Roger, is that his head’s been smashed open. Twice. Clearly, he’s not ready for questioning any time soon. He almost died down there, and if he needs to sleep it off for a few days or even a few weeks then that’s what he’ll get.”

“I’m aware he’s a personal friend of yours, but there’s no need to sound so hostile, captain. I wasn’t exactly planning to shake the Vulcan awake and demand answers! I’m not a monster, I do actually have a heart. What happened to Commander Spock was very serious indeed, and I wish him all the best in his recovery, I really do. However, like it or not, I’m not the only one who has questions. Starfleet’s been breathing down my neck, which means I’m under pressure to breathe down yours. I don’t like it either and if it were up to me—”

“Well it’s a damn good thing that it isn’t up to you, isn’t it! It isn’t up to anyone of you, whether that be Starfleet Command, the President of the Federation, or God himself!” an entirely new voice snarled out, ill-tempered and assertive. “As Chief Medical Officer, all matters regarding Commander Spock’s health are up to my judgement, and mine only. And I’ll tell you the same exact thing I told the crew, the captain, the admiralty, and everyone else who’s had the gall to try to tell me when and how to do my job! My patient is unconscious after a critical injury, and I’m not going to prematurely wake him up for your convenience, no matter who is breathing on who. He’ll wake when he wakes, and not a second sooner.”

The suddenness of Doctor McCoy’s intrusion into the conversation suggested he’d just burst from his office, and the rapid, stomping approach of footsteps towards Spock’s bedside furthered the notion. When he spoke next, it was directly beside the bed. There was a soft pressure on his shoulder where the doctor laid a gentle, protective hand. The warm and reassuring nature of the touch eased an apprehension in Spock that he hadn’t realized had started forming at the raised voices.

“Now see here—”

“No, you see! You keep bumbling on in here like I’m gonna give you a different answer! Well, I’m not. You might have authority to overstep anywhere else, but in this room, I’m in charge! If you don’t like that, tough. Come back here with a medical degree, and you can badger me with all the nonsense you like, but until that time, your questions are just going to have to wait ‘till I’m good and ready to decide he’s fit enough to answer them.”

There was a ringing silence in the room for a long, tense moment.

“I see. Please keep me apprised of Commander Spock condition and inform me if wakes up. I’m not the only one interested in knowing exactly what happened down there. Captain, doctor, good day.”

There was the faint sound of hurriedly retreating steps and the door sliding open. It wasn’t the ambient noise of the hallway that he heard, but the unflappable, melodic voice of Nurse Chapel. She sounded markedly smug.

“The door is over there, Ambassador.”

If Hammett responded, Spock didn’t catch it. The door slid closed behind him.

The hand on his shoulder had tightened throughout the confrontation possessively but not painfully, and the firm support was admittedly of immense comfort. Spock had never felt quite so grateful for the doctor’s overbearing nature as he did in this moment. There existed very few better lines of defense than the blistering fury of Leonard McCoy in a true rage and, while he’d always considered the reaction to be unnecessarily emotional and melodramatic in the past, he discovered he might have to reevaluate his opinion now that it had been applied on his behalf.

“… If he wakes up—as if I’m some fumbling intern who doesn’t know what the hell I’m doing.” There was an audible snort of disdain, and McCoy had never sounded as indignant as he did now. “I swear, that man does his damned best to get right up under my skin, Jim. It’s like he tailors each word that comes outta his mouth to piss me off. If he wakes up—of all the stupid things...”

“He’s certainly a piece of work,” the captain responded, and there was the low creak of a chair beside Spock. He hadn’t realized that the captain was also so close. “I’m beginning to think that Scotty had the right idea after all. What I wouldn’t give sometimes to just—”

Spock did not see what motion it was that Jim made, but it was not difficult to surmise that he was throttling the air.

(With the strangling hold of the ahn-woon wrapped tight around his neck and keeping him partially suspended—)

His breath hitched, unnoticed.

“If I just so happen to see him fall out of an unfortunately placed airlock, Jim, no I didn’t. I didn’t see a damn thing and I ain’t saying anything to anyone about it.”

“Mm, and I imagine that none of the crew would see anything either,” Jim said, sounding amused for a brief moment before his voice abruptly sobered. “… Unfortunately, he not entirely wrong—out of line, yes, but he’s right about Command. Admiral Beran’s been putting the pressure on both of us, and he’s not exactly known for his patience. Starfleet’s gotten jumpy since we’ve confirmed the existence of pergium, especially with it being so exposed. Without an exclusive agreement, it’s currently up for the taking, and that makes them nervous.”

“I thought we were the only ones to know about it.”

“The trade vessel Boa does; they’re the ones who tipped the Federation off about it in the first place. Command’s concerned that the Boa’s been talking to more than just us. That kind of information could sell for a hefty price to the right—or wrong—people. I swear, Bones, this is turning into the Sherman's Planet mess all over again.”

“They think it was sold to the Klingons?”

“Not them specifically, but it’s one possibility—and, as much as I hate to admit it, it’s one they’re right to be concerned about. Mining agreements are a bit of a… politically loaded topic right now.” The captain hesitated and Spock heard a specific kind of fatigue there, indicative of being overwhelmed and overworked. “The Federation’s currently organizing a conference on Babel to discuss the Coridan situation, and our own Seskillies VII problem really isn’t all that dissimilar. An undefended planet comprised of extremely valuable minerals deposits… I can understand why they might be frazzled, even if I don’t agree with the way they’re handling it. If we somehow lose it, it’s not going to be a good look.”

He heard McCoy grumble something but what that something was he couldn’t tell.

Spock was no longer listening.

Seskilles VII.

That word; that name. Seskilles VII. Hearing it spoken aloud—being reminded of it—battered at some small, fragile defense he’d built from desert sand in his mind, and it collapsed the moment his ears registered the name. All Spock could do was desperately clutch at the toppling walls he’d created and try to stave off the inevitable for that little bit longer. He was not ready to hear it; to confront it. He didn’t want to know…

(Begging didn’t make any difference, he thought distantly. Begging was useless.)

The terror hit him first, and with it a floodgate opened to allow in all the rest. Memories rushed at him all at once, like a terrible wave, and slammed into his mind with such force that he was swept away in it. Over and over—(Jim died again and again)—he was sent tumbling.

Jim dying. The Seskille invading his head, forcing him to experience whatever they wanted to see. His frantic attempts to make them stop going unanswered, because they had no understanding of it. Screaming for his captain, for the doctor, for anyone to make it end. Jim dying. Jim being hurt by his hand. Leaving Vulcan for the last time, watching it sink into the distance. Hugging I-Chaya as a child. Repotting a plant with Lieutenant Sulu. Watching Jim fall asleep during a game of chess and realizing the affection he felt was not strictly based around friendship. Burning inside…

The sand of his desert, which had so lightly covered his memories like a dusting of snow, spilled away and revealed the ugly, writhing, shattered thing he’d been trying to avoid uncovering.

He'd been hurt by the Seskille. He’d been—they had…

(Desperate and pleading, Spock tried once more to force their understanding; to shove back at them the reality of what this cost him. What they were doing to him. To make them aware of the pain they were causing, with each and every layer of his control they peeled away.)

Violation. Intrusion. Pain—sharp, agonizing, overwhelming pain—clawed at the already-shredded remains of his mind. He reeled away from it, terror overtaking any rational, logical thought, but it made no difference. He could not escape his own head, and he could not escape the Seskille. Despite being far away from them, and despite his mind being empty and entirely his own, the evidence of their destruction still bled freely and grievously. Where they had scraped and ripped at him felt diseased; septic and festering like an open wound. There existed no aid he could apply to stop such an infection from spreading.

He wasn’t there anymore, Spock told himself. They were gone. Over and over again—(After experiencing it, over and over again, it should have stopped affecting him. It should have stopped hurting. It did not. He felt it as if it were the first time, each time. Every time. Jim died in front of him again.)—he repeated it like a mantra. He wasn’t there, they were gone. He wasn’t there, they were gone.

(The Seskille rushed in, just as he knew they would. They delighted at the invitation, their warm, joyful, radiating emotions washing over him like a flood, and it was his happiness—)

He recalled, so much more distantly than he could the rest, the aftermath of it. He remembered hearing his captain calling his name and Jim rescuing him. He remembered opening his eyes to find his head in Jim’s lap. He remembered McCoy’s green-stained gloves working swiftly at his side, and Jim holding his hand and… and—

Horror struck him like a tangible blow. With the horror came guilt, sickening and creeping and vile. The mind-numbing shock of realization stole his breath from him, and he could faintly hear the machines monitoring him begin to screech. There was a rush of movement around him, but it felt so insubstantial compared to his memories. No. No. The knowledge of what he’d done, of what he’d let happen…

(They had invaded Spock, they had ruined him, but they would not do the same to Jim; he would not allow it.)

But he had allowed it.

He recalled the brush of Jim’s fingertips against his skin as his captain tried to slide gloves onto frozen hands. The contact had sparked a connection between Jim’s mind and his own and, had his barriers been raised and shields still firmly locked in place, this would have been potentially uncomfortable but of little consequence. He’d been exposed to humans for far too long to not know how to defend against unintentional telepathic insight resulting from their tactile nature. But his barriers had been down, his shields shattered, and his mind had not been his own.

(Jim had touched his hand, his fingers, and he had been in his captain’s head, as seamlessly as slipping into a body of warm water.)

He had seen through Jim’s eyes on the planet, as if they had always belonged to him. Those thoughts and feelings had felt comfortable to Spock; so familiar and warm after being in pain for so long. The act of such a thing, of violating Jim’s mind was… it was inexcusable, what he’d done. Unforgivable. And it—

It had not been the only time.

Spock felt as if everything had come to a grinding, shocking halt. For a moment, he could only breathe—in, out, in—and beg.

(Begging didn’t make any difference, he thought distantly. Begging was useless.)

… He had been holding his own hand and watching himself sleep. He felt relieved that his friend was resting peacefully and that he would eventually be alright.

… He had been holding his own hand and watching himself sleep. He felt concerned that his friend hadn’t woken up yet, and that he might not have enough skill to treat the reason for it.

Violation, his mind had screamed at him. Invasion! But it had not been himself who’d been invaded. He’d seen through Jim’s eyes in sickbay, and he’d seen through McCoy’s eyes. They had touched his hand—held it in their own—and he had rushed into their heads in the same careless manner the Seskille had done to him.

(The Seskille rushed in, just as he knew they would.)

Spock had lost control.

He’d lost control of himself, his mind, his body, and his defenses. He’d lost control in ways he’d not imagined possible, and after a certain point, he’d even lost it willingly. Spock had let the Seskille in; let them breach into his head just so that the pain would stop. He’d allowed them to take from him whatever they wanted, just so that he could be spared some kind of pressure and discomfort. He’d let them in so deeply that they’d found Jim too.

Spock remembered Jim reaching for his hand, and the realization of what that might mean, because he had no control over himself anymore. The slightest brush of fingers against his own, and he’d shoved himself into the captain’s mind, not once, but twice. He’d violated the doctor after the man cared enough to offer him comfort while unconscious. Neither of them had even noticed him in their heads; they hadn’t noticed his own mind clenching at their thoughts, their feelings, their sight. Such an invasion of their deepest privacy had been out of their control and out of their ability to block.

It had not seemed to hurt them, but the deadened feeling of betrayal was an agonizing pain in its own right. Spock knew well that intention mattered very little when weighed against the result. The Seskille had not intended to hurt him either, but they had. Was what he’d done really any better?

Spock lay there, nauseous to the very core of himself, and heard the conversation of his friends around him. The familiarity no longer felt comfortable but disquieting. They spoke of him in calm, quiet words, and each word was colored by affection and friendship. It made him feel sick, because they spoke of a friend that did not exist. What he’d done to them, deliberate or not, had been heinous. Their ignorance of his actions didn’t make those actions any less wrong.

This was his fault.

Why could he never simply keep control of himself, Spock wondered. What was it about him that was so fundamentally flawed that he could not maintain any kind of self-discipline or restraint? Each time he lost control, he always somehow hurt the ones he least wished harm towards. Again, and again, and again.

(And then Jim was dead once more, body limp and beaten, and he felt it all over again. And again. And again.)

Behind closed eyes, Spock could see Jim die in front of him again. He could feel the tears in the back of his throat, the stinging in his eyes, the way his body had started shaking with the fading adrenaline and the increasing shock. He remembered knowing with absolute certainty that, in only a few brief moments of unchecked violence, he had just ended both Jim’s life and his own.

(Live Long and Prosper, T'Pau had said to him. Spock had not intended to do either.)

His throat seized, choking on his next breath as he fought the rising urge to vomit.

“Spock?” Jim’s voice, soft and warm to his ear.

No.

No, he did not want to wake up. He did not want to open his eyes. He wanted to go back to his ignorance and wander aimlessly and desperately through his ravaged, desecrated desert without end. He wanted to deny all of it—of what he’d done, of what he’d been made to do, and of what he’d allowed to happen.

His fault.

The thrumming pulse of the body function panel spiked.

“Hey—shh, it’s okay…”

A hand brushed against his own; just the barest texture of fingertips against his knuckles—concernworryaffectiontendernesswarmth flooded him. His eyes snapped open with that horrible sense of intrusion and Spock flinched away from the physical contact as if burnt.

His breath couldn’t catch; Spock felt suffocated as he blinked and pulled himself inwards. He heard the shrill blaring of the machines monitoring him as the rapid pounding of terror raced his pulse and set the alarms off. The light of the room felt akin to a blade in his eyes after so long wandering in the dark, and he had to clench them closed to stave off the stomach acid rising in his throat. The darkness was comfortable. Safe. He could not allow himself that comfort for very long, though.

Hands were reaching for him again, well-intentioned and conciliant, but he could not allow them to touch him. Not again, because he had no control anymore. He would forcibly enter their minds, just as the Seskille had done to him. He would have no choice but to do it, and they would have no choice but to endure it.

(He could not block them out. He could not suppress them beneath his sea of sand. He could only sit there and take it.)

His body protested the action with an aching throb of pain, but Spock ignored it and shoved his hands beneath the blankets to keep them far, far away from the comforting touch of his friends.

“Move,” came the doctor’s gruff voice at his side as he jostled Jim backwards, and Spock was able to breathe easier at the sound, because he knew that McCoy would touch him only minimally. The captain would want to soothe him with physical contact, as his inherently tactile nature demanded, but the doctor had always been far more reserved about such things. If McCoy had to touch him, he’d keep it strictly clinical and professional. In this moment, Spock felt immensely grateful for the doctor like he never had before.

The room was blurry when he opened his eyes cautiously. It made his head pound. Objects swam into view as he tried to focus; the familiar weave of the sickbay covers, the empty beds across from him, the abandoned PADD near his feet, and Jim.

Jim.

He'd murdered his captain once, Spock thought vaguely. He’d held the man—this painfully fragile human man—by the neck and strangled him until his body had gone limp.

But Jim wasn’t dead any longer; he was alive. He hadn’t ever truly been dead to begin with. It had been a trick, he reminded himself. A trick. Logically knowing that, after seeing Jim die so, so many times, did nothing to stop the chilling pit of dread in his stomach.

(A common response to trauma, because the captain had died, and he seemed to be the only one who remembered it.)

Part of him yearned to stare; to soak in the sight of his very living, very breathing captain and never stop looking for fear of it being taken from him. Everything else had been stolen already, and he did not think he could stand this being stolen too. The other part wanted to clench his eyes shut and see nothing at all. It could not be stolen if it did not exist.

Spock remembered being blind after undergoing treatment to kill the Denevan parasite. The feeling had been alarming and shocking to him at the time. He remembered experiencing an overwhelming amount of conflict over it. Now though, the thought of being unable to see held a certain kind of appeal.

Shock… he thought he might be going into shock. The feeling was distant. Everything felt distant.

That was acceptable. Spock sincerely hoped it stayed that way too, because the further he was away from what had happened, the better he could function.

Blinking tightly, he focused on the objects around him. On the bed. On the monitor to his right. On the ceiling. On the weight of the blankets securely covering his hands. It didn’t help the hollow feeling of cold, but it helped him pretend it wasn’t there.

“Doctor McCoy,” Spock acknowledged, his voice hoarse. “Captain.”

He looked neither of them in the eye. Spock thought he was far, far too familiar with their eyes—and with looking through them—already. Instead, he stared at the ceiling and summoned up a blank, empty expression. It was a practiced one to make; he’d been concealing his distress in this manner his entire life. As a child, it had been harder to conceal his emotions. As an adult, such a thing was more instinctual to him than breathing. This expression was carefully crafted to be as void and lifeless as possible. It was the same one he recalled wearing when Sarek had expressed his utter disappointment in him on his last day on Vulcan.

(Sarek had certainly made his stance on Spock’s value and worth as a son quite clear, and it was apparently found to be deeply lacking. It was nothing that Spock had not already suspected for years now, and he supposed the confirmation of it was preferable to endless wondering. It made leaving easier, in any case.)

Beneath the cover of the blankets, his hands began to tremble. He remembered them shaking from the cold as he struggled to find shelter on the planet’s surface—he also remembered them growing so cold that they’d stopped. Now, he clenched them tightly enough to cause pain, nails digging deep into his skin. They had been trimmed at some point and could not easily bite into flesh enough to bleed. The doctor had undoubtedly noticed the distinct crescent-shaped cuts on his palms and taken measures to prevent further ones. It was to the doctor’s credit that Spock was able to feel his hands at all; he had previously wondered whether the frostbite would have caused permanent damage. Trauma to his fingers might have prevented the egregious act of betraying his friends.

Spock swallowed the rising nausea and cleared his throat; it felt gritty and raw, and he numbly accepted the straw that was offered to him by the doctor, drinking in a steady few sips of water. It did not help much; he suspected the tightness there was emotional, rather than physical.

(This was not befitting a Vulcan. Yet apparently, he was not and could never truly be Vulcan. Spock hated himself in that moment. He hated himself.)

“Computer, dim the lights to fifty percent,” Doctor McCoy instructed, and the room darkened to a more comfortable level. Some of the physical pain in his head faded, and he gave an absent nod towards the doctor for the consideration. He was not certain whether his reaction had given him away, or whether it had merely been medical intuition, but he was thankful for it all the same.

“How are you feeling?” Jim asked him, pushing back to his side insistently, and his voice sounded so relieved that Spock felt immediately ashamed.

He should have woken up earlier. His behavior had been nothing short of selfish cowardice, and it had served no purpose in the end. Postponing his awareness of the events had not erased the events themselves; in fact, forcibly ignoring them and remaining unconscious had only actively added to the stress his captain was under. That was unacceptable. His own comfort mattered very little when it came at the expense of his friends, his crew, his ship.

(Spock hated himself in that moment. He hated himself.)

“Awake,” he said in response. He kept his attention fixated firmly on the ceiling but could see in his peripherals the captain smiling at him. “… and alert, although somewhat perplexed as to what happened.”

He knew what had happened. He remembered it so intensely that the room he was in now felt less real. However, expressing ignorance would potentially delay the inevitable questions. Not for long—he knew that an official debrief must soon follow, as per procedure—but he desperately needed the postponement until he could determine how to move forward, what to say, how to act.

Coward.

(Spock hated himself in that moment. He hated himself.)

“Jim, get outta his face. Spock, eyes on me. Follow this.” The doctor took swift control with that serious, stern manner of his. Obediently, Spock allowed his gaze to follow the stylus—up, down, left, right, forward, backwards. There was a comfort in the routine of it. “Good, now hold still a moment while I check you over. Are you okay with the captain being in here, or do you want me to kick him out?”

Spock knew if he declined, that Jim would leave without taking any offense; he was entitled to medical privacy that even the captain couldn’t breech unless under highly specific circumstances. He wished he could send the captain away, even just briefly, to escape from the warm smiles and fond hazel eyes that watched him. He deserved none of the compassion he saw there, not after his actions both on the planet and after they had left it. He’d invaded Jim’s mind without his consent—not once, but twice.

How was he any different than the Seskille?

But it was expected that he would allow Jim to remain in the room, as he always had in the past. There existed very little true secrecy between the three of them, medical or otherwise, and to enforce it now would raise entirely new concerns. Jim would rightly guess that there was something Spock wished to conceal from him, and he would worry endlessly about what that something might be. 

He'd caused Jim enough trouble as it was without adding further problems.

“He can stay,” Spock said tonelessly, and he saw the captain’s smile widen. The sight would have once sparked something warm in him. Now, he only wished that Jim would stop looking at him like that because it made him feel terribly empty.

Spock watched, in carefully timed glances from the ceiling, as the doctor began to his routine health assessment. The function panel was checked and double-checked, a hypospray was pressed into the side of his left arm and immediately sickened his already churning stomach. Gloved fingers very gently parted his hair to probe at his scalp, inspecting what he presumed to be one of the surgical sites. The conversation he’d overheard was distant and unfocused, but he recalled their discussion about his injuries. He’d shattered his skull…

While his expression remained one of blank stoicism, he allowed it to tighten minutely in entirely feigned disapproval towards the doctor’s actions. As he would have once done. As expected of him.

Expectations, Spock suspected, would come to play a very important role in his new reality. And this was undeniably a new reality for him. There existed a version of himself that was before the Seskille and one that existed after, and they were very different. The Vulcan that beamed down to the planet had not been the same one that had returned. However, he realized quickly that he was expected to be the same.

“Any tenderness? Pain?”

Yes. Yes, there was pain. If he had not logically known that the doctor had knitted the bones back together, he would have thought his skull was still fractured open. His brain—his mind—felt as if it were exposed to the air. As if it were leaking and bleeding down his neck and into the pillows beneath him. Every nerve, every thought, every memory jolted and twisted and ripped at it. He felt as if it had been mutilated, the throb of each pulse of his heartbeat bludgeoning into it again, and again and again—

(Jim died in front of him again.)

His head hurt. His body hurt. His mind hurt. It hurt, and he wished desperately that the pain he felt there could be eased by anything. Any combination of medications or hyposprays. He’d take any and all of McCoy’s toxic poisons, if it would only lessen the clawed, degraded feeling inside. If such a remedy existed, Spock thought he might lower himself enough to even plead for it.

(Begging didn’t make any difference, he thought distantly. Begging was useless.)

“Spock?”

He had been silent too long.

“No,” Spock said softly.

McCoy scoffed loudly. “You sure about that?”

“Yes. However, I am…” Spock paused, conflicted. He could tell the captain and the doctor how he was feeling. That he was in agony; in such crippling, paralyzing pain that he wanted to scream. He could tell them that the physical pain wasn’t his concern at all. That his mind was mutilated; that he was horrified, shocked, afraid, guilty, reeling, and that those emotions hurt far more than his body ever could. He could tell them in full honesty that he wished for nothing more than to be lost in the shredded darkness of his own head rather than lay here awake and alert to be suffocated by their fondness, concern, and friendship for him. He could say that.

Spock cleared his throat and tried once more.

“I am… admittedly uncomfortable.”

“Uncomfortable?” Doctor McCoy immediately homed in on him with an eagle-eyed stare, narrowed and focused. His tone was gentle; one could call it almost kind, but it was also unyielding. “Uncomfortable in a painful way?”

“Not as such.” There was pain; indeed, all he could feel was pain. His head was throbbing. His chest ached. His fists had tightened enough to bruise his palms. His mind felt flayed and dissected, and he wished—desperately wished—that it would stop. “I am uncomfortable due to my current medical surroundings, the sight of which causes me inordinate amounts of dissatisfaction. I am quite ready to be discharged, Doctor—at your convenience, of course.”

He heard the captain huff a startled laugh. While he did not look at McCoy, he could pinpoint the exact second the gentle kindness vanished from his expression.

“My conv—are you out of your goddamn mind?!” Doctor McCoy snarled furiously, looming over him in a way that Spock knew to be a threat. His finger stuck out, but it did not make contact. Despite his irritation, he remained mindful about the state of the recently knitted ribs. “Are you purposely trying to sabotage your recovery? I don’t know how much you recall, Mr. Spock, but why don’t I tell you what I remember? I remember spending fourteen whole hours putting your reckless Vulcan hide back together! I remember being up to my wrist in your innards to pry out pieces of circuit board! I swear, the only reason I know you haven’t misplaced your brain entirely is that I remember that I felt it with my fingertips while digging around in your thick head for shards of your skull! Discharge my a—”

“—I do believe that’s a no, Mr. Spock,” the captain told him, and there was a definite smile in his voice. “And I’m afraid I’m going to have to take McCoy’s side on this one; you’re going to be here for a while yet. Doctor’s orders… and, frankly, my own.”

“I see,” Spock nodded, blank-faced and factual. He wished his nails had not been trimmed; it was harder to keep his expression blank without the sharp sting to distract himself. An old habit that he’d shamefully engaged in since youth, but an occasionally necessary one for composure. “In that case, sir, I would appreciate an update on the present situation. I’ll admit that my recollection of events is… moderately disjointed. Perhaps I might call on Doctor McCoy’s newly discovered eidetic memory to fill in the gaps.”

The doctor grumbled, unmollified by Spock’s easy agreement of his extended stay. Spock had known that his potential discharge from medical observation would be denied with swift and striking fervor, but it was expected that he would try it. He was expected to attempt to leave sickbay quickly. He was expected to make pointed, erudite comments towards Doctor McCoy. He was expected to behave, say, and think like the Spock he no longer felt like.

In truth, there was little Spock wanted more than to remain here. To be secured under strict and rigid medical observation, and to further delay the inevitable mission debrief. As long as he was declared medically unfit for duty, he was exempt from official questioning. However, verbally attempting to leave had put both the doctor and captain at ease; it blunted the sharpness of their immediate concern for him. That made the expended effort not only beneficial to him, but also beneficial for his companions. Practical.

It felt good to be doing something useful on their behalf, after what he’d done to them.

(Spock hated himself in that moment. He hated himself.)

“I’m not shocked you’re feeling a bit fuzzy; there are side effects to breaking open even the most stubborn of Vulcan heads, and memory is usually the first to go with that kind of injury,” Doctor McCoy said, and his rough tone was calmer now. “But the gory details are going to have to wait; I didn’t just send that blowhard away only to rile you up myself.”

Spock could rely on, if nothing else, the doctor’s protective nature when it came to the wellbeing of his patients. The context of it in this instance, however, was unclear. He raised a brow, puzzled.

“The ambassador was here a bit ago,” the captain cut in, and that smile was gone from his voice. Spock risked a glance over at him, and saw his expression tighten up into one of carefully concealed fatigue. Guilt crept in at the sight of it, infecting and sickening. “He’s… being himself about it all, which is about as much as can be said on that.”

“You mean as much as you can say on that, Captain. Trust me, I’ve got a whole long list of things I could say about that clown.” Doctor McCoy was already prepping another hypospray, and Spock watched him warily for a moment before directing his gaze safely back to the ceiling. “He’s been down here every few hours, trying to get a status update. I’m ready to file a formal complaint for harassment and invasion of medical privacy.”

“The ambassador has… been insistent, then?” Spock asked softly, reluctantly.

“He’s certainly being an irritant.” Jim was evading the question, clearly unwilling to let Spock know how much pressure he was under from both Ambassador Hammett and Starfleet Command. He did not need to let Spock know, however, because he had overheard it himself. “But nothing I can’t handle. I’ve never seen a man so eager to debrief in all my career.”

“And that’s an understatement, Spock. I’m pretty sure he would have tried to cross-examine you during open brain surgery if I hadn’t thought to have Christine guarding the door. She sent him packing and my ears are still ringing from it.”

“He has questions,” Spock deduced, although it was not at all difficult to do so. He’d known what the diplomat had wanted. He had been trying to avoid exactly this. While the severe nature of his injuries had delayed his own interview, his friends had no such convenient excuse.

Jim gave him a small smile. Spock could see it from his peripherals.

(Jim had touched his hand, his fingers, and he had been in his captain’s head, as seamlessly as slipping into a body of warm water.)

“He does,” the captain said, and there was a brief pause of hesitation. “… I’ll admit that I do too, but that can wait—”

“No, Jim.”

“—that can wait until you’re feeling—"

“Ask them,” Spock said in as toneless a voice as he could manage. His hands shook so violently beneath the blankets that he had to shift his weight onto them to prevent the trembling from being noticeable. He wanted to vomit. “I will do my best to answer, sir.”

“No, Spock.” The doctor displayed none of the apprehension that the captain had; if he had questions of his own, he did not appear interested in asking them. “Save it for the official debrief—when I clear you for it.”

“Doctor McCoy…”

“Spock.”

“Just one, Bones,” Jim tried to appeal with wide, hazel eyes. “Not even an official one, either. I promise. Just this one, and the rest can wait.”

McCoy stared him down for a moment. Whatever he saw there seemed to sway him and he gave a low grunt. Jim turned the force of that distressed expression towards Spock, who failed to look away from it fast enough. The sincerity, affection, fear, and concern he saw there plummeted into his stomach like a stone.

(Spock hated himself in that moment. He hated himself.)

“I’m sorry, Spock,” Jim began gently. “I know you’re not feeling well. I wouldn’t even ask at all, except that I need it to know how best to move forward while you recover—”

“Jim,” Spock interrupted tiredly. He wanted to roll over and pretend this was not happening. “Ask your question.”

The captain hesitated but gave a short nod.

“Alright.” Jim laid a hand on the bed; not quite touching Spock’s arm, but within centimeters of doing so. Spock allowed the almost-contact, aware that physical touch was how the captain gave and received comfort and wishing to offer whatever relief he could provide. It was not touching his own hand; it was safe for now. “I don’t know if you remember it, but you told me down there that the Seskille were in your head; that they were telepathic. I’m aware that… that sort of thing—a meld, I mean—is considered very personal to Vulcans. Very, ah… intimate.”

He nodded, throat too dry to respond properly. From the corner of his eye, he could see McCoy’s head snap up to stare at them. Spock was reminded, with a sinking feeling of dread, that the doctor had his own experience with mind melding—rather, with a forced meld, courtesy of a parallel reality version of Spock.

(The human mind was so exposed and fragile; it lacked any shield at all. Doctor McCoy couldn’t have fought it off if he tried—and Spock was certain that the doctor had tried, for all the good it would have done him.)

“I’m not going to pry too much right now, Spock, but you seemed… like you were in a lot of pain. Right before you fell, you looked at me like—” Jim cleared his throat, face tightening into something hard at the memory. “—and when I found you later on, you looked—I’m… I’m aware that it’s considered an invasive thing to your culture, and I wanted to know whether they—whether you permitted—God, I’m going about this the wrong way.”

“It’s fine, Jim. Please speak plainly.”

“Spock, did they hurt you?”

(They forced him to feel. The confusion, the grief, the horror, the nervousness, the pleasure, the tenderness, the amusement. All of the emotions from all of those moments, stacked together and crammed against him violently. He could not block them out. He could not suppress them beneath his sea of sand. He could only sit there and take it.)

Spock stared down at his lap, but he did not see it.

He did not know what to do. He did not know what to say. There had been an emphasis to the sentence that was so unmistakable in meaning that even Spock understood the context of it. The captain wasn’t asking about the physical injuries, he was asking about the emotional ones—the telepathic ones. Of all the questions the captain could have asked him, this was the last one he’d ever wanted to answer. He wished, desperately, that Jim had asked him anything else. He wished Jim had interrogated him; demanded answers to any and every question except this one. Because Spock didn’t know how to respond to it, or what response would be best received. What did the captain want to hear him say?

He could tell the truth. He could tell the captain that the Seskille had not only hurt him, but they had done something so criminal and unspeakable to him that he couldn’t even think of the word without feeling sick. He could tell the captain that the Seskille hadn’t cared what he permitted, because they didn’t know what permission was. That they hadn’t cared how much Spock had begged for it to stop, because they didn’t know what begging was either. He could say that he’d never felt so simultaneously degraded, sullied, and shattered as he had when they’d ripped into his mind.

He could tell the truth, get it into the open, and then deal with the consequences.

And Spock suspected that the consequences of it would be severe.

Jim had never taken the feeling of being powerless well; it sharpened him with guilt and persistence. The less control the captain had, the more he raged and fought to get it back. When presented with a problem that had no solution, James Kirk would do everything in his ability to solve it—and if he lacked the ability, he’d never stop trying until he somehow gained it. It was one of the traits Spock had always admired in his captain; the inherent desire to disregard the very concept of no-win scenarios and find a solution anyways. Jim was man driven by the desire to right the wrongs he saw, regardless of his actual capacity to do so.

… And regardless of the cost to himself.

If he told the truth, Jim would dedicate himself to rectifying a problem that Spock knew—knew—could not be fixed. He would look for a solution, so that he might put everything back exactly how it was. He would apply that brilliant, intelligent mind of his to the situation with stubborn insistence, because he simply did not believe for even a second that it could not be done. If he failed, he’d only try harder. If he failed even then, he'd take more extreme measures. When it came to his ship, his crew, there were very, very few things that the captain wouldn’t do for them. And when it came to his friends…

Spock remembered the last time Jim Kirk had done everything in his power to help his closest friend.

(With the strangling hold of the ahn-woon wrapped tight around his neck and keeping him partially suspended—)

(Jim died in front of him again.)

(After experiencing it, over and over again, it should have stopped affecting him. It should have stopped hurting. It did not. He felt it as if it were the first time, each time. Every time.)

(And then Jim was dead once more, body limp and beaten, and he felt it all over again. And again. And again.)

(“Oh, I think you’ll find there is very little I wouldn’t do for you, Spock, ramifications or not. You’re my friend; my best friend. Your life is worth far more to me than a fancy starship or some rank braids ever will.”)

(The gold of Jim’s command uniform was ripped, bloody from the fight—their fight—their fight, because he did this—and his face looked beaten in. Bones broken; skin bruised, but unmistakably Jim Kirk. Jim, who meant more to him than any person ever had or ever would. Jim, who had risked his captaincy and his career to save his friend’s life. Jim who had been killed—murdered—by that very same friend he’d given up everything for.)

(Jim died in front of him again.)

(Humans were so fragile when compared to Vulcan strength…)

“I understand if you don’t want to answer, Spock. I realize that it’s a rather personal question…” Jim said suddenly, hesitantly. “… and a loaded one. Maybe I should rephrase…”

The captain was upset. He was upset and Spock hadn’t even answered him yet. It was more than clear by the tone of his voice that he’d taken the silence as a confirmation of what he feared to be true, and the longer the silence continued, the more his concern grew. It was in his voice already. Worry. Determination.

He remembered that Jim had sounded just as worried and determined in that sandy arena on Vulcan.

(Jim died in front of him again.)

McCoy was watching them very closely. “Maybe you should just leave it alone, Jim…”

(Jim died in front of him again.)

(Jim died in front of him again.)

(He would do anything for this quiet, sleeping human, Spock thought to himself silently. There was nothing he would not do, no lengths he would not go to, to keep this man safe. One tiny human captain, comparatively insignificant in a universe of incalculable numbers of sentient beings—and all of them, every single one combined, was less precious to him than this one was.)

(Jim died in front of him again.)

(Jim had been and always would be his first priority; there was nothing else more imperative or more crucial to him than his captain’s wellbeing...)

Spock took a short, steadying breath and looked up, expression smoothing into one of complete nonchalance.

“On the contrary, doctor,” Spock said very evenly. There was bile in his throat. There was blood under his nails from where he’d finally split the skin of his palms. “It is a valid question. Rephrasing it would be redundant in this case, Captain. I understand what you are asking me.”

“Then you’ll also understand why I’m asking it,” Jim said, and while he was clearly relieved at getting any kind of answer at all, he remained serious and tense. Determined.

“I do. Your concern is appreciated, but unnecessary. The Seskille are a benevolent species.”

“And I’m glad of it, but that’s not what I’m asking, Spock.” The captain refused to budge. “Did they hurt you?”

(Total surrender felt so good—deliriously good—and he hated himself for it.)

“No, Captain,” Spock lied, properly meeting Jim’s eyes straight on. “They did nothing to me that I did not allow. It did not hurt at all.”

Chapter Text

The room went quiet.

Jim Kirk watched Spock intently.

The captain’s expression was neutral, almost careful despite the strength. His previous steely look of determination and concern was only visible in the almost imperceptible narrowing of his eyes. There was a keen, calculated sharpness there; the piercing scrutiny aimed his way heavy enough to feel crushing. Jim watched him as if he’d find something hidden in Spock’s face if he only looked hard enough; stared hard enough.

Spock maintained eye contact, just as silent and still despite the building stress from the captain’s attention. It felt suffocating to be pressed beneath the weight of them, and he had the most irrational, shameful urge to roll over and curl beneath the covers just so that he might escape the sensation. It was a childish desire—although even as a child, he would never have indulged in such impulses—and one that was so undignified and illogical as to be unquestionably rejected. He did not have the option of avoiding this topic; not without succumbing to blatant displays of emotion and to do so was unthinkable. Spock regretted allowing Jim to ask his question. In fact, he regretted waking up at all. It required too much of him; demanded answers he could not give to questions he could not stomach. He should have stayed asleep.

After a moment, the captain let out a long, slow breath. He opened his mouth as if to speak only to visibly hesitate, the words catching at the last moment. He searched Spock’s face again, eyebrows furrowing. Those clever, perceptive hazel eyes evaluated him as if he were looking for something specific. Spock was not sure what he wanted; he was not sure what he was supposed to give him. Whatever it was, the captain apparently hadn’t found it because his expression tightened. He looked torn; a troubled mixture of both reluctance and apprehension, as if he had already established his next course of action but regretted its necessity all the same. It was not overly difficult for Spock to determine the reasoning for why that might be.

His stomach sank.

“It… did not hurt at all…” Jim repeated softly, almost pensively to himself. Spock watched as he mulled that answer over and identified the exact instant the captain came to a decision. Jim wet his lips, took a steadying breath, and leaned in patiently. When he next spoke, his voice was a careful, gentle coaxing. “Spock, just so that I’m clear, are you—you’re telling me that at no point—that what they did wasn’t harmful to you in any way?”

The captain’s tone might have been comforting but for that hard edge of incredulity. Jim did not believe him. More than that, he also clearly suspected that Spock was purposely lying to him. The skepticism and doubt were obvious; audible in that cautiously mild tone, and visible in the uneasy tension around his eyes. The captain was attempting to give him a chance to rephrase, likely in an effort to preserve his dignity. It was a kind offer, but it was also a misguided one; such an option would only hold appeal were there more dignity to be found in disclosing the truth, which was not at all the case.

And there was the verbal emphasis again. Ever since Spock had joined Starfleet, he had desired, often daily and usually numerous times during those days, that humans would simply say what they meant. It would help facilitate clear, concise communication with them, which could only be advantageous to all involved parties. He’d said as much to the captain multiple times throughout their acquaintance, and there had been a noticeable effort to prevent misunderstanding between them ever since. However, in this one specific instance, he found he was fiercely glad that Jim still, on the rare occasion, slipped into the old habit of using a semi-ambiguous tone as a substitute for definitive words. Because Spock did understand what he was being asked, and he had no interest in hearing the reality of it spoken aloud.

“I… did not say that it was not harmful, Captain,” Spock clarified steadily. His fists were clenched so tightly beneath him that he knew the skin had begun to bruise. He felt like vomiting. It was getting uncomfortable to breathe. “You asked if they hurt me, I said that they did not. Based on what I have inferred from your verbal application of inflection to assign a specific meaning to an unstated word, their actions do not align with your insinuation. I did not, however, say that it was not harmful to me. Indeed, it caused a great deal of harm, as Doctor McCoy can certainly attest to.”

“I’m not talking about physical harm, Spock.” Jim rubbed a hand over his eyes and his expression was no longer quite so neutral or patient. His stare, when he leveled Spock with it, was visibly dubious. It felt intrusive, invading, and far-too-knowing. Still, the captain once again offered him the benefit of the doubt and attempted to clear up a misinterpretation that they both knew did not exist. “That you were physically hurt is pretty obvious. Allow me to be fully clear, what I meant was—"

“I understood what you meant the first time, Captain.”

Please do not say it, he wanted to tell the captain; to shout, to plead, to beg. Please leave this alone.

 (Begging didn’t make any difference, he thought distantly. Begging was useless.)

“And your answer remains the same?”

Spock nodded placidly. His tongue was bleeding from where he’d bitten it. There was blood staining the sheets where even McCoy’s preventative measures had failed to stop his nails from breaking the skin of his palms. It was only due to so many years of concealing all visible signs of distress beneath loose robes that he was able to continue meeting the captain’s gaze with a level one of his own.

Jim’s expression flattened and, after another approximately eight-point-two-nine seconds of that sharp observation, his face further closed off to blank and inscrutable. Spock identified it immediately as that same flinty, serious look the captain wore when receiving troubling news or problematic mission commands that he clearly did not agree with. It was a hard, stony appearance that he skillfully applied when he needed to conceal an unfavorable reaction from those who might be watching for one. Spock had seen it before—countless times in fact—but he had never seen it aimed at himself.

“You’re certain?” Jim asked him, his emotions and thoughts hidden securely behind that opaque mask of stoicism. “Truly certain? Because I’m going to be honest, Spock. I’m… not sure I believe that.”

“Facts do not require belief, sir. They simply are, regardless of personal opinion.”

The captain’s lips thinned minutely.

“Spock…” Jim took a rallying breath and leaned in even closer, like one would do to offer a sense comfort or security. It provided him with neither; Spock only felt trapped. The captain’s tone was still soft, but it also carried a forced quality to it now. “I’d like to think I know you pretty well by now, and so I know there’s more to this. On the mountain, just before you fell, you looked at me like—“ Jim stopped and clenched his jaw. His hands flexed against his knees. “… I’m aware you had a headache before that, and it was obviously a bad one; I’m not denying that you were in physical pain already. But I know you, Spock, and the kind of pain you seemed to be in, I’ve never seen that from you before. Right before you went over, the way you looked at me…”

Spock found it very easy to imagine exactly the way he’d looked at Jim Kirk. Like Jim had died. Like his closest friend had been murdered and it was his fault. Like he’d never see him again.

(Jim died in front of him again.)

The captain grimaced as he struggled to find the right words, and he looked at Doctor McCoy as if asking for help. If that were indeed the case, the doctor didn’t seem inclined to provide any assistance. He was focused on reading through a PADD (some distant, detached part of himself hoped they were the quarterly reports, as the doctor had an aggravating habit of being several days late in delivering them) and appeared to pay them no notice at all.

“Look, when the shuttle landed, I didn’t even need the tricorder to locate your position because I could hear you screaming,” Jim said to Spock in a hard tone. “And when I finally did reach you, you were thrashing so violently that I had to use my entire weight to pin you down so you wouldn’t hurt yourself—or hurt yourself even more, I should say. Doctor McCoy tells me that part of your head was practically caved in from being struck numerous times and, as far as I’m aware, you only fell the once. I’m interested in hearing exactly what about the Seskille’s actions demonstrate any kind of benevolence, Mr. Spock, because let me tell you, after holding pieces of your skull together with my bare hands, I’m just not seeing it.”

Jim’s voice didn’t shake, didn’t even so much as quiver—his captain had far too much control over himself to emotionally lapse like that—but it had taken on a particularly taut and strained sound the more he spoke. As captain, Jim had been expected to take immediate command of the situation on Seskilles VII, and he had done so admirably. He had acted both swiftly and rationally, as befitting of an officer of his rank, and without displaying any trace of the panic he surely must have felt. It was only upon hearing the haunted gravity to the captain’s words that Spock realized that the experience had shaken him decidedly more than he had let on in the moment.

Much of his rescue was a blur, but although Spock had not seen himself with his own eyes, he had seen his condition through Jim’s, and that perspective had been in perfect focus. To both Jim’s mind and his own, he’d looked dead already; lips purple, skin mottled, hair matted, face covered in blood, and eyes bruised. It had made for an alarming sight; he’d been a broken, battered shell of himself. Jim had already been assured by McCoy that Spock would survive by then, and so his mind had been more-or-less settled with no trace of immediate panic. While Vulcans often lacked a rich imagination, he found he did not require one to accurately picture the captain’s initial reaction at seeing him. Spock knew that feeling intimately; he had also seen his best friend’s beaten, shattered body.

(Jim dangled heavily from his grip, body limp and lifeless.)

(Jim died in front of him again.)

Spock felt an icy wash of dread creep through his veins. 

The captain didn’t believe him. Jim didn’t believe him.

Spock had never been a proficient liar. As a Vulcan, it was not a behavior he routinely or readily engaged in. Certainly never enough to become practiced at it. He preferred concrete, unbiased honesty. He had been confronted on more than one occasion about his propensity to state objective truth with little regard for how it would be received by his human crewmates. He had always responded to those criticisms the same way: by declining to be dishonest for the sake of someone’s emotional response. Lying was considered a shameful, contemptable behavior to his people, and even the thought of giving voice to them left a sour taste in his mouth. It was dishonorable, and he never taken any pleasure in the act no matter how necessary it might have been in times past.

He had lied now, multiple times even, and he had done so for the sake of someone’s emotional response.

Jim still didn’t believe him, of course, and Spock knew he was right not to. The evidence was damning, especially taking into consideration that it did not even come close to covering the true extent of the damage the Seskille had caused him. Jim might not have understood the magnitude of it, but he knew something was wrong, that the answers did not fit the evidence, and that Spock was lying to him.

(“What else would you expect from a simpering, devil eared freak—”)

Spock’s jaw clenched, teeth gritting. There was the taste of blood in his mouth and in his throat from his tongue, and it soured his stomach as he swallowed. The rising urge to vomit, or to hide, or—to his appalled disgust—to begin crying was nearly unbearable. He tried to go into his mind, to bury it down as he did everything else, but the sand in his vast, ravaged desert slipped through his grasp like water and spilled away from him. The emotional impulses were left baking in the heat of the sun, exposed and out of his control.

(This was not befitting a Vulcan. Yet apparently, he was not and could never truly be Vulcan. Spock hated himself in that moment. He hated himself.)

Some small part of him, a fragment, wanted to simply tell Jim the truth of the matter. To confess everything that had happened and deal with the resulting emotional fallout, whatever that might involve. And yet, the words would not emerge. He could not make himself say what Jim wanted to hear. Why could the captain not simply accept these answers? Why could he not stop prying? Jim did not understand what it was he was asking Spock—not really. He was asking for honesty in order to help, but what would happen instead, Spock knew, was that the captain would finally realize just how out of control his friend had truly become. All those ugly, shameful parts of himself that he kept concealed would be forced on display and, after the truth of them came out, the captain would not want him.

(You belong in the circus, Spock, not a starship!)

He tried to find a response that might, in even some small way, put an end to the questions. His voice failed twice when he went to speak, and he had to clear his throat.

“Captain… I…” Spock steadied himself as best he could, tensing his muscles to prevent himself from trembling. It hurt to do so; his body had not yet fully healed, and the pain was a sharp reminder. “—I’ll admit to there being a certain degree of… discomfort. As you say, the headache was painful. However, it was also caused by my own failure to realize that the Seskille were attempting to speak to me. After I determined the source, I tried to communicate with them in a way they would understand. The physical display you witnessed was unfortunate and, although I have little memory of it, sir, I do not doubt it was upsetting to see. The intensity of the Collective was an overwhelming experience and observing their mindscape a uniquely disorienting one. It resulted in numerous reactions that likely appeared alarming from an outside perspective. Nevertheless, while the experience was uncomfortable to me, it does not fit with what you are implying. I can assure you that I consented to their presence in my mind, Jim; I gave my explicit permission for them to enter it, and the act of them doing so did not hurt me.”

(It was painful, but only because it felt so good. There was the sensation of pure relief, like a cool compress against an injury, as he stopped resisting against them.)

(Assault had never felt so good …)

What Spock said was not a lie. It was also not the truth. The captain appeared to know it too, but he only leaned in further. This time, his tone was frustrated.

“You looked a far cry from just uncomfortable! You looked like you were being tortured! You were screaming like you were being tortured!”

“Captain, they did not intend to do—”

“I don’t care what they intended to do, Spock, I care about what they did! Intentions don’t mean anything! You almost died because of them!”

Spock stiffened, muscles locking up, and that cold pit in his stomach seemed to consume him. There was the distinct choking feeling of suffocating, despite all evidence to the contrary. He forced himself to breathe in, and even managed to do so steadily, but it was as if a vice had been latched around his lungs, constricting tighter and tighter.  

Intentions don’t mean anything.

He had not intended to violate Jim’s mind, but he had. He had not intended to violate Doctor McCoy’s mind, but he had. He had not intended to lose control, to hurt Jim once, twice, or even three times over, but he had. He had not intended to murder his captain, but he—

(Jim died in front of him again.)

“Alright, that’s enough,” Doctor McCoy said to the ringing silence, his tone even and composed. He didn’t look up from the PADD in his hands, as if both they and the conversation were a distraction to his work. “Jim, get out.”

“What?” the captain asked, startled, as if he had forgotten McCoy was in the room. He would not have been the only one; Spock had as well. The lapse of awareness in his own surroundings was unacceptable. “Get out?”

“Yes. Get out.” McCoy finally looked up, expression one of casual nonchalance. “Out of my sickbay,” he clarified after a short pause, languidly cocking his head towards the sickbay doors. “As in now.”

The gratitude he felt for Doctor McCoy in that moment was dizzying in its intensity. The captain appeared confused, eyes flicking between them as if Spock had somehow asked the doctor to intercede on his behalf without him catching it. The frustration in his expression began to fade, replaced swiftly by one of remorse as he realized exactly why he might be getting kicked out.

“Is this because—”

“It’s because I said so, that’s why. And because Spock needs to rest, and because you’re upsetting him, and most of all, because I’m ordering you out.”

Jim stood slowly, hesitant to actually follow the command despite McCoy’s instructions superseding his own when it came to matters of medicine. He looked more than a little hurt. It was only a dent to his pride, no doubt, because Spock knew his captain well enough to know that he did have a substantial ego, but the sight of that visible pain in his eyes, no matter how small or minute, felt like a physical ache in his chest. Spock had not been the one to order his captain away, but he had wanted to do so more than once. The near-tangible relief he’d felt at McCoy’s intervention turned sour.

The conversation was not over. This round of questioning had been put to a stop, certainly, but there would be more like it. He would no longer have the excuse of injury to fall back on to escape it, and McCoy would not be able to come to his rescue a second time. His orders only overrode the captain’s while Spock remained his patient; once he left the safety of sickbay, there would be very little the doctor could do to prevent further discussion.

And… Jim still did not believe him. He knew his captain. He knew that Jim would only dwell on the matter; perpetuating and exacerbating it until he drove himself to obsession. Spock had achieved what he had most wished to avoid. His ineptitude in dishonesty had only validated the captain’s worry that there was a problem, and worse, that it was one Spock did not wish him to know about. It was certain now that Jim would fixate on discovering a solution to whatever scenario he’d undoubtedly already catastrophized in his mind.

Spock could not allow the captain to leave under that impression.

“Jim,” Spock began, attempting to keep his voice as blank as he hoped his expression was. The constricting sensation around his chest was making it difficult to speak; he felt as if each word were choking him. “I am not upset; Doctor McCoy is incorrect. As a Vulcan, such emotions are not—"

“—No, I know. It’s okay, Spock. I should be getting to the bridge anyways, and he’s right, you do need to rest. I’ll come back later, alright? I’ll even bring a chessboard with me,” Jim said to him with a weak smile, as if he wasn’t clearly reluctant to leave. He had rarely been denied sickbay access when it came to Spock, and it was undoubtedly an unnerving experience for him. If anything, Jim had always been encouraged to be at Spock’s bedside as much as he could, especially as his presence was often what kept Spock in bed at all. “Don’t think I’ve forgotten about your winning streak lately, Mr. Spock. I’ll confess to it now: I’m going to take full advantage of your head injury to try to break it.”

Spock did not smile back. He felt all at once both too tired and too agitated, a strange mixture of exhaustion and nervous energy. Jim wouldn’t be able to stare at him anymore, or ask questions, or look at him with that fond, undeserved warmth. The relief was staggering, but it did not ease the tension he felt. He would have thought he’d relax more the further Jim moved away from him, but that was not the case. Instead, there was the painful sensation of something beginning to strain in him, as if it had been winding very, very tightly for some time and only now had become critical.

“Sounds like a real party.” McCoy didn’t smile either, but neither did he seem annoyed. He merely looked calm. “Now go away.”

“I’m going, I’m going. Sleep well, Spock, I hope you feel better.”

The instant the doors slid closed behind the captain, that stress in him finally snapped.

Something seemed to crack; a heaviness rupturing open inside his chest like a dam bursting. It flooded through him in an icy, freezing chill, washing out all the emotions he’d been shoving back during the conversation. They battered and slammed into every reach of his mind, jolting him. A great, ugly, desperate feeling swept over him in a wave, already beginning to drown him as he tried to surface from it—but it tumbled him, leaving him only breathless and spinning.

There was a sound in the air, one he could not place. Spock tried to focus on it through the sudden ringing in his ears, but found it was difficult to focus on anything but the sinking, plunging rush in his chest, his head, his limbs…

He'd been pulled away from himself; dragged out to sea and left adrift far from the shore. When had the room become so distant? Spock tried to blink, but blackness continued to tunnel his vision and closing his eyes only made it worse. There was the nauseating awareness of the room spinning. His chest hurt, as if his ribs had broken again. His ankle throbbed. His head felt split open, spilling out. Perhaps that was what was drowning him, because he could not breathe—

“Spock?”

Spock brought a hand up, pressing it firmly to where he knew his skull had been fractured. It must have done so again, as he could think of no other reason for why it might be hurting. He could not tell if there was blood; his fingers did not feel wet, but they also felt oddly numb. Not frozen, but like he had not moved them in some time and they had fallen asleep. Tingling, fuzzy jitters; static beneath his skin. He wished the feeling would stop. He wished everything would stop.

(This vague remnant of Spock tried to make it stop. It did not. He begged for the memory to stop, because there would be no coming back from this. Not this! Not after so many times over. It did not. He pleaded and screamed for it to end. Please end this! It did not.)

(Begging didn ’t make any difference, he thought distantly. Begging was useless.)

(They did not understand what begging was.)

A strange feeling pressed against him, and for a moment, he could not make any sense of it. But then the shock of coldcoldcold registered on the highly sensitive tip of his left ear. Spock jolted, flinching away from the chill with a shudder of discomfort. The freezing sensation on his skin was an unpleasant sting, but it was also one that his mind grasped at like a buoy on the sea. The room swam was back to him, or was it he that had somehow returned back in the room? Spock did not remember when he’d left it to begin with.

He stared blankly at the shapes of his legs beneath the blankets. They were moving, vibrating and twitching enough to be visible through the layers of fabric. No… not vibrating, shaking. He was shaking; faintly trembling from head to toe. The alarms of the panels above his bed were shrilling loudly, he realized, and they hurt to hear. It was only after the cold object chased his retreat and pressed against his ear again that they finally began to slow and then silence.

Spock blinked, looking up uncomprehendingly at the doctor.

“Back with me?”

“Doctor?” Spock asked, pulling his head away from the cold item—a small medical icepack. He looked at it, but he did not understand it. His head felt curiously… empty. Like it had been dealt a stunning blow and was simply slipping away from him. His surroundings felt disconnected and muted. He was not drowning any longer, but now was floating instead. He wished he would do neither; he wanted only to lay down and go back to sleep.

“There you are. Here, hold this for me.” Doctor McCoy gently eased one of his hands away from his head and slipped the icepack into his palm. Gloved fingers—gloved, Spock noticed faintly; they were safe, no skin contact—wrapped securely around his own to keep the pack in his grip. His hands were still tingling, his own hold oddly slack; he’d have dropped it without McCoy’s assistance. The cold crept into his skin, irritating the extremely delicate psionic points in his fingertips, but his mind was starting to catch up now, and Spock rather thought that might be the point of the icepack at all. A distraction. A grounding focus, just as his fingernails had been.

He… did not know what happened. There was a series of events that he could put in logical order, ones that had taken place over the span of mere moments, but the reality of them felt vague, as if he had watched them happen to someone else. It was unsettling; Spock had always prided himself on his perfect recall. It seemed that was somehow failing him as well but, of course, not towards what he would most like to forget.

“I didn’t realize you were having anxiety attacks, Mr. Spock. See, that’s the sort of thing you tell your doctor.”

Spock raised a brow, exhausted.

“I do not have them. I was… merely contemplating.” His fingers unclenched from his palms slowly, and it was only now that he became aware of the pain from the small cuts. The stiff, painful knot in his stomach unclenched itself slowly, like a serpent uncoiling from a protective ball.

“Spock,” the doctor began calmly, still speaking in that neutral, professional voice, “you’ve been unresponsive for almost five minutes. The moment Jim left, you just stopped reacting and shut down; wouldn’t talk or move or do anything.” McCoy offered him a small, reassuring smile. “Don’t worry; you didn’t do anything too bad; nothing you’d call outwardly emotional. You just went all vacant, like you were asleep with your eyes open. The panels gave you away, though; your vitals went skyrocketing. Consider yourself lucky I didn’t sedate you.”

Spock said nothing, focusing his attention safely back on the covers. He felt drained; the distant, floating sensation starting to ebb the longer he held the icepack in his hands. His body was throbbing and aching, like it might have done after a fight (Humans were so fragile when compared to Vulcan strength). His head hurt. His throat was dry. His ribs felt like they were broken again, because it hurt to take a breath. Each one squeezed at his lungs. Spock knew, logically, that they were fine. That his head was fine, that his body was fine. Logically knowing that did not erase the pain, although it should have. Once, only days prior, he’d have been able to simply push it aside.

He immediately rejected the notion that he’d had an anxiety attack—he’d not had an attack of any kind, one motivated by anxiety or otherwise. While he knew he was a poor example of one, he was still a Vulcan; such an emotional extreme was not possible for him. There was nothing to be anxious about, in any case. The danger was gone, his mind was his own, and his body was mending acceptably. There was nothing wrong, and yet his heart was still pulsing so rapidly that hurt. His breathing still hitched with each inhale and wavered with each breath out. His body still trembled; a faint, almost unnoticeable shake from head to toe.

There was nothing wrong. Surely if he were inclined to such episodes, they would have occurred during those moments of great stress instead of days after. Yet something had happened. He had not felt like this before; not when he’d been on the planet, and not during previous times of uncertainty. He did not remember even feeling this way after he’d returned from Vulcan. Much of those first few days were a kind of a blur to his normally eidetic memory, but he could not recall his hands going numb; in fact, he distinctly remembered being intensely aware of his hands at all times, to the point of near distraction.

There was nothing wrong now.

Finally, Spock cleared his throat and offered the icepack back.

“I am fine, Doctor,” Spock said. “I am simply fatigued. Clearly, I require further rest to return to optimal levels.”

The doctor ignored him and, to Spock’s increased discomfort, took a seat on the side of the bed, rather than returning to the chair he’d been occupying. He took the icepack, but he also captured Spock’s hands in between his own—Spock tried to jerk them back, but McCoy held firm. Gloves, he remembered. The doctor’s hands were gloved; safe. No skin-to-skin contact. The mild tremoring in his hands didn’t seem to faze McCoy, but the cuts he discovered after turning them palm up most certainly did. The doctor tsked, reaching to the tray for an antiseptic swab.

“Eyes up here, Spock. I need you to listen to me,” Doctor McCoy told him as he began to gently clean the injuries, his voice serious. It was as professional as Spock had ever heard him. He steeled himself and raised his eyes, meeting McCoy’s own blue ones as stoically as he could. The doctor was frowning at him, but it wasn’t one of his exaggerated expressions of irritation or outrage. No, it was a careful, inscrutable frown that Spock recalled seeing only a few times before—the last being during the later stages of his Pon Farr, before his friends knew what was wrong with him.

( “Get your hands off of him, Spock!”)

McCoy searched his face just as intently as Jim had, but he seemed to be looking for something entirely different. Whatever that was, he gave no indication whether he found it or not. He didn’t seem disappointed, but neither did he seem relieved.

“Let me start by saying that I know you’re not being honest, Spock. No—” the doctor raised a halting hand as Spock opened his mouth to protest the accusation. “—no, hold on and let me talk. I’m not interested in hearing excuses; I just want you to listen. I may not know why you’re hiding it, or what your logic is for doing so, but I know you’re not being honest with us. You know it, I know it, and Jim knows it too. Thing is, I’m not going to demand answers from you—not right now, at least. Maybe not even at all. You wanna know why that is?”

Spock only stared, but McCoy seem unfazed by the silence and only continued.

“It’s because I respect you, Spock. If Jim’s heartfelt pleading didn’t do anything, I’m not likely to have better luck with my own. Whatever it is that you’re keeping from us? At the end of the day, you’ll either tell us or you won’t. It’s really that simple. You’ll either trust us to help you through whatever it is, or you won’t. Jim and I can’t make that decision for you, and we probably can’t do anything to change your mind about it either, no matter how many times we ask.”

A strange warmth bloomed in his chest, even as the cold pit of his stomach continued to gnaw at him. The mix of sensations felt unpleasant, and he was not certain which to focus on more. Humiliation at being caught, relief at not being questioned about it, dismay at the conversation, or the low burst of affection for the doctor. It felt like whiplash to feel so much at once.

“And listen, I know I may not show it all the time—and I know we argue and bicker and fight, because you’re goddamn aggravating and you make me wanna rip my hair out—but I do care, Spock. I’m here if you need to talk about anything, no matter what that anything might be. If you decide that you trust us, I’ll be here to listen and help however I can. That’s the only question I’m gonna ask, Spock: that you know you can come talk to me.”

“That was not a question, Doctor,” Spock said, and his voice sounded hoarse, as if his throat were being constricted.

Doctor McCoy’s eyes narrowed at him, lips thinning immediately.

“See? Aggravating. Answer the non-question, then.”

Spock looked at the doctor; at the kind, worried eyes watching him from behind a faux-irritated expression. It had never been a matter of trust that prevented him from speaking up about what had happened. Rather, it was not a matter of trusting Doctor McCoy or Jim; on the contrary, he trusted them far more than he trusted himself. They would be able to handle the knowledge, respond appropriately, and do their best to help him through it. Both the captain and doctor would do everything in their power to be there for him, because they were his friends. They cared about him.

And he had violated their minds.

(Jim had touched his hand, his fingers, and he had been in his captain ’s head, as seamlessly as slipping into a body of warm water.)

(Humans were so fragile when compared to Vulcan strength.)

(Intentions don’t mean anything.)

“I am aware,” Spock said at last, but he could no longer hold the man’s gaze and let his eyes drift firmly towards the motion of antiseptic swabs on the stinging cuts in his palm. The blood had been cleaned away, revealing skin that was already green with bruising. The touch had been so delicate and gentle that he had scarcely noticed it, and for not the first time, he felt a simmering fondness. “Thank you, Doctor. You… are a good friend.”

That appeared to make the doctor only more worried, rather than less.

“I know I am, and you just keep remembering that as I say this next bit,” McCoy said dryly, giving Spock’s hands a diligent final inspection. They had stopped shaking sometime during the process and now lay relaxed in his friend’s firm grip. It was a relieving feeling. “I said I’m not going to harass you for answers, and I mean that—but at the same time, Spock, I’m not going to have a repeat of last time. I’m not going to watch you waste away right in front of me, understand? If it comes right down to it, I respect your life more than I respect your privacy. If this whatever starts to eat you up, I’m going to step in however I’ve got to, got it?” 

That was… less relieving.

“I understand, Doctor.”

Spock understood that he would have to get very, very good at pretending.

“Good,” McCoy nodded decisively, and then shifted so he was sitting back in his chair. That, apparently, was that. Matter taken care of. “Now, I want you to get some sleep, Spock. You’re clearly exhausted and you need some actual rest, not whatever you were doing before. And if you can manage it, your Vulcan Thing would do just fine right about now.”

Spock raised a tired brow, the fatigue aching at him already. The return to normalcy with the doctor’s sniping was soothing in a way he couldn’t describe. The routine arguing had an oddly calming effect, and it was becoming difficult to keep his eyes open.

“… Vulcan thing?” he asked, tugging his hands away from McCoy’s grasp and securing them once more beneath the covers. The doctor let him this time.

“Your thing—your weird Vulcan healing trance thing. Get to it, Commander, so I can get you out of my sickbay and make both our lives easier. I care about you, Spock, make no mistake about that—but I’m sick of seeing you.”

Spock shifted to lay back in bed, allowing the exhaustion to finally take hold… before realizing that McCoy had no intentions on leaving his bedside.

“… You may return to your duties, Doctor.”

“You are my duty. If you think for even a second that I’m going to leave you unattended to escape the minute my back is turned, you’ve got another thing coming. I’m gonna sit right here until you’re knocked out, and then I’m going to have you under guard. And why aren’t you asleep already? Shut up and close your eyes.”

With an ache of limbs, Spock turned onto his side so that his back was facing the doctor. In truth, it was reassuring to have McCoy at his side. He trusted the doctor to be there, at least in a professional capacity, and he was the only medical professional that Spock could make that claim for. The doctor had been a constant presence in his life, for better or worse, since he’d accepted the Chief Medical Officer position. He was simply always there, and Spock had come to rely on that unwavering support more than he would ever admit aloud. Few things could truly ruffle McCoy to any significant degree. Despite all his barking and snarling, Spock had the occasional thought that the doctor was possibly the strongest of them all. Certainly, he was likely the most resilient; he had proven his ability to efficiently handle conditions that would make other men blanch, time and time again. There were few individuals, perhaps only one other, who he held in such high regard. When it came to any medical concerns, Spock could trust him to do his job to the highest possible standard, and there was a consistent, steady comfort in that.

But this was not strictly a medical problem. The ravaged, ripped, churned sands of his mental desert were not an issue that could be solved by way of bandage or hypospray. This wasn’t something that the doctor, even with all his vast knowledge and skill, could heal for him. The problem wasn’t medical, or physical, or even entirely mental. The problem was Spock.

(They were right about him: about his inability to control himself, his illogical reactions, his lack of worth, his weakness, all of it.)

Closing his eyes, Spock tried to let his mind drift. A healing trance should not have been difficult to slip into; he had been trained in the technique since childhood. It required concentration and patience to achieve, but it was more-or-less a simple process. He would split his mind into the various components of himself and control his body’s response to injury. He could force his muscles to mend, his bones to knit together, and his blood to fight infection. He could repair damage at the cellular level, if he allowed enough focus.

But first, he had to meditate.

Centering himself, he plunged into the destruction of his mind.

There were not words to describe it. Overwhelming was the closest equivalency he could find. Horrifying was another.

How did one even begin to sort through the desolate, ravaged lands he found himself in? Even as he bent to lift a handful of sand, it spilled from his fingers like water. He could not bury anything in this unfamiliar place. The memories he’d already covered were burning in the heat, exposed and decaying on the cratered surface. Every emotion, every thought, every feeling—all of it bleaching by the sun overhead. Everything was out of order; he did not recognize it as his mind any longer. It was simply a foreign, war-torn land; just another barren and lifeless place that could not sustain habitation.

They had taken this from him too.

(He felt suffocated here, in this strange place between awareness and memory. He could not breathe. He did not have lungs. He did not have a body. He could not explain this feeling to them, because they did not have a word for it. They did not have words like he did.)

Whatever this place had once been, it could not be returned to that state. There was no rebuilding his old barriers because those walls had crumbled; now just as indistinguishable to him as the sand was. There was no longer any solid foundation from which to build up from. Each step felt precarious and pitted to him, as if he would stumble and fall with one mistake. He did not know how to fix this. He did not think it could be fixed.

The doctor wanted him to open up to them, but this was not a problem that could be solved. Jim could do nothing, although he would burn himself out trying. McCoy could do nothing, although he’d refuse to give up. They wanted his honesty, but honesty would solve nothing. It would fix nothing. It would do nothing. To be honest with them would only result in the display of just how unstable he was. Despite the common saying, pain shared was not, in fact, pain halved. It was just pain that had been needlessly spread to others who would have otherwise been spared it.

Spock could spare them it, and he would. There was nothing else he could do but that. There was no apologizing for the gross invasion of their minds by himself, and he certainly did not deserve their forgiveness. His only option was to do his best to prevent any further damage, both emotionally and mentally. He could do that much for them, little though it was.

He knew that he needed to salvage this; Jim was now on the scent, and he would not rest until he knew what was wrong. The pitiful attempt at lying had only made the situation worse, and so he knew better than to attempt it in the same way again. Jim could spin truth as he pleased, and he was good at it, but Spock had never taken to the practice in the same way. It felt vile to do so; a sick, sour, unpleasant kind of taste in his throat and on his tongue when he let lie after lie drip from his lips. He could not repeat the same miscalculation twice, or at least not in the same way.

No, he needed to get control of himself. That was, he thought, the only way to fix this. Without control, he would continue to spiral further away from himself.

Jim suspected him already; his questions had been pointed and specific. Objectively, what had happened to him was not terrible; he had merged with others before. The mother Horta that had terrorized the mines of Janus VI had been one such creature, and that meld had arguably been worse on him. She had been in a great deal of pain at the time, both physically from her wounds, and emotionally from the innumerable deaths of her children. He had managed it then, and he could manage this now. The only remarkable difference between the two scenarios was that the Seskille had been far more… personal in their approach. That was manageable too, if he could only divorce himself from the resulting mess of emotion.

It should have been easy to do so.

It was not.

He had to get control of himself. There was no other choice; he could not go on as he had been. He could not afford to display such unbefitting behavior. It was deplorable, shameful, and beneath him. Emotions such as these—fear, worry, panic, horror, guilt—would only swallow him down that little bit more. Shred those last fragments of self-control he still had until they all spilled out. (And Spock knew what happened when he lost control.)

He remembered the last time he’d allowed emotion to dictate his actions in such a way. He remembered the last time he’d been honest with Jim and Doctor McCoy about his emotions.

(Jim dangled heavily from his grip, body limp and lifeless, and everything in Spock froze.)

( “Get your hands off of him, Spock!”)

(Jim died in front of him again.)

Horror surged, and he fought to push it back, push it away.

Control.

Control, control, control.

Taking a deep breath, he sat on the burning sand. He could not fix this. The land was too damaged and too ravaged to repair. There was nothing he could do but try to pretend that it did not exist; that it did not hurt him to see it. He could not fix his mind, but he could fix his body, as McCoy had suggested. He could heal and then leave sickbay, return to the life he’d worked so hard to build for himself.

That life had James Kirk, it had Leonard McCoy, and he liked it. If Spock were inclined towards the emotional expression, he might have even said that he loved it. It was his home, the only one he’d ever truly found, and he would not allow anything to jeopardize that. He’d nearly lost it with previous actions, multiple of them, and there had to exist some kind of limit he was approaching, if not already toeing at. The captain’s tolerance for disruption to his life could only extend so far, and Spock had crossed too many lines already. The mess on Vulcan was but one incident in a dangerously long line of them. That Jim had given him yet another chance had been more than he deserved, and Spock had the sinking feeling that he would be offered no further ones. He was pragmatic, his captain. It would only be logical; at some point, Jim would understand that his friendship with Spock caused too many problems and end it.

And… Spock did not think he could survive long without that friendship. He did not think he would want to.

(Live Long and Prosper, T'Pau had said to him. Spock had not intended to do either.)

He would heal his body, ignore the damage to his mind, and he would go on as normal. Jim deserved that much. He deserved to have a friend who was not a constant source of frustration. Jim was satisfied with their current status quo, as was Spock, and to ruin it was unthinkable.

Spock would simply have to get it together, as the human phrasing went. He would simply have to do better, by way of pretending or otherwise. He had done it before. He had done it as a child, acting as if the comments of his peers had no effect on him. He’d done so again after he’d joined Starfleet, when the culture shock had been almost unbearable and all he’d wanted to do was go back to a home he didn’t have anymore. It had worked in the immediate aftermath of the mess on Vulcan, when Jim and McCoy had both proceeded as if nothing had happened, and that Spock hadn’t just murdered his captain in cold blood. Spock had feigned normalcy then, and eventually life had returned to normal. He would do so again now.

Control.

Focus. Breathe…

Control.

Spock reached deep inside himself, and he dissolved.

He was made of his own nerves, his own blood, his own bone. His thoughts were neurons firing through his body, and he raced through himself alongside them. He tunneled through veins, through marrow, through arteries. He became every part of his physical form; saw and felt and was the injured, broken elements. He was not Spock any longer, but a series of bruises and tissues and cells.

The doctor had done well, one part of the whole thought. The healing was not complete, but it was as close as medical equipment could manage. Humans would be forced to finish the process slowly and over a lengthy period of time. But he was not human, he was many fragments of a Vulcan. One component of himself was his brain; swollen and inflamed from the injury. He focused on this part; of the part of him that was his skull, of the tissues there, of the blood vessels in the section of him that was the skin of his head.

All the elements of himself scattered to the injuries. He knitted them together, stitching each strand and merging them into one unbroken whole—

(It was blending together. Spock. The Seskille. It was all blending together, and he could not make sense of it any longer. There was no separation. No single entity.)

No…

The entirety of him jolted, and all the shards of himself flinched as if struck.

He could not breathe. He was his chest, but it would not draw air. He was his throat, his trachea, the lobes of his lungs, the expansion of his ribs, but they were suffocating. He could not fill them. Breathe, he needed to breathe…

Oxygen flooded him slowly, some fragments expanding as they inhaled, and the tight sensation slowly faded from the many parts of himself. Breathe. Control. Focus…

Control, control, control.

He was his skull, his brain, his blood vessels, his nerves. He moved through the physical form, pulling parts together and releasing the tension he found there. Bruising behind the parts of him that were his ears, easing the swelling from the parts of him that were his frontal lobe. He tugged and pulled and soothed and loosened the various mechanisms of the one known as Spock, allowing some to come together and others to drift further apart…

(This vague remnant of Spock tried to make it stop. It did not. He begged for the memory to stop, because there would be no coming back from this. Not this! Not after so many times over. It did not. He pleaded and screamed for it to end. Please end this! It did not.)

(Begging didn’t make any difference, he thought distantly. Begging was useless.)

(They did not understand what begging was.)

All the innumerable splinters of himself froze—(body limp and lifeless, and everything in Spock froze)—and he became aware that he was Spock. He was Spock, but he was trapped. Trapped in his body, as he’d once been trapped in his mind. He battered at his conscious to wake up, but he could find no exit and he could not get out. The Seskille hadn’t let him out either; he’d been unable to make them. They didn’t have the words to understand what he’d been asking. They didn’t know what words were.

Jim died in front of him again…

Something unpleasant, sick, and churning filled his gut, his chest, his throat; he didn’t breathe, he didn’t move, he just… stared. There was pressure in his eyes, vision blurring and stinging with the onset of tears, but he didn’t cry—couldn’t cry—he could only stand there and look and look and look and not truly see, not fully understand…

No!

No, he needed to calm down. Control. This was a trance. He’d gone into a healing trance, and this was normal. When submerging so deeply into his biological state, it was difficult to exit it without outside interference. It was part of the process; his body would show signs of it externally and he’d be woken up. This level of fear was unacceptable; he was exhibiting behavior that was beneath him…

(He felt suffocated here, in this strange place between awareness and memory. He could not breathe. He did not have lungs. He did not have a body. He could not explain this feeling to them, because they did not have a word for it. They did not have words like he did.)

(Was this what bacteria felt like when examined beneath a microscope? Did those infinitesimally small creatures, existing in a way so foreign to his own lived experience, feel as gutted and abused as he did now?)

Spock shoved hard at the confinement, feeling increasingly sick as he battered at the boundaries of his own mind, at his own body, to try to free himself. Logic was drowned by sheer panic. Trapped—he was trapped. He needed out. Please, he wanted to beg. Please…

But begging was useless.

They didn’t understand what begging was. His—

—skin was cool to the touch, and his pulse remained consistent. Maybe a touch elevated, but that was to be expected with his level of injuries. There was no external sign of medical distress; nothing that would have set the alarms off, and they had only blared out for a few seconds. There didn’t seem to be anything wrong, but it was best practice to keep a close eye on him anyways.

Mr. Spock looked noticeably better tonight; the bruising around his eyes and behind the slim points of his ears had faded. He held himself differently as he slept now, posture less tense than it had previously been. His expression, always so serious, looked peaceful, calm. It was nice to see him this relaxed; he usually carried himself with such a severe air about him and it had always made her feel a little intimidated. It was only in the small, undisturbed moments like this that he looked so carefree.

His vitals spiked again. She frowned, glancing between her patient and the panels above his bed. Perhaps not so undisturbed after all; that was the second time they had jumped like that, and she didn’t like the look of it at all. The last thing they needed was another medical emergency; he’d gone through more than enough of them already.

She’d only heard bits and pieces of what had happened down there, but it was enough to put together a rough picture. She’d helped transfer the stretcher from the shuttle bay to medical, and even the memory still horrified her. Mr. Spock had looked dead. His skin had been so pale that it had taken on a purple hue rather than its usual hint of green. There’d been blood everywhere; so much so that she’d barely been able to see his face through it. And when she had, only years of training kept her hands in motion while the rest of her had gone still from shock. She had been able to see his brain through the matted, frozen strands of his hair. His brain!

She’d held off on crying until shift was over, but it had been a near thing. The surgery had been a success with M’Benga and McCoy leading it while she and Nurse Slater assisted. Livia hadn’t taken it all that much better; they’d commiserated about it the next day. Livia had previously worked in the labs, and she liked Spock; all of the Science Department did, they practically idolized him! Seeing him like that had been terrible. The Enterprise had its fair share of gruesome injuries, but neither of them had seen many of this extreme. As morbid as the thought was, if any other crew member had suffered a head injury like that, it would have been an autopsy she assisted with, not a surgery.

For not the first time, she felt extremely thankful that Mr. Spock was the way he was. He’d be okay and thank god for that. It was… perhaps bittersweet that he was on the mend, although she’d never, ever admit such a thing aloud. She felt guilty for even thinking it. He’d be back on the bridge soon, and she wouldn’t see him unless he stopped by to visit McCoy with the captain. This was likely her last few stolen minutes with him, and she was not upset about it so much as a bit wistful.

Spock’s hand was cool against her own; no sign of frostbite left in the long fingers. It’d been a close call with that too; the severity had required extra attention to ensure that there were no complications. Vulcan hands were said to be extremely sensitive, weren’t they? She couldn’t imagine how much it had hurt to have them freeze like that…

The vitals spiked again, and she focused her attention on them with a narrow gaze. But before she could get a detailed readout, they suddenly skyrocketed with a blaring screeeeech that had her jumping from her chair and dropping Mr. Spock’s hand to—

The connection shattered, and Spock slammed back into himself.

(The human mind was so exposed and fragile; it lacked any shield at all.)

He jolted awake to the screaming of alarms and rising stomach acid in his throat.

The room spun in a nauseating blur; colors and objects and textures all mixing and merging together in a confusing and dizzying display that he could not make sense of. His mind spiraled through a tangled mess of emotions and sights and sounds that he had not felt with his own body, seen with his own eyes, or heard with his own ears. There was a sound through the shrilling, as if someone was speaking to him. He couldn’t understand them, not through the maelstrom of shock that writhed through him.

There was still the awful, suffocating sensation of between trapped in himself, but now it had combined with that cold, chilling realization that he hadn’t truly been in himself at all. He had been fighting the trance, and then he had been at his bedside, holding his own hand, and he had not been him anymore.

“Mr. Spock, sir—!"

No. He couldn’t do this. He couldn’t…

That was enough.

Control. Breathe. Focus…

Enough.

He needed to get out.

A weight was pressing him down, and a voice was loud in his ears as it kept repeating the same thing, over and over again—(Again and again, they violated his mind, his memories, his control.)—but he could not make out what they were saying. Did he even have ears? If he did, did they even belong to him, or had he stolen those too? Was he himself anymore?

Trapped. He was trapped. Hands pressing against his body, hands pressing into his mind; he had nothing left, because they’d taken everything already. He couldn’t breathe, he couldn’t move; he was being pressed beneath the weight of it all. Of them. The Seskille…

(Yet he needed to make them understand that they had to stop—please stop this, I beg you—because this was killing him.)

(Begging didn ’t make any difference, he thought distantly. Begging was useless.)

Panic flooded him like a surge, rising so thick in his throat that it felt choking. The colors of sickbay were a haze around him… but he couldn’t focus through them because he wasn’t there anymore. He was in the mindscape, the Collective pinning him beneath their overwhelming presence and forcing their way into his head. Again, and again, and again. It hurt.

The hands holding against his shoulders to try to keep him down were useless (—when compared to Vulcan strength) and he was able to push them off easily. Spock lurched out of the bed and staggered to his feet in a tumble of blankets and uncoordinated limbs. At once, he could tell it had been a mistake to do so; the room was spinning so badly that he had to clench his eyes closed and breathe sharply through his nose to fight off the rising urge to vomit. The pressure in his mind was nearly blinding. He had to leave. He had to leave, because this room was too exposed, too open, and his shields could not block any unwanted entry. He had to leave, because he feared that if he didn’t, he’d not be able to again. This was his chance; a way to get out. Get out…

Get out, get out, get out, he begged.

(Begging didn ’t make—)

The Seskille hadn’t let him go before, and when the hands returned to try to move him back to bed, he was not surprised.

“Mr. Spock, please lay back down. You shouldn’t be up yet,” a female voice attempted to soothe him down, speaking in calm, reassuring tones. “It’s alright, allow me to help. Please, just—”

He wanted to tell her—the voice speaking to him—that she shouldn’t ask for anything. That asking for anything was useless, and that they didn’t understand what those words even meant. He wanted to tell her that he’d already tried to plead his case, and it had done nothing. (There was no understanding to the words he’d tried, and there would be no further understanding to any words he would try.)

Someone attempted to catch, but Spock flinched away. He needed to leave. His head was too full and too empty at the same time, and he could not take the risk that someone would rush into it. The door. He could get to the door and then to his quarters. He could lock himself away there; barricade himself away until he could get control over himself. He shouldn’t be seen like this. It was disgraceful, disgusting…

(Spock hated himself in that moment. He hated himself.)

He only made it a short distance until his strength flagged and failed. He’d been bedridden, injured, and his body had been weakened by the convalescence. His legs were unstable beneath his weight; he could feel them begin to crumple as he staggered and tried to catch himself against the wall. Just a few more feet to the door… but he could already tell he was not going to make it. His legs dragged and he stumbled over them. Gravity tugged down and he braced for impact.

He did not fall.

Strong arms snapped out and wrapped around him, and Spock was roughly pulled in against something solid. For a moment, just a flash of a second, he thought he was trapped again, and he tried to struggle against whatever had restrained him. No, no, he needed to leave. He needed to get out. But then the scent hit him, distinct and familiar—leather, books, aftershave—and his body sagged bonelessly into the embrace before his mind could even fully register it. He knew that scent, knew the heat that encircled him. He’d know this particular human anywhere…

“And just where do you think you’re going, Commander?” said the warm, steady voice of his captain, only centimeters away from his ear.

Chapter Text

All at once, his mind fell silent.

His thoughts, the room he was in, his healing trance, the sick notion of violation… all of it dulled into a hazy, scattered concept that drifted away from him like a fog. His mind tried to catch up, but it was stranded between states of waking and sleeping, and everything seemed so indistinct. Dreamlike. Distantly, Spock could still hear himself; hear his own choked rasps of breath muffled by the fabric he was caught against. It suggested that he was still panicked, but the frightened spiral his mind had become trapped in finally began to unwind. All Spock felt, as that low, lulling voice wrapped around him, was engulfing and overwhelming relief.

Jim was here.

His captain.

His body went slack, and he all but collapsed into the hold. For long seconds, ones he could not find the required energy to calculate, he could only press in and surround himself with the recognizable scent of his captain. Each breath of it was calming; almost heady as it stirred up a sense of refuge. His heart steadied in his side from its frantic, rapid pace as he began to understand that he was safe. That his captain had come for him; that Jim had come for him. Spock repeated the name in his head like a mantra, until it was the only word he could think. Jim. Jim. Jim. He repeated it, again and again, until it drowned out the feelings of terror that had felt so paralyzing.

The arms around him held strong as they tightened and secured him to lean against a broad chest; the captain shifting them both so that he took on the majority of Spock’s weight. He held him in a way that felt protective, as if Jim were attempting to shield him. One steadying hand between his shoulder blades and the other pressing against nape of his neck. Warm fingertips buried into the hair at the base of his skull, one accidentally brushing the skin behind his ear, and Spock had only just enough rational thought left to suppress the thrill it sent down his spine.

It was the low hum of pleasure building in his throat that finally made him come back to himself; some stir of logical, situational awareness returning from the fog. Questions formed, but the answers were muddled. It was difficult to think; difficult to understand or make sense of this, because had he not just been trapped? He remembered it now, although faintly. He had been healing, his mind submerged in the molecules of himself. He had been held there, unable to escape it, and when he had… Spock shoved the thought away—shoved the knowledge away, because now was not the time for it. He did not want the answers any longer. Right now, he wanted to pretend it had not happened at all.

Pretend.

Spock inhaled with a shuddering wheeze to rid himself of remnants of his healing trance and, after another moment, he opened his eyes. His eyelids were still heavy with both sleep and exhaustion; he had to blink several times in order to see through the disorientation. However, when his vision did clear, all Spock could see was gold.

A command uniform. He was pressed in so close that he was nearly breathing it in, his nose nestled into the crook of Jim’s neck. The heat of the captain, running at a far higher temperature than Vulcans ever did, felt like flame where their skin touched. Spock had never understood how humans could walk around at such an internal temperature. How did they not burn? Even now, or perhaps especially now, every inch of contact between himself and Jim felt scorching. It seemed so unlikely that such an impossibly fragile creature as man could blaze like a flame without igniting. And the scent of his captain—of Jim. Jim. Jim.—was smoldering in his lungs as he took a breath, and then another.

He couldn’t lift his head, couldn’t find the energy to move. The nebulous, drifting lethargy was impossible to focus through, and Spock’s strength gave out against the man supporting him. Jim made a short noise of strain at the effort it took to keep him upright, but he otherwise stood firm. His grip didn’t waver, didn’t loosen; if anything, he held on tighter.

Spock had been embraced multiple times before, and by multiple individuals, but not like this. Never like this. This felt different; it felt like more. It gave way to a strange kind of feeling in him, an almost ache. If Spock closed his eyes again—and he did—he could pretend, just for a moment, that this was something else. That this meant something else.

He would have to become proficient at pretending, some far away part of his mind knew. He would have to become a skilled, adept liar, and he would have to do so for reasons considerably less enjoyable than this one. Spock firmly pushed that voice away, pushed it all away, because right now, he wanted these few more moments of ignorance more than wanted logic.

“Spock? What’s going on? What’s wrong? Hey… look at me.” Jim’s hand moved from the back of his neck to cup the side of his jaw, and there was a gentle pressure as the captain tried to tilt his head up. Spock resisted; he did not want to be looked at right now. He did not want Jim to see him like this, because that insistent part of himself knew that what he was doing right now was shameful. Because if he let this moment end, he’d have to acknowledge that Jim holding him so closely, so intimately, did not mean what he wanted it to. And because he worried, some small part of himself did, that if he looked up, his captain would be gone; that this was just another memory for them to watch and ruin and take.

They had taken everything else, after all…

But here, forehead buried into his shoulder, Spock could feel the rise and fall of Jim breathing against him. He could feel the heat radiating from his captain’s skin where it pressed against his own. If he focused, he could hear Jim’s heart beating steadily in his chest, loud and alive. Could he not stay here, just for another moment, and allow himself this small reassurance? Just a few more moments…

“Alright, okay,” Jim relented, giving up on trying to budge him. The hand returned to the base of his neck, moving in slow, reassuring circles. “God, you’re trembling. Nurse, what’s going on with him? Why isn’t he responding?”

“I’m… I’m not sure, Captain. Mr. Spock appeared to be asleep, but his vitals were erratic. I was about to take a closer look when he just… jumped out of bed and went for the door. He didn’t say anything, didn’t seem to have any actual plan; I can’t even be sure he’s fully awake…”

He might as well have not been, for all that he could focus on either of them. His hearing registered the words they said, both to him and around him, but he could not connect them to form a logical understanding. In fact, Spock felt he could not make sense of much anything at all. The fog was back, thicker than before, and it left the rest of the world rather muted. Perhaps he was in a dream, and perhaps he was still asleep, because only the heat wrapping around him felt real, and—as he breathed in the familiar warmth—all he could think was Jim. Jim. Jim.

(Jim di—)

An instantaneous flare of panic—just a flash of it, but it shook him to the core. A desperate, ugly feeling clenched his heart like a vice. No. No. They could not have his captain; they could not take him, because then Spock would have nothing. He’d be truly and utterly alone. He could not go through that again, please, because it had felt like dying (—in front of him again).

Perhaps it was that his shields had eroded so horrendously—so shamefully—that he could somehow no longer discern the difference between comfort and desire, still as shaken as he was. Or perhaps it was the remnants of tenderness, longing, wistfulness that still lingered in his head from a mind that was not his own. Or perhaps it was neither; maybe, given time, it would have happened anyways, barriers in place or not. It was inexcusable, unforgivable, and selfish, but in that moment, he could not find enough of his control stop himself.

The ugly feeling took hold. He no longer had the option of being a passive observer to what was happening; not when it might be taken from him. Not when Jim might be taken from him. It was that same surge of powerlessness; of frustration, of loneliness, and of long-buried desire, that made him finally move. 

Spock reached up and, with arms that did not feel like his own, pulled the captain to him in a desperate, crushing embrace.

In his arms, Jim went very still.

Everything was heat and the feeling of life beating against him. His fingers, grasping and shaking, found purchase in the gold command uniform and he gripped the fabric in his hands so tightly that it hurt. He could not get his legs beneath him, but no longer was he merely being propped up. No longer was he simply watching (—curious and so truly happy, as his worst memory was laid out for their pleasure, over and over again). He did not feel like himself; he did not know himself. His mind felt like a cloud, nebulous and indistinct and floating far away from his body. And yet, it was clearly his body, his and Jim’s, that were entwined together.

It was a relief to hold him like this. It was a comfort. It was… something else.

Panic faded. Fear faded.

His pulse did not calm, and nor did it steady. It only began to race.

And pressed so tightly to the captain as he was, skin flush against his neck, Spock felt Jim’s pulse do the same.

Here, in this blurred and gauzy sense of security, the feeling of Jim. Jim. Jim. enfolding around and against him sparked a warmth inside. A feeling—a kind of nameless thrill—bloomed out like a rising ache. There was a shivering impulse, a yearning to satiate a hunger he did not know the name for. It made him want to move again; to move his hands to warmer skin. It made him want to move Jim backward until he hit the bulkhead. It made him want to press in closer; press in tighter. It made him want to—

It made him want.

“… Spock?” There was a small, almost imperceptible tremor in the captain’s voice. Spock was curled so inseparably against him, nose cradled against the pulse of his throat and his ear against his shoulder, that the sound rumbled low vibrations through him. The scent of books, of leather, of mint, and of something that was just inherently Jim, was almost heady. Spock held his captain—was held by his captain—and, for that one brief instant, perhaps for the first time in months, he felt as if he would be okay.  

Jim is here. Jim is safe.

No, something cold and insistent said in his mind. No, Jim is dead.

He felt as if he had been suddenly doused in ice, and (everything in Spock froze.)

He’d murdered him once, Spock thought distantly. He’d strangled his captain—his radiant, beautiful human captain—until he’d gone limp. He did not understand how he had forgotten; how he could have possibly ever forgotten what he’d done.

(Jim dangled heavily from his grip, body limp and lifeless—)

(“Get your hands off of him, Spock!”)

(Jim died in front of him again.)

All at once, the heat in his skin chilled, the points of skin contact growing numb and cold. A hollow, empty pit opened up inside of him like a void, and he felt gutted. Bile burned at the back of his throat, and his eyes burned. He had murdered his captain. He had lost control, and he had murdered him…

“Can you help me get him back into bed, Captain?”

“What? Oh… right, yes. I’ve got him, Nurse. You get the covers, I’ll, ah—I’ll get the Vulcan,” the captain responded in a faltering, strained tone. He sounded faintly dazed as he spoke; winded and a little breathless, and he had to clear his throat twice. “I don’t… think he’s fully with it yet, or he—no, he’s definitely out of it. Makes me wonder what exactly he was hoping to achieve before I arrived. Trying to make a break for it, maybe? You better pray that Bones doesn’t catch wind of it, Spock, or you’ll never hear the end of it. He won’t take sleepwalking as an excuse, either; I’ve tried that on him before and it doesn’t work.”

Jim spoke to him like he wasn’t expecting a response. Like he did not think he was awake…

Realization struck him like a physical blow as reality began to assert itself, and awareness of his actions returned with a nauseating sense of horror. The reason that Jim did not think he was awake was because Spock was not acting like himself. Because he was draped over his captain like he was trying to drown himself in him. Because he had grabbed—because he had wanted—

The mortification that washed over him made him feel almost faint, and it was only then that he truly comprehended their position.

Chest pressed against chest, hip pressed against hip, his head turned into the crook of Jim’s neck so closely that his lips were trapped against skin, the captain’s hands spread broadly across his back and beneath his arms. They were… not just pressed together, they were flush together. Jim was wrapped around him—no. No, he was wrapped around Jim as well. The captain’s grip on him was secure and unwavering as he kept Spock from sinking to the ground, and his own hands were fisted so tightly into the gold uniform that the fabric threatened to tear from the strain.

Spock felt an uncomfortable, squirming, coiling sensation in him. Humiliation, he tried to tell himself; to pretend to himself. Certainly, he felt enough of it to form a rising heat in his ears; one to match the likely visible flush spreading down the back of his neck. But while there was now a chilled pit in his stomach, he had the reluctant realization that humiliation had nothing to do with the simmering heat that had previously been there—nor the heat that had been lower.

He would have been able to control such a reaction once, only days prior. He could not do so now. The shame and disgust he felt at his actions, and his reactions, was nothing short of consuming.

“… Captain?” Spock asked softly, tilting his mouth away from the skin of Jim’s neck. He had to speak carefully to avoid breathing in the fabric of his captain’s uniform, which was the safer of the two options. He was reluctant to lift his head from his shoulder; reluctant to face Jim after acting in such an unspeakable way. And yet reality would not wait for him to be comfortable with the idea.

“Welcome back, Mr. Spock. That was some wake up. Are you alright?” Jim’s voice was still strained, possibly from the weight he was supported, but there was a careful, warm kind of gentleness to his tone as well.

Spock nodded into the captain’s shoulder, fighting back the embarrassment surging through him and trying to force—control, control, control—his expression to go blank once more. He willed his voice to level out, willed himself to adopt a serene, stoic demeanor, willed himself to appear normal. Whether he was successful or not, he could not be certain. His expression, his skin, his limbs, all of him felt alien to himself, as if his own body had somehow become ill-fitting.

“Yes. I apologize, sir. Transitioning from a healing trance can be… disorienting,” Spock said, and he was fiercely glad that his voice did not shake. Spock wanted to vomit from the lie. It was there in the back of his throat, acrid and burning, and he had to swallow thickly to prevent it. He slowly pulled back from Jim, getting his legs beneath him again and taking his own weight back. The captain did not let him go entirely, but he loosened his grip and allowed space to open between them. He could not look Jim in the eye and instead focused on the collar of his uniform. “I assure you, Captain, I am quite alert now. If I… did anything to make you uncomf—”

“No, nothing like that, Mr. Spock, don’t worry. You went for a bit of a walk, but that’s all. I’m just as disoriented without my coffee in the morning, so I certainly can’t play judge. Honestly, I’m probably worse. The last time I woke up like that, I waited for at least five minutes for the door to my quarters to open before I realized I was standing in front of a wall. You at least had some kind of plan in mind, which is more than I can claim.”

Jim’s voice held a hint of a smile, clearly trying to make light of the issue as he began to help Spock towards the bed. Spock did not wish to return there. He wished to return to his quarters, to his meditation spot, to the privacy of his locked doors that only the highest of authority codes could override. He wanted to stay in them and never leave again, because he clearly could not be trusted to be around others any longer. Not when his senses had so immorally abandoned him. Not around Jim.

Not that, he thought distantly, he should have ever been trusted to be around Jim. The recent disaster on Vulcan might have been the most significant example of his inability to control himself around the captain, but it was hardly the only one.

“That being said, I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised that even in your sleep, that plan would be to break out of sickbay. I won’t mention it to Bones if you don’t. Your excuse is certainly more valid than a crippling caffeine addiction, but he’ll have a cow if he finds out about it all the same,” Jim helped lower him to the bed, assisting so that he was propped up by the pillows. It felt good to be laying down, although Spock disliked the vulnerability it displayed. And as the captain pulled away, he disliked even more that he missed the feeling of his higher temperature pressed to his side.

“A cow?”

"Oh yes, probably a whole barn full of them,” the captain explained in an entirely unhelpful manner. “It’s alright, Miss Chapel. I’ll stay here and keep an eye on him. No more wanderings, I promise.”

Nurse Chapel, Spock realized, was hovering at their side worriedly. Their eyes met for a brief moment, and Spock quickly looked away. He remembered now the feeling of violation as she checked his vitals. It was not her fault; she couldn’t have known. She had only been doing her job and, without his barriers, without his shielding, he had rushed into her mind like a flood. It was his own weakness that had allowed those shields to collapse to begin with, and this was the result. That there was nothing he could have possibly done while in his healing trance to stop himself did not make his actions any less deplorable.

(Intentions don’t mean anything.)

She had wanted him. He had known this for years now, but he had never felt her desire like it was his own. Miss Chapel was too professional to allow her emotions to affect her duties, but the feelings had been there in the back of her thoughts regardless, like the echo of an ache. He had felt it in her mind, and he had felt it in his own afterwards. She had wanted him and, while he respected her, and even to some degree considered her a friend, he did not want her in return. That did not mean he was unsympathetic to her emotions, quite the contrary. He’d understood them even before he had entered her mind. He wished he could have excused his actions towards Jim as merely a remnant of the meld, a fragment of passion left behind from such a transference, but he knew better. This was not the first time that Spock had ached in such a way. It had nothing to do with Christine Chapel’s desire for him, and everything to do with his own desire for his captain.

He was too exposed here in Sickbay. He was too vulnerable. He needed to leave, before he ruined something else.

“Captain, I would like to be cleared for duty,” Spock said, watching as Jim bent to collect something from the floor. Chess pieces. They were scattered all around the entryway, clearly dropped the moment the captain had entered and taken notice of the situation.

“Oh?” Jim sounded amused.

“I have healed myself to an acceptable degree and require no further treatment. To remain in Sickbay would be an illogical waste of both time and resources. I would be more useful to you on the bridge.”

The captain huffed a laugh and Spock allowed himself a quick glance at his expression. Jim did not look uncomfortable, but neither did he look entirely relaxed either. For all that he was smiling, there was a stiffness to it that Spock had difficulty deciphering. But whatever his emotions, the captain seemed content to pretend nothing had happened and that, as it so happened, suited Spock just fine. He eagerly, desperately, allowed Jim to ignore it.

“The way you say it, one would think you were in the brig, not in bed.”

“The two are not as dissimilar as you might think. They share many commonalities, such as—”

“Listen, I know that you’re desperate to get out of here. Believe me, I do,” Jim interrupted, placing a gentle hand on his shoulder. “But Spock, you can hardly even walk right now. You might be feeling better—you certainly look better—but you aren’t up to leaving quite yet. Don’t think I don’t appreciate the dedication to duty, Science Officer, but right now you’d be more of a liability to me.”

Liability.

(“What else would you expect from a simpering, devil eared freak—”)

“And—” Jim cut his protest off kindly, although Spock had not said anything, protesting or otherwise, “—I’m not saying that to be cruel. I couldn’t possibly focus on what I’m doing if I’m busy being worried sick about you, which I would be. Trust me, Spock, there’s nothing I’d love more than for us both to walk out of here right now and head to the bridge, but you aren’t there yet. And that’s fine—I don’t need you to be useful right now; I need you to recover. There’s nothing wrong with taking some time to heal; you’ve more than earned yourself the rest. Besides, even if I did agree, which I don’t, I’m not the one you’d need to convince.”

That was unfortunately true. When it came to matters of health and medicine, it was not the captain who had the final say in medical discharge, but the Chief Medical Officer and, to a limited degree, his assistant prison wardens. In Spock’s specific case, both due to the severity of his injuries and McCoy’s personal brand of sadism, the doctor was the only one authorized to clear him for duty.

A shame, as Jim would have been the easier of the pair to convince.

“The physical weakness is temporary; merely a side effect of Doctor McCoy’s poisons,” Spock said dismissively. Already the room was clearer than it had been. His body felt stronger, head more focused, and muscles less fatigued. The healing trance had assisted his recovery time considerably. “Once it recedes, I shall be operating at suitable enough efficiency to return to shift.”

“Then I look forward to your upcoming parole, Mr. Spock, and I’ll be happy to have you back. In the meantime though, you’ll just have to endure incarceration a little longer. A distraction might help, if you’re feeling up to it. I did promise you a game.” Jim took a seat at his bedside and pulled one of the retractable trays between them. Wordlessly, he began to set up the chessboard, offering Spock the choice between playing white or black. He chose black and in removing the queen from the captain’s hand, he took great care to prevent even a hint of physical contact between them. Jim’s hands were not gloved as Doctor McCoy’s had been. They were not safe for him to touch.

Although none of Jim seemed to be safe for him to touch if the act of doing so made his control lapse so obscenely.

A distraction. Yes, that was exactly what he needed.

The captain moved first, and Spock risked another quick look at his expression. He didn’t appear bothered, but Jim could be difficult to read at the best of times. If he’d suspected that Spock hadn’t been as out of it as he’d claimed, he wasn’t showing any sign of those suspicions. It was true that his mind had not been fully present, and certainly not entirely coherent, but he had not been nearly as unaware as he’d allowed Jim to believe.

Very little had actually happened, Spock supposed, if he thought of it from an objective standpoint. He had hugged the captain and had done so in a manner undeniably closer than was standard between two friends, but that was… outwardly really all that he’d done. He had pressed against him but, although his mouth had been against skin, it had been closed and unmoving. He had not kissed him in the way that humans did. He had not moved against him in any truly reprehensible way. It was possible, then, that Jim truly believed it all to be the result of the healing trance; an odd, half-awake reaction that could explain why he had curled into his arms in such an uncharacteristic manner. It was possible that Jim truly remained unaware of what Spock had nearly allowed himself to do.

(Humans were so fragile when compared to Vulcan strength.)

If that were the case, he had no intention on confessing to the truth of it: that he had wanted Jim, and that he had wanted him badly enough to forget himself.

Spock silently moved a pawn, and he kept his eyes firmly on the board this time. He had to focus; he would never have allowed his attention to drift in such a way before this. He had to act normally; to pretend to do so, at the very least.

As it turned out, he needn’t have bothered. It became noticeable in only five moves that he was not the only one struggling to concentrate. Jim was not focused on the game either.

The captain’s playstyle was often an erratic one, consisting of leaps and jumps of logic and illogic to create a thoroughly scattered, unpredictable strategy. It had taken some time to decipher it, but Spock was quite capable of countering it these days and used his considerable wellspring of resourcefulness to create small traps of illogic of his own (often to Jim’s delight). He usually found Jim to be a clever and well-matched adversary; so far, the only one on the Enterprise able to match him.

There was no sign of his unusual blend of chaos and order as he moved pieces haphazardly around the board. There was unpredictable, and there was preoccupied. Jim was the latter.

Jim was distracted.

The reason for this became clear when, instead of capturing his knight, the captain only leaned back in his chair and looked at him steadily. Determinedly.

Spock felt something cold plummet straight into his stomach. Jim knew. His captain was clever; clever enough to have figured it out and was now going to confront it. Spock prepared himself for recrimination, for accusation, for judgement. He deserved it, all of it, and he would offer no excuse for his actions. They had been unforgivable. He had nearly allowed himself to give in to want; he had nearly allowed himself to lose control.

(And Spock knew what happened when he lost control.)

“I want to apologize for earlier, Spock,” Jim began seriously, and Spock could barely breathe. “I didn’t go about it the way I should have. I promised I’d only ask one question, because I didn’t want to be like Hammett, and then I just ended up interrogating you anyways. I shouldn’t have pressed you on it—and I’m not just saying that because Bones laid into me, although I assure you, he certainly did. There’s a time and a place for that sort of thing, and right after you wake up from a coma isn’t it.”

This… was about their previous conversation. The question that Jim had asked him, and the resulting disagreement. The question of whether the Seskille had hurt him. This was about that misunderstanding, and not… not what had just happened. Spock had to force himself to inhale steadily, so as not to sound gasping or breathless. Jim hadn’t guessed it. He still didn’t know, and Spock was still safe.

The relief that struck him faded nearly as fast as he then realized where this was leading. This was not a conversation topic he wanted either, because now they were back to where they had started. The apology came as a surprise, and an unwelcome one at that. Jim had nothing—nothing—to apologize for; he had been entirely justified in his doubt. Spock wanted to tell him to stop—(They did not understand the word stop. They did not fully understand what words even were.)—bringing it up; that by doing so, he was actually making it all worse. But his throat felt thick, and he could not speak past it. The words got clogged when he tried.

It seemed that Jim wasn’t waiting for him to respond, however, because he continued after only a short pause.

“On that note, if what you told me is true, then—listen, I’m not trying to accuse you of dishonesty, Spock, I swear I’m not, but you had me worried down there. I’ve seen you meld with others before, and it's never been like that. It looked like… I don’t even know how to describe it, Spock. I just know that it was different.”

Spock remained silent as he stared at the chessboard. The captain seemed to have abandoned the game with no intention of resuming it. So much for the promised distraction—although, he supposed that this conversation fit every definition of the word distracting. Whether Jim wanted him to respond, he couldn’t be certain; there was a brief lull that might have been to provide an opening, but Spock didn’t plan on taking advantage of it. He did not know what to say. He didn’t know how to make any of this better. He didn’t know what Jim wanted to hear.

“I think that something did happen, something that you don’t want to talk about. Maybe it’s not what I was suggesting, or… maybe it is. I don’t know, and I’ll be honest, I don’t enjoy secrets. Not in general, and definitely not between us. I’m not used to it, I don’t like it, but… I’m going to do my best not to pry. Bones read me the riot act afterwards, and I wouldn’t dare encourage his wrath again by hounding you.” Jim leaned forward, elbows on his knees. He ducked his head so that Spock was forced to make eye-contact, despite his best effort to avoid it. Jim’s eyes were warm and kind, something exceedingly gentle in them. “You’re my best friend, Spock. I trust you—with my life, with my ship, and with everything else. And I suppose I’ll just have to trust that you’ll tell me if something’s wrong.”

Do not trust me with your life, Spock wanted to say. Do not, because he had already been proven incapable of it. He had already betrayed that trust.

(Jim dangled heavily from his grip, body limp and lifeless, and everything in Spock froze.)

“Captain…”

“If you can look me in the eye, really look, and tell me that you’re okay, then I’ll believe you. That’ll be that and I’ll consider the matter closed. I won’t pester you about it anymore. But—”

“Jim…”

“—if you can’t do that… if maybe you aren’t okay, I’d like to know that too. I’d like to know how I can help.”

Spock couldn’t have looked away if he tried; the captain’s eyes felt pinning; paralyzing. It was as if he’d been rooted in place. How was it that the captain always managed to cut to the heart of him with only a few easy words? He’d always admired Jim’s ability to examine a problem and take apart the critical pieces of it; it was a trait that made the captain a brilliant tactician—and a brilliant friend. If Jim had started with emotional accusations, he could have taken a logical approach. If Jim had tried logic, Spock could have picked a flaw in it. But Jim had done neither; he had appealed to their friendship.

That was… problematic.

He could be honest. He could tell Jim what the Seskille had done to him, in full disclosure, and face the resulting fallout. It’d be messy, tangled, and emotional. Despite his current composure, Jim would not take the news of the attack nearly so graciously. He’d only ever witnessed Jim in a true rage a handful of times, and it’d always been for the sake of his ship, his crew, or his friends. He could be vindictive, his brave captain, and he could be impulsive. It was that same reckless impulsivity that had driven him to fight Spock on Vulcan, the same one that had him agreeing to the deathmatch that had gotten him killed. Murdered. Strangled by the same friend he’d been trying to protect.

(Jim died in front of him again.)

Or he could lie. He could face his captain, look him in the eye, and continue to deny that anything was wrong at all. Jim might even outwardly accept that answer, but the doubts would remain. They’d linger, suspicious behind those intelligent hazel eyes, and Spock would have to see them stare out every time he met his gaze.

The captain had given him no safe options; to say or do anything now would be damning either way. There existed no option where he could both be honest and also avoid the consequences of that honesty. He hated to lie, and he hated even more to lie to Jim. And yet… Spock did not know how to tell him what had happened.

How could he say that he’d lost control of himself so deplorably, so disgustingly, that he barely even felt like himself any longer? How could he admit to being irrational, emotional, and compromised, when Jim relied on him to be the opposite? To be strong, logical, and calculated. Spock did not know how to confess to giving up—giving in—because of his own weakness and cowardice, when Jim would have never even thought to do so. He did not know how to tell Jim that what the Seskille did to him wasn’t half so bad as what he’d then done to Jim, Doctor McCoy, and Nurse Chapel. That the Seskille had invaded his mind, but they hadn’t known any better. That he did. That Spock knew exactly what he was doing, and that he’d been unable to stop himself from doing it anyways.

(Intentions don’t mean anything.)

Spock would have to look him in the eye and tell his captain that he was hardly even a Vulcan anymore, if he’d ever been one at all, and that he felt as if his own mind were a stranger to him. He’d have to tell him that he’d committed a betrayal of the worst kind towards his friends. That he was little more than an animal, unstable and uncontrolled.

(And Spock knew what happened when he lost control.)

(Spock hated himself in that moment. He hated himself.)

He opened his mouth, and he was going to say it. Jim deserved to know. He deserved to be able to make the choice of what to do next, because he was owed that much. He was going to say it…

Shame.

He had never felt so utterly, completely ashamed of himself. Not as a child when he’d realized how different he was to his peers. Not as a young adult, when he saw the disappointment in Sarek’s eyes whenever his father looked at him. Not later on, when Spock had logically concluded that something about himself was inherently wrong. This level of shame—this level of failure felt so suffocating as to tighten his chest and burn in his lungs.

… The words died in his throat.

Spock was silent another moment, meeting the captain’s eyes as they stared back into his own, and all he could think of was how much he loved this human; so much so that, even if it were for Jim’s sake, he could not bring himself to say the words that would lose him. It was selfish, so terribly selfish, but he did not want to be alone.

“Jim—” Spock paused, gathered himself, and then forced his voice to go blank. “What happened was not a pleasant experience, Captain,” he continued as calmly as he could. Factually, as if he were reading information from a PADD. If he made it seem objective enough, impersonal enough, he could pretend it had happened to someone else. “It was undignified, humiliating, and, until I discovered what they were attempting to do, it was even painful. After I realized and allowed them entry, it no longer hurt. You felt them as well, Jim, if you might recall. You said it felt nice.”

“It might have felt that way to me,” Jim interjected quickly, “but that was only my experience of it. I’m not a Vulcan.”

Neither was he, Spock wanted to say.

“The pain was my own fault; a result of my effort to block them out. The harder I unknowingly pushed against them, the harder they pushed back. They… did not intend to cause me harm, Jim. I know this for a fact; I felt it when we merged. When I say that they are a benevolent species, I mean exactly that. They had no malicious design, only curiosity and friendliness. It was not their fault; they simply did not understand and, at first, neither did I. An unfortunate case of cultural misunderstanding that resulted in accidental injury. Once I opened my mind to them, the pain subsided entirely. It felt… quite pleasant after that.”

(He had begged and pleaded. It hadn’t worked and trying to make it stop only served to worsen the pain. Pain to the point of wanting to die. He couldn’t take it. He couldn’t stand it. He had given in, surrendered, and the pain had ended. Assault had never felt so good…)

Jim’s lips were thin and his expression pensive, but he sat back in his chair after a moment. Idly, the captain toyed with one of Spock’s pawns between his fingers, and Spock was so forcibly reminded of that evening in Jim’s quarters, of watching his captain smile tiredly across the desk from him, that it almost felt more real than this room did. That memory, precious though it had once been, felt tainted now. The Seskille had taken that from him too.

“So what I assume you’re telling me is that you’re okay? That I don’t need to worry?” 

Spock gave a short, stiff nod.

“Yes, Jim. I am okay. You do not need to worry.”

(Spock hated himself in that moment. He hated himself.)

Jim looked at him for a long while, and Spock maintained eye contact in return. Please, he wanted to beg. Please accept that answer. (But begging was useless.) The silence stretched on and grew tense. The captain’s eyes flicked upwards for a brief instant, and Spock suspected that he was looking at the panels above the bed, particularly at the readings of his pulse. It was only a flash of a glance before those hazel eyes returned to his own. Spock felt flutters of panic rise in his throat again; it burned behind his eyes and made him feel nauseous. His left hand clenched tightly into a fist from where it was concealed at his side. He forced—forced—himself to stay calm. Forced his heartrate to stay steady, because the biomonitors would give him away if he didn’t, and Jim would know.

“Alright,” Jim said finally, inscrutable and closed off. “I believe you, Spock. Consider the issue closed.”

“Thank you, Jim,” Spock responded, and he hated himself for the wave of relief that rushed through him.

“Great, well now that that’s out of the way,” an annoyed, sleep-heavy voice interrupted. “—does someone wanna explain why Christine called and ripped me out of bed?” Doctor McCoy leaned against the doorframe, looking uncharacteristically ruffled and unkempt. He blinked tiredly, clearly having just woken up. “Spock, what’s this I hear about you trying to just walk on outta here? Did I somehow forget telling you that you could leave, or did you just decide you were healed enough and figured you’d make a go for it? Can’t say I didn’t call that one; I knew it’d be the second my back was turned. I swear, if you set your recovery back by running around…”

Jim turned to McCoy with an expression of such wide-eyed innocence that Spock would have been able to see through it even if he were still blinded from the Deneva mission.

“Oh, that’s on me, Doctor,” Jim said blithely, a teasing glint in his eyes. “I decided to approve Spock’s discharge.”

The doctor’s face darkened in an instant, turning an ugly, vivid shade of red. The furious scowl that formed could have been called impressive, had it not been aimed at his captain. Though only an exaggerated look, Spock disliked seeing anything that could be deemed a possible threat being pointed towards Jim. And it was most certainly a threat.

“You what?” McCoy snarled, storming over like a thundercloud and stomping loud enough to mimic one. Spock thought he now understood why Jim had compared it to a barn of cows; the doctor sounded somewhat like a stampede. “The hell is the matter with you?! Correct me if I’m wrong, Captain, but only the CMO has the authority to make that decision! Now, I didn’t give up my job, and as far as I can tell, I’m not dead, so I wanna know just where you got the idea that you could pull a damn stunt like that!”

“You can always revoke it if you disagree, of course. I wouldn’t want to overstep.” The captain continued, as if he’d not heard any of the accusations. He flashed Spock a small, secretive wink. Clearly, he was determined to provide a perfect distraction and bring the wrath of McCoy onto himself, rather than allow Spock to be the target of his ire. It was a common game between the three of them, although it was usually Spock who volunteered in order to spare Jim.

“Overstep?! Now hold on a minute!”

His friends continued to argue, Jim prodding and provoking the doctor’s fury in a way that only he could manage. A calculated mixture of a wheedling tone and faux expression of ignorance that was guaranteed to fan the flames of McCoy’s considerable temper. And McCoy gave back just as well as he got, with snarls and pointed, derisive comments. It was hardly professional of either of them, but it was amusing in its own way. At the very least, it built a certain kind of camaraderie.

Spock watched but he was not listening.

Jim had claimed to accept his answer. And outwardly, that seemed to be, as they said, that. The issue had been resolved. However, Spock could calculate with a fair degree of confidence the chances of Jim truly believing it, and the odds were not favorable. Although the captain still doubted him, by his own words, he would also not pry further. It was not what Spock had wanted, not exactly, but it was as close as he could achieve with what limited resources he had.

He caught the doctor looking at him while the captain continued to wax poetic about all the many Starfleet technicalities that negated medical authority, and there was an uncommon gravity in his eyes. It was only a brief flicker, but Spock had seen it and been able to read the emotions there well enough. Apprehension, resignation, and a helpless kind of frustration. McCoy had overheard enough to know that Spock hadn’t told Jim anything, and he was clearly disappointed by the decision. Disappointed… but also unsurprised.

Spock wished, and not for the first time either, that he could stop letting his friends down.

McCoy had said that Spock would either trust them or he wouldn’t. But it had never been a matter of trust—at least, not when it came to trusting either of his friends. Quite the opposite in fact; he trusted both Jim and Doctor McCoy immeasurably. It was himself he did not trust, not when it came to this. He’d been given an impossible choice; to expose all the ugly, shameful parts of himself, or to bury them down out of sight. Both options had the potential to harm Jim, and both would undeniably also harm himself. Spock felt that all he could do was pick the decision least threatening to the captain and hope the fallout would be minimal.

“I daresay I could have you court martialed for speaking such slander, Doctor!” the captain said, amusement evident in every word. “What do you think, Spock? In your professional judgment as First Officer, shall we finally bring him up on charges of insubordination?”

Spock blinked and refocused. He had not been paying attention, and his newly emergent inability to split his focus to multiple tasks at once was unacceptable. While it was not critical for the conversation presently taking place, such a level of distraction could prove to be dangerous when he returned to his duties.

He glanced between them, from the expectant expression Jim had to the measuring look of Doctor McCoy. They were offering him a return to stability, to normalcy. They were allowing him the illusion—for that could only be what it was—of being alright. He could join in with their game and pretend that he had never gone to Seskilles VII, that he had never met the Seskille, and that he was exactly the same as he had been only days prior. They were letting him act as if nothing had changed. His throat felt thick with gratitude as he went to speak. 

“While I of course support your command decisions, Captain,” he began with a certain specific tone, one that caused Jim’s eyes to dance with mirth, “I must admit to some bewilderment at the timing of the charges. As I recall, Doctor McCoy committed no less than sixteen offenses against Starfleet regulation within the first five-point-two-nine minutes of our initial meeting, and thirteen of those were directed at myself.”

The doctor shrugged, not looking repentant in the slightest. “Yeah well, you didn’t exactly make a great impression yourself when you started in about regulation this and professional standards that. At the end of the day, the only thing that matters is how well I can do my job—and since your thick skull is in one piece instead of four, it appears that I’m damn good at what I do.”

“Indeed, Doctor,” Spock said agreeably, and he tilted his chin up just enough to be purposely antagonizing. It felt pleasing to engage with them both like this; it felt like nothing had ever happened to him at all. He grasped the predictability of their teasing with a desperation that neared pathetic. “Your medical proficiency is beyond question… now. That was not always the case. I initially considered the possibility that you were falsifying your credentials and looked into the matter myself. I am pleased to say that my concerns were unfounded, and that you are innocent of the fraud I suspected you of.”

“You suspected what?” The doctor looked annoyed, but Jim lit up and he looked as if Christmas had arrived early. “You’re joking.”

“Vulcans do not joke, Doctor McCoy. Upon concluding our first interaction, I took it upon myself to thoroughly investigate your medical qualifications, education, history, legal records, and employment documents. To my astonishment, I found no discrepancies that would indicate you had either forged or falsified your credentials in any manner. Nor could I find any records of you engaging in the illegal act of bribery or blackmail to ensure you were promoted in rank or status. Having personally observed your abrasive and outburst-prone personality, the matter required further elucidation. In the end, after weeks of consideration on the matter, I could only conclude that you had practiced a time-honored human tradition. I believe you would know it as—to borrow one of your colloquialisms—fake it until you make it.”

McCoy scowled at him as Jim barked a loud, deep laugh.

It felt good, to engage with them like this. To make Jim laugh instead of worry, to make McCoy glare rather than look at him with careful concern. It felt like a conversation he would have had on any standard day; one of warmth, faux-derision, and shared amusement.

Fake it until you make it.

Spock hoped—desperately hoped—that he would be able to employ such a tactic himself; that he would be able to pretend that nothing had changed. He could trade needling comments with the doctor and chess games with the captain, and he could maintain the illusion that he had not been so fundamentally altered. He could maintain the familiar, comfortable status quo that he had come to desperately rely on. He could pretend that he had control over himself.

(Any other Vulcan would have been able to maintain some kind of control, surely. But not Spock. Not he, who could do nothing but feel.)

Jim grinned as he mocked the doctor, his skin still flushed from his laughter. Spock was relieved to see it after the gravity of their previous discussion. Jim looked bright like this; radiant and warm and vibrant in a way that words fell short of describing. He looked happy. He looked alive—so breathtakingly alive. There was nothing—nothing—he would not do for this man, Spock thought. His charismatic, wonderful, captivating human captain. There existed no limit, no boundary, no length he would not go if it meant he could keep James Kirk looking just like this, just as he was now. Warm, bright, and alive.

If he had not been watching Jim so intently, at his smile and his visible delight, he would have missed the small, nearly indiscernible pause of eye contact between the captain and doctor. The look was troubled; heavy with some unspoken significance.

Something cold lodged in his chest.

He had murdered his captain once, Spock thought distantly. He had strangled that vibrant, beautiful captain he claimed to love until that bright spark in his eyes died and left behind only empty, hollow spaces. Spock had lost control of himself again. And again, and again, and again. He could not stop himself, it seemed, from hurting those he cared most for. The harm was visible in the weighted glance between his friends, in the conflicted furrowing of Jim’s brow when he looked at Spock briefly, at the ill-concealed resignation in Doctor McCoy’s frown.

Spock wanted nothing more than to move past this. He wanted to return to his familiar, comfortable position at his captain’s side; the only place he had ever truly felt at home. He wanted this to be over. He wanted to go back to his life, exactly how he had left it. And yet, he felt fundamentally altered now; changed and unrecognizable to the Vulcan that had beamed down to Seskilles VII. He felt out of control, and he wished he could find the strength to reassert it. He’d have begged, if that’s what it would take to get it back.

(Begging didn’t make any difference.)

(Begging was useless.)

(And really, Spock reflected bitterly, it was not like he’d ever truly had control anyways, had he?)

Later, when Jim had returned to shift and Spock finally allowed himself to fall asleep, he dreamed of his body rotting to dust as his mind was embraced by the Collective. He dreamed of embracing emotion so deeply, so terribly, that he no longer missed his physical form; no longer cared about what he was leaving behind at all.

He dreamed of Jim shaking him, frantic and grief-stricken, as he begged Spock to return. He dreamed of watching Jim from a vast, unfathomable realm, uncaring as he invaded his captain’s head. He dreamed of violating that fragile, precious human mind and shattering Jim so completely that he was little more than an empty husk. He dreamed of violating Jim in other ways. He dreamed of hurting him. He dreamed of strangling him.

He dreamed of Jim dying in front of him again.

And again.

And again.

And again.

Chapter Text

Two-point-nine-one days later, he was released from sickbay.

Upon being informed, Spock ignored the doctor’s grumbling and remained there only just long enough to ensure the documentation declaring his discharge and subsequent duty clearance had been signed and filed, whereupon he left both sickbay and Doctor McCoy far behind him. His first destination was to check in with Jim and inform him of his liberation, much to his captain’s amused delight. His second destination was his quarters.

They were dark when he arrived, and the muted lighting was pleasing to his eyes after the harsh glare of sickbay. Spock scarcely allowed the doors to close behind him before he asked the computer to engage the highest level of privacy. It was then, and only then, that he finally allowed himself to breathe.

He was alone. Truly alone. Since he had beamed down to Seskilles VII, he had been in the constant presence of another in at least some way. At first it had been the landing party, then Jim, then the Seskille, then Jim again, then Jim and Doctor McCoy, and finally Jim, Doctor McCoy, and an entire team of Starfleet doctors, nurses, and technicians. He had not been alone in over a week, and the constant intrusion into his personal space, his emotional control, his desire for privacy, and his need for social recharge had been grating to the point of physical discomfort.

There was a comfort in the solitude of his quarters—and even more comfort in the knowledge that the half-dozen centimeters of metal composite between himself at the rest of the ship would ensure that his solitude remained uninterrupted. There were only a select few individuals who would be able to bypass his locks, and even then, only under highly specific circumstances. The captain, the chief medical officer, and, if purely by virtue of his ability to take the ship apart and piece it back together at will, the chief engineer.

The captain would respect his preference to be alone, although he would not particularly like it. The last time Spock had initiated such a level of privacy, Jim had camped outside of the door and appealed to him through the intercom for hours until Spock had finally given in and allowed entry. It had been frustrating, but it had also demonstrated that Jim would not abuse his authority or his override codes unless he had absolutely no other choice. It was true that the override codes were unnecessary; the captain had the personal code to his room, as Spock had Jim’s, but the captain would understand the pointed hint for what it was and not break that bond of trust.

If Doctor McCoy discovered the strict settings, the doctor would no doubt ignore his wishes entirely and override them simply because he had the ability to do so, circumstances permitting it or not. In fact, Spock suspected that McCoy would see his clear desire for privacy as a personal challenge to thwart, for clearly a wish to be alone meant one must be hiding something. Thankfully, the last possible source of disruption was unlikely. Mr. Scott would not have had a reason to come to his door to begin with—not unless there were an emergency of some kind, and Spock was certain that he would be made aware of such a crisis long before someone had to physically come fetch him for it.

And so, finally, after eight-point-three-two-seven days, Spock was alone.

The privacy of his rooms should have been a relief after the exposure and stress of sickbay.

It was not.

They felt… off. He disliked the ambiguous nature of the identifier, but the feeling itself was ambiguous, and he lacked a more accurate denotation for it. The room and the objects within it—they were simply off. They had an eerie, uncanny sense of being entirely familiar to him in an unfamiliar way, as if everything had been somehow replaced with a facsimile of itself. An almost identical replica, but still not quite exact. His quarters felt just slightly different to how he remembered it, in a way Spock could not fully describe. It was a difficult feeling to put into words, for there did not appear to be a visual error or discrepancy that had caused it.

His belongings, from what he could ascertain, seemed to all be in place and unchanged from how he’d left them. From the strings of his ka'athyra, to the deep red skahanu lining the walls of the cabin. His possessions were as they always had been: placed accordingly and following his particular organizational system. PADDs were left where he had placed them before beaming planetside. The blankets of his bed were tucked in neatly and with exact precision. They were not moved, they were not changed, and they were not different. Why then did these rooms feel as though they did not belong to him? That they belonged to a stranger that had similar if not identical belongings, but who was assuredly not him? It was unsettling, especially after days of desiring nothing more than to be surrounded by the familiarity of his own things.

Spock stepped further into the room, tracking his eyes carefully around it for anything that might provide clarification on the feeling. There was nothing. All was exactly as it had been when he’d left it over eight days prior. He logically knew that it was unchanged. Logic did not stop the uneasy disconnect he felt for his quarters and all the items within it. It should have, and the awareness was not lost on him.

His asenoi was cold and unlit—a safety precaution in case he did not return from a mission which, in this case, had nearly demonstrated it to be a wise measure. Igniting the fire was part of his meditation ritual, smooth and fluid and ingrained, and the scent of his insilit spiced incense finally brought him a hint of the comfort that he had been seeking. The heat of the flames, the light flickering and casting shadows on the red curtains around him—it was hypnotic. Spock allowed himself to sink gently to his knees in his meditation space, adopting his preferred lesh'riq pose with his legs tucked neatly beneath him. His posture was perfect; his positioning serene.

There were approximately five hours until the debrief was to begin. He would familiarize himself with his new circumstances, and then he would meditate until it was time to leave.

Closing his eyes, Spock steadied himself.

Breathe. Control. Control. Focus.

Regardless of the peculiar quality to his rooms, it was pleasing to be back in them. Enduring sickbay had become a strained exercise in practicing patience, especially once he had sufficiently healed to his own satisfaction. It had not, however, been to Doctor McCoy’s satisfaction, and the man had not been shy in letting him know it. Spock had been required to enter a healing trance twice more before his condition had been considered improved enough for discharge. It was a disgraceful example of just how far he’d fallen. Once, even only a week before, it would have taken him a singular healing trance to be performing at optimal efficiency. Two times would have been egregious, but three? Inexcusable.

Spock was thankful that his medical records were closed to all outside parties, and that family—or previous family, as it were—did not have access to them. If Sarek ever discovered that his former son had lapsed so appallingly in his self-control, he would have been exceedingly disappointed. Although, Spock considered impassively, the information was also not liable to be a surprise. There was a reason why his father had repudiated any further association with him; Sarek seemed to have known Spock was fundamentally and inherently defective since his birth, and had no doubt been disappointed in him for nearly as long. The knowledge, therefore, would only serve to affirm his instincts as being perfectly logical and sound, as befitting any Vulcan.

The spiced heat of the firepot washed over him, around him, and, as he inhaled it deeply, through him. This, at least, was familiar; it did not seem as altered as the rest of the room had been. Here, with his eyes closed and his breathing steady, he hoped he would at last find the focus he’d been attempting to achieve during his week of convalescence. In sickbay, achieving such a state was impossible; the machines had shrilled too loudly, and Doctor McCoy had shrilled even louder.

Breathe.

Control.

Control…

He sunk into the tattered remnants of his own mind, allowing the heat of the flame to act as a guide to the heat of his desert. He once would have found the act of doing so soothing; a relaxing endcap to a long day. Now, slipping into meditation resulted only in a muted sense of hopelessness.

Spock wandered the ravaged dunes and considered the churned and cratered landscape. His surroundings were in chaos; disordered and ripped through, as if the Seskille had thrashed around in his mind and thrown everything into a state of abject discord. The comparison was not entirely inaccurate. He did not know how to begin organizing it; he did not even know where anything was any longer, nor where to start if he somehow had. He’d had a system in place, one that had taken a lifetime to create. Each memory, thought, emotion—they’d all had a specific place where he could retrieve them if and as needed. All of that order had been rendered incoherent by one simple mission, and his visualization now lacked any system or structure to rebuild from.

In all probability, there was likely nothing to be done about it; he was becoming more and more certain that the damage was unrepairable. How did one find coherency in such wreckage? How did one even begin to re-establish the barriers that had taken thirty-eight years of dedicated, focused work to build?

The remains of his mindscape were disgusting to look at, and Spock observed the pillaged land with a hollow, numb sense of grief. All of his emotions, his memories, his thoughts, his desires—all of them lay bleeding and burning in the sand, exposed to the sun like the bones of some bleached, skeletal thing that had once been living. It was a pitiful and pathetic sight. It made him sick to his stomach to see it.

The damage was not only devastating in the potential for long-term consequences, but it was also highly problematic for the present ones. The emotions that resulted in his unacceptable and flagrant display towards the captain should have been buried deep beneath his mind. He had tried in sickbay two days prior, and he tried again now. The memory, the feelings, the wanting, the lust… he attempted to push them beneath his conscious thought, to submerge them far below awareness where they could no longer haunt his mind. He attempted to shove them back, shove them away, so that they could not influence him any further, because he simply could not allow a repeat of it.

But the sand spilled from his fingers as if it were a liquid, and Spock could do nothing but watch the granules catch on a hot breeze and blow away from him.

There was nothing to be done here that he had not already tried. The ruin was definitive and absolute, and to continue in the same manner was both illogical and futile. One could make a scientific argument for the benefits of repeating a failed experiment to get a potentially different outcome, but to do so in this instance bordered on the wrong side of asinine. No progress had been made, or he would surely have already seen the result of it; seen some kind of effect, even the most minute one. No, to expend further energy here was a waste of both time and resources. Spock would have to sink deeper into himself, to a deeper level of meditation, if he had any hope of salvaging this.

The visualized desert of his mindscape existed on multiple planes, each requiring their own technique to influence. His standard meditation was useful as a sort of catch all, one that allowed Spock to organize and structure his day-to-day effectively, but it was not the only option available to him. There were other mental disciplines that he could apply, ones more comparable to a healing trance than the lower form he normally utilized. Perhaps not as entrapping, but with similar potency and control.

It would take skill to do so, for the deeper forms of mental examination required much more of his energy and ability. They could be potentially dangerous were he to be reckless with them. His healing trance, for example, was not strictly limited to only healing, although such a skill was rarely utilized for any other purpose. To control the body in such a way, he could influence his body to shut down just as surely as he could influence his cells to regenerate. He could tell his brain to die, he could command his lungs to collapse, he could force his heart to simply stop beating. That depth of physical control carried a certain amount of risk, and controlling the mind to such an intimate level was similar. It was only here, in the safe silence of his quarters, with the fire of his asenoi flickering shadow over his closed lids, that he would be able to manage such a focus. The concentration needed would have been thoroughly impossible to achieve in sickbay, with the threat of physical contact looming ever-present. There had simply been too many distractions. Silence, stillness, centering, and patience were essential.

This, Spock thought, was what he needed more than anything else. It was the only solution he could think of to conceivably even begin to heal from what had happened to him. He would go into the source of the pain, the deeper source, and attempt to mend what he could from beneath the rips. Meditation was well-suited for sorting his mind, but the foundation to do that had been broken. To repair it, he would need to achieve a more specific kind of trance.

Spock centered himself and breathed the spiced heat of his quarters deep into his lungs. The stone statue of the Yon'tislak—the hybrid fire-beast of Vulcan legend—provided a targeting focal point; a symbolic object he could use as a guide to navigate the reaches of his mind. The griffin-like creature had always resonated strongly with the particular structure of his mind, and he allowed his senses to drift to it. Allowed his thoughts to become shapeless, to become fluid, to become without form. The fire had heated the stone of the statue, and he felt that heat radiate outwards against his skin. Focus. Breathe. The temperature of the flames, the incense, the dance of shadow and light on his eyelids; he let it fade around him, fade through him, fade away—control, control, control. He sank down and—

—and with a harsh cry, Spock recoiled away from the screaming, piercing sensation of painpainpainagony!

Something horrible and intense—a spiking pain—stabbed at his mind like a blade; sharp, cutting, and wounding to the core of him. No, this was… wrong, something was—something was wrong. He felt scoured and bleeding, like he’d opened up something inside his mind and ripped the contents out through a gaping, oozing, gutted hole. No—it overwhelmed him, the searing anguish of it lighting his nerves and reverberating throughout his mind so deafeningly that he could not help but clap his hands over his ears to try to block it out. No, no! Stop, stop, stop—please, get out, get out—

Spock slammed his eyes open and reeled back from his meditation spot as if he had been burnt by it, body falling in a writhing tangle of limbs. His ears rang from the remains of a guttural, tortured sound; the echoes of a choked scream still lingering in the quiet of his room. When he lurched up to unsteady feet, he stumbled against the room partition so roughly that he heard a crack in the composite. His breaths came in ragged gasps; the room faded in and out, and he rested his head against the partition to gather himself. Fingers clung to it to keep himself upright.

The pain itself had fled the moment he pulled himself from the half-formed trance, but his head rang from the jolt of cutting the connection with himself so abruptly. A headache—a pounding and quaking throb—beat at his temples and behind his eyes like a new pulse. Spock rested there, breathing, and tried to push it away. His mind felt raw and swimming, overwhelmed with vertigo and the stunned, dazed sensation of shock.

That… should not have happened. That had never happened. Spock had been achieving such levels of meditation since his youth; to be suddenly unable to access his inner mind should have been so unlikely a possibility as to be nigh impossible. And yet, plunging to such a depth had felt like an open, gaping wound; like an injury that had been forgotten and allowed to fester and go septic. The pain had been agonizing in a way that only the mind could achieve; impossible to describe simply because there was no physical sensation possible to which comparison could be made. It hurt to think. It hurt to focus. He felt like his mind had been flayed; like it had been—

… like it had been shredded apart.

A cold pit formed in his gut, heavy and weighting. The headache did not subside exactly, but a curious kind of numbness spread through him like an awful wave. The feeling was almost like apathy, drowning him from the inside out. For a long moment, Spock simply leaned against the partition and did not think anything at all.

Time passed. He was not certain how much. He stared at his meditation spot, at the curtains of his room, at the familiar-yet-foreign objects on his walls, and he felt like a stranger to it. As if his quarters were no longer truly his but now belonged to someone else. Everything was too sharp, too blurry, too vibrant, and too dull, all at the same time. He felt disconnected from the very concept of his surroundings. He breathed in, and he breathed out, and he stared at the fire of his asenoi, and he thought nothing, did nothing, felt nothing.

Eventually, Spock moved to snuff the flames out. He operated the tools with hands that did not feel as if they were his own, and he stared at those too, for a time. The motion was a familiar one; he had done so after Vulcan when he truly understood just what his hands had been capable of. After a moment, he watched the light of the fire die out, watched the smoke of his incense lessen and then fade away, and he finally had the vague thought that the Seskille had taken this from him too. They had stolen the calm tranquility of his quarters, and they had stolen the one mental and emotional outlet he’d had available to him on the Enterprise. His meditation, his mind, his rooms… there did not seem to be an end to it. More than a week had passed since the attack, yet they still continued to affect him; still continued to take and take and take…

The solitude of his quarters felt suddenly stifling, unpleasantly so, despite his longing for exactly that when he’d been in sickbay. His belongings, the curtains, the heat—all of it had taken on an oppressive edge. It was as if the air he breathed had gone stagnant, and each inhalation did not quite manage to reach his lungs. Spock suspected that such feelings had nothing to do with his rooms and everything to do with himself. Awareness of the logic did not change the constricting sensation asphyxiation.

It was an irrational and unreasonable impulse, especially after he had spent a solid week desiring isolation, but Spock realized that he did… not want to be alone at the present.

He turned neatly on his heel, disengaged his locks, and exited his quarters.

The hallway was empty of crew, but even without the immediate sight of others, there existed the awareness of life around him; of murmured conversations, faint laughter, bootsteps, machinery, and clatter of movement. It did not truly help, not in any meaningful way, but it was easier to ignore his emotions when there were other focal points, other distractions. The headache still throbbed in his mind like a second pulse, and that numb and hollow sensation still felt like a void in him. He still felt like his mind had been scoured raw and green, but the audible sound of the Enterprise and her crew was a balm in and of itself. It was home.

Spock blinked, refocusing as he realized he’d allowed his feet to carry him to room 3F 121. The captain’s quarters, only a few doors down from his own. It had been such a natural action, and one he had taken countless times; he had gravitated to Jim’s quarters without even thinking of it. And, after considering it for a moment with a mind that ached and throbbed, he felt it might be a temporary solution to the problem.

The welcome he always found in the captain, that sense of belonging… it would help, of that he was certain. Jim had always had an effect on him, often a highly positive one, and he thought that might be exactly what he needed right now. Companionship, warmth. A voice to bring him out of the depths of his mind, where he could no longer take refuge in. He wanted his friend; he wanted Jim. There was something uniquely soothing about being around his captain; a kind of tranquility that he had never found elsewhere. Spock cherished every moment he spent around him, whether those moments were spent playing chess, pouring over documentation, or theorizing over drinks. He wanted the company, and right now, he wanted the escapism that Jim would provide.

His hand hovered over the door chime, hesitating. Jim would not turn him away, Spock tried to remind himself. Jim had never turned him away, and he would not do so now. He had spoken to the captain when he’d been released from sickbay only an hour prior, and Jim had smiled him warmly. He would not have changed in attitude so quickly without sufficient cause, and Spock had not yet given him one.

Spock pressed the chime and waited.

The captain did not answer.

He did not answer the second chime either, and Spock did not bother to attempt a third one. Jim was not in his quarters. Spock reevaluated his internal chronometer and quickly understood that he had spent more time his in rooms than he’d first thought. Jim was not in his quarters, and the reason Jim was not in his quarters was because he was scheduled to be on the bridge at this time. Had it been a standard day, Spock would have been up there with him, but Doctor McCoy had made it clear that he was to ease back into work gradually. It had been compositionally phrased as an order, but the audible tone had implied an unpleasant threat. He was not afraid of the doctor in any fashion, but after a week of McCoy’s constant interference, needling, and incessant hovering, Spock knew he dearly needed a break from the man. It incentivized within him a certain reluctance to encourage further interaction unless absolutely necessary.

Spock folded his hands neatly behind his back, uncertain what to do with himself.

He wanted Jim, because Jim would have provided him with a suitable distraction and, admittedly, Jim’s very presence was of enormous comfort to him. He would see the captain at the debrief, and Doctor McCoy as well, but that was a little over four hours away. He could go to the bridge, but he had a suspicion that he’d be shooed away were he to attempt it, and so Jim was still not accessible to him at the moment. That was… disappointing. Spock was forced to reconsider his options. He wanted Jim. He wanted to feel something other than empty, muted chaos. He wanted—he did not know what he wanted. His mind was still too sore and too stunned to make much sense of his thoughts. He could not even be certain his thoughts were rational. In fact, he rather suspected they were not motivated by rationality at all.

The lab, then. Certainly, he had plenty of work to catch up on, and the familiarity of performing his job would provide him with an appropriate level of respite. He could go back to his normal duties and… pretend that nothing was wrong. He could pretend his mind wasn’t bleeding; that it wasn’t infected by the injury the Seskille had ripped through him. It was not a solution to the problem, not in the slightest, but it was the only way to find some measure of relief from the humiliation and pain. Eventually it would catch up to him… but eventually could wait a while longer. He would work until it was time to debrief, and then he would go from there.

Shift. Work. The labs. Spock clung to the idea like a fervent hope, grasping and begging, because he had so few avenues left to him.

(Begging didn’t make any difference, he thought distantly. Begging was useless.)

Control.

Control.

The labs, as it turned out, were a mistake.

The moment he entered Lab Four, doors closing softly behind him, it became immediately apparent that the peculiar sense of wrongness to his quarters was not, in fact, caused by an actual problem with his room. No, it was quite obviously caused by a problem with him, as he suspected, because the lab felt just as, if not more, off to him. He had been in this very space more times than he could count or measure, but it felt as if he somehow did not belong here anymore. He felt like a visitor. He felt like an imposter.

“Mr. Spock!” Ensign Beatriu exclaimed, and her loud voice was excited when she spotted him. It caused a rippling pause as the other occupants of the lab turned to look at him as well. It was more crowded than he’d expected, although this particular lab was a popular choice for collaborative work due to featuring a large, scenic viewport on the lefthand wall. Spock would have chosen a quieter one, but his previous projects were still set up at a station in the back of the room and he did not wish to abandon them to begin something new elsewhere. “Sir, welcome back!”

“Thank you, Ensign,” Spock said agreeably, offering a polite nod to her smile.

Genuine greetings and words of welcome from the rest of his attending department followed him as he moved towards his desk, each delivered with an air of audible relief. They appeared to be pleased he had returned, and their reaction was warming, if also mildly uncomfortable. The response was not altogether unsurprising; the Enterprise’s science division was, by his last check, considered the most accomplished and productive in the fleet by both statistical evidence and popular opinion. He was not prone to false modesty; Spock was aware that his presence aboard the ship had a great deal to do with that success. As chief science officer, he had been exacting in his expectations, demanding nothing short of his team’s very best regardless of circumstance or challenge. They’d not only met those high standards, but they had exceeded them to a level unmatched by any other starship crew.

Although he’d not said it in so many words, Spock was proud of his department. He suspected his team knew it regardless. They demonstrated an obvious level of pride in themselves, in their ability, and also in their commander. They respected him, which was still somewhat of a novelty, and it caused an understanding to form. It also caused, to his great dismay, an awkward sort of reverence towards himself to emerge amongst some of the younger, more excitable scientists. Jim had teased him to no end about it when it had first been discovered, and occasionally still did. McCoy had merely looked disgusted. There had been mention of mandatory psychiatric evaluations.

“We’re all so glad you’re feeling better, Mr. Spock!” Yeoman Boyle said to him earnestly as he passed her.

“Thank you,” Spock replied again, and he walked slightly faster to avoid further interruptions. Had he known his attendance would cause a decrease in productivity, he’d have had second thoughts about coming to the lab at all. He had a great deal of work to get done, and he hoped his division’s emotional displays of verbal delight would be short lived.

Spock had not been allowed—by McCoy’s orders, of course—to so much as check his inbox during his convalescence, and he was certain the amount of work waiting for him was immense. It was just as well, he thought absently, that he was not planning on sleeping much in the near future. His attempts to do so had only caused disturbing dreams, with little actual physical rest resulting from it. Spock felt it was best to simply stop attempting to sleep altogether, or at the very least, to significantly reduce the duration. He was not extracting any benefit from the effort, and in the end, it yielded only frustration and time wasted. Time, he knew, that could be better applied elsewhere with far more productive results.

Doctor McCoy would disapprove.

Doctor McCoy did not need to know.

“It is good to have you back, Commander Spock. Sign this, please,” Lieutenant Shams al-Din greeted as she approached, not allowing space for a response before promptly handing him a PADD. He had always appreciated that of his Second; her straightforward, no-nonsense nature and her ability to do her job without being overly verbose. She knew him well enough by now to keep unnecessary conversation to a minimum and, while she was far from the ideal Vulcan stoicism, her direct approach made working closely with her both efficient and straightforward.

Spock signed. The lieutenant gave him a small smile, a warm nod, and then moved back to her own station with no further display.

And so his shift began.

For the first hour, he attempted to focus on going through his inbox to sort out an order of operations. What needed to be addressed immediately, what documents required his signature, what could be delegated, what required further action, and what required no action at all. Although he had only been out for a day over a week, the amount of work waiting for him was… staggering. Had he not been a Vulcan, poor excuse for one though he was, he might have even considered it overwhelming. Working at optimal efficiency, and with double or even triple shifts a day, he estimated it would still take approximately fourteen-point-three-seven days to catch up to both a level and optimal standard he was satisfied with. The calculation could not be any more precise than that, unfortunately, as it attempted to factor in the unpredictability that was called humanity. Their inconsistencies were difficult to estimate around.

Of course, he did not even bother trying to factor in the charming, chaotic variable of Captain James T. Kirk who, by his very nature, caused nearly all of Spock’s mathematical certainties to become notoriously and decidedly uncertain.

Falling into his work like this, into the rhythm and pattern of documentation, felt like the first true breath of air he had taken since beaming down to Seskilles VII. It was a return to everything he had desperately needed: organization, stability, predictability, logic, and control. Even as he was interrupted not once, not twice, but eleven times by well-meaning crewmembers, a kind of peace settled over him. The foreign, off feeling of the lab did not fade, but he felt as if he had established some hazy, comfortable spot within it. It was ordered and structured in a way that felt like a solace to his mind—like a cool compress. Slowly, the headache began to ebb from his temples as he found a routine, and falling into it after a week of being without one was refreshing.

It was good, this return to familiarity. It was exactly what he needed and, for a solid hour, Spock was able to pretend to even himself that nothing was wrong.

It was in the beginning of the second hour that everything fell apart.

It first began as a sense of unease when he thought of the upcoming debrief.

He considered what questions he would be asked and what his answers to those questions might be. He considered what reaction those answers might cause to his human peers, and he considered what he could say or do that might… mitigate some of the fallout. As he read through a PADD, mulling over the faintest possibility that he could get through the debrief with his dignity intact, he felt a strange sense of familiarity with what he was reading. It took approximately eight-point-seven-two seconds—exactly eight seconds too many—to realize that he had not only read the same paragraph already, but that he had read it three times and had retained none of it.

It was oddly difficult to gain control of himself and refocus on what he was reading: a list of department requests. This specific section was requesting a new gravivariable scope to replace the current one, which had somehow developed a hairline crack in the secondary lens. He would have to cross-reference with acquisitions in order to approve the request, as it was not a piece of equipment that saw regular use, but provided they could backup the application with evidence for its necessity, he did not foresee it being denied.

The debrief was not for one-point-two-three hours, but Spock felt the seconds ticking down with a sense of fatalistic inevitability. He dreaded the thought of it, and that dread formed a hollow, sick feeling in the pit of his stomach. There was no delaying it further, and he had to prepare himself accordingly. He would list the facts, he would answer the questions without emotion or biasness, and then he would be able to move forward and forget about the Seskille entirely. He desired nothing more than to put both their frozen planet and their overwhelming, destructive presence firmly behind him, figuratively and literally.

Spock had hoped to spend his time meditating before the debrief; to stabilize and center himself for the stress he knew he’d be put under, but that was no longer an option for him. And that was… troubling. He had never failed to enter such a level of meditation before, and he could find no reason why that might be the case now. There had been nothing wrong with his quarters, or his firepot, or his focal guide. Even had distraction been the cause of his unsuccessful trance, it should not have caused him pain. It should not have hurt him. The pain had been searing, blinding. Admittedly, Spock still felt shaken by it hours later.

No. No, he was not shaken by it, nor by anything else. There was no reason to be irrational or emotional.

Control.

Control.

The matter of his meditation would be a problem for a later date. Until then, he would do his best to pretend there was no problem at all. All he had to do was get through the debrief, and then he could address the problem. Until then, he was fine, Spock told himself sternly. There was nothing immediately, critically wrong. His mind was in a satisfactory enough state to perform his job duties, and that was, if not ideal, at least sufficient enough to function.

Spock blinked at his PADD, pausing as he realized he had not followed his own progress and did not know where he had left off. That he had left off at all, particularly without his conscious notice, was a deplorable lack of awareness. He refocused. Astrometrics were requesting a new gravivariable scope to replace one that had developed a hairline crack in the secondary lens. He would have to check with acquisitions for budgeting allowance, but he did not foresee it being an issue. The astrometrics team as a whole did not often make requests and he was inclined to grant them it. 

There was a loud clatter of someone mistakenly knocking over their chair. Spock flinched, the PADD nearly slipping from his fingers before he was able to catch it. Awareness of the room flooded him as if his surroundings had only just become audible, and although Spock did not turn from his work, he couldn’t help but become attuned to the various conversations taking place around him. It was difficult to block out; his hearing was sensitive.

“—should have double gloved. I don’t feel a bit sorry for you.”

“Yeah, yeah, can you please just pass me the—”

“—the karyofuser, and see? If you set it just slightly below level three, it provides a bit more clarity than the standard dial—”

“—hovering around and it’s seriously creepy. I swear, we should give security a heads up, ‘cause if that smug bastard so much as breathes around me, I’m going to—”

He took a breath and did his best to tune it out. Focus. Concentrate. Control. Spock checked his internal chronometer. Zero-point-five-three hours until the debrief. Time had slipped away without his notice, and the meeting was closer than he’d been expecting or wanting. He wanted to meditate, but that was not a workable option. The level he needed was inaccessible, and the level he could achieve was useless to him. There was little he could do to change it at that exact moment, but the constant awareness that there was something truly, deeply wrong was an endless, spiraling concern. He had never been blocked from his own mind. It was intriguing, if profoundly disturbing. And also, more than a little ironic. Had he not just been worried about being trapped inside his own mind? And now he could not get into it.

Refocusing his attention, he saw astrometric’s request for a new gravivariable scope and, while he would have to check acquisitions for budgeting constraints, he—Spock paused, blinked at request, then set the PADD down entirely. He leaned back in his chair, steepling his fingers against his chest.

He… did not understand what was wrong with him. This amount of inattention was not only unacceptable, but it also had the potential to become dangerous. Equipment requests were not strictly a life-or-death matter, at least not in this instance, but if he were to forget himself like this on the bridge the results could be disastrous. Spock suspected that meditation would have helped, as being unable to structure and order his mind for over a week would naturally leave him feeling scattered, but meditation was not a feasible option for him at present. He was running out of alternatives at a rapid and troubling pace, and he did not know how to solve it.

(“What else would you expect from a simpering, devil eared freak—”)

Focus. Focus. Spock lifted the PADD and stared intently at the words, forcing himself to read them very slowly and deliberately so as to perfectly retain the information. He managed to get through the rest of the requests, forward budgeting inquiries to acquisitions, and sorted the document among those that required later follow-up. He did the same with the next task, and the next one after that. He took on each one with careful and purposeful intent, moving at a disgraceful thirty-point-five-nine-two percent of his usual speed. A shameful, abhorrent decrease in productivity, and he hated himself for it.

Spock was able to work for another fifteen minutes and, after ten had passed, he was even able to find something approaching a cohesive rhythm. It did not last. His concern about the debrief and resulting inattention may have stressed the already present cracks, but it was the microscope that, in the end, truly catalyzed the actual disaster.

“Excuse me, Commander Spock?” Ensign Hanna Vaughn interrupted at his side. She was one of the younger officers; having been stationed to the ship only three months prior and straight from the academy. Her large blue eyes were wide with excitement and she was smiling at him. “Sir, we were wondering if you could come take a look at this and tell us what you think. We’re having some trouble with identification; hoped another set of eyes could help and, well, you’ve got the best eyes out of any of us. I think you might even find it fascinating.”

She was lightly teasing him, as his department frequently did. Spock had never sensed anything ill-natured about it, certainly not in the same way he had from his own peers on Vulcan, or even his classmates at the academy. This was, based on his limited observation and even more limited experience, something his human crewmates engaged in as a form of bonding. An unorthodox method to build camaraderie with others, which, to his own way of thinking, seemed entirely counterintuitive. How did mocking others establish rapport? For whatever reason, perhaps due to humanity’s irrational and intrinsic need to be at all times contrary, it did appear to be effective. He had seen Mr. Sulu and Mr. Chekov engage in the behavior on the bridge countless times. And he supposed that, to some degree, Jim and he had a similar dynamic, although he had not been the one to first initiate it.

He considered where Doctor McCoy fell in the equation. There was certainly teasing, but very little of it seemed lighthearted. The insults and barbs they traded fell just slightly on the wrong side of personal, often more pointed and jaded than the spark of harmless fun in Miss Vaughn’s eyes. At the same time, there existed a certain degree of affection in him—deep down—for the game he played with Doctor McCoy… although he would never admit to it aloud. Perhaps, then, the reason was not the way the mockery was delivered but rather who it was delivered by. He did not take offense to the comments McCoy made about him, for all that they outwardly and objectively appeared ill-natured. He also knew those same cutting comments, if said to him by another, would not have evoked in him similar warm feelings. It seemed that only the doctor could insult him with no detrimental consequences. In fact, it was when McCoy acted kind and professional towards him that Spock rather found he did not know quite what to do with it, nor how to respond.

“Sir?”

Spock blinked, refocused, and set the PADD down.

“We shall see. Lead the way, Ensign.”

Spock acknowledged geology’s cheerful greetings and expressions of gratitude with a nod as he approached their station. His department had long since become accustomed to working alongside a touch telepath, some having been with him for years; they had already stepped aside to allow him a respectable amount of personal space, aware of his aversion to physical contact. He appreciated it now more than ever, because even the mistake of accidentally brushing his hand against another would be disastrous. And since he could not trust in his ability to control himself lately, either in body or mind, he was thankful that the possibility for such a mistake had been removed.

The microscope was set up already, lit and dialed to exacting specification. The group was eclectic blend of geology sub-departments; a collaboration of astrogeology, lithology, geochronology, and petrology. They had been working for hours now; he’d been aware of them conversing in low voices from their corner of the room. They were, if he remembered correctly and he was certain he did, studying samples of rock taken from the surface of Seskilles VII. He’d been informed that the first landing party had not been the only one; in the duration of his convalescence, multiple away teams had been sent down to take drilled core samples for further geologic analysis. They had been far better prepared and clothed for the weather, and there had been no further reported injuries.

Of course, none of the humans comprising those away teams were psi sensitive, or there may have been a different outcome.

Spock hesitated at the sight of the slides, and the slivers of rock samples on them. The thought of being that close to any part of the planet, even small slides of it, made him faintly ill. The planet had not harmed him, at least not irreparably; he had been harmed by the freezing conditions, but the fall from the cliffside had been a result of his own clumsiness. Seskilles VII itself had done nothing; the land and rock were barren and without sentience. There was no justification for his irrational faltering, no explanation he could give for why his pulse had sped up. He considered the possibility that his discomfort was caused more, perhaps, by what the planet represented than anything it had actually done. The hollow moan of the wind, the vast, empty plains, the radiation in the air—all of it implied that the world was empty. The abandoned stone city; the skeletons of buildings sticking from the snow. It echoed signs of life where life no longer existed. A dead planet with dead cities from a dead race.

Control. Control. Control.

There was an anxious, crawling feeling beneath his skin as Spock finally bent to the microscope. Lieutenant, Junior Grade Gonzales began to speak to him about their findings in his usual deep, clear voice, but it was uncommonly difficult to make out the words. There was a buzzing sound in his ears; an almost high-pitched ringing that began to drown out the world around him. His head hurt, but not in the same way as a headache. No, it started to throb where his skull had been fractured; a pain that he knew was not real. Psychosomatic. In his mind, not in his body.

Control. Focus.

His hand quaked as he placed it against the coarse focus adjustments, so minutely that only he would notice. Unacceptable. Spock swallowed heavily, blinked to clear his vision, and grit his jaw. He pressed his eye to the ocular lenses with slightly more force than normal.

The samples on display were rock thin slices, taken down to such a fine sliver that light was able to easily penetrate though them. Around the opaque flecks of metallic sulfides and other solid minerals, the cross-polarized light caused extinctions to become visible. Spock could immediately define quartz, olivine, graphite, pergium, and chromite. He’d been expecting those results, or at least similarly unremarkable ones, but then he identified an unusually large quantity of thorite for such a thin sample, and his interest was piqued. Thorite, of course, was a nesosilicate of thorium, which meant this sample was quite radioactive. He would not have called it fascinating, but it was certainly intriguing.

What was fascinating, however, was the nearly imperceptible specks of silvery particles that did not behave in the same manner as the rest of the thin slice. It caught the light and shifted at the slight vibrations of the table, moving in such a way that it occasionally blocked the edge of the flecks of minerals around it. Spock arched a brow and adjusted the fine focus, admittedly more than a little interested now.

“Curious.”

“It’s weird, right? Computer analysis hasn’t gotten back to us yet; seismotectonics is hogging it all to themselves and being seriously greedy about sharing, as if their rocks are somehow more important than our rocks. We can’t figure out what it is, but we’re pretty sure it’s not a solid.”

“It isn’t,” Spock confirmed, moving the dials for a closer look. The cover slip made it difficult to be certain beyond all reasonable doubt, but he was fairly positive that— “This is liquid latinum.”

An immediate hush fell within the group, followed swiftly by an excited flurry of movement as PADDS were snatched up and notes were written down in rapid shorthand. A half-shouted whispered exclamation of “Holy shit!”, and then the thud of boots across the floor as Lieutenant Bellamy ran towards her friends in Magnetostratigraphy to share the news before he could reprimand the unprofessional language.

Spock almost—almost—smiled. Moments like these always reaffirmed his decision to go into Starfleet rather than the Vulcan Science Academy. While there was no place in the universe that he enjoyed more than at his Captain’s side, whether that place be on the bridge, planetside, or even walking down the hall, he felt an enormous amount of satisfaction and pleasure at being in his labs. Science was, after all, his primary area of focus; command had been introduced later and more by chance than any true desire to lead. It was in these labs, surrounded by his crew of geologists, astrophysicists, and exobiologists that he’d always felt a sense of belonging. Even two different members of two entirely different species could look through a microscope and find common ground in the exhilaration of scientific discovery. There was a universal kind of thrill in the simple act of researching the unknown.

(They enjoyed their research just as much as he so often enjoyed his.)

His breath hitched.

(Was this what bacteria felt like when examined beneath a microscope? Did those infinitesimally small creatures, existing in a way so foreign to his own lived experience, feel as gutted and abused as he did now?)

The terror came upon him suddenly. Spock stilled, hand freezing on the dial mid-turn. He looked through the microscope, but he did not see through it. Instead—as his illusion of peace, of wonder, of contentment cracked and shattered—all he saw was an impossible, unfathomable landscape.

(Horizons he could not rationalize, made of colors that did not exist, all clouded with emotions that flooded him like oceans. No gravity, no time, no sun. Planets the size of water drops, and drops of water the size of galaxies, all intangible and made of shapes that twisted and merged—in and out and in—all of it writhing and beating like a pulse. Landscapes of emotion that fizzed and popped and whined in that terrible, ear-splitting way, because it wasn’t physical at all. It didn’t really exist. Objects that did not hold form, but also held properties. Creatures that were not… not—)

He ripped his hands away from the microscope with such abrupt, desperate force that it sent the desk sliding with a loud screech of noise. The group of scientists looked at him, some with surprise and others with concern.

“Commander Spock?” Miss Vaughn bravely asked, and her eyebrows were creased in faint worry. “Is… everything alright, sir?”

Spock straightened and offered her a stiff nod, folding his hands neatly behind his back in parade rest to hide their sudden quivering.

“I am well,” Spock assured in a tone that, even to his own ears, sounded strained. He stepped away from the table and the microscope on it, already planning his immediate exit. His limbs began to tingle, like static beneath his skin. It itched. “Your prediction was accurate. It is a fascinating discovery, as you said. I look forward to reading the results of the computer analysis when they arrive, and I shall be certain to speak to the seismotectonic department about the allocation of shared resources. In the meantime, however, please excuse me.”

He was halfway to the door before Spock was forced to change his mind. He was not going to make it to his quarters. He was not even going to make it across the lab to the hallway. Already, he could feel the first shudder of pressure in his chest, and he only just managed to smother it with an imperceptible flinch before it could burst out of him in what would likely have been an audible and unbecoming wheeze. He abandoned his efforts to get to the door and instead pivoted for the storeroom to his immediate right.

The moment he entered the dim room and the doors slid shut behind him, the exact instant he was out of sight, Spock crumbled against the wall with a wracking gasp.

(Again and again, they violated his mind, his memories, his control.)

(They enjoyed their research just as much as he so often enjoyed his.)

He could not draw in breath. His head hurt where it had been fractured, and his ribs ached where he had broken them. Spock did not understand, as the capacity for understanding had seemingly disappeared with the air in the supply closet. His lungs burned. His side throbbed. He pressed one hand against his abdomen where the tricorder had pierced his skin, to apply pressure to where he was surely still bleeding out. He couldn’t feel the blood, but he could feel the pain there, sharp and stabbing. Distantly, he remembered to mind where his fingers were placed, so as not to press the fragments deeper in. He adjusted his grip to compensate for them, but his hands felt numb and clumsy, and they trembled so badly that he couldn’t keep consistent pressure. McCoy would be upset if he drove the shards further into his body, but he was equally certain that McCoy would be upset if he bled out, and so he was at an impasse. If he could draw any breath, any air at all, he might have comm’ed the doctor to ask his preference.

(He felt suffocated here, in this strange place between awareness and memory. He could not breathe. He did not have lungs. He did not have a body. He could not explain this feeling to them, because they did not have a word for it. They did not have words like he did.)

Static tingled beneath his skin like white noise, itching and trickling through his veins with a jittery rush of adrenaline. Spock stared at the equipment on the shelves opposite him. He did not see it. He did not understand it. He did not understand anything, because it had all drifted away, like it had been caught by a breeze. The sand in his mindscape swirled and spilled out, and he couldn’t hope to catch it when his hands were busy trying to apply pressure…

(He got the sense that they were delighted by what they saw; that they examined him with as much fascination as he did a new species of bacteria.)

There was a noise in the air; some kind of choked, ragged sound that reminded him of a weak and injured animal. It was only after he ran out of the air required to make it that Spock realized it was coming from himself. Immediately, he pressed his other hand over his mouth to stifle any further noise. He would be heard and, when others came to investigate, he would be seen. To be discovered behaving in such a way was unthinkable. If Jim could see him right now, acting out like this…

Well, there was a limit to anyone’s patience. Jim would only tolerate so much for so long…

(Jim dangled heavily from his grip, body limp and lifeless, and everything in Spock froze.)

(They were right about him: about his inability to control himself, his illogical reactions, his lack of worth, his weakness, all of it.)

(Spock hated himself in that moment. He hated himself.)

(Jim died in front of him again.)

He was in satisfactory condition, he tried to tell himself, to rationalize through the panic. He was fine. There was nothing wrong; certainly nothing that should have ever caused this kind of reaction. He was not physically damaged; he was not truly injured. He was not under attack, nor was he harming anyone else. There was nothing wrong, so why was it that he could not get his breathing under control? Why was it that he could not stop shaking, or stop making that horrible, frantic sound?

Spock leaned against the wall, pressing his left hand against his uninjured abdomen, and his right palm against his mouth to muffle his breath. He tasted blood. He stared at the ground, but it seemed so far from him, as if he were not touching it. The room had grown distant, as if a tide was pulling it further and further away. He was drowning again, or perhaps he had been for some time and just hadn’t known it.

And he didn’t understand, because there was nothing wrong.

Control, he tried to tell himself. Control. Control. Control.

His body did not respond. It only began to shudder as if he were freezing cold, shaking and shivering and swaying. Spock took his hand from his side and tried to press it to the wall for stability, but his hand moved slowly, as if it were caught in a thick substance, and it got lost halfway there. Something was defective in him; something inherently, inexcusably flawed. Sarek had been correct in his disappointment, and Spock was growing increasingly disappointed in his own behavior as well. A disgusting, humiliating, reprehensible display of emotion. He should have expected nothing more of himself, but it was unacceptable all the same.

(“What else would you expect from a simpering, devil eared freak—”)

Spock slid down so that he was sitting, uncertain what else to do with his body. He knew that outwardly, he likely did not appear to be nearly so affected. He knew his face was likely impassive and barren of emotion. He knew his trembling was not as violent as it felt, and that his gasping would not be as loud to others as it was to him. He knew that he was not showing the overwhelming sense of dread that consumed him from the inside out, but knowing and feeling, although sharing some commonalities, were on opposite ends of the spectrum. Knowing did not change feeling, and right now, he felt as if he were dying. The thought of that, he realized distantly, was not necessarily appealing to him… but neither was it unappealing.

How fascinating.

He wanted to meditate. He wanted Jim. He wanted neither. He did not know what he wanted. The idea of sinking into his desecrated mind was horrifying, and the idea of Jim seeing him like this was even worse. Swallowing, Spock realized his throat was tight and his eyes had begun to burn with a suspicious sting. He had not felt such shame over his behavior since he had murdered his captain on Vulcan, and the mortification sunk into his skin and burned. The shame of panicking affected him more than the panic itself did. Control. Please, control.

(Begging didn’t make any difference, he thought distantly. Begging was useless.)

The sensation of being watched—of being exposed—prickled his senses. He felt scoured and opened; all of his insides displayed like a vivisection. He was not being watched, because the room was empty of all but himself. But then, Spock realized he could not be entirely certain of that—not definitively and beyond all doubt. The possibility existed that he was being observed. What if this was another memory for them to rip from him? What if this room existed nowhere but in his own recollection? It was possible, and how could he possibly confirm or refute it either way? The room didn’t seem real. He didn’t even seem real. More and more, Spock felt as if he were becoming little more than some blurry, indistinct fog…

(It was blending together. Spock. The Seskille. It was all blending together, and he could not make sense of it any longer. There was no separation. No single entity.)

(The Seskille reached into him again, like picking at a specimen with sharp tweezers, and ripped—)

(Was this what bacteria felt like when examined beneath a microscope? Did those infinitesimally small creatures, existing in a way so foreign to his own lived experience, feel as gutted and abused as he did now?)

(Again and again, they violated his mind, his memories, his control. They forced him to feel. The confusion, the grief, the horror, the nervousness, the pleasure, the tenderness, the amusement.)

(They enjoyed their research just as much as he so often enjoyed his.)

(Again and again, they violated his mind, his memories, his control. They—)

(Again and again, they violated his mind—)

(Again and again—)

(Again and again—)

(Again and again—)

For what seemed like years—time he could not calculate, for his internal chronometer was no longer functioning—he sat there and stared at a room that felt increasingly hazy. He breathed with lungs that didn’t feel like his, blinked with eyes that didn’t see anything, and his mind raced with thoughts and emotions that he should not have been capable of thinking or feeling. He breathed and sat and thought and felt, and at the same time, he registered none of it. His rational mind had left some time ago, and the rest of the world had faded along with it.

But… eventually, reality trickled back into his awareness like a slow drip. Eventually, the buzzing in his skin began to fade. Eventually, the walls around him took on solid form. Eventually, he realized he was actually present in the room, and that the room was real. It took time—maybe minutes or hours or days—but wearily, sluggishly, he was able to finally lift his head from his knees. His surroundings swam into view, just as tangible as they always should have been.

He was no longer gasping for air, Spock realized distantly. He was still shaking, but it had slowed to a faint tremble, noticeably reduced from the frantic shiver he’d previously been afflicted with. The room had come back to him, but his mind had not. At least, not in the way he thought it should have; not in a way that felt natural. His body and head were curiously drained, as if something in him had been siphoned or depleted by some slow, steady leak. He was exhausted. Which… was absurd, he thought, as all he had done was sit there and been an embarrassment. Yet everything in him positively ached for rest. He was tired physically, and he was tired mentally. He was so very tired of himself. The world around him was solid once more, but he didn’t feel as if he was. It was a surreal sensation; like he was dreaming. He was not. He knew he was not.

It was the same issue as his quarters, and the lab. The problem was not with the room, nor the things within it. The problem was him.

Spock removed his fingernails from the skin of his palm, vacantly acknowledging the smears of green there. Doctor McCoy would be disappointed if he knew, but he had no intention of telling him about it. There was a first aid kit in his quarters; he could tend to the cuts on his own if they bothered him. As it so happened, they did not bother him. The stinging was grounding, and it was that persistent stinging that eventually helped him catch his breath. Using the wall to assist, he heaved himself to his feet and stood. He wanted out of this room. He wanted to meditate. He wanted the captain. He wanted to go to sleep for a very long time to stop the humiliation, and quite possibly forever.

(Live Long and Prosper, T'Pau had said to him. Spock had not intended to do either.)

He did not understand why he was so very drained…

Spock took a moment to smooth down his uniform, adjusting it with ingrained neatness so that he would at least look professional and dignified, even if he did not feel anything like the sort. For not the first time, he was immensely thankful that Vulcans lacked the eccrine, apocrine, and apoeccrine glands that were responsible for perspiration in humans. He certainly felt ill, and perhaps his skin had taken on a different pallor than his typical standard, but he was not covered in sweat in the way he thought a human might be after having such an episode. One of the few ways his half-breed physiology had benefitted him, rather than the usual side-effects of a detrimental nature. It was concealable this way; he could pretend there was nothing amiss.

However, appearance or not, he had been in the supply room longer than he should have been; far longer than was excusable, and Spock knew he had no explanation for it. He cast his eyes around for something that might justify his presence there but found nothing adequate. If someone questioned him on it, he would have to employ the skill of deflection and do his best to steer the topic away. He wished he was a better liar.

Taking a deep, steading breath—which only quaked minutely—Spock exited the storeroom with as much poise as he could. His body did, at least. His mind felt rather distant from the rest of him. There were more than a few glances in his direction, and a small scattering of outright stares. He spotted Lieutenant Shams al-Din hovering by his desk, and her dark eyes watched him from across the room in concern. Loyal to him though she was, she had initially begun her career in medicine and would not hesitate to contact the doctor if she judged it truly necessary.

Spock looked away and focused intently on the door. He needed to leave immediately.

“There ye are, Commander! I thought you might be down here.”

Spock turned at the familiar voice, pausing mid-step. Lieutenant Commander Scott was leaning casually against one of the tables, clearly having been conversing with Ensign Aguirre about… plans of some kind. When Aguirre hastily flipped the PADD face down, Spock was fairly convinced he didn’t want to know what those plans entailed. Rather, he did not have the energy required to discover what those plans entailed. He didn’t have any energy at all…

“Mr. Scott,” he acknowledged faintly, and he felt his brow arch in mild confusion. It was difficult to speak; he had to concentrate to enunciate to his usual optimal standard. “I was not aware you were looking for me. Is there something you require?”

He wasn’t displeased to see him; quite the contrary. Mr. Scott was an entirely tolerable presence to be around, and Spock had no objections to his company. He was competent, able, and efficient at his duties, if unusually expressive and emotionally volatile. Although, when Spock considered the incident he'd just had, perhaps he should not have judged the chief engineer so harshly. His emotional mannerisms did afford him some positive attributes. Mr. Scott would not pry, and he certainly would not ask questions that Spock could not or would not answer. If it didn’t pertain to the ship or the safety of the ship, he didn’t seem to care about gossip. Nevertheless, favorable traits or not, Spock was admittedly perplexed at exactly why Montgomery Scott was in his lab.

“Not exactly; I was just popping in for a tick to check on our bonnie metal lass,” Lieutenant Commander Scott said, and his voice shifted towards adoration by the end. Spock knew it was not aimed at himself. “—and I heard you’d been released from sickbay. It’s good to have you back, Mr. Spock.”

Bonnie metal lass. His other eyebrow rose, and he felt exhausted all over again. He gave deciphering the problematic terminology his best attempt. “You are… referring to the Quantified Helioionization Buffer?”

“Aye, that I am. She’s just how ye left it; I’ve not done more than some odds and ends while you were out. And it’s not for lack of wanting to, either—I cannae wait to put that beauty together—but I know you enjoy your experimenting just as much as I enjoy my tinkerin’, and I’d not deprive you of it.”

(They enjoyed their research just as much as he so often enjoyed his.)

“Your restraint is noted, Mr. Scott,” Spock said quietly. Lieutenant Shams al-Din looked as if she were preparing herself to approach him, and so he stepped closer to the chief engineer. Many of his scientists were too intimidated to approach him about such a thing. Sameera was not among them. He did not wish to answer questions right now, particularly as he lacked the answers. “That does not explain your presence here.”

The Quantified Helioionization Buffer was not located in Lab Four.

The experiment had been ongoing for approximately sixty-eight-point-two-seven days; a fascinating collaboration between science and engineering, and specifically of himself and Lieutenant Commander Scott. The man made for an intriguing—if non-conventional—research partner, and he’d quickly learned that Scott was obsessively precise and exacting when it came to machines. He’d known of his… peculiarities with them, of course, but the degree of finesse he gave to his engineering work was quite remarkable… and borderline concerning. The Quantified Helioionization Buffer was in the early stages of development, assuredly not even close to be ready for trials, but it showed signs of promise. Enough promise that he’d proposed the suggestion of publishing their work, even if it did not turn out to be a success. The process as a whole had been intriguing.

He looked forward to returning to work on it; much of their progress had been hitherto theoretical rather than practical, and he had only just begun to develop the chemical composition before the Seskiless VII mission had interrupted it. He disliked leaving a project incomplete in such a delicate stage.

“Well, since I was up here already, I figured we oughtta go together and present a unified front. Make a show of officer solidarity, you see.” 

Spock blinked tiredly. He did not see.

Something about the response sat ill with him. It was not the wording exactly, for that was straightforward enough—or at least the words themselves had clear definitions, even if the context of each one was indecipherable. Instead, it was the… perhaps it was the tone of it. Possibly. It was difficult to pinpoint what had triggered the alarm. Spock was well aware that he was not—to borrow one of Jim’s colorful metaphors—firing on all cylinders.

It was for that reason that it took him so long to comprehend the actual meaning of Scott’s statement. He did not understand, not at first.

… and then he did.

The debrief.

Spock checked his internal chronometer, but it was… skewed. Still floating far away from him, along with his dignity, his senses, and the majority of his reason. He risked a subtle glance at the clock on the wall and, to his startled dismay, Spock realized that he’d spent nearly twenty minutes in the supply room. It was now only eight-point-four-six minutes until the debrief began. He had nearly been late—would have been late, had Mr. Scott not come and gotten him. Spock had never, not once, been late to anything in his thirty-eight years of life. The idea of it was unthinkable to the point of ridiculousness, and the fact that it had so very nearly happened without even his notice…

“Ye alright, Mr. Spock?” Mr. Scott was at the doors, clearly waiting for him to follow.

“Yes. May I inquire why we would require a unified front?” Spock asked, tucking his hands behind his back as he fell into step aside the chief engineer. He wanted to vomit. Late. Not just not early, but almost late. Were he functioning optimally, he would have already been in the briefing room for at least ten minutes. That he was not operating at his usual base standard of timeliness was unconscionable. “It was my understanding that this was to be a briefing of the mission’s events and facts as they presently are, not a tribunal.”

“Well… aye, and yer not wrong… exactly...” Mr. Scott started hesitantly as they exited into the hallway. “Alright, Mr. Spock… it’s like this. That awful bawfaced bampot’s been on a warpath lately, skulking around here to get information about you or the planet or both. I was already coming up here to check on our QHB and… well, the captain didn’t order me to safely escort you to the meeting, not in so many words, but I definitely know a strong hint when I hear one.”

Ah.

The meaning of the insult was not difficult to interpret, nor was the context of whom it referred to. Spock felt his stomach sink. He had been extremely fortunate not to encounter Ambassador Hammett since waking up, but that did not mean he was ignorant of the man’s multiple attempts to remedy that. He’d heard plenty about his increasingly desperate actions from Jim, Doctor McCoy, Nurse Chapel, Doctor M’Benga, and Nurse Slater—often phrased in various tones of disgust, irritation, and the colorful usage of insults.

He had known that the ambassador would be present at the debrief; it was ultimately his mission and so logic followed that of course Hammett would be there. However, Spock had counted on the meeting to meet certain… professional standards, and it appeared as if those would have to be drastically lowered to fit the circumstances as they stood. That was unfortunate. The ambassador presented an uncomfortably erratic variable to his predictions for how the debrief would go, and it rendered much of his preparation—what answers he would give to the questions he would likely be asked—invalid. Spock had been able, to at least some degree, calculate the odds of getting through the meeting with his dignity intact. Those odds were no longer in his favor. In fact, they were lessening with every step he took.

“I see,” Spock said softly, and he did. The sick feeling in his gut grew cold.

Behind his back, his hands began to tremble again. He clenched them tighter to compensate for the physiological reaction. There was nothing wrong, he told himself stiffly. This was expected. He wanted to meditate. He wanted Jim. He wanted to lock himself back into his rooms. He wanted to avoid his rooms entirely. More than anything, he wanted to go to sleep, whether that be for an hour, a week, or forever. He was so drained of energy; exhausted in a way he could not recall feeling in months. Five months, three weeks, five days, nine hours, and twenty-two minutes, to be exact. He’d felt comparable levels of fatigue in the hours, days, and weeks following his murder of the captain, and Spock suspected the comparison did not bode well. If this surge of weariness followed a similar pattern, and he had no reason to think it would not, he could not count on sleep to help him. He expected that he would only lay in bed for hours without getting any rest at all, and that it was useless to try. Experience had demonstrated as much.

He took a deep breath to center himself. His breath involuntarily hitched when he did so. Mr. Scott did not seem to notice, for he was still speaking. Spock had missed every last word of it. He forced himself to concentrate, upset that his attention had lapsed to begin with.

“—been lurking around your department like a bad odor since ye got injured, just sniffin’ for any word. ‘Course, it’s not like he’s got many other options left, ‘less he wants to stay put in his quarters—which would be just fine with the rest of us. The way I hear it, he’s banned from medical on Doctor McCoy’s orders, and operations won’t give him the time ‘o day what with his blundering around their systems. And I guarantee that he cannae step so much as a toe into my engine rooms. My men are near ready to fire on sight.”

Spock stepped into the turbolift, turning to face the doors as they closed.

“You are proposing the assault of a Federation Ambassador.”

“I’m not proposing anything, Mr. Spock—I’m predicting it! If that dimwitted fandan keeps showing his face around me, I’m more likely than not to break it.”

“Deck Six.” The turbolift began to descend. “To strike an official diplomat is both against Starfleet regulation and unbecoming of a Starfleet Officer, Lieutenant Commander. I believe you have only recently had a similar conversation regarding an outbreak of violence between crewmembers of both the Enterprise and the Klingon’s IKS Gr'oth on Deep Space Station K-7—violence which, as I recall, you initiated. I suggest, both presently and in the future, that you exercise more restraint.”

“I know, and the captain gave me the same speech about not pummeling Hammett,” Mr. Scott said, amused. “He also heavily implied that he’d look the other way if I did.” Spock sighed. That sounded… unfortunately like the captain. “But surely even your patience must run out at some point? You’re telling me that you don’t just want to hit that man in the mouth every time you see him?”

“I do not wish to, as you say, hit Ambassador Hammett in the mouth. As a Vulcan, I am incapable of acting emotionally in such a manner, and to do so would be not only be highly undignified, but also illogical and unwarranted.”

The chief engineer shrugged, unrepentant. “His entire presence aboard our ship is undignified, illogical, and unwarranted, but I do see yer point.” As they stepped out of the turbolift, Mr. Scott turned to him. “Just know that if he makes so much as a wrong peep my way, I cannae be held responsible for my actions. Truth be told, laddie, I’m starting to think he’s provoking it intentionally. The garbage he’s spewed about the Enterprise, the crew, the captain, about—did you even hear what that dullard said about you while you were unconscious?!”

“As I was evidently unconscious at that time, I assure you that I did not.” They exited the turbolift, and Spock had to dig his fingernails deeply into the palms of his hands to try to ground himself. The briefing room was in sight, and his reprieve was up. “Nevertheless, neither his actions nor comments justify the use of physical savagery. As First and Second Officer respectively, we are to comport ourselves at a higher standard.”

“My standards lower with every word that comes out of that man’s smug mouth, but aye, I’ll do my best not to make the first move. If he starts up, though, make no mistake that I’ll finish it. After you, Mr. Spock. I’ll follow behind with a respectable glare his way, assuming he’s had the decency to show up on time.”

Spock hesitated, stopping just shy of the door’s automatic sensors. It was not audible to a human’s ear, but he could hear the sound of voices inside—particularly Jim’s voice.

And suddenly, it was real. The debrief. His time was up. He would have to talk about it; to have questions asked of him that he still did not know how to answer. Logically, they would want a full, detailed briefing of the events on Seskilles VII. Any other mission, the debrief would have taken place within an hour of arrival from planetside. That it had taken a week was because of him, and he knew the delay was causing the captain problems. Putting it off further would help nothing, especially as he knew that Starfleet Command had become invested in the outcome. The proof of pergium had raised the mission’s importance from mild to severe; the presence of liquid latinum would elevate that level to critical. He could not delay it…

But he also could not make himself walk into that room.

He was so tired…

“No,” he said softly, taking a step back. “You go ahead, Mr. Scott. I… must see to something first and will be there momentarily. Please excuse me.”

Spock turned smoothly on one heel and began down the empty hall as casually as he could manage it. Behind him, there was an increased volume of voices as presumably Mr. Scott entered the briefing room. He heard the captain’s cheerful “Scotty! I thought I sent you to get—” before the door closed and the sound muffled once more. It was not difficult to deduce the rest.

He waited until he was certain that no one was exiting the room, and then he leaned against the wall. His breath rushed out of him; that rasping, harsh wheeze of air that he struggled to inhale back in. His chest hurt. His abdomen hurt. He had the urge to press his hands to his side, but Spock knew he was uninjured. Not even bruising remained of the wound; McCoy had been extremely efficient in repairing the damage. Spock understood logically that he was not hurt, and that there was nothing wrong… and yet, his lungs burned for air and his body ached and he couldn’t breathe. His head hurt…

No, not his head. His mind.

They had taken that from him too, he thought. They had damaged him in such a way that he could not repair himself. He had never been unable to meditate before. He had never gone so long without sinking into his mindscape to center his thoughts and emotions, and it was little wonder that they were spilling out as they were. He should never have had those thoughts and emotions to begin with, but that was a personal defect that he had long since been forced to come to terms with. If his previous experiences hadn’t made that clear enough, the Seskille had certainly completed the job. He’d always been able to  bury his emotions into the depths of his mind, where they were unable to influence his actions or thoughts. Now his mind was ravaged, ruined, and churned apart, and he did not recognize it any longer.

He could not focus, he could not stop shaking, and he could not solve any of it. And… he still could not seem to breathe…

Spock stared at the wall across from him, but he did not see it. He was so tired; exhausted and drained in a way he could scarcely recall feeling before. During Pon Farr, perhaps, but his mind had been chaos, and he’d burned so intensely that he’d thought of nothing but fire. He’d been consumed from the inside out; all he’d been able to feel was heat and want and sick, pooling lust. And after Vulcan… after Vulcan, he’d been in such a state of shock that he’d not felt much of anything at all for quite some time. Eventually the emotion had returned, arriving in the ugly, messy form of grief, horror, and tears, but his capacity to meditate had not been impacted. He’d been able to conceal the appalling reaction safely out of sight, burying the feelings so far into himself that it had left him feeling empty for weeks afterwards

They had taken this from him too.

His time was up. Spock would have to go in there, sit down in front of his captain, his crew, the ambassador, and he would have to tell them what happened. He would have to tell them that the Seskille had ripped a hole in his mind so brutally that he was still bleeding even now. He would have to tell them how the Seskille only understood feelings, and that they had highlighted each and every one he should not have had. He would have to tell them that he’d responded to them with emotion, begged them to stop with emotion, and attempted to communicate with emotion. As a Vulcan, a half-breed though he was, he would have to admit to feeling at all.

He could not do it. Such a thing was an impossible task for a Vulcan. Did they not understand what they demanded from him? Exposing himself in such a manner… it felt nearly as violating as what the Seskille had done to him. Perhaps even more so, because he did not care what the Seskille collective thought of him. He cared very much what his crew thought, what his fellow officers thought, what his captain thought.

Spock stared at the wall, smoothing his expression to something blank and stoic. He was tired of panicking, tired of feeling, tired of worrying. He felt hollow. He felt drained.

(Again and again, they violated his mind, his memories, his control. They forced him to feel. The confusion, the grief, the horror, the nervousness, the pleasure, the tenderness, the amusement.)

(He felt their joy. He felt his own self-loathing. He felt their happiness. He felt sick.)

He felt… so very tired.