Archive of Our Own ^beta

He has lain quietly for some weeks now, resting, watching the numbers. The doctors who treat him do not tell him what they indicate, but he knows. He has seen these numbers enough to know their meaning.

Vulcan doctors do not waste time on sympathy, on bedside manner. They do their jobs efficiently and emotionlessly. It is the way they are taught, the only way they know. But he has known so many others, spent so much time among humans, that perhaps he has grown accustomed to that tenderness, that comfort. He finds himself craving it now.

He has often wondered about the afterlife. Once he tried to speak to it of a doctor at his bedside, to be met with a blank stare and Such considerations are illogical, sir. Illogical. Strange to contemplate how a word that so often fell from his lips could cause him such irritation now. He can almost hear his old friend laughing at him.

It is nights like this that he misses his old friend.

He misses them all, has missed them for a long time. Humans do not live as long as Vulcans do, of course, though his friends had good, long lives. Nonetheless, one by one they left him. Now he is alone. And he misses them. Badly.

"Sir, you have visitors."

He turns his head, slowly, painfully, to the nurse, nods once to let her know that the guests, whomever they may be, are permitted to come in, then lies back. Probably it is some dignitary, some Vulcan official, here to ask for final words of wisdom or give final words of honor. He does not have much time now.

"Mr. Spock."

The voice startles him for a moment, and he looks quickly to the door. Reality and logic take over once more as he observes the seven people approaching his bedside. Four men with dark hair, one medium, one fair, and a lovely dark-skinned woman, all in the formal dress uniforms of Starfleet. A memory comes unbidden to his mind: standing at the entrance to the shuttle bay, next to a dark-haired man who tugs at his collar and grumbles good-naturedly about the complexity of the Vulcan salute.

He smiles faintly. "Dress uniforms?"

The man in the lead, the fair one, nods. "The least we could do to honor a Starfleet officer."

"I am no Starfleet officer," he says, though he is touched. "Not anymore."

His eye travels down the line. They look so similar to his friends, but they are not. They are younger, warped slightly by the alteration of the timeline, changed by circumstances he sought to avoid. He cannot think of them by their surnames, as he did his own friends. He must use their first names. After all, to him, they are not officers, not right now. They are children.

Jim gives him a crooked smile. "Then it's the least we could do to honor you."

He tries to smile in response. "Why did you come?"

His younger counterpart's face is set in a carefully blank mask. "We were in the vicinity and thought to contact you. When we hailed New Vulcan, we were informed that you were unlikely to survive the night."

"Spock," Nyota murmurs, elbowing him slightly.

At that, he cannot help but chuckle lightly. The human part of him has become more prominent as he has aged. "It's all right. I can still read a bio-screen. I already knew."

Leonard almost smiles before he catches himself. "Anyway, Jim put in a call to Starfleet Command and got permission for us to stop long enough to visit with you."

"I appreciate that." He notices the way Jim and Leonard's fingers twine together, the artificial light of the bio-screen glinting off the gold band on Jim's left hand. "But what were you doing in the vicinity of New Vulcan?"

"We're on our way home," Jim answers.

"So soon? It seems only yesterday you were passing by on your way to chart the rest of Alpha Quadrant."

"Five years goes by fast."

"Tell me what you found," he requests. "What you did."

And for the next hour, they do, taking it in turns, filling in details, teasing one another. He relives his own missions, his own journeys, as they name planets and situations. He feels both pleasure and pain at the memories.

"And now?" he asks as they wind down. "What do you do now?"

"The Enterprise'll be going back on another five-year," Jim answers. "She's already got her orders. Gamma Quadrant this time--like you said, we've finished charting Alpha, there's nothing left. And they're almost finished charting Beta. The ships that are out there will probably have it fully mapped within a year or two."

"That is what the ship will do," he says, noting Jim's careful wording. "What do you do?"

Jim hesitates, looks at Leonard, who smiles slightly. "Well, the two of us will be going back out, at least. Can't keep this idiot out of space, and someone's got to go along to keep him in check."

Jim laughs, but there is a look of relief in his eyes. Nyota doesn't even blink. "Spock and I will be on board, too."

"Aye, so will I," Montgomery agrees. "Who else would I trust with her?"

He smiles, then turns to the two younger men. "And you two?"

Hikaru blushes. "Um. I'm not sure, actually. I...have an offer to transfer to the Excelsior when she comes out of the dockyards, but that won't be for another year or two. I still have to think about whether or not I'm going to take it. But I'll at least be on the Enterprise until then. If you'll have me," he adds, glancing at Jim.

"Of course," Jim says with a smile, but there's a faintly wistful look on his face.

"I'll be staying on, too, Keptin," Pavel says. Jim smiles for real at that news.

He smiles, too, then feels tears unexpectedly prick at his eyes. "You never know the value of friends until you lose them," he murmurs.

"You'll see them again soon," Nyota says encouragingly, although there are tears in her eyes.

He looks up. "You truly believe that?"

All six of the fully human officers standing at his bedside nod. Leonard adds, "I've sat by the bedsides of enough dying men to know that there's something beyond this life."

"Doctor," his younger counterpart says stiffly, "you have no proof, merely sentiment. Such feelings are--"

"Mr. Spock," he interrupts, "if the next word out of your mouth is 'illogical,' I shall be forced to hurt you. Frankly, I am sick and tired of hearing about logic."

Jim, Leonard, and Nyota all laugh at the expression on his younger counterpart's face. Additional laughter draws his attention, and he turns his head quickly, sure he has misheard.

But he has not. Standing by the wall are two more men, around the same age as the crew on the other side of him, similar but different, one fair and one dark, both with their eyes crinkled upwards in laughter. They wear, not the stiff dress uniforms trimmed in shiny ribbon, but the simple, serviceable working uniforms he remembers so well--one greenish-gold, one pale blue. They are men familiar to him, the two men who have been on his mind so frequently.

"There you are, Spock," says the one in gold, getting his laughter under control. "You've led us a devil of a dance, let me tell you."

He stares, stretches his fingers longingly. "What...?" he begins, then, softly, "Jim. Doctor."

Kirk and McCoy step closer, still smiling. "Do you have any idea," Kirk continues, "how hard it was to find you?"

"Made looking for you on the Genesis planet seem like a cakewalk in comparison," McCoy puts in.

"Why are you here?" he asks, still softly.

Kirk shrugs in that offhand manner he recalls. "The Enterprise is waiting. She's fully fueled and ready for a long journey. Has been for--well, at least fifty years."

His eyebrows lift slightly. "Then why have you not left?"

"What? Leave? Without my first officer?" Kirk smiles.

He looks over at his visitors, the younger Enterprise crew, but they give no sign that they have heard the exchange going on. He turns back to Kirk. "What is your heading?"

Kirk's smile deepens. "Second star to the right," he says, "and straight on 'til morning."

He smiles, remembering the words. McCoy smiles, too. "You oughta see the bridge, Spock. Sulu and Chekov have her neat as a pin. And Scotty has the warp core running beautifully."

"All of time and space, Spock," Kirk says softly. "Anywhere we like, backwards, forwards, sideways. This universe or our own. An awfully big adventure. It's all waiting for us out there. Waiting for you."

He turns to look at the visitors again, then back to his friends. "And what of them?"

"They'll carve their own destinies," Kirk replies. "Just as we did. Our paths will cross again, I'm sure."

McCoy comes over, lays a hand on his shoulder. "You've stood the watch long enough," he says, his voice also soft. "Time to let go."

Kirk holds out his hand. "The choice is yours. Give the order, Mr. Spock."

He smiles, a broad, genuine smile. One hand curls up to his shoulder to cover McCoy's. The other reaches out, grasps Kirk's. He feels strength course through him. And then he speaks, the last words he will speak in this lifetime, the first words he will speak in the next.

"Mr. Scott, beam me aboard."