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Chapter Text

"I have made my decision."

There was no inflection to Sarek's voice at all - of course there isn't, Spock thought to himself, his father was enviably Vulcan, even under the furious eyes of his all-too-human wife.

"Well, I haven't," Amanda hissed, her hands tightening slightly, bunching her skirt in her fists. She would not have done so if she were not distressed, Spock noted. The fabric would crease easily. "And he is my child as well, or have you forgotten?"

"I am hardly able to forget, Amanda," Sarek responded, and perhaps his eyes were reproachful or perhaps they gentled a bit or perhaps he showed nothing at all and it was their psychic link that made Amanda relax her hands, made her face soften slightly into something more sad than angry. "Which is why I must insist that he be treated like any other Vulcan child. I have allowed him to remain with us in the house to indulge your need for companionship and your attachment to him, but if I were to keep him here now that he has reached the proper age for schooling it would not serve him well. His age mates would—"

"His age mates will treat him differently no matter what we do, Sarek," Amanda said firmly. "And children, even Vulcan children, can be cruel. I do no want to send him out there with them, defenseless! If they should mock him...he feels emotions far more strongly than his peers. If they—"

"I am capable of controlling myself, mother," Spock interrupted, stung. "And I am not defenseless. I have been learning Suus Mahna from Master T'Pirr." And learning somewhat less orthodox methods elsewhere, he thought, but did not voice it. He felt the smile in the back of his mind, and responded with a mental smile of his own. It felt...easy, unlike the crude curling of his lips that he sometimes displayed for the benefit of his mother. The same emotion, and nothing to fight through in order to show it.

His parents turned to look at him. "You invalidate your point, Spock, by interrupting without cause. It's possible your mother is correct," Sarek stated coolly. Amanda inclined her head, the triumph in her eyes dwarfed by the worry.

Sarek did not acknowledge her thanks. "However. I believe the challenge of control will be good for him. He is far too free with his emotions, here, where they are accepted. It will be better if he learns that not all of our society is so tolerant." He turned on his heel, leaving Amanda gaping after him.

If he's what you guys call tolerant, Jim announced in his mind, I'd hate to see Vulcan's racists.

Spock examined his mother's surprised profile for a moment, and then turned away, walking absently through the vaulted halls of his home. His attention was entirely inward, as it had been more and more of late. He supposed his father approved of his silence, but knew his mother worried. He wished to reassure her, but wasn't sure how to explain the boy who dreamed his way into Spock's life, or the utterly alien life of Jim's that Spock saw when he slept.

What is a racist? He asked Jim curiously. The word was weighted and negative where it touched his mind. He wondered which Common root it was derived from - "race" as in a contest of speed, or as in variety within a species?

He could feel Jim struggling to find a way to explain it. He marveled again at just how much he could tell of the other boy - it helped that Jim had mirrors in his room, had let Spock examine his expressive face, his freckled cheeks, his wide smile. It was much easier to imagine that face twisting in contemplation than to have some faceless feeling in the back of his mind.

It's like...do you remember last week, when that woman came into the shop, and Frank totally ignored her to talk to her husband, even though she knew what she was talking about way more than he did?

Spock nodded, and then caught himself. Yes, he said simply, turning a corner. He remembered thinking it was odd, but not worth distracting Kirk from the engine he'd been repairing.

That was sexism. When someone thinks they're better than someone else just 'cause of their gender. Jim was a little angry, a little sad. Racism is like that, only it's usually because of something even stupider, like skin color. We've mostly overcome stuff like that, by now, but it used to be awful. There were wars fought over it - white people kept black people as slaves, like the Orions. Even after we solved that, it took until the 21st Century for a black man to be elected President.

Spock raised his eyebrows. You are not sexist, he observed, reaching his chambers.

Of course not! Jim thought, a little horrified, and Spock hurried to clarify. He tried to find how best to phrase what he was thinking. But your father is. How -

He's not my father, Jim thought quickly, firmly. Spock sat on the edge of his bed, careful, even now, not to let his puzzlement show on his face.

But he is married to your mother. He claims parental authority over you. The thoughts were not really questions - he had observed both of these things as true during his dreaming, but he wondered how the conclusion he drew from them could be incorrect.

Yeah, but that doesn't make him my father. Jim thought, and then was silent for a long moment. Spock thought suddenly that perhaps he had woken, and felt a stab of sorrow.

I apologize if I am prying into personal matters, he thought, mostly to make sure that Jim was still there.

Mental laughter washed over him, and not for the first time he wanted to hear it for real, through his own ears. His mother laughed so rarely that he could remember nothing but how startling it was to hear such noises - nothing about the joy that she must have felt, the joy that Jim felt, when he laughed. Dude, Jim thought, amused, you're inside my head. You are my personal matters.

Strangely gratified, Spock folded his legs under him in a meditative pose. He had no desire to clear his mind - in fact, quite the opposite - but it would give him the appearance of doing something, were anyone to walk by, besides staring at the walls. If Frank is not your father....he started, and then tried again. I do not understand. It was my assumption that humans, like Vulcans, mated for life.

Sort of. Sometimes, Jim thought. There's something called a divorce...

He stopped, evidently tired of explaining every little nuance of human culture, and then sighed. My father's dead.

Immediately images flooded Spock's mind. They seemed to be mostly of projected videos - things a bit like the historical broadcasts Amanda had shown Spock of Earth history. He recognized the ship involved from those same lessons - the USS Kelvin, piloted by one George Kirk. He watched as it was destroyed, the explosion overlaid with the face of a Human man, his features almost familiar, and the face of Kirk's mother Winona, though she was much younger than the times he had seen her before. He blinked at the weight of the emotions he felt from Jim - sorrow, a sort of longing, and a dull, useless anger - as well as the information that the images conveyed.

I grieve with thee, he thought, before he knew what was he doing, and then sat stock still, not sure Jim would understand the ritualistic phrase.

I know. Jim thought back, wearily amused. I'm in your head, remember? Your poker face is useless against me.

Spock blinked again, not because he did not understand the reference (Jim had explained poker to him the week before) but because he had not thought of that. He'd assumed that he could feel Jim's emotions because Jim was human - he experienced everything so intensely, so loudly, that Spock could feel it through their inexplicable bond. But that Jim could feel his, as well, was unexpected, and slightly disconcerting.

Jim interrupted his musings, his mental voice suddenly distant. Uh oh, he thought. I think—

And he was gone, presumably blinking awake in his bed in Riverside, Iowa, the United States of America, Earth, leaving Spock with a mind full of sorrow that he realized with a start was his own.

"Goodbye," he said, speaking softly aloud to the silence of his home.

****

He began school a week later.

He immediately understood why his mother had been worried. Wherever he went he encountered stares and murmurs, body language that conveyed more hostility than he'd ever seen a Vulcan display in any way. His instructors spoke down to him, assuming that he possessed a level of intelligence far below what he actually did. He responded by holding himself high and answering all questions with careful, educated answers. Jim responded by cursing them out and ranting to Spock about how stupid they were, how unfair it was. I'd be on them in a second, beating them to a pulp, he snarled in the back of Spock's mind. Who the hell do they think they are?

Several times in his life, his mother had expressed to him the desire to hold him, and several times she had actually done so, folding him close and pressing her cheek into his hair. He had found the experience remarkably comforting, but had never understood her motives for wishing to do it.

The first time Jim expressed his anger at Spock's peers, at his instructors for their condescension, Spock wanted to hug him.

Overall, however, he found he enjoyed school. The classes were fascinating, much more complete and detailed than the lessons his parents had taught, or even the lectures that his private tutors had given. The work was challenging - he often found himself having to concentrate hard on the assignments. Jim laughed at him about that, thinking, Hey, I just had to do my own math homework, I don't want to do yours while I'm freaking sleeping!

Despite this, he actually seemed quite fascinated with some of the lessons that Spock was taught, especially those concerning Vulcan and alien cultures and styles. He would often chime in if Spock was in class, making observations that would never have occurred to Spock. The few times that he brought these observations to the attention of the instructor (usually he felt as if it was cheating), he was rewarded with raised brows and high marks, as well as the emotionless stares of his peers that said that such things would never have occurred to them, either. Spock felt slightly proud of that, a feeling only amplified by Jim's childish whooping and taunting in the back of his head.

Jim was often childish. It was one of the things that Spock found fascinating about him. He would vacillate between startlingly accurate observations of Vulcan culture to calling them "jerks" and claiming that they needed to "pull the stick out of their collective butt". In his own life, he often did things that were illogical, impulsive, and verging on irrational, tearing holes in Frank's clothing while laundering it, though it would just cause his step-father (this was, Spock eventually learned, the proper term) to scream at him and his mother to scrounge up the money for more, or purposefully scratching one of the cars in the shop, knowing he would be blamed for it but not caring.

One day, Jim sat on the roof of his porch, his feet bare and hanging over the edge, his toes borne up on the wind. The shingles on the porch were old, and many were broken. Still others were rotted through. Spock expressed worry about the safety of his location, and Kirk laughed aloud to the blue sky. "So?" He asked, never quite having gotten the hang of speaking to Spock only in his mind - or perhaps just preferring to talk aloud. Spock would never say it, but he preferred it this way too - he liked Jim's light, laughing voice. "It's fun!"

You do many things only for the pursuit of fun, Spock observed, and Jim grinned. Spock could feel it, a bright blossom of amusement. "Duh. I'm only thirteen."

And I am only fourteen years of age, Spock answered, yet I do not understand such motivations.

"Yeah," Jim agreed, "But you're half Vulcan. There's probably, like, a death penalty for any Vulcan who does anything fun."

That would be illogical, Spock thought at him, but allowed himself to be amused, and Jim grinned even more.

"You seriously don't know what it's like to have fun?" Jim asked, after a minute. The sun was beginning to set over the barren fields, and Spock noticed absently the huge array of colors that the Earth's sky was capable of becoming. "You've never, like. Driven so fast that the wind fills you up? Played soccer? Wrestled?"

I have never driven an automobile at all, Spock answered, ignoring the other two as incomprehensible.

"Oh, man. I'll make sure you're around, next time I take one of the cars."

You are three years short of the United State's legal driving age, if I am not mistaken about Earth law, Spock thought at him.

Jim's only response was to flop back onto the roof and spread his arms wide, opening himself up to the darkening sky. He stayed there, silent, Spock just as silent in the back of his mind, until it was truly dark and the stars began to emerge. The wind was slightly cold, but Jim didn't move, and Spock didn't urge him to.

"My father was a great man," He said abruptly. His mind was alive not with pride, but something more complicated.

Indeed, Spock thought, his contributions to science were numerous, and his skill in the Captain's chair legendary.

"Yeah, and he was a great man, too," Jim responded, with something close to a laugh. He was silent again for a moment, staring hard at the stars above his head. "Everyone expects...everyone expects me to look up to him. To want to...to be him. But..."

He trailed off, and Spock's view of the stars was cut off when he closed his eyes. He left me here, Jim said to him, mind-to-mind, his mental voice conveying a confusion far deeper than his words had. He died, Spock, and left me and my mother with him, and I have to think, what kind of man does that?

There were a thousand things that Spock could have said to defend George Kirk. No one can know the time of his death. It's not his fault who your mother married. He had no control over the character of the man that raised you.

But he read all of those things already in Jim's mind, so he thought instead, It is illogical to wish to be a man you are not.

"Yeah," Jim said, and opened his eyes again. The stars were blurred, above them, and they both ignored the wetness on Jim's cheeks. "Thank you, Spock."

Thank me by showing me what is "fun" about driving an automobile so fast that you endanger yourself. Spock said, attempting to lighten the mood. There was a strange tightness in Jim's chest, or maybe his own, sleeping in his bed on Vulcan.

"I will," Jim promised, and Spock woke up. For a moment he was disoriented by the bright stone ceiling of his bedroom, and then he rubbed a hand across his face and composed himself.

He slipped from his bed and dressed. He briefly considered waiting for Jim, but the other boy was in a contemplative mood and might stare at the stars for hours before his thoughts turned to sleep. It was possible he wouldn't even notice Spock was gone.

So he paced silently from his room and through the halls to breakfast.

His parents were waiting for him, something that made him hesitate in surprise. It was not unheard that one of them, when they were not away on business, might wish to breakfast with him, but they usually would leave him a message explaining such, and it was rare indeed to find both of them at home at once. This seemed somewhat of an ambush, and Spock found himself dragging his steps slightly.

"Good morning, sweetie." His mother said over her cup of spice tea. Spock's hesitation grew as Sarek inclined his head formally, each of them clearly trying to put him at his ease in their own way. He took his seat. "Good morning," He greeted. "Might I ask what prompts this gathering?"

Amanda attempted to look innocent. She was not entirely successful. "I just wanted to have breakfast with my son - "

Sarek cut her off, his eyes solemn. "You are fourteen years of age today, Spock."

Spock blinked, but did not change his expression, and remained silent. He knew humans celebrated birthdays, but they had never followed that custom before, and nor had any Vulcans he had ever heard of.

"Your mother and I have decided that it is time we looked to the issue of your bonding."

Oh. Spock remained impassive, but it felt like the bottom had fallen out of his stomach. He turned his eyes to his mother.

"We have no way of knowing whether it will work," she said, her gespar pastry untouched on her plate. "Or whether it is necessary. But it is a precaution that we feel we must take."

"Of course." Spock said, a little proud of how steady his voice was. It did make sense - to go through the pain of pon farr without a promised bondmate was rare, certainly painful, and sometimes fatal. However, he had always had a sort of hope that his human heritage meant that he wouldn't go through it at all. So, apparently, had his mother.

"You are agreeable?" His father asked, and if Spock didn't know better he would have said he was surprised.

He opened his mouth. His words stuck, a little, in his throat, but finally he said, "I would like to know more about the other party involved, but as always you are perfectly logical. I am agreeable."

His mother let out a sigh of relief, and his father shot her a glance that she ignored. "Oh, Spock, she's beautiful."

"Her name is T'Pring." Sarek said. "I have sent you her files, if you wish to retire to peruse them."

"He hasn't even eaten anything!" His mother scolded, and she passed him the gespar. "Besides, a girl is more than statistics and a family history. Eat, Spock, and I'll tell you - "

"No," He interrupted mildly. "If it is acceptable, I should like to return to my rooms to learn about this T'Pring. Will you be here all day?"

Amanda looked startled. "Yes, but - "

"Then if I require anecdotal supplementation to her official files, I shall seek you out and ask." He stood, inclining his head to them both. "Thank you."

Sarek inclined his head in return, and, a bit belatedly, so did his mother. He walked from the room, feeling her gaze on him until he turned the corner.

On his personal computer he found extensive files on T'Pring and her family, a well-known merchant clan. The files included images, and he opened one, wanting to study the girl he was to be promised to for life.

She was, as his mother said, beautiful. Her hair was long and silken-straight, her cheekbones high, her face as stone-set as any Vulcan could wish. But it seemed to Spock as if she were carved of ice, or the porous stone of Vulcan's white mountains. Her features moved nothing in him.

He was about to close the image when he felt Jim uncurl, catlike and blinking, in the back of his mind.

Missed you, came the thought, one of those right on the edge of the bond that he was not sure Jim was even aware of conveying. And then, louder and more awake, Ooh, who's she?

She is to be my promised bond. He thought, and his fingers shook a bit on his keyboard. Betrothed, is the closest equivalent in Common.

You know, I heard Vulcan all night, and I think I'm beginning to get it. Jim thinks, almost babbling. Like, it helps that I have your brain there to translate it for me, into feelings and stuff, but sometimes you think in Vulcan, too, and I'm pretty sure I'm starting to figure out the language.

Spock blinked. Fascinating. He thought, feeling somehow...nonplussed. You have no reaction to my betrothed?

Um, Jim thought, and Spock could sense his unease. She's pretty? Congratulations?

I am unsure such regards are in order, Spock thinks, and he can feel something snap into place in Jim's mind where it rests comfortably against his own.

Oh, Jim thinks. Oh, I thought - you don't love her. I mean, of course you don't, but you don't - you don't want this?

I am....hesitant. Spock said, and then frowned. You cannot feel my confusion?

It changes, how much of you I can feel. Jim thought. Usually it's like...yeah, I feel what you feel, 'cause we're...us, y'know? But sometimes...like today, I get here and you're all closed off, and looking at some Vulcan girl and I thought maybe you went and fell in love or something without me -

Illogical, Spock interrupted. Discounting the fact that Vulcans do not fall in love, you are with me for most of my life, how would I have fallen in love without your knowledge?

I don't know, man! Jim's voice was agitated. Somehow you went and got yourself engaged without my knowledge, so I didn't think it was that much of a stretch! He was almost yelling in Spock's head, and Spock blinked at his computer screen, taken aback.

Sorry. Jim said, after a moment. Spock nodded, knowing Jim could see him in the reflection on the now-dark computer screen.

I apologize for not consulting you. He thought. It did not occur to me to consider you in this. If you had been here, perhaps the conversation with my parents would have gone differently, this morning.

Jesus, they just sprang this on you? Jim's mental voice was incredulous, a little shaky. Shit. I'm sorry I wasn't here, dude. Frank came home a little drunk and - Spock could feel him stop that thought, forcibly wrench both of their minds away. It took me a while to get to sleep, is all.

Spock remembered far too well the first night he heard Kirk's mental voice - close to dawn on a dreamless night and he was pulled away from his bed, to a dark, alien kitchen and a terrified, alien mind. Help me help me help me help me - A fist, raised to strike a women who fairly glowed with strength and love in his new body's eyes, a face twisted with alcohol and rage. Help me help me someone oh god please - He remembered that it was all he could do to think I'm here, all he could do to think as hard as he could about the things his martial arts tutor had told him. All he could do to watch in amazement as the strange new body he was inhabiting stepped forward and went through the precise motions of a complicated Suus Mahna move, throwing a man perhaps three times his size over his shoulder and kneeling swiftly by his head, checking his pulse. He remembers how strange it was, the numb acceptance of his presence, the shocked obedience of his equally as shocked orders.

Spock. Jim pulled him away from the memory again, his mind-voice ragged. Stop, please.

You do not belong in that house. He replied, but he let go of the images, looking into his own eyes in the reflection.

We were talking about your betrothal, Jim reminded him, but it was a not a disagreement.

Yes. We were. Spock sighed and turned from his computer, sitting on the edge of his bed again. Her name is T'Pring, he added, as if that would help something.

Cool, Jim said, blankly, and then, That's total bullshit, you know.

Spock lay back on the bed, mirroring the stance Jim had taken the night before, trying to open himself up to the featureless expanse of ceiling as the other boy had to the night sky.

To what are you referring? He asked, assuming that Jim meant something other than the name "T'Pring" or the betrothal in general, which had too much logical reason behind it to be described as 'total bullshit'. Not that that would stop Jim, but even so.

The whole 'Vulcan's don't fall in love' line. Of course they do, and you know it.

Spock blinked at the ceiling. How would I know such a thing?

Uh, your father? Jim's mindvoice was that particular shade of confused it got when he was explaining something he thought should have been obvious to Spock.

Spock lifted his hands, lacing them together to block out the view of the ceiling. He felt strange, restless. My parents arrangement is one of logic.

Yeah, of course they told you that. Your dad is trying to be a model Vulcan now he has someone to model for. But you can't say you haven't noticed the way they look at each other. Something in Jim's voice indicated that he found something ironic in Spock's father's impassivity. There were times that Spock agreed with him.

It is not something I have observed. Spock thought, though he made a silent vow to pay more attention when next his parents were together. In any case, I do not love T'Pring.

Yeah, Jim acknowledged. I can feel you, again. I know how uncomfortable you are with this.

Unspeakably relieved, Spock sent him a touch of a smile, and felt the answering one, small and faltering. Jim's voice followed, just as small. Spock...what will happen to me? When you and T'Pring bond?

Spock closed his eyes, sinking into his bed. I don't know. He thought. I've tried to research our situation before, but there is no mention in any available Vulcan Science Academy files of anything close to the bond we share. We are unique, Jim.

Freaking fantastic, thought Jim. What will happen if I'm bonded too? If when...whatever it is, Crazy Time hits, and I'm worlds away and no one knows and...

It is called ponn farr. Spock thought, And there is no guarantee that it will hit me at all. The chances that it will hit you as well are 0.0023%.

You made that up. I thought Vulcan's couldn't lie! Jim sounded scandalized, as if Spock had kissed his mother in public.

They can't, apparently, if you could tell. Spock thought, even more of a smile growing.

I'm in your brain! Of course I can tell, moron, Jim thought at him, warmly exasperated, and suddenly everything felt a little lighter. Well, he continued, I guess we'll find out. Maybe when we're old and grey, you can add us to the Science Academy files.

Perhaps I shall. Spock propped his folded hands behind his head and crossed his legs, a pose that Jim often found comfortable.

I hope T'Pirr doesn't mind being married to one and a half humans, Jim thought, settled in his mind.

As do I, Spock thought, and felt Jim's laughter wash over him.

***

The announcement of his and T'Pring's bonding came out two days later, the bonding itself to happen two weeks after that. It was rushed for such an important matter, but Sarek was scheduled to leave for a twelve-month assignment on a Space Station orbiting Earth, and to do the ceremony without him would be unthinkable.

Spock hadn't considered the effect the news would have on his school life. Most of his instructors seemed to approve. His mathematics professor even went to so far as to remark upon it, when he handed back Spock's latest test. "Well done," he said, "I am glad to see that you are working to overcome your unfortunate handicap."

Spock inclined his head politely, accepted his paper, and walked back to his seat.

Jim, at the back of his mind, growled I'd like to give him a handicap. Spock quirked an eyebrow. Yeah, okay, that was lame. But he's an asshole.

His peers seemed to have the opposite reaction, becoming even more hostile towards him. The few who had spared kind glances or courteous words for him vanished altogether, replaced by tall, stone-faced young Vulcans who murmured words like "Half-breed" and "bastard" at him from behind his back, things that the Vulcan tongue had no equivalent for and they had to stumble through in clumsy, heavily-accented Common.

Jim, of course, found this hilarious. Harf-brid, he crowed after one particularly bad day, his laughter filling up Spock's mind so much that he was almost afraid it would burst out his mouth. Harf-brid! Jesus, that's amazing.

The next day, when his ears caught their cruel voices, Spock spun. "While you are correct that I am equally of the blood of two species, I believe you will find that my human mother was quite legally and rightfully bonded to my father well before my birth." He said, in perfect Common.

That shut them and Jim up, for a few minutes, at least. He was three classrooms down the hall before Jim spoke up again. Woah, was all he said.

You are not the only one learning languages, Spock thought, unable to contain just a breath of smugness. Could you say that in Vulcan?

Of course I could, Jim blustered, and when Spock went to sleep that night he tried.

He did pretty well up until the "legally and rightfully bonded" section, which wasn't surprising because there were four words that meant the same thing but for shades and nuances of meaning. For the first time in his life, as he listened through Jim's ears to Jim's voice mangling the breathy syllables of his tongue, Spock felt the urge to laugh.

He would later note how beautifully ironic it was that when the urge struck, he was without a body to do so.

It's not fair. Jim complained, after laughing for him, eyes shining bright blue. Linguistics is your favorite subject, and Common is waaayyy easier to learn than freaking Vulcan.

But he kept working on it, and within the week he had the whole thing correctly and smoothly. He grinned at Spock in the cracked mirror in his bathroom, and Spock again felt that strange, inexplicable need to embrace him.

His instructors, in the week leading up to his bonding, apparently unanimously decided that T'Pring should be forewarned of what she was getting into, despite the rules dictating contact between betrothed before the time of the meld, and sat them together in class. In person T'Pring was more beautiful and more cold than she was as a still image, but Spock found himself impressed despite himself with her academic prowess. They quickly rose to the top of the class, fighting for the top place from day to day.

Well, she's smart enough for us, Jim thought as he walked from Planetary Geography, his PADD in his arms. He had been referring to Spock and himself as "us" much more lately, a habit that Spock supposed he was forming in response to the fact that soon enough they were both to be tied to one woman for life. A little lacking in the compassion department, but if you've gotta marry a Vulcan there's not really much variety there.

Indeed, Spock agreed. Perhaps this bonding will not be as bad as we have feared.

You know how we can tell? We should play chess with her. That always -

Jim broke off as Spock slowed down, both of them examining the three young Vulcan males that blocked the hallway. They were all quite tall and broad, the one in the middle especially so, his ears protruding excessively from his skull and his face flat and too-wide. His neck was too long and his head too small and his face was twisted with more anger than Spock had ever seen a Vulcan display.

You know, I think that's the first time I've seen a truly ugly Vulcan. Most of you are so ridiculously pretty you're gonna give me a complex. Jim thought, and there was a rueful sort of truth behind the thought.

Illogical, Spock responded immediately, startled. Although humans as a race are remarkably varied in aesthetic quality, you yourself are -

He was interrupted by the middle Vulcan, although enough of what he had intended to say must have gotten through because there was a surprised whisper of Thanks before they both focused their attention on his words.

"You do not deserve her." The Vulcan was saying. "She should not be defiled by such impurity."

Spock stood straight and considered beginning to walk again. He also considered turning around and heading back the way he'd come. There were other ways to get to his next class, ones that didn't involve passing through a roadblock of his peers.

But he did neither. Instead he stayed, and he listened, and maybe that was the Jim in him because he could feel a vibrating sort of readiness at the back of his mind.

"You do not deserve her," the Vulcan insisted again.

And you do? Jim asked incredulously. Spock ignored him. "Perhaps not. It is not my decision, in any case, but it seems to me we are suited, intellectually at least. What is it, exactly, that you object to?"

The guarded anticipation the Jim was feeling slid smoothly into surprise. Spock, what -

"You are a half-breed. You are born of a human woman, a human whore." The word, again, was Common, and he pronounced it with a certain flavor of glee.

Don't goad him, Spock. Jim said, and there was a touch of worry to him, now. Spock tried to send him reassurance, but his mind was alive with anger's sharp buzz. "My mother is a respected linguist and scientist." He said, tightly.

"She is human. After that, who cares?" The Vulcan paced forward a few steps, closer than was courteous. "Humans are savage. They are unthinking, brutal, illogical, irrational beasts, ugly and worthless. And half of you - "

Spock didn't let him finish, swinging an arm up and around to strike at his face. Jim gave a horrified shout in his mind, but he was drowned out by Spock's own heartbeat, the molten anger that seized him and made him tremble.

The other Vulcan twisted with his blow, apparently expecting this, and his friends moved swiftly forward, moving to catch Spock's arms.

Left - Came Jim's split-second warning, and Spock struck out in a closed-fisted punch obviously not from any Vulcan martial art. He spun right and managed to get a knee into the third Vulcan's groin but by then the first was up again, slamming him back against the wall. "Savage." He said again, shaking his head to clear it. His fingers came up, finding the precise points on Spock's neck that would render him unconscious.

Spock, his mind awash with Jim's memories, slammed his head forward into the other Vulcan's.

He collapsed to the ground, seeing stars, and blinked them away in time to see T'Pring, on the ground, kneeling next to the ugly Vulcan, who was lying prostrate on the floor.

"Stonn?" T'Pring was saying, her voice more emotional than Spock had ever heard it. "Stonn, awaken."

The Vulcan did not move.

T'Pring looked up at Spock, and then slowly stood. "If you have killed him, half-breed..."

'Least she knows how to pronounce it. Jim thought bitterly. But I don't think I want that chess game anymore.

Nor do I, Spock acknowledged, and turned away from the scene. As he moved, his head throbbed and darkness threatened at the corners of his eyes.

Spock? Jim asked anxiously, and then the other two Vulcans were on him, slamming the edges of their open palms into his sides simultaneously. He tried to spin and faltered, his vision swimming.

You headbutted him too hard. Shit, Spock, get out of there -

Excellent advice. Spock stumbled back a step, but before he could get his feet under him to run, a flat palm slammed against his temple, and he dropped.

From where he lay, he could see that a teacher was approaching. He watched as T'Pring stepped forward, saw her lie through her stoneface mask that he had attacked Stonn unprovoked, that the others had had to restrain him. He tried to lever himself upwards in order to make a case for himself, but his arms shook and his head throbbed and he felt himself slipping away.

Jim's simple, heartfelt Bitch was the last thought he remembered before he passed out.

Chapter Text

When he woke up, it was at the back of Jim's mind. Jim was staring at himself in the mirror, standing in his bedroom. He was swaying a bit on his feet, his eyes dull, and Spock wondered how long he'd been standing there, how long he'd been keeping himself awake. Waiting for Spock. Jim, he said gently, unsure if the other boy had felt him arrive.

"Hey." Jim rasped, blinking. "You're okay. Or, maybe you're okay. I guess I should have slept, but I - what if there was nothing but black? When you fell, it was like...it was like before we knew what we were doing, and we would both be asleep at the same time. Nothing but dreamless space."

I believe I will recover relatively quickly, Spock said. Judging by the strength of my opponents and even factoring in my own miscalculation of the force needed to free me from Stonn's grip, I am unlikely to have any broken bones or lasting damage. Bruises and a headache should be the only lasting effects, once I awaken.

Jim laughed a little and sagged, stretching out a hand to the mirror for stability.

Spock twitched a frown at him. You, however, appear to be quite fatigued. Perhaps if you sit -

"No." Jim cut him off. "I want to see you - or you to see me, whatever, I just." He ran a hand through his hair. His face was drawn and nervous. "Spock, what if you die?"

An illogical fear, as I have just outlined the severity of my injuries. Spock countered, not that calling Jim "illogical" had ever done anything to make him change his mind, and he had a growing suspicion of what Jim had meant.

"No, I mean. I know you're not, but what if you were dead, right now? And you were here? Would you just live inside my head for the rest of my life?" His eyes were steady, now, staring at himself, at Spock lingering in his mind.

They were both silent for a moment. Such a situation would not be entirely disagreeable, Spock finally thought.

Jim blinked at him. "Don't be an idiot. You don't want my life."

Not if you were not here to share it with me, no, I do not.

Sometimes Spock wondered how much control either of them really had over what they were saying, when they spoke mind to mind. More often, he wondered that he did not mind speaking only what he felt into the whirling storm of Jim Kirk's brain.

Jim stared at him through his own eyes, surprised and touched and understanding, an emotion he seemed to have a monopoly on in Spock's life. Spock wished he had a body to squirm away from his gaze, or at least lower it, but he did not, so instead he said, You never took me driving.

Jim licked his lips and stepped back from the mirror. Right. "Yeah. Perfect." He bounced a little on his toes, and the leaped down the stairs two at a time.

I didn't mean at this precise moment, Spock thought, slightly alarmed. You're exhausted -

I just watched you get the shit beaten out of you. Felt you get the shit beaten out of you. And I couldn't do anything. Trust me, I need this. He sprinted through his kitchen, hooking his step-father's keys off the table, and slammed his way out through the door.

Just because I have put myself in unnecessary, irrational danger does not mean you have to do the same, Spock said severely, and Jim grinned fiercely into the dawn. "So you admit you were being an idiot?"

I had a lapse in control, yes. Spock conceded.

"You can say that again." Jim hesitated a split second before jogging toward the convertible, vaulting over the side into the driver's seat. What I don't understand is why. They've used your mother before, what made this time different?

Spock thought about that. He was unsure what it was exactly that had triggered the molten rage that had raced through his blood. He groped for an explanation. They were not just using my mother, but humanity in its entirety.

And humanity in its entirety is a shining ball of virtue and rainbows that you need to protect with your fists? Jim snorted. Dude, you of all people know that's not true. Just look at Frank, and you see that Stonn guy's point.

Frank is not all of humanity, Spock thought. Nor was it he of whom I was thinking when I struck. Stonn was implicating...my human half.

And who - oh. Oh. Jim sat for a moment, and then turned the key. Beneath him, the old automobile hummed to life, and Jim's mind seemed to purr right along with it. He smoothed his hand over the worn leather of the seats, patted the dashboard like it was an animal to be tamed.

I don't really see how it could be, but I hope this is worth all the things I have to thank you for, Jim thought, and Spock sent him a small curl of a smile.

Jim did something with the controls of the car and then they were moving backwards, the sudden wind of acceleration plastering their hair to the back of their head. He slid something up and they reversed, shooting forward with a screech of synth-rubber tires.

Spock had been transported in hovercars before, smooth metal capsules completely closed off from the sky outside them. They moved with little to no noise, slipping unobtrusively through the orange skies of Vulcan, almost apologetic.

There was nothing apologetic about the way Jim Kirk drove a red Corvette. His hands were sure and swift on the wheel, his foot heavy on the accelerator. They sped towards the rising sun, eyes fixed on the light breaking across the horizon. As the needle on the dial spun them faster and faster, the wind filled Jim's grin and puffed his cheeks outward, and he gulped and swallowed the air with his laughter. Sock felt a sort of joy, a thrumming, humming love of speed fill up Jim's mind, buoying him up and making him float on a wave of freedom. He felt himself drifting - could almost feel something against his hand, not Jim's, could almost hear someone calling his name, but he scrabbled and clung to this feeling here, because no, not yet.

Jim swung them along dirt roads and then off of them, into a wide green field freshly mown, where the air smelled like dust and dirt and growing things. It was a smell Spock had only ever experienced through Jim's nose - the dry, parched plants of Vulcan smelled entirely different than the sweetness of cut grass. Jim spun to a halt, carving circular ruts into the dirt of the field, and slipped out of the driver's seat. He stood, staring, as the sun crested the horizon, his chest heaving with adrenaline. There was an ache in his mind, a knot of worry and sorry and guilty that started to loosen as the morning came up golden.

It is not your fault. Spock thought. I will be fine.

I know. Jim responded, and he did, Spock could feel it. But you shouldn't have to fight alone for us both.

I am not alone, thought Spock, and then he was.

He was lying in his own bed, in his own room. In the corner his mother sat, looking up without speaking at his father. Both of their faces were tight with worry.

He closed his eyes, trying to return to Jim and the warm Iowa dawn, but there was a dull, throbbing pain in his head that chased away all chance of sleep.

"Mother," he managed, his tongue thick in his mouth., and Amanda's eyes snapped to him. She hurried to his side in a rustle of multi-layered skirts. "Oh, Spock, it's okay. You're going to be fine."

"I know," He said, quickly. He flicked his eyes from her to his father. "Do the professors believe T'Pring's version of events?"

Sarek turned to regard him closely. "Do you accuse her of lying?"

It was a many-layered question. His parents surely did not believe that he had attacked Stonn unprovoked. However, the social stigma against telling a lie, especially one to a figure of authority, was such that an accusation on Spock's part would result in months and months of legal hearings and testimonies from all involved. Spock had no doubts that Stonn and his friends would back T'Pring's story, and the only other witness was currently on Earth, standing in a field and watching the sun rise. Besides, Spock thought bitterly, even if he was here, even if he had been here physically, he's human. And it is common knowledge that humans lie at every opportunity.

So for all intents and purposes, it would be his word against that of three well-respected Vulcan youths.

He dropped his eyes. "How does this effect the bonding ritual? Am I considered unfit, as dangerous as I am?"

Sarek stepped to the foot of his bed. "Quite the opposite. I have spoken to T'Pring's parents and we agree that this might be the best thing to stabilize you. If you have these violent tendencies now, ponn farr will only exacerbate them, and it is logical that we prevent that by any means necessary. As such, if you will rise and prepare yourself, we will proceed to the place of koon-ut-kal-if-fee."

Spock blinked at him, startled. "The ritual was scheduled for three days from - from the fight. Surely I have not slept so long."

Sarek inclined his head. "Indeed not. However, under the circumstances, we have decided that the ritual should be enacted as soon as possible. If you have no further objections, I shall expect you in the main hall in thirty minutes."

Spock felt numb. His tongue was thick and his head ached and he was cold, under the warm, layered blankets, but he had no choice. No objections that his father would recognize. And, after all, their logic was sound. He nodded, precise and respectful. "Of course, father."

Sarek turned and glided from the room. Amanda put a hand on Spock's. Through her fingers he could feel her worry, her relief, her doubt. "You don't have to do this, Spock."

He looked her in the eyes. "You do not believe that, or you would be fighting with him."

She dropped her face. "I am...afraid for you. When ponn farr comes. But I also...I don't want you to be bonded to someone who would let you be hurt so."

Anger sprang to life somewhere in the back of Spock's mind, where Jim should have been. "You say that this is not required of me. But I have no other recourse. There is no one on Vulcan who would accept me, after what I have done. She is still willing, even after I am shown to be violent, savage, and irrational. I am sure she has her own logic behind her actions. Perhaps when I am bonded to her, I will be able to understand them." He carefully untangled his hand from hers. "I am unsure I will ever understand yours."

His mother drew back as if he had struck her. "Spock..."

"I apologize if it causes offense, but I would be alone." He turned his face away from her, and finally, she rose and left the room.

Spock sat up in bed. He stared at his reflection in his darkened computer screen and tried to reach through the back of his head, call Jim to him. They weren't ready for this. They had no idea what would happen - they had to prepare. Prepare yourself, his father had said, but how could he, with half of him gone?

He slid from bed and dressed slowly in the ceremonial robes laid out for him, feeling each second tick by as he waited for Jim.

Two minutes before he was supposed to be in the main hall, he finally left his rooms. He walked slowly down the halls, hoping for that slow, soft uncurl of another mind in his. It didn't come.

He met his parents in the main hall. Both of their faces were impassive, although his mother's eyes sparkled with something like hurt. He wanted to apologize to her, but he didn't know the words. He followed her, silent, out of his house and down the steps, hesitating for the barest moment on the threshold of the hovercar that awaited them.

When Jim finally did slide into his mind, sleepy-happy-lazy, Spock nearly jumped up from his seat, he was so tensed for his arrival. Immediately, the sunshine caught in Jim's mind vanished, replaced with sharp worry. Spock, what -

They have pushed the ceremony forward in reaction to the fight, he thought quickly. His mind was shivering with his effort to keep it still, to keep it calm. He could feel its edges soften into Jim's, feel the Human's steadiness seep into him. I am travelling to be bonded. We...we are to be bonded, this day.

Today? Right now? But we haven't...Spock, we're not ready for this! Jim thought. Spock felt his surprise, his fear, like flame.

I know. They sat silent for a while, Spock's eyes on the orange skies and floating spires outside the windows. The aircraft slid silently away from the outskirts of the city, across the cracked, windswept desert, and began to spiral downwards.

I don't understand. Jim thought, a bit desperately. If it would not get her free of us, why did T'Pring lie?

I...do not know. Spock thought back, unable to keep a bit of his jangled, mournful mood out of his mindvoice.

His parents stood, and the door to the aircraft opened as they touched down. In his mind, Jim was crafting an image. It was rare that he did so, that he struggled to project anything other than words into Spock's mind, but he was doing it now, steadily building up a clear picture: his own hand, small and calloused, palm upwards in offering.

Spock closed his eyes for a moment against the welling-up of emotion in his throat, and placed his own mental hand in Jim's. He carefully imagined lacing their fingers together - not the sensual twining of a Vulcan kiss but something stronger, born of trust. An anchor.

Opening his eyes, he followed his parents to the place of koon-ut-kal-if-fee.

Before them was a circular structure, walls of orange stone arching up to the sky. No ceiling kept the harsh desert sun from their heads. In the center of the clear space inside the walls there was a raised dais, on which stood a octagonal metal gong.

The walls were lined with impassive Vulcans in their shining silver ritual cloths, standing shoulder to shoulder like an army of statues. Standing in the archway opposite Spock and his parents was T'Pring and hers, all of them also garbed in rich, patterned silver. Her hair was drawn up in a complicated, elegant knot, exotic blue flowers placed expertly here and there to draw attention to the line of her neck, the delicate point of her tiny ears.

Below his nervousness, below his blankness, Spock hated her.

One of the soldier-statues stepped forward, drawing a small mallet from his robes. With a flourish, he struck the gong in the center of the ring, three times. Driven by his father's palm at his back and some faint, inescapable knowledge of what must be done, Spock stepped forward. T'Pring mirrored him, their steps measured. They stepped to the dais and lowered their heads, folding their hands in front of themselves. In Spock's mind, Jim clutched him tighter, and Spock returned the grip.

Two Vulcan officials produced racks of ceremonial bells and began to circle the pair, shaking them. The bells were high and jangling, dislodging something stubborn in Spock's mind. He could feel himself straighten, feel himself lift his head. He raised his hands, borne up on the strange music, and he saw T'Pring already staring at him, the pupils of her eyes blown wide. She parted her perfect, pink lips, and spoke to him.

"Spock," she said, and then wrapped her tongue around his ceremony-name, his clan-name. At first he thought she was speaking almost too-quietly for him to hear, but her words were oddly clear. It was only after the faint thread of confusion (so faint) from Jim's mind that he realized it was because she was speaking to him - only him. Just the pieces of his mind that were still, and always had been, Spock.

The Vulcans around the walls started to intone something, slow and proper, but Spock couldn't hear them, his eyes glued to T'Pring's. She raised her hands, flicking her wrists, and he matched her. The chanting sped up, and suddenly T'Pring thrust her hands forward, palms meeting his with a soft clap! of flesh on flesh. Spock started, his eyes rolling back in his head as her mind stabbed into his. It was nothing subtle, nothing beautiful - nothing but an invasion made smooth by the words around them, by the bells, by the place.

Parted from me? Never parted. T'Pring's mindvoice was like ice, flung in his face after a warm dream. He struggled to keep hold of Jim's mental hand, scrabbled at it like a lifeline, but he could feel it slipping away. T'Pring's hands rubbed obscenely over his own, her fingernails catching and scarping against his skin. Never and always touching....and touched. She twisted the age old greeting into something sinister and strange, something that tugged hungrily at his mind, pulled him away from the place where he and Jim met. He felt that gap yawning, and his mouth gaped in a silent sob.

Spock. Came Jim's mindvoice, nothing more than a whisper now. I can't -

T'Pring curled cruel fingers against his wrists, and Jim was gone.

Weak-mind, weak-mind. T'Pring crowed, her mental voice childish and unpolished. Spock supposed, in the part of his mind that still possessed any logical reasoning at all, that she hadn't done this before, had never had cause to speak only mind-to-mind.

It didn't stop her from doing so now. His vision returned, and he found her staring at him, face inches from his. Shapeable, forgettable. Placeholder for true worth. Excuse.

Spock felt her, strange and cool, slide into the place that Jim should have been. She filled it up with smooth edges and a kind of clean, awful logic, filled it up completely and left no room for more. Spock hated how perfectly she fit, hated how no matter how much he scrabbled and tugged at her edges she stayed.

And, despite himself, a sort of calm washed over him. T'Pring's hands gentled on his, and suddenly her touch was not so harsh, but almost soothing. Settle feathers, fighting bird, she thought at him, and he couldn't even bring himself to bridle at the open contempt in her mind.

Slowly, the bells stopped ringing, the Vulcans stopped chanting, and, in the silence, Spock was free to pull away, step back and lower his hands and his head. T'Pring did the same, and he felt her presence in his mind recede.

Jim's did not return.

He walked back to his parents. His father stood proud and straight, approval radiating from him. It was clear that he knew nothing of what had really happened - he had seen a bonding ceremony, for a bonding ceremony had taken place. He assumed that Spock would be happy, whole, in what he had gained, and did not spare a thought towards what he might have lost.

His mother smiled at him, her eyes bright with tears, and for the first time Spock envied her ability to cry.

Over the next few days he began to learn to live with the constant, cold presence of T'Pring in his mind. It was like and unlike what he had had with Jim - to be awakened to two minds at once was powerful and strange, and he only could tell what she thought, what she felt, when one of them made the effort. Neither of them did.

T'Pring seemed content to ignore his existence in every area but academic. He did come to learn her reasons, as he had speculated to his mother - whether this was because she consciously focused on them or because they slid through during the initial bonding he did not know. Shapeable, she'd thought, and she believed it - in her mind, Spock was weak and strange, something to be pushed away or pulled to her on her whim. She assumed he would not last long - or if he did, and the time of ponn farr came, she would challenge him and appoint Stonn her champion and he would die all the same.

It became clear that Stonn was her chosen bond, but her family would not agree, having made their vows with Sarek and Amanda already. Spock, then, was expendable - he could be anyone, really. His half-breed status was nothing but a convenient excuse for the challenge, when the time came. No one would doubt T'Pring's reasons for not wanting to bond with a Vulcan so fundamentally disadvantaged.

It was brilliant, in a way. Perfectly and beautifully logical.

Every night, Spock closed his eyes against the shadows of his room and reached, sought out that bright spark of friend and brother and a thousand other words that did nothing to describe Jim. And every morning he would wake, blurry-eyed and exhausted, from dreams of nothing but starless space.

His classes no longer held his interest. Without Jim's bright enthusiasm they were little more than challenges to be worked through, methodically and well. T'Pring seemed determined to best him at every turn, and it was only some faint vindictiveness towards her that kept him on his toes, kept him ahead. Being truly angry at her, he found, was impossible - it was like being angry at a part of himself that he had no control over, which was the highest kind of illogical.

He would stare at himself in the mirror, sometimes. Did he look different, now? Was he emptier, thinner, were his ears more pointed and his eyebrows more slanted? The bruises from the fight were beginning to fade, yellowish-green against his pale skin. He pushed his fingers into them, savoring the dull ache, and remembered.

Jim's laugh, filling his mind completely. Jim's voice speaking haltingly in Vulcan. Jim's freckles, standing out in his pale face where he stood swaying in front of his mirror. You shouldn't have to fight alone for us both.

He wondered if Jim was remembering, too, from his bedroom in Iowa. He wondered if he pushed his head into his pillows and grasped for Spock's mind, wondered if he were beginning to wonder if Spock and all his world were just a strange waking dream, the companions that a lonely boy's mind might create. If Vulcans were given to such wild imaginings, Spock might be wondering the same thing. But they were not, and he could not believe that Jim Kirk was not real - if he lost even those bright memories he might be altogether empty.

His mother worried about him. She pressed him for details of his schooling, wondered if he were being bullied or insulted. She wondered if perhaps nightmares were troubling his sleep, some unforeseen side-effect of the bond. Spock smiled a little, at that, though there was no humor in it, and shook his head to the rest. Words did not come often from his lips. He felt no need for them, outside of answering the questions of his instructors.

One night his mother came to his room as he was slipping on his sleeping-clothes, tying their knots against his now-unmarred flesh. She paused in his doorway, her face a half-smile.

He turned to look at her, eyebrow raised, and she chuckled. "I came to tell you that I'm leaving for a while. They've got an influx of new recruits at the Starfleet base in Iowa and they need my transla - " She stopped. "Goodness, Spock, what's wrong?"

Spock discarded the tie he had snapped off of his shirt and released his clenched fists. "Nothing." He denied. "I was...unaware that there was a Starfleet base located in the state of Iowa."

His mother had learned almost Vulcan-esque eyebrow control, and made use of it now. "And you being unaware of an obscure fact of Earth geography was surprising enough to warrant destroying your clothes?"

Spock smoothed his shirt, impassive. "It can be mended simply enough."

She watched him, puzzled, as he finished the other ties and sat down on his bed. "I suppose it can." She admitted, and then shook her head. "Anyway, I'll be back in a few months. Don't let your father pressure you too much about the admittance exams, alright? The preliminaries are almost a whole year off, and it's a big decision. There are other options besides the Science Academy. Remember that."

She turned and left. Spock, his legs folded under him in meditation, watched her go. "I will," he said, and felt something like hope take hold. When he slept that night, he let his mind rest. There was work to be done.

Chapter Text

Rain pattered against the roof of the hovercar. Spock watched the water slide down the windows, meeting and parting, mixing and mingling. Once, he would have seen the symbolism of that - the metaphor for his months ahead. Now all that it generated was T'Pring's soft scorn - a damp, unpleasant planet. He flicked her away with an ease it had taken years to perfect and examined the rest of the occupants of the car.

They were all off-worlders, or they would not be here, but they varied in their degree of outsider. There were three Orions, two females and a male. The females were wearing layers and layers of clothing, leaving as little of their green skin showing as possible - a reaction, Spock supposed, to the stereotypes that humanity had placed upon them, even after the slave trade was abolished. The male was fascinating - it was rare that they were seen, even now. His skin was blue to their green, although Spock thought that difference was individual rather than sex-related. His eyes were small and nervous, and he kept casting glances around at the other passengers.

Spock looked away from him and met the eyes of a human woman who had also been examining the Orion. Her hair was white-blonde and piled on top of her head, and she had a red cross sewn into the lapel of her grey, military-style jacket, something like the antique symbol for a medical officer. He assumed she was from some off-world colony, although which he could not tell.

She cast a glance back at the Orion man and then switched seats to sit next to Spock. "He's got lacerations on his wrists - like from shackles." She said quietly, staring out the opposite window at the rain. "His fingernails are broken and dirty - can't tell whether it's just dirt, or blood. There's a shake to his fingers - he's scared, and badly. Not supposed to be here, and wondering who knows it."

Spock raised an eyebrow. "Indeed. You have surmised all of this from the state of his hands?"

She smiled, and it was surprising in its sweetness. "You can tell a lot about a man from his hands." She held out one of her own, and he saw that her nails were cut short and businesslike, her skin scrupulously clean. "Here, let me see - "

"That would not be advisable." Spock interrupted, keeping his hands flat on his knees.

Her brows drew together. "Why?"

Her turned to look at her properly. "Perhaps you were too busy examining the Orion to notice, but I am a Vulcan. Any physical examination of my hands would lead to me learning far more about you than you would learn about me, and I do not think you want to open yourself up to a complete stranger in such a fashion."

She blushed prettily. "Oh! I'm sorry. We don't get many, um, other races, where I'm from. I'd never seen an Orion, that's why I was staring - before I noticed the cuts, I mean."

Spock raised an eyebrow. "Where are you from?"

Her eyes flickered, and he examined her more closely. She was wearing a short blue dress under her jacket, and the red cross was sewn patchily on over some other crest. She lowered her face. "Orpheus Mining Colony," she said, and she sounded resigned, almost guilty.

"The anti-alien movement known as Terra Prime was dissolved nearly seventy years ago, and it would be illogical to hold every resident of a mining colony of approximately twelve thousand people responsible for the actions of a small, if influential, portion of their population," Spock said, divining the reasons behind her reticence, as well as the tone of her voice.

She looked at him, expression a little odd. "Thank you," she said. "Not many people see it that way."

Spock nodded. "Many are driven by emotion, rather than logic. This is regrettable, but acceptable - for those who are not Vulcan."

Chapel looked amused. "I sense some bitterness, there."

Spock felt his face smooth, any trace of relaxation gone. "Vulcans do not get bitter, Miss....?"

He saw her move to stick out a hand again, and then stop herself. "Christine Chapel," she said. "Hopefully, soon to be 'doctor', not 'miss'."

He inclined his head. "Spock."

Her full lips quirked. "Just Spock?"

He folds his hands in front of him. The hovercar begins its descent. "My family name is impossible to pronounce to anyone not of Vulcan descent." It was not technically true - his mother had learned to speak it, after a fashion, but it had taken years of practice and psychic lessons.

Chapel smiled. "Fair enough. So, Mr. Spock, what brings you to Earth?"

Spock closed his eyes against the sound of the rain. The anticipation was loud in his veins again, a rushing, pounding nervousness that was wearing down his emotionless mask from the inside out. "I am enrolled in Starfleet Academy," he said, and opened his eyes.

Chapel's face said that she knew that for the non-answer it was, but after a moment she shook her head, her smile growing. "So am I."

They sat silent as the aircraft touched down. Spock tried not to think about anything - the sky was the sky that he'd seen the sun travel, a sunrise, a sunset here and there, through the bright-blue eyes of his dreaming. The grass was grass that he'd smelt, felt against Jim's feet. The doors slid open and the wind tasted familiar in a way that made him ache in places that had iced over and numbed long ago.

They filed out and split in two directions, leaving the landing strip through separate doors. Spock watched the Orion women embrace each other, and part, one of them heading off towards the city, the other joining Spock and Chapel's group. After a moment of hesitation, the nervous man followed the first woman at a safe distance. Spock caught the tail end of Chapel's glance at him, but felt no need to decipher her opaque expression. The Orion and whatever was troubling him were irrelevant.

An instructor from the Academy met them, sleek in a trim black uniform, and led them into the depths of the base. It was only through entering a state a bit like meditation that Spock was able to focus on Orientation; he could feel T'Pring laughing in the back of his mind but had no attention to spare for her. When his guide finally left him in his new quarters ("It's a single, cadet Spock. We thought you would be more comfortable without the imposition of a roommate"), he finally let himself realize that he was here. That he was standing in Iowa, with a few days before classes began, and free reign.

He blinked at the floor and then raised his head. "Computer," he said, voice coming out too quick, too harsh. "Find and display directions to the residence of Frank and Winona Kirk."

***

The sun was out completely by the time he arrived, hovering above the horizon and washing out the world to something monochrome golden. The house was even more ramshackle than when he had last seen it (of course it is, his brain said, six years), the porch roof more a lattice of rotted beams than anything practical. There were puddles of rain caught in the sags of the porch itself, and weeds twining through the floorboards.

There were cars in the garage and lights on, and somewhere inside he could hear voices.

He paused a moment on the front lawn, casting a long shadow against the ancient concrete steps. His stomach was suddenly afire with doubt - what if Jim didn't remember him, had dismissed him as a dream? What if he were so changed that they no longer connected? What if he blamed Spock for what had happened at the bonding?

But something uncurled against the back of his mind, an entirely visceral memory, an image of a hand gripped tight in his own, and he mounted the porch in one swift step.

He rapped his knuckles against the door, although he knew that Frank would have seen him already through the security system he had installed. It opened under his hand, and for a moment Spock felt disoriented, dizzy, as he met Frank Kirk's eyes for what was and what was not the first time. His hair was thinner, his waist thicker, but his reddened eyes, his veined arms were sickeningly familiar. Spock clenched his fists, alarmed at the depths of his distaste for the man.

He reigned himself in, straightening his new scarlet Starfleet uniform. "My name is Spock," he said, a touch proud of how steady his voice was. "I am looking for James T. Kirk."

He could feel Frank's eyes rove over him, could feel him notice the ears, the eyebrows, the uniform, and watched his lip curl. "He's not here." Frank said bluntly, and started to close the door in Spock's face.

Spock threw out a hand, and the door shuddered against his palm. "Please," he blurted. "I will wait for him, or if you know when he'll return I can come back - "

Frank turned back to him from where his eyes had been glued on Spock's hand. His face was twisted with contempt. "He's not coming back, point-ears. Been gone six years now and we never seen hide nor hair of him. And if he did show his face here, I'd bloody it. Idiot kid stole my fuckin' Corvette! My own beautiful car, and all I ever did was provide for him and his mom."

Spock felt shaky and strange, disconnected. "Have you any idea where he might be, sir?" He asked, voice somehow still polite and cool.

Frank shrugged and resumed trying to close the door. "Fuck if I know. Check the lock-up, that's where I'd stick him if I got the chance. Ungrateful little bastard. Needs to learn some fucking discipline, if you ask me."

Spock narrowed his eyes. "I did not. Ask you." He removed his hand and let the door swing shut, sudden, as Frank was suddenly exerting an inappropriate amount of pressure against it. He heard the sounds of stumbling and cursing on the other side, and let himself feel a sort of blank, distant pleasure.

He stepped off the porch. "Been gone six years now. Idiot kid stole my fuckin' Corvette!"

Six years, three months, and twelve days, Spock thought grimly, though he doubted Frank would know that. He could have it down to seconds if he spent the time thinking about the differences caused by the warp between Earth and Vulcan, but his mind wouldn't focus on the numbers. He left...or vanished...the morning my Bonding, of our Breaking. He was certain of it, now, as certain as he was that Jim was not in "lock-up". As certain as he was that his search had hit a sudden, sharp dead end.

He noticed, now, the space in the garage where the Corvette should have been. It glared at him, overgrown and bare, and he crouched in it, tracing his fingers over the ground. His hands, he noticed, were shaking. He picked up a piece of brick, broken and sharp. Presumably it had been used, once, as a block to set cars on in order to raise them above the ground. Now, though, portable anti-grav units hummed quietly in the corner, and the brick sat here, broken and useless.

Spock gripped it, felt his knuckles pop and the brick crumble. Useless.

**

"19,456.12, sir." Spock said, voice clipped. The teacher nodded. "Quick work, cadet Spock." He wrote the number on the board. "Now. This is only the beginning of our solution. If we forget to factor in the momentum we had going into warp, we won't compensate for it on the other side, which can cause collisions with anything that happens to be there - other ships, stations..." He quirked his mouth. "Planets..."

Spock sat blank-faced as the cadets on either side of him chuckled.

"So, if we take our initial speed and substitute it in to this next equation...I'll give you a moment."

Spock stared at the board, his mind filled with the beautiful rows of numbers. In seconds he put up his hand, but across the room, someone beat him to it. The teacher turned away from him. "Cadet Chapel?"

"Um, 25,867.431, sir." Chapel announced, the slightest bit hesitant.

The teacher grinned. "Excellently done."

Spock felt Chapel's eyes on him, and he turned slightly to look at her. Her gaze was considering, but softer than that, too. Admiring, perhaps. He straightened his back, uncomfortable, and turned to the equations on the board.

They played a sort of informal game, matching each other speed for speed, digit for digit. After class he found her waiting for him, leaning against the wall outside the classroom. "You're amazing." She said softly, when he paused next to her.

"Your own powers of deduction are considerable as well," he answered simply.

She shook her head, wry. "Yeah, but I was using a PADD." She held up the thin computer, and then looked significantly at his empty hands.

He raised a shoulder in a slight shrug. "Mathematics come easily to Vulcans. Numbers follow a logical progression, and transform according to simple rules."

She steps forward from the wall, face suddenly eager. This, then, was what she really wanted to talk about. "But you're not entirely Vulcan, are you Mr. Spock? Your mother, she was human, right? I asked around, you're a bit famous."

Spock felt leaden. "Indeed?"

Chapel took another step closer. "Why did you really come to Earth, Spock?" She asked, probing. "Are you running from something?"

In the back of his mind, T'Pring was cold and waiting. Spock looked at Chapel's eager face for a moment, and then moved past her. "It doesn't matter, cadet Chapel."

"It's Christine," she insisted to his back, "And it does matter!"

Spock stopped and looked back over his shoulder at her. "No," he said, "Not anymore."

He slid, silent, through the crowds. Once, twice, he was jostled, human minds flickering against his own. His throat felt tight at their touch - so familiar so close to right so wrong - and he was almost jogging to get free of them, collapsing into his quarters with a ragged breath.

T'Pring waited for him to stand himself up, waiting for him to smooth a hand over his face, before she spoke. Why do you not tell the pretty one what you run from, bonded?

Spock closed his eyes and sat down on the floor, his back against the door. His conversations with T'Pring were entirely different from those with Jim - they spoke in a place that was not fully in either of their minds, a sort of dream-landscape not unlike the place of koon-ut-kal-if-fee. She was standing there, perfect and beautiful, one eyebrow raised. He folded his hands in front of him. Because I am not running from anything, bonded. You know this. You know what - who - I was running towards. Please, leave me in peace.

Was running. She mocked. You've given up, Spock. All the determination you felt...I was beginning to think you could actually make it, you know. And now what? Will you give it up, become a Starfleet officer, live out your life in a career that you chose for all the wrong reasons?

It is a career that would suit me, despite my reasons for taking it, he answered, gritting mental teeth against her tone.

She flickered a teasing hand down the side of his face, suddenly close, and he caught her wrist in furious fingers. She met his eyes. So much anger, she noted, and melted out of his grasp, standing composed and motionless again on the other side of the circle in the sand. But no one to blame. Nowhere to go. You've given up. It's too bad. There was something almost amusing in watching you scramble for your childhood hallucinations, as if they would claim you even if you did find them.

They would. Spock said with a conviction he did not feel. He would.

She raised her chin. But it does not matter. She said in his voice, and with a start he heard the pain in it, the sorrow, that he thought he had given up, or at least successfully hidden from Chapel. Not anymore.

Her eyes mocked him as she faded, leaving him alone in strange echo of a home he had given up. It was Vulcan and it was not, because there was none of the heat of the sun, none of the grit of the sand, just a sort of weighted numbness. It was hard to feel anything, against his skin, against the mask he had constructed over his emotions. All was silent.

He stayed there, alone, for a long time.

**

"You asked for me, instructor?"

The man looked up from his PADD, where he was tapping his stylus in apparent frustration. "Ah, yes. Cadet Spock. Come in, have a seat." He said, and put aside it aside, folding his hands in front of him. There was a window behind him, and the snow's glare made him a shadowed silhouette more than a man.

Spock took the chair he offered, and waited.

"You were on the hovercraft A-453, were you not? The shuttle from the space port, at the beginning of the school year."

Spock was already nodding, not needing the clarification. "Yes, sir, I was."

The instructor nodded, satisfied. "Did you, by any chance, see this man?"

He held up the PADD, displaying a picture of a blue-skinned Orion man, his eyes slightly too-wide. In the image he was dressed much more beautifully than he had been on the craft, but it was definitely the same man.

"I did." Spock acknowledged. "In fact, he held my attention for some minutes, as his appearance was intriguing. He seemed, if I may make the judgment, nervous. His wrists bore the marks of recent restraints, and his fingernails were worn and dirtied, as if he had been misusing or overusing his hands."

The instructor sat back in his chair, more of the white light from outside falling on his face, and Spock recognized him. Christopher Pike. His face was familiar - he was an extremely competent Starfleet Captain, and responsible for recruiting perhaps half the cadets in Spock's class and the one below him. At the moment, his face was also halfway between surprised and impressed. "You got all of that from a few minutes of examination?"

Spock shook his head. "Many of the observations were made by cadet Chapel, whose acquaintance I made on that same hovercraft."

Pike rubbed his chin. "Chapel, Chapel..." He swung around in his chair to his computer. "Computer, bring up cadet Chapel's profile." He waited a moment, and then nodded. "Right, yes. Christine Chapel, medical student." He kept reading, and his lips twitched downward. "Unsurprising that she would find an Orion man worthy of examination," he said. Before Spock could do anything but register the tone of the words, he was speaking again to the computer. "Quarters of Christine Chapel, please."

After a moment Chapel's surprised voice came through the comms. "Sir?"

"Cadet Chapel, please come to my office. I've got a few things I want to talk to you about." Pike said brusquely. "Pike out." He switched the computer off and turned back to Spock.

"You assume that Chapel is biased against nonhuman races because of her upbringing on the Orpheus Mining Colony, " Spock said, carefully.

Pike regarded him with sad eyes. "My mother was an artist. She taught at the Andorian Academy, was friends with many of the Andorians - and others - there. In her third year of teaching, she died protecting her students from Terran supremacists from Orpheus."

Spock blinked at him. "But Terra Prime was dissolved in 2183 - for you mother to have died before that... that would make you more than seventy years of age, sir."

Pike leaned forward, steepling his fingers. "Prejudice does not end just because it is no longer officially organized, cadet." He shook his head. "I suppose Vulcan doesn't have much in the way of racists, but here on Earth we've had a long complex history with stupid prejudices. It makes us wary."

Spock remembered innocent curiosity, an idle question - what is racism? - and Jim's struggle to answer. He swallowed against the memory. "Nonetheless," he managed, "I do not believe you are being entirely fair to cadet Chapel, sir. From what I have seen, she displays nothing more hostile towards nonhuman races than a perhaps overeager curiosity, which is entirely understandable, given their complete refusal to set foot on Orpheus. It is my opinion that she, at least, is free of most of the prejudice that marks her society."

"Why, Mr. Spock, that's sweet! I didn't think you cared - what with being an uncaring Vulcan and everything."

Spock turned to see Chapel standing in the doorway, curls tumbling about her face. She saluted Pike and stepped forward, not looking at Spock. "Have I done something wrong, sir?"

"No, no." Pike gestured to another chair. "In fact, if cadet Spock is to be believed, you've done many things right." He held out the PADD. "You remember this man."

She took it, and nodded. "From the hovercraft over, yes, sir." She looked between them. "He's a fugitive, isn't he?"

Spock raised his eyebrows, and Pike shook his head, chuckling. "Well, that answers that question." He reclaimed the PADD and sat back in his chair. "The Orion's name is Heled-Mar, and you will have files on his background sent to your personal computers. Both of you - you'll be accompanying myself and Major Drabus to retrieve him and send him back to Orion."

Spock blinked, puzzled. "Pardon me, sir, but are there not police forces better suited to the retrieval of a fugitive than Starfleet cadets?"

Pike nodded. "Certainly. But Heled-Mar's status as a newly-freed Orion, as well as an intergalactic criminal, means that no Earth police force holds jurisdiction over him. Thus, it falls to Starfleet. As the two of you are the only two we know of who have actually laid eyes on the man, you'll be part of the retrieval force." He smiled slightly. "Plus, it'll be good for you kids to see some action. Now, did either of you see which way he went?"

"He separated from us when the instructor met us outside," Spock said. "He went towards the City. Beyond that, I could not tell."

Chapel looked at Spock for a long moment, face serious. Spock looked back, saying nothing. "...Sir," Chapel said, finally turning away, "There was another cadet on the hovercar, an Orion girl. I didn't catch her name."

Pike hummed and picked up his stylus. "Did she pay attention to Heled-Mar?"

Chapel shook her head slowly. "No, actually, it... it was more like she was deliberately ignoring him, sir."

Piked nodded and jotted something down. "I see. Thank you. You're both dismissed. I'll contact you in a few days with more information about the mission."

Spock rose and inclined his head to Pike, then left the room. A few seconds later, he heard Chapel's quick steps behind him.

"Hey, um." She said, and he turned, resigned. "I'm sorry if I've offended you or anything and you don't really seem to like me much, but I really did appreciate what you did back there. Like I said before, there aren't many who can see past what some of us have done to what others of us are."

Spock bowed a bit to the thanks. "I have met...racists." He said, and T'Pring hissed warningly in the back of his mind. "You are not one of them."

"Have you?" She asked, curious. "I wouldn't think - I mean, Vulcans don't exactly strike me as judgmental."

Spock raised an eyebrow. "You have never met a full Vulcan."

She smirked. "True. Only you." She tugged at a curl. "Hey, listen. A bunch of us - we're going out for drinks later, and I....well, I mean, if we're going to be working together, and we don't know how long this is going to take...would you like to come? As a friend. We could. Be friends, I mean."

Spock stared at her for a long moment. Friends. Vulcans had friends - habitual chess-partners, peers in academics. But Spock had never really had either - he enjoyed chess more as a way to judge character than as a game, and many of his age-mates were nothing near his intellectual level.

The only person he counted as a friend was Jim Kirk, and that...That was something that Christine Chapel could never come close to. Something so much more than friend that Spock didn't quite know how to describe it in Vulcan, and certainly couldn't in Common.

"...That would be acceptable." He said at last. It was a social gathering, not a contract, and he could always return to his quarters to meditate if he felt it necessary. But perhaps in the noise and heat of an Earth bar it would be harder to hear T'Pring's cold music.

She blinked, and then smiled, that utterly sweet, surprised smile that she'd had the first day. "Really?" She said, and then shook her head. "I mean, yeah, awesome. I'll come by your room around 21:00, okay?" She waved, and vanished down a corridor.

Spock watched her go, and went to read about Heled-Mar and his crimes against sentience. It would clear his head.

Friends. That, like everything else since his arrival on this planet, was unexpected.

It will not last, T'Pring thought at him, or maybe it was his own doubts. It was sometimes hard to tell where one ended and the other began.

Perhaps, he agreed. But perhaps not.

And for now that was enough.

Chapter Text

By the time Chapel arrived in his quarters he had studied all the files and was sitting meditation-style on his bed, puzzling over them. The crimes themselves were extensive. Heled-Mar had committed no fewer than eighteen murders, on Orion soil, and six off-world. He had stolen valuable property, conned alien officials out of confidential information, and smuggled dangerous and illegal weapons to colonies off of Orion proper. In each case the evidence was clear. Heled-Mar was, without doubt, guilty.

Yet in each case, he was acquitted, exonerated, or broken out of whatever punishment he had been assigned. Sometimes his bail was paid, but never from the same account. Sometimes last-minute witnesses or pieces of evidence were produced, and flimsy though they were they were enough to sway the jury. And he had escaped, with aid from separate sources each time, from twelve different prisons and four penitentiary colonies.

It was truly puzzling.

Not only that, but Spock had spent nearly three hours researching the crimes themselves, and they exhibited none of the patterns and logic that serial killers generally displayed. Every victim was completely unrelated to the others and to Heled-Mar himself, they had all been killed in different and ultimately mundane ways - there was no flair for the dramatic, no distinct style. Just a fast, efficient murder and just enough evidence to point to Heled-Mar.

Chapel nodded, when he explained to her musings, and shook her head. "It makes no sense," she said, "It's like he's the universe's clumsiest, luckiest serial killer."

Spock half-nodded, signaling acknowledgment more than agreement, and followed her out of the Starfleet base and into the City proper. Beyond his first venture through its streets and beyond to the house of the Kirks, he had not taken the time to explore it much. Chapel, though, took him down the broad boulevards with quick, sure steps.

They arrived at a small bar, the old-fashioned neon sign above the door specifically designed to flicker and pulse. A heavy beat shuddered through the whole place and Spock closed his eyes for a moment on the threshold, unsure that he had done right to accept Chapel's offer.

Inside, however, the place was rather clean. It was crowded, but not terribly so, and the majority of the patrons were in Starfleet red or black. What few civilians there were seemed to be keeping to themselves, though Spock saw a a pretty cadet dancing with someone in a worn leather jacket. His eyes caught on the slope of the man's shoulders and something whispered against his mind but the beat was loud and Chapel's hands were on his arms, tugging him away to the bar.

She introduced him to her three friends (Farra, a red-haired cadet with wide-set eyes that spoke of nonhuman blood, somewhere in her past, Marc, his grin wide and his eyes smoky, and Ella, who stared him down, calm and collected, and wrapped her small hands around her glass) and sat down, ordering herself a drink. The bartender looked expectantly at Spock.

He looked back. "I do not require anything but water, thank you," he said after a moment, and the bartender looked nonplussed and slid him a glass.

Chapel rolled her eyes. "C'mon, Spock, the point is to have some fun!"

"If by "have fun" you mean "become inebriated", I should inform you that even if I were to order something alcoholic it would not affect me as it affects humans," Spock said distractedly, his eyes seeking the dancefloor again. The beat shook the floor below him, caught him off guard. It pulsed through the bar under his hands.

Surprised, Chapel scooted her stool closer to him. "You mean you can't get drunk?"

Spock raised an eyebrow. "Not at all. I am told the loss of inhibition associated with the consumption of alcohol instead comes from the Earth delicacy "chocolate"."

Chapel laughed, full-throated, and tossed back her drink. She signaled for another, and then frowned. "You're told?"

"Chocolate allows us, even, it seems, forces us to display our emotional reactions, our desires. Such a lack of control is considered so unacceptable that chocolate has been banned from Vulcan entirely." Spock felt disconnected, uncomfortable. He shifted on his stool. There was something....he had to do, something unnamed, perhaps unnameable. He had been right, though - T'Pring seemed very far away, very quiet, compared to the clamor of voices, the jangle of music. The lighting of the bar made everything shimmer golden and fascinating, the edges of things dimming and blurring together.

On the dancefloor, the pretty cadet had stopped, head cocked in annoyance. Her partner stopped, too, stepping towards her with a confident swagger. His hands covered hers on her hips and then she was slapping him and his face snapped around with a flicker of too-blue eyes and Spock's breath hissed too loud into his lungs.

Chapel pursed her lips, not seeming to notice."So you've never been drunk. Y'know, I bet they could whip you up some cocoa if you're feeling rebellious - Hey!"

Spock was up and moving, shoving his way through the dancers, a tremble in his legs. He could hear his heartbeat, the heartbeat of all those around him as he brushed by and left them, the beat of the music, thrummed with it in sudden nervousness, sudden impossible hope. The cadet was storming out, the young man massaging his jaw and staring after her. Spock finally reached him, put a hand on his shoulder to turn him, so that he could see -

The young man grabbed his wrist to remove his hand, turning in annoyance, and froze. Spock barely had time to acknowledge the ways his face had changed, the dark lashes over eyes no less remarkable, the bowed lips, the faded freckles, before a second awareness thundered into his head with a force that made his knees buckle.

Jim, it said to him, surprise shock joy lust worry confusion guilt shame longing fear sadness lust longing love terror - and then Jim was tearing his hand away, eyes huge and shocked and the loss hit Spock with the force of a punch. He gasped and sagged, eyelids fluttering. "Jim," he managed, and felt his lips curl, felt himself really, truly smile. His hands raised by themselves, seeking again that familiar-strange-familiar mind, but Jim stepped back, his mouth hanging open.

"Spock?" He finally said, voice little more than a ragged breath, his eyes searing Spock up and down like flame. He was beautiful - the first word that came to him, and the most apt. He was beautiful, sculpted upwards and onwards from the skinny, freckled boy that Spock had known into something that would have been otherworldly if it weren't so incredibly, perfectly human. "Spock," he said again, and Spock thrilled to his voice."Spock, how...what are you doing here?"

Spock straightened, trying to regain his composure, but his heart was still thundering and his lips were still smiling. "I was...looking for something." He said. His eyes caught on Jim's, and Jim swallowed. "I believe I have found it."

"Holy crap, what did you do to get him to smile like that?" Chapel asked, sidling up to them. "I've been trying every chance I get and I haven't seen even a twitch."

Spock didn't look away from Jim, but Jim glanced at Chapel and something dropped behind his eyes, something dark and defeated. Spock's smile vanished. "Cadet Chapel," he said, voice controlled, "This is - " He paused, unsure of how to introduce Jim. My friend? That didn't begin to cover it. My Jim? Utterly presumptuous, and he had never been more uncertain as to whether it was true.

"Kirk." Jim said, holding out a hand. His eyes slid over Chapel's slim, uniformed body, his lips twitching up in a smirk that looked wrong, pasted on over something stronger. "James Kirk."

Chapel raised her eyebrows. "Shaken, not stirred?" She asked, wrinkling her nose.

Spock ignored her. "I sought for you," he said softly, and Jim's gaze stuttered over to him again. "At your old house. It was...strange to meet Frank for the first time."

"The first time..." Jim shook his head, his tongue flickering out across his lips. "I don't get it, Spock. How...how are you here? Why?"

Spock took a step forward, frustrated with the confusion he saw in Jim's face. "I have explained why. I sought you - "

"No." Jim shook his head. "I can't be the only reason. I'm not - seven years, Spock, and how many of those working to come here? You can't tell me you didn't have other options, you're fucking brilliant. Even the bigots of the Science Academy - "

"I was accepted to the Academy, yes," Spock acknowledged. "But I did not wish to attend. To live my life as fully Vulcan..." He shook his head. "Words are inefficient. If you would just let me - " He reached a hand forward, an offering, imagined Jim clasping it. An anchor.

Jim shoved his hands deep in his pockets, his head lowered. "I...I can't. Spock, I don't..." There was rejection written in his shoulders, in the furrow of his brow, and Spock's stomach dropped.

He lowered his hand. "I see." He said, and beside him, Chapel took a quick breath. He did not look at her, but he wondered what his face must show, for her to notice, to be so shocked. "I suppose I have been mistaken. It did not occur to me that our Breaking could have meant freedom for you, even as it meant the opposite to me. I apologize, seeing me tonight must have brought back memories you would perhaps prefer to leave buried." He turned, and, hesitantly, Chapel followed, face full of a confused sort of sympathy that he was entirely sure he did not need.

"No! Spock - " Jim made a frustrated noise and leaped forward, pulling Spock back around, his hands coming up to frame Spock's face. He started speaking in a rush, voice unnecessary with his thoughts rushing faster, but his breath ghosted over Spock's lips. "Of course I'm glad to see you - " so fucking glad happy lust longing joy " - and that's total bullshit about the bonding - " pain loss hurt miss you miss you missyoumissyoumissyou " - but it's been seven years, seven fucking years, Spock, and I've done things - " blood on my knuckles eyes wide fear fear blood " - things I can't. I can't let you see. And you don't - " don't want me damaged different wrong " - don't need me complicating things for you, you've got a life, I see it, Starfleet's the right place for you and I won't - " won't ruin it won't tarnish it I'm not I'm not worth it " - interfere with...that." He stopped, breathing heavily, and he was so close, face to face. He swallowed, eyes caught on Spock's lips. Longing love lust lust lust -

Spock closed the gap, his hands coming up to Jim's shoulders, closed his eyes and kissed him, clumsy and desperate. You are worth it, he thought at him, and Jim kissed him back hard, lips and tongue tangling expertly with his own. Fuck, missed you, missed you, need you -

Jim stumbled away, shaking his head over and over, and Spock felt empty, like he'd been stretched wide open and then just left, gasping and gaping. Dazed, he didn't move as Jim pushed his way past Chapel, past the small crowd that had gathered to watch them. He turned back in the doorway and Spock wanted to run after him and pull him in and make him understand that it didn't matter, it didn't, whatever it was, and it took him a moment to realize that Jim was speaking into the silence. "The Orion you're looking for, the one I - I saw in your mind." He said, his voice cracking. "I've seen him around - I think he's staying at a motel at the edge of town. The corner of twelfth and Port. You know it?"

Spock blinked, straightening up, and slipped his mask back into place. It was harder than usual, like he had to map it on over new features. Chapel cast him a worried glance. "I know it." She called to Jim, and he nodded, weary and jittery, and vanished out the door.

Chapel turned to Spock. "I thought the touch-telepathy only worked one way."

"It does." Spock said blankly, staring at the place Jim had disappeared. "For most humans. He is..." He paused. "Out of the ordinary."

"No kidding." Chapel laughed humorlessly. "This whole night was surreal as all hell. You going to tell me what just happened, or are you going to go after your boyfriend?"

Spock flicked his eyes to hers. "Those are my options?"

She crossed her arms. "Those are your options. 'Cause I'm really, really curious, and I'm surprisingly good at getting information out of people, so if you stay here you'll be talking."

"In that case..." Spock closed his eyes for a moment, steeling himself. There was a whisper of something, something human something Jim, that lingered at the back of his mind. "I shall see you back at the Academy, Cadet Chapel."

She sighed, disappointed, as he moved through the crowds, but called after him, "Good luck!"

Outside, the warmth had faded, leaving the air slightly chill. The City was neither empty nor bustling; here and there a late-night traveler keeping to himself. He scanned the streets around him, reached with mind and hands outwards, seeking the telltale trail of Jim, but T'Pring was slipping more and more back into his head, now that he was free of the noise and of Jim's clarity. There was no sign of him.

He wandered through the dark streets. The moon hung huge and low, winking at him between buildings. It was strange, that the night could be so bright - moonlight was as alien to him asphalt under his feet. The roads were too hard and the light too soft and he had all of Jim's emotions built up in his head, jumbled with his own, not worth it ruined won't can't won't can't, and Jim had refused him. Had kissed him hard and perfect, given him something shining and brilliant, and then walked away.

Frustrated, he clenched his fists and slumped against the wall. His head hurt, and there was a sort of hopelessness rising in his throat, threatening to choke him. T'Pring hovered, just waiting, and he wanted to go to her, wanted to put his hands around her throat and just squeeze the breath out of her, as if it would do anything but shame him.

You lost him again, she said, and he shudders against the cold cement.

He wants me, he said. I felt it in his mind. He believes, illogically, that I will not want him now that he has done what he had to in order to survive. It is a beginning, he thought, and tried hard to believe it.

It is an end, she said. Missing was not enough, you had to be convinced. And now, rejected, still you cling. Disgusting, this illogic you humans call hope.

I am Vulcan, he said, a whisper of instinct, a whisper of pride, and she laughed. Lie shivering against the cold, against your sorrow and your own creeping lust...yes, you make the homeworld proud.

He felt himself drawn to that dreaming-place, saw her standing pillar-straight in the center of the circle. Was it that, after all, that kept you going? Not the bonds of friendship or delusion, but the perverted lust for a human boy, younger than yourself, more innocent?

Her face was impassive, her voice colorless, which made her words somehow worse, somehow uglier. Did you imagine he would greet you with open arms and open legs, look at you with those blue eyes and beg you for it? He would break so prettily, under the fury of ponn farr.

Be silent. He thought at her, disgusted and furious and shaking, shaking. Be silent or I shall lock you out.

She raised an eyebrow. If you could, you would have long ago. Soon you will not be able to brush me off at all. Her eyes glittered. Seven years, Spock.

And she was gone, withdrawn into her own cold cage of a mind, and Spock was left alone once more.

**

Pike sighed, shaking his head. "I'm glad to see you've uncovered the same strange coincidences I have, but I'm afraid without more information there's nothing we can do as of yet. The one lead we had on this guy's location fell through, and we haven't found anything else yet. I guess just keep an eye out, you two. Continue with your classes, and if you find anything - "

"Actually, sir," Chapel interrupted with a glance at Spock, "We already have."

Pike sat back, looking surprised. "Oh?"

Chapel was still looking at Spock. Spock stared straight ahead."He's been seen at a motel at the edge of town, sir. West district - corner of twelfth and Port, sir."

"I see." Pike narrowed his eyes. "And you waited this long to tell me this, Cadet Chapel, because...?"

"I was going to let Cadet Spock explain it sir, as it is much more his story than mine."

Pike turned his eyes to Spock, who sat silent, his hands steepled in front of his face. "Cadet Spock?"

Spock spoke evenly. "A young man we happened across saw the Orion at the motel Cadet Chapel named, sir."

Pike sighed. "And you expect me to believe that that's the whole story, do you?"

Chapel lowered her eyes, and Spock said nothing.

"Right." Pike leaned forward. "Care to explain to me how this kid came to learn the details of a confidential Starfleet investigation?"

Spock found himself, for the first time, contemplating lying to a superior officer. He could easily blame Chapel, claim that she was drunk and discussing the anomalies in Heled-Mar's stories with him, that Jim had overheard. Everyone knew Vulcans do not lie, so it was likely that any protest Chapel voiced would be ignored. However, she would also be unjustly punished, and fond of her or not she was the first person here to offer him friendship.

He flicked his eyes up to Pike's. "Instructor, may I speak to you in private?"

"Oh hell no." Chapel burst out. "Spock, I've been waiting days for this story, you can't just cut me out - "

"I can, Cadet Chapel, and I will, if Cadet Spock insists," Pike said firmly.

"I do." Spock said simply. Chapel glared at him, but stood.

Pike nodded to her. "Dismissed. I will summon you again if anything develops further concerning the case as a whole."

Chapel threw a sulky salute and flounced from the room. Pike shook his head after her, and then turned to Spock, his face concerned. "Something tells me this wasn't just a random townie kid you guys "came across"."

The edge of Spock's mouth lifted, acknowledging the gentle prompt. "Indeed not." He said. "The young man goes by the name of James Kirk, and he and I have...something of a complex history, which, in order to explain how he got knowledge of the investigation of Heled-Mar, I find myself forced to relate."

Pike blinked. "James Kirk? Not the son of George Kirk, Captain of the Kelvin?"

Spock inclined his head. "The same, sir."

"Well." Pike shook his head. "This should be interesting. Take your time, Cadet Spock."

Spock did. He spent a moment organizing his thoughts, and began.

As he spoke, he watched Pike's face for signs of disbelief, of condemnation. The first there were plenty - raised brows, twisted lips. A few times he opened his mouth to interrupt and then seemed to think better of it, waiting, instead, to see if it started making more sense as Spock continued talking. But Spock was surprised to find almost none of the second - no signs of fear or judgment that he was nothing but delusional, driven mad perhaps by the mixing of his blood.

"The night in the bar was the first I'd seen him since my bonding with T'Pring seven years ago, sir. It was..." He stopped. Pike was no psychologist, to pour his feelings out to. "Like many Vulcans, I am a touch-telepath, and I was unsurprised to find that with Jim such a knowledge goes both ways. He saw Heled-Mar in my mind. There can be no doubt, therefore, that it is Heled-Mar, and not another Orion that he saw. The lead is good."

Pike studied him. "That's quite the story, Cadet Spock."

"Yes, sir." Spock agreed.

"If you were anyone else..." He shook his head. "Do you think there's any chance you could convince Jim to join Starfleet? If he's half the man his father was..."

Twice the man, Spock thought. Aloud, he said, "No, sir."

Pike raised his eyebrows. "No?"

"It is something we had discussed prior to my bonding, sir, and Jim was always very much against it. Even if that had changed, in the seven years we have been apart, there is an added factor now that weighs more heavily against it."

"And what's that?"

Spock clenched his fists. "I am a member of Starfleet, and Jim made it quite clear at the bar that he did not wish to associate with me."

Pike rocked back in his chair. "Oh." He said. "God, Spock, I'm sorry."

Spock cocked his head. "While I cannot say it has not affected me, it certainly will not hinder me in carrying out my duties at the Academy, sir."

Pike stared at him, hard. "Of course." He said. "Dismissed, Cadet Spock. I will call you back when it's time to investigate your lead."

Spock stood stiffly and saluted. "Thank you, sir."

"You're welcome." Pike said, and Spock turned to go. "Spock," Pike stopped him, and Spock turned back, eyebrow raised. "Why did you find it necessary to discuss this in private?"

Spock shook his head. "Although none of the matters discussed were confidential, Cadet Chapel has displayed an overeager and over-curious mind. The relationship between myself and James Kirk is...not something I wish to be analyzed, nor discussed at length. I trusted your discretion - hers, however, I was unsure of."

Pike smirked. "I'll take that as a compliment. Thank you, Cadet Spock, and get some rest." He inclined his head in Vulcan manner, and Spock left the room.

It was only when he was halfway down the hall that he wondered how Pike had known he needed sleep.

Seven years, T'pring had said. His mask was beginning to slip.

Chapter Text

The motel was dark and mostly empty. The sign in the parking lot declared its vacancy in cheerful glowing letters, the only cheerful things in the place. Kirk ran a hand over his face - he felt wrecked, fucked up, run over. He could still...he could still feel him, perfect-shining-right in the back of his mind, could feel him looking for him, reaching out with a desperation, a need that maybe no one else in the world but Jim would ever feel...

No. Can't think like that. Can't. Not. He doesn't know who I am. It's not me he needs, but little Jim Kirk, who couldn't even fight off his drunken stepdad by himself, would never even have considered...the kid who still believed in happy endings.

He ran a thumb over the scars on his knuckles, pushed himself towards one of the doors. His bones ached with something, and that was ridiculous, because nothing had happened - he hadn't fought, he hadn't even really danced but it felt like something had been torn out of him. Maybe worst of all, he felt sober.

He slammed a hand against the door. "Bones." He growled at the stupid peeling numbers, at the stupid fake wood. "Bones, you bastard, open up!"

"Hold your horses, asshole!" He heard from beyond the door, and the sound of the sliding of the chain was too loud, scraped against the back of his brain, and he stumbled forward as the door swung open.

Bones caught him, gentle. "Jesus, Jim. What the hell happened to you?" He tilted Kirk's head up, examined his eyes with worried gaze. "Your pupils are dilated to all hell, but you're not drunk and you're certainly not drugged. What the fuck is going on?"

Kirk fought him off, collapsing onto the single bed with a screech of rusted springs. "Saw Spock." He bit out, and even the name tasted good. Fuck. "I know you have booze, Bones, and I know I really need a drink."

Bones didn't move. After a while Kirk pushed himself up on his elbows. "Well?"

His friend was staring at him, hard, face in his perpetual half-scowl. "You saw Spock. Spock, your imaginary Vulcan childhood friend."

Kirk pressed a hand to his pounding temple. This goddamn headache. He wanted to push himself off the bed and race through the streets until he found Spock again, just so this fucking incessant tugging towards him would stop. "The only part of that sentence that was right was "Vulcan"." He said, and then winced. "And that's only half right."

McCoy grabbed a mostly-full bottle from the top drawer of his rickety dresser and settled next to Kirk on the bed, cross-legged. "He's not your friend?" He asked.

"Used to be." Kirk said. "Maybe. Something like that. I mean. Not anymore, anyway."

Bones handed him the bottle, raising his eyebrows. "He tell you this? That you're through?"

Kirk shook his head. "Didn't have to. Saw inside his head, Bones. He's got..he's living a life. No room for me. All numbers and classes and regiments and he's already on this special case and he's a fucking genius and finally being recognized for it. There's no place in there for me, Bones." He tilted the bottle at his lips, tried not to think about what had touched them last.

"Used to be all sort of room, way you tell it." Bones said, taking back the bottle after Kirk had had barely a swallow. Kirk scowled at him, but Bones ignored it.

Kirk flopped back, gestured helplessly at the ceiling. "What we were...I don't fucking know, Bones. Of course he liked me back then, I was in his head. It was either like me or go mad."

Bones nearly spat out his whiskey, but managed to swallow, face even sourer than usual. "That's bullshit and you know it. He liked you 'cause you're you, Jim Kirk, 'cause you're...you're a stubborn fucking bastard who grips onto the things he believes in and grins in the face of a thousand idiots bigger'n him and tries to get himself killed approximately seven hundred times a day."

Jim chuckled humorlessly. "Naw, Bones, that's why you like me. Spock never...he doesn't know that Jim Kirk, and he doesn't want to." He ran a hand over his face. "Even if he did, he won't anymore. I fucked that up."

Bones raises his eyebrows. "How?"

Kirk closed his eyes, holding a hand out for the bottle. "Kissed him."

"You kissed Spock." Bones said, handing it to him, careful.

Kirk nodded, silent, taking a swig of whiskey. It burned nicely; cleansing.

"For God's sake, Jim, why?"

He sat up quickly, suddenly angry and restless. "Because he's fucking...He's perfect, Bones. He's sculpted and graceful and hot as fuck and I have poor impulse control, okay?" He slid from the bed, paced the room. "And he was going to...he was going to leave thinking I didn't care about him. And I couldn't let him do that."

Bones watched him as he poured more whiskey down his throat. "Let me get this straight. You're not planning on seeing him again, yeah?"

Kirk ran an agitated hand through his hair. "Not if I can help it." Not if I want to stay sane.

Bones scowled. "So why do you care whether he knows you care about him?"

Kirk stopped. "Because he's Spock, Bones. He cares for me, or cared for who I was and that's the only thing, sometimes, that..." He shook his head. "I can't ever ruin that. Don't you see? That's the whole point. He has to keep loving the kid I was. If I screwed that up, if he knew what I'm capable of doing, what I have done..."

Bones slumped back on his elbows. "And there you have the bottom of this whole idiocy, Jim. You think he's gonna stop missing half of his brain just because you did what you had to to survive? Because you saved lives? He's half Vulcan, something tells me he has more logic than your moron brain."

Kirk shook his head, slumped back against the wall, tasted whiskey and salt and the edge of bile at the back of his throat. His head pounded, pounded, and he closed his eyes against the light, against memory and deep-seated self-disgust as familiar as his leather jacket. "I killed a woman, Bones."

He heard Bones' feet hit the floor, heard him approach. Felt a hand in his hair, just resting there, solid and real. He pressed the bottle to his lips, swallowed once, twice. Swallow. Swallow. Swallow. "She would have died anyway, Jim." Bones said at last, voice weary, following the steps of their ritual. He knew Kirk wouldn't believe him, and Kirk knew Bones meant it.

"You don't know that." Jim said, tongue thick. "You can't. You're not even a real doctor, and even if you were, no one knows the future."

They were silent for a while, ritual dance complete, and Kirk kept his eyes closed, tried to keep himself here and now while everything he was tugged him towards Spock, or back, back, to that night and the bright splatter of blood across his shoes. The whiskey helped, at first, bright and burning in his throat, but it softened the hold his mind had on his body and he kept getting flashes of pale skin blue flowers orange sky, things he'd almost seen before but never quite known.

Finally, Bones sighed and took the bottle from him. Kirk didn't look up. "I know one thing." Bones said softly. "This wasn't the last time you'll see Spock."

Kirk clenched his fists, shook off Bones' steadying hand. "Yes." He grated out, voice broken. "It was."

Chapter Text

'Aren't you going to eat anything?' Chapel asked, gesturing at his empty tray and glass of clear, cold water.

"No," Spock said simply, pressing his hands down on the table. He could feel his heart beat against his gut, could hear his breath too loud. It was getting worse.

"Spock?" She asked, and leaned down, concern plain on her face. "Are you - "

"I said no, Cadet Chapel." He said, standing in a rush. His chair began to fall, and he flung out a hand to catch it. She stared at him, wordless, and for a moment he stared back. I had hoped this would not happen.

***

"Because I do not want to tell you." Spock grit out, his hands clenching and unclenching on the back of the chair. It was flimsier than the one in the dining hall. Would crack so easily, under his strength. "Allow me my privacy and cease your endless questioning!"

"I deserve to know!" Chapel insisted, her eyes boring into the back of Spock's head. "How did James Kirk know you seven years ago, when you've barely been here a year? How did he get you to smile like that? And now you're all...twitchy and strange and you're not eating and..." She sighed and changed tactics, her voice becoming wheedling. "I'm just trying to learn, Spock. You know we don't get aliens on Orpheus, help me out here!"

Seven years.

Spock didn't look at her, closed his eyes, but that only made it worse. "No."

"Come on, Spock! I'm your friend, aren't I?" Chapel pressed.

Spock spun. "I am Vulcan." He hissed. "I do not have friends, and if I did, you would certainly not be counted among them, you whining, useless insect!" He advanced on her, fists at his sides clenched so hard his nails would leave marks on his palms. "The closest thing I have ever had to a friend is cut off from me so entirely that I cannot even find him, now, when I need him most. It is taking all of my considerable control not to wring your neck for your interruption of my attempts!"

Chapel's eyes were wide, and she retreated from him, open hurt and fear splashed across her face in an ugly red flush. "Yeah, you're really doing great on that control thing, Mr. Spock," she spat, almost too shaken to be angry, and fled through the door.

Spock collapsed on his bed, the tension leaving the room with Chapel. The silence was relief, for the barest of moments, and then it was just a space for T'Pring's hated voice to fill. It's happening, she whispered. Seven years since the bonding. Come home, Spock. You've suffered enough. Let it end. You saw your little friend and he does not want you. What, then, is there for you to live for? Come home, bonded, and die.

Spock curled in on himself, pressed long, cold fingers to his temples. No. He said. No. No. He is here. I will stay here.

You will die anyway, T'Pring spat, and Spock opened his eyes to find himself curled in the dream-space, with her standing over him, eyes full of rage. You will die far from home, alone and loveless.

Ah, Spock thought, and then he was standing, broken but strong. But I will take you with me.

She studied him with hard eyes, and then changed tack. You are not so horrible, she thought at him, as if giving him some great gift, stepping closer. I am sure the heat of pon farr would simulate love, enough that you would not die entirely bereft. Let me hold you, Spock. Come home to me.

Home. Spock thinks, circling her. There is an earth expression, "Home is where the heart is."

A meaningless phrase. She dismissed. For them, it would be in the upper left chest cavity. For us, the lower right. Are we snails, then, to carry our homes with us?

As usual, you fail to grasp even the simplest understanding of humanity. Spock said, narrowing his eyes. I may have been raised on Vulcan, but my heart is here.

It was then that her mask cracked, broke open, and she struck out at him, the pain nothing in this place but her very real disgust and rage hitting him with its approximate force. I don't care, I don't care! She screamed at him, and finally he could see that she, too, was affected by the madness of pon farr. Her teeth were bared and her eyes flashing. I will not seduce you to me. I will not waste my time playing your stupid, emotional games. You will come home. You will face Stonn in combat, and you will die.

Something, far away, beeped.

No, thought Spock, and returned to his body. I will not.

He opened his eyes to find that the comm was bleeping in the corner. He pushed himself up, dragged a hand across eyes that seemed strange and dry. His fingers found the appropriate switch, and he steeled himself for Chapel's anger - or worse, tears.

Instead, Pike stared out from the screen. He looked taken aback, for a moment, at Spock's appearance, but was obviously in a hurry. "Come to my office immediately, cadet Spock." He said, grim. Spock had a moment of panic - I can't explain it, forbidden, the most private shame of my people - before he continued, "We've found him."

"Yes, sir." Spock said, saluting with shaking hands. He made a cursory attempt to smooth down his uniform, then exited his room at a pace close to a run. His heart was in his throat. Found him. He wondered if they'd arrested Jim - wondered how many other times they had without knowing who he was, how important. He wondered that Pike had known, so easily, what it was he needed - not that he would take it. This was an opportunity, an opportunity only, to make him understand...

He rounded the corner and saw, through Pike's open doorway, the blue-skinned back of the Orion.

Oh. He stopped dead, all the energy draining from him. Of course.

We found him.

He stared, hard, at the floor. The backs of his eyes felt hot and strange. He closed them, scowling, and was surprised to feel his eyelashes grow wet. Were these tears? His eyes were wet, his heart beat, and it felt almost as if a bubble of sorrow and hopelessness was choking him. All symptoms of crying.

Fascinating, he thought, and then straightened, wiping his eyes with the back of his hand. But distracting.

He knocked once on the doorway. "Sir?" He asked.

Pike looked up. He gave Spock a tight, quick smile, before turning his attention back to the Orion.

Heled-Mar was sitting in the chair, perched quite comfortably. He was handcuffed, but was currently staring at them, all of his attention absorbed, twisting and examining his wrists as if the handcuffs were an interlocking-ring puzzle like those given to idle Vulcan children. He was dead silent, and seemed entirely at ease.

Spock supposed, distantly, that he probably was. After all, he'd been arrested thirty-eight times.

"He won't talk to us." Pike said, and for the first time, Spock saw Chapel, leaning in the corner by the bright window. She didn't look at him. "I could just send him back to Orion..." Pike continued, leaning back and crossing his arms. "But I have a sneaking suspicion that he'd just end up free again. What I want to know...is why. What is it about him that makes them let him go?"

The Orion sat, silent, the chain of his handcuffs clack-clacking against his wrists.

He glanced up at Spock. "Which is where you come in."

Spock swallowed, and Pike frowned a little at the twitch. "I don't understand, sir."

Pike leaned forward. "You're a touch telepath. I know that from your own story, as well as your file." He gestured towards the Orion. "I'm not gonna get anything out of him by asking, I can't even tell if he speaks Common. So I need you to read his mind."

Spock looked at Heled-Mar. Heled-Mar looked back, all clear, dead eyes. "That would not be wise." Spock said, folding his hands carefully behind him. He looked back up to Pike. "Sir."

Pike frowned. "What?"

"In fact, I cannot comply with that order." Spock said tightly. "Now if that is all - " He turned, took a step towards the doorway.

Pike stood. "No, goddamn it, Spock, that is not all! What the hell is going on with you?" He came around the desk. "First you somehow terrorize poor cadet Chapel here so much that she hasn't said a word since you came in, Chapel, and now you refuse to do your job?" He stepped towards Spock, passing close to the Orion as he did so. Spock resisted the urge to shy away. "Was it the Kirk kid that did this to you? I know there were things you left out of your story, and yeah, that's your right, but not if - "

Spock had time to only blink when the Orion moved. Heled-Mar was standing, hands flashing out, and Pike grunted in pain. Heled-Mar reared back and pulled, and Pike staggered, almost fell. Chapel darted forward, but Heled-Mar spun and kicked his chair into her stomach. Spock saw several things simultaneously - one of Heled-Mar's hands was free, and he'd embedded the other end of the handcuffs, toothed-side first, into one of Pike's legs. He'd probably been aiming higher, but Pike had been moving at the time, and the sheer force involved staggered Spock's mind.

The other thing he noticed, with the piece of his brain that was nothing but fire and want, was that the Orion's shirt was torn along the shoulder-seam, exposing a smooth blue sliver of skin. On closer inspection, it was dotted with tiny, silvery-white freckles. Spock felt as if he were moving in slow motion, reaching out to trace them. Heled-Mar's skin was cool to touch, and Spock placed two fingers feather-light, just so, and squeezed.

Immediately, images rushed into his mind, and a strange, liquid-smooth language full of allusions and illusions and secret sly ways. He saw Heled-Mar in chains, again and again, in front of Orion officials, yes, and Starfleet ones, and aliens Spock didn't recognize, but most often in front of Orion women. Gorgeous, stately women the color of jealousy, the color of sorrow, their smiles wide and toothed and beautiful. They spoke to him in words Spock didn't understand, couldn't understand, because he was tearing himself away, back to a body that ached and rushed with need.

The Orion dropped, unconscious.

Spock stood over him, breathing hard, his hands shaking. Pike stared at him, uncomprehending, from where he was propped up against the desk. "Cannot." Spock managed, strangled, and then stumbled from the room. Behind him, he heard Chapel move to Pike's side, heard her soft, clipped voice telling him to sit, dammit, before he lost more blood, and she would try to get the handcuffs out with the least damage.

Spock fled made it to his rooms, barely, before breaking down and sobbing, crying out his own helplessness and frustration and all the Orion's, too, all of Heled-Mar's long-forgotten guilt and sorrow and desire and anger, all the things that had been beaten and broken out of him. The emotion was so loud in his ears that even T'Pring's cold voice was drowned out, but Spock couldn't bring himself to care.

Eventually, empty and drained, he fell into a dreamless sleep, propped up against the door of his quarters.

**

He woke up when the door chimed. His brain told him he had slept for hours, that it was nearly 02:00. His eyes were crusted with something, his second eyelids dry and slow to retract. He cleared them with one long, shaking finger, and then stood, swaying. He pressed his forehead to the cool metal of the door. "I do not wish to speak of it, Chapel." He said, weakly. "I would have thought I had made that clear enough. Go away."

"I'm staying here, Spock." It's almost a whisper, a murmur. "Why the hell are you?" The voice is not Chapel's, is not Pike's, is warm and nervous and so familiar it almost hurts.

Spock froze. "Jim?" He breathed, and stepped back from the door. "Open." He commanded, quickly. Want to see, want to hear, want want want -

The doors slid apart. Jim rubbed the back of his neck, not making eye contact with Spock. He looked as tired as Spock felt - no, he radiated it, radiated exhausted and worried and a desperate sort of sorrow that wants so hard to be hope but can't quite believe hope is even possible. "Go back to Vulcan, Spock." Jim said, still not looking at him. "I know what this is. Seven years."

Spock stared at him, hard. "Seven years, Jim, and you would have me go back?"

Jim scowled, raised his eyes quick and angry. "If it's that or die? Yes!"

They stared at each other for a long moment, and Spock folded his hands behind him, clutching his own wrist, fingers around it like shackles (and for the briefest moment he felt small, cowering, broken, in front of yet another in a chain of smiling, sharp-minded women), preventing himself from stepping forward and...

Kirk tore his eyes away, which just left Spock staring at his profile, studying the strong curve of his neck, the peeking temptation of collarbone above his t-shirt. His mouth was dry. "I die if I go back," he said finally, once he remembered that words were necessary (and that was wrong, so wrong, between them). "You...we were Broken before I learned T'Pring's plan, but she...she will challenge, and Stonn will kill me."

Jim looked at the floor. "You can defeat Stonn." He said. "You did it before."

"Seven years ago, yes, with you in my head to direct me. But I have seen Stonn, through T'Pring's eyes, Jim. He is nothing but logic and muscle, a mountain driven by his hatred for me. T'Pring has made sure of that." He shook his head. "I would not survive a confrontation with Stonn."

Jim made a low, frustrated noise, moved to sit on Spock's bed with his head in his hands. Spock forced himself to think about the obvious distress radiating off of him rather than the fact that he's Jim, sitting on his bed. "So, what, I'm supposed to just watch you die? God, Spock, what was your plan, here?"

Spock closed his eyes, stood swaying in place. "I didn't think this would happen." He said softly. "I didn't think I would ever undergo pon farr."

"Why not?" Jim asked. "We both had no idea, last I checked. What changed?"

"T'Pring." Spock said, and his hands are at this sides now, twitching and shaking, his eyes still closed. "You never met her, Jim, not how she really is. She is ice and cruelty and hatred and...I never thought that anything could make me need her. Foolish, I suppose. It is not as if biology cares what would hurt me, what would kill me."

"Biology might not, but I do." Jim said, and his voice is shaking now. "And there's...there's got to be something I can do. I can feel it, Spock. The tugging towards Vulcan, though I've never been there. I see...I see the Breaking-place, and T'Pring as she was seven years ago and I just...I've got this longing, as well as being horny as all fuck, and it's goddamn confusing."

Spock's eyes snapped open. "You can feel my pon farr?"

Jim nodded, miserable. "I guess. I mean, I don't know. How is that even possible?"

Spock shook his head, took a step closer. "It's not." He said, and then smiled, a tiny, slim bloom of hope. "But then, we've always been good at being impossible." He put out a hand, traced it across Jim's cheekbones, just his barest fingertips. He wanted to touch, god, he wanted to taste and bruise and take.

Jim looked up at him, weary and clear-eyed. "I killed a woman." He said, voice devoid of emotion. "That's what I don't want you to see. That's why I can't..." He turned his face away from Spock's fingers, and Spock wanted to laugh.

"I suppose you mean to shock me with that." He said, and knelt in front of the bed. "I suppose I am meant to assume you were drunk, and angry, and the woman was defenseless and innocent, and that it was a senseless, random crime." He leaned forward, both hands on the edge of the bed. "But remember, Jim. I know you....and now, I now how it feels to murder." He caught Jim's eyes with his own, so close, so close, tilting his head. "Show me?"

Jim closed his eyes, swallowed, and then he was leaning in, pressing his whole face to Spock's, pushing out a long slow breath and seven years of waiting against his face. They brushed noses, brushed lips, brushed foreheads, every nerve afire. The images started slow, and Spock used the pause, aligning their mouths and claiming Jim's bottom lip, sucking it into his mouth, swallowing up Jim's tiny gasp. He ran a tongue over Jim's teeth, exploring and hungry, and when Jim opened fully for him he saw fire.

It was a house, a house on fire and Jim was pulling him up, hand on his arm, hand in his hair, there were screams - children, he thought, and a woman, and then someone was shouting, a male voice that is familiar but not to Spock and Spock tangled himself in Jim, limbs caught with limbs, and pressed hot, wet kisses to his jawline. Jim was mumbling something and diving into the flames, wet blanket across his back squirming up against him, one hand tracing again and again along the shell of his ear, the other tugging insistently at his shirt but there was no time no time no time, the children breathing smoke and a woman in the doorway, already aflame and Spock distracted, distracted, licking a long stripe up Jim's neck, sucked faint bruises into his collarbone and Jim was mumbling the screaming was louder, too loud, louder, curses and prayers and his name, again and again, and please please please move, have to get them out, please, please, and Spock complied, his hands finding Jim's belt, tracing along the trail of hair there and Jim's face was twisted with pleasure and need and horror all the same and the woman isn't moving, blocking the doorway, her mouth working but it wasn't her that was screaming, it was him, and Spock wrapped long fingers around him Jim struck out, desperate.

The woman crumpled, and Jim arched, crying out in anguish and pleasure, and Spock stopped. He lifted his other hand to Jim's face, cupped his cheek. He rubbed the back of his knuckles against Jim's inner thigh, soothing, teasing, until Jim would look at him again. "You saved them, the children." He said, though the images have stopped, now. "You saved their lives, at great risk to your own, and yet you would not let me see this?"

"I went back for her." He said. "She didn't die of smoke. She didn't die of burns - she died when she hit her head, when I pushed her. I could have gotten her out, I could have...The blood - I...I killed her, Spock."

"And saved eight children, eight of her children, in the process. Jim..." He ran his thumb across Jim's lip. "...The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few."

Jim stared at him for a long moment, and pulled him down, kissing him hard, thumbs against his cheekbones. Spock sank into him, closed his fingers around his length, ground down into his hip. They breathed harsh and quick between kisses, rocking and desperate. Lost in Jim - the feeling of him, the smell of him - Spock felt something shift, something huge and important but he didn't notice, couldn't, with two minds worth of pon farr and no more walls, at last, to leap.

When it was over, he curved himself around Jim, cradling him to his chest like something to be cherished. Jim moved, sleepy and languid, to curl into him. "Didn't think...you wanted me here. You were so...smooth and you had a career and friends - they're why I'm here, you know. Chapel hunted me down - I thought I was in trouble, for a bit, before I recognized her from that night in the bar." He smiled, a little, and Spock felt it more than saw it, the tiniest twitch of lips against his collarbone. "Bones was about ready to stick a hypo in her and run, but I calmed him down."

"Bones?" Spock asked, though there were whispers of him at the edges of his mind - dark, worried eyes, tongue lazy with alcohol but never anything but clever and roughly kind.

"He's my best friend." Jim said honestly, and Spock felt odd. "My only friend, really, except for you, but that's always been..." He lifted his head, his stubbled jaw rasping all along Spock's throat in a way that made him shiver, and looked Spock in the eyes. "...something else. Something...more."

Spock nodded, warm again, and said softly, "T'Pring tried to tell me it was only lust, what I felt for you. That...with who I am, what I am, only an alien like yourself would have me and I was going to...take advantage of the trust you had in me. She had me almost convinced that the pon farr would tear you apart."

"God." Jim's lips twisted. "What a bitch. I can't imagine seven years of her in my head."

"It was...difficult, on the worst days, for me to remember why she was wrong. But some days I remembered...many things, and she was quiet." He curled a hand around the back of Kirk's neck, traced his fingers through the hairs there. They were softer and finer, and he could fit his fingertips in the dip between muscles, trace along it to the top of his spine. He wondered whether there was any part of Jim that he would not find fascinating. "At the moment, I cannot hear her at all."

Good, said Jim, fiercely, and then, aloud, "This is not for her."

And he kissed Spock again, slow and careful, and melted all T'Pring's ice with hands and tongue and thought.

Chapter Text

Spock saluted Pike with an almost embarrassed stiffness. Kirk followed him into the room, so close Spock could feel him radiating heat and Jim and he wondered if he'd ever get used to that, to the physicality as well as the mentality of having Kirk here.

"Christopher Pike." Pike said, standing and holding his hand out to Kirk. With a glance at Spock, Kirk took it, shaking firmly before letting go, and Pike gestured to the two chairs in front of his desk. "I understand you helped Spock here through a tough time. If he is be believed, maybe more than one."

Kirk licked his lips, frowned. "I'm not sure I...understand, sir."

Pike ignored him, looking at Spock for a long moment, a smile twitching at his lips. "Glad to see you okay again, cadet. I'd sure like to know what happened, but if you boys aren't ready to tell me, well..." He looked back to Kirk, and then to Spock again. "I suppose you've earned that trust."

Spock inclined his head, letting himself feel the gratitude that swept through him. "Thank you, sir."

Pike nodded, still looking at him, and Spock cocked his head. "Sir, from what I observed the last time we met, the Orion wounded you quite severely. I regret that I could not stay to help, but...events were beyond my control."

Pike nodded, sinking back into his chair. "Of course. Thankfully, you left me in the best possible hands. Whoever gets Cadet Chapel as CMO on their ship is a lucky man. She might be a motormouth, but she's steady in times of crisis." He studied Spock's face. "I'm fine, Spock."

Spock relaxed slightly. "And the Orion?"

"Ah, that'd be why I called you here." Pike straightened the stack of papers on his desk. "I know you said you couldn't read his mind, when I asked you before. But whatever was troubling you seems to have been solved. Is that still an impossibility? Because I'll have to mark down that you're unable to use the touch-telepathy common in Vulcans, if that's the case. We wouldn't want - "

"He's fine," Kirk interrupted Pike, a hint of glare in his eyes. "No need to mark anything down." He flicked his eyes to Spock, and then amended, "Sir."

Pike's lips twitched in amusement, but he raised his eyebrows at Spock, who nodded slightly. "Jim - Mr. Kirk is correct, commander. My previous telepathic capabilities have returned to me. Am I correct in assuming that you still wish me to examine Heled-Mar?"

Pike nodded. "Yes, you are. Although perhaps under more guard this time, yeah?" He grinned.

Spock inclined his head in acknowledgment. "I will do it." He said. "On one condition."

Pike looked surprised. "Condition? I know I didn't give you a direct order, Spock, but I assumed it was implied - "

"He didn't mean condition." Kirk said quickly. "He meant - he has a request."

Pike frowned at him. "I assume Cadet Spock can still speak for himself, Mr. Kirk."

Spock's lips tightened. "He is correct, sir. I misspoke. I have a request about the proceedings with the Orion."

Pike steepled his fingers. "And what is your request, Cadet?"

"I would like to have Jim with me." He said. "I have reason to believe that he might be of use."

Pike leaned forward, for the first time looking annoyed. "Oh? What reason? Or is that classified information?"

Spock saw Kirk's shoulders tighten, laid a cooling hand on his arm. The contact was immediate and soothing, but Kirk's mind tasted of suspicion and tension. Spock tried his best to ignore it, looked at Pike. "Though it would not have been wise for me to engage in a full mind-meld with the Orion the last time we met, I did catch a glimpse of his thoughts as I put pressure on his nerve-points. There's certainly something unusual going on. He seems to have some sort of arrangement with a cabal of very powerful Orion women. However, I also encountered some resistance. It is possible that in his travels he has acquired some rudimentary telepathic knowledge. On my own, I might be able to push past it." His fingers slid down and off Kirk's arm. "Jim and I together can break through it easily."

Pike sighed. "Yes, alright. Logical as always. I'll drum him up a pass to the briefing rooms. You're dismissed."

Spock stood, and Jim followed him out. He let them get all the way down the hall and turn a corner before he was pulling Spock aside, hands insistent on his chest. "You wanna know something interesting?" He said, searching Spock's face.

"I am generally fascinated by your insight," Spock answered, though he knew the question was rhetorical.

Kirk's hands were on his arms, now, just resting there, like it was natural. He was staring at Spock, though, like he was trying to figure him out. "I can feel it when you lie." He said at last. Spock started to turn away, but Kirk stopped him. "What was all that bullshit about telepathic resistance? You got a whole host of images from one nerve pinch. If anything, the guy's especially sensitive to telepathy, an open book to you. What do you need me for?"

Everything, Spock almost said, and Jim heard it through the palms of his hands, because his eyes immediately softened. "Oh, god." He said, and then laughed. Spock tried his hardest not to look affronted. "You...you made that up so that I would stay with you. You thought, God, Spock, you thought if I didn't have a reason I had to be here, I'd just leave?"

Spock didn't meet his eyes. "Last night you did what you had to to prevent me from dying. I appreciate that, and thank you, but I do not wish to ask more of you than you will give."

Jim stared at him, hard. "More than I will give? Spock...Spock, you saw what I did to that woman. You...you more than saw it, and you're still here, still with me. There is no fucking way I'm letting you go." His hands slid down to Spock's, his fingers gentle. Spock could feel each of his callouses, rough on his skin, could feel what they were from - the smooth leather handlebars of a motorbike, here, between the thumb and forefinger. The rough wood of a shovel's handle on the lower pads of his fingers. Here and there a scar, from a knife, from a stone wall. His own fingers twitched and slid against Jim's, smooth, too smooth, having gripped nothing but paper. Blood-stained fingers and ink-stained, Jim's thought came, and Spock let him feel his smile.

Jim grinned up at him. "Good." He said, and then took Spock's hand the human way, more clasp than kiss. "Then c'mon."

Spock followed willingly, though he raised his eyebrows. "Might I inquire as to our destination?"

Jim's voice was lighter, more purely happy than he'd ever heard it. "You're going to meet Bones."

***

"Well, goddamn." Bones smirked when he opened the door. "He ain't imaginary." He cast a sardonic eye downwards, to the bottle hanging from his fingers. "That, or this stuff's stronger  than I thought."

Jim laughed and hugged him, then turned to look at Spock. "Bones, as you've guessed, this is Spock. Spock..."

"Leonard McCoy." Said McCoy, holding the hand not wrapped around a mostly-full bottle of whiskey.

Spock gave a slight bow, eyeing the hand. "I have already learned about you from Jim, Doctor. I doubt you wish me to learn anything more private."

"What the hell are you - " McCoy frowned a moment - it seemed natural on his face - and then shook his head. "Oh, right. Touch-telepaths." He dropped the hand and went to lean against the room's single bed. He tipped the whiskey into his mouth, offered it to Kirk, who shook his head. He looked at Spock a moment, then shrugged and took another swallow.

"You are a Doctor, McCoy..." Spock mused, genuinely curious. "...And yet you willingly ingest overindulgent amounts of a poison that will slowly cripple your liver. Why?"

McCoy grinned, quick and cynical. "You are a Vulcan, Spock." He said, mocking Spock's clipped tones, "And yet you willingly subject yourself to someone who will slowly crack and tear away that tight-lipped control you've got on your emotions. Why?"

Spock stared at him, startled. It seemed the Doctor's disheveled appearance hid an astoundingly acute insight. He thought about the question for a few moments, flicking his eyes to Kirk. Jim's mouth was bowed in the tiniest of smiles, something confident and joyful, and Spock felt too full, too bright. Love, he wanted to say, but it was too huge a word for a room with so many people in it.

Bones' lips twitched. "Yeah," He said. "Me too." He squinted at Kirk. "So? What are you two doing here, anyhow?"

Jim licked his lips. "We...thought you might like to go somewhere with us. You know, have a celebration or something. God knows it's been a long time since we've had anything to celebrate, right?"

Bones studied him. "You're still trying to get me out of this piece of shit motel room." He stood straight. "And what happens when we're done celebrating, Jim? You and your Vulcan go back to your fucking sinshine-and-rainbows at Starfleet, and I come back here. To this piece of shit motel room and to this bottle and to the four fucking credits I have to my name." He stalked towards Jim, thrusting the bottle at Spock. Puzzled, Spock took it, and then McCoy was folding his arms, standing toe-to-toe with Jim. "Well I'm sorry that I'm not all over that plan, Jim! I get that you're happy. Hell, I can't blame you, can I? Your guardian angel came swooping down on a starship and saved you from the from the filthy life you were living."

"Actually," Spock started, still holding the bottle, "It was much more Jim that saved me - "

Bones turned to glare at him. "So you saved each other. You're each others' knights in shining armor. Fantastic. But I don't have one. I don't have an...an immortal lover or a imaginary brain-friend. I don't even have a damsel in fucking distress." He took a deep breath, turning back to Jim. "You want me to celebrate? You want me to be happy? Great! Tell me how."

Spock had been watching Jim's face throughout Bones' speech, noticing the tightening of his jaw, the change in tension around his eyes. All the things that would have told him, even if he couldn't feel it, that Jim was getting angry. This was a conversation that they'd had a thousand times; the script for it itched at the edges of Spock's mind.

"Enlist in Starfleet." Jim gritted out between clenched teeth. "You know they'd take you. You're an amazing doctor - "

"No." Bones made a frustrated noise and spun away, snatching back the bottle from Spock's hands. He sat on the edge of the bed, hands dangling off his knees.

" - and you'd be doing good, Bones." Jim pressed on, his tone more persuasive, now. "You'd be helping people, like you used to - "

"Do you want me to list the ways that space can kill a man?" Bones spat, staring Jim down. "Because I can."

Jim closed his mouth against further arguments, his eyes narrowed and sad. McCoy took another gulp of the whiskey and sighed. "You kids go celebrate." He met Jim's eyes. "God knows you deserve it."

"So do you," Jim muttered pointedly, but he led the way out of the motel room anyway. Spock followed, falling into rhythm beside him. They walked in silence through the dusk, the streets mostly empty as the sun set and took the warmth with it. Their breath steamed out in front of them in clouds, and Spock felt Jim slowly relax. This felt right, just the two of them, not touching, not needing to, nothing but footsteps on the pavement.

"I admit I was surprised to hear you reccommend Starfleet to Doctor McCoy," He said after a while.

Jim nodded. "A lot has changed in seven years," he said, and then, "Not every Captain is my father." The corners of his lips twitched up, and Spock thought, it will be hard not to smile at you, when the world is watching. It was a subtle thought, slipped into his mind like a whisper, and he waited for the scathing, cold voice, for the ridicule.

It did not come. He closed his eyes for a moment, steps aligned with Jim's, and searched for her, for any trace of T'Pring at all.

"There is something else," he said, opening his eyes. He stopped, and Jim looked at him, inquiring. Spock wet his lips. "T'Pring is gone. Perhaps she is merely silent, but if there are still ties to her, my connection to you is masking them."

Jim looked surprised, and then grinned, slow and triumphant. "Well that's wonderful! Isn't it? We ousted the bitch!"

Spock inclined his head. "Perhaps...or perhaps she is waiting for something." He shook his head. "It should not have been that easy. When you were torn from me, I..." He swallowed, and Jim's fingers found his, casual and grounding. "I could feel it happening. It was painful, more painful than anything in the world. And while the bond I have with T'Pring is nothing but a fraction of the strength of ours, I can't help but be wary."

Jim searched his face, and Spock thought perhaps he was the only one in the universe for whom such a search would be anything but fruitless. "Then we'll be wary," he said, and they walked on into the gathering dark.

***

The briefing room was cold and bare, little except for the long table and the vid screen at one end, the simple strip lighting on the ceiling. Heled-Mar was seated at one end of the table, strapped to the arms of the chair, the long sleeves of his prison uniform tucked over his hands. A straitjacket, Jim told Spock, startled. Is he crazy?

"No. He has committed twenty four murders," Spock said back, "but inexplicably, he remains sane."

The man in Command Gold sitting in one of the other chairs at the table looked up at him, and then frowned. "Did you say something, cadet?"

Spock saluted, stepping a little in front of Jim. "Nothing of import, sir. Just remarking that it is curious that the Orion is still as coherent as he is. It is not the conclusion I would reach, were I examining him as a logical exercise."

The man still looked suspicious. "You're not here to use him as a logical exercise, cadet. You're here to give us a reason to end him."

Jim frowned. "Excuse me, sir, but there have been indications that more is going on here than just a simple murder case. It's possible that we can gain more by keeping him alive - "

The man's scowl deepened. " 'We?' Who are you, kid, and what makes you think you know what's best for Starfleet? You're not even allowed in this briefing rooms. Cadet, what is he doing here?"

Jim looked taken aback. "I - "

"Spock has requested that Mr. Kirk help him in his investigation of the Orion, John." Pike cut in smoothly, from behind them. "He has every right be to here." He slid into a chair across from the man. "Boys, this is Major John Drabus, the man who would have led the search for Heled-Mar, if there had actually been anything of a search."

Draybus' bushy eyebrows shot up. "Kirk? Not George Kirk's son?" He asked, surprised, and Pike chuckled, nodding. Drabus stood up, holding out a hand to Jim. "Well, I'll be damned! Why didn't you say so, kid? Great to meet you. Chris here ever get to telling you how much of a nerd he is over your dad?"

Jim took his hand, caught between resignation, disgust and amusement. Spock could feel him, tense and confused. "No, actually, he didn't."

Drabus chuckled, gesturing to Pike, who was staring very hard at his sheaf of papers. "This guy worshipped the man. Used to talk on and on about him, during his academy days. Wrote his thesis on him...why, he even had a Captain Kirk - "

"Can we get on with this, please?" Pike interrupted, and Spock noted with interest the slight quickness to his words, the several degrees of flushing on his cheeks. He nodded, and took his place, sitting along one edge of the table, nearest to the end where the Orion sat.

"Well now look who's all business!" The Major laughed, but he sank back into his seat. Jim took his, across from Spock, so that they were bracketing Heled-Mar at the end.

"Yes, well." Pike said tightly. "Excuse me if I'm not entirely comfortable sitting and joking in a room with a man who stabbed me last time I saw him."

Spock reached out and took Jim's hand. It wasn't entirely necessary - they were still to attuned, only days after pon farr, that they could converse even when they weren't touching. But it focused him, focused them both. He raised his other hand to the Orion's face. Heled-Mar watched his fingers with a sort of detached interest, didn't move even a fraction when they found his face.

"Fair enough," Drabus conceded, and then his voice was fading, the room was fading, to...

....the place in-between, the dream-Vulcan, the circle of koon-ut-kal-if-fee. Spock blinked, had only time enough to register Jim at his side, Jim's own surprise, and then, sharp and acrid, his fear -

Before he saw T'Pring. She was standing across the circle, looking loose and strange, her normally perfectly-coiffed hair blowing back behind her in a wind that shouldn't exist, not here in this place. Nothing was here that they did not bring with them.

Her pale hands were on the shoulders of Heled-Mar, who knelt in front of her, knees in the dust. His eyes were fixed on Spock, and he was trembling. T'Pring pet his head as if she were a human and he were her dog.

"He is perfect." She said, calm, and Jim stepped up beside Spock. "They have stripped him of everything nonessential. They have taken his guilt. They have taken his rage and his sorrow." Her fingers edged to Heled-Mar's neck, circling it lightly. "He is a glove, tailored for my hands."

There were too many questions for Spock to ask any of them, but here, he didn't have to. They dropped from his lips like rain, like lead, and he found he was sweating. Sweating in a heat that shouldn't have existed. He raised a finger to his lips, tasted salt.

Next to him, Jim asked in a voice too rough, "Who? Who did this to him?"

"How?" Spock finally managed, and T'Pring was looking at him, her eyes never once wavering to the blazing - blazing, yes, Jim was blazing-bright here, flame even when flickering with fear - figure at his side. "How are you here?"

Her eyes were dark. "I planted my seed when you first touched the Orion, Spock. He's an exceptionally useful psychic. So...open. Nothing but blank space, to do with as I please."

Spock stayed silent. He could hear Jim beside him, beautiful and terrified. He was remembering T'Pring - remembering the only thing he truly could, that Breaking moment long ago when her claws had torn him from his only friend, from half of his heart. And he was petrified that she would do it again.

"Yes." T'Pring breathed, and finally she looked at Kirk, raking him up and down with cold eyes, ice to his fire. "You fear rightly." She laid a hand flat on Heled-Mar's head, circled him. "Do you know what they thought of me, Spock? When you did not return, when you did not even send word that you would not return? When you did not release me nor claim me?" She stopped, looked at him. "For seven years already I was anathema, tied to one cursed. But when even my curse did not want me... Even Stonn, beautiful, stupid Stonn, grew tired." She lowered her eyes to Heled-Mar. "I swore to him that I would see you dead." She took her hand from Heled-Mar's head. "I intend to see that promise through."

And Heled-Mar was moving, almost faster than Spock could see, racing over the sands towards him. T'Pring was controlling him and not controlling him, letting him do what had been instilled in him by a thousand women like her, a thousand heartless, manipulative aliens, their taste for power equal only to their taste for blood.

The Orion threw himself forward, lirpa in his hands, and Spock understood.

It was a challenge. It was all just a challenge, with this poor Orion slave in place of Stonn.

He dropped down under Heled-Mar's wild swinging, swung a precise fist up into his ribs, and used the Orion's momentary disorientation to sweep a hand back and wrench the lirpa from his grasp. Standing up, he slammed the blunt end of the lirpa down on Heled-Mar's still-bent back, knocking him to the ground, and stood over him. "There is no need for bloodshed."

But in a blink Heled-Mar was standing again, and armed, and Jim's thought came, Nothing but blank space...

Spock nodded grimly and gripped the lirpa. It seemed that as much as T'Pring could control the world around them, she couldn't control Spock or Jim themselves. And if they got to her...

Got it. Came Jim's thought, and Spock went on the offensive. He faked a jab to Heled-Mar's stomach, spun to aim a hit at his side. It connected, the rounded metal cracking into Heled-Mar's ribs, but the Orion spared only a blink for the pain, lips pressed silent together.

Spock did not look at Jim, but he knew he was edging around behind T'Pring. He could feel her eyes on him, and he planned to keep it that way. He blocked a blow from overhead, but the Orion recovered faster than should have been possible, slicing a long, shallow cut down the side of his chest, and Spock grit his teeth against the pain, jerking back. He caught Heled-Mar's lirpa and pushed, but the Orion was strong, honed muscle backed by a mind that that had been wrestling with Spock's for seven years.

But then the mind withdrew, and Spock threw Heled-Mar off with a grunt. In the corner of his mind he could feel the palms of his, Jim's, his hands around T'Pring's throat and her skin was cold and silent because they were Jim's hands, his own hands were...

...were being pulled from their arrangement on the Orion's face and Pike was peering at him, his confusion worry pouring into Spock through his hold on his wrists. "Spock," he was saying, from very far away, and Spock blinked, blinked, focused on his face. "Spock," Pike said again, "What's happening? You were shaking - "

And then Jim started screaming, head thrown back, eyes widened in pain and fear. Spock fought free of Pike's hold, almost backhanding him across the room, and gripped Jim's hand again, pressed shaking desperate fingers to the Orion's face and...

...and he surfaced to see T'Pring, cold-eyed and snarling, one hand pressed to her throat, the other thrust out in condemnation. Heled-Mar was leaning on one end of his lirpa, and there was pain pain unimaginable pain in his gut, because the other end was buried deep in Jim's stomach.

Blood stained the sand around him, pooling dark and impossible. Spock still gripped his hand, he could feel strong fingers against his palm, but there he was lying spread-eagled and dying, gasping and grasping.

Spock closed his eyes, focused on this place, on what it meant. Focused on T'Pring. Focused on the the way the sweat had run down his face.

There is nothing here that you do not bring with you.

The wind stirred around his boots, tiny tornadoes of sand and dust.

****

Spock watched Jim's eyelids. He moved his thumbs across Jim's cheeks, tracing the places he remembered freckles. The differences still took him by surprise sometimes, but the smile was just that same smile as in the cracked mirror in the dilapidated house so long before - the tongue the same tongue that had wrapped itself awkwardly around the syllables of the Vulcan language.

And the slow, sleepy, content uncurling of Jim's mind against his own, that, too, was familiar.

Jim's face shifted under his hands, his brows drawing together. T'Pring? He asked without asking. Heled-Mar -

His eyes flew open. "I - I was dying." He spit out, like he expected it to come out bloody.

Spock shook his head. "Not in a physical sense, although the lasting damage to your mind might have - "

"Spock." Jim searched his eyes, looked for the recent memories, for how Spock had gotten them out. Spock let him see some of it - the blistering heat, the tearing winds. Let him see the ruined stones around the circle, the shreds of silvered cloth. But when he delved deeper, Spock guided him gently but firmly away. "No." He said.

Jim folded his lips over something bitter. "I see."

Spock looked him in the eyes. "Were you aware that it takes a mere 168 newtons of force to break the neck of a human?" He asked, and then flickered his eyes away and back to Jim's face. "A Vulcan spine, it seems, is far more resilient."

Jim let out something that was almost a laugh. "Alright, I don't need to know. But...someday?"

Spock inclined his head. "Someday." He agreed.

They lay curled together for a while, thinking separately and together. "I don't understand." Jim finally said. "How can anyone be so...empty? He must have had some personality traits. He must have once been a person."

Spock thought a moment. "Some of the murders he commited quite young, and it seemed as if the women who shaped him were all powerful, but from different factions. He escaped prison against all odds, again and again. It follows logically that he was sort of a...common scapegoat, if you will. Someone raised for the specific purpose of getting away with murder, tacitly approved by Orion society because that is his use."

"God." Jim breathed, and Spock could only agree with the emotion behind it. "Perhaps Starfleet should investigate further into what was behind the Orion slave trade." He mused. "None of the women who had a part in his life seemed subservient, and the image they put forward in the Federation is that their women are oppressed and sold as commodities."

"Are we sure it wasn't the other way around? Was the whole slave trade a front?" Jim asked. "Spock, this is huge. If I hadn't seen accidentally into your mind that night in the bar..."

Spock smiled, slow and perfect. "If you hadn't kissed me, James Kirk, Starfleet would have been without some enormously important information."

Jim laughed against his face, all hot breath and amusement. "Well. It's a good thing I did, then, isn't it?"

Such a foolish question hardly deserved an answer, so Spock didn't give one.

At least, not in words.