Chapter Text
LOG ENTRY 01
STARDATE: 5543.7
LOCATION: Acantha III – Subterranean Zone
There’s a sound to fear when it’s quiet—when phaser fire’s long since faded and all that’s left is your own breath echoing off stone. That’s the sound I remember most from Acantha III. That, and Spock’s breathing beside me. Ragged. Controlled. Hurting.
We were underground. A survey mission gone wrong—interference from the upper crust disrupted transport. The locals didn’t take kindly to off-worlders. The away team scattered under fire. I only managed to keep track of one other person: Spock.
He’d taken a hit. Plasma burst from a poorly rigged perimeter trap. I saw the way he clutched his arm, the way he tried to downplay the burn. Vulcans don’t lie—but they do omit, and he was omitting pain.
We found shelter in an old mining vein. Just rock and ruin and whatever supplies I had on me. I remember pressing cloth to his wound—torn from the hem of my uniform. I joked that it was probably the first time that rank had been used as gauze. He raised an eyebrow, even through the pain. That almost made me feel better.
Then the silence came. Hours of it. No one was coming. No rescue. No signal. Just me, and the man I’d given orders to for years—who I now couldn’t stop looking at like he was something I couldn’t live without.
I don’t remember exactly how I said it. Maybe I was afraid. Maybe I’d just grown tired of hiding. But I told him—I cared about him. Beyond the mission. Beyond duty. Beyond command.
He looked at me like he was studying a new star. “I care as well,” he said finally. “I believe I have for some time.”
It shouldn’t have felt like a revelation. But it did. It felt like breathing again after being underwater too long.
I leaned in. He met me halfway.
We kissed in the dark. Not out of fear or desperation—but clarity. The kind that only comes when everything else has been stripped away.
When they finally found us, hours later, no one asked what happened in that cave. And I didn’t tell them.
But I remember.
END LOG