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Spock, before he had joined the Enterprise, had never actively used his telepathic skills before. Certainly, Vulcan, when Vulcan had existed, had always brushed gently against the back of his mind, the hum of an entire species, his own people, quiet and constant.
However, he had never felt more than this background noise; his peers had never attempted to reach out to him, convinced that a half human would never be able to perform to communicate adequately. The Vulcan telepathy system was amongst the most developed in their quadrant of the Galaxy, and notable due to the extent of their ability compared to their high function, evolutionarily speaking - most telepathic species were more basic creatures. Indeed, the Vulcan system itself was the last vestiges of a primordial hive mind, not quite developed out, and the addition of human genes was not enough to displace it. Spock had always known that his peers must know this - that he must have brushed against their mind as he brushed against his.
But he had no need to use it, and when he had arrived on earth, there had been no use. Very few telepathic beings existed in the federation, and there were far more convenient means of communicating with them.
After Vulcan had been destroyed, the silence it had caused was deafening. While the presence in his mind had changed in volume often, increasing when he was closer to Vulcan or to Vulcans, dipping as he became further away, it was always constant, had been since he was a baby. The change had been too much, and the pain had impaired his judgement greatly.
Then, through the silence, a song had started up, small and delicate, a simple beat, a soft, steady rhythm. A heartbeat, slow and sure, lifting him up through the void of his grief. It was a lifeline, and he took it readily, despite not knowing where it was from. He came to love it, quietly.
It had remained a constant, quiet presence to him for years, even until the 5 year mission. Then, once, as he walked to his quarters one evening, the presence seemed to swell in him, causing him to pause outside a door, almost unthinking. The captain’s door. Mesmerised, he opened it, stepping in to Jim’s quarters, not for the first time, but the first uninvited, heart in his throat. The steady beat that had comforted him for so long was warm and all encompassing here, as if embracing him, and he almost couldn’t help the steps if brought forth in him.
Kirk was asleep, half-upright in an arm chair, and, mesmerised, Spock watched, as if he had never seen him before. He understood the heartbeat now, and hesitantly, he reached out a hand towards Jim’s chest, knowing he would find the same beat there that he felt in his head. His breathing was light and hesitant, and he shook with anticipation at what he might find, but compelled all the same.
Then, suddenly, a hand had wrapped around his wrist, and he looked up, into Jim’s face, eyes open and smiling gently. “I knew you were here.” He said softly, “I could feel it,” his hand slipped into Spock’s, and he was lost in the fireworks of it, the feeling of two minds joining as if they had always been together. From there, things were as they should be.
After that, what was once a call in the dark became something greater, the connection of two minds. They didn’t need to communicate, if someone wishes the other person to know something, they simply knew. It was easy, as if it was how their minds were supposed to work. In times of stress, it was a good communication tool, and when there was fear, he could always reach out and make sure that Jim was right there, where he was supposed to be. It was useful, but mostly they let the connection fade backwards, a comforting but unobtrusive presence that they could rely on – a part of them.
----
Spock had been running purely on adrenaline even before he and McCoy had been launched into space. Since then, human instinct had taken over, as he had fallen around the alien ship, considering how fortunate it was that McCoy was not usually at the helm of any craft. The ship had been badly damaged during the attack, and McCoy’s graceless landing had done it no more favours, throwing him across the ship in a vicious roll that resulted in his colliding with the wall of the ship, and a strange tearing sound that he couldn’t place. It winded him, shocked the air out of his lungs and tightened his chest.
As fresh air and light hit him, he unfurled from the floor, following McCoy out the hatch. As he stretched, there was a strange feeling in stomach, as if pulled downwards and stretched to its fullest, and he grunted, bending over. He blinked, and reached down. He observed, immediately, that his shirt was wet and stuck to him, and, moving his hands down, he came to something cold, stuck there. He turned to McCoy, confused, unable to speak and cold.
It was almost comic the way McCoy’s eyes bulged at the sight of him and jerked forward, pulling him out of the pod and into a half-lying position, stretched so that the wound, and the metal piece sticking out of it was visible and accessible. “My god man, you shouldn’t be standing, lie still!”
Spock placed a hand on the surface of the pod beneath him to try and prop himself up, but McCoy managed to keep him down with little more than a hand resting on his chest. “It is imperative that we keep moving.” He insisted. His mind was a haze and be felt no pain, so it seemed only logical to him that he followed the only thought his mind could conjure up - find the others, find Jim.
“You’re not going anywhere. If you haven’t noticed, you have a bit of an alien space craft stuck in your iliac region.” McCoy had moved away from him, and he was doing something, though Spock could not lift his head to see what. “Vulcans… If I remember my anatomy correctly, your heart is approximately the same place as the human liver.”
Spock swallowed and managed a small nod, his tongue thick in his mouth, “That is correct.” He choked out.
“Well you’re lucky.” There were some grunts, the sound of heavy manual labour. “Just a few millimetres to the left and you’d be dead already.”
“You will forgive me if I do not feel very fortunate.” He said, his voice wavering. There was still no pain, to the point where it almost frightened him, and he reached out his hand, almost attempting to determine what had happened was real, but he was so weak that he couldn’t lift his hand. He was cold, his joints were stiffening, and he knew, logically, that he was going into shock.
Find the others. Find Jim. Find him. His only thoughts rolled through his head like a drum beat.
His mouth opened slightly as if to speak again but no words came out. “Right, this is going to hurt,” McCoy rubbed his hands nervously, and Spock stared at him, his vision swimming.
McCoy was leaning over him, and hesitated, “Do you want to bite down on something?” he asked. Spock swallowed thickly in response. McCoy was still muttering to himself, but he couldn’t hear him properly. There was no pain, there was nothing.
He was in a daze. He reached out towards the comforting presence of Kirk’s mind, trying to find him, to lean on him through the pain and fear, because he did not have himself any more.
Silence.
McCoy wrenched the spike from his abdomen, and the pain came to him, searing hot. He screamed.
His vision turned from blinding white to blackness, and there was, for a moment, mercifully no more. When he came to, he had a hand on McCoy’s shoulder, clenching so hard that McCoy was visibly uncomfortable and he was close to cracking bones, and there was so much tension in his body that he had to physically force his muscles to relax. The pain in his body had reduced down to merely a dull throb, but the absence in his mind was louder and more prominent than it had ever been. Even the pain of Vulcan’s death had not been this great.
“He’s dead,” He managed to gasp though airless lungs.
“Dead? Who’s dead?” McCoy frowned, pulling Spock up, “Listen, We need to keep moving. We’ve stayed here too long, made too much noise.”
Spock couldn’t help but think that if he was dead, there was no point in continuing moving, but his legs followed McCoy’s insistent pull. “It’s too quiet… he has to be dead.” He mumbled, unable to bring his mind together, the physical and mental pain was too much. Without Jim, he had nothing to focus inwards on, to re-centre himself and he was lost. There were no thoughts now, he couldn’t think, now his only thought had been lost to him.
Gone. Gone gone gone. The new drum beat thrummed through his head.
“It only makes sense.” He mumbled, partly to McCoy, mostly to himself. “He would not leave the ship if there were still people to be saved.” Again and again, he reached out into the void, until he felt he might be lost entirely in the silence.
“Right, I forgot you and Jim have that… weird thing.” McCoy said vaguely, waving the hand that wasn’t wrapped around Spock, hauling him through the rocky climb.
There was silence apart from harsh breathing and the sounds of their heavy footfall against the path.
Then, suddenly;
“You don’t really think he’s dead, do you?” McCoy asked sharply.
“There can be no other logical explanation,” He replied morosely.
“Are you sure?” he asked, “You’re hardly logical right now. You nearly got stabbed in the heart - You still have serious internal injuries.”
“A Vulcan is never without logic,” his voice was sharp and almost unwavering.
“Well, we could argue about that until the cows come home,” He grumbled, “Nothing logical about having your heart beneath your ribcage - it’s what it’s there for, for godsakes.” He brought them through a small pass in the the cliff face, away from the exposed ground of the canyon.
They followed the pass as it narrowed, pushing them closer together as the rock face scraped over across their shoulders. Some combination of the towering rock and the light getting lower in the sky meant the pass was darkening, and McCoy glanced upwards nervously. “We need to find some shelter. Who knows what kind of god awful creatures come out at night in this hellhole.” Spock looked at him morosely and nodded, which worried caused McCoy’s face to crease more in concern.
They came to an opening in the rock, a square cut hole about waist high that was too perfect to have been formed by nature. A breeze blew through it and a swarm of something resembling butterflies, glittering bronze in the light, fluttered through. Spock managed to raise an eyebrow, “Fascinating.” He managed.
McCoy snorted, “Ominous. Dangerous.”
Spock raised an eyebrow shakily, “You did say we require shelter.” Carefully, he unwound his arm from McCoy’s shoulder and stepped forward. McCoy watched with apprehension, ready to catch him if required. Spock reached for a handhold above the opening, slowly pulling himself up and through, grunting with pain as it pulled on the muscles and fresh scars in his stomach. Both feet safely on the ground, he crumpled, skidding over rocks as he attempted - and failed - to keep himself standing upright.
McCoy jumped forward, climbing frantically after him, “Damnit man, you’re injured, you should be resting, doctor’s orders!” He gripped Spock’s shoulder, propping him up. The opening did indeed lead to an obvious dwelling, a room cut out of rock and filled in with wood, plain but for a small dais in the centre.
“Aren’t your internal injuries already enough?” McCoy growled, “it’s like you have a death wish.”
Spock shunted himself forward, using the wall to keep himself up. “I would posit that my life is not worth living without the captain.” His voice was hard.
McCoy couldn’t help but roll his eyes, “Now’s not the time to go soft hearted, Spock. When we’re back in friendly territory and you’re not dying, then I’ll take all the enjoyment I can in your sudden emotional lapse. For now, focus on not bleeding out.”
McCoy reached out a hand to pull Spock down - he was met with very little resistance. A new green patch was starting to ooze over Spock’s shirt, wet and shiny and McCoy sighed, “See what you’ve done? I can’t do anything for you here - 10 minutes in the med bay and you’d be safe and stable but here - i’m not sure if you’ll…” McCoy faded off, reluctant to keep talking. He kneeled down, peeling the shirt from where it stuck to the inflamed and mottled skin and he felt how his breath became ragged as the skin raised and fell back into place. The new wound wasn’t awful, just a split in the burned flesh and clot that was keeping the wound together, slowly oozing a thick dark green blood. He tore a length from his sleeve and used it to dab at the wound gently. As long as Spock didn’t attempt acrobatics he didn’t think it would reopen, but it was raw and infected looking, which he couldn’t do anything about here.
Spock stared, unfocused at the wood vaulted ceiling. He frowned, “The writing here appears to be analogous to the writing on the artefact.” He commented, “It is logical to hypothesize that the artefact originated from this planet.” His eyes were beginning to slip closed, and he was slipping out of lucidity again..
“That’s all very well and good, but if we don’t get out of this, nobody’s ever gonna know that, are they?” Spock was covered in a thin sheen of sweat, and he barely had to touch him to know he was running a fever, even considering that Vulcans had a lower blood temperature than normal. “I’m going to go see about getting some water. Can you do what’s best for once and stay here?” Spock didn’t answer, his eyes glassy and barely focused. McCoy doubted he would be capable of movement for now.
A primitive fire crackled in front of them, flickering in the draft that drifted through the network of tunnels. Spock’s Fever seemed to have receded slightly, and though they sat in silence, he seemed more present.
“I do not believe you understand how… Unpleasant it is to have a person torn away from you like the Captain was taken from me. I imagine it is not unlike having a limb removed.” Spock said quite suddenly, as if responding to a comment McCoy had just made, rather than referring to something that had happened hours ago. It was testament to Spock’s mental capacity that he spoke so suddenly.
The doctor blinked and looked over at him, “I can’t rightly say I do, I’ve never had a telepathic connection with anyone.” He shifted slightly against the hard rock, “But I have lost people, and I know what that’s like.” He admitted.
“My condolences,” Spock said solemnly.
McCoy shrugged. “For what it’s worth, I don’t believe Kirk is dead. Not until I see it.”
“The ship crashed, it is only logical that he died. If not I would be able to hear him. I have never been unable to hear him.”
“Are you sure? Maybe he’s just a bit too far away?”
The strength of the communication can span across planets. It becomes weaker but I should still be able to feel him if he was alive.” He closed his eyes, “I cannot live with this silence. It is worse than the genocide of Vulcan.” He shuddered slightly and his face showed visible pain. “But it’s no matter, I’ll be dead myself soon enough.”
“Not if I have anything to do with it!”
Spock gave something that almost resembled a smile, “You have performed your job adequately Dr McCoy, particularly considering the circumstances.”
“Stop it, Spock! Jim is alive and we will find him, do you hear me! We have to.”
He nodded, “You must continue to look for survivors.” He insisted. “Even if I survive, I will slow you down and cause you more danger. I have come to terms with my death once, I can do it again.”
McCoy frowned, “What do you mean?”
“While aboard Yorktown I was given some news. Ambassador Spock has passed.”
“Oh god… I'm so sorry. I didn’t know.”
“Don’t be. It was his time. Perhaps it is only fitting that I should die also. I wished… To emulate him. He was a great man who did great work, and I wanted to continue his work.”
“You're not saying that you wanted to leave Starfleet? But what about Jim?”
He gave a slight inclination of the head as affirmative, “He would have been fine, we would have still been together in some sense.” He insisted, “but perhaps this is fate telling me that it was not the path I needed to take.”
“Ambassador Spock was a great man, as you say. However, he was only great because he spent so many years on his Enterprise.”
Spock seemed to consider this for some time, “I think you are in fact correct, doctor.”
McCoy chuckled, “Wow you really must be delirious!” He joked. Spock let out an ungainly snort, then a laugh, and continued laughing, “My god, you are delirious, aren’t you?”
As the sun rose, they had regained a little bit of their strength. Spock had slept long and deeply, but McCoy had not been able to sleep for worry, afraid that if he slipped into sleep, Spock might go into shock and be dead by the time he woke up. But he was lucid and calm, and very much Spock, and that’s all the could hope for.
They continued walking, eventually leaving the cave and reaching an area that was more green, with trees breaking through the rocks, verdant with leaves that shaded them from the harsh sun.
“You really love him, don’t you?” McCoy asked softly.
“Love is not accurately able to describe it.” Spock replied, “In my culture he would have been called my thy’la.”
“Oh yeah?” He pushed a branch out of their way as they continued walking. His feet ached desperately. “What does that mean?”
“It means…” Spock hesitated momently, searching for the right words, “It means everything. Brother, friend, lover, everything.” He breathed, “He was my mind mate, he was my everything.”
“You keep using that word, was. You need to stop. He’s still alive.” McCoy growled.
“How do you know?” Spock demanded, “How can you be so sure he’s alive, when I know him, when I know he is a part of me and I feel like a part of me has died.” Spock snarled, more aggressive than McCoy had ever seen him. Spock put his head in a hand and massaged his temples, “I apologise, doctor. Shouting is irrational.”
“No, don’t apologise for acting a little human, Spock.” He assured him, “Don’t argue, we both know you have a little bit of human in you. The reason I believe Jim isn’t dead is because I trust him. I trust him to have a plan that doesn’t require going down with the ship unless it was absolutely necessary. And I don’t believe it was absolutely necessary. Think about it - I’m no physicist but that nebula scrambled all our communication device. Couldn’t it do something similar to your… mind link?”
Spock seemed to consider this for a moment.”That would require him to be either within or on the other side of the nebula. That is highly unlikely, and I do not believe that the nebula would be able to disrupt such a communication.”
“But it doesn’t stand to reason that if there is an environmental block for communication signals that a block for… Whatever you use to communicate.”
“It is feasible, theoretically.” Spock admitted and McCoy smirked. “However, unlikely.”
“You’re impossible, you know that, right?” McCoy growled.
A grey shape moved across the sky, and they looked up. Three ships, in front of them, and they were in open space, with nowhere to run, and no time to hide. Spock stepped back, away from them, as the ships paused and changed their course towards them. “You must leave me, Doctor. You have much more of a chance surviving if you leave me here. I will act as a distraction.”
McCoy scoffed, “Like hell you will.” He snarled. There was a ship in front of them, and there was noise behind them, and they knew they were surrounded. It was too late to run now.
Then, Spock felt himself become lighter, lifted up, the familiar movement of a transport beam, unravelling him. When he was righted, on a ship that seemed strange but familiar enough, his ears were ringing. Scotty was there, he was speaking but Spock couldn’t hear.
There he was, a small, cocky grin on his face, and he walked over, unsure on his feet but desperate to get to him. His face was home. Kirk’s relief seemed to mirror his own as they locked eyes.
Found. Here. He’s here. Mine mine mine. It was as instinctive as breathing and he felt like he would die if he could not physically touch Jim.
He rested his forehead against Jim’s. Felt the skin against his, warmed to his heartbeat, “You’re here. You are here.” He whispered. He didn’t care who was around, who could see. He needed this. Jim’s hand came up to rest on the back of his neck, keeping him close. “I thought you were gone.” He thought about the words McCoy had spoken, and the words he had spoken. “I love you.” He whispered.
A voice cut through the silence, “Well this is all very touching, but Pointy here still needs medical attention. Do you have any medical supplies in this… Museum?” The pain overwhelmed the joy and relief he had momentarily felt and he began to crumple into Jim’s arms.
There was another, a stranger. She nodded, “I do not know what is museum. This is my house.” It said indignantly, “Come with me.”
Kirk refused to let go of him, refused to leave his side until the treatment was done and Spock was lying there, safe and resting. He laid his hand over Spock’s. “I couldn’t feel you…” Kirk admitted, “It was so much pain, I’ve never felt so much... I’m glad you’re here.” The pads of his fingers brushed over Spock's open palm, “I love you too.”
Spock thought about wanting to leave. He could not leave this now, not after knowing. His place was with Kirk, wherever he may be, and Kirk’s place was with him. He needed him too much.
“My Thy’la.”