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Chapter Text

A FUNERAL ON NEW VULCAN

On a high plateau on a planet light years from his home, Sarek, father of Spock, poured water from an ewer over a mound of glowing, red coals. Steam billowed in white clouds as the coals hissed and spat angrily, obscuring the already unfamiliar night sky overhead. Ash floated up, bright as faraway stars, and disappeared.

The funeral for Ambassador Spock was held at a place in the mountain which was most like the one that held such ceremonies on Vulcan. Old Vulcan. But New Vulcan was exactly that--new--a planet untouched until recently by little more than a few million varieties of invertebrate, and Spock, Commander Spock of the USS Enterprise, observed from his place in the crowd that 'most like' in this case, was not very like at all. The rock beneath their feet, their boots when Spock looked down, was not worn smooth by millenia of the bare feet of his people, darkened by sweat or blood, and the sky, when he looked up, had all the wrong stars. Two moons, distant, small, waning crescents, frowned down at him.

At his place behind the fading steam clouds, Sarek spoke, but few could hear him over the sputter and choke of the fire dying.

"What did he say?" Kirk, Spock's captain, asked later on their walk from the funeral site in the mountains to the family home as was the Vulcan custom, along a path newly hewn by mechanical processes to mimic the original, down to a dry, rust-colored valley that stretched for several kilometers before springing up into the few dozen homes and buildings that housed what was left of their displaced people.

Both Kirk and Doctor McCoy walked alongside Spock. He had asked them to accompany him to the ceremony because it was customary to have family take the walk with you, and while five years was not usually very long by Vulcan standards, their shared experiences aboard the starship Enterprise, and even before it, were singular. Also, apart from Sarek, there was no one else. He had thought that they would walk with his father also, but Sarek had kept a polite distance since Kirk and McCoy had beamed down and Spock convinced himself that he was not bothered by it. Sarek was several paces ahead, walking alongside a distant cousin.

"He said," Spock began, "that the ceremony is as it was from the beginning, that--"

"No, I heard, that, I mean at the end," Kirk interrupted and something, probably McCoy, jabbed him in the ribs, because he ended with a louder "oof".

"What he said was not for our ears," Spock said, and Kirk went silent. Spock was grateful for it as he watched his father. The maxim "his ears were burning" was not a Vulcan one, but Spock knew that his father was listening. It was lost on no one present, least of all Spock, that Sarek had, in a surreal and yet very real way, said goodbye to his son that evening.

"We're meant to be leaving our grief behind, I guess? All this walking?" McCoy said rather than Kirk. The two had exchanged places and the doctor now walked beside Spock.

"Not exactly, Doctor. Only a life wasted is to be grieved and the Ambassador's was not."

"Mmhmm," McCoy hummed in a tone that Spock recognized as not quite believing what he was agreeing to.

"The walk is symbolic of the journey of life, and thence to the afterlife, when our people believed in such things. But if there is grief it is expressed in private," Spock continued, "long before the ceremony. Particularly in this case as it was so long delayed."

"I guess nobody told them that," McCoy whispered and nodded over his shoulder toward a group of humans sniffling a little ways behind them.

"Different cultures approach life and death differently, as you know, Doctor."

"Where I'm from you cry it out in the church and then eat and drink yourself happy again for the rest of the night. Is that what we're headed to?"

The lights of homes shone ahead, obscured now and then as dust, rather than sand, caught the breeze, ochre hazes in the daytime, grey at night, and the ground was hard-packed beneath their feet. One's foot did not sink or twist and squelch in the dunes. There were no dunes, only dust piling up against rock, or walls, or the rare tree trunk.

"I always assumed you were speaking figuratively when you said you would throw a party in the event of my untimely demise," Spock said, as much because he knew McCoy expected a retort as to lighten the conversation, but McCoy did not laugh.

"That was your retirement, not your death," McCoy said, and frowned and went silent.

"Whose retirement?" Kirk asked, suddenly appearing, having lagged behind slightly, and McCoy shushed him.
____

A DISCOVERY

McCoy had not been entirely wrong about what happened after Vulcan funerals. In the common room of their family home there was food and drink and sober socialization. Kirk and McCoy had formed a small group with the other humans present and, after a while, Spock left them to it as early as it seemed polite enough to do so, slipping out onto one of the walkways where it was quiet.

Very quiet.

The Spock family home was, as many Vulcan homes had always been, designed as a compound. Various smaller residences huddled together with connecting paths, some even sharing roofs. Sarek lived there as well as the cousin along with what was left of her family, and so had Ambassador Spock. The connecting walkways were encased in clearsteel. The wind, the night, was silent. Only his footsteps disturbed the silence, amplified it. Motion sensors turned on soft glowing lights as he walked, always a little ahead of him, as if predicting the way that he would choose to go, or directing him. He had not yet visited the ambassador's rooms. He had not wanted to. He did not want to now.

There had been many things since the Ambassador's death--since his own death, he sometimes thought, and McCoy's psychologist tone would cut into his thoughts and tell him not to think it-- that he had done which he had not wanted to do. He had not, at first, wanted to remain in Starfleet, fearing perhaps that he could never be the man the Ambassador had once been, that he could only hope to try to continue his work, a pale imitation. He had especially not wanted to attend the ambassador's funeral, but Kirk had insisted, citing future regret and respect but Spock thought maybe McCoy had put him up to it. He had not really even wanted to set foot on New Vulcan, though curiosity, even more than duty, would have won out eventually, he knew. So perhaps it was as inevitable as the sudden brightness of the overhead lights that he would find himself here.

The door to the Ambassador's home snicked open, either unlocked or programmed to permit him, and closed silently behind him as he stepped inside. It smelled faintly of incense long since burned, of new furnishings, of the planet itself, ancient and sterile, untouched for millions of years. It had only been a few months, of course, but the rooms had obviously been closed in all that time. The front room, for sitting and dining, was spartan, but there on the table was a PADD, blinking a tiny red light that warned it would need charging soon, a stylus just by it, and an empty glass, as if it had all been left moments before. In the bedroom the bed was made, grey bedding on the traditional low bed with grey walls and grey carpet. There were clothes folded neatly in their place. Boots tumbled less so in one corner. Spock wondered idly if they would fit him but did not try them on. In another corner a lyre leaned against the wall. He walked over and plucked a sagging string and it rang out dully, mournfully out of tune.

He passed by a bathroom and caught sight of himself in a full length mirror and paused. He did not shiver, but something was cold in his belly, and he turned back to the bedroom and sat on the bed, softer than his own. He looked around the room, seeing what the Ambassador would have seen every morning, evening. He did not lie down though he wanted to. Beside the bed there was a table, another empty glass, a dried mineral deposit at the bottom, striping the sides. The water had evaporated over time. How long had it taken?

The table had a drawer. Spock hesitated. It was Kirk who once told him that a man's bedside table was a sacred thing, but that was a very human observation, based on human habits. He opened the drawer and inside there was a book, a real one made of paper, quite worn. He wondered how many galaxies and times it had survived to be there, and then he reached into his tunic pocket and pulled out the photo box he had been given on Yorktown, the day he had learned about Ambassador Spock's death. He opened it. He knew each face, every expression and nuance without looking. He placed it on the table, thinking that it probably belonged there, had probably sat just there. Then he picked up the book.

It was large, thick, heavy, the cover threadbare and unreadable. Inside the title page read "A Tale of Two Cities". Spock had read the book, an Earth classic, but he fingered a few pages, bent here, torn there, a brown smudge on this page, orange or red on another. Something thunked onto the carpet, having fallen from the book. It was a small, red square, flat, one thin side was open in a narrow slit and lined inside with metallic contacts. It was not a technology he recognized, but it was obviously data storage.

He looked around the room again, at the wall opposite the bed, then said simply, "Viewscreen," his voice strange and loud in the quiet, and the wall flickered to life, a faint, rectangular glow. He set the book aside and inspected the viewer but there were no matching ports. In the front room he found the PADD, still blinking insistently, and there was a slot, unfamiliar to him, but the screen would not boot. He moved the PADD to the charging station, slid the data tape home, and waited.

The PADD flickered, blinked, and a series of files appeared, each one named systematically, letters and numbers. Stardates? And what else? His finger hovered over the first file, his hand shaking as he hesitated, but when he opened the file it was only the same photograph he had left on the bedside table. He closed it. The next was a variation of the first, everyone a little out of place, laughing or smirking. The next was just the Dr. McCoy of the Ambassador's time, smiling at something off camera. The next was Dr. McCoy again, this time with the Ambassador, the Ambassador's face very grave, McCoy barely containing a smile, both in colorful robes, kneeling on rocky, orange ground, a hazy red sunset behind them, facing one another, holding hands. Spock closed the file. He knew that place. He knew that ceremony. The PADD sat in his hands, no longer blinking, files waiting, black text on white background, daring him to believe it.

The next file had a different nomenclature and when he opened it an audio file began to play, a recording of a subspace transmission. Spock recognized the characteristic low buzz that human ears tended to ignore or miss.

Darlin' Spock,-- it began, a soft, fond voice, just a little accented. He closed the file, sat for a moment, then powered down the PADD and removed the data tape. He went back to the bedroom and placed it back in the book and placed the book in the drawer and closed it, then slipped the photograph into his pocket.

He made it as far as the door to the bedroom before he stopped. He stood for a long time, his hands at his sides, then went back to the table and retrieved the book, the tape, and on his way out, the PADD.
___

THE ATRIUM

Spock stood in the walkway outside the door to his father's home, just far enough away that the sensor would not yet open the door for him, voices inside blending into a constant, low murmur. He thought that he could hear Captain Kirk, but perhaps not. Perhaps he only wanted to.

The Ambassador and the doctor. Said like that, well, that sounded reasonable. Spock and McCoy. That was less so. Himself… and… Leonard?

The lights that had only just flickered off behind him illuminated once again as he turned on a heel, took a divergent path, not toward the Ambassador's home but toward the atrium, a glass-walled, climate-controlled greenhouse that grew all of the plants that the soil, the dust on New Vulcan could not, which was all of them. It was dark ahead, so he knew no one was there. It would be quiet and he would be alone.

As the door to the atrium whooshed open he was greeted with a blast of warm, wet air, bright yellow overhead lights, and Dr. McCoy sitting on a stone bench next to a large, thick-leafed plant.

The door hissed closed behind him. Spock stood for a moment, uncertain for the briefest, most infinitesimal amount of time that his mind was not, as Kirk would say, playing tricks on him.

"Doctor?" he said, a complete lack of echo in the heavy air. The atrium was large but crowded with life, underfoot, overhead, wall-to-wall green or yellow or red or brown, leafy or spiny or fuzzy, but for a narrow stone path that snaked throughout. It smelled at once sweet and pungent, earthy and green.

McCoy looked caught, eyes red. He shifted his feet over the sandy stones and straightened from a slouch. He must have been there for a while for the automatic lights to have timed out. He raised something in his hand and gave a lopsided grin.

"Commander Spock," he said, and pushed himself to one side of the bench. "Wanna drink?"

Spock resisted the urge to turn back the way he had come, not that McCoy would have found that strange, Spock ignoring or avoiding him now and then, but they had shared a new camaraderie since being stranded together on Altamid, and now an even newer curiosity about the Doctor prickled somewhere beneath his skin. He settled for crossing his arms, then uncrossed them, and a beat later joined McCoy on the bench. The thing in McCoy's hand was a flask and McCoy took another draw. He wasn't intoxicated, Spock had noted that the doctor never drank to excess the way that some of the crew did on shore leave, but he was… relaxed. He slouched again, closer to Spock, looking up at the ceiling, the night invisible beyond the lighted glass.

"If you're still enough," McCoy said, "for long enough, the lights'll go out and you can watch the stars. That's the thing about a new planet. No light pollution."

"New Vulcan is hardly new, Doctor. It is--"

"You know what I mean," McCoy interrupted and nudged Spock with the arm that held the flask. Spock took it but did not drink.

They sat quietly for a while until McCoy said, "I won't ask if you're okay because that's a damned fool thing to ask, but if, you know…" he trailed off, leaned forward, elbows on knees, palms rubbing drily against each other. "I mean I know how--no, no I don't, but I know something about loss, about--" he stopped again, a catch in his voice. "Hell," he said at last, "I should be better at this."

Spock risked a look at him. His dress uniform coat unzipped, his shoes polished a shiny black, his hair perfect as ever. McCoy didn't look any different than he had before Spock found the data tape, but now Spock couldn't help but try to see… what?

"What?" McCoy asked, noticing that he was being watched.

Spock reached past him, behind and over his bent head. "This plant," he plucked a small bud that spawned from the stem of one of the thick, glossy leaves, brought it around for McCoy to see and rolled it between his fingers, squeezing it gently. The air between them filled with a sweet smell. McCoy leaned into it.

"Citrus-y," he said. "Sweet."

"Try it," Spock suggested and McCoy raised a brow, flared his nostrils, eyes dark.

"Finally trying to poison me, Spock?" he asked, his tongue sticking just a little on the 's' in 'poison' and 'Spock', so that perhaps he was more intoxicated than Spock thought, but he reached out and took the little green bud and popped it into his mouth with a sideways grin, sweat beading on his skin. After a second he made a surprised sound, a rumbling 'mmm' and nodded appreciatively. "Like candy," he said.

"As close as Vulcan children come to indulging," Spock said and sat back. He still had the flask in his hand and he tasted it, a quick draw before he handed it back to McCoy, frowning.

McCoy laughed. "Saurian," he said, and shrugged lazily, blinking slowly.

The data tape, the book, sat heavy in Spock's robe pocket. Did McCoy deserve to know? Spock hardly even knew at this point, not really, not much, just that in another time, another him, another Spock had been charmed by this. This emoting, sweating, unselfconscious human. It was, for lack of a better word, fascinating.

"Disgusting," Spock said about the brandy. He placed a hand in his pocket, felt the book, then removed his hand, empty. Somehow, he still felt he owed McCoy something.

"If I have not said, so" Spock said, even though he knew that he had, "thank you for coming, Doctor."

McCoy took a drink, leaned back. "Of course."

"Contrary to typical human expressions of nicety, I did not take it for granted that you would want to come."

"Nobody wants to go to funerals, Spock, but, you know," McCoy crossed his arms, his feet at the ankles, closing himself off.

"I do not know," Spock countered, and didn't really expect an answer.

"You need us here," McCoy said plainly, blurting it out like it was obvious, then he wriggled in his seat and capped the flask and tucked it into a pocket casually like he'd changed his mind. "Well, you needed Kirk and Kirk needed me to keep him out of trouble, so."

"Of course," Spock agreed at last, and McCoy relaxed again, seeming happy that Spock let it go. The lights were still on. In spite of McCoy's suggestion that they wait and see the stars, he had not stopped moving since Spock joined him. Even now one knee swayed slowly side to side.

"I guess you've been to his place, then?" McCoy asked suddenly, perhaps simply grasping for a change of subject, but Spock's throat closed a little.

"Just now, yes."

"But not his place on Earth," McCoy clarified, then made a face, realizing the impossibility of his statement. "What am I saying, none of us have been on Earth in three godblessed years."

The climate controls kicked on a misting system high above them, and it reached them as a pale, wet fog. "The Ambassador did not have a home on Earth," Spock said.

McCoy raised his eyebrows, looked at Spock then away, somewhat guiltily. "Uh, he did, actually. I helped him find it. I mean, he told me whereabouts and I knew of some land and well, he already had a contractor lined up--"

"The Ambassador had a home built on Earth?"

McCoy wiped the sweat off of his lip, wetter now from the added moisture in the air. "Yup," he said simply, not looking at Spock.

"And he came to you for assistance?"

"Well he wanted it to be in Georgia for some reason, and seeing as I'm from there..."

Spock thought that he knew the reason.

"Anyway," McCoy continued, "He wanted someplace quiet, out of the way. Can't get much more out of the way than Blairsville. Well, you could, but then you're just a hermit on the side of a mountain…"

McCoy was babbling, it was a tendency of his when he had already said too much. Strange, the human habit of covering too much noise with more noise.

The mist felt cold on Spock's face, it beaded on the shoulder of his robes, the fabric across his lap, on McCoy's suit and hair.

If McCoy knew, if he knew about the Ambassador and that other McCoy, he would tell Spock. Wouldn't he? Tell him like a joke. "You won't believe what I just heard," because he would find it funny. He would think it ridiculous.

"Excuse me, Doctor," Spock said, interrupting McCoy's nonsensical muttering about mountain dwellings and stood. McCoy looked up at him, feigning disappointment, clearly relieved. "I should return to my father," Spock said.

"Yeah, 'course," McCoy said and slouched again, returning to the position he was in when Spock found him. "I'll be right behind you," he called as the door hissed open again, as cold air from the walkway blasted Spock in the face, "in a few."
___

ON THE ENTERPRISE

The Enterprise orbited Vulcan for another thirty-six standard hours then warped out toward the Sol System. They were expected on Earth in approximately one month ship's time, officially for debriefing on the action on Altamid and to learn if their mission was to continue or be aborted, unofficially so that those at Command could see the fleet's newest flagship for themselves. As they were headed in that direction, there was also a mission to Mars, a delivery of massive solar panels and filters held static in the transporter's matter stream, compromising a full point-zero-eight-seven percent of their total power, a fact that made Chief Engineer Scott anxious to be rid of them.

It wasn't until he felt the minute lurch of the warp drive initiating, the ship and New Vulcan parting rapidly, that Spock powered up the Ambassador's PADD again. He sat in his quarters, cross-legged on his meditation mat, and opened the first audio file, his finger hovering over the screen, ready to stop the playback at any moment.

Darlin' Spock,

That voice again. Both familiar and not. Playful. Warm.

Doesn't that have a certain ring to it? I think I'll start every message like that, just to annoy you. How else will you know I still care? I'm sure you've already read my report on the status here on Theta II. The medical center is about as medieval as it could be, but the staff are eager to improve and I can handle myself in an atmosphere suit. Like I told Jim, I'm fine. Quit fretting like a hen!

There was a noise in the background, then McCoy's voice was quieter, answering someone.

No, try it without the--just give me a few minutes.

Then he was back, louder than before.

Sorry about that. These kids they sent with me… slap an insignia on their chest and add those letters to the end of their name, P-H-D and they're ready to go, I guess. Anyway, I found the socks you packed for me. I'm not sure if I should be grateful or insulted that you assumed I'd forget, even if I did.

McCoy tried to sound annoyed but it came out fondly, knowing, an audible smile. Then there was a pause, just breathing, a soft smack of lips just before he continued.

I miss you. I don't sleep as well without--

Spock paused the playback, swallowed. He had spent all thirty-six of those hours since he'd found the data tape attempting to convince himself that he should not listen to them, that while he and the Ambassador were genetically identical, they were not, in fact, the same person. That the messages were not meant for him, and therefore he should not hear them. He should not hear these declarations of love from a man who was also not, in fact, Leonard McCoy.

He had not been successful, of course. Logically, as an historical record of a time-space anomaly, it was his duty as a scientist to hear the recording. It was only coincidence that his alternate self happened to be the subject of amorous declaration. He could, he was sure, listen as an objective observer.

Objectively, he was wrong.

Spock knew the face of the the older man on the recording, had it memorized like every other crewmember in the photo with the Ambassador. But just then, for a moment, he had seen his Doctor McCoy, and it had unnerved him.

There was something else, too. Something easier to analyze: Theta II. McCoy had mentioned it and Spock was only vaguely familiar with the system. He sat the Ambassador's PADD aside and took out his own. A quick search showed him a clump of stars unexplored by the Federation. When did they go there? Will they, in this time, go at all? Or the question should be would they not have if Spock had not listened to this recording, since now, of course, they must? Now that he knew about a civilization there, now that he'd been told about it by a voice from an alternate time.

This presented a new problem, a larger issue, not simply interpersonal relations. What else would he learn from this record of an alternate yet potential future? How much would that information sway their own actions? This should not be his responsibility alone.

Somewhere in his mind, the voice of McCoy, his McCoy, that psychologist's voice he used when it suited him, said "are you sure this isn't what you wanted all along? A reason to tell someone else?" He frowned at the McCoy that wasn't there.

Both of them.
___

A RESCUE

Spock would give the data tape to Captain Kirk along with the book. Kirk, he thought, would appreciate the book.

Spock would give the data tape to Kirk eventually. As long as no one knew, as long as even he, himself, did not listen to it, it would cause no harm, and so the book sat on a shelf in his quarters next to the closed photo box, and the tape sat in the book. Neither out of sight nor mind.

It had been a week since they left New Vulcan, the Enterprise would reach Mars in twenty-point-three-five standard days, Mr. Scott being unwilling to overstress the new engines before the brass at Command headquarters could get a good look at her. Kirk had not been quite as conservative and had already taken her briefly to maximum warp shortly after leaving Yorktown to "see what she was made of". It was noted by all bridge personnel that this order was performed only once the Chief Engineer was known to be asleep.

They were cruising on impulse, performing a routine check of the engines, when Spock had the conn near the end of Alpha shift and Dr. McCoy walked onto the bridge. There was no reason for him to be there. There was almost never a reason for him to be on the bridge, but there was also no rule against it. Spock had seen him a few times since the funeral, had assisted him in reviewing the survey of Altamid, logged by the Franklin crew so long ago and revised by the captive Enterprise crew who had taken a rudimentary survey even as prisoners. He had also seen McCoy in medbay after a sheepish, apologetic ensign presented with an unknown-to-McCoy reaction to an insect bite received on New Vulcan, and Spock had been called to consult.

No, Spock was definitely not avoiding McCoy.

"Mr. Spock," McCoy said as if surprised and slowed his approach to the command chair where Spock sat. "I thought Kirk had the bridge."

"As you can see," Spock said, and gestured with one hand, "he does not. The captain is occupied."

"Haircut," Uhura said from her station and then shrugged when Spock gave her a look.

"Didn't he just have it cut last week?" McCoy said, approached the command chair and leaned against it on one arm. "That kid and his grooming, I swear. It's outer space not senior prom."

There was a soft laugh from several stations, even Sulu who still had his back to them could be seen to shake softly. Spock rarely understood the crew's reaction to McCoy's attempts at humor, particularly when it bordered insubordination. He could hear McCoy breathing over his shoulder. The bridge of Enterprise-A was at once larger and more crowded than the former Enterprise, additional equipment, safety features, and thicker bulkheads negated the larger footprint of the deck. McCoy, just then for Spock, seemed to be taking up too much space as well.

"Is there anything I can help you with, Doctor?" Spock asked tersely.

McCoy shrugged. "Not really. Had some time to kill, thought I'd see what was shakin' out in the void."

"I assure you nothing is shaking," Spock said.

"Actually," Sulu cut in, "unidentified vessel in range."

A dozen heads turned to their respective stations, bending or leaning, listening, watching.

"No response to hails," Uhura reported first.

Chekov was next. "Speed is nominal, very little power usage. The craft appears to be drifting, Commander."

"Approach carefully, Mr. Sulu," Spock said. "Only close enough for a better visual at maximum magnification."

"Ay, Commander."

Minutes passed as Sulu increased to full impulse, easily overtaking the adrift vessel, and the long range scopes provided a clearer image of it.

"She's a small ship, sir," Chekov confirmed what they could all see, "courier class by Starfleet standards, perhaps one, two dozen crewmember capacity at best."

"But that's no Starfleet ship I've ever seen," McCoy said, no longer leaning against the chair but walking toward the viewscreen as if it might actually take him closer to the vessel.

"That is obvious, Doctor," Spock said. Even a layman could not have mistaken the sleek, egg-shaped craft for any previous or current Starfleet design. It was almost invisible, reflecting the space around it, no lights fore or aft. Without the scanners, they would never have seen it had they passed even a few kilometers away. "Any distress signal?" he asked Uhura.

"None, sir, only..." she went very quiet, covered the ear that wasn't wearing the headset. "There is a static I cannot place."

"Naturally occuring?"

"No… I don't think so. I'll need a moment to analyze." She turned fully to her station

"Signs of life?" McCoy asked before Spock could do so.

"Not yet in range, Doctor," Chekov answered him. "Two minutes."

The deck went relatively quiet, each crewmember concentrating on some screen or calculation. On the main viewscreen, Chekov's scans flashed over different sections of the ship, assessing her tonnage, structure, design.

"Warp capability," he said aloud. "There is power but not enough to run the warp core."

"Unless they have significantly more advanced technology that ours," Spock countered.

"Ay, Commander," Chekov agreed. "There is also damage to the hull, sections are venting atmosphere. It is difficult to say if there could be survivors; the design does not match any known vessel. They must be very far from home."

"Weapons?" Spock asked.

"None that are recognizable, sir."

Spock ran one finger lightly over the command module in the arm of his chair, thinking. A danger to the Enterprise? Another exploring vessel? Both?

"I've got that static pinned down," Uhura said. "It's not static, it's a message. I don't recognize the language; I've got the computer analyzing it."

"Well let's hear it!" McCoy blurted and Spock frowned at him. Uhura waited, giving McCoy her own exasperated look.

Spock took a breath. "Main bridge audio, please, Lieutenant."

"Ay, Commander," she said, pointedly enunciating the word in McCoy's direction, and then a hissing sound filled the bridge.

"That's a language?" Sulu asked, wincing as it peaked in a grating pitch.

"It's a short message in duration," Uhura said, "looping every nine-point-three seconds. Just enough time to call for aid in most languages."

"Or warn off other ships," McCoy said, "biological hazards, plagues.."

"Life signs detected," Chekov said suddenly, clearly intrigued by their little mystery. "Six, by my count but very faint, sir."

In the viewscreen, the ship did not grow any larger, but Spock knew they were drawing closer. The hissing sound rose and fell, paused and started again, like the Enterprise was filled with giant serpents.

"Slow to one-quarter impulse, Mr. Sulu," Spock said.

"Ay, sir."

"All decks yellow alert." He pressed the screen on his arm rest and an alarm sounded once and yellow lights strobed softly at different points overhead, making the serpent sound seem more urgent.

"I think we have heard enough, Lieutenant."

"Ay, sir," Uhura said and complied.

Silence for one brief moment, the almost imperceptible sensation of slowing, and then McCoy was at his side.

"I'd like permission to board," McCoy said softly, just close enough and low enough that Spock could hear him, crowding the command chair. His breath smelled faintly of coffee. When Spock only raised one brow without actually looking at him he added, "I mean, that's what you're going to do, right? Board her? Those people could need help. Those people could be dying." His voice had raised a little but everyone else was either too busy to notice, or were pointedly ignoring the doctor's behavior.

"Report," Kirk said as the turbolift doors snicked open and he joined them on the bridge, breaking the silence and the tension. "What's with the yellow alert--oh." His attention was now taken up entirely by the craft on the viewscreen.

Spock stood, sidestepping McCoy to give Kirk the chair.

"Unidentified, warp capable, courrier-class vessel, adrift and leaking atmosphere," Spock reported. "Weapons status unknown. No contact except for an as yet untranslated message on loop. Lieutenant?" He turned to Uhura.

"No luck yet, sir," she said. "It's most like the Gorn language but different enough that the translator needs more time or more words. There may not be enough there at all without contact."

"He left out the part about people being alive on that thing," McCoy interrupted a little forcefully.

"How many?" Kirk asked, ignoring the breach of protocol or too preoccupied with what he saw on the screen.

"Six," Spock said, "by Mr. Chekov's scan, but it may be an anomaly as the life signs are below survivable limits for a humanoid."

Kirk's brow pinched. "Isn't it possible they're not humanoid?"

"Of course, however, it is unlikely in this quadrant."

"That ship's pretty unlikely in this quadrant," Kirk said, squinting as if the viewscreen was too far away. "This is all a little too familiar, Mr. Spock. Isn't this how the USS Indomitable discovered Khan and his crew? What are the possibilities there's six more megalomaniacal superhumans on that ship?"

"Unlikely. The ship does not appear to be of Earth origin, or any other planet in the Federation. I am unable to comment on the likelihood of megalomania."

Kirk conceded with a smirk and went quiet, clearly considering their options. His hair was still wet and he scratched at his neck absentmindedly, at the tiny offcuts there. Even McCoy gave him the courtesy of silence. For thirty-three seconds.

"Jim," McCoy began to say in that earnest 'dammit, I'm a doctor' voice when Spock cut in.

"Captain, I would like to beam over to the ship and assess the situation."

"And I want to go with him," McCoy predictably said. "No matter what kind of maniacs they are, those people obviously need help."

"I do not require the Doctor's assistance for reconnaissance," Spock said just as predictably, he realized, and wondered at the petulance in his own voice.

"What you require and what those people require may not be the same thing," McCoy spat.

Kirk winced, shook his head, and took the chair.

"Spock," he said, "get over there and check it out--"

"Jim," McCoy began but Kirk cut him off.

"--and if it's safe and anyone requires assistance, the Doctor will join you immediately."

If McCoy had any further arguments, Spock didn't hear them. He was halfway to the turbolift.

Less than thirty minutes later, he stepped onto the transporter pad in an atmosphere suit, the conditions within the unidentified shuttle being unsuitable to his requirements. He did not mind the close-fitting and heavy suit the way that most of the human crew did. The weight made him feel a little more at home; even New Vulcan had not been able to quite recreate the increased gravity of its predecessor.

On his hip he had a phaser and tricorder. A light on his helmet's viewscreen told him the universal translator was ready for service and that all of his own vital statistics were at normal. In the room with him, besides the two transporter operators, Dr. McCoy was pulling on his own helmet and frowning, brows pinched in thought or anger or concern over the alien crew or the tight grip of the suit on his body or any number of other things. Once McCoy's helmet was in place, Spock pressed the screen on the suit's arm panel and McCoy's breathing was loud in his ear.

"Comm check," Spock said and McCoy jumped, looked up sharply.

"How about you warn me before you get in my head," he grumbled.

"We have you on the bridge," Uhura's said, a smile in her voice.

"Comm link confirmed," Spock said, then pressed the screen again, this time to open a one-way video feed from his helmet to McCoy's screen as well as the bridge. "Video check," he said dully.

"Yeah, I got it," McCoy confirmed, watching himself standing there in the suit. "God I look stupid in these things. I'm a doctor not a--well, I guess I'm a space explorer, too."

"Bridge confirms." This time Uhura's voice came with a laugh.

"Video confirmed," Spock said simply, resisting the urge to linger, to question how they might find humor in the situation, or why it was any concern to the doctor how he looked. He knelt on the pad, the better to prepare for unknown surroundings. "Energize," he said, and the transporter room disappeared, almost instantly replaced by complete darkness, total silence, and the weightlessness of null gravity.

He switched on a headlamp, bobbing in place. By Chekov's calculations and estimation he was supposed to have been transported to the most likely area for the command center, since this was where the signs of life had been detected. Spock, however, thought that he was actually in a berth compartment. The long, narrow room was flanked on either side by what he guessed were bunks, egg-shaped rather than rectangular, but stacked like the ones he'd seen in freight vessels or drilling rigs, meant to hold the most people in the least amount of space. The lamp illuminated a meter's width at a time, vignetting his vision, and penetrated the darkness only a few meters ahead. Out beyond the light, between the rows of bunks, there was darkness in either direction, and when he tried to straighten from his kneeling position, he quickly found the ceiling and floor. Tight quarters.

"Transport successful," he said into his comm and only Uhura responded, her sweet voice there with him in the darkness.

"We have you, Spock."

Spock touched the first bunk, using it to pull himself forward, maintaining some of his bent posture in case the life forms they had read surprised him. Hand-to-hand combat was tricky in null gravity.

"No evidence of electrical usage, no lights," he reported, moving his head, the camera on his helmet, so that the bridge could take in his surroundings. "You can see these bunks, of course."

"Yes, Commander," Uhura again. "Pavel apologizes for his error."

"Apologies are unnecessary," he replied, and moved farther into compartment, shining his helmet into each bunk, then in front of and behind himself. Bunk, front, back, over and over. He could still hear McCoy breathing, the link between the suits being an open one, unlike the bridge.

"Signs of life?" McCoy asked, more quietly than Spock would have thought.

"None so far, Doctor."

It was slow going with so little light, such little space. Claustrophobia, or phobia of almost any kind, excluded an individual from the space division of Starfleet, but Spock knew there were a few humans even on the Enterprise who would not be comfortable in the confinement.

Bunk, front, back.

In his narrow field of vision the beds, the ship, looked oddly colorless, shades of grey and white, black in the shadows.

Bunk, front, back.

His helmet clanged against a beam he had not seen. It did not injure him but pushed him back, free-floating for just a second before he touched a bunk to steady himself, but his feet were now in front of him. He righted himself.

Bunk. front, back.

"There, what's that," Uhura said urgently, loud after the long silence, and Spock's heart pounded for one, two beats, before he calmed himself. "Twenty degrees to your left, Commander."

There was nothing, not by Spock's reckoning, only the pale shape of a bunk against the grey metal and the darkness beyond, but he moved forward and shined the light in the direction that Uhura had suggested. Surely it was only a ripple in the otherwise neatly made beds, each of them identical. He drew closer and, no, it was not a blanket or anything else. It was a very small, delicate finger, gripping the side of the bunk.

"Approach with caution," Uhura said. "Captain's orders."

Spock wondered how anyone could suppose he would handle the situation in any other way, and pulled himself along the compartment.

The being, when he reached the bunk, was humanoid, starkly white in his lamplight, as white as Jaylah but without the markings, without any markings at all as far as he could see, but they were covered with a heavy blanket or suit of unknown material. It stretched over their body and even surrounded their head but for the pale face. The low profile of their nose showed only a single, narrow slit where the two nostrils would have been on a human or Vulcan, and although the tricorder reported the being to be alive, if only barely so, there were no outward signs. No rising chest or rapid eye movement.

"Talk to me, Spock, what's the status," McCoy said to him anxiously.

"Perhaps you had better beam over, Doctor."

McCoy appeared behind him moments later, kneeling as Spock had done, but where Spock's first movements had been careful, deliberate, McCoy crashed over in slow motion, bumping into the bunks and the ceiling to get at his patient.

"It presents as metabolic depression," McCoy said when he had scanned the being once, twice, a third time, Spock hovering next to him, bracing himself and McCoy between the ceiling and floor so that the doctor could work freely. There had been no movement from the bunk. "Possibly self-induced. I've seen something like it before in humanoids, present company included."

Spock knew what he meant, "Vulcans can, through meditation, decrease or increase metabolic rate by as much as sixty-five percent. Perhaps this species employs a similar practice."

"No," McCoy shook his head, "it's more than that, more like hibernation, aestivation." He went quiet, looking over the screen in his hand, watching the slow movement of an organ which must have been the heart, lips moving silently, perhaps counting even though the scanner was giving him a real-time BPM. Spock could see over his shoulder but the internal scans meant less to him than schematics. There were few jobs on the Enterprise that he could not do as well or better than the crewman whose job it was to do them, but McCoy's was that exception.

"Anyway," McCoy began again as if minutes had not passed, "I'm not sure that this one would appreciate being woken the same way you wake a Vulcan from a healing trance and any attempt to jumpstart them might do more harm than good. What we've got to find out is why these people put themselves in this state in the first--"

McCoy paused, consulted his tricorder which had spiked with an audible beep. A flicker of eyelids in Spock's lamplight and the being woke, pale eyes stared back at them and McCoy began scanning over the being again as Spock hoped the best for the universal translator.

"We mean you no harm; we are here to assist you," he said, and the translator repeated the same in Klingon, Tellaran, Romulan, and would have continued in many more languages but the being began to speak and the translator paused to analyze.

In the cold darkness the hissing sound was unnerving, stopping, starting, stuttering. Spock did not know if that was their usual cadence or if the being's condition was affecting their speech.

"Vitals are increasing slowly," McCoy said, his face lit by his screen, "it's as if your light--"

That's when the being pulled a device from seemingly nowhere and aimed it at McCoy. It was slender and dangerous looking, or at least unrecognizable and that was enough for Spock, who threw an arm in front of McCoy, and raised a foot to push off on one of the bunks to throw them clear of any line of fire. The power of his kick-off was magnified in the null gravity and they slammed against a bulkhead with incredible force, McCoy's grunt loud both through their suits and in his comm. Still, the effort was not fast nor far enough, he realized, as the device the alien held began to emit a low hum. Spock raised his hands.

A second ticked past in slow motion. No blast came. No phaser, laser, or disrupter fire.

"I am sorry," someone said over the hum, not McCoy but a mechanical voice. It was the being and the translator that they held, which Spock had mistaken for a weapon, was converting the hissing into standard. "I did not mean to startle you," they continued, eyes glowing wetly, apologetic. "We are grateful for your assistance."

"Jesus, Spock, what was that?" McCoy grumbled, pushed his body against Spock's to free himself easily, using the bulkhead he'd crashed against as leverage. "I didn't know you cared," he said under his breath, then "put that thing away," and pulled himself past Spock, toward his patient, floating over to the being and bumping his head on the ceiling or touching the bunk now and then to stay in place.

Spock floated, body still tense. He looked down at the phaser in his hand, drawn automatically at the perception of threat. He had read the situation incorrectly, nearly injured or killed a being on first contact. Slowly, he holstered the weapon and straightened as much as he could in the small space, and for the first time the atmosphere suit felt like it was choking him.

When he rejoined McCoy the being was speaking, looking less pale by the moment. There was an echo of every word that they said and Spock realized his own universal translator had finally caught on. He switched off the audio and left it recording.

"They need the ship repaired," McCoy briefed him when the being lay back and rested, "and they need some electrolytes, a bit of looking after. They got clobbered by an asteroid field and were essentially hibernating until help came."

"Did he say where they are from, Doctor?" Spock asked.

"Yeah," McCoy said, "I can't pronounce it in their language but he gave me coordinates, I'm transmitting them now." McCoy pressed a sequence on his tricorder then moved on to another bunk, another patient.

Data flashed across Spock's helmet screen, a star map appeared, a binary system, charted but unexplored. The name of the system that flashed in white block letters was already known to him: Theta.
____

ON THE OBSERVATION DECK

The rescue operation progressed slowly. The Thetan ship needed to be repaired and re-pressurized. Only the compartment where the Thetans had slept (six in all, and all of them family) had remained undamaged. So a section of the medbay was sealed off and the atmosphere was adjusted for Thetan life, and the six Thetans woke one-by-one from their sleep as the Enterprise towed their ship toward Mars.

Spock had gotten back to the Enterprise as quickly as he was able, even before the remaining Thetans had been brought over. There was not room for him with the additional medical staff in the berth compartment, so he had beamed into the control room and downloaded logs for review on the Enterprise. It had been a relief to breathe the open air of the much larger ship.

From the observation deck the Thetan ship could be seen as it was pulled along by the invisible tow line of the Enterprise's tractor beam, its elegant curves reflecting the distant stars so well it was visible only in the way that it seemed to bend the space around it. It was, he had decided, a beautiful ship. He had decided this even before he knew that it was one of the last of its kind.

The ship's logs had contained much of that planet's history, since the crew of the Onychron had known, when they left it, that they would never return to their home planet. According to the logs, Theta III, the third planet in that system and nearest neighbor to the Onychron home planet, Theta II, had suffered under massive civil war for a century, finally culminating in its utter annihilation. How the planet was destroyed was unknown to Theta II, but debris from its destruction, caught in Theta II's gravitational pull, began raining down on their homeworld with catastrophic results. The Onychron and hundreds of ships like it had set out from their system, all other habitable planets having also been destroyed, looking for another place to call home.

They had come so far, risked so much. Theirs was a plight he knew intimately well, and yet he had nearly destroyed one of their few remaining people. It was not like a Vulcan, not like himself to act so rashly. Perhaps his encounters with the Romulan, with Khan, and indeed on Altamid, had finally altered his judgement. If so, that was a problem. It was unwise to assume that every new species must be considered a threat until proven otherwise; that was not an attitude conducive to an amicable first contact. Any Klingon could prove that.

Another theory was that his reaction was due to stress and uncertainty of a much more personal nature. Equally unacceptable.

In the reflection of the clearsteel, Spock's face superimposed itself over the Onychron and behind him in the doorway a figure joined him. He had heard them, of course, but had hoped they were not there to speak to him.

"Just wanted to let you know," McCoy said as he approached, not waiting for Spock to turn to him, "Norah, the first Thetan you found, he's likely to make a full recovery. The others, too."

"Thank you, Doctor," Spock said over his shoulder, and then McCoy was beside him, reflected in the clearsteel next to Spock. He was in the black undershirt most of them wore under their uniforms, and his duty slacks and boots, the tell-tale mess of his hair, flattened in places, raised in others, a product of wearing the atmosphere suit. He smelled of sweat and antiseptic and had probably not yet been back to his own quarters to wash or change.

"I read your report," McCoy continued, "on the ship's logs. Jesus." He shook his head. Spock still did not understand the human tendency to invoke the name of a deity as an expletive.

"It is fortuitous that they were found by the Enterprise," Spock said, "and not someone less hospitable."

"They lost a few elders in that fight with the asteroid, though."

"And a child."

"Yeah." McCoy brought a hand to his face, rubbed his chin, his cheek, rasping softly in the quiet, and took a deep, cleansing breath, as if it was the first real breath he'd taken since climbing out his atmosphere suit. "Anyway," he continued after a moment, "he wants to meet you. Norah, I mean. I think he wants you to know he didn't take it personally, you…" he raised his hand in the universal weapon gesture and then waved it away, "you know."

"I'll visit the med bay before I retire to my quarters," Spock said with as little inflection as possible and hoped that this would end their conversation, that McCoy's reflection would retreat and take the man with it.

Instead, McCoy crossed his arms, rocked on his heels, moving in and out of Spock's periphery.

"You know," he began, his tone lighter but lower, rasping too much like the voice from the data tape, "when I signed up for Starfleet, I was drunk. Have I told you that?" He didn't pause and Spock didn't attempt to respond. "Hell, Jim's probably told you that. But I'm a good, drunk, see? Especially back then. It's hard to tell, is what I mean, if I want it to be. And back then I usually did. So the recruiter, he just saw my credentials, shook my hand and the next thing I know I'm being bounced through the Federation shuttle routes with all the other ambitious kids."

McCoy toed at the carpet, as if there were earth or stones for him to move there, but the fibers were unyielding. "Only I start sobering up, wondering what the hell I'd gotten myself into, thought about calling it quits before I'd even started, and that's when I met the one person who looked worse than I did. You'll never guess who that was."

"The Captain," Spock said plainly, "and someone had to stay to keep the 'kid' out of trouble."

"Oh," McCoy said, disappointed, "I guess Jim has told you this story."

"A much more concise version."

McCoy sighed deeply and probably, Spock thought, rolled his eyes."Well, in that case, long story short, I could have walked away. I could have tested out, I could have gotten a medical discharge, fear of flying and all, or hell, anything I wanted. But I stayed. Not 'cause I had no way out. I stayed because I cared. I'm here because I want to be, and that means I understand the risks. So does Jim and everyone else on this damned tin can out here in the black. Remember that the next time you go throwing yourself in front of a phaser for someone."

The last part came out in a rush, his tone sharper, and he took a breath that shook in his throat, then went back to rocking gently, still only watching the Onychron or Spock in the reflection, Spock couldn't tell.

"I guess what I'm saying is," McCoy continued, "the Ambassador's dead, not you."

Spock frowned, and for the first time turned to McCoy and McCoy did the same, his gaze uncowed, unflinching, eyes as clear as the steel window that separated the two of them from vacuum and oblivion. McCoy's face was unshaved and unabashed, even as his messy hair gave him a childish look.

"Neither fact is unclear to me, Doctor," Spock said carefully.

McCoy shrugged, as if what was clear to Spock did not concern him. "Yeah, well," he said and unfolded his arms and turned at last to leave, "just thought you might need to hear it out loud."
_____

IN THE CAPTAIN'S QUARTERS

The Captain's quarters on Enterprise-A were larger than those of her predecessor. Two rooms divided by a decorative bulkhead served for sleeping and living respectively, featuring a particularly large, private lavatory. More impressively, the living area boasted a smaller version of the viewing window on the observation deck. The glass could be made opaque if desired; the view of space at warp could be be dizzying to some, but Spock had never seen Kirk's anything but completely transparent. At impulse, the star-speckled black rolled by at an easy, steady pace, giving the room a sense of calm that would not have suited the Kirk that Spock knew as a cadet, but matched perfectly the seasoned Captain before him.

"This came from the Ambassador's home," Spock said, and handed Kirk the book. It was late beta shift but Kirk was still in uniform. The Thetan contact had everyone working double shifts.

Kirk took the book, a crinkle of confusion in his brow, standing near the replicator where he had tried to entice Spock with a drink and Spock had declined.

"There is an inscription which I think you will find interesting," Spock continued, as Kirk moved over to the sitting area, a sofa which, Spock knew, was merely a cushioned surface fastened over the housing of an emergency escape pod. There were fully one-third more escape pods on the Enterprise-A than the original.

Kirk held the book carefully, inspected the cover, nearly worn off, and flipped to the first page.

"To Tim--" Kirk read.

"It is difficult to read," Spock conceded, "but try again."

Kirk smiled softly, uninsulted, then read, "To… Jim, on his…" he put his face closer. Spock wondered if he had already removed his corrective lenses for the evening, "fifty-second birthday?" He read the last like a question, looking up again at Spock. "Was this--I mean did this belong to the other Kirk?"

"That is my assumption," Spock said, "and given the nature of the straightforward message within, I also believe it was a gift from the Ambassador. This and several other items must have been with him when he traveled through the black hole. I think it would have pleased him for you to have it."

"This is incredible, Spock," Kirk said and stood, still gingerly admiring the book. "You sure this shouldn't be in a museum? An artifact from another dimension, I mean… the age alone…." In spite of the question he did not offer the book back to Spock, but paged through it carefully, ran a thumb along the spine, then placed the book on the table as if that was its new home. Spock appreciated that he did not employ the human practice of attempting to refuse a gift out of courtesy, which, in Vulcan culture, had the opposite effect.

"But hey," Kirk said, retrieving his drink and raising it, "at least we know I live to fifty-two."

"You may not in this reality," Spock offered.

Kirk squinted, clapped him on the arm, said, "Thanks for the vote of confidence, buddy," and took a long drink.

Spock very nearly smiled. Few people could rouse such a reaction from him. Being Kirk's friend was a knife edge of guilt and pleasure.

"More importantly," Spock said instead of smiling, "there is this." He held out the data tape and this earned an even more puzzled look from Kirk, but Kirk took it, inspected it, and quickly came to the same conclusion as Spock.

"Some kind of data storage?"

"Precisely. I have only listened to the first audio file, that is, the earliest dated file. It contains information of a sensitive nature concerning the Ambassador's personal life as well as possibly influential information of that alternate future." Spock said it all in a rush. He had not practiced, but he had planned what he would say.

Kirk tapped the tape on his palm. Curiously, he no longer looked puzzled. "Personal life?" he asked cautiously.

"Subspace messages spanning decades," Spock said, "at least one of which makes clear a certain relationship with a crewmember." He did not specify. He did not actually want to specify.

Kirk nodded like he understood something, then turned on his heel, took a few steps away from Spock and a rather long pull from his drink, then turned again and looked almost apologetic when he said it.

"With Bones," Kirk said softly. It was not a question.

Spock raised a brow. The room went suddenly warm, close. He clasped his hands behind his back.

"You have knowledge of their…" Spock grasped for a word. This he had not planned. "...association. May I ask how?"

"The Ambassador," Kirk said simply, like it was obvious, and really, it was. "He shared everything, I mean, not absolutely everything, but he shared a lot on that ice planet when he performed the mind meld."

Yes. Of course. It was logical that Kirk already knew. They had shared a peculiar friendship, Kirk and the Ambassador, only the Ambassador had seemed to harbor no guilt over the fact, only joy. But then the Ambassador had had decades, centuries to assimilate the same emotions that Spock had been forced to face in the brief moment that it had taken for his home planet and nearly everything and everyone he had ever loved to die. McCoy had been the one to point that out to him.

Kirk sat on the table, patted the space next to him and waited for Spock to join him, still looking apologetic.

"I figured if he wanted you to know he'd tell you. The Ambassador…" he drew the word out into a pause, "well, he wasn't really shy about sharing information, you just had to know how to ask it. Maybe you finding this, after his death, maybe that's how you were supposed to find out."

Spock considered something. "You have known almost as long as you've known me."

Kirk didn't nod but took another drink, weighed the tape in his hand. "Look, Spock, this doesn't mean anything about you and Bones, our Bones I mean. Our history and theirs diverged over three decades ago. I don't think even you can calculate all the variables that could have occured since then to make you, Bones, me, the Enterprise, all of us very, very different."

"I can assure you, Captain," Spock said, maybe too quickly, "that was neither a concern nor a possibility."

Spock didn't see Kirk's reaction to that because Kirk looked away just then, toward the window, as if something there had caught his eye. Spock couldn't see but he feared it was a smile. When Kirk turned to him again, however, he looked very serious, and his voice had a sharper point to it.

"Spock, I gotta tell you, I'm curious as hell to listen to this, but more than a little of that is just voyeurism," Kirk said.

"That is a very inappropriate admission, Captain," Spock put emphasis on the title.

"You see? That's why I'm not the man for the job. You are. I know it's not your life, these letters aren't to you, but you're the closest thing to him here, and no one has more integrity."

The Ambassador is dead, not you, he could hear McCoy saying again. These humans and their assumptions regarding his existential battles were becoming tiresome.

"But the additional data--Captain," Spock said, preferring to argue a clearer point, "there is a mention on this recording of life in the Theta system. I knew about it weeks before we found a Thetan ship adrift. On this data record, Theta still existed. The McCoy of that time was posted there during some kind of outbreak, I believe. Yet in this time, Theta has been destroyed. The possible changes to our own--"

"That's exactly what I mean, Spock." Kirk interrupted him. "Nothing about you knowing that Theta supported life in another time has affected this one. The system was destroyed months ago, before you even found the tape. Nothing you could have said or done would have changed it."

Kirk reached out, took one of Spock's hands and opened it palm up, pressed the data tape there.

"But if it could," Kirk said, "I wouldn't trust anyone else with that kind of information." He closed Spock's hand over it and took a breath, then he did smile. "Listen to it, Commander. That's an order."
____

THE FIRST MESSAGE

Darlin' Spock…

It was becoming familiar, that voice.

They were twelve-point-two days out from Mars. The engines hummed just a little higher, unnoticed by most, as the Enterprise increased her speed to make up for time lost repairing the Thetan ship, which now cruised on its own power under the larger ship's proverbial wing toward Mars.

It was the first available time Spock had found since his talk with Kirk about the tape, or the first that he could no longer find an excuse to avoid the direct order, and only the third time Spock had heard those words and yet he had the cadence memorized.

Doesn't that have a certain ring to it? I think I'll start every message like that, just to annoy you. How else will you know I still care?...

This time Spock had prepared himself. The lights were not dimmed. He was not at meditation or in his robe or anywhere comfortable. He stood in his quarters, near the shelf where he had kept the book before giving it to Kirk, where the Ambassador's PADD played the datatape. He did not sit as the room filled with a soft static and a gentle voice from another time.

I'm sure you've already read my report on the status here on Theta II. The medical center is about as medieval as it could be, but the staff are eager to improve and and I can handle myself in an atmosphere suit. Like I told Jim, I'm fine. Quit fretting like a hen!

The recording continued, McCoy annoyed and interrupted by his assistants, grateful for socks, missing Spock in his bed, and Spock considered that he might pause it, save it for another time, wait for yet another two weeks to pass, but he did not, and McCoy continued seamlessly.

...I don't sleep as well without you these days. Who'd have believed it?

A soft laugh.

I thought about getting a launch dummy, setting it up in the corner of the room like it's meditating, but unfortunately no one had the foresight to pack me one of those.

There was a noise in the background, a sharp beep, and then a sigh.

Alright, gotta sign off. I think it'll take you a few hours to get this so, have a good night, Spock.

The static cut out abruptly and Spock was left standing in his quiet quarters, only the environmental system and the distant hum of the engines to break the silence. Now that he'd heard the rest, he felt foolish for resisting for so long. Somehow, in spite of his own certainty that his life and the Ambassador's were totally divergent, it had taken Kirk's assurances to give him real perspective. He could now, he believed, truly be objective.

From the menu on the PADD he selected the next file. The same static and then,

Darlin' Spock, let's get married.

Spock stopped the playback and sighed.

Chapter Text

YOU JACKASS

Darlin' Spock,

I hope you're happy, you jackass. I've heard of cold feet, but your problem is a cold heart! You could have just told me you didn't want to marry me, you didn't have to run off home to purge your emotions, your love for me. Because I know you loved me. You never could fool me.

So I really do hope you're happy. I hope every joy and sorrow and fear and love you ever felt for me or anyone is keeping you up at night, keeping you from Nirvana, or whatever the hell you think you're trying to reach. I don't know if they let you keep your comm account once you enter their cult, and I won't try to reach you again, but it had to be said: live long and prosper, you emotional train wreck. I'll love you 'til I die but it doesn't mean I have to like you.

Goodbye, Spock.
____

SELF OBSERVATION

He began to listen to a recording a day. Some were quite long, some less than a minute. They mostly ranged from deeply personal to incredibly mundane and domestic, and jumped wildly from courtship to marriage proposal, apparent refusal to apparent reunification. A few, the ones Spock found least difficult to hear, were of a technical nature, the Doctor and the Ambassador apparently working on long-distance projects together.

It became easier to listen as the characters that were McCoy and the ever invisible "Darlin' Spock" became more familiar. Kirk had been right, they were not the same people, not entirely anyway. The Ambassador seemed even more pedantic, exacting, reserved, if McCoy was to be believed. McCoy, on the other hand, was more open, less defensive, and most all, joyful. Perhaps that was due to age, experience, or the intimacy they shared. Perhaps, though, Spock thought, with the Narada incident being the point at which their realities diverged, it was logical that everyone in their time, his own time, might be more guarded in one way or another.

Yet Spock found himself conscious of his own mannerisms, comparing them to those of the Ambassador's which McCoy of the other time had liked to note in passing. Things he missed, things he knew Spock would be doing in response to something he had just said. Giving him "that eyebrow", rolling his eyes, holding his hands just so. He had never noticed any of those things about himself, and yet all of them were true.

He watched McCoy also, even though he knew the doctor well enough to recognize similarities simply from his own experience and memory. He looked for things he had not seen, inflections he had never heard. Things, perhaps, he realized later, that only a lover would recognize.

"You know, if you've got something to ask me you could just spit it out," McCoy said to him, perched on a stool in the lab, leaning over a microscopic viewer and not looking at him. "You're giving me the heebie-jeebies, creeping around in here."

It was gamma shift and the lab was otherwise empty. Ostensibly, Spock was there to analyze the structural makeup of the material used in the Thetan ship's hull, a mineral unknown to the Federation, but actually he had already completed the analysis. He had thought his efforts to observe McCoy from his computer station to be stealthy.

"I have not consciously communiticated either a heebie or a jeebie to you, Doctor. Perhaps you acquired the illness from elsewhere."

McCoy cut his eyes over, just a glance, and laughed softly.

"If you're still mad at me about that colony of Andorian mud beetles," McCoy said and straightened, stretching out his back, his neck and arms, "I didn't purposely leave my coffee out for them to find and definitely didn't intend for them to start some kind of turf war with the Ceti slugs in a caffeinated frenzy. Anyway, maybe some scientists should be more careful with how they house alien critters." He waggled his head at that, so very much a human, then bent again to tap something into his PADD.

Spock pushed back from his station but did not stand. "One might also observe that some scientists could be more conscious of where they place their liquid stimulants, but that was not occupying my mind."

"Well if I didn't know any better I'd say you were sweet on me, Commander. But since I know that to be an impossibility why don't you tell me what's grinding those gears of yours."

If he had not been Vulcan, and therefore schooled to avoid such blatant reactions, Spock might have blushed. Instead he stood and stepped closer, McCoy glancing at him now and then.

"I was thinking of observation."

"Scientific or general?"

"General. Social."

"Well that definitely narrows it down."

"I have been contemplating recently that through simple social interaction we must observe others far more than we observe ourselves, analyze the drives and desires of others but perhaps not our own, and therefore better know certain physical traits, mannerisms of another individual, in fact many more individuals, than our own."

McCoy had stopped to look at him, frowning in a way that meant he was really listening. The light from his station was brighter than the room around them, and illuminated his face from below in blue light.

"Well of course we do. Not only are we naturally social creatures, human and Vulcans and most other species, but that's also survival. Know your enemy and your friend, know them equally."

"I did not argue that it was not beneficial."

"Beneficial. Critical. Unless you're a narcissist you'd go mad analyzing and observing yourself all the time. That's what psychologists are for. Outside perspective."

"I was chiefly interested in how little time individuals spend observing themselves," Spock said. "The way in which self reflection causes discomfort for so many."

"That's because we have ideas of ourselves that we don't like to have contradicted. That's why it's always so strange to see yourself in a holo, hear your own voice in a recording."

"I have never found it strange."

"You've never found anything strange only fascinating." McCoy said with widened, teasing eyes, then rubbed his neck, shifted on his stool. "So is that what you're doing? Observing me?"

"Not intentionally," Spock lied.

"Then you were avoiding observing yourself?"

"I am capable of both at once."

"Well then I guess you're the exception to the rule, as usual," McCoy said. Arms crossed as he swiveled on the stool slowly, quietly watching Spock, waiting for a response but Spock gave none and after a moment he took a breath and said, "If you're done observing yourself maybe you can come observe this for me." He pushed his stool away from the station to allow Spock access, rubbed at his eyes, squeezed them closed and open again, for effect perhaps, and added. "I'm going a little cross-eyed."

Spock did. He stood next to McCoy at the station, looked into the microscanner as McCoy explained the peculiarities in the tissue samples taken from Norah and the other Thetans, the challenge they presented, his voice dry and tired.

When McCoy was satisfied that Spock had noted the same phenomena, could draw the same conclusions from the data, he stood from his stool, stretched the whole length of his body and yawned.

"Thanks," he said when he could, "maybe I'll get some sleep tonight."

"Have you not been sleeping well, Doctor?" Spock asked, and McCoy blinked sleepily at him, as if surprised by the concern he heard in Spock's voice.

McCoy shrugged. "No… well, yeah. I mean, I haven't," he said, brow furrowed, perhaps equally surprised by his own honesty.

"If it was the puzzle of the Thetan cell structure that precluded your sleep, you might have consulted me sooner."

"It wasn't just that," McCoy said, waving away the comment. He began cleaning up his station, pushed in his stool and took his lab coat from over the chair. "Sleep is like a bad joke. Sometimes you just don't get it." He smiled crookedly, but Spock did not laugh and McCoy sighed.

"Goodnight, Spock," he said, and Spock, to his astonishment, found that he wished that he could follow the Doctor, to tell him that he did understand the humor in his statement, to smooth the concern from his brow, to ensure that he slept.

Instead he said simply, "Goodnight, Doctor."
____

CAPTAIN SPOCK

Darlin' Spock,

Or Captain Spock, if you prefer. You know, it wouldn't have taken so long if you hadn't messed around with that kolinahr business, but then I've pretty much beaten that horse, haven't I? Anyway, congratulations. I wish I could have been there. I'd've laid one on you the minute they pinned you, do my damnedest to make those stuffy admirals blush like brides in June.

To answer your question, yes. I've got a few things to wrap up here, then I'll catch the first shuttle out to start my acting career. Luckily, I think I'll be pretty good at playing a doctor, and those cadets will be in capable hands. Even you can't argue about how I treat simulated injuries.

Love you. Take care of yourself until I can get there to do the job properly.
____

A SHUTTLE TO MARS

The protocol for Mars landing was extensive. There was no beaming into the domes of Mars Prime, the largest of the still-operating colonies, except for dignitaries and emergencies, and only into locations that were outside the main and feeder domes. Only Martian-manned shuttle craft entered and exited the feeder domes via a series of airlocks, checkpoints, and scans, and while there were public transit shuttles and licensed charter shuttles, anyone else who wanted to land on the surface could only do so at a great distance from the dome, and following a thorough inspection of her manifest and cargo.

Being the oldest off-Earth colony in the system, Mars had learned from lessons of the long ago past, wars that Earth had only barely survived while the colony was still just a hope in the hearts of Terran space enthusiasts. Paranoia, stubbornness, and incredible ingenuity made a Martian. Any Martian would tell you so. Spock found their defiant nature ironic since these, he felt, were their most human traits, and yet Mars was quick to distance itself from its Terran roots, demanding independence almost immediately. Only war-weariness and reduced Terran resources had prevented a Mars-Earth battle, and although the two planets now had excellent trade relations, the home they left behind was still the power that Martians pushed back against hardest.

That and the vacuum of space.

Once past their defenses, however, once you had gained access to the dome and therefore their trust, they were a very hospitable people. Mars, more than Earth, was the preferred shore leave planet in that sector, except for Terrans returning home. Where Earth had grown intellectual and serious, Mars still enjoyed a good party.

The Enterprise would not be landing, of course, her shipment of the large, clearsteel dome pieces and the massive air filters which had been held in the matter stream for over a month now did not require it. Mr. Scott, who had command of the ship as she orbited Mars, had no doubt already calculated the precise total use of power this had cost the Enterprise over such a long period, and was telling it to anyone who would listen as he went through the hoops of delivering her payload.

Elsewhere, many of her crew were being shuttled down for respite before the unpleasant business of the debriefing on Earth, including Spock and most of her bridge crew. It was an older public transport shuttle, long outdated compared to the Enterprise-A and not very roomy but tidy. Their particular car was loaded to capacity, Enterprise crew easily outnumbering the civilians and crowded into tight groups. They were all out of uniform, even Spock, but it was clear to any layman that they were a team of some kind.

Kirk stood in the back of the car, leaning against one of the vertical support bars, trying to stay out of the way of his crew now that they were all off-duty, but many were seated or standing around him, Spock included. Several conversations were fighting for dominance over the high hum of the small craft. Spock could hear the one closest to him easily.

"So the first domes were made of ice. It blocked the radiation and once they found a source of water it was a pretty quick solution. But that wasn't sustainable for larger domes--"

"Every grade school Terran kid knows that. That's the stuff they tell you on the field trips."

"Speak for yourself; I've never been to Mars."

"You can still visit the old ice domes, but the subterranean colony is my favorite."

"Don't listen to her. You don't go to Mars for a history lesson, you go for the climb. Olympus Mons. Tallest peak in the Sol system."

"Am I the only one who just wants a few days on solid ground and maybe a swimming pool?"

"No swimming pools this time of year, even in the dome it's not warm enough for that. Hot tubs, though, and a view of--"

The transport lurched as the craft entered atmosphere, and the Enterprise crew members gave a startled sound in unison as every stomach dropped, but with a laugh that showed their confidence in the vessel and continued their conversations.

"I bet Mr. Spock could beat you, Doc," Lieutenant Riley called out from across the car, certainly trying to bring Spock into that conversation which Spock had not overheard. Riley was one of the few crewman who was not intimidated by him. He was seated with Sulu, Chekov, and McCoy along the opposite wall a little ways down the car.

"At what skill am I meant to defeat the doctor?" Spock asked, raising his voice only a little, since most of the crew had quieted to listen.

"Poker," Riley said. "We were talking about the casino and how well the Doc would do there. None of us have managed to beat him, but I'd bet you could, sir."

"The way your luck's been going, Kev," Sulu said, "I wouldn't bet on much if I were you."

Laughter broke out, even from the intermingled civilians.

"Is the doctor really so skilled?" Spock asked. Kirk had taught him the game once and he had found the it quite dull. "I thought it merely a game of chance."

McCoy, who had been laughing with Sulu, shrugged, looking somehow younger sitting with the lieutenants and wearing an old leather coat and denim pants. He wore a crooked smile, also. "The cards are chance, but the skill is in reading people, Mr. Spock."

"Doc can pick out anybody's tell," Riley said.

"Anybody's?" Kirk asked, and everyone turned to look at him as if surprised. Without uniforms, they seemed to have forgotten their captain was aboard. "I beat you last week."

"Well that's different," McCoy argued, straightening in his seat, then realized everyone was watching. "Anyway, I never said it. It's not my fault your bridge crew can't bluff their way out of an open hangar bay."

Another round of laughter and McCoy stood, patted Riley on the shoulder and moved toward the back of the car to stand next to Kirk, displacing an eager yeoman as the general noise of conversation rose again.

"Maybe I'm getting too old for the kids' table," McCoy grumbled, leaning down to speak quietly near Kirk's ear though Spock could hear him well enough. "They've been threatening to take me dancing."

"I didn't know you danced, Bones."

"I don't, that's why it's a threat."

"You're the one who said a little R and R offship would be good for everyone."

"Me dancing isn't good for anyone."

The transport slowed abruptly, traversing one of the airlocks, so that McCoy, leaning against the back wall without any handholds, listed forward, off balance, and both Kirk and Spock threw out an arm to stop him, even as McCoy caught a vertical pole over the startled yeoman's head.

"See what I mean?" McCoy said and laughed softly. Spock had released him just as suddenly as he had reached out, but Kirk lingered, turned it into a friendly shoulder pat and McCoy kept a hand on the vertical pole as the transport sped up again.

"So what have you two got planned for your great Mars adventure?" McCoy asked. "You gotta meet with brass, Jim?"

Kirk shrugged. "I've got a meeting at the embassy on behalf of the Thetans, after that, free as a bird. Spock invited me on a hike with him but I think I'll stick around and watch the new dome being installed. I've been in dozens of them, never seen them put together."

"Well that sounds fascinating," McCoy said in a tone that belied the statement, then turned to Spock. "A hike, huh?" he asked and Spock did not answer since Kirk's statement had already provided the necessary information, and since the tone he used then was clearly meant to provoke. He knew it from his McCoy, he knew from the other McCoy. "I'm surprised you're taking advantage of shore leave, Mr. Spock. Pleased as punch, but surprised."

Again, Spock did not answer. Instead he asked, "Why is the captain different?"

McCoy wrinkled his brow in confusion at the change of subject.

"Regarding the game of poker," Spock clarified, "you said the captain was different."

Another sudden slow-down and the craft shifted forward again. This time everyone was prepared and braced themselves so that even McCoy hardly moved at all. "Well," he said and slid his free hand into his jacket pocket, overly casual, "kid wears his heart on his sleeve, everything's his tell, which means none of it can be trusted." He nudged Kirk as he said it, as if this were some shared joke.

The transport sped up and they all shifted backward.

Kirk shook his head. "It's because I know him better than anyone else, so I know how keep him from reading me."

"By which you mean that no one knows Doctor McCoy better than you," Spock asked, "or that the doctor is the person you know best of all other persons?"

Kirk squinted. McCoy laughed.

"The first one," Kirk said, then smirked, "maybe both." He turned to McCoy. "Which I think means Riley is probably wrong, since Spock knows you pretty well too, Bones."

Spock caught McCoy watching him, amusement still in his eyes, but McCoy looked away slowly and shrugged. "No, I already know Spock's tell."

Now it was Kirk watching Spock, perhaps too closely, and Spock remembered what Kirk had admitted about his voyeuristic interest in hearing the recordings from the other McCoy. How long had Kirk been watching the two of them interact with this in mind? Was he looking for something that wasn't there? Had he seen something they had not?

"And what would that be, Doctor?" Spock asked.

McCoy grinned, lopsided, and slid his eyes toward Spock. "Where's the fun in telling, Mr. Spock?"

The transport shuddered, slowed, rolled slightly one way and then the other, bursts of retropropulsion, and they landed softly. The hiss of hydraulics and the sudden stillness of the car made all the Enterprise crew aboard cheer, then go quiet as several civilians stood and pushed their way to the door as if this was their daily commute. Perhaps it was. Then a chime sounded and a red light over the door turned green and the doors whooshed open onto Mars.
_____

GENESIS IS ALIVE

Spock… I… darling Spock.

We've left you. I don't know how, but you're gone. I know what happened, I know that you did it to save us, of course you did, you damned fool. But I don't know how I can… how Jim could…

Kahn is dead. Genesis is… alive, I think. I can almost hear it growing, changing, when it's quiet in my quarters… without you. I can't… I won't believe I won't see you again. Logically… you'd like that, wouldn't you? Me trying to be logical… now. Logically I shouldn't ever see you again, but I can't believe that. Denial be damned, I just know it. I have to… there's something I have to do… I think?

I think maybe I'm losing my mind, Spock. It's like you're there, a word on the tip of my tongue that I can't quite remember… Spock…

I'm tired. I sleep a lot. I think you must have done something… something I need to do…

I love you, Spock. I'll see you again.
_____

MARS PRIME

There was much about Mars that was not like Vulcan. The cold, for one. Even with the atmosphere suit warming him, Spock could feel the chill of the air. Not only had they landed during the Martian winter, but Spock had set out before sunrise, when the frost was still on the rocks.The reduced gravity, too, reminded him that he was far from home, each step as light and easy as the last, no matter how long he walked.

There was also the fact that he had to wear the atmosphere suit at all.

But as the sun rose and the dark sky lightened to a pale umber, then to a deep, hazy ochre, and finally to a rosy orange by Martian noon, he felt… not at home, but even this faraway, cold place felt like less of a lie than New Vulcan.

According to his helmet's data screen he had walked for six hours in the direction of the rising sun, red soil and rock beneath his boots, passing by the occasional skeleton of an abandoned dome, ship, suit, the mountains a jagged brown shape against the lighter sky in the distance, and nothing else. Only the voice from the PADD kept him company.

He turned around, back toward the glowing dome of Mars Prime, gauzy on the horizon in the partial light, following his own footprints among the cracked earth and scattered rock. It would be an equally long walk back unless he called for one of the shuttles that ran along the surface outside of the domes. On hs viewscreen he brought up the link to the PADD he carried. Replay?, it asked him, but he couldn't listen to McCoy's broken, desperate voice again, the puzzling account of the Ambassador's death, no matter how much the mystery of "Genesis", whatever it was, intrigued him.

"Next file," he said to it.

Darlin' Spock,

Boy I've sure done it this time. Your charming husband has run off yet another contractor. The house half finished and me here without a roof over my head or a replicator for my coffee. How was I to know he'd be offended by being called a lazy, targ-faced liar? If he didn't want to be called that sort of thing, he shouldn't be one! Looks like we might not get to move in until some time next millennium.

At least not having any walls means I've got a great view. Hope you have half as good of one in ShiKhar. I can't say how glad I am your daddy came to his senses. Sorry I couldn't be with you there, I just… I just needed something familiar for a while. Something to help me... well, to be me again. But I'll see you soon, and I'll have the house ready when you come, I promise. Even if I have to apologize to a targ-faced contractor!

Tell your mother I said howdy. Just like that. Don't say 'McCoy sends his regards' or some nonsense she'll know didn't come from me. She always could appreciate my southern charm.

The hiss of playback stopped. No explanation. Nothing about Kahn or the "Genesis" being, and nothing of the apparent resurrection of Ambassador Spock. He checked the date stamp. More than a standard year after the Kahn incident. Many of the recordings were that way, with such a long period of time between them as to be almost impossible to connect, or so allusory as to be occasionally incomprehensible. None had piqued his curiosity in quite this way, though. He called up another file, added the date and a brief summary to the timeline he had constructed, frowned at the gaps. Much would have to be inferred to complete the narrative.

And McCoy… McCoy had known his mother. They had never met in his time. They could never meet.

"Replay?" the screen asked and he did, listening for anything he might have missed, and walked on.

Halfway back to Mars Prime a chime sounded over the playback of a close-range communication concerning what the Doctor and the Ambassador would be having for dinner. A "Message Received" notification flashed in the corner of his viewscreen. This was unexpected. Transmissions into or out of the dome were strictly limited to official Martian channels or else via a comm permit which none of his crew members possessed, and any message from the Enterprise would have gone to his communicator, which he did not have with him. More to the point it was a borrowed suit. He had been required to give his name and credentials when he rented it, but someone would have to have access to the rental database to know how to contact him.

"Open message," he said and the playback paused automatically. White text appeared on his screen.

Captain James T. Kirk injured. Situation critical. Mars Central Medical Complex.

The sender was the medical center, an official notice. As First Officer he was certainly Kirk's emergency contact. Did the other crew know? Was anyone else with Jim?

His feet were moving before he'd even finished reading the message, but running in reduced gravity required a different gait, posture, stride. He knew this, of course, but his legs, less calm than his mind it seemed, did not cooperate at first. They kicked at air for several seconds after the first push-off that floated him a couple of meters into the air to fall slowly down again to the surface. He touched down, adjusted, stumbled, frustrated by how long it took him to fall so that he could recover and start again. When he was up again he leaned into the run, pushed off along the ground, floated a little less, lengthened his stride, and soon he was moving farther rather than higher, sprinting toward the opalescent dome in the distance.

In fifty-six minutes he cleared the first airlock, impatient with the slow body scanners that proved him to be the same man who had left ten hours earlier. At the second airlock he shed the borrowed atmosphere suit so quickly that he nearly left his identification and the PADD behind, his impatience making the guards and assistants, accustomed to tourists heading out for a little sightseeing, suspicious and nervous. He caught sight of himself in the reflection of the airlock glass and understood their hesitation. A Vulcan, sweaty and panting, hair and clothing disheveled and no official insignia to be found on his black undershirt and slacks; he wouldn't have trusted himself either. But when he showed them the message from the medical complex they cleared him, and even gave him a ride on a security hoverspeeder.

In the medical center he found Chekov in the hallway. He would have walked past him had Chekov not called out to him.

"I was with him, Mr. Spock," Chekov said, moving to the periphery of the hallway. Spock followed reluctantly; this was not where he needed to be.

"At the dome construction site. One of the cranes--there was a malfunction, and if it had been Earth gravity he would have been crushed, even in the suit. Another man, a worker, he is dead."

Chekov looked tired, eyes red-rimmed and bloodshot, and everything he said came out a little breathless, like he'd been running from something.

"We were up all night watching them. We saw the sunrise," he added, seeming dazed.

"Where is he?" Spock asked.

Chekov told him and Spock said that Chekov should go, to get some sleep, because he knew that's what humans said to other humans in these situations, and because now that he knew where he was going he only wanted to get there.

When he did, Sulu and Rand were being hurried out the door, and McCoy was the one doing the hurrying.

"He needs rest and room to breathe," McCoy was complaining, rather loudly for someone advocating rest, and then he saw Spock.

"Jesus, what happened to you?" he asked, but instead of waiting for an answer he turned and went back into the room, leaving the door open. Sulu nodded to him once and Rand said 'oh, Mr. Spock', and Sulu lead her away.

Kirk was on a biobed, vitals animated on a wall screen over his head. He looked strangely well apart from a bandage on his head. He might have been sleeping.

McCoy was reading the screen, marking something down in a PADD. Occasionally, he would touch Kirk at the wrist, the neck, the forehead, lift an arm gently or push back an eyelid and shine in a light. Spock doubted that this told him anything that the screen was not already telling him. He thought he understood it, though. He wished he had as much excuse to reach out and touch the body in the bed. Instead he stood at the foot of it, clasping his hands together.

"Is he stable?" Spock asked, his voice surprisingly even.

"He's got a steady heart rate if that's what you mean, no great blood loss, nothing we couldn't handle anyway. Bruising, cracked ribs, all patched up, but there's some swelling in the brain we're keeping in check. He hasn't regained consciousness. Oh and his haircut's ruined." McCoy didn't look at him and Spock wondered if he was avoiding him or just unwilling to take his eyes off of Kirk, as if only a watchful eye was keeping him alive.

"When did this occur?"

"This morning."

A nurse came in, pushed past Spock to read the screen as McCoy had, to touch Kirk in many of the same ways.

"Can we get another warmer on him?" McCoy asked her. "His temp keeps fluctuating and it's cold as the devil in here."

"I'll speak to his doctor," she said, still marking on her PADD.

"I am his goddamned doctor," McCoy spat in a voice that cracked.

She pursed her lips at him and turned and left.

Now Spock looked more closely at McCoy, unshaved, red-eyed. He'd seen him look that way before. After Khan. He thought of that other time, the Ambassador's time, when it was him and not Kirk for whom the doctor had wept.

"Doctor, how long have you been here?"

McCoy checked the clock on the wall but he only motioned toward Kirk and said, "Since he got here. Well, I was already here. Friend of mine from med school runs the L&D department. I was here all night cooing over babies when Chekov commed me. Where the hell were you?" This time he did look at Spock, just one long accusatory glance, then back at Kirk.

Spock kept his voice even. "I was out of communication range. And though I am sure it is only frustration at the helplessness of the current situation that compels you to seek an entity to blame, I will concede that I should have been with him."

A long exhalation accompanied McCoy's headshake. He swallowed. "Not for him, for the crew, for…" he paused, furrowed brows softened and he looked away, put his PADD aside and picked up another device, a deep tissue scanner. "You're right, there's nothing I can do but wait."

Spock waited too. The evening turned to night and the night to early morning. Doctors and nurses came periodically, told them what they already knew. Crew members came and went, Spock updated each of them and McCoy continued monitoring Kirk, occasionally leaving briefly, Spock assumed to relieve himself, and returning with a new strategy to collect the same data he already had.

Spock was returning with a meal for the doctor when he paused outside of Kirk's room to observe a whispering sound from within, and when he stepped quietly inside he found McCoy sitting in a visitor's sofa, head bowed and hands folded, praying in the half dark. Spock stepped back into the hallway silently and waited for the sound to stop. Then he came in noisily, shuffling his feet in a way that he never did, and placed the food on a tray near where McCoy sat, now leaning back, hands in his lap. He looked so worn out, so boneless and unselfconscious that Spock was reminded of another time that he had come upon McCoy in such a position, in a garden on New Vulcan.

McCoy didn't touch the food. Spock sat beside him, straight-backed. The environmental controls blasted cold air over them. Only the screen over the bed and the light at the foot of it illuminated the room. The air smelled thickly of antiseptic and the apple juice that Spock had brought McCoy.

"You were raised to know that logic was the true path, right?" McCoy asked in a hollow voice without preamble, and without waiting for an answer he said, "just like I was raised to know, however much I try to kick the idea, that there's an all-knowing being that keeps track of our mundane lives."

"I apologize if I interrupted--"

"I'm just saying it isn't stupidity, it's habit by now, just like your logic."

"I suppose, yes," Spock conceded. It was not the time to be pedantic.
"Well I don't see logic or God in this," McCoy said and leaned forward, scrubbed his face in his hands and through the arch of them he said, "this can't be the way he goes. All that nonsense he gets up to, throwing himself at every alien that want to kiss him or kill him, traipsing across the galaxy, surviving Khan and Altamid, Kodos and, god, even the battle that got his daddy killed. Some goddamn construction accident on Mars can't be the way this kid goes."

He said all of it softly, without anger, without much inflection at all, as if he hadn't intended for anyone else to hear even though Spock was there beside him.

"You once told me," Spock said just as softly into the dim, "that fear of death is what keeps us alive, but I believe that you do not fear your own death, Doctor, only the deaths of others."

McCoy dropped his hands into his lap, sat up, a shrug of a movement and frowned. "Well I ain't got a monopoly on it."

Before dawn, Uhura came through the door to find Spock still sitting on the sofa and McCoy asleep against him. Kirk lay still on the bed.

Spock lifted a finger to his lips, signalling for silence, then made the Standard sign language gesture of greeting.

What happened to you? Uhura signed back.

Sandworms, he said. An old joke.

Uhura smiled and raised a brow in McCoy's direction, slumped against him. You look comfortable.

Comfort is of the mind, he said. He had to spell out several of the words as most of the signs required both hands, but in fact the arm pinned beneath McCoy was numb and prickly.

She rolled her eyes, then moved closer to Kirk. He looks good, she said. Do you know how he is?

There is no action now but to wait.

I was here when they brought him in, there was so much-- she paused, shook her head and swallowed thickly, the only sound she'd made besides her boots on the floor. I'm glad you're here now. She stood for a while watching him, watching the screen, then smiled again at Spock, shook her head at McCoy's prone form.

Take care of him, she said before she left, and he didn't know which one she meant.

When the door closed behind her McCoy began to stir. It was a change in his breathing at first, regular and warm against Spock's neck, then louder, faster. McCoy's cheek rasped against the juncture of Spock's neck and shoulder, his nose cold beneath Spock's jaw, his ear. Was he asleep still? Spock turned his head as well, just a little, a soft slide of skin on skin and his hand on McCoy's shoulder tightened reflexively. McCoy's face moved again, as if seeking something, and Spock felt lips against his throat, a long inhalation, a soft exhalation, hot and damp.

The biobed beeped. McCoy went entirely still for a full second, then sprung like a trap, jumped up from the sofa, knocking over the tray of cold food to get to Kirk's beside, scanner already in hand, reading through the history on the screen, watching Kirk intently.

"C'mon, kid," he said, just once, as Spock stood just behind him.

The bed beeped again and blonde lashes fluttered open to clear blue.

McCoy laughed. "Jesus kid, you scared us."

Kirk frowned, blinked, and the silence stretched.

"Who," Kirk said with a dry throat, swallowed and tried again, "who are you?"

McCoy made a choking noise, then growled, "If you're fucking with me, Jim Kirk, I'll kill you myself!"

Jim smiled blearily.
_____

GO CLIMB A ROCK

Darlin', Jim's gone and lost his mind. He's started rock climbing. At his age! Of all the tomfoolery. I guess that's the danger of stranding a starship captain at the bottom of a gravity well for too long. He says he's ascending El Capitan next week and I told him we were going with him. Someone's gotta be there to talk him out of it, or to patch him up if something happens.

Maybe it's early senility. I told him all that beaming around would scramble all our brains one day. I'm glad you haven't gotten any such wild ideas. But then I suppose that's the benefit of being married to a Vulcan, by the time you hit your midlife crisis I'll be dead! Maybe before. Lord, we sure did get a late start.

Sorry, I guess I've had too much spare time of my own, getting maudlin. I went to see mom's old house, what's left of it. I should have never let it set all this time empty. I guess that's why I've been thinking that way. I never thought I'd see it go to ruin; expected it to be just the same even after all these years. Funny how memory persists.

Anyway, I'm watching your shuttle stats live and as long as Command doesn't keep you I'll see you for supper. Oh, almost forgot to tell you, Joanna's coming. She wanted to surprise you but I know how you hate surprises.
____

ON AND AROUND EARTH

One standard week later the Enterprise left Mars and reached Earth orbit after an easy afternoon cruise. Most of that time had been taken up by official Mars orbit exit protocol, standard checks for the Enterprise, and the usual ceremony that accompanied a Starfleet ship's return home after years at space, with a little extra pomp for the newest flagship.

There was a Captain's dinner planned for that evening aboard the ship, Starfleet brass stuffing themselves and making awkward conversation with ranking officers or insisting that Mr. Scott explain intricacies of the ship's design which they did not actually understand, even though they would nod and say, "oh yes" and "she must handle like a dream".

Until then they had debriefing meetings, separately and together, concerning the Altamid incident, including all of the bridge crew and ranking officers, and others who had been most involved in the action, even some of the new people they had picked up on Yorktown.

"Why do I feel like we're going to be on trial again?" McCoy grumbled when he, Kirk, Spock and a few others headed to the transport room to beam down.

"Because we will be, in a way," Kirk said as they walked, reaching up to smooth down his hair to cover the bald spot over his ear. It did not entirely do the job. "We lost a starship.They can't just shrug that off. And they've got to make up their minds about whether or not they're going to give us another mission."

"I'd have thought the inquisition on Yorktown would have been enough," McCoy complained and the transporter room door whooshed open.

"I have to agree with the doctor," Spock said. "A single investigation acquitting us of blame should be sufficient."

They stepped onto the pad, each finding a circle.

"That was one admiral and one panel of officers," Kirk said, "Now all the rest of them want to have their say, even if they can't charge us with anything."

"A typically human exercise," Spock said, "judgement for the sake of entertainment."

McCoy scoffed. "Well they can entertain my spaceboot right up their--"

"Energize," Kirk said.

The day was long. Spock spent the first half alone in a room with an officer who questioned him based on his testimony on Yorktown, and another who monitored the recording, neither seemed particularly interested in what he had to say. He was kept separate from the rest of the crew during a lunch break and he thought the others had probably experienced the same. A ridiculous gesture since they had already had months to fabricate any information they wished to falsify, what was another half hour?

In the afternoon Spock was brought into a large, round hall with seating along the outer rim of the room, and in the center a lowered floor with several semi-circle tables and seated at them were a dozen Starfleet officials with stern faces. But when they sat him down it was next to Captain Kirk, and farther down along the curve of the room were Sulu and McCoy, and in front of him was Uhura. Their entire section was Enterprise crew.

The hearing dragged on. Even Spock did not have the patience or interest to listen to everything that was said, having heard it all more than once before, having written some of the reports himself. Instead he noticed the lint on his uniform pants leg, the bitten nail on Kirk's right thumb, the perfect smoothness of Uhura's ponytail, and calculated the approximate number of octagons in the carpeting based on a thirty by thirty centimeter square section and an estimated size of the room.

Once, when he tired of watching the white-haired admiral reading a list of total damages to the Yorktown station, he caught McCoy watching him. McCoy shrugged, made a gesture with his hand that seemed to imply incessant talking, and rolled his eyes. Then Sulu elbowed him and he turned away.

As Kirk had said, they couldn't charge them on anything, and no decision would yet be made on the status of their mission, so when the hearing was over everyone seemed to look around as if no one had even understood the point of the entire event. Then the same people who had questioned their actions came over to congratulate them and clap them on the back for escaping with their lives.

This continued at dinner, as did McCoy's behavior, seated across and down from Spock. Spock found McCoy watching him twice. Once McCoy just smiled and raised a glass, another time he looked away.

"I met the ambassador," someone was saying to Spock on the observation deck after dinner, a very thin Vice Admiral named Horace Paisley, "met him when he was putting in all that time on the New Vulcan project. Fine man."

"Indeed he was," Spock said politely, even though Horace had a yellow mustache and the breath of a tobacco smoker that turned Spock's stomach.

"Fascinating, the things he must have seen in all those years, and traveling through time," Horace continued. "Lord knows he accomplished enough in our universe for a lifetime. Do you find it an intimidating prospect?"

Spock blinked slowly. "What prospect is that, Vice Admiral?"

"Holding a candle and all that. Living up to the man, I mean." Horace shook his head solemnly. "I don't think I could operate under such pressure."

"Then it is fortunate for us both that you are not required to aspire to such distinction."

Horace frowned, then someone spilled a drink on him.

"Oh my great aunt Sally, I'm so sorry," McCoy said, affecting a more than usually thick accent and wiping a cocktail napkin across the breast of Horace's uniform jacket. "You know how it goes with us lubbers, one day on solid ground and I lose my sea legs."

Horace snatched the napkin away, cursed under his breath and went away. Immediately McCoy's face transformed from apologetic and tipsy to sober and mischievous. He smiled a wide, white smile at Spock and stuffed a hand into the pocket of his dress uniform. He bounced on his heels.

"Don't listen to that hot air bag, Spock. Don't listen to any of 'em." McCoy gestured broadly around the room with his glass.

"It was not my intention to do so. In fact, I was just leaving," Spock said and McCoy smirked.

"I'll walk with you."

They headed out into the hallway, only a few people loitered outside, talking closely and intimately. Spock felt briefly guilty for leaving Kirk behind to play host alone, but that was his burden as captain, and the silence in the halls when the doors snicked shut was such a relief that he did not think on it long.

The hall was cool compared to the crowded observation deck and in the quiet he could hear their feet on the carpet, McCoy beside him breathing, the clink of ice in McCoy's glass as he turned it up. They entered a turbolift.

McCoy leaned against the next wall, neither far nor near, and watched Spock without watching him. Looking everywhere else as they rode in silence, though it was very clear to Spock that he was being observed.

"Doctor," Spock said after a moment, and McCoy looked up from the ice he'd been inspecting in his otherwise empty glass, as if he'd forgotten Spock was there. "I have something I'd like to discuss with you privately if you have the time."

McCoy raised a brow, surprised, shifted against the wall, "Sure, of course."

In Spock's quarters, McCoy looked too large somehow, taking up more space than he inhabited elsewhere. He had never actually been there, Spock realized, and seeing him move in the familiar space between bed and desk, sofa and shelf, the four walls Spock knew intimately, felt strangely invasive.

"You mind?" McCoy said, gesturing toward Spock's personal replicator, but instead of ordering another whiskey, as Spock suspected he might, he only asked for cold water and downed it quickly, then looked for something to do with his hands, finally rubbing them noisily together as he looked around the room. He inspected Spock's lyre, plucked a string.

"I'd heard you played but I thought it was just a rumor," McCoy said.

"There has not been time for it on the mission, but I am capable."

"I'd like to hear that some time." McCoy's voice was strange, careful. He started looking for a place to sit and it occurred to Spock that McCoy was nervous, a thing he had never seen in the doctor. Fear for a patient, perhaps, unease in certain flying craft, but not basic human social anxiety.

McCoy finally chose to perch on Spock's desk, unzipped his jacket in spite of his nerves, slouched a little, and managed to look more comfortable in Spock's quarters than even Spock.

"Well how can I help with this private issue, Mr. Spock?"

Spock held his hands behind his back, stood briefly in front of McCoy but McCoy was watching him too closely. Instead he paced a few steps back and forth slowly.

"It is concerning our relationship," Spock said.

"Is that right?" McCoy said.

"Certain information has come to my attention," he turned again, conscious of McCoy watching him, his every move. "Of an unexpected connection."

There was a noise, a soft sliding sound, and when Spock turned again McCoy had moved to the edge of the desk. "What sort of connection?" he asked softly, carefully.

Spock made one more turn and stopped and stood in front of McCoy who was looking up at him, jaw a little slack and more clean shaven than Spock had ever seen. His eyes searched Spock's face, uncertain, curious, slightly amused, wholly engrossed. He opened and closed his hands in his lap. He parted his lips.

"Spock?" McCoy said gently. The room was very quiet.

Spock took a breath. "A connection between the Ambassador and the Doctor McCoy of his time," he said quickly, and held up the data tape procured from his pocket. It often found its way there. He had not considered until precisely that moment that it was possibly the Ambassador's same practice of keeping it close by that had allowed it to be brought here. "The ambassador carried this with him through the wormhole and it came into my possession following his death. It details their life together, as well as referring to related and unrelated events throughout that history."

McCoy sank backward and away from Spock slowly, his face slackened and went blank, the face of a man unexpectedly stricken, unable or unwilling to strike back and so not certain what to do at all. He swallowed loudly. Then, as quickly as that it turned into a breathy laugh and he rolled his eyes.

"Oh is that all?" he said as if relieved and stood, momentarily close to Spock before he sidestepped and leaned against the wall on one hand. "I thought you were going to show me some kind of weird rash you had. Dodged that bullet, I guess."

Spock frowned. "I thought that you should know this as a preface to telling you that I believe," he took a breath, "I feel that such a connection would not be unwarranted between us, in this time."

Something flitted across McCoy's face like sadness. It was only an instant but so sincere, so at odds with the cool appearance that McCoy was trying to project that the image lingered in Spock's mind. Then McCoy smiled crookedly, bitterly, and shook his head. "What'd he do? Leave you a note from his deathbed? Marry the doctor or the universe implodes?"

Spock blinked. He had imagined many reactions from McCoy. This had not been one of those.

"The Ambassador and Doctor were bonded, in both the Human and Vulcan sense of the word for decades, perhaps longer. I do not find the humor in that."

"Hell, I've got bourbon older than that."

Spock stepped closer to him. McCoy did not move away but straightened. "Your being flippant is, I am sorry to inform you, your tell. I do not believe that you find this any less significant than I. More to the point is that your attitude implies that this is not new information to you. I wonder how it is that you knew?"

McCoy shrugged, overly casual. "The old man told me."

Spock nearly asked 'what old man?', but he knew just as quickly. "The Ambassador told you?" His incredulity sounded ridiculous even to himself and he forced the sound of it out of his voice. "Yet he did not tell me. You seem to have been closer than you have reported."

"Look, Spock," McCoy said and sighed, "I'm sorry he didn't share his deepest secrets with you while braiding your hair, but you see I don't put much stock into…" he waved his hand, as if the word he wanted was in the air between them, " fate or destiny or...whatever."

"Says a man I once saw pray to an unseen God for assistance."

"That's not…" anger flashed in McCoy's eyes then softened. He breathed in and out once and his voice went quieter. "What I mean is, a lot happened there, or then, that hasn't happened here. We're not them, not really. And I see how it weighs on you," he reached out, as if he might touch Spock but didn't, "living up to him. You don't have to. You don't owe anything to the past, or the future or whatever it is." He lowered his hands, looked Spock up and down, and said softly, "Live your own life, Spock," then stepped away, zipping up his jacket.

"You have not answered my question, Doctor," Spock said and McCoy turned to him at the door.

"I didn't know you asked one," McCoy replied, suddenly seeming so annoyed by the conversation that Spock regretted starting it.

Spock straightened to face him, feeling especially stiff in the dress uniform. "Upon further reflection, perhaps I did not."

McCoy swayed and the door snicked open. He was quiet for a long moment.

"I think we work together just fine, Commander," McCoy said, "and that's all this universe requires of us."

The door snicked closed behind him.

Chapter Text

AN INADEQUATE STATEMENT

Spock could not bring himself to listen to another message that night. He sat on his meditation mat for hours but found that he could not focus. Work was no distraction either, nor food nor even sleep when he tried it. When he reported to Command in the morning, he was an hour and a half early to meet Kirk.

"Something on your mind, Spock?"

Kirk asked him the question later in the day as they sat in a shaded alcove on the campus. Only he and Spock had been required to return to discuss their failure to negotiate peace between the Teenaxi Delegation and the Fibonan Republic, and now they had a break which they took on an outdoor walkway, their feet stretched out into the sunshine.

"Many things at once," Spock said, and for most that would have sufficed.

Kirk breathed a laugh. "Okay, it's just, you haven't really been yourself today." He then shook his head and amended his statement. "You seem distracted, Mr. Spock."

Spock took a breath, the air so different from a starship's recycled stores of oxygen and carbon dioxide, so different from the hot, spiced air of Vulcan, the dusty, sterile air of New Vulcan or even the stuffy, filtered air of Mars Prime. It smelled like the sea and rain and Earth. Their view overlooked the quad, green grass sloping down a gentle hill to the bay, and out in the near distance the Golden Gate, bright red in the clear afternoon.

"Vulcans do not speak of such matters with parties who are not involved," he said after a moment.

Kirk leaned forward, hands on his knees. The sun picked out the highlights in his hair, lit the blue in his eyes. Kirk was at home anywhere his ship was docked, but Earth suited him best. Someone walked by and he nodded to them, smiled a brief, bright smile, then waited until they were out of hearing range.

"Something to do with that data tape, maybe?" he asked and Spock remained silent. "You didn't tell Bones about it, did you?"

More silence and Kirk shook his head. "I'm guessing that didn't go so well."

"An inadequate statement," Spock said at last, watching the gulls flying circles around the towers of the bridge, their bellies white on the roll.

"Exactly how did you tell him?" Kirk asked, and when Spock did not answer he said, "Look, I don't know if you've changed your mind about…" he paused, "certain things, but if you have, and if you… well you gotta know something about Bones. The more he wants something the more he thinks he doesn't deserve it, and he's so damned stubborn he might not take it even if you-- if it was offered to him."

Someone else came up and walked past, heels clicking on the walkway. A cloud covered the sun, then moved on, and the light climbed a little higher on their pants legs.

"I will take your observations into consideration," Spock said, "however, I do not think they are relevant in this case."

Kirk rubbed his hands together thoughtfully. "I could talk to him if you want. He went on leave this morning, but--"

"No, Jim. Thank you," Spock said quickly.

They went quiet again. It was almost time to return to the debriefing but they were both reluctant to do so. A breeze came in off of the water, cool, salty. Directly overhead, in the rafters above them, house sparrows cheeped. One landed on the walkway near them and hopped about when Kirk threw it pinches of crust from the sandwich he'd eaten.

"You know," Kirk said, "most of the crew is on leave while we're here. You're done after today. I know you don't have family--" he paused, seeming to regret what he'd said or how he'd said it, then continued, "I just mean why don't you take some time? See something you didn't have time to see while you were at the Academy. Grand Canyon, Giza, Taj Mahal. Get out of your head--metaphorically. Get some distance."
___

A PLACE ON EARTH

Spock did have one place on Earth that he wanted to see. It was not difficult to comm his father for the location, although subspace messages now took three hours, thirty-six minutes to travel to and from New Vulcan, so he would not set out until the next day. Once again he tried to meditate as he waited. Once again he could not. So he ordered a mild sedative and dosed himself with a hypo to the thigh and lay back on his bed waiting for sleep. McCoy had carefully developed the sedative specific to his biology and he was thinking of the doctor's warm hands as it pulled him into an easy and restful sleep.

Just after dawn he borrowed a shuttle craft from headquarters and filed a flight plan, then flew out over the bay heading east. As he ascended and accelerated his body was reminded of the sensation of flying in a gravity well and without the inertial dampeners of spacecraft. The shuttle he piloted could not exceed even close to the quarter lightspeed of impulse, and yet it felt somehow faster, the pressure on his chest, the pop in his ears and the sway of his body on even a slight yaw. Cruising just below the clouds he took a deep breath and went a little faster.

Out below him the land spread wide, green giving way to brown or grey-white as he passed over the snow-dusted mountains, then a rocky red. He might have been flying over Vulcan, but Vulcan was gone. He'd never fly over the Forge again, or crest the peaks of Mount Seleya. Now when he looked down he saw the Grand canyon, a jagged, painful looking scar in the Earth. Kirk had told him that he should see it.

In a couple of hours the world had gone green again and he altered course south southeast once he passed over the Mississippi River, a muddy line snaking south, dividing the land. When he reached Georgia the ground was so lush and verdant it looked soft to the touch, and the rivers, reflecting the vegetation as much as the sky, sparkled like veins of jade.

He began his descent.

The Earth home of Ambassador Spock sat on a foothill of the Smoky Mountains, surrounded by trees that swayed in the displaced air of his craft as he landed. He disembarked and stretched, his body buzzing from the long flight. The house was not large but it seemed to sprawl, all horizontal lines that stretched and were bisected by uprights and stretched again, with floor to ceiling windows which he thought could probably be made opaque but were not. Simple, functional, beautiful. If not for a porch and the abundance of greenery it could have been a home on Vulcan.

A rush of cooler, drier air accompanied the soft hiss of the door as it opened to his name spoken aloud. Welcome home, Commander, a quiet chime of a voice over the door greeted him.

Welcome… home?

He stepped into a living room, clean, impersonal but for a pair of slippers by the door, lit by sunlight through the transparent walls, the forest so green and clear through the wall opposite him that there might have been no wall at all, only the silence told him otherwise. The scent of new-build artificial hardwoods lingered, mingled with incense and the outdoors. It smelled even less closed-up than the Ambassador's home on New Vulcan had, though surely it had been vacant longer.

Off of the living room a kitchen opened to the left, a counter for dining, and to the right a hall that he found lead to a bedroom, a personal bath. It all looked brand new.

"Mr. Spock?" a voice behind him in the hallway called, a small, high voice, and when he turned the person was indeed a child.

"Oh," she said, when she saw his face. "I thought you were, I mean, I know he died, just." She shrugged, satisfied that this was explanation enough. She was approximately nine or ten years old, and her wavy brown hair framed a round face. When he did not respond she simply stepped forward, smiled, and bowed.

"Hello," she said, and it was a moment before he realized that she had said it in Vulcan.

"Hello," he said likewise, and bowed in return. "May I ask your name?"

"My name is Jo--"

"Joanna," someone called from another room and Spock immediately recognized the voice.

McCoy appeared from around the hall corner though Spock had not heard a door open. "I think there's someone here, there's a shuttle--" McCoy all but took a step backward he seemed so surprised to see Spock. Something in Spock, too, dropped heavily in the pit of his stomach. "What are you," McCoy said, then paused, shook his head. He wore civilian clothes, a tee shirt, denim pants, but his feet were bare and so were Joanna's. Spock felt self-conscious of his own boots. "Of course you're here. We're the ones who shouldn't be." He moved closer to the child, put a hand on her shoulder. "Spock, this is my daughter, Joanna."

"Spock?" Joanna said, "Like the Ambassador?"

"Standard, please, Jo," McCoy said, in a tone softer than Spock was accustomed to from hearing from him. "I told you it isn't polite when people don't understand."

"He understands me," she said in Standard.

McCoy ignored her and went on. "We're sorry, she--he was a friend to her, and it was still under construction when we left for the mission, so I've only seen it in holos. Anyway, we didn't mean to intrude."

"There is no intrusion," Spock said. "I myself am an intruder."

McCoy's brow furrowed with confusion but he said nothing.

"Are there a lot of Vulcans named Spock?" Joanna asked.

"A few," Spock said.

"So it's a coincidence?"

Spock looked at McCoy for guidance and McCoy just shrugged in a way that seemed to say 'your call'.

"I am a… relative of the Ambassador's," Spock said.

"Oh." Joanna looked disappointed. "I wondered if you might have been his temporal twin. He said he had one and that he was younger."

Spock raised a brow. McCoy didn't look surprised. "That is, in fact, how I am related to the ambassador."

She smiled, said, "Cool," and turned and left them standing there. McCoy shifted a little where he stood, but didn't walk away.

"He gave her voice access so she comes here and reads or plays sometimes," he explained, still looking apologetic and Spock could not just then reconcile this McCoy and the agitated one who had left his quarters two nights before. "I'll keep her out of your hair and you can change the permissions."

"Why would I do that?" Spock asked. "It is not my home."

Another confused expression and McCoy said, "You might want to look into that," then followed Joanna out onto the shaded porch. Spock considered staying where he was, letting them leave as abruptly as they had appeared, but McCoy lingered in the open door and Spock joined him.

Outside, Joanna held a watering can and watered the plant boxes that lined the porch railing, succulents of many varieties, colorful and fleshy, long and spindly, spiny cacti and furry cacti.

"I've been taking care of them for him," Joanna offered. "They only need a little water once a week, but you should take them in when it gets cold. The kitchen wall faces east and gets excellent morning sun."

"Thank you for the advice," Spock said.

"Believe it or not," McCoy said, sounding more like his usual self, "Spock here's a pretty smart guy. Almost as smart as your old man."

She squinted hard at her father, looking much like him. Instead of arguing she asked, "Are we still going trail riding?"

McCoy consulted the watch on his wrist. Spock had never seen him wear one. "Yeah, we gotta get your riding boots, though, and let grandma know we're headed out." To Spock he said. "We should get going," and smiled a strained, unfamiliar smile, as if Spock were a stranger.

"It was nice to meet you, Twin Spock," Joanna called, pulling on her shoes then skipping down the steps.

"Don't call him that!" McCoy said.

"Sorry," she called back.

"Hey, hold your horses!" he shouted as she had already reached a trail in the treeline.

"Do you require transportation?" Spock asked. He did not see a surface vehicle.

"Uh, not really," McCoy said, taking one then two steps off of the porch, still barefoot, carrying his shoes, "we're just over the hill." Then he was away too, running to catch up and Spock could just hear him say to Joanna, "You see what I did there? Hold your horses? Because we're going trail riding?" He could also hear her answering groan.

The house was quiet when he stepped back inside and closed the door, more silent than before. He pulled off his boots and, after only a moment's hesitation, put on the slippers. A glass of water, a meal from the replicator, and he began a tentative search of the home, then a more thorough one. There were not many possessions, items of use like clothing, dishes, toiletries mostly. He found a document file on the computer that included the deed to the home and land and had his name on every page. Of course it did, his name and the Ambassador's name were the same, but it had his alien number on it as well, a label he had never liked but had been a necessity for interplanetary working and living.

The home was his.

In the bedroom he sat on the edge of the bed, seeing the room as the Ambassador might have seen it. He opened the bedside table drawer but there was nothing there but a box of tissues and a thin, silver hair. Over the bed there was a framed drawing of Mt. Seleya, not especially skilled but beautiful in its sincerity. The artist had been there, had seen it, had loved it. Spock wondered if the Ambassador had drawn it, though he had little skill for art himself, but then the Ambassador had had a very long time to learn very many more things than he had.

He fetched his duffel from the shuttle and put his clothes away, fitted them beside the Ambassador's, black next to black and gold. When he left the Enterprise that morning he had not decided if he would or even could stay in the Ambassador's home, and now it was even less clear if he should, deed or no deed. But he would stay at least one night in the house that he had been given.

The sunset that evening was red as it sank behind the tops of the pines, purple at the outside and dusty pink that faded to grey. He watched it on the porch where the Ambassador might have done the same, standing where the Ambassador might have stood for the best view, where he and another McCoy might have watched it in another time, sitting in rocking chairs, drinking cold after-dinner drinks even as the early fall evening air began to chill and reaching out to one another across the little space between their chairs.

The stars were just beginning to appear when he heard a rustling out in the trees, then a pale shape with McCoy's voice floated up into the yard.

"Hey," it said simply and came into the circle of the porch light.

"Hello."

"Sorry to bother you again."

Spock did not especially like these apologies. "You do not bother me, Doctor."

McCoy took the few steps up to the porch and leaned on the rail, crossed his arms, his eyes dark shadows under the light. "Yeah, well it's weird in the real world isn't it? On the ship, we know when each other's shifts are, when we're on duty, and we just show up, beg or borrow but down here…" He shrugged.

"When you said you had helped the Ambassador find a home near your own, I did not realize it was next door. Please understand that I did not--"

McCoy waved at the air, frowning, "That's not--I mean, I know you didn't know. I came because Jo's invited you to dinner. My mom's invited you, too, once I told her a shipmate was next door. But, if you've got something else going on…" he trailed off.

"I confess I am available," Spock said carefully, "however, if you are not comfortable with me attending, please feel free to make my excuses to your family."

McCoy rolled his eyes, an action so familiar to Spock it was actually comforting. "Oh, can it Spock. How long have we been friends? How many times have I saved your life? And probably you saved mine at least once." He smirked. "This doesn't have to be weird. We've got a mission to finish together if they let us. Jim'll kill us if we make it any weirder." He paused, laughed, watching Spock and Spock smiled, not because he found it funny, but because McCoy wanted him to. "Good. Now come and eat some curry." He turned and headed down the steps, out into the darkness of the yard beyond the porchlight.

"You comin'?" He called back, when Spock did not immediately follow.

They moved down the trail, through forest that surrounded the house, drooping pines and wild muscadine grapevines heavy with fruit that grazed their shoulders, their legs, the moon just rising over the trees. McCoy stepped certainly on a well-worn path out ahead, a darker shape against the sky when they climbed up the hill, his white shirt ghostly in the dim on the way down, until the lights of a two-story wood frame home appeared around a break in the trees. The land opened up under the moonlight, flat and clear, then sloped down and up again into the rolling black of the nighttime mountains. They followed an unpaved road that ran pale in the darkness toward the house, and curved out of sight in the other direction when Spock looked behind them.

"It's actually my folks' place," McCoy explained when they stepped up onto another, much older porch, the light yellow and welcoming, "well, my mom's place. Been here for centuries. Rebuilt a few times but the same plot of land. "

A screen door creaked open to a large, dimly-lit living room, opposite in every way from the Ambassador's. Well-used furniture made islands on a braided rug, darker in the walking paths. Photographs hung neatly in frames on every wall and table, some yellow and faded, some holos, bright blue in the yellow lamplight. Paper books filled several shelves, and here and there a child's drawing or a stack of papers or a potted plant trembled in the breeze of a ceiling fan.

They added their shoes to the pile by the door and McCoy called out to someone in another room. The air was warm and close farther in and smelled of curry and old timber, and the sound of cooking and of a small voice chattering filled the air.

In the bright kitchen Joanna sat a table with one skinny leg pulled up against her chest.

"Hello," she said in Vulcan, this time without bowing or even standing.

"Hello again" he said to her in Standard, and at the sound of it a woman with short, silver hair and familiar eyes turned from a stove and smiled.

"Mom, this is Commander Spock," McCoy said, "First officer, Science officer, technically also my superior officer but only very technically. Spock, this is mom."

The woman shook her head at McCoy, wiped her hands on an apron, shaking the silver earrings that dangled from her ears. "Susie is fine, or Susan if you prefer." She did not offer her hand but Spock did. He knew what most humans thought of touching Vulcans, but she did not hesitate, and her hands were as warm as her son's.

Over dinner he learned that Susie was a software engineer.

"Replicators," Susie said, her voice strong and clear, "particularly anything organic. Food is my specialty." She smiled with a wink like McCoy teasing Spock in the lab, and ate a spoonful of curried lentils.

"If you've actually enjoyed anything from a food replicator in the last forty years," McCoy added, "chances are mom coded it."

Susie shrugged, accepting the compliment easily.

"I admit I had never considered it, but it must be a kind of art, perfecting the formula," Spock said.

In Vulcan culture, dining was not a time for socializing. It was for nourishment alone. But Spock had been raised by a human mother, and for all the ways that she conformed to life on Vulcan, the practice of conversing over meals was one human peculiarity that persisted in their home, and it had served him well in the fleet.

"Human taste buds, and Vulcan as well," Susie said, "are more discerning than you'd think. I did a lot of work refining the Vulcan programs to work with the Starfleet replicators. Mr. Spock, I mean, the Ambassador, he introduced me to a few new dishes, and was always a willing guinea pig."

"I tried some," Joanna added, "but they were--" she made a face of disgust.

"Much of Vulcan cuisine is an acquired taste," Spock said.

"She's a terrible test subject," Susie said. "So was Leonard as a kid," to which McCoy rolled his eyes fondly. "His father, though… when we were first married, all of our meals were replicated. I think he may have even preferred it."

The conversation quieted, McCoy only had eyes for his curry, and after a moment so did Susie, her smile fading.

"You excel in non-replicated cuisine also," Spock said, to say something, and Susie looked up again.

The conversation continued, filling the warm room with noise to compete with the sweet aroma of peaches cooling on the stove. Joanna talked about her previous year of school and a Rigellian classmate who was 'such a knowitall'. McCoy and Spock were questioned about their travels, but McCoy was never very forthcoming, and Spock tried to follow his lead. If McCoy wished to keep that part of his life separate from this, that was his prerogative.

When the table was cleared and coffee was brewing, Susie said to Spock, "You do remind me of him. I'm sorry, I'm not sure if…well I always thought he was exaggerating, black holes and temporal twins."

"It was still only a theory when the ambassador traveled through to our time," Spock said to reassure her. "Your doubt is understandable.

"But you're... I don't know," she hesitated, "maybe it's an inappropriate question, but you're actually him?"

"I am."

McCoy made a sound like clearing his throat, shuffled his feet.

"A version of him," Spock corrected.

Joanna said something in Vulcan and Spock turned to her.

"Though it is a pleasure to hear it spoken and pronounced so well," he said, "I agree with your father that it is impolite to speak a language that not everyone in the conversation can understand."

He felt McCoy watching him. After a moment of kicking at something under the table, Joanna spoke up again.

"I said that I always believed him," she said.

"I am certain he appreciated that," Spock said.

McCoy stood. "Who wants pie?"

After dessert and coffee, Spock said goodnight to Susie and Joanna and followed McCoy out to the porch and McCoy sat in a rocking chair, motioned for Spock to do the same. McCoy put his bare feet up on the porch rail. Spock left his booted feet firmly on the porch floor.

The night was utterly black beyond the porch light, only the brightest stars and the nearest foliage could be seen, some of them must have been flowering plants, Spock could smell them, cloyingly sweet. Crickets sang close by, far off, and invisible. McCoy stuffed his hands into his jacket pockets. The night air was chilly.

"So you think they'll give us another mission?" McCoy asked, and Spock wondered if it was really something he wanted to know, or something he had said to chase away the quiet.

"I do not know any more than you," Spock said, "but I think it is likely that the crew may be split apart, sent on separate missions, or some of us may be promoted out of the Enterprise."

McCoy exhaled sharply, not quite a laugh, watching the darkness beyond his pale feet. "They've got to get Jim another command. Can you imagine him stuck down here? He'd go crazy. He'd have to start cave diving or base jumping to stay sane."

"Rock climbing, perhaps."

"God, he would," McCoy said, this time with a real laugh.

"What about you, Doctor?" Spock asked, because it was something he wanted to know. "What will you do if the mission is terminated?"

McCoy pushed against the rail, one big rock backward then forward, considering, then relaxed again, face ruddy in the yellow porch light, hazel eyes black when he glanced at Spock.

"When I joined, Jo was only two, and I was just trying to get as far away as I could, now I've got a ten year old who barely knows me."

"Some officers are being permitted to bring family on missions," Spock suggested.

"You mean take her up there?" McCoy replied with an indignant brow and shook his head. "I'm afraid she'd like it too much. She's got a little too much Jim Kirk in her for my taste. Maybe… if they split us up, I'll retire my commission, try to start a family practice down here. Hell, maybe even if they don't split us up."

Spock swallowed, his throat felt thick. "You feel that would present a sufficient challenge to you? After all that you've seen?"

"Better bored than dead. I don't want her to know what it's like…" he did not clarify, but Spock thought he understood.

"May I ask, when did your father die?"

McCoy blinked and his face went blank, stony. "About eight years ago," he said.

"I assume it is not coincidental that it was the near the same time that you joined Starfleet?" Spock asked.

"And got a divorce. It was a busy year."

Spock nodded, let the crickets have their say, and after a moment he said softly, "The day of the Ambassador's funeral, you said that you understood grief, you offered to talk to me on the subject. It did not then occur to me that you needed the same."

"Well, you didn't know I knew him, really."

"I did not know many things. I might have understood, had I been told."

McCoy shrugged. "It took us time, to get to where we are. By then I thought it wasn't very important."

"I grieve with thee," Spock said, instead of the many things he might have said and McCoy nodded, still watching the dark night.

"Anyway," McCoy said after a moment, "you were the one who was thinking of retiring. That still on the table?"

"It is… not an impossibility."

The screen door creaked and slammed and Jo came out, wordlessly clambered up onto the railing opposite them, and sat there swinging her skinny, bare legs.

"It's too cold for you out here in those shorts," McCoy said in a tone Spock knew well as being for stubborn ensigns and in spite of his own bare feet.

Joanna shrugged, and McCoy sighed but didn't push the issue.

She had a PADD in her hand and it lit up her face from below as she pushed something around the screen silently, her brown hair golden in the wan porch light.

"What's the Vulcan word for a knowitall?" she asked. Spock told her the closest approximation, explained its lack of nuance, and she nodded without ever looking up from her PADD.

After another moment she slid down from the railing and crawled into her father's lap, tucking her legs beneath her and trying to cover her knees with McCoy's coat, still moving her finger over the screen now and then.

"I told you you'd get cold," McCoy said, so softly and fondly, smiling and holding her close, that Spock looked away.

Eventually Spock stood and McCoy asked if Spock had everything that he needed, toiletries, linens, and Spock assured him that the home was well stocked, and he left the two of them rocking in the yellow light to the music of crickets and the old chair creaking under their collective weight.

Spock walked back to the Ambassador's home under the light of a waxing gibbous moon, the stars full and clear out on the path, the sky a milky black. The house was as empty as he had left it, emptier now, perhaps, and in the silence and stillness of its rooms he cleaned himself and changed his clothing and sat again on the Ambassador's bed without the lights on, only the glow of the moon through the transparent wall, Mt. Seleya a pale shape over his head when he lay back. He took the Ambassador's PADD from where he'd left it in the bedside table, disturbing the short, silver hair still nestled into one of the corners of the drawer, and opened the next audio file. After a minute, he played the same file again, then once more, then he put it away, stood and moved to the Ambassador's meditation mat. He took a breath, centered himself physically, emotionally, and fell easily, swiftly, into a restful meditation.
___

A LATE MESSAGE

I was just settling into bed and looked over and there was that rock you call a pillow, but not you. It used to be easy, I mean, relatively easy. Maybe now that Jim's gone… well. I don't know why but now I find that when you're off-world I feel like some part of me's out there with you. Maybe it is. I guess I've never asked what the katra transference means for us in the long run, maybe nothing. If I was a poet and not a doctor, I'd say it was my heart you've got, tucked into your hip pocket, but it's beating in my chest so I know it's not that. But you've got something, darlin', and I miss it. I think I might try sleeping on that rock tonight… or maybe not. I don't deserve the punishment. Not today anyway.

I guess I'm getting older than I realized. I can't remember why I comm'ed you. But there'd be something wrong if I needed a reason, wouldn't there? Even you couldn't fault that logic. Good night, Spock.
___

A MOUNTAIN TOWN

Spock considered going home in the morning but the Enterprise, he realized, the only home that he had known for the past three years, the only home, perhaps, that he now had, might not be his home for much longer. The Ambassador's house, the town, the planet was not his home, but it had been for the Ambassador, in more than one reality.

He comm'ed Kirk via text to tell him that he would be away for a few more days.

You're on leave, Spock, you don't have to report to me, Kirk replied after a few minutes, then, Hope you're getting to relax???

Spock did not respond. He dressed in slacks and a tunic and boots, packed a bag with a canteen of water, a tricorder, his identification, and his PADD which was already loaded with a route to the town.

The morning was clear and blue and warmer than the night before when he stepped out into it, though the air was humid, cool when a breeze moved through it. He headed toward the same trail where he had followed McCoy last night, past his shuttle, into the trees where he could now see small stones lining the edge of the path, and here and there forks in the trail and small wooden stakes in the ground which read "Lake" or "Old Mill" or "The Harrisson's". At the foot of the hill he found the road and just to the north sat Susie's white wood-frame house, even more cheerful in the daylight.

He turned south toward town, the dry reddish dirt of the unpaved road immediately discoloring his boots and pants legs. He bent and took up a handful of soil. Iron oxides, manganese dioxide, aluminum, silica, he guessed, then scanned it with his tricorder. He was correct, with the exception of some other trace elements. It was not unlike Vulcan soil in makeup, though finer, richer. He let it fall and continued walking, stopping now and then to examine a flower, a grass, a beetle. None were new to him, but it made the walk, his very presence, feel purposeful. He might have been conducting a survey on any Minshara planet.

He had been walking this way for more than half an hour when the first vehicle came down the road, riding along a steady cloud of dust displaced by its anti-gravity field. He moved to the edge of the road to let them pass.

"You need a ride?" a familiar voice asked when the vehicle slowed beside him, and he found Joanna's face grinning in the window.

"Where you headed?" McCoy asked from the driver's seat, leaning over to better see Spock.

"I thought that I would explore the city," Spock said.

"Hop in," McCoy said. "It's at least another hour on foot."

"We're going to the market and then hiking," Joanna said.

"Thank you, however, I do not mind the walk."

Joanna frowned, clearly unsatisfied with his response, and said something to him in Vulcan.

"You have studied Surak," Spock said and Joanna shrugged, then unbuckled her seatbelt and climbed into the back seat.

"What's happening?" McCoy asked as Spock got in. "What'd you say to him?" he asked Joanna over the seat.

"Assistance is a gift given," Spock said when he sat in the passenger seat and buckled his seatbelt, "which should not be rejected except where it is a hindrance to all."

McCoy looked impressed. "She said that?"

"Surak said that," Spock corrected.

McCoy nodded and to Jo in the rearview he said, "You'll have to teach me that, kid."

They rode with the windows down and the noise of the wind precluded most conversation but Joanna shouted over it now and then to point out someone's house, or a landmark which she evidently felt that Spock should know about. Soon the dirt road transitioned to pavement and the trees grew sparser. Spock didn't realize that they had reached the city until Joanna said, "That's where we buy our groceries," pointing to a long, one-story building simply labeled 'FOODLAND'.

"This is the town?" Spock asked.

"This is it," McCoy said, amused.

The town proper, Spock knew from previous research, had not changed much since before the wars of the 21st century, being neither near a port nor a major city which would have been targeted. But while their poverty and remoteness may have saved them from destruction, the collapse of the tourism industry, their main source of income, had still left its mark in the way of slow growth even after peace. While Spock knew this, and although McCoy had praised it in his messages to the Ambassador for being of a simpler time, Spock was unprepared for the anachronism that was modern Blairsville.

There were no skyscrapers, no buildings, in fact, taller than the two-story (plus clock tower) courthouse at the center of town, around which the main thoroughfare circled. A few anti-grav vehicles like McCoy's could be seen making that circuit, but equally as many still trundled on old, rubber tires that touched the road. Various squat buildings, including a diner, a couple of coffee houses, law and tax offices, a salon, an inexplicably large funeral home, and all the other typical businesses that comprised almost any town, spread lazily around it, all visible, Spock assumed, from the lawn of the courthouse. The town itself seemed aware of and even proud of its quaintness, the words "Old Fashioned" advertising everything from candy to photographs to clothing on printed signs sat squarely in doors or windows. Always, on the horizon, there could be seen the green and undulating line of the mountains.

McCoy stopped in a parking lot that was crowded with people milling around tables covered in vegetables, jams, wooden sculptures, cakes or pies wrapped in clear bioplastic. Spock thought that he should leave McCoy and Joanna to their errands but when he got out of the vehicle Joanna took him by the hand.

"They do this every Saturday except in the winter," she said. "C'mon, I'll show you the best tables."

Spock looked to McCoy and McCoy shrugged. It was apparently their new form of communication.

The best tables, according to Joanna, were any which offered either pastries, candies (of which she insisted that Spock sample her favorite--lemon drops), or polished stones. Spock asked about the latter and learned that she had a particular interest in geology. He took out his tricorder and showed her how to scan the stones to determine their age and mineral composition as McCoy stood nearby, watching over her shoulder.

"I did not intend to intrude--" Spock began to say to him as Joanna was discussing something with the vendor.

McCoy again shrugged away the comment, though he sounded more genuine than he looked, arms crossed in that same old leather jacket though he must have been warm in it. He sucked on a lemon drop.

"She can be hard to say no to," he said.

"I will make my excuses as soon as she has shown me what she will."

This time McCoy's smile was real amusement. "You can try."

As McCoy predicted, when Joanna had shown him through the best tables, she then showed him the next best, fruits and jams (which could also be sampled) and wood carvings of local birds, and then the vegetable tables where McCoy purchased things from a list that Spock assumed was by his mother's request. She next insisted on his coming with them for lunch. When Spock said that he could not, it was McCoy who argued.

"C'mon," he said, raising his hand to take in the whole of the town, "what else are you gonna do?"

They ate in a diner that smelled of bitter coffee and toasted bread and where the waitress, a thin, smiling woman with a name tag that labeled her 'Aletta', knew both McCoy and Joanna, as well as the Ambassador. She looked Spock over with prolonged scrutiny, though from the corner of her eye, likely judging his ears and hair and coloring.

"Are you related to Mr. Spock?" she asked after taking their order.

"He's--" Joanna began to say but McCoy spoke over her.

"He's family, Al," McCoy said, "just in from New Vulcan and I promised him a slice of your pecan pie. How about it?" He smiled sweetly at her, his accent thick and his hair disheveled from driving, two days' worth of stubble on his jaw and the faintest beginning of a tan, utterly unselfconscious. She smiled back, cheeks flushing. She was attracted to him, Spock could easily tell and probably so could McCoy.

She gave Spock a less bright smile and went away.

"Why couldn't I tell her?" Joanna asked quietly, kicking the table as she had the night before.

"Because it's his business," McCoy said, "now go play us a song."

"Family?" Spock asked after Joanna had scuffed her way lazily over to jukebox.

"Sure, why not?" McCoy said casually, watching something out the window instead of Spock. Outside, across the street at the courthouse a group of people were raising a banner advertising the 294th Annual Sorghum Festival.

"She is an extraordinary child," Spock said instead of listing the reasons why he might not be considered family, "but then I do not have much experience with human children."

McCoy looked over his shoulder at Joanna as she was slowly swiping through the musical choices. "No, you're right. She's something else. I guess I'm biased, though."

"I can understand why you would find it difficult to leave Earth again."

"Well, even when I'm here she's with her mom full time," he turned back to Spock, picked at something on the table with a thumbnail. "I get to see her, but..."

"All the more reason why I should not be infringing upon your time with her," Spock said, and found, to his surprise, that he regretted that it was true.

McCoy shifted in his seat, leaned forward over the table, and when he spoke, quietly, Spock could smell the lemon candy still on his breath. He had much the same sweet look, though without the smile, that he had given the waitress, and Spock wondered if he was about to be manipulated in the same way.

"Look," McCoy said, "the Ambassador was a big part of her life for a few years. She stays with my mom during summer break and he came back here every summer...I'm sure you can guess why... what she was to him…" It was the first time McCoy had made a reference to the Ambassador and the other Doctor's relationship since that evening on the Enterprise. He looked away when he said it. Spock did know. Like a daughter, albeit younger than the Ambassador had ever known her, and he already knowing something of her future, or what her future could be, and wanting to safeguard it.

"Until this year, of course," McCoy continued. "Now you're here and… I know you're not him--" a soft, bitter laugh, none of the sweet manipulation, "hell, I know better than anyone, but if it makes her happy, and if you're okay with it…." He spread his hands as if offering or accepting something from Spock. A song began to play.

Joanna returned and McCoy slid to make room for her in the booth, stretched an arm over the seat back behind her.

"My favorite," McCoy said.

"Me or the song?" Joanna asked, but smiling as if she already knew the answer, like this was a script she knew well.

"Both," McCoy said, and pulled her to him. After a moment Aletta came and sat their lunches in front of them, and in front of Spock she also placed a slice of pie which, once she had left, McCoy reached over and took and ate with his coffee.

Spock rode with them out of town and higher into the mountains, to a trailhead and a small parking lot edged with rotting timbers, and at the edge of it one could see down over the green, tree-covered mountains. There was a mist over them, the "smoke" that gave them their name, and the air up there was even more humid and cool. The trail was covered in pine needles and plant matter, the ground dark and damp and the soil smelled of decomposition.

There were three trails, color coded and marked along the way, each a different skill level or length, and they followed the longest (though not the most difficult) trail at Joanna's insistence that she would not get tired. The trail proved to be more difficult where the rain had washed out wide places and they had to ford through dense brush or over downed tree limbs, or help each other past the washouts, hand in hand, or one at a time, sometimes handing Joanna from one to the other. All the time Joanna asked him about the Ambassador, or how he compared to him. Did he play the Lyre? Did he paint too? Was he married? (She knew only that he had been, not to whom.) Was his mother human, too? Did he miss her? There McCoy interrupted and suggested that they look for more stones for her collection. Whether or not she knew that she was being redirected, she did so happily.

Near the end of the trail Joanna did tire and McCoy carried her on his back, her long skinny arms around his neck, legs dangling at his sides, and they sang a song together that Spock did not know.

In the late afternoon they returned to Susie's under growing cloud cover, the house seeming whiter and brighter in the grey of it, and there in the yard was a black and red shuttle that had not been there before.

"Why's mom here?" Joanna asked, and was out of the vehicle as soon as it came to a stop.

McCoy sighed deeply, cut the engine and sat in the driver's seat in the sudden quiet with his hands slack in his lap.

"Perhaps I should not stay for dinner as Joanna requested," Spock said.

"Yeah," McCoy said, "maybe not."

Spock took the trail back through the woods to the occasional sound of rumbling thunder, and he wasn't in the house long before he heard the first raindrops hit the roof.

Later, the rain cleared and the moon rose and Spock heard another sound, a thump on the porch.

"Hope you don't mind," McCoy said when Spock found him there, leaning back in a chair that was not meant to lean. His pants legs were damp and his hair was wet. "Mom's porch is pretty crowded."

Spock's only reply was to retrieve a coat which he put on himself, a towel for McCoy, and then sat in a chair next to him, crossed his feet at the ankles and was quiet.

"Jocelyn," McCoy began to say, "that's my ex-wife, said she wanted to surprise Joanna, came for dinner. But I know she just wanted to get a look at me. She thinks this has all been a midlife crisis, joining the fleet, going to space. Hell, maybe it was."

"I understand that you did not part amicably," Spock said, "but are you still on hostile terms?"

"Not hostile exactly. We get along for the kid. Back then Jo didn't understand, now she watches every move we make. Doesn't mean I have to stand around and be judged by her, though... the ex, not the kid."

The rain had stopped but it still dripped down from trees and porch roof, thudding rhythmically against the foliage, the porch steps.

"I imagine it is difficult," Spock said, "co-parenting under discord, particularly across a galaxy."

McCoy breathed a bitter laugh. "Co-parenting is a generous word. I'm more of a bystander. Although we talked tonight about what might happen if I don't get another mission."

"You will have more time with Joanna? If you retire your commission?"

"Maybe," McCoy said, scratched at the beginning of a beard. "She's getting remarried, Jocelyn. I hope he's got something I didn't have. She's a good mother, I'll never say otherwise. But we were terrible for each other."

"And yet you did not always think so or you would not have married."

"Yeah, that's how hindsight works." McCoy said, then fixed Spock with a dark stare and a raised brow, "I don't guess a Vulcan would understand anything as illogical as basing a relationship solely on sexual compatibility?"

"I think that depends on the Vulcan," Spock said.

McCoy laughed, this time less bitterly, rocked back in his chair, nearly too far, caught himself, but continued to lean, boots, not Starfleet issue but worn and scuffed, resting on the rail.

"It wasn't really just that," he said at last, seeming far away. "As long as there was no outside stress, when we were alone and everything was good, it was… good. We lived on the Gulf for the first few years. We'd spend whole days at the beach, just us, not worried about classes or work, and we would go swimming in the ocean, float together on the waves, holding each other's hands and feet, like a human raft, and I thought it couldn't get any better. I thought, this is it, this is what marriage should be, holding each other up, keeping each other in place." He paused, swallowed loudly. "Then my dad got sick, and then Jo came, and I…"

McCoy did not say anything else for a while. He sat leaning and watching the bugs that flew around the porch light, and Spock watched him, wondering at the strange circumstances that had led the two of them to this moment and place and time.

McCoy was speaking again but Spock had not heard the first of it even though he had been staring.

"I guess that happens a lot," McCoy was saying, "you being the only Vulcan in the room."

When Spock replied only with a quizzical brow McCoy clarified. "In the diner, in town."

"Frequently," Spock said, once he understood. "I have grown accustomed to it, particularly since...."

"Since that goddamned Romulan."

"Yes."

"Must get lonely sometimes."

He might have argued to anyone else that Vulcans did not experience such an emotion but to McCoy he said, "Loneliness may have many causes and take many forms."

McCoy shook his head. "If that's a jab at me you just keep jabbing."

"I have no desire to jab you, Doctor. Merely observing, as you are, that certain circumstances are conducive to a feeling of isolation. If you find that such circumstances apply to you, then that is, as the saying goes, your business."

"Well it applies to all of us, doesn't it?" McCoy said, rocking a little in his chair thoughtfully, "when we're out there," he nodded out past his boots toward the dark sky. "Married to the work, to the fleet, or the ship itself if you're Scotty. I've certainly heard enough of it, seen it wear on people. Some more than others."

"Work is not a companion, neither is a ship, though many do treat them as such."

"Says the man who doesn't take shore leave."

Spock raised a brow. "Am I not now, Doctor?"

McCoy shrugged. Somewhere close by an owl called. Silence, and then another call farther away. It might have been the same owl or two different ones, Spock did not know.

"Anyway," McCoy said, watching the darkness rather than looking at Spock, "it must be easy for a Vulcan to find a companion. You've got a long life ahead of you to work at it, and how picky could you all be anyway? You find the nearest, most logical being, preferably with pointed ears, I guess."

Spock wondered why McCoy would make such a remark, to Spock of all people, after their conversation on the Enterprise, even if he was not serious, as McCoy often was not. It felt, in fact, like he was trying to take up the conversation again, only applying it theoretically rather than personally.

"Are you being intentionally obtuse, Doctor?" Spock asked. "Consider that I might say the same of you, that the first available and attractive human should be a suitable match when one is looking for a partner. But would you agree with me? If heritage and physical attraction was the only deciding factors humans would not have invented divorce, and you should not have had cause to divorce your own wife, although I admit that I am not aware of her relative attractiveness so I cannot remark on it. At any rate, what is suitable is what I choose, Vulcan or otherwise."

McCoy had turned to him and was watching him, eyes dark in the dim light. Another gust came through the trees and the porch, to scatter leaves and shake the succulents in their pots, and McCoy tilted his head down to shelter from it. Then all grew quiet and they both watched the dark sky once more.

"You still got some of those lemon drops?" McCoy asked after a while. "I know you didn't eat them."

Spock pulled two out of his pocket. McCoy took them both and popped them into his mouth with a swift backward tilt of his head, nearly lost his balance again, but corrected, and Spock could hear the hard candy clacking against his teeth now and then, over the sound of the crickets, and the rain, and smell the citrus sweetness of it.

Chapter Text

THAT FEELING

Well, my darlin', we are great-grandfathers once again. All are well though mom and dad are plum give out. David's beside himself with wonder. I remember that feeling. Jo's still en route from the Eminiar starbase so I'm glad I was here. Being at warp again after so long was like seeing an old friend. Next time I tell you I'm well enough to travel, maybe you'll believe me! I got all the holos I dared without getting too much in the way. And I didn't once tell those doctors how to do their job. Not unless they asked!

Strange being in the old house again, you'd hardly recognize it, all the added rooms and all of them filled with toys that make far too much noise. A lot of good memories but I'll be glad to be back on Vulcan with you. What a difference ninety years makes, huh babe? What I'd give for ninety more.
___

A FALL

Joanna was on the back deck in the morning. It seemed that here he was to be beset with McCoys of one kind or another. He saw her there when he went into the kitchen, a pink shape standing at the foggy glass of the back door. When he opened it the air that rushed in was chilly and damp. It had rained again overnight and the trees sat heavy and sodden, their leaves dripping. Joanna's shoulders were wet in dark patches and her misted hair curled wildly around her face, so much her father's daughter.

"Not to sound too much like your father," Spock said when he let her in and she shivered, "but I believe you are not suitably dressed for the weather."

He sat her at the counter with a cup of hot cocoa and fetched her a pair of the Ambassador's slippers and a sweater from his own duffel. It was either that or one of his robes, and he was already wearing the only one he had brought. The sweater hung large over her shoulders, the stool where she sat, and she pushed the sleeves up on her arms to hold her mug, fingered the golden starfleet insignia on the chest.

"My dad has one just like this. He never wears it, though," she said in Vulcan.

"Does your father know you are here?" Spock asked in the same language, sitting opposite her with his own mug of hot tea.

She shrugged. "He's probably still asleep. Grandma went to town and mom left last night. I'm okay by myself."

"I have no doubt," Spock said, "however, I would like to inform your father."

She shrugged again, sipped her cocoa. It gave her a foamy mustache which she wiped away with a sweater sleeve.

Spock reached for his comm and connected to McCoy's. He did not answer. "Joanna is with me," he said and the message appeared as text and he sent it off.

Joanna smiled at him as if to say 'see, I told you,' but instead she said, "You know I'm usually in school right now. I only visit grandma in the summers, but with dad here, and since I haven't seen him in so long in person. Mom said it was okay for a week."

"You are not worried about falling behind on your curriculum?"

She shrugged again. "I'm smart," she said. "And I'm still doing my work here, I won't be behind. Anyway, I'm already way ahead of everyone in some things."

"Like xenolinguistics?"

She smirked. "Just Vulcan. But yes. Only the Vulcan kids are better than me."

"How many Vulcan children are in your school?"

"In my class, only two. T'saan is a friend. She helps me practice since Mr. Spock has been gone."

"That explains some of the informal speech," he said and she frowned, asked what he meant. He pointed out that she had been using phrases which mimicked the use of contractions in standard, and other modifiers which had not existed in the Vulcan language until after prolonged exposure to Terrans.

"Is that wrong?"

"No. Language evolves like everything. It is a tool of communication, and any changes which allow for greater understanding are desirable, within reason."

"But if you change it, then it becomes something else."

"Does it? Or does it become a different version of itself? You will grow taller, older, your hair will change, your voice, yet you will still be Joanna McCoy.

She nodded, her face grave. "You sound a lot like him."

"The Ambassador?" Spock asked.

"No, my dad," she rolled her eyes, "he's always trying to talk to me about my body changing or who I'm going to be, like I've got to decide tomorrow."

"I am certain that it is only in an effort to connect with you in ways that he understands."

"You mean biology and career goals?"

"Perhaps."

"He could talk about the mission but he doesn't like to. I ask him all the time what he's been doing. He just says, 'we were out on Rigel' or wherever he's been, but never much about why he's there. And when he's here we do the same old tourist stuff all of the time, the same things we've done since I was a kid."

"Are you not still a kid?"

She held up both hands, floppy in the oversized sleeves, as if the answer was obvious. Outside, it began to rain again.

"Perhaps I misunderstand the application of the word," he conceded. "But it is not uncommon for service members to separate their professional lives from their private. He may be more interested to hear about your life than sharing his own."

"My life is boring," she said, and took a deep swig of her cocoa.

"And you imagine that three years in deep space is full of drama and adventure?"

She shrugged. "I guess."

"What if I told you that your father and I spent much of the first year in the ship's lab, researching microorganisms found on a silicon-based planet?"

"Well that sounds interesting."

"It was fascinating. But as far as action goes, we were bent over microscopic scanners or writing and revising papers for six to eight hours per day."

She made a face. "Sounds like my science class."

"Precisely. It is a scientific mission after all. We find adventure at times, or rather, it has a way of finding us, but that is not the mission."

She squinted at him, sighed, kicked her feet in the oversized slippers and, apropos of nothing, asked, "You wanna play a game?"

They were sitting cross-legged on either side of the Ambassador's table screen, a holographic chess game projected between them on a low table in the center of the living room, when McCoy tapped on the door, then let himself in when Joanna waved to him.

"Nice of you to leave a note for your old man, kid," he grumbled from just inside the door, hanging his dripping coat on a rack. He slipped off his wet shoes and Joanna ran to fetch him a towel.

"We shouldn't stay," McCoy said, standing there drying his hair even as Joanna went back to sit across from Spock on the floor. "Mr. Spock's probably got stuff to do. And we were going to see the falls.

Joanna caught Spock's eyes, another 'see, I told you', but said aloud, in standard, "It's raining, dad. Anyway, Mr. Spock doesn't mind." She moved a pawn up one level.

McCoy frowned, looked lost, standing there with a towel, uncertain now how to proceed. Spock was certain he had never seen him so easily cowed as by his daughter.

"You are correct, Joanna," Spock said to her, "that I do not mind, however your father may. Perhaps you should speak with him in private."

"But I'm winning," she whined.

McCoy shook his head, caught Spock's eye and sighed with his usual mix of tension and resignation. "You sure you don't mind?" he asked.

"Of course not, Doctor," Spock said, and McCoy took a seat at the nearest side of the table, between Spock and Joanna.

"Why do you always call him doctor?" Joanna asked, flipping through the game menu for something the three of them could play together, in spite of her argument about winning the match with Spock.

"As a sign of respect," Spock said.

McCoy made a sound, half choke, half laugh, smiling handsomely and folding up the sleeves of his button-down, only partly buttoned, but did not argue. The tension had seemed to immediately go out of him.

"You got any coffee, Mr. Spock?" he asked.

The day passed slowly. The rain slackened at times, a light pattering on the roof, distorting the view though transparent walls, only to fall heavier again, a staccato soundtrack to their game, their lunch, their conversation.

In the afternoon the sun came out, high, clear and yellow, and the grey sky turned almost instantly blue. Through the clear wall the forest surrounding the house looked hyper green, iridescent in the intense light, but in the livingroom the blue overhead lamp was dim, and Joanna was asleep, head in her father's lap on the sofa, still wrapped in Spock's sweater. Spock sat beside them.

"It's got to be strange," McCoy was saying quietly, stroking his daughter's brown hair, a few shades lighter than his own but just as wavy. "Being here in his home. I'm not surprised he didn't tell you about it. The man was pretty enigmatic."

"More so than I realized," Spock admitted. "It had not occurred to me before the funeral, before the tape, just how much I had avoided knowing about the Ambassador. Had I encountered the same phenomena occurring between any two other people, temporal twins, as he called it, I would have been eager to understand how and in what ways they paralleled or differed."

"Is that what you're doing?" McCoy asked with a frown, hazel eyes more green than brown with the forest bright behind him. "Research? Because it's a lot to put on yourself, Spock. I know you feel obligated to understand the man, out of, hell I don't know what. But if it's anything other than scientific curiosity, I say stow it."

"Actually," Spock said, "the Captain did give me an order to listen to the tape."

"Jesus," McCoy muttered.

"But it came from a knowledge of my interest, in direct opposition to my argument that perhaps my hearing it was a danger to space and time. An idea that I now know to be absurd."

McCoy inclined his head but said nothing, stroked Joanna's hair, so softly and rhythmically that Spock felt calmed just watching it.

"Are you not also curious?" Spock asked after a moment. "To know the other doctor? To hear the data tape?"

"Not really," McCoy shrugged. "Everything on those tapes, in this time, our time, they didn't happen. It's a fiction."

"It happened for Ambassador Spock. His existence here, however short, makes it a reality."

"And yet here we are in this one," McCoy countered, lifting his free hand to take in the room, as if those four walls represented their entire universe. "It was his reality and he's gone now. Ours is something else."

"This was their home, you know," Spock said, and McCoy only sighed.

"I figured as much," he said. "The old man had some pretty specific requirements."

Spock shifted to see McCoy, not closer, not farther, careful not to wake Joanna. McCoy did not move. Spock took a breath.

"I know that you may be reluctant, Doctor, but I admit that I am curious how and what the Ambassador told you… about himself and his McCoy." When McCoy stiffened he added, "Call it scientific curiosity if you prefer."

The clock on the wall chimed softly that it was two-pm, reminded the Ambassador to water the plants, then went quiet.

McCoy cleared his throat. "What he told me, you already know. But how he told me…" he laughed softly and shook his head, watching Joanna's profile. "After we were back for a while, after Kahn and everything, he came to see me on Earth, long before the mission started." He paused, smiled, "That wiley dog, he said he needed to consult with me about some medications he'd taken in the future, the other future, you know what I mean, anyway, they didn't exist yet. I know he could have done the work himself but he came to me. I guess he couldn't help himself, Vulcan or not." He glanced up at Spock, a fond smile on his face. He had only been on Earth for three days but the sun was already pinking his skin past space-pale.

"So we worked together," he continued, "and he'd just watch me, all the time. I thought it was a Vulcan thing, you know, cultural differences. I didn't know you as well back then, I didn't know what to expect." He shrugged. "We started talking about what was different in his time and ours, how Jim was different, the crew, and me. I hadn't even considered until then that there was another me. I don't know why. Vanity, probably. He said that I--that the other McCoy had been older when they had first met, but that I was much the same. Stubborn, I guess he meant.

That was all that he said about it for a long time, until we got the mission. I told him I was leaving, promised to send him a message now and then, and he said he'd like that, that his McCoy had always sent him messages when they were apart, especially after they were married." He shook his head. "Just like that, he dropped it on me. I kept expecting him to laugh about it, let me in on the joke, but then I remembered who I was talking to. I asked how that happened and he said 'very slowly'. He said--" McCoy stopped. Spock wondered what the Ambassador might have said about his life long partner that was flushing the doctor's cheeks even redder. They would be warm to the touch if Spock reached out.

"Anyway, that's how I found out. We didn't talk about it much after that. He'd bring it up sometimes, casually, 'My Leonard this or that', and I'd listen. He wasn't the kind of man you interrupted, you know."

Spock's heart was beating quickly in his side. He had not realized until then. He tried to calm it. "I do," he said coolly, quietly. "It must have been very difficult for him to see you again. You may think us cold and unemotional, but it is because we feel so deeply that we go to great lengths to temper it."

"Yeah, he said the same thing. Only not about it being difficult. I guess he'd had time to come to terms with, well… I guess even in that place humans don't outlive Vulcans."

McCoy glanced at him again then away, but Spock could tell that it was an effort. The room grew very small and quiet. Somewhere outside in the damp forest a limb snapped, thumped to the hard wood of the deck.

Joanna made a soft sound and, after a moment, opened her eyes.

"Hey, my girl," McCoy said softly down at her, smiling at her as she blinked at him in confusion, stretched, rolled over and stared at the ceiling.

"Did it stop raining?" she asked.

"Yep," McCoy said.

"Can we go to the falls now?"

"If you want."

The careful silence of the room quickly gave way to the movement of bodies rising, fabric hissing over arms and shoulders as coats were pulled on and shoes, now dry, were stomped into or laced on with small, exacting fingers.

McCoy and Joanna were at the door when McCoy asked Spock, "You wanna come?"

The falls were a short drive away and they rode with the windows down, the wet air warmer than it had been since Spock landed, and dense. Spock could taste the rain and the earth in it, could see it condense on the windscreen even as the sun burned it off.

They parked and hiked a worn trail, the ground drier here, higher up, soft with brown pine needles, and the sound and the smell of rushing water was in the air. Spock still wore his robe, as comfortable in it as his service trousers, and McCoy had said it would not be a long hike.

It was not a long hike. Soon the forest opened up onto a wide, stream, clear and shallow in places, dark and deep in others, and beyond it the land and the trees and the rock climbed high to meet at a point where water cascaded over striated rock, some nine meters wide, falling, Spock estimated, at least eighteen meters to meet the swiftly moving stream. The air was even wetter here, and the sun dappled the ground, the rocks through the trees, glistened off of the rushing water, warming the day enough that they removed their coats. Even at a distance, the falls were loud enough that they spoke louder, or closer.

"Careful!" McCoy shouted, either to Joanna or Spock or both, as the ground changed rapidly underfoot, mostly rock, some moss and some sand.

Joanna had her PADD and Spock took her and McCoy's photo in front of the fall, then she sat it on a rock and made Spock join them.

"Tell me one cool story about being in space," Joanna said when they idled by the water, Joanna throwing smaller rocks at nothing in particular.

McCoy picked up a smooth pebble, skipped it across the water. "There's lots of free time to do your homework," he said drily, and she frowned at him.

"We discovered an unknown and unusual species that defied classification while on shore leave," Spock said, walking along with his hands clasped behind his back. He looked to McCoy who only smiled a little, so he continued. "It was a small, round, furred animal, without sight or auditory perception. It propelled itself by peristaltic means, rolling toward or away from pleasing or frightening vibrations. It reproduced asexually, based solely on the availability of an ample food source."

"Trouble was," McCoy chimed in, "the darned things were so cute, sorta purred when you petted them--"

"Like a cat?"

"Like a cat without claws, so better. Anyway, they were so cute, everyone kept feeding them and soon the ship was overrun. Every closet, every console, replicator, or Jefferies tube, even the captain's chair, covered in little furballs."

"How'd you get rid of them?" she asked.

"We fed them to--" Spock began to say and McCoy interrupted.

"We fed them something to slow their reproduction and sent them back to their own furball planet." He looked pointedly at Spock and Spock did not argue.

"That's interesting, I guess," Joanna said, and threw a rock.

"I once assisted your father in the delivery of octuplet tetrapods," Spock said.

"Of what?" Joanna asked.

"Big lizard people," McCoy said.

Joanna made a face. McCoy shrugged. They walked a little farther.

"Have you ever caught a fish?" Spock asked.

"Grandma takes me fishing all the time," she said. "In the creek behind the house. Dad doesn't like to, says it's cruel."

"They suffocate," McCoy said, a disgusted look on his face. "It's a horrible way to die."

"We shall not be using anything as barbaric as a hook," Spock explained, heading out toward the water, "and the fish will not be harmed. On Vulcan it was a test of patience and agility. Shall I show you?"

Joanna shrugged and McCoy mumbled something that sounded like 'this I gotta see'.

Spock toed off his boots, stripped off his socks and left them on a rock, the water colder on his feet than he expected, then lifted the front and back of his robes, crossing them between his legs and tied them together around his waist with the sash.

"You're gonna freeze!" McCoy shouted, but he sounded amused.

Joanna was less subtle. Her laughter echoed off the forest wall, several birds flew up, startled.

"Your legs are so hairy!" she said, bending over.

Spock picked his way carefully into the water, it rose up to his calves, icy on his skin.

"Most mammals throughout the galaxy retain some of the body hair or fur of their more hirsute evolutionary relatives," he shouted toward the shore, over the sound of the falls. "It is believed that the predecessor to the modern Vulcan, which lived during the last glacial age, was so wooly as to be indistinguishable from a sehlat at a distance." He bent at the waist as he waded farther out, using the shadow of his body to block the reflected light. Something moved in the water, silvery and quick. "However, when the planet began to thaw some two million years ago, the proto-Vulcans of the equatorial regions adapted to the warmth by losing body hair. After that it was a matter of sexual selection. Most Vulcans lack all body hair. Mine is likely an expression of my human genetics."

Another shape moved, still too fast. He let his fingertips skim over the water.

"Your fur isn't the problem," McCoy called from the shore. "You look like you're trying to smuggle a colony of tribbles through the neutral zone in that get-up. I thought you wore pants under those things."

Spock's foot slid on a slick rock and he corrected, watching the water.

"That is actually another step in our evolution, Doctor, or rather, a misstep. Unlike homo sapiens, when Vulcans lost their hair, they did not develop eccrine glands, or sweat glands, to further assist in cooling. As the planet continued to warm, our ancestors took to the trees for shade, until all but the hardiest grasses and sedum had gone extinct, then people looked once again to the shelter of the caves which had warmed their glacial ancestors. In this way they remained cool and sweatless."

"But you didn't evolve robes, those are made by people," Joanna shouted.

A shape, silver, shimmering pink or green as it moved, circled his pale, numbing feet.

"Correct, however we learned that shading our hairless skin from the sun was beneficial even in the ambient heat. This is, of course, a simplification of events, and in fact, as I am partly human I do possess eccrine glands, only not as dense as your father's, for example."

"You trying to insult me, Spock?"

Silver brushed his fingertips, swam by.

"To the contrary, Doctor, it is the one evolutionary advantage you have over me."

Another brush of silver, soft as the water.

"Just the one, huh?"

"Perhaps there is another of which I am unaware and you may enlighten me."

Spock closed his fingers, not too much pressure or the creature would slip away, but enough to hold. He stood straight and the fish wriggled in his hands as he lifted it, cold water running down his wrists, into his sleeves. Joanna squealed. McCoy laughed. Spock took a step toward shore and slipped.

He had a moment of clear and certain knowledge of what was happening, that there was nothing to be done about it, and of a brief weightlessness, like a shuttlecraft pausing in null gravity, then it was gone and his head and shoulder landed hard against a rock. He had walked out farther than he realized, the water was deep where he fell, and before he lost consciousness, before he lost the fish, and before he was swept off by rushing water and the drag of his heavy, wet robe, he saw McCoy hurrying from the shore toward him.

When he woke, Joanna's was the first face he saw, the outline of her dark and fuzzy against the bright sky. He lay on the ground.

"He's awake!" she shouted to someone not in his line of sight, and then McCoy appeared with a blanket. Water dripped from his hair, the tip of his nose and onto Spock's face when he leaned over to cover Spock in the blanket, to look in each of Spock's eyes in turn, pushing back the eyelids, tilting his head back, gently as a lover.

"You're gonna be fine," was all that he said, "just fine."

Then they went through a series of questions about what Spock could and could not do. Could he count three fingers or two or four? Could he move his head? Did he know the stardate? The Terran date? Could he sit up? Stand? Walk?

Spock could. All of them.

"I assure you, Doctor, I am alright," he told McCoy as McCoy hovered over him, helped him to stand, helped him to walk back to the vehicle.

"It is perhaps my ego more than anything that is bruised," he said.

"Dad says a scientist must have an equal measure of humility and curiosity," Joanna offered from the back seat once the vehicle was moving again. This time the windows were up and the environmental controls were set to heat the cab.

Spock looked over at McCoy sitting in his soggy clothes in the driver's seat. McCoy, breathed a laugh and shrugged. "At least you caught the fish."

When they returned to the house McCoy sent Joanna for his med bag and helped Spock into the Ambassador's bedroom. He did not need assistance and he told McCoy this, but in truth he did not mind McCoy's hand at his back, sometimes touching, sometimes not. He allowed McCoy to help him with the wet robe, though McCoy stepped out of the room when he shed his undergarments, as if he had something to do in another room, as if he had not seen Spock nude for many physicals or injuries over the years. He returned with a glass of water and a towel around his neck and Spock wore one of the Ambassador's dry, gold-trimmed robes. It was softer than any of his own, silken against his cold skin. He stood and drank the water. McCoy watched him, waiting quietly, eyes golden in the early evening light through the windows.

Joanna returned noisily, ran through the house with the med bag held high, obviously still excited by everything that had happened.

"Go on back to the house," McCoy told her, and petted her head.

"But," she said, though she had no clarifying statement, and after a look from her father she said goodbye to Spock and was gone.

McCoy pushed Spock toward the bed. "Sit."

"I assure you I am fine, Doctor," Spock said, but sat.

"Just let me be the judge for once, would ya?" McCoy said and knelt in front of him and pulled out his tricorder. He must have been cold and uncomfortable in his wet clothes, and he smelled, as Spock did, of tinny stream water and wet hair, but his concentration was such that he might as well have been in uniform, in the comfort of his medbay.

"That was very un-Vulcan of you, I have to say," he said quietly, as if he did not want to disturb something in the room, looking back and forth between the tricorder and Spock's face, moving the scanner around Spock's head.

"It was only my intention to amuse Joanna."

Spock could feel the breath of McCoy's laugh on his cheek. "I think you pretty well succeeded."

After another moment the scanner ceased its buzzing and McCoy put it away.

"You're right, you're fine," he said. "I can give you a hypo for the headache you probably have but I'm guessing pain is of the mind, as it usually is."

"You are correct," Spock said.

McCoy smiled gently and Spock felt dizzy, having nothing to do with the bump on his head. Then McCoy reached up, smoothed down Spock's hair.

"You look ridiculous," he said with a grimace and stood. "I prescribe rest, if you'll take it, and a comb."

He packed his med bag and threw the towel into the cleaner and hesitated for a moment in front of Spock, looking down at him, Spock looked up at him, trying to breathe evenly. Neither spoke. McCoy turned to leave.

"I have researched the details of the home and property," Spock said suddenly, almost a surprise to himself, and McCoy paused in the doorway, "and its ownership."

"It's yours, right?" McCoy asked, shifted. Spock regretted keeping him from changing out of his damp clothing. "I think it was always yours."

"And yet the surrounding property is owned by your family. You gave the Ambassador a plot of land to build his home."

McCoy shrugged, one hand on the door jamb, looking at something there instead of Spock. "Yeah, of course. We weren't doing anything with it."

"And you knew it would one day belong to me."

"I thought it might."

There was a long enough silence that McCoy reached for the door knob to pull it closed behind him, to leave Spock there in the Ambassador's house--his house--alone.

"Doctor," Spock said. He sounded desperate even to himself.

A quiet exhalation and McCoy paused, hand still on the knob, "Call me Leonard, Spock."

"Leonard, you once said you knew my tell. May I ask what it is?"

McCoy smiled, shook his head. "I have no idea," he admitted "Pretending to know, that's part of the bluff.

"Yet you are purportedly unbeatable among the Enterprise crew," Spock said, reminding him of Chekov's claims.

"I don't know what any of theirs are either," McCoy said. "I think they're all just really bad players." He waited quietly to see if Spock had any other questions.

"Thank you, Leonard," Spock said.

"Get some rest, Spock," McCoy said after a moment, and then was gone.

___

USS ENTERPRISE-D

It's official. We've been out-classed. The USS Enterprise-D is bigger, better, and, I admit, I didn't know what half the medical equipment was for. I still nodded and said 'mmhmm' and 'oh yes, that'll come in handy' and gave my approval of the whole business. It's all just a polite gesture to an old country doctor anyway. Called me Admiral, the whole lot of 'em, like I'd ever commanded anything but a hypospray. There was an android reminded me a little of you. Not as cute, though.

Anyway, I've just transferred to the rendezvous ship and I'll be on Vulcan before your morning plomeek. Keep the light on for me, darlin'.
___

A TREEHOUSE

On his third day in Georgia, Spock began packing up the Ambassador's belongings. Clothing mostly, personal items, a shaving kit, a dental kit, several pairs of shoes, all fit into a small chest he had found in a closet. Spock kept one of the gold-trimmed robes, folded it neatly and placed it in his duffel with his own, together with some data tapes of documents, music, photographs and books. They were not from another time, but he kept them anyway.

Then he laundered the sheets and remade the bed, cleaned the kitchen and bath and set the floor cleaners to clean and polish every room in the house, then sat to have lunch when he remembered something and returned to the bedroom. From the bedside table he pulled a single, straight, silver hair. He turned it between his thumb and forefinger. It caught the sunlight, and he remembered the first time he met the Ambassador, standing in a hangar bay, wishing him good luck.

After a moment, he placed it into the recycler.

He had not heard from nor seen Joanna or McCoy, but he would need to before he left. He had something to discuss with McCoy.

In the afternoon he dressed in his service trousers and tee and headed down the forest path toward Susie's home. The day was warm and humid, more end of summer than early autumn, and either the heat or something else made him sweat.

Susie was in the side yard starting a winter garden, the ground newly turned. She was bent over spidery bots, directing them to dig here, snip a root there, a large, floppy hat on her head. She looked up when he threw a shadow over the ground.

"Mr. Spock, glad to see you up and around!" she said and straightened. "I heard about your tumble." She reached around and smoothed down the back of his hair as if feeling for a bump.

"I am well, I assure you," Spock said.

Susie smiled, took her hand from his hair but rested it on his arm. She smelled of earth. "You stirred up something here," she said. "After seeing her daddy in action yesterday, Jo's decided she's going to be a nurse. A Starfleet nurse. Len nearly fell out of his chair."

"As I cannot imagine an objection to the profession, I assume that he does not want her to join the fleet?"

"Never," she shook her head, turned on her heel and he followed her toward the back of the house. "We were all shocked as hell-excuse me- surprised when he joined up himself, never had anything good to say about it up 'til then. Certainly never thought he'd take after me once he had his MD."

"You were in the fleet?" Spock asked, sorry for the surprise in his voice, but Susie either didn't notice or ignored it.

"Only about a decade. I met David, Len's father, during my physical. He was a doctor too." She turned and smiled at him, winked like her son. "I retired my commission a Lieutenant. I missed Earth and my family too much."

They had reached the back yard and out past an old barn McCoy was lifting Joanna up into a large tree. "I believe you and Leonard are more alike than you realize," Spock said.

He left Susie to her garden and walked out to meet McCoy, the ground still damp and soft under his boots from the day-long rain the day before.

"Did you come to help?" McCoy asked when he saw him, standing by the tree, one arm raised as if to steady Joanna up on a platform in the branches, watching her instead of Spock.

"Mr. Spock!" Joanna shouted, almost invisible in the foliage. "Dad's gonna fix the tree house!"

"Maybe," McCoy clarified but under his breath so that Joanna did not hear him.

"Leonard, I would like to discuss something with you," Spock said, before he decided that he shouldn't. "It will not take long."

McCoy really looked at him then, his clothing, his expression, perhaps. "You're leaving," he guessed, not a question, and stared for a moment, that same blank, stricken look Spock had seen once before. Then he turned his face back up to Joanna.

"Well I'm sure it can wait, Mr. Spock. We've got a treehouse to build." Then to Joanna he said, "Come down, baby, we need to get some ladders and I'm gonna fetch Mr. Spock a change of clothes."

"I do not require alternate clothing," Spock said.

McCoy caught Joanna, set her feet on the ground and she took off toward the barn. McCoy stepped up to him, grimaced, squinting in the sunlight. "Well you don't want to get your service kit all dirty and sweaty, even with those inferior eccrine glands, do you?"

Spock frowned. "I do not wish to compromise any more of the time that you have with your family than I already have."

"I told the girl we'd build her a treehouse, Spock," McCoy said. "So we've gotta build her a treehouse. Besides, I'm no architect. You've got to help me do it right, make it safe for my only child." He put a hand on Spock's shoulder and his voice had softened, taken on a pleading tone that Spock did not think was genuine. His eyes were wide.

Spock sighed, stepped beneath the tree and looked up. There was a platform, only partially broken away, grown into the tree wherever it touched the trunk, and a skeleton of walls above it, no roof at all.

"Have you drawn up any plans?"

McCoy grinned broadly, clearly pleased to have gotten his way, and slapped Spock on the back. "We're winging this one, buddy."

There were no plans but there was a photograph of a structure that had been built when McCoy was Joanna's age, perhaps younger. It pictured the same tree only smaller, the foliage dense but sculpted. A simple house with a sloping roof and a platform that projected out onto several limbs, a hole in the floor and a ladder provided ingress and egress. Through one of the windows a round, tan face peered out from below a mop of curly, brown hair.

"It looks like a boy-me, huh?" Joanna said when she showed it to him. "Except I got blue eyes, like grandpa."

McCoy brought him a pair of old denim pants, beaten sneakers, and a once-white tee-shirt that read 'Ole Miss' and 'Class of 2249', and he changed in an attic bedroom stacked with boxes that read 'Len's stuff/kitchen' or 'Len's stuff/photos' or 'Len's stuff/scrubs", with McCoy's black duffel in one corner near an unmade bed.

There was a small stockpile of synthetic lumber in the garage and old glass jars filled with assorted nails and screws, tools of every variety, most quite old, orange or brown with rust but solid, and a replicator for anything else they would need. Spock did draw up crude plans, with input from Joanna who added flower boxes and a swing.

Spock ran the laser saw, outfitted with every safety precaution, and McCoy teased him that he had only chosen to do so as he did not trust McCoy to achieve the required accuracy. Spock agreed, but smiled when he said so, and McCoy grinned back, went on trimming the foliage and passing limbs to Joanna for the yard waste recycler.

Then they made a scaffold with two ladders and timbers and they might have just as easily been working in the lab, bent over hammer and nail or huddled around a microscanner. Spock felt at ease with McCoy once again. For the first time since New Vulcan he felt anchored, and not by gravity or the scaffold, or the home which he'd been given, which had always been his, it seemed. 'Welcome home,' it had said to him, as if it had known something he had not.

In the late afternoon they took a break, a brief pause in the shade for McCoy to drain a tall glass of iced tea quickly, liquid dripping down his chin to his throat and chest, to join the darkened V where he sweated there.

Spock waited, watched McCoy's throat moving eagerly, sipping his own, felt the breeze on his damp face, watched Joanna picking wild muscadine grapes at the edge of the woods, her energy seemingly undiminished.

"I would like to offer you the house and property," Spock said when McCoy lowered his glass.

McCoy blinked at him, pulled at his shirt collar to wipe his forehead, his mouth, shifted where he stood. "You mean sell it to me?"

Spock took another sip of the tea, cold on his lips, his dry throat. "I mean to give it to you."

"Yeah, you don't have any use for it, I guess," McCoy said, and squinted out toward the mountains.

Spock frowned. "The idea chiefly arose from the assumption that you would have more use for it."

McCoy nodded, his hair damp with sweat, it dripped down to run at his temple, and then he smiled politely. "I'll think about it, alright?" he said quietly, then stood. "We'd better get back to work. It'll be dark soon."

McCoy was quieter after that and the work went quickly. They didn't finish by dark but nearly, only the plant boxes remained, and they stood in the rapidly dimming evening admiring their work as Joanna climbed in and out, calling down her approval. When Susie called them in for supper Spock made his excuses with no resistance from McCoy, just a wave and a thanks, then Spock headed back through the trees in McCoy's clothes, his own tucked under his arm.

At the house--he no longer wanted to think of it as the Ambassador's house--he shed the dirty clothes, tracking dirt and dust even though he'd left McCoy's old shoes at the back door, undoing much of the work the cleaners had accomplished earlier. He showered longer, under hotter water than he usually would have, let the steam rise up through the exhaust and he thought of the Ambassador's funeral, of his father and the coals and steam flying up to evaporate into the atmosphere, of the Ambassador, who had foregone the transference of his katra, who had died in a place that was not his own, with many homes and yet without one.

Out of the shower he toweled off, dried his hair roughly, and lay on the bed naked, cooling after the hot water. After a while the room grew colder and the moon began to rise over the trees. He took out the Ambassador's PADD. There was only one file left. He pressed play.
___

ONE LAST MESSAGE

Darlin' Spock. I was just remembering I used to call you that when you were off-planet or off-ship or I was. Far away from each other either way. Drove you crazy. Or at least I always hoped it would. But this message isn't traveling though the galaxy tonight, riding on star stuff or bouncing from receiver to sender, faster than light. You're in the other room, asleep I think. You'd better be or you'll ruin the surprise. You never could let me get the drop on you; anticipated my every move after a while. Maybe just that first time I kissed you. I think I shocked the hell out of you then.

Don't worry, this isn't a suicide note. I wouldn't do that. I like myself too much! But I hope you'll wait until after to hear it… I want you to have something more than whatever comes last. I could never get the image of my father out of my head, after I'd…. I left another recording for Joanna, if you'll give it to her. But this is for you, Spock.

I want you to close your eyes now, I want you to picture me smiling, maybe giving you that sly old wink, sipping a mint julep, my eyes unclouded, lord they were something. Picture me like that, maybe taking your hand, lifting my glass and saying: here's to us, babe. It wasn't long enough, but it was sure good while it lasted. I once told you I'd love you 'til I died. Well, don't ever let anyone call me a liar.
___

A NEW MISSION

A little while later Spock's comm unit chirped across the room. He stood and walked over to his duffel, fished it out of a pocket and wiped the salty dampness off of his cheeks.

A text message from Kirk flashed in the dark of the room.

We got our mission back. See you on the ship at 2200 tomorrow.

He sat on the bed, stared at the shapes on the screen, blinked to clear his vision, let his eyes trace each word, then each letter. Something that had sat heavy on him, something he had not even known was there, lifted, like flying up out of a gravity well, and he took a deep breath.

His comm unit chirped again, this time it was McCoy.

You hear from Jim? I guess we're back on.

I am surprised at the speed of their decision, Spock replied.

Could have stood a few more days myself.

You are not retiring, then?

Someone has to keep an eye on you two. Then, a moment later. I've decided not to take the house. Thanks, but you should keep it. Maybe you'll need a place to go whenever you're on Earth. Good to have a place to come home to. Several moments passed, long enough that Spock might have sat the comm aside when the screen lit up again. Or someone.

Spock felt himself flush bodily. His heart rate increased.

Another message from McCoy: Would you meet me? Now? Not in the house.

Yes, Spock replied. Give me a moment.

He dressed in a robe, the fastest thing he could put on, slipped into his boots without socks and walked, calmly walked, to the door. The temperature had plummeted, it cooled his warm cheeks, and the moon was huge and bright, no longer waxing but full so that he needed no extra light to find his way. There were crickets in the bushes and the muscadines rotted sweetly somewhere nearby.

At the top of the hill he could hear someone moving through the brush and he stilled, waited. Then McCoy was there, washed and redressed in a dark button-down, half undone, a silver pendant in the V of it. He approached uncertainly, not from the darkness, he could certainly see as well as Spock.

"Spock," he said, but he said nothing else because Spock pulled him close, hands around his neck, and kissed him.

McCoy made a sound of surprise, went stiff for a moment but quickly relaxed, softened, as if relieved of a burden that had been too heavy to carry much longer. Spock felt McCoy's hands on his waist, light at first then stronger, sliding to his back as he stepped closer, pressing himself into Spock, pulling Spock against him, using his slight height advantage to deepen the kiss.

When they parted they were both breathless, and Spock could see the shine of the moon in McCoy's eyes.

"Hell," McCoy said, voice deep and husky, "you beat me to it."

"I did as I should have done on the Enterprise," Spock said, felt it quiver in his throat. "Believe me when I say that this is what I wanted then."

McCoy licked his lips, breathing heavily in the cold air. "I don't want to be some box you think you have to tick to live up to the old man," he whispered suddenly, sad or angry, Spock could not tell, perhaps both, but he stayed close, kissed Spock again with a little more force, as if to prove his point.

"Do you really think me so complacent as to accept a fate laid before me?" Spock asked when he could, kneading the warm skin of McCoy's neck, thumbs brushing at his hairline. "An individual you once referred to as being 'acutely stiff-necked and obscenely pig-headed'?"

"Did I?" McCoy asked, and smiled when they kissed again.

Spock nodded silently. He could not speak just then.

"Well, that's an unnecessary amount of adjectives but you probably were."

"And what about you, Doctor?" Spock whispered into McCoy's collar. He smelled of soap and cologne and his skin was in places salty and bitter. "Are you not afraid of following a path previously laid out for you, by fate or simple suggestion?"

McCoy scoffed, loud in Spock's ear, but it was another moment before he spoke, a moment in which he shuddered as Spock moved against him. "It wasn't anything the Ambassador said, I mean," he pulled away, held Spock's face, to see it clear in the moonlight, his own eyes bright with it, "maybe I didn't see it before but…" he kissed Spock again softly, briefly, pulled away just far enough to see, that same intense look in his eyes, then his brows knitted and he frowned. "You know, it was those damned silicon amoebas. Every day in that lab with you, talking to you, working with you, hell, even arguing with you…."

"That was over three years ago, Leonard," Spock said, almost not believing it.

"You're tellin' me," McCoy said, "and all that time you were with Uhura--God, she's going to kill me, isn't she?" he shook his head. "I just didn't think that you would..." now he looked hesitant again, "You know, he--that other guy, the things the old man said about him, the way he talked about him; cured more diseases than Jesus Christ with nothing but a starship lab and a hypospray, had enough medals on his chest to drown him in the lake. That's not me."

"I know who you are, Leonard," Spock said, as clearly as possible. He wanted to be understood. "But love, I have been told, makes one see and remember people in a more auspicious light. Perhaps the Ambassador recounted only what he chose. Perhaps that explains my own current perception."

McCoy winced, looked down at the space between them and shook his head, not at all like a man who had just been told, if rather obliquely, that he was loved.

"Don't say things like that… " he said, so softly that Spock almost didn't hear him, and for the first time since they'd met under the moonlight he dropped his hands, tried to pull away but Spock closed the gap again, unwilling now to let McCoy drive anything else between them. He took handfuls of McCoy's shirt in his hands, tugged him abruptly close, held him there. McCoy looked surprised but let it happen.

"I choose you, Leonard," Spock said carefully, not kissing but close enough that they breathed the same air. "If you do not choose me, tell me now and I will accept that I am unsuitable for you. There need not be any further clarification."

McCoy frowned, stricken, anger or desperation in the glint of his eyes again. "That's not what I said, dammit. Spock, you're more than, hell…. you're just…" he did not clarify what Spock was, stubborn? infuriating? Perfect? Instead he took a deep breath and his face softened by degrees. Then he swallowed hard and reached up to touch Spock's hands gently where they twisted in his shirt and Spock released him. McCoy didn't move away but pulled Spock even closer, and was breathing in his Spock's ear, lips moving against his cheek when he spoke again.

"I'm not going to be any nicer to you," McCoy said softly.

"I would not expect it."

"And we're not getting married. I don't want to get married again," McCoy added, but so achingly sweet and quiet against Spock's skin that Spock did not believe him. "Not right away anyway," he said after a moment, and Spock laughed, though not for long.
_____

MOONLIGHT

Moonlight through pines illuminated the room where they lay. Spock had watched the distant satellite, a curiosity to someone from a moonless planet, many a night during his academy days, and for the past few evenings he had observed it waxing through the glass walls of the bedroom. Now it was full and he watched only McCoy and understood for the first time the human sentiment often attached to that orbiting body.

McCoy was asleep. He lay on his side facing Spock, lashes on tanned cheeks, breathing noisily, as he always did. His hair was disheveled and he was nude beneath the sheet over him. Utterly defenseless.

It had once, very long ago, been a sign of great trust for a Vulcan to fall asleep in front of another, since it left them vulnerable to attack. The practice of meditation over sleep is thought to be born of this early paranoia. Humans, for all their barbarity, were strangely trusting, Spock thought.

After a while Spock stood, dressed in his meditation robe and crossed the moonlit room to the Ambassador's mat, rather more plush than his own. Even there, sitting cross-legged, hands resting in his lap, he watched McCoy a while longer before beginning his meditation.

Spock woke to full sunlight in the same room and he must have slept. His back ached from slumping a little and he had no memory of meditating for longer than an hour or two. He stood, stretched, and noticed that the bed was empty. The covers were neatly tucked and the pillows placed very purposefully and in the center of the bed lay the Ambassador's PADD. McCoy was gone.

Not gone. A sound in another room accompanied by a curse gave away McCoy's location. Metal on tile, perhaps a pot or pan dropped, and something tight in Spock's belly that was not hunger loosened. He took a cleansing breath.

The PADD on the bed blinked at him, a new message. But no one should have messaged the Ambassador.

Spock, the message began when he played it and McCoy's voice, his McCoy, boomed into the empty room so that he reduced the volume quickly.

You're still meditating in the other room right now. Hell, if that's meditating I do that every night. Pretty sure you were snoring at some point. His voice was thick, raspy, like McCoy early Alpha shift, before his coffee. Spock sat on the bed, held the PADD carefully with both hands.

Anyway, when you're up and about, if I'm not here I've gone to mom's to get some strawberries. I'm going to make us some pancakes. And if you don't like pancakes I'm sure the replicator can come up with the Vulcan equivalent of decadent breakfast foods. Maybe after breakfast we finish up Jo's treehouse, then in the afternoon we can work on our Vulcan-Terran relations some more, by which I mean, in the common parlance, fool around.

A soft laugh, a pause, a breath, the rasp of what might be a palm on a stubbled chin. Spock remembered the feel of it well.

I'm expected back on the ship tonight, I'm sure you are too, we didn't exactly get around to talking about that did we. Too busy. But maybe I could catch a ride with you if you're going. We could give Jim the shock of his life.

Not as shocking as you might think, Spock thought.

And after that, well, hell. I guess it's up to you. All of it is, really. If you decide to get back in your shuttle this morning and return to the Enterprise and never mention this again, I won't give you any grief over it. There was a laugh but it sounded very bitter. No, really. I can do that. If you've changed your mind, realized.... Anyway, I'm not trying to drag you anywhere you're not willing to go. I just wanted to give you something to listen to that wasn't that clown from another dimension or reality or, whatever. He got his Spock already, don't see what he needs with mine.

So if you hear a racket, I'll be in the kitchen. There was a long silence, as if he wanted to say more, but at last McCoy said simply, Yours, always… literally always, it seems. McCoy.

The PADD went silent and the screen displayed its "Replay?" symbol pulsing gently. The kitchen noise, which had gone totally silent while the message had been playing, suddenly rose, as if someone there wanted to sound busy quickly, proving that they had not been listening.

Spock powered down the PADD and crossed the room to slide it securely into his baggage. The noise in the kitchen continued, settling into the normal occasional hiss and thud of things being cooked and placed onto counters or plates or chopped into small pieces. Spock removed his robe and redressed in a tunic and pants, watching now and then a blue jay that had settled onto a branch outside. Beyond the bird and the trees he could see his shuttle, black and silver, wet with morning dew.

He crossed the room again to the lavatory to freshen himself, wet and combed his messy hair and washed his face and teeth, noted a short, wavy brown hair on the counter that was not his own. He left it there, then headed into the kitchen.

______

EPILOGUE: NEW THETA

Spock,

I can't believe you volunteered me for this. I could have been poolside with you on Risa. But no, you had to get all noble and helpful and say, "I know just the man to set up a hospital on a newly inhabited planet in the ass end of the galaxy!" Don't think for a minute that I believe that nonsense about an uprising against the Risian Hedony; those folks are too sex-crazed for an uprising of that sort.

Either way, you'd better watch out for yourself, and Jim, I guess. But yourself first. I'll just be here unpacking hypos and testing the water. At least I got a good field assistant. She really seems suited to life out here, I hate to say. Likes to wear her atmo suit even in our quarters. Nearly shorted out her view screen with a bowl of cereal.

All told I reckon we'll finish up here ahead of schedule, and if you all have the Risian orgy--I mean uprising under control by then, we'll hop a passing starship just as soon as we can. I thought five years was a long time away from Earth, but five weeks is way too long away from you, darlin'.

Jo sends her love. Me too. See you soon.

Oh, almost forgot, thanks for the socks.