A/N: Shamelessly inspired from the haunting song "Now I am an Arsonist", by Jonathon Coulton. Highly recommend.
They tranquilize him on the way to Earth: that is how it starts.
Or, that is what Amanda Grayson says, weeping and slapping feebly at her husband's chest when the news reaches the Vulcan embassy of her son's decision. It is not strictly necessary, but the scientists had strongly recommended it. "We do not know how space travel might affect him," they had warned. "Your son's hybrid-physiology is very fragile. He is always vulnerable to death; it is best if he rests through the trip."
They do not consult Spock. He is a Vulcan minor; it is not his decision. He is sedated, and taken with them to the embassy for Sarek's year-long posting, and it is done.
Spock is not a Terran minor. And he holds a dual Vulcan-Terran citizenship. The day he wakes, he vanishes; and the day he vanishes, Sarek receives an alert informing him that his son has arrived at Starfleet Academy in San Francisco.
James Kirk cannot remember being offworld.
He knows he has been left Earth. Relatively recently, in fact. At the age of fourteen he went to Tarsus IV and stayed with his aunt and uncle for an entire year. He has an album full of pictures showing his own face against golden wheat-fields, beaming under a sky with triple moons.
He doesn't remember any of it.
Psychologists call this a blessing. They also say it is dangerous, because he will probably remember eventually; and they also ask strange, prying questions with vid-recorders at hand, and he knows they are just waiting to write a paper about the famine-survivor as soon as he recalls anything.
He does not believe in psychologists, really.
But he does want to remember. Not the massacre; that can stay buried forever. It is gone and behind him. But he would like to remember the planet, the alien soil, and the triple moons. He would like to remember the feel of a foreign star heating his skin and strange birds singing in his ears.
He would like to remember the stars.
They have a class together when they meet.
It is an astrophysics course, and a chore to many cadets. Difficult, but required, for of course astrophysics is a necessary prerequisite to anyone serving in a space-based service.
Spock does not give the human sitting next to him any notice until the man turns and says: "Isn't it beautiful?"
Spock blinks. He is simply surprised at first to be addressed; then he is wary of the question. "Beautiful?"
The man gestures at the screen at the front of the room. His hazel eyes are shining. On the screen a picture of an expanding supernova blots out the viewer, the star's surface studded with molten pits. "Beautiful. Because it can destroy us."
"An unusual definition."
"But don't you think so?"
"Aesthetics are appreciable on a functional level," Spock responds. "But I did not join Starfleet to appreciate beauty."
The young man is still smiling.
"Oh?" He asks. "So why did you join?"
And Spock stops.
Because he realizes he has no answer.
James Kirk – for that is the young man's name – does not seem deterred by Spock's short replies. And somehow his smile is not a detraction; it is a mystery, instead.
Though somehow, Spock would know better than to say this to anyone else. He feels it might be misconstrued.
James Kirk just-call-me-Jim takes him walking through the grounds, hands sweeping in broad strokes to indicate the sky. "Don't tell me you came here for the higher education," he tells the Vulcan, and touches a flower in bloom, stooping to drag a hand across the bark of a tree.
Spock is fascinated, and tells himself it is with humans, in general, and not this man.
"You should meet my adviser," Jim says, and Spock finds himself helplessly agreeing.
Christopher Pike smiles when he looks between them, and he puts Spock on the command track without his consent. Spock does not protest.
Jim is good at stilling his protests. "I know Vulcans have art," he says. And when he hears that Spock plays the Vulcan lute he will not stay still until Spock consents to play, which he has not done publicly for years.
But it is worth it, because as the soft strums rise through the air Jim's eyes slowly flicker shut, and his lips part open. He breaths a quiet, surprised sigh that Spock hears even over the music, fingers twitching, shoulders going lax with languid pleasure at the sounds.
And Spock realizes something.
"I love rainbows," Jim says, peering up at the sky. "It's the best part of a rainy day."
"On Vulcan, it does not rain enough for such a phenomenon."
"Well." Jim turns and smiles. "That's why you're here. Isn't it?"
Jim listens with a tiny curve to his lips when Spock takes him aside and tells him, in quite, obscure terms, of the traditions of couples on Vulcan; when he tries to explain that couples of two men are perfectly acceptable; that he is engaged, but not in a way that is, as yet, binding...
And Jim, being human, just holds him close and kisses him, which is really a much better solution.
In his second year at the Academy, Spock receives a missive from his mother, pleading him to return to Vulcan.
"We could visit," Jim says. And he looks wistful.
"We will go off-world together," Spock promises. "But not there."
When he touches the human named Jim Kirk, there is something between them spoken of only by the oldest poets of Vulcan. In the space of a breath, there is a new universe opening under his fingers, and a golden radiance spilling to fill the dark places of that void. When he touched Jim Kirk, he sees the planes and nebulae of his mind gleaming back on silver mirrors, shuddering with warmth to know his skin.
When he touches Jim Kirk, he thinks he can almost understand light.
"You're ready," says the professor, and Jim clenches a hand around Spock's wrist so no one else can see.
It is no great thing, to leave the atmosphere in these days. Children pilot shuttles all the times, space-boomers and those who have lived aboard ships all their lives. Yet Jim and Spock never have. Now, finally, they have been selected to do just that. A monitored flight, just themselves in contact with an officer back at the Academy.
"It shouldn't even be difficult," Jim says, as Spock goes over the specs of their shuttle for the twenty-second time. "We've run simulations. No one is concerned. But..."
"I know," Spock says.
Yet when the day comes, there is a problem.
"I am sorry," Spock tells his friend, his partner, as the professor looks on. "It was unforeseeable."
"I can hardly blame you for getting hurt," Jim murmurs, glancing at his bound and healing arm; the result of a clumsy Tellarite pushing into him on the way to class.
Jim starts to hold up a hand, to search for an embrace; then, glancing at the professor, he lets the gesture go. "I'll see you when I get back," he says, softly. "And show you everything." He taps his head and smiles.
"We'll send Lieutenant Layfield with you," the professor tells Jim. And, to Spock: "You can watch from the Observation Room."
Spock nods.
And he does, too. He wants to share in Jim's moment, even if he cannot be there. Though, it is hard to have this taken.
He is watching on the screen as it happens.
"Hey," Jim says. "Hey, listen. My controls aren't responding."
The professor stirs. "What do you mean."
"I mean, it's not responding."
Jim is accelerating fast. He is flying past Venus, approaching Mercury. And...
"Kirk, you're getting too close to the sun's gravitational pull."
"I know that, don't you think I know that? I'm telling you, the control's aren't responding."
"Sir, I confirm," Lieutenant Layfield snaps, considerably more panicked. "Something's wrong."
The professor straightens.
Spock says nothing at first, because he can contribute nothing useful and he will not willingly disrupt efforts to fix the problem. But soon the professor is frantically calling command, trying to find ships in range to beam the two aboard.
Impossible, some are saying. The sun's gravity is already too much. It interferes with the transporters.
We're too far, others say. Or, there's no time.
"You have to do it yourself," the professor says.
"Spock," Jim says. "Spock? Are you there still?"
"Yes, Jim."
"Spock. Spock. I see the stars, Spock. I love you."
And he just says: "I know, t'hy'la."
"Not yet," Kirk laughs. "Not yet."
And Kirk is still laughing softly at his response when the communications crackles out in a fizz of static.
"He knew," the students whisper. "Why do you think he didn't go up with Kirk? He knew."
For all that humans obsess over Vulcan ears, they ignore their function. Spock walks through campus and ghosts through classes, and he hears the words they say. He knew. He knew. He knew.
He did not know. But he also did not find the find the flaw in the shuttle that could have saved Jim. There is an engineer by the name of Montgomery Scott reputedly drinking himself half to death in the engineering department; Spock does not seek him out.
"Are you alright," asks the advisor called Pike. And Spock says, "I am Vulcan."
Spock requests that he make his shuttle trip alone. The professors let him.
When he breaks atmosphere, the internal environment of the shuttle protects him from the vacuum of space. But the breath breaks from his body anyway, expelled in one great rush as the stars spread before his eyes.
He has waited for this.
He turns the shuttle away from the intended flight path. The communications channel opens immediately; he shuts it off.
His flight is swift but leisurely. This is something to savor. The shuttle hums under his skin. To his left, the communications light glares bright and furious; without a thought, he reaches out and crushes it.
The approach of the sun rears golden and searing before him, burning his eyes. Heat starts to scorch his fingers, still wrapped around the metal of the shuttle controls. Flares of fire bubble and burst from the great body's surface, and he can almost imagine Jim's voice laughing beside him.
Isn't it something? He would whisper. Such a delicate thing...
Delicate?
Delicate, because it could destroy us.
The controls are melting over his fingers. He breathes air that is too thick to find his lungs. Something is shrieking.
He thinks he understands, now.
The stars really are beautiful.