Disclaimer: I do not own anything of Star Trek, Paramount, or Viacom. I am only referencing the Star Trek 2009 movie and the accompanying audio book for the purpose of this fanfic and showing my appreciation for it. Gene Roddenberry, J. J. Abrams and all involved are geniuses. I love these characters.
A/N: Thanks to all who read my other stories. Here is another that was bursting to get out of me. It is pretty long so I broke it up into two chapters. This story is to help put me in "Spock mode" for my other story.
Again, I am lifting quotes from the movie.
This story begins just after, Spock leaves the bridge after nearly choking Kirk to death and ends before he returns to the bridge again.
Pardon me in advance for any grammatical errors or misspelling. If it gets to be a problem, I will employ the services of a beta reader. If anyone would like to volunteer, let me know.
Lessons Learned
Failure Must be Accepted
"Failure is simply the opportunity to begin again, this time more intelligently."
Henry Ford
Spock had failed. He tried to kill. Unbecoming of an officer and a Vulcan.
He could not will himself to cry but from the genetic soup that was his makeup he was capable of killing.
He had lost command of the U.S.S. Enterprise to a humiliatingly successful coup. How had James Tiberius Kirk, a cadet, beamed himself and a stranger onto a ship going at warp speed and had known to press him, mercilessly about his mother to have driven him almost to homicide? Thus causing him to be emotionally compromised where he had to resign as Captain, under Starfleet regulation 619. He could almost surmise that the slightly younger Terran, had the ability to read his thoughts. "Impossible! Some unknown variable must account for these perplexities." His eyebrows knitted into a frown of confusion.
He was indeed compromised. He could have easily subdued Kirk and swiftly broken his neck. He was much stronger and faster than him. But he had had the need to work out some of his then unfettered rage. It had been a slow burn as Kirk had been intentionally evasive, before the attack. Setting a match that had lit the fuse. Only the cool, calmness of Sarek, his father, had cut through the heat of his determination to end Kirk's life. Hearing his name from Sarek, at that moment, was like being mentally seized at the scruff of the neck as if he had been a spoiled child. He had to then relinquish his hold from around the neck of the human and then the command of the ship. All eyes but the ones he shared a genetic marking, had followed him, with shock and disbelief, when he had exited the bridge, leaving no one as his replacement.
When he left the turbolift, his normally erect posture was now bowed with shame and his graceful, military stride was now noticeably labored as he walked to sickbay. A small comfort was that he was going there to take his required psychological examination without being sedated or under armed duress.
As he walked the halls, the crew buzzed around him, at their duties, oblivious to what had transpired. In only mere moments his fate and theirs had changed. They were to leave the safety in numbers by joining up with the fleet in the Laurendrian sector, Captain Pike's last standing order, to what may be certain death against the vastly superiority of Nero's ship, Narada. Occasionally, a crewmember would stand to attention as he passed. He would give acknowledgement with a nod but with his eyes turned away. Some seemed puzzled, seeing Spock somewhat disheveled with telltale stains on the sleeve of his right arm of his blue tunic.
All activity had stopped when there was a whistle announcing a message on the shipwide comm system. "Attention crew of the Enterprise." The voice was Kirk's. Spock felt every sinew of his body tighten with every nerve still raw. "This is James T. Kirk. "Captain Spock has resigned his commission, advancing me to acting Captain." Kirk then had ended the announcement by telling the crew that their mission was to intercept Nero and that all departments were to be readied for battle stations. The whistle sounded again to signal the end of the transmission.
Fellow shipmates in Spock's line of sight reflected on their faces looks of astonishment that he could not. His face only, remained stoic. Those who knew of his presence among them glanced at him sheepishly and scurried away in embarrassment. Their collective fear was palatable around him. He could not and was not able to offer comfort or explanation.
His erroneous behavior, if not yet known to all on the ship, will draw undue attention to himself as a Vulcan. The Vulcan refugees onboard, but one, will disclaim him as one whose actions were disadvantagely 'human'. And there was one human that he hoped her love he had not lost.
Spock quickened his pace to the sickbay. When he entered, all inside, alien, human or humanoid, froze in their place when seeing him. He silently moved to Dr. McCoy's consultation office. Due to reduced medical staff resulting from the Battle of Vulcan and no one else with the sufficient qualifications available, his evaluation was to be performed by Dr. McCoy, the most senior medical officer. In McCoy's office, he assessed the hand that had delivered crushing blows to the former cadet. It throbbed slightly but no skin was broken. Yet he was sickened that he drew blood that was not his own. This was not the Vulcan way as dictated by Surak's principles. He took a mediwipe to his hand and then sat down quietly, to steel himself in meditation before Leonard McCoy's arrival.
In the short time he had known McCoy, he felt that a mind meld on the doctor would be unnecessary because the man basically blurts out everything on his mind. All being very abrasive. Not that Spock would willingly be the one to perform it.
The medicinal smell of the office was not conducive to his meditation. It was disturbing his senses. The color of the walls, gray and depressing, clearly could have contributed to the constant irritability of the doctor. The room was spartan. No pictures, no decorations of any kind but what was medically required and issued by Starfleet and there was a slight, stale, lingering smell of an intoxicant. All he could do or had time for was to close his eyes and open his mind to transient mediation.
There was no formulate data on trans warp beaming. Only speculative data currently exists. There have been develop-.
Without the usual pleasantries or small talk, McCoy blew into the room, breaking Spock out of his meditative state. As if no time had passed since his last heated conversation with the doctor, when he had said a stallion must first be broken in response to McCoy referring to Kirk as Spock's best stallion and should not have been expelled from the ship, the doctor spoke.
"Instead of breaking the stallion, it appears that it threw you and bit your ass on your way down." There seem to be a slight smirk of satisfaction on the doctor's face, as he sat down behind his desk, retrieved his PADD from inside a drawer and punched in his security code.
McCoy had burrowed deeper. "I suppose an 'I told you so' would be wasted on you."
Spock was in no mood to trade verbal jabs with the doctor so he continued in residence behind his Vulcan bastion.
He was relieved that McCoy's lack of patience soon had him tire of the badgering when he found Spock unresponsive.
"Before we begin your RPE (Required Psychological Examination), would you be more comfortable with a Vulcan representative present?
"That will not be necessary, Dr. McCoy. Other than fulfilling the requirement of Starfleet regulation 619, the mental processes of a Vulcan are private.
McCoy put him through a battery of questions to test his mental state.
"What was your relationship with your mother...uhhh... I'll skip that one.
The gaffe was not completely unintentional. The doctor was looking for a foible, a kink in Spock's armor. Seeing none in him, McCoy moved on.
McCoy had found his Vulcan mind as puzzling as his Vulcan anatomy. Each progressive question soon resulted in McCoy's eyes glazing over. "Dammit, Spock, I'm a doctor not a damn Vulcan." He made no attempt to hide his exasperation as he continued. "Since I can't understand a goddamn thing you're talking about, I am assuming that that Vulcan mind of yours is back to normal." We're done here." He took a stylus and signed his digital signature to the RPE, pushed the PADD over to Spock and handed the stylus to Spock for him to do the same.
Spock quickly scanned the report and signed it. He could not relay to the doctor that he continued to struggle with the duality of his mental state. It was peculiar to him that he felt like he was in two separate places in two completely separate pieces. To center himself he resumed to postulate mentally.
Light from distant stars may take thousands even millions of years to reach the eye of the one that beholds it.
Light moves independently from its source. For trans warp beaming, there must be some catalyst that propels light electromagnetically with the source matter, as done with transport beaming but at a faster rate than the moving destination. Then holds it in suspension until that destination reaches it.
He walked the halls again, unable to settle in one spot yet to meditate fully. The cool, bright, blue light of the daytime simulator lights of the halls of the Enterprise were softening gradually to a warm evening glow. The dim lighting was now matching his mood.
Careful calculation must be made to anticipate where these....
His mind had broken off from his current train of thought to ponder a question that before the events of the previous day would have been out of scientific curiosity but now it was to torture himself.
Would this advance beaming have saved a person in freefall towards a planet imploding into a black hole?